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“This wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

“No, really? And how did you think that attempting to clear a spider nest single-handedly was going to turn out, Russandol?” His brother’s voice was flat enough to make a tabletop jealous.

Maedhros waits a beat. “Not funny. Can you cut me out of here? Hanging around is getting boring.”

“You are so lucky to have me,” Maglor grouses, making short work of the spiderwebs with his sword in one hand and his dirk in the other.

Maedhros watches his brother’s approach. “...oh, and I think maybe the spiders are mutating.”

Maglor took precious time to cut his elder brother a glare. “Don’t say that. …why do you think the spiders are mutating?”

“Well,” Maedhros says casually, “before, the immobilization venom just made me really limp and gave me an Oliphaunt-sized headache. But now it’s giving me a rash, too.”

“Save it for the healers,” Maglor says hastily, finally pulling his brother free of the clinging webs. “And maybe do us all a favor,” he pauses to grunt as he slings Maedhros over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, “and stop getting yourself into these situations!”

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There was nowhere left to run, no ground left to give. Celebrimbor stood panting with his back pressed to the wall, sword clutched tightly in one hand, the other pressed to the seeping wound in his shoulder. Þauron clicked his tongue and stepped forward, laying aside his own sword to press cool fingers to the wound. “Poor Tyelpë,” he crooned. “You should have joined me, you know.”

“Go to the Void,” Celebrimbor snarled. But Anna- Þauron was too close, and his shoulder hurt too much, and he couldn’t even lift his sword, much less swing it. The knowledge that this was where it ended for him closed around his heart like a vise.

Þauron chuckled softly. “Oh, probably one day,” he agreed carelessly. “Eventually. A pity that it will be much too late for you to see it.”

Celebrimbor spat in the fair, foul face. Annat-  Þauron didn’t seem bothered, merely wiping the bloody saliva off on a richly brocaded sleeve. “Don’t worry, Tyelpë. We shan’t have to lock you in a root cellar for long – I am, after all, rather adept at making proper cages.”

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It was… hard to move. Not worth it, really. Better to just lie here, among the dead. Gonna be joining them soon enough. Black blood, hot and sticky. Curse that Elf-king, and curse that spear that had gutted him like a mewling whelp. Impaled by the Elf-king. What a disgrace.

He groans heavily and shifts. It hurts, so he stops. Hot, panting breath in his ear – oh, not good. “What do we have here? A wiggler?”

He tries to spit an invective, but blood trickles from his mouth instead as he hacks on agonizing coughs. Pawing hands with iron strength check him over for wounds, and the evil voice shudders with laughing glee. “Been awhile since I’ve had a good meal. Think you’ll be a good one. Fresh meat, mm…”

He lunges, snapping. The snaga scuttles back, raising its paws. He settle back with a groan and a snarl. “You’ll wait until I’m dead, or I’ll make sure I’m the last meal you ever eat,” he threatens.

The smaller orc squats on its haunches. It can wait: he is fading fast, and they both know it. Every so often it twitches towards him, and he drives it back with bared fangs.

He lets his head thump back on the unforgiving ground, panting hard. The snaga sneaks closer; cold steel at his temple. It still won’t risk his fangs, but it is willing to help him on his way.

“Say goodbye,” the evil voice gloats. Doesn’t matter. He was dying anyway.

Everything goes black.

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He had to keep going. He couldn’t believe that they were the last: he refused to believe it. Lord Maglor had gotten away, surely. Had gotten some of the others away. His group, they weren’t the last: they were just separated from everyone else. That was all. The smoke, it was disorienting. The flames. Hard to see through the flames. That was okay. South, keeping heading south. Would be a lot easier if the blasted sun were up, or the blasted moon were in the right place, or the blasted ground would stop swooping like that--

Did he black out? He doesn’t remember doing so, but he doesn’t remember anything else from the past few minutes, either, so maybe he did. Can’t afford to do that again.

...was the moon always over that way?

...orc dung. Is he leading his little band in circles?

... no, he’s pretty sure he’d remember stumbling over this little tussock if he’d done it before, and he can’t imagine that he wouldn’t have tripped if he’d encountered it previously. So. Not circles, then. Maybe large ovals, or perhaps corkscrews, like his thoughts. Ellipses?

...not the point. (Ovals have points, ellipses don’t. Or maybe it’s the other way around?)

...doesn’t matter right now. They can always turn southward again later. Right now, away from the fire is the most important direction. Or, at least, they could, if the fire weren’t herding them back towards the north. He didn’t like the flickering, leaping flames. Didn’t help his dizziness at all. Why couldn’t they stay stable, like a respectable lamp?

That… that large mass over there. He doesn’t remember that mass. A woods? A very bad idea. But there shouldn’t be a woods over there. Oh, someone is shouting – asking his name? Should he tell them? Might be Morgoth. Might not. Maybe a nice suggestion of where the shouter can stick his loud voice and Elentári in Valinor is that an Elf?

Strong firm arms around him. “Let’s get you something for that concussion, buddy.”

Yeah. Yeah, that sounded like a nice idea.

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Occasionally, Moringotto and his Lieutenant would get into disagreements. When this happened, the Lieutenant liked to show his rebellion in small, petty ways – like using water instead of fire in his activities.

They must be bickering again, the captive muses, as the Lieutenant’s delicate hand twists into shorn russet locks and thrusts the captive’s head below the surface of the water. The captive had attained a new record for holding his breath last time, and the Lieutenant had been displeased. He’s pretty sure he’s going to be punished for it, this time.

He is dragged up out of the fouled water and a sharp punch is driven into his stomach before his face is immersed again. So that was how it was going to be this time, he notes, the Lieutenant wasn’t in the mood to make a game of it: he wanted this task done and over with as quickly as possible, perhaps to return to another project. Maybe that’s what the argument was about.

There are black spots swimming in front of his eyes, but it is hard to tell if it is the lack of oxygen or the ash. Lack of oxygen, probably, because his jaw is opening now against his will to drag in the first lungful of water.

He is dragged out and flung down, coughing. His side catches on one of the spiked clubs the orcs had left lying around – great, because more blood loss is exactly what he needs. The Lieutenant crouches beside him to seize his jaw and turn his head this way and that, examining him. He’s too out of it to wrench away – he’s still trying to fill his lungs with the choking, overheated air.

The Lieutenant clicks his tongue in disgust and flings the captive down. The back of his head bounces on the iron floor and then he lies still, watching through bleary eyes as the Lieutenant goes over to stoke his forge to ever-greater heats. Grateful to be forgotten for the moment, the captive lets his eyes drift shut as his heaving gasps finally settle down into ragged breaths.

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He could hear them talking, even as he was gagged with a barbed muzzle and bound in tight chains to be dragged away. “We can offer a trade, a ransom of sorts. They can have him back if they flee far away, to the south, forgetting the Jewels and their petty war.”

“They won’t fall for it, my lord.”

“Of course they will not. They’re not supposed to. But when news of his torment reaches them – and we will see to it that it does – they will begin to doubt and loathe themselves for not accepting the trade when it was offered.”

He had known, when his loyal men were slaughtered and he was dragged in captivity back to Moringotto’s seat of power, that he was being sucked into a nightmare. But just as the Noldor had had no point of reference for the horror that they would find in Endorë, so he had no point of reference for just what a horror his capture and torment would be.

In sheltered Valinor, such cruelty had been inconceivable. The slavering werewolves and the bats, the slinking dark shapes that defied description, the slant-eyed, jeering orcs, the úmaiar – he had never before even dreamed of such creatures. He was dragged down halls painted slick with blood that glistened in the torchlight, past the moaning screaming victims of sick tortures. Nelyafinwë’s mind shied away from what his eyes were seeing, unable to comprehend the panorama of grief and misery.

Cruel tight hands pulled him past rows and rows of cages, in which languished dull-eyed slaves. “Welcome to your new quarters, your majesty,” the orc captain leered, flinging Nelyafinwë into the opened cell before the door was slammed and securely locked. “Hope you enjoy your stay. And even if you don’t, we sure will!”

Ugly laughter rose as Nelyo painfully levered himself up onto his knees and turned to look out through the bars. The orcs returned down the corridor, taking the torches with them as the corridor faded into darkness once more. Some moments later, from further down the hall, there came a grating of tortured metal, and a scream of terror and pain, followed by more foul laughter, and then the light vanished altogether.

Kneeling there in the dark, bounding in barbed chains, the King of the Noldor shuddered.

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He woke silently. (In Angband, you learn quickly to wake silently, to buy yourself those extra precious few seconds before the pain starts all over again.) He woke, still and silent and keeping his breathing at its regular ragged rasp, and kept his eyes closed against the light of the torches already there. (In Angband, you learn quickly to sleep with your eyes closed. The orcs don’t like open eyes, they don’t like feeling watched.)

It was… unusually silent. The torches were only lit, the prisoners only permitted light, when the orcs were about. The orcs themselves could see quite well enough without, of course, but to see the light approaching meant their tormentors were coming for them once again, and so where once they had loved and even worshiped light, the captives learned to hate and fear it. But never did the orcs come silently.

Which meant… which meant it wasn’t orcs here for him this time. Either the Lieutenant was bored today, or he was to be dragged before Moringotto and tormented with the Silmarils and the Oath again. His heart seized within him in quaking dread, and he began to tremble.

There continued to be no sound. The light held steady. The Lieutenant, then, he was much more patient than Moringotto – and endlessly more creative. He would wait to strike until the captive had worked himself up into a frenzy of terror.

Even knowing that he was playing right into his torturer’s hands, the captive could not help the overwhelming wave of agonized fear that crashed over him, or the scalding of his eyes as tears welled up to slide from beneath his closed eyelids. He was shaking all over now, trembling like a starved slave dragged before the Iron Throne. There was no way he could still pass for sleeping, but still the Lieutenant lurked, waiting.

The captive slowly curled his fists – no, fist, only his left hand – where was his right hand? Where was his right hand?! Had the Lieutenant finally become discontent with only his hair and taken his hand as well for vile projects? Why did he not remember the loss of his right hand?!

“Nelyo, Nelyo, Russandol!” A slurred voice cut through the haze of terror and horror surrounding his mind, still blurry with sleep and unsated weariness. “It is well, thou art well, Russo, wake up! Russo, open your eyes!”

One did not disobey a command from the Lieutenant. Shaking and sobbing, pleas already ready upon his lips, he opened his eyes.

Gauzy white walls met his sight, the light the steady blue of a lamp. A vaguely familiar face was looking down at him in alarm, drawn and wan, the ribbons braided into the hair washed out in the blue light.

“Russo, it is safe, thou are safe now,” Findekáno said softly, reaching out to lay a gentle hand upon the stump. “I cut off thy hand to rescue thee from Thangorodrim. Thorondor brought us hither.”

He didn’t really believe, of course. This couldn’t be Finno, couldn’t be Mithrim. He wasn’t safe, he would never be safe.

But he would rest in the illusion of peace and safety as long as it lasted.

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“How are you feeling today, beloved?” her husband’s soft voice asked from the dim-but-still-too-bright doorway.

“Everything hurts and I’m dying,” she groaned, curling tighter and hoping the pillow would block more of the light.

Her husband made a soft sound of sympathy, coming in all the way and closing the door. “I brewed you a broth,” he murmured encouragingly, and the soft bed dipped beneath his weight as he sat on the corner of it.

Despite her aching back and aching joints and pounding head, she scooted closer, relishing his very presence. “I’m sorry for saying you were exaggerating and that it wasn’t that bad,” she whimpered.

He gave a soft huff of laughter, and there was the clink of porcelain as he set the cup down on the bedside table to gently brush back her sweaty black hair. “I forgive you, dearest. The influenza does lend itself to dramatics. But I promise you are not dying: your fever isn’t even that high.” As if to prove his point, he brushed the delicate stump of his other arm across her forehead, deliciously cool. “ Now come, beloved, drink your broth. Dehydration will make the illness worse.”

