This is the end, for real this time.

Or the beginning, depending on how you look at it.

XI. Epilogue: The Third Option

The stars shone distant and cold, but to him it seemed like a twinkling mockery, an unspoken demand.

You have your choices presented before you. Choose.

Submission or annihilation?

Fiddler's Green, Chapter VI: Under the Stars

Outside was nothing he could have prepared himself for in all the ages of the world. It was nothing, neither light nor dark. The closest thing that would come to describing it would be drifting in the ocean so deep where the sun does not reach, but without the water and without the sense of up and down. And yet this description would be insufficient because nothing could describe the absolute absence of everything. There was nothingness around him and this nothingness did not bear anything beside itself. And he was an intruder, imposing himself on the emptiness (in every moment, all the time, but it was like a footprint in the sand that was being washed away by the waves as quickly as he could set his foot down into the sand.).

After some time (if it existed at all here), the attempts to wipe him away became more persistent, the emptiness around him trying to flatten the ripple his appearance had caused in the eternal calm of the Outside, trying to smooth out the disturbance that was upsetting the unending, timeless and absolute equilibrium.

And yet here he was, an intruder, a stranger, a conqueror boldly setting down his foot on new land, only there was no land to speak of and he was lost in this abyss of stillness and death which had devoured space and time long ago or had never been subjected to it in the first place.

He felt the resistance, but he did not budge. There was something out there, not a being, but the opposite—a non-being, invisible like the black corpse of a collapsed star, because nothing that entered its domain ever escaped, invisible, lurking, deadly and discernible only by its unrelenting pull toward equilibrium, stillness and cessation of life.

Some nothing shifted out there and he knew he had attracted attention.

He stood his ground, as he always had, refusing to be wiped away, refusing to come undone and refusing to bow to the rules of this not-place. The pull to tear him apart became stronger. He had become a nuisance.

Something encircled him, drew its circles closer and closer and he could feel the pull now—it was above him, below him, everywhere and it was terrifying. It was the undertow of something that was greater than worlds straining to settle back into absolute nothingness.

The vortex around him swirled around a centre that became smaller and smaller. Bits of him were being ripped away, memories were evaporating into darkness, his names erased by the black ocean around him that wanted him gone, still and lifeless like everything around him in this a horrifying peace in this lightless graveyard of Unbeing.

"What you are planning to do will take everything from you even if you succeed," Tom Bombadil had said.

He had listened. And he had learned. When you were caught in a spider web, struggling only served to pull the strings of cobweb tighter around yourself. No god would have survived this and no Vala. Not even Melkor who, for a while, had been more than his siblings and had allowed his thoughts to walk uncharted trails, would have prevailed here. Too strongly ingrained was their need to be themselves, to hold on to their spirit, their soul, their names, their powers. Their greatest power would turn out to be their doom here, because what you possessed could be taken away.

You could not face a wave head on and hope to stand. You had to roll with it and emerge after it had shattered on the coastline. The grass bends in the storm, the oak breaks. In order to win, he had to lose. Utterly and completely.

He bent and let go, leaving himself open, dropping his defences and allowing all that he was to pour out into the void.

I am Mairon the Admirable who was there when the world was built and the pillars of creation were beaten from the molten core of the first suns at the very Beginning.

I am Aulendil the Disciple of the Great Smith who forged Elbereth's eldest crown and set ten stars upon her brow.

Like werewolf attracted by the smell of blood the Unbeing crept closer, drawn in by his surrender.

I am Annatar the Giver of Gifts under whose beck of the hand empires rose and fell.

I am the High Priest of Númenor who was there when the sea came to claim it and escaped unscathed.

I am Gorthaur the Cruel, I am the Lord of Werewolves, the Necromancer of Dol Guldur.

I am the Lord of the Rings.

The vortex coiled around him like a snake and devoured him.

I am Mairon the Admirable who was there when the world was built and the pillars of creation were beaten from the molten core of the first suns at the very Beginning. I am Aulendil the Disciple of the Great Smith who forged Elbereth's eldest crown and set ten stars upon her brow. I am Annatar the Giver of Gifts, I am the High Priest of Númenor…

Bits and pieces were ripped off him and out of him, his arms and legs, and his spirit. The pain was like a pillar of molten lead, but he stood still, with his eyes closed and endured, teeth gritted and jaw locked.

