The Day of Doom by AdmirableMonster  

    If in the Day of Doom

    one deathless stands,

    who death hath tasted

    and dies no more,

    …

    then all shall not end,

    nor Earth perish.

    — The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, "Völsungskviða en nýja", Upphaf v.14

The ponderous craft bobbed gently from side to side, making minor gravity adjustments to the solar wind that felt more like the motions of a craft in water than a rocket traversing the stars.  Hakari vu Kimah squinted through the viewport, brushing their too-long bangs out of their eyes.  There was a red blinking light at the side, a proximity sensor going off.  But as the proximity sensor’s location was impossible, they were forced to assume that there was a misaligned circuit array in one of the battery cells.  Thus far, a diagnostic had turned up nothing.  They chewed on their lip.

“Kimah Star-pilot,” said a creaking voice politely, and they turned.  Somehow they had not noticed the whispering hum of the little propulsion units in the robot’s feet on his approach.

“Elnor.  I was just thinking of coming to find you.”

A black eyebrow rose, nanometer-sized ink particles scrambling to rearrange themselves across the porcelain face, skidding over the golden seam above one vacant eye socket.  “Is something wrong?”

“There must be, but I can’t find it,” Hakari replied, leaning back and stretching protesting muscles.  “There’s a proximity sensor going off—but it’s lighting up as if there were something beyond the Edge.”

“That’s strange.”  Elnor approached, hovering by their shoulder.  One slim, jointed hand reached out, trailing across the panel.  “Hmmm.  Let’s set the viewscreen to visible spectrum instead of ultraviolet.”

Hakari shrugged.  The viewscreen shimmered, and the view changed.  A thin silver line appeared, branching and crooked—like a crack.  There were mirages at the Edge, sometimes—when light or particles reached the curtain of nothingness that separated the universe from that which was not, they often reflected backwards in strange, not-quite-understood ways.  They had never seen a mirage with such clear edges before.

“We ought to record this—I can’t imagine what it’s reflecting.”

Elnor was eerily silent.  The robot did breathe—metabolizing oxygen much as a person might—but he seemed to have forgotten to do so for a moment.  When he spoke, they could not quite read his voice.  “That is no reflection.”

Shaking their head, Hakari turned to look at him.  “What do you mean?” they asked.

“The Door of Night,” breathed Elnor.  “Have we truly come so far?”  He shook his head, putting a hand to his forehead.  “Ai, we have no choice.  Hakari—Kimah Star-pilot, I mean—this is the end of—everything.”  He turned to them, and his single grey eye caught theirs.  “Will you sail your craft to bring word to the place that must have it?  It will not be an easy journey.”

“What—what do you mean?”  That long silver line in the viewscreen was putting out little branches, as if it were truly a crack, as if the crack were lengthening.

“Do you trust me?” Elnor’s voice was pleading.  “I am sorry, Hakari, I am truly sorry, and I will do my best to explain on the journey itself, but there is no time.  We must take the Aging Whale to a place she was never meant to go, and we must do it now, or it will be too late.”

“What do you mean—where—” They mastered themself after a moment.  “Yes, Elnor, I trust you,” they told him swiftly.  “After what you did for us in the blizzard on Orpheus 9—we’ll make ready to go immediately.”

They reached for the alarm system—and it went off before they had done anything.  “What—”

“Hakari!  Hakari!”  Stellaffina burst into the corridor, panting hard.  White feathers dripped from her dark curls, fluttering softly towards the chrome-white floors of the Aging Whale.  “An—Anomalous intruder in the sleeping quarters—they took Stinky!”

“They what?” Hakari echoed.  They had a sudden, hysterical feeling that they must be part of a comedy broadcast—a slapstick pantomime of the first order.  It wasn’t possible—wasn’t reasonable—for all of this to be happening at once.  And who would take Stinky?

Elnor said something completely incomprehensible that still sounded remarkably obscene.  “Get Okashi Star-reader.  I’ll tell him where to lay in his course.  Come.  We must hurry.”  He set off at a rapid pace down the corridor towards the navigation space.  

Making a small, slightly hysterical sounding noise, Hakari followed him, grabbing Stellaffina’s hand as they went.  Okashi had clearly been reading in their small kitchen, since he still had a mug of hot tea in one hand and was looking up with a confused expression on his face, brushing his blond hair out of his eyes.  “What’s—”

“We must fly,” Elnor told him.  “Come.”

As befitted Hakari’s oldest friend, Okashi only needed a moment to compose himself and a single glance to them to get their confirmatory nod before he was nodding himself.  “Where to?”

Elnor distractedly rattled off a series of coordinates to somewhere that sounded very much like the middle of nowhere.  Okashi slipped into the navigator’s chair, and Hakari into the commander’s.  Stellaffina sat cross-legged on her pillow as she always did.

“Ready for jump, Star-pilot,” Okashi said firmly after a moment.  

“Right.  Jumping.”  As Hakari brought their hand back to the lever that would take the Aging Whale to hyperspace, they felt something shiver through the ship as if something had exploded behind them.  But that was impossible—nothing could explode beyond the Edge of the universe itself.

The stars stretched around them as hyperspace took them.  Hakari drummed their fingers on the arm of their commander’s chair, feeling a sense of falling with nothing to catch them.  That silver crack—beyond the Edge of the universe, where there could not be anything.  Could there?

They had been traveling for perhaps five minutes when Elnor took a deep breath.  “Let me see the navigational readout, please,” he said.

“It doesn’t work in hyperspace,” Okashi protested, somewhat unnecessarily, since everyone knew that.  Nothing worked in hyperspace; you only hoped you had not miscalculated the ship’s initial momentum and that you would be spat out where you were supposed to be and not in the middle of a star.

