Chapter Text
In retrospect, everything went wrong after the discovery of the orc gambling rings.
Mairon, patrolling the premises and adamant that Angband’s armies must be orderly for the master’s return, sent Balrogs to break them up, intending to force some sense of order into the involved orcs by blade or even fire-whip, if necessary. While the Balrogs were disciplining their unruly underlings, however, Melkor tangled himself further and further into Ungoliant’s webs, and he sent forth a cry so terrible that the mountains shook and trembled in their roots. The Balrogs, unfortunately, were too busy divesting the orcs of their hard-earned bone-daggers and jerky to respond to their master’s call of distress.
Meanwhile, Melkor, as he struggled in those webs of Unlight, began to have a good amount of second thoughts about making deals with void creatures of insatiable appetites. Ungoliant, with her unhinged jaw slowly closing over his right hand, made an altogether very convincing display that she meant to take her due, the attachment of limb to Vala notwithstanding. Finally, in haste (and with no small amount of fear), he opened his hand, from which outpoured the light of the Silmarils in their crystal casket. Then Ungoliant, greedy for that last bit of Light, swallowed it whole – casket and Silmarils – and immediately howled in pain.
The problem with Varda-hallowed gems, unfortunately, is that they rarely agree with the stomach of a creature of the Void.
Fëanáro’s greatest creations unbreakable sat within her, and seemed to light up her limbs in fiery pain. Thus, in great agony, she turned and fled into the darkness, twisting and shedding her form and covering herself in Unlight once again.
Melkor was most wroth coming upon the gates of Angband, and remained most wroth as the Balrogs cowered before him and babbled apologies for abandoning their master in his hour of greatest need. Then, in the true fashion of those who are ever just following orders, they unanimously turned and named Mairon as the greatest culprit for the loss of the treasure this world may not see again.
Melkor then turned to his (previously) most trusted lieutenant in rage, and bade Mairon to leave the fortress, and to not return again unless in hand with the Silmarils, lest Melkor be overcome with the urge to strip his fana from his ëala.
Now, the question lingering on all of the blackened hearts of the residents of Angband remains — just where is Ungoliant?
Well, only Ungoliant can answer that question. But given that she is currently scrabbling through the Void at breakneck speed, nearly entirely consumed by pain, it seems that her location shall remain a mystery for a long, long time.
To the residents of Arda, that is.
Far, far out in the Eä, in a world that the Valar have all but abandoned and where chaos reigns supreme, a civilization named Valyria is completely unprepared for a rather large surprise.
A surprise from the sky that, in fact, seems to be growing larger every second.
The dragonlords of Valyria had little time to react, and even less time to flee on their dragons, as a ball of writhing black mass and blinding white light hurtled down from the clouds and crashed into the heart of their city. Chaos erupted as people rushed to their dragons, and dragons rushed to take off in flight.
Unfortunately, the other thing that erupted were the Fourteen Flames.
As it turns out, Varda-hallowed gems also have a tendency to disagree with the fire-and-blood magic poured into maintaining the volcanoes upon which Valyria is built.
Thus fell the black towers of Old Valyria, and dragon riders and dragons alike burned in the fire that licked up from the fissures in the ground. And many more perished in the underground mines in which they were enslaved, though their deaths were perhaps quicker than that of the sorcerers, whose magic boiled them alive from within.
A rather dramatic display of fire and light and Unlight, in truth, though hardly any eyes would survive to describe the artistry of the moment.
Far, far away in the Golden Fields, where a small family of dragon-riders had just built their keep, Daenys Targaryen watched the far south-east light up in red, and knew her dreams to be true.
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“On the Holy Mountain hear, Manwë, and Varda!” Even as Curufinwë Fëanáro swore his Oath, standing in the square of darkened Tirion-upon-Túna, he felt in his fëa that what he sought was no longer within Arda.
But where else could it be, if not in the hands of the Great Enemy, who yet now is fleeing to his fortress? To Beleriand they must go, and in haste, for every minute dawdling is another minute that the Enemy spends shoring up his defenses and hiding the Silmarils away.
So the Great Music continues, rising and ebbing like the waves of the sea. So in haste the host of the Noldor went to the shores of Alqualondë, and when Olwë refused to lend the Teleri’s swan-ships, Fëanáro hastened to steal away with them in the night, and in the darkness no one knew whose sword first fell through flesh, and in the confusion then knew little and less except for the clang of weapons and cries ringing out over the waters, and at the end that the shores of lovely Alqualondë ran red with elven blood.
