"Abra, Abracadabra, I'm going to reach out and grab you..." the minstrels now sang. I came to the sudden realization that they did not have our best interests at heart.

"Do you hear that, Hobbit? Your assumption was correct! These foul sirens, these minstrels, they're mocking us!"

Strider expertly impaled the first face grasper that launched itself at him, but a second whipped its tail around his neck, crawling towards his mouth. He severed the tail from his person, but this resulted in howls of anguish as the acidic substance burned his flesh.

Radagast, in the meantime, attempted to use his power over animal life to send the beasts away, but, being not of this world, they failed to obey him.

Lacking weapons, he resorted to throwing glass jars.

"Every time you call my name, I heat up like a burning flame..." Maddening, that invisible minstre.

I drew my sword and marched past an egg, impaling the nearest beast that came my way.

The creatures became too numerous. I was forced to make a hasty retreat.

The king could not prepare for the next attack. The beast shot itself at him with a spring-like motion of its tail, and I thought for certain he would be no more.

Thwip.

The creature shrieked as it fell to the ground with an arrow through its body.

Thinking it to be Skalg, I whirled around to look.

I found myself staring at a pale figure with pointed ears.

An elf. Somehow he had crept into our midst without any of us even noticing.

In the course of seconds, his arrows felled half a dozen of the creatures. Though it required twice as many as one would need to fell a common animal, the speed still impressed me, comparable to the mechanized crossbow I'd been using. "Legolas!"

The elf gave me a curt nod, tossing me a ring.

I sucked in my breath with alarm. "What is this!"

"Steady thyself. Tis not the One Ring. It is the Colma Ettelea, the ring of strangeness. Its power enhances—"

I had been examining the ring as he spoke. Not unfamiliar. "I'm a wizard. Spare me your explanations." I slid the ring on my finger, pointing my staff at the hundreds of Face Graspers swarming on the ground.

Throughout my long and difficult quest for the ring, I have studied the lore concerning this artifact. I understood its temperamental sensitivity. Ergo, I chose the most basic of magical incantations, the simple fire summoning spell used to start campfires.

The conflagration erupting from the end of my staff would have inspired jealousy in a dragon. If Aragorn had not leapt aside at a crucial moment, I'm certain he would have resembled a roast hare in armor.

The eggs went up like candles, the beasts shriveling blackened like spiders on a blazing yule log.

For fear of Aragorn's safety, I had not allowed flame to sweep the entire chamber, which unfortunately meant that half the creatures escaped.

I shouted for him to move aside, but by then the spell had drained my constitution so much that I had dropped to my knees,leaning on my staff for support.

I gave the elf a weak smile. "Oh, and thank you."

Smirking, Legolas stepped around me, nocking an arrow.

Near fainting with exhaustion, I watched as king and aide wounded the remaining brutes, the elf's re-purposed arrows descending with such precision that the impaled the hostile creatures mere fractions of an inch from their limbs.

The minstrels now crooned about something called a "Cisco Kid," with a disarmingly cheerful sound.

My eyelids grew heavy, and I began to see visions...

Surrounded by Ring Wraiths, ones that only I could see, all kneeling in fealty before me.

Instead of being alarmed, I arrogantly supposed it only right for them to be doing so.

It's not the One Ring, I told myself. I can break free from its power any time that I wish.

A woman's voice spoke to me. "You have eluded me a long time, wizard, but your fears were ungrounded. A ring is a mere tool, only as good or as evil as the one who wields it. Do you doubt your self control so much as to deprive yourself of the very instruments you need to effect the greater good?"

"No," I whispered, both as a protest against those words and an agreement.

"This ring can do great things. Far greater than anything you know in the lore."

"No!" I ripped the ring away from my finger.

"It is not the one ring. Your will is greater than this pitiful Elvish ring. You can master it. You are The Great Wizard."

"Yes," I found myself saying. "It is a weaker ring..." I slid it back on my finger.

A Face Grasper crawled along the ground nearby, rearing up for a launch against my person.

Nob pointed. "Gandalf!"

I nodded dismissively.

"Stretch out your hand," the voice said.

"You can't tell me what to do."

"Fine," Nob groaned. "Let it wrap itself around your face. See if I care!"

"As you say," said the voice. "It is the weaker ring. No one is forcing you. But if you but stretch out your hand, you shall see the full extent of your power. Your foes in this cave shall all perish."

"It is I who am in control." I spread my hand in the direction of the creature. "The ring is weak."

A powerful force seized my arm.

