Despite the distance from the Black Gate where they currently happened to be at that moment, Frodo and Sam did notice when the wildfire was used to destroy it. Yes, they were protected from both the resulting soundwave and the shockwave by a magical barrier suddenly appearing around them because the Martell family members knew that the two Hobbits needed to be protected in order to reach Mount Doom, though this did not prevent them from falling over by the sheer force of the shockwave.
"...wh… what was that?! "
Given that they were only familiar with fireworks as the closest thing to an explosion outside the rare accident of something happening inside a windmill with flour dust getting too close to a spark of some kind, and naturally could not know about Saruman developing the first gunpowder seen in Middle-earth all the way back in Isengard, the shocked question from Sam was reasonable.
"...must…go…on…"
Frodo, however, despite his understandable similar shock over what just had happened in the distance, tried to regain focus on getting closer to Mount Doom, despite that the surrounding area had changed a bit from the shockwave. But he could not quite hide how badly he was trembling as he tried to walk.
"I am coming, Mister Frodo!"
With great care, Sam managed to pull Frodo back over his shoulders and began to walk as best as he could between the sharp stones and rocks, hoping that this would allow Frodo some small rest so he could have enough strength to throw the One Ring into the fires and lava.
Someone who had been noticeably less lucky than the two Hobbits, was Gollum, though to be fair, as Faramir had not been present in Ithilien when they were passing through, it was impossible for the other members of the Fellowship and their allies to know that Gollum had been guiding Frodo and Sam towards Mordor since Emyn Muil. Partly buried under some dry earth and stones, he had been hit straight by the shockwave and this sheer force of the loud sound had cost him his hearing, proved by how he held his hands over his ears from the pain.
"...p…Precious…!"
Of course, this new pain did not help lessen his anger over that Frodo and Sam were getting further away from him, and that also meant that the One Ring was also getting out of reach.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Khamûl was actually impressed by how Rhaenys had made a simple but very effective plan to try and weaken him. He was not sure how she had figured out the logic that he and the other Nazgûl had a weakness in the sunlight as creatures of darkness, but perhaps simply doing a bit of research though old writings and records mentioning the Nazgûl would have given her enough clues to work that out, as well how she made sure to stay way out of his reach to avoid the Black Breath by using her spear to check the distance. By magically transporting him back to the lands where Kemet once had laid so long ago in the long-gone past, and letting him be hit straight by the powerful desert sun, he had only the remaining ruins of the stone pillars and temple walls to offer shadows as a hiding spot, and that was only in the remains of the royal palace and the temples.
"So much for the Dark Lord intending to send me back to Dol Guldur and command the northern forces against the Elves there… "
Whatever the reason, he did not care. Thanks to each one of his mortal Consorts being proved to be born with magic and bound to him as part of the "wedding ceremony" when they became a Consort, he could keep the fortress under control even at a distance. In fact, with the amount of mortal Consorts he had been having over the millennia since he first had joined Sauron, their united magical power should be enough to somewhat challenge that female Elf whose presence he could sense, if so only vague.
"That nonsense about "you should not hit a woman"...the fools who say so, have never faced females who need to toughen up and learn to fight for survival or living in less safe surroundings than what most nobles and royalty are brought up into thanks to being surrounded by guards and other protectors…or realize that there are women who simply can not afford to be meek and passive or they will not live for long because they are unable to defend themselves against dangers… "
Well, he was not surprised by the Elves laying siege to Dol Guldur, and likely would try and capture the fortress at some point, whether he was actually there or not. If Sauron lost the fortress, he would have to deal with said loss thanks to his refusal to send some of the Ringwraiths to the battlefields further north. If there would even be a fortress remaining in the end, that was.
At her side of the improvised battlefield, standing out in the sun as a way to avoid Khamûl grab hold of her that easily, Rhaenys knew that she could not drag this battle out for too long, even with the sun weakening him.
He already knows that there is no use in redeeming him, foolish girl. What supposed change of heart now, with the fate of the world in the air, will wash away everything that he has done as a servant of the Dark Lord for so long?
She could hear it somehow, even with the distance between her and Khamûl. It may not be the One Ring, but given that Sauron had played a part in crafting the Nineteen Rings of Power, Rhaenys could not even claim to be surprised that the Ring of Power worn by the former Farao, seemed to reach out to her. Trying to reach for her inner darkness which Rhaenys already knew about:
The barely remembered face of Rhaegar, that look of apathy in his eyes as he did not even look at Elia, nor did the same to either one of his two children as he turned around andvanished out of their lives forever with the unspoken hint of thathe had never cared for them, any of them, in the first place compared to those cursed prophecies that he was so obsessed with. Not Elia as the legal wife who had risked her life in childbirth twice, not Rhaenys as his firstborn, or Aegon as the male heir…
"No….no…!"
Rhaenys knew that she should no longer be bothered by Rhaegar after so long a time, not with having an actual father in Théodred despite them sharing no blood at all, and so many other men who played an important role in her life, and yet…
That man who kept casting a shadow within the deepest depths of her mind and heart.
