howling ghosts they reappear | Glowfic Constellation

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Bellona, meanwhile, encases the Ring in a little pocket inside her chest, and -

The first few days aren't too bad. She's worried about El. She's miserable. She's lonely. She's beating herself up for not realizing sooner. But they're not too bad, even if she gets lost a few times. The woods are nice. It's early spring, and there's flowers out, ones she's never seen before. She doesn't pass anyone, friend or foe. Just birds, and deer, and small animals unused to humans let alone empty armors.

...And then she comes to the mountains.

There's two passes, she knows. One, narrow, with a Tower, ceaselessly watched. One, wide, with a massive gate across it.

She heads to a little crevice in sight of neither, and begins to alchemize her way into the dark. She closes the tunnel behind her, so she won't be found, won't cause a cave-in with her little airless, lightless bubble -

Her armor's shaking by the time she makes it to the other side. She has to sit down, staring out over at the sunless plains - the sky choked with ash, the only illumination a distant, angry red glow.

Bellona does not like the dark.

She forces herself to stand and keep walking, relentless.

She keeps out of sight as best she can, which becomes easier as her armor is rapidly covered in dust and ash. It grinds in her joints. She doesn't need to be clean to walk, though, ceaselessly onward.

Still -

After a near miss, she modifies her armor until it resembles an orc's. The different tribes have standardized gear. It's easy enough to fit in, and there's enough stragglers sometimes wandering the barren plains she doesn't go remarked those times she's caught on the roads. (They're so much easier...)

Bellona's stopped being anxious about how El will react when she returns. She's not sure she wants to return. Not sure she'll be able to return. Her anxiety has turned into a creeping dread about what will happen when she destroys the Ring. (It, at least, seems to have no hold on her mind, but she's sure El thought that too - )

She trudges on.

(Elsewhere, the war grinds on. Men and dwarves and elves and dragons and orcs and trolls and all manner of creature fight and die and flee and live and the ground becomes a bloody mess, pockmarked by weapons far worse than any that have been seen in an Age - )

(Elsewhere, Sauron equips his orcs with better guns.)

Two weeks in -

She gets caught on the road again. Silly. Foolish. She needs to stop taking roads, even if they're easier. Even if they sometimes have people.

The troop of orcs -

Pressures her into joining their fire. She can't slip away, not without suspicion. She keeps quiet, doesn't talk much, blurts out 'the Misty Mountains' when asked where she's from - there's knowing looks and firm nods and one burly orc woman pats her on the back. ('Sucks, doesn't it, whole thing sucks, orcs been living there longer than my gram knows - now it's not even a grave - ' until she gets elbowed by another orc.) Their captain tries to press Bellona into eating, drinking, taking off some of her armor isn't she hot -

They teach her to play bone dice, Mordor style.

She slips away in the night, leaving behind the waterskin and rations they pressed on her. It's the first time she's spoken to someone in two weeks, and she could've left sooner, but -

She makes it three hours before she finds a hollow to curl up in. Stupid. Wasteful. She needs to destroy the Ring.

It's a good thing she can't cry anymore, because if she started now she'd never stop.

(She imagines all the faces around that fire, imagines each of them being torn apart by the weapons Bellona and El introduced to this world, helpless in their mostly quilted armors - )

It takes her far too long to start moving again.

But move she does. No rest now, Bellona. No roads where there may be friendly faces. No doubts. No weeping.

Just - move.

(Elsewhere, Estel stands before men far greater than he, and argues, relentlessly, tearfully, heartfully - they must commit. Everything. Not to destruction, not to wiping their enemies to the rock like they could, but to distraction. They could besiege Mordor to terrible effect but his friend trundles alone - they must sacrifice their advantage, he says, voice impassioned, to give it to her, to draw out the armies so she has a chance - and, somehow, they listen.)

She reaches a barren plain without roads - she doesn't know how long after that. She can't count time anymore, not even the days by the slight brightening and dimming of her surroundings. She gets close enough that the mountain - fuck she hopes it's the right mountain, but it sure looks angry enough - looms before her.

She returns her armor to normal. To remind herself -

She doesn't know what she's reminding herself of. That she's not an orc? That everything she is was made by El? That she's a machine, heartless, tireless, an empty shell perfectly suited for this one task?

She doesn't know she'll be able to stand looking at someone of flesh and blood - looking at someone who can feel things, who has everything she doesn't - someone who would have died long ago in this desolate place and wouldn't, couldn't still be forcing themselves to move forward because the flesh may be weak but maybe that protects the mind -

The armies of Mordor are leaving. There's just Bellona, and the ash, and the darkness, and the red glow of the end of the world.

She reaches the base of the volcano.

(Elsewhere, people are dying on the field of battle. Estel's gamble worked, and the armies tear each other apart.)

Bellona climbs. One foot in front of the other. Onward. Upward. No rest. No pause, even as her knee grinds with ash.

She reaches a door in the side. Turns to face Barad-Dur.

Slowly, deliberately, claps her hands and touches her chest. The bright crackle of lightning can surely be seen for miles -

She pulls out the Ring, and in the distance Sauron's fliers stop fending off the dragons, wheeling toward her -

Bellona walks into the forges of Mount Doom.

Destroying the Ring, after that, is the easy part.

(Elsewhere, the orcs wail and fall back, many clutching their heads. The free peoples - Estel shouting at them, his boyish voice somehow commanding when many of their officers lie dead - regroup rather than pressing the rout, gathering their wounded, stealing themselves - the orcs are allowed to retreat.)

Convincing herself to move, after, as the flows of magma beneath the ground destabilize, as the earth shakes, as ash fills the air thick enough she can't see, surely noxious enough it would have killed her if she had lungs -

Leaving is the hard part.

Bellona steps out into a disintegrating world. Jagged scars open all along the mountain's side, belching out smoke and lava, underground chambers exploding and sending rubble surging into the air.

She stands on a small rocky outcropping as lava bubbles up around her, and...

Maybe she could alchemize her way out. Maybe she could take the energy away from the lava, make a bridge, something -

She's so, so tired.

Bellona stands, a lone figure on a volcano trying to twist itself apart in a thousand ways, and waits for it to end.