Well. Been a while, hasn't it?
Phil
"Irmo? Irmo, where am I?"
Manwë opened his eyes, pointlessly. Darkness wreathed him.
"Irmo, did the power fail or som-"
Manwë's question was cut short as the world below him gave way, sending him freefalling into nothingness with a terrified scream. As he tumbled, he saw a point of blue light in the distance looming closer and closer.
"Irmo!" Manwë cried out. "I'm falling! I'm falling into something!"
Manwë attempted to right himself and slow his descent by spreading his arms and legs, but it had no effect. He was tumbling through nothing at all - not even air stood in the way of his fall. From the glimpses he got as he turned and rolled in its direction, the blue light was spreading, resolving into a complex, sprawling matrix.
"I don't know if you can hear me," Manwë called out, "but the light is...growing, it's...getting closer, it's…" He squinted at the light, feeling an odd sense of deja vu. He'd seen this pattern before. "It's...it's Almaren!" He said, astonished. "It's our old home."
A huge tower shot past him as he descended into the wire-frame city, its surfaces pearlescent and its lines glowing eerily. The massive dome of the Palace, where he and Varda had lived so briefly, loomed in the background. The 'ground' was approaching quickly.
"Ah, Irmo," Manwë called out, "how do I...how do I stop?" He received no answer, and he was running out of nothing. "Irmo, if you can hear me, say something," he repeated, panic beginning to rise as the city now filled his entire field of vision. "Irmo? Irmo!"
With no help on the way, Manwë whimpered and curled into a ball, his every human instinct expecting him to break into pieces on the cybernetic asphalt. But instead of shattering, he simply stopped. He was falling, and then he wasn't. After a few seconds of motionlessness, Manwë slowly opened his eyes. He was lying in a foetal position in the middle of a road he recognised from a lifetime ago, its surface smooth and glassy. He stretched his hand out onto it as he pushed himself up, at once both perturbed and comforted by its indescribable sensation; it was at once both cold and warm, hard and soft.
"What is this place?" Manwë muttered to himself as he craned his neck to look at the twinkling spires of his long-lost home.
"-hear me-" A rasping voice hissed in his ear. Manwë spun, trying to locate the source. "Manwë, can you-"
"Irmo?" Manwë called out. "Irmo, is that you?"
"-trouble establishing the link, stand by," Irmo's voice, a burst of static, replied.
"Irmo, if you can hear me," Manwë said, "I'm standing in...some kind of recreation of Almaren." His voice sounded strange to himself; he couldn't be sure if he'd spoken out loud or simply thought something.
"Almaren?" Irmo's voice finally crackled into life. "Intriguing. What can you see?"
"It's incredible," Manwë replied. "Indescribable. It's like it's made of light."
"I wish I could be there with you," Irmo said softly as Manwë began to walk slowly forward. His footsteps sent ripples of light down the street and up the buildings adjacent, as though they were all part of the same solid mass.
"How am I? In your world?" Manwë asked.
"You're alright," Irmo replied. "You collapsed as soon as you went in but I don't think there's too much damage. You might want to take it easy for a couple of days, though."
"Thanks, Doctor," Manwë muttered. "So, let me get this right; my body, my actual body, is in the Tank; my projection is in the real world; what does this make me in THIS world?"
Irmo sighed deeply. "It's a bit long-winded, but what we've essentially done is hijack the part of your consciousness that remains within the Tank. What you're seeing is the shared mental state of the linked subconsciences of all of the Tank residents."
Manwë stopped in his tracks, mulling the information over. "So," he began as Irmo winced preemptively, "if we're all essentially asleep in the Tank, am I in...our dream?" Irmo was silent for a good few seconds.
"That's as good a way as any to put it," he acceded.
