Title: Mandos and the Paths of the Dead
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Rating: G
Length: 124
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana, Morgynleri & Icka for encouragement & sanity-checking.
Written for the prompt 'Purgatory'
Summary: Some thoughts on Mandos and the Paths of the Dead.



If Mandos, Keeper of the Halls of Waiting, is the Vala of law, of contracts, oaths, as well as justice, which is a reasonable extrapolation, then he has something to do with the Dead of the Paths of the Dead. Not directly in the sense of immediate intervention, but in the structure of what holds them to the world, prevents them from finding dissolution, release from their mountain halls, from finding their way through the door to the mystery of the Doom of Men. Their oath binds them; flesh may have failed them, death of body stopped breath and blood, seed and the creation of anything new — they are not alive, they are dead, but denied Mandos’ Halls. Not until the fulfill their binding Oath can they be unbound, released, set free to go beyond.