Duplicity by Prackspoor  

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Cataclysm (III) - Inferno

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IX. Meltdown

Frodo turns around, the entrance to Shelob's tunnels gaping behind him like an open mouth. The whites of his eyes are impossibly bright in the gloom, or maybe his face is just so very dark with grime and dirt by comparison. His blond hair sticks to his fever-damp forehead in matted, greyish strands.

“Is there no other way?” he asks.

“No other way. Just this one. Orcs don't know it. Orcs don't take it. It's the only way that's safe. Just go ahead, master,” you say. “It's the only way.”

 

Broad beams of light slant into the inner chamber of the great temple, the floor bathed in alternating strips of evening light and the shadows of the marble pillars. The air is thick with the smell of incense, but even that is not enough to cover the underlying stench of burnt flesh wafting out of the Chamber of Fire.

Pharazôn and his council stand before the raised platform on which you have had the Númenoreans build an obsidian likeness of Melkor, fifteen feet high. It is a mockery of his true form, but it sends the believers trembling, which is all it is supposed to do. In front of the statue, you sit in the silver chair of the high priest, watching the entourage of old men who have come to seek you out with an impassive face. Your robes these days are always black. Black and silver, or – on days of sacrifice – black and red.

“It is madness,” Erendur says feebly. He is an old man, a firm loyalist and senior advisor of Pharazôn, so wrinkled and shrunken with age that he could easily be mistaken for a hunchbacked child in the semi-darkness. His old age and the wars he has waged during his lifetime have made him conservative to a fault, and in all matters of state his mind stands as unchanging as a rock in troubled seas. In the months after the upheaval that had come with removing Míriel from all public affairs, he has been advocating for peace, prudency, and tradition, and placed himself as an opponent of every reform and change put before the council. In the process he has become your single greatest annoyance after you have removed Míriel from the playing board.

“It is your only chance,” you say crisply.

Pharazôn stands silently, staring at the stone steps leading up to your dais, his hands opening and clenching into fists at his sides. He has not said anything since his little procession had come before your throne and he had told you of the reason for the council's visit, but you can feel how it rankles him that he should have to come before you like a common supplicant instead of the other way round.

“If we were to consider it at all, we could not possibly decide such a matter on the spur of the moment,” Hallatan, another of Pharazôn's bannermen and an experienced military advisor, chimes in.

Your brow furrows and you stand suddenly, your robes settling around you like liquid darkness, before you step forward to the topmost stair of the stone platform and stare down at the group of men looking up at you, towering over them like a dragon looming over a herd of sheep.

You stand before your mockery of a king and his aging retinue, while you are ageless, still as tall, still as wondrous, still as terrible to behold as the day you first encountered him at the Black Gate – and you know that Pharazôn is keenly aware of this.

You steeple your fingers, and school your features into a more conciliatory expression. Your tone, though, when you speak, has nothing of the friendliness and forbearance of your expression. “My lords, you have been turning the issue over for years now. You will not hear a piece of counsel I have not already given you. You will not be given new insights on the matter regarding its advantages or disadvantages. All that can be said has been said one hundred times over.” A pause, and you turn to address Pharazôn directly. “The king I know – the king who dragged me here in chains without showing so much as an touch of fear – would have made his decision long ago,” you say, and you do not bother to keep the scorn out of your voice.

“Well, and you try to push me into a corner and aim to force me into a decision I am not yet ready to make!” Pharazôn lashes out, his temper flaring like the fire in the brazier hanging from the marble columns.

“Ah, what a remarkable combination of lethargy and temper you lay before me,” you say as you step down the stairs. “If someone ever claimed that oil and water could not go together, I would present them with you, my lords, to prove them wrong.” You begin to pace, your steps drawing circles around them that are getting tighter with every round you complete. The men try to keep you in their sights, unconsciously and uncomfortably flocking closer together. You wonder if they know how much they resemble a flock of scared sheep in this moment.

“You remind me of your Elven ancestors, my lords. Like them, you would like to set aside a few hundred years to ponder a weighty matter. And for them, it is just as well – leaving aside the fact that Elves rarely ever get anything done before another millennium turns. But for them it doesn't matter. They have forever to ponder and hesitate, to reconsider and to mull over their philosophies. You on the other hand...” You come to a halt in front of them, your hands folded and looking each of them up and down before they cringe away under your gaze and the probing of your mind, suddenly aware of their ailments and little deformities, their greying hair and their wrinkled faces. “You do not have forever.”

You stop in front of Pharazôn, smirking slightly. Pharazôn meets your gaze sourly, the tarnished silver of his eyes turned to copper by the sheen of the torches.

“'Forever' was taken from you, by a lord you did not choose to serve; a lord who discarded you immediately after he made you. A lord to whom you are not much more than an afterthought – a foil for the glory of the creation of his better-loved first-born children.” You point out over the western sea, where the sun is just now sinking on a blood-red horizon. “There lies your claim, your ancient right which has been taken from you out of arbitrary despotism. The gods have ordained that you should stay away from their shores, and they have trusted in your fear of them to hold you back – and look how well this plan is coming along! They are playing for time – and as long as you let them, they will always win. Time is working in their favour, and it is your greatest enemy. Soon your bodies will have lost the strength to lift a sword, just as the minds of those who are still steadfast and brave today (at this you shoot a scathing look in Erendur's direction) will have lost the courage and willpower to fight your fate.”