Manwë turned a corner into what had been a marketplace in the real Almaren, and stumbled backwards as a crowd of eerily silent grey figures milled to and fro, their forms flickering in and out of perception like images on a broken screen. Their mouths moved wordlessly, their footfalls leaving no trace. "Irmo," Manwë said as quietly as he dared, "Irmo, there are people here."
"Well, of course," Irmo replied. "I told you, this is the shared nexus of our subconsciences. It's only logical that they should exist here too."
Gingerly, Manwë sidled out into the market and watched as figures parted around him, avoiding him but paying him no heed. "They don't seem too put out by my presence," he muttered.
"Why should they? Like I said, we're hijacking your own subconscience," Irmo said. "As far as they know, you're the same Manwë they've been palling around with for the last few millennia."
Manwë's steps slowed as a revelation dawned on him. "Everyone in the Tank is here, aren't they?"
"Should be, yeah," Irmo replied.
"Even if they don't have an avatar in the real world?"
The silence between them stretched out into eternity.
"Manwë," Irmo finally said, his voice low and serious. "Don't even think about it."
"Why are you examining all of us?" Finwë asked Irmo as a masked nurse cut his fur clothes away from his body.
"Because repeated study is the gold standard of science," Irmo replied, entering notes onto his tablet.
"I am Eldar, Ingwë is Eldar, Elwë is Eldar; what's the difference?" Finwë shrugged as one of his sleeves was gently pulled away to reveal a taut, muscular arm.
"We all differ, Finwë," Irmo explained, "from person to person, from father to son. Even twins can be very different people."
"Why does she hide her face?" He asked, tilting his head to the nurse now cutting at his other sleeve.
"Because examining Elwë was...unpleasant," Irmo mumbled. The stench of sweat and gore which accompanied removing years-worn fur clothes into which the wearer has been sewn had to be smelled to be believed, and precautions were now being taken. Behind their subject a second nurse loitered with a hose, primed and ready. Thankfully, Finwë seemed to have slightly better hygiene than Elwë so far.
"Do your people not sweat?" Finwë asked the nurse. "How fortunate for you!" He mused enviously.
"You ask a lot of questions, don't you, Finwë?" Irmo said sardonically as he set his tablet down and retrieved a penlight from his pocket.
"Do I?" Finwë replied innocently. Irmo's eyes locked with the nurses', sharing a look of mild exhaustion. This would be a long examination.
"Oromë has already told us a lot about your culture," Nienna told Ingwë, who seemed physically incapable of sitting still, insisting on wandering from corner to corner of her practice room and drinking in the novelty of everything he saw. "But there are still things we would like to know about who you are as people, as individuals."
"Speak," Ingwë replied airily, his attention on everything but Nienna.
"Tell me about your life," Nienna asked. "How did you become chieftain?"
"I was the first of us to wake," Ingwë replied nonchalantly as he picked up a framed photograph of Nessa and Tulkas and shook it, as though to let the tiny people trapped inside escape.
"What does that mean?" Nienna asked. "Is it a ritual of some kind, an initiation? A trial? Or is it a metaphorical wakening, a coming of age?"
Ingwë turned and shrugged. "I woke up," he replied, "and I found my people."
Nienna nodded slowly and scribbled some notes. Evasive, she wrote.
"Alright, Finwë," Irmo told his patient, who twiddled his little finger in the ear where Irmo's otoscope had just been, "I'd really like to test your vision now. I understand your people have exceptional eyesight." This had been one of Irmo's passions, ever since hearing Oromë tell the story of his first encounter with the Eldar; a hundred-yard arrow hit by moonlight, and a fatal blow too.
"The keenest of us can see the Curl," Finwë replied, a touch proudly. "I'm not one of them, though."
"The Curl? What's that?" Irmo asked as his nurse handed him an ophthalmoscope.
"It's a great mass of stars," Finwë said, as effusive as a child. "To the north-east, shaped like a fish-hook." Irmo nearly dropped his tool as he realised Finwë was talking about the Ainur's home galaxy, some four million light-years away.
