Why don't they get rid of Azog? I bet he'll be a nuisance later, Bilbo thinks as the eagles send orcs and wargs flying to their deaths. If they weren't evil to the core Morgoth's creations, Bilbo would sympathise.

As eagles turn their attention to the members of the Company, Bilbo's heartbeat pulses in his temples. His body is rigid with fright, but when his turn comes, he doesn't struggle. The eagle carrying him in its claws joins the flock in a V formation and tosses Bilbo up into the air. And for a terrifying moment, Bilbo is sure he's going to die. Again. But after a few seconds of free fall, he lands on the back of another bird, safely nesting between its massive wings.

The ground falls farther and farther away until, at last, they are gliding over a sea of clouds, snow-covered mountain peaks breaking its surface like stepping stones. Bilbo's shirt is sweated through, and the rush of air battering his body threatens to knock him off the bird. It wouldn't be this bad if only Bilbo had his backpack, but he lost track of it somewhere between jumping from pine trees and the fight with Azog. Next time, he vows, for no matter how hard he tries to stay alive, there always is a next time, I will keep a better hold on it.

Before long, his teeth are chattering. He can't stop shivering. Only his toes and the tips of his finger are warm, burrowed between stiff feathers. Exhaustion pulls at his limbs like weights. A familiar emptiness of hunger settles in his stomach.

Hours pass. The lighting changes. The scenery doesn't. Bilbo would fall asleep just to relieve the boredom, but the overabundance of space beneath his eagle keeps Bilbo's eyes wide open and his breath catching and stuttering in his chest. His muscles are frozen; he can barely move his eyelids. The wind-induced tears turn into an ice crust.

When they land, Bilbo can't get off the eagle's back on his own and has to wait for assistance. After checking Thorin's condition — alive but unconscious — Gandalf helps Bilbo down with a heavy frown making itself at home on his face.

Lightheaded and dizzy with relief, Bilbo falls to his knees, the pain of impact barely registering.

"Oh, thank Eru," he whispers around the razors scrapping his dry throat. "We made it. Solid ground." He contemplates kissing the rock, but his lips hurt too much. He pats it instead.

"Are you unwell, Bilbo?" Gandalf asks, crouching beside him.

With some effort, Bilbo raises his head. His throat constricts. He swallows and croaks, "Cold."

"Oh." The wizard touches Bilbo's forehead. His hand is scalding. "I'm sorry for your discomfort. The eagles were our only way out."

Bilbo closes his eyes. The thawing ice crystals prick his skin. He hears Gandalf whisper in a language he doesn't understand. The words are silky-soft but threaded with a power that rattles his back teeth. A wave of warmth runs through his body. A rustle of fabric, weary footsteps, then a weighty fabric is piled on him. Without intending to, Bilbo surrenders to the pull of sleep.

When he wakes up, still on the eyot, his limbs ache but no longer feel foreign. The rough stone under his cheek has changed to a scratchy coat that someone bungled him in. The sun is at its zenith, and Thorin is sitting a few feet away, a hand on his ribs.

"Finally, the halfling awakens," he says, but instead of the usual mild hostility and distrust, his voice is laced with good humour.

Clumsy and awkward, Bilbo gets out of the coat and onto his feet. Thirst makes talking impossible, and after appropriate gestures, Thorin passes him a waterskin. Bilbo sips slowly, experience warning him against going too fast, lest he makes himself sick.

After he finishes, Thorin grips his shoulder and looks him in the eyes with more sincerity than Bilbo has ever seen the dwarf muster. It is a heartening sight.

"I thank you for saving my life, Mr Baggins. I'm in your debt."

"I couldn't let you die," Bilbo murmurs. And then, as an afterthought, he adds, "Simply Bilbo is fine."

Thorin's grip tightens minutely. "Come, we must press on. The sun is getting unbearable here."