“That sounds all very easy and tempting,” Amandil says, and as always he does not bother to hide his disdain for you, “but the fact remains that you are proposing an attack on no one lesser than the lords and ladies of this world – and all in order to catch a hypothetical spectre of immortality on the shores of Aman. This alone would be a sufficient testimony of lunacy in even the most seasoned general. But seeing how this piece of advice comes not only from a priest of Morgoth who would happily stab his own mother in the back if only he had one, but also from a lesser god, who was apparently unable to defend a country fortified by mountains from an army of mere mortals, I must apologise if I will advise the king to take your piece of military advice with more than one grain of salt.”

Were it not for the fact that he had once been Pharazôn's closest friend, Amandil's head would be mounted on a pike outside the temple of Melkor by now, along those of other traitors. Pharazôn shoots Amandil a disgruntled glance, which Amandil meets without blinking an eye, before he turns to look at you. Your smile, at first glance pleasant, speaks a promise of slow and painful revenge.

Despite this you bow your head in meek assent. “I fear it is right that I do not know much in the ways of war, as our Lord Amandil pointed out with his unmatched wit and conciseness. I am a creature whose purpose and talents lie in serving those greater than me, instead of toiling in the trenches of the battlefields of this earth, like braver men than me do daily.”

Amandil snorts and covers it up with a badly feigned cough. You can feel the mood of the men shifting in his favour.

“The fact remains,” you add pointedly, “that I know the gods like no one else on these shores, better than any of you. Better even than the virgin priestesses, who set out for the woods of Andustar during the Spring Rites to allegedly commune with Lord Oromë himself in order to know his mind and his will – for I have seen your gods. I have walked among them. I know their plans and their intentions.” You fix each of the men with your gaze in turn. “And the truth is, the gods fear Man. They are spirits existing on borrowed time, for as long as your fear of them will let them. They have no way of refusing or resisting you. They know that if the Men should take up arms and come to claim what is theirs, they can do nothing but watch.”

You take up your circling again, gliding in and out of the shadows crossing the temple room. “Or why do you think they have done nothing for all those years that Númenor toiled and turned to them for help? Because they are cruel? Most assuredly yes. But also because they are ultimately powerless to do anything of consequence in this world.”

You stop at the foot of the brazier-lined steps leading up to the simulacrum of Melkor.

“You have the power. You have the people. And today you still have the strength of body and of will. The time to act is now, before old age robs you off your last chance to reclaim what is yours.”

Your eyes meet that of Pharazon. “Immortality lies scattered along the shores of Valinor. If you do not seize it, your death is no one's fault but your own.”

You turn away from them and climb the stairs back up onto the platform. Without turning around you say, “I would appreciate it if the lords left the temple now. The day of a high priest is one filled with many tasks of sacrifice and devotion, and I wish to pray.”

You kneel down in front of the statue of Melkor and close your eyes. For a few moments, there is no sound as the men just stand there and stare at your back. Then there is a shuffling of feet, growing softer as the steps recede into the distance.

Three days after that evening, Pharazôn orders the construction of a fleet of a thousand ships. On the same day, it becomes known that Amandil has fled the capital together with his son Elendil.

One year after the order, the fleet of Númenor sets sail for Aman.

Seagulls are wheeling overhead, their mournful cries drowned out by the sound of a silver horn. The sound echoes through the streets of the seaport. Everywhere on roofs and balconies, women, children, and elderly people are standing. No one is waving handkerchiefs, no one is singing or shouting. The entire city stands in watchful, sombre silence, like attending the funeral procession of a distant relative.

You and Míriel are standing side by side on one of the highest terraces of the palace in Eldalondë, overlooking the seaport, the harbour, and the silent houses below.

“They know,” Míriel says. Her face is expressionless, her voice betrays no emotion. “You may have swayed them for the moment, but in their hearts they know that their men will never return.”

“Of course they do.” You give her a lenient smile. “But what does it matter now?”

She makes no answer. You watch the oars strike water and the ships pull away from their piers one by one, until they are lined up like a string of pearls stretched out for miles across the western sea, against the backdrop of a flaming orange sun.

 

You crawl down the lower spurs of the Morgai, ashes and stones crunching under your fingers. Every now and then you stop to scratch a bit of spiderweb out from under your dirty nails and wipe the sticky threads off your fingers.

Frodo has been gone for a long time; Shelob must have gotten him by now. The only thing you need to do now is to go to the delve where the fat old spider usually discards the parts of her meals that she does not care for – clothes, armour, weapons. The Ring.

You find the way easily, and you squat down at the edge of the stone wall surrounding the pit, safely out of the way of old Shelob herself. The delve is devoid of life, but full of signs of death. Bones and skulls litter the ground, as do shields and rusty swords. There is no sign of the Ring, or of Frodo's nasty blade Sting, or his equally disgusting mithril shirt.