"Extraordinary," he croaked, suppressing the urge to kiss Finwë's forehead in exhilaration.
"One thing that Oromë found surprising was the youth of your culture," Nienna told Ingwë, finally sat down, albeit on the coffee-table. "Tell me about your elderly."
"I am the eldest of the tribe," Ingwë replied, unhelpfully. Nienna flashed her practiced smile.
"And who was the eldest of the tribe before you? Your father?"
"I have none," he replied, as though it were the commonest thing in the world. Nienna recalled Oromë mentioning off-hand he felt the Eldar unpersoned their dead.
"You did at one point, though, didn't you?" She probed, delicately. "Before he died." Ingwë's brow furrowed in good-natured confusion.
"No," he said. "I told you, I was the first to wake. I opened my eyes on the shores of Cuivienen, and found my people sleeping around me. This is my first memory." Nienna leaned forward.
"Ingwë," she asked, sensing a thread about to come loose, "how old are you?" Ingwë shrugged.
"I don't know," he replied, amused. "Why would I?"
Nienna's eyes opened to the size of saucers. There was something very, very strange about these people.
"I thought the male doctor was the superior here?" Míriel asked as the last of her furs were stripped away, standing in imperious nudity. A nurse approached her with a surgical gown and gestured for her to raise her arms. Míriel regarded him with brief disgust at being ordered about, but relented.
"Irmo is the commanding officer, that's correct," Estë replied.
"Then why am I dealing with his underling?" Míriel asked, without malice. Estë's brow rose imperceptibly at her patient's snobbery.
"Irmo is examining your husband," she explained as her nurse began to tie the gown closed behind Míriel's back, "and it's customary in our culture for female patients to be seen by female doctors. Some male doctors find it...uncomfortable," she explained with heavy scorn. Imagine how the patient feels, she grumbled to herself, sparing Míriel her ongoing grudge. "And I'm not Irmo's 'underling' - I'm his wife."
Míriel's lofty brow lowered in seemingly sincere contrition. "Your chieftain," Míriel continued, "Varda. How did she rise to her position?"
"Oh, Varda isn't our...chieftain," Estë replied. "That would be her husband, Manwë. Though she is his second-in-command." Míriel frowned.
"Then why did your chieftain himself not greet us? Are we unworthy of his attention?" She challenged. Estë inhaled deeply, keeping her calm. Nienna had already seen Míriel. That would certainly be a story worth hearing.
"Not at all, Míriel," Estë reassured her. "He is simply unavailable, for the time being."
Míriel sniffed as the nurse finished her work and stepped away. "The men of this world are lucky."
"How come?" Estë asked.
"That their women are so happy to excuse their failures," Míriel replied with a nasty smile. Estë's bedside manner evaporated as she rolled a rubber glove onto her hand.
"Shall we begin?"
"Well," Irmo sighed, exhausted and elated. "This has been...a privilege. It really has." Irmo's exhaustive study of Finwë's physiology, including x-rays and scans of multiple kinds, had been a revelation. If the Academy of Sciences had still existed, Irmo thought giddily, he'd have won the Gold Medal every year for the next century.
"Thank you," Finwë replied, not sure what he was being praised for.
"One last thing," he said, taking a sterilised syringe from a drawer. "I'd like to take a sample of your blood." Finwë's eyes widened and muscles tensed, fingers digging into the soft foam of the bed. "Just a small amount," Irmo added hurriedly. "It's no more painful than an insect bite."
Finwë looked the syringe up and down nervously. Irmo could see wheels turning in the Elda's mind, and silently willed him to comply. "Why?" He asked.
"Because what makes all of us different is in our blood," Irmo replied. "It's what makes me different from you, and you different from, say, Ingwë. A few drops of your blood will tell me more than any test I've done on you today."
Finwë pursed his lips. The doctor had been unfailingly kind to him, and his 'examinations', as he called them, had been perfectly tolerable.
