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She was not a warrior. Celebrian repeated this to herself with nauseating frequency, a blade in her hand, and black blood splattered across her dress. Lord Celebrimbor was dead, she'd found his body sometime earlier, hung in his forge like a trophy upon a pike. Eregion had been her home for centuries, and now was overrun with nightmares.
She was not a warrior, she repeated again. Her skill was in music and art, in things of beauty, her love in the scrolls of time and the past. Long had she honed these skills at the side of masters with natural affinity. Her fingers were calloused with strings, not weaponry; her ears were tuned to the woods and the river, and song which came dancing from breezes and birds. Now all that was dead, silenced by machines and steel.
She was not a warrior. She was young, younger than the stories of her mother and father, younger than the last of the wars. She had been promised peace, and yet here was war before her. History was a poor reflection of it: words upon pages which always had incited her empathy, bedtime tales of fallen realms—they all fell short of the terror and fear that she felt now. It lacked the screams, the dead, and the horrors of watching friends fall at the hands of orcs.
An ugly yell came from behind her, and she barely turned in time to stop from being impaled upon a jagged sword. She held the orc at bay, somehow gained the upper hand, and continued on with its body at her feet. Her stomach rolled at the sight, but an opening was now found, and she ducked away from the carnage in hopes of a moment of reprieve inside a guardhouse where bodies were strewn about the threshold. The orcs had already come in here, they likely would not return until some time.
Slumped against the stone beside the door, Celebrian allowed herself a breath of pause, to gather her wits and her thoughts before she headed once more into the fray with hopes of finding an escape. Hope was lost for Eregion, even the elven army which had come from Lindon was now but a handful of warriors in a river of evil. If they were not already dead, they soon would be, as would every elf within the walls of Ost-in-Edhil.
She had been on the walls when the dawn had come, the light of the sun upon the helm of High King Gil-Galad himself had given her hope until she'd counted his numbers.
If she'd wondered how the people of Gondolin felt as their city had been overrun, she knew now. She knew better than she'd ever known before. Now all that they needed was a fallen tower, and that High King which fought outside its walls to be below it and the parallel would be complete.
A small whimper caught her attention, a tiny elfling cowered in a corner beside a clearly deceased mother. She could not tell if it was a boy or girl, but they held the mother's hand and stared at her with wide eyes filled with terror. She knew the feeling. Her heart went out to the child as she stared back, knowing the feeling of loss which came with losing ones mother. Granted, she simply did not know where her mother was, so maybe not exactly the same.
It was an image Celebrian was certain would remain in her mind forever after.
Careful not to be seen from the door, she crossed the guardroom and stooped in front of the elfling, hands moving the child's light brown hair from their eyes. “Hello,” she said gently, wrapping an arm around them. “would you like to come with me?”
The child nodded.
There is something to be said in the way that protecting others often saves ones own life. Celebrian would swear this to be true in future, as the little one at her side gave her a determination she had been losing. Before long, she found the tunnels from the city which led into the cliffs above, and with one hand upon the child and another still clutching the sword, she found herself looking down upon the ruin of Ost-in-Edhil.
She was not a warrior, she felt that keenly as she looked upon the devastation. She was not a warrior, but she still heard and felt the presence of orcs seeking out refugees in the forest. She moved then, quickly ducking away from every sound she heard, no rest. Not until she was safe. Her hand tightened around the elfling's. They were safe.
She was not a warrior.
But for a day, she was.