Gandalf's first instinct, upon reading Saruman's summons, was to pretend it had been addressed to someone else.
He stared at the seal, at the familiar hand, at the blunt certainty baked into every line—and for a few hopeful breaths he did nothing. He sat in his warm chamber while the Shire's smoke drifted up like prayer, while his castle's halls hummed with obedient footsteps, while everything he'd built to avoid the world sat heavy and safe around him.
Then the truth, ugly and unavoidable, set in:
Saruman didn't ask.
Saruman called.
And Gandalf—God-King of hobbits, master of a kingdom that knelt on schedule—still felt a small, bitter knot tighten in his gut at the thought of disappointing his "big brother." Not because Saruman could punish him directly. Because Saruman could see him. Could name him. Could strip the pretty lies off him like skin.
So Gandalf decided he would go.
And because he was Gandalf, and because he had never once been brave, he decided he would not go alone.
---
With a great deal of reluctant whining from his hobbit servants, Gandalf assembled what passed, in the Shire, for a "grand procession."
It was not an army.
It was a wandering scandal.
A few dozen hobbits sat astride pony backs in mismatched mail and polished trinkets, calling themselves Pony Knights with the solemnity of children playing at war. Some wore pot-lids for helms. Some carried spears that were, in truth, sharpened broom handles. Many had packed more ale than food, and nearly all of them wore the same wide grin—the grin of people who had never met consequence and assumed it was a myth.
They set out singing.
Their voices rolled over green hills and hedgerows like a festival gone on the march, and the Shire—accustomed to quiet work and softer laughter—blinked at the noise. Rabbits vanished into burrows. Birds burst from trees in startled flurries. Even the cows lifted their heads with offended disbelief, as if to say not this again.
The hobbits cheered at their own bravery, drank to the road ahead, and swore loud oaths about glory and songs and coming home with treasures to hang above their hearths.
Gandalf listened from the front of the line with a face like a man chewing something bitter.
He rode Shadowfax.
Not the myth of the West, not the legendary lord of horses whispered about in Men's tales—but the creature Gandalf had actually kept: a white donkey with the broad chest of a mule, the stare of a judge, and the stubborn dignity of an animal that refused to be impressed by anything that wasn't edible.
Shadowfax's ears flicked back and forth as if tallying the stupidity behind them. Every so often he brayed—long, loud, and pointed—and the timing was always perfect, like punctuation added by a critic.
Gandalf patted his neck anyway.
Shadowfax was the only honest companion he had left. The donkey had followed him from Valinor without reverence, without worship, without pretending Gandalf's exile was noble. If the mission had been banishment dressed in holy language, Shadowfax had been banished too—dragged along simply because he belonged to Gandalf's orbit.
And that, strangely, mattered.
---
The first days were easy.
Rolling fields. Familiar lanes. Friendly farms that bowed as the God-King passed. The Pony Knights sang louder as the Shire fell behind them, as if volume could keep fear away. They treated the wilderness like novelty, like something you could laugh at if you didn't take it seriously.
Then the land began to change.
Hedges thinned. Roads turned rough. Trees grew taller and less welcoming. The air cooled. The world stopped smelling like bread and gardens and started smelling like damp earth and hidden teeth.
The Pony Knights kept drinking.
They kept boasting.
They kept acting like nothing could touch them.
And the road—patient, cruel, and indifferent—corrected them.
The first death wasn't heroic.
It was stupid.
A hobbit rode too close to a cliff edge while delivering a speech about destiny to impress his friends. The pony's hoof skidded on loose stone, and rider and mount vanished over the side with a scream that ended too fast. The line behind them went silent and simply rode around the empty space as if looking down might invite the same fate.
Two more disappeared at an inn.
Not murdered. Not ambushed. Just swallowed by their own arrogance. Too much drink, too much laughter, a wager made in a warm haze. They wandered into the dark to prove something to no one, and morning found only hoofprints in the mud leading into trees.
A handful strayed off the road to chase a deer they swore must be enchanted and friendly.