"Stop it…stop it…!" Rhaenys pleaded, "Stop! NO!I do not want that sort of power…!"
The whispers promising power. The ability to bring Westeros to its knees with her magic just like Khamûl had spread fear and terror among the colonies of Nûmenor in the centuries following him entering the service of Sauron, the other Great Houses having no choice but to submit to her as their female ruler. The chance to end the awful stereotypes of Dorne and its people from those who lived north of the Red Mountains…
The chance to truly ensure that in the longer run of history, Rhaegar would forever be remembered solely as a failure, both as a Crown Prince, husband and father.
You want to free your mother's homeland, once for all, and prove Westeros just what they are rejecting. What that "silver prince" failed to see the first time you opened your eyes and met his own. Why refuse that chance? All you need to do is to take that Ring from him.
All she would need to do, was taking the Ring of Power from Khamûl, and most likely causing him to fade away, to await whatever judgment he would face from the Doomsman, and take his place as a servant of Sauron before unleashing a hell of unmatching terror over the rest of Westeros while Dorne finally got to be a independent nation forever.
"N-no…!"
Rhaenys did not want Dorne to be free from Westeros, in exchange for serving Sauron. The homeland of her mother would never be truly be freed in that way, only gaining a mockery of true freedom while Sauron kept a invisible chain around the necks of the Dornish people.
Tossing one of the jars with paints to the ground so it broke, the sound of the hardened clay breaking into pieces, seemed to help cleaning her mind from those whispers, if only so temporarly.
" Jt!"
But was not Rhaenys speaking this time. It was the voice of Mara coming out of her mouth, and furthermore, she used the word for father from their once native language.
"Jt! I truly mean it, both as myself and as my reborn, current self as Rhaenys! I am offering you the chance to finally get PEACE IN DEATH, TO BE FREE FROM THIS…THIS MOCKERY OF THE FARAO YOU ONCE WERE! TO FINALLY DIE AS THE RULER OF KEMET I REMEMBER YOU AS, AND NOT BE AN ENSLAVED SOUL BOUND TO THIS WORLD!"
This was the moment that Visenya had waited for, as she closed her eyes. And for a moment, just as Visenya sent over a vision of how happy he once had been with his wives and children, Khamûl retook his appearance as the mortal ruler he once had been.
Roughly at the same time, in Minas Tirith:
All of the Baratheon descendants looked up as one person, towards one direction. Brienne as well, in that she stood up from her seat and reached for her sword out of habit.
"Mara? "
For a moment, their appearance changed, to the royal children of Kemet which they once had been so long ago. They could almost hear her struggle against the Ring of Power, as Sauron tried to ensnare Rhaenys with its whispers of promised power.
"Not again. "
"We could not save Father the first time, because none of us survived that attack that doomed Kemet and none of us knew what sort of ring he truly wore. "
"Sauron has already taken our birth father from us once. We shall not lose our sister in the same manner! "
When Gendry opened the door to check on them, partly out of a bad feeling in his gut, the chamber was empty. Not even the youngest family members were still there and the bed where Aemon had been resting, turned out to be empty, which was alarming in itself given that Aemon was of a sickly health which requested him to be closely watched in case he got a fever and the simple fact that he and Rhea were very young children compared to the others.
"Oh no…this better not become a habit for life…" he groaned in both alarm and a tiny dose of growing frustration as he looked in both directions of the corridor, knowing that he better try and find his half-siblings and cousins before any of the remaining adults noticed that they were gone too.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Rhaenys did not know what had happened to her to get free from the whispers from the Ring of Power, but she did not waste the given time. Hurrying over to her painting, she turned it around to reveal that it was no one else than Khamûl back as mortal in the painting.
"I have seen this before. Not just in this current life of mine. A husband and father, not without flaws, but still with his good sides. And I refuse to see you be used by someone else for the powers you still hold!"
Holding up a small brush, she added the final touch to the final details:
The black eye color.
"What are you aiming for…?! "
Khamûl paused to look at himself, seeing how his current form seemed to slowly reverse back into a mortal body, and hissed in pain as old wounds and scars opened up on the body of flesh and blood. But it was not the magic of Rhaenys, he could somehow sense the difference, and none of his other children, back in Kemet, had been blessed with this type of magic either. Even Rhaenys was staring in disbelief over seeing what was happening, before a small group of people appeared behind her:
"Sorry for being late….Rhaenys?" Brienne asked as she pulled out her sword, just to confirm her guess, because she and the daughter of Elia did share a birth year, but she had never seen the princess before because of the logical reason that most of Westeros either believed Elia and her children to have died at some point past the Rebellion or were hiding in exile somewhere in Essos without being in contact with Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen, to which Rhaenys nodded.
"Better to arrive late than never, " Rhaenys smiled unexpectedly as if recalling a treasured memory from when she was very young, "Just like how my treasured stepfather proved himself to be the very hero that my trash to birth father failed to be, despite how everyone claimed that he would be a far better king than my mad grandfather, and, well, look how that despicable man caused his own dynasty to lose the very throne they had forged for themselves."
