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The rainforest is dense around him, a nearly overwhelming presence making itself felt with every step he takes. To anyone else it might feel constraining, oppressive—it feels eternal in its vastness, unyielding in spirit, a mirror of its creator—but Tyelkormo was born amidst it, grew beneath its shadow, was reforged in its soil; he has long learned to feel welcomed and let himself be guided instead of imposing his presence upon it.
And guided he is—eyes closed, he lets his other senses sharpen, lets himself hear what’s being whispered by the trees around him. His instincts act with the rustling of leaves, with the thuds on wet soil, and the swing of his sword is dictated by the burn of his muscles, by the putrid smell on the air.
The anger burns hot in his blood, scorching his veins and setting his thoughts alight, leaving nothing but awareness of his surroundings and the most basic of instincts behind. It’s easy to lose himself like this, to feel a type of calmness that is not calmness at all, and the forest encourages this—it pushes him further into the eye of the storm with each cut of his sword, keeping him centred while letting his fire burn at the same time. The very ground around him is corrupted, and it encourages the corruption within him, settling the restlessness he’s constantly fighting by setting it free, letting it loose.
Here, he can just fight and feel: there is no grand scheme to keep track of, nothing that divides his attention or requires him to keep his composure—the earth itself has given him allowance. There is nothing stopping him from letting it all out, from letting himself burn, and it’s the closest to inner peace he gets to feel these days.
Steel against steel becomes metal against putrid flesh as grunts and pants turn into groans and coughs, and soon the sounds of the jungle become absolute again, the slithering of snakes and ruffling of feathers mixing with his own heavy breath as all else fade.
Tyelkormo opens his eyes to the bodies of the enemy scattered across the floors, their blood pooling around them, further poisoning the ground. His hair feels heavy, and he grimaces at the sight of dark blood against silver strands, at the smell and feel of it on his skin and clothes.
Beneath him is a gory sight—the bodies are whole somehow, despite the violence inflicted upon them, but there is far more in sight than there should be and he wrinkles his nose in disgust.
He should burn them, he thinks. Should take them to the very edge of the trees and burn them, lest they ruin the ground beneath them while decaying. As corrupt as this place might be, it still lent him its eyes and ears, gave him strength and favour; the least he could do in return is make sure to pay his dues.
A sigh makes its way past his lips, and he turns his head to the night sky, closing his eyes once more and letting himself be bathed by the silver light that shines through the thick foliage of the tall trees around him. His muscles ache with exhaustion and his sword feels unbearably heavy in his hands, but he knows there is no rest for him now—there is still a long way back to Amon Ereb, and Maitimo will have his skin if he delays any longer.
The thought conjures a laugh from him, hysterical but shockingly genuine. He was always the most troublesome of his siblings, wasn’t he? His older brothers always loathed to leave him unsupervised, and Maitimo always kept a closer eye on him, a tighter leash.
He supposes the reasons for that are very different these days; there is no mistaking the mistrust, the sorrow and rejection he sees in his brother’s eyes when they fall on him. He wonders what exactly Maitimo fears from him—there are no more diplomatic ties for him to ruin, no new violence for him to inflict upon the world, after all.
Maybe he thinks he'll turn against them in a fit of rage, turn his sword to his own siblings as the last of his sanity vanishes with the wind. He'd never do that, of course, but he can see why it'd be a concern.
Celegorm, the cruel.
Suiting epithet, he thinks, though the name leaves a sour taste on his tongue. There is little he has against Sindarin as a language, but he did wish it would never have touched his name. It feels foreign and wrong, being baptised by the language of a land this rotten; it feels more and more like yet another thing taken from him by this war, along with his father, his sanity and his pride.
Something shifts in the environment, both imperceptible and loud, cutting his line of thought. He keeps his body lax, but his senses sharpen as he takes in his surroundings, summoning the aid of the jungle once more to expand his reach.
The enemy bodies still lie where they fell, their blood still spreading sluggish on the ground. The fauna seems unbothered by whatever might be lurking in the shadows—no birds react to it, and he can still hear the uninterrupted crawling of insects all around him, the faraway movement of a deer.
