Her first memory was of the sea. A rolling deck and black sails perched on a spread of blue that stretched in every direction. She could see it moving, she could see it still.
She glanced left, hair whipping in the wind and rope biting into her hand, and saw the rest of the ships dot the sea like trees on a plain. Bastions of black sails, dark wood, and long oars that swayed on the water like dancers to a tune. On and on they went, until they were little more than specks against the horizon, waving at her.
Then she would turn - pain flaring across her palm - backward toward the helm. Toward her father and her siblings standing resolute and immovable aboard the pitching deck like they were born to it. Lived their whole lives there on that single breadth of plank. Gimilzôr would smile at her and wave, Gimilthôr would nod his head - brows loosening a little bit, and then her eyes would be on her father.
He never noticed. His own focus locked on the horizon ahead.
Next was Umbar - how could it not be?
She doesn't remember the siege, nor the Triumph through the city as Ar-Adûnâim was founded in the North and Ar-Pharazôn's jeweled tower was restored. Just the piercing, soul-defining boredom of a young child made to stand still and stare straight ahead for hours on end. For what seemed like a lifetime. The sensation of every movement being picked apart and analyzed by the soldiers around them and the citizens below. Snapping banners of burgundy, black, and gold, and then her father's hand is on her shoulder and her spine finds a second wind to straighten a little bit more.
When she looks up and up and up into his eyes they are smiling.
It's almost enough to make her forget the stench. But when he nods to the Naru n'Aru beside her it comes trickling back.
The stench fades over the next few months, and her moments with family fade with it. Gimilthôr heads East to Ardûmir and their new border with Harad, while Father and Gimilzôr cut a path north to Caldun and the southern bank of the Harnen.
It was just her, Aunt Fenuhúir, and the Naru n'Aru for years.
There weren't many memories then. The days were too monotonous and repetitive. Ever the same and - usually - ever boring. Brief dinners with a woman so busy she governed while she ate, fleeting moments of standing in the wings of court and watching the day to day governance sweep past in a blur between her steel-masked guards. Learned men would try to teach her and she would try to learn, but the facts and theories would enter her ears as static and leave without so much as a footprint. Too busy focusing on not moving or listening to the sounds of the harbor drifting through her window to stay centered on their words. Reading especially was like forcing herself to hold a hand in a fireplace. Her thoughts strayed to anything that so much as stepped near them whenever she was forced to.
She found solace in activity. Mindless physical training and repetitive exercises where her thoughts could shut down or walk their own path while her body moved. Where reading was a curse and numbers drove her mad, combat was a blessing, and she took to it like a fish to water.
Sword and spear and mace and shield - a good lord learned them all. And she would be a very good lord.
The few memories from these years were almost always outside in the drill yard. In the middle hours of the day when the guard were too busy guarding to train. Under the watchful eye of her Naru n'Aru's shadow - and, eventually, instruction - she would rip the dummies to shreds and swing and stab until she couldn't lift her arms. Turn and find a smile wrought in the bronzed body language of Nerennen and Falthiur even before they took to teaching her.
She was never free of the books though, and, it turned out, that an exhausted body made it actually somewhat easier to learn. There were days when she thought of giving up and having Nerennen or Falthiur burn the scrolls and books (and they would), but then Father's voice would return, soft and unyielding. A good lord learns them all.
And so she would.
Wake, train until the sun is high in the sky, study until it's nestled low into the water. Day in and day out.
No, there aren't many memories from those years.
They start again when Gimilthôr returns trailing victories and gifts from Harad. She's in the drill yard practicing with a bastard sword (the biggest she can hold - still almost as tall as her) and hastily-stitched leathers when the gate horn sounds. It echoes across the city, all the way up to the keep that answers in kind.
She remembers leaving the sword stuck halfway in the dummy's chest and sprinting to the nearest tower - Nerennen and Falthiur hot on her tail. Her footsteps override the city so that only the steady crack-crack-crack of leather on stone can be heard.
The air smells of salt and fish and people when she bursts onto the top floor and almost makes the sentry topple off the parapet from surprise. It carries cheers and a pounding, rhythmic marching chant. Even up here, miles from the Eastern gate and poised on a cliffside, she can see the glittering black, crimson, and gold - shining like a beacon - and she cannot help but smile. And taste salt.
