The Name of the Fire by Kios  

Chapter 1

For a while, Fëanor does not register any change. Darkness surrounds him, but that is nothing new. In Mandos there was plenty of it. Gentle shadows had thrummed in stone and tapestry, murmuring false lullabies of silence and healing that he never bought. Light was a rare thing, made reverent by its scarcity, granted solely to those who submitted—as if tempting souls with its potential presence would somehow convince them to unravel. 

To him however, it was a taunt, an insult, a cunningly crafted illusion of the memory of what he had created to lure him into the Valar’s trap, and become their blind worshipper like one of those foolish Vanyar. 

So Fëanor did what he has always done when confronted with something threatening: he blocked it all out with fire. And as consequence, as they have always done when confronted with resistance, the Valar segregated him from light completely. 

Curse Mandos and his damned schemes to the Void!

But Fëanor prides himself in being a maker at heart. His passion may be light and fire; but that does not mean he is reduced to nothing in their absence. 

No, he simply creates his own. 

Thus he had glared with a brilliant flame, burning down Halls to the point of unravelling; until walls and floors evaporated into mist as thin as a line, and he was left walking in a shapeless dark. 

The absence of light becomes the absence of…Everything. 

He begins to notice that something is off when nothing pushes back. He feels a strange weightlessness, a sense of being afloat within a space without air. There is no opposition to his fire, his defiance, his will. As an eminent craftsman he knows it is a universal law that where there is a force there is always an equal and opposite response to it. And for as long as he can remember he has felt this responding push: in life there was always opposition—either to his words, his hammer, his deeds—to which he had responded and manipulated in turn; in death so far he has been the one opposing, and he has grown used to external pressure upon his spirit. Its weight had given him strength, because it gave contrast, definition, and confirmation that he was succeeding in keeping everything out. 

But this darkness does not seem to provide anything to push against. It is as if no substance exists which can allow a reactive force; no present medium in which his fire can form and be fed by. Fëanor expects entrances, levels, limitations, sequences—but all are gone. There is only vastness without distance. An endless night without any horizon. Blackness that is so utterly void of light that colour itself becomes mere fantasy. 

He finds it very annoying indeed.

Out of habit, he turns sharply on his heel. It is his signature move, meant to establish disapproval and nominate objection; once upon a time, it was his baseline, his means of escape in confrontations he deemed beneath him. 

Except now, the motion feels hollow, undefined, like something has been stolen from it—but he knows that the movement was resolved exactly as intended. 

He tries turning again, in what he imagines is a different direction—only to meet the same issue. 

Impatience heats up.

Overtaken by the urge to reassess his spiritual form, he looks within himself. It is the only precious thing he still keeps that is utterly his own; he would loathe to see it gone, or disfigured. He re-measures the structure of his hands, his face, his garment, visualizing from memory what they are supposed to feel and behave like, and comparing that against the present. 

They are as they should be; their weight remains solid and continuous even when all else around him has failed. Distance still functions inside the boundaries of his fëa, though it takes much effort to keep it. He holds his hands before his face, and can only see them if they are very, very close—and even then, it is more of an impression of hot fingers against his face, while his mind fills in the gaps of their appearance.    

Suddenly, dread creeps in. 

He reaches for the familiar pulse of time, thinking that it, at least, would answer to him. It is there—or something like it is. What once was a steady rhythm is now a broken interval, weak and fragile like steel that has been stretched too much. It is countable only if he insists on it, and even then, it does not readily form. When he tries to name the seconds they slip away from his grasp, leaving only a faint imprint of progression that is soon forgotten. In its wake only silence remains, whole and absolute. 

Fëanor dislikes silence. It stands for decay.

Anger rises, familiar in the bite of its heat, coming in wild tongues of flame that rear up like countless snapping mouths. He welcomes it like an old friend, for it has never failed him before, never forsaken him. When Morgoth came knocking it had wrapped its coils around him and spilled sharpness from his lips; when he faced uncertainty and scorn it had held him in a lover’s embrace and scorched a path forward; and now it returns to fuel his will, lending strength in the face of obscurity…

And the belief that he can outlast the darkness. 

It directs his thoughts to what is most dear to him. Like a circle completing its orbit around a center, his mind loops back to the Silmarils. Retracing their memory gives him strength where none can be found externally. He recalls the light he had focused, the brilliance he had shaped into being, the perfection he had made eternal; and though he is lost to them, he knows that somewhere in the world they still live. 

And as long as they endure, he will persevere. 

He then conjures the faces of his sons, of Nelyafinwë foremost and Curufinwë proud. Of seven wills as sharp and strong as his own. They will carry on his legacy—they must. He is certain of it. They shall not fail to avenge him, to finish what Morgoth started. He did not raise them to yield at the first sign of trouble.

So he gathers his fire and sets it against the darkness.
 

For a while, it is enough.