Chapter Five: Fire stories
Dedication: To masters and kings. To beasties and godmothers. To Maleficent.
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There were two kings in Legolas' life. One light and silver green, the other dark and dripping red.
One taught him many things, archery, nature magic, swordsmanship, reading, laughing, playing, protecting, wondering. He made Legolas' soul into who he something bright and untainted, the kind elf shut inside a wooden cage, with only an arrowed leaf for company. A unmoveable king.
He taught Legolas to believe, to never lose hope, to wonder at the world around him, to fight for what's right. And not what's easy.
The other taught him three things, and gave him the snarling darkness to wield. His expectations were high. and he always turned a blind eye regarding the prince. It took him a long while to trust his young charge, but it was a trust well worth it.
Never break in unless you know the way out.
Shadows were everywhere, even amongst the brightest stars. The darkness always helps its prince.
Never make a cage you can't get out of.
There was a cage named Mirkwood for his father. A glided box full of light and music and people that came with a beloved king. Death was the only way out, because if no one steps inside and suffer for his people, then there will be no people left.
There was a cage called Mordor for his master, a moth in a jar waiting to die. A bird singing at the top of its lungs because where there's light, there's always darkness. Trying in vain to attack the walls with his broken wings, but he always grew tired eventually, and restless.
Evil is like a phoenix, much like light. A ball of fire consumes the phoenix when it dies, devouring its essence and its memories. But from the ashes that came from the flames, a new life was awakened.
Small, harmless, untapped madness in something nobody could tame.
Destroy and kill, said the light. They sought to destroy evil without once asking nor considering whether or not the evil even wanted to be made.
The only people who should kill are those prepared to die themselves.
The only wish of Sauron, was to die. After all.
He was the king in a land a darkness and black flames. No matter how hard Legolas tried, he will only remain a prince.
The orcs and the trolls and the walgs pillaged and burned and devoured. A deal's a deal. The Dark Lord quenched their thirst for blood, in return, they fight for him. He wanted the Light to see, to understand, and to fight back when the monsters became too much.
He didn't think that he would grew so powerful and so out of control that only the combined efforts of elves, dwarves and men could destroy him.
He actually cackled inside his helmet when Isildur swiped the golden ring off his finger. Laughed broken and bloody to the dark sky as his blackened soul vaporized in the air, gone without the key to anchor him.
He didn't understand the greed of men as well as he should.
Orcs were made from elves simply for the fact that they will last almost forever. They have the mighty endurance of the fair folk and their proud determination. They hunger for the their light, the thing they once possessed but was lost when they succumbed to the dark.
Sauron was an elf once, free and fair, a bright elfling that could bend fire and light to his will. He would often conjure balls of flame and juggle them around and around in the air, garnering laughs and squeals from his friends. It was just a tuft of orange, incapable of harming anyone. Perfectly safe to hold it in your bare hands.
But elves were a race of light, of mornings, of trees and meadows and arrows fired from ornate bows. He was none of those things.
He preferred the unspoken surface of the stone rather than the singing trees with bright leaves. He preferred the dim twilight to the radiant mornings, preferred the long swords with wicked hilts, whips with pronged tips than the flying arrows and smooth knives of the fair.
He did nothing wrong, but the immortal light, with their wisdoms and years, were succumbed to fear of the unknown far easier than the mortal humans.
Fear of the different, fear of the night.
When the men from the east and the orcs from the north attacked and raided their homes before the bright trees of Lothlorien, no elf stayed nor turned around for the little elfling screaming for help, and soon, mercy.
They fled, to the light, and abandoned the night.
They saw, they paused and they turned the other way. Perhaps even celebrated the demise of the odd little boy and his dark tricks with flames.
Morgoth found his half buried under a pile of fire logs with the still cackling flames. Alive and unafraid at the towering man standing in front of him with the sharp blades and the cold steel shadows writhing behind him. He reached out a bloody hand to see if the shadow man was actually real, or was the product of his overly active imaginations. A thing that could make Galadriel laugh and Thranduil scowl.
When the man asked him what does he want to do with that fire of his, the elves flashed in his mind. He thought they were his friends, people he could fight along side with, people he could place his trust in. Was he so different that even the holy elves would reject him? Was he such a monster that even the most kind-hearted folk would find his vile and strange?
I want to make then burn. He said to the man/wraith, dark eyes enflamed with orange and red as he stared up at Morgoth, unafraid and determined. I need to make them pay the only thing on his mind as he stared defiantly into shadowed red eyes.
Morgoth extended a hand, coldly knuckled in steel gauntlets, dripping red and oozing black. Both of them a substance Annatar did not know. A curious little beastie, taking the wrong faerie godmother's hand.
Morgoth bound him, life, soul and magic, to the eternal darkness. There's no reprieve, no mercy and no escape. There was a curse, a curse ripped from the demon's fanged mouth when he was cast down to the deepest dungeon Mother Earth could provide for the light.
