If time had slowed for the Fellowship, for Gandalf, it had shattered.
The fall was not an end; it was a transition. In that final moment, as he was pulled from the brink of the Bridge of Khazad-dûm into that bottomless darkness, the Balrog's fiery whip had grasped not only his body, but the very fabric of the wizard's being. They fell together. Light and Shadow, locked as one, becoming a stone plunging towards the foundations of the world.
The fall might have lasted seconds, or ages. For these two ancient beings, entwined, time had lost all meaning.
Gandalf's last conscious thought was the terror on Frodo's face. Then that thought, too, was torn apart by the blinding speed and roaring wind that enveloped them.
The air first turned to fire. The Balrog's rage was so intense, it turned the walls of the shaft they fell through into glassy obsidian. Gandalf still held Glamdring tightly; Turgon's sword screamed in agony against the demon's flames, its metal glowing with a white-blue light. The wizard used his last strength to form a shield. It was a fragment of the light of Valinor; that pure, untainted energy the Balrog despised.
"You cannot serve the dark fire!" he had roared on the bridge. But now, he was in the very heart of that fire.
When his shield clashed with the demon's flaming sword, the sound that erupted was not the clash of metal, but a peal of thunder. Its echo vibrated every stone of Moria, from its highest peaks to its deepest foundations.
Then the air turned to something colder than ice. They were falling to where the fire ended and the void began. This was beneath even the deepest delvings of the dwarves. This was the Foundations of the World.
Remnants of the primordial darkness from which Arda was created, not yet fully formed. Here, the "Nameless Things" stirred; beings that existed even before Sauron, beings that not even Morgoth had fully mastered. Gandalf felt, with a corner of his mind, these vile, formless lives seeping from the surrounding rock, drawn to the two brilliant lights falling—one of dark fire, the other of secret fire. The Balrog felt these beings too, and was disgusted by them. They were a chaotic, meaningless darkness; whereas the Balrog's darkness was a shadow forged of wrath, serving a purpose.
Their fall ended by crashing into a vast, dark, subterranean ocean.
Boom!
The water exploded with the sound of a mountain avalanche in the immense cavern, unseen for millennia. The water was cold. An abyssal, bone-chilling, light-swallowing cold.
The whip grasping Gandalf dissolved. The two beings were flung in separate directions within the bottomless lake.
Gandalf, with the last light of his staff, pushed himself toward the surface. His lungs were about to burst. When he breached the surface, he gasped for breath, but the air he took in was a toxic mist, stinking of sulfur and decay. In the distance, he clung to a small, natural rock ledge. He was utterly exhausted. Glamdring's blue glow faded. The light of his staff dwindled to a candle flame. He was alone.
But for the Balrog, it was different.
The Flame of Udûn sank thousands of meters deep into the water. And for the first time, for the first time in millennia, its fire was extinguished.
This was not pain, so much as an existential shock. The internal, demonic fire that defined its existence had been smothered under the absolute pressure and cold of the abyssal water. All that remained was pure shadow. And within that shadow, a consciousness that had slumbered for thousands of years, blinked.
For the duration it was known as Durin's Bane, the Balrog had acted mostly as a knot of instinct, rage, and hatred. When awakened by the dwarves of Moria, it had devolved into a hungry, primitive beast, merely protecting its territory.
But now, that primitive fire was gone. It was replaced by something far colder, far more ancient: Malice. Pure, calculated evil.
This was a Balrog. A fallen Maiar. A spirit that had once walked with the Valar when the world was young. A being that had entered the service of Morgoth, one of his most powerful lieutenants.
In the cold, dark water, the Balrog remembered.
It remembered Valinor. It remembered the vile light of those trees and the eternal hatred it felt for that light. It remembered the face of its Master, Morgoth. And the oath it swore to him.
This was the moment of "awakening." It was no longer just a beast; it was a part of its Master's will. And its Master's will was currently focused on something else in Middle-earth. The Balrog felt a reflection of that will, that disgusting, diminishing power, even from thousands of meters beneath the water. The Ring. The small, mighty thing that the grey fool was protecting.