The woods taught them otherwise.
Foxes took one. A bear took another. Teeth and hunger did not care that they were small, soft, and singing.
The hobbits' songs began to falter.
Not all at once—they tried to force cheer into their throats like stuffing into a torn pillow—but the sound came out thin. Every day the line behind Gandalf was shorter. Every night the jokes died faster.
Gandalf moved with careful caution, eyes sweeping the road, the treeline, the gaps between stones. He barked orders when he had to—not because he was a commander by nature, but because chaos felt like death waiting to happen.
"Stay on the path."
"Stop drinking while you ride."
"Count your people before you sleep."
Half the time they didn't listen.
Half the time the world punished them for it.
Shadowfax, as always, offered commentary in the form of long, satisfied farts whenever Gandalf's patience snapped. It was infuriating. It was also, in its own way, accurate: the donkey's body language said what Gandalf refused to admit aloud—
This is what you wanted, isn't it? A shield that bleeds instead of you.
---
By the time the wild foothills rose up and the air turned misty and pine-cold, Gandalf's "grand procession" had dwindled into something far more honest: a handful of hobbits with dirt on their cheeks, fear behind their eyes, and hands that no longer shook only from excitement.
These were the ones who had learned.
Not bravery.
Not heroism.
Just the basic skill of staying alive.
Mist curled down from higher slopes as the hidden valley drew near, cool and damp and smelling of stone that had never belonged to hobbits. The road narrowed again, twisting between rocks older than the Shire itself. The remaining Pony Knights rode close together now—no singing, no laughter—just breathing, listening, watching the trees.
Gandalf looked back once at the small remnant trailing him.
Not enough for a battle.
Not enough for glory.
But enough to keep him from being alone.
He faced forward again and nudged Shadowfax onward.
Rivendell waited somewhere ahead—hidden, watchful, and far too wise for the kind of trouble Gandalf always seemed to drag behind him.
---
They came to Rivendell the way filth comes to a clean floor: not with malice, not even with intent—just by existing loudly enough to ruin the atmosphere.
The last miles had been all stone and mist and narrow paths that seemed designed to punish anyone foolish enough to travel them. The forest had tightened around them, branches clawing at cloaks, roots waiting to trip ponies. Streams cut across the trail like cold hands. The hills rose sharper, harsher, until the world stopped feeling like the Shire's gentle green and started feeling like something older—something that remembered wars and didn't care who was tired.
Then, abruptly, the valley opened.
Rivendell lay below them in a wash of pale light, tucked into the fold of mountains like a secret too precious to share with the rest of the world. Water sang over smooth stone. Trees stood in disciplined beauty, their leaves too perfect, their silence too intentional. Every line of it looked untouched—not because trouble didn't exist, but because Rivendell refused to let trouble leave fingerprints.
The surviving hobbits stared like children seeing a cathedral for the first time.
---
Rivendell appeared like something the world had forgotten to ruin.
Light lay there in clean bands, soft as breath. Water fell in long white ribbons from the cliffs, constant but never loud, as if even the waterfalls had learned manners. Pale stone bridges arched over clear streams. Rooflines curved like grown things rather than built ones. Trees stood in disciplined beauty, leaves trembling in slow, deliberate motion.
For the hobbits who had survived the road, it was like stumbling into a dream after weeks of being slapped awake by reality. They stared, slack-jawed, awe wiping the exhaustion off their faces for a few precious moments.
A refuge.
A place untouched.
A place where, surely, they could eat and drink and sleep without something trying to tear their throats out.
Gandalf felt relief too—greedy, immediate. He had built a kingdom to feel safe. Rivendell made safety feel… effortless. Like a standard. Like a law of nature.
Good, he thought.
Let the hobbits rest. Let them gorge. Let them sing in someone else's halls.
He was here to handle business.
And business, unfortunately, was named Saruman.
---
The hobbit host entered Rivendell the way drunken guests enter a chapel: loudly, proudly, and with no idea they were offending something sacred.