“Let me see it.”  Elnor bent over Okashi’s shoulder, one slim white finger tracing across the chaotic static.  “There you are, Straight Road.  Let’s see if we can make it onto you even from here, eh?”

His fingers moved across the controls.  Hakari barely bit their lip in time to keep them from shouting at him, their fingers tensing against their command chair.  The controls ought to have been locked; there should have been no way for Elnor to take control in any case, but holographic golden runes were hovering around his hands and head, projected just above the surface of his skin, and the controls were moving—they were moving in hyperspace, and that could not, it could not be safe, it could not be—

The Aging Whale rattled from stem to stern.  A terrible little puff of air fell out of Hakari’s mouth.  Then blinding light flooded the cockpit, and there was an impossible noise.  “There you are,” Elnor murmured, in that fluting lyrical language he had taught them all after a drunken wager some years ago.

The hyperdrive made the usual grinding noise that Hakari was always planning to get fixed—that wasn’t dangerous, only annoying—and they fell out of hyperspace with a bone-jarring rattle-thud, and every alert in the cockpit seemed to go off at the same time.

Proximity alarm.  Atmosphere.  The Aging Whale wasn’t rated for atmospheric flight, and they shouldn’t have been able to drop from hyperspace into an atmosphere to begin with.

“Hold on!” Elnor shouted, his hands flying over the controls.  “Okashi, I need you to—”

“On it!”  

Stellaffina gave out a muffled cry of distress as the localized gravity well of her pillow started to give out.

“What is happening!” Hakari barked.

“We’re going to need to make a water landing in the next—ah—three minutes or so,” Elnor replied.  “I should have expected that.  Sorry.”

“Ah.”  Hakari swallowed.  “Stellaffina, did you ever make those modifications?”

“Yes,” Stellaffina replied, in a strained voice.  “But they haven’t been tested.”

“Well.  I suppose we’re doing a field test,” Hakari replied.  “I trust you,” they added, because they did, and on the maybe-not-so-small off chance they were going to die, they didn’t need Stellaffina dying thinking that Hakari didn’t trust her.  

The Aging Whale rattled again, and orange flame blossomed around her viewscreen.  Hakari took a long, deep breath.  

“Everyone take crash positions,” Okashi said steadily.  He bent over the console.  Hakari breathed shudderingly again and forced themself to relax as they braced themself.  The temperature in the cabin was rising, slow but steady.  Their mind went sharp, and time slowed down, as it often did under dangerous circumstances, but there was nothing they could do but sit and wait.

Through the red flames across the viewscreen, a vision of water appeared.  The Aging Whale roared towards it.  Hakari shut their eyes.

* * *

Light swam before Hakari’s vision.  Their head ached terribly, and the Aging Whale seemed to be spinning violently.  No—that could not be right.  It was definitely the illusion of spinning, the kind of vertigo-spacesickness you ended up getting after spending too long in a ship and not long enough grounded to a planet.

They lay and blinked, breathing deeply and trying to anchor themself to their body.  After some minutes, the awful rotating feeling seemed to dim a little, and they were able to sit up and look around them.

They were lying on a white bed in a high chamber that appeared to be made from some sort of gold-veined white stone.  Thin, diaphanous drapes hung and fluttered in four great archways that were not quite doors and not quite windows.  Slowly, they got up to look around and found that someone had changed them out of their flight suit.  They were now wearing a long sleeveless white tunic, and there were bandages visible beneath that, where they must have been injured.

They made their way carefully and slowly to the archway, testing that their bare feet would carry them, and pulled aside the drapes to look out.

A gentle slope rolled away downwards outside, and a little breeze laden with warm soft scents ducked inside to play around their body, sliding teasingly up the flesh beneath the shapeless tunic.  Cloth fluttered against their skin.  The slope was covered in brambles laden with clusters of tight maroon berries.  

“Pssst!  Hakari!” Stellaffina’s fluffy dark head poked out from behind an archway or a pillar further down the line of openings.  “Oh, I found you!”

“Stella!”  Hakari slipped out and found themself on a thin lip of smooth stone, like a low window-sill.  They ran over to her, and then, finally, her slim hands were in theirs and their face was buried in her frizzy hair, inhaling a scent that wasn’t quite right—a hint of Stella’s sweat, yes, but beneath an unusual sweet old odor that reminded them of their great-grandmother’s library somehow.

“Where’s Okashi?  Is he alright?” They asked as they managed pulled back a little, running their hands across her shoulders.

“I don’t know.  I just woke up.  Where are we?”

Hakari frowned, looking around.  “I don’t know either.  But, Stella—good job.  Whatever happened, the Aging Whale stayed together well enough that we survived the landing.”  

She dimpled and tossed her head.  “Obviously.  Come on, Hakari, we’ve got to find Okashi and Elnor.”  And Stinky?

“Yeah.”  It was like any unexpected landfall, Hakari told themself.  The most important things were caution and unobtrusiveness.  That crack lurked at the back of their mind, but they pushed it away.  “All right.  Let’s go.”

They went back into the room that Stellaffina had come out of.  It was just like the one Hakari had woken in—an airy chamber all in white and gold.  “I haven’t tried the door yet,” Stellaffina reported.  She was keeping tight hold of Hakari’s hand, and they really didn’t see any reason not to let her.  There was some strange oppressive thing in the air that laid heavily on them.

Carefully padding over to it, they laid their ear against it.  “No sign of any of our possessions?” Stellaffina shook her head.  Shame.  Hakari didn’t exactly use their blaster much — they weren’t even a very good shot—but somehow it made them feel better to have the familiar weight on their waste, especially in a place like this.  “All right.”