So the Great Music continues, now rising to a crescendo of cacophonous sound. So Mandos proclaimed his great Doom upon the Noldor, and so Arafinwë turned back to Tirion-upon-Túna, yet his children continued onwards.
In another Song, Curufinwë Fëanáro would have taken the swan-ships, and upon arriving in Beleriand burned them red as dusk over water, and the houses of Nolofinwë and Arafinwë would have known themselves betrayed, and taken the thirty-year march across unforgiving Helcaraxë.
But this is not the Song here.
The Great Music continues, but now stutters, as though the conductor has lost his place. Now a tune took up again, a lighter tune, perhaps too light for the blood that yet still colored the shores of the Blessed Lands. Yet it was this light tune that wove its way in the waves under the sails of the House of Fëanáro, who had now set out on the swan-ships, their prows pointed in the direction of Beleriand.
Eru Illúvatar works in mysterious ways, after all.
(Or perhaps not so mysterious ones, since it is quite evident that a major part of the Song has just made its grand escape from the Arda in the stomach of a void-spider.)
Nonetheless, midway on their voyage, a great fog set upon the ships of Fëanáro and his kin, and in the fog they lost their way, and they thought it an ill omen from the Valar, who meant to prevent them from reaching Beleriand entirely. Yet they soon saw that that would not be the case.
Alternatively, “immediately” would have been a more accurate description than “soon”, since the first hint that something was wrong with their journey was about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. Or, in this case, to the eyes – as the Fëanorian host upon the swan-ships, when the fog cleared, was suddenly cast under a bright golden light, seemingly from a great orange ball in the sky.
For the Noldor who had only ever known the soft light of the Two Trees and the white stars, the light that now came bearing down from the sky blazed like fire, and many shielded their eyes from the sudden light. Some wept, though perhaps from the light as much as the sudden realization that they were very, very far from home.
“Is this the light source of this world?” Fëanáro wondered, and under his burning hot rage, the first spark of curiosity bubbled – for he was, above all else, a craftsman, and even now his first instinct upon encountering the unknown was to study it.
In the distance an island of black stone rose from the sea, sculptures of dragons twisting around its walls. The white swan-ships of the Teleri, lovely and alien, drew up against the black sands of Dragonstone, the abandoned westernmost trading outpost of Old Valyria.
They were met with the fishing folk who had built small villages on the shore of the island, and for a moment there was naught but silence. The fishing folk, weathered by sun and salt, stared at the tall strangers with something like a mix of awe and the apprehension of a people with a long history of being visited by beautiful strangers with ill will. Though at least this time they weren’t arriving on dragonback.
The Noldor saw before them the Aftercomers who, by all rights, should not yet have been present in this world, and they realized, or perhaps were finally willing to acknowledge, that they had not arrived in Beleriand, and perhaps they were no longer even in the Arda.
Fëanáro’s heart was hot, and bent on revenge, but there was no vengeance to be had in a world without Morgoth, and it was a world strange enough to stay even his hand. So when Maitimo urged caution, to send out the ships to scout this strange world, Fëanáro grudgingly agreed.
Out on the Narrow Sea, the swan-ships that should have found Essos instead were met with the thick fog that had brought them from Belegaer to this strange sea, and when it cleared they once again arrived on the shore of Araman, where the hosts of the second and third family of the house of Finwë were waiting anxiously.
So, seeing no better option, the ships landed and bade the rest of the Noldorin host to board.
And, in an outcome entirely to be expected, they were once again besieged by the fog, and arrived, bewildered, on the shores of Dragonstone. Yet when they sent the ships out for the third time, the elves perceived that the way through which they came was closed to them, and they found nothing but the hither shore of Essos. Many thought then that this was to be part of their Doom, to be lost from their quarry before pursuit even began; others thought it an act from Eru himself, though to what ends they did not understand and could not begin to guess.
When the ships set sail, Fëanáro and his sons had already explored the island, and from the fisherfolk gleaned the geography of the continent beyond, of its various warring kingdoms, of where they were, and had set about fixing the abandoned castle for livability. Yet Dragonstone was a small island, and its crops were meager, hardly enough to sustain Fëanáro’s own host, much less the three hundred thousand Noldor in total who had now arrived on the island, so they returned to the ships once more and set sail for the mainland.
In the years afterwards, the maesters would mark this year as 2 BC, the time when the Noldor stepped foot onto the shores of Blackwater Bay, and the time when Westeros was forever changed.