Kili walked through the mist with his hand on his sword. Not that it would do any good wielding steel against an insubstantial enemy, but he felt better to know that it was there, the same way that he felt better seeing the light of the torch bobbing through the fog ahead of him and knowing that it was carried in his brother's steady hand.

Last night, when it had first rolled in, the mist had been strange, certainly, but he had not thought much of it and had considered it merely another strange and natural phenomenon, like the ice spears they had passed and the snow drifts twice as tall as he could reach. Kili had little knowledge of the natural world beyond the stone and metal of the mountains, the bones of the earth that were a dwarf's native element. His firm footing extended only a few leagues beyond the Dwarf Halls of Ered Luin, and a few dozen yards around wherever his brother stood. Any farther from those two places and his feet faltered and his mind recoiled.

With Fili beside him, Kili was willing to shrug off the mist as something to be expected in a land ruled by magic. It was strange, but strange was not unusual in such a land as this.

And yet, last night, his dreams had spoken otherwise. In them, the mist was not merely strange smoke upon the ground, but a living, grasping thing, a clutching hand that sought out life wherever it lay hidden in its den. In his dream, Kili had been a mouse cowering in its hole, but the mist had found him out, picked him up in its iron grip and pressed the breath from his small lungs, wringing out the life like so much water from a ragged cloth.

He had woken, gasping for breath and choking on the smoke from their fire; and then, strange as it was, his first thought had been to seek out Betta.

Although Fili's hard line against omens and superstition had begun to weaken in recent days, he had kept those doubts mostly within his own heart, and Kili still believed that his brother did not believe. On their journey, Betta had always proved more open to listening to Kili's talk of ghosts and curses, while Fili would frown and shake his head. And so, it was only natural that, when he had woken with the memory of malice and dark premonitions, Kili had reached for the woman who would hear him out and not judge… and he had found her missing.

And then, he saw that the mist had returned.

If there was any woman who could take care of herself in the wilderness, it was Betta, and if there had been no mist, Kili might have allowed his brother to convince him let her go, but in this land, he was afraid for any member of their company who was alone. They had come too far and could not now allow themselves to be separated.

Nothing else could have persuaded him to enter that cursed fog, nothing but the safety of his brother or their guide, and yet he still hesitated at the edge of it and was afraid to step through. He mastered his fears because his brother seemed not to be afraid, but once they were passed the threshold of smoke, the mist had closed in behind them, cutting them off from the standing stone, and then Kili had felt its malice and the will that guided it; the same will that he had felt in his dreams. He could feel its fingers searching for him, looking for that weak place to take hold.

But Fili had walked on, indifferent to the growing threat that closed in upon all sides and rose up above their heads. Kili dared not speak of it for fear that his brother would laugh at his superstitions. He laughed at himself for it, but he could not ignore the fact that whenever they paused in their march or even slowed their steps, the mist seemed to gather more thickly about them and between them. The longer they stood in one place, the thicker it grew until long tendrils reached out, slithering across the snow-covered ground, circling their legs and reaching up to twine about their arms.

Then, Kili would feel his limbs grow heavy and his mind grow dark. There was a fog within as well as without, and he struggled against it, lazily batting aside the tattered tendrils. They fled away under his hands, and then the fog would lift a little, but each time less and less. Always, the mist would retreat only so far back and, when his steps would slow again, the assault was renewed. Kili's strength was slowly being drawn away, so slowly that at first he did not notice it, and when he did, he was too weak to think of calling out. He could only follow, slower and slower, reaching out when he could to grasp his brother's pack.

If Fili noticed the mist's relentless pursuit of them, he gave no sign of it. His steps never wavered, and the arm that held aloft their dimming torch never drooped or faltered in its task.

The wall of smoke between them thickened and darkened, seeking to separate them. Kili struggled to keep his hold on his brother's pack, but the mist was reaching up, catching hold of his arm. If he hesitated or lost his focus for even a moment, his hand would loosen and his arm would drop to his side. It became harder and harder to lift it again and when he did, he felt as if he were pushing through a wall of thick molasses to reach his brother.

It was a battle that he could not win, but when he opened his mouth to speak, doubt assailed him. Perhaps it was only his imagination. Fili must certainly know what was happening to them, and if his brother said nothing, then it was Kili who was being weak-willed and inattentive. His brother's shoulders bore a heavy burden already, the loss of his lady-love; Kili must not be another distraction to him. He could not always be the young dwarfling hanging onto his brother's arm.

Mile after mile, Kili struggled, and the minutes seemed to drag into hours. Always as his steps slowed, Fili's seemed to quicken. He looked only at the prints that they followed through the snow, never back at his brother until Kili wondered if he had been forgotten. The mist seemed to whisper in his ear that he was not forgotten, that Fili deliberately sought to leave him behind. And, though he knew in his head that it could not be true, in his heart, Kili began to doubt.

He could not know that, although his brother's feet hurried forward and no mist restrained his limbs, the fog had overtaken Fili's mind, and the names of Betta and Kili were mere shadows upon his memory. He thought of nothing but the footsteps he followed and gave no thought to the woman who had made them, or to the brother that was falling farther and farther behind him.

Kili did not know this; all that he knew was that the distance between them was now so great that he could no longer reach out to touch his brother's pack. He gathered what was left of his strength to cry out, though he had little hope that his brother had the senses left to hear him.

He opened his mouth, but at that same moment, a great cry rose up from beyond the hills and echoed all around them. It came from the far east, but flew fast over the heads of the dwarves, fleeing south as swift as a messenger on an errand of death. The sound froze Kili in his tracks and shook him to the bone. His already failing heart quailed in the face of such utter suffering and grief, for it was no orcish cry that he heard; there was no anger in it, only unfailing sadness and despair.

