A/N: Thank you again for the reviews!
I don't own the Tolkien characters. By now, I don't think anyone is surprised
by this. And if anyone wants this Sue, you can really, really have her. Please.
Also, I don't know if it applies to anyone reading this story, but definite
spoilers for the ROTK movie. Just in case.
The Game of the Gods, 29
Morgoth could hear yelling beyond the web, but he had the feeling that the
others weren't going to be in time to save him- assuming they even cared about
his being in the web in the first place. They probably didn't, he thought
sourly. Tulkas was probably delaying them from the rescue, under the impression
that it would be a good show.
He grabbed for the only weapon he had, opening the carved box of Sues. He was
supposed to be the ultimate evil power of the world, he thought, as his fingers
fumbled after an appropriate Sue. Surely he could find one that would defeat
this creature, who was very hungry and who was giving him uncomfortable
memories of Ungoliant demanding the Silmarils.
His fingers brushed against one that sparked, and Morgoth didn't hesitate,
flinging her out before him.
The Sue landed on the ground, and the gameverse spread around her. Morgoth
sensed Shelob pausing.
Then she shrieked.
Morgoth sighed and began edging backward. If he could just get away while
Shelob was watching the Sue-
Of course, there was a fence of webbing behind him, and the Sue stopped moving
without his attention. Morgoth sighed and crouched down, fixing his will so
that the girl once more animated.
He would just have to wait here and get out when he could, of course. When
Shelob was distracted with the Sue.
Which might take a while.
Morgoth pushed aside the distracting thought and concentrated. He didn't have
to think about an opponent playing him this time, and so he could go ahead and
play with perfect impunity. This ought to be his best game yet.
A clicking sound made him waver. Balrogs had had to save him from Ungoliant, he
remembered-
But again he pushed the thought away, and began.
-----
Beauty peered ahead into the darkness of the cave, lofting her arm so that
light could pour from her into the darkness. Her eyes were wide, she knew, but
then, she had never expected Frodo and Sam, whom she was tracking to help, to
pass into darkness like this.
She licked her lips, and considered the wisdom of going forward. Then she cast
the thought away. She had followed Frodo in the first place because, with the
Ring, he was an outcast like her, and there was the chance that he might turn
his wondrous blue eyes to love someone who was half-Elf, half-hobbit, and had
the magic of the Elves glowing like fire through her skin.
----
Morgoth chuckled a little to think about the reactions he would get from
Yavanna and Varda, if no one else, with that one, and then lifted his head
apprehensively as Shelob stepped forward, the light of the Sue glowing in her
eyes. Morgoth swallowed, and then had to close his own. His fear of spiders was
that bad. He had a lot of things to curse Ungoliant for.
The darkness did give him more concentration in going ahead and talking about
his Sue, though.
-----
Beauty pressed forward into the dark, dank, bad-smelling cave-
-----
"Bad-smelling?"
Morgoth glanced up, eyes widening. Shelob sat not far away, her mandibles
slowly opening and closing at him. She did not sound pleased.
"I didn't know you could speak," said Morgoth.
"Of course I can," said Shelob. "But no one ever said anything
interesting to me, and no one ever paused to find out what a poor spider wanted
before stabbing." Her voice creaked towards sorrow.
Morgoth stared at her for a moment more, then shrugged. "Are you going to
play me, then?"
"Why not?" Shelob asked. "I've waited centuries on centuries for
a meal, a good one. You smell meaty. A few more minutes will only serve to whet
my appetite now, and not torment me."
Morgoth trembled. It shouldn't have been this bad, of course. He was the Dark
Power of the world. He should be the one making people cower.
But old memories were waking again. This seemed to be the Valian Year for them.
He sent Beauty forward.
-----
-and found that the light that shone from her skin melted back some of the bad
smell, the darkness and the foulness, in the air. Beauty smiled, pleased. It
was good for something after all, then.
Anyone looking at her would have seen someone remarkable, though they didn't
know it at first. She was apparently a hobbit, but she was taller than any
halfling, and she bore no hair on her toes-
-----
"Of course not," said Shelob. "That would be gross."
"Thank you!" said Morgoth. "Finally, someone who agrees
with me."
"But is still going to eat you," said Shelob.
Morgoth let his smile falter, and turned back to Beauty as if chastened. But he
did have a plan. He thought he did, at least, and that was almost the same
thing.
-----
-and she had pointed ears almost hidden beneath her tumbling mane of chestnut
hair. Her eyes were large and blue-green, and had the same striking glow that
infused the rest of her body, signs of her Elvish heritage.
Now those eyes were wide, as she contemplated the way that Frodo and Sam had
taken into the cave. She had to follow them, had to find them, had to-
She shivered, and licked her lips, and pressed forward. She would find them.
She had to. Her mother had sung at her birth that she was meant to give light
in the darkness, and so she would.
