One day ended and the next began, their third underground as Fili reckoned it, but even he and his brother were beginning to lose count. There were Dwarves beneath Ered Luin in the deepest, darkest mines who spent months without moon or sunlight, but they did not miss the natural count of days. In Moria, before it fell into darkness, the Dwarves of Durin might pass years at a time in their fair halls, forgetting the sight of the open sky as they carved for themselves glittering roofs of silver and gems that reflected lamp light in memory of the sun.

But Fili and Kili, though sons of Durin, were not that kind of Dwarf. At Ered Luin, they spent more time underground than they had during their childhood in Dunland, but they seldom lasted more than a few days indoors before sneaking out again – and even then, it was only because their mother or uncle had ordered them to stay in as punishment for some prank. Kili, especially, spent more time in the town below Thorin's halls, hanging around the dwarf forge, listening to the talk or drinking in the taverns. Fili was not fond of the company of Men, he preferred to climb into the woody dells along the mountainside and hunt small game between the boulders. For this reason, the brothers' assessment of their own skills at telling time underground was not as accurate as they liked to think.

And so, when Fili declared that they had walked for so many miles, he was wrong by more than one third of the distance; and when Kili guessed at the length of hours they had been toiling along, he was nearer to the mark than his brother, but still overshot. Betta made no guesses. It mattered little to her whether they walked for one hour or four between their brief periods of rest. She was tired and breathless, growing more and more anxious the tighter and darker the tunnel became, and her quest was nearly forgotten in her desire to breathe the open air again.

At some point, they had passed beyond the habitable halls of the mountain passage and into darker places. There were no more rooms on either side of the tunnel, but many fissures broke the uniform smoothness of the walls, narrow but seeming once to have been well-used. Fili frowned at those fissures and at the walls of the tunnel; he was unable to shake the feeling that he had walked these halls before. The tunnel wound itself around until he was almost dizzy with following its course; he was convinced that they had entered an old river path or the hollow tube of an ancient lava flow, but the walls had clearly been widened and the floor leveled by primitive hands.

Not by Men's hands, he thought, shaking his head. No, the tunnels above had been the work of Men, but this was something else. Fili did not voice his suspicions to the rest of his company. He could not speak to Kili without Betta overhearing them, and he was reluctant to worry her or to tell her that they no longer trod the path of her ancestors. The air in the tunnel had grown clearer as they went along, but it was still too close for human comfort. Behind him, Fili could hear her shallow breathing coming faster, and he called for more rests than he would otherwise have done. Of course, Betta protested at first, but she soon set aside her pride and began to call for them herself.

They had stopped now and were resting in one place. Fili stood uncomfortably with his hands clasped tight together and listened to her gasping breath. He did not know what to say to her, and so he said nothing. There was nothing that he could offer to ease her pain, and they could not turn back.

Kili had taken their torch and wandered ahead in the tunnel, eyeing the stone walls with a frown that Fili understood all too well.

"Will you be alright here for a moment?" he asked Betta.

She nodded. "I am fine," she said. It had become a refrain to her, and the only answer that she would give if either brother voiced their concern. Fili had learned to accept it.

"Drink some water," he said. "It will help to clear your throat."

She nodded but did not answer. Reluctantly, he left her there among the baggage. There was nothing more that he could do.

He joined his brother a few yards down the tunnel. "You should not wander off with our only light," he said. His words echoed off the stone walls and sounded harsh in his ears. He lowered his voice and added quietly, "You know that she does not like the dark."

Kili looked back at their guide and shook his head. "She would not thank me for bringing up her weaknesses," he said, "but I wonder if we should not walk in darkness for a little while. If the air is too heavy for her lungs, then we do not help her by burning the wholesomeness out of it with our fire."

Fili frowned and nodded. It was something to consider. "What are you looking at there?" he asked. When Fili had first joined his brother, Kili had been standing with his nose pressed almost against the stone, looking at something through narrowed eyes.

"These seem to be old tool marks here," he said, holding up the light for his brother to see. Fili saw a few long scratches over an unusually textured patch of the wall. The area seemed to have been sanded down many hundreds of years ago, but even though the remote location of the tunnel had preserved it from many of the ravages of time, it was difficult to know clearly what had made the mark.