For all intents and purposes, it seems nothing has changed. There were no gentle thuds of footsteps on the ground signaling an arrival and there is no change in the flow of air, no signs of soft, controlled breathing or of a low and steady heartbeat. He would consider the possibility of finally having lost the little mind he had left, but the sensation of being watched is undeniable, and the feeling of a new aura, unquestionable.
It makes no sound as it inches nearer, and its aura must be contained, otherwise he would have felt it by now, but the sheer presence is enough to have the hairs on his arms standing, and Tyelkormo—
Recognises it, at last.
His teeth grind against each other as a burst of ire surges inside him, bitterness and anger mixing in a growl that echoes out of him as he pinpoints its location and moves.
He twists his body as fast as he can, grabbing a dagger from inside his robes in a movement guided by emotion alone, and throwing it with all the power the bubbling rage inside him can summon.
It flies true, hitting his target in the shoulder—to no effect.
“Why have you come?” The words are poison that drip from his mouth, viscous and acidic, and he sees in the reflection of a no-reaction response that they were felt more harshly than his dagger.
He should have noticed this presence before, he thinks bitterly to himself, should have recognised it for what it was the moment he felt its effects on his skin, on his surroundings.
But it’s been a long time—almost five hundred years—, and Tyelkormo is not as stable as he had been in the past. Memories are foggy and unreal more often than not these days; things he cannot grasp, distant tales heard second-hand rather than lived out events, and this presence was the one he was felt most alienated from, one he thought he’d never feel again. That he had done his best to forget completely, in some ways.
It angers him beyond his ability to feel, wrath that surpasses his own self and manifests on the environment around him: he feels his aura expanding and fluctuating, erratic and vicious as it acts violence upon all around him. From the depths of his consciousness, he hears the flapping of wings as birds fly from it, the fleeing of the deer nearby and something inside him saddens at the thought of his very presence repelling nature.
“Tyelkormo,” A voice calls out, familiar and unfamiliar at once. The sound echoes a murder of cawing crows, a pride of snarling lions, a den of hissing snakes, all forced into verbalisation. It’s unnatural for something composed from nature, but it rings in the jungle as if it belongs there, vibrating through his bones before dissipating in the wind.
Oromë stands unearthly before him, taller than Tyelkormo had ever seen them be, dressed in light hunting robes, eyes shining bright red in the dark instead of the elven goldens and greens. The light brown of their skin is dyed with patterns in bright red paint, and several small animal bones and teeth dangle from delicate strings tied around the spiralling ram horns protruding from their head.
A wave of dark blue feathers fall as hair from their head, and the intricate tattoos on their left arm shine silver, contrasting with the red markings, their pattern broken only by the dagger buried in their skin, wherefrom golden blood oozes slowly.
The tattoos are a perfect mirror to the ones Tyelkormo has etched into the skin of his right arm, and the urge to grab one of his hunting knives and peel off his own flesh until they are gone is almost blinding, nearly impossible to resist.
Oromë’s expression is empty to all who don’t know them, but satisfaction blooms in Tyelkormo’s stomach at the sight, and his anger is quick to turn cruel as he identifies what hides beneath it.
.
“Have you come to brag? 'I warned you of this, I told you not to come, and now look what you have become'?” He asks, a fell smile on his face as he steps closer, anger and pain twisting in his chest as he finally feels the edges of an aura that was once as familiar to him as his own. Oromë is keeping it from him, he realises, hiding it. For what purpose, he wonders; fear of being tainted by his? He doubts he could do a Vala’s any significant harm. He is not Nolofinwë and Oromë is not the decaying creature that is Morgoth. Unwillingness to touch something as foul as him? Possible. Probable, even, but he doubts it nonetheless.
Fear of what it might be found within it, maybe?
Tyelkormo’s coin has found its bet.
“Or have you come to wallow in self-pity, perhaps? Wonder where it all went wrong? What could you have done to prevent such a tragedy? How could you not have saved a single puny Elda!” His voice is manic even to his own ears, but he doesn’t care, eyes sharp on the unchanging sight of Oromë’s face.
