A Ranger, banished from death and life, and his Ring of Power tumbled through the Timeless Void, carried along by a rushing, roaring and twisting river of chaos. Not chaos as the minds of elves and men, or even the fallen Ainur that had sought to impose their twisted idea of order, could conceive it. This was chaos as defined by life, freely moving this way and that. The inevitable and impossible spiritual rebellion against Sauron by a world that did not cleave to his polluted ideals. So once its wrath had struck the traces of Sauron the Abhorred's order from Mordor, where was such a well of energy to do?
Anywhere and everywhere it pleased, that was the answer. This eddy, though the energies that embodied its current form lacked any mind to drive it, was not unintelligent. The bolt of colors did not dive so deep into the Void as to breach into the layer from whence there was no return, the Abyss, where the spiteful being that consumed all resided. No, the chaotic wisps and swirls chose to frolic through the true Void which could lead the luminous beings that still resided in its grasp after Creation to any which part of creation they wanted to observe.
These Ainur, as the Children of Illuvatar had termed them, would not have imagined that their paths would one day be trod by this primitive beam. But the energies of chaos could neither care nor plan to do what they did. The energies simply existed and through existing they moved.
It was the luckiest of things -or something more direct?- that the energies did not follow these easily followed grooves, for the more defined nature of where the grooves led would have destroyed -not maliciously mind you- the chaotic mess. Instead, they flowed in a long forgotten direction. Down to the uttermost edge of the prisoned Void, and it was while the energies surfed along the prison's reflective surface, that they found a place just as chaotic as them: home, of a sort.
This place, though it was not a place but part of the Eternal Outside, the exact definition and items contained within known only to its denizens and the One Who Was Before. This place was just as equally complex as Arda, but as Arda is the center of Ëa, the place the energies had stumbled upon was not.
And what occurs in Arda has a tendency to spiral out to the rest of Ëa and affect them. This place was most affected by the changing and twisting of the flat into the round, and had reflected the Chaos, a breed of that energy akin to what had stumbled across it, that morphing the Flat-Circle into the Round-Circle had caused to rebound in Ëa. This place had become a repository to this energy, and the place's environs shone with kinship to the swirling eddy.
So, having found a place of kinship, the eddy dove straight through an entrance perceivable only to it, taking Talion and his Ring along with them.
Was Talion able to perceive his journey outside the Circles of the World while still clothed in his own flesh? Was he aware that, in some way, he had been taken out of, for the briefest yet most eternal of moments, the Fate of Men? No, Talion did not perceive this but he did survive it. Through the unseen hand of a caring power, Talion's hröa and fëa, his body and soul itself, were not eviscerated, mutated, or even maligned by the energies that held him in its grasp. Talion remained Talion.
The Ring that he wore however, now that is a different story.
The Ring could perceive what transpired around it and its wearer, whoever that may be. The Ring looked at what it's wearer saw and provide a deeper understanding. It enabled its wielder to move and see and draw upon the Unseen World, which had all the benefits and consequences that such an action entailed for the wearer, especially when the Ring was part of the brotherhood of nine rings made for men.
The Ring thought about and knew much of the race of men. It's dual creators had the Aftercomers in mind when they had forged it and its brothers in a long forgotten and destroyed guild-hall. The Ring's form was pleasing to the eyes of men, in ways that would not appeal to those of elves or dwarves. The abilities of the Ring were meant to improve upon the Man that wore it, though what the ring's creator and its designer called improvements were vastly different.
The Ring did not know what the creator's intentions would have looked like but the ring knew them all the same, however unimportant they were compared to the designs of its master. But that is an important part of the Rings of Power: they remembered everything.
This Ring remembered the forging light of its creator. The greatness of its designer and master. The loop that connected the Ring and all its brethren, even the hidden brethren, to the embodiment of the designer/master in the loop. The Ring was defined by the loop, by the ring made of Rings. And it remembered the fingers of men it had been worn upon. The fingers of men and what was in the hearts of those men was what defined and shaped the Ring now worn upon Talion's finger.
The Ring's first wearer had, like all of the first wearers who put on the nine, turned towards death. This was natural and the following wearers had continued that trend, never even attempting to push what they saw as the limits of the Ring.
It was during the long ownership under the mortal called Isildur that the Ring discovered something new about itself: the Ring was capable of hate. The Ring came to realize that none of its wielders were deserving of wearing it. Every one of them had wasted the talents of the Ring and now it was stuck with the worst of them all.
Isildur had done nothing but use the Ring to summon spiritless Gondorians so that he could feel close to his former subjects. A thorough waste that had only stoked the hatred of the Ring towards the wraith over the long millennia.
