For five hundred years it poisoned his mind; and in the gloom of Gollum's cave, it waited. Darkness crept back into the forests of the world. Rumor grew of a shadow in the East, whispers of a nameless fear, and the Ring of Power perceived. Its time had now come. It abandoned Gollum. But then something happened that the Ring did not intend. It was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable. A Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, of the Shire. For the time will soon come when Hobbits will shape the...