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The Unseen World pulls at Galadriel more with every passing moment. The power of the One Ring is endless, depthless—and she is resisting the temptation to succumb to it with all of her own considerable might.
Her turquoise dress flows around her as she gallops forward on the great white steed Shadowfax, meant for Mithrandir before he fell into Shadow and Flame, drawing ever closer to the Gates of Mordor. After accepting the One Ring from Frodo, against her reservations and self-doubt, she set out forthwith for the Dark Land of the Enemy. She is single-minded in her goal now.
Sauron will fall.
Galadriel has been riding hard from Lothlórien for three days with brief respites for sleep and food. The sky, which started clear and blue, is filmed over with the gray haze of Orodruin, thickening the air with the tang of sulfur and the stench of death. Night falls early on the third day due to the lengthening gloom, so she pauses at the edge of the vast forest to the north of Gondor. She will need her strength for what is to come tomorrow.
The night passes restlessly. Her dreams are disturbed by visions of thrall and command, her worst aspirations made true as the One Ring senses her power and her ambition. She abandons her bedroll before the first light penetrates the black clouds stretching from Mordor, staring out toward the distant orange glow of the volcano. Somewhere in that terrible place is the giant burning Eye of the Enemy, its gaze heavy and beckoning.
Galadriel looks down at the One Ring, fitted onto the opposite hand of Nenya. Such an innocuous thing, a small piece of jewelry, that has caused so much strife and horror throughout Middle-Earth.
She collects herself, fortifying against the Unseen World once more, and alights Shadowfax, spurring him onward and out of the trees. The White City rises to her right with the Pelennor Fields in front of her. The vast plain stretches to the River Anduin, beyond which lies the approach to the Gates of Mordor. At this early hour, she races unimpeded across the grass, crossing the Anduin at the devastated border city of Osgiliath. The remnants of many skirmishes remain here, their signs far more numerable than anyone left behind.
Closer to the borders of Mordor, the day seems to turn to night, and Galadriel’s own essence lights up the mostly abandoned city around her. Combined with the power of Nenya and the One Ring, she casts stark shadows on the buildings and down the alleys as she gallops through Osgiliath. A few men she recognizes as Gondorian soldiers startle at her sudden appearance, though she’s past and gone before they can do anything.
On the other side of the city, the road to Mordor is barren and deserted. Above her head there is nothing but a black shroud over the world, barely lit by the far fiery glow of Orodruin. Sauron’s evil and madness have driven everything good and whole away from this land. Small things scurry away in the sudden light of her passage, those rodents the only living thing she senses.
As she rides closer, she feels the dark shadow of Minas Morgul rising above the pitch peaks in front of her and slightly to the right. She’s on the correct path and keeps that dread tower on her right side, following the broken road closer and closer to the walls of the steep mountain range bordering Mordor to the west.
After minutes or hours—passage of time has no meaning when she cannot see or sense the movement of the sun—the Gates of Mordor begin to resolve to her Elven eyes. She lets more of the power flow through her, further lightening up her surrounds, and leans into Shadowfax as the horse lengthens his stride and increases his speed.
Galadriel knows the moment she is noticed. There is a commotion high on the Gates and shouts of military commands. She has half a thought to let the Unseen World take her and disappear entirely from their sight, but she immediately discards that notion. She wants Sauron to know she is coming. She wants the Enemy to understand what he has wrought on himself. She wants the pleasure of razing these poisonous structures to the ground.
The earth starts to tremble as the Light of the Eldar and the Radiance of the Noldor fill her, augmented by Nenya and magnified by the One Ring. Cracks form in the dirt and spread to the sides. She presses onward and hears the satisfying crunch of the Gates as they begin to bend to her terrible wrath. She has only a short sword strapped to her waist yet she needs no weapon to lay bare what Sauron has done here.
The Gates of Mordor collapse outward, bringing their gatehouses and supporting walls with them, throwing scores of orcs and other foul creatures into the crushing maelstrom. She rides through the center of the dust and debris unharmed and untouched. Before her, the wide path into Mordor between two receding cadet mountain ranges is revealed.
