Deep in the caves of the dead, lost to time – but likely some time after the dead had conquered the living.

The man had fallen further than any could say. He had been born in the dark, in the cage of his mother's making, and now he would die in his own.

Yes, someone had destroyed the entrance to the paths of the dead, and had trapped him and his child in here. And yet no one had forced him to walk into the paths of the dead, he had willingly given up the land of light and sun to step into this strange place.

This place where ghosts lived, as they never truly did anywhere else.

And now he had fallen even further than that.

Stupid, to be led so by a path he didn't need a light to see. And yet he had fallen off it still. And now here he lay, his back and his neck broken in ways that would never mend. For he had not the time in this life left to let them.

This was how he died, how he ended his adventures in the light and the dark. Still, despite this embarrassing end he did not regret his life. He had love, and friendship, and more than anything he'd gotten to see his girl, his little Hela grow.

And even though all he could hear was her horrified screaming now, that she had come across his broken and dying body, he was comforted. She would be safe here. Amongst the dead, as perhaps she never would amongst the living.

She was her mother's daughter, after all.

And with that one last sardonic thought, the son of Mab and the Leomhann died.

But don't be sad, because that was hardly the end of the story.

Somewhere in a place only your darkest nightmares could dream up

My dear readers, there comes a time in every life, when we must wake up and look back on the carnage we have caused. Of course, with most people this wake up is only metaphorical. Unless of course you happen to be afflicted with the dreaded sleep-stab virus, a condition here meaning the desire to grab pointy objects and stab them in the general vicinity of your sleeping loved ones. However, seeing as this is purely an affliction – or convenient excuse – of the Took line, it would be highly unlikely that this is the reason you woke up and suddenly realised just how much damage you've caused.

It certainly wasn't the case, for the sleeping giant that was Námo, Lord of all Mandos.

A dark fog seeped over his mind, and like a stranger waking from a dream he stretched his legs and cracked his knuckles, like this should mean something. It doesn't, he's too numb for that. This body, strange and beautiful as it is, doesn't even feel like it's his anymore. It belongs to someone else, someone who hasn't seen the light of day for…for so very long now.

Standing up at last, a new feeling began to seep into his bones… pain. Starting from his head – which felt like it had a thousand pick axes hammering away inside it – a whole wreath of new pain and discomfort accosted his body. One step forward, and it sobbed to be able to lie back down again, but he couldn't – he needed to find her, he needed to see her, he needed to ask…to beg her to tell him, what had gone on while he'd been so very fast asleep.

For you see Námo, awake as he finally was, remembered none of it. He remembered none of what he let happen to his kingdom – such as it was – or what had happened to his people. When he stepped past and through the thick, broken fog that was – or rather had been – his home, he no longer recognised it.

This place was a dream, this place was…was worse than the most foul places in Middle-Earth. Worse because it had never been intended to be so, not by Eru at least. It had been meant as a place of rest, healing and most of all a place for repentance for the fëa who simply could no longer stand the pain of life anymore. Or alternatively the fëa who had left life in a rather bloody fashion, fëa like…fëa like Fëanor and his brood…oh Valar what had he let happen?

It is almost too terrible to describe the sights that the once great lord of Mandos saw, as he stumbled through the empty shell that had once been his kingdom. For you see, he had not been an idle fixture in this destruction, this had not been done behind his back, but with his willing consent.

Perhaps, it is better if you turn back now. Better you go and read something less terrifyingly terrible. For once you see, once you see the sorry state that this Valar's madness has left everything he has ever loved in, well, you may surely wish that you had listened and turned back before he reached that door.

Her door.

'Vairë! Vairë! Vairë!'

'Be gone wretch, I've had enough of you and your torments for this world. Leave me be.'

But Námo, did not stop, for more than fourteen hours of their time – there's no telling how long that would have been in mortal years – did Námo, great lord of the dead pound on that door and scream his wife's name.

And it wasn't till the fifteenth hour, when his voice finally ran out, did she answer him with anything, besides the firm order to go away.

'Why, why should I open the door? So that you might attack me again, so that you might send those wretches after me? Please I am no fool Mandos, I am the Lady of this realm no matter what you might scream at me. I say what doors must be opened. Please leave Mandos, I am far too tired to repeat this fight today.'