Rhaenys was speaking of Théodred in a fond manner on purpose, and immediately switched to open disdain when mentioning Rhaegar without directly saying his name, showing the Baratheon children and Brienne just how unimportant the last Targaryen Crown Prince was in her eyes compared to the man who truly had became her father in any sense sans blood ties.
"If we all survive, then please introduce us to this man who your lady mother remarried after getting widowed. He sounds like a very valuable ally, or at least someone to not make a enemy of," Argella said as winds started to flow around her, and got the following response:
"Insult my treasured stepfather, or his beloved homeland, and you will regret that poor choice of words for the rest of your lives. Same for anyone else who dare to look down on him, either for saving Mother, my brother and myself when we could have been murdered on the orders of Tywin Lannister in the Sack of King's Landing, or just viewing him as a laughable poor replacement for the trash who sired me and Aegon. Without him and that choice to save us from death despite us being total strangers that he had never met before that fateful day, none of us three would be alive today. "
Despite their different appearance from their past selves and Rhaenys understandably having never met them before, there was a natural familiarity in their manners to the point that Khamûl could almost see the children he had sired so long ago:
Rhaenys as Princess Mara, Aemond as Crown Prince Ramses, Lyonel as Prince Meryre, Argella as Princess Bintanath, Elinor as Princess Tíye, Brienne as Prince Meryatum, Mya as Princess Iaret, Eric as Prince Thutmose, Shireen as Princess Sitre and Rhea as Princess Tuya.
This was no mere battle. It was a trial. Of whatever he still had enough of his almost vanished humanity left inside him to not harm the children he once had loved so much, or if he had fallen too far into the service of Sauron to never get freed from the Dark Lord.
Indeed, this realization was something Visenya had also found out, and she could not exactly blame her Master for suddenly being less sure if he even could attack the reincarnations of his former children or not. It was one thing to do it as a shapeless wraith, but as he slowly became more trapped in his lost human form, and with it the return of old memories and feelings…
After all, it was to avenge them, his murdered wives and children by the hands of his half-Nûmenorian son Tar-Minyatur, that Khamûl had entered the service of Sauron so long ago. Out of them all, only Mara had escaped through the portal to the other world that had saved her and ensured that her son Morgan would become the forefather of the Martell family, while Neith had been safely away from Kemet at that horrible event thanks to her marriage with the ruler of Dorwinion.
Now Khamûl was facing the reincarnations of those among his children who had managed to escape Sauron, their souls leaving their dead bodies and following after their sister before Mara had closed the portal between the two worlds, therefore allowing a few of her siblings to avoid getting captured by the Dark Lord to ensure that the former Farao did not do anything that could result in the souls of his wives and children being harmed as punishment.
"Clever, older sister Rhaenys, to try and remind Master of what once was his biggest treasure in life, his family. It may not work to change his mind, but attacking without some form of plan is never good."
However, Visenya had a strong feeling that she and the other mortal Consorts would need to step in at some point, especially with how their Master was returning to a body of flesh and blood which could be harmed. Yes, none of them "loved" their Master in a romantic sense, and they all knew that they had mostly raised to their positions by being born with magic, which Khamûl used to try and search for the soul of Mara, the daughter who had been forever lost with no one knowing what had became of her until the last few years.
But still…
Given the alternative fates of what could happen for people who turned out to have magic, some of which was far from pleasant and tended to involve a very horrible death, both in Middle-earth and the world with Westeros, being a Consort was not too bad.
"Time to repay that he allowed me a far better fate than what my birth father intended for me and my half-siblings."
Closing her eyes for a moment, Visenya took a deep breath to steady herself, before opening them again.
"It is time to free the trapped soul of Jt from the Dark Lord and fulfill that pact I made with Lord Namo so long ago when dying, Sen."
With those words, Visenya revealed her own biggest secret that no one had found out so far:
That when the three-year-old Rhaenys had opened that temporary portal between the Fangorn forest and King's Landing which had allowed Théodred to save Elia and her two young children from death, another soul had crossed over from Middle-earth too, and found itself having a new body by being reborn as the daughter between Rhaegar and Lyanna.
Neith, the other surviving princess of Kemet, whose son from her pregnancy at the time most of Kemet's ruling family was murdered by Tar-Minyatur, had become the ancestor of Suleiman and the rest of the current ruling family of Rûm.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author's note: Yes, Galadriel DID single-handedly destroy Dol Guldur by HERSELF in canon, and it will happen here too, just not witnessed by the other characters for logical reasons such as the vast distance and literally everything else that is demanding their attention
Jt means Father and Sen means Sister in Ancient Egyptian (got this helped from another fanfic series with a LOT of connections to Ancient Egypt and how some events there are still affecting the present day in the late 1990s in-story)
Yup, both Rhaenys and Brienne are born in year 280 after the Targaryen Conquest, I simply headcanon that Brienne is a few months older since Rhaenys was born nine months after the wedding of her parents, which happened at the New Year