With his hand still on Bilbo's shoulder, Thorin leads him to the edge of the eyot, the rest of the Company following. A single mountain rises over the endless plains far on the horizon. Forests and lakes, hills and more plains lie before them, but seeing their destination, so close and so far away, lightens Bilbo's spirit.

"Is it?.."

"Erebor," Gandalf says, and turning, Bilbo finds the wizard standing behind Thorin. "The Lonely Mountain. The last of the greatest kingdoms of dwarves of Middle-earth."

"Our home." Thorin's voice carries the same longing Bilbo reads in the softening of his features.

"A raven!" Oin points at a bird flying overhead.

"This, my dear, is a thrush," Gandalf says.

"We will take it as a sign," Thorin says, meeting Bilbo's gaze. His eyes are soft, and a gentle smile graces his lips. It is an entirely uncharacteristic look for the dwarven king. A look Bilbo has never seen before. It suits him well.

"You are right," he replies, "I do believe the worst is behind us."

His legs, still half-asleep and aching, carry him forward. Bilbo takes a step to the edge of the eyot for a better view of the path ahead, Thorin's hand sliding off his shoulder. Another step and—

"Bilbo!" Thorin shouts, but it is too late.

His foot finds nothing. With a startled yelp, Bilbo tumbles off the Carrock.

Waking up, he swears and hits his forehead with his palm.

"Stupid! That was so stupid! 'The worst is behind us,'" he mocks in a high-pitched voice and grimaces. "Ugh!"

Rallying his resolve, Bilbo packs his warmest sweater and breeches, and a second coat. If he survives long enough, it will be winter when they reach Erebor. He is surprised the thought has never crossed his mind.

-[break]-

The flight on the back of an eagle never gets easier. No matter how long he lives, Bilbo won't be comfortable with a giant beast that has already killed him once standing between him and painful death. He has grown to hate heights with a fierce passion.

Another series of tries later — Bilbo swears to never try to keep his backpack while sitting on an overburdened pine tree — they reach Mirkwood.

What a horrid place, Bilbo thinks as they march along the narrow trail.

Dead leaves and dry moss prickle the soles of his feet as they crumble.All around, twisted and gnarled ancient oaks loom over the Company like ever-tightening dense walls, pressing closer and closer. The thick, moist air smells of decay, and Bilbo has to swallow repeatedly past the sick, oily residue coating his mouth. No birdsong cuts through the unnatural stillness of the forest. The nights are worse: the darkness, when it comes, is impenetrable safe for the eyes that glow from the edges of the road.

Without Gandalf's reassuring presence, fear sinks deep into their hearts. They huddle together, resting in shifts, hands never straying far from weapons. Nobody ever attacks, but the constant waiting wears them down. After the brief respite under Beorn's care — and what a scare it was, meeting him in bear form! — it is especially jarring.

They walk and walk and walk in eternal twilight, the journey seemingly without end. No matter how much Bilbo rations, after two weeks, the food Beorn supplied runs out. He listens to Bombur's bemoaning the lack, to grumblings of the dwarven stomachs, and curls his lips in slight contempt and pity. He, a hobbit, survived — didn't — worse and for longer.

With hunger gnawing at his belly, his tongue dry and lips cracked, images of frilly cakes and tart dewberries, and juicy lamb meat layered on golden-brown potatoes tease and torment him as soon as his eyelids slide shut, and sometimes when his eyes are open. They dance before him, tantalising, begging to pluck them from the air.

"My head is swimming," Oin complains, and the mirage vanishes.

The path abruptly ends in a broken bridge. Bilbo stops. His own head is light, his vision funny. Beneath the bridge, a thick layer of fog hides a river.

"We can try to swim it," Bofur suggests from Bilbo's right.

You must be joking, Bilbo thinks. The river seems uninviting.

"You heard what Gandalf said," Thorin rumbles behind him, voice low and hoarse. "The dark magic lays upon this forest. Water of this stream is enchanted."

"Doesn't look very enchanting to me," Bofur says, and Bilbo tries to smile.

