Middle-earth, and all who dwell within it, belongs to Tolkien. I am grateful to him for growing this garden in which our imaginations can play. Please review!
Fili crawled out from under the thick stone and stood up, wiping the dust from his knees. Kili stood nearby with the lamp in one hand while the other held a green handkerchief over his mouth and nose. He shook his head.
"Your new friend was not lying when she said that the air would be foul," he said, his voice muffled by the cloth. "This is like coming upon a sudden vein of sulfur down in the mines."
"It is not sulfur," Fili said. He looked around.
Magha had spoken true when she said that there would be a hall beyond the door. The walls of this passage were as wide as the wide doors that had led to it; the height of the ceiling was tall, and made taller by the many cracks and boulders that had broken loose. The floor of the passage was piled with them, though it seemed that at some work had been done to force a winding path through the mess. It had been long ago; the way was thick with sand and soot, and the air stank of dry rot.
Fili took up his pack again with his left hand. The wound on his right forearm had given him pain before, but as he had crawled his way out from under the door, he had begun to feel a dull, driving ache that spread out from the shallow cut. He shrugged it off, thinking that it was only because he had used the arm so much on their recent journey through the side-passages and narrow tunnels that led to and from Magha's home.
The foul air stuck in Fili's throat and he searched his pockets for a handkerchief to do as his brother had done. He found one, but when he held it up, he stared at it in surprise. It was the same handkerchief, Man-made and of a bright, blue cloth (though the color was nearly obscured by the many new stains that it carried); it had belonged to Betta. Fili had returned it to her after finding her flag in the driving snow above Emyn Uial, but he had been still sleeping when she had used it to wipe his brow after the confrontation with the snow-troll. It seemed a miracle to him to find it in his pocket once again, and he held it tight in his hand until his brother's worried voice broke through his thoughts.
"Fili?" Kili frowned at him and searched his face. He, too, knew to whom that handkerchief had once belonged. "What are you thinking now? It is too late to turn back and look for her."
Fili shook his head. "That, I know," he said, "and she would not thank us if we died searching for her body. We must go on." He held the handkerchief to his nose and mouth and looked around the hall. "This place will sicken us if we stay too long, and Magha said we have a long ways to go."
"Yes, so Magha said…" Kili grinned, but it was lost behind his handkerchief. "Lead on, brother."
Fili carried the lamp as they set out down the hall. The pale light was dim and flickered fitfully in the air that not only smelled foul but was also full of the tendrils of smoke that wrapped fingers around the many boulders and about the legs of the dwarves. Kili was uncomfortably reminded of the mysterious mist that had tricked him into leaving the road upon the hills outside. He kept close to his brother this time, refusing to let him out of his sight.
Their light did not shine far into the gloom, but they were able to pick out a steady path between the shoulders of the fallen boulders. Most of the stone was plain, but here and there, Kili's keen eyes picked out a piece that was carved with strange designs. Once, he stopped short in surprise and nearly cried out when he thought that he spied the severed head of a Dwarf lying to one side of their path. It was only the broken bust of an ancient statue – the body of which had rolled to one side and was hidden – but the carver of the thing might have rivaled the skills of the Dwarves of Ered Luin with his realism.
Kili stepped carefully over the broken head, but Fili seemed not to see it. He was too lost in his own thoughts and in peering ahead down the smoky hall.
This first leg of their road was not so long as Magha had led them to believe, but it ended not in a narrow path but in a wide stair going up. This staircase was less steep and more grand than the narrow descent they had made leading to the river-room. On either side, great iron rings had been driven into the stone and a thick chain was strung between them for a handrail. The foul air had rotted the iron as Magha had thought it would and when Kili put his hand on the first ring, it broke in two and fell with a clang onto the floor. A cloud of rust and flaking metal rose up into the air, and Kili waved it away.
"I suppose that this is a good sign, at least," he said, "that we are climbing upwards once more. We will soon find ourselves at ground-level."
Fili grunted his agreement, but he said nothing. He remembered the last stairwell that they had been preparing to climb before the orcs attacked…
"Fili…?"
"Lead on, brother," Fili said. "My arm grows tired from carrying this."
"Are you feeling well?" Kili asked, taking the lamp and seeing his brother's pale face.
"Well enough to climb a few stairs," he said with forced cheer. "Not all of us have slept as long or as deeply as you these past few nights."
His brother was reluctant to ask more. If they turned back now, they were lost. There was no way to retrace the winding road that Magha had led them down, and her home was the only safe place for two Dwarves among the Naug.