Not much longer, you think to yourself and nervously rock back and forth on your heels, gnawing on your fingernails. Not much longer, and the Precious will be mine, we will be together again, whole again, Precious, Precious, Precious.

Moments pass. Minutes pass. The sickly reddish sun sinks lower on the clouded, smoke-choked sky. Your fingernails are bitten bloody, and still you gnaw at them. You haven't come across a puddle of water, and thus you haven't had the opportunity to talk to your reflection again. A pity, for he seemed to have some good sense, and you are getting more and more nervous by the minute. But you are also weary, weary in a way you have never known. The black clouds are pressing down on you, the air is dry and thick in your throat. You are worn and tense, as if you were a piece of skin stretched far too thin over jutting bones.

You do not know when you are awake and when you nod off for brief amounts of time, but all the while you keep mumbling to yourself in assurance, “She must be here soon, must be here soon.”

“Must she really?” someone next to you says and the voice almost startles you out of your skin.

You jerk awake (have you been asleep?) with a hiss and stare at the towering shadowy figure that has taken a seat right next to you. It looks huge and massive, and it is far too close to you. Why did you not see it coming? How was it able to sneak up on you?

The outlines of the figure are like black smoke, wavering and wafting. You cannot make out its face. You bare your teeth, but the figure only laughs and it sounds like mountains collapsing.

“Why would she come here to dispose of the Halfling? Maybe she's gotten a taste of what has really fallen into her jaws thanks to you, and like her mother, she'd prefer to devour it.”

You blink owlishly. “What is it saying?” You are, at this point, talking more to yourself than the shadow, but the shadow doesn't seem to be bothered by it. If anything, its huge, hulking form seems to ripple with amusement.

“The Halfling carries your Ring, and you and I both know how much Ungoliant's spawn likes to eat fine trinkets.”

You narrow your eyes and cock your head to one side—and then the coin drops. You almost jump back, and there would not have been missing much for you to topple heels over head into the pit. You scrabble for purchase and land in an undignified heap – much too close to the edge for your comfort, but even closer to the shadow than you'd like.

You are silent. Then you say, almost resentfully, “You.”

“Took you long enough.” The shadow inclines its head to one side and invisible eyes seem to size you up, take in every inch of your miserable appearance and your crouching, cringing posture. “It would have been more justified for me not to recognise you. Just look at you. Mairon, Mairon, whatever has become of you?”

“What's it calling us?”

The shadow leans forward. “Your name. Don't you remember it?”

“No.” You turn away and return to picking at your fingernails. “No one calls us that. No one, anyone, not even ourselves. Why would we? It's no longer ours, the name, isn't it? We took other names, fitted them to ourselves, tailored them to us, or tailored us to them, what do we know? We do not use it anymore. It no longer fits us, so we forgot.”

“It truly does not fit you any longer." The dark figure heaves a sigh. "I never thought I'd see the day when I would be the sane one out of the two of us. We've truly come a long way from our glory days, haven't we?”

You throw the shadow a furtive, annoyed glance. “What do we – what do I know? I don't remember.”

“I think you do. You are remembering me this very instant, albeit very wrongly, which is no credit to your current state of mind – just listen to me talking reason to you, it's ridiculous. No one in their right mind would believe it if we told them.”

“Maybe.” You turn away to stare at the dark tunnels dug into the wall, willing Shelob to appear with a dead hobbit in tow.

“Maybe Shelob will find your Ring even tastier than the Halfling who is carrying it. Spiders have a penchant for shiny things. Do you recall when I returned to Angband, mauled and mangled, because that cursed monster Ungoliant had set her mind to robbing me of my Silmarils and almost bitten my arms off?”

At those words, an echo of a memory surfaces: dark hallways, smoking torches, and a great dark figure limping down the corridors, trailing rivers of blood and the stench of burned meat.

“I remember that.”

“That is something, at least. And I guess you also remember what your reaction to the whole disaster was.”

You think about it some more. You look at your hands, at your bloody, yellowed nails. You scratch your head. “I laughed?” you venture.

“Damn right. Stoic little bastard that you were, I have never before or since seen you laugh like that. It would have served you right for me to end you then and there. But when I look at you now, I wonder if I would not have done you a favour by killing you. Nothing good came afterwards except defeat piled upon humiliation, piled upon another defeat. At least my brothers and sisters removed me from the downward spiral before I had the chance to sink as low as you did.”

You bristle at that. “Low as me? I did what you never had the courage to do – I ventured out into the world and I made it mine – I did not need to steal someone else's stupid trinkets, I made my own devices of power, I was smarter and more inventive than you ever were and – we, we were powerful, we were feared, we were even adored by some and we gave them gifts, gifts they could use, and which we could use to use them and we controlled them, more effectively and thoroughly than you have ever been able to! 'Low as me'? We at our lowest were still better than you at your highest, you self-aggrandising, arrogant would-be-king of the world! Anything you could think of, we have improved upon, together, bound together, working and functioning as one, as intended, something someone as cowardly and stupid as you could never have achieved, not in a thousand ages – ”

You rant on and on, and then you turn around all of a sudden and notice that the shadow is gone.

You lie on the ground, your limbs trapped under your body, twisted and uncomfortable and stiff – although you do not remember lying down or falling. You climb back onto all fours and wildly cast your eyes about, but you are alone, alone, utterly alone.