"We must find another way across," Thorin says. The sound of retreating footsteps follows.

But Gandalf said to stay on the path, Bilbo thinks. Shouldn't we try to cross it here? His thoughts are slow and thick, like honey.

The fog parts. White flakes or maybe seeds float on the black surface of the river among rust, blown, and purple-pink decaying leaves. Bilbo sways.

"Bilbo!" He hears Thorin's call and turns. The Company has ventured onto the bank. Shaking his head, which does nothing to clear it, Bilbo joins them.

As the lightest person, they choose him to cross the water. Holding onto mossy vines trailing from above, Bilbo tests a twisted, low-hanging branch of the ever-present trees. It swings from side to side, but Bilbo's steps are sure.

"'s al'right," he says, his tongue swollen and unwieldy. "'eems stable 'nough."

He stretches to reach another vine and loses his footing. He falls, flailing and with his stomach jumping into his throat. And catches the branch with his legs at the last second.

"Ev'thing's fine." Bilbo sighs, hanging upside down.

Swinging to catch another vine, he grips a branch and holds himself suspended, stretched parallel to the water. His vision blurs, goes in and out of focus, the spinning starts and stops and starts again. He looks at his reflection. Framed with dark seeds, Bilbo-in-the-river winks from four handspans away. Bilbo frowns, but Bilbo-in-the-river doesn't and suddenly gets closer, closer, close enough—to touch.

-[break]-

He dreams of singing.

Melodious voices entwine to form a beautiful, haunting song. The words slip his grasp, however. At first, all Bilbo sees is absolute, all-consuming darkness, but as the chorus nears a crescendo, the darkness lifts to show him a view from an eagle's back. He sees the Shire, the rolling hills and fields, and woods; the waterfalls of Rivendell; a forest of tall, golden trees with homes built high up on fleets; a gleaming city of white stone with graceful spires piercing the sky. He sees sands, a market square full of colourful tents, twisting streets running like veins through a rust-orange city, and large ships with bright sails anchored in a port under black banners.

Bilbo sees many things, flying over the whole world, and everything in it is on fire.

-[break]-

Surfacing from sleep to chittering and hissing noises and a white, sticky cocoon suffocating him in a clingy embrace, Bilbo thinks, This isn't right, but his grasp on consciousness slips through his fingers and—

Bilbo wakes up to the sunlight filtered through a white cloth. Sometime in the night, his blanket bound his legs, and a sheet wrapped itself around him like a shroud. He rips it off his face. His heart is beating against his ribcage like it's tired of its housing. Breathing hard and fast, Bilbo stares at the soft cotton bunched in his tightly clenched fists, blinks, and mops the sweat off his face.

Next time, Bilbo resolves, he will be the one to lead the way.

He is.

Thorin protests, as does the rest of the Company, but Bilbo does not budge.

"I have researched the maps in Rivendell," he says with all the stubbornness of a Baggins and pigheadedness of a Took his parentage has granted. "I know the way better than any of you."

Grumbling and cursing, the dwarves agree. He leads them at a good pace, making steady progress until they reach the river. There must be a better way to cross it, of that Bilbo is sure. He is determined to find it even if it kills him, and, strangely, it doesn't. Relying on his nonexistent luck, Bilbo chooses left and leads the Company along the bank. The river widens. The trees no longer bridge its width but form a gnarly dome high overhead. And then, he spots it.

"Here, see?" Bilbo points at a lighter patch of colour on the other side.

After a bit of squinting, hobbitish eyesight being sharper than dwarvish, Kíli exclaims, "A boat!"

"I told you," Bilbo says, and triumph suffuses his voice, "that I will find a way, and I did, didn't I?"

"Aye, laddie, that you did," "Good job, Bilbo," "I never doubted you," sound the joyous confirmations.

