Minas Tirith, sometime during the early years of the fourth age.

A shriek made the herb master look up from the steaming cauldron before him, a frown clouding his kind face. Ioreth was the last person he expected to hear shriek in horror. When he stepped inside the store room, he found her fending off a swarm of cockroaches with a broom.

“Spawn of Mordor,” she spat, her forehead crowned with droplets of sweat. “Cockroaches - I hate their filthy lot.”

~*~

Floating aimlessly in the void, Morgoth dreamt dreams of past and future grandeur and grinned. In the end, his six-legged minions would conquer Arda.

In the end, he would laugh last.

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Title comes from the Lay of Leithian