After a tiring day walking the final stretch of Erebor from Lake Town carrying all their belongings, the Dwarves are all feeling a little worn out by the journey. However as the Dwarves finally stand at the foot of Erebor,  not all seems right.  There appears to be nobody present to greet them home from the tourney and silence replaces the usual hum of activity resonating from deep within the Mountain.

Myla smiled as she watched the Orcs in charge of their groups of Dwarves make them cower and cry in fear. It gave her a rush of power and adrenaline as she thought back to how easy it was when she gave the order and the Orcs came rushing in.

She had just signaled that they were to start and witnessed the swarm of Orcs rushing in over the walls and through the gates causing a sudden panic throughout the people. They were like a plague as they scattered about herding the Dwarves towards the center of the area. It was amusing to see them easily overpower the guards and render them useless as they were shoved along with all the other Dwarves running about in fear. Once they were all where they needed to be she stood in front of them and cleared her throat to get their attention.

"Erebor is now under new management! If anyone has a problem with that feel free to tell my friends here. I'm sure they'll take your complaint into consideration as they slice the skin from your bodies and feed them to the Wargs." She grinned watching a few flinch at the thought and hold another for comfort.

"There are going to be a lot of changes around here, and to ensure that Erebor stays mine, we'll be choosing some of you from each group and send you to the dungeons where you'll be joining this lovely lass." She nodded her head at two Orcs and made sure everyone was watching as they dragged Dis into their view. She wasn't sure exactly how important the woman was, but knew from what she heard from others that she would be the perfect captive. The two dragged Dis away towards the dungeons as Orcs began selecting from the groups and sending them off to join Dis. Some struggling to get free and crying out to be spared.

She tilted her head in amusement as one Dwarf tried to make a run for it. An Orc was about to go after him but Myla stopped him, she pulled out one of her daggers as the Dwarf, who she now saw was one of the guards reached the gate and before his hand could reach to open it she threw the dagger and hit him straight in the back watching him fall to the ground unmoving.

"Take him and start making a pile with some of the other few that were killed, they'll be the decorations. So any outsiders who they think can enter will be warned and hung up themselves."

And now here they were, Myla was sitting where she could see everything taking place, about 1/3 of the Dwarves were in the dungeons while the rest were put to work making the place look more presentable and give it that feeling of "home". The bodies she asked to be put together were now tied and strung up outside of the gates, some had their hands cut off or their eyes missing while the rest just held the marks that killed them. Black symbols were written along the gates as well serving as the warning she talked about.  

Insire Erebor, the Dwarves that were put to work had put up enforced barriers to keep anyone from sneaking in and were all dirty from constantly moving and being shoved to the ground when not working.

"This is becoming quite the success, and now the only thing left to do is wait for the important ones to return so they can join their loved ones." Myla spoke before turning towards one of the Orcs next to her and in Black Speech told him to go back and tell those remaining as well as the leaders of their success and that they'll be awaiting their arrival soon.

It had been a long while now since the swift march to Erebor had become a wearied trudge, after the tourney and many days of travelling it was safe to say that there was nothing the Dwarves probably wanted more than to sleep in their own beds and eat some decent food at the feasting hall. And as much as Fíli shared the same longing to have a well-deserved rest, he couldn't help but feel that there was something... well something wrong.

At first he had written off any sense of unease as anxiety, it had been a long while since he had been back and no doubt there would be a mountain of work waiting for him once he returned.

But as much as he had wished to ignore his feelings, as the party approached the Mountain, he only became more sure that he wasn't simply imagining something wrong. It was still too far to see any detail but their was something at the base of the Mountain that he couldn't yet make out but was certainly a new addition. Fíli had eventually decided to ask Kíli to scout ahead and make sure that all was well. He didn't want to alarm the others and so told those who asked that Kíli was simply riding ahead to make sure the cooks at the feasting hall had something to feed a hungry horde of Dwarves.

"What are you looking forward to most when we get back?" Fíli asked Tahlaia as he tried to distract himself from his thoughts.

The journey back to Erebor had left Kíli bone-weary, in need of a hot meal and a warm bath. He was tired and hungry and…. And uneasy. He hadn’t been able to put a finger on it at the time, hadn’t been able to tell why he felt so jittery and jumpy, so desperate to urge his pony in to a gallop. He hadn’t been able to tell why he couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was wrong.

He hadn’t said anything to Fíli or to any of the guards who had travelled with them to Erebor (dwarves who Kíli knew from his training and who, Dwalin had told him, were technically under his command for the duration of the trip), far be it for him to make an already unpleasant journey worse by planting seeds of worry in their minds. It had therefore been a relief when his brother had come to him with his own unease and had asked him to ride ahead to make sure all was well.

He had eagerly agreed.

Now… 

Kíli stared at the scene before him.

Black marks had been daubed on the gates. A language Kíli didn’t understand and didn’t recognise but which sent a shiver of dread down his spine and caused his gut to clench which fear. He didn’t have to be able to read what it said to know it was a warning to all those who saw it, to know that it didn’t bode well for those inside the mountain. 

And then there were the bodies.

They were strung up around the gates, swaying slightly in the breeze. They were fresh, the blood still dripping from their fingers and feet and the corpses were only just beginning to stiffen. They looked like macabre versions of the soft toys Kíli and Fíli had played with as children; limp, boneless…. lifeless. 

There was Ragnar, the old guard who always had a bawdy joke or two to lighten the mood on patrol, one of his hand missing and his mouth set in a rictus grin. And there was Njord, who had been so in love with his wife and who had been so excited for the birth of his first child, his eyes gauged out. They had probably been on duty when the attack came, taken by surprise with barely any reinforcements and absolutely no chance of surviving.

Kíli was going to be sick.

Tearing his eyes away, he turned tail and fled.

The others had to be warned.

Tahlaia had been so used to travelling in her lifetime that the trip back from Rohan was barely a bother. Yes of corse she was a little tired and just wanted to be able to have a rest without knowing she and to get up and go again the next day. But she'd enjoyed it as well, the group offwarrows had kept themselves occupied on the way back. It was nicer than travelling on her own like she had done in the past. Although she wasn't overly participant in the conversations that they had, she still found that them going on around her kept her brain occupied.

She'd stayed close to Fili and Kili for most of the trip home. The two of them didn't mind her all that much and they didn't act off when she was nearby like a few of the older Dwarrows that came did. She was under the impression that they didn't like the idea of her being on this trip in the first place. Or they just didn't like her. She didn't let it bother her too much.

The Dwelf had been in a world of her own when Fili spoke, it jolted her out of her own head and she looked over at him with an embarrassed flushed "S-sorry? I was... Out of it." She hadn't even realised how close they now where to Erebor, which looked surprisingly quiet to her standards of the place.