Author's Note: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so very, very sorry for the long wait for this chapter. I could tell you the multiple excuses that aren't really excuses that have kept me from updating AND writing anything for this fanfic for the past what... two, almost three weeks? Work has been insanely busy and stressful and I've found in the past that whenever I write when I'm truly stressed I kill whatever it is I'm writing. I also just haven't felt like writing for the past couple of weeks, haven't had the time nor the energy to write. Hopefully things with work have settled down enough so that I won't be spending every single day getting my throat ripped out by nasty people complaining that they're being paid the wrong amount even though they're being paid exactly what our system tells us they should be paid, but anyway, enough about that. That's not important, what is important is that as of this chapter, Frodo is now in Erebor! YAY!
Please enjoy!

Chapter Twenty-Nine

A Child's Running Feet

Frodo stared up at the Lonely Mountain in amazement. It was huge! Bigger than he had ever imagined it could ever be. Neither his dreams nor his mother's stories had done the great, lone mountain the justice that it so deserved for its grand size.

The Misty Mountains had, of course, been huge, but there were a great many of them while this mountain stood all by itself out in front of him was-was something else all together!

"Impressed mim ze?" Aivion asked, smirking up at him from where Frodo was once more seated upon Radin's shoulders.

Frodo was too speechless to speak so he simply nodded his head, his mouth hanging open a little. He was pleased – once he has regained a little composure – to see that his grandfather and cousins were looking at the huge, lone mountain with similar stunned expressions as his own.

"Come, I wish to get there before nightfall and hopefully without too many people seeing us." Aivion rumbled as he straighten his pack on his back, signalling for his troops to pick up their pace.

"Why?" Frodo called to him from the top of Radin's shoulders as the company start marched along at an even greater pace than before.

"Why mim ze?" Aivion called back over his shoulder to him.

"Why don't you want anyone to see us?"

Aivion looked back and up at him thoughtfully.

"It would just be better for us to get to the mountain without being noticed by any humans or elves. Even dwarves." He added with an oddly cautious note to his voice that Frodo didn't truly understand.

"Oh…" Frodo said. He leant forward to look down at Radin's face in confusion.

Radin simply shrugged beneath him.

Frodo noticed that his big friend looked quite nervous and unhappy as they moved closer and closer to the mountain, taking care to stay on the less well-used road heading towards the great mountain, away from the larger, bustling main road the wound its way from the shores of Long Lake to the very roots of the Lonely Mountain. The road that they were currently travelling upon was one of the many roads that had been created between the Lonely Mountain and the Iron Hills. It was a road of a time long gone by, a time before Smaug the Terrible and had not yet been restored for the smooth travelling of carts and wagons, so it was hardly ever used and they saw not a soul upon it as they marched briskly towards the Lonely Mountains roots.

Aivion's prediction that they would reach the mountain before nightfall were indeed correct and Frodo felt sure that his eyes would surely fall out of their sockets as he desperately tried to take in every single detail of the great mountain before him, with its great stone statues standing proudly on either side of the grand entrance.

He could only just catch glimpses of their grandness from the direction that they were coming from but even so, his mother's description and his own dreams of the mountain, he was still in awe of what little he saw of the Kings of Old, the Guardians at the Gate.

Much to Frodo's disappointment they did not enter the mountain via its great and majestic front gates– and he had so wanted a closer look at those great statues, to see just how accurate his dreams were of them. As well as maybe getting a good look at the everyday dwarves that were clearly returning from a successful day of trade in the rebuilt city of Dale - but rather, the company made their way through a smaller side gate, a fair distance away from the main gate.

Guards moved around them as they entered the huge stone chamber just past the gate, all looking at them with guarded and suspicious expressions.

Frodo shrank down upon Radin's shoulders, his feelings of joy and awe quickly dissipating under these unfriendly stares.

Radin touched his leg gently, giving his ankle a reassuring squeeze.

"Captain Aivion, what's this? Where's Bovin?!" A large dwarf with a bald head, impressive muscles and a great many tattoos decorating his flesh bellowed as he strode down some stone steps from one side of the chamber towards them.

He looked, to Frodo's young mind at least, far too large to be really considered a dwarf. He was taller than everyone else in chamber! Well, excluding of course Radin, but Radin was taller than everyone!

"Dwalin," Aivion and his men bowed to the imposing dwarf.

Dwalin? Frodo leant forward eagerly, forgetting his fear for just a moment.

Hadn't his mama travelled with a dwarf called Dwalin? Yes! Yes, she had… He was - he was King Thorin's right-hand man.

Frodo felt his heart sink to his toes at the thought. He still hadn't made up his mind on whether he should trust the dwarf king or not.

The Arkenstone thief…

He watched as the two dwarves spoke in soft voices, every so often glancing in their direction, and maybe he was becoming as parra – parra - paranoid as his Uncle Lotho said Mama was, but they seem to be looking at him quite a bit as they talked.

Whatever it was that they were talking about, Dwalin's seemed to be struggling with what Aivion was telling him.

"I'm going to get Thorin." Dwalin rumbled loudly as he waved off whatever more Aivion was trying to tell him. The large dwarf's face was contorted into a grimace that held not only a great deal of rage but a good deal of sadness as well as he strode back up the stairs from which he had first entered the chamber from only moments before.

