Work Text:
In the Vale of Nan Dungortheb, between the Elf-king's realm and the highlands of Dorthonion,, the water crept higher.
For thirty years of the Sun it had seeped up the River Sirion, turning marshes into lakes and valleys into marshes. Now it felt its way round the feet of the Ered Gorgoroth, the Mountains of Terror, where Sauron lay in hiding, and lapped around the fallen city of Gondolin behind its encircling hills. With it came the salt of the Sea, and the power of Ulmo: always the most feared of Melkor's enemies.
But the forests of the Elf-king were impassable now, even though the Queen their protectress was long gone. Not one of Melkor's folk would set foot - or claw - in those brackish waters, with the sad trees dying in their midst, leaning upon each other, failing and falling as their roots drowned.
The waters were coming from the south. West was the Sea, and none of the great spiders would go their, not since their fore-mother Ungoliant fled with Melkor from the Undying Lands. And north, the battle raged: the lords of those undying lands, laying siege to Melkor's citadel in years' long assault. East was the only way.
So Shelob, last and greatest of the offspring of Ungoliant, made her slow way east. She passed stealthily along the ridge of hills between the drowning plains of Beleriand and Lothlann, scarcely aware of anything beyond the need to escape and to feed. There was prey fleeing that way too: Elves of the West, and of the forest, leaving the great battles to those more fit to fight them. Now and then, she would capture one, wrap it in her spider-silk, and consume the flesh at her leisure. And then the next night, or the next, she would resume her slow journey.
She reached the Ered Luin, on the marches of Beleriand and the wider lands of Middle-earth. But the Elves came there too, in ever greater numbers, fleeing the wreck of Beleriand, seeking refuge on the borders of the lands they had loved. There were mighty names among them still, warriors who would seek out Melkor's pets, and destroy them if they could; and a king among them establishing a last realm east of the Sea. After a while, she crawled onwards.
Eastwards she crept, seeking mountains like those of her old home (and those were gone utterly now, since Melkor's other pet, the winged dragon, fell in ruin on his citadel and the tortured earth slid into the sea.) She had never had any time for the dragons. They wanted power, and riches, and were too much like the Elves who fought them. All she wanted was to prey upon life.
She crossed more hills, and bleak moorlands, and stayed awhile in the great mountain chain that had been raised in days beyond the Elder Days; but the wreck of Melkor's ambitions had left but few Orcs to feed on there, and the Dwarves of Moria were busy about the increase of their realm. Down into Greenwood the Great she slunk by night, and there she spun her webs. There she laid her eggs, and ever and anon, would raise up one of her children to be her mate, and having mated with him, would consume him also. Slowly their progeny filled all of the north of Greenwood.
Came the Elves again, and built a fastness in the forest. Then they would go out hunting, and destroy Shelob's brood when they could; and Shelob, not caring for their fate but mindful of her own, left them to spin their petty webs around the Elf-kingdom and crept South again. And slowly she drew her bloated body down to the Mountains of Shadow on the boundaries of Mordor.
There she made her lair, in the one pass through those mountains which all must travel who thought to journey between the Great River and the Black Land. There she delved tunnels, and filled them with clinging webs, and snared her victims. And from the crest of that pass, she watched in the dark across the inner fence of the Morgai as a new tower began to rise on the knees of the Ash Mountains to the north.
Sauron the Great, as he now styled himself, had made the same journey as her from the ruin of Beleriand, following her into Mirkwood, as they called it now; and he had chosen Mordor for his own, and now was making it strong. Course by course, built by many labouring slaves, the tower rose, until it rivalled even the foothills on which it stood for height: Lugburz, the Dark Tower, or as the Elves would say, Barad-dur.
Shelob thought little enough of the new Dark Lord's doings: until one night a flame awoke on the plain of Gorgoroth between her lair and the Dark Tower. Mount Doom had burst into life. Its red light pulsed and mounted into the clouds it sent forth, lighting them from within: and with a shock that she felt throughout her bloated body, she heard his voice claim mastership of all the Rings of power. And within ten years of the Sun after that, he had been chased, defeated, back to his Tower: and Shelob was there still in the Mountains of Shadow, spinning her webs.
She was still there a full Age later, no longer recking any thing of her turbulent neighbour. Here on the twisted fences of his land was prey enough. At first they had been Men, climbing up from the Tower of the Moon, set to guard the pass (though she was all the guard that was needed) and the valley below. Strong men and fair, proud and valiant; and she had taken her pick and consumed them one by one. None was a match for the Elf-warriors of old. And after the Tower of the Moon had fallen to Sauron's might, the prey changed; scuttling Orcs, harsh-voiced and foul-mouthed, and they afforded better sport though worse eating. She knew well enough when they were Sauron's gift; their fellows would prod them into her tunnels with their spears, and stand at a good distance, watching while she did her work.
Then one night the Mountain burst into flame once more, and put forth its reek and fume; and in the darkness that followed, as the armies spilled forth from the valley below, there came her little spy and pander of these last ten years, and following him, two small creeping figures. Like and yet unlike that spy these two were; younger, plumper, a more toothsome meal altogether. They would make better eating than the Orcs of the centuries gone by.
She left her den, and scurried swiftly along the tunnels behind it, to await their coming to the highest doorway of her lurking-place. And there she waited, for there was no other way out; there she would savour flesh as yet untasted.
She waited for them to run into her web. Here they came now, running, their voices full of hope. She drew her legs under her, and waited to spring.
And then one of them brought forth a light, blazing like a star beneath Sauron's darkness: and in that moment, all her ages-long life went awry.