There was no sound from outside.  They tried the door and found that it opened soundlessly with no resistance. Then they blinked, because they were looking directly at a giant hominid a good two or three feet taller than they were.  He had long red hair, pointed ears, and luminous eyes, and he was entirely naked.

“Uh,” said Hakari, forgetting all their first contact training.

“What,” said the giant blankly, in the language Elnor had taught them.  “Secondborn?”

Taking refuge in formality, because it was the only way to get words on their tongue, Hakari said, “I am Hakari vu Kimah Star-pilot, and this is Stellaffina va Kimah Star-speaker, of the Aging Whale.”  They bowed stiffly.  “We greet you in the manner of your people?”

The giant cleared his throat, sounding dazed, but he responded in a surprisingly polite tone of voice.  “I am Nelyafinwë Maitimo Russandol, called Maedhros Fëanorion, and I—” his voice wobbled with something like hysterical laughter, “I don’t think I am in Mandos any longer.”

They might have stood there for quite a bit longer, if Elnor hadn’t chosen that moment to come round the corner with Okashi and someone else that Hakari didn’t know.  He looked the same as ever, his slim robot body hovering a few inches above the ground.  There might be an extra crack or two, but the reinforced body had held well.

“Okashi,” Hakari breathed, putting out a hand, and he was at their side in an instant, taking their hand and squeezing it hard.  He was not as demonstrative as Stella, and besides the circumstances were less private, but he was here, and his presence was all that Hakari really required.

“I’m so sorry,” Elnor said rapidly in Common.  “This must be very confusing for you, but Elrond—” he gestured to his companion, and then he looked up at the red-haired giant, Nelyafinwë-Maitimo-Russandol called Maedhros-Fëanorion, and for an instant his words seemed to fail him.

“Atar,” gulped the person at his shoulder.  “Atar, you’re awake.”

“What is going on?” asked the giant.  “Elrond…?”  He stretched out his hands.  “Elrond.”

“We—we—there are folk at the Máhanaxar,” Elnor said faintly, then he seemed to remember himself slightly.  “It’s—been a very long time, uncle.”

A pause; a very weighted one, to Hakari’s well-tuned diplomatic senses.  Then the giant held out both his hands, eyes widening, voice shaking, and said, “Celebrimbor?  What happened to you?”

The ink rearranged itself to give the porcelain mask the appearance of a wry smile.  “I lived.”

* * *

Celebrimbor had never actually seen the Máhanaxar, and it was not quite what he expected it to be.  At least, he did not think he had seen it.  Even with an Elvish memory, it had been an impossible amount of time since he had set foot in Valinor.  Perhaps it had changed; certainly he had.  It seemed quieter, somehow; emptier.

“We have heard nothing from the Valar in centuries,” Elrond explained rapidly, and it seemed so strange to see his face again.  “And for a long time, people have been falling asleep, with no waking.  Especially those of full Elvish blood.”  There was a queer haunted pain in his face. Celebrimbor kept looking at him and thinking that he saw Maglor, but it seemed that Maglor had not been seen in many Ages of the world.

“Perhaps he went with his Man in the end,” Elrond said, as they made their way towards the Máhanaxar.  “I hope he did.”

“His what?” Maedhros croaked.  He seemed dazed, though he was growing more aware rapidly.

“He loved a Man named Halbarad,” Elrond said softly.  “But it was very long ago now.  I have not seen him since then.”

The conversation died as they came over the last hill and saw the Máhanaxar itself.  It did not lie in a building or hall, as Celebrimbor had assumed, but was instead a great amphitheater, sunk into the green valley between the rolling hills.  A wide mossy stone circle in the center was surrounded by the wobbling shapes of mossy benches that eventually faded into the hillside.

As they crested the hill and began to walk down towards the center, they saw a loose cohort of Elves and Maiar standing around it and murmuring, rubbing their eyes as if they had recently woken from a deep slumber.  Elrond gave a cry and began to run, and a silver head looked up at the side, holding out her arms.  Beside her, sunlight glittered gold on threads woven through dark hair.

Maedhros made no sound, but only took a slight, staggering step forward, and the figure put out a hand.

“Go,” Celebrimbor told him gently, and Maedhros ran, his heavy, long limbs eating up the space between him and the other.  Celebrimbor looked away and upward, so he was looking up when light shimmered off white feathers and the figure of a great eagle began to circle downwards.  Dangling from its claws, looking very small and vulnerable indeed, was Stinky.

* * *

The three of them looked at each other.  Elnor was already swearing in that thick, profane language of his and accelerating down the side of the hill.  “Hey!” yelled Stella, the first of the trio to react.  “That’s our cat!”  She took off after Elnor.  Hakari grabbed Okashi’s hand, looking inquiringly at him.  He nodded, and then they were running as well.

The rightness of it slotted into place, suddenly.  Just another away mission—one star in the sky, soft and red and old-looking, spilling sweet and golden light across what were probably chlorophyll-based plants—they had that green look, though Hakari couldn’t be certain.  Just another time that Stella bowled on ahead and left the other two to run after her.  She was still shouting.

Elnor reached the top of the circular stone structure first, but Stella was close behind him.  As Hakari and Okashi came up behind them, the earth seemed to tremble beneath them.  Stinky, looking terribly, terribly small, flattened his ears back and hissed at the eagle, which was now winging its way back upwards.

Take thy true form. The words seemed not to be spoken so much as suddenly there, like some great truth of the universe that was known and had been known and would be known for all time, impossible to revoke, impossible to deny.  

