Author's Note: Well...I really have nothing to say about this chapter. Except that it was a bit of a challenge to write, because...well, you know, movie sequences. So yeah. Boring author's note. :P
Chapter 14-Storm Giants?
Don't look down, Karra told herself. Don't look down, don't look down. The path through the mountains was very narrow, it was nighttime, and it was storming, making the rocks beneath her feet rather slippery. She pressed herself as close to the cliff as she could and stepped gingerly, trying her very best to keep her footing. Several times she had slipped, nearly causing herself a mini heart attack. There was no way that was happening again. She clung to any small outcroppings she could find, but most of them were slippery with rain.
A sudden crash of thunder made her jump. "Hold on!" Thorin shouted. Before Karra knew what was happening, she felt something move underneath her feet, and suddenly she was looking down into a chasm. With a gasp and a little shriek, she jumped backwards and found herself slipping and sliding away from the gap, only to lose her footing and fall to her bottom, hard, on the narrow rock path. She shrieked again and tried to scramble back up as she slid towards the edge. Just then, she felt someone helping her up, pulling her to her feet. She looked up to see….in the moment of stress, her mind went completely blank on who it was. Ori? "Thanks," she muttered.
"We must find shelter!" Thorin shouted above the wind and thunder and noise.
"Watch out!" Dwalin cried, and Karra looked up to see a huge boulder hurtling towards them. She shrieked again (was this, what, like the third time? She was such a wimp) and pressed herself further back into the cliff wall, if that was even possible, as the boulder hit the cliff above them with a deafening crash, and shattered, sending not-so-small chunks of rock showering down upon them.
"This is no thunderstorm!" shouted Balin. "Look!"
Karra looked up and nearly shrieked again. A piece of the mountain was actually moving! Moving, like it was alive! The thing, whatever it was, reared up from the mountain, and using what looked to be an arm, ripped a huge piece of stone out of the cliff.
"Well, bless me, the legends are true!" exclaimed Bofur. "Giants! Stone giants!"
"What's a storm giant?" Karra cried, as the boulder flew past them and hit another….storm giant, was it? in the….was that its head? Little pieces of rock broke off and came showering down around them. Karra, rather embarrassingly, found herself clinging to Oin, who happened to be standing beside her. All at once the stone beneath her feet began to move, and everything seemed to careen backwards. Karra let out a little cry as she saw that the path they were standing on was splitting, taking half the company with it. She gasped as everything whipped forward, and clung even harder to Oin. She vaguely heard someone calling her name, but then everything slid again, and a wave of dizziness and nausea swept over her. She tried desperately to hold onto something as the world around her careened back and forth.
With a jarring jerk, the path slammed into another section of rock, and Karra found herself following the others as they scrambled onto the new section. She slipped and caught herself, breathless, on an outcropping. Apparently the rock they were on now was a giant, too, for the ground began to move again, and Karra felt like she might throw up. Finding Gloin convenient, she wrapped her arms around him and hung on.
A giant's fist slammed into the cliff dangerously close to them. Karra shrieked again and ducked just in time as rocks fell about them, and slid to her bottom. Gloin helped her up as the ground careened backward again, and more boulder-size rocks fell past them.
The cliff moved again, and for a moment, Karra saw the other part of the company as they moved past them.
"Kili!" she heard Fili shout. "Karra! Kili!" And then they were out of reach, and as the giant moved backwards again, and Karra watched in transfixed horror as another giant's knee moved forward and slammed directly into the cliff—exactly where she thought the rest of the company was. The giant fell backward, and appeared to lose its footing, falling into the chasm.
And then everything was still. "Fili!" Karra cried, and rushed forward and around the corner, fully prepared to find nothing, or to find the rest of the company smashed to bits. Rounding the corner, she saw them lying there and gasped. "Oh no. Oh no," she said softly, but then, Balin called out,
"It's all right! We're alive!" With an enormous sigh of relief, Karra ran forward and singled out Fili.
"You're alright! I thought you'd been smashed!" she cried, throwing her arms around his neck. But then, suddenly, Bofur called,
"Where's Bilbo? Where is our hobbit?"
"There!" shouted Ori, pointing to the edge. And there was Bilbo, hanging off the edge of the cliff, holding on desperately. Karra gasped and rushed forward with the others, but she couldn't quite bring herself to lean far enough over the edge to lend Bilbo a hand as the others were. Nothing worked; no one could reach him. Suddenly Thorin was swinging himself off the edge to reach the hobbit. Karra nearly screamed again, until she realized that he had landed on a small ledge and was hoisting Bilbo up.
