//------------------------------//
// One I Could Call King 
// Story: The Hobbit: Desolation is Magic 
// by King Camelot 
//------------------------------//

Three fourths of a day had passed since Bilbo and the three equestrians had began their journey with the Company of Thorin Oakenshield. It had seemed like they had been riding for hours on end, and everyone was beginning to wear out. Especially Starlight and her friends. Only one of them had gone on adventures of this ilk, the other two having adventures that only ever lasted a day, and were mostly traveled to by train. So by nightfall, the only people who still had energy left in them to keep riding were Gandalf, Stygian, and Thorin Oakenshield himself.

Despite this, Thorin could not ignore the silent cries of his company. After finding a small cave into the plateau they were crossing, he declared, "We'll make camp here for the night. Get as much sleep as you can, and be ready to travel again by daybreak."

Everyone had given audible signs of exhaustion and relief, as they got off their ponies and horses and prepared to make camp. There was no dinner, everyone had just unrolled their packs and went straight to sleep. Except for Fili and Kili, who had made the campfire and were keeping first watch with Thorin. 

Gandalf was up as well, silently smoking his pipe and thinking, like he usually did. But this time, his thoughts were not occupied by Bilbo or Erebor, instead he had passed the time thinking about the three children, Starlight in particular. She had spoken about the fact that they were from the future, and that them being here was drastically affecting the flow of time. He didn't quite know what to make of it, but it was surely nothing good. What was she so afraid about? Was she worrying over nothing, or was she cursed with the foresight of a terrible event that had yet to come? And what of Stygian and Sunset? Stygian had the ability to produce magic, which was surely not a feat capable to any creature on Middle-Earth that wasn't an Istari, Maia, or Eldar. Sunset had a book in her possession that had detailed events from the beginning of Arda to the present, and she claimed that half of it was erased. What or who had caused the journal to be erased, and what did the erased passages detail?

To all these questions, Gandalf had none of the answers to. When the time was right, he would have to steer the company to the beings who surely did have that knowledge, to both the children and the hidden clue of the map. But now was not that time, now was to simply rest and smoke his pipe.

Bilbo, however, had received little to no rest that night. The dwarves were heavy sleepers and loud snorers. Bombur in particular kept sucking in and spitting out a small squad of knats as he slept through the night. Poor Bilbo could not get a wink of sleep under these conditions. So he didn't sleep, and chose to spend some time caring for the ponies. Double checking to make sure the people that were awake weren't watching him, he sneakily pulled an apple from his pocket and presented it to his pony, whom he had named Myrtle.

"Hello girl, who's a good girl?" Bilbo playfully said as he gave her the apple, "There's our little secret, Myrtle. You mustn't tell no one. Shh, shh." After eating the apple, Myrtle came up close to his face and gave him a few nudges.

"She likes you," came a voice from behind him. He quickly turned around in surprise, to see Starlight. Apparently, she was still awake too, but by the looks of her, she had only awoken a few minutes ago. She then did something rather peculiar, she went up to Myrtle and gave her a few soft neighs, telling the pony to go join the others.

To say Bilbo was shocked beyond belief would be an understatement, "How on earth did you do that?"

Before answering, Starlight had an inward panicking moment, trying to choose her next words carefully. After a few seconds, she said, "Back where I'm from, we spend most of our lives around ponies. Caring for them, training them, loving them like you would love a friend. We're even taught how to speak with them."

Bilbo was fascinated, "Who taught you how to do that? Talk to ponies, I mean."

"My father," Starlight answered, which was a half-truth, as he did teach her to speak, "I never knew my mother, so he basically had to do all the parent work during my filly- er, childhood."

"Do you think, that maybe, you could teach me how to do it?" Bilbo asked, trying to sound as polite as hobbitly possible.

Starlight smiled, "Perhaps someday. But for right now, I just want to get my friends through this quest in one piece."

"You really care about them, don't you," Bilbo noted, "About what happens to them. You talk about them like I would talk about my mother's things to my neighbors."

Starlight's friendly demeanor dropped, being replaced with a passive aggressive one, "What are you saying?"

Bilbo could tell that he was on thin ice, so he tread carefully, "I'm just saying, that you seem to put all the weight on your shoulders when you don't have to. I haven't seen them fight, but they seem like they can take care of themselves."

Starlight was starting to get more defensive, "You don't understand, it's my fault that we're in this mess. If we had just fixed the mirror like we were supposed to, none of this would've happened. But I made a mistake, some flaw in the process, and we ended up here. I got us into this mess, it's up to me to get us out of it."

