Chapter Eighteen: The Webs of Greenwood

Notes: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays All! This chapter is not very holiday-like but hope you enjoy it anyway.

We walked for what felt like forever, following the stone path that wound through the wood. It was impossible to distinguish one part of the forest to the rest so I made sure to stay close to the others. I kept my hood over my head as the rain continued, making the stones we walked on slippery. I was still utterly afraid of that place with every step I took, but I kept telling myself that the faster we moved the faster we would be out.

I wanted to hold onto Thorin's hand while we walked, but I knew I needed to be brave on my own. If everyone else could do it, so could I.

Suddenly we stopped and I nearly fell into Thorin again. I looked up from my feet and everyone, including myself, demanded to know why we stopped so suddenly. We all looked around each other trying to see what the hold up was.

Nori had taken his turn to walk at the front and he said blankly. "The trail is gone…"

"What?!" we all shouted.

We clustered around and saw that the path had been taken out by a landslide so nothing remained besides a steep cliff with no easy way to the other side. We couldn't even see where the path continued on the other side, if it did at all.

"Fuck," I said under my breath, my anxiety rising by the moment.

"Let's just backtrack and try and find another way around," Dwalin said, not seeming bothered at all.

"Nothing else we can really do, can't go forward from here," Thorin agreed.

We turned around and were unable to find the path, so we had to go against Gandalf's advice and go off the trail. We had no other option, we had to keep moving forward if we were going to make it to Erebor in time. If we left the forest and attempted to go around, as Gandalf said, we would have no chance.

As we went deeper into the trees, the world seemed to shift and change around us. The air seemed to get thicker, making it harder to breathe and have complete thoughts. The dwarves rambled on about absolute nonsense, or at least it sounded like nonsense in my head. I kept walking, watching my feet go along for what felt like hours. I looked up and everyone was still hobbling along between the trees. But then I blinked and all of them were gone.

I stopped dead in my tracks and looked around. They were all wandering about in a haze, going in different directions and talking to themselves.

I leaned against the nearest tree and tried to get a hold of myself.

"Oye! Look at this!" Bofur gasped, picking a leather pouch off the ground. "There's other dwarves in these woods!"

"Ones from the Blue Mountains as well!" Dori added, inspecting the bag.

"Looks just like mine," he squinted.

I said, "It is yours Bofur, you must have dropped it and we've been walking in circles. We have to be lost."

Thorin came up beside me, his eyes looking more clear but still in haze. "We can't possibly be lost, we've been heading east the entire time."

Oin said, "Which way is east? I can't tell which direction the sun is or which way it's going at all from down here."

I looked up to the sky and saw some light glowing through the tops of the trees. "The sun, that's it." I considered taking off my backpack and weapons so I could climb easier, but knew I couldn't trust the dwarves while they were in this state. "I'm going up."

"What? Where?" Thorin asked, seeing me roll up my sleeves.

"I'm going to go above the canopy and see which way the sun is. It's our only chance of getting out of here in the next century. Keep everyone here and together, we don't want anyone running off. I'll be right back down."

I dodged the spider webs and started climbing up the side of the tree. The higher I went the easier I could breathe and my brain seemed to clear up. It kept me going higher and higher even though I knew how far I was getting off the ground. At some point I knew that if I fell I would have died, but I just told myself to simply not fall then.

I broke through the leaves of the canopy and felt a clean breeze blow the last fogginess out of my brain. I breathed it into my lungs as deeply as I could before even opening my eyes. I squinted at the sun setting over the pink and orange horizon between the mountains that stretched out on both sides of it. The sun was setting into the water though, it looked like a lake!

"I can see water ahead!" I shouted down to the others. "And a river! And the mountain, oh my we're so close! I know which way we need to go!"

I was met with no responses so I assumed they just couldn't hear me from all the way up there. I was about to start lowering myself back down, but I heard snapping and crashing not far from where I was. I could see in the near distance that some trees were shaking. Then the shaking moved forward, making the next one snap and shake.

Whatever it was, it was big enough to make trees shake like that!

I gulped and lowered my head under the canopy, to see if I could spot at all where the commotion was coming from. I saw nothing but branches and trees, but I knew there had to be something coming. I squinted and shifted my weight, trying to get a better view but I heard a snap and the branch fell out from under my feet.

