Arda, Deep within the Oceans of Middle-Earth; T.A.3003

In a place your kind will not know for many thousands, upon thousands of years is the land in which I make my home. It is not a country with borders or limits, all it has is the top and the very deep bottom. Neither of which you have ever properly touched.

Do not think me cruel when I say this – for I only speak the truth, the Race of Man was always meant to populate the world of the surface, and it is in the deep in which I make my home. In which all my kind make our home.

What am I?

That is the joke you've just not got yet; for part of you already knows.

I am a creature of the ocean, the very deepest part of your earth.

I am a beast that very few of your land bound kind have ever seen at all.

But you have.

You have seen my shell.

And my fins.

You have seen my jaws close around that strange little person – the one that so desperately sought the glass ball that the nice men folk in the harbour had fed me that day.

Yes, I think you remember me now.

I am Turtle. I am Fish.

I am Fastitocalon.

Though many just call me a Turtle-Fish.

So long I have swum in these oceans – born as I was when the world was flat, that sometimes it feels like all my life is set in one big circle. We hatch from our eggs; we swim from our creche in the shallows of the ocean, and then we move out to the wider world. We might try to live interesting lives, do good things – I can't tell you how many small people I've ferried across the ocean, not all of them very grateful – but in the end what our existence comes down to, is the simple act of keeping our bodies functioning. I swim to eat, and I eat to swim. I can rest, close my eyes and sleep but always I must keep moving.

Just like you really.

Always we must keep moving, we cannot look back – if we were meant to, our necks would let our heads turn all the way round. Our purpose, both in the sea and on land is to keep moving forward – for when we do not, aye then my friends, that is when we truly go mad.

Ow.

Forgive me, my stomach begins to pain me…strange I have never felt a pain quite like this one, I really hope it wasn't something I at…

BOOM

And so, ends Fastitocalon, last of the noble Sea-Turtle Families, we shall never see his like again. Longer and larger than the greatest of your modern whales, there was many a foolish mortal that had mistaken the vegetation and rocky sculpture of his shell for some new land to claim. The largest beast that will ever swim or walk the earth, now nothing but particles in the water. There were no words that existed in the time that Fastitocalon swam the oceans of the world, to describe what happened to him, but there is now: vaporisation.

And what, dear reader, was left behind when the body of the Turtle-Fish vanished from history? Why, only a very small figure – still wearing the tattered blue robes of his body's former occupation. Perhaps we would call him a wizard, where we of foolish stock, for no servant of the Valar would ever be as mad as the son Finwë had become.

After all, only a madman would use a Silmaril in such a terrible way.

Middle-Earth, The Land of Dunland, The Castle of Dunlich; T.A. 3019

Mab had not smiled in a real way in twenty-nine years, not since Llue's death and…well, everything that had come after that. She couldn't, not in the way other people seemed to do so naturally.

She might pretend, she'd done so for years while her son still dwelt under the branches of her cage. But it wasn't real, it could never be real not with the voices…the voices of the men that had crossed over, the men whose bodies should lie in the dirt, filling her brain with their noise.

To be drenched in the blood of the slain was to be gifted they said, but never so grand a joke had existed. Aye, yes, she could do many things could this mage Mab. She could summon fire to her fingertips, or lift the ground itself with a jab of her smallest toe. She could even enter your mind, and make you think her thoughts were your own, and many such other marvellous powers, but they always came with a price. Headaches, nosebleeds and the inability to feel the same kind of joy that others threw around so casually.

When she had snatched the sun from their land, the other people of the clans had grieved. Had lit fires and waited up all night long for the sun, the real sun or moon to rise and light their world. But it would never come, and at night Mab could hear the wailing of their hearts at the loss. It was why she had sent the jewel – made from the old cracked stone in her staff up to fill the void. That stopped the fires, and the nightly wailing at least – but nothing could take the place of the true sun. Not really.

Just like nothing could take the place of what she had lost.

But you have to understand, Mab didn't do it because she felt any loss from the sun herself – the voices, and the scratch of magic under her skin were too strong now for her to feel much of anything at all. She had done it because she found their crying annoying. Really Mab found all emotion, that thanks to her gift she could no longer quite experience, annoying.

