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It had been decades since his death under the sea, but Mairon still did not reform. If asked why then he would have had many excuses to give. It took time to build strength after such a violent death. He wanted to drift East before taking a form. If he did it too early, then he would draw too much attention from the Valar.
Excuses, all of them. In Truth Mairon could have taken a body eight years into his death, but did not out of fear. Every time he began the process he drew back into his fëa and trembled. Something was wrong, something was horribly wrong. The bones did not listen to him, the flesh rebelled. All he could seem to direct with any finesse was the overall size of the vessel. It filled him with such terror to have such little control over the most private and primitive of powers.
But it had been long enough. He shuddered to think of how his kingdom was faring after 78 years without even his messages from Númenor. His council was great, yes, but he did not trust it like he had trusted Gothmog or Thuringwethil. They would struggle to predict Mairon’s wishes if anything remotely unexpected had passed.
So Mairon drifted on the winds until he came to the Ash Mountains. There he found a deep cavern in his mountain, and floated deep. It was beautiful here. The perfume of lava, like metal and sulfur, surrounded him like a lover. It made him feel stronger. It made him want to reform not only for power, but for the simple joy of feeling heat against his skin and metal forming under his touch. It had been too long since he had been able to partake in the pleasure of existence.
Yes, it was time. Time to put aside the silly anxieties he had. He was Mairon, Melkor’s chosen successor, and he had to endure. Perfecting his body could be done later once he could accelerate his healing with food and sleep. For now he’d had to accept what he could form, no matter how unsatisfactory it would be.
Mairon stopped inside a large chamber of molten lava. It was bright here, cozy, full of energy and beauty. Most of his powers were weak in his incorporeal form, but he was a spirit of fire and a trail of lava hardened eagerly at his whim. He placed himself over the obsidian and drew within his center all the power he had.
Bones formed first. Initially they took to the shape he wanted them. 195cm exactly. Tall enough to impose, but did not make life as inconvenient as Melkor’s insistence on being 217cm at rest. At rest! No matter how many times Mairon had explained the inconvenience of such a height, Melkor would laugh and say the world should bend to him. He was right, but it did not make the fine ivory bed any larger. The memory eased some of the fear, so Mairon leaned into it. He remembered how large his lord’s bones were. Mairon, even in his form of war, could not wrap his fingers around Melkor’s wrist. It had amused him to try, and warmed his heart that Melkor allowed him that amusement.
Mairon despaired as the bones of his new skull refused to shape the way he intended. Usually this was where he stopped his attempt before he was trapped in a sub-par flesh. But he forced himself to continue. He had taken the reigns of Melkor’s kingdom, and it would be an insult to his lord to abandon it over vanity.
Ligaments came next. These at least obeyed him. If they had not, then Mairon would have had to abandon this vessel despite his resolution. A mistake in the connective tissue would not be vanity, but a source of pain and disability.
Muscles now. Mairon’s new teeth clacked sharply to make up for his lack of vocal cords. The muscles would not listen, they simply would not. They’d anchor where they should, but they did so unevenly. How could he make such amateur errors? He had not had such asymmetry since they had all been new to flesh crafting. It had been so exhilarating then that no Maiar had cared if their brow was thicker on one side than the other. His own original body had his left arm longer than his right, yet he had thought nothing of it then.
He wanted to hyperventilate despite his lack of lungs. The moment his diaphragm formed he pumped it like a great set of bellows. Air rushed between ribs and over forming muscle.
Melkor was always asymmetrical, Mairon reminded himself. From his eyes, to his hair, to the coloring of his skin. Melkor was a patchwork that sung of beauty and finesse not in spite of the chaos, but because of it. He had been what Mairon couldn’t be. Perfection without order. Perhaps this would bring him closer to the memory of his lord. Even if it led to pain, was that not something his Lord had experienced everyday?
Organs settled in their places now. Like the ligaments, organs could not tolerate any error. He had to concentrate to ensure his heart was right for his height, that his liver’s bile structures weren’t constricted, and that each lobe of his brain was properly constructed. He almost laughed as he remembered the time an Umaiar had underestimated the importance of her vessel’s brain, and had developed such bizarre issues that Mairon had to strike her down to allow her to correct her mistake.
It had been so long since he had last spoke to another umaiar. None were his friends. No, his friends had all died horribly long ago. But a few of them could almost be called one. Perhaps he had been too hasty to write the others off as mere batteries to reform the ones he truly cared about. Doubtless Gothmog and Thuringwethil were trapped somewhere formless, and Mairon had long since written off the existence of the rest of the umaiar if it meant bringing back his friends. He could force their fëa energy to dissolve and heal whatever hurt that kept them.