“My throat hurts,” she whined, and she was too far gone to even care that she was whining. “And my stomach hurts. And my back and head hurt too,” she added for good measure. “Fading didn’t hurt like this.”

She thought that was laughter, bubbling in her husband’s voice, but as he was helping her sit up and letting her lean against him, she let it slide. “I know, my love. Here. Drink.”

He held the cup to her lips, and she was grateful, because her own hands were not nearly steady or strong enough to do so. Once she had taken as much as she could bear, he eased her back down and bent to kiss her forehead. “Sleep now, my Tinúviel, and be well when you wake,” he whispered like a blessing, and withdrew to leave her in peace.

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Maedhros was taking first watch. The twins were, as usual on these outings, snuggled up against Maglor, sharing his cloak. Maedhros sat with his back to them – they were as protected from the rear as they could be, under the spreading, drooping boughs of this tree, but he kept one ear tilted back just in case – and watched the lightning flickering and flashing and illuminating the hissing rain. Thunder was a constant continuous rumble, and after one particularly loud clap, one of the twins – Elros, he thought – whimpered. He glanced back to see Maglor’s arms subconsciously snugging tighter about the children, but all three of them sleeping on.

Maedhros wasn’t sure he would wake Maglor for his watch, tonight. He himself did not take well to keeping the twins warm, and they were still wary of him. Warier, anyway. And all he would do all night would be toss and turn, anyway: he did not sleep peacefully, not anymore, not after-

Another lightning flash, and a dark shape off a ways, but not nearly far enough. He leaned forward, gripping his sword, eyes darting between where the shape was and where it might be. Both ears angled back, now, lest this be only a distraction whilst the real attack came from the rear using the sound of the storm as cover. (Morgoth’s creatures were not adept at being silent.)

Another lightning flash. The dark shape is ambling away. Maedhros’ tension ratcheted up another notch, because there was no reason for anything to be moving away from the only shelter for miles unless it was a trap, it was a trap, it had to be a trap but would the attack come from in front at unreal speeds or behind, was it a distraction or a bluff, where was the attack-

More lightning. It was still slowly moving away. He risk ed a quick look behind him, into the forest. Nothing immediately visible. Nothing audible, either. He grip ped his sword more tightly and look ed front again. The thing ha d disappeared – no. No, wait, there it wa s. If there was no attack, then… it must be to lure him out, to hunt the creature in desperate hope for food.

He settled back. He would not fall for it. He would not hunt something that should not, could not be there.

He checked his brother and the twins again. None of them had stirred. He looked back out at the rain, holding guard.

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He slowly, painfully lifted his head. His back was still oozing red from the earlier whipping, but the approaching laughter of guttural voices heralded the return of his torturers and the resumption of his torment. A spasm crossed his face and he let his head fall limply forward again: a state of unconsciousness would not deter them – they would simply slap him awake – but he saw no point in expending his energy in defiance. Not anymore.

A harsh crackle brought his head back up, apprehension tightening his features. He’d never heard that sort of sound before, but it couldn’t mean anything good. Nothing here ever meant anything good.

The orcs tromped into the room in which he hung, arms wrenched above his head, emaciated body dangling. One of them slapped him harshly across the ribs as the foul creatures laughed to each other and he wheezed for breath. The crackle came again from behind him, and he twisted his head around in a desperate attempt to see what new torment they had devised.

“We’ve got something nice for you today,” one of the orcs jeered, seeing his efforts. “Very nice. But we’ve got to get you all ready, your majesty, you can’t appreciate it properly all filthy like that!”

Hard cruel hands seized him, holding him aloft so that the chains could be loosed from the hooks driven into the walls. They clattered through the iron rings hanging from the ceiling as he was dropped abruptly, and he collapsed in a heap with a low moan as blood rushed back into his arms and hands and set them alight. The laughter of his tormentors swelled about him again, and he barely had time to catch his breath before they seized hold of him once more.

A cloth wet with the vile liquid of Angamando was placed over his face, and he thrashed, panicked. Hard knees with iron shinguards pressed down on the hollows of his shoulders, his wrists held tightly and his arms extended as far as they would go. A length of cold heavy chain was dropped across his numb legs, effectively immobilizing them.

“No,” he gasped, “no, please, no, no-”

“Drink up,” an oily evil voice said gleefully, and then he was drowning, drowning, there was water on his face and he couldn’t breathe and no matter how he struggled he couldn’t get away-

The flow of liquid stopped and he gasped in a damp breath, spluttering and choking on the vileness soaking the cloth that dripped into his mouth. The orcs continued to kneel on his limbs, pinning him supine. Nearby, the crackle had become constant, heightening in pitch and intensity, as though in anticipation.

“That was your drink,” the same oily voice said. “Now for your bath!”

He had just time for half a terrified gasp before the cloth was deluged once more. He shut his mouth and his eyes firmly against it and tried to ignore the sludge running up his nostrils into his sinuses and make it stop, make it stop, make it stop, please, someone, make it stop –

The cloth was dragged off his face and the pinning weights were lifted. He rolled onto his side, huffing and blowing and trying to clear his air passageways. Thus he didn’t see the vat of scalding water coming before he was drenched, and he arched, gasping.

“Hold this,” one of the orcs ordered, shoving something at him. He stared uncomprehendingly down at the dully reflective red-orange rod in his hand, unexpectedly yanked back across time and an ocean to a childhood in blissful light, looking at a copper circlet in copper hair above a copper beard as a deep voice rumbled proudly in his ear, telling him how one day, he too would wear copper on copper and be the more beautiful yet-

He shrieked as the metal rod in his hand came alive with agony, waves of sharp pain flowing through his hand and through his body. The noise of jeers and howls and cruel mirth around him went white. He only vaguely felt the hand landing on his shoulder, barely noted the sharp shriek of its owner. He couldn’t hear anything over his own screaming as his voice was stripped from his throat leaving it sore and raw and bleeding and that was nothing, nothing, on what was happening, and his fingers were frozen around the rod he couldn’t let go make it stop make it go away make it STOP –

“Don’t kill him! The master won’t be pleased if you kill him!” A shouting voice slowly bore through the white-hot buzzing in his ears. He became aware that they had stopped whatever they were doing to him, and one of them was prying the rod from his hand.

“I can barely get his lovely hand off it, the shocks brought his strength back,” the orc laughed.

“Chop his hand off, then!” another growled impatiently.

“He’s smoking,” a whiny voice remarked in awe, a clawed finger poking him. There was another sharp sting on his skin and the small orc jumped back with a yelp, much to the amusement of its fellows.

“Should we string him back up?” one asked.

“Naw, leave him down. The Lieutenant will be along soon,” the apparent leader said dismissively. The troop clomped out again, leaving him shivering and sweating in a pool of pain and murky liquid.

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“Hey, there, muindor, easy, I got you, come on, calm down, I got you now-” Elladan kept up a low stream of easy chatter, his twin’s head lolling. “Aulë’s sweaty pits, Ro, what did you do to yourself this time?” he muttered, carefully peeling back the sloppy bandages and wincing at the sight of the wound inside. “At least you had the sense to try and splint it, but stars above, man, how much blood have you lost? And why in the name of all that is good didn’t you call for me sooner?!”

“That’s three,” Elrohir slurred, and Elladan paused to squint at him.

“What?”

“Three times,” Elrohir said again, no more clearly. Elladan wasn’t sure he was even hearing properly.

“Three times for what?”

“That you cursed. Ada would wash your mouth out,” Elrohir mumbled.

Elladan scoffed, reaching for his bag and sluicing his hands with the solution that their father had created for just such emergency cleansings. “Right after he washed this wound out. What did you do, decide to go for the old Dúnedain method of staunching it with mud?”

Elrohir mumbled a suggestion for what his twin could go do that Elladan generously decided to write off as his brother’s wound talking. “No can do, little brother. Ada and Arwen would have my head if I dragged your carcass back cold and stinking. Brace yourself, this is gonna hurt.” He dumped the entire contents of his waterskin over the jagged white and bloody seeping red. “And this is gonna hurt worse.”

He took the precious vial of cleansing fluid and splashed over the wound next. The words that hissed from between Elrohir’s teeth would definitely have gotten his mouth washed out in Imladris, but considering exactly what he’d just put his twin through, Elladan decided to forgive these, too. With a catch.

“I’ll make a deal with you, little brother,” he suggested, supporting Elrohir’s head to help the younger peredhel take a sip of miruvor. “You don’t tell Ada about my cursing, and I won’t tell him about yours.”

“Up yours,” Elrohir muttered, but as his cheeks were something more closely resembling a healthy color, this was not to be let slide.

“Sorry, buddy, that’s not how this works.” Elladan stood, holding his brother bridal-style. “I offered you a perfectly good deal; more tipped in your favor than mine, in fact, once I tell Ada what you said.”

Elrohir rested his head on his brother’s shoulder, pale again and trembling but still much more lucid. “I’d get out of it by virtue of being injured.”

Elladan clicked his tongue for his horse, who had been patiently standing nearby and waiting. “Right up until you’re not, anymore. Mutual silence, take it or – hang tight, this is gonna hurt – take it or leave it.” It took a certain amount of maneuvering to get his injured brother on the horse, but finally Elrohir was mounted, white-faced and sweaty and gasping obscenities.

“Fine. Fine. Take it,” the younger twin muttered, slumping forward over the horse’s neck and gripping the grey mane tightly.

Elladan mounted behind him. “Done. You good?”

“I’m good.” Elrohir straightened with an effort, setting his jaw and nodding firmly.

“Alright. Let’s go.” Elladan tapped his heels gently on his horse’s sides, turning the dappled head towards home.

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They weren’t expecting it. Lord Celebrimbor had tried to raise the alarm, and indeed alarm had spread outwards from the forges of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain like ripples in a pond, but they still weren’t expecting it. Small raids and even skirmishes happened, of course, but no one had seen a true, honest-to-Belain orc army in years. Anorthon had never seen one in his whole life.

But he was seeing one now, tramping through the fair streets of Ost-in-Edhil, slaughtering the inhabitants until paving stones ran with blood and destroying homes and businesses. Some of the invaders carried torches which they touched to every piece of wood within their reach, while others carried great battering rams which they swung indiscriminately at stone and metal.

Anorthon ran. Not away from the city, as many were doing, but deeper into it, as many others were doing. Lots of people had something or someone to go back for, something more precious to them than their own lives. Anorthon’s thoughts were all on his little sister, still a child, at home while their parents traveled to Lindon to trade and he was supposed to stay and watch her but he snuck out to go meet his friends and now there was a freaking orc army invading .

“Anorlothil!” he shouted at the top of his lungs as he skidded into their street. ‘Oh Elbereth, please let her be safe, please let her be at home, please don’t let her be out in the city, please please please please help me find my sister,’ he prayed, taking the familiar gentle curves as fast as his legs could carry him. “Lothil!!”

“Thono!” His baby sister’s terrified shriek rose.

“Hang on, I’m coming!” he yelled back, but his voice was almost drowned by the harsh calls of the yrch. ‘No, no, no, Elbereth, no, please don’t let them get her, please keep her safe, mighty Tulkas protect her PLEASE –”

He slid around the last corner, horror clawing up his throat like bile. The orcs had passed by already, and his home was destroyed, a mountain of smoking rubble. “ Anorlothil! ”

“Thono, Thono, please, help me, help me, I’m trapped,” his sister’s voiced pleaded from within the heap.

With a quick pat on one of the stones that had sheltered him since his birth and a plea to not shift further and bury them both once and for all, he plunged into the rubble. “Lothil, I’m coming,” he called as soothingly and calmly as he could. “Keep talking to me, sis, it’s okay, I’m coming for you but – Lothil, nethig, I need to hear your voice.”

“Thono, it hurts, and I’m scared.” She was crying, but she was lucid, and that was good, and – oh sweet Elbereth, a gleam of bright gold on turquoise, the dress she was wearing this morning, she was trapped under there.

He crouched down to peer through the small hole. “Lothil, I’m here,” he said softly. “I’ve gotta figure out how to get this stuff off of you, okay?”