Sauron was locked in his tower, the tallest one that looked down upon them all like ants and boots. He heard it, he felt it, and he sought to embrace it.
Death will only be delivered, by what you call son.
He mastered orcs and wyverns, goblins and trolls. They were given one task to perform. Kill and destroy. All for the sake of his One Ring. For his inevitable death everyone sought. The only reason he wants it, is to throw it into Mount Doom himself. Or order one of his ringwraiths to do it.
He pushed all thoughts of the curse out his mind, until the Nazguls brought back an elf.
Unconscious but alive. An heir of Mirkwood, still bright and stormy.
The Witch-King threw the blood covered prince to the foot of an empty throne. The elf was still sane, and could still fight with the long knife on his back if not for the bounds on his person. Wrists, ankles and mouth, all covered with tendrils of flaming black sand.
He came out of the shadows and raised a hand, and the halls were left alone for him and the now mystified prince.
The elfling, for he was but a child in the Sauron's eyes, would no doubt have heard stories about the dark lord in the dark lands where the sun refused to set foot. About the armies of the foulest species to ever to appear in Middle Earth. Of the sad fates the humans and dwarves and elves wrought upon themselves.
A prince of mornings and stars, of trees and songs, trapped beneath the gaze of the lord to forgotten stones and flames.
A prince of Mirkwood, of an elven kingdom protected solely by arrows and knives, rather than the two rings of power. The prince, no doubt, would have been part of patrols, to exterminate orc raids and spider colonies.
He loved fear.
He dragged the prince up by his wrists to face him, holding onto the black bounds and noting the trembling hands. Mirkwood was a place of danger, of venom and dirty blades. Was he so terrifying that he could make the prince of the woodland realm tremble?
The elves don't like change, after all.
He wasn't born to be kind.
The prince has beautiful eyes, he noted, silver-blue, like the sea, like the stars. Like his own elven glow he lost a long long time ago when he took his master's hand.
He loathed them on sight.
With a flick of his arm the prince's writs were locked and pinned above his head and to the base of his throne, an useless piece of rubbish he never wanted. Black fire coursed through his hands with merely a thought, and he brought his fingers to the prince's eyes, close enough for him to feel the scorching heat, to taste fear.
The legends spoke of the dark lord's powerful armies, of his snarling shadows, of his flames that could ignite and burn a town into ash with merely a flick of his hand.
The prince was just like his father.
Before a king, a prince was always there.
He had met Thranduil when he was still Annatar, a tall elf with a forever air of pride and power. Thranduil has been drawn to the dark elf through his words and his flames. Annatar took to the then elven prince because of his eyes.
Silver-blue. Brighter but also dimmer than the pair of radiant orbs of Galadriel.
He wished he had eyes like that once, the color of bright stars instead of charcoal black, muddy and depthless. Eyes are the windows to the soul, and he always wondered if he ever had one.
There was indeed fear in the prince's eyes, but he was not looking at the ball of flame only inches from his umblemished face, regardless of the jouney he had taken to get to infamous tower of Barad-Dur. He stared calmly into Sauron's eyes, something few had managed to do and live to tell the tale, resigned but unbreakable.
A hint of puzzlement in his eyes, a taste of anguish, a bit of grief. But underneath all the stars and the mists and the frozen ice, was wonder.
Wonder, at the stone and blackness. Wonder, at his own week and tragic fate. Wondering, at how the handsome elf before him became one of the darkest things ever to set foot in Middle Earth. Wonder, at how he could change that.
Thranduil taught him well. A wondering prince, a curious prince.
He wonders for a moment then and now if all the darkness inside Mordor, the land where the shadows lie, had gouged his eyes out and he shoved two stars into his empty sockets to take their place, and that's why those blue eyes are so bright!
Sauron could see the arrowleaf pendant tucked inside his grime covered tunic. A star surround by blood and dirt and ripped up skin but still somehow remained clean, untouched. Pure. Much like the prince locked before him.
Sauron murmured under his breath, and the flames turned into moving shadows, alive and writhing, and ver yeager to obey its master's commands. The prince only made to cry out once, a half silenced scream constricted by the gag, before he understood, and relented.
There was a new beastie, an even more curious one, and he was now the faerie godmother. He knew the roads that could be taken, lives to be cost. He vowed to himself then, that he will never offer a hand to the wondering child that cast his twoo bright gaze upon a monster.
The prince was bundled into the shadows, and he would never fear the dark.
A/N: Here we are, starting for the past. I recently had an obsession to princes, so bear with me and blame Severus Snape.
You know Prince of Mirkwood has the same initials as Prince of Mordor
English is not my first language, since I lived in China for 12 years. I apologize for any mistakes in grammar, punctuation and the tenses category. Reviews are very welcome. Updates will be soon (define soon) be irregular.
Question: How do you say I want to bash a brick to your face, nicely? Answer: One wishes to acquaint your facial features with a fundamental item used in building walls... repeatedly.
I deserve it, don't I?