I shouted as I fell, hitting spider webs and branches on the way down. My limbs flung around, trying to find something to grab and I was relieved when I got a hold of another branch. I hung by my hands, swinging back and forth as I tried to get a strong enough grip to pull myself up. Before I started the attempt though, I heard a hissing coming from the webs in front of me.

The webs stretched and broke as the largest spider in existence climbed out towards me with his fangs exposed.

"FUCK!" I screamed, letting go and falling again.

My back crashed through layers of more spider webs and it slowed me down until I laid stuck in one of the sticky traps. I thrashed around but I was unable to move my arms and legs, I was completely stuck to the web. I saw the spider drop down towards me. I shouted again as it wrapped up my entire body tightly into a little pod.

I was relieved that it didn't immediately sink its fangs into me. Instead, I felt myself get carried off. I tried to look through the webbing to see which direction I was going, but I wouldn't have known where I was going even if I could see clearly.

I heard the chittering of more spiders and I thought I heard the squirming and noises that sounded like the other dwarves. They must have been in the same situation I was in. I needed to find a way out of this, so I wiggled to try and get a hold of my sword, which luckily with the way I was wrapped my hand was right by it.

I was being dragged across one of the larger branches to be added to the rest of their collection. As soon as I got my sword a little bit loose, the spider that captured me loomed over me, about to poison me with its fangs.

I heaved as hard as I could and stabbed my sword up through the webbing, and I felt it sink its abdomen and it squealed in pain. I pushed upwards, lifting it off me and throwing it off the branch. I didn't waste time to see if it was truly dead, I started ripping the webs off me as quickly as possible. Having it just touching my body made my skin crawl.

I got up and hid against the tree trunk, relieved that none of the other spiders were close enough to notice me killing their kin. I watched them crawl around on the branches, wrapping the dwarves tighter in their webs and adjusting them as they hung from the trees. There were too many of them, I needed an advantage.

I reached into my pocket and took a deep breath before slipping the ring onto my finger. The world lost its vibrancy and it moved in strange ways, but something else also changed. The chittering of the spiders formed into coherent words.

"Kill them, kill them now!"

"Eat them now, wet and runny!"

"Their hide is tough! There's good juice inside!"

"Stick it again! Stick it again! Finish it off!" I moved towards the pod that I believe Gloin was in because he kicked and shouted, though any noise he made was muffled. "Ah! The meat's alive and kicking!"

"Kill them now! Kill them now!"

"Feast! Feast! Feast!"

I broke off a branch from the tree and threw it as far as I could. It smacked through the webs and clattered against trees then the ground. The group of spiders spun around, catching their attention. They chattered to each other as most of them crawled off to go investigate. One stayed behind through, spinning Gloin around and its fangs dripping.

"Just a taste, just a little taste!" It laid Gloin down on the branch and hovered over it, trying to find the angle it wanted.

I swung my sword at its abdomen. It screamed out and searched for the source of the slice. I slashed at its legs, slicing them clean off.

"Ah! Where is it?! Where is it?!" the spider demanded.

I removed my ring, popping up in front of its eyes. "Right here!" I then pierced my sword right between all of its eyes.

"It stings! Stings! Stings!" it shouted, falling from the branch. It crashed through several webs on the way down before lying dead on the forest floor.

I stared down at it breathlessly, just hoping it wasn't going to get up again. "Sting, that's a good name." I looked at my sword and wiped off the spider ooze off on the tree branch. "I shall name you Sting."

I had to take advantage of the spiders' absence, so I got to work on lowering the dwarves down to the ground. Once they got lowered they were able to break free and help everyone else get out of the webs. I counted them as I went along, making sure no one was left behind. I wrestled through the webs, constantly needing to rip them off me and Sting. From my count and from who I could see below, the only one that was left was Thorin so I kept digging through the webs in search for him. I called out to him, telling him to move around as much as possible so I could find him.

I did find him tucked back towards the center of the tree. The web cocoon was thrashing around and I could hear his muffled shouting. I smiled, relieved that I found him.

"There you are Thorin, calm down, I've got you now!" He stood more still so I could reach up and cut the web rope. He landed head first onto the branch and groaned in pain. "Shit, sorry about that! Sit still so I can get you out."

