A/N: I'm excited to hear your reactions to the next few chapters. I actually spent the majority of my school day writing out different scenes from the next few chapters in my notebooks. Oh jesus frosting, I'm such a nerd. XD

Disclaimer:...you know the drill. I own nothing but Íverin, Tolkien's a writing god, yadda yadda yadda.

There was another long silence as we stood on the snowy mountainside. Finally, Gandalf spoke. "So be it. There is a road not far from here that should lead us safely down to the doors of the mine. Quickly!"

And so, the journey back down began. For a long while the Fellowship picked their way through thick snow and jagged rock, with Legolas and I always itching to simply run ahead. But Gandalf would not allow it, for fear of us getting separated from the rest of the group.

It seemed to take forever, but eventually, we began to make our way down the Moria Road as dusk fell, and the landscape changed. Snow turned to slush, slush turned to stone (much to our pleasure). The chill of Caradhras left my bones, but what now replaced it did not bring me joy.

The new landscape was, truthfully, ominous and depressing. We walked along the gravelly banks of a lake, looking almost black in the darkness of the night. A few trees grew along the mountainside, but other than that, no life was present.

It was here that Gandalf stopped. For awhile he searched the wall, walking back and forth, moving his old, wrinkled hands over the smooth grey stone.

"Dwarf doors are invisible when closed," said Gimli, as he also walked about, searching for the entrance.

"Yes, Gimli," Gandalf nodded, "their own masters cannot find them, if their secrets are forgotten."

"Why does that not suprise me?" Legolas said quietly. I chuckled.

Finally, Gandalf came to a gap in the trees, slightly bigger than the rest. He began to run his fingers here and there over the rock, as if tracing a hidden path. "Now, let's see...Ithildin. It mirrors only starlight and moonlight," he whispered, turning around. The round white moon peeked through the clouds.

All of a sudden, thin threads of white, with a tint of blue, appeared on the doors, growing thicker with every passing second, as if they had been long covered by a layer of dust. They wove a beautiful picture in the stone: Two elven trees wrapped around pillars of stone on either side, with a crown bearing seven stars at the top. A hammer and anvil was underneath it, and below that, in the exact center, was a small four pointed star. Dwarf-runes were arched across the top.

I stood in awe next to Gandalf. "What does it say?" I asked.

"It is a greeting!" he said. "It reads: These are the doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter!"

"What do you suppose that means?" asked Merry.

"Oh, it's quite simple!" Gandalf replied. "If you are a friend, you speak the password, and the doors will open." He raised his staff and touched its tip to the star in the center. Closing his eyes, he muttered something in a foreign toungue and...

...nothing happened.

I frowned. "Why did it not work?"

"Wrong password, I suppose," said Gandalf. He tried again, but got the same response: nothing. The doors did not budge.

For hours, it seemed, we waited. Gandalf tried everything he knew, in Dwarvish, Elvish, and the like, but the doors stayed shut. Feeling restless, I decided to do what I always did when I was bored: climb. I quickly scaled the nearest tree, swinging effortlessly up through the branches until I sat comfortably on the top.

Pippin looked up at me from below. "Aren't you worried you'll fall, Íverin?"

I laughed lightly. "It is the way of my people; how I grew up! These trees are strange, growing here, but still sturdy. I am not afraid."

"And neither am I." I jumped at the sight of Legolas's blonde head popping up through the leaves. He smiled at my reaction. "I thought you might enjoy some company."

I smiled. "I would indeed!" He drew himself up so that he was sitting beside me. Gazing out over the dark water, I asked him, "What do you know of this place?"

"Nothing," said he, "but something does not seem right. A dark presence is in my mind." His eyes also flicked to the lake. "The water...disturbs me."

I nodded. "I feel the exact same way. At first, I was excited to visit the Dwarf mines, but now I am not so sure. There is evil here, of that I am certain."

Suddenly, there was a loud plop. Then another, and another. Merry and Pippin were tossing rocks in the lake and watching the ripples.

Boromir grabbed Merry's arm as he tried to throw another one. "Do not disturb the water," he said in a low voice.

Gandalf cast his staff on the ground, grumbling to himself as he sat on a rock, thinking.

My eyes never left the last spot where a rock had hit the lake. Though the hobbits had stopped throwing things, the ripples were still there. I glanced at the others. They were watching the spot, too.

Frodo stood up and walked over to the door. "It's a riddle."

Now there was more than a ripple, it was a wave. "Something is moving down there," I whispered. My muscles tensed, and I was suddenly reluctant to climb back down onto the stony shore. Legolas put a hand on his bow.

"Speak 'friend' and enter." Frodo looked over at Gandalf. "What's the Elvish word for friend?"

Gandalf looked up. "Mellon."

There was a loud cracking noise, and my attention snapped up from the thing in the water and to the doors. They swung outward, pushed on by some unseen force. Gimli gave a shout of victory. Legolas and I climbed back down, and with one last wary glance at the water behind us, headed inside.

The area was dark, lit only by the moonlight outside. Dark shapes were scattered about the room. Almost immediately I sensed danger.