She doesn't bother changing to meet Gimilthôr - not enough time. Her feet carry her with long strides (Falthiur says that's how you run faster) all the way down to the inner gate. The guards take up the call, and, by the time she reaches the courtyard, "the Prince has returned!" is filling every nook and cranny of the keep and the marching duststorm has reached the open gates.
He's at the head of the column, dead center of a mass of glittering steel that marches in perfect lockstep. His eyes meet hers, and the next thing she knows she's flinging herself into his open arms. The pommel of his sword digs into her side and he reeks with the stench of marching soldiers, but all she notices is his little half-chuckle - a boisterous laugh for the reserved prince - and the smug "told you you'd miss me."
Father returns next, at the helm of his personal Dulgubalak. She runs to him too, but the title of King demands a certain distance, so a hand on her shoulder and a rare smile will have to do.
Officially, she is too young for War Councils. Unofficially, the balconies of the Council chamber and a nearby and never-used guest room are only separated by a thin trellis covered in blooming ivy.
(She had plenty of hours to explore Umbar's keep as she dodged numbers courses. It was that or go insane.)
The sun was setting and she was, as always, stained with dust and sweat from her afternoon training (practicing disarming today), and climbing the trellis - shockingly - didn't alleviate the soreness in her wrists and arms. But for the boon of listening in on the War Council what was being sore a little longer?
"Prince Gimilthôr, Ar-Ghimilkhad. Welcome back to Umbar." Aunt Fenuhúir's voice, sounding stressed. Then again, the woman always sounded stressed.
"You do us honor with your welcome, Fenuhúir. I see you've treated the Havens well in my absence."
"Thank you, your Grace. I would do nothing less."
"I expect you don't know the meaning of 'less' in regards to anything but what not to do, Fenuhúir."
A sigh slipped out the open arch and into the sea breeze. "Your wit has been sorely missed, Prince," Aunt Fenuhúir said, with the tone of a woman eyeing the balcony and calculating the seconds it would take to hit the ground. "The Black Havens are brighter for having it back."
"And that's not even counting the rest of me, is it? In fact -"
"Gimilthôr."
She stifled a snort.
"Yes," her brother coughed, and the sea breeze snatched that too to secret away into the sunset. "Ardûmir is subdued and the passage East into Haradwaith is secured. The Haradrim themselves seemed eager to talk. Insisted on holding parley on the back of one of their Mumakîl," she heard him shiver, "terribly high up, if you weren't aware. And swaying."
"Gimilthôr," Father warned again.
"Yes. Anyway. The Haradrim are now - formally - our ally. The Eastern border is safe. Until Tal'Aljaf and Faen'obel are ready to be reclaimed."
"That will be many years. A war with Harad is the last thing we want," Fenuhúir muttered.
"Gold will do what steel cannot, assuming the Haradrim don't fade into the Wastes and leave the cities to rebel after Gondor is remade."
"It's possible," Gimilthôr grunted, "the tribes seemed to have their… tensions when I was there."
"The Haradrim are, at best, a confederacy of a hundred different tribes. That they remain so stable now is indicative of just how weak The Faithful have become." Metal and wood clattered as the room sat.
"A fortunate thing for us," her brother mused.
"A blessing and a curse. As Gondor weakens, the Great Betrayer grows stronger in Mordor."
"The enemy of my enemy -"
"They are both our enemies. Sauron must die for what he did to our people, and Gondor must be reshaped in the true image of Numenor. Its usurper line broken. You know this."
"If he can even be killed," Gimilthôr muttered.
Someone - a general she did not know - cleared his throat before the familiar argument could rise again. "What is the status of Gimilzôr and her northern army, Your Grace? Is Caldun secured?"
"It is," her father answered, and the council dove into numbers and supply routes until the sky turned dark and her eyes drifted shut.
Shifting platemail woke her, clicking and clanking and screaming in her ear. Two blue eyes were level with hers, the stars sparkling behind them. The King was crouched right in front of her.
"You're too young for War Council, my dear."
Heat rushed to her cheeks, and when she moved to sit straight her back flared with pain. "Gimilthôr was eight when he went to his first Council." Her face tried to morph into a pout, but she managed to stop it dead. It would do nothing to make her seem older.
"Gimilthôr is heir, mîth-ûrê, and I didn't know better then." One hand, still gauntleted and sprayed with salt, slid under her arm and nudged her up. Gentle, considering it was still coated in plate. "Plus," he said, those blue eyes finding hers again as they passed into the emptied Council chamber, "your brother has a penchant for both numbers and letters."
