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Smoke rose from the dead soil of Anfauglith, the Hammer of the Underworld fell like thunder, and the king fought on.
Four times. He’d struck Morgoth four times. Left calf, right forearm, right flank, right hand. It was more than he’d hoped—not that Fingolfin had hoped for anything, really—when he’d ridden out from Barad Eithel in grief and rage and despair. They weren’t deep wounds. They weren’t likely to change anything. But they bled.
After everything, all the death, all the destruction, the undoing of everything the free peoples had built together, Morgoth could still bleed.
The hammer came down again, and Fingolfin barely managed to jump aside. The ground around them was a mess of craters soaked in the black blood of Morgoth. It was just as well that he’d dismounted; Rochallor was a hearty steed, but this terrain would have been the death of him.
Morgoth swung the hammer around, and the king ducked beneath the blow, lashing out with his own weapon. The Enemy roared again as Ringil found his left wrist. Five.
Another spray of foul blood wet the ground beneath him, and Fingolfin cursed as he lost his footing for the first time. He caught the next blow with his shield. The force of it made his whole body ache, but Morgoth’s injuries were taking effect; the strikes might no longer mean instant death, though the king was loathe to test the idea.
Clambering back to his feet, Fingolfin twisted away from the clawed hand reaching out to grab him, bringing his sword up as he did so and eliciting another, greater cry as the blade went deep into the meat of the right thigh. Six. Now it was Morgoth’s turn to stumble, the pain and the slick, hot blood throwing him off-balance. He didn’t fall as Fingolfin might have hoped, but the hammer’s head sank into the bloody mire beneath them as the weight of his injured form leaned heavily upon it.
Seeing this. Fingolfin darted forward. Morgoth’s right fist slammed into his side and he felt his ribs break on impact, but it wasn’t enough, not anymore. With all his own weight, he brought Ringil down on—through— the left elbow. He slammed face-first into the muck beside the sundered arm as Morgoth howled in shock and outrage and agony.
Seven.
Standing was a struggle, as was breathing, but Fingolfin felt curiously little pain as he rose. Morgoth was on his knees, staring at him in horrified disbelief. The king took one step,
His father’s shattered body in the wreck of Formenos
and another
Turukáno weeping as Elenwë disappeared into the cold depths
and another
Arakáno staring sightlessly into the sky
Flinging his shield away, Fingolfin seized the jagged iron fretwork of the Dark Lord’s crown, and even the Silmarils’ light seemed to dim in anticipation.
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With a cry for everything the world had ever suffered at this monster’s hands, Fingolfin drove his sword through Morgoth’s eye.
From Angband there arose a chorus of wails as the Enemy’s servants beheld, and beneath the walls of Minas Tirith Sauron quaked in dread, and flowers burst into bloom behind the Girdle of Melian, and even upon distant Taniquetil the winds stilled and the birds fell silent.
From the fatal wound Morgoth’s flesh was flayed away layer by layer, falling into nothing as his fana unmade itself.
Fingolfin gripped the sword as tightly as he could and tried to dig his heels into the mud, but the violence of a Power’s death was not to be resisted. There was a *crack* as Ringil shattered, and the whole world seemed to turn red and painful as the king was hurled back across the bloody, pockmarked earth.
He saw the walls of the gates of Angband shudder and groan as though pressed upon from above, and he saw his bent and broken fingers still gripping the iron crown, and he heard, nonsensically, the cry of an eagle.