The relief was short lived. Without warning, Thorin was now hanging off the edge of the cliff. Karra pushed forward with a little cry, trying her best to help this time; but Dwalin had already grabbed his hand and pulled him up.
But the next moment, Karra noticed that she had somehow ended up way too close to the edge. For she lost her footing, and suddenly she felt her world slip out from under her.
It took her a split second to realize that she was falling. When it hit her, she threw her hand upward and reached for something, anything, and found herself hanging off the cliff by one arm.
"Help!" she cried. "Help me!"
"Grab my hand!" she heard Fili yell. Reaching up with her free arm, she let go for one second and felt a rush of air as she fell. But then someone had grabbed her by both arms and was dragging her up. For a moment, she hung there, gasping, and then she was sitting on firm ground again.
"Don't ever do that again," she heard Fili whisper in her ear.
"Don't do what?" she gasped.
"Scare me like that."
For a minute, Karra just sat there, gasping trying to regain a feeling of normalcy. Her head spun, and she felt like she could throw up. She felt Fili's arms go around her waist, and she could tell that he had been genuinely frightened for her for a moment.
She glanced Bilbo's direction. He was dusting himself off and looked just about as scared as she probably did. She managed to give him a weak smile, though he probably didn't see her.
"I thought we lost our burglar," Dwalin eventually said, looking at Bilbo.
"I thought we lost Karra," Fili piped up.
"Bilbo's been lost ever since he left home," Thorin said harshly. "He should never have come. He has no place amongst us."
Karra wondered for a second if Thorin felt the same way about her. But then she was being gently helped to her feet, and she found herself following the others, still a bit dazed, wondering what exactly had just happened.
It took Karra a moment to realize when the company stopped. But apparently they had just walked into a cave. For a minute everyone looked around, then Dwalin said, "It looks safe enough."
"Search to the back. Caves in mountains are seldom unoccupied," Thorin advised. Dwalin raised his lantern, which had somehow not broken through all of that, and thoroughly examined the place.
"There's nothing here," he finally announced.
Karra was still a bit uncertain. "Yeah, well, how do we know we're not inside one of those storm giants?" she asked nervously.
"Stone giants," Kili corrected her.
"Whatever." Karra shrugged and looked around. "But somehow I don't trust this place."
Apparently everyone else did, though. "Let's get a fire started," Gloin said matter-of-factly, plopping a bundle of wood down on the floor.
"No," said Thorin. "No fires, not in this place." Well, at least Thorin agreed with her! "Get some rest," he ordered. "We start at first light."
"We were to wait in the mountains until Gandalf joined us," Balin protested. "That was the plan."
"Plans change," Thorin replied with a yeah, well, get over it attitude. "Bofur, take the first watch."
Soon everyone was settled and basically asleep. Karra wondered how they could sleep after what had just happened. She couldn't seem to calm down. She tossed and turned, sat up, laid back down, tried various positions, but to no avail. It wasn't that she was uncomfortable, exactly; she had arranged her blankets in such a way as to provide a measure of comfort on the stone floor. But she couldn't get that falling feeling out of her head. She kept replaying over and over in her mind that moment when she had lost her footing and the ground had slipped out from under her. That sudden loss of control….for a moment, she had wondered what it would be like to dash to pieces on the rocks….she was falling….
Karra opened her eyes quickly. She had fallen asleep and was having a nightmare. Turning over, she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out that feeling. Restless, she turned over again. She noticed that Bilbo was apparently awake, too and he and Bofur were apparently having some sort of conversation. Not that she meant to eavesdrop, well maybe she did, but she perked up her ears to listen.
She barely caught the tail end of the conversation. "I wish you all the luck in the world, I really do," Bofur was saying. As she watched, Bilbo turned and began to walk away. She barely had time to wonder what has happening before she heard Thorin shout, "Wake up!"
Before she had time to wonder what was happening now, the ground collapsed out from under her. Suddenly she was falling again. And then she hit something hard, and she was sliding down some kind of chute. The twists and turns reminded her vaguely of a slide at a waterpark, except not nearly as fun. She slid, bouncing off walls and floors, bumping her head several times. And then suddenly everything disappeared and for a moment, she was falling through the air again.
Squelch. Everyone landed with a thud on top of one another, groaning. Karra struggled to sit up. "I am going to be so sore tomorrow," she grumbled, but was cut short when she looked up to see the ugliest things she had ever seen coming towards her.
I'm not in a real creative mood right now. So I'll just say I like reviews. And that I'm sorry this chapter was so short. I have nothing more to say.