Their laughter echoed through pristine corridors. Boots scuffed pale stone. A wineskin sloshed. Someone shouted a toast to "Elven hospitality" and nearly fell into a flowerbed.
Elves watched.
Not with anger. Not with open contempt.
With that quiet, surgical disappointment that made Gandalf want to crawl into his robes and vanish.
He did not vanish.
He straightened instead, because in a place like Rivendell, you survived by pretending you belonged.
Servants—Elven, graceful, almost expressionless—guided the hobbits away with gentle hands and firmer eyes, steering them toward guest quarters and long tables already set. Food would appear. Wine would appear. Comfort would be offered. Rivendell was polite that way.
And then the doors the hobbits would never be allowed to open would close.
Gandalf followed the escort upward, leaving the noise behind.
The council chamber was not a hall.
It was a ruin that had been chosen and preserved—a circular ring of ancient stone arches open to the sky, ivy crawling over broken columns, white flowers growing where no flowers should have dared. Sunlight filtered through leaves and stone alike. At the center sat a single round table carved from pale rock, worn smooth by centuries of hands laid flat in argument.
No throne. No raised seat.
No obvious hierarchy.
The message was simple and cruel: nothing here bends for you.
Gandalf stepped into the ring and immediately felt smaller. Not in body. In certainty.
Elrond stood at the far side, calm as the stone beneath his hands. Ageless face, controlled eyes, the stillness of someone who had watched civilizations die and never once believed noise could prevent it. He did not greet Gandalf warmly.
He did not greet Gandalf at all.
He merely looked at him, and in that look was everything Rivendell thought of hobbits—and the wizard who had turned them into something sharp and hungry.
Gandalf swallowed and pretended not to notice.
Galadriel stood beside Elrond, and the light seemed to favor her. Hair like starlight spilled down her back, pale and precise. Her gaze cut through everyone it touched, as if truth were simply a thing she peeled out of people for sport.
When her eyes landed on Gandalf, something in her expression softened—barely.
Not kindness. Not affection.
Recognition.
She saw the trembling coward beneath the robes, the liar beneath the posture. She saw the fear that had built a kingdom, the greed that had called itself order.
Gandalf felt a stupid, reflexive flutter in his chest anyway. He hated that he still reacted to her like a fool. He hated that her beauty still struck him like a hook.
Her dress—fitted and deliberate—made the reaction worse. The way it framed her body wasn't accidental. Galadriel didn't accidentally do anything.
She noticed him noticing.
And she smiled—small, amused, and sharp enough to make it clear she could ruin him whenever she felt like it.
They took their seats.
Food and drink were served with Elven efficiency, as if the council could be held together by bread and wine alone. The air remained calm, the valley wind moving softly through the open arches.
Radagast was already there, slouched near the table's edge with a rabbit cradled in his arms like an emotional anchor. His hair was tangled with leaves. His robes smelled faintly of damp earth and whatever he'd been fermenting in his pockets. He looked relieved to see Gandalf—as if Gandalf's presence meant he was no longer the strangest thing in the room.
That, Gandalf thought, was a low bar.
Then Saruman entered.
And the room finally changed.
Saruman should have arrived composed, immaculate, irritating. That was his nature. Saruman liked control the way priests liked prayer.
Instead he came in looking like a man who had been chased out of sleep.
His robes were disheveled. His eyes were too wide. His face was tight with a strain that made him look older than he had any right to look. He did not take his seat. He did not even acknowledge the table properly.
He began to pace.
A tight circle, boots scraping stone, like a caged animal trying to wear a hole through reality.
"Listen," Saruman said, voice rising too fast. "Please—you must listen to me."
No one interrupted.
Not out of respect.
Out of that instinctive sense that whatever was happening to Saruman… was contagious.
"I know it sounds like madness," Saruman went on, words spilling out like blood. "But you have to understand—this is serious. Soon blood will fall like rain. It will be like a storm of death! Cities will burn. Men, women, children—dead. The land will be drained until only darkness remains!"
His hands shook. His breathing hitched, as if the memory itself was trying to choke him.