Take now for instance, she was certain that the young girl – the young scout she had been all those years ago would have felt pity for the young woman, that stumbled injured and bloody into the hall of Dunlich castle on that terrible night. But the woman she was now, the mighty Mab, felt only a brief flash of pain from the voices in her head – as she tried to focus on what the stupid chit was even saying.

'The Dead! The Dead, have broken the banks of the Ancient Moors, the Bear Clan has fallen! The Bear clan has fallen!'

Call the horn, summon the other clans to the keep of Dunlich and wait…wait until the dead came. This is the plan those that still stand, what little there is left of them concoct, and this is the ground in which she shall build her greatest masterpiece.

Part of her, the forgotten girl still hidden within the sorceress' chest, knew that this was how it would end. This was how it was always supposed to end, with the death of all those that no longer mattered to the world beyond. Perhaps that was why she had let Calgacus and his pregnant wench leave; she'd known what he was trying to do – she was Mab, she always knew, and she had let him do it anyway. Maybe this was why she had raised the cage in the first place.

The clans were always fated to end like this, and perhaps she had hoped to spare the rest of the world – the evil, the ignorant, the innocent, all of them – from suffering the same fate. For a very short time, the Leohamm and her had deluded themselves that they could stop this. That they could rescue their people, by trapping the leader of the Dead in a newly conceived mortal body. But it was just playing for time, it hadn't destroyed the dead, all it had done was scatter them. All it had done was leave them open for a new king and this one, aye, she could not trap this one in her womb.

The only thing to do now was run, and when the earthly plain had abandoned you…there was only one place to run to.

Middle Earth, Dunland, The broken camp of Gondor

The Brother had not thought of Gondor in…he could not count the years anymore. It was a pale ghost city only held to life by his fading memory; if he chose to, he would forget it entirely one day and be all the better for it. What more could Gondor do for him, do for his men now that they were locked in here with them?

Though whether he meant the Dunlanders or the dead, the Brother was never quite sure anymore. Personally, he privately preferred the dead but that was because…well.

'Sir! Sir!'

A soldier, a strangely tall fellow with an outrageously long nose, stepped into the officer tent that the brother had been occupying these last…what was it? Twelve, sixteen years? It was hard to remember when they had lost the first campsite, certainly well into the years without the sun. It was all a blur of darkness, screams, and the wailing of the restless dead.

'Yes? What is it?'

He shouldn't snarl, not at his men and yet his life now provided so few opportunities for self-contemplation, even of the depressing sort he was so lately fond of, that any interruption felt like a personal attack.

'Sir, it's the Dunlanders!' The Soldier barks, his face so still and obedient, and the brother, well he couldn't stop himself from laughing at that.

'Oh yes? What are they doing now? Eating their own young, perhaps? Stabbing one another with pitchforks? Ooh, oh, I know the dead are marching and it's the end of everything we know and love. Well come on out with it boy, what would they have with us now?'

Perhaps boy was a little inaccurate, after all even the youngest of the soldiers were closer to the last counting age, than they were their boyhood. Blast it, Dunland culture was like a disease. Seeped in to the very pores and poisoned the blood. Thirty was old for those savages because even before the cage, and the dead, and Gondor, Dunland was a terrible land – where only the hardest made it through early youth at all. Thirty was old enough, so counting past it was just tempting fate. Bad habit to get into that, he'd have to watch it or before long he'd be ordering all the men to paint their faces blue.

'It's the horn my lord, the Dunlich Horn has been blown. Mab calls for the Clans, the Warriors and everyone who can still run to meet at Dunlich keep.'

The Dunlich Horn…the bloody Dunlich horn, why had he ever agreed to that pact? Agreed to come without question when Mab or one of her pet Chieftains blew that bloody horn. The thing wasn't even a proper horn, but a hollowed-out tusk of some ancient and long dead creature. It didn't even make a proper noise – or at least not one that carried past the first village at the edge of the old castle's lands. They had to send runners out to their allies, the major clans, the healers and the Gondor Army – and now they awaited his reply. Part of him wanted to say no, to tell them all that they could all go and die at thirty if they were so desperate to leave this world behind.