She sniffed and looked up at him, black hair clinging to her tear-wet cheeks. “It hurts, Thono,” she whimpered. “There’s – there’s a nail, and it’s, it’s stuck in my leg, Thono, I can’t move, it hurts…”

He gulped. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay. I’ll get the stones off and get the nail out and we’ll escape and find Nana and Ada, okay?”

She sniffed and smeared snot across the back of her hand and nodded. “Please hurry.”

“I will,” he assured her, and stood back up to study the heap of debris. It was a comforting lie: he couldn’t risk hurrying and crushing her. A quick glance over his shoulder, ear-tips pricking, reminded him that his sister had a point: they couldn’t linger forever.

He put his hands on the stones, sending his consciousness out towards them. ‘ Long and faithfully have you served us, old friends. But now our Anorlothil is trapped and hurting. Will you help me get her out?’

He went very still, evening his breathing, listening, listening, listening…

…there. The fault lines of the heap. The way they could all be safely moved. Lift this one, lift this one, toss it aside, shift this one, carefully, carefully, carefully, tune out Lothil’s tearful pleading, can’t afford to be distracted – no! No! Don’t shift! Catch it catch it catch – heave – wipe sweaty palms on leggings and reach for the next, time enough to let the near miss catch up later.

Anorlothil screamed as he lifted the final stone, the one with the six-inch nail driven into her leg. Blood spurted from the wound and he dropped to his knees, panicked, before ripping the hem from his tunic and wadding against the wound. “It’s okay, Lothil, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he repeated rather wildly. “Baby, I need you to hold this here while I rip your dress to tie it, okay?”

She leaned over to press the pad against her calf. “Not a baby,” she wept.

“No, you’re right, you’re not a baby at all,” he praised hysterically, hands shaking as he struggled to tear her dress. “You’re handling this amazingly, just like an adult, I’m so proud of you and Nana and Ada will be too and-” The material finally tore the right direction, and he yanked a long strip free to wind about her leg and tie tightly.

He looked up to meet her eyes. “We’re gonna have to run, nethig . I’ll carry you on my back, but it’s gonna hurt. I need you to be really brave, okay?”

She nodded, sniffling. “Will we see Nana and Ada again?” she asked, voice small.

“Yes,” he promised, reaching out to clutch her hand. “Yes, we will. We’ll make for Lindon, and as soon as they hear what happened they’ll come looking for us, and we’ll meet them halfway. Okay?”

“Okay.” She nodded.

He bit his lip. “I’m gonna pick you up now. It’s gonna hurt a lot, but you’ve got to be brave, okay?”

She nodded again. “It’ll hurt more if the yrch get us,” she said fearfully.

“Yes, it will, but they won’t, because I’ll make sure they don’t,” he promised, and turned around. “Alright, give me your hands – good – and wrap your legs around my waist – I know it hurts, nethig, but you’ve got to do so. Good. Yes. Like that. Here, I’ll hold your ankles, that should help.”

He stood up, his precious burden clinging to his back. “Ready?”

She nodded against his shoulder. “You’re sure they’ll meet us halfway?” she murmured in his ear.

He folded his lips. “I’m sure,” he asserted, and started running along the street which had been the idyllic scene of his childhood, and now stood in ruins .

‘Please, bright Elbereth, please let them meet us halfway.’

Chapter Text

Gil-galad’s smile was more of a grimace, really, but Elrond appreciated the effort nonetheless. He would have appreciated it more if his king hadn’t gotten himself captured by one of the few straggling bands of orcs left, nearly a hundred strong. He would’ve appreciated his captured king being more or less whole and well, too, but Elrond had learned long ago that Arda did not order itself to his wishes and desires.

He crouched by the cage, studying the rusty iron padlock. “How badly are you injured, your majesty?” he whispered softly in the Common Tongue. No need to alert the orcs with Elvish speech, even if his accent was distinctly un-orcish.

“I’m not sure I can walk,” Gil-galad admitted, pale in the moonlight. “My leg is fractured, and I think my hip might be dislocated.”

Elrond concealed his dismay admirably, merely humming softly in acknowledgment and poking at the lock. His dagger wouldn’t fit all the way in the key hole, but he could use the tip to tension the lock and the shank that he disguised as a hair ornament might do nicely as a pick…

Gil-galad stayed quiet as his ever-versatile herald worked at the lock holding him prisoner. He had long suspected that there was far, far more to the genteel peredhel than Elrond let on, and this was only a very small confirmation.

A final click and the lock came free. Elrond set it carefully aside so that it wouldn’t clank, and set about studying the hinges. He produced a bottle of oil from somewhere about his person and poured over them – no, no, not oil, because it hissed and foamed and bubbled and then the hinges were nothing but a heap of rusty slag.

Gil-galad eyed the solution dubiously as Elrond carefully recorked the bottle and stowed it away again. “That cannot be legal,” he whispered.

“Whoops.” Elrond didn’t sound terribly concerned, removing the door and setting aside along with the lock. He crawled into the cage, carefully looking over his king. “You’re not in as bad of shape as I was expecting, your majesty,” he admitted.

“I don’t think they knew who I am,” Gil-galad admitted, shifting gingerly so that Elrond could access his leg more easily.

Elrond hummed under his breath, examining the injured hip. “Your diagnosis was correct, your majesty. I will reset it once we are away from this foul camp.”

Gil-galad nodded. He wasn’t sure quite how Elrond was planning on getting them both out, but he trusted his herald with his life.

Elrond himself turned to study the layout of the sleeping orcs with canny eyes, before nodding once. “Your majesty? I will carry you on my back. It will hurt, I am afraid, but it is the most practical solution.”

“Pain is an old friend,” Gil-galad answered briskly, dragging himself towards the door of the cage and only wincing slightly at the agony in his leg. “Oh, and, Elrond?”

Elrond ducked out behind his liege, situating the king’s arms across his own shoulders and collarbone. “Yes, your majesty?”

“Thank you.”

Chapter Text

A demon with hair of bloody fire clutching a bloody sword and staring down with pitiless grey eyes cold as Morgoth’s very winter. The sword descended and she lifted a piece of a chair, flinching as the sword bit deep into the wood. There was no way she could fight this demon, but she must, she must, she must –

“Go! Run!” she cried to the tiny children behind her, clinging to each other and screaming. “Little ones, run! I shall be right behind you!”

She wouldn’t, of course. She would die here, by the blood-slicked sword of this blood-soaked demon with the cruel eyes, but the twins didn’t need to see that. And perhaps – perhaps – they would find their mother, and their mother would protect them, their mother would give up the jewel to save her sons as she hadn’t been willing to save her city –

She fended off another lazy sword-swing with her stick of wood, and then gasped in shock and pain as she was slammed into the wall beside her, the hard stump of the demon’s right arm across her throat.

“Elwing? The jewel? Where are they?” he rasped.

She spat in his face. “Go back to Angband where you belong, monster!”

His icily remote expression didn’t even flicker. She gasped and gagged at the sudden pain in her stomach, worse than anything she had ever known, and the blood hot and sticky down her abdomen and her legs as he withdrew the sword and the stump and let her collapse like a marionette whose strings had been cut as her very life pulsed out of her with each beat of her heart and it hurt, it hurt, she’d never imagined such pain, but the demon was wending his way higher into the tower and please, please, please let the twins have escaped –

~~~~~

Some days, it felt like he’d never left Angband at all. Like he was still caught in Moringotto’s cage, caught in torment. But this cage and this torment was of his own devising: he had locked the iron shackles about his own neck in Tirion, thrown away the key when his father lay dying in the darkness of Beleriand.

He walked on, flicking the blood from his sword, leaving behind Elwing’s servant. Nursemaid to Elwing’s twin sons, perhaps, he had seen the children briefly before they obeyed the command to flee. She was suffering now, but would not be for long: he had an intimate knowledge of Elvish anatomy, and she would be dead within a few minutes, bled out from the gaping hole in her stomach.

He spared no further thought for the elleth behind him, looking up the winding staircase that led, presumably, to the top of the tower. Elwing was up there – and more importantly, so was the Jewel.

He began to climb.

Chapter Text

He stared down at himself as the healers unwrapped the bandages, revealing his entire body for the first time since his arrival at the camp. Findekáno leaned forward, eyes pinned on his face with painful intensity. “Timo. Maitimo. Maitimo, breathe,” he said urgently.

He… he couldn’t. He couldn’t breathe. Every inch of him – every inch of him – foully, cruelly marked. Scars. Scars on scars on scars. Roping, twisting, shimmering, burn scars and whip scars and claw scars and electrical scars and scars from other things that his mind shied away from. Not one inch of him left unblemished.

He gave a low moan, as of an animal in pain. “ Don’t lie to me! ”

Findekáno frowned. “ No one is lying to you, Maitimo,” he said cautiously.

“That,” he hissed. “That is a lie. I am Maitimo no longer. Don’t ever call me that again.”

Findekáno’s face went graver yet and he inclined his head. “As you wish. What would you be called, then? Will Russandol do?”

He carefully lifted his hand to run over his head. His hair was starting to grow back, slipping between his fingers, and he pinched one between his nails and plucked and a short sharp pain later, he was laying it out for inspection on his blankets.

“Yes,” he said slowly, running his index finger alongside the four-inch length of bright copper. “Yes. Russandol will do.”

Chapter Text

She cried out in her sleep, sometimes, calling names, pleading for aid. She knew because the orcs told her so. They would wake her up to laugh at her. “No one is coming, Elf,” they sneered. “No one knows where you are.”

They were… not wrong. She didn’t even know where she was. Halfway between Lórien and Imladris, when she was captured, but they had dragged down into the mountains and through the tunnels for miles after twisting miles, and there was no telling, now, where she was. Elrond and Naneth would have their people scouring for her, but there was no way they would find her before the orcs wearied of their sport and slew her.

She wasn’t sure she wanted them to, at this point. Elrond and Naneth and Adar shouldn’t have to see her like this. And the twins, and Arwen…

S ometimes, the orcs laced her food with something. It left her limp and helpless as they tortured her, unable to move beyond drawing breath and counting heartbeats. (If her heart was beating, she was still alive. No matter how deadened her limbs.)

It left her susceptible to their words, too, cruel taunts burrowing through her ears into her mind. “They’re not coming for you.” “They don’t care about you.” “They don’t want you.”

It was dark. The orcs had finally left, and her arms were wrenched above her head, chained to the wall. There was something hot and wet and seeping around her where she lay slumped, and she wasn’t entirely sure what it was. A dozen bones were broken, and she hadn’t eaten for what felt like weeks. And there was no end in sight.

The orcs were right. No one was coming.

Chapter Text

Thranduil sighed. This must, he supposed, be punishment sent by the Belain for his long resistance to their sea-longing. It was too late to cross, now – all the last ships had long since departed the shores, and he was no ship-builder. Legolas had built a boat – and bright stars above, he hoped his son had made it safely, and even the Dwarf too – but he had spent some time with Círdan learning to do so before returning to Ithilien and Eryn Lasgalen. Thranduil had not.

But eventually, there was no one left in Eryn Lasgalen, save its lonely monarch. And one day in the middle of fixing his breakfast, Thranduil had looked around the tiny quarters that were the only inhabited portion of his grand halls, and realized how echoingly, pointlessly empty it all was.

With no reason any longer to stay save his own memories, he surrendered to the pull on his heart, and traveled to go see the Sea. With no way to cross it, he wandered along the shore, eyes cast Westward.

…until this utter nonsense today.

“I thought you were long since dead,” he told the dangling Elf sourly, bracing one hand on the cliff face to steady himself against the rolling of the driftwood under his feet. Balance restored for the moment, he examined the crude manacle driven into the rock and made a sound of contempt. “Luckily for you, my steel should be able to slice through this easily, so no need for you to lose your hand.”

The dangling Elf did not respond, head hanging as limply as the rest of him. Thranduil made another sound of disgust and began prying at the manacle and the exposed lock with the tip of his knife. “Shoddy orcish workmanship,” he muttered to himself as he worked, “and of course they didn’t bother even to seal it, honestly, the rust is the only thing keeping this together at this point, it doesn’t even have pins anymore, just a corroded blob, this is disgusting, why did you of all people let yourself get caught by creatures that can’t make a better lock than this…”

There was a sharp snap, a shower of brownish-red powder, and the dangling Elf was abruptly no longer dangling, but crumpled in a heap on the sand. Thranduil looked down at him. “…oops. I suppose I should’ve caught you.”

He shrugged and hopped down, examining the other’s right shoulder joint. “ Hm. You’ve clearly been hanging up for there for awhile. Why didn’t you just Sing yourself free? But I don’t think it’s been thirty years. Thirty months, maybe. You should recover and be just fine.” He peered more closely at the unresponsive Elf’s face and scowled. “You aren’t Fading, are you? Don’t you dare. I didn’t just skin my palm on a rock rescuing you just so you could Fade.”

He waited a moment, and when he still didn’t receive an answer, made yet another sound of disgust. “Fine. Be like that.” He looked up, scanning the shore. “We should probably get out of the sand. I can build us a fire.” He looked back down at his… captive? Companion? Creature? “And maybe make some soup. I’ve become quite a decent cook in the last few centuries. You look like you could use some food.”

