Unmade by Arveldis  

Chapter 1

Written for the prompt "made and unmade" for Tolkien Horror Week 2026 on Tumblr.

Frodo stood bare in the burning dark. Before him lay only a vast darkness, in which spun a wheel of fire, consuming, and behind him lay a great chasm, ringed with fumes. There could be no going back; he could only go forward, driven by a will long since depleted, stumbling over the rocks that pierced his feet and hands, and tumbling face-first into the pits that yawned suddenly before him, invisible in the darkness.

There was no sound in this land, if land he was in. No light, no warmth. Even if he sought to reach for the burning wheel—no! cried a small voice in his mind, rising from its shackled silence and shaking its chains futiley—his hand came away unscathed, so pale and thin he could nearly see the flicker of flames through the translucence of his skin. And cold, so cold.

There was no warmth in the cloak he wrapped himself in, no stirring of heat beneath his skin as he placed one foot before the other. But even so, no chills rattled his body. Had he not shivered in the tower, bare beneath the whips and knives? Had he not trembled to find himself bare in a room of stone and iron, huddled against the wall beneath the window-slit where the winds that howled like Orc voices could not so easily reach him?

But the tower was a dream, a dream threaded into the endless tapestry of nightmares that veiled his mind, as tangled and torturous as the thorns that groped for his feet and the hem of his cloak. Perhaps he had never shivered at the touch of cold. Perhaps he had always walked thus, afflicted but without affliction.

A hand sought his sometimes in the darkness, but it was void of warmth, and Frodo found no comfort in its touch. He had passed beyond touch, a distant part of his mind thought, and wondered at the thought, as if it looked upon it from a great distance and glimpsed something that might otherwise have held meaning. But the thought passed nearly as soon as it appeared, as quickly as the winds blew in clouds of noxious gases and then drove them past, and he thought again only of his feet, stumbling, weary, so clumsy and far beneath him as to seem to belong to someone else, until he fell and felt the bite of of rock against every inch of him and remembered that he had skin and bones and was not a creature of thought only.

A voice murmured in the darkness, but its words were distant, as if he were trying to listen to a whisper beneath wind. Silence held him, immutable and ancient, and his thoughts shriveled and shrank beneath its weight until at last they ceased utterly. He walked in a land without voices or speech, only the endless dark, burning, pressing, beating. Words held no meaning here, nor memories, if memories he had. There was only the darkness and the dreams darker still; all else lay forgotten, cast into the cleft of the fuming chasm.

He walked without thought, driven only by the memory of a will that had borne him past hope, until it, too, had failed, and he walked only because he remembered he must.

A thought and knowledge greater than his bore down upon him, ever mightier and unflinching, and he stumbled beneath the strength of its malice. He lifted his hands before him, fending, keenly aware of his smallness and fast-flagging strength. He was a pebble beneath the eye of a storm that roved far-seeing over leagues uncounted, gathering strength with every league it consumed. His thoughts shrank and fled, and yet they could not flee fast enough, for the thought that bent upon him was too vast to flee. He was pinned, flayed, laid bare. Every thought, every vein pulsed beneath the scouring thought. He could not move beneath it, only lay like a prone thing, barer than if he stood unclothed beneath the raking wind, flayed beneath its fingers.

White, then clear, then white again shone his hands, fending off the weight of the thought, as if light pooled in him, or else poured through him. A dim corner of his mind wondered at where the light could have come from, in this land of darkness, when all his mind was thick with shadows. But the thought faded as soon as it rose. He was become like glass, clear, hollow, empty.

Like glass he would crack and shatter, for surely he must. The weight was too great, and he too fragile.

I am unmade, said a small, shrinking voice in his mind, emptied of all that I am. I shall never be whole again. I have come this far only to fail at the last. 

I am made into a thing mighty, said a louder voice, rising imperiously and casting its burning gaze to the wheel of fire that burned now not in front of him, but against his chest, a beacon in the darkness. I am filled as I never was before. I am not glass but adamant unbreaking.

Hands tore at him, but his will was mightier. He cast off the thing, panting, and held the circle of fire to his skin, white as the clearest light.

Fire leapt beneath him, burning his skin with its nearness. But he did not feel it, for it was nothing to the circle of fire that blazed upon his finger and burned away all shadows as if they never were. His mind cleared, and all terror and grief fled. The weight that had bent upon him staggered, reeling in its wrath, and released him. He stood unbowed, all his thought caught in the circle of flame upon his finger, consuming, strengthening.

I ought always to have taken it. I ought never to have resisted.

A pain, and a furious wrench—

Fire raked his mind, searing. A red anger surged and screamed and died, until he was no more than a cloud of ash caught by the wind, driven scattering over the land.

I am a vessel emptied.