But Gimli's spirits were still high. "Soon, Master Elf," he said to Legolas, "you will enjoy the fine hospitality of the Dwarves! Roaring, fires, malt beer, ripe meat off the bone!"

I reached out and touched Aragorn's arm, giving him a worried look. He returned it.

"This is the home of my cousin Balin. And they call it a mine," Gimli scoffed. "A mine!"

Suddenly, my foot kicked something. I looked down and clapped my hand over my mouth to suppress a scream.

It was a body.

Boromir saw it, too. "This is no mine. It's a tomb."

My eyes scanned the room, and now I saw what all those shapes were. More bodies. Skeletons.

"No..." Gimli said. He knelt down, and sure enough, there lay a body of a dead dwarf. "NOOOO!"

Legolas ripped an arrow out from one. "Goblins!" Aragorn, Boromir, and I unsheathed our swords.

"We should have made for the Gap of Rohan," Boromir said. "We should never have come here! Now get out of here, get out!"

Suddenly, Frodo screamed. I whipped around to see him being dragged towards the door by...a tentacle? I ran towards him. "Frodo!" I ran outside, hacked at the slimy thing pulling him away, and grabbed him. Not a second after I had done so, the tentacle retreated back into the lake, and at least twenty more shot out in its place. One of them hit my chest, knocking Frodo from my hands and sending me to the ground.

Aragorn, and Boromir came flying out, trying to slice the tentacles coming from the water. Two more grabbed Frodo and held him high over the lake. The hideous thing that controlled these tentacles rose up from the water. It was a disgusting, slime-covered beast with few eyes and a huge, gaping mouth. The beast roared.

I stood up. Legolas shot the thing, and it shrunk back a bit, but then lashed at us again. I jumped out of the way of another tentacle and ran into the water until I was knee-deep. I sheathed my sword and pulled out my own bow and arrow. Archery was not my biggest strength, but I was still good enough to get a couple more shots in.

Finally, Aragorn managed to cut through one of the tentacles holding Frodo up. The monster bellowed in pain and dropped Frodo into Aragorn's arms.

"Into the mines!" cried Gandalf.

Aragorn flew up the steps, with Boromir right behind him. Legolas turned and shot at the thing one more to buy us time. I ducked into the doorway with him.

A moment later, there was another roar, and I watched as the beast grabbed onto the trees beside the doors and dragged itself up onto the shore. I shot at it again, fearing that it would come inside, but instead, there was a deafening rumble, and then a crash as the wall above the doors broke and an avalanche of stone came down, sealing off the door entirely, and covering us in darkness.

For a moment, all was quiet, save for the sound of our panicked breathing. Then Gandalf spoke.

"We now have but one choice." He struck his staff on the ground, and light emitted from the tip of it. "We must face the long dark of Moria. Be on your guard. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world." We fell into a single file line: Gandalf, then Legolas, Gimli, the four hobbits, Boromir, myself, and Aragorn at the rear. "It is a three-day journey to the other side," Gandalf continued. "Let us hope that our presence may go unnoticed."

So we walked. And walked...and walked...and walked. Moria was not at all what I had expected. It was a dark and dangerous place. Our footsteps echoed eerily in the darkness. Every time I touched one of the cold stone walls, I could almost feel the brokenness and torment radiating from them.

After a day of nothing but walking, we came to a crossroads. There were three passageways, center, left, and right.

Gandalf stopped and looked at them for a long time.

I strode up next to him. "Gandalf?"

He looked over at me, confused. "Íverin...I have no memory of this place."

So we waited. The waiting was almost as bad as the walking.

"Merry? Are we lost?"

"No, Pippin."

"I think we are."

"Shh! Gandalf's thinkin'."

"...Merry?"

"What?"

"I'm hungry."

That was about the most conversation I heard all day long. Too often I found myself staring at the center passageway, nervously fingering my bow, or the spare dagger I kept by my side. I paced a lot, too.

At one time, while I was pacing, Legolas was sitting nearby. He looked up at me and smiled. "You are sure to wear a hole in the ground, at the rate you're going."

I stopped. "I cannot help it. These caves...they worry me. Never in all my years of living have I felt this kind of dark presence." I sighed. "I hate it. I feel like any moment now, some foul creature will spring out of the ground and slay us all. We have waited too long."

Legolas looked at me with concern. "You worry too much, Íverin," he said softly. "Perhaps sleep would be a good thing for you. We have walked a long way with no rest, surely you are tired."

"...all right. I will sleep, if that comforts you."

He smiled again. "It does."

I pulled the three spare blankets I had packed out of my traveling bag and laid them out upon the rock, all three on top of each other to act as a cushion against the hard ground. I laid down and closed my eyes. I was tired, but not enough to fall asleep. I could not rest with the nagging worry that we were in peril gnawing at the back of my brain. After what seemed like an eternity of just laying there, I finally began to drift off into slumber. Just before I fell asleep, I caught a bit of a conversation between Frodo and Gandalf.

The hobbit sounded on the verge of tears. "I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened!"

"So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us," the eldery wizard's kind voice responded. "There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought."