Chapter 407: Creating Chaos
Aragorn gazed up at Mount Doom, his eyes tracing the dense web of watchers filling the sky above it. His brow was furrowed, his expression grim.
He stayed silent for a long moment before speaking. "We have to split up. Six of us together, especially with Gollum, is too conspicuous. Even if we manage to slip through the cordon and reach the mountain, the risk of being spotted is too great."
He looked around at the others. "Legolas, Gimli, and I will create a distraction. We'll draw every eye in the area toward us."
Legolas and Gimli agreed without hesitation. They understood what it meant: they would be drawing nearly all of Mordor's attention, along with most of its danger.
But the Ring had to be destroyed. Whatever the cost, it was worth it.
Gimli looked practically eager. "We haven't had a proper fight this entire journey. I've been going half mad from it. Time to take a few Orc heads."
Frodo heard the plan and felt his stomach drop. "But that's too dangerous for you. This is the heart of Mordor. If you're exposed..."
Aragorn's expression stayed calm, almost easy. "Don't worry about us, Frodo. Legolas and I both know magic, and we can Apparate. Gimli can handle himself in a fight. We can keep moving, stay ahead of them, and if things become truly unmanageable, we have Portkeys. We can get out."
He paused, and his voice turned more serious. "The ones I'm worried about are you and Sam. Neither of you can do magic. The path to the Crack of Doom is crawling with patrols. One wrong step and you're caught."
Then he looked more closely at Frodo, concern overtaking the calm in his face. "Frodo. Can you keep going?"
Sauron was absent from Mordor, but the One Ring had been forged in the fires of Mount Doom. That connection had never broken. The closer they came to the mountain, the stronger the Ring's pull became. Even sealed in its box, soaked in Basilisk venom, shielded inside the dragonhide pouch, the presence leaking from it was more intense with every step. Frodo had been carrying it against his body the entire way, and the weight of it, the mental pressure of it, had not stopped for a moment.
Even in his Orc disguise, his face was pale. His body and mind were exhausted in a way ordinary tiredness couldn't explain.
"I'm all right," Frodo said. He forced something like a smile onto the ugly, borrowed face. "Don't worry about me."
The others looked at him and said nothing, because there was nothing useful they could say. They could not carry the Ring for him. None of them possessed a Hobbit's resistance to it, and prolonged contact would have begun to corrupt any of them within hours.
Sam wanted to share the burden. Frodo refused.
This was his responsibility. He wasn't willing to put Sam through the same grinding pressure, and he hadn't reached his limit yet. When he did, if he did, Sam would take it. Not before.
Aragorn raised his wand. "The mountain is covered. Spiders and werewolves on the ground, vampires and crebain in the air, Nazgûl on fell beasts above those. And the Eye of Sauron up on Barad-dûr, watching everything." He looked at Frodo and Sam carefully. "I'm going to cast a Disillusionment Charm on both of you. It won't make you truly invisible; it blends you into your surroundings. But you must be careful. It won't fool a werewolf's nose, and it won't fool the Eye if it looks directly at you."
He cast the charm, then continued. "We'll move to the other side of the mountain and make enough noise to pull everyone's attention, including the Eye, over to us. That's your window."
At the mention of luck, something came back to Frodo. He reached into his dimensional pouch and drew out two small vials of golden potion. He held one out to Aragorn.
Aragorn stared at it. "Is that… Felix Felicis?"
Frodo nodded, looking slightly abashed. "Elthir gave these to me and Uncle Bilbo as birthday gifts, said they would bring good fortune. Uncle Bilbo passed his vial to me before we left. I had completely forgotten about them until now. I thought… perhaps they could help."
Aragorn's face broke into something close to relief. "Frodo, this could not have come at a better moment. Felix Felicis is extraordinarily rare and incredibly difficult to brew. Only a Master of Potions can make it properly. With this, our chances improve considerably."
Each vial held enough for a full twenty-four hours of effect.
Frodo and Sam divided one vial between them, each drinking half. Their task was the most critical, so twelve hours of luck apiece felt right.
The other vial went to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, divided into three. Eight hours each, enough time to run a convincing distraction and keep Mordor's forces occupied.
Gollum received nothing.
And at the foot of Mount Doom, Gollum's usefulness had run out entirely.
While Gollum watched with wide, frightened eyes and began to plead, Aragorn cast Petrificus Totalus and locked him in place. Then a Disillusionment Charm, and he was tucked carefully beneath a large, sheltered boulder in a spot unlikely to be found.
When the magic wore off, Gollum would be free. Whether he survived Mordor on his own would be his own concern.
They were all aware of Gollum's hunger for the Ring. Now that they were at the mountain itself, bringing him any closer was not something they were willing to risk. They had not killed him, only immobilised him and hidden him somewhere reasonably safe. That was more than fair, given that he had tried to feed them to Shelob.
With Gollum dealt with, Frodo and Sam wrapped themselves in an Invisibility Cloak. It was not the Hallow that Kael possessed, but a well-made cloak of considerably above-average quality. It would not last forever, but it was far superior to anything sold in an ordinary shop, and two small Hobbits fit comfortably beneath it without anything showing.
They moved quietly through the shadows, drawn by the strange instinctive pull of the Felix Felicis toward a section of the cordon where the patrols thinned. There they waited for their moment.
The Polyjuice Potion had worn off by now. They were Hobbits again, small and unremarkable, which helped. The Dungbomb smell had been scrubbed away entirely as well, since that stench would have drawn every patrol in a mile's radius straight to them.
On the far side of the mountain, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli drank another dose of Polyjuice Potion, resumed their Orc forms, and Apparated into the main Orc encampment.
Once inside, they worked quickly and quietly. Aragorn and Legolas moved through the camp, casting Confundus charms and slipping a Confusion Draught into the food stores of both the Orc and Uruk-hai contingents. Tensions between the two groups were already high, a natural cruelty in the way Mordor's armies were structured, and it didn't take much to turn friction into violence.
Gimli, in his Orc body, walked straight into the middle of it and took an axe to several Uruk-hai without any particular subtlety.