Hello everyone around the world!

And we're getting closer to the end of this story as well as the First Age but not before having a look of what happened to the last two Fëanorians and the last two Silmarilli.

I want to thank Celridel for her immense help in editing this story as well as all the reviews I have received which are very encouraging.

Waiting for your reviews, guys!


Chapter 7: Bring Us Light

The quiet was fraught with ghosts, the crumbling land holding echoes of the battle that had raged for nearly half a century. Beleriand was now a blackened ruin, pocked with rubble and pits of flame gouged deep into the earth, crowded with unquiet spirits. Morgoth had been its sick, beating heart for too long, and now that he was gone, there was no return. It began its slow rotting descent into the Great Sea, a final baptism to wash away all evil, a last sacrifice...to whom, they could not say.

Laura sat alone, her back against a crumbling stone facade, blackened by dragon fire. Sleep was far beyond her grasp. Instead, she listened to the quiet movements, as the once-great army readied to go its separate ways. By dawn, the Vanyar and Maiar would set sail for Valinor, taking Morgoth, bound by Angainor, and the Silmarils as their victory-prize. While the Noldor and Men would be forced to retreat East, beyond the reach of the encroaching sea.

Then what? Laura wondered. What happens to me? Am I done?


"The Oath. Remember the Oath, Makalaurë." Maedhros paced like a caged tiger, his hair like burnished copper in the flickering torchlight. It seemed to Maglor that a great weariness settled itself on his broad shoulders, so he seemed stooped, like one greatly aged when he said that word. It was a dark star they had trailed to Ennor, as Fëanor manipulated their love for them, letting them drown in his madness.

"I remember. But-"

"No," Maedhros said, kneeling in front of his brother. "Makalaurë, you do not understand. It was not you that our loving father made swear in the sight of gods and men, to recover the lost treasure. It was a sacred oath. I cannot retract it."

"Yet if we go with the Silmarilli," Maglor pleaded. "As Eönwë desires us to, be judged in the courts of the Valar. And if Manwë and Varda themselves deny the fulfillment of an oath to which we named them in witness, is it not made void?"

"But how shall our voices reach to Ilúvatar beyond the Circles of the World? And by Ilúvatar we swore in our madness and called the Everlasting Darkness upon us if we kept not our word. Who shall release us?" Maedhros demanded.

"If none can release us," said Maglor, "then indeed the Everlasting Darkness shall be our lot, whether we keep our oath or break it; but less evil shall we do in the breaking."

"So you say," Maedhros said. "Yet one who dies with his oath broken is one lower than a worm."

Maglor seemed to shrivel in on himself, covering his face with his hands. Maedhros stood dumbly at the tent-entrance, his face miserable.

Finally, Maglor rose and buckled his sword-belt. "There are guards," he said.

"One battle," Maedhros assured him. "One battle to put an end to this misery."


As Maglor foresaw, the tent where the holy jewels were housed was well-guarded by Vanyar soldiers. But the sons of Fëanor were nothing if not well-trained, and the guards watered the ashy ground with their blood without sounding a cry of alarm.

Few would willingly sleep by the jewels, not even Eönwë, greatest of the Maiar, for they were made of things splendid and unsettling. They were housed in their own tent, in a locked wooden box. Maedhros clove the lock in two and flung the lid back. There, cushioned on tiretaine, the jewels shone like fallen stars.

"There is no time! Let us go!" Maglor hissed.

Maedhros stood still, hesitated. Redemption. It was a pretty word, with a sidereal sound. Far, far away. He was too far gone. Face the swords. That was the only way, and then this could be over.

"Betrayal! Betrayal!" a woman screamed outside the tent, a high, shrill sound that sliced through the night like steel through silk.

Maedhros snatched up the box, even as the camp flared to life, clattering with swords and shields. By the time he ducked out of the tent, a cadre of Vanyar soldiers stood there, glittering in the torchlight.

Leading them was Eönwe, Herald of Manwë, Armsmaster of Ennor. He was clad in magnificent armor of burnished red steel, his rondels were airy sunbursts, and an eagle on each shoulder fastened a cape the tawny color of hawk feathers. His face was startlingly, fearsomely beautiful, and his eyes, a light grey that was nearly white, seemed to burn.