“Ah! Where have you gone? Come back!” You rake your fingers over your skull, digging bloody trenches into your scalp. “Come back and listen to me, you – you shadow, you impostor, you king of nothing! Don't you dare laugh at me!”

You rage for a bit longer, tearing at your hair and hurling stones in every direction, until all of a sudden the voice of your ancient self, which you have glimpsed in the still pond, echoes inside your skull like a clap of thunder, Shut up!

You stop in mid-motion. “You're back?” Involuntarily, and quite absurdly, you look around yourself for a puddle of water from where your reflection might look back at you.

I was never gone. Turn around, I heard something!

Its angry tone abruptly quells your anger, and you snap your mouth shut, whirling around with wide eyes and a half-formed grin on your lips, expecting to see Shelob throwing the remains of a dead Frodo into the pit, and instead seeing –

– seeing Samwise-fucking-Gamgee rolling out of one of the tunnels, getting to his feet and stabbing an enraged, bloated Shelob right in her soft underbelly with – is that Frodo's sword? How – what – why –

You stare, your mouth agape and you can not believe it, you cannot believe this, how can this be happening, why – is – he – here – and how are hobbits always doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing and thwarting your plans by simply existing, you cannot believe this, YOU CANNOT BELIEVE THIS.

You are so close to jumping into the pit yourself and bashing Samwise's head in with a blunt piece of rock, but the voice inside your head hisses and orders you to pull back.

Not now! Not now! She's about to kill him!

“He's about to kill her!” you wail.

And both will turn on you if you jump in, and that will get us very far in regaining the Precious, so in the name of good sense, stay here!

In the end, you do as the voice of the elder (or younger?) version of you bids, but your blood curdles in your veins as you watch Samwise stab Shelob repeatedly, until the old spider decides that she has had enough, and heaves her fat body back into one of her tunnels, making a hurried escape. You watch Sam drop Sting where he stands and hurry over to Frodo to tear the spiderwebs away from his face, only to break down in tears at the discovery that his master is obviously dead. You sit back with a dissatisfied grunt. At least there's one thing this useless spider was able to do properly.

But then, you see your luck once again turned to ill fortune when in this very moment, of all times, two orcs on patrol clamber down the stony steps leading to their post of Cirith Ungol. Samwise quickly slips away to hide between two mighty boulders, and the orcs come to a halt in front of Frodo. They regard him with puzzled glances, launch into a debate about what to do with a dead hobbit, all of a sudden proclaim that he's not dead after all, and then decide to bring him to their outpost with them in order to relay him to the Great Eye for questioning.

You watch from your position on the ledge and only barely resist the urge to smash your head repeatedly against the rocky floor. The voice of your ancient you is ominously silent in your head. You both know that there is no way of getting to the Ring as soon as Frodo is inside the walls of the outpost, and you have to get your hands on it before the Eye does.

We have to –, the voice in your head starts, but you cut it off immediately.

“Be quiet.” You bury your face in your bony hands, dig your thin fingers into your eye sockets, squeezing between your eyeballs and the protruding arc of your cheekbone. “I am trying to think.”

We can do nothing while Frodo is in the keep, the voice carries on, unperturbed.

“I know.”

We will have to attack the escort party that is to bring him to the Tower. Kill the orcs. Kill the Ring-bearer. Take the Ring for ourselves.

You hiss angrily – you know all this, you know all this, because it was you suggesting it in the first place, so why does the voice keep nagging you – this – is – unbearable – you feel like you are trying to talk and think over a constant echo –

“Be quiet,” you say. “Be quiet, be quietbequietbequiet. I know what to do. I know what we must do.”

Kill them all. Take the Ring. For yourself, and yourself alone.

You won't share it. With anyone. But the voice of the other You does not need to know that.

With that, you turn around and you set off along the ridge of jagged rocks, in the direction where the hundred orange fires of the orc outpost illuminate the eternal, choking twilight enshrouding Cirith Ungol.

 

But yet again, some insufferable god sees fit to throw another wrench in your works. You and the voice in your head watch in disbelieving silence as Samwise Gamgee sneaks into the Orcish keep all by himself. When all of a sudden a riot starts in the upper levels of the tower and Samwise emerges unscathed with Frodo in tow not two hours later, you flop down onto the ground, unblinking and mostly unthinking. The voice in your head is utterly quiet.

This, you think, is too much.

You sit and stare at nothing in particular for a few moments, while the two hobbits make a hurried escape in their ridiculously ill-fitting sets of orc-armour. Just after they have vanished around a turn of the path, you slowly get to all fours again, then sit back on your haunches and slowly, one by one, crack your fingers. There is a satisfying crunch when the abused joints snap back into their assigned places, and then you climb on, following the trail of fear-stench and footprints laid out for you by the hobbits.

It will not be hard to keep track of them from now on. Between you and the chasm of fire now only lie the endless ashen plains of Gorgoroth, stretching out for miles in every direction. On the open plain there is no chance of losing their trail and letting them escape. Barring the off-chance of both of them stumbling and breaking their necks in some ditch along the dirt roads (which, at this point, is entirely too much to hope for), their way to the Mountain is clear, but also exposed and widely visible in every direction.

