Sunlight spilled across the Pelennor Fields, warm and golden—an almost cruel brightness for a land so thoroughly broken. Green grass still grew, stubborn and defiant, but it bristled now with black orc-arrows and lay strewn with bodies. Gondor's riders were scattered like fallen banners, their horses sprawled beside them, armor dulled with blood and dust.
Near the heart of the ruin lay Faramir, motionless among the dead. The wind tugged faintly at his cloak, as if trying—too late—to wake him from the stillness that had claimed him.
To the east, the clouds of Mordor advanced with patient certainty. Dark and swollen, they rolled like a bruised tide across the sky, swallowing the blue and creeping steadily westward. And beneath those clouds, the armies moved with them.
The earth began to answer their coming, ever closer to the White City.
But for now, far from the blood and the marching thunder of Sauron's host, high within Minas Tirith, the Hall of the Kings held a different kind of battlefield.
Denethor, Steward of Gondor, lay on the cold marble floor, gasping like a man drowning on dry land. White stone pressed against his cheek. Silver dishes lay overturned around him, dragged down when he'd pitched forward from his seat at the long table that had been hauled into the hall. Red wine—thick and bright as fresh-spilled blood—had pooled beneath him and spread in slow, glossy rivulets.
He had eaten in fury, tearing at a chicken leg as though the meal itself had insulted him.
And now—grimly, absurdly—the bird was having the last word.
A splintered bone was lodged fast in Denethor's throat.
Pippin stood nearby, rigid with confusion and fear, doing exactly what he'd been ordered to do.
He sang.
He danced.
And, with the grim determination of someone who had absolutely no idea how to stop a situation from getting worse, he shook his hips like it was a matter of national security.
"Let's dance, come on everybody, let's dance—
Everybody in the whole jail block was dancin' to the jailor's song—"
Denethor's fingers clawed weakly at the hobbit's leg. Foam bubbled at his lips as panic curdled into helplessness.
Then the Steward's grip slackened.
His body went still.
Pippin blinked. Swallowed. Stared at the dead man.
Unsure what else to do—because surely stopping wasn't allowed, right?—he decided to change the song and continue exactly as he'd been told, voice wavering only slightly as he tried to finish the line:
"Oh, I have searched far and wide,
I have drank whole towns dry—"
The doors of the hall burst open.
Tower Guards stormed in—and froze.
There, in the high, solemn chamber of Gondor's kings, a hobbit the size of a small child hopped around the Steward's body, singing to a corpse drenched in wine as if it were blood:
"But you'll never find a beer so brown or so sweet
As the one my Betty makes for me—
So you can come drink at Betty's, drink her fancy ales,
You can drink them by the flagon—"
A beat of silence.
Then the guards did what guards have always done when faced with confusion: they chose certainty. Swift as Gondor's justice could be, they seized Pippin, ignoring his frantic protests and panicked explanations, and hauled him out the king's hall, and toward the railings.
"No—wait—please—I didn't—!"
Over he went.
His scream vanished into the sheer drop of the city's highest level.
Down below, on the first tier, Gandalf stood watching the Pelennor Fields, grim and unmoving—until the sickening sound reached him: a small body striking stone, breaking with a sound like fruit split on a kitchen block.
Gandalf didn't move. He only closed his eyes, as if the world had finally found a new way to disappoint him.
"Oh no," he said softly. "Not another one."
People nearby cried out in horror, certain a child had fallen.
Gandalf opened his eyes, glanced once, and raised a hand in weary reassurance.
"No, please calm down," he said. "It's just my hobbit."
There was a pause—awkward, collective, immediate.
And then, as if the matter had been neatly filed away:
"Oh," someone said. "Ah. Right, then."
---
And now it was: March 15, 3019 of the Third Age, and the White City of Minas Tirith was being breached.
Gondor had already been bloodied at the Battle of Osgiliath, and now the full weight of Sauron's Morgul-host rolled toward the city like a tide that could not be argued with—only endured.
Even with Faramir's brave resistance, Osgiliath had fallen. Worse still, the great ring-wall between river and city—the Rammas Echor—was overrun, cutting Minas Tirith off from the world beyond its walls. The enemy had come in numbers greater than anyone had dared to anticipate.
Their dead did not slow them.
Rotting corpses piled against the white stone until they formed a grisly ramp—enough for orcs to climb, enough for ladders to bite, enough for the siege to spill inward.
Above, twelve Nazgûl circled on foul Fellbeasts, their shrieks and shadow pressing down like a curse. Setback after setback, loss after loss, the defenders were driven higher, forced up through the city's levels like embers chased by wind.