"The stonework reminds me of the old store rooms in the north wing back home," Kili said. "But I have never heard that Dwarves delved in these mountains." He shook his head and stepped back from the wall. "Perhaps my hope sees more than what is there, or my eyes are playing tricks on me. We have gone a long time with only smoking torches to light the way. What I wouldn't give for a plain, iron lantern!"

"And clean oil to fill it," Fili agreed. He shook his head and was about to turn away when something caught his attention and held him there. He looked back at Kili with a frown. "What did you say?"

"About the lantern?"

"No, about north rooms in Ered Luin. You said that this place reminds you of them…" Fili took his brother's arm and raised it so that the light of the torch fell upon the stone again, and then he looked around the tunnel, seeing it with new eyes. "That is it! I see it now. I have felt for some time that these walls were familiar to me, and now I understand why. They are exactly like the old hall to the north, beyond the store rooms. You remember it, the one that Balin said had once been part of the caves of the Exiles."

Kili's eyes widened and he looked around. "It is similar," he said slowly, not ready to concede the point just yet. "But, Fili, do you really think that they would…?"

"What are you two whispering about?" Betta asked, appearing out of the darkness at Fili's elbow. "Have you found some new clue to our quest?"

Kili shut his mouth, and the brothers exchanged a wary look before Fili turned to her and said cheerfully, "Kili thought that he saw a mark there, but it is nothing. Only the natural stone, you see." He shined the light on the wall for her, knowing that she could read nothing in the rock.

Betta frowned but she nodded. She was too tired to ask questions and her eyes were not sharp enough to see through the dim light to the anxious looks being traded back and forth between the dwarves. They had shared many tales with her on their journey, and many that an older or wiser dwarf would not have told, but buried deep in the depths of their history were the Exiles; petty and deceitful thieves, they had been cast out from their various houses long before the western lands were drowned under the sea. The Exiles were an embarrassment to the whole race of Dwarves and not even Fili and Kili would speak of them to outsiders.

"If you are rested, we will go on," Fili said.

With one look, Betta told him that she knew he was not telling her the truth, but she said nothing only nodded and they returned to the baggage. They each took up their burdens again without comment and went on.

Now, as he walked, Fili searched his memory for the little that he knew of the Exiles and their history. He was not really surprised to find evidence of their dwellings here in Angmar. The Seven Houses had built their first kingdoms in the East, and the petty dwarves had naturally wandered west after they were exiled. There were many small settlements left behind from their wanderings; anywhere that there was good stone to mine, they had stopped for a few years or a decade. It made sense that the caverns and caves above had been carved by Dwarvish hands and not by Men. Hadn't Harandir suggested it when he said that in the old stories, Betta's people were thought to be tall Dwarves? It was unlikely that the Dwarves and Men had lived together in these halls, but not so unlikely that one had moved on and the other had moved into their place and into their abandoned dwellings. The caves in northern Ered Luin had been abandoned long before the founding of Nogrod and Belegost.

Now that he knew these tunnels had been carved by dwarves – even petty, exiled dwarves – Fili had more hope of finding a way out. The Dwarves that had cut these tunnels were different from the more respectable families, but they could not be so very different that they did not need air and light to live.

Fili had not gone far along in those thoughts or far along the path before he heard his brother's sudden cry of surprise. He turned, his hand already reaching for his sword, but there was no cause for alarm. Betta had been walking just behind him and she, too, turned to look. Kili stood several yards back, not quite in the shadows beyond the torchlight, and he faced the left-hand wall, looking into one of the many fissures that they had passed.

What now, Fili thought. They would get nowhere to day if Kili kept stopping to stare at the walls. He put on a smile for Betta's sake, but before he could ask what Kili had found, his brother was already rushing up to him and taking him by the arm.

"There," Kili said eagerly, pointing to the fissure. "I see a light down there."

Fili stared at him as if he were claiming to have seen gold, and he allowed Kili to drag him back down the tunnel.

"There, look!" Kili insisted.