Bilbo hadn't the slightest clue what she was talking about, but he did get one particular gist, "Listen, I don't know anything about what you're talking about, mirrors and processes and the like. But it's like I said before, you're putting all the weight on yourself when you don't have to. Sunset and Stygian over there, they're your friends. Let them help you carry some of the burden, and you might be surprised with how strong they are."

Again, it went back to friendship. Starlight was getting a little tired of hearing all the friendship talk, but she also had to admit, it was also a little comforting, "Ha, you remind me of this woman I knew. She talked an awful lot about friendship too; she practically worshipped it. But, the things that she said did have a lot of truth to them, and they shaped me into the woman I am today. I feel like if she were here right now, she'd be telling me the exact same thing you're telling me right now."

Bilbo smiled, he didn't know much about friendship himself, aside from polite talk with the neighbors. Yet, he was happy that he knew enough about it to give her good advice, "What was her name?"

Starlight hesitated, debating whether or not she should tell him the name of her teacher. She weighed the possibilities in her mind, what damage it might cause, what might be changed, etc. However, she was spared from having to answer such an awkward question, for just on the other side of the plateau where they were camping, they heard the most horrid and inhumanly screech off in the distance.

Both Starlight and Bilbo shot upward, Fili and Kili had looked up from their duties by the fire, and Thorin suddenly had an attentive and sour look on his face.  Bilbo had never heard such an awful shriek such as that in his entire life, "What was that?"

"Orcs," Kili answered, a grave tone to his voice.

"Orcs?" Bilbo asked with bewilderment, he had never heard of such a creature.

"Orcs," Starlight repeated, "Ugly, sadistic creatures who hate all the free peoples of Middle Earth." She knew this much from Twilight, who had taught her about them, how cruel and vile they were, and how dangerous they could be should a swarm of them appear in Equestria.

"Miss Glimmer is right," Fili agreed, "Throat cutters, there'll be dozens of them out there. The Lone-Lands are crawling with them."

"They strike in the wee small hours when everyone's asleep," Kili explained, his voice carrying a weight like if one was telling a ghost story, "Quick and quiet, no screams. Just lots of blood."

Bilbo did a double take towards the shrieking, his mind frantically trying to figure out how far away they were, and how long it would take for them to get where they were camped. The Baggins side of him adding another reason to the ever growing list why he shouldn't have come with them on the journey.

Then, the mood between the dwarf brothers changed, as they began to chuckle at the idea. Starlight could not believe them, what part about getting killed before you could defend yourself was funny? Thorin shared her disdain, "You think that's funny? You think a night raid by orcs is a joke?"

Fili and Kili backed off, realizing too late that they had touched a nerve, "We didn't mean anything by it."

"No, you didn't," Thorin spat, the poison in his words would've been enough to kill an Equestrian Yak, "You know nothing of the world!" He then left the campfire, directing his attention towards the distant orcs and their vile screams. Starlight wanted to go to him, to offer him some comforting words or just be alongside him. Her better judgement, however, told her that the last thing he wanted was comforting words, especially from her. So she decided to just leave him alone.

"Don't mind him, laddie," came a voice from behind them. Balin, who had awoken some time ago, came up and joined the campfire, "Thorin has more cause than most to hate orcs."

Starlight was intrigued, "Really, why is that?"

"Because of what they did to his family," Balin explained, beginning to tell Thorin's tale, about his singular and unwavering hatred for the Orcs and how they had wronged him, "After the dragon took the Lonely Mountain, King Thror tried to reclaim the ancient dwarf kingdom of Moria."

Again, something Twilight had taught her about Middle-Earth. She remembered being in a classroom where Twilight would teach her students about the kingdom, how it was ruled by the dwarven line of Durin, how their riches came from their bottomless mines as they searched for the powerful metal mithril. However, their reign had not been forever, for Moria was taken from them by an evil and ferocious creature of darkness; a Balrog, whom had been named Durin's Bane. But she had never heard of this part of the tale, and she was a little excited to be able to hear it from someone who had actually been there.

"But our enemy, had got there first," Balin told them, as he recounted the battle for Moria, "Moria had been taken by legions of orcs, led by the most vile of all their race: Azog the Defiler!"

Balin said his name with such poison and anger hidden in his words, that both Bilbo and Starlight had known that Azog had truly earned his evil title, but they feared what he did to earn it, "The giant Gundabad Orc, had sworn to wipe out the line of Durin. He began... by beheading the king."

The old dwarf paused, having relived a painful moment of his people's past. Starlight turned around to see Thorin, who was still staring off into the darkness of night, pretending that he wasn't listening to the story. She had begun to feel sorry for him, she had known what it felt like to lose someone that you loved, how it created a hole inside of you. But the difference between them was she was able to meet her friend again, refill the hole in her heart and find what was lost. Thorin couldn't do that, his grandfather was gone forever, and there was no magic in Equestria or Middle-Earth that could change that.

