The Legend of the Gravewalker

By Bissek

Disclaimer: Middle Earth was created by J.R.R. Tolkien. The Middle-Earth Games were produced by WB Games. I am affiliated with neither.

Gandalf the Gray followed the guard down the stairs to the archives of Minas Tirith. Here, the records of three thousand years of the history of men had been carefully stored and recopied over the course of an entire Age. If there was any lore concerning the greater Rings of Power that might confirm or allay his suspicions about the ring that he had convinced Bilbo to leave in the Shire, it would be here.

"Here is the head archivist, Mithrandir," The guard said as they entered the archives.

The head archivist was an old woman. Scars from some long-past battle covered her face and arms. But despite this, she still walked tall and straight, with the casual grace of a trained fighter.

"Good day, lady..." Gandalf began.

"Idris," the woman answered. "Of Minas Ithil."

"Minas Ithil? I didn't know that there were any survivors from when the city fell." The Tower of the Rising Moon had fallen while the wizard had been busy dealing with the aftermath of the retaking of Erebor and the Battle of the Five Armies. By the time his travels had taken him back near Gondor, all hope of retaking the city had been lost.

"There aren't many of us left," Idris admitted. "Barely a company's worth of men managed to fight our way out of Mordor when Castamir betrayed the city. And time has been slowly finishing off those the Orcs couldn't kill. So, what brings a wizard to archives of Gondor?"

"I'm looking for any records pertaining to the Rings of Power."

"We have many records on two of them. Which one were you interested in? The one Isildur took from the Dark Lord in the Second Age, or the one wielded by the Gravewalker when the tower fell?"

"It was the records of the One Ring I was looking for. But who is this Gravewalker?" He hadn't heard of another Ringbearer out there, much less one who had fought on the front lines against Mordor. Given the risks involved in wielding a Ring against the Lord of the Rings, that was incredibly brave or incredibly foolish.

The archivist nodded. "A ranger from the Black Gate. Somehow, he found a Ring when the Black Gate fell, which allowed him to continue the fight against the Uruks no matter how badly he got hurt. At least a dozen times we saw him take wounds that should have been fatal, only for him to show up again to resume the fight a few days later, leading the Orks to believe that he could come back from the dead. If he hadn't been there to draw the attention of the warchiefs and the Nazgul, nobody would have survived to escape the city's fall. Some believe he's still out there, fighting against the Dark Lord. That the only reason that the Orks haven't pushed into Ithilien is because they're still trying to kill him.

"But enough about battles long lost. The records from the first century Third Age are this way. If you want, I can bring you the records of the fall of Minis Ithil as well."

Gandalf spent hours poring over the records in a dark room illuminated by the sparkle of an elven pendant that hung from the ceiling to serve as a lamp that could not start a fire and destroy the precious scrolls. He eventually found a record that seemed to reinforce his suspicions on the nature of Frodo's Ring, and provided a test that could confirm them.

He also looked into the records on the Gravewalker. The description of the Ring used by the ranger and its powers did not match any of the Greater Rings to his knowledge, but no lesser Ring could possibly allow a man to repeatedly survive fatal wounds. It was a mystery.

Who was the Gravewalker? What was the Ring that he found? And more importantly, given the likelihood of Sauron's return, where was the Gravewalker and his mystery Ring now?

Elsewhere

The Nazgul dismounted from his horse and tied it to a tree. In the terrain he was going into, it would be more practical to travel on foot. His prey was small and a nimble climber, but the Nazgul had been an able tracker in life, and service to the Dark Lord in unlife had not diminished his skills.

It took hours to find and corner his prey, but he persisted. After all, his prey needed to stop for rest and food. A Ringwraith, sustained purely by the power of the Nine, did not. The creature known as Gollum could not do more than delay the inevitable no matter how many tricks it could come up with. Before the sun rose in the sky, the creature that had once been a Hobbit was firmly grasped in his hand and lifted off the ground to look at his captor beneath the hood. Gollum's eyes widened as he recognized the face beneath the cowl, and his head darted from side to side as if looking for someone else.

"Bright Mas…" Gollum began before the tightening fist around his throat cut him off.

"The Bright Lord is no more," The Nazgul known as Gravewalker said to him, "And the Dark Lord would have words with you."

Years Later…

Gravewalker drew his sword and advanced alongside his brother wraiths. The halflings had been treed at the fallen watchtower of Amon Sul, and here they would claim the One Ring and return it to their master in triumph.

The halflings tried to drive them back, but their pitiful weapons were barely half the length of the ones used by the five Nazgul. It was the work of moments to toss them aside to reach the one carrying the Ring, and soon the Ringbearer was downed, clutching his wound after the Witch-King pierced him with a Morgul blade. Then the Ranger appeared.

