The Last of the Guardians Part 2 - A Hobbit Fan Fiction

Chapter 24 - Dragon Sickness

They walked for what seemed like an age to Nema. Up narrow corridors, down worn steps, through rooms untouched since Smaug had taken the dwarf kingdom for his lair.

Moving through Erebor's dusty halls in the half-dark, Nema could not imagine living there. She could feel the weight of the mountain all around her. It pressed down upon her wings, keeping them tucked up against her back. Her hands clenched into fists whenever they entered a tight passage, and only relaxed when the walls moved apart to form an intersection or a wider room. She needed the sky. She needed to breathe fresh air. Her chest was beginning to tighten. How some dwarves managed to live their whole lives under a mountain was beyond her.

The shear size of the kingdom unnerved her too. Flying around the mountain, she had imagined one large hall, perhaps a few smaller chambers to the sides, but nothing so grand and sizeable as this. It seemed to go on forever. Just when she thought they were about to come back around to where they had left the other dwarves, there was yet another antechamber leading to yet another cavern - though none so large as the one with all the treasure. If she ever got separated from the group, Nema knew there was no way she'd be able to find her way back again.

But Thorin seemed to know where he was going. He was running a hand along the wall, feeling every nook and crevice as he went, and when they came upon one of the old halls he would pause for a moment and look around with an expression of dazed wonder on his face. It was as if he had never truly allowed himself to believe he would see them again. Be a could feel his presence on the edge of her mind. Through her connection to him, she could feel his heartbeat quicken in his chest, could feel the excitement running through his veins as he looked on sights he had hardly dared to hope he might see again.

There was sadness too - a heavy, world-weary sadness that held his joy in check. Every happy memory was tainted by the dragon, and though the rooms they passed through had retained their beauty and splendour for all these years, to Thorin they would always be filled dust and death.

Watching him, Nema almost thought the real Thorin had come back, but of course, the dragon sickness would not have let him go so easily.

"The Arkenstone," he said suddenly, stopping dead in his tracks in the middle of another lesser cavern and rounding on Bilbo. "Did you find it?"  

Nema's heart sank. She had known it wouldn't take Thorin long to remember his precious jewel.

"What?" said Bilbo. His mind had clearly been elsewhere.

"Did you find the Arkenstone?"

"Oh. No, I didn't. I'm sorry."

Thorin thumped his fist on the wall and stopped walking in the middle of a crossways of two passages. "Your one task was to find the Arkenstone and bring it back. That was your one task. Some burglar you are!"

"Let him alone, Thorin. He tried, didn't he?" Nema examined the three routes they could take. Straight ahead was dark and unwelcoming. To the left, though it was still dark, Nema could detect a faint glimmer of golden light dancing just around the corner. She looked to the right, and felt the lightest of breezes touch her skin. She wanted to go that way. "Besides, it is difficult to find one gem in a hall of a thousand gems with a dragon hunting you. It's this way, right?"

The dwarf shook his head and pointed the other way. "That way leads back out onto the mountainside. This way will take us back to the rest of the company."

"Back to that cavern of gold, you mean," Nema groaned. "They might have gone back up."

But Thorin was already moving towards the golden light, and she and Bilbo had no choice but to follow.