Many thanks to BeaconHill for betareading.
Supernova 16.3
The Simurgh's song echoed in the space between my ears. It was Discordant, which I might have expected. The Endbringer was a shell of Entity-adjacent flesh around a heart which beat to the rhythm of the Two Trees. It was a bridge between the Silence and the Song. Just like my Rings of Power. Just like Melkor—and I—had once been.
The One Ring flared brilliantly on my finger as I lifted myself up to charge at the Simurgh. The wind raised me up like a ball in a sling, launching me where I needed to go. All around me, flying capes were soaring up to meet her. Despite all of them, her eyes fixed on me as I approached. Then, as I drew nearer, she did something unmistakable.
Her eyes closed, and she bowed her head to me. A sign of respect? A request?
I didn't know, and it didn't matter. Her head snapped back up, and she moved. Every single one of her wings flared out and sliced through the air like knives. I heard capes scream as she tore through them, flinging their bleeding bodies down to the ground. One of her hands darted out, grabbed one flying cape, and threw him in the direction of Behemoth, a mile or more to the east. He sailed like a dart towards the other fight.
I dodged around the wing which came for me, then struck it with Sunrise. As I sailed forward I dragged the blade through it. Although it looked like pure white feathers, as it split along my sword the interior was revealed to be the same iridescent crystal as Shaper's limbs, or the Shard I had fought during my own trigger.
The Simurgh tugged her wing away from me, then batted at me with two others in quick succession from opposite directions. I rotated in midair to brace my feet against the first, propelling myself through the second with the point of my sword held before me. It stabbed directly through the wing, the hilt striking the feathers hard.
Her hand snapped out to pin me against her wing, but I tugged out Sunrise and leapt out of the way, jumping first to the joint of her wing and then across her torso towards the joint where her largest wing connected to her body. Under that joint glowed the luminous Silmaril, brighter than any star.
Every single one of the Simurgh's wings flapped as one. The sudden wind blasted us in opposite directions, pushing me away from her as she blasted back into the sky. A wave of capes pushed past me as I righted myself. From this distance I could see the terrible beauty of the Simurgh when she stopped holding back. She was a whirlwind of blade-like feathers, death embodied in bristling, spinning white. All around her, capes were falling like rain.
I dove, Singing cushions of air into existence beneath the falling combatants and doing what I could to heal the worst of the wounds. They slowed, drifting downwards into the waiting arms of the search and rescue team below.
Chris appeared beside me, Menelaraf firing a flurry of lasers from its mounted cannons as he steadied himself at my side. I couldn't see his eyes beneath his visor, but his head was turned in the Simurgh's direction, and his mouth hung slightly open. "She's never fought like this before!" he said, shouting to be heard over the terrible Discord.
"No!" I agreed. "They're not holding back today! They're not here to test us—they're here to destroy us."
His mouth closed. His chin set. "Well, they're going to be disappointed."
Together, we charged back into the battle. As I dodged a scything wing, I heard the thunderous crash of a tidal wave striking the city below. In the distance, there was a flash of lurid red as Behemoth blasted lightning.
I bared my teeth as I danced between the Simurgh's wings, trying in vain to get close to that Silmaril. She was aware of me, however, and kept me at bay with everything she had—deadly wings, yes, but even clawing strikes from her hands and, a couple of times, powerful kicks with her legs.
And still that Discordant song thrummed in my head.
Suddenly, all around me, armbands piped up. "One minute remains before Simurgh exposure limits are passed. Team B is deploying—Team A, fall back to a safe distance."
"Fall back!" I hollered, augmenting my voice with Song to be audible over the Simurgh's chant. "Hentûron and I will hold her until Team B arrives!" I turned to Chris, who was gliding between two of the Simurgh's wings. Get some distance! I ordered through his Ring. Give me ranged support!
He shot me a thumbs up and kicked Menelaraf up, putting the plate between himself and the Simurgh, allowing its thrusters to push him back and away from her. All around me, capes were sailing down and away from the Simurgh. In the distance, I could see the dozen or more specks of my new team.
But it would take them at least a minute to arrive. Sixty long seconds during which the Simurgh's attention would be entirely focused on me.
I spun as I darted between two of her wings, tugging the blade of Iphannis, now missing its haft, from my belt. As I rotated back to face the Simurgh, I threw the knife, a dart of cold blue fire, aimed directly at the luminous Silmaril embedded beneath the joint of her wing. She batted it away with a wing while others came at me. The knife fell towards the earth, out of my sight.
The Simurgh struck at me in a frenzy, heedless of the damage I dealt as Sunrise cut through her scything wings. I saw, however, that she carefully tugged her wings away before I cut through them completely, and alternated which limbs were attacking me. Those which she held back I saw knitting themselves back together. We were at a stalemate, and I could not close the distance to the Silmaril without being batted away by a wing or the Simurgh darting away on a gust of wind.
