Transmigration in Mordor

Entering the cavern of the Nameless Things was like stepping into the entrails of a mad god. The noise was a physical assault, a symphony of destruction made of millions of tons of crushed rock, a rumble so deep it vibrated the air and threatened to liquefy Zac's bones.

He moved with a caution that bordered on paralysis. Every step on the trembling ground was a gamble. The giant worms, these devourers of worlds, ignored his presence, too busy with their cataclysmic task. But the danger didn't just come from them. In their wake, crawling on the freshly plowed ground, writhed creatures his mind refused to categorize. Hideous amalgams, conglomerates of mud, molten rock, and pale flesh, equipped with multiple insectoid legs and greedy mouths. Scavengers of hell, feeding on the minerals and residual energies left by the worms.

Several times, he nearly died. Once, a worm changed its trajectory without warning, its grinding maw passing mere centimeters from the ledge where Zac was flattened, showering him with a rain of burning rubble. Another time, one of the crawling amalgams detected him. The creature had no eyes, but it turned toward him and hissed wetly before lunging in pursuit. Zac ran, his heart pounding, slipping on the unstable ground, chased not by a creature, but by a crawling nightmare.

On his way, while hiding in alcoves to escape these horrors, he saw the treasures of the earth. Veins of pure gold, as thick as his arm, ran along the walls. Open geodes revealed carpets of raw diamonds the size of his fist, and large emerald crystals pulsed with a faint green light, illuminating scenes of desolation with a macabre beauty. Riches for which kings would have started wars, here as common and useless as dust.

Finally, he abandoned the cavern floor to scramble through the immense, freshly dug tunnels of the worms. It was safer, but he was now at the mercy of their labyrinth. He got lost. For an infinite time, he wandered, fleeing the sound of approaching mastication, searching for a path that didn't lead to a dead end. He eventually found himself in a network of quieter, secondary galleries, where the rumbling was just a distant echo.

Exhausted, he leaned against a wall. And there, in the relative silence, he took the time to think.

'The worms are the architects of the deep,' he told himself, his cold lucidity taking over. 'They don't just dig. They reshape. They create. And if they create paths downward... they must also create paths upward.'

An insane plan, born of total despair, began to sprout. He wasn't going to fight these creatures. He wasn't going to flee them. He was going to use one. He was going to ride it, like a horseman mounts a wild steed. He was going to turn an instrument of his damnation into his tool of salvation.

Returning to the main cavern was an act of pure will. For hours, he watched, hidden, studying the worms' behavior. He noticed their patterns. Some seemed to follow specific veins of ore. Others, after digging horizontally, would suddenly shoot upward, as if sensing a different pressure, a fault to exploit. He had to choose the right mount.

His opportunity came in the form of chaos. A group of scavenging amalgams had gotten too close to a smaller worm—if you could call a hundred-meter-long creature "small." The worm, annoyed, began to writhe, its tail lashing the air and pulverizing rock. It was now or never.

Zac ran, the `Forge of Brutality` pulsing in his veins. He wasn't aiming for the head, but the body. He leaped from a ledge, aiming for a crevice between two hard parts of the monster's skin. He landed heavily, the impact knocking the wind out of him. His fingers gripped the uneven edges of the worm's hide. The worm bucked, and Zac was thrown into the air. He fell violently onto the creature's back, the razor-stinger he held piercing his palm. The searing pain helped him hold on. He was on. He had succeeded.

The journey began. The worm, after shaking off its nuisances, began its ascent. Zac clung on with all his might, his body shaken by the beast's movements. The world became a tunnel of noise, vibrations, and heat. There was no up or down, only a relentless progression through the stone.

He passed through terrifying places, pockets of hell that no living eye should have seen. Caves filled with a phosphorescent gas where silent, tentacled creatures floated, trying to grab him as he passed. Underground rivers of a black, corrosive liquid.

Then, for a brief moment, the worm emerged into another cavern. And what Zac saw chilled him to the marrow of his corrupted soul. It was a bone-yard of the ages. A cavern so vast he couldn't see its limits, filled to the brim with skeletons and remains. Mountains of dragon bones, heaps of cave troll carcasses, skeletons of Orcs by the millions, and even, he would have sworn, the blackened remains of what looked like vanquished Balrogs. Above this cemetery of ages, billions of spectral wisps, the souls of evil creatures, floated in eternal silence. The worm passed through this necropolis without stopping, a simple, indifferent gravedigger.

Time again lost all meaning. Days? Weeks? Zac fought against sleep, hunger, despair. He was a tick on the back of a titan, a stowaway to an unknown fate.

Just as he was about to give up, when his body and mind could take no more, he saw it. The worm had just pulverized a new section of rock, and through the cloud of dust, there it was.

A thin crack.

And through that crack, a light.

It wasn't the glow of magma or gems. It was a pale, white, almost gray light. A natural light. The light of the surface. After an infinite time spent in the darkness, he no longer believed it. His eyes, accustomed to the dark, squinted in pain. It was the most beautiful and most terrible thing he had ever seen. He was almost there.