Kili went first up the stairs, but he looked back often and kept a close eye on Fili who did not realize how loudly he grunted at every step or the heavy way that he leaned his arm against the wall when the iron chain proved too weak to bear his weight. Still, they climbed steadily, and the higher they went, the thicker grew the air and the stronger the stink of the fumes. Twice, Kili was forced to stop and to snuff out the sparks from their wick that had caught light on the flammable clay around the bowl of the lamp. He closed off two of the small doors, and that seemed to help the flame not to sputter, but it left them with only a narrow beam of light and they climbed slowly after that.
Kili reached the top of the stairs first and set down the lamp so that he could pull his brother up the rest of the way. For a minute or two, their light struggled against the foul air and they were able to see that the stairs they had climbed led to a short landing which ended in a steep and sudden drop. They could hear the lapping of distant waves across a wide cavern, but the air was so thick with brown smoke and fumes that they could see nothing beyond the small circle of their light. To the right, another stair led down into darkness, and to the left was a narrow ledge that hugged the curving walls of the cavern.
Fili stood on unsteady legs and looked ahead, shielding his eyes. There was a gentle breeze in the cavern and, for a moment, it seemed to him that the smoke parted and he could see, far out in the center of the lake, a low, stone island with a ridge of boulders like spines along its back.
Then, the fog rolled in again. Their lamp light flashed once, twice, and died, leaving them in darkness. No handkerchief could have kept out the stench that burned their mouths and nostrils, but they tied the cloths over their faces like masks, and Kili took from his belt the iron rod that Fili had used before to feel their way. There was a breeze, but it was not strong enough to tell them where the free air might be found, nor strong enough to blow away the fumes and the heat from the cavern.
In the darkness, Fili reached out and found his brother's arm. He could not be sure of what he thought he had seen, but there was only one path for them; they must follow it blindly and trust Magha's word that it would lead them out.
"She said it was a high and narrow path that we were to follow. To the left, we go, then," Fili said, "but first let us have the rope."
They tied a length of rope each about the other's waist with a few yards between them so that they might go on without being separated; if they were meant to fall, then they would fall together. The ledge along the cavern wall was too narrow to walk safely in the dark but neither dwarf was too proud to crawl.
In that way, they set off. Kili went first with his left shoulder pressed against the wall and the iron rod in his hand, feeling along the ledge before them. At regular intervals, he would stop and reach out with his right arm to find the edge of the path. For the most part, it remained three feet from the wall to its sharp edge. In places it grew narrower but never wider than that.
Here and there, they came upon fallen stones perched upon the ledge, but they were small and Kili easily pushed them out of the way. The smallest stones, he balanced carefully, but some were too large, and those he was forced to push over the edge and send tumbling into the waters below. He heard them splash, but the thick air deadened the sound and it blended almost seamlessly into the eternal washing of the waves that echoed through the cavern. As they went along, Kili began to count the seconds it took each stone to reach the lake, and each time the fall grew longer until he guessed that it was a drop of fifty feet or more.
The brothers did not speak. The air was too sour to open their mouths, but Kili paid close attention to the steady tug of his brother's weight on the rope stretched out behind him. They had begun quickly enough, but Fili's pace had slowed considerably since then. Kili felt the damp growing under his hands and knees, and the sharp stone stabbing into his palms as he crawled on and on; it seemed forever they crawled through darkness and, slowly, he felt his strength beginning to fade. The air choked him and the pack on his back seemed to be full of heavy stones.
Suddenly, Kili felt the rope behind him tighten. He braced himself, but the fall never came. He tugged on the rope, and his brother gave no answer. Turning to feel behind him, Kili found first Fili's arm and then his head lying beside it with his cheek pressed against the cold ground. Fili had collapsed, stretched out along the ledge only inches from a deadly drop.
"Brother, wake up," Kili said, his words dissolving into a coughing fit. He reached out and shook Fili's shoulder. "We cannot stop here!" His voice was raw in his throat, but he felt his brother stir and sit up.
"I cannot," Fili gasped. "I feel so heavy. Rest… I need…"
"Oh, no! If you fall asleep here, you will die," Kili said. "A little farther, and then we shall rest."
Those few words left him breathing hard, and drawing more and more fumes into his lungs, but he felt Fili nod his head and turn onto his hands and knees again.
"…only a little farther…" Fili agreed, weakly.
