+++VALINOR+++

New walls were rising fast around the camp where the army was gathering. Built of perfectly-cut snow-white marble, they reflected the swiftly descending Sun brilliantly like polished gold. Within the walls seven citadels were rising faster yet. Around the walls were lesser stockades, which were bristling with activity no less than the great fortress standing above them.

Three hundred thousand of the Eldar now formed up the host, which was growing by hundreds each day. The Noldor were still the overwhelming majority and many veterans from the old wars against Morgoth had rushed - uncannily so - back into armour for the final war due to be made. The Onodrim had after some deliberation decided to join the army, and the Eagles of Manwe stood perched on every pinnacle, cliff face and crag of the Encircling Mountains, prepared to aid in the fight in their domain. Servants of Orome and Tulkas had joined as well.

The Naugrim had been an unexpected development. The children of Aule, gone from Endor, seemed to have taken on new flesh and were building most of its arms and armour - as well as electing to join in the campaign against Morgoth.

Looking from the training-field to a west-looking tower, Ancalimon could only wonder if he was part of the force which would arrive to set foot on Endor. The greater part would go there across Belegaer at a time of the Vala Manwe's order, but a third would remain in Valinor to fend off the Black Enemy in their homeland. He hoped he would see Arda brought to its fulfillment. If the Men of Arda went outside the Music's foretelling, changed that ordainment of the future - Morgoth could win. Morgoth would destroy all things and leave nothing but a barren waste of elemental matter and tortured void where his will alone dictated possibility - a hollow wasteland which would be destroyed and remade at the arbitrary whims of a deranged god.

He could not bear the thought of such. It was too horrible, too infinitely horrific, to even begin touching on in thought. And the Eldar would bear it more than any others.

+++UTUMNO, APRIL 15TH+++

Captain Ivanov looked down the cyclopean staircase and down into the abyssal darkness beyond. The camp had been expanded massively - a large collection of Abrams and T-72 tanks now pointed their gun barrels right into the shadows beyond. Machine-gun nests and sentry towers waited silently and patiently. Explosives surrounded the pillars of this hall, waiting on his word to collapse the whole damn place and seal this godforsaken underworld pit till the end of time itself. Last but not least, about 2,000 soldiers - good men from Russia, America, England - waited for an attack.

Ivanov felt something when he looked into the pit. Something long dead; a monster whose blazing reptilian flesh had been killed, but whose corrupted spirit had fled here into the deepest, darkest crypts of this underground hell to nurse its malice and strength and take on new, glorious and unholy life. There was a silence from below - a calm before a summer storm. But he knew that there were things here below, more terrible than the man-like creatures found in the higher levels, that were waiting to come out. He knew because when he looked into the blackness of that abyss, he felt those things, their malice and cruelty oozing out to his mind until he turned his eyes away. They were in pits so deep all light failed to reach them, closer by far to the burning sea of fire miles underneath his feet than the surface of the Earth.

And they longed to rise.

+++SOUTHERN GERMANY, APRIL 17+++

The wolf population was growing faster than ever imagined. In the latest week alone it had increased by 300 percent according to statistics. Now that rapid, impossible growth was slowing, but still the amount of attacks was increasing. And there were stories spreading now - of solitary wolves attacking and killing bears. Other tales were spreading fast as well - of massive wolves, rhino-sized, and even larger creatures with flaming eyes and black coats of blood-matted fur.

Franz was a practical man and had not taken those stories seriously. But just Saturday, looking for a particularly nice stag to no effect, he'd come across a police car on its side, peeled open like a crab with the clawed and mangled body of an officer spilling out of the rent doors in a pool of human blood. Now he was going to try his luck against these wolves. The population needed control anyway.

A howl went from his right side. He fired, and hit a nearby branch as the startled animal ran off. More howls came in from every direction, the forest quickly filled with wolf-cries. Soft, padded footsteps circled round the clearing. Fiery eyes blazed out from the undergrowth and high branches. He was surrounded. Suddenly, before he could think of calling for help, a larger-than-normal wolf leapt out and grabbed at his leg. Screaming, he tried to fend it off, but it was strong and the grip of its jaw was iron.

Bleeding, disorientated and terrified, he saw the wolves now showing themselves clearly, red eyes gleaming with malevolence. In that moment he knew that such a joy as a quick death was most certainly not to be his.

The screaming continued all through the night and was heard by nearby villages all through the forest. When police investigated the next day all they found was a trail through the undergrowth, a churned-up patch of bare earth and what was left of a half-eaten human hand.

+++CENTRAL ASIA, APRIL 18 2012+++

They called him Hafizullah Ahmadzai, or to be short, "the Blackheart". A warlord on the ill-policed frontier between Afgahanistan and Uzbekistan, his men were fierce fighters with a 7-year dominion over a wide array of towns and villages. They gave him their women, their food, their medicines - if they did not, he and his men just took what they wanted. Now though, he had bigger ambitions.

Three days ago, a voice had come to him, appearing as a man-shaped creature of endlessly swirling sand, its eyes blazing with smokeless fire.

"I would offer a bargain from Melkor, the King of the World," it had said.

"What do you seek to offer?" he had snorted. "Who is this King to aid me?"

"The King is Giver of Freedom, He Who Arises in Might. If you follow his instructions, as I give them, He will aid you in battle. He will give you a kingdom greater than all others - He will give all gifts to you, even the women of the West as concubines, if you but join yourself with Him and do as He wills."

"Very well, I agree. But give me a sign by three days that he abides by his bargain."

"That will happen in two," the spirit replied, then crumbled away into the sand.

The following day, a freak sandstorm had led to a great victory against a rival warlord - his forces joined to the Blackheart's growing army - and the spirit's voice had said that such had been his doing.

So now they were prepared to conquer much more territory, drive out the filthy kuffar Westerners, and begin to put the world under the feet of its King. So the spirit had promised, so would it be.