Chapter 369: Return
"Take the route near the Water-city."
Frodo made his decision, his face drawn tight with pain from the Nazgûl's shrieking cries.
The "underground route near the Water-city" could only mean one thing.
Moria.
Frodo did not know what that place was truly like. In fact, the reason he chose it was embarrassingly simple: the name Water-city. A city built under Levi's leadership made him trust it instinctively.
He trusted Levi's judgement. So even "Moria near the Water-city" sounded the safer road.
More reliable than the Gap of Rohan, and more reliable than Gondor.
Boromir's heart sank, but he gathered himself quickly and held to his promise.
Whatever else, he had said Gondor would support the Ring-bearer's quest, and he spoke for Gondor. There was no time to lose face.
So, after all the detours and debates, they finally set their course south. Moving swiftly along the great road by Roadside Keep, they passed the Water-city and came to a watchpost in Eregion.
"No trouble nearby. All is as usual," the Ranger at the watchpost reported.
From the Misty Mountains to here, they had travelled entirely under the Free Cities' protection. The road had been almost absurdly smooth.
"The Vale of Anduin ought to have been like that too," Gandalf muttered. "The sort of road where you could simply drop on the ground and sleep, and your only danger would be catching a chill if you forgot your blanket."
"But…"
Remembering the message a bird had delivered before they left, Gandalf's brows knotted.
"Mordor has sent no fewer than fifty thousand troops to attack the North and South Vales and the Vale of Anduin. And at least three Nazgûl. It is madness."
"He does not want to see what will happen once the Free Cities respond."
At the gathering in Halfway Town, most people had been arguing for marching straight into Mordor, taking Sauron alive, and forcing him to tell them what had become of Levi.
And from what Gandalf understood of those realms, the moment Halfway Town's mayor met the other local rulers, that proposal would be raised. It was the public will. Even if the mayor did not support it personally, he would still have to mention it.
"But they held them," Boromir said, far more focused on the balance of strength than Gandalf was. "More than held them. They have the advantage."
That was fifty thousand Orcs and Uruk-hai, not to mention at least three Nazgûl leading them.
That kind of force could have marched from Osgiliath to Minas Tirith. Even if the White City held, it would have paid dearly.
Yet in the Free Cities, a coalition mustered in mere days had already pushed that host back. Give them more time to gather men, and they might even drive the Enemy all the way back.
The comparison stung.
And that was with Levi absent. If he had been here, would they already be hammering at the Black Gate?
"Come," Gandalf said, waving them onward. "We go in."
"Moria is a road I have taken before. If fortune favours us, we may even find the campfires and marks Levi left behind. Those signs will guide us safely through to the other side."
"Then…" Pippin started to say, only for Merry to clap a hand over his mouth.
"Then what?" Gandalf looked back, his expression unpleasant.
"Nothing, Gandalf. We will be fine," Merry answered for him.
Pippin avoided getting scolded again.
Gimli patted both Hobbits on the shoulder. "Come along, lads."
"Let us go and see our lost home."
Would it really be fine?
Forced into silence, Pippin watched Gandalf at the head of the line. The wizard looked worried and tight-lipped, and Pippin could not shake the feeling that something was about to happen.
When they reached a well-preserved campfire site marked with Levi's personal crest, Gandalf suddenly spoke in a strange, half-muttering way.
"Old noise left over from ancient days must always be cleared away, and Wizards bear that duty."
"My foreboding is growing stronger, Aragorn."
"What?" Aragorn looked confused.
"Nothing," Gandalf said, as if dismissing it. "Only that a little noise like this is something I can certainly deal with. Little, yes. Compared with the vast hidden clamour in the north, it is little indeed."
"Look after Frodo, and the Hobbits behind you. Let us move."
After resting by the fire for a while, they rose and went on.
Far below, in the deep places of the earth, flame kindled.
It followed their footsteps, slowly rising.
…
"Achoo!"
In the deepest depths of the world, in a place that barely felt as though it still belonged to Arda at all, Levi stood within a prison veiled in grey-black mist. His nose itched for no reason, and he could not help thinking the air here was filthy. Every breath pushed him to the edge of Poison.