The second level was gone.
The third was about to break.
Most of the city's defenders lay dead by then, and what few remained fought with the hollow stubbornness of men who knew they were running out of ground.
All hope seemed spent—
until, from far beyond the ruin and smoke, a sound cut through the dread like a blade:
the mighty horn of Rohan.
And with it came the thunder of hooves, and the promise—at last—that Gondor would not fall alone.
As the mighty host of six thousand riders formed their line, their old king—the great Horse-lord Théoden—rode before them upon his white steed. At the center of the front he reined in and sat tall, a lone figure against a world gone black.
Below him, the green Pelennor Fields had been swallowed whole. A sea of shadow churned where grass should have shone—Mordor's host packed so tightly it seemed less an army than a living tide: snarling beasts, iron helms, jagged spears, and death enough to drown a kingdom.
Théoden looked upon it all.
And he did not falter.
He turned back to his riders—his sons in all but blood—and drew breath as if to pull the whole sky into his lungs. Then, at the top of his voice, he cried out words that would echo through a thousand years of songs and old tales:
"Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!
Fell deeds awake, fire and slaughter!
Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered—
a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!
Death! Death! Death!
Forth Eorlingas!"
The sound rolled outward like thunder, booming off the mountain flanks. For a heartbeat, even Mordor's creatures—and the battered defenders on the City's walls—were stunned by the sheer force of a king's wrath made voice.
For unknown to both Gondor and Mordor alike, the Drúedain had guided Théoden in secret, leading the Rohirrim through the Drúadan Forest by an old hidden road—built by Gondor long ago, and forgotten by all save the Wild Men. Thus the Riders had slipped past the enemy's watch upon the northern road, and now stood poised to strike Mordor's host from the rear.
Nor was Rohan entirely alone. With them came men of Dunland, hard-faced and grim, seeking Minas Tirith not for plunder but for an honorable death—so their spirits might go in peace to their gods, knowing they had not died cringing in the dark.
And because the orcs had torn down the Rammas Echor, the ancient outer wall that once ringed the Pelennor, Sauron's armies had not fully secured a strong defense in the north. From that hilltop the Rohirrim looked as if they might sweep the fields clean—swift and terrible as a storm.
Or so it should have been.
For before them were hundreds of thousands: a river of evil so vast it seemed to run from the White City itself all the way back toward the Black Gate—orc and Uruk-hai in endless ranks, trolls lumbering like moving towers, and tens of thousands of warg-riders snarling and snapping in the press.
Yet still the Rohirrim charged.
They thundered down the slope like a breaking wave, lances lowered, hooves shaking the earth. For one glorious, violent instant they crashed into the enemy line—
like a bucket of water flung into a black river.
Steel bit, shields splintered, and bodies fell. The riders carved a path, cutting down many as their battle-cry rang above the din.
But the mass of Mordor did not break.
It swallowed.
The charge slowed—first to a grind, then to a crawl—until at last it came to a halt, smothered by sheer weight of numbers. Riders toppled from their saddles. Horses screamed. The press closed in, black and relentless.
Soon the Rohirrim began to fall in vast numbers, simply overwhelmed. With sword and spear they hewed down foes by the score, but it seemed to make no difference—like striking at the sea.
And still the shadow poured forward.
Then the sky itself seemed to split with malice.
Out of the smoke and shrieking wind the Witch-king swooped down upon his great Fellbeast, a shadow given wings. He came like a sentence already spoken—swift, cold, and certain—and in the chaos of that dive King Théoden was struck down. Snowmane, faithful to the last, reared and screamed—and then the mighty horse fell, crushing his lord beneath him.
For a heartbeat the world narrowed to one broken king on trampled grass.
And then—into that moment—rode a shieldmaiden with death in her eyes.
Éowyn spurred forward, and at her side came Meriadoc Brandybuck, small as a child amidst giants, yet following her into the very mouth of doom.
The Fellbeast lunged. Éowyn swerved beneath its talons with desperate grace, and her blade flashed up—clean, bright, sure.
She hewed the foul head from its neck.
The winged beast collapsed in a spray of black blood and ruin, and the Witch-king was thrown hard to the ground.
Yet he rose.
Unharmed.
He stood like a tower of night—well over two meters, black armor swallowing what little light remained. In his hand was a massive flail, and he began to swing it in widening circles with such speed that the very air screamed. The wind of it tore Éowyn's helmet from her head and sent it skittering away.