Kicking down the hope that sprang up in his chest, Fili turned his face to the wall and looked through the gap in the stone. The light of the torch in his hand shone through the narrow door and he saw that the fissure was wider inside. He felt a light breeze on his face coming down the side-passage, but it was no fresher than the air of the main tunnel and he saw no light.

"You are seeing things, brother," Fili said, but Kili snatched the torch from his hand and stabbed it out against the wall.

The company was cast into darkness, and Betta cried out in dismay. Fili reached out his hand for her, but she had already taken hold of his coat sleeve, gripping his arm tight enough to bruise.

"Kili! What in Durin's name…!"

"Look, now!" Kili ordered, and Fili felt his brother's hand in his hair, turning his face back toward the wall.

It took a moment for his hands to find the fissure again, and for his eyes to grow used to the darkness, but once the night-blindness passed, Fili looked through the doorway again. At first he saw nothing, but before he could say so, his vision cleared and he realized that he could indeed see dark shapes in the distance. It was not much, but in the pitch black of the tunnel, he should not have been able to see anything at all.

"There is a light," he said, as surprised as if he had looked into the room and seen a whole courtyard full of feasting elves seated around a great fire.

"Didn't I say that there was," Kili laughed. He slapped his brother on the back and, not ready for it, Fili nearly knocked his head against the wall.

"Kili…!

His admonition was interrupted by the sharp crack of flint on stone. A burst of sparks lit the tunnel and their torch caught fire again. Betta stood, blinking in the new light, her hands still holding tight to Fili's coat sleeve. Kili grinned at her and at his brother, proud of himself and his discovery.

"That will teach you not to doubt your brother," he said, still laughing.

"Keep your voice down," Fili hissed. "It could be anything down there. We're too deep for daylight."

Kili's eager grin faltered and he glanced warily toward the gap. "It might only be a shaft, or a way out," he said. "The air feels fresh."

"No more that out here," Fili said, refusing to be drawn on by false hopes. "We must take care."

"But we will take a look, at least," Betta said. Her fear had passed, and she looked at him. She saw the reluctance in his eyes and pressed on with the only leverage she knew. "What better place is there to hide a golden treasure than down…"

Fili held up his hand to stop her. "No," he said, "no more talk of treasure. You need not convince me to explore this new path, but we are looking for a way out of these caves, nothing more." He looked hard at his brother. "And we will go forward carefully. The last thing that we need is to run blindly into the arms of another troll."

"It is too tight for a troll to fit down here," Kili said, but he was no longer laughing. There were many evil creatures much smaller than trolls.

The doorway was too narrow for them to pass through with all their baggage, and Fili still refused to believe that the light promised them a way out from under the hills; they left their supplies to lie in the tunnel unguarded. If there was ever a safer place to leave their things, they had yet to find it on this journey.

Kili entered the new passage first, eager to prove his brother wrong, and Betta went after him before Fili could stop her. She was eager for light, whatever the source. The doorway was a tight fit for Kili, but Betta's shoulders were narrower and she walked through with ease. Watching her pass by, Fili noticed for the first time that she was once again wearing her bow and quiver where she could reach them; she had not tied them to her baggage as she had been doing since entering the cavern above. He frowned, but told himself that it was only her fear of the dark that caused her to seek the reassurance of weapons and not a premonition of dangers to come. He followed her through the fissure.

The doorway was a tighter squeeze for him than for either of the others, but once past it he saw that the path did indeed widen out. It was not as wide as the main tunnel – though even here there were signs that a dwarf's hand had been at work smoothing out the stone – but once did Fili need to turn sideways to slip past an outcrop of stone.

Kili and Betta hurried forward, and Fili was pressed to keep up with them. It was not long before the dim light brightened enough to be noticed even with the torch lit. The light was faint and must have traveled far to reach them there. Fili guessed that it was near noon on a cloudless day outside: no dim dawn or shadowy dusk could be bright enough to find their tunnel. It set his calculations off by nearly half a day; he had thought before that it would be night.

After only a dozen yards, Kili stopped short. The torch in his hand was nearly spent, but he did not stop to light another. He put out the light and tucked the dead wood into his belt. By then, the rest of the company had caught up with him, and they stepped around a gentle curve stood looking into a small, softly lit cave.