Her focus shifted to the walls as they walked. Ancient sandstone and new marble, the walls covered in busts and tapestries and iron. The moon and stars flickering to life every few steps through windows and arches. "Who told you?" she asked the wall. Pretended she didn't still feel the eyes watching her.
"Your Aunt." Of course. The woman hid nothing from her brother-in-law.
Neither spoke for a few moments. It was just sea breeze and footsteps.
"I'm trying," she muttered. And it was true, she was. But the words never clicked when she looked at them - it always took three or four tries for a sentence to crystallize in her head. And those were the good days, the days she could muster focus and interest enough to read them at all.
Another beat of silence. She forced herself to turn and meet his eyes. Hold them. "I am."
"I know." Left unspoken was that any amount of 'trying' was never good enough. Not if success didn't wait at the end of that road.
She turned to watch the moon.
"She tells me you've taken up combat training."
A nod. "Five hours every day. It helps."
Father raised a brow, "with your studies?"
Another nod. "It tires me out so I can't run away."
She swore he almost chuckled. "Creative thinking, mîth-ûrê."
A small burst of pride welled in her chest, and her lips formed a smile. "You said half of being a good leader is creativity."
"True," she glanced at him as he nodded then snapped her eyes back to the hallways before he might notice. "I think I also said the other half is planning, skill, diligence, and a million other traits depending on the day."
Her shoulders sagged a little, even as she tried to stop them.
"They are both incorrect. Leadership - kingship - cannot be reduced to two or three idealized traits or a handful of clever tricks." He turned to look wholly at her then. "You must have them all. You must never stop improving. 'Perfection is a journey, not a destination.'"
She felt herself deflate. "I know, father." How many times had she heard that line of scripture? It was not like she didn't try. Her everyday was spent reading and training, reading and training until she rinsed herself off and collapsed into bed. She could not afford to cut out distractions because she had none in her life.
No friends, no crowds, nothing but walls and towers and men and women too scared to talk to her.
They came to a stop outside her door. The moonlight made the iron hinges look almost like talons driving laterally into the wood. She stared at them, idly imagining the size and lines of the monster that would stretch on and out from the claws. "Goodnight, little one."
"Goodnight, father," she intoned to the door.
The footsteps behind her paused, shifted. She turned to meet them. Her father's face was bare and tanned and unmoving. The only exception being the twitch of his brow. His hand moved at his side as if to touch her - to ruffle her hair or grip her shoulder or, maybe, even drag her into a hug. Then it stopped, frozen halfway between them.
It dropped to her father's side limply. He smiled instead, and she tried to smile back.
"You will excel, Fathûir." He said, voice like stone. Then he turned and walked away.
She could not tell if it had been an order or a vote of confidence.
Father left first, sailing north at the head of an armada of black sails: Gimilthôr's eastern host, minus the quiet prince. "North," she'd heard, over sea breeze and through blooming ivy, "to Gondor and the Harnen."
The King's goodbye had been a kiss to her brow when he thought she was sleeping.
Gimilthôr left not but three days later. She remembered spending those three days trailing after him closer than his own shadow, studies and training left by the wayside. Her brother didn't smile much in her memories of then, his greatest affection a soft quirk of his lips over a deadpan voice while he ruffled her hair.
Court and councils and evening dinners, every moment but those asleep she spent behind him. Every moment but the War Councils where she hid behind the ivy and listened. By order of the King she was not allowed inside that room, and her brother would not defy the king.
Gimilthôr departed north on horseback - a rarity for the Ar-Adûnâim - at the head of his hundred-and-three warbows; a column of dark plate and crimson fabric arranged under the gate in perfect formation.
The sun was high in an empty sky and the wind off the sea carried the smell of dead fish and saltwater into the courtyard. Her brother smiled at her, a full, true smile, and then turned and walked his horse out through the gate.
She remembered standing under the portcullis and tasting dust. She remembered scaling the nearest turret to watch the line of black and wine-red march through the city until the colors blurred into something that was just dark. She remembered following the smudge as it exited the city and vanished over the horizon.
North. North to Father and Gimilzôr and the char her sister had left in her wake.
She remembered staying up there to watch the spot where they disappeared: a little hill, a paved road, a bushel of scraggly trees, and morning fog rolling in off the sea.
Just in case.
The book shook in her hands; one-quarter exhaustion, three-quarters rage. She tried - she tried, but the words smeared and blurred and even when they were whole they wouldn't stay in her mind and make sense. They'd click then leave like a wind through her ears whenever she blinked, whenever she thought. It was impossible to keep them.