Someone will take note of them sooner or later. You'll just have to get them first.

And you will get them. They cannot outrun you on the open field. You are too fast, too tenacious, too eaten up by the desire for the Ring to allow this.

Your patience is wearing thin. Just a bit longer, you'll force yourself to remain calm and quiet, while you stay close to their heels during their meandering flight off to the side of the greater roads through Mordor. The hobbits sense your presence, even if they do not consciously know you are there. They keep throwing backward glances over their shoulders, but every time they do, you are already hidden behind a dried thorny thicket or have wedged yourself in a cleft between two rocks, watching them unblinking, like a lizard.

You can see that they are reluctant to leave the relative safety of the mountains behind. Up until now, they have been wandering in the trough between the Ephel Dúath and the Morgai, but they can only follow the mountain range so far before running into another Orcish stronghold or straight into the vale of Udûn. The open land before them offers no cover and no shelter, and both hobbits know it. And yet, despite all of this, they have no choice in the matter in the end, so one evening both hobbits shoulder their backpacks and step out of the menacing, yet protective shadow of the mountains, and set out across the east road leading over the dead plain, directly to the fiery mountain.

You wait until they are almost out of view, just blurred black specks against the grey, rocky ground and the reddish sky – you'll have to keep your distance for now – and then you set out after them, on the last stage of your journey, towards your final confrontation.

 

The march is long and arduous. Despite the clouded sky, the heat is oppressive. It seems not to come from the shrouded, weak sun above, but instead it appears to rise up through the ground below. You pick your path along cooler spots over rocks and through dried-up riverbeds. You have not seen one of the sad trickles of oily water in two days, and you cannot remember the last time you have eaten. This close to the Mountain, not even maggots and insects can survive. The air is pregnant with the smell of brimstone and other poisonous gases.

Your head is swimming. Your thinking has ground to a halt. You cling to the one desire remaining to you, and that is to move forward in order to get a hold of the Ring. Whatever comes after you have reclaimed the Precious will take place in another world, where everything will be changed, and all that has come before will be irrelevant and naught. In the next world (your world) you will finally be recompensed for all the pain and humiliation you have gone through. You just have to survive until you reach the Mountain, when you will be able to ambush the hobbits.

Your body is finished. You drag your hull forward, bloody, yellowish nails scrabbling over the ground, thin strings of saliva dripping from your parched lips, your skin raw and scabby. All that remains to you now is your will to keep you going.

Every now and then, your surroundings shift around you, and you seem to have stepped through a window in time into the Elder Days, or even older times. Fortresses and palaces rise and fall around you, building themselves up with the rumble of stones and dissolving into mist at the height of their magnificence.

Shadows are moving about you, flitting in and out of your field of vision, sometimes clearer, sometimes vaguer. You try to ignore them.

This is your last journey, and the ghosts of your past are walking beside you.

 

You see them floating or walking next to you, lined up like pearls on a string, each one a face worn, an identity discarded: there is a primordial being of fire and flame, accompanied by a mountain of shadow. They are followed by another similar creature, tarnished and corrupted, its flames darkened, the rest of it all spikes and wheels and sharp edges. There are a torturer and a military commander walking at the head of a pack of slavering wolves with red eyes. You see a sorcerer cloaked in black, grasping a twisted staff of blackened iron, chased by blue, grey, brown and white orbs of light. There is a penitent in battered armour and – later – in a white gown. You see another figure of white and gold, mingling with other, weaker shadows, flitting in and out of existence around it, except for one shade that is a bit more constant, and stays longer than the others. It walks close to the white-and-gold figure for a while, but then something strange happens: the white-and-gold spectre splits in the middle, and an eerie shadowed doppelgänger of it appears, faded and veiled and terrible. The white-and-gold spirit fades, and its friendly companion spirit vanishes in a violent explosion of the doppelgänger.

You want to avert your face, but at the same time, you can't help but watch as the dark spirit convulses and thrashes, changing and mutating wildly and malevolently. The doppelgänger splits again, once, twice, and smaller versions of lesser power but the same evil intent appear. You do not need to count them to know that their number is sixteen. Even the other spirits seem to shy away from it in disgust, and fall back as it sidles close to you, looming over you like a dark cloud. It reforms and suddenly you recognise the reflection you saw in the water so long ago.

You stop and turn to watch the spirits; that long line of everything and everyone you have ever been.

There are so many of them.

And there is so little left of you.

 

The Mountain takes up almost your entire field of vision by now. The spirits are flocking unbearably close to you. The hobbits are getting slower with each passing hour, and you decide to overtake them and wait for them higher up, where the chance for a successful ambush is greater. You turn away from their footprints in the reddish sand and round the slope in search of another path where you can climb up.

With each rasping breath, you draw more poisonous fumes into your lungs. The last of your spittle has long since dried on your chin. Your mouth is parched, your tongue feels bloated, and your hands and feet leave dark smears of blood on the volcanic stone as you climb.

You reach out to pull yourself up another ledge, when suddenly the world tilts –

– and you fall to your knees, gasping and coughing.

