Chapter Text
PROLOGUE.
My dear Frodo,
You asked me once if I had told you everything there was to know about my adventures. And, although I can honestly say I have told you the truth… I may not have told you all of it.
I am old now. I am not the same Hobbit I once was.
And I think It is time for you to know what really happened.
It began, long ago… In a land far away to the east. In the likes of which you will not find in the world today.
There was the city of Dale. A paradise. It’s markets known far and wide. Full of bounties of vine and vale. Peaceful and prosperous. For this city lay before the doors of the greatest kingdom in Middle Earth. Erebor.
Stronghold of Thror, King Under the Mountian. Mightiest of the Dwarf Lords. Thror ruled with utter surety… never doubting his house would endure, for his line lay secure in the lives of his son and grandson.
Erebor was built deep within the mountain itself. The beauty of this fortress city was legend. Its wealth lay in the earth in precious gems hewn from rock and in great seams of gold running like rivers through stone.
The skill of the Dwarves was unequaled in fashioning objects of great beauty out of diamond, emerald ruby, and sapphire. Ever they delved deeper, down into the dark. And that is where they found it. The heart of the mountain, the Arkenstone.
Thror named it, “The King’s Jewel”. He took it as a sign, a sign that his right to rule was divine. All would pay homage to him. Even the great Elven King, Thranduil.
As the great wealth of the Dwarves grew, their store of goodwill ran thin. No one knows exactly what began the rift. The Elves say the Dwarves stole their treasure. The Dwarves tell another tale.
They say, the Elf king refused to give them their rightful pay. It is sad how old alliance can be broken. How friendships between people can be lost.
And for what?
Soon the days turned sour and the watchful night closed in.
Thror’s love of gold had grown too fierce. An evil sickness had begun to grow within him. It was a sickness of the mind and where sickness thrives, bad things will follow.
The first they heard was a noise like no other, loud like a hurricane coming down from the North. The pines on the mountain creaked and cracked in the hot, dry wind. It could only mean one thing.
Dragons.
Dozens of firedrakes from the mountains. No one had seen a hoard like them in thousands of years.
They took to the skies above Dale destroying the city tenfold, leaving nothing but rubble and fire in their wake. The screams were unmatched, from children and their families as they sought what little shelter was left in the red sky.
Although small, their stature could not compare to whom led the thunder. The largest of them all, Smaug.
Such wanton death was dealt that day. For this city of Men was nothing to Smaug and his army for the drakes eye, and his eye alone was set on another prize.
For Dragons covet gold with a dark and fierce desire. And Smaug's greed for the mountain's riches unmatched his own kin and they too, were lost in their own burning flames. Their bodies lay rest in the one thing that was their downfall… jewels, silver, and gold.
Erebor was lost that day. For a Dragon like Smaug will guard his plunder as long as he lives, no matter the cost.
Thranduil stood watching the destruction and did nothing. For he would not risk the lives of his kin against the unmatch wrath of the Dragons. No help came from the Elves that day, nor any day since.
Robbed of their homeland, the Dwarves of Erebor wandered the wilderness. A once mighty people brought low.
The young Dwarf prince took work where he could find it laboring in the villages of Men. But always he remembered the mountain smoke beneath the moon. The trees like torches blazing bright. For he had seen Dragon fire in the sky and a city turned to ash.
And he never forgave… and he never forgot.
But far away, in another corner of the world, Dragons were only make-believe. A party tick conjured by wizards on midsummer's eve. No more frightening than fairy dust.
That, my dear Frodo, is where I come in.
It was the beginning of an unlikely friendship, that has lasted all my life.
For, quite by chance, the will of a Wizard, and a strange company of Dwarves and two mortals, well that's what we thought at the time but yet fate decided I too would become part of this tale. And well, it began as you might expect.
In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.