~~~~~

The first thing Maglor was aware of upon waking up was that the pain in his shoulder was different. The second thing he noticed was that he was warm, in a way he hadn’t been in… too, too long. The third thing he noticed was the voice, grumbling sourly, although whether to itself or to him, he wasn’t sure. He lay still, eyes closed, and listened, trying to puzzle out his changed circumstances.

“Climb up on a log like some ungainly shorebird, skin my hand, blunt my knife digging in that rusty piece of orc slag, pour food down your unresponsive gullet, and this is the thanks I get. They say – said – that you have a beautiful voice. At this point I’d settle for hearing a croak out of you. But no, I waste my time and energy and resources to drag your sorry carcass down from that cliff only for you to Fade on me. That’s golodh gratitude for you.”

Maglor ran his tongue around his mouth and was only half-surprised to find it not nearly as dry as it had been when he lost consciousness. He could, he thought, summon more than a croak. “ Le vilui. ”

The sour voice abruptly cut off, and Maglor thought he’d rather surprised its owner. It returned a moment later, its satisfaction no less the sour than its discontent. “So. You live after all. Well, at least I didn’t waste my time with you, although now I find myself wondering why I bothered at all. And your accent is atrocious, by the way.”

Maglor cracked his eyes open – and honestly that didn’t take nearly as much effort as it should have either – and peered across the fire at his grudging benefactor. “Forgive me,” he said politely. “I do not think I know you.”

The stranger scowled and tossed a stick into the fire as though it had done him a great personal wrong. “Oh, that’s the least of the things for which you should beg my forgiveness.”

Maglor slowly sat up, and realized he was wrapped in a thick grey cloak. He shifted it carefully to reach across himself and examine his right shoulder: the frozen dislocation had been broken and re-placed into the joint, and though it was terribly sore, it was not nearly as agonizing as it should have been. He wondered where the unknown Sinda had found the pain-relieving herbs out here.

“I can tell by your speech that you were once of Doriath. So I suppose that is the most pressing issue on which I have to beg your forgiveness,” Maglor observed.

“Thranduil, son of Oropher, of Doriath indeed,” the other said flatly.

Maglor winced, and it had nothing at all to do with his shoulder. “I see. Well. Then I must take the opportunity to tell you how very sorry I am for my part in the kinslayings, and most earnestly beg your forgiveness.”

Thranduil scoffed and shifted to see to a pot of soup bubbling over the fire. “Not much point to holding grudges now, I suppose,” he sighed. “We’re the very last two left. Everyone else is sailed or dead or Faded.” He stared into the soup, thinking of a Little Green Leaf who had fallen in love with the sea and dragged his bearded half-sized sidekick along with him on his grand adventure.

“I’m sorry,” Maglor murmured, watching the Sindarin no-longer King.

Thranduil flicked a glance at him. “Ai, well, some of the stories say you lost a son to the Sea, as well,” he observed neutrally.

“Two of them,” Maglor returned sadly.

Silence fell as Thranduil ladled soup into two bowls, handing one across the fire to his erstwhile enemy. Silence reined as the two ate, each lost in their own thoughts. Nor did they speak as Thranduil took the wooden bowls down to the ocean to wash them.

It was only once the fire was banked and they were laying down on opposite sides of the ashes, staring up at the stars, that Thranduil finally said, very casually, “I don’t suppose you happen to know anything about building boats?”

Chapter Text

It was not the first time the ice had cracked. They had lost Princess Elenwë some time ago, and nearly lost the Princess Itarillë with her. Now the small girl was clutched in her aunt’s arms as they all forged onward.

The line came to an abrupt halt as with a sudden crack, another rift in the ice appeared, in the very middle of the caravan. There were several screams as some half a dozen Elves fell through into the fatal water below. Two disappeared from sight immediately, shocked by the freezing immersion, sinking into the cold depths. One seized the edge and was hastily pulled back up by his fellows, one yanking free their own cloak to wrap around him.

The other three managed to tread water for a few moments as ropes were hastily uncoiled and thrown to them. One’s fingers were too numb to seize the lifeline and she slipped beneath the dark water with a despairing wail. The other two were pulled to safety, bundled hastily in any blankets or cloaks that could be spared.

“Three lost of six,” Findaráto murmured to Findekáno under his breath. “It could be worse.”

Findekáno nodded grimly. It could be much worse: every life lost was too many, but they had already lost so many that three more would barely count to any save their families – if they even had families left alive. The problem now was how to get the rest of the host across the crack in the ice.

Healers had rushed to see to the three that were saved. The first out was declared as well as could be expected, but the two who had spent more time in the water were hastily rushed off to an even more hastily erected tent. “I will go tell Atar we will be stopping for the day,” Findekáno sighed.