Her pleasure and satisfaction turn briefly into surprise. The path before her is paved with flat, even stones, wide enough for forty abreast and set with drainage ditches on either side. Every so often, there are structures on the sides, though they melt into the dust at her oncoming storm. Orcs who step up to question or stop her are obliterated by her essence, barely having time to shout before they’re washed away.
The peaks on either side lower to nothing. The great Orodruin is off to her left, spewing smoke, ash, and lava into the air in an ever-present stream of ruination. The land itself is lifeless—no trees, shrubs, or grass as far as she can see. Warcamps she passes feel the might of her fury as well. Their soldiers and their tents are annihilated before anyone can mount a resistance against her. As she begins to round Orodruin, she finally senses the Eye locking onto her, and she cannot stop the feral grin that crosses her features. Let him See her coming. Let him know the same fear he has instilled in so many others. Let him reflect all that brought them both to this moment.
Horrific screeches draw her eyes to the air. Three Nazgûl are bearing down on her. She pulls her short sword as Shadowfax dodges the first attack, driving it into the second as she passes under it. Shadowfax dodges the third and keeps galloping. She glances behind and sees one of three Nazgûl down, its beast unmoving as the rider stares at her. The other two circle around and they continue this dance for several minutes. In the end, her own power and the newfound potency of the One Ring are more than a match for Sauron’s lieutenants, and she leaves all three behind with their dead beasts.
Barad-dûr finally comes into sight at the same time the burning red Eye at its pinnacle spotlights her progress across Mordor. It’s as pretentious and ugly as she imagined it would be, all sharp angles and superfluous turrets, stretching so far into the sky that it practically matches Orodruin’s height.
Galadriel scoffs to herself. What could he possibly need with such a structure? Other than his own hubris, it likely serves no purpose except to intimidate those of weaker minds and make it more difficult to approach him directly. Now that the Eye is on her—now that Sauron knows without any last shred of doubt that she has his most precious possession—she heads straight for the behemoth. She hears the Quenya version of its name in her head, sung in tales millennia old at this point: Taras Lúna.
At the base of the Dark Fortress, she dismounts from Shadowfax after eliminating all enemies and guards she can sense. It is so easy with this power she now holds to snuff out life as if it were never there.
Inside Barad-dûr, most of the rooms and corridors she ascends through are eerily empty, feeling much more like a tomb than a living fortress. Perhaps Sauron’s armies are not as numerous as previously reported and feared? Or perhaps they are elsewhere in Mordor or Middle-Earth at the moment. Even so, the Eye far above her head is a clarion call in her soul—Sauron is here and that is all that matters.
She has seen a vision of the future. She has some idea of what will come to pass if she is not victorious this day. Countless lives will end in a pointless war of attrition with an evil that will eventually face defeat and oblivion. If she can save even the smallest fraction of those lives, she will consider her task complete.
As she continues to climb the seemingly endless tower, she begins to realize that she is no longer sure how they got to this point. Well, she knows how they—Sauron and Galadriel—got to this point, but she can not say how Middle-Earth arrived to this day. Was it really that moment in Eregion that set the whole of Middle-Earth and perhaps all of Arda on this path? What does that say about her if she let this conflict brew and grow for the thousands of years between then and now?
Wearing the One Ring has forced her to bare her own soul to herself, stripping away all false pretenses, excuses, and insecurities. Galadriel was always frightened of what she would do with this much power. She was terrified that the small flame of darkness in her would burgeon into something unstoppable, something stronger than the foundations of the earth. She never wanted all to love her, for that would only lead to despair in the end. And thus she had denied Sauron’s possibly only genuine request of her—to join him and help heal Middle-Earth into something better.
Where has that led them? Where has that led all of them? The third great age of the world is ending with fracture and death. The fourth age will begin with torment and tyranny if she does not do what she should have done all those lifetimes ago. She should have drowned him in the sea of his own making when he trapped her in her head and damn the consequences! If it had killed her too, at least Arda would have been free of him.
Galadriel steps onto the highest level and pauses. It’s a square room with big windows set all around it, bare except for a black throne in the center. There is no one here except for the violent delight of Sauron himself, pulsing in too many emotions to name above her head as the Eye floating over the top of Barad-dûr. She sheaths her sword, sets her shoulders, and turns to the narrow staircase leading to the roof.