Smiling, Bilbo stands aside as Kíli shoot an arrow with a tied rope. Dwalin reels the boat in. They cross in groups of three and four, Bilbo going first with the 'Ri brothers. If the river has currents, he doesn't notice; their boat moves in a straight line without any course correction. It all goes well, until the last two dwarves, Dwalin and Bombur, are disembarking.

Leaves swish. The dwarves grow tense, fall silent. Kíli draws the bowstring, the sound loud as a crack of a whip.

"Don't shoot!" Bilbo shouts as a stag with a coat so white it shines in the perpetual gloom appears between the bushes. The warning comes too late.

Kíli's looses an arrow. Despite only a hundred paces separating him and the animal, the shot goes wide, but the stag startles and charges. The Company rushes out of its path, but as the stag leaps across the river, Bombur staggers and falls out of the boat with a mighty splash.

Time slows down as Bilbo watches black water close over Bombur's startled face. The dwarves fish him out right away, but he has fallen into the darkest depth of sleep, and nothing wakes him. With a peaceful expression, Bombur slumbers on, his loud snoring twining the rumbling of his stomach.

Perhaps, he dreams of food and drinks aplenty.

The search for the road is fruitless: the forest is too dense. As if by magic, trees block the way every time Bilbo glimpses an opening, and in the end, they choose a dirt path that follows roughly the same direction.

Even though Bilbo insisted on bringing more supplies and starting to ration right away, the last of their food runs out a week later. They wander the woods, alone and lost and hungry for three more days.

"Bilbo," Thorin says, stopping abruptly.

They walked for hours on end, and Bilbo's aching legs want to fold under him. He locks his knees and steels himself for the long-awaited condemnation, but all Thorin says is,

"I want you to climb up. See if you can find a road."

Wordlessly, Bilbo nods and sets his backpack under a tree he's to scale. The bark is grey and lifeless. He scrapes his wrists and ankles, but Bilbo has a task, and climb he does, no matter how much his head is swimming. Ten paces up, he hums along with eery music coming from afar.

There's no warning when he reaches the upper branches, no thinning of tree limbs. Just suddenly he breaches the canopy and shuts his eyes against the blinding light.

A breeze tussles his hair. Under his eyelids, the world is warm red-orange, coloured by the afternoon sun. Bilbo breathes the sweet, untainted air. He shakes his head, the heavy haze that has settled over his thoughts lifts for the first time in weeks. A kaleidoscope of butterflies takes flight, and Bilbo smiles, watching their bright blue and oh so lovely wings.

There is no path, but behind the carpet of treetops spreading in every direction, he sees the Lonely Mountain, a lake, and, closer still, a river. Bilbo traces the river's flow into the Long Lake, and laughter bubbles up his throat and spills like elvish sparkling wine. Perhaps another week or two of constant walking, and they will make it to the foothill of Erebor.

We are so close!

Still smiling, he takes one final breath and starts the gruelling descent, but when he hits the ground, no one is there. The dwarves vanished as if the trees had hugged them with wooden limbs and took them underground.

Tucked between two knobby roots, his backpack waits exactly where Bilbo left it. No trail of footsteps is left for him to follow. There are, however, cobwebs, sticking to the bark in loose, white threads. Stretches of it sprawl between branches like nets, tall and broad enough to wrap a hobbit twice over. Bilbo freezes. A gentle susurration retreats into the trees, the sound fading.

"Oh, blast and botheration," Bilbo whispers, not daring to raise his voice. "Exactly how large are they?" He doesn't want to imagine. Gritting his teeth in resolve and budding irritation, he grabs his backpack and runs after the spiders.

As cobwebs thicken, encompassing more trees and linking them together, Bilbo pulls the ring out of his pocket. It slides onto his finger as if of its own will, with a readiness he doesn't expect. The world greys out, leached of its colours, and cold sinks deep into the marrow of Bilbo's bones. The hissing cuts off. Instead, he hears words filling him with dread.

