There was no slide or mechanism to aid their descent downwards, into the heart of this dank and dust filled cave. They simply fell, onwards and onwards until not even the gods amongst them could tell how much time had passed since last they saw light.

I would not say that they landed with a tremendous thud, as I would not say an Oliphant landed with a tremendous thud. The surface they landed on, or at least Namo landed on and everybody else just seemed to pile on top of him was hard, as hard and as solid as any rock could be in a land such as this. His head cracked, and his eyes crossed over his nose, but no blood was spilled as it might have been had someone else been first to hit the ground.

For more than 10 minutes real time all there was to their world was silence, silence and the crushing blackness of this land around them. And then…

'Who goes there?'

A flicker of light within their dark world, and the voice – high-pitched and nasally as it was – seemed to surround them now. It couldn't have been an echo, for the words were only repeated once, but never the less it came from the right, and the left, and behind them and from in front of them. It came from everywhere, that same voice, no those same words but the voice, the voices were different. All high-pitched and nasally perhaps but different, and so many. As if…as if not one but a crowd, a crowd of small nasally voice children surrounded them now…no, not children.

A flash of something bright and suddenly they were no longer plunged into darkness anymore. Light, light everywhere, fires and great glowing orbs of beautiful light such as the Valar had never seen before. Although if Aulë remembered correctly, Olorin and his hobbits had described such things in their Shire. Yet around them stood not the friendly faces of hobbits but goblins.

If the Drúadan people were misleadingly ugly, the terrible visage of their faces and their harsh voices hiding the gentle people beneath, Goblins were deservingly so.

Twisted creatures, their skin bleached pale and sickly by lack of light – the light that even now scorned their faces. Their faces, their harsh twisted faces, the faces of killers, of liars and betrayers. The faces of a race so despicable by birth, that not even the light of the sun would tolerate them.

Truly death could only follow such a horrifying sight as they.

Yet it was not death that awaited the small band of adventurers as they struggled to their feet. The Goblins around them snapped, and snarled behind their crooked teeth, gabbing away in some kind of corrupted version of Orcish. The same word repeated in that foul language, over and over again. It was too much, and the already swollen head of the Lady of the Earth could no longer stand it anymore.

She raised her hand, and from that hand grew a flash, a blinding flash of such brilliance that even those who were accustomed to such light, would be wincing away. It should have sent the goblins scrambling, yet it didn't…as if something were stopping it. A presence, an echo really of such power that it could shield the goblins from her righteous wrath. Such power could only come from another Valar…and yet surely it couldn't be the three…no the two behind her. Her husband stood as stunned as she, his sword drawn, and his lovely hard worn brows drawn together in consternation. Mandos, his face pained, looked at the ground and away from the light as if even at this slight level it still pained him. And Vairë…where was Vairë?

Yavvanna lowered her hand, the power she had displayed retreating back into her fingertips. And then she looked down at the goblins and said, her voice tight with the weight of her own fraying control, because she knew what she had to do now.

'Take us to your Master, my good Goblins. For we have need to speak with him, on the state of the world above.'

The goblins blinked stupidly at her, as if they were unaccustomed to being addressed so respectively. And then almost as if of one mind they began to laugh. Yet this was not the cruel mocking laughter one should expect from such creatures, it was nearly joyful in its tone. It echoed round the cave like the ringing of bells in high Valinor, and for such a sound, to not only appear in a place like this, but from mouths of such foulness was a shock even to the mighty Valar themselves.

Yet if this fazed Yavanna, she did not show it as she stood there, amongst those giggling goblins as if nothing not even the power of Ilúvatar would move her from this spot. Nothing that is, except the smallest goblin who'd stepped forward with his left hand outstretched towards the great lady of the earth, his small green claw curling round her long-boned appendage.

'Come this way my Lady,' the foul little creature squeaked. 'The Queen and her Fool have wish to speak with you and your…companions immediately.'

And with a quick nod backwards to urge the others in the party to follow her, Yavvanna allowed the small wretch to lead her away, down into the twisting heart of the Goblin kingdom. It was all madness, but then madness and death were all this world seemed able to offer anymore.

Up and up their small guide led them, up and up passed the crowds of tiny smiling Goblin Children. Hustling each other out of the way to get a better look at the strange visitors from up above.

Finally, the small goblin, it's tiny claw like hand still wrapped around the two middle fingers of the great lady of the earth, stopped. Turning back to the group, with the largest, and most cheer filled smile Aulë had yet to see on one of these strange, twisted little creatures.

