The Shadows that Remain
A Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion fic
By: Shadow Chaser
Gandalf, Sam, & FredIt was said that no ordinary humans nor Elves could view them, but Fred realized that either Professor Tolkien was on drugs when he wrote that fact down, or he, Fredrick Baskerville, was able to see things no one else could. But that also meant that Sam was also able to see the things that no humans or Elves, except a few, have ever laid their eyes on. The Council Halls of the Valar and Maiar…
The light of the First Children of Iluvatar was supposed to be too bright for any mortals to view, but surprisingly, Fred found himself seeing these God-like beings. He briefly wondered if they "powered down" their brightness just for their sake, but shove that thought out of his head as he stared at their majestic beauty. He recognized Lorien, the Master of Dreams, Nienna the Weeper, and Vaire the Weaver among the group of Valar and Maiar gathered.
"Olorin, what is the meaning of this?" a sudden booming voice barked out and Fred looked up at the source of the booming voice, startled.
It was one of the Valar, Fred was sure of it, and the Valar looked pissed. His raven black hair was long and flowed like a river down his back, and he had piercing green almond-shaped eyes. He looked a bit Asian, yet he didn't at the same time – exotic was what he would have called the Valar. His clothes were simplistic, yet they were cut in such a way that Fred thought he saw wisps of clouds and wind blowing by on the dark blue-black clothes.
"I would have thought, Lord Manwe, that you knew we were coming and you and the others of this Council shifted to your human forms to let these two mortals look upon you," Gandalf replied in a slightly cheeky tone and Fred felt his eyes widen like saucers.
From all that he heard of Manwe, he was the Lord of the Valar; the head honcho…the one in charge, and someone not to trifle with. Not even the other Valar or Maiar would dare speak to Manwe in such manner, but perhaps Professor Tolkien was wrong in his assessment when he wrote The Silmarillion – either that he had misread the book completely.
"That's Manwe?" Sam squeaked beside him and Fred froze as the Wind King raked his piercing eyes over them. He could feel the power overwhelm him and realized that even in his human form, the Wind King was only using a fraction of his power given to him by Eru. He knew that if Manwe had used his full power, he and Sam would just be little piles of soot on the ground – perhaps not even soot, maybe just atoms floating in the air. That Vala was scary.
"Hmph," Manwe sniffed before turning slightly in disdain, "you're cheek will be forgiven this time Olorin. Do not presume otherwise next time."
"Your forgiveness Lord," Fred was treated to another sight as Gandalf bowed to the Wind King. Of all the years he had known the Maia as both Professor White and as Gandalf, Reincarnated or not, he had never seen him bow or defer to anyone else, save Lorien his master. "May I present to you and the others of this Council, Frederick Baskerville, the Reincarnation of Frodo Baggins of the Shire, and his faithful companion Sam Granger, Reincarnation of Samwise Gamgee of also the Shire."
All eyes of the Council stared at both him and Sam and Fred suddenly felt very small in front of the most powerful gods in the universe. He unconsciously flattened his hair, and bowed slightly before looking around at the others. All of them had human forms, some more exotic than others with different shades of skin color, ranging from normal browns and olives to tints of even blue and green. Except for one.
"That is Arien, the Fire Maia, the only one of her elemental kind not to turn evil to Morgoth's rule," Gandalf whispered to him, noticing where his gaze was as the Valar and Maiar started to whisper among each other while pointing at them.
"Oh," Fred said as he tried not to stare at the fire Maia. She was extremely beautiful, her form was humanoid, but it was completely covered in fire that curled and danced all around her. She wore only a simple toga of white and her eyes were completely yellow and pulsating with power.
He blushed as she caught him looking at her and waved a bit, a smile lighting up her face. Adverting his gaze, he tried to focus on the female Valar that was next to Manwe. That had to be Varda, the patron of all of the Elves. Her outfit betrayed who she was as it was midnight blue and looked to be reflective of all galaxies and stars that rotated in slow orbit around her. She had wavy midnight black hair and her eyes were dark blue.
