Chapter 410: The Last Obstacle
The two of them moved carefully into the Crack of Doom, walking against the heat that rolled out to meet them.
No one from Mordor in sight. Both of them let out a quiet breath.
The Crack of Doom was dark and suffocating, the heat almost unbearable. Frodo and Sam quickly pulled out a vial of Fire-Resistance Potion each and drank them down, and only then did the air become something they could endure. Even the Phial of Galadriel seemed to struggle here: the light of Eärendil turned pale and cold, its radiance muted, barely pushing back the dark.
Pulses of deep red light flared up from the depths below, rising and falling without rhythm, as though the fire beneath was breathing. From somewhere far down came a constant low rumbling, like immense machinery turning in the earth. The magma churned below, its glow the only real light in that place.
They had made it. They were here.
"We actually made it," Sam breathed. His exhausted face broke into a wide, genuine smile. He looked at Frodo and urged, "Go on then. Take out the Ring and throw it in. We've done it, Frodo. We've actually done it."
Frodo smiled back, a weak and tired thing, but real. The weight that had been pressing down on him for so long seemed to ease slightly, just knowing the end was within reach.
He reached for the dimensional pouch.
Then the cold hit him.
It came from nowhere, sudden and absolute, as though the scorching air of the volcano had been replaced in an instant by the dead of midwinter. Every muscle in his body locked. He pulled Sting from its sheath and spun around.
A black-robed shape stood behind Sam, its eyes two points of burning red in the dark. One hand gripped Sam's shoulder. The other pressed a Morgul blade against his throat.
A Nazgûl.
Before Frodo could move, a cold presence touched his own back. He spun again, driving Sting forward.
The blade rang against something with enormous force and was wrenched from his hand, clattering away across the stone floor.
A black, freezing hand closed around his throat and lifted him.
Another Nazgûl.
It stared at him with burning eyes. Its voice came like a dry hiss from beneath the hood. "Halfling. Where is the One Ring? Give it to us."
Frodo hung in its grip, unable to break free. Struggling did nothing. The Nazgûl's presence pressed on him like a crushing weight, and fear rose within him without reason or will, cold and deep and impossible to resist.
He forced it back. Kept his thoughts moving. His eyes flickered, and he answered in a strained, careful voice. "It's… on me. Let us go… and I'll hand it over."
"Frodo, don't!" Sam shouted.
The Nazgûl holding Sam answered by driving its clawed fingers into his shoulder, crushing down through cloth and flesh. Sam cried out, staggered, and went down on one knee with his hand pressed against the wound, blood soaking through his fingers. He opened his mouth to say something more, but the pain had taken his voice.
"Give us the One Ring," the Nazgûl holding Frodo repeated. "Or you and your companion die."
Frodo looked at Sam on the ground and made his decision. "All right. Don't hurt him any more. I'll give it to you."
He reached into his outer pocket and produced a dimensional pouch. He held it out toward the Nazgûl.
"It's in here. Here, take it."
Then he threw it sideways.
The Nazgûl's attention snapped instinctively to the thrown pouch.
In that same instant, Frodo's other hand drove a dagger into the side of the Nazgûl's head.
It was one of the four daggers Kael had given the Hobbits before the journey began, each one carrying power specifically effective against the Nazgûl.
The Nazgûl screamed. The grip on Frodo's throat loosened, and he dropped, hitting the ground hard. Above him, the Nazgûl's body contorted, twisted in on itself, and came apart.
Across the floor, Sam had been watching. The moment the Nazgûl holding him was distracted by Frodo, Sam gritted his teeth against the pain, reversed his dagger, and drove it backward into the creature's chest.
The Nazgûl had not considered that possible. It had not thought to guard against a counter from something so small, something it had already dismissed. It had not known about the daggers.
It followed the first into nothing.
Both Nazgûl were gone. Frodo and Sam slumped where they stood, too drained for anything beyond a slow exhale.
Frodo crossed to Sam immediately, crouching to look at the wound. "Sam. How bad is it?"
Sam's face was white, but he shook his head once, firmly. "Forget about me. Throw the Ring in, Frodo. Do it now."
Frodo knew what mattered. The shoulder was serious but not fatal. He straightened, reached into the inner lining of his coat, and drew out the second-dimensional pouch.
He had been carrying two all along. One held the Ring. The other held food and water. The one he had thrown to distract the Nazgûl had been the second.
He opened the first pouch and took out the mithril box. Inside, the Basilisk venom had long since evaporated. The One Ring lay bare.
The moment the box opened, the Ring's full force hit him without any barrier left between them. Its will and its temptation surged up at their most intense, reaching for his mind, his want, his sense of himself.
Frodo's expression shifted. Something distant moved behind his eyes, something torn between longing and resistance.
Sam saw it. His breath caught. "Frodo. Frodo, look at me."
Sam's voice cut through.
Frodo blinked. He came back to himself, looked down at the Ring in his hand, then across at Sam's pale, worried face. He shook his head slowly. "Don't worry. I won't be taken by it. Not now. Not this close."
He closed his hand around the Ring and walked to the edge of the Crack of Doom.
When the two Nazgûl were destroyed, the Eye of Sauron atop Barad-dûr locked onto the Crack of Doom at once. But Sauron himself was still in the west, and the Eye alone could do nothing. In rising panic, it pushed its will outward, commanding every dark creature surrounding Mount Doom to abandon everything and converge on the Crack of Doom immediately, at any cost.
In the west, Sauron burned hotter and more frantically against the bonds holding him, pouring away his own strength without restraint in his desperation to return to Mordor before it was too late.
Inside the mountain and beyond its walls, the dark tide was already moving. Tens of thousands of creatures swarmed upward toward the crater.
Frodo stood at the edge.
He looked down. Below him, magma churned and earthfire rolled, light and heat rising together in waves. He looked at the Ring in his open palm. It blazed with temptation, pulling at him even now, even here, filling his thoughts with a hunger that was not his own.
His eyes passed through struggle, through want, through the long weight of everything the Ring had pressed into him over the course of the journey.
Then they went still.
He turned his hand over.
The Ring slipped from his palm, turned once in the firelight, and fell into the magma below.