He advanced, silent, terrible.
Then he struck.
Éowyn caught the blow on her shield—
and the shield exploded.
The force of it shattered her arm nearly in half. Bone punched through flesh. Blood sprayed bright against steel, and Éowyn's scream cut through the battlefield like a wound. The Witch-king slowly withdrew his weapon, almost leisurely, as if savoring the sight.
Her legs buckled. She fell to her knees, shaking, choking on pain.
The Witch-king lifted his flail for the (mercifully) final blow.
Behind him, Merry surged forward, Barrow-blade raised—aiming for the back of the knee, for the small, desperate weakness no warrior would think to guard.
But the Witch-king was no fool.
Without even turning fully, he whipped his flail around.
The blow caught Merry and sent him flying—high, helpless, broken. He hit the ground like a tossed doll, and what was inside him did not survive the landing.
Merry did not rise again.
Éowyn, gasping, tried to use the heartbeat of distraction. She drove her sword upward toward the Witch-king's face as he turned—
but she could not reach. The height between them was cruel and final.
A heavy strike came down upon the crown of her head.
And Éowyn fell, too—silent now, her courage spent into death.
Still, the battle raged.
The Horsemen of Rohan, under the command of the fierce and charismatic Éomer, fought on—alongside their poorly equipped Dunlending allies, who died in droves and did little but clog the mud with bodies. The Rohirrim did not mourn them; old hatred is a thin warmth when hope is failing.
From the city, Gondor's footmen tried to muster a counterattack—but most would not go. Gandalf managed to hurl only a few hundred out onto the killing field, and they vanished into orc-blades like sparks into water.
Yet not all strength had fled the West.
From the south came Imrahil with two thousand Swan Knights, bright and disciplined amid the ruin. And with them rode what remained of Gondor's cavalry—fifteen hundred light horse that still dared to meet the shadow head-on, led by none other than Boromir himself.
Even so, they were outnumbered beyond reason.
Orcs flooded the field, and the trolls—huge, blunt instruments of war—were murder to face in close combat. Mordor committed everything: reserves from Osgiliath, reinforcements drawn from the long road that led even toward the Black Gate, all poured into the fight as if Sauron meant to crush the West in one final, grinding blow.
And then, as the tide darkened further, the Men of the West looked toward the river and felt their hearts drop.
Raiders from Umbar, it seemed, had come at last—to finish what Mordor had begun.
Once, Umbar had still been held by Men. But the Nazgûl and their legions had swept it clean, as they had swept so much of the land east of the Anduin. Whatever had lived there had been driven out or slain.
Now there were no Men in Umbar.
Only the Dark.
And whatever sailed beneath that black banner was not arriving to save anyone.
Yet neither side knew—not yet—that hope had already slipped its knife into the dark.
Far to the south, Aragorn and the Grey Company, aided by the dread Army of the Dead, had shattered the Orcish Corsairs in the Battle of Pelargir. The Oathbreakers repaid their ancient debt to Isildur in full, driving terror into the Corsairs' hearts. Mad with fear, many flung themselves screaming into the Anduin, drowning in the dark waters rather than face the dead that walked and spoke.
The captured ships were swiftly claimed. They were loaded with as many men of southern Gondor as could be found—along with a surprising number of mercenary hobbits, grim-faced and stubborn—and the fleet turned north, sails snapping like banners of judgment.
When they arrived upon the battlefield, Mordor's host found itself suddenly wrong-footed.
From the river—where the enemy least expected it—steel and resolve came crashing in from behind. Aragorn's reinforcements struck hard, and the unexpected ferocity of the hobbit pony-knights punched a wide, bleeding salient straight into the most vulnerable stretch of the Mordor-host. The army was split in two: those pressed against the walls of Minas Tirith, and those trapped between river and blade.
For a moment, it seemed the darkness might finally break.
But above the slaughter, the Witch-king still rode—now upon a black steed—and the remaining Nazgûl screamed through the sky. Under the Witch-king's fell sorcery, the orcs found courage where there should have been none. Steel rang against ghostly blades as the Orcs clashed even with the Dead, held upright by terror and will not their own.
Even so, the Men of Gondor, Rohan, Dunland, and the mercenary hobbits pressed their advantage. Infantry surged again and again, while cavalry struck, withdrew, and struck anew—cycle charges grinding the enemy down by inches and blood. Morale cracked. Order failed.
At last, the battle turned into a rout.
