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When Khimil is newly-come to Valinor, and the queen-dowager has taken him into her home, Indis speaks of Khimil perhaps requiring a guard. Khimil denies this, not wanting to inconvenience anyone, and more, knowing deep within his heart that an Elven guard would do him little good against anything Tar-Mairon might set against him.
Somehow, Tulkas the Valiant hears of the queen-dowager’s offer and Khimil’s refusal. He finds Khimil buying household necessities in Valmar and sits beside him as if it is nothing.
"Nessa says that you are a noteworthy dancer," says the Valie’s spouse. "Do you fight as well?"
Khimil dubiously recalls his fumbling attempts at partnering the Dancer, and is not sure what she would have found notable. "If I must," he answers.
"I think you are stronger than you know!" says the mightiest of the Valar, and he smiles, but mercifully does not laugh. "Show me."
Khimil can find no reason to refuse him, and so they go to the courtyard of Tulkas. It is a fine structure, with columns and inlaid with gold over the stones that delineate practice rings. It is the largest of these that they go to, and Khimil leaves his purchases at what he hopes is a safe distance outside the ring.
Once they are both inside the ring, Khimil bows. He does not bother to warn the Vala; such would be superfluous to a being that can read his movements so precisely. He strikes out instead, and they begin.
Khimil is a passable fighter - Tar-Mairon had ensured as much - but the Vala's movements become swifter and swifter, and soon Khimil begins to perceive more of the Power's form and might, and he becomes afraid, because it is no shape made by Eru Iluvatar. To fight one of the Powers is beyond mere flesh! It will tear his spirit from his body and consume him entirely. (It does not occur to him to wonder how a monster might mask itself in Tulkas's own court.)
In fear, he speaks a Word that Tar-Mairon had taught him, once.
The monster is not slowed at all, much less destroyed. A hand passes by his face, and Khimil does not see it, but rather feels the wind of its passing. He has only one defense against such complete destruction, and he uses it.
Khimil takes himself between the threads of Ea. It is timeless and formless within the threads of Vaire's tapestry, a grain of sand no different in kind than a mountain, and Khimil has no voice there to sing and no body to fight. Sound and motion are things bounded by thread; he no longer knows or obeys those laws. He observes, but through no physical sight. Nothing is solid save for what he holds still with his sight; everything around him is in flux.
But even this is not the escape that Khimil had needed it to be. Khimil perceives the monster anew, prying apart an opening into the realm of the spirit. It should not be possible to move with Khimil's sight upon it, and yet it does. Khimil is frantic; he cannot escape from the thing! With no voice to scream and no body to flee, it is by will alone that he calls forth a weapon.
No sword would avail him here, in this place without weight or solidity, so Khimil calls upon the threads of Ea itself. There are a precious few backwards-twisted threads throughout Vaire's tapestry, Tar-Mairon had told him, and theirs is a dreadful power. Tar-Mairon had shown him the smallest part of it. In his desperation, Khimil pulls upon all of those threads that he can find. The fabric of Ea is shorn away and left ragged; Khimil is blinded because there is nothing to see by.
It is not enough. The thing calls a piece of the Void to itself as a shield (Khimil thinks, terrified, that even the Powers cannot command the Void) and weathers the blow, turning away from its pursuit and pulling Khimil after it, back inside the torn threads of Ea-that-is.
When Khimil opens his watering eyes, he sees the End of Life is there in Tulkas's court, radiating cold displeasure. Khimil sees Rhun at Namo's feet, crouched low and small. Tulkas is laughing, arms and face bruised and bloody. His followers are outside the courtyard, their faces white and their weapons drawn. One of the great Eagles is with them, great wings mantled. The courtyard is ruined, Khimil sees, stone pulled and warped like taffy, melted gold cooling on the floor.
And Khimil himself hurts all over, his head throbbing with each heartbeat. He thinks he might be bleeding. The Vala Tulkas was the monster; the monster was the Vala. No one else seems to find it awry. Mandos would know an imposter at once.
"You!" Tulkas wheezes, waving an arm. Khimil sees it five-fingered and red-fleshed, but also bladed and golden, and swift formless unmaking, and he flinches away. "I have not fought so since I brought Melkor to the Void!" the Valiant continues with enthusiasm.
"There is reason for that," says the Speaker of Doom, and Khimil holds himself very very still.
"Yes, yes, of course, no one wants to remake the continent again, but did you see! Ah, you could face a great Maia, Silverheart, and I would not bet against you!" Tulkas wipes at his oozing face, blowing at the wounds on his arms like a child or an animal might, and Khimil sees again those blades, a monstrous head fastidiously bent to clean them.
The Dancer runs through the crowd, furious, the air booming like thunder in her wake as she passes. "I could strike your head from your shoulders, Tulukastâz, and it would make no difference in your wisdom! Look at you, you've terrified Khimil, and he's wounded you!" She fusses over her husband, pulling the Power to his feet and dusting at his clothing. Or perhaps she is striking him, Khimil reconsiders, seeing the force she uses.
"I did? Ah, Khimil, so I did. I beg your pardon," says Tulkas, looking over his wife's shoulder, "I did not think I would have to call on so much of myself to match you!" Khimil looks at him, afraid, and Tulkas loses his smile. "As Melkor is the brother of Manwe, so is Ungoliant my sister. I forget that it is not so well-known."
"Yes, if Yavanna had agreed to mantids the size of Ungoliant's children, I imagine it would be better-remembered," his wife adds. Khimil places his mind's image of the insect over his recent memory of Tulkas's form, and finds them similar. It soothes the hurt place in his mind, to have the metaphor of a known shape instead of the raw alien horror that he had perceived, and the ache behind his eyes eases a little.
"You were taught a great deal," Namo tells Khimil, and death's power wells up around him, mending his wounds the same way that his body had been re-forged. He can sense the saturation of it throughout the courtyard, pulling apart the threads of Ea to draw away the poisonous remnants of unmaking.
"I am sorry," Khimil says, and sits, very carefully. He looks at the floor of the courtyard, where dirt and sand have been fused into glass, stone melted and warped.
"Use it only at great need," Mandos commands, and places a trembling Rhun into Khimil's lap. Khimil nods.
Tulkas declares his courtyard much improved, and keeps it thus. No one speaks to Khimil again of needing guards.