"This Council will be called to order," Manwe's booming voice suddenly overrode all of the whispers and Fred suddenly found himself seated next to Sam and Gandalf, in the middle of an amphitheater like area, surrounded by the Council members. "We have gathered here to discuss the future of the Earth and of the Children. Presenting this case to us, is Olorin, servant of Lorien, and he has with him his two charges. Now I give you, Frederick and Sam, what cause do the Valar and Maiar have to go to war against Melkor?"
Fred felt his jaw drop slightly in surprise as he realize what was the special mission Gandalf wanted them to go on. He had originally been disappointed that he wasn't traveling with neither Matt nor Phil and instead was being taken to somewhere else by Gandalf who hadn't said a word about this. He and Sam were here because the Elves and Humans needed help from the Valar and Maiar to defeat Morgoth, or as it seemed that the Valar still knew him as Melkor.
It meant that their help depended on his and Sam's case and presentation to the Council. They had a huge responsibility and he managed to close his mouth enough to dry swallow whatever moisture he had in his throat left from that shocking statement.
He took a quick second to try to compose his initial thoughts before standing up and bowing a bit more respectfully than he initially had towards the Council and said, "There is no cause for you my Lords and Ladies, but the price of the lack of your involvement will cause such a ripple effect in your society and power that it will upset the balance of the world."
He paused for a second to which one of the Valar he identified as Mandos, the Keeper of the Dead, stood. The man looked like a Nazgul when seen through the power of the One Ring and Fred tried to suppress a shudder of fear that ran through him. He dug up all the knowledge he had about the Valar and Maiar that he read from Tolkien's books, and from his Reincarnated memories that apparently had also dealt with some of the Valar and Maiar in the various Ages he existed after he was Frodo Baggins.
"Why not have the balance fall to all of the goodness that is in the world? Why should we just let Melkor be defeated and keep the good in the world? That's what happened after the Third Age," Mandos barked at him before sitting down, smoothing his sickly milky white-green robes. A few murmurs came with his assessment.
"I've got a bad feeling about him…he just seems a bit off," Sam whispered beside him before sitting back. Fred nodded fractionally; he too had a feeling that Mandos wasn't what he seemed. He wasn't like the other Valar that showed neutrality and beacons of shining light. Perhaps it was just because the Vala was the Keeper of the Dead and spent too much time in the company of them, but he had a feeling that it wasn't the case and instead was something else.
He remembered what Lorien had said about Mandos possibly falling into Morgoth's league, but if he had, he didn't really show it right now. Maybe he was just imagining things, but he vowed to be very cautious about his information when he was in the presence of the Vala. No sense spilling everything he knew to be true.
"Then what of the good that is in the world?" the words that spilled from his mouth seemed a bit off for his normal speech and he knew that it had to be one of his Reincarnated forms taking over what he said. It was eloquent and different from the way he was used to talking with the students of Columbia University and his friends, heck even Gandalf. "As I understand it, you, the Valar, are supposed to keep the balance between the good and the evil in this world. Whereas Eru created this world to be a haven of sorts, he also created his Children to be smart enough to fend for themselves. All of you, the Elves, and us, descendents of Men.
"But with the price of independence and freedom, comes the knowledge that everything in this world cannot be just 'good'. There always has to be a bit of evil left over. There always has to be conflict," as he spoke, he saw unbidden memories of his former lives and realized that a majority of them were either observers to various events in history, events that changed the course of the world, or they were of evil and suffering. Sometimes, he had participated in the suffering, but other times, he was forced to watch, and he understood why this was happening.
"With this conflict, you are able to grow and survive, and realize the mistakes you've done in order to improve upon your previous errors. That is why, I suppose, you deemed yourselves to be Gods over the other Children, to help guide them along their paths to peace, occasionally creating conflict along the way."