The wraiths scattered, trying to attack the human from multiple directions. But the ranger was too skilled, easily fending them off one at a time with sword and torch. Soon four of the wraiths were in retreat.

Gravewalker circled around the ruined the fortress, seeking to attack the Ringbearer's protector from behind. He had killed many a foe from stealth before, he could do so again. But as he snuck up on the ranger, something about his opponent stirred a memory. A memory from back when he was human. This human looked familiar somehow.

"Isil…?" He began.

Then his question turned into shrieks of pain as the ranger threw his firebrand right into Gravewalker's face.

The Council of Elrond

"Mordor is going on the offensive for the first time since the fall of Minas Ithil," Boromir reported. "Even now, battles rage for control of Ithilien. We even lost control Osgiliath for a time, though we were able to retake it."

Aragorn's brow furrowed in concern. The fall of Minas Ithil was his greatest failure when he had commanded the armies of Gondor during the reign of Boromir's grandfather. He had been away from Gondor at the time, leading the bulk of their armies to a great victory over Umbar, razing their ports and leaving them unable to threaten the south for generations. He had been flushed with victory when he returned, only to learn that his campaigns had left Gondor unable to respond to threats from the East. Both the Black Gate and Minas Ithil had fallen by the time the armies had returned, and he was never sure why the offensive didn't push onward towards Osgiliath at the time. The only explanation he had ever heard of was rumors of someone called the Gravewalker running around behind the lines assassinating warchiefs at every opportunity from refugees and wildmen who had fled the Uruks.

But even if there was some legendary ranger still fighting for the White City in the lands held by Mordor, it appeared that he could no longer distract Sauron's armies enough to make a difference. It would be up to Gondor to take the blows that he had expected to fall on it decades ago. He hoped that they had spent the time preparing for it.

"If that is the case, then we need to take the offensive against Sauron's forces." Aragorn suggested.

"Offensive?" Boromir protested. "How? We lost Osgiliath because we could not match their numbers, and though we regained the city, I have no doubt that there are more Orcs where the last army came from. And even if we had the men, the only ways to take an army into Mordor are to force the Black Gate or to fight our way past Minas Morgul and Cirith Ungol. Either would be suicide!"

"There is another way we can take the fight to Sauron," Elrond stated, turning to Frodo. "Bring forth the Ring."

Osgiliath

Gravewalker soared over the ruined city on the back of his fell beast. The defenders tried in vain to shoot him down, but their arrows all flew wide as the beast raked the rooftops of the half-collapsed buildings with its talons, clearing them of defenders and siege equipment. Beneath him, the Uruks under his command were rallying. He had already taken this city once, and he could take it again. With his support from the air drawing off the archers, it wouldn't even be hard.

He knew that the uniform that the men trying desperately to repel his army was the same as the one he wore underneath his Nazgul robes, but that didn't matter. The part of him that had once been a ranger was no more. He was a servant of Sauron, and in his name, he would take Osgiliath, and with it, all of Ithilien.

A small figure appeared on a walkway. Gravewalker was surprised that there were still children in the city. No. It wasn't a child. It was a halfling. Could it be…? He ordered his fell beast to fly closer.

It was one of the halflings that he had encountered at Amon Sul. And he was reaching into his shirt to pull something out. The One Ring?

Before he could seize the Ringbearer, a second halfling tackled the first, knocking both of them down a stairwell. Gravewalker would have landed his beast and approached on foot, but an arrow pierced its hide, making the beast scream in pain and veer away. As he struggled to regain control of his mount, Gravewalker saw the ranger who he had taken the city from some months ago firing more arrows after him.

By the time Gravewalker had gotten his beast to return to the city, his army had been pushed back, and the Ringbearer had vanished. No matter. He had far more men to spare than the rangers did, and could return another night to finish the job. As for the Ringbearer, he would tell his brother Nazgul that he had been spotted. The noose was tightening.

Minas Tirith

After a hard-fought battle between the armies of the Dark Lord and the armies of the dead, the forces of Mordor had been driven off of the fields of Pellenor. The White City had been saved, at least for now. Aragorn, though still uncrowned, was already being hailed as the new King of Gondor, the first to rule since the fall of Earnur II against the Witch-King nearly a thousand years before.

But thoughts of his rule would have to wait. At the moment he had a campaign to plan. In order to draw Sauron's eye away from Mount Doom, he needed to draw out the armies still within Mordor. And if that failed, his reign would end almost as soon as it had begun. His armies would be marching out of Minas Tirith as soon as they had rested from the battle they had just fought.

After several hours planning out the march to the Black Gate and working out how much meat and grain the troops would need to make that march and where they would get it from, he dismissed his council of war and left to fetch the Palantir that Gandalf had recovered from Orthanc. It was time to throw down the gauntlet.

As he headed to the throne room, he was approached by a very old woman carrying a plain wooden box.

