“I am with you at present,” said Gandalf, “but soon I shall not be. I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so. And as for you, my dear friends, you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you.”

Thus speaks Q to their warrior anons as we journey back to the Republic as it was meant to be. But we already know our home has been decimated by the socialist, greedy scum. A sudden blast of the horn and the cleansing will begin in earnest. And the patriots who see beyond their years will say, “There is to be no slaying… not even if they have gone over to the other side.”

We have our orders; we wait for a final command. We forgive and teach, and one day our land will be healed.

“When things [all that we hold dear] are endangered, someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”

Reread the final chapter of The Return of the King. It differs from the Hwood version. Be alert, anons.