Many of the Mordor-host were saved only by the Witch-king's iron command, retreating in grim order back toward Osgiliath. There, the Mouth of Sauron held firm with his caragor and graug riders, supported by fresh legions. He rallied the fleeing orcs, forged them back into ranks, and prepared—already—for another assault upon the White City.
By sunset, the field belonged to the West.
The dead lay in heaps, and only a meager few enemies still fled into the deepening dark. Yet it was no true victory. Sauron's armies had suffered only a momentary setback.
The cost to the Free Peoples was terrible.
Rohan, above all, had been shattered. Their king lay dead. Their princess lay dead. Nearly all six thousand Riders were slain or grievously wounded. The men of Dunland were mostly gone as well, buried unnamed beneath piles of corpses and trampled banners.
And yet—strangely, bitterly—the White City now stood better defended than before. The arrivals from southern Gondor, and more forces marching north by Aragorn's prior command, filled the walls once more with men who could still lift sword and shield.
Gondor was united now—under Aragorn—into a new kingdom, hardened by loss and ready to fight to the last breath against the darkness.
Still, even with banners raised and hope spoken aloud, Gandalf found no peace.
For one question would not leave him.
Where was the One Ring?
For nearly three thousand years it had been lost. None had seen it since Isildur fell. Even Sauron himself seemed uncertain of its fate—and that ignorance frightened Gandalf more than certainty ever could.
It left him adrift.
He had brought hobbits into his long designs with a quiet hope—half instinct, half defiance. A hope that one of them might stumble into greatness. A hope, too, that he might yet prove Galadriel wrong.
Hobbits were useful.
Bilbo had been lost long ago in the fires of the great dragon Smaug. Pippin and Merry were gone now as well, spent like coins on the field of history.
Still…
Gandalf could not help but wonder—stubbornly, foolishly—
whether somewhere, somehow, one of them might yet prove him right.
---
Unknown to Gandalf—or to anyone else—five hundred and fifty-six years earlier something had happened that the Ring did not intend.
The Ring had been found by Sméagol—a Stoor hobbit mocked and bullied for his long ears, for his strangeness, for the obsessive way he trained his body as if muscle and discipline could buy him a place among his own people.
His training made him stronger. Taller. Harder. His ears sharper than the others.
It was never enough.
Then, on his thirty-third birthday, Sméagol found the Ring by accident.
It took him immediately, like a hook in the mind.
And Déagol—his beloved cousin, his one real friend—wanted it.
Jealousy twisted into something uglier. Déagol tried to take it from him, hands grabbing, voice rising, eyes fixed on the gold like it was the only thing in the world.
They fought like animals for it—biting, scratching, rolling in river-mud.
And in the middle of that struggle, with the frantic, panicked intelligence of a cornered creature and the sick insistence that he wouldn't hurt his cousin—Sméagol did the one thing Déagol couldn't tear away.
He swallowed the Ring.
Déagol saw red.
He went for Sméagol with his fish-knife, trying to carve the truth back out of him right there. Sméagol fought him off and ran.
Déagol tried again later. Not with steel—with poison. He tainted a meal.
It didn't kill Sméagol.
It only made him violently sick—
and it killed Sméagol's entire family.
When Sméagol realized what had been done, something inside him cracked open. Something dark and patient—something that had been waiting for an excuse—stood up in the center of his chest and smiled.
In broad daylight, where everyone could see, Sméagol hunted Déagol down and impaled him on a sharpened fishing pole.
He lifted him up for all of them.
One end driven through Déagol's ass, the other bursting out through his mouth.
And as Déagol hung there—gagging, twitching, dying—Sméagol roared like a beast finally allowed to be itself.
"Damn you—you—you fucking bastard, Déagol! I hate you! I hate you, I hate you! You made me do this! You spread those rumours about me—" His voice cracked into a frothing snarl. "You were the first to call me Gollum. Gollum, Gollum, Gollum!"
Horror swept the Stoors like wildfire.
They gathered with hunting bows, pitchforks, dogs—faces pale with fear and fury—and they came for him.
They wanted his head.
And in the forest by Mirrormere, Gollum hunted his own people down one by one.
He stripped naked and smeared himself with river-mud until his skin became the same dull brown as bark and rot. He pressed it into his hair, under his nails, across his face until even his eyes seemed like wet stones in the dark. When he lay still in the brush, he vanished. Breath slow. Heart steady. Waiting.
A fat hobbit lumbered past first—panting, sweating, bow hanging loose at his side. He muttered curses to himself, too tired and too scared to watch his back.
Gollum rose behind him without a sound.