Its fire was extinguished, but its shadow remained. And its shadow hardened, like a solid substance. It took a new form in the water. Fire was replaced by a light-swallowing darkness that looked like the void itself. And within this darkness, two red points glowed, like two embers.
It began to rise from the bottom of the lake. Not with fire, but with pure will alone. Not toward the surface. Westward.
Toward the West-gate of Moria, toward the dark lake the Fellowship had entered.
It didn't know exactly why, but something was pulling it there; a sense of ancient rivalry. In that lake, there was something else. A being ancient, like itself, one of the Nameless Things, but one somehow bound to the surface, to the world. The Balrog saw this presence not as a threat, but as an insult. Khazad-dûm was one of Morgoth's ancient domains, and this slimy, formless creature was defiling the gate.
The Balrog walked along the bottom of the vast subterranean lake. It no longer boiled the water around it; on the contrary, it froze the water around it. Where it walked, the very structure of the water changed, a path of shadow and ice opening before it.
It was a long walk. It took days. Or perhaps only moments.
Finally, it reached the immense cavern: the main basin that fed the dark, vile lake just outside the West-gate of Moria.
And the Watcher in the Water was there.
The Watcher was not just the twenty or so tentacles the Fellowship had seen. Those were merely its hunting extensions. The Watcher's main body, however, was massive enough to have hollowed out the underside of a mountain.
Perhaps it was descended from Ungoliant, or perhaps something even older, born of the first, formless darkness at the bottom of the sea. It was a mass. A mass of pure, insatiable hunger. Its hundreds of tentacles spread like a cancer into the cracks in the rock, clinging to the mountain's foundations. And at the center of it all, a single, enormous, pale, moon-white eye. A blind eye, yet it sensed everything.
It sensed the Balrog. It sensed its shadow. And it was afraid.
But the Watcher's fear turned to aggression. When it felt this new, dark power entering its domain, it attacked with all its might.
The calm waters of the subterranean lake instantly turned to chaos. Hundreds of tentacles, each as thick as a mountain pine, closed upon the Balrog. They sought to crush it, to drown it, to bury it in the muddy bed at the bottom of the ocean.
If the Balrog had been in its old, fiery form, this water and pressure might have troubled it.
But this was the "awakened" Balrog. This was shadow and cold hatred itself.
As the tentacles wrapped around it, the Balrog did not move. It just stood. And its shadow... expanded.
The moment the Watcher's tentacles touched the Balrog's shadow, they began to decay; not a physical rot, but an existential melting. The Watcher's primitive, animal life force was dissolving before the pure, concentrated evil of the Balrog's Maiar essence.
The Watcher screamed in agony. It was not a vocal scream; it was a tremor that shook the mountain.
And the Balrog drew its sword from within the shadow. It was no longer a sword of fire. It was a sword forged of pure darkness, of frozen lightlessness.
It began to cut the tentacles. With every blow, the Watcher's body convulsed, and giant stalactites fell from the cavern ceiling. The water filled with the vile, phosphorescent green blood the Watcher shed.
The Watcher, in a panic, used its strongest weapon: its body. It dropped its enormous, central mass upon the Balrog. It used its full weight to crush it, to bury it in the foundations of the mountain.
For a moment, the Balrog vanished. It was buried beneath that slimy, colossal mountain of flesh. In the cavern, only the churning of the water and the vibration proclaiming the Watcher's victory remained.
But the Watcher did not know that even if a Maiar's fire is extinguished, its embers never truly die.
Beneath the Watcher's mountain of flesh, those two red embers glowed.
And then, the last, suppressed fire within the Balrog, combined with cold hatred, detonated.
This was not an explosion of flame. It was an explosion of shadow. An explosion of "negative fire."
The Balrog's form changed. It was no longer a humanoid shadow. It took on an indescribable, multi-angled shape reminiscent of Morgoth's first wrath.
