This story begins, as it ends, with folly. The children of Aulë were always drawn to earth. Earth begat them and to earth they returned. Not for them the lofty havens of the elves, surrounded by winds and air, or the plains and grasslands whereupon men flourished. For them, the rock, and the iron, and the dark. They delved deep, building monolithic dwellings, solid and enduring, like the dwarrows themselves. They mastered the earth, shackled it to their will, and took its treasures for their own. They made beautiful things with their riches, priceless jewellery that would beggar a king to buy, cities made of strong, cold rock, with ceilings that faded out of sight and halls where giants should sit. But they also made tools of war, weapons and armour no less beautiful for their purpose, but with a beauty that could only be appreciated in times of misery. Although that is perhaps where beauty is needed the most. To make their most powerful instruments of strife, the Khazad used mithril. As an element, mithril was a shining silver metal, the purest, most beautiful light sparkling off it when only a glimmer of light shined. But by itself, Mithril could only be used for jewellery; rings and necklaces that seemed to illuminate the wearer in a fey glow, and cast any stones that were set into it into mere baubles, but jewellery nonetheless. For the heroic weapons and the resolute armour, mithril was mixed into an alloy, in the most secret forges, in the deepest parts of the Dûm, where only fire and the ringing of hammers accompanied the Khazad master smiths. With their arms wreathed in the blood of the earth, molten hot and roaring with unconstrained fury, their eyes blazing with blue fire, at counterpoint to the abyssal reds and blacks surrounding them, their torsos bare to the heat, deep blue tattoos looping over and under their dense arms and chest, spelling out secret names of earth and fire, entreating the gods to guide their hammer and their creations fate. Down in the deep they made mithril into wonders not seen in this age anymore. But therein lay their downfall. Mithril was mined with a fever in the greatest of the dwarrow cities; Khazad- Dûm. Its king, Durin IV, became rich off the earths treasure and his city became mighty, despite the hardships outside his realm. After the devastation of the last alliance, Khazad- Dûm was a bastion of the free folk, where the noble kingdoms of the world could look in envy and hope that one day, all would be this mighty. But in order to continue their fortune, their Khazad delved ever deeper in search of Mithril, and in their folly brought about their doom.
He awoke from the long night to the sound of tapping. Constant tapping. It subsided before returning with the same monotonous regularity. He slowly rose from slumber, from his hall with its oceanic blackness and its volcanic floor. He rose to his full extent, twice the height of a large man, with the same vague proportions, but with two monstrous bull horns curving from the side of his face. They gleamed in the unlight as if they were polished with a wan glow. He unfurled his arms to either side, embracing the freedom of movement with a gasp. He had lost count of how many years he had waited, how many years he had cowered in the deep places, away from the light. He thought back to the days before his flight, the days of the first age, where the armies of Melkor were mighty and proud, and the elves and other 'free', he chuckled blackly, races quailed at the sight of the hosts he led. He remembered Gothmog, and his battle against Fëanor, and their desperate retreat from his sons in their eternal anger. And he remembered his fall. He remembered the Valar with their crowns of light and their host of fools, he remembered the fighting, the release of war, the taste of it, the conflict that stretched across the land, and then, the shame of his retreat, harsh and pungent in his mind. He remembered looking back to see the release of the wyrms, the mightiest of Melkor's servants to whom even knelt to. He saw lighting tear the sky asunder and fire consume the earth. He watched as Ëarendil smote Ancalagon and as the last great drake fell from the sky like a mountain. He watched as his master was dragged from his pit in chains that hurt to look at and bonds that hurt to imagine. He fled. And hid. And waited. Until it was time to re-emerge and to once more wage the long war. The time was right. He breathed in the air around, tasting brimstone and fire and heat before letting the air out in a roar that shook the very foundations of his hall. It echoed off the stone ceiling with its hate and anger, threatening to tear down the walls themselves with its fury. The tapping paused only for a second before resuming as normal. He flexed his mind and wove the essence of himself, the essence that made all the higher creatures, the maiar, and wove himself a set of wings, fashioned on Ancalagon's; black as the night and wider than a host of elves. He studied himself in the obsidian floor, his eyes piercing the night in ways no mortal eyes, not even the Khazads could. He remembered the flames of Angbad, and the fires of hate that fed Melkor, and in a moment, the same flames consumed him. They roared and leapt high into the air, down his back like a red white mane, down to his feet before burning the floor and charring the very air and yet, did not touch him. Fire was his. His gift from Melkor for years of service, he wielded it as an ally and as a friend. He took a step forward, his cloved foot cracking the ground with its heat and threw his head back, illuminated in the roaring heart of a mountain, his eyes ablaze with hate and loathing, and roared his challenge at the ceiling. With a thunder crack his wings unfurled and he leapt up before soaring to the ceiling, roaring his rage at a world that had turned on him. The tapping ceased.