Talion stared up at the sky for at least an hour, watching the soft glow of dawn stretch and fade to the brightness of a day without clouds. Strange, he thought, hadn't there been a ceiling of stone above him earlier?
Talion turned this way and that. Below him was the gray stone of the mountain, above him was the clear sky, awash with a light golden tone that was creeping across the fading night sky faster and faster. Maybe he hadn't been paying attention. Next Talion looked out over the edge. The sea churned as far as he could see, circular white waves crashing against each other.
But Talion was pleased to note that the many ships of the Skelligers had weathered the turning seas. He took a deep breath, enjoying the way the cold, clean mountain air flowed through his lungs.
Talion stood still for a time, enjoying the clean air around him. How long had it been since he had breathed air free of the stench of Mordor.
How long had it been since he had breathed?
Talion stilled. When had he stopped bothering to breathe? When had he realized that he didn't need to fill his lungs anymore to continue existing?
Babump-babump went his heart inside his chest. Startled, Talion gripped his chest.
When had his heart stilled for the final time and why didn't he remember that!?
The answer was whispered to Talion from his mind, the restored state of his memories providing the answer. He had slipped further into wraithdom and corruption in his servitude to the Eye, he had objectively known this even before his mind had been cleared of the fog inflicted on him. Talion hadn't known how the degeneration had progressed when he had finally lost himself.
He had been commanded to act like every other Nazgul and that meant he needed to obey.
But now he felt alive! Well, more solid and material than he had been before he had reforged the ring.
Ah, what a sight it made now! All unblemished, glittering gold once more! Ha ha!
Talion enjoyed the giddiness for a time before coming back down to himself. He looked around the bare mountain top with new eyes, taking in the way the clouds ringed the mountaintop and the way the sunlight filtered down to him from the clear sky directly above.
The whispers in his mind were silent, for now.
Then Talion turned his head a bit too far and felt metal crack against his skin. Startled, he brought a gauntleted hand up to his face and felt around. He felt smooth and lumpy metal on his face. He gripped the edge of the metal and pulled it away from his face. Talion felt a pulling against his face as the metal came away and he started, realizing that he was holding the metal and malformed mask he had been wearing.
No longer was it a wicked visage of power and cruelty, not after it had lost all trace and form, except for the eye slits, during the forging process. Now it looked rather like a Morgul mushroom in shape and air pockets littered its surface.
Talion turned the melted mask back over, peering into the depression formed on his face. In the smooth panes of the interior, he caught a glimpse of himself.
He looked…not dead might be the best term. His skin had not miraculously returned to the natural hue of a living person, but no longer did it look like his skin was about to slough off from decomposition. Instead he just looked sickly, that was the most fitting description. Thought the blackened veins around his eyes and the burning appearance of them would clue any onlooker to the fact that he wasn't sick.
His visage was still clearly unnatural, Talion recognized that, but it was the appearance that felt right to him. So he didn't question it, rather he embraced his looks and felt his newly thumping heart beat joyously. He felt firmer now, more tangible to a sixth sense that he possessed. He felt like himself again, like all the missing parts of himself that had been torn away by Sauron or stretched too thin by the depredations that came with the service of a Ringwraith had been filled back up in one great rush.
So he looked at himself and was pleased by the results of his craft, knowing in the back of his mind that Talion and Talion had done this. No wrathful elf or muttering eye to direct him, just the will of Talion. He smiled, for the notion that he had won one over on Celebrimbor was ever pleasing to the man banished from death.
A pulse of light reflected in the smooth metal caught his attention. Strangely to Talion, it looked like his eyes burned with a more golden hue to their fire than before. He paid it no mind, his eyes burned with power as they always had, a minor shift in the hue of the burning was nothing to worry over. So said a whisper in his thoughts. Suddenly a wind leapt up and ran across his face and Talion flinched back.
He sneered reflexively. The wind on his bare face felt unnatural after wearing a mask for so long. Talion resolved to make himself a new one as soon as possible. Still the hulk of metal he held now was useless, so Talion tossed it to the side.
The metal hit the floor and the sound of glass shattering broke the mountain silence. Talion looked over, the ruined mask had landed on glass judging by the spider-web cracks around it.
He looked down and surely enough the worn rock he vaguely recalled from earlier had been transformed by the heat and raw power that had overflowed from the forge as Talion had worked, and so the rock had become glass that cracked and shattered with the slightest pressure. Talion tested his observation by stepping forward.
The discordant sounds of snapping and crunching glass came out from under his boots.
The wind rose up again, and Talion decided to forget about the glass and the vague notion that he had begun to forge in a cave of a kind and now stood under the open sky. This wind was bothersome and Talion decided that he did not want to be bothered by it anymore.
He reached back and pulled up his black hood, pleased that the rough fabric had survived the forge intact, just like the rest of his armor and physical weapons. What about the cruel nazgul mask had caused it to become slag like it had?
Talion adjusted the hem of the hood so that it cast most of his face in shadow, leaving his lower jaw and mouth free of the concealing dark.
Talion would be doing much conversing in the near future, he divined. Yes he had many questions to ask!
How had he forgotten that? Well he had been swept up in the beauty of his heart beating and the joy of breathing true, but Talion needed to focus now. He had left not just Mordor behind, he had left Middle-Earth and Arda itself behind!
He had been thrown to some far flung corner of the creation, far from the familiar and into the complete unknown. But he survived!
Yes! The fact that he had survived Sauron filled him with glee. Now Talion was the master of his own fate, as it was always meant to be! Here he was, in a land unknown but it was also a land he now felt deeply connected to. Only Mordor had made Talion feel belonging in an equal manner.
But yes, Talion knew he now dwelt in a new world and with it he was restored to his full might and glory. What to do with that though? He felt somewhat directionless, Talion had always had an enemy to strive against, even before his first death he had an enemy to fight(though Talion remembered nought of who or why he had fought when true life still coursed in him).
Well, he thought, just as when he was in Mordor, Talion needed to get the lay of the land. And he remembered the people of this island, Undvik. They would certainly know more of where he was and who was important in the local power structure. Talion smiled, and it was a cruel smirk of a thing.
Just like Mordor, no?
And so Talion the Ringlord began to walk down the mount he had created and into the history of the Continent.
A/N - Another short one, but it is the last of the prologue chapters/set up chapters. Next time we are gonna cut to my friends and yours, our local band of frightened Skelligers! And Talion will be going on a field trip! What fun!
For him of course, definitely more nerve raising for the Skelligers.
Next topic, did anyone pick up what geographic change Talion's forging caused? I think I laid it out pretty clearly enough without being super in your face about it. Talion certainly wouldn't pay much attention to it. Other POVs definitely will.
See everyone next time.