And if it had just been his own life to consider he would have joyfully done so. What did it matter if the dead were regrouping, or if the whole of middle earth was going to die; his brothers were dead, and he would be only too happy to follow them. And yet, in this land there were others to consider, men who demanded that he led them…even if it was only towards a slightly less painful death. He was not a good man, but he liked to think his moral integrity was not so derogated as to abandon his own people.

'Sir?' Said the ridiculously tall soldier.

And in the end, there was really only one thing to say.

'If Dunland calls for aid, then Gondor shall answer.'

Middle-Earth, Dunland, The Rocky Border between the silent Sheep grazing grounds, and the Ancient Moors: T.A.3019

Titania was a sheep herder, only now there were no sheep anymore. When the sun had vanished all those years ago, the animals had died out with it. Some fell into chasms between rocks, or drowned themselves in the deep end of the great river – so terrified were they in a land without light.

Others had had slower deaths. Many had starved, as plants would not grow either in the darkness or the unnatural light of Mab's gem. And then there were the truly unfortunate, the creatures that became something quite unsheep like. Beasts that tried to feed from the new sprouts that grew from the lowest branches of Mab's trees.

Bigger than a regular sheep, with a skull that looked twisted and hollow; and great horns that grew twice the size of the terrible thing's head. It was a wonder it could lift its neck at all, let along charge with it lowered as fast as it did.

That's what she'd been doing you see, when she'd seen the dead, in all their wretched glory. Most people, small boned and weakened from the lack of sunlight, wouldn't have been able to out run the beast – after all the only sign it was there at all, lurking in the shadows, was the brief flash of those red eyes before, it leapt. But then again, Titania was a sheep herder, and the beast no matter how Mab's magic had changed it, was still a sheep. Just one whose wool was a bit unusable.

She had run. Jumping from rock ledge to rock ledge, hoping to trip up the monster in the dark light of the gem. A terrible sound, like that of a human babe came from behind where only the beast could have lurked, but Titania Caora Shasannach knew enough not to look back. You never looked back when the twisted sheep chased you. But this could not last, the broken rocks of her people's grounds were beginning to give way to the smoother boulders of the Ancient Moors. Even now she could swear she could feel the tickle under her nose, of the sharp stench of the bogs. It smelt ever so slightly of…burning mud, odd as that felt to say. There must be a Bear clan village not too far away, all she had to do was run a little faster and…well…they'd definitely kill the thing behind her. Even in this half-light Bear Clan archers never missed; they may however, not particularly care if they hit her too, which was why she had to run faster. Let the beast be the bigger target before they saw her, that was the way to live, at least for today anyway.

And she'd almost done it too, she'd caught sight of the low, green burning torches of the recognisable mud huts of a Bear Clan settlement. But…something was wrong. Where were the guards, where were the arrows? Where were the people? They were gone, the green torches still shone against the red light of the gem but that was it – the huts were empty, empty of life, empty of warmth, empty of the safety she so desperately sought. And so terrible was this thought that Titania had stumbled then, though no rock caught her foot. And the beast caught her, its barbed horn sinking deep into the flesh of her side. Titania screamed but no one was around to hear it, well, no one living anyway.

She couldn't feel anything below her stomach, and even then, the only feeling that invoked was a dull ache that gradually crept up inside her, till she felt like rocks were scraping at the flesh inside and her mouth burned.

The beast that had pricked her had run away, and for a brief glorious moment, Titania had not understood why. The Hunters were gone, and if they had been where they should be, surely a beast like this would never actually be afraid of them. And then she had heard it, that slow step, shuffle, step – the kind of sound that only someone who was not used to moving the feet they used made.

It was the march of the Dead.

Middle-Earth, Dunland, Dunlich Castle; Guest Hall: T.A. 3019

This was the story the young sheep herder had told Mab, as the older sorceresses bent over the red gash in Titania's hip. Blood had soaked through her fur wrap as she had run, until the thing looked like it had been painted red. Possibly as some kind of joke on a wedding day.

'Mmm,' said the gaunt and bony magic wielder. 'And you never fainted once?'