I cut through the surface of the webs and slowly pushed it through to make sure I wasn't cutting Thorin. I pulled the webs from his face and he squinted at me, reaching up and taking more strands out of his eyes.

"Well hi there. I bet you're happy to see me," I smirked.

"You do have a nicer face than our eight legged friends."

"Thank you?"

He chucked and I helped him sit up. "I'm not very good at compliments aren't I?"

"Not this time, no. Let's save the good compliments for later though, let's get the hell out-" I saw fangs out of the corner of my eye and before I could react it leapt toward me and knocked me back and away from Thorin.

I skidded on my back and it tried to take a bite of me, but I held up Sting so it wrapped its fangs around that instead. Venom dripped from its mouth and landed on the front of my shirt. I winced in disgust and held my arms far out in front of me.

"Any day Oakenshield!" I yelled.

"Hold on Lydia! I'll be right there!"

I bent my arms a little and when I pushed back up I had enough room to bring String around and stab the spider, gravity impaling the monster onto the point. As it died, the legs curled around me, trapping me under it. My eyes widened as it started to fall to the side, taking me off the edge of the branch.

"Thorin!" I screamed.

My backpack held me up as the spider slipped off my body and plummeted to the ground with the other dead spiders. I dangled there for a moment, white knuckling the straps of my bag and catching my breath, before looking up to see Thorin holding onto the handle. He grunted and pulled me back up onto the branch and to safety.

I laid on my back for a second, regaining my composure.

"Now who is happy to see who?" Thorin joked, sitting next to me.

"Me. I'm the one who is happy to see you," I admitted. "I have had enough falling on this journey, I swear. Thank you for catching me."

"Of course, thank you for saving me as well." He pulled me over to him and placed a sweet kiss on my temple. "As you were trying to say earlier, let's get the hell out of here."

I controlled myself from grabbing him and kissing him all over his web-covered face. Instead I gave him a knowing smile, so he knew I wanted to do that. Then we started climbing down to the ground. Dropping through the webs helped us reach the ground faster but we did have to clean ourselves of them all over again.

Knowing the spiders would be upon us shortly, the dwarves headed off in the direction that I confirmed was east. Before I started following them, I put my hands in my pockets and realized something was missing.

"The ring," I whispered, stopping in my tracks. I looked down to the ground and started searching among the leaves and the clumps of web and dead spider.

"Don't dilly dally!" Bofur called to me as they kept hurrying ahead.

"I'll catch up! One moment!" I pushed the spiders out of the way and checked under them as the dwarves left my sight. The ring had been exceedingly helpful so far, I couldn't just lose it! I would have never been able to save the others without it! "Where is it? Where is it?!"

I looked past the spiders and there at the top of a little hill sat the golden ring I had been searching for. It must have fallen out of my pocket at some point during the whole situation with the spiders. It was a miracle I was even able to find it again!

I hurried over to it and picked it up. I held it between my fingers and inspected it, to make sure that it was still in good condition.

In the distance I heard one of the dwarves shout, "Keep up!" and I assumed they were calling to me.

I tucked the ring back into my pocket and then leapt over any obstacles to catch back up with the company as quickly as I could. Along the way I passed by more dead spiders. They must have been ambushed while I was searching for the ring! I ran faster through the trees and could hear the sounds of fighting ahead.

I'm glad I refrained from shouting out to them, because once I rounded a corner I saw that they were surrounded by wood elves with arrows and swords pointed at them. I dodged back behind a tree and peaked around to see what was going on. They did not seem as friendly as the elves we met in Rivendell, just as Beorn had said.

A tall, blonde elf pointed Orcrist at Thorin. "Where did you get this? This was made by my kin, how in the world did you get your hands on something like this?"

"It was given to me," Thorin responded coldly.

"A thief and a liar." He turned to the other elves and said something in their language, and they started guiding them away. It looked like they had been stripped of their weapons so I knew there was nothing I could do to get them out of this one.

There were just too many elves.

Thorin looked around the forest, probably searching for me since I had obviously not been captured like the rest of them. I pressed my lips together and watched them get marched off towards what I assumed was Mirkwood.

"I will need to use you again, my friend," I muttered to the ring as I pulled it back out of my pocket. I slipped it onto my finger and then followed after them.