"Can I help you?" He asked.

"Your Majesty," She curtsied. "I am Idris, of Minas Ithil. I have something I need to show you." She opened the box. Inside was a crown, of the style used by the last Kings of Gondor. And from the dings and scratches on it, it was possibly old enough to have been worn by one of them. But it was not one of the crowns of the kings of old, they were all buried with their owners, and those tombs had clearly been undisturbed for centuries when he had paid a visit to his long-dead kin upon entering the city.

"What is this?" He wondered.

"When the Tower of the Rising Moon fell, we were able to keep a few relics safe from the Orcs during our retreat. This is one of them. This is the war crown of King Earnur II. He wore it when he rode to duel the Witch-King of Angmar. It was recovered by the Gravewalker during a raid on Cirith Ungol shortly before Minas Ithil fell." Idris knelt and lifted the box up towards him. "The last crown worn by the last of the old Kings of Gondor. I hereby return it to the first of the new."

Aragorn took up the box with calm dignity. "I thank you for keeping this safe in trust, Lady Idril. It shall see battle against the forces of Mordor once again."

The Black Gate

The Gravewalker and his seven surviving brothers flew over the plains. The armies that had taken the field at Pellenor sought to force the Black Gate, but they were completely surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered. Their utter annihilation was only a matter of time. Men died by the score every time of the fell beasts make a raking pass over the human lines, breaking up their formations so that the Uruks and Trolls could better smash those who survived. Sauron would stand unopposed when this night ended.

A screech sounded through the air. A flight of giant eagles soared in from the west and stooped upon the fell beasts. Their control of the air challenged, the Nazgul turned away from the battle on the ground to fight in the skies.

Then the battle was disrupted by a call that every Nazgul heard in his mind. The call of the One Ring. It had been taken up, in the heart of Mount Doom. All eight Ringwraiths turned their beasts back towards Mordor to reclaim.

Seize the Ring and bring it to me!The voice of Sauron demanded.

No! Called out a second voice, an elven voice the Gravewalker had not heard in years. You will bring the One Ring to me!

You defy me still, Ringmaker? You are a fool. The Nazgul answer to one Master. Nan buurz goth-ob Mordor!

No! Celebrimbor's voice demanded They shall answer to me. Nan iChîr Gelair Mordor!

Upon the Tower of Baradur, the spirits of the Ringmaker and the Ringmaster clashed for dominance. The struggle distracted the Gravewalker as he tried to control his fell beast, leaving him distracted as an eagle dove upon him. The blow knocked him from his saddle into the swirling melee below, with most of his robe being caught in the eagle's talons and ripping away as he fell.

With his fell beast out of reach, the Gravewalker drew his sword and waded into the fight. Orcs hurriedly cleared out of his way when they realized who was approaching them. Soon he was at the fore of the battle, hacking and slicing his way towards the battle standard of the enemy general.

The general he faced was the same ranger who had thrown a torch into his face on Amon Sul. Upon his brow he wore a war crown, one that he had seen before, many years ago. It made the man wearing it look even more familiar.

"Isildur?" He hissed out.

"I am his heir." The ranger countered. "And who would you be, fallen one?"

The Gravewalker stared at the King of Gondor. As the voices of the two would-be rulers of Mordor battled in his mind, the memory of the man who had once been Talion of Gondor awoke and went to battle against the monster he had become.

The war was lost. Aragorn knew that the moment he saw Frodo's mithril shirt in the hands of Sauron's emissary. All that was left to do was to ensure that the Dark Lord would be unable to take any of them alive, and enact as high a price for their deaths as possible. He had lost track of how many Orcs he had slain, or how many men had fallen at his side. There was just the foe in front of him, and the ally of the moment.

There was a brief gap in the melee. The Orcs were giving a wide berth for the opponent facing him here. Atop its head was the cowl of a Ringwraith, but the robe beneath it had been torn away by something, revealing the armor and tabard of a ranger of Gondor underneath.

"Isildur?" It asked.

"I am his heir." Aragorn responded. "And who would you be, fallen one?"

The Nazgul froze, as if trying to figure out the answer to this question. Aragorn hurried to regain his breath while the lull lasted. None of the Orcs were approaching him while one of the Nine had marked him as a target, so that gave him a brief respite from the clash that he needed to take advantage of.

"I…" The wraith began.

"Am a ranger…" The wraith's free hand reached up to grasp the hood of its cowl.

"OF GONDOR!" The wraith tore the cowl away, revealing the face of a man of middling years, his eyes glowing a mystical blue. Spinning away from Aragorn, the man took the arm of an Ork passing by him with a single swing, before driving the point of the blade into its skull.

"Hear me, Uruks!" The ranger called out. "The Gravewalker has returned! And I am taking back the Black Gate this day!" With that he plunged into the fray.

