Middle Earth 4

I was currently sitting by the lake of Rivendell, fishing and enjoying the scenario. My week in this place was almost over and I would start climbing the Misty Mountains tomorrow.

During this week, I made a few plans regarding the future, plans that included how to capture a wild She-Elf without being hunted by the Elven prince and his kingdom, how to enter the Lonely Mountain, how to plunder its treasures, and how to get the Arkenstone.

Entering the mountain was probably the easiest thing to do, in fact, there were many ways to do it. One way was to just steal the key and use the secret door, it was a miracle that they even had the key after their journey, they got robbed clean at least two times, once in Goblin Town and once when they were imprisoned in Mirkwood.

The other ways were even easier, I could either wait for them to anger Smaug and just walk through the front entrance that he destroyed or, even easier, turn into a bird to fly through the large space above the main entrance. That was a stupid obvious solution, there was no need for a magical door and a special moon when they just let their windows open, they could just have brought a large ladder or a long rope on an arrow instead.

As for the rest of my plans, let's just say you will find out.

The day of my departure came quickly and I made my way to the High Pass. I decided against visiting Goblin Town and to just look for Giants. It was actually kind of funny how the One Ring was so close to the remains of the sword that separated it from its master.

Although the path across the mountains was dangerous, the bad terrain didn't pose much of a danger to me since I could always just turn in a bird and fly back up if I fell but the constantly bad weather made that very hard.

Unless you happened to be a Giant Eagle, you couldn't fly across the Mountains in this weather and wasn't a giant Eagle. Despite the versatility of my shapeshifting ability, it also had a few restrictions, namely I couldn't change into something with a too big size difference compared to my human form nor could I turn into magical beings.

I deemed it too overpowered if I could just turn into a planet-sized giant to walk to Erebor, become the size of an atom to escape danger or kill someone from the inside, or turn into a dragon to kill Smaug, that just couldn't be called an adventure. Still, even with these restrictions, my shapeshifting ability was overpowered, if you could even call that a restriction.

I sadly didn't encounter any giants, or maybe I did and just didn't see them, they looked like humanoid rocks after all, but even then, the journey across the mountain range was exhausting. I knew I couldn't sleep in any caves since they were pretty much all traps that leap to Goblin Town, forcing me to only sleep a bit in small openings in the mountains and even then I was often awoken by storms and rain.

Others might have found this tedious but I found it a nice change of pace compared to how I usually lived, not to mention that I got the feel the feeling of hunger, thirst, sleepiness, and adrenalin again.

After over of climbing through the Misty Mountains, I finally reached the end of the High Pass and entered the Carrock. What would have been a day at most when flying, turned into a whole week on foot, I couldn't say I was surprised since it was a hard terrain.

I spent the next three weeks traveling up and down the entire area between the mountain range and the three rivers but I still couldn't find a reason why they would spend 12 months here. I might find out in the future but for now, I was going to go south to Lórien and maybe even the Fangorn forest.

I think the company will meet up in Hobbiton in a month or two and take another month to reach where I'm currently standing, that should be enough time for me to at least go to Lórien and back and still be in front of them.

Actually, let's make this a bit more fun.

I stood in front of the River of Anduin with a barrel next to me. With a strong throw, the barrel landed in the river and I jumped into it before the strong current took us both away.