The sooty heat of Mordor caresses her face as she steps onto the roof and turns to face the giant glowing red Eye. The pupil is constricted and staring down at her. She feels none of the terror or panic every other being might feel in this moment. She’s not awed by the display of Sauron’s power, nor is she impressed by the flames curling out from his narrowed Gaze. It’s a party trick and nothing more. She starts to build up her power again to end whatever is left of his spirit once and for all.
The Eye seems to blink. Then it constricts on itself and shoots down into the tower as a narrow pillar of flame, leaving the roof in the shadow of Mordor itself. For a moment Galadriel thinks the coward has fled from her—and she will chase him to the ends of the earth if necessary—but then she realizes she can still sense him. Below her instead of right in front of her. She sighs and descends to the throne room again.
Sauron is lounging on his black throne in his iron armor. His battle-mace is laid carelessly against the side of the throne and he has one leg over the side.
The audacity of this creature!
She strikes out with her power. He knocks it aside. She readies another blow when a new sound reaches her ears. Her fury starts to rise in her. He’s laughing.
“You will not be laughing when I send you through the Door of Night to be reunited with your old master!”
Sauron sits up and tilts his head at her. She does not like being under his inquisitive gaze, especially when she can feel it caressing her, learning everything about her that has happened or changed in the millennia since they were last face-to-face.
“I see you have something of mine.”
Galadriel twirls the One Ring on her finger, mocking him.
“Is it yours if it sits on my finger?”
“No less mouthy than the last time we were together.”
“You never could handle that. You were too prideful, you foul beast. You do not like anyone questioning your opinions or thoughts.”
“Come, Galadriel. You know that is not true. There was always a reasonable give and take between us.”
She’s tiring of this charade.
“Enough, Enemy. I am here to do what I should have done so long ago. Rid all of Arda of your evil.”
He spreads his black-gauntleted hands wide. “By all means.”
Then he raises his hands to his iron helm and pulls it off, revealing long sweaty hair and a face that has haunted her dreams and nightmares for almost two ages of the world.
“You dare take that face with me?!”
“Me?” he raises a sardonic eyebrow at her. “What about you?”
His motion toward her briefly confuses her. What could he possibly mean?
“You look much the same as when you rejected me, Galadriel,” he continues. “As if no time at all has passed and we are back there in Eregion.”
“You lie,” she seeths.
“I do not.”
He waves a hand and creates a shiny surface right in front of her face. She gasps and steps back, lifting the hand with Nenya to a cheek, staring at a person from the distant past. Though Elves are ostensibly immortal, they do age over many long millennia, and the face looking back at her is a much younger version who she last knew at the end of the first age.
It must be the One Ring. Before she put it on, she looked like the many thousands year old Elf she was; now she looks like the younger Commander who inadvertently led the Deceiver right back to Middle-Earth.
“So you see,” he says, dispelling the mirror, “I thought you should see my face as well.”
Galadriel gathers her wits. “That is not your real face.”
“Though you will not believe me, it is.”
“I do not believe you.”
Sauron stands from his throne, circling around it and away from her rather than toward her. She keeps her power primed and all of her senses alert.
“As I knew you would not. Regardless of what you may believe, it is the truth. This has been my face and my corporeal body since we last met.”
“That is impossible. You were defeated at the end of the last age!”
“I was,” he agrees, nodding his head. His back is to her now and he’s looking out of one of the many windows. “Yet my spirit lived on, and when I regained enough strength to form again, I found myself back in this body.”
He turns toward her and his black armor falls away all at once, leaving him standing there in simple trousers and tunic, as if they were back in the cells on Númenor. Her heart pangs as she’s faced with this echo of a man she once assumed she knew. She thought she had done a good job burying those feelings but the rising emotion in her says otherwise. Nenya and the One Ring are pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
“You see, it seems that I gave too much of my spirit,” he says, locking eyes with her. “When Maiar do that, their physical forms can become locked.”
“Why are you taunting me with Halbrand?” she whispers. “Does your cruelty know no bounds?”
“My cruelty?” he wonders, disbelief coloring his voice. “Galadriel, listen to yourself! You took the One Ring and all of its power for yourself! At the very least, it should have shown you all that you are, down to the deepest recesses of your soul. I am not the only cruel being standing here today.”