"Your determination must not waver." Tom Bombadil's parting words rang out to him; an echo of another world.

am Mairon the Admirable –

... when the world was built and the pillars of creation were beaten from the molten core

of the first suns ... at the very Beginning.

... I am Aulendil the Disciple of the Great Smith who forged Elbereth's eldest crown and set ten stars upon her brow. I am Annatar the Giver of Gifts, I am

- of Númenor…

The vortex tore at him and he could feel himself growing thinner and thinner, like a single drop of water being spread and dragged out to cover all of the earth. Piece upon piece was taken away.

I am Mairon

- when the world was built and

the pillars of creation were beaten from the molten core of the-

first suns - Beginning. I am

- Aulendil the Disciple of the Great Smith who forged Elbereth's -

stars upon her brow. I am Annatar the Giver of Gifts-

Númenor…

It was tearing at him, biting, locking its jaws into his limbs and chest and he was coming apart at the seams, his physical form disintegrating at last, mutilated and torn and ripped.

I am

- world and

the pillars of creation-

first suns - Beginning. I am

- Aulendil the Disciple of

the Great Smith who forged Elbereth's -

stars upon her brow. I am Annatar the Giver of Gifts-

Númenor...

I am

-creation

first suns - Elbereth's - stars upon her brow. I am Annat…

Thoughtlessly, wild, frenzied, the Nothingness kept wiping him out, coiling itself tighter and tighter around him, unaware that it was working toward its down doom. But it did not think about what it was digging up by peeling away layer and layer of names and memories. It did not know what it was unearthing, because how could it? A living being could not comprehend nothingness and it was true the other way around. The Unbeing did not know what lay at the centre of someone who was alive and had let go of all of his outer defences in favour of protecting what lay inside (like a commander allowing the enemy to storm the keep, only to trap him on a killing field between the walls of the inner and outer ring.) The metaphor surfaced and was immediately ripped away like a leaf in a storm. For a moment he very nearly hesitated, his instinct rearing up and urging him to cling to it, but then he remembered Tom's warning not to doubt and he let it go.

I am

suns

Elbe-

stars.

I am A-

The Unbeing kept devouring, snapping at the last bits of him, when he suddenly slammed his will against its attack and the Nothingness recoiled, exuding sense that would have resembled confusion in something that was alive and sentient. Clearly, it was against every rule that he was able to force it back at this point. The Unbeing circled him, roiling, coiling around the remains of what had once been a Maia, a spirit of fire, a deceiver, a traitor, a torturer, a warlord … but he was no longer any of that. There was a silence of a greater kind, a stop, like a great, incredibly slow and deep heartbeat stopping. It was then that the Unbeing realised:

There was nothing more it could take away.

But there was something that remained.

I am.

The words burned through the darkness like a pillar of white-blazing flame, not a statement, not an identity, but only an expression of pure, unfettered will and truth, undeniable, untouchable, boundless and eternal.

The nothingness recoiled. The Unbeing shrank back, hesitating, unbelieving, in the face of its own antithesis it had created.

I am.

It was a claim of being, a sliver of light in the dark, not tied to a single being, not tethered to an identity, not fettered and weighed down by fears of small beings that needed to hold on to something in order to exist.

It was anything and nothing, so great and yet so elusive that neither darkness nor death nor the void could touch it.

It was defiance thrown into the face of an enemy, it was a seemingly defeated warrior rearing up once more, the triumphant call of a silver horn when a new sun rose behind a black horizon.

He reformed, but it was not as who or what he had been earlier. He was different, unbound, unfettered. He was.

Slowly, with a slight effort of will—because that and being was all he was (and it was enough to triumph over the darkness and nothingness a billion times as big as him, for even the slightest spark of life was enough to lighten the deepest dark, if just a little bit)—with a slight effort of will he regained a form.

It was similar to what he had been earlier, but it was not constrained by boundaries any longer. He was endless now, eternal, a pillar of white flame that rose light-years in every direction.

FOOL, he spoke, voiceless and yet his words carried into the last corner of the Unlight, the Unbeing, the Doom that was all around him. His lips curled in a smile, triumphant and slightly feral.

BEGONE, THIS IS NO LONGER YOUR DOMAIN. YOU HAVE NO LONGER ANY POWER HERE.

And the emptiness fled before him, retreating from him, far, far away where he could not reach it.

And then he was alone.

Truly alone.

No one came to challenge him.

Everything around him was calm.

If the dark ocean around him at been whipped by winds and storm before, he was now standing on the surface of absolutely still water, flat and glazing like a mirror. Everything was calm… and yet... and yet brimming with expectation.

