A/N: Hello, dearest readers, it's been too long, but here we are.

Mizz Alec Volturi, Khamûl is mentioned as the second-in-command of the Witch-King of Angmar, taking hold of Dol-Guldur ten years after the Battle of Five Armies. I swear by my sword that I didn't know it when I started this fic, but having one of the Nazgûl going there in canon just in time was a nice surprise!

Celebrisilweth, Thorin and Bard would hurry more if they hadn't to take care. There are lives at stake, after all…

Welcome on board, Sarah Weasley, and have a nice ride!

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Hurdles and Perks

What Legolas saw was beyond the darkest nightmares that plagued his spider-poison hallucinated states.

The golden plate on the stone table, when hit by the iron contraption, by logic and physics, was supposed to splatter blood everywhere around it, but it wasn't so. Instead, dark shadows rose from the ruby fluid pooled at its bottom, as if consuming what life fuel it could touch.

The sick greenish fumes of the encircling cauldrons couldn't do better than to mix with the growing shadow, and that was what they did.

Shadow became shape, shape gained density, darkness evoked malice, evil bestrewed despair.

Khamûl was back.

Khamûl, the Easterling. Khamûl, the Shadow of the East. The Black Easterling. Many were his titles, pleasant and derogatory. He didn't care. The pleasant ones were, well, pleasant, and the derogatory ones… only were so in the lips of the weak, lesser people deserving to be enslaved and serve him and his mighty Dark Lord. He could laugh at the titles people threw at him. He didn't care. He was a faithful servant of the mighty Sauron, he earned a Ring of Power, and he would never die.

Well, actually, some people believed he did, but wasn't he back? After all the embarrassing situation of having his body pierced by swords and whatever and then wrapped up in tough leather shrouds, sealed within the High Fells under powerful spells put by the Elves of yore.

Immortal elves, bah! He was the one really immortal, despite human-born! He conquered death by his dedication to the one who really cared about his followers, the one actually able to bestow power on the faithful ones! Like him!

Now it was time to seek for sweet revenge…

…if he only weren't so weak that he stumbled on things, in the hypothesis that a wraith could stumble, of course. Who was the idiot that left all that rubbish on the holly altar of his return?

Khamûl looked around. Oh, orcs, of course. Very useful when you don't have anything better. Didn't think of finding him an appropriate garment, of course, but considering the undignified rags those mules wore, it probably was for the best. Long gone were the silks and velvets of his days as king. Which made him wonder, what day (or night) was it, after all? He couldn't have been dead for more than a month… or could he? Nah, Sauron would have dealt with the stupid Númenoreans and the arrogant elves by now.

Wouldn't he?

He had the Ring, the precious and wonderful Ring that shared his power and made him feel so… Magnificent. Terrific. Splendacious. Superb. Impressive. Coruscant. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Or something like that.

Oh, and he would serve Sauron with all his readiness, all his good will, as soon as he found his Dark Lord… he couldn't be too far… he just needed a bit more of sustenance…

One gesture of his invisible hand and the nine Uruks of Mordor fell to the ground, reduced to dust. A life devoted to Annatar was a life worthy to giving up. Those nine had been honoured by giving it up for the mightier One. Or one of his splendid most-honourable servants.

Now, to find his Dark Lord… He couldn't be far…

Kíli ran, as fast as his wobbling steps could carry him and the precious load in his arms. Legolas held back, then ran forward, and then he was behind them again, all the time slapping the stone walls here and there. The dwarf couldn't be more confused.

"Where to, by Durin's beard!?"

"There must be a passageway close by. If I remember the maps…"

"Hammer and anvil, if you don't remember I'll ram the wall open with your head!"

"Not so easy to find something you never saw in person, is it?"

The elf retorted to his complaining friend, and Kíli swore to himself Legolas would pay dearly for making him think about other things than escaping. Focus, the dwarf muttered to himself, focus!

As if answering his self-intended plea, Tilda opened her eyes. Her face was sickly pale, as expected from one who lost so much blood, but she sounded as lucid as someone could be under the circumstances.

