Early September 1423 S.R.
Northern Mordor
I thought the people of Rhun had a hard go of it, but now I see what total destruction looks like. I haven't seen a living soul of any sentient race in days, the last being a scrawny, starving orc just after I crossed the Ash Mountains into what was called Mordor. I haven't had it easy myself and have gotten pretty thin over the last months, but apparently I frightened him anyway. He darted into a crack in the rocks and I had no reason to follow. I'd be surprised if he still lives.
Surprise,, though, is too mild a word for what I feel now. I can see the jagged shape of Mount Doom from where I stand. It looks like it came apart from the inside and spewed its substance all over this land in a torment. It's only the second most amazing thing I've seen since the war, though. At my feet is a gaping pit, with the gusting winds lifting ash from around my legs to fall into fathomless depths where light doesn't penetrate. I don't know what's down there at the bottom or if anything is at all. Even if I had a rope I wouldn't try to discover it. In all my days I have never seen such annihilation. We never did it to the tarks or the elves or the dwarves, and try as they might, they couldn't do it to us. This, though, looks like what happens if an angry spirit has its say. I don't want to meet the architect of this destruction. I recall vague garbled rumors saying that our lord had been brought down by a single half-man – no, Halfling, they said, who had nothing but his will, and something about a ring and that mountain over there.
I stare longer, trying to comprehend it all, to make sense of the garbled rumors and match it with what I see around me, keeping myself still and silent and listening to the eery wind blowing bits of ash and rock past me. I don't know how long I stand here listening and reflecting. I suddenly seem to hear whispers in the wind, and just as suddenly feel great feelings of bitterness and disbelieving rage, as if the wind is giving voice to this land or something in it. The sounds and sensations grow until I don't know where I begin and they end. My mind is filled with a cacophony of sound and fury, fragments of memory that flash before my mind too quickly to process along with an overwhelming urge to throw myself into the pit.
A sudden dim question forms in my mind, "Why? I still want to know…"
The feeling grows stronger and stronger, more and more insistant. The partly formed question is lost In the din. It becomes not only a maddening set of emotions and thoughts, it's physically painful as I stand poised on the edge of the pit, lost to my surroundings.
Something shifts around me and the din, while by no means going silent, is pierced by someone's words. It takes me a moment to realize that this is an other fragment of memory, for some reason caught in a mysterious current of this maddening flux and held still for a single crucial moment.
"It's one of the things I'm workin' hard to teach my Garion," says the voice of Leanne as I work on a shoe. "You got to learn to make your own choices. There'll come a day when you must, because no one else is gonna do it for you, and really you shouldn't have others makin' your choices for you. That's the core of what it is to be a thrall, havin' no say in your own life. I'd rather be dead."
The flash of clarity is swept away in the roaring torrent. The cacophony slowly resolves into almost understandable words and I recognize the overwhelming voice of the one whose will has been mine for most of my life. I am suddenly angry on my own behalf, not merely in echo to his rage.
"No! Begone!" I shout, though there's no one to hear me, and for a moment my surroundings come into focus enough for me to realize I'm leaning forward over the fathomless dark pit. I step back. Again the din grows stronger, the emotions more forceful still. Instead of the pit, I now see a tall tark, raven-haired and grey-eyed, seemingly alone in some trees and wearing a set of green and brown leathers any of my band's skulks would have killed for. And speaking of killings, I suddenly seem to hear a command to find and kill this tark. The urge grows and grows, but something feels wrong. As strong as it is, I am not lost in it. Who is this tark that I should kill him? Why should I follow this order?
"No!" I call out to the empty land around me again. Am I going insane? There is a moment's ominous silence as the wind goes briefly still, then there is a seeming redoubling, then a second redoubling of the cacophony. There is a sense of something near desperation to it now in addition to the bitterness and rage, and the sense of disbelief is stronger. I almost lose myself in the torrent of feelings and dimly realize I've dropped to my knees in physical pain that is a dim echo of the roar In my mind. Instead of one lone tark in the woods I see a seven-tierred city with banners fluttering from the highest point, banners with that same odd seven-star emblem I saw on that unfinished sheath and the sword at Leanne's dwelling. The image shifts a bit to show a different tark, older than the first, with a bit of grey in his dark hair, similar grey eyes, and with some big winged thing on his head. I seem to be looking at him from near a window. I don't know this tark either, of course. I've never seen him, but the command now is to put an arrow through his eye or die trying. Yet there is something in that eye that is more powerful even than the urge to kill this unknown tark. Something like a light, but not quite. It is impossible to describe, but I am left with the impression he might know something of the questions I have been trying to answer since the war ended. The pain in my head spikes as the cacophony redoubles yet again. My commander of old is exerting all his remaining strength to make me forget all but him.
"I will not!" The words burst from me in a spasm of coughing. I come to myself to realize the reason for the coughing isn't just pain, I'm lying face-down on a hill of ash, having apparently fallen at some point. I rise again, continuing to hack and clear my throat.
"Do you hear me? I am no longer yours." I mean for it to come out defiant, but it's more a raw whisper than anything else. My throat isn't clear yet. There is an impenetrable silence, probably because the cacophony in my head fades to nothing and I am left listening to the natural movements of the wind, which I now realize is blowing from the west. There is a brief an overwhelming feeling of futility, disbelief, rage and despair that I can't explain but realize is not mine before I'm left to myself. I'm just dead tired, almost literally, and I want to find somewhere safe to lie down. That won't be anywhere near here, for sure. I stagger away from the pit, heedless at first of which direction I'm even moving.
I end up going back into the mountains and dodging Tark patrols. I am mostly driven to get far, far from the pit where once stood Lugburz. I get lucky this time and there's no mounted patrol at the gate when I am, so I slip out of Mordor and wander the mountains of shadow until I find a nice cave that suits me.