Team B arrived and finally I saw an opening. The Simurgh was forced to divert several of her wings to fend them off, and for an instant I saw a path through her defenses. Without hesitation I charged, darting between her wings, charging for the brilliant stone shining in the Unseen. The Endbringer knew what I was doing as soon as I started, but her wings were too far to stop me. She tried to rotate away. I followed. Sunrise darted out. Its tip buried itself in her flesh, and I began to cut—
Golden light flared in the corner of my eyes. I stopped midmotion and kicked against the Simurgh's body—just in time. The beam of golden Silence speared through the space where I had been, tearing a cylindrical hole through the Simurgh's torso. Her chant cut off suddenly, her wings flapping to carry her skyward. She stopped a few hundred feet above where we'd been fighting, but I was already looking away.
Zion hovered in the distance, drifting closer slowly. I felt the weight of his gaze as I turned to him. The sounds of combat faded around me as I Sang a wind to carry me towards him.
We met at last in the middle, hovering a few hundred feet up, the roiling shore below us. Leviathan had stopped fighting and had retreated some distance out into the water. His asymmetric eyes looked up at us. Overhead, the Simurgh stared down. In the distance, Behemoth was still roaring.
We came to a stop a dozen or more paces from one another. The expression of profound grief which it was said always rested on Zion's face was gone, and he studied me with a sort of empty curiosity.
"Maia," he said in, of all languages, Valarin. His voice was shockingly human. I had expected something like Broadcast's reverberation, but his mouth shaped air the same way as anyone's.
"I don't think we've met," I said, speaking in the same tongue. "I am Mairë, who was once Sauron, who was Mairon before that. Do you know me?"
He blinked once, slowly. Then he nodded. "My mother fought your master," he said. "My sister languished on the borders of your realm. We rem—" he suddenly winced, and that grief crept back into his face. "I remember."
"I know what happened to your partner," I said. "I am… sorry for your loss." I was surprised to find that it was true.
He considered me for a moment. "She thought your kind had abandoned the worlds of mortals," he said. "I see that she was wrong."
I nodded. "She was."
"This is the beginning," he observed. "Of the end. The first skirmish in the last war."
"It doesn't have to be," I said. I extended a hand. "I have already built alliances with some of your Shards," I told him. "I would not reject you. You do not have to be a slave to your nature any more than I did, when I tried to conquer Arda long ago. We don't have to be enemies."
His eyes slowly drifted down to my hand. For a moment, everything was still.
The silence was broken by a thunderclap as Behemoth struck a cape with a lightning bolt. In the corner of my eye, I saw the Simurgh, far above me, reach out a hand in the direction of that battle helplessly.
Without looking away from me, Zion raised one hand to the side, pointed at that fight, and fired a blast of Silence. Behemoth screeched, then fell silent. I heard its body crash to the ground with a deafening thud, but I didn't turn to look. My eyes remained fixed on Zion.
His gaze returned to my face. The grief in his eyes faded away as his eyes narrowed in unmistakable hate. "My kind do not serve yours, Ainu," he said. "We eat you. Your flesh, your Song, your Light—we will consume them all." He smiled mirthlessly. "But first, let me show you what your beloved Secondborn did to me."
His hand turned, his palm facing downward. I realized what he was doing an instant before it happened. "No!" I screamed, the word a sharp note in the Song, constructing in an instant a dozen barriers between him and his target as I lunged into the path of the beam.
I was too slow.
The golden Silence tore through all of my shields, lanced past me, and struck the figure on the shoreline below before she could dodge. Sophia stared up at me, her green eyes wide in shock at the hole in her belly.
Around the wound, her flesh began melting away into shadow and dust. I was screaming as I dove towards her. By the time I reached her, most of her body had already vanished. I held her in my arms, tearing away her mask as the decay reached her neck.
"Taylor," she whispered. Tears filled her green eyes.
There was nothing I could do. The Silence had already taken apart her body on a level even I couldn't heal. All I could do was give her one last kiss until her lips turned to ashes in my mouth.
"I'm sorry," I whispered as her ears crumbled.
A single tear fell from her beautiful green eyes before they, too, were gone, and I was left holding an empty costume. I felt, in the back of my mind, my link to Cenya snap.
Her mask fell from my boneless fingers. Shaking, I stood. I turned and looked up to stare at the golden man in the sky. Zion's face was twisted in hateful triumph.
I screamed wordlessly as I leapt at him. A tempest, fueled by my rage and pain, carried me skyward. I swung Sunrise back for a brutal cut.
His hand rose. Golden lightning played about his fingers. The blast of Silence fired out towards me.
I dodged to the side, then swung Sunrise. The blow severed one of his arms, but a new one started slowly growing out of the stump like an inflating balloon before I'd even finished the motion. I screamed again as I went in for a thrust.
He spun out of the way of my blow, flying around behind me. I darted to the side out of the way of the beam which lanced over my shoulder, then threw my weight into another swing.
He danced away from this one, firing two beams as he withdrew. Rather than dodging, I dove between them, sword pointed in front of me, spearing directly toward where his heart would have been if he'd had one.
He dodged to the side, then drifted away from me. "Reckless," he observed, still in Valarin. "You're growing sloppy."
I didn't answer except with another agonized scream as I sailed towards him, Sunrise dragging behind my hip in preparation for an upward swing. He remained perfectly still until I was already committed to the motion, then darted up and over the arc of my weapon, bringing his hands together for a beam.
I had long enough to register my mistake. I didn't have long enough to dodge.
There was no pain. There was no ringing in my ears, no life flashing before my eyes. There was only Silence.