It was a peculiar question for Mab the sorceress to ask – there were tales of her serving with the healers in the burning caves of course, but really, they were only rumours and most people, sheep herder or otherwise dismissed them as nonsense. She was Mab, blessed of the Fallen, most powerful Magic user in all the world. Or at least the world of the clans, though to many that was the only world that mattered. She was Mab, if she cared about anything to do with Titania it should be how many dead men, she'd seen on her way to Dunlich. Which was why she tried desperately to remember; recalling in vivid detail the faces, the rotten flesh of them that she had seen near the Glanduin River. They had been gazing at themselves, just staring at that distorted foul reflection as if nothing else mattered in the world. That was how she'd managed to sneak past them, despite the fact that even then her wound had been dripping something foul.

'Yes,' said the great Mab. 'They must have been newly raised, that's what they do. Stare at themselves and weep for all that time has done to them, as if only an imortal could understand the true loss of what is wonderful in the world. Still, it must be hard for strange elf folk such as they; to have been so beautiful as to make any mortal weep, and now well, we do not scream for their beauty. Could be worse though, the spirts raised in the bodies of animals go mad within days.'

Titania did not know if it was a joke or not, but she tried to smile anyway – it hurt, it always hurt but she grinned through the pain

Mab placed a skeletal hand over the sheep herder's brow, and told her to be quite less she make herself ill.

'The exact numbers of the dead do not matter to me, they outnumber us now, they have always outnumbered us Titania. The only reason this day had not come sooner, is they had not realised it yet.'

'And now that they do?' Said the sheep herder.

And Mab smiled at that, a strange smile, thin like thread. Something that should never have belonged on a mortal face.

'Tell me, Titania – while you were running from them did you see him?'

'See who?' Said Titania, though she was beginning to suspect she might already know the answer to that question.

'Why the blue wizard my dear, it always begins with the blue wizard.'

The Camp of the Dead

'Did you ever hear the proverb, that a wizard is never late, he arrives exactly when he intends to? Of course you've heard it, everyone gets lied to at some point in their lives. Then again perhaps the rules were slightly different for insane elven Fëa, possessing the body of a wizard. One would suppose that such a creature to be rare enough as to not really fit properly into any proverb, sensible or otherwise.

'Though to be fair, I never fit into one in my first life either.

'Oh, my dear, how long have I wondered in this terrible land; my spirit broken and you lost to me. When we destroyed the beast together, I thought I was free – free of the creature, free of the world and the leeches who clung to our light. We could have just stayed there my love, and sunk down to the bottom of the deep blue sea. But the waves, and the will of the Valar would see us parted and you were carried away from me by the rush of the tide. And I, well I landed here on this terrible land where the sun is no more and the trees grow unnaturally to block out even the frail light of the moon.

'Of course, it wasn't like that when I first clambered up on these harsh rocky shores. No, only when I stumbled in land and heard their screams, the screams of the living and the dead, did I realise the trap that I had let myself walk into. The dead fell that day, and the trees sprung from the ground and blocked the light from our sky. Had I been a second slower in clambering from the sea, I would have been stuck on the other side of this cage, and you my beloved shinning one, you would have been lost to me forever.

'Or at least as long as long as the witch lived.

'The witch who caught me in her cage – the only one of those of mortals who ever did. But even then, it only worked because we were so lost, me and the voices in my head. You had been taken from me, and without you I am mad – my living followers never noticed, but then they were mad too in their way. And my dead followers well…they can't notice anything beyond their own bodies now.

'I knew you were in here with me my lovely Silmaril – waiting, hidden for me to find you again. I always know when you and your siblings are near, I sense it, but this land in its darkness and its ways was still strange to me. I had no choice but to seek the witch out. She had trapped me in here and in the height of my delusions I thought perhaps I could convince her to give me you as recompense. But in the end, I hid my madness and love, I hid my name and my true purpose. I took on his name, his form, and his eyes – but I was still me, oh yes, I was still Fëanor son of Finwë and I would not be so easily bested by a mortal witch. She stole my light from me? I took her son from her.

'And in repayment, the world led me back to you, and I was made whole again.