-----
"She glows too much," said Shelob. "Put her out."
Morgoth looked up apologetically. "Sorry. My ears were deafened by the
latest screaming of Fëanor. What did you say?"
Shelob muttered and clicked. Morgoth grinned back at her and then bent over
Beauty, subtly adding as much glow as he dared to her skin.
-----
"Master Frodo!"
Beauty broke into a run, hoping she was not already too late, fearing she was.
She came around the final turning and saw Sam kneeling over Frodo, tears
flowing down his face. He was patting gently at his master, but Frodo lay
motionless from the spider's poison and did not wake.
-----
"Poison? It was just a little sleeping draught."
Morgoth stared at her. "Shelob," he said at last, "everyone
knows you're evil. You don't have to defend your reputation."
Shelob thought about it for a moment. Then she said, "Yes, I believe
you're right. That's a load off my mind."
Morgoth shook his head and went back to the game.
-----
"Samwise!"
Sam looked up, eyes widening at the sight of her. "Beauty!" he
exclaimed. "Oh, Beauty!" And then he was running forward and
embracing her, sobbing into her shoulder. "Oh, Beauty, Frodo's dead, he
is! Make it right, Beauty, make it right!"
-----
"I thought he made it right," said Shelob.
"This is a Sue."
"Who has even less reputation than me?"
"Correct."
-----
"It's all right, Samwise, it's all right," Beauty whispered into his
hair. It was horrible, but she had to admit that she enjoyed the attention. No
one had ever paid so much attention to her back in Hobbiton. Most people
probably hadn't noticed that she was gone when she followed Frodo, Sam, Merry,
and Pippin to Rivendell. But now she was the last hope of the Fellowship, and
of the Quest.
"But Master Frodo- he's dead-"
"No, no, just sleeping," said Beauty, and smiled when Sam lifted a
tear-streaked face to her. "Really? Would I lie to you?"
"No," said Sam, relaxing. He knew, just like everyone in Hobbiton,
that Beauty couldn't lie. The spirits would punish her if she tried.
-----
"Spirits?" Shelob clicked his mandibles. "Will I have to deal
with them, too?"
"They're only conceits of the Sue," said Morgoth.
"It can still make them annoying. Your Sue is annoying me with her light,
and we've only barely begun."
Morgoth sighed.
-----
"But what are we going to do?" Sam asked helplessly.
Beauty let him go and knelt beside Frodo. His face was pale, and he didn't
appear to be breathing, but she knew he was still alive. Nothing in the natural
world was a mystery to her. She reached out and laid her hands on his body,
closing her eyes.
The poison was visible to her as a bright coil of angry green in the back of
Frodo's neck. She reached out and soothed it with the cool blue touch of her
magic, and it burned away into nothingness, though it would still be a long
moment before Frodo woke. Beauty sighed and sat on her heels, shaking as if
she'd run for a week.
"This is not safe for us," she told Sam solemnly. "We must move
as soon as possible, and I think the best way to do that is for me to take
Frodo back through the cave. You stay here and look for Gollum."
"Can you carry Frodo?" Sam asked, looking doubtfully from Frodo to
Beauty's slender frame.
-----
"She's not slender, she's skinny," said Shelob critically. "Not
enough flesh on the bones for a good meal."
"Sues say slender."
"Why?"
"That reputation again, which they mistakenly believe that they have."
Morgoth reflected, in some disgust, that he sounded like Varda. That would have
angered him more if he hadn't had a giant spider in front of him to trick, of
course.
"Ah."
------
"Yes," said Beauty calmly. "Elves are much stronger than they
look, you know, Sam, and I am half-Elf."
Sam nodded, and stood back as Beauty hefted Frodo in her arms. He really did
weigh almost nothing at all, Beauty thought sadly. He had lost weight while he
bore the Ring. She would have to heal him further, and then, when they returned
to the Shire, heal him yet again. The thought made her smile. Perhaps some
sexual healing would be in order.
"I'll look for Stinker," said Sam, bringing her back to the present
moment.
"You do that," said Beauty, and slipped into the tunnel with Frodo
held safely in her arms.
-----
"Coming to me?" Shelob asked.
"Yes. Get ready," said Morgoth.
"I am always ready." A click and then a shifting. "I am always
hungry."
Morgoth tried not to think about whether the Sue would be enough to satisfy the
spider.
-----
Beauty slipped carefully around a corner. She knew this was the way, she knew
that she had to turn this corner, and then-
A clicking and a hissing grew up before her, and then the monstrous spider was
near her.
-----
"That's me, that's me!"
"Yes," said Morgoth, stifling the urge to laugh at Shelob's
earnestness, "that's you."
------
Beauty laid Frodo on the ground and prepared to face her enemy, calling on all
the radiance of her magic. If she raised it high enough, then she could easily
defeat the spider, and that would end things.