"No matter how much we struggle," he snapped, "no matter how much we endure, we are doomed. Doomed! We have to run! We must sail to Valinor—surely the Valar would not turn us away—surely they must take us back—"
His voice broke and collapsed into something smaller and uglier.
"I don't want to be eaten," he whispered, eyes wild. "Not by them. Not—no—"
Saruman began muttering to himself, the words losing shape, fear chewing them into incoherence. Even Radagast shifted, clutching his rabbit tighter, eyes darting nervously between Saruman and the exits like he was wondering whether rabbits could be used as flotation devices.
Gandalf stood very still.
Because this was worse than hearing about armies.
This was seeing Saruman afraid.
Saruman—the one who had spat on Gandalf's boots and called him coward. Saruman—the one who believed control was a virtue and weakness a sin. Saruman—the one who had always seemed carved from certainty.
If he was breaking, then whatever waited in the East was not a rumor.
It was real.
Gandalf felt dread stir in him like something waking from sleep.
He opened his mouth to speak—some lie, some calming nonsense, some practiced performance of leadership—
And Galadriel's voice slid into his mind like a blade.
Don't just sit there, coward.
Gandalf's spine stiffened.
He is your brother, is he not? Calm him. Make him speak sense. I cannot listen to his whining any longer.
There was no warmth in her thought. Only irritation sharpened into command.
Then she tightened the leash.
Do it, or I stop buying your weed. And I stop supplying Elven wood for your little hobbit bows.
Gandalf's mouth went dry.
Because that wasn't an insult.
That was leverage.
Orcs of Angmar were already hitting the outer colonies. Wargs were taking lonely patrols in the night. Without Elven-made bows, his hobbit soldiers were just short bodies with short courage—targets pretending to be an army.
Galadriel knew it.
And she knew he knew it.
Cold sweat slid down Gandalf's back beneath his robes.
He looked at Saruman pacing like a man hunted by a memory with teeth, then at Galadriel—calm as a glacier, beautiful as a knife—and understood what this meeting truly was.
Not a council.
A negotiation.
A reminder.
He could be God-King in the Shire all he wanted—here, in this ring of stone and sunlight, among beings who remembered what he used to be, he was still what he had always been:
A coward in borrowed robes, trying to keep his little empire from being swallowed.
And now he had to speak.
He cleared his throat, the sound small in a place like this.
"Saruman."
Saruman snapped his head around. His eyes were too bright, too wide—like a man who hadn't slept in weeks and had been using fear to stay upright.
Gandalf held his gaze anyway.
"Calm down," he said, voice firm in the way practiced voices could be firm. "Your life has been spared. Whatever happened in the Far East is not happening to you right now. You're here. Behind the Misty Mountains. Behind wards and rivers and Elven stone."
Saruman's mouth twitched.
Gandalf continued, pushing through before Saruman could start again.
"So have a smoke," he said. "Sit if you can. Breathe. And talk once your mind stops sprinting in circles."
Saruman didn't sit. He never sat when he felt cornered. He kept pacing, but the pace slowed—a fraction. Enough.
Gandalf reached into his black leather bag and pulled out thick, hand-rolled cigarettes. He handed them around the table like medicine.
Elrond accepted one after a pause, expression unreadable.
Galadriel took hers without hesitation, her fingers elegant, her eyes still on Saruman.
Radagast fumbled his, nearly dropped it, then clutched it like it might keep the world from ending.
Saruman stared at the offered cigarette as if it were an insult, then snatched it anyway.
"Hobbit," Gandalf said, without looking. "Wine. Weed. Food. And bring musicians before my brother starts prophesying again."
His footstool servant practically sprinted away.
A little later, the ring of stone and sunlight had been invaded by smells and noise: meat pies, bread, jugs of wine, pipes and smoke, soft strings and flutes that tried—politely—to make dread sound like something manageable.
It was absurd.
It worked.
The five of them sat around the table while Saruman hovered at its edge like a storm refusing to become rain. Cigarette smoke curled up into the open air. Wine loosened tongues. The music filled the gaps where panic wanted to live.