"I assent," he said, not without a note of reservation.
"Thank you," Irmo breathed, fetching a vial. Finwë watched the procedure with a grim fascination, not even reacting when the syringe punctured his skin and filled the vial with his blood.
"And that's that," Irmo smiled as he withdrew the syringe and set the vial down on his desk. "Let me just get you a bandage for-"
Irmo blinked. He blinked again. He screwed his eyes shut for a second, and took a third look. The syringe-hole had disappeared. He took Finwë's arm again and pressed his thumb into the Elda's bicep. His throat went dry. The wound hadn't just stopped bleeding; it had healed, without a scrap of scar tissue to show for it. He ran a gloved finger over pristine flesh.
"That's," he gulped, "that's...not possible. That is simply...not possible," he said, looking into Finwë's eyes as though for an explanation. Finwë shrugged. "What are you people?" He whispered.
"We are the Eldar," Finwë replied, smiling.
Oromë sank into his old armchair with a joyous groan. "Oh, hello, old friend," he moaned as he shuffled his shoulders to settle himself deeper into its cushions. Vana appeared at his shoulder and offered him a cup of tea, which he accepted gratefully. She took a seat on the couch opposite as he took a tentative sip. Oromë had been home for hours and all they had done was hold each other on their bed in silence, the moment too big for either of them to find words, before they had finally realised they should do something else.
"Won't you at least trim it?"
Oromë's eyes swivelled up from his cup to meet Vana's. She grimaced as tea dribbled from her husband's moustache.
"Trim what?"
Vana scowled and crossed her arms. She had expected her husband to be much-changed from his century in the wilderness, but she hadn't expected to be caring for an ape-man. "I saw them, you know. Your Eldar." Oromë's gaze slowly went back to his cup. "They had clothes. They even looked like they washed once in a while. What the hell's your excuse?"
Oromë blew his tea slowly. "I've been busy," he replied at length, before taking another drink.
"Oh, yes, use that excuse again, it certainly hasn't gotten old over the last few decades," Vana muttered.
"Well, I have!" Oromë retorted, wiping his beard clean of drips - Vana privately gave thanks that he hadn't sucked it clean. "I had to set Ingwë's lot up with the docs, make sure they were alright, and then I'm back out to Middle-Earth."
"No, you didn't, Oromë," Vana replied, frustrated. "You didn't have to. They're grown...whatevers, they're being looked after."
"They're still my responsibility," Oromë argued.
"No, they're not!" Vana replied, half-laughing at how circular and ridiculous the argument was becoming. "Not anymore, you have other responsibilities now!"
"Like?" Oromë asked, incredulous.
"Like me!" Vana's shout silenced Oromë. "How do I know you'll come back?" She asked after what seemed an age of awkward silence. "I lost you to that place," she said quietly, "for a lifetime. And you've come back barely recognisable as my husband. And in a couple of hours, you'll be going back-" Vana's voice broke with an irrepressible sob. Oromë's face crumpled with guilt. "This is so bizarre," she whispered, laughing weakly. "For so long you were less than a memory. You were a ghost, haunting me. You weren't here, but you weren't gone. It was suffocating. Like I was caught, hovering above my own grave. And then you came back, and here you are...looking, and eating, and...smelling like an animal. Everything has changed, and nothing has changed - you're still here, but you're still...gone."
Oromë slowly set his cup down. "This isn't about my beard, is it?" He said quietly.
Vana closed her eyes slowly, seething, with the smallest trace of a smile tugging at her lips. Oromë's gift for deadpanning was still alive and well. "No, Oromë, this isn't about your beard."