And it burned the Watcher's body from the inside out.
The Watcher's enormous, moon-white eye glowed with this dark light from within. Its pupil dilated, trembling with shock and pain. Then, the eye exploded.
That was when the "Scream from the Deep" was unleashed.
It was a scream both physical and spiritual, unleashed by the Watcher as it died. It was the final sound of that ancient, primitive being, trapped beneath the water for millennia, as it was erased from existence. It was not just a sound, but an echo that etched itself into the fabric of the world.
The echo moved faster than water. It hit harder than rock.
It struck downwards, into the Foundations of the World, the lair of the Nameless Things, sending them fleeing deeper in terror.
It struck upwards, vibrating every hall of Khazad-dûm, all the way to the snowy peak of Zirakzigil. The lake outside the gate the Fellowship had long since abandoned frothed and boiled with the Watcher's final spasm, and then fell silent forever.
But most importantly, the echo spread horizontally. Beneath the crust of the world, like a seismic wave, it traveled along the foundations of the continents.
Southward, it reached the foundations of Mordor. In the deepest dungeons of Barad-dûr, the Eye of Sauron flickered for an instant. The Master had felt the release of that ancient power. A rival? No. Another fire born of Morgoth's will. A potential ally.
It went west, beneath the sea, along the ancient paths. But the place the echo struck hardest was the North.
The scream traveled from the roots of the Misty Mountains, to the Grey Mountains (Ered Mithrin), and from there, beneath Forodwaith, the freezing ice desert of the North.
There, beneath the remnants of the Helcaraxë (the Grinding Ice), in an ice cavern forgotten for millennia, another ancient being slumbered. One of Morgoth's first and greatest children. The last survivor of the war of cold and fire.
The echo reached that cavern. It cracked that icy tomb.
And after thousands of years of sleep, an enormous, ice-blue eye opened.
The Dragon of Helcaraxë had heard the Scream from the Deep.
The Balrog, meanwhile, stood amidst the shattered corpse of the Watcher. It was victorious. The West-gate was now clean. But it was exhausted. This "awakening" and this battle had taken its last strength.
It no longer had fire, only shadow. And this shadow needed to rest, to gather its strength anew.
It needed to rest one last time before beginning its long ascent.
And far, far away, on the other side of that vast subterranean sea, Gandalf, clinging to a rock ledge, felt that echo. It was the death knell of an enemy. But it was also the herald of a greater evil awakening.
The light at the tip of his staff flickered for a moment.
"It is not over," he whispered to the darkness with chapped lips. "Our battle is just beginning."
The Balrog had not heard him. As it rested among the Watcher's remains, it had only one thought in its mind: The Peak.
It had to climb to the Peak..
The forest rose before them like a wall.
This was not the suffocating, spider-filled darkness of Mirkwood. Nor was it the ancient, deep-rooted anger of Fangorn. This was something else. The border of Lothlórien, a timeless boundary where the silvery trunks of the mallorn trees stood arrayed like a shield-wall, and golden leaves refused to fade even in the midst of winter.
The air changed instantly. The stench of sulfur and decay they carried from Moria gave way to the sharp scent of honey, ancient stone, and a fading flower. Even the wind blew differently here; as if it were humming a melody, but not letting the words be fully heard.
Aragorn signaled for the remnants of the Fellowship to halt. "We are here," he said, but his voice held more anxiety than relief.
"The Golden Wood," whispered Sam, his eyes wide with wonder. "The place stories are told about."
"And not all those stories are fair," grumbled Boromir, his hand not leaving the hilt of his sword. "This is the place Men call 'The Enchanted Wood.' It is said that those who enter do not come out the same."
Gimli gripped his axe tightly. His face was hard with a mixture of grief and the humiliation he had endured in Moria. "Elf-magic. My folk do not trust this forest. Galadriel. The Sorceress of the Wood."
"Be silent, Dwarf!" hissed Legolas. His eyes scanned the depths of the trees. He did not feel the threat the rest of the Fellowship felt, but a kind of pressure. As if the forest... was watching. "Here, every leaf has an eye, and every branch an ear."