If one could read her mind, it would be clear. They were escaping, or trying to escape, a place that had been, once upon a time, an elven fortress. Even in her stunned state, the memory of tales about escaping Thranduil's halls were not so far away. The dwarrow princes made sure it wouldn't be forgotten. Eleven-years-old-Tilda made sure this tale was told more often that the ones where they hungered, or feared, or fought, or fled. Because the patients under her childish care shouldn't be reminded of their hardships, but of their victories.

"Barrels. River. Escape."

Her parched lips closed again, but Kíli endured her stare and understood. She was a child then, but she heard about the dwarrow's escape from Thranduil's halls more than once, and from his own lips while Kíli was recovering from his close-to-deadly wounds and the woman now held in his arms was no more than a too-early-grown-up child straining to keep him and his brother willing to heal and to overcome their losses.

"Legolas, how did your grandpa transport goods?"

"How would I know?"

The elf continued to slap stone after stone of the walls as they ran away from the terrace.

"Maps, books, whatever!" Kíli glanced back at the passageway they just crossed. The darkness out there seemed darker that it was before. An idea hit him as hard as Legolas hit the stone slabs on the walls. "Where is the closest toilet?"

"Erú's sake, Kíli, we've dirtied ourselves times enough the last weeks for you to care about…"

Of course it was not about using a toilet as it used to be used, but rather about using it like the Company used it when they sneaked into Bard's house. Which was a misuse, but they couldn't care less when it was the retake of Erebor that was at stake. Such a misuse wouldn't be less disregarded when it was their lives at stake, would it?

"Where does the sewer go?"

For a moment the elf had nothing to answer, trying to process where the question could lead to. His lengthy study of maps didn't approach some commonplace issues of daily life. He answered between taps on the stone walls.

"It falls through several ducts to a… pool of cleansing… and then to a river…"

"We can use this route!"

Slow but inexorably, Legolas finally understood what the dwarf was talking about. He stopped his stone pounding, blinked like an owl and turned to the offending person beside him.

"Sewer dirt and fresh wounds don't mix well. They'll fester and kill you."

"If we don't get away from here really fast we won't have time for wounds to fester."

They almost had no time neither to for their wounds to fester nor for their mouths to shut up, as the loud trample of orcs sounded nearby. A niche close to what once had been a stained glass window offered them hiding, barely enough.

After the sound of iron-shod feet disappeared in the distance, Tilda mumbled to put some reason into the thick skulls of his companions.

"Cold water… was clean…"

The males looked at her and back at each other. It was obvious, once stated. Although it was meant by their captors as an added torment, it wasn't something devised by them. The water was fresh, sprout from stone outcrops at the top of the Naked Hill, Amon Lanc, as it had been once known. It was water enough to supply the whole capital of the Woodland Realm, once upon the Second Age. The spring used to torture the three captives was just a small creek in comparison to its whole flow rate.

"Where goes that water? That they poured upon us?" Kíli asked, and the elf smiled.

"I have no idea, but we'll find it out together."

"That yard was full of orcs, Legolas!"

"We don't have to cross it. There is a way around. I know there is!"

"Like the passageway you were searching until now?"

They were all weak, hurt and tired, short tempered, and Legolas was no exception.

"If you have a better option, Kíli, just point it out and I'll follow you, but right now I'm the best suited person to guide us out of here and that's what I'll do!"

The elf stressed each phrase with anger, hitting the wall beside him with his palm as if it had personally offended him.

Kíli's eyes went wide, and the elf thought that, for once, he had gained the respect which was his due. Even if by means of anger, menace, and shows of physical strength, as was not his praxis, but that he had learned from one of the best, unfortunately.

"Aye, you will."

Legolas was muted by the archer's acknowledgement of his competence, as rarely something he stated was not disputed by the dwarf. Then he felt it, rather than saw it, like Kíli did.

The wall, or part of it, slid along his fingers. When he turned to see it, most of one of the walls of the niche they hid in had a slight glimmer, and it was moving to the opposite side from the corridor. Slowly, downward steps showed beyond the line of the receding wall.

No more words were needed.

The escaping route was there, and they would use it.