Laughter even happened—thin at first, then more real, the way laughter always did when people wanted to pretend they were still in control.
As the sun began to sink, turning Rivendell's light gold and tired, Saruman finally spoke again.
Not loudly this time.
Not as performance.
As confession.
"They've united," he said.
The words didn't sound like triumph. They sounded like defeat.
"It isn't chaos anymore," Saruman went on, voice rough. "It's… organization. They've sorted themselves into tribes, each with a purpose. Each one a cog. The whole thing moves forward like a machine that never gets tired."
He took a drag and exhaled smoke with shaking hands.
"The Machine Tribe," he said. "That's the heart of it. Foundries. Forges. Workshops as big as towns. Fires that never go out. The smoke turns their skies black." His eyes flicked upward, as if remembering the ceiling of that darkness. "They don't craft like Orcs used to—one blade at a time, crude and snarling. They produce. Efficiently. In numbers."
Elrond's brow tightened.
"The Feral Tribe tames beasts," Saruman continued. "Breeds them. Trains them. Wargs, yes—but worse than wargs. Things that shouldn't be harnessed, wearing harnesses." His mouth twisted. "They till fields too. The land feeds the war now, not the other way around."
He glanced at the table, as if expecting laughter.
No one laughed.
"The Marauders run the economy," Saruman said. "Trade. Loot. Distribution. Pillaging as policy." He tapped ash onto stone. "The Terror Tribe keeps order. Enforcers. Public punishments. Fear as law."
Radagast shifted, rabbit pressed to his chest.
"And the Warmongers…" Saruman's voice tightened. "They study battle the way scholars study books. They train. They adapt. They learn from losses. They don't throw bodies at walls forever—they find the weak point and use it."
His pacing resumed, slower now, like a man circling his own memories.
"But the worst," he said, "is the Dark Tribe."
Gandalf's eyes narrowed.
"Assassins," Saruman confirmed. "Spies. Infiltrators. They scale walls, slip through gates, open cities from the inside. They remove commanders in the night. By the time the army arrives, the heart is already cut out."
A wind passed through the open arches. The music faltered, then continued.
Saruman's voice dropped again, thickening with something like disgust.
"And then there are two tribes I wish I could call lies."
He swallowed.
"The Mystics," he said. "Ritualists. Necromancers. They raise dead animals first—rats, birds—small things to watch and carry messages. Then men. Then Orcs." His hands clenched. "And yes, there are stories of worse. Of dead drakes hauled like carcasses into pits and… prepared."
Galadriel's expression remained serene. Her eyes did not.
"And the Lifegivers," Saruman said, and the word itself sounded like something he hated. "The Orc women. Kept in caves like cattle. Bred until their bodies stop being bodies and become functions." His face tightened. "Milked. Swollen. Used. Those who aren't pregnant are made pregnant. Those who are too weak are discarded."
Silence sat heavy around the table.
The wine did not soften that part.
Saruman dragged another breath of smoke into his lungs like it might keep him steady.
"They've become efficient," he said bitterly. "Not just cruel. Efficient. Their legions don't stop because their supplies are their enemies. They eat what they conquer and keep moving."
Gandalf sat very still, cigarette glowing between his fingers. In his head, he pictured the Shire: mills, quotas, discipline, walls, breeding policies he'd dressed up as duty.
He didn't like the mirror Saruman was holding up.
"You said they united," Gandalf asked, voice controlled. "How?"
Saruman's eyes went distant.
"When the Blue Wizards and I first rode east," he said slowly, "we thought we were early. We thought we'd stop it before it became real. But by the year 1250 of the Third Age…" He shook his head once. "It was already too late. They had been building for over a thousand years while we told ourselves Orcs couldn't make anything that lasted."
He laughed—short, empty.
"We were arrogant."
He took another drag, hands still trembling.
"They called me the Pale Man," Saruman murmured. "They didn't trust us. Kings and lords smiled and watched my tricks like I was entertainment. Fireballs. Juggling. A wizard as novelty." His lips curled. "It wasn't enough."
