Dying. It was supposed to be the end.
One moment, I was walking home from college under a heavy, brooding sky. The storm had rolled in fast that afternoon, black clouds boiling overhead. I remembered the crack of thunder and the sudden white hot flash, and then, nothing. No pain. No fear. Just a consuming darkness, waiting to be unraveled.
I should have been afraid. Most people are.
But deep down, I think I had already made peace with the idea of dying a long time ago.
And yet… this was not the end.
When awareness returned to me, a flicker of something unmistakable gripped my heart a swell of anticipation. Something was profoundly amiss.
I could feel my body, but it was no longer the familiar shape I remembered. My arms were stiff, massive, and alien. My skin was rough and cragged, like volcanic stone, and a deep, throbbing heat pulsed through my chest and shoulders, as though I carried an ancient and powerful force within me, one that was awakening.
When I moved if you could call it that the earth trembled. Trees toppled. The ground quaked beneath my weight, splitting in shallow fractures that hinted at the power I now possessed. My size was unfathomable. I could sense it even before I opened my eyes.
And when I finally did, blinking slowly against the burgeoning light of a young sun, my reflection appeared in a vast, crystal-clear lake.
Not a man. Not human at all.
What stared back at me was a monumental beast, black as cooled magma, with jagged spines erupting from its back and rivers of steam escaping from deep fissures along its sides. My eyes glowed faintly, like the last embers of a dying bonfire. And from my mouth, even as I breathed, tiny wisps of smoke curled outward into the air.
In that moment, the truth struck me with the weight of a hammer blow.
"I… I'm Zorah Magdaros," I thought or perhaps rumbled my voice echoing with a gravitas that shook the very ground.
In the games I once cherished, Zorah was a walking cataclysm a living mountain of molten rock and ancient fury. A creature so immense, it dwarfed even other Elder Dragons. And now, impossibly, I was to navigate this enigmatic existence within its form.
Panic flickered through me, a faint and helpless sensation against the sheer enormity of all that lay ahead.
What had happened? Where was I?
As I turned my colossal head to take in the breathtaking world around me, another realization began to unfold, stranger and richer than I could have imagined.
The land was untouched, pristine. Endless forests stretched to the horizons, interspersed with towering mountains, their snowy crowns glimmering in the distance. The air was fragrant with the scent of blooming life, pure and full of promise. No cities scarred the land no roads, no towers, no smoke of industry.
Above me, the sky shimmered with stars more vivid and strange than anything I had ever seen. And somehow, for some reason, maybe my instincts or some forgotten memories I recognized the patterns constellations not from Earth, but from legend. From stories.
Middle-earth.
Arda.
The world crafted by the song of the Ainur, still young, still perfect.
I was in the world of Tolkien.
And not just anywhere in its history this was the beginning, the very dawn before the great evils would tear it apart. Before Melkor's rebellion would shroud the skies in darkness. Before even the Elves had awakened.
The scale of it all was staggering, evoking a whirlpool of excitement within me, despite the magnitude of my new body.
I tried to move again, and the mountains trembled with anticipation. Each step gouged deep scars into the ground, leaving traces that would one day evolve into canyons and dried riverbeds. Birds scattered in panicked flocks at the slightest quiver of my limbs, like petals shaken from a tree.
It took hours to traverse even the smallest valleys. My movement was slow, glacial a lumbering force of nature set to awaken in a world not yet ready for its presence.
In my old life, walking a mile took twenty minutes. Now, each stride covered hundreds of meters, as I felt like a mountain beginning an eternal migration, not measured in minutes or hours but in days and weeks.
And yet, strangely, it felt right a deep, resonant harmony with the world around me. This body was patient, a timeless embodiment of the earth itself.
Still, I was no mindless beast.
My memories and thoughts remained sharp. I remembered the stories of this place: the Valar and Maiar, the shaping of Arda, the creation of the seas and mountains. I recalled the rising of the Two Trees far to the West in Valinor, knowing the darkness had not yet openly declared itself, though it simmered in hidden corners of the world.
A part of me, deep within, wondered about the choices ahead. Should I reveal myself? Would the Powers that governed this young world recognize me as a being of creation or see me as an abomination in need of destruction?
But for now, I chose caution.
I settled near a jagged range of mountains, letting my colossal, volcanic form blend seamlessly with the rocky cliffs. From a distance, I would be mistaken for part of the land itself a new mountain, birthed from the convulsions of a restless earth.
The ground around me steamed softly, the air hazy with the faint scent of brimstone.
~~Time Skip~~
Days passed or was it weeks? Time bent, shifting in ways I had yet to understand, filled with the pulse of an ancient world eager to unveil its secrets and forge the stories yet to come.
