Manwë's Birthday Party by Dawn Felagund, Tarion Anarore, , Rhapsody, , oshun, , Isil Elensar, , pandemonium_213, , Beatrisu

Chapter 9: Things on the Doorstep or The Valar Make a Grand Entrance by pandemonium_213

This is an unsolicited birthday fic for Dawn. In it, I give a nod to her affection for the genre of horror (not to worry, nothing gruesome) and her deep, abiding love and respect for the Valar. Heh. - pandemonium_213

After twelve separate explanations, each a stultifying exercise in dumbing down, Manwë was finally able to direct the vapid Finrod toward Yavanna and her jar of volatile liquor. The Elder King rolled his semi-divine eyes, their lovely sapphire irises reflecting azure light in every direction, as Finrod attempted a random walk toward Yavanna, Legolas and the alternately truculent and jovial Kinslayers.

“So what’s with all the Elves and just one Maia and one Aini?” Manwë ruminated as he surveyed the guests milling around Yavanna and her potent potation. “Where are the rest of my divine kindred? Doesn’t anyone like me?”

As if on cue, the earth trembled, the sky darkened, and the wind howled with the haunting voices of the outermost netherworld. What strange and terrible portent was this? Had Melkor managed to slip past the accretion disk? No, that was impossible. Why, that would violate the laws of physics! Not that there's anything wrong with that, thought Manwë, as he justified several hundred thousand similar violations that he had committed in his eternal lifetime.

In the midst of the geological tumult, he recognized the horrific screeches, whistles and dental fricatives that constituted the very purest form of Valarin. The directionality of the din indicated that whatever emitted these gruesomely strident sounds was rapidly approaching his grand home. The Elves immediately covered their ears again, wincing in pain indescribable as the unsavory sibilants hit their sensitive ears, which may or may not have been leaf-shaped. However, Varda and Yavanna brightened immediately upon hearing the bedlam, toothy grins spreading across their incandescently beautiful visages. Olorin, in his typically inquisitive manner, made for the remnants of the door to see just what manner of monstrosities were making their way to the party.

Manwë summarily shoved the bookish Maia out of the way, grabbed Varda’s exquisite waist and pulling her to his magnificent masculine humanoid form, whispered in supplication to her: “Please, dear! Distract Olórin, would you?”

Varda nodded and complied. She turned to Olórin, smiled winsomely and cooed, “Pull my finger.”

The Elder King picked his way past the bricks that Yavanna had knocked asunder. Once he was past the wreck and ruin of the clumsy Aini’s destruction, he ran down the path, hoping to intercept the Things That Should Not Be before they reached his capacious domicile. He rounded a curve in the path, and there they were, writhing before him, their odious voices splitting rocks and their noxious fumes causing Varda’s jaunty posies to wilt precipitously.

A shapeless pulsating entity of sickening putrescence led them. Behind it was a cluster of undulating tentacles, gelatinous quivering protoplasm, viscous sticky bubbles, multiple articulated legs, a prehensile proboscis, and scaled and horned dread. In their wake they left a trail of fetid green-yellow ichor. A noisome cloud of sulphurous vapors hung over the unspeakable horrors. The leader of the group extended a single pseudopod toward Manwë, and the other five hideous beings shrieked in unison:

“Iä! Iä! N’gah Kthun, Cthulhu! N’gah Kthun!”

Manwë was appalled yet so aroused at the sight that several tentacles snaked their way out of his forehead. He quickly suppressed his unseemly corporeal outburst, and his head snapped back into its smooth and perfectly ethereal shape.

“Great Eru’s fire, Cynothoglys! Ix-nay on the Ulhu-cthay!” He tried to hush the pandemoniac cacophony. “There are Elves and a Maia here. Quick, put on your raiment before they see you!”

Necrotic blackness swirled around the terrors on the path, and when it cleared, six angelic forms of breathtaking beauty stood before Manwë.

The tall, beyond-darkly-handsome fellow draped in amethyst-purple robes shuffled his feet, grinding his last bleb of goo into the ground, and addressed Manwe distractedly.

“Eru? Eru who? Oh, yes! Yog-Sothoth sends his blessings, Cthulhu, uh, I mean Manwë.”

“Cyno - er, Námo, that was too close for comfort.”

“We are so sorry,” said Shub-Niggurath, the Ghastly Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, now transformed into the scrumptious form of fleet-footed feminine pulchritude called Nessa. We just thought as the High Priest of the Great Old Ones, you’d like it if we all appeared at your celebration clad in our original birthday suits.”

“I appreciate the thought. Really, I do,” Manwë said to his radiant kindred. “But remember the Elves and the Maiar - well, they don’t know about us!"

“Ummm,” mumbled Azathoth in his heroically muscular form of Tulkas. “Then what should I do about this?” He proferred a present to Manwë. Only a few spots of slime stained its delicate wrapping paper. The Elder King immediately tore into it.

“The Necronomicon? Oooh, and it’s a signed first edition, too!” Manwë effused in delight. “Thank you so much, Az. I’ll just disguise it.” With a snap of his fingers, the unholy volume of abomination unimaginable turned into a tray of canapés.

He scrutinized his colleagues. The fellows were acceptable enough. The three Valier had cleaned up rather nicely, too. Shub-Nessa had broken out into a gleeful dance, tripping the light fantastic. Byatis and Atlach-Nacha were visions of the feminine divine as they adjusted their gossamer raiment of Estë and Vairë, respectively, not an arthropodic limb nor a serpentine proboscis in sight.

“Right then. You’re all presentable now. Follow me, please.”

Manwe led his glorious comrades to his house, hoping that the party would really take off now that more of the Great Old Ones - that is to say Valar - had finally arrived. Before he stepped across the jumbled bricks, he turned to smile at his friends, and then recoiled when he saw sickly phosphorescent coagulum smeared across the garden path.

“Irmo, you’re still oozing. Please do something about it.”

“Right-o, Chief! Sorry about that,” the Master of Visions and Dreams said as he gracefully stepped over the piles of bricks into the Great Dread’s crystalline – and brick - castle, leaving only one gobbet of foul slime behind him.

Chapter End Notes

This might be influenced by H.P. Lovecraft, who was a one odd dude. A list of the Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos may be found here.