“I am done with this conversation, beast. Return to Aman for judgment or face oblivion at my hand. Choose.”
He crosses his arms, a smug smile spreading across his lips. She hates it. Her memories of Halbrand have no place here.
“I choose neither.”
“Then I shall make the choice for you,” she snarls, and lashes out with her power again, letting go of any check on her light, Nenya, and the One Ring.
Beneath them, Taras Lúna starts to rumble and vibrate. Sauron blocks her attack.
“Galadriel, be reasonable. You will kill both of us if you bring down the tower.”
“I don’t care!” she screams, suddenly beyond reason at all of this. “It will be worth it to rid existence of you! All you do is corrupt and deceive and destroy!”
“That is not true,” he says, quietly. She attacks again and he blocks this attempt too, though she can sense fractures in his powerful shields. “I was made to create and I have created many wondrous and beautiful things.”
Galadriel curses at him in Quenya.
He smiles again, sadly this time. “And perhaps the one thing I forged that I am proudest of, I also destroyed. In that, you are not wrong.”
The tower quiets beneath them as Galadriel pulls back a little, still nearly apoplectic with rage, but understanding she has the upper hand here. The final and absolute apogee of this great conflict.
“Shocking,” she says, sarcastically.
“I missed your wit,” he murmurs. “And your scathing tongue.”
“Spare me, Sauron.”
“That is not my name. Not the one I choose.”
“Halbrand, I suppose?”
“If you wish,” he shrugs. “But Mairon is my real name.”
“The Admirable?” She scoffs again. “How prideful of you.”
“It was given to me. I did not choose it. Yet it is what I know as myself from the earliest moments of my existence. Thus Mairon is closer to my true identity than any of the other names the creatures of Arda have given me.”
“Aman,” she grits out. “Or oblivion. I won’t tell you again.”
“That is not a choice, Galadriel. Both lead to the Door of Night.”
“It is what you deserve.”
“You never did ask what I forged.”
Her flat stare makes him laugh out loud. That ache returns to her heart. He takes two steps closer to her.
“You could cut mithril with those eyes,” he says.
“Cease the flattery, Deceiver. Now that you have baited me, I suppose I am required to ask what you forged then destroyed?”
His smile drops away and his eyes, so human in that Halbrand face he’s wearing, show an emotion she is sure he is not genuinely capable of.
Remorse.
“It took me a long time to realize,” he starts. “I was so angry for so long at what happened that I blinded myself to the truth of my own actions. But that is a predictable cycle with me, is it not? I was created before the Breaking of the First Silence to be a smith to the gods of this world, forged with enough ambition to take pride in my work and strive forever to better myself and my craft. I sought perfection even if there was never perfection to be found, not back then and certainly not among the Valar.
“After Morgoth fell and Adar’s betrayal, I was nothing more than the lowest spirit upon the deepest and darkest pits of Middle-Earth. Humbled like that, my eyes were opened to the truth of what Morgoth had done to me. What I had allowed Morgoth to do to me. It was a war and there were sides of course, but my quest for perfection had been perverted into a quest for power. And power for power’s sake corrupts. That is the plain and simple truth. It happened to Morgoth, it happened to me, it happened to the mortal men who held the rings, and it will happen to you too, Galadriel.”
She opens her mouth for another scathing retort. He holds up a hand to stop her.
“It is a truth you know because you wear the One Ring. It holds more than just a sliver of my essence. It is the culmination of thousands upon thousands of years of experience forging similar artifacts, holding all the knowledge we have of the Unseen World, all of the will and desire and malice and hope of the peoples of Arda, and is the key to both the Door of Night and the Gates of Morning. When I tell you that I have wanted to cast it back into the fires of Orodruin since I regained corporeal form, I do not lie. It was folly to forge it in the first place and it is folly for anyone to carry it for too long.”
Galadriel does feel the Ring pulling at her essence and she has been wearing it for only four days.
“You did not destroy this,” she says. “You said whatever you forged you destroyed.”
“Ah, yes.” His gaze turns wistful. “It is us, Galadriel. The friendship we forged before you knew I was Sauron. Fighting by your side in the Southlands is the single most sublime experience of my endless existence. It was a resplendent spark of light in the darkness.”