The examinations and testimonies were over. To help them unwind after a long day, the Eldar were afforded an honour which had not been extended to many of the Ainur; they were taken on a tour of Irmo's private garden, which had been his pride and joy in the centuries since he had hung up his stethoscope. The doctor had turned his considerable genius to the field of horticulture, and within a short space of time had seeded the city with flowers of unimaginable beauty and variety. Every thousand cycles of the Lamps, they would release their pollen, dispersing themselves across Arda in a shimmering rainbow wave. Many Ainur picked their favourite rooftop and spent the whole day watching the stream drift eastwards, losing themselves in the beauty of the spectacle.
The Eldar were no less enchanted by Irmo's handiwork, having scattered to the four winds almost immediately to pick, stroke and sniff at a thousand different flowers. All Eldar, they explained to the crewman chaperoning them - a quiet, plump-faced botanist called Aiwendil - shared a love of plants, seeing them as their closest relatives in the natural world. Later that night, in the Lord Commander's office, Aiwendil gave Varda an exhaustive report of their movements and comments as Telperion, the Night Tree, reached the peak of its light.
After almost an hour, she dismissed Aiwendil with a tired smile. The botanist's chair scraped along the marble floor noisily as he hurriedly vacated it, making Varda wince. The Eldar were, by now, sound asleep; not in the large guest rooms of the palace, which she and Ilmare had spent hours arranging and decorating to perfection, but in the open air of the courtyard, so they could see the light of the Trees dance before the stars. Varda envied them with every fibre of her being; for being so innocent, and for being asleep. She still had one more duty to perform: her debriefing of Irmo, Estë and Nienna. She thought, unwillingly, of Manwë, for his refusal to allow more the Eldar to stay more than one day had tied their hands. She castigated herself; she had promised she would not think of her husband until the Eldar had departed for Middle-Earth. If she did, she knew she'd be too angry to concentrate on anything else. Finishing line, she told herself. Get over it. Forcing herself to think about her next task, she touched her communicator and asked the trio to join her.
The three, usually inscrutable, seemed almost caricatures. Nienna's large, sunken eyes, which always had a tinge of sadness to them, seemed positively haunted; Irmo twitched with so much nervous energy Varda sincerely worried he was about to have a heart attack; and Estë's bone-white eyes blazed with the tired fury of a woman who had had a very, very long day.
"So," Varda sighed, lounging untidily in Manwë's throne-like chair, "who wants to go first?"
The silence of the room seemed impenetrable. Irmo and Nienna shared nervous glances, like children hoping the other will be the first to jump into the water. "I hate them," Estë glowered. The exhausted friends collapsed into giggles, like a great bubble of tension had been pricked. Even Estë managed a smirk. All four had them had discovered over the course of the day that the Eldar were a very singular people, with extremely odd habits. "Irmo," Estë invited her husband, "go on, before you have a heart attack."
"Alright, alright," Irmo said as he brought his giggles back under control. "Well, as we thought, they're incredible physical specimens. Exceptional eyesight and hearing, unbelievable strength and stamina, and agility far beyond human capabilities. They are an apex predator. THE apex predator. Everything about them is perfectly adapted to their environment; for example, the human skeleton usually comprises around fifteen percent of total body weight. The Eldar's skeletons," he said as he brought a glowing stick from his top pocket and pressed a button on it, "make up just five."
A large holographic display of a wireframe body appeared in the centre of the room, and Estë and Nienna turned their chairs around to see as Irmo rose. "It's this that gives them their incredible agility," he explained as he used gestures to strip away layers of holographic skin and muscle from his model, magnifying an ulna and then taking a slice out of it. "Notice anything strange?" He asked. Estë found herself smiling. Irmo's talent as a lecturer, rather than a doctor, is what had initially caught her eye, and it made her heart swell to see him dive back into it.
"It's hollow," Varda said.
"Aren't birds' bones hollow?" Nienna chimed in.
"Exactly," Irmo enthused. "It affords them all the solidity of any human body, only vastly lighter. Elwë leapt five metres forwards from a standing start - it's no joke when I say that if they had wings, they could fly." Warming to his subject, Irmo swiped his hand and brought an Eldar face up. "Their eyes, too, are so sensitive to light that they can see in total darkness by detecting residual UV radiation. They make eagles look short-sighted," he babbled, enraptured.