Maedhros stood still, clutching the box to his chest with his gold hand, his sword in the other. At his back was Maglor, pale and wordless.

"I see the Fëanorians return to their old tricks," he said. His voice boomed and rumbled, a sound deeper than thunder or warhorns, and more Elves poured from their tents, clustering behind the Vanyar cadre.

"These are ours by right," Maedhros retorted fiercely. The moon silvered his sword, a pale crescent that rode through the clouds, indifferently peering through the smokes and reeks. "Fëanor forged them, and they are ours."

"He forged them from the light of the Two Trees," Eönwe said. "And even were they yours by right, is that sufficient for you to continue slaughtering your compatriots?"

"They are murderers and traitors!" a voice shouted from the shadowy mass behind Eönwe, and there was a clamor of approval.

"Enough hiding, Mortissë!" Maglor cried out. "Come show yourself, you are not craven."

"The Jewels are here," Maedhros said desperately, holding out the box. "Will you not come fight for them?" Steel on steel, he thought, terrified by Eönwe's calm, knowing face. Steel on steel, one last battle, and this will be over.

"No," Eönwe said. "No weapon will be raised against you. If they are yours by right, then take them and be gone."

No, no, no, Maedhros cried inwardly. "Then we will go."

He turned away, but Eönwe's inexplorable voice drew him back. "You may go, and keep the jewels as you see fit, but we will keep the box."

Slowly, Maedhros laid the box down, and a small puff of ash erupted as it hit the ground. Inside, the Silmarils blazed, a white light that cast strange shadows, burning hotter than dragon-fire or summer sun.

I know what you are doing, he thought, looking up at Eönwe, who regarded him impassively. For I am the Lord of the Red Right Hand.

He picked the Silmaril. The gemstone lay in his palm, the size and weight of a plover's egg, cool to the touch. At first.

Maglor picked up the other stone, kicking the box towards the Maia, who stopped it with his foot.

The Silmaril in Maedhros' hand began to glow with light. At first slowly, a single flame of white light stretching upward, then it burst into such brilliance that all but Eönwe shielded their eyes. It seemed to Maedhros that the fire was cleansing him, burning away the doubt and fear, and then….

Pain fountained up in him, a deep soul-biting pain. His hand blistered, smoked: the camp became awash with light and shadows leaped and capered, boneless and terrible. White flames writhed up his arm like ghosts, his fingers blazed bright as torches.

This is how it ends, he thought, even as his feet carried him away from Eönwe's mocking white eyes. The fire branded the air with shimmering glyphs and runes, telling him the stories of his past as fire plumed up from the Silmaril and embers flew like swarms of fireflies.

The ground beneath his feet opened into a gaping chasm, a pit gouged into the fires that dwell in the heart of the earth, coloring the cliffs crimson.

He fell to his knees and screamed with anguish and despair as the holy light devoured him, flames racing up to feed on him. And below him, something seemed to take shape in the inferno, something with hair the color of fire, or of burnished copper. He breathed relief, sobbed contrition, and fell forward into the waiting arms of fire and brimstone, even as a hawk soared above, beating the curdled night-clouds with tawny wings.

And faraway on white shores, a mother wept.

Maglor had seen his brother fall. Now he swerved away, running Westwards towards the sea, aware of the figure that followed him as closely on his own shadow.

"Time to tour the Halls of Mandos," she shouted at him as they ran, her voice accented with bloodlust.

He ran to a bluff, where the encroaching sea crashed green and blue and grey, wave after wave crashing restlessly, eager to swallow the rest of Beleriand. The hand that clutched the Silmaril was smoking, the pain searing and intense. Tears streaked his cheeks as parades of white fire danced and swayed like Northern lights.

He listened for a minute, hearing only the susurrus of waves, not the metallic grate behind him, and then threw the Silmaril.

It branded the night sky with white fire from horizon to horizon, and it seemed to Maglor as he stood on the lonely bluff that the ocean seemed to reach up for it with watery arms, forcing the flying gem downwards. It sunk beneath the waves in a final, blinding blaze of light, and so the last Silmaril found its long home.


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