He’s getting closer, he can feel it, to shaking that vacant expression up, to making their control crack, even if only a little. Not something a wise elf would ever dare to do, but if wisdom was never a characteristic of the Noldor, the House of Fëanor was always particularly lacking—and Tyelkormo is nothing if not his father’s son.
“Or,” He starts, cruelty twisting its claws around his heart, flowing from his voice and into the air between them, darkening his aura to the point where he can feel plants starting to wither around him, hear bugs crawl away from its poison. He stands as close to Oromë as he finds himself able to, head turned upwards as they look down to meet his gaze, impassiveness hanging by a thread. “have you come to put me out of my misery?” A laugh bubbles out of him along with the words and finally, finally, he sees it.
The tightening of a sharp jaw, the suddenness of an inhale for which they have no need, the too lengthy blink of eyes that, even when so unelven, now shine with the same sadness of his people’s.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” His glee is built from hysteria, mania turning the anger that was simmering under his skin into a joy he does not feel. “You’ve come to do what you know you should have done before the Exile, before the Kinslaying. What you should have done the moment we met, in fact! How do you plan on doing it? I won’t fight, I think—it’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it?” The words spill out of him before his mind catches up with their meaning, thoughts tumbling out of him and into the world and breaking Oromë’s faux calmness in the process.
“Tyelkormo,” Oromë says, sounding a lot closer than before, and Tyelkormo raises his eyes—he hadn’t even realised he had been screaming at the floor between them—to see that they’re not nearly as tall as they had been a minute ago.
They have shed their previous form in its entirety, in fact, have once again adopted the familiarity of one of their more elven hröas. White hair, long and dreaded, tied back and framing a face that was etched into the very fabric of Tyelkormo's fëa, with pleading golden eyes and bright face markings. The red paints are gone along with the horns, but the tattoos shine in their every form, and Tyelkormo’s dagger still sits on their shoulder, breaking the pattern and drawing golden blood.
The pain that hits him is sharp and makes him gasp with its intensity, casting him into the past with an ease that he had never experienced before, memories that seemed foreign moments ago now drowning his thoughts.
He steps back and away, feeling his hands shake and his emotions shift again—another phase of a constant harrowing metamorphosis—into sorrow, this time, into longing, fear and regret.
“Look at me,” Oromë says, voice demanding and as warm as Laurelin’s golden light.
“No.” Tyelkormo spits out between his teeth, feeling his anger return, feeling it mix with the everything that spirals inside of him and form a miasma of confusion and bitterness, of sadness and fury. He’s so angry for no clear reason, outraged at the cacophony of his mind, at Oromë’s presence fueling the pyre where his sanity burns.
“Hear me, then.” Sharper now, impatient and distressed, and Tyelkormo doesn’t want to hear anything they have to say either, wants to scratch his eyes off his face and put a knife to his own ears so he doesn’t have to see or hear any of this, so he can end this maelstrom of emotions holding him in place. “Do you truly believe I have come to kill you?”
“Why else?” He hadn’t meant to answer, but his bitterness spits it out for him, hiding the truth of what he knows behind it, and he finally looks up at Oromë, meets their eyes with his own as words fall and fall from his lips. “I suppose maybe I’m giving myself too much credit: what evil can one elf do that a creature as great as a Vala would travel across the world to stop? Maybe you only wish to see with your own eyes, the fate of the accursed! What are we, First-born, if not an interesting little project that went wrong, after all? Why else would one of the Aratar step down from their otiose throne of inertia and into this rotten land? When none but Ulmo have lifted a finger to come to our aid? When none at all thought of us when we were dying by the thousands? When tears unnumbered dyed pink the rivers of blood on Beleriand’s floors?”
Whatever was left of Oromë’s composure breaks faster than he had anticipated, a well-known temper resurfacing as memories of their last meeting rise with it. “Do not talk as if you hold no fault. None of this would have happened had your blasphemous brothers and your insolent father not—”
“None of this would have happened had you idle King kept his putrid brother on a leash!” Tyelkormo’s voice echoes loud in the jungle, scaring away whatever animal was brave enough to still be around.
