[Fordim Hedgethistle]

She threw off her attackers, and screaming with rage and pain and the disbelief of her mortality, Shelob scuttled up the walls of the chamber beyond the stinging blows of her prey’s steel. Her wounds ran freely now, splattering the creatures that had dared defy her with their survival. Her beautiful eyes were almost all gone, but there were yet enough to see. Her crippled and useless limbs dragged behind her, catching upon the jagged rocks of the cavern and sending new waves of agony through her shattered body, adding more fuel to the fire of her vengeance. She reached the summit of the cave and whirled to face them, and as she did her rage was so great that it was as though she was young once more in the first years of the sun – before the coming of the Elves and terrible Men into her abodes in the mountains, before the young upstart Sauron had taken up the cause of his dark master. At the memory of that time a light was kindled in her eyes and they began to glow with a hideous green light, like the exhalation of decay from a rotting corpse, and the beings trapped in the cavern with her were frozen once more in the terror of their plight. For a time that defied reckoning they stood thus, frozen and staring upward at her greatness, unable to move, and unable to look away. Her mighty sides heaved with hunger, and she shifted her remaining limbs raising a clatter that echoed into the vast emptiness of her eternal night. The light of her eyes grew, and she seemed to swell into a shape vast and formless, and it was as though her agony and her horror were food to her will, repairing her hurts and filling her with a new strength. To now she had hunted for food, and had sought only to sting and still her prey – but now she cared not for sustenance. All she could see now were their shattered bones and savaged bodies. When she next moved it would not be for food, but for the utter obliteration of her foes. There were few in Middle-Earth in these days who could withstand her in her hunger…there were none who could resist her in her wrath.

The weapon that he held fell from Grash’s lifeless hand. His body and will were numb as he looked upon the monster. It was hopeless, all that they had done to her was as nothing. Dorim’s fall, Brór’s mighty and futile heroism, the mad courage of Zuromor, Dwali, Darash and all the rest…it would all pass into the darkness of her realm and never be remembered.

Then he heard a sound that was more terrible than any that had yet assailed his mind. A voice, ancient and worn, thin from disuse, but having lost none of its bitter sting for the ages spent in silence, slowly filled the cavern with its hateful pitch. “Silly stupid flies,” it said. “Why do you resist your doom? So much struggle and so much agony only to delay your destruction. Lay yourselves down before me, and I will dispatch you quickly. Prostrate yourselves and do your obeisance and I will put you into a sleep before I feast. If you do not,” and her voice rose in terror, so much that some among the party fell upon their knees or against the wall, gasping and choking as though her hate were thick dark waters in which they were drowning, “I will keep you alive as I feed. Long may I keep you so, and you can watch as I devour your entrails, and feast upon your very life’s blood. The last thing you see will be your heart as I throw it as a morsel for my spawn.” Focusing the poisonous malevolence of her will upon them all, she delivered the final terror. “And do not think that the torments of your body are the most that I shall do. They are the least! For as I destroy your limbs, I will feast upon your mind and your will. As the life drains from your frame, the light will fade from your self, until all that is left will be the hollow ghost that I will leave to howl out its agony in the cold and naked darkness until the unmaking of the world!”

As she was speaking they heard a terrible, familiar sound. From all the crevices and cracks in the walls, from out of all the passageways, there came wave upon wave of the smaller creatures that had beset them before Shelob’s attack. Thousands upon thousands of them poured into the cavern and clambered upon the walls until no rock was visible and the chamber was a living, pulsating mass of flesh and hair and fangs. “Now,” she said quietly, “who will kneel to me?”

There was a silence so complete that Grash fancied he could hear his own heart beating. There was no hope left, none at all. It had been for nothing: his escape, his attempt to find some way beyond the walls of the land of darkness. His dreams of freedom had been for nothing. But then someone moved beside him in the darkness. And then another. Slowly, the company stirred and moved about, and Grash knew that he was not alone: for the first time in his life, there were others there with him who shared his fate and his dreams, and who would not shy away and let him go singly into the night. He felt the others gain strength as they too realised this, and then, unbidden, he spoke, and it was as though some other will spoke through him. “No,” he croaked. “We not bow down to you, or any evil creature. We are free now, and if we die, we die free. Come!” he cried, and his voice gained in strength. “Come! Enough talk and threat. You come for us. You come! You come and see what strength we have! You come and we kill you!”

The cavern was filled with a terrible thin hissing that might have been laughter. “Foolish flies! You know not what you are doomed to! All the better. And may your spirits howl all the more miserably for your insolence.” The light in her eyes grew, and slowly her spawn began also to glow with the corpse-light. Gathering her legs under her, Shelob prepared to descend.

But she let out a sudden cry of dismay and surprise. The company looked and saw that she was trying vainly to bat one of her spawn away from the wound in her belly. Even as she struggled with that one, however, three more sprang upon her wounded legs, and then a dozen upon her shattered eyes. She spun about, sending streams of her blood about the chamber, but this only seemed to send the smaller creatures into a frenzy, for they swarmed toward her by the hundreds, and the thousands. In horror the company watched as they clamped onto her with their fangs, tearing into her flesh and ripping apart her armoured hide. Shelob’s shrieks filled the cavern, splitting the very stone and the company fell to their knees and sought to cover their ears with their hands. In vain she struggled against the swarm, for no matter how many she managed to crush of throw off of her, a hundred more would come upon her. The last of her legs was severed and with a cry she fell from the roof of the cavern and landed upon the stone with a sickening thud. The creatures covered her like boiling tar and as they did so, their glow increased until the entire cavern was filled with their hideous light. The company stood and watched in horrified fascination as she was devoured by her own brood. Piece by piece she was taken apart, and still she thrashed and screamed and struck out at her attackers.

It was Morgoroth who saved them from their trance. Seeing that the creatures would soon consume their dam and then turn their attention upon fresher meat, he cried out, “Come. We must flee this place!” He ran to the only passageway not filled with the beasts and began hacking at the strands of web with his blade. “Hurry! I cannot do this alone!”

As though they were waking from a terrible dream, the company rushed to his aid and began sawing and striking at the webs. It was hard work, for the webs were like steel, but their combined efforts were just enough to open one small rent in the wall of strands. One by one they clambered through. Dwali cried out, “We must not leave my kinsmen!” Following the Dwarf, Aldor, Darash and Grash returned for Dorim and Brór and bore them from the chamber.

They fled up the long passage, the sounds of Shelob’s torment fading into the distance. Finally, there came one last drawn out shriek that sent waves of darkness through their spirits, and then there was silence, and they heard nothing more.

On and on they ran, and ever their path went upward. The passage narrowed and lowered, until they could only go on hands and feet, and still it grew narrower, but still they pressed ahead, so desperate were they to leave the realm of the new departed monster. Eventually, they felt an air that moved and saw ahead a faint grey light. Renewed by the sight and feel, they rushed forward on their very bellies, until one by one they emerged from a narrow crack high upon a cliff face, and crowded onto a small ledge a few hundred feet above the bleak and featureless plains below. In the distance they could see the looming hulk of Mount Doom, and the fires of its fury lit the underside of the clouds that crowded in above their heads like a roof.

They had escaped Shelob’s Lair, but they had come back to the very margins of Mordor.