Findaráto nodded, eyeing the sloshing frost-rimed gap in the ice. “I will see if I can work out a way for everyone to cross this.” The two cousins went their separate ways.

~~~~~

“We’re going to have to amputate,” the healer said gently.

Angindo looked down at his frozen foot and pursed his lips. “Well, odds were that I was going to lose it sooner or later, anyway,” he said pragmatically. “Go ahead and get it over with.”

There was nothing to ease pain out here. He was given a leather strap to bite, the frozenness of his foot and leg the only relief from the sharp steel. He bit into the leather, gripping the sides of the fur on which his torso rested, and bore through.

A few hours later, it was time to move on.

Chapter Text

Elrond wasn’t fully with it. –he hadn’t been fully with it since that one hit on his head. He thought he’d vomited a few times, and now he was hallucinating. Maedhros’ low growl. “Foolish peredhil! When I told you this world would eat you alive, you thought I was exaggerating?”

At the moment, Elrond would have willingly endured one of Maedhros’ blistering scoldings to be back at the relative safety of Amon Ereb. But his only refuge now was the darkness, swelling to swallow him again.

The next time he woke enough to slit his eyes open, he saw a horse’s head and neck, and beyond, Elros clutched in Maglor’s right arm, head lolling. “ ‘Ros,” he croaked.

“He’s alive,” Maedhros’ voice said harshly from above.

Elrond let himself slide back into oblivion.

He woke to something hard prying at his lips. “Open your mouth, dratted brat,” Maedhros was snarling above his head, plainly frustrated. “Open your mouth and drink!”

Groggily, Elrond did so. It was hot, and bitter, and it made the horrible pounding headache and nausea recede some. He whimpered a little, licking his lips, and heard the clunk of the vessel being put down. He thought perhaps a gentle hand smoothed over his hair as he fell back asleep, but that could have just been wishful thinking.

He woke slowly. He was… in a bed. A proper bed, if a rather thin one, with a thin but proper blanket covering him. Rippling arpeggios from a harp suffused the air; no Power behind it, so not a proper Song of Healing, but soothing and calming nonetheless. His head hurt too much to open his eyes, but he whimpered out, “ ‘Ros?”

“He’s sleeping.” Maglor’s voice, as soft and soothing as his music. “He’s in the bed next to yours. Go back to sleep, Elrond.”

It was all too easy to obey.

The twins had been declared medically sound by the healer, and returned to their previous room. Now they huddled together on the bed, swallowing hard, as Maedhros stared them down. The redhead’s anger was legendary, and he was furious. They were not afraid that he would kill them – they would be no good to him dead, hostages were only useful alive – but they had seen how mercilessly he meted out punishment to his followers when they made mistakes.

“What. Were. You. Thinking,” Maedhros hissed, looming above them. “Where did you think that two children could go to be safe? The baby fat still on you and you think you could brave what’s out there? Where did you plan to go? To Gil-galad? Were you planning to swim to Balar? Or perhaps you thought the orcs would be kinder captors?” he added with awful sarcasm. Elros had started to shake, pressed against Elrond’s side.

Maedhros stared at them a moment, sneering in disgust. “Dare I even hope you learned your lesson?” he demanded harshly. “ The orcs, the spiders, the wolves – those are the least of the Enemy’s servants. Did you enjoy your stint as captives of Morgoth’s servants? Their beds were more comfortable than ours, perhaps? Their rations more plentiful and less bland? Their shackles less cruel? Did you hope to reach the next level of their hospitality – the comfortable warmth of the Balrogs, perhaps?”

Elrond’s eyes stung, and when he blinked, his cheeks tickled. Elros’ shaking had intensified.

Maedhros clicked his tongue. “ Tch. Little fools. Hate and revile us as you will: such is your right, and talk is cheap. But if you value your sorry hides, do not leave this fortress unprotected again!”

He turned on his heel, cloak swinging, and stalked out, slamming the door behind himself. The boys turned towards each other, sliding down under the blanket and weeping softly into each other’s arms.

The door opened again, much more quietly, and they both shrank. But it was Maglor who entered, carrying his harp and clad, unusually, in a robe rather than armor. He gave them both a soft, melancholy smile, and sat down in the hard wooden chair beside the bed. “I thought perhaps to sing you a lullaby, and ease the nightmares,” he offered.

Elrond sniffed and buried his face in the pillow. Elros propped himself up on an elbow. “Please,” he whispered.

Maglor sang long into the night, well after two little heads had hit the pillow and two little faces relaxed into sleep. He kept watching the small sleeping children, though, even once their fluttering eyelids stilled. Their waking lives were enough of a nightmare: he could at least see that their sleep was untroubled, for this one night.

Chapter Text

There wasn’t much to do as a captive of the Elves, Ashuruk was finding. At least not yet. They had tended the gash along her stomach, slopping something that burned worse than fire across it before binding it tightly, and then binding her hands inside a sack when she wouldn’t stop clawing at it. They had thrown her in this cell and all but two had left, and the fire had eventually faded into numbness.

She lay curled on her side, knees drawn up protectively over her stomach and bound hands, watching the Elves through the bars. They appeared to be engaging in some sort of board-based contest of skill? It wasn’t chess – she had seen the Lieutenant play chess, once, although if he knew she had seen she would be dead just like the rest – but it seemed… similar. More complicated, perhaps, if that was even possible.

They would move their pieces, and make little tally marks, and consult, and pass captured pieces back and forth. It didn’t make sense. Why not just have all your pieces capture and eat the other person’s pieces? Why exchange prisoners? Typical Elven weirdness and stupidity.

The door opened, and they both sprang to their feet, snapping to attention in the same movement. The leader from the skirmish stepped inside, helmet removed to display blazing red hair and eyes like chips of ice. His voice was harsh and grating, much more akin to an orc’s than the annoying melody of the rest of the Elves’ voices. “Open the cell.”

One of the guards leapt to obey, producing a key and swinging the door open on silent hinges. (Why were the hinges silent? It was uncanny.) Ashuruk didn’t bother trying to escape – not much point, with three Elves in the room and her hands bound – but she did push herself into a sitting position and scoot back against the wall.

The commander had to duck his head and shoulders as he stepped inside. The door was closed and locked behind him, leaving the two of them inside the cell. He stared down at her measuringly, and she glared back through narrow eyes. “Filthy stinking Elf-dung.”

He bent down faster than her eye could follow, his left hand snapping out to seize one of her fangs and wrench it out by the root. She screamed, writhing, bringing her hands automatically to her mouth. The sack covering them rapidly soaked through with black blood as she sobbed into it.

He straightened, tossing her fang carelessly aside. “Let us get one thing straight right now, ” he said coldly in her own tongue. “ It has been a long day and I am tired, and I will not indulge pointless posturing and defiance. Those stories your people bandy about regarding the cruelty of Elves? Those stories are about me. So I suggest you think long and hard about making this more difficult.”

Behind him, the guards were looking sick – one had turned green, and the other seemed as though he were only moments from puking. The commander did not even turn to look at them as he lifted the stump of his right arm. “Dismissed. I will call you when I am ready.”

Ashuruk cowered, whimpering in terror and shock. This was no mere Elf-commander into whose hands – hand – she had fallen. This was Maedhros Fëanorian. The rest of her life suddenly looked even shorter and bleaker.

He canted his head with predatory grace. “Now. Will you tell me what I want to know? Or will I need to wring it out of you?”

Ashuruk started talking.

Chapter Text

He was only fifteen, barely more than a child, too young to die for some madman’s delusions of grandeur. She knelt there, in the mud, cradling him to her chest as he coughed, blood dribbling and seeping over his lips with each painful spasm. She wiped it away with her apron, again and again, murmuring meaningless comfort into his hair.

Some instinct made her look up. A group of Elves was approaching, carrying drawn weapons, many of which still dripped with blood. She curled further over her brother, willing the Elves to move on – to take no notice of two young, blood-covered Men, to go in search of worthier prey.

Her hope was vain. The Elves surrounded them, looking over them and speaking softly to one another in their strange tongue. She lay her brother’s head tenderly down before casting herself to her knees at the feet of one who looked like he might be the leader. “Please, I beg you, let him be,” she pleaded. “He is so young, and he is dying already. Let him die in peace. Please!”

The Elf looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then produced a cloth from inside his tunic, cleaned his sword, and sheathed it. He stepped carefully around her, stooping beside her brother and laying a hand on his chest. The Elf seemed to listen for a moment, before scooping her brother up in his arms.

She leapt to her feet, arms thrown wide in a frenzy of terror. “No, no, no, no, please no! Please! Let him be! Take me instead! I will tell you everything, anything you want to know, please, you won’t even have to torture me, please, please, please, let him be, let him alone, please-”

“Peace,” one of the other Elves said, cutting across her increasingly hysterical begging. “We mean him no harm. He will be taken to our camp to be healed.”

Some distant part of her mind noted that she was shaking. “Why? He’s so young, he’s-” She cut herself off with a hiccup. Better alive, and a slave, than dead in the mud of a battlefield… right? “ Please,” she whispered again, although if pressed, she couldn’t have said with any certainty what she was asking for.

The one who had spoken to her took her arm, leading her along in the wake of the one carrying her brother, the rest falling in behind. “Fret not,” he said gently. “No harm will come to him, or to you. Elves do not torture, and we are not in the habit of murdering children, either. You will be safe, staying with us, until you can return home .”

And… she did not trust them. Of course not. They were Elves. But if they could heal her brother…

She did not object again.

Chapter Text

He winced at the withdrawal of the needle. It was a large one, covered in… he wasn’t sure if that was rust, or the detritus of its previous victims. Diseases and infection, either way.

He didn’t figure he’d be around long enough for it to matter.

Whatever they had injected him with was already starting to take effect. Spider venom, at a guess, basing off an old wound during the War of Wrath, the kind that left you able to feel everything but completely limp. That time, he’d fought it off and survived. This time, he reckoned he wouldn’t get that option.

He met his lord’s eyes across the table. Celebrimbor’s horror and devastation were visible, even through the smashed nose and smashed jaw and half his teeth missing.

“Don’t tell the treacherous misbegotten pile of orc dung anything,” he told his lord fiercely. “No matter what happens. No matter how I scream. Don’t tell him anything. And I’ll meet you in Mandos when it’s all over.”

Annatar, lounging nearby sharpening a knife, stood straight and smiled. “Let’s get started, shall we?” he said smoothly, walking over.

It… hurt. It hurt… a lot. Constantly, and with little reprieve. They didn’t need him to talk, after all. They just needed him to hurt, to get Celebrimbor to talk.

But occasionally, as they reheated the brands or swapped out knives, there would be a brief moment where he could gasp out, “Don’t – tell –” That was usually as far as he was allowed to get, but it was enough.

Celebrimbor wept. Every so often, when he could squint past the pain, he would meet his lord’s eyes in an attempt to be reassuring. Yes it hurts, but I will endure this and more to save our people. Don’t worry about me. Mandos will heal us both. Considering the absolute agony on Celebrimbor’s face, he wasn’t sure his message was getting through. He kept willing it through anyway.

By the time his rhond gave out, he had no mouth left to speak of, even if he could have . But had he had one still, it would have been stretched wide in a grin of triumph: not once had he flagged in his determination, and nary a word had passed Lord Celebrimbor’s lips.

Chapter Text

She had never thought they would be forced to kneel to Gil-galad. But Alagbor’s wound was getting worse; he no longer had lucid periods at all, but alternated between writhing and moaning, and fighting them as they sought to help him. His only chance now lay with the healers of Lindon.

It was possible, of course, that Gil-galad would not have mercy, would not allow Alagbor to be healed. But even if he chose that route, he would most likely grant them all a swift clean death, so there was that cold comfort, at least. And at this rate, they would all be dead soon any matter.

So they bore Alagbor, tightly bound as he howled curses and imprecations at them, towards Lindon and Mithlond.

The guards at the city gates crossed their spears. “Halt! Who goes there?”

Gaelivren eased her end of the bier carrying their companion to the ground, stepping forward. “We come in peace. And to –” Her voice cracked; she cleared her throat and continued determinedly, “– to beg for aid.”

She waited anxiously as the guards scanned their tiny band – tiny in truth, as long years of battles and skirmishes and war and more skirmishes had whittled them down from hundreds to dozens to fifteen to five – eyes lingering on Alagbor, who had fallen silent but was foaming at the mouth as he twisted against the ropes. “He was bitten by… we’re not sure what. It looked like a cross between a spider and a wolf. But we have no anti-venom to counteract whatever was on its fangs, and…” She trailed off, biting her lip. Perhaps it would be kinder to slit his throat and let him pass to Mandos, but they were all of them loath to lose yet another of their companions.

The guards consulted softly together in some Avarin tongue, then one pointed his spear at them as his fellow disappeared through the gates into the city. “You will stay here until we receive direction from the Palace,” he said sternly.

That was… fair. Gaelivren bowed in acknowledgment, going back to their group. “Let us eat and drink now,” she said softly. “We may not have the chance again for some while.”

Calaglar and Magoron eased the bier the rest of the way to the ground, Lothlilleth delving into the pack for the canteen and the waybread. Magoron took the canteen first, kneeling beside Alagbor. “Hold him still,” he said, and Calaglar dropped to his knees, catching and forcing Alagbor’s head stationary. Magoron dripped water into his mouth, clamping it shut until their wounded companion swallowed.

After that, the canteen was solemnly passed around before being handed back to Lothlilleth empty for her to tuck away in the pack. Everyone took a careful bite of the waybread, and then that too was gone. And then there was nothing to do but wait.

They were not left waiting long. The guard returned, with another walking at his side.

“Elrond?!” Gaelivren gasped.

He inclined his head, smiling faintly. “Gaelivren.” His eyes scanned their company, resting thoughtfully on Alagbor, and he gestured. “Bring him.”

She went to the foot of the stretcher once more, as Magoron and Calaglar took up their positions. She was grateful that Elrond had not brought anyone else to bear him, and had spared them the spectacle of refusing. No matter their weariness, they would not relinquish him into another’s care before they absolutely must.

They followed their former fosterling through the streets, a silent, grim little cavalcade. The citizens of Mithlond called out cheerful greetings to their king’s herald, looking curiously, and at times suspiciously, at the bedraggled band behind him with their writhing, spitting burden. Elrond, in turn, smiled and nodded to the people, but he did not stop, and indeed, quickened his pace as they approached the palace.

“Through here,” he directed them around to a side door. “I often use this when on my own errands,” he added, to her doubtful look, and quirked a smile. “His majesty is well aware of it. He has given permission for you to be here.”

…she was just as glad of that, she supposed.

Elrond led them through a dim passageway – it reminded her rather startlingly of Amon Ereb with its rationed oil and hard-won wood, and Himring in the cruel north before it – to a suite of rooms that could only be his private sanctum. Books of every subject and language lined the walls, except where there were maps and diagrams, and on tables and shelves and in cabinets, surgical implements and bundles of dried herbs and potions jostled for space.

Elrond moved around the sturdy oak slab that dominated the center of the room, gesturing to its surface. “Lay him on the table.” As they did so, he flitted about the room, gathering what he would need. “It will be neither pretty nor kind, what I must do,” he warned over his shoulder. “It will hurt him, and I will need to bind him down, but I dare not give him anything until I find out how the venom will react to any of my remedies.”

“We know, Elrond,” Magoron assured him. “We have seen healing before, even of new toxins.”

“We know he might be too far gone to save,” Lothlilleth said softly. “But… we had to at least try.”

“And we thank you for it.” Calaglar’s voice was much hoarser than it should have been, and Gaelivren wondered abruptly if he had been quietly giving up his ration of water and none of them had noticed. She hoped not.

“He’s not in his right mind,” she added hurriedly, trying to drive the thought away. “He… he’s been very… suspicious of us. So if what he says makes no sense, or if he is cruel, he doesn’t mean it. He’s just. Not right.”

Elrond briefly glanced up from his work at Alagbor’s head. “ I have dealt with altered mental states before,” he said gently. “ Through there –” he nodded to a second door, set between a potted plant in a niche and an early Númenoréan statue depicting Varda “–you’ll find meals set out. All of you can be most helpful, now, by going and eating them.”

Magoron looked like he was about to argue, so Gaelivren shepherded him through first. Lothlilleth followed after, Calaglar right behind her.

Elrond watched them through until the door shut, then looked down at his patient. “Well, Alagbor, this is a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” he murmured, moving around the table to tie each of his patient’s limbs to one of the table legs.