Could Betta's soft voice have made that sound? He shuddered to think of it and looked up at the sky, but the clouds were thick and no star shone down upon him. The torch in his brother's hand was far away, its light nearly smothered by the mist. Kili realized that Fili had not stopped to hear the cry; he had hurried on even faster, as if some force propelled him, and before his eyes, Kili saw him swallowed up by the mist.

"Fili, slow down!" Kili gasped, breathing in the acrid taste of sullen air. His feet were buried in the snow, fettered by the bonds the mist had tied about him while he was distracted. He used his hands to dig himself free and stumbled forward, but the torchlight was nearly gone.

"Brother, wait!"

A gust of cold wind was his only answer. It stirred up the fog, and the light was gone. Darkness fell all around him save for the eerie glow of the mist that lit nothing but itself. His brother had vanished, stolen away, and he was utterly alone.

Finally, and after long struggle, despair took him, and for some time, Kili could think of nothing but darkness, see nothing but darkness. His mind was full of it. But then, a distant light appeared and shone sickly green beyond the mist.

Thinking that it was his brother's torch, Kili cried out and pushed forward in a panic, determined not to lose Fili again. The mist released him reluctantly, and he rushed toward the light.

He had not gone more than a dozen yards when it dimmed and faded again.

"No…" Kili whispered, but he kept walking, still seeking for the place where he had last seen it.

And then, to his right, the light appeared again.

Now was the time when Kili should have thought clearly, when he should have realized that the light he saw could not be the yellow flame of his brother's torch, but he was desperate and afraid. His thoughts were not clear, and the memory of his nightmare was too near to his heart. He had never before been in such danger, never without knowing that his brother was near at hand to defend him and comfort him. Cut off from all ties, alone and afraid, he was fey and unreasoning; is it any surprise that he gave in to his fear and sought the false lights that promised comfort but would only lead him astray?

So, when the second light appeared, Kili followed it, striving after it until it, too, was snuffed out and another appeared in another place. "Wait," he called out to each new flame, and "No!" when each vanished in its turn. He did not know how long he sought them, nor how long it was before his strength left him and he sank down into the snow, too weak to give chase, too cold to go on.

Long he sat, and long he sobbed, watching the lights appear and disappear around him, swaying this way and that like the lanterns of ships sailing upon the foggy sea. Finally, he lay back in the snow and stared up at the sky, and for a long time he saw nothing.

The cold might have taken him then, or the mist smother him, but some blessing was yet upon his quest, and the clouds opened up. A single silver star shone out bright above him. The light cut through the darkness of his mind, and he realized the mistakes that he had made.

Fili had been following Betta's trail. If Kili had stayed where he was when he first lost his brother, he might have lit his own torch and followed after them. Even in dim light, he could have found it, so long as no fresh snow came to cover the tracks. Or, he might have waited for daylight to dispel the mist, and then gone on with his search. Both following the same trail, he would have eventually met up with his brother and, he hope, with Betta - if she were still alive.

But it was too late now. Kili sat up and looked about him. In the fair starlight, he saw only his own trail where he had run headlong and heedless, his lonely tracks in the snow. For a moment, his heart caught in his throat, but he swallowed down his fear and stood up. Taking a branch from the bundle of firewood that he carried, he used his knife and flint to coax the wood into flame. None but a dwarf could have lit fire in that wet and windy place, but Kili managed it, and though the star was once more covered up in clouds by the time he finished, he could see his own trail and follow it back the way he had come.

The hills around him were tall and closed in upon all sides, and so he knew that he had left the road and was lost in the deeper mountains. It was only luck that had saved him from tumbling over a cliff or falling into a gully somewhere with a broken neck. He remembered the star, and Betta's love of the jewels in the sky. He had always thought them less precious than the jewels of the earth, but now he wondered if the Elves under their trees did not have some wisdom in their worship of them.

With his thoughts cleared and his head bent nearly to the ground so that his beard trailed in the snow, Kili followed the trail with his flickering torch, back-tracing his steps and ignoring the mist that still tried to wrap itself about him. Its malice was strong, but he saw through its tricks now and the way that it played his own doubts against him. He refused to be distracted by the lies it whispered. He walked on and on and, though the mist oppressed him and the darkness weighed heavily upon his thoughts, he would not be kept from his brother.

"I will find the road," he muttered. "It must be this way. I will find it!" He said this over and over to keep his spirits up, and thrust the torch this way and that to be sure he did not miss any sign.

He was so intent upon the trail that he did not hear the sounds that approached him, the creak and groan of protesting snow, the soft wind sweeping back and forth over flat ground, the same sounds that he had heard only yesterday outside the standing stone as he and Betta sat waiting for Fili to return from the hunt.

And then, there came a heavy sound from nearly next to him, like a heavy drift that had been precariously perched upon a rooftop suddenly sliding down onto the ground and landing with a thud. Kili heard it and felt his heart skip in its steady beat. His hand fell to his sword hilt, but before he could draw his weapon, a great gust of wind, like the breath of a giant, blew down from above, and his small torch was snuffed out. Darkness came again, but he had little time to mourn the loss of his light. A great weight fell upon him from behind, and he was knocked to the ground into a drift of snow. Darkness took his thoughts as well, and he heard and saw no more.

Don't worry, he's not dead. Not before BoFA...

Please review! I feel lost and lonely without your love :)

-Paint