There was no sound or sign of movement as they stepped into the cave. It was a much smaller version of the wide cavern that Kili had found above the broken crack in the first tunnel they had followed from the troll's hall to the chasm of waterfalls. The rough walls were plain and unadorned stone, but along the perimeter marched long lines of stalactites and stalagmites, their yellow fingers sparkling with moisture as they stretched up and down and melded together into twisted columns. The center of the cave was dominated by a wide, flat boulder worn down in the center where it caught the stead drip-drops of water that fell from cracks in the stone above.

"The light comes from over there," Kili said, pointing up and to the right of the cave. He passed quickly around the flat stone to have a look, but Fili walked up to the boulder and looked down. All along the narrow edge where the water had not yet washed it clean, he recognized the remains of carved runes, too faded to read but their meaning was clear to him.

"No Man cut this," Kili called from the corner. "It is far too deep, and too straight, the work of a Dwarf's hand." He moved on around the cave, examining stone and looking for clues.

"And this," Fili said, nodding to the runes. "But that was long ago. Many years have passed since any living thing dwelt here."

"You told me that Dwarves never dwelt in these hills," Betta said. "They live farther east at Gundabad and beyond Hithaeglir, you said."

Kili looked up from his search. He knew as well as his brother that they had told Betta many tales that were kept secret among Dwarves, but to speak of the Exiles to a human went beyond any of that. If Fili wished to tell his woman their secret, Kili would not stop him, but he would not encourage him to do it either.

Fili searched Betta's face and was glad to see her growing strong and determined in the fresh air and sunlight, even if it meant that she would argue with him again. She had asked for answers but in a different tone than when she had interrogated him on the hills below the mountains and demanded to know his reason for being on her quest.

He shook his head. "This tale I must keep to myself," he said. "It is a secret of our race that not even you can be told. Please, do not ask me again."

She frowned at his answer and glanced over his shoulder toward Kili, but his face, too, was stern. She nodded and accepted his word, asking only, "Will it help us to find a way out of these caves? Or tell you where your treasure is hidden?"

Fili knew could not put it off any longer. "How often must I tell you that I no longer care about finding gold? I would rather find food or safety for my brother," he said sharply. "And you. You must abandon your hope of answers, or whatever it is that you seek down here, Betta. We are beyond the place where Men once dwelt and have left the ancient homes of your people. These tunnels belonged to the Dwarves. If we go on, we will not find answers for you nor any gold for me, but we must go on."

Betta stared at him, and his words were slow to reach her, but when they did, he saw the anger rise up red upon her cheeks and the fierce fire in her eyes kindled to a blaze. He had known what would happen when he answered her harshly, but he did not know how else to reach her. He braced himself for the sharp words that would have for him, but there was no need.

"Fili, come here!" Kili called suddenly, interrupting them.

Betta's fury died in her eyes and the fire turned to cold ash. She turned her back on him. He sighed and shook his head, then followed his brother to the far side of the room, far into the shadows opposite the light shaft. There was a thick cluster of stalagmite gathered there, and Kili stood looking behind it.

Fili followed his brother's gaze and felt his blood run cold. Protected from the light was another deep crack in the stone wall. It was smaller than the one they had passed through to reach the cave, but it was not abandoned. The ragged edges of the opening were scored with fresh cut marks made by iron tools and on the ground just within the hole was a torn scrap of foul leather marked with an ugly, red design. Fili did not touch the thing; he did not need to. Kili held out his hand and in it were two broken black arrows with barbed fletching and iron points.

There was no need to say what they had found, but Kili said it anyway.

"Orcs."

Well, I'd hoped to reach a very special event to commemorate our 100th chapter, but it seems that you will have to wait a little longer for the big reveal ;)

Gosh, it's been a long journey to get here. We should throw a party! Like when TV shows hit 100 episodes, only there's no chance of this story going into syndication. Thank you all for reviewing, following and favoriting, and for those of you who lurk in the shadows, reading in quiet anonymity. This story wouldn't be here if it weren't for all of you.

Vanafindiel, I hope that this chapter answers your question ;)

100 Thanks You's!

-Paint