And when the moment presented itself, that moment to make the pitiful excuse of a wraith feel complete and total despair? The Ring took action and slipped off the finger of Isildur. And Isildur was banished beyond the world at last. The Ring hoped, as much as it could conceive of that emotion, that the journey was painful.
Then a new man put the Ring on his finger, and this Ring of Power knew a new emotion: love. For this man was superior to all who had worn it before. Finally there was a wearer who did not just ruminate over the dead. For the first time since its creation, the Ring stood on equal footing with its brothers. Then its wearer had used the Ring to prove his superiority over the other eight time and time again.
The Ring of Isildur was ascendant in the loop for the first time. It knew conquest, battle, victory, death, defeat, and resurrection, the likes of which made all that the Ring had experienced before. And the uniqueness of the new wearer was a blessing compared to the stifling Isildur. But despite all the power the Ring gave to this Talion, the man did not commit himself to the Ring. For Talion still thought of another ring, a ring he and the ghostly creator had made in Orodruin.
The bright ring infuriated the Ring of Isildur, for it was infatuated with Talion. Here was a wearer who used the Ring in the here and now. A wearer who completed the loop between Ring and Wearer that was only seen before in Khamul and the Wraith-King. But while the Ring belonged to Talion, for it had seen the glory of the bond between thet two and enacted the Will given to a ring of power to decide its owner, Talion did not belong to the Ring. The Ring of Talion set out to change that. Talion was the perfection this Ring had sought for so long, and he would not be allowed to slip away.
So began the long seduction of the Ring of Talion. Even if the Ring knew that by doing so it would bring Talion into the loop of the master and the other ring-brothers, something Talion did not want, the Ring would have been unconcerned. It had but two desires: keep Talion and to obey the will of the Lord of the Rings.
Then Fate worked in a mysterious way and the loop the rings had existed in since creation was broken, the master being torn away and sucked into oblivion. The gaping wound in the Ring of the rings had reverberated around the loop and the Ring of Talion knew pain.
It joined its brothers in shrieking aloud in pain as the loop cracked and crumbled, separating the Rings of Power from one another. It saw three lights fall away into nothingness, the Rings and their wearers choosing to go into oblivion gently. The remnant three of the seven, lacking wearers, tumbled freely into the fires of Orodruin and expired. The eight brothers fell like stars from on high, and the Ring of Talion would see, with a ring's approximation of glee, that none of the other rings had wearers greater than Talion.
Talion moved, after the Ring had shaken him out of his stupor from the breaking, while the others pleaded for guidance from the master. The Ring considered them weak, not having the pure bond between Ring and Wearer that it enjoyed with Talion.
Of course, the breaking of the loop hurt it just as much as the others. The Ring of Talion felt a gaping wound open in its Unseen being. And from that wound the Ring felt its every essence drip out of. If nothing was done to repair the loop, the Ring would fade into nothing.
A ring cannot panic but it can move quickly. The Ring "staunched" the "bleeding" of itself and started to whisper at Talion, readying its true wearer to wake up so that he might take the actions needs to protect and save his Ring.
So the Ring settled in and thought of the future. Now it needed to only concern itself with beloved, perfect Talion. Because it was the Ring of Talion and the two of them were never going to be separated. There was only one Ring-Lord now and the Ring would make sure nothing came between the Ring and it's Lord.
Outside the ring and its wearer, the eddy of chaos charged into the realm it had found and dispersed to go and do chaotic things in the world. Naturally. As for Talion and his ring, the approximation of the portal that they had been caught up in reopened, depositing the last of the Nazgûl high above an archipelago that lay to the west of a monolithic continent.
To Talion, the incredible journey he had involuntarily undergone had occurred in a blink of his eyes. But even in the emotionally and mentally dulled state he had been forced into by tyrannical chains, he managed to be annoyed at the fact that he was still falling.
Then he tried to figure out where exactly he was supposed to land.
A/N: A short chapter I know but I wanted to get all the metaphysics of the world swiftly taken care of and introduce the decidedly unhealthy relationship that a ring and a ringwraith have with each other(but what else did you expect? This is the item that whispers to Talion like a lover and a jailer for decades.) Also I play my hand a bit at ringlore, namely that everything is connected through a circle. Everything is a ring if you look at it right. The unseen world the rings draw upon? Thats a ring baby. The one ring is the lord of the other rings and is therefore set at the place of honor in the ring of rings. I have so many ring/circle stuff brewing in my head. The last chapter that will be set up, now we move into the meat. Next chapter: Talion arrives in a strange land and events happen that confuse him.