'That's what they see in me, my love. Not some great leader, or mastermind of battle, but the light that had burned my mother from within, that shines within us both. I am greatness incarnate, but only if I remember it – and the only way to do that is to have you by my side again.

'My Wonderful

'My Beautiful

'My Silmaril.

'Look at me telling you what you already know, for we are of two souls entwined…all we need to truly be sane again is our other halves – the Silmarils together again, at long last. And the only way I…we can even hope to do that is if the Witch dies.

'Huh, I had never thought of that before, I've become far too merciful in my…weakness. The dead had flocked to me because unlike them even when I was mad, or sitting listening to the voices argue in my head, I had my own mind. That's why they still flock to me, why they congregate together and march on oafs like those Bear people. As if forming the steps of an army from memory long lost to the grave. Why shouldn't I use it? Hasn't the world taken enough from us? Don't I deserve something back? Even if it's only the death of the witch that trapped us in here.

'What do you think, My Love?'

The mass of moulding, retched blue robes that was the once proud son of Finwë turned then; expecting to see his beloved Silmaril – the only one out of the three that had returned to his hand – but this is not that story.

And every creature both living and dead; from the Mightiest of Beasts below the earth to the most afraid child hidden in the castle of Dunlich could hear the scream of Fëanor. But it was only one creature among the many, the fleeing sheep herder known to the few who knew her as Titania, who truly flinched from the sound. For it was only she, with her prize wrapped in an old cloak from a dead man pressed to her chest; that knew with the utter certainty of one who had caused the loss in the first place, why that terrible scream had come to be.

There would be no mercy for this thief, she knew it – and now all she could hope was that she could run fast enough to Dunlich Castle to make this sacrifice worth it.

Dunland, Dunlich Castle: One Week Later

If it was the intention of Mab and her Clans to provoke the wrath of the Dead before they'd finished amounting their full strength – then they had certainly succeeded. Of course, after a week held under siege from a ravenous and fairly feral army, they probably weren't feeling that victory so very keenly anymore.

They could hear the wails and screams of the dead from inside their stone block; but since no one was allowed on the battlements – so said the decree of Mab – they couldn't exactly see them. Every now and then an archer would risk unblocking an arrow hole in a wall to fire at the enemy. But always it was a mistake, for the enemy was not living and so arrows of any kind didn't exactly stop them. So, all you did was end up wasting your arrows, and putting yourself in dangerous proximity to their shrieks.

Never go near the walls, never go near the outside for it is not the dead's weapons that will get you, it is their shrieks. Never before in the history of the fight with those that should have remained in their graves had the voices of the dead held so much venom. So much poison towards the living. But then again, never in the history of the battle between the living and the dead had they had much cause to. Without magic or devine intervention the living could be overrun by the dead quite easily; and without a leader or some kind of unifying presence, the dead could only really shamble along, barely with enough presence of mind to not fall off a cliff. They might catch you and consume your flesh – but really only if you were slow or stupid enough to let them.

Now though…there was him and there was her, and there would be no rest for either the living or the dead while these two walked on the same earth.

Eight People.

Eight People sitting in a circle.

Eight people staring at a glass ball, waiting for it to do something.

It was ridiculous.

But then Magic, Titania realised, was a bit ridiculous. Earth floating above itself, fire catching alight with no sign of a flint's spark or a tree's smoke? Nonsense, perfectly sound nonsense. But then, wasn't it just nonsense that she – a silly little sheep herder (and hardly even that since there were no sheep anymore) was here sitting amongst these great people, leaders of the last of the clans, as if she belonged. Mab had wanted her here of course, had said it was important and well…no one disobeyed Mab.

Eight people sat in a circle around this…Silmaril; and only one of them really had any business in the like of magic. But then when did magic ever need sense to work? No all a good spell or incantation needed, was the power and of course a group of idiots to recite the thing. It didn't really matter if they understood it or not.

'I take the place, o the Queen of Winter.'

Mab said, sat at their head, her pale eyes almost lifeless and blank – she stared at that glowing gem like it was the very last hope of her entire existence. Which considering their current predicament, was more than a little ironic.

'The King of Winter.'