Gandalf leaned forward slightly. "And the Blue Wizards?"
Saruman's gaze dropped.
"They were taken," he said. "Forced into arenas. Slaves with power, made to bleed for crowds." His jaw tightened. "They started a revolt. It worked. They gained influence. They became advisors to the new Khan Ali."
Radagast made a faint sound, like someone trying not to cry.
"But it still wasn't enough," Saruman said. "The wargs kept coming. We beat them and they returned with more. We broke them and they returned with better tactics. Every victory was just a lesson for them." He stared into the dying light. "And then…"
His voice thinned.
"The East is lost," Saruman whispered.
He looked up, eyes raw with the weight of it.
"And now they are coming for us in the West."
---
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Smoke drifted upward through the open arches, thinning as it rose into the late light. The musicians kept playing because no one had told them to stop—soft strings, patient and beautiful, sounding suddenly obscene against what had just been said. The valley did not react. Rivendell never did.
Then Gandalf broke the silence.
"Don't be so dramatic, Saruman," he said, voice low, measured—carefully casual, the tone of a man smoothing wrinkles from a tablecloth. "I think you're letting fear do the thinking for you." He leaned back slightly, as if the stone itself were on his side. "I mean—come on. These are Orcs. Filthy creatures that can barely read, barely count, living in holes like animals. You expect me to believe that is the end of the world?"
He shrugged, a small, dismissive motion.
"I have an ever-growing Hobbit Legion," Gandalf went on. "Walls. Towers. Discipline. Soon there won't be a road in the West they can't choke. Whatever you saw in the East—whatever horror show you're carrying—it doesn't change that. This isn't a threat we can't manage."
Saruman laughed.
Not loudly. Not cruelly.
It was the sound of a man hearing a lie he had once told himself and finally recognizing it.
"You fool," Saruman said, voice low and rasping. "You are as ignorant as you ever were—pinning your hope on halflings and counting walls like they mean something." He stepped closer to the table, planted both hands on the stone, and for the first time since entering the ring, stopped moving. "Even if every realm united tomorrow, this would not be a war you win."
Radagast blinked, slow and unfocused. "W-w-what?"
Saruman didn't look at him.
"You want the truth?" he said, eyes fixed on Gandalf. "The truth is the Blue Wizards broke the East."
The words landed like dropped glass.
Elrond's brow tightened. "The Great Eastern Khanate."
"Yes," Saruman said. "The largest empire the East had left. And we shattered it." His mouth twisted. "The revolt worked. Too well. We tore apart the last structure strong enough to resist what was coming."
Radagast stared. "B-b-broke it?"
"In the name of liberation," Saruman went on, voice roughening, "we doomed them. We crowned Ali. We burned the old order. We let everything fracture." He tapped the table once, hard. "Humanity's fate in the East was sealed the moment we mistook chaos for victory."
His gaze drifted, no longer in Rivendell at all.
"Still, we held the line for centuries," he said. "Ali fought. The men of the East fought. But they fought alone. Small kingdoms. Small walls. Proud, stubborn, divided." His jaw clenched. "They would rather die separately than stand together."
He straightened, eyes distant now.
"I watched Alifareast fall," Saruman said quietly. "Ten years under siege. Clay walls ground to dust by catapults. Roofs collapsing inward. Fires spreading until the half-moon churches burned like torches."
Radagast made a thin, wounded sound and buried his face in the rabbit's fur.
"We fought there," Saruman continued. "The Blue Wizards held the gates—fire and ice. I shattered siege towers. I made stone rain from the sky." His voice faltered, just for a breath. "And in the end…"
He swallowed.
"They looked at me. Gave me the fastest horse in the land. And told me to run."
Gandalf did not blink.
"'Fly, you fool,' they said," Saruman went on, almost whispering now. "'Ride west. Warn them. Make them build walls. Castles. Anything.'" His mouth tightened. "So I did. I tore a tunnel through the earth with my own magic and led civilians into Rhûn. I watched them disappear behind me. Alive. For now."
