Transmigration in Mordor

The return to the depths was a nightmarish journey. The galleries he knew, those paths carved by the worms, were unrecognizable. The earthquake had devastated the world's foundations. Ceilings had collapsed, creating immense rockfalls that blocked entire passages. Gaping fissures had opened in the ground, revealing unfathomable abysses from which a putrid breath ascended. He often had to take long detours, crawling through tunnels barely wide enough for his body, his heart tight with claustrophobia.

The skeletal spider's cavern itself had been shaken. Sheets of webs had torn, cocoons were falling, crashing in the newfound silence of the place. The presence of the skeletal spider seemed diminished, as if it too had been affected by the tremor. Zac crossed its domain with increased caution, but the creature did not appear. Only the small mutant spiders, more nervous than ever, stirred, but the path was clearer.

He finally reached the entrance to the Balrogs' cavern. The tunnel opened onto a spectacle that defied all logic, all memory.

It was no longer the same cavern.

The transformation was total, terrifying. The dimensions were altered, as if the seismic shock had twisted space itself. Entire walls had vanished, others had formed. The lava, that river of fire, was no longer contained in its beds. It had left some channels, spread into other areas, creating new boiling lakes and incandescent waterfalls that fell into freshly opened chasms. The din was deafening, a cacophony of hissing steam, grinding rock, and volcanic rumbles.

And the Balrogs.

The sight was a hammer blow. Carcasses. Broken. Everywhere.

Titanic bodies, made of shadow and extinguished flame, lay shattered on the basalt. Some were crushed under enormous boulders that had fallen from the ceiling. Others seemed to have been torn from their positions by invisible forces, their forms twisted like broken toys. Fractured obsidian wings, ripped-off horns, blackened and frozen hearts of magma.

The tremor he had felt upon his fall. His own fall.

'It was me. I did this,' Zac thought. He had caused this carnage, this destruction of beings that legends described as quasi-divine. He had shaken the foundations of this hell.

A pressure. An unbearable weight fell upon him. It wasn't the air. It was a presence. An entity. A consciousness that pierced him, tearing through the thin layer of his corruption. The scent of Ungoliant that protected him from lesser creatures was an insult to this thing.

He saw it.

In the midst of the chaos, where the lava had receded to form a new plain of basalt, a Balrog stood. It was not asleep. It was awake. And it was watching him.

A massive form, made of pure shadow and inner flames that pulsed with a cosmic rage. It was larger, more terrifying than in his memories. Its eyes, burning embers, pierced him. It did not merely see him with sight; it saw through his tainted soul, through his memories, through the cowardice of his original death. It saw him for what he was. An insect. A mistake.

The Balrog began to move. Slowly at first, a force of nature awakening. Then, with monstrous speed, it started to advance, each step echoing like a thunderclap.

A frantic chase began.

Zac turned and ran. Terror overwhelmed him, purer, more visceral than ever. There was no longer a strategy, no longer a plan. Only desperate flight. The Balrog was behind him, its whip of flames crackling, its sword of fire tracing arcs of destruction. Each blow from the monster pulverized basalt pillars, opened fissures in the ground, made geysers of lava erupt. The ground trembled under its steps, the air filled with shards of rock and the unbearable heat of imminent death.

He ran through a chaos of collapses. Basalt columns fell, rock bridges shattered, threatening him at every second. In his mad dash, his gaze caught a glint. A fragment of mithril. Torn from its vein by the surrounding chaos, it rolled on the incandescent ground, shining with a cold, silvery light amidst the inferno. Without thinking, in a gesture his reason would never have commanded, Zac dove, snatched it up, and continued his run, the metal burning his palm.

The Balrog was too fast. Too powerful.

He was caught. The whip of flames wrapped around him, lifting him into the air, his body screaming in pain under the incandescent embrace. He was thrown against a wall of basalt, his body bouncing like a rag. He landed heavily on a bed of burning slag, his bones cracking.

He looked up. The Balrog stood over him, a towering silhouette of destruction. The sword of fire came down, not to kill him, but to pin him to the ground, to immobilize him. Zac's arm was pierced by the incandescent blade, burning him, instantly cauterizing him, his flesh sizzling. He could not hold back a scream of pure agony.

The Balrog did not kill him immediately. It tortured him. It lifted its foot, massive as a mountain, and crushed his knee. A sharp crack, followed by a pain that made him faint and come to in an instant. He felt the magma burning him where his flesh touched the ground.

The Balrog watched him agonize, its fiery eyes reflecting an abyssal indifference. The being of legend, Durin's Bane, did not bother to kill him quickly. It wanted him to feel every bit of his life slip away. It wanted him to understand the extent of the power he had dared to defy. It wanted him to know terror. True terror.

The massive hand finally came down, closing its grip around his skull. The sound of his bones breaking was the last thing he heard. The taste of blood and metal. The fire.

Then, the void.