Next to her sat the Gondor Soldier, an extraordinary tall man that had taken his leader's place in the circle, when the other man had refused to comply with Mab's wishes. A fool's mistake if ever there was one, though in fairness being forced to sit still for no less than five counting hours – while outside the walls, the dead screeched and clawed at the stone of Dunlich. Still, to disobey one who held magic in her sway was an odd decision for any leader, Gondor must truly be the strangest of places.

'The Lady of Winter'

The next one down from the clearly uncomfortable soldier, was a woman dressed in a patchwork cloak of wolf fur. There were no wolves now in the land of the Clans, they had all been chased off either by the dead or the sight of Mab's magic – accounts did vary. She must have had that cloak for a while. Yet even sitting in this placid pose, Tatiana could see clearly the shine of her weapons under neath her wolf skin. For she was Medb, Chief of the Wolf Clan and there was no greater warrior in all the world.

'The Knight of Winter.'

Next over in the circle was a man who looked as thin as death – a dark haired wraith that would have not seemed so uncomfortable in the company of the dead. He wore a thin cloak and the bright red sash marking him as a bard of the Onex Clan. Ankou, she believed his name was – she remembered Mab barking it at him when she told him to leave his lyre by the door.

'The Knight of Summer.'

Another man made up the fifth member of the circle – his hair as red as the other's sash but truly that was the only similarity to the man that sat beside him. An elegant face that would have seemed intimidating if it had not been split open by the largest, and most warm-hearted smile that Titania had ever beheld. Corineus, a strange name for the leader of the Hawk Clan – a minor clan that normally would not been consulted with such important matters of the land. But then, Mab had insisted – and Mab always got her way.

'The Lady of Summer.'

The circle's sixth companion was a woman so small, one might – if they were of a foolish disposition – have mistaken her for a child. Thin, and weak seeming the red fur of her fox hood almost entirely obscured her face. And yet the kind dark eyes of Healer Varrey of the Fox Clan could not be so easily obscured.

'The King of Summer.'

Sitting beside Titania herself was a man who bristled with rage – he wore the sharp rounded armour of…the Bear Clan. One of the last of them, though she did not think him a chief or a leader. He was just a fighter, the only one of the Bear Clan that had survived the dead - she wasn't entirely sure of his name, but she thought she'd heard one of the others greet him as Cai when he'd sat down.

'I take my place as the Queen o Summer…may you accept our humble service, as recompense for what we ask of you today o light who made us all.'

And the last, and truly the least of the circle, was Titania herself. A simple sheep herder with no proper clan. The Sheep Clan wasn't really one big clan after all – though by far they had the most people to their name - just a loose collection of unnamed minor clans who happened to all work in the service of sheep.

All of them gathered around a glowing yellow ball, waiting for it to do something.

Entirely ridiculous.

And then Mab started to speak.

'Hear our voices,

'As they travel across the veil between our world and the next'

And the others began to chant: 'And the next, and the next.' Making even the blank faced Mab quirk her lips up ever so slightly. They were still chanting, all of them but Titania could no longer understand it, words that seemed to mean nothing at all drifted out of the other's mouths and all Titania could think was that this was getting farcical, even for magic.

Outside the muffle of the stone, she could just hear the scrape of the dead's steel and she felt herself tremble. This was it, this was how she would die -Dunlich would fall to the dead and the greatest leaders of the land would be helpless, because they were all here chanting this nonsense. And Titania could do nothing to stop it, she couldn't even get up – for her legs felt like two stone columns crumbled to the floor. She couldn't even close her mouth to stop the nonsense words tumbling out, all she could do was stare at the glass orb as it began to glow brighter. So bright, never before had she seen it's like – it was a beautiful thing, glowing and warm – it was like looking at joy, or love or all the good things in the world. And yet, as the glowing aura around it began to expand Titania could see…almost as if it was playing out in front of her…all the misery the thing, this beautiful thing had caused the world. The lives, families, civilisations that have been destroyed all to hold a beautiful thing…a beautiful thing that in fact couldn't even be touched by mortal or blood-stained hands.