Radagast snorted, the sound wet and unsteady. "B-b-bunny shit."
Saruman's head snapped toward him.
"You cannot dig tunnels like that," Radagast continued, slurring, courage borrowed entirely from wine. "Y-y-you ran. You always run when defeat gets too close."
Saruman slammed his fist into the table. Stone rang.
"No!" he shouted. "I survived. There is a difference, you twitching moss-eater!"
Radagast hugged his rabbit tighter. "P-p-pussy."
Saruman's nostrils flared. For a heartbeat he looked like he might snatch the rabbit by its ears and fling it into the river below just to hear something real break the spell of this room.
Gandalf, safely seated and safely insulated from consequences, took a long drink instead. Wine made everything blur at the edges. Even apocalypse sounded distant when your mouth was warm and your throat was numb.
Galadriel exhaled cigarette smoke through her nose and smirked as if she were watching a play that had stopped being funny three acts ago, but still hadn't had the decency to end.
Elrond cleared his throat.
Sharp. Deliberate.
The sound of a man trying to drag order back into a room full of addicts, cowards, and liars.
"It is clear," Elrond said, voice measured and noble in the way speeches are noble when they do not have to pay rent in reality, "that the enemy gathers in force. The West must act. We must strike a decisive blow."
He leaned forward, palms on the ancient stone as if touching it might summon competence.
"The Ring must be destroyed," Elrond said. "Cast into the fires of Orodruin. Only thus can the Dark Lord be defeated for good."
He paused—just long enough for the idea to hang in the air like incense.
"And therefore," he continued, warming to his own momentum, "I propose we form a fellowship. A company. A chosen band of the Free Peoples. They shall take the Ring into the heart of Mordor and end this—this entire long nightmare—at its root."
He sat back a fraction, as if expecting the room to rise with him.
Silence.
Not thoughtful silence.
Not reverent silence.
The silence of people waiting for the punchline.
Then Galadriel laughed.
Not loud. Not vicious.
Just… delighted.
"Oh, Elrond," she said sweetly, like she was praising a child for drawing a horse with six legs. "You're precious."
She lifted her cigarette and gestured with it as though she were conducting a choir.
"We don't have the Ring. We don't know where Sauron is. And we certainly don't have an army large enough to march into Mordor."
Her smile widened, all polished cruelty and perfect calm.
"But please—do continue. I adore plans that begin with 'we should' and end with 'everyone dies.' It's very… forward-thinking of you."
Elrond's jaw tightened. "Mockery is not strategy."
"And slogans are?" Galadriel asked, eyes bright. "You've just recited the plot of a prophecy you wish you were living in."
Saruman stared at them both, and something in his face slowly drained away—color, pride, whatever fragile hope had dragged him this far.
"So you're saying none of you will help," he said, very quietly.
Galadriel waved the question away like smoke.
"My people will provide what is reasonable," she said. "Lembas, perhaps. A few cloaks. Medicine, if you ask politely. Timber—if you grovel properly." Her tone remained soft, almost bored. "But I will not send Lórien's sons and daughters to die in some heroic suicide march. The Elves have already bled enough for this world."
She took a slow drag, eyes half-lidded, unbothered by Saruman's stare.
"Lórien is a wall," she added. "Not a spear."
Saruman's eyes flashed. "And Rivendell?"
Elrond spread his hands in the posture of a man offering charity because he has nothing else.
"I can spare riders," he said. "A company, perhaps. A few hundred mounted Elves. Scouts. Messengers. Enough to harry, not enough to hold a warfront." He hesitated, then forced steadiness into his voice. "We are a refuge, not a kingdom. Lindon might help if asked… though I doubt they would come."
Galadriel's smile returned—faint and cutting.
"A refuge," she echoed. "Yes. A very dignified word for we hide beautifully."
Radagast straightened, eyes watery, expression fierce with wine and mushrooms.