Not wasting a moment of his brother's strength, Kili turned and crawled on, drawing Fili behind him. It would not do to dwell on what would happen if either brother's strength gave out completely, and the path was too narrow for Kili to carry his brother.
A little farther, a little farther, Kili chanted to himself as he crawled on. He leaned his shoulder hard against the left-hand wall. The ledge had grown narrow again, and he was inching his way past when suddenly the wall disappeared from his left side and he tipped over with a cry. The iron rod fell from his hand and rolled off the edge of the path, falling with a great noise into the waters below.
Fili gasped as he was thrown suddenly forward onto his face. The surprise was enough to wake him from his stupor. He held tight to the rope, and to the ledge, but Kili had not fallen far, and Fili was not pulled after him.
"Kili! Where are you!?" he called, feeling his way forward along the taught rope. He had heard only the fall of the iron rod, and he was surprised to find that the rope turned left and not right. "Kili!"
"Here!" Kili called. "I am safe, I think, but I cannot move."
Fili felt the wall carefully and found the edge where a great channel had been cut into the stone. A steady breeze came through the channel, and he guessed that it had been fashioned to bring fresh air in from the outside. The floor had once been sanded smooth but was split by a great fissure, narrow enough that it did not impede their path along the ledge but widening farther in. That, it seemed, was where Kili had fallen. Fili fingers touched the toe of his boot but no more of his brother could he find in the dark.
"Well? Hurry up!" Kili gasped. "I cannot lie here forever."
"And I cannot see you in the dark," Fili muttered. He continued to feel along the channel until his hand fell upon the iron lamp that Kili had carried and dropped when he tipped over into the crack. It was lucky that the lamp had not fallen over the edge with the rod, and lucky, too, that each brother had taken a portion of the incendiary powder for his own pocket. Fili took out his box of the stuff and found the wick with his fingers. He dropped a pinch into the lamp.
With a pop and a snap, the wick burst into flame. It flickered and was stubborn, struggling to burn under the strong breeze from above, but the new air blew away the fumes so that the flame did not suffocate. Fili adjusted the doors until the light burned clear, and then he looked around to see where he was.
It was indeed an air channel, much like those that he had seen before in other Dwarf-homes, and carved to bring air in rather than let it escape. Though the channel itself was empty of fumes, the difference in pressure meant that little clean air entered the cavern but less of the tainted air escaped.
"Don't just kneel there. Help me up!" Kili called.
Fili looked down. The fissure in the floor that he had felt did indeed widen farther in, and it was into this gap that Kili had fallen. It was narrow enough that he had been wedged in with his heavy pack and his arm was caught so that he could not readily pull himself out, though he might have managed it eventually if Fili had not been there.
Taking care so that he would not fall, Fili braced himself against the wall and took hold of his brother's arm. With a great deal of grunting and groaning, and more than a few muttered curses, he finally succeeded in hauling Kili out of the crack.
His brother popped free and clambered up onto the floor beside Fili, rubbing his shoulder and scowling. "If all adventures are nothing but being captured and falling into things, then I have had enough of it. First mud puddles and snow-covered riverbeds, now sudden cracks in the floor… Enough!"
"You should count yourself lucky," Fili said. "You might have been wedged too deep for me to pull you out, if it were not for that poor fellow there…"
Kili looked down and then jumped up with a cry. The crack in the floor was twice as deep as he had fallen, but at the bottom, wedged in even tighter than he himself had been, was the mummified corpse of a Dwarf. The constant flow of air had dried out the body and prevented the usual processes of decay, but the sour fumes had darkened and twisted the flesh so that only by stature and the remains of a beard could they tell the creature's race.
"I would guess that this is the criminal, Grahn, that Magha spoke of," Fili said, shifting in his seat, but he was too tired and too sore to be disturbed by the nearness of this new neighbor. He looked around. "The wind comes from up there, I think," he said, looking toward the back of the channel.
Kili took the lamp and went to have a look. "There is no way out," he called back after several minutes. "The chimney is blocked. From the sound of it, the wind outside is blowing strong. That is lucky for us or we may not have had this fine pocket in which to rest."
Kili returned and sat beside his brother. His initial surprise had worn off, and he looked down at the mummified corpse with growing curiosity, but there were other things on his mind. "How do you feel now?" he asked Fili.
"Better," he said, but he held his injured arm close. The panic of the moment had faded and the pain of the wound returned to plague him. The ache had sunk in deep to the bone and seemed to cover his whole arm and hand. His head throbbed as well and not even the fresh air could halt the hammer that struck against the anvil of his skull.