'What wretches? Vairë, Vairë, I am alone. What…what has happened! Vairë, Vairë, Vairë? Come out here now and speak with me. This land is broken, it's hollow and mist filled, all around me there are holes and cracks in it that shouldn't be. It's as if a whole horde of Fëanorians have broken free, only this time they didn't bother to cover up their tracks.'

'Yeah, no shit.'

'Vairë, please, this nonsense has to end. Please come out and tell me what you have done?'

'What have I done? What have I done? You must be joking.'

'Well, who else? I've just woken from my grand midday nap, surely it must have been…but then if not you than who? Vairë, open this door right now and tell me, did they break in? Did they hurt you my love, did they…did they…?'

'Yes, yes to it all, but then you know that already husband. Now leave, leave this place and never return before they come and find you.'

'Come and find me, what on Middle-Earth do you mean…?'

A thump at the back of his head, and once again the world grew dark for the lord of Mandos.

The world became wonky, and what he saw as his vision slowly faded in and out, he would never forget so long as he lived. Because it was not a demon, or a wretch like Morgoth that had hit him, that had prevented him from reaching his wife …it was his sister.

The large sorrowful eyes of the lady of mercy looked down at her brother, prone on the ground, and for the first time since they had both leapt fully formed from the mind of Eru Ilúvatar, she did not weep.

'Take him away, bind his wrists and legs, and take him away. Too long we've stood by, I'll not let you do this to yourself a third time brother. I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry.'

It is to the bright light of Manwe's halls that the Lord of the Dead woke again. Ah Manwe's Halls, a place that had been filled with the same sights and sounds since time first began: eagles crying from up on high, the faint flapping of a moth's wings and as always, the unmissable sound of Varda being proven right once again.

'How many times must we go over this my love? How many times must you turn away all faithful council until you find one that fits your petty world view?'

'Petty? Petty, my star? Is it petty to wish for a better world, is it petty to see past squabbling to a world where all that anyone needs is love?'

'You seem to think my love, that you are the only one who values peace, but you are not. You are simply the only one who values the ease of stupidity over the hard work of actually having a working mind in your head.'

Silence and then

'Mandos please open your eyes, I know you are awake.'

'It's my fault, I should have seen it coming, he was never right in the head and now left alone for so very long, in that dank dreadful kingdom of his.'

'Nienna, shut up.'

Vairë, Vairë, Vairë.

'Yes, Nienna, shut up.' Snapped Varda. 'The point of this hearing isn't to sob over your brother and blame yourself, all though feel free to do that afterwards, it's to establish a narrative for his crimes.'

Another voice, this one gentler and as deep as the very world itself, interrupted the queen of the Valar mid tirade.

'I thought the point of this meeting was to plan our assault on the reanimated graveyard his subjects have made of my beautiful earth.'

'Not everything is about you Yavanna.' Nienna snarled, tears still falling down her cheeks.

'Oh no by all means clearly this is about you Nienna, and your impossibly high guilt complex.'

Nienna's voice only shook slightly with what she said next.

'It's not my fault if none of you want to talk about the Oliphant in the room, but I'm going to say it. This wouldn't have happened if we were more attuned to what was bloody well going on in each other's realms. I mean for Eru's sake, the dead were literally burrowing through my brother's walls and no one fucking did anything about it until they were literally polluting the mortal realm.'

Mandos stilled, a deep growing horror creeping into his head as he listened to his sisters' words.

'My subjects? My realm, what have they been doing while their master has been away?'

'Mandos?' said the deep voice of the lady of the earth. 'Do you not remember what you did?'

'What I did? What did I do?'

Perhaps you have ever asked a question which seems quite logical to you, but undeniably stupid to every single other living, breathing person in the room. Alone, in the middle of them all, the great lord of the dead could not escape the fact that what he'd just said had been undeniably stupid.

'Well, now that we've finally reached this point, what's to be done?'

Yavvanna's voice was strong, and particularly loud in her best of moods, now it was like the crash of thunder just before you were struck by lightning.

'Isn't it obvious,' Tulkus, lord of the hunt. 'We must whip him until all the insanity bleeds out from his body.'

Yavvanna laughed.

'Then clearly, we must whip you first, Tulkus.'