But you cannot rest now, you have to go on, ever on, and you start to drag yourself forward on your stomach. Suddenly there are arms around your chest, pulling you up.

“Come, Mister Frodo! I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!”

You find yourself first pulled to your feet, then heaved onto somebody else's shoulders. “So up you get! Come on, Mister Frodo dear! Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where to go, and he’ll go–

– back.

You have no idea what just happened and shake your head angrily, trying to chase away the ghosts, the sudden shifts in the world around you, the annoying voices echoing inside your head.

The Precious, they say. We want the Precious. Bring it to us, give it to us.

You shake your head, but it does not make them go away, so you grab a sharp-edged stone and smash it against your skull until the roar of blood and the thunder of the headache drown out the voices.

Give us the Precious, give it to us. It is ours.

“It is mine! Mine!” you screech. “Go away! Get out of my head!” You bound up a few boulders, lose your footing, and roll down the slope again. Covered in ashes and dirt, you try to scale the slope for a second time.

 

You stumble again.

“Mister Frodo!” Sam cries, his voice tear-choked.

Your face is pressed to the hot ground, the sand burning your skin away. You inhale the scent of ashes and slag, and if there is anything else in this world, anything other than this mountain, the heat, and the ashes, you have forgotten it.

You raise your head, and the chain cuts into your neck when you drag the Ring away from the ground. There, above you, is the entrance to the Chambers of Fire. So close, so close. You have to go on.

Sam turns you around, so you are lying on your back instead of your stomach. “Oh no, oh no.” He strokes your cheek with his hand, and he would be crying, were his eyes not dried out from the heat. “We have to take a break, Mister Frodo, dear. You can’t walk like that. Just for a short while.”

You shake your head, but for a moment you are tempted to give in to your exhaustion and just lie there, until the Eye or the Nazgûl spot you and carry you away … and whatever comes after, you are not sure if it is worse than this –

No.

You open your eyes and right yourself up again, struggling to your hands and knees. You have to go on, you have to destroy the Ring, even if you cannot walk anymore.

“I'll crawl,” you say.

 

You are nearly deaf and blind, and still you climb on. An invisible thread ties you to the Ring. Wherever it is in this world, you will know it and you will be drawn to it. You climb sideways, your progress revealing more and more of the western plain of Gorgoroth – and slowly, the Black Tower slides into view, from whose windows It is waiting, watching. You groan and crouch lower. It must not see you, it must not see anyone, or it will know that you are here and it will take the Precious for itself.

There is a screech in your head as all the ghosts and another voice cry out as one. You can hardly make out the words, only –

“Help me, Sam! Help me, Sam! Hold my hand! I can’t stop it! He’s spotted us!”

And suddenly the gaze of the Eye is upon you, and you cradle your head in your hands as you throw yourself to the ground to hide, trembling and crying, whimpering, “Help me, help me, help me!”

But the ghosts are cold and pitiless, they just repeat their eternal chant back to you: The Precious, the Precious, give us the Precious.

“No, no, no, no! Never, never!” You crawl on, and suddenly you see the hobbits, dragging themselves up the path not far below you. Another turn of the road will bring them directly under the outcrop where you are perched.

You wait – you wait – they come closer. You see a glimmer of gold around Frodo's neck, and that is too much – it is not – his –

– you drop down and you slam both of them to the ground.

Both hobbits are bowled over by your accelerated weight. You are immediately upon Frodo, who looks like a skeleton, his skin stretched taut over his skull, his eyes sunken, and his gums drawn back from his teeth. You punch him about like a ragdoll, and he does not even have the strength left to fight back, then you go for his throat and reach for the Ring.

All of a sudden, a wild light flames up in Frodo's eyes; his hands are locked around your wrists and he rears up, his teeth bared and his pupils tiny pinpricks in his eyes. You had expected him to fight back, but never with such brute force. Out of the corner of your eyes you see Sam watching helplessly with a sword in his hand. There is nothing he can do, for now, for you are interlocked too tightly. An intervention by him to defend Frodo would inevitably harm his master as well, and so he is forced to watch as you two wrestle and tear and bite at each other like rabid animals.

You stole it, you stole it, give it to us, the voices scream, and without knowing, you repeat it aloud.

“You ssstooole it, give it to usssss, give it to usssss!” you snarl, and tear out a chunk of his hair.

Frodo cries out, but all of a sudden he gathers all the strength he has left, and bucks so violently he – throws you off.

You land on your back, and within the blink of an eye, Frodo is on his feet, his hand flies to his belt and you find yourself once more at the end of the blade of Sting.

“Down, down!” he gasps and clutches at the Ring to hide it from your view. “Down, you creeping thing, and out of my path! Your time is at an end. You cannot betray me or slay me now, Gollum!”

You and Sam both stare at him, and then the world shifts once more.

You see yourself and Frodo from a different angle, as if you were watching from above: one of the two a crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stands –  stern and utterly untouchable now by pity –  a figure robed in white, and at its breast it holds a wheel of fire. Out of the fire speaks a commanding voice:

“Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.”

You feel yourself being pulled downward, and suddenly it is you staring up at Frodo, but this is no longer Frodo looking back at you out of bright, wild eyes, there is –

– another shift, and you are backing away, small and terrified.