She tried. But trying wasn't good enough when she couldn't succeed.
Hate. She fucking hated it. She hated the lines of black ink and the rough feel of the paper and the smell of the well-worn leather. She hated how the paper creased when she gripped it, she hated how it sounded when it crumpled, she hated how the words seemed to float and blend together.
Most of all, she hated herself. For not being able to follow them, for not being able to catch and grip them, for the sidesteps her mind would take without permission.
For being too stupid to read.
She screamed and hurled the bundle of leather and paper at the wall like a javelin. It smacked against the stone, flopped to the floor, and the doors to her chamber were thrown open. Nerennen and Falthiur, standing low to the ground with shields raised and spears leveled and eyes hard.
Clenched fists and deep, heaving breaths. She could not face them, could not answer them when they asked if she was alright, shame and anger roiling in her chest and reaching up to cloy her throat like wet clay.
A pause, and then Nerennen crossed the room to pick up the book, the crackle of the fire and the clank of his mail the only sounds. It was small in his hand. The leather was the same that made up his scabbard. He stopped before her and held it out.
Her eyes snapped to his, brown to brown, then just as quickly flicked away to the floor, cheeks burning. She held her arms at her side like she'd seen her guards do for hours on end and didn't take it. Didn't even breathe. Just watched the firelight flicker across the floor in an arch from her hearth.
Nerennen said nothing. Falthiur said nothing. The book was set on her bed and the pair of them walked out.
She was alone. Alone with the words and the fire and the moon through her windows.
She remembered collapsing on the bed and wiping the wetness from her eyes before it could spill over, feeling like at any moment she might burst.
Spear and sword, mace and shield. She grew too big for the blunted blades and graduated to stealing the arms of her Naru n'Aru when they were asleep.
Her closets were full of chairs and posts and little wardrobes, all moved from the abandoned portions of the keep. Wrapped in old cloth from the kitchens, they looked like training dummies if you squinted.
Aunt Fenuhúir stood beside Father's throne and condemned a man to death. Treason. Spying. Sending information northeast to the black mountains of Mordor by raven and letter.
She remembered watching him blanche and sputter, arms twisting to come forward despite still being bound behind his back. Greasy. Pale. A scar over the left side of his mouth. He had a face like the dead fish they would hang on market stalls in Ar-Pharazôn's Square.
Aunt Fenuhúir seemed more stressed at dinner that night than she could ever remember seeing her: a hand running constantly through her hair, chewing her lip more than her food.
The man she watched hang the next morning looked like him. Greasy, blond hair, a long and narrow face like someone had gripped his chin and forehead and pulled.
But there was no scar on his lip.
He did not hang there long after.
Four times she flung the book out her window, into rain and mud and dust. Four times Nerennen went to fetch it. Returning each time more soaked than the last, trailing water through the keep only to stop at the threshold of her room.
After the fourth she shut her doors and tossed the thing into the fire.
Gimilzôr sent letters, two every moon. By raven or by ship, they always came. She… couldn't read them, so always had Falthiur do it for her. He, at least, would never tell.
After she'd read the new she'd go back and read the old. A stack of parchment in her room by the bedside, by her sword and spear and mace and shield. All in the same reckless hand.
They were the only thing she wanted to read. And, when the moon was high in the sky and Nerennen and Falthiur were asleep or on duty, she would fall asleep trying.
She only had to ask once for Gimilzôr to promise to spar. For the first time since father's visit, she dodged her tutors in favor of practicing.
She would not embarrass herself.
She remembered Gimilzôr arrived at sunset, when the sky was bands of purple, orange, and pink, looking like she'd lost a fight with a Haradwaith dune. Dust and sand were in every nook of her dark plate, and her wine-red tabard was stained with spots of black; her face was smeared with dirt through the gaps in her helmet, and she had a fresh, angry red scar under her right eye that twitched when she smiled. And she always smiled.
Her sister swept into dinner like a gale off the sea, and left her aunt scrambling to find the proper courtesies. An arm in black mail yanked her up when she tried to kneel and pulled her into a hug, laughing.
She didn't realize she was even up and running until her chair clattered to the floor somewhere behind her, and by then she was more than halfway there.
Gimilzôr caught and spun her with a dirty smile and a smell like woodsmoked battle, her laugh echoing in the high hall. "There's my favorite sister!"