"Then it means they know they have seen us," said Aragorn, raising his voice. "I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn, Heir of Elendil. With me are Legolas, son of Thranduil, Gimli, son of Glóin, Boromir, Captain of Gondor, and Hobbits from the Shire. We were under the guidance of Gandalf the Grey. But he..." His voice choked. "He fell in Moria. We seek refuge."
No answer came. Only the humming silence of the forest.
Gimli stepped forward impatiently. "Come," he said. "Do not let them hide among the trees and frighten us. With our fate..."
"Stop!" Legolas's voice was as taut as a bowstring.
Gimli froze. Because he had seen it too.
From between the trees, blending perfectly with the silvery bark of the trunks, three figures in grey cloaks appeared. They had glided silently, like leaves. In their hands were long, slender bows that looked as if they were made from the wood of the forest itself. Their faces were beautiful but cold; a beauty as harsh as a winter sky.
Their leader stepped forward. He was tall and elegant. "You cannot pass this border," he said, speaking the Common Tongue with a slight melody, but a tone like steel. "The days of Lothlórien have darkened. The evil of the world has reawakened. And you carry the scent of that evil upon you."
His eyes locked onto Gimli. "And a Dwarf. We heard the noise from the depths of Moria. We heard that the greed of the Dwarves has awakened a bane anew."
Gimli roared in anger. "Greed! My people were slaughtered there! My friend..."
"Haldir!" Legolas interrupted, stepping forward. "My friend, be calm. This is Gimli, son of Glóin. He is a friend."
The Elf, called Haldir, looked at Legolas, and for a moment his expression softened. "Legolas Greenleaf. Your presence here is a surprise. But it does not lighten the burden of those with you."
"Our burden is heavy," said Aragorn. "And it has grown heavier without our leader. We must come to Caras Galadhon, before the Lady Galadriel and the Lord Celeborn. Our quest concerns the fate of all Middle-earth."
Haldir's gaze rested on Aragorn for a long time. "I know you, Dúnedain," he said slowly. "The hope of Rivendell. But hope is a dangerous thing. And your hope has acquired a dark companion."
His gaze shifted, directly to Frodo.
Frodo felt himself shrink under that gaze. Haldir's eyes seemed to pierce his clothing and flesh, looking directly at the weight on his chest. He instinctively brought his hand to his chest.
The Ring hated this gaze. In Frodo's mind, that cold, angry whisper began again. They see us. They judge us. Do not trust them. Elven light is a trap. It only burns.
Haldir nodded. "I will take you. But I have conditions." His eyes returned to Gimli. "The Dwarf must go blindfolded."
"Never!" roared Gimli, raising his axe. "I will not be a plaything for an Elf! I either walk as a free Dwarf, or I die here!"
"You will die," Haldir said calmly, raising his bow slightly.
Aragorn stepped between Gimli and Haldir. "If the Dwarf is to be blindfolded," he said with determination, "then we must all be blindfolded."
Boromir looked at him in disbelief. "Aragorn, this is madness! We will walk blind among our own allies? I am a man of Gondor..."
Even Legolas was taken aback by this decision. He understood the purity of Lórien, but this distrust was an insult to his friend, Gimli. Caught between his Kin and the Fellowship, he remained silent, his face tense.
"Gondor means nothing here, Boromir," Aragorn said sharply. "Here, their rules apply. It is all of us, or none of us." He turned his eyes to Gimli. "Son of Glóin, my friend. I know this is an insult. But I ask you to accept it, for Gandalf's sake, for the Fellowship's sake."
Gimli looked at Aragorn, then at Legolas's silent, conflicted face. The Dwarf's face was a battlefield of anger and grief. Finally, he lowered his axe. "Fine," he grumbled. "But if an Elf touches me, I will tear off his arm, blindfolded or not."
Haldir almost smiled. "Our hospitality also has its limits, Dwarf."