Alagbor slowed his thrashing to look for the new voice. “El...rond,” he said slowly, eyes narrowing, then hissed and yanked his hand free. “You traitor. So you have thrown your lot in with them, have you? Just another torturer? Well, I shall never tell you anything, you nor your scum brother, never, never, never…”

Elrond ignored his patient’s ravings, binding the second hand. “This is going to hurt,” he cautioned, holding a shining knife in a candleflame with one hand and palpating the wound with the other. “And I am sorry. But I need a sample of the venom, and your blood, and your flesh, and this is the most efficient way.”

Finding firmer flesh around the soft, almost soupy wound, he dug the knife in and gave it a quick circular jerk, popping out a small cone of skin and flesh. Alagbor screamed, arching, but Elrond disregarded this, picking up the sample in a pair of forceps. “I am sorry, old friend, but I do not have time to be gentle,” he said, moving over to a dish of crystal and dropping the dripping flesh into it. “You have done an admirable job fighting the toxin, but if it crosses the blood-brain barrier, you are done, and I do not think you can fight it much longer.”

He carefully lifted a drop of oozing brown onto the end of a thin steel rod. A flicker of his fëa analyzed the substance, and he narrowed his eyes at it before reaching hastily for a bottle containing a potion glowing dimly red. A drop of this he poured over the toxin, observed the reaction, frowned, shook his head, and set the needle aside to retrieve another.

Three more potential anti-venoms he tested, before finding one that performed to his satisfaction. This one, he carefully, apprehensively dripped onto the sample of flesh, observing it closely as it interacted with the blood and the skin.

Elrond straightened abruptly, turning back to his moaning patient. “We’re in luck,” he announced, returning to the operation table in three quick steps. “The poison does not seem to be one of the ones designed to cause fatality upon mixing with Elven blood and the antivenom. I am afraid it will rather hurt, though.”

He filled a needle, tapping the bubbles out before plunging it into Alagbor’s neck, free hand pressed firmly down on the Elf’s forehead to hold him immobile. Alagbor was screaming non-stop, at this point, but he was not the first of Elrond’s patients to do so, and the peredhel did not let it ruffle him.

Syringe emptied as close to the brain as was safely possible, he cast it aside, picked up the vial, and poured the entirety of its remaining contents into the wound before moving to stand with Alagbor’s head cradled in his hands. He sent his fëa pulsing into the other Elf, along nervous pathways and to the spinal column, easing the pain, blocking it, pulling it into himself.

His upper thigh burned in sympathetic agony as Alagbor howled, straining against the ropes holding him down. Sweat beaded Elrond’s forehead and hairline as he worked in concert with the antivenom, cleansing the cardiovascular system, the liver, the pancreas – everywhere the toxin had spread. His own voice went from a low urgent mutter to a shout, invoking Words of Power of Healing and Cleansing and Living.

When Elrond came back to himself, everything was silent. He was bowed over, his brow pressed to Alagbor’s, hands frozen to the sides of the soldier’s head. He stood straight with an effort, observing his patient.

Alagbor’s eyelids were fluttering, his breathing raw and ragged and his face pasty, but his fëa held strong and steady within his hröa. There was an ugly brown puddle on the oak table and the floor beneath it; the venom that had fled at Elrond’s Command, well-mixed with blood. No longer did Alagbor fight at his restraints: a slight twisting of his wrists was all that was left of his struggles, and Elrond wearily went to untie the ropes.

“I think I will let the others bear you to bed,” he murmured, swaying, and caught himself on the edge of the table. “And I think I shall go take a nap.”

Elrond looked frankly terrible as he stumbled through into the comfortable living quarters, carrying Alagbor. Magoron leapt to assist him, tenderly taking their companion. “He will live,” Elrond forestalled their questions wearily. “When he wakes, give him beef tea. Guest bedrooms have been prepared for you in this corridor, servants will come shortly to show you the way. Now I am going to bed. Goodnight.”

Chapter Text

Annamîr sat, staring blankly at the girl she had failed to save. She couldn’t have been more than forty-five summers – just old enough to get caught up in the fighting. Annamîr supposed she should close the dead girl’s eyes, but she didn’t want to smear the blood on her hands onto the poor girl’s face, too.

So she sat and stared, and the dead Sinda stared back.

Hands grasped her arms, pulling her up; Elvish hands, not orcish ones, so she didn’t fight them. They dragged her limp body along the cobbled streets – at one point, turning around so they were dragging her forward, not back – until they thrust her to her knees in front of… someone. Gil-galad, maybe. Too weak to kneel properly, she collapsed, sitting on her heels and holding herself up on her hands until her elbows buckled and she pitched forward onto her face.

“Kill me, please,” she begged quietly, turning her head slightly so her voice wouldn’t be muffled. “I don’t want to do this anymore. Please just end it.”

“Perhaps. In a few minutes. But I need you to answer some questions first.” Despite the callousness of the words, the voice was not cruel, or even furious. Just… controlled.

Annamîr’s breath hitched. “They said… no more violence. We would march on Sirion with shock and awe, we would, we would intimidate Elwing into giving up the Silmaril, we wouldn’t hurt anybody, wouldn’t kill anybody…”

“And yet clearly you did.” Silvery boots, stained red around the soles, moved into her vision, then their owner crouched. “Look at me, please.” It was spoken softly, gently even, but it was unmistakably a command, and Annamîr pushed herself painfully up until she could meet the clear blue eyes beneath the puckered brows and silver crown.

“Your majesty,” she whispered.

“How did you go from promised non-violence to this?” he asked, a wave of his hand encompassing corpse-littered street and blood-spattered soldier alike.

She shook her head numbly. “I don’t… I don’t know. I wasn’t near the front. Lord Maedhros, he, he was talking to – to one of the guards, or the lords, or perhaps the Captain of the Guard, I don’t know, I couldn’t hear what was said, but Lord Maedhros just – he just, he drew his sword and…” She closed her eyes.

“What did he do?” Gil-galad prompted, gentle but inexorable.

Annamîr took a deep shuddering breath. “He stabbed him in the throat. Everything descended into pandemonium, after that. We were all arrayed for war, and the Sirionites had no way of knowing we didn’t intend to come here to wipe them out…”

“Look at me,” he said again, and waited until she had opened her eyes to ask, “Where is Elwing? Her sons?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what happened to Elwing or the Jewel. They went after her, in her tower, but they did not have the Jewel when they came down. I think – I think they took the boys.”

Gil-galad’s face went grimmer. “I see. And why are you here?”

She swallowed hard. “I… deserted. I wanted no part of it. Many of us didn’t. Most who turned on them were cut down… I got away. I tried to help the wounded, but, but…” She was starting to shudder, and she couldn’t look at her hands. (She could feel it, though, the blood, dried on her knuckles and her cuticles and under her nails, she could feel it– )

“Please.” Her breath hitched and she realized in shock that she was weeping. When had she started weeping? “Please. I can’t – I don’t want – please, just kill me now.”

“We are not kinslayers.” Gil-galad stood, looking down at her thoughtfully. “We will take you back to Balar with us, and we will determine there whether your repentance is genuine. And if it is, a place will be found for you among our people.”

Annamîr stared up at him, uncomprehending. After a moment of silence, the king stepped away, and she let her gaze drift down the bloody street towards the ocean. Her mind was a hum of grey fuzz, and she let herself surrender to the nothingness.

Gil-galad darted a last compassionate glance towards the catatonic ex-Fëanorian. “See to it that she is kept warm, we don’t want to lose her to shock,” he ordered. “And remember – if Elwing or the Gem are found, bring them here at once.”

Chapter Text

Bagronk glared wildly at the fair-haired Elf smirking down at him. He tugged against the burning, biting rope binding him tightly to the tree, but it did not give even slightly – the Elf knew his job well.

The Elf drew a knife from his boot, casually sharpening it on a whetstone he removed from his belt, leaning back against the boulder behind him and resting one ankle on the other knee. The great wolfhound padded over, curling up at the Elf’s foot as he began speaking. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Celegorm Fëanorion, sometimes called The Hunter, sometimes called The Fair.” He paused to tilt the knife this way and that, admiring the play of light upon the blade. “And sometimes…” He lowered the knife and leaned towards Bagronk, teeth gleaming in a wolfish grin. “Sometimes, called The Cruel.”

He sat back and picked up his whetstone again, drawing it along the knifeblade. “My elder brother Maedhros likes to tell his captives that the stories of Elven brutality are about him, but he’s not the one named for it, is he?” He stood up, moving over to Bagronk and carelessly flicking the gag off with his knife, the tip catching Bagronk’s cheek and drawing blood.

Celegorm crouched in front of him, voicing going low and conspiratorial. “Y’see, the thing is, Maedhros, it’s all clinical to him. He doesn’t care, one way or the other, about causing pain. He doesn’t have the usual aversion to it, but he’s not like me, either. He doesn’t enjoy it.” He drew the knifetip gently down Bagronk’s cheek, leaving a thin trail of black blood behind it, to tap it against the orc’s lip.

“Lost your voice?” Celegorm asked softly, an unholy light shining in his eyes. “I suggest you find it, then, and start talking. Although, to be perfectly clear, I don’t mind if you don’t…”

Bagronk found himself less afraid of his former commander than of this feral Elf with his glittering smile and his knife like sharp ice. He started talking.

Chapter Text

Thranduil had been in worse situations. Much worse, even. Still, being stripped of his weapons and tied back to back with an ancient kinslayer in the very middle of a camp of orcs, goblins, and trolls some dozens strong, as those afore-named creatures danced around and sang – if it could be called that – of their plans to cook and eat their captives, ranked pretty high up there. “Please tell me you have a plan.”

“Why would you think I have a plan?” Maglor’s voice was lightly curious and faintly amused, as though they were discussing a picnic.

Thranduil frowned. His fellow captive had a point: when they had met, Thranduil had rescued Maglor from dangling by his right wrist on a cliff, a morbid echo of Maglor’s elder brother’s long torment. Luckily for Maglor, the orcs had strung him up only just out of reach of the ground, so a piece of driftwood had sufficed for his rescuer to reach him, rather than necessitating an eagle.

“I would think that after that, you would have formed a contingency plan,” Thranduil sniped, testing his bonds carefully.

“You are my contingency plan,” Maglor returned innocently. “Stop that, it tickles.”

“I am deeply flattered by your faith in me,” Thranduil grumbled, eyeing one of the trolls warily as it lumbered past and drawing up his feet to avoid being stepped on. “But I’d suggest you put that famous tactical mind of yours to work and come up with a way to avoid both of us being roasted and eaten alive.”

“Well,” Maglor considered aloud, fidgeting around, “I think our first step should be to get out of these ropes.”

“You don’t say?” Thranduil returned with withering sarcasm, twisting his head around in a vain attempt to see what his companion was doing. “What are you doing back there? Now it’s tickling me!”

“Stop it, you’ll draw attention,” Maglor scolded, not ceasing his own activity.

“I hate to be the one to break it to you, but we’re already the center of attention,” Thranduil remarked, wincing as a particularly poorly-scanned verse broke over his sensitive ears, describing in great detail the fate that awaited them.

“No, the concept of eating us is. We are being largely ignored,” Maglor corrected, and the ropes around Thranduil’s abdomen suddenly gave. “Honestly, I expected more precision from one who styles himself a king.”

“Your family would know all about self-styling kingship,” Thranduil said snidely, and swallowed a yelp as a knife nicked his wrist. “Really?!”

“Quit your whining, I can’t see what I’m doing,” Maglor grumbled, and then the ropes around Thranduil’s wrists fell away altogether. Thranduil squinted suspiciously, but as he had no way to prove that Maglor had cut him intentionally – and he supposed they had bigger issues right now anyway – he reluctantly let it go.

“I don’t suppose you happen to have any more of those?” Thranduil asked casually, resisting the urge to check the cut on his wrist and rub away the chafing burns left by the coarse orcish rope.

“Afraid not. It’ll be hand-to-hand until we get over to our weapons.” The orcs had despoiled them, but the runes and wards of protection against servants of the Enemy had done their job, and all the Elves’ gear lay still in a single heap some yards away. Thranduil eyed it dubiously, not much caring for the odds against them.

“You said that getting out of the ropes was the first step. Do you have a second?” he asked hopefully.

“Grab our stuff and run like Mandos?” Maglor suggested cheerfully.

Thranduil’s frown deepened. That wasn’t very dignified, but it was sensible, he supposed.

The troll lumbered back the other way. Thranduil drew his knees up again, pondering. “ I’m noticing a few obstacles to that plan,” he pointed out pithily, eyeing the various creatures about them.

“So pessimistic,” Maglor sighed. “On my three. THREE!”

T hey both erupted upwards, screaming ancient war-cries from a land long-gone.

“Gurth ani chyth ‘wîn!” Thranduil cried at the top of his lungs, charging pell-mell for his belongings.

“Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! Cottolvar noruvar ve lómë Anarello, I axor cottolvaiva siluvar nu Anar!” Maglor shouted at his side, voice reverberating through the entire camp and quite possibly for several miles farther. The orcs closest fell to the ground, clawing at their ears, howling in agony as they rolled back and forth.

The two Elves dove for their weapons and came up back to back, standing over the pile of the rest of their belongings, swords lifted in challenge.

“Well,” said Thranduil, thoughtfully, swinging his sword through a charging orc’s blade, arm, armor, torso, armor, and arm, “I would have preferred to go to Valinor the Long Way, but I suppose this works, too.”

“Not for me, it doesn’t,” Maglor said tetchily, seizing his opponent’s straggly hair in one hand and smashing the ugly face in with the other, “there is no Short Way for me, just Darkness. So I’d still prefer to live through this and take the Long Road.”

Thranduil frowned, decapitating an orc and continuing his swing to bite his sword deep into the trunk-like leg of a troll. “Well, when you put it that way… weren’t we supposed to be grabbing our stuff and running, anyway?”

Maglor grunted as he drove his sword through the mouth and into the skull and brain of a charging wolf. “Right. I forgot. On three?”

“THREE!” they shouted together, swung down as one to grab their belongings, and charged through the camp, screaming incomprehensibly. Their swords flickered and flashed as they fought off attackers from each side, turning ever and anon to knock aside whistling arrows targeting them from behind.

“Now what?” Thranduil panted as they left the firelight far behind – but not, unfortunately, their pursuers, who were determined to regain their rare Elven meal.

“Now it’s your turn to think of something,” Maglor panted back, and Thranduil wasted a moment and a breath to curse.

“This was supposed to be your plan!”

“I’m a big believer in equal opportunity!”

“I hate you,” Thranduil asserted passionately, looking around the surrounding countryside for a route of escape. A herd of strange, tall-necked animals met his gaze, and he eyed them calculatingly. “Actually, I might have an idea. Maglor, have you ever ridden a llama?”

~ ~~~~

“I cannot believe that worked.”

“So you’ve said.” Thranduil did not even bother to try and keep the smugness from his voice. “Maybe that’ll teach you to leave the planning to me. Toss me the bandages.”

Maglor obligingly rolled up the length of clean linen and lobbed it across the fire. Thranduil caught it with his uninjured hand, not looking up from his wrist. “I cannot believe, all of that, and the only wound I sustained was from my so-called friend, ” he groused.

Maglor rudely ignored this well-grounded complaint, watching Thranduil rinse the dirt and dried blood off his wrist . “ I’ve been meaning to ask. When you found me on that cliff – why did you save me?”

Thranduil’s mouth twisted. “I don’t know. Maybe I was just tired of being alone. Just now, why didn’t you run and leave me and save yourself?”

“Maybe I was just tired of being alone,” Maglor echoed. “And as a matter of fact, I do have a plan for our next move,” he added, leaning back and plucking a blade of grass to chew on. “Although I’m not sure you’ll like it.”

Thranduil glanced up from the bandages he was wrapping around his wrist. “Will it get us closer to Valinor?”

Maglor tilted his head. “It should.”

“Then I’m game,” Thranduil said determinedly.

Maglor smirked.

Chapter Text

The Mirror showed things that Were, and things that Are, and things that Yet May Come To Pass, but it wasn't always necessarily reliable. Galadriel could, of course, bend it to her will, but she had learned long ago that it was better not to do so save in cases of direst necessity.

Finding her daughter was a case of direst necessity.

It was tiring, forcing the Mirror to look where she willed, rather than following its direction. Galadriel was willing to spend every drop of strength she had to find Celebrían. Elrond had everyone he could spare out scouring the mountains, and the twins were tireless in their search for their mother. Even the Dúnedain Rangers were helping as they could.

But the goblin-caves of the Hithaeglir were deep and twisting and long, dangerous to penetrate and more dangerous to search. They had lost too many Rangers and Elves to them already.

Galadriel bent over her Mirror, bringing the full might of her formidable will to bear upon it. “Show me my daughter,” she whispered, sending forth her fëa into it.

The quality of the darkness of the water shimmered, shifting. The Mirror could not convey sound, but to Galadriel, it was almost as though she could hear her daughter’s anguished screams, muffled by distance. She pressed one hand to her mouth to hold back a sob, the other drifting to hover just over the water. “Celebrían,” she whispered, anguished.

But watching would not help her daughter. She turned her attention and the vision to the passageway, following it up out of the mountain, to the nearest entrance, then swooping high above the peak to view it as would an eagle.

She knew where Celebrían was being held.