(A bowstring about to let an arrow fly.)

(A rope pulled taut to the breaking point.)

(A branch about to snap in two.)

There was something akin to air, and it was vibrating, waiting, like something to break loose and burst forth any moment now.

Something was about to happen.

He looked around in the void surrounding him. It was about time to fill it.

He waved his hand around in a circle and there was a sphere that sunk and stopped to float a few inches over the palm of his hand. He watched the sphere inside of which light and darkness intermingled and the occasional sheen of fire burst forth. It was turning and brimming with immense power, something incredibly huge compressed into an immeasurably small place under impossible pressure, forcing its way outward, but held back by his will and not escaping… yet.

A slight smile played around his lips and it was genuine.

Submission or annihilation, indeed. Keep your choices, I have made my own. I choose freedom.

There was only one thing about these situation that he regretted and that was that, by definition, they happened without an audience. How magnificent it would have been to have the others watching him, see what he could do now with a little more than a wave of his hand and an effort of will.

Well. He shrugged it off. You can't have everything.

Still, who was to say that he had to forgo a little bit of dramatics? This was his undertaking and his stage. He might as well make it memorable and see to it that the story was told in the right way later on.

The sphere was floating between his hands, aloft between his fingers that surrounded it but did not touch it. He could feel it pulsing with energy and vibrating with power contained in a space that was much too small, just waiting to be unleashed. Fires were lighting up and dying inside, clouds in and mist of every colour sunk and rose, obscuring patches of darkness, glinting lights.

How do we begin?

He thought about it for a moment, his head inclined to one side, watching the sphere ponderously.

Music? No, that had been done already. There was something else, another way of beginning that was more appealing to him, an echo of the nature he had given up.

Then he smirked. Ah, I know.

He raised the sphere higher until it was floating over his head, still holding it pressed together by force of his will. A last moment of silence, a bated breath.

And he released it. The sphere bloomed outward at the speed of light and for a moment everything was white flame. Opposing forces of gravity and repulsion, light and matter and a mixture of both.

The incredible pressure set the air itself aflame.

Stars were born and burst into flame in the darkness.

Trails of debris were spiralling around them, becoming denser, taking form.

They turned into spheres of stone and gas that formed themselves into planets racing around young suns.

Solar systems converged and rotated around greater stars, mass and time deformed space, creating an invisible landscape of hills and dales, trapping stars and planets in their depressions, making them circle each other like little wheels in a giant clockwork of fire and light.

Gravitation pulled it together and galaxies formed in the blink of an eye, wheeling through space like disks made of billions of diamonds zooming past him like lighting.

Clouds billowed and built themselves, electricity building inside them and releasing themselves in bursts of rays of light that traversed clusters of galaxies and destroyed entire colonies of stars before they had even finished maturing.

It was a the first storm, the Great Storm, it was fire and light and immense power.

He stood in the middle of his new universe and watched, a spectator of his own play and although he knew the script he watched with awe as it played out.

Finally, after the initial eons of chaos had passed and the mad race of rotating galaxies and planets had calmed down to a slower speed that would carry them through the ages that were to follow, he moved.

There was one last thing to do and the one thing he had been waiting for, trying his patience one last time while he waited for the storm to pass. He was shaking with excitement himself, and he was just so able to contain his power after the initial rush had subsided, because this was what he wanted, what he was good at, although he might never be able to repeat on a scale so grand as before. But scale was not everything.

Most of the time it was not the quantity that mattered, but the quality. And in sense of quality, this would be his greatest work.

He reached out to an unassuming little planet that was all stone and magma. It was not great and it was not remarkable, but it was as good as any other. He had made his choice. His mind was set on the unassuming sphere of magma and stone and there was no hesitation as he reached out and touched his finger to the little planet ever so slightly.

LET THERE BE LIFE.

"Take me out to the black,
tell them I ain't coming back.
Burn the land and boil the sea,
you can't take the sky from me."

"The Ballad of Serenity" by Sonny Rhodes

Thanks to everyone who stayed here until the end of the epilogue. Let me know what you thought of it, whether you liked it or not or how you would have gone about writing the ending for this story. How did you like the third option? It's been in the making for a long time, but maybe there's the odd person who was still surprised (in a good way, I hope).

I hope you enjoyed reading Fiddler's Green as much as I did enjoy writing it.

Again, thank you and see you around.