They wandered for what felt like days, but there was no way to tell as they had lost the sun. They stopped only when they were tired, barely taking a break to eat. They didn't bother with fires, and had three on watch each time they took a sleep. The path they followed took twists and turns, over bare rock, grassy grounds and high ledges. There were many fallen trees, broken bridges and streams, but Keerla warned then not to touch any of the water.
As time went on, they all became grouchy, and cruel with one another. Even Thorin seemed to lose the control of his temper. Only Keerla and Kili remained calm, but that was due to the binding of their souls, and even then they still found themselves getting upset with the others. While there was no way to truly tell the time they had been wandering the dark, Keerla knew at least a month had passed as she had finished her first bleed and started another.
It was the day after she finished the second bleed that everything seemed to go wrong. The line of dwarfs, exhausted and hungry, complained as they had the last few days for the need of air, and that everything was spinning. The hallucinations had gone on for a while; they had all fallen prey to it at least once. But then the line stopped still and sent everyone into angry murmurs.
"Nori?" Thorin moved forward to the dwarf in the lead, Kili, Fili and Keerla following after him, "Why have we stopped?"
"The path. . . it's disappeared!" Nori whimpered, looking ahead of him at the edge of a cliff.
"What's going on?" Dwalin demanded, and Keerla cast her eyes around, a sinking feeling in her gut.
"We've lost the path!" Came Oin's cry.
"No," Keerla said, loud enough for the rest to hear, "It's been lost for a while. The path we've been seeing was a hallucination."
"Find the real path," Thorin ordered, pushing everyone away from the cliff, "All of you look. Look for the path!"
"Come on," Kili tugged on her hand, pulling her along with him.
Keerla followed behind the group with him, watching as they staggered and tripped, hallucinations coming in copious amounts. Eventually, she gave up and dropped onto a rock next to where Bilbo had sat down.
"Are you okay?" she asked him, watching Fili and Kili look around the area to her left.
Bilbo just shrugged and plucked at a spider web to his right, sending shivers through it. Keerla's ears pricked as she followed the webs up into the trees, the shudder continued through it all until it was long out of sight. She grabbed Bilbo before he could do it again.
Soon after, they rose and joined the company as they wandered further away, but no one, not even Keerla seemed able to find any sign of the path.
"Look," Ori said behind her, making her jump and Kili pulled her close; worried something had given her a scare.
"A tobacco pouch," Dori exclaimed, picking said item form the ground, "There's dwarfs in these woods."
"I can't take this much more," Keerla grumbled, ignoring what the others were saying as she leaned against a tree, "There was a reason i left this cursed place, why did i come back?"
"Because you care too much for us," Kili said, grinning as he tried to cheer her up. She managed a weak smile of her own, making him sigh, "I'm sorry, you shouldn't have to deal with this."
"For you, i will," she mumbled, pulling him down to her lips, "Just stay here with me for a few minutes, my mind is clear when i kiss you."
"I can't complain," he said, pressing his lips against hers roughly, neither of them paying attention to the yelling and arguing going on around them.
"Enough!" Thorin's voice boomed, making them jump apart, but he wasn't looking at them, he was looking into the trees, "Quiet! All of you! We're being watched."
"Ouch!" Keerla shouted, peeling a sharp pinching in her back, and everyone turned to face her.
Kili looked panicked, and his lips moved but she heard nothing. As she slumped to the ground, she saw him lunge toward her and a large shadow passed over his head. Then it was all black.
-
A short cry of pain left Keerla's lips as her back slammed against something hard, waking her from whatever slumber she had fallen into. Her whole body was surrounded by thick sticky white webbing, and for a second she panicked, only for someone on the other side to rip it open.
"Fili!" she gasped in relief, throwing herself into his arms, "What happened?"
"Big ass spiders," he told her, helping her out of the webbing, "Bilbo's been cutting us all down."
They both moved over to another web sac which Kili was struggling to free himself from, and they helped him before moving onto the next. Soon the thirteen dwarfs and the elf stood together, but the hobbit was nowhere in sight.
"Where's Bilbo?" Bofur called out, also noticing.
"I'm up here!" the hobbit yelled from somewhere up in the trees, only for a spider to lunge for him.
"Bilbo!" Keerla cried out, panicked, then pulled her blades free of the sheaths on her thighs. "Look out! We've got company as well!"
She ducked as one lunged for her, driving her blades up into its underbelly and winced as the shrieks of the creature rung in her ears. The black eight legged monsters came out from every direction, sending the company into a fierce battle, hacking and slicing at them to keep their lives.
Several dwarfs grabbed the legs of a spider which had fallen on top of Bombur, pulling them off and causing the body to plop to the ground like some sort of rock. Keerla found herself backed into a corner but Kili was there in an instant, slicing the front lets off causing it to slump forward, then pierced an arrow through its head.
"Thank you," she breathed, taking his hand as they ran through the trees after the others.
"Anything for my wife," he winked, sending warmth rushing through her veins, it was the first time he'd called her that, and she found she rather liked it.
-