Among the Flames

Flames sputtered and rose up out of the chasm, leaping within inches of the walls, the ledge where Frodo stood. Sam lay, hands on the searing ground, trying to catch his breath. Before him he could see Frodo, standing outlined in firelight. He tried to get up. He could barely move. His head throbbed and pulsed as if in time with the wild flames.

‘Cast it into the fire!’ he cried, but Frodo gave no indication he heard.

Frodo turned away from his faithful gardener and glanced down into the seething pit of lava, ash, and flame. Around his neck the Ring seemed to have a life of its own, tugging against the chain, whispering on the edges of his mind, trying to convince him to just put it on! put it on! Frodo reached around his neck and yanked the clasp open on the chain, frantically trying to get the Ring away from his skin, which burned from contact with the seemingly innocuous gold of the Ring. Behind him he could hear Sam, his nails scraping against rocks and pebbles as he tried to get up. Frodo wanted to look back, wanted to reassure his friend, but the presence of the Ring in his palm and his mind was as if a living thing. It ate at him, insidiously creeping within his consciousness. Frodo could hear nothing but the call of the small gold circlet. He wanted to think of the Shire, of the taste of fresh strawberries with homemade cream...he wanted to see Gandalf’s craggy, gentle face again, he wanted to throw the Ring into the chasm and run screaming, never looking back, not for anything. Leave Sam behind, the very air that swirled around him seemed to murmur. Just let go of all those useless feelings like loyalty and love. Run, run, run far and run fast! Frodo clawed at his head, fingers tangling in soot-blackened curls. Sam cried out but Frodo could not hear the words. He whirled around, eyes wild and possessed, and glared at what had been his friend. Suddenly, Frodo caught sight of a gangrel, sniveling creature sneaking up behind the gardener. In the evil light of the Cracks of Doom, a smile twisted Frodo’s fair lips. He turned the Ring over and over in his palm. He slid it towards his finger.

‘It’s mine!’ he wanted to cry, claiming it as his own, he would be the Master of the Ring! It inched towards his finger and he watched, impassively, as Gollum smashed a rock into the back of Sam’s skull, and smiled wider when Sam’s eyes darkened and closed and he fell forward, head thudding against the ground. Flames nearby threw sparks and Sam’s hair smouldered. Gollum looked up and leapt for Frodo, but Frodo was too quick for him and jumped aside. Gollum keened as his momentum threw him over the edge. Abruptly the call of the Ring was subdued, and Frodo gasped in horror, seeing his friend lying, his cheek crushed against the ground, blood on his nape, apparently unconscious. With monumental effort he resisted the Ring’s sweet, evil caress and tore it away from his finger. He would not put it on! He would not try to claim this evil for himself. And he knew with certainty that the Ring was responsible for Sam, lying there unconscious, that it was responsible for all of this heartache and evil and destruction, and he also knew, beyond any doubt that he could no sooner let go of the Ring over the chasm than cut off his own arm. He glanced at Sam, turned sideways and looked out over the Crack. His friend would not be injured if not for him and the cursed Ring. It breathed in his palm, and slowly the words licked the back of his brain, gradually increasing in scope and volume, and he knew it was now or never.
‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ he said to his unconscious friend. Taking three steps backward, he felt his left foot land on nothing but a cushion of air. His arms windmilled, but then with an effort he held them still and moved his right foot backwards. There was the feeling of a swift wind whistling in his ears and cooling his body despite the heat, and then he was falling flat, and when he hit the first wave of lava and flame it felt as through his skin had been sloughed off. Agony and burning flame consumed his flesh and he gasped for breath. In his clenched hand the Ring pulsed, but he could not let it go. His hair incinerated and and seared his scalp. Frodo closed his eyes and shut out the leaping of shadow and flame around him, and his body sank, and he was engulfed in an agony like nothing he had ever experienced, and the flesh and bone of his fingers withered and burned, and he opened his mouth to breathe and choked on fire that rushed into his lungs and twisted his insides, burning outward, and now there was lava and fire in his lungs and his esophagus and surrounding his entire body, and he knew he had no skin left, and he wondered how he would still be conscious, and there was a constant screaming in his brain, but it wasn’t him, his mouth was clamped shut, teeth through his lip, at the pain. And still the Ring called out, and cried and railed and screamed. Just before he lost consciousness, he felt the gold breaking apart and slipping and sliding through his fingers, and then it was washed away, and Frodo felt clean deep within his soul, and then pain burned through his retinas of his once closed eyes -- odd, his eyelids had been burned right off, he thought -- and flames licked the inside of his skull, and redness and black filled his murky vision, and then he knew no more.

From somewhere far above a hobbit screamed, ‘Mr Frodo, NO!’ But there was no response save the echoing rush and crash, and then, incredibly, Mount Doom began to break apart.