Stinky screamed, and Elnor gave a breathless, horrified exclamation, before shouting, “You can’t—”

The cat’s little body arched backwards, and he flailed his paws pathetically in front of him as if trying to ward off an attacker.  A terrible tempest seemed to spring up before him, plastering his already flattened ears to his head and carrying him upward—his form twisted, and his back legs were pulled back—and back—and back—

Fur stiffened and then melted, dripping downwards like wax.  His muzzle seemed to split in half and peel back, to reveal a fragmented but vaguely humanoid countenance.  It was not unlike Elnor’s porcelain face, but it wasn’t white scored with gold-lined cracks, it seemed like a whole jumble of metals stitched together in patchwork—and how, how, how had Stinky’s face become this—and the cat was still screaming, a high, impossible wail that only became less feline and more desperate with each passing moment—

“Stop this!” Elnor cried.  Then, “Annamir!”

Fur scattered into the wind, and long gold-wire hair was blown back and away from the revealed face.  Below, the body that had been dragged out of the cat’s was like a metal statue’s, bent and warped, with fingers that were like nothing so much as long sticks of charcoal.  Above—one yellow-gold eye was the same as Stinky’s had ever been, but the other—the place where the other should have been was a divot at the base of a terrible ripped-out chunk of the mask-like face—and it was bleeding fire into the wind.

Hakari watched in horror as the creature who had been Stinky dropped to his hands and knees.  Liquid gold spattered across the rocky ground.  “Four winds’ breath—” Okashi gasped.

“What have you done?”  Elnor started shoving his way through the crowd.  This was well above Hakari’s pay grade at this point, but Elnor was their friend, and if these were Elnor’s people, then they probably wouldn’t be breaking any first contact taboos, so they shrugged and began expertly elbowing people out of the way.  They managed to get Elnor right through and into the middle of it with a minimum of bruises to them or to any of the bystanders, which they considered to be a job largely well done.

There was a whole group of figures ringed around the innermost circle of the amphitheatre that Hakari had somehow not seen until this moment, and they seemed not to be able to look directly at them.  It wasn’t that the figures were bright, exactly, nor dark.  It was just that they seemed not to be where Hakari looked.  Somehow they only existed in the periphery of vision, and yet there was a strong, terrible feeling of absolute reality about them, beyond anything Hakari had ever seen, except for once, on a vision quest with an old friend on Soronúmë XV.  It had been one of the most sacred experiences of Hakari’s life, and these figures seemed to have something of the same majesty.

A majesty which Elnor summarily ignored, shoving his way past them with his elbows just as Hakari had just done to get him this far.  He made it to the center of the whole ring and put his hands on Stinky’s shoulders.

“There is no time for this!” he shouted.  “The Door of Night is opening, and you are busy holding a sham trial for the last ember of a penitent!”

A queer, preternatural stillness fell across the space, and there was only the sound of Stinky’s ragged, crackling breaths.

One of the figures stood, and Hakari had an impression of myriad white wings beating at the air in the wake of a storm.  “Shall justice not be done?” asked a voice that seemed to come from the sky itself as much as the figure before them.

“It is the final battle,” said another voice, a dreamy whisper in the back of Hakari’s mind.  “All the sleepers are waking.”

And then, in a proclamation that was not even a voice, not even words but only a certainty that was not there one moment and then the next, there was the judgement that this was the end.  There was another standing figure, too, seen only in the glimmer of lensed starlight about a black hole.

“We must ride to battle,” exclaimed a slightly more normal-sounding voice.  This speaker was a person so tall they dwarfed even the vast redhead Hakari had met before, with legs like treetrunks and an immense bow that he was swinging down from his back to string.

“There is no more time for justice, no more time for tears,” said a misty raincloud piled upon itself into a vaguely feminine form.

“There is no more time at all,” chuckled a person with long red hair and a long red beard, whose pointed shark-like teeth bared in some kind of eagerness, snapping at the air.

The white wings seemed to bow a great head.  “Then we go to battle, I suppose,” they said.  Their attention turned to Elnor.  “The Dagor Dagorath has come upon us, wakening all the kindred who have slept so long, and as its herald the grandchild of Void-cursed Fëanor, holding by the hand Morgoth’s greatest servant.  I mislike these omens.”

Elnor only shrugged and put Stinky behind him.

* * *

The ground was shaking.  Celebrimbor had lost track of Hakari, Stellaffina, and Okashi, and frankly could only be glad of it.  He had no idea what the Valar would think of three full-blood Secondborn who had crashed a starship into Valinor, but he did not particularly want to find out.

Annatar had not spoken since his fána had been torn from him—he did speak, sometimes, the same old sweet voice issuing from a different mouth—but now he only looked at Celebrimbor with his one remaining eye and shook his head, despair written in the lines of his shoulders.

“Annatar,” Celebrimbor said urgently.  “Annamirénya.”

Spreading his burned and blackened hands in a gesture of helplessness, Annatar ducked his head.

“You can’t give up,” Celebrimbor told him.  “Listen to me—you must not give up.”  He had heard all of Annatar’s fears and knew them as well as he knew his own.  He was sure that the old persistent voice was whispering in his lover’s mind of oaths sworn of fealty and the unbreakable nature of such things—Annatar had repudiated them, long ago, but at his lowest points he sometimes reverted to those fears, and the Valar had hardly welcomed him kindly.  “Please,” Celebrimbor whispered.

The ground continued to shake.

* * *

It was clear that they had landed at a chaotic time.  And what, Hakari wondered, did all of this have to do with that crack in the Edge?  Both the unknowns and the complications of this particular landing were mounting.  Worse, the movements of the crowd had torn them away from Elnor and Stinky—particularly unfortunate, since those were the two of their party who evidently had the most information on what was going on.