But I was far from idle.
I listened.
The young world vibrated with a symphony, a living song still echoing the grandeur of its creation. I felt the subtle harmonies of water coursing through hidden veins beneath the land. I heard the murmur of roots pressing deeper into the earth, the faint whisper of stone reshaping itself beneath the relentless pressure of time.
I sensed life awakening.
Great beasts stroamed the boundless forests mighty herds of creatures destined to become nothing more than myth and legend. There were no Elves, no Dwarves, no Men. Only the animals and the silent guardians of the world: the Valar and Maiar, who shaped and nurtured the earth according to the Music they had sung before Time itself began.
And it was they those radiant beings who first noticed me.
It began as a ripple in the Song.
Initially, it was subtle a discordant note, faint and uncertain, like a single drop of dark ink in a sea of light. But discord cannot remain hidden forever. The Song is pure and intricate, and every note is essential.
They must have sensed it.
Something vast and ancient stirred in the world something not born of their Music.
I felt its approach one evening, as the twin stars of Elbereth rose into the sky, bathing the world in silver light.
A presence neared.
It was not a creature of flesh and blood. It was thought and power and light given form, drawing closer to where I lay half-buried in stone. The earth grew still, as if the land was holding its breath.
I lifted my massive head slowly, steam hissing from my nostrils.
From the trees emerged a figure unlike any I had encountered.
He stood tall towering over the land like a titan but compared to me, he was small, little more than a flicker of brilliance. His skin glowed with the soft luster of polished stone, and his beard flowed like molten silver down his chest. His eyes burned with a deep, smoldering curiosity.
Aulë the Smith.
The great craftsman of the Valar, shaper of mountains and forger of worlds.
He stood alone, staff in hand, gazing up at me with wonder rather than fear.
I shifted slightly, the ground groaning under my weight. The nearby lake quivered, waves lapping at the shores in rhythm with my breathing. I could have crushed him with the slightest movement, yet something held me still. Instinct? Respect? I could not say.
For a long time, we regarded each other in the quietude.
Then, without uttering a sound, his voice entered my mind curious, cautious, like a smith inspecting a newly discovered vein of precious ore.
"What art thou?" came his resonant question.
I struggled to respond. I had no voice suited for speech. My form was too vast, too primal.
Instead, I lowered my head in a deliberate gesture of peace and submission.
Aulë smiled, the corners of his mouth lifting beneath his shining beard.
"No malice," he noted thoughtfully. "No hatred. Only the heat of the earth and the weight of the mountains. Thou art… natural, yet not of our making."
He circled me slowly, his staff tapping against the rocks. Occasionally, he paused to place his hand against my hide, feeling the flow of heat and life beneath the surface.
I observed him carefully.
He showed no fear only fascination.
"Strange," he mused, "Thou art as though a mountain took breath and will. Yet none of the Valar shaped thee. Nor did the Discordant One" his voice hardened slightly at the mention of Melkor "lay thy form into the fabric of Arda."
He turned to face me fully, planting his staff firmly into the ground.
"Speak, if thou canst. Who wrought thee?"
I wanted to answer. I yearned to explain that I came from another world entirely, a distant place of hunters and monsters, of steel and fire and desperate survival.
But how could I convey such complexity to a being who had sung the stars into existence?
Instead, I closed my great eyes and reached outward not with words, but with memory.
Images surged from me: the stormy night of my death, the flash of lightning, the endless blackness, and the moment I awoke upon the shores of this newborn world, encased in this titanic form.
For a heartbeat of eternity, Aulë stood frozen, absorbing the flood of alien memories.
When it ended, he stepped back, his expression inscrutable.
Then, to my surprise, he laughed a deep, resonant sound that made the stones tremble.
"So," he said, wonder filling his voice. "A spirit unbidden, cast across the void, clothed in a body of stone and flame." He shook his head in astonishment. "Stranger things have happened, though few indeed before the Kindred have awakened."
He tapped his staff lightly against the ground, and I felt the earth beneath me steady, soothed by his touch.
"Fear not, great one," he said warmly. "Thou art no foe to the world. Not yet."
There was a warning buried in those words, though no threat accompanied them.
He turned, gazing out across the forests and valleys, clearly assessing the world's potential in light of our encounter.
"Come," he said softly. "Let the others know. Let the Song know. The world must understand that a new voice sings among us."
And then he was gone, striding across the land with the ease of a mountain moving through mist. I remained where I was, staring into the vastness of the night sky.
The world had seen me.
The Valar had seen me.
And now, all of Arda would feel the slow, heavy tread of Zorah Magdaros across its young face.
The question remained, would I be its protector or its doom, Only the forging of time would tell.