It was like it was weeping – the strange glowing jewel in the middle of the floor. Weeping for all the lives it had ruined, and all the lives it had yet to ruin. The light in me, it seemed to whisper to Titania, is neither good nor evil it simply is; but that won't stop the Morgoths, and the Fëanors, and the Wizards of the world from using it, using their love of it to ruin everything else. The only way to escape that fate, at least for this jewel, was to run away – run away to a place where no one could ever touch it again.

And that, Titania realised with a start, as Mab started to speak again, was exactly what the Sorceress was going to do. Raising her thin, skeleton like hands up to the roof of the chamber where…had that…had the chamber's ceiling always been that swirling void of light. Looking deep into the thing, the lights half blinding her with the strain of it, Titania could not recall. How long had they been chanting? Did they do this? Or did the jewel, and suddenly Mab's voice rose in intensity.

'I feel the light that pours within you, oh great jewel of the forgotten ones, let it overflow and pour fourth from this world into the next. I beg you, creatures of the light from beyond, let the people of the clans, the people of this land both born and otherwise pass over. Let us come and make our dwelling within your realm, within your world for this one has forsaken us.'

'Forsaken us, forsaken us, forsaken us.'

Cried the others, though not Titania – for she was much too feared, feared of the swirling wind that whipped about the eight, feared about the swirling mass of lights over their head and feared…oh yes, very much feared of the snow that now fell from the roof.

'And as our bodies burn, we shall cross over and leave this world behind, leave it to the ghosts and the halflings.' Mab screeched.

'To the ghosts and the halflings, to the ghosts and the halflings' the others bellowed.

Outside the door there was the sound of screams, and clatter…and Tatiana knew then, stronger than she had ever known anything before in her life that the walls had fallen and the dead, the dead had come to claim their jewel. In her cowardice she closed her eyes and waited for the sound of the door to bang open, and for the feel of the sword in her back.

BANG!

Someone kicked the door open, oh yes but there was no sword. No scream of the dead, there was just the silence of expectation and the sound of…of Mab. She was laughing, wild and manic, she was laughing in someone's face. And given the current situation, it was not difficult to guess who that someone was.

'Oh, how the wee blue wizard will weep when I speak my final word on the matter,' giggled Mab like a girl of twelve counting years. 'But suddenly our work here is finished my lord, and we shall not see each other again till long since this current tale is past. But never you fear, for there is much still for Mab…Queen of of all fae folk…to be about. So, I say goodbye Fëanor, intermedium lord of the Dead, please give my son my best when you meet upon the battlefield. He may not remember me, but you will, aye you'll always remember Mab.'

'And why,' said another voice as cold as the very earth of a grave. 'Would I remember a trull like you?'

Mab cackled at that.

'Why, because a lord always remembers the thief of his treasure. Goodbye sir, never again will your ilk steal a body of the clans.'

The gem in the middle of the circle flashed a terrible mix of orange, gold and red and suddenly…suddenly there was no Titania the sheep herder anymore, for her body was gone, vaporized into dust. So stood true for everybody standing under the cage of Mab's trees. The dead screamed and wailed as their meat puppets disintegrated around them, they screamed loud enough to wake the living two continents over. But Fëanor did not care, because Fëanor cared about very little in this new half-life of his. The only thing…the only creature that Fëanor was capable of loving, the only thing keeping him somewhat sane – was gone. There was no jewel, no brilliant gem for him to hold and cradle to his body, even though it burnt him something terrible now.

His Silmaril was gone, they had stolen it from him…these…these mortals. Mortals…mortal men, mortal women, mortal dwarves and elves, and everything in between; they had stolen his gems from him. Every single time he had them in his hands they would come, those mortal creatures, and snatch them away. Now one flew in the sky – too far away for even Fëanor to reach. Another, had been stolen away by an old twit wearing a stupid blue robe and now finally, his last Silmaril – the Silmaril that had called to him from its ocean prison – that had been snatched too. By filthy mortal thieves…well they might be safe from his hands for now, but he would make all their kind pay for what they had done to him.

He would make them all pay – the living, the dead, they would all suffer his wrath.

And what of the thieves themselves you may ask, where had Mab spirited all those mortal souls under her cage? Well, to that I say, when you need a place to hide, to truly hide, what better place then away with the fairies.