'Just up that way my good visitors, and the Fool and our Lady High Goblin Queen will see you.'

Aulë craned his neck upwards, not too steep a climb, but still after all that they had been through, after all that they had seen, was two large fat goblins sitting on thrones really worth the effort?

And then there was a laugh – and it was if the room was suddenly a flame, a flame with the power, the power of knowing exactly how the story will go.

'Oh my,' came a voice, from all around them. 'So, the party has made it to our doorstep? So soon? I thought there would be more pitstops along the 's the wizard? Has the author killed him already? Pity, he's the only one who's been in Rohan and seen its fool.'

Above the party, a hobbit with the garb of a fool sat on an overhanging ledge. The large heels of his oversized feet clicking against the solid face of the rock behind.

'Tell me my good lady Yavvanna? Are ye friend to Goblin Town, or are ye foe?'

'I am friend,' cried the lady in question. 'So long as they be friend to me. But tell me who is this that speaks to me as if with some authority, for he is not goblin stock.'

'Aye, no,' laughed the Fool. 'He is not indeed, of Hobbick's stock am I and not his brother's, Great Lady of the Earth. But this is my home more than it will ever be yours, thus my word has the right to defend it from such intrusion. So, tell, oh wise and noble one, what do you intend to happen? Do you wish to find love? Do you wish to slay a dragon? Or perhaps slay the man that set it upon you in the first place?'

'Fëanor is our task, and if you and your Monarch will not help us in reaching the surface, then you had better step out of our way Halfling, lest we throw you aside.'

The Fool laughed; a deep belly laugh that seemed to shake the walls around them.

'Oh, oh, tis, tis funny, my Queen did you hear that? Did You? Did You? They expect to stop the Fëanor Lord, with nothing so much as the sword in their hands. Oh, pray forgive me for my outburst my kindly visitors, but you are more Fool than ever I was. The Lord is no elf anymore, nor wizard, but the tangled-up version of the two. A rotting, slathering mess, that will consume you all, as he does with everything that he touches. Not even his sons were safe from his wrath.'

'What nonsense is this,' began Aulë now stepping up to stand glowering by his wife's side. The Fool's golden coloured eyes swerved to gaze down at the Mightiest of all Smiths.

'Thus, comes the maker, the sculptor of our doom, but blinded by his own ignorance he knows not what he does my Queen. Shall he go south, or shall he go North, round and round the decision goes where it stops nobody knows.'

And then from out of the shadows another voice came.

'Fool that is enough, bring them forward and into my light. So that I may see them clearer.'

There was something glorious about a beast such as the Goblin Queen was. It would be an understatement to merely say that she was both fat and huge. The Goblin King, the one whose throat Olorin had claimed to slay all those years ago, had been both big and huge, and not to mention disgusting. The queen was as like to that as she was to a molehill, large, grand and with a face as ugly as all her subjects combined. She didn't just live inside a mountain, for she was the mountain.

And what a mountain it was.

'You have heard my fool speak. Now hear me, you say you're here with peace to offer? You cry that we must aid you or be doomed,' she laughed at that. 'Strange, I wonder how when you don't have any weapons?'

'No,' said the Lady Yavvanna. 'No, your Majesty, we do not. But I am Yavvanna, Green Lady of the Valar, and I think you must be familiar with my husband Aulë.'

'Aye,' laughed the jolly queen. 'And all his creations…but the dead rule above, and I rule below, this is law, and not even you can break it. If that, if you are who you say you are…but maybe not, maybe it is a ruse by the Hobbit queen and her shiny general? Is our flesh and blood, our son that we let leave with him not enough for you Halflings? And they call us a cruel race.'

A great rumble behind her and suddenly the queen did not look so fat and jolly anymore.

'No, I think not, I think I'm done with your war. Leave me the children I have left, my son you have stolen, but I am not so lonely as that. Go home wretches and tell your mistress the Goblins are not toys in her war games.'

'No,' said Yavvanna, her tone really not fitting the situation at all. 'We are here to kill Fëanor and we will do so with or without your aid.'

The Queen smiled at that, a slow, dark, creeping smile.

'Aye. I thought that's what you would say.' Said the Goblin Queen. 'Very well, be your fates on your own heads.' Then turning to the hobbit beside her. 'Fool, deal with them.'

'Aye, my Queen, it would be my joy to do so.'

Aulë scoffed, when the small creature raised its bell bedangled arms and clapped his hands once, only once and the Valar's world turned white.