Chapter 1 - Loss

It's fire and ashes. The last of the setting sun. Darkness and brightness, crimson and white. Colors bleed into each other, a monochromatic blur, until everything narrows down to that one focal point. To those mockingly triumphant eyes, their glass-like irises sealing his fate.

There is a buzzing in his ears, drowning out the angry shouts, the fearful cries and his company's desperation. The pain spikes and ebbs, keeping him on the edge of consciousness long enough to see the curved blade, crude metal hovering at his throat, marking his demise. And the thought occurs to him that perhaps of all his failures, both past and future, this is, without a doubt, the very worst.

Orcrist is out of reach. His body has already forsaken him, broken as it is. His friends will meet their end before the next dawn. And his nephews, true sons in every manner but title, will suffer an untimely death at the hands of his greatest foe. The one he couldn't kill. The one who will finally annihilate the line of Durin.

Thorin swallows thickly as despair settles in, the hurt of it a greater agony than any pain suffered from his newly inflicted wounds.

But then even that pales in comparison to the terror he feels when he sees the Hobbit tackle the orc that was looming over him, blue blade firmly gripped in his small hands.

Bilbo ...