Like a rising wave of thunder crashing down over the land, so the Host of the West came up out of the Sea. The ringing of the trumpets of Eönwë came rolling to the very feet of the Hithaeglir. The sky blazed with the light of the Valar and the glory of the Vanyar. White were their banners. The Edain came to the battle, and the remnants of the Noldor of Beleriand, but Maglor and Maedhros did not come. Yet they heard the tumult of the War of Wrath from afar. From their fiefs and lands the people of the Sons of Fëanor looked up in wonder, hope, and terror, as the sky itself writhed with seething clouds, for little of the northern part of the world could escape the chaos. At night, dragons boiled on the horizon, spilling out curtains of red flame that set the forests ablaze, but they did not come east. Flashes of white lightning flew to meet them, and one by one the great Worms were struck from heaven and cast down into the rising Sea. The land was broken and the mountains shook. Many hapless souls were lost even in the hour of victory, for a land far greater than Númenor was buried beneath the waves.

Standing on the wall of Maglor's keep, the brothers gazed westward. Tears spilled without abating on Elrond's cheeks, and when his twin asked him why, he could only say, "Sirion."

Watching a sunrise tearing through a cloud-wracked sky, they could see in the distance that Gelion had broken its banks and was flowing backwards, and that on the horizon, the tongue of fire which they saw lapped beneath the sky was actually the rising ocean driving inland. Its heaving surf caught and scattered the ruddy light of dawn like frothing blood.

"I hope our father's people are not under that," Elros said, unusually subdued. "How will they escape? And what of the wild creatures?"

Elrond shook his head and turned away from the sun, leaning his elbows against the lip of the battlements. "Drowned," he sighed. In his mind's eye the wave was always sea-green, not red, and it was the towers and homes of Men that were engulfed, not the sweet wild lands and the ruined kingdoms of the Elves. For once in his short life, he was utterly at a loss to reconcile what his eyes and heart were seeing. "I have seen enough," he said abruptly, and made for the stair spiralling around the inner curve of the wall.

Elros nodded and made to follow, but his eye was caught by a dark speck between the clouds and the ocean, speeding towards them. Puzzled, he turned back and watched until at last he was certain: a bird of size immeasurable with wings spread in the kingly span of the greatest of Eagles. With astonishing swiftness it arrowed towards them, but its destination was not the foothills of Mt. Rerir; instead, it circled thrice over the Hill of Himring some leagues to the west of them, then dropped from view. "Telling them to flee?" he guessed, for if the Celon and other rivers were rising too, Maedhros would soon be cut off and his fastness an island in the maw of that angry Sea.

Somehow the ocean had a fascination for Elros even at this distance, too far away to hear the yearned-for music of surf and breakers that the boys had missed for so long. He vowed to see it again when the waves had calmed. If they calmed. Had Morgoth been defeated, or was this the world's ending? No one yet knew.