Aragorn wasn't sure how or why one of the Nine had apparently broken free of Sauron's control, but he wasn't about to question his good fortune. Raising his sword once again, he followed.

The ranger's cry had been heard across the battlefield. Soldiers who had heard the tales of the ranger who had kept the fight going behind the Mountains of Mordor and allowed the survivors of the fall of Minas Ithil and Nurn to flee into the west were heartened by the news that a legendary warrior had returned to fight at the side of their king. The Uruks who remembered the long years in which the seemingly unkillable had waged war upon them single-handedly recoiled in fear. The momentum of the battle began to shift.

The King of Gondor fought side by side with the Gravewalker. The other man battled with a strength and fury that seemed inhuman. Limbs were hewn off and blades were shattered and the hand of the legendary ranger. An Olog tried to smash the man into the ground with its enormous club, but the Gravewalker slid under its legs, slashing out its calf muscles as he did so. The Olog stumbled, and Aragorn stabbed it in the throat as it fell. An Orc berserker attempted to strike him from behind with an axe. Aragon stepped in to block the blow, leaving the Orc open to a counterstrike, which the Gravewalker used to cut the berserker in half at the waist. Then a glow shone in the Ring on the ranger's hand, which he slammed into the ground to cause a burst of flame that incinerated dozens of Orcs, leaving the men in the fray untouched.

Aragorn lost track of how long the two fought together, or how many Orcs they slew. All that mattered was that each Orc they slew before they went down was one Orc that would not go on to rampage across the West. One drop removed from the deluge of horror that would soon descend on the free people of Middle-Earth. One extra moment for his people to flee the hordes of Sauron. And they would win as many of those moments as they possibly could.

A rumbling sounded in the distance. The earth started to shake, and then crack. In the same instant, the Orc's morale shattered. They broke and ran, but could not outrun the quake that split the earth, dumping all of them into a seemingly bottomless gorge, leaving the armies of the West standing on a peninsula. Cheers erupted as everyone realized what had happened – Frodo had succeeded. The One Ring had been destroyed. Sauron was no more.

As the cheering subsided, Aragorn turned to the man who had fought alongside him in the battle. The man who claimed to be the legendary Gravewalker.

"You fought well, Gravewalker. May I know your name?" He asked.

The Gravewalker knelt. "I am Talion of Gondor, last Captain to guard the Black Gate. I was captured when the Gate fell and sacrificed by a servant of Sauron to call forth the spirit of Celebrimbor the Ring-maker.

"The spirit bound himself to me, holding off death. Together, we fought against the forces of Mordor until Sauron managed to capture Celebrimbor. I used a Ring I had taken off a fallen Nazgul to hold off the wounds I had taken at the gate to continue the fight, but eventually the Dark Lord's powers overwhelmed me, and I became one of the Nine. Forgive me, your Majesty. I failed to hold the Black Gate, and in the end, I failed Gondor."

Aragorn placed his hand on Talion's shoulder. "There is nothing to forgive. Your actions prevented Sauron's forces from pushing into Ithilien after Minas Ithil fell, and delayed his invasion by nearly half a century. No one could have asked for more than that from you."

A thin line of red started to appear on Talion's throat. "The One Ring is no more. The power of the Nine is fading, and with it, the spell preserving my life. My King, the Black Gate has been retaken, and the Dark Lord has fallen. May I be relieved of my post?"

Aragorn drew Anduril and raised the blade in a salute. "I hold your duties fulfilled. Be at peace, son of Gondor."

"Thank you, my lie…" Talion sputtered as the wound in his throat widened and he collapsed to the ground, succumbing at last to the blow that had killed him decades before.

Aragorn laid out the body of the Gravewalker. Then he turned to the survivors.

"Prepare a place in a wagon for him. Talion the Gravewalker shall be returned to Minas Tirith and entombed in the Hallows with the honors due a hero of Gondor."

A/N: Just a little something I came up with to integrate Talion's story into the films. I know that the time when Aragorn torched Umbar in his backstory doesn't line up with when Minas Ithil fell in the games, but in the original chronology Minas Ithil and the Black Gate fell 950 years before the Battle of the Five Armies, so strict Tolkien chronology doesn't work anyway, and it provides an explanation for why nobody tried to relieve Minas Ithil – all available troops were fighting a different war in the south.

Earnur's crown is one of the artifacts that can be found in the game (as is the elven pendant Idril used as a reading lamp), and since Idril was as much historian as she was soldier, it made sense for her to take it with her to Gondor in the evacuation, which I ran on the assumption that she survived to make once it was clear that there were no more people to rescue.

Nan iChîr Gelair Mordor – I am the Bright Lord of Mordor

Nan buurz goth-ob Mordor – my attempt at "I am the Dark Lord of Mordor" in Black Speech