"R-r-rabbits are always r-r-ready!" he blurted, fist raised like he was about to lead a charge. "J-just give them carrots! My… my b-b-best ones can b-b-bite ankles and s-s-s-scout! They know the trees! They know the moss!"
He hugged the rabbit like it was a crown.
"I have… elite b-b-bunny battalions."
Gandalf, mid-swallow, nearly choked. Wine went down the wrong way, and he coughed hard enough to make the musicians glance up.
Even Elrond blinked, uncertain whether to be offended or impressed.
Galadriel's mouth curved as if she were trying not to smile and failing.
Saruman did not laugh at all.
Because Saruman could still hear screams at the back of his skull.
He could still taste ash. He could still feel the moment his brothers' hands had left his shoulders for the last time. This wasn't a tavern. This wasn't a story. This was the end of the world creeping forward like a tide.
And these were the people who were supposed to stop it.
Gandalf leaned back, comfortable as a man discussing trade agreements rather than extinction.
"My hobbits," he said thoughtfully, like he was pricing livestock, "are… temperamental."
Saruman's eyes snapped to him.
Gandalf raised a finger, genial.
"However. For the right price, I could rent you a legion. Properly drilled. Shield walls. Spear lines." He smiled like he'd solved a puzzle. "They'll do anything I tell them."
Elrond stared. "Rent."
Gandalf shrugged. "Armies cost money, Elrond. Even holy ones. I'm a king, after all—not a charity handing out hobbits to any desperate wizard who knocks."
Saruman looked around the table.
Elrond with his speeches. Galadriel with her isolationism dressed as wisdom. Radagast with his carrot-fed rabbit militia. Gandalf—God-King of hobbits—offering to lease soldiers like farm equipment.
Smoke curled. Wine glowed red in cups. The musicians played softly, still pretending this was normal.
Something inside Saruman hardened.
Not anger.
Clarity.
He had known, before he came, that this council was a performance. Now he understood the deeper truth:
There would be no Last Alliance.
Not with these leaders.
Not with these priorities.
Not with everyone guarding their own little corners of the world like misers guarding coins.
"That's it, then," Saruman said. His voice was quiet, which made it worse. "None of you are willing to do anything but the bare minimum. Not after all I've said. Not after everything I've sacrificed. Not after I told you my brothers died buying the West time."
No one answered him properly.
Galadriel laughed, soft and amused.
"Oh, Saruman," she said, as if he were being dramatic at a dinner party. "Did you truly think any of us would take your words and charge east like children in a story?" She exhaled smoke and tilted her head. "Even if we believed you completely—what do you want? That we empty our realms and march into an endless search for Sauron, who may not even be alive?"
Around the table, heads nodded. Not in cruelty. In comfort.
It was easier to doubt Saruman than to accept him. Easier to pretend the fire was far away than to admit it was already under the door.
The conversation began to drift—inevitably—back into safer things. Local politics. Old grudges. Trade routes. Jokes. The warm narcotic of not deciding.
Saruman watched it happen and felt sick.
Defeat washed through him, sharp and metallic. Anger followed, but it was too clean to become shouting. Shouting was for people who believed they could still change minds.
Saruman had stopped believing that.
He turned away from the table.
He did not slam a door. He did not make a speech. He simply left—because he had wasted enough time listening to people speak beautifully about doing nothing.
By morning, the wise White Council lay strewn around the stone ring like the aftermath of a feast. Slumped against arches. Sprawled across benches. Empty cups on their sides. Smoke clinging to robes. Stale wine souring in the air.
Radagast's rabbits hopped among the debris, nibbling cabbage leaves someone had dropped.
Outside, hobbit pony knights were cleaning in embarrassed silence, scrubbing stains from stone that had once hosted songs older than their entire species.
Dawn touched Rivendell with pale gold.
And one wizard was already gone.
Saruman had mounted his horse without ceremony.
No farewell.
No blessing.
No speeches.
He rode out of the hidden valley and into the world alone—because he understood the threat that was coming for them all, and if the West would not prepare together, then he would prepare without them.