The chamber fell into an almost stony silence. Not that Frodo noticed over the sound of his pounding heart.

Thorin? Dwalin was going to get – to get Thorin?

Frodo started to tremble at the thought. He bit back a startled yelp as he felt himself being lifted off and down from Radin's shoulders and being carefully settled upon the stone floor of the chamber.

"You alright, mim ze?" Radin asked as he came to crouch by Frodo, his muddy brown eyes filled with concern.

"Um…" Frodo spluttered, his breath coming out in short gasps.

What was he going to do? What? What?

Suddenly all his excitement for meeting his mother's dwarves had disappeared and he was now filled with a sudden but great desire to simply run away. Run as fast and as far as he possibly could. Didn't matter about the destination, he just needed to get somewhere quiet where he could clear his heavy head.

"Easy," Radin said as he rubbed a hand over Frodo's back, trying to calm his gasping breaths, "Easy mim ze. What's wrong?"

"I-I…" And then his feet just took off, seemingly on their own accord, pulling the rest of him along with them.

"FRODO!" He could hear Radin, his grandfather, cousins and other dwarves yelling after him, but he paid them no heed as he ran up the stairs that he had seen Dwalin disappear up several moments before.

"FRODO! COME BACK!" the yells were growing distant as he ran up the stairs and up the corridor it had led up to.

His breath was snagging in his chest but he kept on going.

He turned a corner and almost crashed head long into several figures.

"Woah there."

"Who are you then?" Frodo shot the leader of the figures a frighten look and for a single moment his eyes were locked with a pair of eyes that mirrored his own before he was running off again but not before he heard another voice calling after him in an amazed voice.

"That was a hobbit. Dwalin! You didn't say there was a hobbit involved!"

"There are five actually." Frodo heard Dwalin retort before he belted out after him for him to come back.

"That was a child." Said another voice, a gentler one than Dwalin's, "Wait, little one, come back!"

But Frodo kept on running, ignoring the sharp pain that shot through his poor feet with each step he took.

He took several more turns, becoming completely lost but making sure he wasn't seen by any of the many dwarves that were moving around the corridors, going about their business.

When he found he could run no more and he was completely and utterly lost, he opened a wooded door and ducked quickly inside of it into the dimly lit chamber.

He found himself to be in some kind of storage chamber, one that hadn't been used in years if the amount of dust was anything to go by.

He sneezed as he moved cautiously around the chamber.

Now what? He thought as he moved deeper and deeper within the chamber, inspecting the burning lanterns that hung from the walls, impressed by the impression they gave that once lit they didn't go out for quite some time, maybe even years.

He found an old pallet tucked to one side of the chamber, with a soft blanket that smelt slightly smoking. After a moment of listening hard to make sure he couldn't hear any footsteps anywhere nearby he curled up upon the pallet and pulled the blanket over his head.

Why had he run away like that? It was silly and childish but something inside of him had just panic when he heard that Dwalin was going to go and get Thorin.

And it was probably Thorin he had almost run into now that he thought about. That thought stirred mixed emotions within his gut and he wished for the millionenth time that his mama was here with him.

Sniffling softly he buried his face into the pallet and fell into a fitful sleep.

Author's Note: Yeah, sorry for it being such a short chapter. It was longer but I'm still not happy with the *cough* Thorin side of this chapter, so he half of this chapter has now become Chapter Thirty...
Bloody hell, this thing is over thirty chapters long! Wasn't expecting that! Not from me.
My track record with long, involved chapter fic isn't overly good - It kinda pathetic really. I usually lose interest or am desperate to write something else by this point - which is partially true, I am desperate to write other things, but unlike with those other times, I'm not letting myself do just that, write other things I mean (I also don't have the time to start writing anything else. I barely find enough time to write a paragraph or two for this thing)
It is possibly one of the longest fics I've stuck with (beside from my Hunger Games one - which I still haven't finished and it too is sitting around the thirty or so chapters mark, but I gave up on it to write this fic instead... Don't you all feel special, lol). I started writing it on the 1st of March and am still plugging along with it now half-way through August. Hopefully I can keep on plugging along with it until the damn thing is finished because I really do want to finish it. And it gives me good and happy feelings, unlike my Hunger Games fanfic which was actually starting to make me feel quite depressed. That's what you get for naming and writing background stories for all your tributes, you find it really hard and devastating to kill them. But luckily with this fic, that's not really that much of an issue.
Yeah, ok, I'm rambling again, sorry. And again, I'm so sorry for the annoyingly long wait for this chapter. It wasn't my intention to make you all wait, it just life got busy and stressful and yeah, that's basically it. If I could, and if my brain would let me, I would write this fic all day, every day until it was done, but I can't. Sorry. If you don't hear from me for a little while, I'm not dead, I'm simply busy and too stressed and tired to write. But hopefully things will be better now so I can get writing again.

Anyway hope you enjoyed this chapter, next time will be with Thorin... actually I think we'll be with Thorin for a couple of chapters in all his 'oh mahal what the hell is happening. why do these sorts of things always happen to me? I seriously need a drink' glory.

Bye for now