Chapter Text
- Doriath marches to war, but Beren and Luthien do not. Dior is an adolescent, but he is not fully grown. Elvish parents can’t go to war and leave a child behind. It’s just not done, even though they try to argue the point. Thingol goes, though, despite Melian’s warnings.
- There is no Luthien to take down Sauron. Morgoth never even goes onto the field. They do better than they would have without Nargothrond and Doriath’s armies, but they don’t do well enough.
- Fingon dies. Azaghal dies. Huan dies. Hurin gets captured.
- Thingol dies too. Melian abandons Doriath, and Luthien takes the crown with Beren as her consort.
- Finrod is now High King of the Noldor. This does some good, actually. Having a king that’s not tucked away in Gondolin is good for both morale and organization. The surviving Noldor are less scattered. Celegorm and Curufin’s people are still in Nargothrond. Caranthir withdraws to Amon Ereb, and his other brothers join them there. Thanks to their slightly less disastrous defeat, their numbers are sufficient for this to be rather crowded. Amrod and Amras withdraw to the south and build a fortress near the Mouths of the Sirion at Maedhros’s request. It helps to secure passage to where Cirdan’s people have retreated to the Isle of Balar.
- Turin’s story goes pretty much the same, with only a few differences. Beren is more sympathetic to his desire to help his people than Thingol was and although Beren is too old to go himself, he sends some warriors. They can’t retake the ground, but they do manage to do a lot of damage and to get some of Turin’s people to safety in Brethil. Unfortunately, Turin doesn’t find his mother and sister.
- But when Turin returns from doing this, he still ends up accidentally killing Saeros.
- Beren has a lot of sympathy with this (personally, he would have challenged Saeros a long time ago if he thought he could get away with it), but unfortunately, Turin still refuses to return. The curse proceeds apace, and Turin eventually turns up in Nargothrond.
- Finrod knows exactly who this is, and also knows he’s Beren and Luthien’s foster son. He still owes Beren. Of course Turin will be welcome there.
- Curufin and Celegorm are less than enthused about this.
- Finrod is not easily swayed, but he is determined not to just lock himself away. They still take the fight to the enemy. They still build the bridge.
- Curufin is very opposed to this concept. Partially because he’s taken a dislike to Turin, and partially because he genuinely thinks it’s a terrible idea. When he gets overruled, he leads his brother and their followers out of Nargothrond. This is a disaster in the making, and he’s not sticking around for it.
- Celebrimbor goes with them. He likes the idea of the bridge, but unlike something like, say, sending Finrod to die, it’s not a hill he’s willing to make a stand on.
- Nargothrond falls. Finrod dies. The disaster that is Turin’s life continues on.
- Curufin feels vindicated, but he’s smart enough not to say that too loudly.
- Gondolin’s fall happens as per canon. Without the girdle to keep out those of the Noldor that aren’t Finarfin’s children, however, and with a friendlier face on the throne, the survivors flee to Doriath. Luthien and Beren feel a certain sympathy for Tuor and Idril.
- Unfortunately, Luthien is in the last days of her rule. Beren is old. He doesn’t live long past the fall of Gondolin, and Luthien fades soon after. With a full life behind them, Luthien can’t persuade Mandos to send them back, but she does persuade him to let her follow Beren into a mortal fate. Dior takes the crown.
- He gets a letter from the Feanorians, specifically Celegorm and Curufin. They want to set up a settlement on the edge of his lands. It’ll give his people more protection from Angband, so despite the slightly off-putting tone of the letter, Dior is happy to agree.
- Morgoth sends out forces to test their defenses. They stand firm.
- Earendil and Elwing grow up. They get married. Elwing gets pregnant.
- Idril and Tuor wait for the twins to be born before making an announcement. Idril is abdicating in favor of Earendil. He’s old enough now that she’s confident he can handle things. She and Tuor are making a bid to try and brings news of their plight to the Undying Lands.
- This is only part of their reasoning, but it’s the only part they make public. The other part is that Tuor is getting older. He wants to satisfy his sea longing before it’s too late. Idril nurses a secret hope that maybe his life can be preserved in Aman.
- Dior doesn’t know this, but he guesses. He wishes them luck. They sail.
- Morgoth has continued sending forces against them. Doriath’s might combined with the Feanorians has sufficed to withstand him.
- Morgoth unleashes the winged dragons.
- Curufin and Celegorm’s stronghold falls. Celegorm dies in the first onslaught. Curufin dies shortly after ordering Celebrimbor to lead the retreat.