“Just as your brothers keep you? And what good has that done, tell me, Turkafinwë?” The poison of their voice reflects the one on his own, and Tyelkormo laughs, clear in his bitter amusement.
“Even with all the evil I have done, to be compared to Morgoth—how dissociated from reality are the Ainu?” The underlying mania of his tone is only barely held back by his increasing anger. “You think of yourselves as impartial rulers of this world, as ineffable and infallible, yet refuse to hold your King accountable for their actions! Because of Manwë, Morgoth was allowed to roam free and sow discord amidst the Noldor, was allowed to kill my grandfather and steal my father’s most prized creations, was allowed to come into this land, where your Father’s children lived and burn it to the ground!”
“Better yet,” He screams, watching the way Oromë’s expression tightens in anger and outrage, seeing the need to defend their own hiding the knowledge of the wrongfulness of their positions behind it. “Had you done your job and razed Angamando to the ground with Sauron and their fetid servants inside it, we would not even be here right now.”
“Do not talk of what you do not know!” And at last, Oromë’s aura is released.
It’s scathing and untamed, holding power beyond anything Tyelkormo has encountered since the last time he felt it, and it burns with anger, with outrage and with regret, a concoction of emotions that feels much like the ones inside of him right now.
He stands his ground, refusing to let the power of the blast shake his position even as air vibrates visibly around them, keeps staring Oromë in the eyes while letting his own aura spread poison.
It’s gone as fast as it came, pushed tightly back inside its owner again before it could do further damage to their already ruined surroundings, and Tyelkormo feels its absence as a void. He lets the strangeness of this feeling twist his lips into a snarl and speaks: “Of what I do not know,” He cackles, vitriolic and sour. “Just who do you think I have been fighting against for almost five hundred years? How many of your family did you lose, Hunter? For how long were you exposed to Morgoth’s unending aura? Did he poison the soil of your home? Did he make murderers of you and yours? Do others see you as proof of his rotten influence on this world?”
He sees then, Oromë’s temper shrink, sees the shadow of guilt cloud their features. They seem tired, then, in a way Tyelkormo thought Vala unable of feeling, and he feels his own anger die down, if only a little.
“I have not come for this,” Their whisper is faint, carried away by the wind as soon as it’s uttered, but Tyelkormo catches it anyway, takes a breath and answers with as much composure as he can:
“What have you come for, then?” As soon as the question is asked, something in Oromë shifts—the way they look at him changes, turns sorrowful and miserable. Their aura spike towards him, sizzling with an unnamed emotion, reaching out and trying to wrap itself around him, intertwine itself with his and ah—
“Ah,” The epiphany is swift, bringing along the death of his remaining anger and leaving behind an emptiness that he has not felt in a very long time. He feels himself frown but is otherwise disconnected from his body and surroundings, and he lowers his unseeing gaze to his feet as he steps back once more. “I see.”
“Tyelko,” Soft, too soft, too filled with regret and sadness—Oromë’s aura is actively reaching out to his now, skittering the edges of his own. “May I?” They ask, and Tyelkormo nods before he realises what he’s done.
It feels like being immersed in warmth, being wrapped in soft furs and hugged with an affection Tyelkormo hasn’t felt in centuries. It’s comfortable, welcoming, and as familiar as it always was, the sharpness of power and nature, and he feels his own aura align itself with their feelings, being soothed by them. It's as if he was immersed back into past, back into a time where there were no wrongs in the world apart from Turukáno's irritating scolding whenever he and Irissë returned from a Hunt, dirtied, drunk and laughing; where the end of a hunt meant lying on comfortable pelts and being crowded by a large, warm body that oozed of power and affection, where his father and grandfather lived and all was well.
He feels the skin beneath his eyes itch with an urge he's not familiar with, and he wants to scratch it off, peel it away so it won't bother him, wants to tear his own heart out and crush it beneath his feet so this feeling in his chest will go away, wants to hurt—either himself or Oromë—and make this stop.