He reached out—not for his own blade—but for the knife hanging at the hobbit's belt. In one smooth motion he drew it free, clamped a hand over the man's mouth, and cut his fucking throat like a fish. Deep. Efficient. The fat hobbit's legs buckled as blood poured hot over Gollum's fingers, the gurgling dying before it could become a scream.
Gollum eased the body down into the leaves and took the bow.
Another came blundering through the trees, calling names, voice tight with fear.
Gollum was already above him.
He climbed the tree like a spider and dropped without warning, landing on the man's shoulders. The weight drove him face-first into the dirt. Gollum wrapped an arm around his neck and pulled back hard, slicing once, twice—until the struggle went slack and the forest swallowed the sound.
Another throat. Another body.
No mercy. No hesitation.
Dogs were lured close and knifed under the jaw. Hunters were crippled first—an arrow through the leg, a rock to the knee—then finished slowly with fists and stone. He dragged bodies off the paths, hid them under brush, moved constantly, never staying where blood had cooled.
To the frightened Stoors, it felt like the forest itself had turned against them.
From the shadows, Gollum spared no one.
Dogs. Men. Even the few women who ran with Déagol's kin and screamed his name like a curse.
They had wronged him. He had tried to be good. He had tried to be Sméagol.
And this was their answer?
Rage swallowed him whole, and it didn't stop at fury—it changed him. The Ring didn't just sit inside him anymore. It seeped. It fused. His hatred burned so hot in his gut that it felt like it was melting the Ring down into him, mixing gold and malice into blood.
With every wound he took, with every kill he made, something in him grew.
Arrows bit into him. He snapped them off, yanked them out, hid—
and the wounds closed in minutes.
His fists felt heavier, denser, like stone wrapped in skin.
He knocked one fat hunter flat, dragged him to a rock, and slammed his face down so it looked like the slob was trying to eat it with his mouth hanging open. Then Gollum stomped his head into the stone again and again—teeth cracking, jaw stretching grotesquely wide—until the skull gave way and brains spilled out onto the forest floor.
He took the dead man's bow and moved on.
He shot legs to cripple. Made them limp. Made them crawl. Then he finished them with rocks, with fists, with clubs.
Quick deaths by blade were too good for his enemies.
Only blunt ruin would do.
Their morale broke. They ran, shrieking over their shoulders as if the words alone could save them.
"Murderer! Murderer! Run—he's crazy! He's a crazy murderer! Run for your lives!"
Gollum almost choked on the disbelief of it.
Murderer.
They called him a murderer.
As if this wasn't self-defense. As if they hadn't come with bows and dogs and pitchforks. As if they hadn't decided he was already dead.
"Gollum," he hissed, shaking with rage. "Gollum, gollum… you fucking bloody bastards."
He loosed the last of his arrows. He hurled stones. A few fell at the forest's edge, and he was on them before they could beg properly—smashing skulls until the pleas turned wet and pointless.
One tried to bargain through sobs.
"No, no, no—please, Sméagol, don't! It's me—remember? I know you! I gave you free beer sometimes! You can't kill me, you psycho fuck!"
Gollum didn't care.
He sang over the begging like a child blocking out a scolding voice.
"Lalalalaaa, I can't hear you… lalal-la-laa… please die under my feet, my rocks and knuckles!"
And then, mid-slaughter, something strange happened.
As he smashed a head in with a rock, his hand began to glow—faint at first, then brighter. With each strike, the rock whitened. The dull stone transformed into a bright, white crystal—until, fully formed, it shattered against the dead hobbit's skull in a burst of glittering fragments.
Gollum froze, breathing hard.
He snatched up another rock.
He concentrated—clumsy, instinctive. A warmth stirred near his heart and traveled down his arm, into his palm, into the stone—
and within a minute it changed.
Not gold. Not fire.
A bright stone, pale as moonlight. A light-stone.
It was warm. It soothed him. It gave off a small, steady glow like a hand-lamp that needed no flame.
He shoved it into his pocket, trembling—not with fear, but with the sudden realization that the world was changing around him… and that he might be changing faster than it could keep up.
And because he knew what would come next—hunters, vengeance, Stoor-men, maybe even Elven friends—
Gollum fled.
He headed for the mountains. For Moria. For darkness deep enough that no one would follow, and stone ceilings that could hide him from the sky. He would make a new home there, lit by his own unnatural light.
Banished for life from what he had been.
And as he walked, alone, filthy, furious, he muttered the only name that felt honest anymore:
"Gollum. Gollum. Gollum."