He lay on the ground, body broken, his vital fluids coating the stone and turning the ash to sickening mud, and his hand was stretched out toward his dropped sword. If I could just... a little further... His fingers brushed its pommel, but the hand they were attached to was slick and bloody, and rather than return to his grasp the treacherous blade slid further away.
While before him...
Before him...
"No." he murmured, because moments before he'd been alone, their Enemy enfleshed striding toward him, but now...
The rock groaned. He could hear the footfalls as heavy Noldorin boots darted to his side. A thick blue cape brushed his face. The figure had taken a fighting stance directly in front of him, and he saw the gleam of a spear against the smoky sky above.
"... Gil-galad..." he gasped, pain shooting through his entire body as he tried to push himself up. Whatever injury he had sustained in his duel with the Dark Lord had left him utterly useless. He wondered if his spine had been snapped - he'd landed awkwardly, and the final blow had been to his lower back - but all fear of that faded as his King, his cousin, his friend, his brother, stood tall and proud before the towering form of Sauron himself.
"Please..." he groaned. His cousin shifted, and he could hear the whispered response.
"Aurë entuluva."
Ereinion Gil-galad, High King of the Noldor East of the Sea, raised his spear and charged.
Steel met iron in a shower of sparks. Sauron was wielding a great mace, and in his daze Elrond thought it a poor imitation of Grond, Morgoth's own hammer. But Aiglos was bright, and shining, and Ereinion was quicker than the heavy-armored Maia by far. They circled, clashed, drew back, met again. Sauron was terrible, and each strike of his mace made the ground shake and sent earth scattering and pain thrumming down Elrond's body; each motion was telegraphed, yes, but so large, and strong, and so desperately final that it was hard to outmaneuver him regardless of his stature and encumbered body. But if Sauron was a rock, Gil-galad was a river of quicksilver. He was fast, and glittering, and poured around his opponent in a flurry of blows. If this was but a poor reflection of Fingolfin's long-ago duel, Elrond thought, then how brilliant his forefather must have been!
Ereinion seemed to dance through his duel, never tiring, almost laughing at the Maia as blow after blow of the mace fell glancing from his shield. In his face the light of his dead family was reflected, and every time Aiglos stabbed forward it found a chink in Sauron's armor in the name of Finrod, of Turgon, of Fingon, of Maedhros. But the King was over-confident.
He twisted, and dodged, and parried, but what he did not expect was what happened next: Sauron brought his mace slamming down straight into the ground, sending the earth splintering. Gil-galad was jolted, sent stumbling, and his foot slipped into a fissure of earth. Aiglos fell to the ground. He looked up -
- Sauron's now-free hand came down to seize him, and he knew no more.
Elrond was screaming.
He was screaming, and he knew he was screaming, but he could not hear the sound of his own voice over the roar of his heartbeat and the raw agony he felt. Ereinion was burning. Burning from the inside out. His King opened his eyes to look heavenwards, and flame burst forth from their sockets. As the peredhel watched, his cousin was devoured, dissolving into ash. Only his charred armor remained to fall lifeless to the ground.
"Númenor!"
Elendil, and his sons. They must have followed, because now it was they who were doing battle, but Elrond found that he could not tear his gaze from the pile of breastplate and gorget and faulds and culet that had once been his cousin. Outside the world was changing. He could feel the balance of power teetering, and then at last with an agonizing scream they shifted, tearing old things asunder. But he did not see it, didn't see Isildur's sword shatter, or the blade flashing out in one last desperate defense.
All he saw was empty, dust-covered armor, and all he heard was the ghost of a dead man's laugh.