"Let's eat them!" says one voice. "Bleed them dry!" suggests another. "So plump, so juicy! Let me take a bite!" says the third just as the spiders come into view. And Bilbo's heart plummets into his stomach. Easily as tall as a horse, the spiders spin their webs, wrapping the sluggishly squirming dwarves in gauzy shrouds. Hanging from thick branches, the cocoons rotate until no hint of any person is visible and only general shapes and sizes allow Bilbo to guess the victims.

His heartbeat thunders like drums. Slowly, Bilbo crouches and blindly pats the earth until his fingers close around a scratchy bark. Hefting the stick, he throws it with all his might. The bushes to his right rustle. The spiders stop.

"What was that?" one says.

"Another prey," another answers.

"Prey," "Fresh meat," "More for us," "Feast! Feast!" picks up the cluster, and many hairy feet skitter away.

Climbing a tree is easier with swatches of cobweb clinging to it, Bilbo finds. The soles of his feet stick to the wide branch that takes him to the dwarves. Leaning forward, he cuts the web strands one by one. Tumbling through the nets spread below cushions the cocoons' fall into a manageable landing.

The impact still jars the Company into consciousness. Immediately, daggers and swords rip the shrouds from the inside.

"Where's Bilbo?" Dwalin asks, turning around. A piece of cobweb sticks to the side of his head, and several more decorate his beard.

"Here," Bilbo shouts, pulling the ring off.

A quiet chitter is his only warning. Whirling around, Bilbo ducks on instinct. Six black, glistening eyes stare him down. The moment stretches into eternity. The voices of the Company peter out, and in that instance, the world holds its breath. Then, mandibles opening with a hiss, the spider lunges at Bilbo.

Startled, Bilbo falls onto his backside. Sting thrusts up, sliding into the underbelly. The spider screeches, globs of viscous saliva flying out of its mouth. And Bilbo pushes his dagger in and up.

Kicking the body off the blade, Bilbo watches it plummet. With a long exhale, he runs a hand over his face. His nose doesn't bump on metal as his fingers go down. Bilbo opens his eyes. There is nothing on his finger. He pats his pockets. Nothing is inside. His head whips around, his gaze darting all over. Nothing.

"Where is it? Where did it go?" he mutters, slapping the webs in the hope that the ring somehow hid there, and all the while, It's mine. It's mine. It's mine! pounds in his temples in sync with his heartbeat.

A hint of metal on a lower branch is all he needs to jump—throw himself onto it. The ring is heavy in his grasp. Lying on his stomach, his whole body smarting with a sharp ache, Bilbo raises it to his eye-level. The golden glint shifts as if in a wink.

"Found you," Bilbo murmurs, and something dark, possessive, alien enters his voice as he says, "You are mine." Mine to hold, to cherish, to possess. The ring warms up. And Bilbo senses triumph.

But wait a moment, a voice of reason peeps.The ring is beautiful and fascinating. This isn't right. He wants to look at it and hide it and never share its perfection. Not right at all. No other person is worthy to even have a glimpse of it. What's going on?!

The ring hits the branch with nary a sound, and Bilbo slaps himself, twice on both cheeks. The sting is burning, but his blood turns cold. His mind belongs to him once more.

"Perfect. More tricks. I hate you. You are my burden." To destroy. His fist closes around the deceptively lifeless metal band, nails and gold biting into his flesh. A mountainous weight settles onto his back, bowing his shoulders.

Below, spider carcasses with legs curled toward their bodies are strewn across the ground like a handful of wilted flowers thrown to the wind. Lilting tones of Sindarin flow from a distance, all the more ethereal against the harsh barks of Khuzdul expletives and earthy Westron exclamations.

An involuntary sigh gushes out of his lungs. Once again, Bilbo lost the dwarves. This time to elves.

He glances up, sure that the Valar are laughing at his expense and curses.

The Company hasn't got too far if he still hears their voices. With a burdened spirit and a heavier heart, Bilbo slips the ring on. And follows.