"This is incredible," Nienna mused.
"None of these even scratches the surface," Irmo retorted, swiping at the wireframe skeleton to bring up an image of a spinning double-helix. "I know we weren't expecting them to allow us to take blood samples, but…" He shrugged, shyly proud of himself.
"Which one agreed?" Estë asked incredulously.
"Finwë," Irmo replied. Nienna chuckled quietly; after he'd spent their time together asking more questions than she had, she could well imagine Finwë being adventurous enough to consent. "But the strangest thing happened; within seconds of me withdrawing the syringe, the wound had healed. And I mean completely healed, not just a scab; fresh, new flesh, as though it had never been broken."
"Bullshit," Estë laughed, disbelieving.
"Believe me, I thought I was going mad at first," Irmo babbled, "but then I took a look at the sample, and..." he turned, speechless, to the image floating behind him. "This people's DNA is...unbelievable," he sighed, watching the holographic helix spin almost lovingly. "It's perfect."
"Perfect, how?" Varda asked. Irmo turned to face her, his pale face tinted gold by the yellow light of the hologram.
"Literally," he replied softly. "It's pristine. Untouched. Undamaged. As if it came from a newborn."
"Hold on," Varda interrupted him, rubbing her tired eyes. "I'm not a doctor, but I know DNA gets damaged over time, yes? That's what causes aging, right?"
"Correct," Irmo replied.
"So," Varda continued, "how is their DNA so fresh?"
"The whole reason they're here," Irmo said. "Isoquantum radiation." Another click of his pen changed the image again, sheathing the double-helix in light. "They have the particles in every cell in their bodies, they're suffused with them. In the outside world, they decay rapidly, but in their cells...I don't know how, but they're everywhere, in every organelle. Mitochondria, ribosomes, sheathing the DNA like a sleeve. It means the telomeres are actually-"
"Humour those of us without a medical degree, doctor," Varda interrupted him. Irmo coughed, having to swallow his tirade.
"They can heal any wound," he summed up, "defeat any illness. Even aging. They would appear to be," he said, feeling giddy with profundity, "functionally immortal."
"Gods of the sky," Nienna breathed, raising a hand to her mouth. "It makes sense." Her colleagues looked at her questioningly. "All this time I couldn't understand why they were so evasive about their elders, about their funeral rites, about the history of their people - they don't have any," she blurted. "Ingwë kept saying he was the first of his people to wake. I thought he was speaking metaphorically, but...what if he was being literal? What if he really is - if all of them really are - the first generation of their kind?"
"I performed radiocarbon dating on samples of Finwë's skin and hair," Irmo said to his stunned audience. He paused, fearing he might burst. "He is at least eight hundred years old." The silence which followed his statement could have blunted a knife. It took an age for Varda to find her voice.
"What."
Manwë wasn't used to being ordered around after a few thousand years in command, but even he had to accept that Irmo was in control in this situation. "Very well," he said shortly. "Where am I going?"
"Just...wander around a bit," Irmo suggested unhelpfully. "It'll come to you. When it does, though, you're going to have to run like hell, so stay ready."
"Do you think they're aware?" Manwë asked as a trio of Ainur ran past him, laughing silently. "Do they know what's happening?"
"I doubt it," Irmo replied. "These are only shadows; self-images, base impulses. No higher functions; they're all filtered out into the avatar projection system."
"Could I communicate with them?"
Irmo ummed and ahhed. "Possibly? Frankly, Commander, no-one's ever done anything like this before, and I'm hardly an expert on the subconscious. This is an aspect of the Tank we never thought we'd ever experience. I suppose you could try?"