"Is Umbar treating you well, little sister?"
Fathûir tried to hide her scowl. Didn't do a very good job of it based on her sister's smirk. Gimilzôr was a warrior - a great warrior. She wouldn't want to hear about the lonely nights and lonelier days, how her closest companions and closest thing to friends she had were her Naru n'Aru. How their aunt was too busy and too proper to spend time with her, how the learned men and women set to tutor her had all but given up.
"It's fine," she said, tearing off a bit from the bread Gimilzôr had nicked from the kitchens and throwing it over the balcony just to watch its lazy fall.
It went out of sight just below the armory, the crumb indistinguishable from the ground. When she looked left Gimilzôr was smiling. "'Fine,'" the woman repeated, nodding and looking at her funny.
"It is home," she huffed, picking at the cut of bread in her hands.
"And such a home it must be for you to adore it so much."
Fathûir grumbled and looked away. Toward the city that stretched on and on til it was flush with the bay. "It is a good home." And, truth be told, it was. The Faithful and The Betrayer and the war were far away north. The keep and city were clean, the weather was oft warm and fair and clear, and the wind rarely carried any scent but saltwater. There were no threats in Umbar. It was as good a home as she had had.
It was the only home she could remember.
"But…?"
She bit her lip and tore another piece off the bread. It was soft and still faintly warm from the oven; nuts and seeds textured the top.
But she hated it. The confinement and the loneliness, the dread feeling every morning when she woke up and remembered it was another day of being too dull to read and write, let alone ever be a true lord. Her only reprieves were letters and training, training and letters.
"But nothing," she spoke to the bread in her hands and the ground far below it, "it is home. It is good. I could wish for no more."
Silence. Long enough for her to notice and look up in question at her sister.
Gimilzôr was studying her: a crease to her brow and a slight frown on her lips. "You are a poor liar, little sister -" she winced "- but I will not press you if you do not want to speak."
Fathûir let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. It was good she didn't have to humiliate herself in front of her sister.
"Yet, that is."
Fathûir scowled, Gimilzôr laughed. The breeze carried it out of the keep and down toward the sea.
"But that is later! This is now," she felt Gimilzôr's still-plated shoulder nudge hers, "and I remember someone saying she wanted to spar."
A smile and a gasp despite her best efforts.
Parry and a half step back; the blade hissed past her ear.
"Guard's too high again," Gimilzôr grunted, stepping forward and changing grip to throw her weight behind an overhead strike.
Fathûir - stupidly - tried to chamber it, but her sister's blade knocked her own aside with barely a flinch, and only a hasty backstep saved her from a bruised-black shoulder.
"Brave," her sister tutted, making the word into an admonishment, carrying the blade's momentum around fluidly into another swing. Then another, and another. Her sister's sword was a blur.
Fathûir sidestepped, backstepped, deflected frantically. She couldn't find her feet, not with Gimilzôr pressing hard, all she could do was scrabble backwards in the dust. Kick up little clouds with her feet.
One block, two - the drillyard was silent but for ringing steel and her own ragged breaths. Sweat cut little rivers through the dirt on her face to settle on her lips and fill her mouth with the taste of salt. The lines that missed ran down her neck and soaked the fabric of her gambeson, made it stick to her like a second layer of wet, scratchy skin.
Six hours. Six hours of swinging steel around under the watchful eyes of Nerennen and Falthiur and all the guards on all the parapets around the drillyard. Six hours every day for six years.
Eight hours once she'd had Nerennen read her Gimilzôr's letter. The one about coming home.
Too many days for her to count, too many hours for her to even think of. All of it so she could last no longer than two minutes against her sister in a duel.
She'd tried. Again and again and again and again. Sixteen tries, sixteen times she'd ate the ground.
Gimilzôr advanced with an overhead feint into a leftside cut. Fathûir caught the blade on her own and held it there, twisted full body to try and leverage the haft out of her sister's hand like Gimilzôr had done to her at least five times today.
It was desperate, and it didn't work.
Gimilzôr shoulder checked her mid-turn and Fathûir hit the ground so hard it shoved the wind from her lungs and left her gasping.
Her eyes watered and her mouth opened and closed but couldn't drag in air, only flap like a fish caught out of water, trying and failing to breathe. There was a fleeting moment of animal fear before her lungs worked again and it passed. She inhaled dust.
