Óin
At that very moment, in the falling darkness of night, Óin was stumbling back to the gates of Moria. He emerged amidst the rocks, from his own hidden path, unknown to anybody else. It was dark and a bit hazy, Óin could not see very well in the gloom, yet he was afraid to light a lantern for himself because he was not sure how much far the goblins' advance parties might have reached and he did not want to be spotted. Thus, he hurried, half-blindly, up the hill, towards the ancient eastern gate of Khazad-Dűm.
The journey was not an easy one. But stumbling in the shadows, wrapped tight in his cloak to protect himself from the wind that came from the mountains, old Óin reached at last the walls of Moria.
"Stop right there!" a shout came from the darkness. "Who are you?"
Guards, Óin immediately figured out. He reached for his tinder box to light his lantern so that they could see him, but his face changed in surprise when he realised that there is nothing where his belt pouch should be.
"I must have dropped it when climbing down that hill," Óin muttered. "And just that was my old tinder box which I did not manage to lose since the Dale was founded! Óin, you silly -"
"Hey, you heard me?" said the voice from the darkness. "Who are you! Speak, or -"
Óin cleared his throat. "Óin son of Gróin," he shouted. Something like delighted cries came in return and suddenly, bright light blinded him. "It is him!" a young voice cried, and suddenly he was in the middle of a group of happy guards who were leading him into the gates. The heavy door closed behind them.
"Lead me to Balin," Óin said in an important tone. "I need to -" then he noticed the looks the guards exchanged with each other.
"What is that?" he asked. "What is wrong?"
But at the moment he spoke it he already knew. Suddenly, the breath he took turned into a sort of stridor and the old Dwarf leaned his back against the wall. He closed his eyes.
"Go and fetch somebody," Óin muttered, surprised how old suddenly his own voice sounded. "I have important news for the colony."
When the young guard run away, Óin shook his head and put his hand on his heart.
"Óin, my good lad," he whispered softly. "Looks like you have already lost another friend."
* * *
Lóni
Being left by his brother and appointed with the task of conveying Trór's orders to the colony, Lóni strode towards a close stone block making a support for a column and climbed on it so that everybody can see him clearly. Not being overly fond of being in the position of a commander or an announcer, but knowing what his duty was, he cleared his throat to speak. Sleeking his golden beard, he was also reminded to his slight displeasure that he still did not have time to properly polish his armor after the battle with the Orcs. But now he had to speak. All eyes were fixed on him.
"Folk of Khazad-Dűm, hear me," he started, being careful to pronounce clearly and accurately. Everybody was attentive.
"It was but a few hours ago when our Lord Balin died, slain by the foul Orcs. Like in the ages of our fathers, these creatures have violated the ancient Dimrill Dale." Lóni knew that with the simple folk, it makes little sense to go into details, his main concern was to give them a basic outlining of what was going on but at the same moment to support their morale. "Your Lord had already set out at the head of our soldiers to push the beasts back, but there is a need for everybody's hands." There was a silence for a few heartbeats, Lóni silently counted up to three and then roused his voice to full strength.
"By the word of the Lord of Moria," Lóni was careful not to speak the name; from his experience on the Council he learned that it may not be too good to emphasise too much the fact that it is no longer Balin, but Trór who is the leader. "Each and every single one who is capable to wield a weapon shall assemble and report to the armory. Each and every single one who can fight shall be prepared ere our Lord returns. The enemy shall not take the Gates of Moria, and everyone of you will contribute to that in your post. Now, everybody act as is your due."
Lóni rubbed his left eye. The time of decision was getting near.
* * *
Onli and Vriti
After a short stay with Nîsa around the incident by the Gates, Vriti left the nervosity-soaked area and headed on one of her lonely trips to lower levels. Now she was scurrying through one of the dark corridors deep below the lit hall where Lóni was giving his speech. These corridors were always lonely and the faintest smell of Dwarves did not even come as far as here. Vriti could freely run here and play around with the large beetles who were running around and across the uneven floor. She always jumped, putting her paw in one beetle's way and then she again raised it, leaving the critter utterly confused for a while. She was always capable to spend several hours with this game, very often while her master was wandering through the upper corridors and looking for her.
This time it was not so, however. Little did Vriti know that her master had been busy, very busy with the new job he had been appointed with. Little did she know about his encounter with Kór, where Onli approached the Dwarf just when he finished talking to his sister, and stepping in carefully, but firmly, supported by his newly gained authority, he asked Kór to come with him to Náli. Vriti did not even know about her master's, nor about Kór and his sister's feelings at that moment.
But however Vriti was just a small Eastern mountain ferret, even she could sense the unrest in the colony. She remembered the change she observed in the last few hours. The Dwarves were odd, confused, some seeming a bit detached and not as friendly to her as usually. Sometimes nobody even noticed her. There was a general atmosphere of fear, and strange smells coming in from the outside with the night-breeze, as well as some strange and unexplainable feeling creeping down the whole colony.
Even now, when she was many levels below the twenty-first hall, Vriti could feel some weird tension, her senses were warning her now and then in almost an irrational way. Once or twice when chasing the big beetles, she stopped, her hair standing on end and that was when she sniffed and stood for a while, attentive, as if this tension was something she could catch with her senses. And then it disappeared again and she went on, chasing the beetles in the unevenly hewn low corridors, and just a vague feeling remained somewhere in the back of her tiny head, a warning to her little fuzzy self.
At once during her play she came to the edge of a great hall, where the cavern's roof was running up into unsuspected heights and disappearing in utter blackness. All that Vriti could rely on was her sense of smell and touch and a vague feeling of large space around her. There was a way leading to the elden way upstairs, back to the lit caverns and corridors of the Third Deep, and Vriti had traversed these caverns and corridors leading towards it before, but this time she could feel something was different. She stopped at the edge of the hall, knowing that about twelve leaps in front of her there is a large column supporting the ceiling of this large room, and beyond it, there lies an archway pointing her way towards the stairs to Third Deep. The ferret sniffed in the stifling air of the cavern and headed towards it, avoiding the column by close proximity. Now in front of her there lay the archway, sensible only by the vague feeling of form and slight movements of the air. Vriti's whiskers trembled and she stopped, sensing the archway and the corridor beyond it being just three or four leaps away.
The archway was there. Vriti gazed into the darkness on its other side.
And the darkness gazed back.