At least they had Stellaffina’s and Okashi’s hands in theirs.  As long as they had their crew, they could face anything.

Above the crowd, they caught sight of a familiar red head—the giant from before, who had called Elnor Celebrimbor.  “Excuse me,” Hakari said, then determinedly began elbowing people out of the way.  After a minute, Okashi and Stellaffina caught on and began to help. 

They came out into an area of cleared earth surrounding two large dead trees, whose naked branches reached to the sky.  Between them, a hardy silver moss was growing across two large stone cauldrons, one that lay broken on its side.  Above the cauldrons was another one of those thin, silver lines in the air, like the one that Hakari had seen reflected at the Edge itself.  It grew longer and wider, and then part of the air seemed to open like a door.  There was a figure inside—small at first, and then growing until it stood only half a head shorter than Nelyafinwë-Maitimo-Russandol, who stepped forward with an incoherent cry, then halted.

The person who stepped forth had a pair of sharp black eyes and a very stubborn-looking chin, but whatever expression their face had been making rearranged itself when they saw the redheaded giant.  Oh, thought Hakari.  That’s complicated.  The last time they’d set foot on their own soil, their older parent had looked like that.  The following conversation had been one of the best of Hakari’s life, but had also hurt more than a crash landing.

The new person shut their eyes.

“Father,” said Nelyafinwë-Maitimo-Russandol.  “I—”

“Whatever you’re going to say, don’t,” said the newcomer, tightly.  “Not until I tell you that you have never failed me, Nelyo.  Never.”

Nelyo stumbled backward a pace, and his gold-braided companion caught him.  His father scowled, but Hakari thought it was the kind of scowl that meant he was trying very hard not to start crying because there was a task that needed to be accomplished first.

“The Valar seem distracted,” said Nelyo’s father, his eyes sweeping across the glade.  “Where are your brothers, Nelyo—do you know?”

“I,” croaked Nelyo, and he went to his knees.

“Stop,” snarled the companion, and Nelyo’s father stepped backwards.

“I’m sorry,” he said, deliberately gentling his voice.  “I’m sorry, Nelyo—I only wanted to know so I could apologize.  It isn’t your responsibility.  If they’re not here—” His voice cracked a little.  “Never mind.  No matter.”

He turned once, in a tight circle—took a deep breath.  Clenched and unclenched his hands, then looked upward and cried out, “Erú Allfather, hear me!  As I, Curufinwë Fëanáro, am returned into this world, I renounce my oath and its binding upon my sons and myself!  I give them up!  I give up the Silmarils—let their light be freed and the work of my hands shattered utterly!”

His voice resonated and bounced around the clearing.  Utterly, whispered the echoes.  Utterly, utterly, utterly…

In the blue sky above them, a new star blossomed.

* * *

Celebrimbor felt the world change even before Annatar cried out, a sharp pain above his heart that made him wince.  He looked up, then followed Annatar’s pointing finger into the bright haloed object in the sky above them.  It contracted and expanded to the rhythm of his heartbeat, and then, like a bleeding wound, light began to fall from it—not sunlight, airy and luminous, but a strong, silver, heavy light, falling like rain, not like air or energy.

“Come on,” he said tersely, taking Annatar’s hand. “That was my grandfather’s Silmaril.”

The world seemed unmoored beneath his feet as he began to run.  So had Celebrimbor felt when the Straight Road bent away from the Earth, but this—this was deeper.  A sense came upon him that all things were unraveling, unmaking.  The earth shook.  The light fell—and then, with a crack and a shudder, the earth split open ahead of them, a red rent in the peaceful flower-covered meadow ahead.  Light boiled up from within it.  Celebrimbor heard Maedhros’s voice shout hoarsely from somewhere ahead of them.

Annatar caught his arm.  All around them, Elves and Maiar were running and crying out in confusion.  Of the Valar, the only sign seemed to be those strange ripples in the air.  Manwë, Celebrimbor realized, was very near, a sense above his head of swirling air and rustling feathers.

The earth shook again.  The light reached the ground.

“Cover thy eyes!” The words were not spoken aloud, but the impression came strongly through the bond, imprinting the concept directly onto Celebrimbor’s fëa.

Annatar’s warning came almost too late: though he managed to get one hand up in front of Celebrimbor’s face, the other eye was left unprotected.  Light seared through the delicate cables that functioned as Celebrimbor’s optic nerves, and even through the metal of Annatar’s hand, he saw an upturned orange mushroom growing rapidly.  He thought he cried out, and when the light cleared, he was on his knees, and the earth was shaking more than ever.

“The Trees!” someone shouted.

“Annamir!” He was gone—he was gone.  Where had he gone?  Half-blind, Celebrimbor stumbled back to his feet, struggling to maintain balance even on his wheeled feet with their internal stabilizers.  Then he halted, staring.

He didn’t think he had ever seen them from this close, and his memories of that time before time were strange and dream-like, but still something inside him recognized them: Laurelin and Telperion, the Two Trees, who had gone dark countless eternities ago, their light snuffed out by Ungoliant’s venom just after the loss of Celebrimbor’s father’s father’s father.  Now they blossomed once again, though Laurelin’s light was threaded with a muted crimson and Telperion’s a soft blue.  Above them, above their petals softly glittering and wafting earthwards, a dark crack had appeared.

Celebrimbor had recognized it at the Edge, and he recognized it now, as the crack strained, as the very space around it bulged and distorted.  Intricate runes—more intricate than tengwar, for the language they encoded was more deeply knotted into the reality of their world than any other—sprang to life around it.  A hollow boom sounded.  The air shuddered.