- Celebrimbor leads as many of their people as he can through the woods to Doriath. Cave system that it is, it’s got a better shot of withstanding the dragons.
- It does do better. But better’s not good enough.
- Or rather - It’s not good enough for those who fall. It is good enough to buy some time. Time in which Maglor, who has been riding to bring word from Maedhros to his brothers, gets to their stronghold and discovers what has happened. Time in which he rides frantically on to Doriath.
- And, of course, in those days, no one rides alone. Maglor’s got quite the sizable company with him.
- By the time they get there, Doriath’s defenses have been breached, but the battle’s still ongoing. It’s being lost by the defenders, but it’s not over. Not yet.
- Elured and Elurin die fighting, not as children, but as grown peredhel defending their king, who is also their father.
- Dior never wanted that. He and Nimloth fall not long after.
- Elwing dies just as Maglor and his men reach where she and Earendil are desperately defending their children. There is no miracle this time.
- She dies facing a dragon.
- The wings do it no good in the cramped tunnel. Earendil is wounded and grieving, but he is determined not to let it pass.
- Maglor dives into the fight.
- He survives it. Earendil … Earendil has been fighting this battle for much longer. Maglor sees, even as he kneels next to him to try to help, that though Earendil may have outlived the dragon, he is not going to survive the night.
- The twins are crying. Earendil reaches for them, and he can’t talk, not now, but his eyes are desperate, so Maglor pours every bit of persuasion he has into his voice, and promises, “I’ll get them out. They’ll be all right.”
- He does. Doriath’s lost, but he rounds up all the survivors he can and nearly weeps when he sees they include his nephew. The Men of Brethil and the survivors of Turin’s people, who have been hit just as hard, join them. He leads them on a desperate retreat to Amon Ereb, and he keeps the twins by his side the whole way.
- Some of the survivors go to the relative safety of the Isle of Balor. Others are determined to stay with their two infant princes, and those are staying at Amon Ereb because with winged dragons in play, nowhere is actually safe, and so Maglor judges it best if they travel as little as possible since traveling's currently the riskiest proposition. He promised Earendil he’d look after them, and he means to do so.
- Elrond and Elros are the bright spots of the fortress that the elves are so desperately re-fortifying with flying dragons in mind. There aren’t many children these days which makes everyone all the more determined to protect what few they have. Maglor is the one actually fostering them, but Maedhros and Caranthir take an interest too, as does Celebrimbor. Amrod and Amras can do less, but the cheer in Maglor’s letters when he speaks of them is appreciated by them both.
- Gil-Galad is now technically the king of the Noldor. He offers the crown back to Maedhros on the grounds that most of the surviving forces are either Feanorians or will be under Elrond and Elros’s control once they grow up. Given that those two are being fostered by Maglor, Gil-Galad doesn’t anticipate their first loyalty will be to him. He definitely doesn’t anticipate any of the Feanorians following his orders if Maedhros disapproves of them.
- Maedhros insists that he gave up all rights to the crown and that his last leadership initiative was a disaster. The crown is Gil-Galad’s.
- Gil-Galad thinks this is a mistake, but he doesn’t want to send too many missives about it in case they’re intercepted. The last thing they need is the enemy sensing weakness. (Or, rather, more weakness than is already dreadfully apparent.) He keeps the crown.
- Cirdan tries to send ships to the Valar pleading for aid. They try sending penitent kinslayers. They try sending penitent non-kinslaying Noldor. They try sending Sindar. They try sending some of the Avari. They try sending Men. None of them ever come back, and no response from the Valar appears.
- In the privacy of Maedhros’s office, Caranthir says what they’re all thinking. “If they don’t send aid, we’re all going to die.”
- “We’ve no reason to believe they’ve let any of the boats through,” Maedhros says wearily. “If they won’t even let us make an appeal, we haven’t got a chance of persuading them. They said not even the echo of our lamentations would reach them, so we’ve no reason to believe they’re listening to our prayers. Unless Ulmo sends another dream, we’ve no way of contacting any of them.”
- Celebrimbor pauses in his sketching of a design of a new weapon to try against the dragons. “ … Technically, that’s not true. We’ve been sending lots of unofficial messengers that we know are getting through. We just haven’t been sending them prepared to make an appeal to the Vala they’re reaching.”
- Maglor is the first to get it. “Mandos. Quite a lot of us have been reaching Mandos.”
- “We are not killing someone in order to deliberately send them to Mandos,” Maedhros says.
- Caranthir shrugs. “We don’t have to. We’re losing enough people as it is. We just have to make sure everyone’s prepared in case they go.”