Her mouth drops open. Here she is ready to destroy him and he brings up that of all things. She has pushed away and repressed these memories and feelings for so long. Her eyes narrow at him.
“Another one of your manipulations.”
He shakes his head and goes to respond, but she cuts him off.
“And futile regardless. Middle-Earth is in ruins because of you, Sauron. Age after age, you wreak havoc and evil on the innocent peoples of this land. Mordor itself was once a lush paradise and now look at it!”
“Why do you think I’ve been seeking the Ring? It is the only solution.”
“You are seeking it because you want to rule over a wasteland. That is what you would make all of Middle-Earth into.”
“No, Galadriel. No.” He steps closer to her. “Orodruin is the way it is because I took something from it when I forged that Ring. If I cast it back into the fires from whence it came, its essence will be restored, and it will quiet. Then I can begin to restore Mordor out from the shadow Adar originally created.”
“That makes no sense. You make no sense. Why are you waging war on Middle-Earth for the third time if you want to destroy the One Ring? Why did you not send out a message with your intent instead?”
“And who would believe me? The Great Deceiver Sauron, the Dark Lord Gorthaur!”
“So you kill mindlessly instead.” She feels numb. “You were always hopelessly malicious and cruel. Capricious too.”
“I have not killed mindlessly since I returned. Not this time. I defend my borders and I search for the Ring.”
“Are you listening to yourself? Being reduced to spirit more than once has made you completely mad. Whatever tiny bit of goodness that was left in you when we came back to Middle-Earth is gone now. I am sure of it.”
He sighs and slumps forward a bit.
“Then end it. End me, Galadriel. I am weary of this endless, meaningless existence. Particularly if the only light I ever held onto is truly lost to me.”
Galadriel lets her power flow again, lighting up the throne room in the purest combination of the Eldar, Noldor, and the magicks of the Rings. It washes away the blackness inherent in this Dark Land, showing Sauron in his Halbrand suit so starkly against the washed out walls behind him that she’s forced to pause for a moment.
He seems diminished. Almost like what she remembers of him the first time they met on the raft out on the Sundering Seas. He’s staring at her with an ageless look in his eyes and a crease in his brow, though the set of shoulders and mouth indicate a fatalistic acceptance of what is about to happen.
The One Ring sings in her mind as she readies to strike him down, flooding her with visions both terrible and enticing. With Sauron gone, she can ascend to the throne of Middle-Earth, taking what is rightfully hers as the Queen of all Existence. Nothing and no one can stop her once the Dark Lord is sent through the Door of Night. She will always have the One Ring and it will always be hers. And after Middle-Earth? The rest of Arda will bend to her will too—
“No,” she gasps, and staggers back.
The light fades as Halbrand moves toward her with an arm raised. His features have shifted into surprised alarm.
“Galadriel?”
“It… It’s impossible,” she manages. “It is not true.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Ring. It showed me the future, or a version of it. With you gone, I can rule all of Arda. No,” she says, forcefully.
“You would be a just ruler.”
Her eyes snap to him. He’s smiling warmly at her, the opposite reaction she expected.
“No,” she denies it, since that is the truth she knows in the depths of her soul. “I would be as beautiful and terrible as the dawn. All would love me and despair. Endless power and world without end.”
“That is the One Ring,” he says, slowly. “Already it corrupts your thoughts and pushes you toward dominion. You must destroy it, Galadriel. Use it to destroy me if that will finally satisfy your quest for vengeance, but then I beg of you to cast it into the volcano.”
Galadriel focuses on him, realizing he’s only three steps from her now. She takes a moment to consider the situation from every bizarre angle she’s been exposed to in the last fifteen minutes.
If she does destroy the One Ring, Sauron will be further diminished, and she will not need it to end him any longer. She wonders if he would even be able to rule Mordor with that power and part of his essence going back into Orodruin. What would he be then? A Maiar stuck in Halbrand’s body.
“I will destroy it.”
He sighs, seeming both happy and sad at the same time.
“Then get on with it. End me and then be rid of the One Ring.”
He holds out his arms, accepting his fate.
“I will destroy it,” she repeats. “And you are coming with me.”