Then, with another boom, a crack, and a final rending noise, the Door of Night broke open.

It had been millennia since Celebrimbor had seen Morgoth in the flesh, but he had never forgotten it.  He no longer looked the same.  His form had lost most of its corporeality, and he seemed like a great long formless mass of darkness with many thin sharp little legs carrying him along the ground.  Ichor dripped slowly from him to sizzle upon the earth that bent and shook beneath his immense weight.  Like a terrible centipede he boiled forward, and the assembled crowd watched as he raised a central bulbous protrusion that must function as a half-forgotten head.

Celebrimbor felt himself caught and frozen as that massive lumpy thing tilted to one side like a confused child.  Three points of wan blue light appeared, and a ghastly white mask-like face formed around them, with a terrible gash forming the mouth.

“MAIRON.  COME FORTH.”  The words emerged along with puffs of greasy grey smoke.

“No!” Celebrimbor shouted, but his voice was whipped away by the wind.

“Stop!” someone else called, and he did not know if it was a Vala or a Maia or someone else entirely, but the flaming, metallic figure burst out of the crowd too quickly to be stopped.  Celebrimbor swore in the Black Speech, because Annatar looked tiny in front of the terrible master who had called to him.

“Dost try to evade my summons, Mairon?”  A black tendril wrapped around the burning fiery form.

“Annamirënya!  The Oath is broken!” Celebrimbor screamed.  “My grandfather’s oath!” But his voice was too quiet, and he did not think Annatar had heard it at all.

“And so his greatest servant is recalled to his side,” Manwë said heavily from somewhere in the space above Celebrimbor’s head, his voice not so loud as Morgoth’s, but loud enough.  If Celebrimbor had had spare breath for it, he would have shouted a very obscene epithet at the leader of the Valar.

“Ah, little flame,” Morgoth hissed.  “Thou art changed.  Dost not greet thy master on bended knee?”  He stood up, the smoke at the end of his body splitting to form a grotesque distorted parody of two legs.

Annatar seemed so small, dangling from his grasp.  Celebrimbor did not think he had spoken a word since arriving in Valinor, and now he was only shaking his head.  

“Ready thyself to stand at my side,” Morgoth ordered him, and now Annatar did speak, finally, his voice cracked and hoarse with pain but wholly audible, “No.”

A murmur spread across the entire field.  Celebrimbor broke away from the main crowd and began to run towards them, knowing he was too far away to reach them.  But he had to get to Annatar, he had to.

“Need a lift?” A spray of water came up and nearly soaked him from head to toe, and he found himself blinking in surprise at Hakari, on a small landspeeder—probably one of the emergency vehicles from the belly of the Aged Whale.  Stellaffina and Okashi and another Man Celebrimbor did not know were crowded onto it as well, but there should be just room for one more person.  Okashi reached out and grabbed his wrist and swung him up with them.

“No?” Morgoth echoed blankly.  “Thou canst not refuse me, Mairon.  Thou art mine.”

Fire wreathed Annatar’s struggling form as the landspeeder roared to life and began to devour the ground between them.  “I—am—not—thine!”  The final word echoed across the whole churning field.

Morgoth growled.  Celebrimbor found himself screaming Annatar’s name as the darkness constricted around his lover—his husband—his best friend.  “Thou durst?  Thou art naught but a Maia—and the Maiar were made to serve.”

The flames about him flickered weakly, and then all of a sudden, there was a soft little popping noise. Annatar’s form shrank three sizes, and one lightning-fast little paw shot out and swatted Morgoth’s face, just as if Stinky had been woken from a nap and was irritable about it.

Morgoth roared and reeled back, as if that tiny touch had been enough to sting, and he flung Annatar away from him.  Celebrimbor cried out again.  Annatar’s tiny form hit the flooded ground in a too-small splash of mud and water, and he vanished among the tufts of grey-green grass.  “No!”

“We’ll get him,” Hakari said calmly.  Their green eyes were alight with excitement, and Celebrimbor wondered how much of the situation they understood.  Probably enough, he supposed.  Hakari was the kind of person who would seem eager for adventure of the world was in the processing of ending—which, in fairness, it was.

A ripple passed through the ground beneath them, and the land-speeder bucked and nearly flung them off. Stellaffina yelped and kept them from falling, and Okashi was steadied by the other Man.  

“To me!” Manwë cried.  He had become more visible when Celebrimbor looked back, a storm contained within a vaguely person-shaped outline and crowned with feathers.  The folk of Aman surged forward.

“Get me as close to Morgoth as you can,” said the other Man, the one Celebrimbor did not know.  His mouth was a grim line, but his eyes were sparkling as much as Hakari’s.

“Annamir,” Celebrimbor said involuntarily.  Grief threatened to hollow him out from inside.  “Annamir.”

Stellaffina took his hand, and Okashi put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.  Hakari only revved the landspeeder and leaned forward.  It was not really meant for this sort of swampy half-water travel, and the engine was beginning to whine with effort, but it did not give up.  None of them were going to give up, were they?  Not now.

Things became chaotic rather quickly.  Morgoth’s forces and the forces of Aman were clashing—probably.  People getting near Morgoth himself seemed to be going down quite quickly, Celebrimbor noticed, and then he realized why. 

“Stop,” he said, putting a hand on Hakari’s arm, and they looked at him with wild eyes, but they complied. “You four,” he said.  “You can’t go any closer, do you understand me?  You’ll have to wait here.”

“Why?” Stellaffina broke in.

