The Road Not Taken by Prackspoor  

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

The roars of the Valaraukar and the sound of battering rams smashing themselves to pieces against the walls of Angband resound through the mountains and iron walls as a constant, distant hammering. The pounding has become the never-ending heartbeat of the fortress, a doom-doom-doom breaking eternity into small pieces, slicing off minutes and seconds of weeks, years, and decades.

The great throne hall is silent save for the faint noises of the distant battle. There is no echo of the usual screeching and pounding of iron machinery in the bowels of Angband. There are no sounds of marching armies along the vast corridors to the gate. No echo of footsteps crawls up the black pillars of the throne hall whose upper ends vanish into darkness. No movement stirs the stale and still air over the throne of black stone.

A war rages above-ground, but down here – far, far removed from the sun, the wind, and the stars – it is entirely possible to forget about the rest of the world.

For more than a few hundred years no one has entered or left the hall – a laughably short span of time for a god, no more than the blink of an eye, and yet time, like anything else, is a resource, especially in war. And now, slowly but surely, that resource is running out.

The big sand-colored wolf blinks slowly and squints up at the throne. On it a Shadow sits sunken in deep contemplation. Its mind is directed inward at itself, its force so great that it is pulling matter, light, and its own thoughts in with inexorable force before devouring them. Even time is forced from linearity into an eternal loop; and seconds, moments, hours are lost as soon as they pass the event horizon of that terrible mindscape and its inescapable grasp. More and more memories, sound, and matter are gravitating closer and closer to that precarious border and when the wolf looks around he can see the outlines of the pillars closest to the throne blurring and slowly disintegrating.

Ever since Morgoth had broken out in wrath and fury after hearing of the tide of battle turning in their disfavour, Mairon had wisely kept his distance. He had known better than to ask for further orders in the immediate aftermath of one of the Vala’s fits of temper, resolving instead to give his master a decade or two do ponder the issue, and deliberately ignoring the fact that Morgoth should have been able to come up with a plan to smash his blasted siblings to piece in mere moments. Instead, he had taken shelter in the shadow of a pillar that shielded him against the dangerous undertow of Melkor mind, watching and waiting for his master to stir.

He has been waiting for a long time.

Mairon is not sure how many years exactly have passed in the outside world, but here in the throne room Morgoth’s sleep has twisted time into knots and loops, drawing it out far beyond its normal length and stretching it to its breaking point. It is anyone's guess how much longer Morgoth can go on like this before the fabric of reality finally tears. Mairon throws a morose glance at the humongous shadow on the throne, the peaks of the black crown vanishing in the blackness above just like the pillars did.

Morgoth has not moved in a long time. He had not even done anything in the past few centuries in the actual sense of the word. But if he kept on sitting here, devouring the world instead of radiating energy outwards, he would destroy Angband by simply existing.

And Mairon will not allow for that to happen.

For the first time in decades, he rises from his sitting position and every joint in his body creaks and cracks. Slowly, he brings his hind legs under him, careful not to twist his back too much for fear of reopening the wounds and scars on his flanks that his last venture into battle and Morgoth’s rage have earned him. The wounds have been slow in the healing, and he has not dared to change his shape ever since he returned from the battlefield, bloodied and beaten, in order to relay the tidings of the war to his master. Ever since he has been waiting at his master's side like the faithful servant that he is, the form of a loyal hound more fitting for this exercise in patience than his usual fiery, restless shape. Until now, that is. Even the most faithful hound will eventually run out of patience.

Mairon shakes and his matted, blood-encrusted fur puffs up around his worn frame. He yawns and rubs his itching muzzle against a stone pillar, then he pads to the central aisle between the rows of angular columns and plops down on a cool spot on the floor. It is not long before the obsidian tiles grow hot under him, but it is nothing compared to the place he has been occupying for the last years where his body heat had made floor melt and liquefy under his paws.

Mairon lowers his head and gnaws at his front paw where hot iron had melted and become solid once more in the space between his claws. He tries to rip out the sharp-edged flakes that sting with every step but only succeeds in tearing out a clump of fur.