Mairon’s new voice groaned as nerves grew like ice inside his flesh. He could not tell if it truly stung worse, or if he had simply grown unused to the realities of corporeal forms. He shook his hands impatiently, shifted his bare feet against obsidian. 78 years was not long, but it was long enough to be overwhelmed with the sensation of being. Glass, heat, the pumping of his blood. It was so much after decades of nothingness.
Once his nerves had settled Mairon worked on the last of his raiment. His hair. He’d gone through many phases in his existence in which he favored blonde, or red, curly or straight. Melkor had always preferred it when Mairon wore red, curly hair. He had loved the chaos of even the best kept curls, how one couldn’t perfect how each strand would fall. He’d touch Mairon’s hair with a soft reverence that no other creature in Arda had the privilege of receiving. Melkor’s affection was for him alone. Smiling at the memory of cold fingers through flamed hair, Mairon willed it into being.
But the hair that spouted from his scalp was not red curls. The smooth silver-blonde of his elven disguise fell into his vision and he cried out. No, this was not what he had willed! This was the hair of his disgrace. It was what he wore as he grew too attached to being Annatar, what he had hidden his face behind as he debased himself in Ar-Pharazôn’s bed. Silver blonde was the color of his mistakes.
He gripped urgently at his hair, then fell to his knees as he glimpsed his hand. It was much worse than he had guessed. Skin drew tight over knobby bones, like a thick version of the sickness of old men. He shook horrible as he gazed up his arms, at the tough burn-like skin wrapped around his treacherous flesh. His stomach was worse, his legs unevenly muscled and thickly textured. Mairon pressed his palms to obsidian and heaved despite his empty stomach.
Then he saw his face in the obsidian glass, and a scream ripped from chapped lips. His face was worse than a man’s, than the unloveliest of orcs. He looked as if he had been burned by acid and let to heal without so much as a wash. He smashed his fist against obsidian and sobbed as he fell into the magma. It cradled him, evaporated the agonized tears. In the magma the edges of his body blurred until he felt as if he was the volcano itself.
He had to pretend to be the volcano, as he knew deep in his fëa that this was not a mistake or weakness. This was done onto him by Eru, just as Númenor’s sinking had been. It was a cruelty that Mairon could scarcely believe had been done. Nothing Mairon had ever caused others to suffer had been so cruel. Fëa destroyed suffered no more. Elves would heal with time in Mando’s hall. Orcs may be now bound to Middle Earth, but they reincarnated with no knowledge of the terrors of their past lives. Men returned to Eru himself come their death.
But Mairon would be stuck with the curse of hideousness till the end of time itself, and his master would never heal truly. The scars on his form stuck with each vessel, no matter how much Umaiar essence was poured into him, and who knew what damage had been done to his mind in the Void.
Eru truly was the cruelest beast. Mairon curled into himself and cried for the fate of himself and Melkor.
--
In secret he fled to Barad-Dur, hiding himself from all but the most sensitive Umaiar. But they could sense the aura he cast and knew not to disturb him. They flittered at the edge of his senses, too far away to see his shame but eager regardless to greet him.
Mairon had long imagined his return. He would have entered the gates glorious and covered in gold. The strength of the Númenorian army would have been his, and they would have sent him back to his home shrouded in the finest silks. Umaiar would greet him with love, the orcs with feared devotion.
But now he stood in his private forge in disgraced anger. His forge was the same as the day he left it. Clearly his fellow umaiar of smithing had honored this like a shrine. They had long worshiped him. Worst would be their gaze upon his new form, when they had known him since his earliest days.
Mairon took silver and mithril from his stock. It was finest metal in which he had dallied long on using. Once it had been easy to work with such precious material. He would craft mithril canes and jewelry for his Lord. Braces made of silver to support long injured legs. Nothing less was deserving of Melkor’s use.
But now he must use finest mithril to prove himself Melkor’s successor. If he stepped into his court looking himself the victim of acid torture then he might as well fade to nothing. Who could willingly follow such a beast? Who could love such a hideous face? Once he had felt just as clothed in flesh as he did silk and steel, but now his vessel was a private thing. Those who he might have been convinced to appear before were all dead or worse.
Mairon formed a mask of mithril, all the while tears fall down his cheeks in trails of misery.
He made it beautiful, in ways he could no longer be. He formed an armor of mithril and silver, light for daily wear and unparalleled in its flexibility. Joint upon joint was created till he knew it would be impossible for all but it’s maker to assemble. That was alright. He had no plan for anyone to help arm him in this.
Not only was it beautiful, but Mairon made it silent as well. Could any other smith have done so? Apart from Aulë, no. Only Aulë could have matched him in this creation.
Mairon stood before his great mirror and saw a stunning statue of unmatched skill. When he moved he looked ethereal, as if he had floated rather than walked. He stared at the reflection and felt as hollow as a Nazgûl. And as he thought that, he remembered Aulë and felt a level of guilt and shame he had thought long beneath him.
Was anything worth this?