"Come now, brother," Kili said, "you have always claimed to be the better of us two. How can you let a bit of foul air weaken you when it has hardly touched me?" He was exaggerating, of course, the air had given him a headache and his throat was raw from swallowing it, but he was better off than his brother.
Fili shook his head. "I do not know… My arm aches. Perhaps the bandage was wrapped too tightly…"
"Your arm…" Kili frowned, remembering the orc-wound. "I wrapped that bandage myself," he said. "It is not too tight, and there was no sign of infection. The blade was not poisoned…"
He stopped short, remembering Magha's words. She said that the fumes in the cavern would taint any meat that they carried, however well wrapped. Could it seep through the bandages around Fili's injured arm, as well? Certainly the damp had soaked into Kili's own clothes and made them stink as badly as the cavern around him.
Fili's face was grim. He had realized the trouble at the same moment that Kili had, but there was little they could do now. They could not very well sit within the channel for the week or more that it would take his arm to fully heal, and they could not trust the chimney to continue to provide clean air for them should the wind shift or the weather change.
"We should rest while we can," Fili said, "and eat something while we have the chance. We do not know how much farther we must go…"
It occurred to him that the blocked channel in which they sat might well have been the way out that Magha meant for them. If it was, then the brothers might crawl their way around the whole perimeter of the cavern and end up back where they started and with no other path to take. He looked down at the mummified corpse and wondered whether Grahn had been killed when he fell or whether he had lain there alone for days slowly starving with the free air yards away but out of reach.
"If we are to eat, I'd rather do it somewhere else," Fili said.
Kili nodded and they moved away from the front of the channel, as far from the fumes and as near to fresh air as they could get, and then they sat down and took from their packs two of the strange lichen that the Naug-woman had given them. It seemed to be unaffected by the air of the cavern. The color was the same pale yellow and there was no sign of rot or stain upon it.
"Do you think that it needs to be cooked?" Kili wondered.
"She did not say so," Fili said, looking his meal over carefully. "I think that she would have given us means to cook them if they did. We cannot very well hold each bite over out lamp's small flame."
"I suppose…" Kili frowned at the food and did not move to eat it.
Fili shook his head at his brother and took the first bite. He chewed it over thoughtfully for some time before finally swallowing and then looking again at the lichen with a curious expression. Kili watched him closely, waiting.
"Well?" he asked.
"It is a strange dish, indeed," Fili said. "Bland, and the texture is…" He shook his head. "I would not like to make too many meals of it, but we might easily have been given worse."
With that, Fili set to finishing his meal. Kili frowned, not reassured, but they had given all their meat to Magha. He took his own bite, prepared to spit it out, but the food was wholesome enough. It was bland, certainly, and a little bitter, but with a texture closer to a fibrous vegetable than to bread or cram. Although it took some effort to chew the stuff, still it was easier on the teeth than the dwarven waybread and a welcome change to the stale meat that they had been eating for days, always over cooked or under cooked but never just right.
After their meal, the brother's rested. Kili unwrapped Fili's injured arm to have a look. The wind in the channel was strong enough and Fili's pain had grown great enough, that they were willing to take the risk.
The laceration had begun to knit itself well before they passed under the Black Door, but the half-healed wound was crusted over with scab and the flesh around it was angry and red. It was like no infection that the brothers had seen before, and Kili insisted on using a little of their water to bathe the wound and wipe away the black crust. Fili winced but the cool water soothed the hurt, and Kili retired his bandage with many layers of the cleanest cloth they had.
"That will have to do for now," he said, tying the final knot. "I only hope that you are strong enough to make it to the exit. Once we are back in the open air, I have no doubt that so stubborn a dwarf will soon recover." Kili smiled, but Fili saw the worry in his eyes.
"I am sure that I am strong enough," he said. "But I will not object to a longer rest in this place."
"Then rest," Kili told him. "We can spare an hour to cleanse our lungs of the filth out there. Sleep, and I will keep the watch." He saw his brother's wary look and held up both his hands. "I swear that I will not fall asleep!" he said, laughing. "Now, rest, brother."
Willingly, Fili lay back with his cloak folded under his head and closed his eyes. Kili sat beside him for a little while, checking their supplies to be sure that the fumes from the cavern had not damaged them. That done and his brother fast asleep, he looked around, bored and eager for anything that might occupy his unhappy thoughts.
The fissure in the floor of the channel caught his eye once more and, leaving his brother, he took the lamp and went to have a look at their unexpected company.