More laughter, and Námo felt like they were reaching in to his very mind and clambering him into insanity again. Eventually he simply could not stand it anymore, and he had to scream.

'Please, will someone tell me what I did!'

Silence, nothing but an enraged silence followed this outburst. It was rude enough to interrupt your fellow Valar when you weren't the one that had caused the mess in the first place, Eru only knew what they would do to him now. Perhaps Tulkus' whipping option would seem far too gentle of a punishment for such a creature as he.

It was Yavvanna who finally broke the silence at last, not with another yell, but a tired sigh.

'Your subjects, that is the fëa that once populated the realm of the dead, have somehow seeped through your walls and found their way over to Middle-Earth. They roam over its lands, over its people, with the unstoppable force that only the spirit of fire could provoke. They sap the will, no they sap the very life itself from my forests, from the rocks, and from the very ground that they tread on.'

Terror filled the once great Valar, for he no longer needed the great queen of the earth's description, he could see the devastation his people…no, that he caused, whenever he closed his eyes now. He had been weak, and foolish and he had let this happen. If he had only acted quicker, if he had only followed his instincts the night before and strengthened the walls, he might have…he might have prevented all this devastation from ever taking place at all. But he hadn't, too tired, too old, too useless and bored with his lot in life.

Let it wait, he had told his Maiar, tomorrow is a new day and we will all work clearer without the dark of the night clouding our thoughts. Oh, what a fool, what a weak, foul little fool he had been. He hadn't stopped that…that monster from escaping, he hadn't protected the others from his corrupting influence…and then, to top it all off, he had gone to sleep.

'Námo, Námo, have you been listening to me?' Varda's voice, high and pleasant even when it was screaming at you, which was a very fortunate thing indeed for the likes of Manwë. 'No, I can see from your face that you have not, please pay attention, it's vital that you understand what I'm trying to tell you. Because Námo, none of these terrible things could have been possible, or so it's stated by your terrified Maiar without, not only your willing consent, but your active participation.

'You have not been sleeping all this time Mandos, you've been very much awake, can't…can't you remember any of it. You stripped your own walls, and burrowed your people out, and you lead them on the battlefield against the humans. You didn't just let this happen Námo, you made it happen.'

We could go into terrifying, and highly disturbing detail on everything that the lord of the dead learned then, all the terrifying things his body had been doing without the knowing consent of his sanity. I could tell you how he had led them, that is the members of the sentencing committee, into the cold dark shell that had once been the great halls of Mandos. I could describe in horrifying detail how they found the great gaping hole that was the Passage of the Dead. The strange twisted metals that made up both sides of that strange cave like tunnel's wall, still coated with the blood of passing fëa.

I could tell you all of this and so much more, how they squirmed at first sight of it, how the high Queen of the Valar trembled with rage and her husband hung his head in dismay. I could tell you how the mist gathering around their feet, despite being devoid of all signs of fëa, still held their untapped screams of terror. I could tell you how many of his own Maiar fled, hiding their faces in both terror and shame, before their names were dragged through the mud, just like their master's. And I could tell you that through it all, Vairë stood there, silent amongst her ever bickering brethren. Silent and still as the dead that her husband had once guarded so diligently, I could tell you how her rage, her anger and her sorrow had surpassed the description of such small and unmeaning names as those were. For Vairë had moved beyond hating her spouse, she did not love him anymore – for no one could, after seeing the sights that she had been forced to witness over the years – but her loathing, all her scorn and yes, even hatred was not directed at him.

No, she had accepted his explanation – for before this she had been the most accepting of souls – that he was not in control of his own faculties. That he had been completely mad, and therefore not solely accountable for his actions. No her hatred, her fierce seeking rage was not directed at the master of this land, but the land itself. Perhaps she had once loved this place, once cared for the inhabitants like they were her own charges – instead of just proxy by marriage – but those days had died. They had died the day those wisps of spirits, those feral dogs, had set upon her as she called for her husband's aid.

She did not hate him, but she would never again be able to love him, and it was all the fault of those wretched creatures. One thing was clear above all else, if she was ever given the chance to hunt them down her vengeance would finally be sated. And perhaps she would finally know peace.

Which is why she smiled, all the wider when Varda said:

'Right then, who's going to go through?'

But I shan't tell you…because you don't want to hear that.