~~~~~

Elrond stood on the balcony, his grip white-knuckled on the rail. Erestor had just born away yet another untouched, stone-cold meal. Elrond had politely rebuffed his worried seneschal’s attempts to convince him to eat, and now stood gazing at the rim of the Valley.

He had no appetite, knowing his wife was out there somewhere under torment.

The lightning-flicker of his mother-in-law’s probing thought moved across his mind, speaking his name, and he turned incredulous eyes to the path into the Valley. Galadriel?

Elrond, she repeated. Elrond, you must – you must make a map. What I am about to show you-

My lady, are you here? I do not see you-

I do not have time for foolish questions, child! Do you have pen and paper?

She was not, in fact, anywhere near Imladris, he realized, turning on his heel and rushing back into his study. He could hardly imagine the strain it was putting on her to establish a connection at this distance. Yes. I am ready.

He sketched the images she showed him, the shape of the mountain and the pass and the goblin-gate, the long twisting tunnels and the torture chamber. (He was grateful that she did not show him Celebrían’s torment, even as his fears grew.) He studied his completed sketches. I will show these to the next search party to return. We are expecting them within a couple of days, and the twins were to have returned fifteen days ago.

Very well. Ai, Elrond… Celebrían…

I know, my lady. I know.

~~~~~

She came back to herself slowly. Strong arms supported her, holding her up, even as a steady glowing fëa fed into hers. She turned, bending slightly to bury her face in her husband’s shoulder in a rare moment of vulnerability. “I found her, Celeborn,” she whispered. “Elrond – he will send someone for her. She will be safe soon. Please tell me she will be safe soon…”

“She will,” he murmured, turning his head to kiss her hair. “Elrond and the twins will see to it. You have done well, my love. Come. Rest. Our daughter’s rescue is nigh.”

Chapter Text

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!”

Celebrimbor jumped at his uncle’s voice, thundering out of their shared quarters. “Excuse me?”

Celegorm strode over, handsome face twisted in rage. His hands snapped out, seizing Celebrimbor by the shoulders and giving him a single hard shake. “Where have you been!” he ranted into his stunned nephew’s face. “We’ve been worried sick about you, your father has taken our men and gone out to scour the woods for you! Where have you been?”

Celebrimbor wrenched free, slapping his uncle’s hands away from himself. “I don’t know what right you think you have to manhandle me!” he said furiously. “I was out hunting, as you would know if you and Atar would ever pay the slightest attention to a word I said! I don’t need you checking up on me, I’m not a child anymore!”

“No, just the biggest headache to grace the pathways of Nargothrond,” Celegorm snarled. Celebrimbor drew back, stung with hurt and mounting anger, but his uncle did not pause long enough to let him reply. “If you don’t want to be supervised like a child, Tyelpë, then start acting like the adult you claim to be!”

C elebrimbor found himself shaking with fury and the longing to punch his uncle’s nose in. “No one else blames me for wanting to get away from yours and Atar’s endless slinking and scheming,” he spat. “Perhaps if the two of you were more self-aware, you wouldn’t blame me either. And perhaps if you noticed my existence more often, you’d be well aware I don’t need either of you to come to my rescue!”

He spun on his heel and stalked out before Celegorm could rally from this attack to return to the battle. Dumbfounded, the elder hunter watched his nephew slam the door. With a roar of frustration and rage, he spun around, slamming his fist into the stone wall before reaching out to his brother to alert Curufin that his errant son was safely returned.

Chapter Text

He stood in the rough-hewn doorway where he had been standing the past several days, glaring fiercely out, and brandished his pickaxe. The chipped iron blade was covered in a thick viscous layer of black blood, half-congealed, on top of another layer, dried to the metal. Drops of it clung to his face and his hair and his thrall’s rags where it had sprayed when he buried his makeshift weapon in the face of the orc captain, and in the faces and bodies of each orc who had tried to gain entry since.

The woman cowering in the hastily carved out chamber behind him was not of his tribe, and he could not understand a word of her speech. But he knew a pregnant woman when he saw one, and he knew enough of the orcs’ foul tongue to understand the gruesome fate they had planned for her and her unborn babe. He did not intend to let that befall her while there was still breath in his body to prevent it.

The orcs were clustered further down the passageway, grumbling one to another. “Garn! He fights like a demon,” one complained.

He bared his teeth in a diabolical grin, twirling his pickaxe and taunting them. “Which one of you fancies getting obliterated by a demon next, scum?”

One of the orcs spat in disgust. “Get one of the Big Guys to deal with him,” it suggested.

This was met with general agreement, only one dissenting voice raised. “What if he runs off?”

This is met with hoots and jeers. “Where will he go, maggot-brain? Deeper into the pits? Maybe a secret tunnel? Shut yer fool mouth and come on!”

Jostling and shoving, the orcs retreated to fetch one of the fell spirits that oversaw the mines.

Swaying on his feet, he turned and beckoned to the woman. “Quickly, now,” he urged, bundling her out of the tiny chamber and further down the rough mineshaft. He thrust his pickaxe into her hands, pointing to an offshooting tunnel hidden behind an outcropping of rock. “This will you take you up beyond the borders of this hell-hole, you’ll just need to break the last few feet. Go, now, quickly!”

She clutched the pickaxe tightly, looking up at him anxiously and saying something in her incomprehensible tongue. He took a stab at what he thought it might be, answering, “Better me than you. And if somehow I survive this, I’ll make myself another one. Now go!”

After one last searching look at his face, she ducked into the tunnel and disappeared from view. He turned and rushed back toward the chamber he was defending, stumbling once from weariness. The orcs had not returned with the overseer, so he sank down, leaning back on the unforgiving rock. He was… so tired… it had been so long since he had slept… it would not hurt anything to let himself rest for just a minute…

He woke to a lash of fire across his face. The orcs laughed and howled as he recoiled, jerking to a sitting position and raising a hand to his face – just in time to catch another burning whip-thong across his arm, jerking at his wrist. He looked up; the overseer today was the demon of flame and shadow.

The Balrog reached down, winding its fingers into his matted hair and dragging him upright. There was naught he could do but dangle there in its grip as it meted out his punishment with its fiery whip. But even held helpless, he laughed his defiance in its face.

Once every inch of his skin was blackened and blistered, his rags falling from his wasted frame in sifting ash, the Balrog threw him down, flinging him onto the scraping rock. He gasped in agony and pushed himself upright, shoving himself until his back was pressed to the side of the mineshaft. Its work done, the Balrog turned away and lumbered off back up the passage, leaving the orcs to their meal.

They crept closer and he surged up, snapping at their clawed reaching hands. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a feral snarl as he dared them to come closer. “Demon you called me? Then demon I shall be! A fey spirit, bound not in wolf-fell or bat-fell or fell-fire, but in Elven-form! You think to eat me? A dinner dearly-bought I shall be!” He lunched, hands outstretched, broken nails jagged like claws as he seized the orc nearest him and scrabbled for its eyes.

A howl of agony echoed through the mineshaft. Yelping and cursing, the orcs fell back, then turned tail and ran up their passageway, leaving their wounded companion to his fate. His screams echoed up towards them, lending speed to their flight.

The screams broke off, replaced by wild fey laughter. “Yes! Flee, scum of foul corruption! Flee, cowards of the murk! A demon of your own devising has risen, do you fear to face me? Beware, for a day shall come when I shall slay you all!”

Chapter Text

He watched warily from where he lay on the floor, weighed down by his chains. His mouth was still bleeding heavily from his last bout of defiance, so he lay silent for now. The Lieutenant paced slowly about the room, toying with a glittering knife.

“You see, I just haven’t been able to get this project to come together. I can’t figure out why, and it’s very frustrating. But it occurred to me that it is my own shortcomings holding me back, my rigid adherence to strict parameters. That what my creation needs is an element of spontaneity.” The Lieutenant glanced over, smiling as though sharing a joke. The captive suppressed a shudder of fear and glared back.

“And then I remembered something that my Master told me, after his return from the Land of the Valar. A story that had amused him: how the creator of the Silmarils had asked of his niece a strand of her hair, and how she, uneasy and offended, had refused to share her power…”

The Oath rose at the mention of the Jewels, hot and choking, but terror vied with it for control. The captive did not like the look in the Lieutenant’s eyes one bit.

“Tell me, Nelyafinwë,” the Lieutenant said sweetly. “Is it true? Does the power of the Elven fëa lie in your hair? Will my project work if I lace some of the remnants of your father’s genius into it?”

The captive could not repress his shudder this time, mounting dread seeking its escape from the confines of his body.Still he pulled his blood-glued lips apart to utter a scathing insult in defiance of his tormentor. “Please…”

The Lieutenant looked delighted. “It does? Ai, how wonderful! And a son of Fëanáro from which to take, no less!” He began prowling closer.

Horror rose visceral in the captive’s throat, and he tried to drag himself away from his approaching tormentor despite the weight of the chains. “No – please – don’t touch me –” he gasped, struggling to throw off the cumbersome links and move further away.

The Lieutenant clicked his tongue, reaching down one long slim hand to grab the captive’s throat. “Now, now, you should know already that running will only make things worse,” he chided, laying the cold flat of the blade against the trembling captive’s cheek. “Hold still, Nelyafinwë, this shouldn’t take but a minute…” he murmured, sliding the dagger back along his prisoner’s face to the blaze of copper-red behind his ear.

The captive gasped in agony, arching, and the Lieutenant giggled. “Oops. Such a shame, now there will be blood in your beautiful hair. Ah well, at least I didn’t take the whole thing – you can still hear, can’t you?”

The prisoner squeezed his eyes shut, keening softly in agony. The Lieutenant gently brushed the ear-tip out of the red hair, letting it fall unheeded to the floor, and continued moving the knife through the fiery locks, his other hand holding his captive cruelly still. Strand after strand, tendril after tendril, fell to the hot iron floor and lay curled there like licks of lava.

The captive struggled weakly, weighed down by chains and horror, motivated by horror and violation. But his strength was nothing on the Lieutenant’s, worn down already by months – or perhaps mere weeks – of torture and starvation. His fingers clawed unavailingly at the tight grip at his neck and jaw, iron links clanking with his every move.

“There.” Finally, the Lieutenant released him to crumple in a twisted heap on the floor and the heap of chains. Setting the knife aside, the torturer reached down and tenderly brushed all the cut hair together, lifting it as though it were a rare and precious resource. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Well, aside from your ear, of course. Ai, don’t fret so, Maitimo – I’m afraid your ear-point won’t grow back, but your hair will. And I’m certain your mother would love you even with short hair. Oh – that’s right. She doesn’t love you at all, anymore.”

The Lieutenant smiled down at his sobbing captive, before carrying his bounty over to his worktable. He spread the hair carefully out, delicately pinching individual strands and working them into his project, humming softly along to the melody of the disgraced Elvenking’s heaving gasps and tears behind him. “Ai, yes,” he murmured in delight. “Ai, Nelyafinwë, look what we have created together! It’s working perfectly!”

He lifted his own device, staring at it with wondering eyes, before turning to display it to his captive. “Nelyafinwë, look!” he urged excitedly, and the trembling prisoner lifted his head to stare at the device in apprehensive dread. The Lieutenant huffed, aggravated. “Do you not admire our art together, Maitimo? Never mind. You shall be the first to test it, and then you will appreciate it more fully.”

The captive flinched back with a low moan of terror as the Lieutenant carried over his newest hellish instrument.

Chapter Text

The one they were calling Russandol blinked himself awake. His arm ached, but the weeping wounds across his body had been carefully tended, cleaned and salved. In all the time he’d been here, no one had held a burning brand to his skin (aside from cauterizing his stump,) or taken a knife to him, or claws, or bitten chunks out of him. The wounds scattered across his body had been allowed to heal, and were now covered by silvery scars.

The light held steady, the same cool blue he remembered from his childhood when he would go exploring caves with his family, or out beyond where the Light of the Trees reached. He remembered how proud his father had been after closing the shutters and unveiling his lamp for the first time, and Nerdanel had laughed and kissed her husband and told him how proud of him she was.

The off-white linen walls hadn’t changed at all, either. Still hanging straight and smooth, hastily-stitched runes around the doorway, for warmth and protection and holding heat in. There had been no flicker or shimmer in them, no change.

Findekáno, very nearly ever-present, sat slumped in the chair beside the bed, eyes glassy as he walked the dream-paths. Occasionally the healers or his father would hustle him away on the pretext of getting food or some real rest or even just changing clothes. But usually, Findekáno sat vigil by the bedside, warmly encouraging and gently teasing by turns as needed. Never cruel, never harsh.

He looked over as the door-flap opened and Ñolofinwë stepped in. Russandol pushed himself into more of a sitting position. “Uncle,” he murmured hoarsely, keeping his voice low to avoid waking Findekáno.

Ñolofinwë sat carefully on the edge of the bed, studying the former captive’s face and eyes. “Nephew,” he whispered, voice unexpectedly unsteady. “How are you feeling?”

Russandol took a deep, shuddering breath, carefully analyzing his own body’s sensations. “I feel… well,” he returned, his surprise leaking through into his voice.

Ñolofinwë’s face tightened slightly, then he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Russandol in a tight hug. Russandol blinked over his shoulder, a tremor going through him, then he hesitantly lifted his left arm to wrap about his uncle in return.

Safe. He was… safe.