The body of the Naug-man was nearly three feet below the floor of the channel. As the air had dried out his flesh and rotted his clothes, Grahn had undoubtedly sunk deeper than he had been at first, for he lay near to the bottom. Lowering the lamp to see the man's face more clearly, Kili's eyes caught sight of something that he had not noticed before. The Naug-man's right arm was not trapped beneath him but stretched out along a narrower part of the fissure near the bottom of the crack. His outstretched, bony fingers seemed to be pointing at something hidden there.
Moving to the other side, Kili lowered the lamp again and then he saw what Grahn had died for. A small, iron chest lay on its side, balanced between the two edges of the narrow place. The rotted remains of cloth around it suggested that it had once been carried in a sack with other supplies, but those had long ago dried to dust.
Glancing back at his brother, Kili grinned. He set the lamp where he might reach it and lowered himself carefully into the fissure. It took a great deal of maneuvering and his heavy boots were not kind to the remains of the Naug-man, but eventually, Kili was able to reach the small chest and work it out of its tight hole. He lifted it from the fissure and set it on the stone floor, then dragged himself out again. That was harder than he expected; the sharp angle of the inner walls caught on his clothes and hooked his belt. If he had not rested and eaten and been a strong, young Dwarf, he might have been stuck once more.
Back on solid ground, seated next to his prize, Kili surveyed Grahn crushed remains. He guessed now that the Naug-man had not fallen and been wedged as Kili had been. He might have freed himself if it had been only that. No, Grahn had indeed fallen and dropped the sack that he carried. Then, rather than freeing himself, he had struggled to retrieve the chest, his greed driving him to reach deeper and deeper into the fissure, wasting the strength he needed to get out until he was trapped. Hunger and thirst had done the rest.
Kili looked down at the mummified corpse and shook his head. He did not know what was in the chest, but certainly it could not be worth a man's life. Taking his prize with him, Kili returned to his brother's side and took out his smallest knife. He set to picking the lock, but it had been long since he had practiced such fine work and by the time he heard the last tumbler fall into place, it was time to wake his brother.
Fili was not entirely recovered from his ordeal, but he woke well-rested and willing to go on. He saw the chest between his brother's knees and frowned.
"Where did you get that?"
Kili grinned sheepishly and nodded to the fissure. "It belonged to our friend, there," he said. "I do not think that he will miss it."
He pried open the lid of the chest and both brothers leaned forward to see what was inside.
It was not much, to be sure, only twenty or so gold coins, a few strands of blue beads – lapis lazuli or some other semi-precious stone – and two emeralds, uncut but of sufficient size. Kili took out one of the gold coins. He polished it on his sleeve, hefted it in his hand and tapped it with his fingernail. All signs pointed to it being pure gold, but he was not willing to risk tasting it until it had been cleaned. The iron chest had been shut tight, but the foul air of the cavern might have found away into even the smallest gap in the seal.
"Well, what do you think of that?" Kili said, tossing the coin back into the chest. "I do not think that this was the treasure that Betta's father had so hoped to find at the bottom of his quest, but you never know when a bit of pocket change might come in handy." He looked to his brother for the final say.
Though it was not generally thought proper to despoil a found corpse, the brothers were in unusual circumstances and rather dire straits. Fili did not wholly approve of his brother's actions, but he knew that Dwarven law was on their side. If the body had indeed belonged to Grahn, a killer and a thief, then there was no crime in retrieving what may well have been a stolen chest from his corpse. Had it been a proper burial mound, Fili would have refused to disturb the remains but, again, that was not the case here. The Naug had declared Grahn a criminal and sent him away. Though his family might disagree, they had given up their claim on him and all his possessions; the treasure was free for the taking.
Fili sighed. He had long ago given up hope of treasure, and to see what he had once sought staring him in the face while the woman he loved had been lost was a blow to his heart, but he agreed with his brother. The gold would be useful to have. They did not know where their path would lead them and it was likely that if they came out of the mountains it would be into less than hospitable lands. They could not eat gold, but those coins might buy food from an otherwise unfriendly traveler that they might meet along the way.
"Take it, then," Fili said. "But leave the chest. We are weight down enough already."
Kili emptied the contents of the chest into his pocket, and the brothers took up their packs again. Fili looked around the channel. "As comfortable as this place may be, I would not wish to make it my new home. Let us move on."
"I am sure that we are at least halfway there," Kili told his brother, "or farther. In no time we shall see daylight ahead of us and breathe the free air!"