It lined the inside of her mouth and throat in a heartbeat: a dry film quickly growing wet; her breathing turned to hacking, spitting. Watching lines of brownish spit pool into wet patches on the dirt between her fingers.
She hacked and spat again, breathed and pushed back onto her haunches. The sky was above her, Gimilzôr before it. The only sign of labor in her sister was a thin line of sweat on her brow and breaths too even and regular to be anything but purposeful.
Fathûir pushed herself up with her blunted blade and struggled not to pout.
"There we are," Gimilzôr looped a hand under her armpit and she had to fight the urge to swat it away. "Up you come, little sister."
The older woman, garbed in dark chain and a wine-red tabard, took a moment to look her over. Then smiled wide. "You did well! Guard was too high and you chambered when you should've parried, but still!"
"Again," she wheezed. The dirt and the coughing made her voice scratchy.
Her sister's smile became gentle and she settled a hand on her shoulder. The smile chafed to look at, the hand chafed to feel. "Not today, Fathûir."
"But -"
"No. We're done sparring for today." And, to enunciate the point, Gimilzôr sheathed her sword, not even bothering to look. Her sister gave the blade in her hand a look.
She didn't want to sheathe it. She didn't want to stop. Breathing tasted bad and there wasn't a muscle on her body that wasn't sore, but she wanted to go again. More than almost anything else, she wanted to spar with her sister - Gimilzôr the Fearless, Gimilzôr the Black. Gimilzôr, the most renowned warrior in all Ar-Adûnâim. Her sister.
She wanted to win, and the eighteenth time would be it, she was certain.
It didn't hurt that more time sparring meant more time before her sister dragged the details of home out of her.
Gimilzôr raised an eyebrow.
Fathûir the Sore sighed and sheathed her sword, and the two went forward together toward the keep.
Fathûir walked side by side with her sister through the wide hallways of the keep. The older woman was still wearing her ever-present mail, and she still wearing the dirt she'd collected from the ground. The left wall was beige and white stone, the right wall was open air and arches and the setting sun.
It was a calm, clear day in Umbar; the halls were flush with cool wind off the sea and the easy cheer of a beautiful day. That didn't stop her from fidgeting with the ends of her dirty gambeson, the sunlight off her sister's mail half a reason why she kept her eyes off the woman and on the floor.
But lords were brave - her sister was brave. And so she would be too.
They stopped outside the library, her least favorite room, with elbows on the railing and the glistening spread of Umbar by the sea below.
She rocked back and forth as she spoke and Gimilzôr said nothing. When she had finished, and the setting sun had sunk into twilight, her sister swept her into a hug so tight it could snap a beam.
Fathûir gripped her sister's shoulders with white knuckles and did not ever want to let go.
When the hug ended and the pleasant silence after had slipped out into the bay, Gimilzôr picked her up and placed her on her shoulders, little feet dangling against her breastplate.
And they swept through the castle as Fathûir the Giantess, greatest warrior in all the lands north and south of the Harnen.
Gimilzôr would write four times a moon from then on. She did not once err.
A/N: Quick Adûnaic translation for some terms, Ctrl + V'd from my notes:
- mîth-ûrê - "little girl" + "sun" = little sun
- Akallabêth = She-that-is-fallen, name of Númenor, Akallabêthin when proper
- phazphêl or phêlzân = princess, king's daughter (made up)
- sapthân = understander, wise man, wizard
- Zigûrun = the Wizard, Sauron
- bâ = aux. Not
- at = num. suff. Two
- satta = num. Two
- bâ an-satta/bâ'n-satta or lâ an-satta/lâ'n-satta = literally 'not of two' or non-binary
Anyway: this story is in many ways a personal writing experiment to see how minimalist I can go with my own style. Just a fun project to push my boundaries while I work on my book and other stories. As a quick heads up: we're not leaving areas south of the Anduin until Ch. 6, and not arriving at Rivendell until Ch. 11, so if you don't care for any of this character establishment/OC childhood scenes feel free to skip to there or not read this story until those chapters are published.
I can't really lay claim to any of the Ar-Adûnâim original lore except for the characterization and Fathûir herself, all that goes to the creators of the wonderful Divide and Conquer submod. If you're interested in playing it yourself or learning more about it then grab Medieval II Total War, install Divide and Conquer, and, optionally, install the AI and Gameplay Overhaul + Submod to Unite All Submods. Good time.
As usual, tell me if I forgot anything or made any typos, and please tell me what you think! Love to hear from people :)