Shelob came closer.
Beauty released the light of her skin in a blinding flash.
-----
Shelob screamed, and stabbed her legs into the gameverse, searching for the
Sue. Morgoth ducked back, scrabbling frantically at the webs, and dragging the
carved box of Sues with him. He heard Shelob grab something, and then the light
ended abruptly, with a crunch that even Morgoth had to admit was a bit
satisfying. Beauty had been too insipid for him.
The webs tore, and Morgoth tumbled out into light and voices and Tulkas's
laughter. He scrambled up and glared at them.
Tulkas looked at him. Morgoth expected at least a glare in return, or perhaps a
flexing of biceps, but Tulkas only doubled over again.
"Your- hair-" he choked.
Morgoth lifted his hand and found that cobwebs were tangled all over and
through his hair. He sighed, and raked it away, then turned to look at Varda.
"Why didn't you come rescue me?" he demanded plaintively.
Varda gave him a cool look, and then handed him two pieces of paper. "We
were rather disturbed by the news," she said. "You'll excuse us for
being more excited about that."
"Good news, or bad news?" Morgoth asked, accepting the messages.
"One of each."
The first was from Thorondor. By squinting, Morgoth could make out the
"hand." The eagle could write holding a quill in his talon, and no
one had ever quite dared to tell him that they couldn't make it out that well.
"Lloth has definitely left the world. I believe she got bored, or that she
only said she was staying around in the first place to mess with Morgoth's
mind. I have looked everywhere with my keen eyes, and can spot her in no place.
Thorondor, the Monarch of the Eagles."
Morgoth sighed in relief. "That's good, then." He looked at the other
letter. This hand he recognized at once as the dark, gothic hand of Mandos. He
always seemed to write that way. Morgoth had seen the text of a cheery song the
Doomsman of the Valar had tried to create once, and it was no use. Lines about
birds and sunshine were written in a hand to make babies cry.
"I let Fëanor and his sons go because I had no choice, because I was
told to do so. They had permission. I challenged Fëanor on this, but he showed
me absolute proof, and in the end I must bow and obey.
I cannot say I am sorry. No matter what happens, it is unlikely that Fëanor
will criticize Vairë's weaving ever again.
Námo, Mandos, Doomsman of the Valar, Lord of the Timeless Halls, Husband of
Vairë, Brother of Irmo, Brother of Nienna, Brother-in-Law of Estë..."
Morgoth gave up. He would run out of time before Mandos ran out of titles.
He looked up at Varda. "Um- it's good that Lloth left?" he tried.
"You were the only one really worried about her," said Varda,
scowling at nothing. "I do not like this, this idea that Fëanor and his
sons had permission. From whom? Mandos does not simply release prisoners from
his halls. I think that I could demand it, and he would not do it."
Morgoth stood thinking for a moment. Then he swallowed. "You said the escape
was arranged in the first place."
"Because Fëanor criticized Vairë's weaving, yes."
"But she wasn't the only one involved in it." Morgoth narrowed his
eyes, growing more and more sure. "And she wasn't the one who suggested
that prisoners walk near the walls. And she wouldn't know where the Men go
after they die, where Fëanor got Túrin from. Mandos knows, but he wouldn't
tell." He looked at Varda. "Only one Vala fits all that."
Varda groaned. "My husband," she said.
"Manwë," Morgoth agreed. "The idiot." He flinched a moment
later. He hadn't meant to say that.
"Don't call Manwë an idiot!" bellowed Tulkas, predictably.
"No," said Varda coldly, "in this case I am inclined to
agree." She glanced up as a winged shadow touched the sky, and Thorondor
flew towards them. "What news?" she asked. "Is Fëanor making for
anywhere in particular?"
"Straight west," said Thorondor, settling to the ground, "to
Ekkaia." He turned and held out his leg to Morgoth. "And he sends
this message."
Morgoth unrolled it, gingerly. The hand was Fëanor's, and written in that
swift, dashing way that meant he was cheerfully deranged.
"Dear He-Who-Was-Melkor-Until-I-Renamed-Him,
We're going west now, and won't attack in Valinor again. Do you want to know
what I'm doing? Look for me in the ultimate West, on the shores of the outer
Sea.
Fëanor the Great and Terrible.
P.S. My sons and father and wife send their love."
Morgoth showed it to them in silence. Varda shook her head impatiently.
"Forget that for now. At least in the West, he can't cause any trouble.
I'm going to talk to Manwë." She strode away.
After some hesitation, Morgoth followed her.
"Does this mean no more entertaining things are going to happen to
Morgoth?" Tulkas whined behind them. "And I was just about to make
some ambrosia for the next one."
Fëanor is doing something, never fear.
But Morgoth should be worried. Very worried.