The beast before me froze in its tracks, then shook as if in the throes of a violent earthquake.

I balled my hand into a fist, and the creature exploded in a spray of burning slime.

The triumphant cheering around me indicated that I had killed more than one, perhaps the entire army.

"What did you do!" Nob cried with excitement. "That was amazing!"

And that's when a giant red eye, surrounded by flame, appeared before me. "You fought me for so long, and why? Because of fear. Fear of what you didn't understand. Of what you can become."

"No! I destroyed you!"

"You can never destroy me. You destroy my puppets, I move on, and nothing changes."

Nob shook me. "Gandalf? Are you all right?"

I waved him away, not even looking at him.

"Your power weakens," I said to the eye.

"Does it?"

I had no answer for that.

"One egg remains from all these. Go there and see still more application of your power."

I rose to my feet, and found I could walk without the aid of my staff. I held it alongside my body like one would hold a broom.

Somehow I knew exactly where this egg was. I approached it, spreading my hand. A mouth opened on the top of the embryo.

A creature slowly crawled forth.

In gradual motions, I squeezed my fingers to my palm, and to my shock and horror found the thing mirroring my motions like a ghastly marionette.

"The power is yours, Gandalf. I grant you immense power, enough to bring peace to Middle Earth for a millenia..."

"Yes. A reign of peace!"

I only contemplated this for a moment before a pair of pale hands struck me in the head with my own staff. I collapsed on the floor.

I awoke in strange surroundings. A dark place, the area smelling of feed that had spent too long in a boot, boiled cabbage, and chemicals.

I lay in a peculiar sort of castle, decorated all about with sculptured bones and a type of advanced machinery unknown to anyone in the realm, with the exception of the dead priests in the skyboats.

My flesh tingled. I looked down and saw that my naked body had been immersed in a pit of entrails. I should have been disgusted, but the sensation felt oddly pleasant.

"Gandalf," a woman's voice said. Not the same one from the ring, for I noticed I wore no ring now, and saw no glowing eye.

"Gandalf."

A melodious, enticing voice. It caused my body to stir in ways I seldom knew.

In the dim light, a female figure approached the pit, clad in nothing, or next to nothing. My eyes admired her shapely legs. "It has been a long time since you have known the pleasures of a woman, wizard. Has it not?"

I swallowed, thinking only about her beauty, her shapely figure, her ample bosom...

She dropped down on her stomach, staring down at me, a finely featured elf with long curls of blonde hair that fell at her shoulders in gorgeous locks, long pointed ears, and solid black eyes.

"You have gone so long without a companion. A lone wolf, isolated from all."

Never breaking eye contact, she climbed over the edge of the pit, crawling down the wall head first. "Day by day, the loneliness eats at you."

She crawled down. "You watch the Hobbits and the townfolk at Minas Tirith going about their love festivals, watch them fall passionately for each other, and you think about what you cannot have."

She descended into the entrails.

"You think about what you once had. And then you think..."

Her hands slid across the points of her ears, and her face became immediately recognizable. Too recognizable. "Of the unattainable, the queen of the Elves herself."

Twas true. I trembled, helpless in the face of the one temptation I had no resistance against.

"Or maybe..." She waded closer, through the mound of guts, and her appearance suddenly altered, her hair turning a brilliant fiery red, shortening in length, as desirable as the first hairstyle. "You just long for someone like her."

I swallowed, thinking this too good to be true, but not wanting to disturb the illusion. "What do you want?" I both longed for and dreaded the answer.

She reached into the entrails that covered me, sliding her hands across my nakedness. "What do you think I want?"

The woman kissed me.

I didn't understand the situation, or what I was doing in this place, but I had ceased to care. Or bodies touched, pressing close together as we caressed each other.

"It has been a long time."

The woman responded by purring and rubbing her head against my neck.

As our bodies connected, partaking in the pleasurable motions associated with the first stages of the intimate act, I suddenly noticed something amiss.

The woman's flesh no longer felt soft and supple, but rather rigid like a suit of armor.

Worse, the head cradled in the dip of my neck was not red haired at all, but bald and black, and it had no eyes.

Horrified, I pushed it back, and found myself staring back at one of those insect-like lion beasts I'd encountered in the forest. I screamed.

"What is it, wizard?" the thing said in the woman's voice. "Don't like what you see?"

I stared speechlessly at the creature, simultaneously disgusted and frightened beyond all rational thought.

"Alone..." It stroked my cheek with a claw. "All alone. All those years without a single female for companionship..."

It kissed me again.

I kissed it back.