Oromë’s hands are just as warm as his aura they cup his cheeks and distract him from the violence forming inside him, rough and big on his face. They don't seem to mind the dry blood staining him or dirtying his hair, don't seem to care that Tyelkormo's brown skin is ashen and covered in scars forged from both his hands and the enemy's. There’s a raw kind of desperation on their face that Tyelkormo has become intimately acquainted after so much time fighting, and it has delirium rising up in his chest again.
(He wonders if it’s the first time Oromë feels something like this, if it’s the first time they experience something all Noldor have become so intimate with since the Exile.)
They’re gentle as they trace the lines of Tyelkormo’s face, under his eyes where his clan markings sit, over his cheekbones, tracing the lines of silver scars, pressing their thumb against his lips. The touch feels both foreign and not, and he feels his skin burn where Oromë’s fingers had been.
“I—” They start, but Tyelkormo doesn’t want to hear it, won’t allow it to be said, not when it was never said before.
“Don’t.” He says, hands rising to grasp Oromë’s wrists to stop their wandering. It startles them, but they make no move to protest any of his actions, looking pained for one moment before closing their mouth and swallowing their words. “Just don’t.” Tyelkormo repeats, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. He lets himself become aware of his surroundings again now that his emotions have all but vanished, lets himself feel the light of the moon on his skin, hear the noise of the animals that have started to roam around them once more, the wind against the dead plants that circle them.
The bodies of his fallen enemies are still littering the grounds.
He should really take them away and burn them.
Amon Ereb is such a long way from here.
“You should go.” He tells Oromë, looking into his golden eyes and standing his ground, feeling his heart stir gently against his chest at the sight. “You should not have come at all.” And these, he feels, are the worst words that he has spoken in a very long time—Oromë would have flinched, were they anything but a Vala, and were their control any lesser, the sorrow of their ëalar would have withered the flora all around them, dissolved their own hröa.
It will take them time to realise those were not words spoken in anger or bitterness, but time is something of which they have plenty. Tyelkormo knows they’ll see his motives sooner rather than later, knows they’ll see what he meant by it.
But for now, Oromë only leans down to press their lips to Tyelkormo’s forehead, pushing dirty silver curls away from his face and running their thumb across the line of his cheekbone once more before moving away.
They look down where Tyelkormo's dagger still pierces their shoulders, and pull it out without blinking, holding the hilt towards him as the wound closes itself on his skin.
"Keep it," Tyelkormo says, voice hoarse and small. A parting gift, he doesn't say, but he's sure it's heard regardless.
And just like Oromë came, they go—stepping away once, twice, thrice before vanishing altogether. No fanfare, no great exit. No yelled out words like the last time, or laughing partings like so many of the times before it; only the vanishing of a presence that Tyelkormo had made the mistake of letting himself feel comforted by again.
The sudden absence has him shivering, his body ignoring the warmth of the rainforest around him to focus on the cold feeling brought by the lack of another aura intertwined with his own, but he pays it no mind.
He takes a deep, deep breath, giving himself time to get reacquainted with the loneliness, with his own withering sanity, with the poison leaking from Beleriand’s floors caused by the Enemy’s ëalar infusing itself into the land.
He’s late and even more tired than he was earlier.
A sigh makes its way past his lips as he opens his eyes, staring up at the night sky and wondering if he should dare to ask anything of Eru at a time like this before deciding against it—he doubts he's in anyone's good graces at the moment.
So he kneels on the floor, instead, summoning sheets from scattered leaves on the ground to wrap each of the bodies in, before grabbing a rope from one of the enemy corpses and tying them all together.
Then, he rises to his feet, tests the secureness of his knots and starts walking.
It's a long way to Amon Ereb.
Maitimo will have his skin, he thinks, turning south and pulling the bodies with him as he makes his way back to their temporary home. He might as well take his time and rest somewhere along the way—he's already late anyway. He doubts it matters how late he is; the scolding he'll get is the same regardless of the amount of time he delays.
Tyelkormo thinks he'd rather like to enjoy himself a little before Doom comes and claims him.