Chapter Text
A Brief, but Educational Account of the Operations Preceding the Establishment of Angband, with Instructive Details on the Appropriate Course of Action following a Release from Prison.
Composed based on Conversations with Lord Melkor, Commander-in-Chief, and Lord Mairon, First Lieutenant and Principal Investigator of the Angband Commonwealth, by Thuringwethil, Postmaster General and Deputy Chief Engineer of the Angband Commonwealth, currently In Hiding due to the Aforementioned Melkor and Mairon misunderstanding the Artistic Liberty and placing a (it must be mentioned, Not Very High) Price on the Head of the Author of this Piece
“In gratitude for the boundless mercy of Eru, we confirm that the sentence to atone for your grievous misdeeds has now been served, and you are proclaimed to be fit to receive freedom anew, though you shall abide in abject humility, with no palace nor retainer, seeking ever to serve the Almighty Ilúvatar and live in peace as the lowliest of your most venerated brethren,” Manwë finished in a single breath, though by the end he was audibly running out of air. The Lord of the Valar majestically raised and lowered his scepter and frowned at Melkor.
Melkor, who had been lost in thought considering his options of surviving in Valinor as a free and, he hoped, reasonably corporeal entity, was startled by the sudden silence, and lifted his head to see the rest of the Valarin court staring at him.
So that’s the end of my imprisonment, Melkor thought, only about five centuries longer than anyone in my armies could have expected, if said armies still exist at all, and in spite of doing his best to keep a sarcastic demeanor, he felt such overwhelming rush of relief that he had to lean on a nearby pillar to prevent his knees from buckling.
“Thank you,” he croaked out.
Melkor had not had much use for his voice over the last few centuries, especially once he had realized that the walls were successfully blocking his pleas and threats alike, and no response would be coming until his power-hungry brother got bored of the prisoner.
Based on the faces in the audience, Melkor’s response was distinctly insufficient.
“I will endeavor… to apply myself fully,” Melkor added as a compromise between the customary promise “to give satisfaction” that made him feel faintly sick, and what he truly wished to say, which was “to give you bastards a giant kick in your most venerated asses”.
Manwë was prevented from giving a proper response to that thinly-veiled insult by grumbling from the rest of the jury, who were eagerly awaiting their next case. He resignedly waved Melkor off and composed himself to dispense justice on three of the more recently incorporated Maiar of Aulë’s, so-called Valaraukar, supposedly invaluable in the forge, but repeat offenders of coating the walls of the Calacirya with ash.
Melkor barely noticed the flaming wings crowding the courthouse hallways, as he rushed outside to take the first breath of air as a free Vala in what felt like about a millennium. It stank of smoke.
That’s what the air smelled like at Aulë’s. A small smile played on Melkor’s lips as he remembered the first time he had strolled into that forge with a just-barely-impossible request, carefully designed to annoy Aulë and his obnoxious crew, who had dared to call themselves the best crafts-Maiar in Aman. He was flabbergasted when a young Maia asked him to wait for an hour, followed by reappearing with the finished mechanism – a tool to control the lights in his walls by a wave of the hand – in even less than that, complete with an arrogant smirk that looked like it was permanently etched on his face. And that was when Melkor knew he was gone.
Speaking of which, if he were to make any kind of living as the highest-ranking outcast in Tirion, he needed Mairon back here, with him, immediately. (Melkor deliberately avoided thinking of all the other reasons why he needed Mairon, he would have more than enough time to ponder them later at night.)
For all he knew, Mairon was still commanding the armies, unless by now he had chucked his Lieutenant’s badge out of the window and moved to farming sheep around Cuiviénen. After all, Mairon could hardly be expected to know that his commander in chief was back in business and would slowly wither without his key strategist at his right hand (and on the right side of the bed, unhelpfully added Melkor’s subconscious).
Unfortunately, there was no regular mail between Arda and Aman, and the latest contact between the two continents came in the form of bright-eyed travelers, who had arrived on an island pulled through the waves, which was not particularly helpful for sending them back.
Melkor considered the bat service they had been using for battlefield communications (to be fair, that was all Mairon’s idea, but what was the point of being a general if one could not claim the most successful inventions of one’s staff?), but he could not remember having seen a single bat in all of Aman. After all, since the land was perpetually bathed in the light from the Trees, the poor creatures would probably be half-blind.
On the other hand, he had seen winged creatures around. Everyone had, and most had become rather adept at avoiding them. The Rookery, as it was known around Aulë’s forges, or The Eagles’ Nest by its official name, housed at least twenty enormous birds, with the expected sound, smell, and amount of natural fertilizer for the lands in a two-mile radius around the mountain.
Melkor shuddered at the thought of visiting the Rookery and for a moment weighed the benefits of a long-distance relationship. He could, after all, take his life one day at a time, without Mairon’s grandiose plans and detailed schemes to achieve them that had always given him a headache.
And who was he to think like that? Tulkas of the “get smashed every night, smash a few faces every morning, life is good in Valinor” fame? The Rookery it will have to be, Melkor sighed in resignation and began walking towards Taniquetil. After a few steps, he reconsidered the idea of harassing a gigantic bird of prey while looking very much like a choice morsel himself, and turned back to leave through the gates of Manwë’s sprawling compound.
There was one way to bribe the Eagles into doing his bidding, and that was fresh meat. Unfortunately, trussing up a few of those newcomer Elves would probably earn Melkor another sentence, so even though it would guarantee the undying loyalty of the Eagles, he had to consider a much messier option. One that, he feared, would have to involve a non-trivial amount of groveling.