Sam whirls around to face Frodo, who is standing taller and straighter than you have ever seen him. “Quick, Master!” he cries. “Go on! I’ll deal with him. Go on!’

Frodo turns his head slowly, as if looking at someone standing very far away. “Yes,” he agreed. “I must go on. Farewell, Sam! This is the end at last. On Mount Doom doom shall fall. Farewell!” And with those words he turns and walks up the climbing path, shoulders squared and his head held high, as if there was nothing in the world that could hinder or scare him any longer.

You gape, and almost miss Sam turning towards you with a murderous look in his eyes. “Now!” he says grimly. “At last I can deal with you!” He leaps forward to fight, but you crumple before him before he can land his blow.

“Don't kill us,” you whimper. “Don't hurt us with the nasty steel. Let us live, let us live, just a little longer. We are lost! When the Precious goes we will be gone. We'll die and turn to dust.” You claw through the ashes of the path under your hands to stress your point.

You can see the hobbit wavering, and you can almost feel his hatred of you warring with his even greater hatred to take a life. In the end, his pathetic pitying nature wins out over his intelligence (which is not a remarkable force to begin with), and he lowers his sword.

“Curse you, you pathetic stinker!” he shouts. “Go away! Off with you, before I kick you down this mountain! Go away, or I really am going to hurt you with my nasty cruel steel.” And with those words he turns away and stumbles after his master.

You watch him with half-lidded eyes, slowly counting down from three in your head, and then you bound after him. A last sprint brings you up to the entrance into the volcano.

 

You can see the sea retreating from the shores, exposing the ocean floor for miles around the coast of Númenor. Silvery fish are thrashing on the glistening wet mud, and children cry out in wonder and run out into the newly exposed mudflats to play, running happily into the arms of their impending death. Your gaze returns from hundreds of miles away, and you turn your back to the sea as you recommence your climb up the mountain of Meneltarma.

 

The walls of the chamber are alight with flaring oranges and reds. You are burning up, inside and outside. You enter through the crack in the stone, feel your way forward through the dark passage and then linger at the edge of the shadow as you spot two dark shapes against the red glare of the inner Chamber of Fire.

Frodo is a black silhouette against the backdrop of fire, the updrafts of hot air swirling around him, whipping his dirty hair and his torn clothes. He is holding his right hand out over the chasm, his palm turned upward and in it – you know – is resting the Ring, with just the thin layer of flesh and bones separating it from its fatal fall into the fires below.

The voices in your head are screaming.

The Precious! The Precious! Take it from him, take it take it TAKE IT – KILL HIM

kill them ALL!

It is ours –

we made it –

we share it not – TAKE IT (Precious),

break its neck, its nasty

fingers (ours ours oursoursours), strangle him, gouge

his eyes out

rip his throat out – give us the Prec-c-c-cious.

You bend over, the agony behind your temples tearing your brain to shreds. Your vision is tinted red when you look up. You can barely see. Something warm is trickling down your upper lip from your nose, and when you lick it away, you taste blood.

Frodo does not move.

“Frodo!” Sam stands a few paces behind his master, doubled over, gasping for breath. “Frodo! Do it. Do what we came for! Destroy it, then let's go – home!” His voice breaks on the last word.

Frodo turns around briefly. His eyes are bright in the darkness that fills the chamber.

Sam takes a stumbling step towards him. “What are you waiting for?” he pleads. “Just let go.”

Frodo looks back at the Ring in his hand, then, slowly, he retreats his hand from over the abyss and brings it close to his chest.

“I have come,” he says. “But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed.” He pauses, his shoulders heaving with a long, indrawn breath. Then Frodo turns around fully, and the look in his face is – no longer his own. “The Ring is mine!” And with those words he puts on the Ring.

A white-hot shriek splits your head, and you go momentarily blind as well as deaf.

(HE HAS CLAIMED IT FOR HIMSELF BUT IT IS OURS OURS KILL HIM KILL HIM THAT RAT THAT WRETCH THAT WORTHLESS THIEF)

And in this moment Frodo’s vague, darkened silhouette is turned to a bright blaze you would have been able to spot from miles away. You can see him now, clearer than if he had been standing before you in bright daylight.

The mountain itself quakes under your feet. A fountain of fire erupts from the core of the volcano, painting the walls of the chamber a deep, dark red. You take it as your cue to jump forward. You slam into Sam and throw him to the ground, and then you go for Frodo, who is frozen when he sees you charging right at him.

(KILL HIM SEIZE HIM THROW HIM OFF THE CLIFF, MURDER, MURDER, KILL THE THIEF)

He braces himself for the impact, and yet the force of your momentum sends you both nearly tumbling from the platform. The Ring is a loop of fire blazing on his right hand. He pulls back, but you are too fast and you grab his hand – touching – the – Ring –

Your consciousness flares outward akin to fire spreading outward along the spokes of a wheel, as you are reconnected with the great nexus whose centre is the Ring, reaching out over miles in every direction. You are in a dozen places at once – you are in the Chamber of Fire, you are crouched in a dark tower, contorted in a wordless scream of terror, you are seven lifeless Rings entombed in a crypt of stone on the lowest levels of Barad-Dûr, you are flying on fell beasts far above an army, when you suddenly yank them around and tear like lightning across the desolate plain, a gate, and you see the Mountain from afar – and –

(TAKE IT TAKE IT FOR YOURSELF)

(IT BELONGS TO ME AND ONLY TO ME AND I WILL NOT SHARE IT)

– you are wrestling with Frodo who fights you tooth and nail like a wild animal. Then he looks up and your eyes meet, and staring back at you out from the hobbit's eyes

 

is

 

You.