Manwë smiled as a familiar face stepped into the street just ahead. It was time to put Irmo's suggestion to the test. "Ulmo," he called out. Ulmo's ghost paid him no attention, as though he hadn't spoken. "Ulmo?" Manwë frowned as Ulmo walked straight past him as though he wasn't there. "Come on, Ulmo-" he called after him, grabbing his shoulder instinctively.
Ulmo's shadowy form flickered and glowed, becoming more solid as Manwë touched him. He looked around confused, then smiled as he saw Manwë. "Commander," he greeted him. "Sorry, I didn't see you there."
"Don't worry about it," Manwë replied. "I need your help."
"Anything," Ulmo said. Manwë licked his lips. How could he express such a complex concept to a mere shadow of his friend?
"The city is in danger," he said. Ulmo's brows rose and chest swelled. "I need you to start getting people into buildings, off of the streets. Don't raise a panic, but make sure they do it quickly."
"Of course, Sir," Ulmo replied, turning and running into the marketplace. Manwë smiled. Ulmo's base drive was, it seemed, to help.
Manwë.
Manwë frowned. The voice in his head sounded different to Irmo's; clearer, more solid. "Irmo, did you just say something?"
"No," Irmo replied. "How did communication go?"
Manwë swallowed hard. "Fine," he muttered, his mind wandering. "Ulmo's helping. Think we could minimise casualties-"
Manwë, help me.
Manwë spun on his heels, not knowing what to expect behind him. The street was empty, glowing blue and grey as it always had. "Who said that?"
"Who said what?" Irmo replied.
"Someone else is here," Manwë said quietly. "Someone else is talking to me."
"No," Irmo dismissed him, "that's not possible. These are shades, they can't just reach out to you. It would be like...like a character in a movie turning to camera and talking to the audience, it just can't happen."
I don't know where I am. I'm scared.
"Irmo, I'm serious, someone is in here, someone is talking to me," Manwë said, his voice rising in panic. "Someone is telling me they're scared, they're calling me by name."
"Manwë," Irmo replied pleadingly, "please, keep a hold of yourself. You're starting to lose it."
Manwë growled in frustration and began running down an abandoned street, the voice in his head growing louder and stronger the more he ran.
No-one will talk to me. No-one can see me. I'm so alone.
"Manwë, where the hell are you going?" Irmo shouted. "You're going towards the anomaly, you need to put as much distance between you and it as pos-"
Manwë, please, help me. I want to go home.
Manwë's heart skipped. "I'm coming," he panted, feet tearing up the luminescent streets. "Hold tight, I'm coming." He ducked and dived through narrow alleyways, instinctively making his way towards a house which hadn't existed in centuries, but which he would always know the way to. Battering down a glowing door which collapsed silently, Manwë thundered up the stairs and burst into the master bedroom.
The smell hit him first. Dirt and filth, sweat and death. The opalescent sheen of the rest of the city was gone here, replaced with rough stone walls and a bare wooden floor. The windows had been barred and boarded, admitting lights through narrow slits. This was a place of unspeakable suffering.
"I'm here," he called out into the empty room. "It's okay."
A dark, slender figure rose from the middle of the floor, piercing the shafts of blue light penetrating the boarded windows. Matted black hair unfurled like a battle standard and pale skin glinted in the light.
"Help me," the figure breathed, its voice hoarse and raspy. "I don't know where I am. I don't know how long I've been here."
Manwë's face crumpled, lip trembling. "It's okay now," he repeated, his voice strangled by emotion. "I'm sorry."
A face turned towards him, pinched and deathly. "Manwë," the figure croaked, shuffling towards him with skeletal arms outstretched, stumbling over its own dragging feet. Manwë instinctively stooped and caught the figure as it fell. Their eyes locked as the figure smiled a black-toothed grin.
"I knew you'd save me."
Manwë nodded, a shaking smile through silent tears. "Of course, Melkor," he whispered, stroking his brother's filthy hair as his skinny arms clung onto him for dear life. "I'm here to take you home."