“Because you’re adventurous, not suicidal,” Celebrimbor told them.  “You are all mortal, and he—” he raised a hand to point at the great black shadow, at the terrible shadow that lay beneath the shadow, across the land.  Everywhere the shadow passed, the vegetation withered and died and flaked away into ash, leaving nothing but dry earth or sterile water.  “His touch will drain your life in an instant.  No—not his touch.  Just his proximity.”

“Hazard suits, then,” Hakari said crisply.  They pressed a button, opening the cupboard beneath the main dashboard of the landspeeder.  “Oh good, I was afraid there would only be four.”

Celebrimbor choked.  “Did you not understand me?”

Those green eyes looked into his.  “And what of you, Elnor?  Your body is made of a polymeric blend; you metabolize oxygen, even if you do breathe more slowly than we do.  Why exactly do you think you’ll be so much safer?”

The creation of his own hands, the one that bound his fëa to the world, that kept him from Fading, shuddered.  “Because I am—” But the Elves were dying, too. 

“And I will not be cheated of my vengeance,” said their mysterious fifth.  “Morgoth destroyed everything I ever cared for, and I will make him pay.”  His hand fell to a black blade sheathed at his side.

“Hazard suits it is,” Celebrimbor said, with a rueful laugh.  “I hope you know that you might all die.”

“That seems to be how today’s going, yes,” agreed Hakari.  “But that thing seems like bad news, and besides, he hurt Stinky.”

They’d pulled on hazard suits under other circumstances, Elnor and his three friends.  They’d often had help from one of the inhabitants of the planet they were passing through. On a few memorable occasions, they had needed to rescue Annatar.  Not having hands and his tendency to fling himself into danger to protect others had left him vulnerable before (but never before for years upon years upon years had he faced his erstwhile master, never since turning his heel, never since he and Celebrimbor had made their vows to one another.)

Come on, Celebrimbor told himself.  Remember how to be just Elnor and Stinky.

After pulling on their hazard suits, they continued on foot.  Hakari, as always, took the lead.

“I should—I mean, Stinky’s my—”

“All the more reason I should lead the op, Elnor.  You’re compromised.”

There was no sense in trying to repeat his grandfather’s mistakes.  Elnor fell into step behind his captain.  They forged through the water—not rapidly, but still forward, still progressing.  Slowly but surely, they made their way closer and closer to Morgoth, until they passed into the area of dead earth and mud that surrounded him.

The hazard suits did their job.  Elnor felt Morgoth’s presence as a sudden cessation, a gap, a silence—he had been so long out of the world that even now the Void lingered around him, and in the Void, the Song was drowned out.  But there was air preserved in the hazard suits, and they were made of material that did not easily decay, so the Song lingered around them, longer than it had around those poor others who had tried to fight him.

Hakari moved in first, testing a blaster, and when its energy splashed uselessly across Morgoth’s chitinous flesh, they pulled out their energy sword, crackling with power, but this did not seem to be enough either; it bounced off harmlessly.

Already, Elnor could feel the weight of emptiness pressing upon him.  The hazard suits had bought them some time, but not an infinite amount.  They needed a plan.  They needed—

He rose from the water still in the form of a cat, spitting fire, his skull broken and fire leaking through it into the wind. 

“Annamir!” Elnor cried out.  He took a step towards him.

“Stinky!” exclaimed Hakari, and the cat gave them both a very un-cat-like grin.

“An oath goes both ways,” he croaked.  “I think I am owed some recompense.”  He opened his mouth and leapt forward, fluid feline grace limned in flame.  Shining like tempered steel, his jaws slammed shut around Morgoth’s ugly heel.

The ground shook with Morgoth’s terrible, pained scream in response.  He reared up; that awful white mask-like countenance whipped round to face Annamir and his four companions.  

“THOU WOULDST DARE?”

Annamir danced backwards and, with as much nonchalance as if Stellaffina were scolding him for having attacked her feet again, delicately licked the back of his paw.  Celebrimbor reached for him, took a single stumbling step before Morgoth’s great white face struck forward, the black neck extending like the spine of a bird—

There was a dull thud and a shk sound like a key sliding home in a lock.  The Man was there, between Annamir and Morgoth, one hand held out before him and the handle of his black sword smoking in his hand.  It looked as if the blade was missing, the hilt pressed right up against that awful white porcelain countenance.  

“Die, creature of darkness,” the Man’s raw voice said into the sudden odd stillness.  “For I am Túrin Turambar, and thou laid’st thy curse on me and mine.”

Morgoth screamed.  His neck flailed back, body spasming in great serpentine coils of black mist and sizzling ichor. The earth began to shake. Celebrimbor took two more steps, and he found that Annamir had turned to him as well, and he had him in his arms.  The slim feline form melted into that cracked and broken humanoid form, his piecemeal true soul of riven and reattached metal.  “Well, now we match,” he said softly. He raised his fingers as if to brush Celebrimbor’s face but the facial plate of the hazard suit turned them away.

“Annamirenyë,” Celebrimbor said, as if it were the only word he knew.

The one remaining eye slid away slyly, as it often did when Annamir was prevaricating harmlessly.  There were dark stains at the corners of his mouth. “You were right.  Even the ancientest oath may be broken, if only you can find the strength to let it go.”  He stumbled against Celebrimbor as the rumbling of the ground became more intense.  Smoke was rising around them.  

Something stung Celebrimbor’s fingers, and he looked down to see that one glove of the hazard suit was covered in oozing gold.  “Annamirenyë—”

The grain boundaries of his husband’s form were coming apart.  “I will always love thee,” Annamir said fiercely, one hand catching at Celebrimbor’s shoulder.  “If thou know’st nothing else, know that.”