Annoyed, he shape-shifts five times in quick succession, shedding a layer of grime and wounds with each one, until he stands in his usual form before the throne, though he has forgone the chafing weight of armour in favour of dark robes that don't aggravate his battered frame as badly.

When he is done, he rights himself and eyes his dark master once more.

Melkor is undulating and shifting, a shapeless black fog whose only constant trait is that it is ever-changing. He is chaos incarnate. Now and then semblances of heads with countless blind eyes rise out of the smoke, sometimes accompanied by arms or wings or other even stranger appendages whose purpose is unknown to anyone but Melkor himself, gliding over and through surfaces, leaving wisps of darkness in their wake.

Mairon hates it when he is like this.

“My lord,” he hisses, teeth gritted. “I request an audience.”

His only answer is a sudden assault of disembodied cries and echoes, coming from nowhere and resounding inside his mind.

Question. _Answer. ^Echo. Void _void ^void Endless _Dream ^dream Destruction

“Melkor,” Mairon says and it is more threat than plea, but right now he has to fear no retribution for his tone and he knows it. Even if it was his intention to rouse Melkor by angering him, the Vala is too far gone, his mind probably in a billion places at once, skirting the outer rims of Ëa and tugging at the weak spots in the fabric of creation like a rabid dog. Anger needs focus, but Melkor is unravelling, his mind scattered into a billion directions at once.

Question _Answer ^call Echo _empty ^cold Question Flame ^Flame Flame _Light ^Fire Pain

Well. A different method, then.

“Come back here. Please.” Mairon sits down on the cold floor and he knows this is going to take some time. Even a god needs some time to pull the bits of himself together from the far reaches of creation. The only thing Mairon can do is to keep talking, and so he does, speaking softly, weaving words together like strands of silver, forming a thread by which Melkor can find his way back from whatever dark place he is at now.

And in this moment Mairon hates him – hates him for everything he is, everything he embodies. It enrages him to imagine what Melkor could be – a god with all the power in the world at his disposal, the strongest, the greatest of his kind – and what he is instead: not better than his siblings, recalcitrant and narrow-minded though they might be. Maybe Melkor is even worse – he has been gifted with the greatest power of all Valar, but even with all his power at his disposal, he is too volatile to focus on something for longer than two minutes, too flighty to think things through, his thoughts a maelstrom of madness devouring everything, including Melkor’s own sanity.

(If he’d only PULL HIMSELF TOGETHER, but no, he can’t. It is against his very nature, he is chaos, he is a jumble, he is a child playing at war with the universe itself.)

And so Mairon sits here, hands tied and greatness fettered by the limits of his power. He has the will of a greater god, but he is a mere mote compared to his master. No matter how great his drive, how fierce his determination – he can no more chase the Valar from their doorstep than he can call the stars down from the sky. The injustice of it all eats him up. He cannot allow himself to imagine what he’d be able to do, thinking what if I had this power, just imagine what I could do with your powers and my mind, my cunning. It is so unfair, oh so cruel – but that way lies madness, and he cuts the thought off before it can go too far. Loyalty is the only thing left to him, and he will not endanger it by following this train of thought to its end.

“What is it?”

Mairon looks up.

A dark-haired child is sitting on the giant throne like an ant upon a mountain. (Ah, the irony, Mairon thinks without humour. He can’t help the acrid smile tugging at his lips, though, the image is too perfect.)

Melkor’s expression is one of pain and anger. Already. So soon. He’s been wearing the shape for mere moments and already he is hurting.

He is coming undone. He won’t hold out for much longer. Mairon shoves the thought away and stands.

“You were gone again,” he says. “I feared you might have ventured too far.”

“You called me back for that? I was running away from it and you called me back so it could catch me again?” The child doesn’t elaborate on the “it”, but Mairon thinks he already knows. Melkor slides off the throne and his shape flickers when his feet hit the ground.

“I want you here, my lord. We need you. We are fighting a war, and we cannot win without you.” He feels like an idiot speaking these words to a child – but Melkor isn't even listening and anyway, the Vala does not remain in this shape for long.

As Melkor walks over to Mairon his appearance ages with every step until the flesh rots from his bones and finally even they burst into a cloud of dust and powder. The cloud reforms to the shape of an abnormal, monstrous fetus, slick and three-headed, with insect feet and fish-scales. It ages again until its form approaches that of an imago, horrible and fully grown.