"Thrain, Thorin's father, was driven mad by grief," Balin continued, after recollecting himself, "He went missing, taken prisoner or killed, we did not know. We were leaderless, defeat and death were upon us." Bilbo was now listening to the story intensively, hoping against hope that there was a happy ending to this tragic tale, as most hobbit stories did. He was granted his wish, when Balin's demeanor changed, showing pride and aspiration, "That is when I saw him. A young dwarf prince facing down the Pale Orc. He stood alone against this terrible foe! His armor rent, wielding nothing but an oaken branch as a shield! He charged the enemy, and cleaved his hand clean off his horrible wrist! Azog the Defiler learned that day, that the line of Durin would not be so easily broken. Our forces rallied and drove the orcs back, our enemy had been defeated!"

Balin took a breath, remembering how Thorin rallied the dwarf army, while the surviving orcs dragged Azog's squirming body deeper into Moria. How they had charged the remaining orc forces and slaughtered the filthy creatures without pity or mercy. Yet, the glory in their victory was short lived, "But there was no feast nor song that night, for our dead were beyond the count of grief." Then, Balin's tone changed once again, this time to hope, "We few had survived, and I thought to myself then, 'There is one I could follow. There is one I could call King.'"

The two dwarf brothers, the hobbit, and the otherworldly daughter of Felaróf, had gained a new respect for Thorin that night. The battle he had fought that day, and the battle he was still fighting to this day, taught them not to pity the dwarf prince, but to honor him. For he alone had gone through more than any of them could claim, and still come out strong and powerful, who put his people first before himself. His story being over, Thorin broke away from his watch and looked upon his company. The other dwarves, and the other two equestrians had awoken from their slumber, as if the story had been a call to arms that they could not refuse. Thorin had seen the faces of every dwarf who had chosen to come with him, and their faces all said the same thing: "We will follow you to the ends of the earth, my king."

All three equestrians felt the same way, for they had understood that loyalty. Princess Celestia, who had suffered for a thousand years so that her subjects wouldn't have to, had earned that kind of loyalty. Princess Twilight, who had put herself in danger time and time again for the well being of her friends, had earned that kind of loyalty. The three equestrians, who had seen Thorin as a grump and a person who cared little for others, were proven how wrong they were. Through his actions at the Battle of Moria, he had proven that he was worthy of the same loyalty as Celestia and Twilight were.

This moment was soon broken by the little hobbit, who wanted to hear one last detail of the story, "And the Pale Orc, what happened to him?" Balin remained silent, for he did not know Azog the Defiler's final fate. Yet, where Balin had said nothing, Thorin was eager to answer, 

"He slunk back into the hole whence he came! That filth died of his wounds long ago!" He spoke this belief with such certainty, he actually seemed to believe it to be true. But Starlight had seen from the faces of both Gandalf and Balin, that he did not truly know what became of his enemy, and it was most likely that what he said did not come to pass. But Thorin was in no mood to have a discussion about it, they had talked about him enough, "If we're all rested and awake, pack your things. We leave at first light."

This earned some moans and sighs, but none dared disobey. As everyone started packing, Starlight came up to Sunset and asked, "What do you think happened to Azog?"

Sunset shrugged, "I don't know, my journal doesn't mention anything about him. But if I were to guess, I'd say he's not as dead as Thorin believes he is."

"I agree," Stygian said, "But it's not our place to talk about it around him. We don't want to give Thorin another reason to dislike us. If he disowns us from the company, we'd lose the only path we'd have to take before we are rescued. Sunset, how are those messages to Twilight coming?"

"I'm leaving them every chance I get," Sunset told him, "If she comes here, she'll know where we've been, where we're going, and that we're alright."

Stygian nodded, "Good, let's keep it that way." Although Sunset and Stygian talked about Twilight coming to save them, Starlight secretly hoped that she didn't come and that she would have the right mind to send someone else to find them. Twilight already existed in Middle-Earth, sixty years from now when she and her friends would join the Fellowship of the Ring. If she showed up here, the consequences would be disastrous. 

And so ended the first night with the Company of Thorin Oakenshield, the last few hours spent preparing to continue the trip first thing in the morning. None of them ever suspecting that on the other side of the canyon, a hunting party of foul orcs on their hideous warg mounts, was watching them with gruesome intent. The wolf-like creatures snarled at the company, wanting so desperately to attack the unsuspecting dwarves, but their evil masters kept them at bay, for the time being.

<Send word to the master,> the orc leader told his comrades, in the vile tongue of Black Speech, <We have found the Dwarf-scum!>