"Then why do you suppose we wanted it this way? Why not just leave everything alone?" this time a crystal clear female voice spoke and Fred turned to his left to see a child speak up, except she looked like a creepy adult at the same time. He realized that it was Vana the Youthful, forever a child-adult…and scary…
"Because you don't like giving up control," Sam suddenly spoke up next to him in a slightly patronizing tone, and Fred sat back down to let his best friend to speak. He wondered if his friend was using his head, but then realized that Sam had always been more direct with people and explanations than he was. He hoped that his best friend didn't end up angering the Valar and Maiar gathered here. Taking a quick look at Gandalf, he saw that the wizard wasn't doing anything to help or assist, and wondered what was Gandalf's role here in this meeting. Was he being held back by the rules that were set upon him by his master Lorien?
"You are the Gods, for crying out loud. You love to control every aspect of others lives. You live for that control, for that chance to see what you can do to either make the world blossom or screw it up for others," Sam spread his hands out, turning around full circle to stare at each one of them, "that is why you have your domains. You each love to control certain aspects, and this is probably why some of the Elves revolted against you, or didn't heed your advice to come from Middle Earth back to Valinor! They didn't want to listen to you, like teenagers to parents. You realized that there was a time when your Children would revolt against you and you tried everything to put that down.
"Well there you go, that is a form of evil that you didn't like! So you set rules for yourselves, rules you had everyone else follow. You didn't want anything to happen to your paradise and so you bound everything together in any shape of form you could have. You have this council, yet you have the stifling rules of a totalitarian government," Sam said in a hard cold voice, "here you bound Gandalf to your rules. You, Lorien the Dreamer, bound him to your service, unable to interfere in certain aspects of our way. I ask you this, why?!" He jabbed a finger at the Master of Dreams and Fred blinked, praying that his best friend wouldn't turn into a charred crisp from the daggers the Master of Dreams was shooting at him. He noticed through the corner of his eyes that even Gandalf was surprised at Sam's brevity.
"You most certainly have the audacity to accuse me, Sam Granger," Lorien stood up slowly like a flag unfurling in the wind, his face impassive and different than what they had seen him at Professor White's classroom at the University. "Do you know what power you stand in front of? Do you know of your words that you accuse us of?"
Sam suddenly had a stricken look on his face as he realized what he had done, and started to mouth something, but no sound came out. Fred narrowed his eyes slightly before jumping in front of his friend to shield him from the wrath of the Vala. "I know of what he says. I know his words because they are my own!" he shouted at Lorien.
"You provided us with these Reincarnated memories to realize what we have done in the past. Sure you knew what our lives were and you knew something like this was going to happen. Don't feign ignorance whereas you knew what we were going to say with our memories besieging us. Melkor is the evil of this world because you stifled too many rules upon him. Yes, he might have been born evil, he might have been created as some potent form of it, lusting after more powers of the Vala, but you brought that upon yourself.
"So in all, you, the Valar of Eru, are at fault for creating such an evil. And you dare ask why should you not get involved?" Fred pushed Sam back; ready for anything the Valar and Maiar were going to throw at him. As he turned slowly around, watching the gazes of those around him, he saw that a few of them had impassive faces, while others were staring at him in anger, but he saw to his surprise, smiles, on a few of their faces, especially on Arien's face.
"Brave words for such a mortal as yourself, Frederick Baskerville," Manwe suddenly stood, waving his hands to calm the others before stepping forward, "you talk as if we were equals."
"In this council, we are," Fred shot back, "because you and I have the same goals. The destruction of Melkor and the peace of the Earth."
"Then I suggest you look upon the world. As history is repeating itself," Manwe waved his hand and a portal of sorts appeared next to him, showing images of troops walking towards a city that was brimming with evil. Fred felt his heart seize up as he saw Alec and his troops marching towards that city. He knew that city very well, as during the Nano War, he had been a historian covering the awful battle that had occurred there. No, it hadn't been a battle, it had been a massacre.
The city was Therin's Hill, and by what Manwe had said, history was going to repeat itself…