Walking along three dimensions is no longer enough for Melkor to escape his eternal torment. He has poured too much of himself into Arda, wounding and raping her for thousands of years with every cruel twist he forced onto her matter, her trees, her children – and now that he is forced to take a shape, Arda uses the tie Melkor has so forcefully established between him and her to exact her revenge on him, feeding on his strength, his spirit, his sanity. Mairon hates and resents her for it, but he would not make a fool of himself by saying that her vengeance was anything less than just. He would have done worse in her stead.

The abomination comes to a halt in front of Mairon, shivering with suppressed torment, its spirit lashing out and scrabbling at the walls of its physical prison, wanting to change, shift, flee, escape.

Mairon reaches out and puts a hand on a chelicera thicker than his own arm. It clicks softly when his palm cups the curve of the mighty jaws.

“Turn back,” Mairon says. “Do you still remember your old form?”

Melkor doesn’t answer. The build of his larynx doesn’t allow for any sounds. But after a while Mairon can feel the chelicera shift and change under his fingers. He lets his hand fall away while his master reverts to his old from.

“Your face,” Mairon reminds him, looking up at the blank surface spanning the flat front of his head.

Melkor’s form ripples and with an exertion of pure will – so forceful Mairon is nearly able to feel the pain that the restrictions Melkor is imposing on himself are causing him – the Vala forces the empty plane into the semblance of a face.

Then at last, he is done.

“There,” Melkor says, annoyed, and this time he even uses his mouth instead of his mind to speak. “Are you quite content now?”

Mairon wonders whether he should lie, but then he just shakes his head. “No.”

“What do you want then?” Melkor’s voice rapidly changes from quiet to a snarl.

Mairon is silent for a while, wondering whether Melkor is even aware of the sheer scope of answers this question opens up.

“I want a lot of things, not all of them immediately relevant to the fact that we are about to have our fortress stormed by your irate siblings,” Mairon says curtly.

Melkor just looks back at him. “What do you want?” he repeats.

Mairon has to resist the morbid, crazed urge to throw his head back and laugh, because it is exactly the same question with which Melkor had drawn him to his side aeons ago, when What do you want? had been all about mapping out heretofore unthought possibilities Mairon had never allowed himself to imagine under Aulë’s tutelage. And now, like a mirror-image, like a cruel reflection the phrase had returned, but instead of dreaming up possibilities it stood for cataloguing the pitiful remainder of options left to them at the end of the road. The irony is almost too much to stomach.

What do you want? It was a great question, maybe the greatest of all, fit for grand moments and momentous decisions. Mairon could not imagine a worse occasion to elaborate on its titanic scope … then again, he thinks with a glance at the Vala, why not tell him? Melkor seems lucid enough for now, and it might be the last chance they would ever have to have a meaningful conversation with each other.

“If we ignore the unimportance of most desires in our present situation, as well as the futility of mourning might-have-beens?” Mairon makes a sharp throwaway gesture. “I want you to be once more who you were in Aman. I want you to be the visionary, the contrarian who convinced me to give up my old life and allegiance in favour of goals that were greater than both of us. I want you full of ideas and plans, instead of brooding over what has been lost beyond recall.”

Melkor opens his mouth to answer, but Mairon cuts him off with a sharp gesture. “– and if you can't be that, then I, as your lieutenant and chief commander, want you on the front-lines instead of hiding in the lowest levels of your fortress until your siblings come to drag you out with your tail between your legs like a pathetic, pitiful coward.”

Melkor's brow lowers. “Is that all?” he asks, but other than that he does not rise to the bait and that alone makes Mairon want to tear his hair out.

“Look at you!” he growls. “A thousands years ago, you would not have stood for one of your servants talking to you like that! You would have struck me down where I stood!”

“So is that what you want me to do? Strike you down?” Melkor says, but his voice is, above all else, weary.

Mairon only barely keeps himself from clawing at his own scalp, his fingers twitching at his sides. Fire is twisting at the tips of his fingers, and molten iron is surging through his veins – but he does not lose his temper.

