"And I'm sure you have your own interests to see to." Still, he nods and turns.

She stretches lazily.

And the dwarves all head into the mountain.

Russet lingers to say goodbye to Brisingr, then runs in after him.

"What do you think of this?" she asks Brisingr.

"The Durin's Bane thing? Might be a fun fight. Doesn't sound like a dragon, but there's some creatures in the stories that're described kinda like that."

"On which side did they fight?"

"Depends on the creature. There was that giant shadow spider who was on no one's side really, unless 'eating everything' is a side, though everyone hopes she ate herself or starved or something. The fire Maiar on the Powers' side don't really go in for a shadowy aesthetic, but the Balrogs - fire Maiar on Melkor's side - did, as do some unaligned ones I think. There's experiments Melkor made, and descendants of the Balrogs... Also sometimes weird stuff unconnected to anything else pops up in stories, and the weird stuff's only sometimes an unaligned Maia."

"I believe I would like to investigate this, once the hoard's curse has abated and it no longer needs guarding."

Hum. "That point should be really soon, at least to where it's safe. Most've the small stuff's fine already."

"Then we will leave soon. You should finish your riddling contest."

"Yeah! Russet's got a lot I haven't heard before."

"Any particularly good ones?"

"A couple! Many of them are also really poetic, which is nice on its own..."

She shares a few that'd puzzled her or just sounded nice.

Ellisaria appreciates the clever ones more than the poetic ones.

Heh.

The next day, Brisingr finishes spooling out a last few riddles from Russet, and judges the gold nearer the mountain cleansed enough. Anything dropped in a river should be left there for a little bit, but Thorin's also pretty sure it'll take them enough time to gather the nearby gold that that shouldn't be a problem.

So, to Ellisaria: "Wanna head out, then?"

"Yes, let us depart."

She flutters her wings, then takes off with a blast of air, circling up towards the sun, laughing.

She is quite excitable. It's kind of cute.

Off they go.

There's quite a lot of plains and forest between them and Khazad-dûm by the straightest path. Notably, the dwarven city-nation seems to be due south of the triple peaks Ellisaria and Brisingr cleared of orcs earlier.

Their flight takes them over the southern expanse of the massive forest Thorin's map identified as 'Mirkwood'. It has a foul sense to it, unlike the dark, brooding, but mostly wild taste of the northern reaches. Thick spiderwebs throng some of the trees, and a ruined fortress sits upon one lowly hill - it seems to have been blasted apart rather recently, and the sunlight seems reluctant to actually shine on it.

Beyond: the vale of the river Anduin, and a tributary that passes up through an insignificant bit of woods to the lake Mirrormere, by which a cracked but still strong pillar stands. The Eastern Gate, its great stone doors shattered, overlooks the perfectly still waters of the clear lake. The mountains soar up quite sharply from the dale, passing into the clouds above.

"The gate is yet open, I see."

She cranes her head around. "Bit more than 'unlocked.' Still. Dwarves build big. Smaug could've fit into that."

"And other things as well, therefore."

"And us."

"Conveniently enough."