~~~~~

The Demon shoved aside another load of rock and crumbling soil – and was slapped in the face with a wash of cold, fresh-scented air. He pushed his head and shoulders out of the hole, pickaxe held defensively in front of himself. But there were no orcs or other fell creatures – only the spicy firs and the clean good dirt and the silver-fire stars above.

He took a great gulp of the clean air, then turned and pointed his pickaxe back towards the hell-hole he had left. “I swear on the stars above and the good earth below, I shall one day contribute to your downfall,” he promised. This so sworn, he turned his back on the stronghold of evil and plunged into the trees that he had once considered his friends.

He had escaped.

~~~~~

“Nelyafinwë.” A grey-robed, grey-veiled lady moved forward, gently scooping up the mess of open wounds and burns that had appeared. “Ai, Nelyafinwë,” she said softly, tears dripping from beneath her veil. Everywhere they landed on the mutilated fëa, the lesions closed over and the burns were healed. “Ai, child. You have done much ill, but you have shown great valor, as well. But you can rest, now. Rest, child, and heal.”

~~~~~

“Anorlothil! Anorthon!” A very familiar voice rose in a shriek that cut across Imladris, and then a brown-haired elleth was rushing for them with outstretched arms.

“Naneth Naneth Naneth!” Anorlothil took off running, her elder brother right behind her. Their mother dropped to her knees, clutching them both to her and sobbing in relief, kissing one, then the other, then the first, then the second again.

“You are safe, oh my children, you are safe, we did not know, oh, my loves,” she wept, clutching them to her as though she would never let go.

“Nana, Nana, we missed you so much!” Lothil babbled. “We’re so glad to see you! Where is Ada?”

Their mother pressed another kiss to her daughter’s small head. “He is with his company, lovely. He has joined King Gil-galad’s army, he will be here soon.”

Anorthon hugged his mother as tightly as he could. “I’m glad you’re here, Nana,” he whispered.

She kissed his cheek. “I am so, so grateful to have found you, ion nin.”

~~~~~

The first time Astaldórë saw a tall redheaded nér, she reached up to run her hand over her teeth at half-remembered pain. But, no – Lady Nienna had promised her that she was safe here, that none would hurt her or hold her past against her. There was forgiveness, life and joy in Valinor, for all who wanted it. Her own pleasures were no longer those of murdering and destroying: she had been given a new life.

She looked up at the great University of Tirion, where she was studying to be an architect. Brushing brown hair from her face, she smiled brightly and stepped through the doors.

~~~~~

The light was… bright, after Mandos. Celebrimbor squinted as his eyes adjusted, taking in the graceful trees around the rippling silver-glinting lake and the grass like bright emerald velvet. He let out a shuddering breath, then held his hands out in front of himself, marveling at his fingers; long and strong and whole once more, uncallused and unblemished and straight.

“Tyelperinquar!”

He turned at the sound of his name, just as a redheaded juggernaut slammed into him. His grandmother, half-remembered and very much real, clung to him, sobbing incomprehensible words as her hands patted over his body and she kissed his face and his hands and his hair. Behind her, a golden cousin approached, smiling wetly. “Tyelpë,” Finrod said again.

Celebrimbor lifted his arms, holding Nerdanel tightly. “Haruni. Finrod,” he said, stunned, then a bright smile lit his face and he lifted Nerdanel, spinning her around. “I’m here, Haruni. I’m here,” he laughed.

Nerdanel lifted her head to him, laughing too. “You’re here, oh, pitya, Tyelpë, you’re here.”

~~~~~

Elrond leaned against the rail, watching the green island, and the white-and-gold town, and the tall slender white tower growing ever closer. He could pick out faces on the docks, now, a press of people come to greet the Ringbearers. A knot of golden heads were forefront, plus one white-haired woman. Beside him, Galadriel had started weeping but was smiling brilliantly through her tears, waving with an enthusiasm he had never seen from her.

Elrond’s eyes moved on from Arafinwë and his family. Time enough to meet the Noldoran and Noldotári and Crown Prince Finrod and the rest of the family later. There was another he was seeking…

There. A flash of silver on the docks, a face sweet and beautiful and perfectly remembered with none of the wracking pain and sorrow that had marked it last he’d seen.

With a choked cry, Elrond flung himself over the side of the ship as soon as the grey timbers nudged the dock, not even waiting for the ramp. A moment later, he had an armful of laughing, weeping silver and white, and was kissing her face all over. “ Celebrían, vanimelda, gi melin, gi melin, I love you, I love you, are you well, oh my dearest-”

“Elrond, Elrond.” She tipped her face back, and he had never seen such a beautiful sight – her eyes were shining bright, glimmering with tears and joy. Her face was unlined, whole and healthy once more. “My love, I am well. I am well.” She reached up, running gentle fingers over his cheek, and he realized he was weeping as well.

Elrond lowered his head to hers once more and let the rest of the world fade away.

~~~~~

“I don’t think Ossë is happy about us trying to get through!” Thranduil hollered from his place at the ship’s wheel, the wind whipping his voice into the air and flinging it like a child with a ball.

“Oh, don’t get your knickers in a knot!” Maglor yelled back from where he was struggling with the lines, halfway up the mast. “This is nothing – he’s playing, probably hasn’t even noticed us. You’d know if he was really upset at me being here! Besides, I can see the edge of the cloud!”

Thranduil gritted his teeth, not particularly reassured, and fought to hold the wheel steady. He glanced – rather pointlessly – at the compass bound tightly in front of him. It had stopped working some days ago, and Maglor had hopefully opined that it meant they were now in the Uttermost West and had only to keep sailing the same direction, and eventually they’d see Aman.

As their purloined little ship plunged deep into a trough, Thranduil could only hope that they were still sailing the same direction.

He fought the wheel again as Maglor fought the sails above, and the water that had fallen away beneath them suddenly rose again and launched them towards the sky. Thranduil thought a prayer to anyone who might be listening – Ulmo, Lord of Waters, Uinen who restrained her husband’s temper, Nienna to please take pity on them – and brushed salt spray from his face onto his shoulder and squinted at the top of the wave and hoped with all his might that they wouldn’t capsize.

Above him, Maglor shouted something that was lost to the wind and the waves. Thranduil tilted his head to squint upwards, struggling to keep his footing on the rain-slicked deck that was rapidly approaching a ninety-degree angle. “What?” he yelled back.

They crested the top of the wave as it broke into a swell, and carried the hapless ship forward. Sunlight broke over the deck as it evened out, and Maglor slithered down the mast to fling his arms about a considerably started Thranduil. “I said look!” he shouted in the other Elf’s ear. “Thranduil, look!”

Thranduil frowned, unwinding Maglor’s arms from around his person, and looked. “What…” he began unsteadily.

Maglor began dancing around the deck, laughing and weeping. “It’s Tol Eressëa! It’s Avallónë! We made it! Thranduil! We’ve made it!”

Thranduil leaned forward over the rail to peer at the gold-and-white town. “ We’ve made it. ”