A raw noise fell from Celebrimbor’s throat.  The wind howled.  The shaking of the earth grew greater still.  Fire ignited beneath his hands, a great warm fumarole, and then dissipated.  Three drops of gold spattered against a hillock of muddy earth.  Celebrimbor’s hands were empty.

The world ended.

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The sky is a high, arching vault of blue canvas with a few white clouds scribbled on it here and there.  Bees, cicadas, and frogs sing, a long and lazy droning susurration.  The heat is soporific, but not oppressive; the air is fresh, laden with the scents of cut grass and rich moist earth.  The grass is soft beneath Celebrimbor’s back.

He blinks his eyes slowly.  At his side, a warm and familiar presence is stirring.  Turning his head to the side, he sees a slim and beautiful form crowned with masses and masses of coiled red hair.  Hesitantly, Celebrimbor runs his hand along his companion’s naked shoulder.  He is warm and real beneath the touch.

Two gold eyes open, filled with motes of light.  “Always,” Annamir purrs, voice smooth as velvet, and Celebrimbor has to smooth that red-gold hair away from his face.  Has to lean forward and kiss him, deep and lingering.  His flesh is soft and yielding to the touch, and a moan vibrates out of his throat and into Celebrimbor’s lips.

“I dreamed…” Celebrimbor whispers.  Vague dark images rise in his mind that slip away when he tries to focus on them.  “Where are we?”

Annamir looks up, looks around, stretches, long and loose-limbed, casually erotic.  “Don’t know,” he says, with a shrug.  Then, with a cat’s singlemindedness, “Love me, I have missed thee.”

A great tree arches away above them, and they are tucked away safely between two of its immense roots.  The grass beneath them is as soft as a bed.  Celebrimbor presses his face into Annamir’s chest, feeling the beat of his heart solid beneath his brown-gold skin.  Annamir makes a soft, breathy sound and moves against him, and Celebrimbor draws his lips across that lovely sternum, catches a nipple between his teeth and teases at it.

“Oh—oh, Tyelpë, oh—” Annamir moans, as unguarded as Celebrimbor has ever heard him.  Slim fingers card through Celebrimbor’s hair, timidly at first but growing bolder as Celebrimbor begins to kiss his way up Annamir’s chest to his throat.  He squirms, and his erection presses into Celebrimbor’s stomach.  Then, “Oh!”  

Celebrimbor pulls back.  “What is it?”

“I—am pleasantly surprised by my anatomy,” Annamir tells him.  “I don’t know why.”  An insistent hand lands on Celebrimbor’s shoulder, pulling him back down.  “Don’t stop.”

There is something gentle in the air.  In another time, another place, there might have been questions needing answered, but here and now, it is like a weight has been lifted from Celebrimbor’s shoulders that has always been there.  Don’t stop.  

“Whatever you want, love,” murmurs Celebrimbor, as he slides a hand between Annamir’s legs and slowly teases at his erection.  Annamir purrs and whines and digs his fingers into Celebrimbor’s back.  With a soft sigh, Celebrimbor pulls himself up and kisses Annamir on the mouth, and Annamir wraps himself around him, arms and legs twining behind his back, pressing them together, naked skin against naked skin, silky smooth and warm as a forge-fire on a cool day.  Celebrimbor groans, sinking into his husband’s warmth and losing himself in those touches.

They tussle a little, rolling first to one side and then to the other.  Annamir sinks his teeth into Celebrimbor’s shoulder, and Celebrimbor hisses with pain and swats him.  A little tongue swipe makes for a fine apology, and Celebrimbor can hardly stay angry when he could instead cup Annamir’s hips and squeeze that warm, yielding flesh.  Annamir laughs and wriggles against him.  “Fuck me, Tyelpë,” he murmurs happily.  “Actually, I want to fuck you—can I?” Before Celebrimbor can even answer, he continues, changing the request a little.  “Can I fuck your thighs, Tyelpë?”  Slim hands ghost down the tops of Celebrimbor’s naked legs.

“Stars, yes, please,” he manages to get out in a strangled voice.

His Maia gives a pleased-sounding little purr.  “Hold me tight,” he demands, and Celebrimbor feels a choked emotion in his throat at how easily, how greedily Annamir is asking for what he wants.

“Only if you hold me tight too,” he retorts, and it’s easy for him too.  He wraps his arms around that slim back.

Annamir bucks, cock slotting beautifully between Celebrimbor’s thighs, his breath roughening.  His hands clutch at Celebrimbor’s back, and he presses kisses along Celebrimbor’s neck.  He’s hot and hard, silky-slick and perfect.  He’s here, he’s safe, and that’s all Celebrimbor needs to feel like home.

With a soft little cry, Annamir spills, and the warmth and soft sounds and the scent of his sweat all smear together into a shimmery blur for an instant—an orgasm so gentle Celebrimbor barely registers it, drawn out of him without a sound.  Panting, they lie back against the grass.  Celebrimbor kisses Annamir’s forehead.

They have lain like that for a few minutes, their breathing evening out, a pleasant drowsiness settling across them, when they hear the sound of light footsteps in a syncopated cadence.  When Celebrimbor looks up, he sees three cats—a fluffy black queen, a large swaggering blond tom, and a slim calico.  The calico strides forward confidently, sits down and licks their paw in a delicate and strangely familiar way.  The name Hakari rises to Celebrimbor’s mind, and when he looks at them and their eyes meet, though he does not hear words, he gets the sense that these three have been sent to fetch him and Annamir, to discuss ways the new world might be put together.

Chapter End Notes

maybe more inspired by Ragnarok but with a touch of Arda Healed :)

  with thanks to BloodwingBlackbird and kimikochi for tireless cheerleading
 

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