Many thanks to BeaconHill for betareading.

Apologies for the lack of an upload last week. As I announced on the forum threads, I had drafted the chapter a little later than usual and BeaconHill and I wanted a little longer to edit it.

Dawn 14.5

I almost didn't realize when it was done. I had been in the fugue-state of forging for hours, perhaps even days, only occasionally distracted by Sophia's presence. As the last fragments of the stiff mold broke away, revealing the pure silver band, I felt as though I was waking up from a dream.

The Quenya inscription glowed green along the inside and outside of the mithril:

Min Corma ana quanda cuntan
Min Corma ana tulyanyët
Min Corma ana quanda rúnan
A Morniëllo moranyët

It was forged. It was done.

I was exhausted, but also filled with a bone-deep satisfaction—even pride. I felt as though I had been running along the inside of my own Ring for a very long time, an immortal hamster caught in the wheel of history, and now at last I was stepping out of the cycle and into something new.

I gingerly picked up the Ring, holding it carefully up in the tips of my fingers and studied the way the silver caught the light. Once again I had suffused my soul into this thing, as I had done so long ago. All of the things that made up the One Ring of ages past were still tied up in this One, but it was more than its predecessor. As I was more than my past.

The previous Ring had been a pure expression of my need to command, to control the world around me and see it obey. It had been an outlet for my need for perfection in all things around me, my desire to see all things in working order—my working order. This Ring still had that push to the perfect, that drive for purity. But this time, it was a force turned inward. Before, the Ring had been a tool to allow me to impose myself on the world. Now, this Ring would be a way for me to impose myself on myself—impressing the image of who I wanted to be onto who I was.

I shouldn't have been, but I was surprised somehow at the green light of the inscription. It was the exact color of Cenya's emerald, the exact shade of Sophia's bright eyes. So much of myself—both my present and the future I strove for—was tied up in her now. That had frightened me, especially before that night in the rain. After all, I had no Aphrodite to breathe life into my Galatea.

But somehow, my dearest Galatea had reached further than I could have dreamed. She had surpassed her Pygmalion, and pulled me forward with her. We shaped one another now, in a partnership of equals. Two sculptors building two sculptures.

All I felt for her was tied into this Ring, too. It was new to me, but it occurred to me that the symbolism itself was ancient. Elves and Men had worn rings of no magic for millennia. It had been a symbolism I had touched upon when I first designed the Rings of Power. A ring was something precious and valuable, but it symbolized something more profound—a connection, an oath, an abiding loyalty.

"Is it done?" Sophia's voice slid neatly into my thoughts. There was no surprise. Of course she would be here. She should be here. I wanted her here.

"Yes," I murmured. "It's done." I turned to face her. Her green eyes caught on the Ring and blinked. She glanced down at Cenya, then back at the One. Then she met my gaze.

"I expected to feel something," she admitted. "When you finished it—I expected to know, to sense it."

"You will," I said. "Once I put it on. This Ring isn't the same as before, but it's still the Ruling Ring, the One that ties all the others together. It's just also… more. It's the Tenth Penitent, the Eighth Warden, the Fourth Watchman. The One stood apart from the other Rings of Power, ruling from on high. This one—I—will lead from the front. I am one of you. You are not my possessions." I smiled at her, keenly aware of my heartbeat. "If anything, Sophia… I am yours."

And there, in full view of her, I slipped the One Ring onto the ring finger of my left hand.

The world at once expanded and fell away. I saw without eyes, out of the caves and tunnels, out of the realm that had once been my home. I saw as thirteen heroes in a city on the sea suddenly stopped what they were doing and turned as one to the west, staring back at me. I saw as Emma jerked to alertness in a little room in the tunnels. I saw a lost shade suddenly start and try uselessly to hide. I saw as Sophia brought her hands to her open mouth, her eyes glistening as she gazed at me.

I saw, too, as fifteen other things turned to gaze upon me. Shaper stepped away from the patient she was tending to, and looked in my direction. The Shards of my Ring-Bearers, my friends, all gazed upon me. Even Dean's mutilated thing, warped and malformed as it was, seemed to have taken on some semblance of cohesion as it gazed upon me through many eyes. Shadows of their host's Rings glittered around something like fingers for each of them.

I understood at last. Shaper was not unique. These creatures were born of the Silence—soulless, lightless, hungering things. Song was antithetical to them—the Secret Fire that sustained Ainur, Elves, and Men alike was death to them.

But Melkor, in his hubris, his curiosity, and his madness, had woven the Discord into existence. That impossible fabric of Light and Dark, of Song and Silence, built a bridge over the infinite gulf between the two opposite forces. The Rings of Power, for all that I was using them for a new purpose and giving them new meaning, were still derived from Melkor's arts, were still of Discord. And these Shards, these spawn of Ungoliant's brood, had walked that bridge. They lived now between, as Melkor and I had.

