It came from behind the peak — from the far side of Orodruin, where the mountain’s bulk had hidden it from view — and it rose into the sky above the crater with a slowness that was worse than speed, because speed would have implied effort, and this creature moved as if effort were a concept that applied to lesser things.
Felgarion. Son of Ancalagon the Black.
The dragon was enormous. Not the size of Smaug, who had been large enough to blanket a town in flame, but larger, far larger, a creature from the Elder Days when the world was younger and made things of a scale it could no longer sustain. His wingspan blocked out the sky above the mountain. His scales were green, not the dark green of the elvenwoods but the deep, liquid green of emeralds, and they caught the red light of the fires below and threw it back in dark, bloody reflections. His eyes were gold and slitted and ancient and utterly without mercy. His jaws, when they opened, revealed a throat that glowed like the inside of a forge.
And on his back, between the great ridged spines that ran from skull to tail, sat Sauron.
The Dark Lord had changed. He was no longer a quiet figure in a silk robe, the chess player, the sketcher of sleeping beauty. He wore armor of black steel, chased with lines of red-gold that pulsed with the same rhythm as the mountain beneath him, and on his head sat a crown of iron, and in his hand he carried nothing at all. He wielded neither sword nor spear, because when one rides a dragon, one does not require weapons. He was terrible and beautiful in the way that a fire is beautiful when it engulfs a forest, and his eyes, visible even at this distance, burned with the same lidless intensity as the Eye atop his tower.
The dragon and his rider crested the peak of Orodruin and hung there for a moment, motionless, silhouetted against the column of smoke and ash, and the image was one that would haunt the nightmares of every creature that saw it for as long as they lived, which in some cases would not be very long at all.
Landroval saw it first. The great eagle turned and threw himself without hesitation at the dragon, not because he believed he could harm it, but because Gwaihir was below and still diving for the crack and someone had to buy him time. It was the bravest thing Landroval had ever done. It was also the last thing Landroval ever did.
Felgarion opened his mouth. The fire that came was not the fire of Smaug. It was not the hot, orange, flaming fire of a lesser wyrm. It was the fire of Ancalagon’s line, white at its core, blue at its edges, a fire that had once melted the towers of the Valar’s own fortifications in the War of Wrath. It struck Landroval in midair.
The great eagle was instantly transformed into a torch. His feathers, his flesh, the very structure of his bones — all of it caught and burned with an intensity that turned the eagle from a living creature into a shape of pure flame in the space of a single heartbeat. He did not scream. The fire was burned too fast for screams. He burned, and he fell, and the wind of his falling trailed a long ribbon of white fire down the mountainside like a comet striking the earth, and then he was gone.
Gwaihir did not look back. He could not afford to look back. The entrance to the Sammath Naur was fifty yards ahead, close enough to see the ancient stone of its lintel, close enough to feel the blast of heat from within, and he drove himself toward it with every ounce of strength his fatigued wings could summon.
He did not reach it.
Felgarion descended upon him like a green star falling. The dragon came straight down, folding his wings and dropping with a speed that belied his enormous size, and his claws — each one as long as a ship’s mast, black as volcanic glass and sharp beyond the craft of any smith — closed around Gwaihir’s body from above. The eagle thrashed. His wings beat against the dragon’s grip, his talons raked at the emerald scales, but Felgarion’s claws held him with the casual, immovable strength of the earth itself.
The dragon’s head descended.
His jaws opened, and the teeth — row upon row, black and translucent and curved like scimitars — closed around Gwaihir’s neck. There was a sound. It was a sound that should not be described, because some things are too terrible for language and this was one of them. The Windlord’s headless body went limp in the dragon’s claws.
Felgarion landed on the slopes of Orodruin with a concussion that shook the mountain to its roots. His claws released the broken body of the eagle, and it slid down the black rock and lay still, the great wings splayed and bent, the golden plumage darkened with dirt and ash, the oozing red blood in stark contrast with the exposed white bone of his severed spine.
Sauron dismounted.
He walked to the body of Gwaihir the Windlord, and he knelt beside the left talon, and he unbuckled the pale leather pouch with his nine remaining fingers. The Elven craftsmanship was exquisite. Even in the moment of his triumph, he noted this with the detached appreciation of a fellow artisan.
He opened the pouch, and drew out the Ring.
It was warm. It was always warm. But now, here, on the slopes of the mountain where it had been made, it was more than warm, it was alive, singing in a frequency that resonated with the fire beneath the stone, with the will of its maker, with the vast and ancient design that had begun in the forges of Eregion and was, in this moment, finally and irrevocably complete.
Sauron stood. He raised his fist, his right hand, the one with the missing finger and held the Ring aloft against the burning sky. The mountain roared beneath him. The clouds above Mordor, the great pall of shadow that had hung over the land for years, began to spread across the sky, rolling rapidly outward in all directions like a dark tide unleashed. The Great Eye atop Barad-dûr blazed with an exultant light that could be seen from the Shire to the Sea of Rhûn.
Behind him, Felgarion raised his head and roared, a sound that shook the very foundations of the Ephel Dúath and sent avalanches cascading down every peak in the range, and the Witch-king, circling above on his fell beast, bowed his hooded head.
On the slopes of Mount Doom, in the shadow of his dragon, with the blood of the Windlord at his feet and the One Ring burning in his fist, the Dark Lord of Mordor exulted in his victory.