They continued to trek through the disease-ridden forest, using their combined efforts to haul Bombur over a step beside a deadly overhang before continuing on their way.
"I don't remember this place before. None of it's familiar," Balin called out while the company searched through the area that they were in for the Elven path that they had abandoned.
They were no longer in the huddle that they were once in, now spread out among the trees but none straying too far from the others out of fear of becoming lost and doomed to rot within the soil beneath their feet.
"It's got to be here, it can't have just disappeared!" Dori panicked as he pushed his way up a slope.
"Unless someone's moved it," accused Dwalin.
"Paths don't just get moved," Athena retorted while she searched the forest floor with Kili and Fili, her legs threatening to give out underneath her as she staggered through Mirkwood.
"It's not over here neither!" Ori declared from across the terrain.
If they did not find the path it was unlikely that they would be able to escape the forest, it was of the utmost importance that they found it before they succumbed entirely to the sickness around them.
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Now walking together in a line the company carried on with their task of finding the path. She narrowed her eyes at the trees as they passed, no matter where they went the scenery never changed, she had grown suspicious of the foliage around her.
"Are you following us?" She asked one tree in particular, keeping her eyes on it while she walked, her head turning so that she didn't need to pry her eyes from it. She did not trust it enough to look away from it.
She stopped glaring at the tree when she felt herself bump into someone in front of her, her attention snapping to Ori who she had just managed to walk into, watching as he handed something to Dori beside him.
"A tobacco pouch. There's Dwarves in these woods," first they were being followed by trees and now the revelation of them being followed by another group of Dwarves settled in Athena. It was simply the only logical explanation to this disaster.
Bofur took the pouch and inspected it. "Dwarves from the Blue Mountains no less. This is exactly the same as mine."
"Because it is yours. You understand? We're going round in circles. We are lost," Bilbo remarked after overhearing the conversation.
She had to admit that his explanation made a lot more sense than what she had previously thought, her suspicion of the trees dropping as she allowed common sense to make its way back into her mind.
"We are not lost. We keep heading east," Thorin retorted as he looked back at the cluster of them.
"But which way is east? We've lost the sun!" Óin cried out while he turned his head in every direction trying to find a glimpse of light, but the forest did not let it reach them. There was no way to tell if the sun was even shining above them, they were encased in an endless night.
The Dwarves soon began to bicker amongst themselves, escalating into pushing and shoving. Their shouts and accusations were unintelligible to Athena. The only time that she stepped in was when she saw Fili and Kili immersed into a fight with Ori and Nori, stepping in to try and pull them back before it intensified into something far more serious.
"Enough! Quiet! All of you!" Thorin bellowed, successfully causing silence to fall on them as they looked over at him, "we're being watched."
"Watched by what?" Dori asked.
"Is it the trees?" Athena questioned, any ounce of common sense once again leaving her after the commotion the Dwarves had caused.
"She has a point. The trees are the only things that have yet to leave us," Kili defended her question, the rest of the Dwarves humming in agreement and glancing around at the trees that towered over them.
"That's because we're in a forest!" Dwalin yelled out of frustration, a fight soon breaking out amongst them once more as Fili guarded his best friend and his brother from the berating of Dwalin, the others launching into a divided debate about whether or not the trees were indeed watching them.
None of them could have foreseen what happened next. They didn't have a moment to prepare for the spiders that descended upon their prey, trapping them in their spindly legs and cocooning each and every one of the members. Athena only remembered seeing a set of sharp fangs and a multitude of eyes before being encompassed in a white sticky substance which left her no room to extend her limbs, succumbing to the darkness.
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Her eyes fluttered open, on the inside she recoiled at the feeling of her eyelashes tugging at the cobweb prison that she was trapped inside. She was able to breathe from a hole in the web around her nose and mouth, despite still being in Mirkwood this was the freshest air that she had been able to breathe the entire time.
She tried to move her arms from their still position, the fabric of her clothing only tugging against the substance that locked her limbs in place and further frustrating her. The blood in her body was rushing to her head and causing a headache to quickly form from being suspended upside down. Her eyes darted from side to side as she searched for any useful information, trying to catch her bearings from what she had assumed to be poison that had caused her to become unconscious. All she could make out through the darkness and the veil of white was the vague outline of figures that roamed around them.
Her eyes widened when she heard fast scurrying as the shapes around her began to move away from her and towards the other cocoons. It was then that it dawned on her what their foes were and where she was exactly. Not only her, but the rest of the company had been captured by giant spiders, and they were caught like flies in a trap waiting to be feasted upon.
