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Morgoth was taken, and all across what remained of the west of Middle Earth, the remnant of his servants wandered mindless and without purpose.
“There is no point in taking them,” Maglor said. “What use is it to cause more harm. And in any case, it is not likely to succeed.”
But Maedhros would not be gainsaid.
“We swore an oath. And it cannot be pardoned.”
The oath compelled them, did it not? The oath they swore, freely of their own will, it compelled them, and compelled them still.
All of the bloodshed, all the ugliness and cruelty, all the pain that Maedhros had inflicted, that he could not stop, it had been for his father, for his grandfather, for the silmarils, for the oath. Morgoth was captured, but the oath remained.
“We must attempt to take the silmarils.”
He did not expect them to succeed. But they would try. Just as they had tried before. Because nothing had changed.
It was far too easy. Far too easy to slip in unannounced, far too easy to kill the guards. They did not expect attack. Such naiveté was to be expected of the host of Valinor, he supposed, but he thought he might have raised the twins better than to let down their guard so.
The silmarils drew them, like light to a moth, like home.
“One for each of us,” Maglor said, wryly.
Maedhros reached out and took one into his hand.
And it burned.
It burned with the stench of death and the taste of bloodshed. It burned with pain unendurable, the pain of hatred and ugliness and destruction.
And it was right.
The monster held the silmaril and it burned.
To say the pain was unexpected would be a lie, to say it was unlooked for…
Maedhros had thought he had left hope behind him after Thangoradrim. He had thought he had left hope behind after the Nirnaeth. Thought he had left it in Doriath with two small boys and a harsh winter. Maedhros was a fool.
There is a moment at which pain cannot be surpassed, an intensity at which pain ceases to be pain, becomes numbness, because there is only so much pain the mind can process. The silmaril burned through this barrier. The silmaril was greater than Morgoth. It was good, perhaps, that something was.
Maedhros did not know how he found himself upon high ground, beside a crack newly ripped from the abused land and filled with fire. It smelled as Morgoth’s stronghold had, of ash and fumes, and it held the heat of Feanor’s forge.
Maedhros had never turned away those who escaped from the Enemy as the Sindar had. But when such elves had shown themselves to have been twisted to Morgoth's purpose, Maedhros had killed them swiftly and without hesitation.
The silmaril burned the monster, and he leapt into the chasm.
And the remnant of Morgoth’s servants wandered aimless and without purpose, wreaking weak destruction upon the tired land.