Fili nodded, not much comforted. The brothers crawled carefully out of the channel and back onto the narrow ledge. Reentering the thick fumes after their long rest was a sore change for their weary lungs, and the light of their lamp snuffed out once more. They brothers were left in darkness, but the rope between them was strong and they were determined to go on.
.
Though Fili and Kili did not know it, the channel that they had found was indeed the halfway point around the old King's Cavern. There were many other chimneys like it, and many other narrow ledges higher than the one they followed. The ledges had been used long ago by the Naug servants whose task it was to keep the channels clear for they provided air to the cavern that was large enough hold a whole village of Men and had once held the original Naug city before the rivers were let loose to fill it. The Naug of Angmar, few in number but strong and skillful, were all that was left of the Petty Dwarves in a world that had long ago declared them dead.
It was the Naug who had filled the cavern and drowned their city in the icy waters of the mountains. After many days of ferocious battle upon the hillside, they had tricked a dragon through the gates and into their city with the promise of treasure, then let loose the rivers and sealed the doors, freezing the fiery furnace in the belly of the beast while Men cowered and hid in their caves to the east.
Whether the old worm was alive or dead, no one knew and no one was willing to open the doors to see. Even the Naug could say for certain, but they claimed to have killed him in order to extract a large payment from the Lord of the Men. From then on, there was little friendship between the two peoples, yet they needed each other and so they created the mark of Safe Passage, a tradition which lasted until darkness reclaimed the old fortress and the Men left Angmar for the safer southern lands.
Even in the days of the Witchking's reign, the waters that flowed through King's Cavern had been hot to the touch, and the walls of the mountain would groan and shake is if a great strength were trapped within them, struggling to break free. The halls and tunnels nearest to the cavern were abandoned and the Naug whispered that they would at times be filled with sudden flame as if a great mouth had been set against them and blown out its fiery breath. If the dragon were alive – as he almost certainly was at that time - not even the Witchking dared to release him, fearing the power of so ancient an evil while his Master was weak and in hiding.
But that was long ago and many hundreds of years before Fili and Kili would tread the hidden ways of Angmar. The old tales had faded from the memory of the Naug, and Magha knew only what she had told the dwarves, that the road was safe enough for one or two to follow if they had a mind to brave the sickening fumes, and that it led out of the mountains. To her mind, it was safer than sending the brothers along the well-trod paths of the Naug city where they would certainly be captured and killed.
Two hours, the brothers spent crawling through the smoke and the fumes, two hours in darkness with the cold body of a possibly-dead dragon so near and yet they did not know it. Kili worried over his brother's health, and Fili suffered from the pain of his arm and his grief, but finally their stubbornness was rewarded. They reached the end of the ledge and stood once more upon solid ground, a landing not unlike the one that they had left behind but the staircase before them went up and up.
The brothers needed no lamp here. As they untied the rope from about their waists, they looked up and saw the reflected light of open sky above. Trusting to Magha's word, they knew that this was their way out and not another taunt to dash their hopes. They started up the stairs, and Kili counted two hundred and fifty steps before he reached the top. From there, they dragged themselves down a short, broken hall at the end of which lay a door.
What had been the original entrance was now filled in with snow and mortared up with brick except in one place where a small tunnel had been kept free. There were signs that the Naug would sometimes shelter within the hall, but not recently and they did not wander far from the door.
Kili entered the tunnel first, wriggling like a worm as he pushed his pack ahead of him. He dragged himself out and then reached back to pull his brother free. They stood, side by side, and blinking in the sunlight that reflected off of white, snow-covered hills. It was midday, and they were free.
Wow. Well, I'm sure that many of you have noticed that updates have not been as frequent as they used to be. I hope that the much longer chapters make up for it. It is, in part, because I have been very, very busy, but also I have been procrastinating because I know - and now you, too, will know - we have very few chapters left in our tale. I think about six, in fact.
Now, how this story ends will be a bit up to you. I have heard some murmuring of folks who would like to know what will happen to the brothers after they return to Ered Luin. What will Thorin say to his nephews regarding this quest and the one to Erebor? How will he react when he learns that his heir has fallen in love with a human woman? Quest to Forochel was just that, the story of their quest and when the quest is over, so too will be the story. Of course, whether or not there will be a sequel (tentatively titled Return to Ered Luin) is up to you.
Just putting it out there. Let me know what you think. Review! I'd really like to hit 400 reviews before this thing ends ;)
-Paint