It was suffocating.
With this level of corruption, a single deep breath would surely earn him an extra second or two of a Poison status effect.
He had pushed into the wreckage of a fortress from an age even earlier than the First Age.
Judging by where he was, he was probably deeper than the very floor of the Great Sea.
Everything Utumno still had left, every last remnant and reserve that had survived the fall of Morgoth's fortress, was likely gathered here.
Truth be told, if left alone, it might sit like this for a very long time, even for ages upon ages, and nothing would happen. By their own power, the things here could never claw their way out.
But if Morgoth returned, that was another matter.
The prophecies said he would return at the world's weakest hour, bringing about a final battle that would destroy and remake the world.
That would be something to see.
But as for now…
Levi pulled the Dragonflame Steel greatsword free from a Balrog corpse and rose, walking down from a mountain of bodies.
There was nothing left here that could move, besides him.
Utumno was empty.
Let Morgoth come back to a lonely wasteland, then.
"So," Levi murmured, "how exactly am I supposed to get back?"
Dig straight up through the world, or try to find a way out?
The moment the thought formed, a pillar of white light appeared before him.
Its radiance called to him. The instant he felt that summons, Levi understood: the light could bear him somewhere, somewhere holy.
He did not hesitate. He stepped into it, and his shape was swallowed by the beam.
—
His sight was drowned in endless white, a sensation so strange it was hard to put into words.
Perhaps only an instant passed. Perhaps a very long time.
In that blurred sense of time, Levi arrived in a magnificent, spotless hall and lingered there for a brief moment.
In that moment of stillness, he saw a vision projected from nowhere he could name.
A mountain peak, it seemed. A high tower. And within it, the Grey Wizard was battling an evil creature wrapped in flame.
If that was not a Balrog, what was?
The battle was earth-shaking, violent beyond measure, at least by mortal standards.
On the lonely peak, the Grey Wizard no longer hid his power. The Balrog struck back with all its might, unleashing attacks that were terrifying to behold.
The summit felt like a storm had swallowed it whole. Inevitably, the clash spread to Durin's Tower that stood there. Under the roars and the shock of power, the tower cracked, broke apart, and collapsed in great chunks, shattering as they fell.
The fight lasted two full days and nights.
When at last Gandalf drove Glamdring into the Balrog's chest and ended it, Durin's Tower was gone. The whole place had been wrecked by the battle's aftershock.
Even the path from the depths up to the summit ruins had been sealed by fallen stone.
After this, Dwarves would no longer need to guess what state Durin's Tower above Moria was in. Gandalf would tell them it was destroyed.
As for where he learned it, he would likely say very little.
Through a strange, godlike vantage, or what Levi would rather call spectator mode, he watched Gandalf confirm the Balrog's death, then finally sag and sit heavily on the ground, gulping air.
His breath grew weaker.
His strength was spent to the last drop, so utterly that even life itself could not be sustained.
In the end, Gandalf could not endure.
His breathing ceased.
He truly died of exhaustion.
Then, the one who had summoned Levi here moved.
Gandalf's soul was recalled.
Of the five Wizards, he alone had remained loyal to his mission from first to last. He had never wavered, never strayed, never turned aside. And so he was granted leave by Eru to return to Middle-earth, and was permitted to wield more of his Maia strength, no longer as tightly bound as before.
In a haze, as his awareness stitched itself together again, Gandalf felt a pull from the root of existence. A great presence was calling him, laying a new charge upon him.
It was the world's Creator, the One God, all-knowing and all-powerful, Ilúvatar.
And Gandalf accepted, in reverence.
Yet even as he received that charge, Gandalf unconsciously frowned, an act that would have been gross disrespect before the Creator.
Ilúvatar did not trouble over such a small detail. The Music was tuned, as it always was.
And Gandalf frowned for one reason only: he could sense that besides the Creator, there was another presence here, one he knew all too well, watching him.
"Levi!"
On the mountain peak, Gandalf's eyes snapped open. He shouted the name in shock.
How was he there?