Once Upon a Time

The chase

I heard some joyous laughter while I was looking at the place Kili should be. I turn my head to look at the rest of the dwarfs and smile to myself as I see how happy they all are. I had wanted something like that but I didn't. I had a little bit of a family but I hadn't seen them in over 2,700 years and I hadn't heard or seen the sweet laugh of Arwen, the wise words of Elrond, the calm, relaxing voice of Galadriel, the calm demeanor of Thranduil, and the small, Legolas. I knew he had said some things but I still forgave him. They have probably changed by a lot. Especially Arwen and Legolas. I knew what I wanted to do and what I had to do but I still had a mountain to help reclaim. So when I saw Bilbo get up to go give food to my best friend and my mate I jumped up to go with him. I startled some of the dwarfs closest to me, I think Ori, Nori, and Bofur. I quickly mutter out an apology as I catch up to Bilbo. I gesture for him to hand me a bowl of the steaming stew. He hands me one and I almost jog up to them. Bilbo catches up and he finds me waving a hand in front of my mate's face. "Kili? Fili? What's wrong?" I question in a quiet voice. "Well. We started with 15." Fili starts. "Now we have 13" Kili finishes I hand him his food and with a little hesitation I give him a quick kiss on the cheek and run off to look at an upturned tree. Fili shoulder bumps Kili and states rather loudly, "you should ask to braid her hair. You like her. She likes you. Come on, you're the only one not courting that's of age." Kili chuckles and I almost pull my braid out and laugh but I stop myself from doing anything irrational. Kili looks at me and we make eye contact and I start giggling while he responds to Fili. "Maybe I should. I don't want any other man courting her." They ask Bilbo a few questions and I finally pile up and speak my mind, "trolls. That's what uprooted the trees." All three snap their heads towards me. And look light. Probably a fire." We all tiptoe our way over to where the light is and we duck behind a fallen tree trunk while the trolls talk about mutton and stuff I wasn't paying attention to. I jump behind a tree, getting closer to the horses while the three I came with are telling me "to come back" and "it's dangerous." I just point to camp and speak into their minds. "Just go get the rest of the company. Bilbo with me." Bilbo jogs up to me and I smile at him. He smiles back and when we look back my boys have gone to get help. My boys. I chuckle to myself and begin explaining the situation to my partner. "The horses are in a pen. Not very well built but sturdy enough the horses can't break through. The rope is thick and strong. Take my dagger and begin sawing at it." He takes the knife I offer him and nods although I can tell he's nervous so I give him a hug and a thumbs up when he gets to the pen. He can't get it open with my dagger so I rush up to help him. He turns around to watch the trolls and he gets grabbed by a troll before he can do anything. I almost scream but hold it in so I'm not the next one with trolls snot all over me so I reach for my sword before I realize I've never had my sword this entire time. I see my dagger laying by the fire in the middle of all three trolls. Great. Notice my sarcasm. I take out my claws and I hear several dwarfs shouting so I hid them again just so I don't get found out just yet. Screw it! I extend my claws once more quickly then cut the rope with one swing. Then I put them away so no one sees. Little did I know someone saw them. The trolls haven't seen me yet so I go around and sneak into a bush behind them. The dwarfs aren't too smart either so they haven't seen me yet either. They were too busy putting their weapons down or they'll take Bilbo's. I grab my dagger and rush back to the bushes before anyone sees me, but one of the trolls saw me. "Hey there's another one!" They all but throw Bilbo at Kili and I can feel the air rush out of my lungs along with the hard ground against my back but I ignore it and continue to dodge the incoming hands while some of the dwarfs are cheering me on until one of the trolls grab me. "Ecko!" Some of them shout my name, others tell them to put me down. Kili is the loudest. "This one seems important to the little brats. Why don't we start with- OW!" I stab his hand and run up his arm when he releases me. I stab his neck and he falls to the ground, dead. The other trolls try to make a grab at me while being wary of my knife arm. I still get a few nicks on them. One of them has managed to tie up all my friends in a spit or in potato sacks. I threw my knife and it embedded itself into the head of the troll, he also fell dead. With no dagger I resort to teeth and claws. I pop out my claws and everyone around me gasps more or less. Except Kili. He has the smuggest smile on his face. I walk up to the troll and start running around it. Over and over I run but it's getting harder to breathe. One of them must've cracked a rib. It might have punctured my lung. I lunge at the troll and stab it through the stomach with