“Who are you – what are you, that you must ask of me what you should do?” he asks. “You are a Vala – you should have the answers, you should give the orders! Since when does the storm look to the breeze for guidance where it should go? But since you did ask – fine! Then listen: I want you to go out and chase your brethren and sisters back to where they came from! And when that is over and done with, I want you to give these damned Elves their due, shattering their ranks, and chasing them back up the trees they crawled down from! You were able to subdue me back when you caught me venturing alone into your first hidden fortress – how can you justify hiding yourself from them? They are Incarnates, bound to cages of bone and flesh and blood! I want to see you rip them apart with your bare hands and devour their beating hearts while they are still alive to watch.”

Melkor gives him a dour look. “You have adapted to this world.” It sounds like an insult.

“And you haven’t at all.” Mairon snarls back.

Melkor doesn't answer. He walks in a small circle before looking up at the ceiling. “Do you not miss the world without boundaries we were created into? The freedom to be everything and nothing at once? I can’t recall the last time I haven’t been hurting because I forced my fëa into a defined shape. Don’t you feel the pain?”

Mairon draws his heavy cloak tighter around his shoulders. “No.” He spits the word out like a glob of slime. “I feel fine.”

Melkor gives him a morose glance. “You have changed.”

“So have you,” Mairon replies. “And not for the better.”

Melkor ponders the remark for a while until he finally says, “I preferred you when you were uncorrupted.”

Mairon raises an eyebrow. “Did you? Pity. Because it was you who made me into what I am now.”

Melkor is silent for a long time. At last, he shifts slightly, and his voice is brittle as old iron when he says, “I did not wish for you to become like this. I did not wish for me to become what I am now. I did not want for many things to turn out the way they did.” The Vala turns away, walking back to his throne.

Mairon looks after him incredulously. “If you did not intend for any of this to happen –,” he makes a wide, sweeping gesture, encompassing Melkor and himself, the fortress, the world, “– if you cannot be anything of what you were before, if you cannot bring about what you intended for this world, what did we leave Aman for, then?”

“Dreams,” Melkor says, pulling darkness around him like a cloak against the cold. “Do you remember when we wandered through the woods behind Aulë’s forge and made plans about how we would shape entire worlds to our liking? We had it all laid out before us: the grand work in Arda of two kings yet uncrowned. Such great ambitions they were.” Melkor falls silent, and then he breathes, out, between his teeth, soft as a sigh. “We wanted so much.”

“We still do,” Mairon replies, and for him at least, it is true. He doesn’t think he could ever stop wanting, even if he tried. “We can still do all of that when we overcome this siege.” (He does not say if.) “What else are we holding out for?”

The battering rams overhead pound their rhythm right into the bones of the old fortress.

Doom-doom-doom.

Doom.

Mairon stares at Melkor’s unmoving, shadowy outline, then repeats, “What else are we doing this for?”

Silence is his only answer. The moment of clarity has passed; Melkor has already retreated back in on himself, his mind slipping back into the murky depths of wherever he goes when the pain becomes too much to bear.

And with that, Mairon decides, he has had enough. He turns on his heel and stalks off, out of the icy hall, heading for the pits. He’ll dig himself deeper into the bowels of Arda tonight, away from the light, into the dark.

He has thought of Aman countless times ever since he left, knowing that he has burned those bridges once and for all. The thought has never before hurt him, never before stricken fear into his heart, because he had been sure that there would always be a forward on the road he was going down – a destination, a fulfilment waiting at the end of the path he had chosen.

He has never been one for self-pity – he never saw the use – but still he feels how easy it would be to give in to the oppressive feeling rising like bile at the back of his throat, now that he is looking down at the remaining pieces on the board, knowing that the only thing left to do was to play the losing game to its inevitable end.

But rather than looking back and seeing the cursed light of a lost home shining dimly at the beginning of the long, long tunnel he has since gone down; instead of facing what he has forsaken—

If I look back, I am lost.

Rather than that he turns away and walks on, shoulders squared and stride relentless, into the sea of blackness ahead, embracing it with fatalistic finality while the light behind him grows ever dimmer, and he pretends that this is what he wanted all along.

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