- “That will certainly have an interesting effect on morale,” Maglor murmurs. “Unless we’re careful about it, of course … A few carefully planted suggestions to have a few choice words for Mandos should we see him any time soon … “
- “He’s not easily moved to pity,” Maedhros points out. There are deep shadows under his eyes. He isn’t against the idea so much as he is past believing anything will help, as careful as he normally is not to show it.
- Maglor’s eyes are already distant. “I’ll compose a new song,” he says, idea clearly catching hold. “I’ll keep composing new ones until someone manages to use one against him that works.”
- The idea catches fire quickly. The rank and file mainly intend to have a few choice words; those higher up in the hierarchy quietly compose carefully memorized speeches that they intend to make.
- Absolutely no one intends for Elrond and Elros to write speeches of their own, but they find Maglor’s, and they decide that they should have one between them, just in case.
- Maglor catches them practicing it and is horrified. They apologize.
- And start being more careful about where they practice it.
- Objectively, they’re probably the most protected people in the fortress, but even they leave it sometimes.
- For instance: When Amrod and Amras make one of their rare trips to Amon Ereb to conference with their brothers. Things have been quiet recently, and so, since getting food is increasingly a problem, the Feanorian twins decide to take a day and go hunting. They’re eager to get to spend time with this younger set of twins, so they try to talk Maglor into letting Elrond and Elros go with them.
- Maglor reluctantly allows Elrond to go, but Elros has to stay behind since he recently broke his leg climbing a tree Maglor specifically told him not to climb.
- So they go.
- Quiet doesn’t mean safe. Quiet just means quiet.
- They don’t come back.
- Elros collapses. The remaining brothers can feel something’s wrong too. Caranthir’s left in charge of the fort, and Maglor and Maedhros ride out.
- They find the dead guards. They find where the Ambarussa fell trying to defend their young charge.
- They find the proof of their failure.
- Maedhros takes another step towards breaking. Maglor is pushed all the way to the brink.
- They burn the bodies. They don’t have a choice. Maglor starts singing something Maedhros has never heard before, and he won’t stop, all the way back, not even when his voice starts to fade.
- Maedhros focuses on that, focuses on desperately trying to protect his younger brother, because allowing himself to think of anything else is something he can’t afford right now.
- Maglor only snaps out of it when a healer rushes up to them at the gate and tells them there’s something terribly wrong with Elros. They rush there and see that Elros - Well, he’s not fading, not yet, but he’s lost both parents and now his twin, and that’s not good for a grown elf, much less an elfling.
- Maglor stops his mourning song and starts pouring all his efforts into keeping Elros alive. Maedhros pours his into figuring out how they’re going to defend his brothers’ fortress without his brothers. Maglor’s in no shape to go, and Maedhros refuses to remove himself from the front lines. He knows he should send Caranthir, but he desperately doesn’t want to let any of his remaining family out of his sight.
- He sends him anyway and prays he’ll be safer there. He’s pretty sure the Valar aren’t listening, but it can’t hurt to try.
- Meanwhile in Mandos, the Ambarussa try to present their plea. Mandos isn’t interested in hearing from kinslayers.
- Elrond is right behind them in the queue. He watches the elves he thinks of as his uncles be escorted away, and he clings to the last words of encouragement they manage to shout to him.
- Mandos tells him he has to make a choice between Men and elves.
- In other circumstances, Elrond would have stopped to consider this properly. Under these, it’s not even a choice. Elros is back there. Elros needs him. Men don’t return, but elves do. Obviously, Elrond will be an elf.
- Immediately after stating this, he rolls into his prepared speech.
- Mandos … Mandos would not say he is moved by it, but he is not unmoved either. He tells Elrond that the Doom stands, but that Elrond is correct that he should not properly fall under its punishment. Since Elrond has done nothing Mandos sees fit to punish him for, since he is so young, and since he seems surprisingly untraumatized by his death, Mandos will release him in a matter of weeks.
- Despite his youth and Maglor’s best efforts, that was far from the first skirmish Elrond has been in. It isn’t even the first he had been injured in. The only thing different about this one is that he has died, and he has died relatively painlessly at that. Of course he isn’t traumatized, Elrond thinks, why would he be? He’s far more worried about how everyone else is reacting to his death.
- Elrond accepts Mandos’s decision with grace.
- After all, he’s finally achieved what they’ve been aiming for. In a few weeks, he’ll be loose in Aman to track down the rest of the Valar to make his case.
- And if they still won’t listen, he’ll figure out a way to cross the sea and shame as many people as possible into following no matter what the Valar have to say about it.