my claws, I stick my claws in his oily flesh to get a grip and climb him. I get to his neck and do the same thing for the first troll. With all of them dead I stand in the middle of the clearing, blood covering some of my clothes, a shadow falling across my face. I step into the light and find a bucket of water and splash it onto the fire, extinguishing it. Afterwards I cut the dwarfs off the spit and they ran off to help the ones in potato sacks. I sit down pulling my claws in along with my fangs and put a hand on my rib cage feeling the broken ones. Kili runs up to me and whisper yells, "That was amazing-are you okay love?" I chuckle and nod before hissing in pain at chuckling. "She's hurt!" Kili all but yells. All the other dwarfs rush over and Oin starts pulling up my shirt before looking at me to see if it's okay and I just nod. He pulls my shirt up and there are really audible gasps. "What? What is it?" I start panicking kind of because I have no idea what happened but before I could look Oin pulls my shirt down and I groan in pain. He lets go of my shirt so I grab it and pull it up. I start smiling when I see it. There's blood and lots of it. The rib broke and it was sticking out of my chest with a big purple and green bruise around it. I look up and make a small comment, "you guys think this is bad? This isn't the worst thing I've seen." I pull up my shirt and warn them I may scream. Some of them look at each other confused. At this point Gandalf has joined us and Kili comes and stands behind me so I have something to prop myself up against. Everyone watches to see why I would scream. I put my palm to the bone sticking out and push it back in, in one swift movement. I do scream but it's not as loud as it could have been. Kili looks at me with a sad expression on his face. It's weird. This is normal but I find it weird that I can feel his pain but he can't feel mine. Anyway I feel the bone and shift it back in place before lifting up my shirt and showing everyone my fast healing ability. I look around and everyone has a shocked look on their faces. Once everything is healed Oin asked to touch it and I was like go ahead but it's going to be a little tender. He just nods and pokes at where the wound was. I felt a little twinge but that's it. "What was that? The claws, the healing. What are you?" Thorin asks quite suddenly, might I add. "What I am you will find out when the time is right what that was, was just said creature. Good night lads." I finish and cross to pick up my dagger and head to camp where everything was packed up and grab my stuff quickly walking to the cave Gandalf had found. Everyone had either found gold or new swords. I didn't find anything that would do me good. I did take some gold coins though. I have 60 something coins. I leaned up against a tree and started dozing off but before I could finally fall asleep shouts were heard in the distance. "Fire, Death, something." I don't know, I wasn't paying attention. Apparently that's Radagast the brown. He talked to Gandalf a little before they went off to talk in more private conditions. I feel myself grow more and more tired. I didn't sleep last night and with that magic I'm already drained. Thorin walks up to me and starts talking. "Are you okay? You seem......" he trailed off from there or more I just started dozing off. I wake up with a start when I hear a howl. Wargs...I am too tired for this. I draw my dagger and prepare to fight. Gandalf was yelling at Thorin and I was trying not to fall asleep. I have horrible nightmares so I don't sleep a lot. I need sleep but I can't. You can tell I hadn't slept in a while due to my eye bags. I ended up not sleeping much when I was with Azog. When I use magic I sleep after. This is the first time I didn't. We start running but I don't know why until I look behind me and see dead wargs. We're being followed, that's nice. I think to myself. We keep running as Radagast leads the monsters away. I turn around and start chasing the wargs until I finally get to them. I stab one in the shank then it whimpers and falls. I stab the creature on its back, killing it. I keep killing, following the scent of the dwarfs. A howl is heard and I go over to that instead and so did the other orcs. The dwarfs have been found and were running to some rocks. They got surrounded by the orcs and Kili kept firing arrow after arrow wounding some, killing others it didn't matter. He killed one and another took its place. Gandalf had disappeared from plain sight. I see what you're doing, Gandalf. I will see my family once more. I smile to myself and jump off the rocks, killing orc after orc, warg after warg. The dwarfs began slipping into a crack in the stone wall. I hear Thorin yell something and look around and see Kili still out. I run to him and kill the warg sneaking up on him. "Hi love!" I shout over my shoulder while I wave him to the hole. Just as he jumps in I see horses coming towards me and hear a horn. Ada. My last thought before an orcish arrow pierces my arm and I almost shout as I run towards the hole and slide down.