 

(tearing through the air, eight times, in eight places at once, willing the fell beasts to fly faster, faster, faster and you scream)

 

You are not fighting Frodo.

Looking at you out of ferocious golden eyes under matted blond hair is no one else but

yourself.

(Evenly matched, evenly strong, evenly corrupted by hunger and desire and the will to POSSESS)

And you realise –

there is no way

 

you

 

can

 

win.

 

The ocean is rising like a wall before you, the wave building up until it fills the entire western sky, while the night in the east is torn in two by lightning and thunder.

For the first time ever you think that

you might have

miscalculated.

 

It is coming together, all the split parts of the Ring converging at the Mountain, like pieces of metal drawn to its central magnet at last.

Frodo and you are interlocked so tightly you might as well be One, two destructive halves – ninths – seventeenths? – of the same being fighting each other to destruction.

You cease to be different existences.

 

A wheel of fire

eternal

infinite

no beginning no end

and everything is connected.

 

You are trying

to rip the Ring from Frodo's hand

to keep Gollum away from your right hand, you shove him back

and you reach out

grabbing the hand of the hobbit

trying to twist out of Gollum's grasp

hurtling towards the volcano with your seven remaining brethren

you gasp as Gollum pulls his hand towards his open maw, sharp teeth

you grin when you notice that Frodo is, by a tiny, and yet decisive, margin the weaker of you two

you are so exhausted

the mountain is now directly ahead

the tower is shaking with your anguish and fear

teeth close around

your

his

fingers

you bite down

a scream

screams

in the tower, in the air, in the volcano

your own voice

not your own

you are not screaming

you stumble back crying

you laugh triumphantly as you spit out the severed finger and pull the ring off it, holding it up

you crumple to the ground, your right hand awash with pain, and Sam is crying your name

you are now above the volcano, all eight of you

a desperate last command ringing forth from the Tower – DOWN! and you dive through the cloud of smoke rising from the crater and into the vent of the volcano

 

You have won

You have lost

 

You hold up the Ring and you laugh, you laugh, you laugh

you scream in terror

in pain

in fear

you crawl towards Gollum, you must get the Ring back

it is yours

no, it is yours

you will not let them take it from you

again

and you laugh, stepping back, still regarding the Precious

for is it not fitting

is it not comical

is it not ironic

you think

as you take one step too far and suddenly there is only air beneath your feet

you watch yourself lose your balance from the outside; though through whose eyes you could not tell

watch as you tilt back in a gentle arc, your centre of gravity crossing the edge of the platform and dropping away into the depth of the chasm

 

You can only watch and stare, for once at the mercy of powers greater than yourself, for once in the face of a greater might that you cannot avoid, and wait for your doom to come down upon you, for the point of no return has passed a long time ago. The wave comes crashing down.

 

and then you are falling

watching yourself fall

into the fire

a Nazgûl dashes past you as you cower on the platform

into the chasm

but he is too slow to reach you and the wing membranes of his fell beast light up like torches in the heat

you crash into the lava at the same time

 

The water hits you like a wall of massive steel. Within the blink of an eye, your body is crushed and ripped to pieces. What is left of you is caught in the undertow as the wave curls in on itself, and then you are being pulled away from the light, and into the lightless depth below.

 

the Tower is shaken to its foundations

the volcano erupts into fire

the earth itself splits beneath an army under a black banner

 

as the circle is broken

its power unmade

everything enclosed in it set free

and everything made by it comes apart

 

and even while you are undone

all the while you keep thinking, Isn't it it fitting, isn't it strange, isn't it ironic

that the one thing you have fought and defeated

could not defeat

have been defeated by

the only one who could ever defeat you

 

has been you alone all along.

---

Chapter End Notes

That's it!
Thanks to everyone who stayed with this story until the end, particularly everyone who took the time to leave their opinions, questions, and thoughts in form of a comment.
A special thanks goes out to RaisingCaiin, who took it upon herself not only to betaread this story meticulously, but also to provide me with suggestions how it could be written better.

For those interested, there are two interesting tidbits of information I thought I'd share:

1) The Hobbit-arc is, by and large, the same as in the original. Most dialogues are taking verbatim from the original books. So, incidentally, is this passage:
You see yourself and Frodo from a different angle, as if you were watching from above: one of the two a crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stands – stern and utterly untouchable now by pity – a figure robed in white, and at its breast it holds a wheel of fire.
I'll just leave that here.

2) For those interested in further reading, I recommend reading this interesting analysis, especially the comparison between the Manichean and Augustinian view of Evil, which inspired the principal idea of this story.