As Men, Gifted as they were, still did.

Sophia's Shard gazed at me. Its bulk was enormous, but I saw that it was finite. They all were. I hadn't been able to see that when I had fought the one that had tried to tie itself to me, but my vision was wider now. It extended unfathomably far in more directions than the human brain was equipped to perceive, but I was not human anymore. I never had been.

I stared back into its innumerable eyes. It had hurt Sophia—it had fueled her aggression, her obsession, her hate and rage and shame, all in the name of driving her farther in the pursuit of power. But I had hurt her too. I had tried to twist her to conform to a shape I could easily control, a form that would yield to me in all ways.

She had overcome both of us, and both of us loved her for it.

We acknowledged each other, and I turned my eyes back to the Seen. Mere moments had passed. Sophia was still gazing at me with sparkling eyes. "Yeah," she said, her voice shuddering with awe. "I felt that."

I took a step towards her, then another. "Sophia…" I began.

"Don't," she said quickly, seeming almost to recoil from me. "Please. I know already. We love each other, we support each other, we need each other. That's enough for me. I'm happy. Really, I am."

She was. "I know," I told her, taking another step closer. I was within arm's reach of her now.

"I'm happy," Sophia insisted. "You don't need to push yourself on this. I don't need anything more than what we already have."

I reached out and took her into my arms. I pulled her in and held her tight, feeling her body warm against mine in a way that eclipsed the fires of the forge, the heat of the volcano. She whimpered in my arms. "I know you don't," I said into her ear. "Sophia—I do."

Our noses bumped together. Her wide eyes filled my vision. "You… do?" she whispered, a desperate hope in the shudder of her voice.

"We're going to have Emma with us all the way back," I murmured. "All the way until we're back in the Bay. It'll be a day or two before we have privacy again. I don't want to wait that long."

Her tongue slipped out to wet her lips. "Wait for… for what?"

"Sophia," I said. "May I kiss you?"

She didn't answer in words. Her lips were on mine almost before the last word was out of them. Her arms wove around my shoulders and clutched at me desperately. I held her just as tightly. Our bodies twined around each other, hot and slick with sweat after lingering in the heat of the Cracks of Doom. We drank deep of each other, like thirsty travelers happening at last upon an oasis after weeks in the desert. Her scent, earthy and dusky, like a forest after the passage of a rainstorm, filled my nostrils. Her lips and tongue had no flavor but were still sweeter than sugar.

The past didn't matter. The future might as well not exist. My names—all of them—flickered out of my head like pinched candle flames. There was only Sophia, her touch, her taste, her scent, and I the supplicant offering myself before my queen. We were two pilgrims engaged in mutual worship. Our hearts beat as one, straining against our ribs in a desire for ever more closeness.

I had no idea how long it was before we broke apart. But eventually we did, and she stared up at me, green eyes wide and dilated, dark skin flushed darker. We stared at each other for a moment, nose to nose, a strand of my hair hanging against her cheek.

"This is real," Sophia whispered. "I'm not dreaming."

"Nor am I," I murmured. "I'm sorry I took so long."

"Were you scared?"

"Yes. And confused. I've never felt like this before, Sophia—never. No one has done to me what you have."

"Me too." She let out a breathless chuckle. "Although I guess that means less, with the age difference."

"I don't think it does." I ran the back of my fingers along her cheek, then cupped it with my palm. She leaned into the touch with a beatific smile. "I'll try to be as worthy of your heart as you have been of mine."

"You already are," she said, one hand coming through my hair.

"Then I'll try to continue." I kissed her again, slower and gentler this time. It was soft, and sweet, and pure.

When we parted again, she murmured, "I know I should worry about the future. You're immortal. I'm not."

"Nothing lasts forever," I said. "I've come to accept that. You're not a dragonfly to be trapped in amber, preserved for me to admire and cherish forever. I much prefer you free to spread your wings, as it should be. I'll miss you when you're gone, but that just makes me want to cherish you all the more while you're here."

She buried her face in my shoulder, kissing the skin of my neck. "I said I should be worried about it," she said roughly. "But I'm not. And I don't want to be. Not now. There'll be time to think about all that later. Let me have this now. No more second-guessing, no more hesitating."

"No more," I agreed. There would be time for words later. There was no need for any more of them now. I cupped her chin and once more brought her lips up to mine.

The ring's inscription translates, roughly, to:

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to guide them
One Ring to bring them all from out the Dark that hides them

This is a portion of the completed Ring-Verse, which is written in English at the end of Arc 13.