Chapter Text
(Flames licked at the brink and curled about the bases of the columns. Wisps of dark smoke wavered in the hot air...)
Their ashen footprints remain embedded in glittering pavements of Tirion, and no amount of washing can erase the scorch marks along the narrow passage of Calacirya.
There was no place for them in Aman.
Few would care to look in their direction with sufficient interest to recognize their shapes or realize that they had names beyond a moniker crafted to encompass an entire kindred. The Valaraukar were considered a pitiful aberration, a false note that did not get erased from the Song. A formless after-image of blinding light in silver halls, where their Maiar brethren circled their Valar like moths around a flame.
Until Melkor told them of a country framed in granite and ice, where they could carve their names in tongues of fire.
The Valaraukar suspected that behind his offer stood Mairon, that enigmatic former craft-Maia, forge-Maia, fire-Maia who, unlike them, managed to subdue his flames into serving his iron will. But could they truly care about anyone's hidden motives in their conviction that they could only serve as weapons, the first to be thrown at an enemy?
The Valaraukar thought of death in battle as the only honor to which even they could aspire, and without a moment's hesitation they took their places in procession on the long march to Endórë.
(Much later, when Melkor was dragged away in chains, they carried Mairon back into the fortress and demanded his attention over the most minuscule of daily tasks to prevent him from falling into despair. When Melkor’s cries echoed along the shores, they marched in step behind Mairon at the head of their newly formed armies.)
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(Of all Elf-banes the most deadly...)
But before the first battle was fought or the first fortress built, they brought their fire to the East.
A passing comment in Tirion had mentioned beings known as the Firstborn, created in a fleeting whim and dropped on dewy grass to wake up naked and confused, far beyond the notice or care of the Valar.
The Valaraukar refused to watch another Valar-forsaken kindred balancing on the edge of survival. So they did the only thing they knew: set the woods ablaze with light and heat, and taught the newcomers how to tame them.
(There is a reason why the Firstborn never speak of their Awakening. It would rekindle memories of hungry centuries that had preceded the gift of fire, and the kind of sacrifices that can be demanded as grim necessity when famine stares a family in the face, and their very lives in debt to those who they would later fight to extermination.)
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(From out of the shadow a red sword leaped flaming...)
Eventually the Valaraukar learned strategy and tactics, and the value of their lives and those of their companions, and found themselves a place in the growing empire, working in its mines and foundries in addition to battlefields.
Though they only stopped considering themselves expendable after getting cornered in the Battle beneath the Stars, in what they thought would be their last stand - except that Mairon landed in front of them like a falling star, his steel-toed boots flicking sparks from the stones, his twin blades a blur, his face framed in dancing flames, contorted in a reckless scream of death and defiance, alone in front of an entire battalion. Mairon's honor guard soon followed, dropping from the skies like a hail of swords, holding the enemy back just long enough to ensure an orderly retreat.
Through the rest of the First Age the Valaraukar fought with the fury of a forest fire and the desperation of dying embers. And they lost.
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(The Dwarves delved too greedily and too deep...)
And empires rose on the price of mithril for Ages to come.
The Valaraukar were the only ones who could mine it in the depths of the Earth, choking in the foul air, bent under the crushing pressure. Enslaved captains of broken armies, laboring beneath the great fortress of Dwarrowdelf, they built the Dwarvish hoards and endured cruel treatment with patience born of a defeat that had begun before the world was sung into being.
And the entire time they kept looking for a chance to escape: to the East, or beneath the mountains, or, as a last resort, in a blaze of battle that would torch the skies.
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(The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn...)
Now tales speak of ancient horrors asleep in cavernous depths until the world is mended, of spirits in Eastern deserts that make phantom cities appear in the air twinkling with heat.
It has never occured to the travelers that the towers reflected in their mirages are not located in neighboring kingdoms, nor even in the fabled lands beyond the Sea. Instead, they see Utumno, the first fortress of the Valaraukar and the most beautiful, sculpted in crystal and ice and flame.
Like sand between fingers, the mirages slip away, and all that remains are after-images of cities long lost, and half-forgotten myths of lesser gods bringing fire to people born in darkness.