She was terrified of spiders. More so than anything else. Even the armies of Mordor did not evoke such a fearful response inside of her than the eight-legged beasts, and finding out that there were monstrous-sized versions of them caused her heart to skip a beat, and not the kind that she feels when she catches eye contact with Kili.
'Okay it's fine, everything is fine. You've faced Orcs and Goblins before, this is nothing compared to that. Just breathe.'
She writhed against her bounds, desperate to remove herself from the situation and at least give herself and the others a fighting chance at survival, which would not be achieved if she couldn't even grab onto her weapons. The entire time she tried to keep her breathing steady, keeping the fear at bay as she had been forced to do so many times in the past during battle.
Her head whipped around when she heard a distant crash that sounded like somebody or something had fallen, or had been thrown. Whatever it was, it caused the spiders to flee curiously in its direction and give Athena peace of mind for the meantime in the absence of all but one of the spiders.
She was unable to see exactly what was happening but she witnessed the final spider being attacked by an unseen force, at first she wondered if its attacker was too small for her to see but out of the blue she saw a figure thrust their sword into the face of the spider, furrowing her eyebrows at how she had not been able to notice the outline of the Hobbit only seconds before.
Her thoughts about how he had appeared out of nowhere were cut short when she felt herself falling to the ground, the webs beneath her cushioning her fall after Bilbo had been able to cut her down from the tree branch. As soon as she felt her back hit the solid earth she pushed her elbows outwards, her arms breaking free of the cocoon before she hurried to free the rest of her body from the restraints, inhaling deeply in appreciation of her regained freedom while she pushed herself to stand and brush away the remaining strands that clung to her.
"Where's Bilbo?" She heard Bofur ask while she helped Fili stand to his feet.
"I don't know, last I saw he was the one that cut us down," she explained while she brushed some cobwebs from Fili's hair, pulling a disgusted expression at the texture of it against her palm.
"We've got to move!" Dwalin cried out after noticing that the spiders had returned from investigating the noise earlier.
Her heart dropped into her stomach at the fast approaching beasts as they took off running in the first direction that they saw, each of them unsheathing their weapons. Athena pulled her intact bow from her back, nocking in an arrow from her quiver before firing it at the spider nearest her, barely having the time to watch it fall to its back and curl up to signal its demise.
She whirled around when hearing a thump behind her, her eyes widening in horror when seeing Bombur being pinned to the ground by one of the spiders. She prepared an arrow to shoot but she never released it as eight of the dwarves had already come to his aid, pulling at the legs before they ripped them off. Athena lowered her bow and sent a shrug to Kili who had also prepared himself to attack the creature before they took off running to escape once more.
Bilbo was still nowhere to be found. With each bounding step that she took she searched the trees around her for a glimpse of burnt orange, though she found no such thing. She only hoped that he had managed to sneak his way to safety and was following the battle cries of the Dwarves of his own accord, she knew that his ability to go unnoticed had helped him in the past and something told her that there was something more magical aiding him in that.
Another of her arrows found its resting place in the eyes of one of the spiders, her having no time to retrieve it before nocking in another arrow and aiming it at a spider that had grabbed onto Kili, Fili called out his name and hacked at the spider, startling it enough for it to release its hold on Kili and allowing Athena a clear shot, it falling to the ground as Kili pulled the arrow from the corpse and threw it back to her, she caught it before using it to stab a spider that had snuck up behind her, it quivering from the puncture before going still and collapsing to the ground.
Around her the Dwarves continued to fight tooth and nail for their survival, using whatever weapon they had available to take down their enemies, it was obvious they were outnumbered as they always had been but it was not enough for them to back down from a fight, what the spiders lacked they had an abundance of — they had each other to watch their backs.
With the combined efforts of the company they were able to defeat the collection of spiders before continuing through the forest, being forced to come to a halt when more spiders dropped down from above them, effectively blocking their path. Athena pulled an arrow ready to fight another round of the beasts but none of the company's weapons were used against them.
Fast moving figures approached them, coming from all directions as they weightlessly traversed through their environment, killing off the spiders that threatened the company. Their moves were calculated yet still they remained graceful. The Elves of Mirkwood. Not once did the company members let their guard down, all of them tensing when an arrow was pointed directly at Thorin, Athena raising her own bow in defence of her friend and pointing it towards his assailant: an Elf with long white-blonde hair.