"I Win" ~ Curse of Mandos AU 5
Maglor has come to the conclusion that Ulmo went through the grueling process of hurling him through the entirety of the Sundering Seas—disobeying Námo's menacing curse—to spit him on the rocky base of the Pelórí because he tired of his singing.
Maglor would have taken offense to such a notion if the blessed light leaking through the crags of the mountains before him did not strike such fear into him. He can see the spires of Tirion and Taniquentil peering over the peaks of the mountains like watchtowers seeking out the guilty and the criminals. Seeking out him.
Gulls cry as they wheel overhead like vultures beaconing him as their prey. Waves slosh and break upon the rocks, recoiling into small puddles where Maglor sees his face reflected.
He is the image of a wraith, the beauty of youth and ease buried beneath sallow cheeks and bony features. Light still shines through his eyes in fragments that augment his cold madness.
Maglor laughs as a madman would, the sound echoing hollowly between the dark places of Valinor's wall.
Shakily, his legs are pulled beneath him. Achingly, he straightens.
All his belongings have been lost to the sea, swallowed up by the deeps. It is in the bowels of which rest the bloody Silmaril that has turned his hand to a leathery map of uselessness.
Maglor's harp, snatched from beneath the ale-sodden whiskers of a mortal bard, is impaled through its strings upon a spire-like protrusion on his little scrap of rock.
"Ulmo did not think much of my singing, did he?" Maglor mutters to himself, taking up the harp and tossing it back into the sea. "My gift to you!" he shouts across the waves, as if the Lord of the Waters dwells just below the surface.
The light of Anor slants across his face. Maglor shields his eyes and stares into the glare. It is but a teasing hint of warmth not sufficient enough to dry his tattered garments.
But the light is not from the face of Anor. It is from the face of his mother.
Bare feet plod over sharp stones, her sea-green gown flapping in the coastal winds.
Maglor's heart nearly freezes in his chest, skipping one, two, three beats like a stone skimming the surface of a pond.
Nerdanel's face is aged. Unfamiliar only in the way that time hazes memory. There is still a generous spray of freckles across her face, and she still has the same strong features that are considered to be outside of the standards of delicate elven beauty.
Tension crunches the air in wait for the first words to be spoken between them for… how long has it been since her entire family abandoned her? Millennia?
Nerdanel's gaze is unchanging. Maglor wants her tears, her knuckles cracking against his jaw, even. Anything but this steady gaze that was quickly reflecting a bone-deep disappointment that had ages to rot.
A breeze shaped like his mother's touch topples Maglor to his knees. Tears wring out of his eyes.
Unable to bear the distance for another agonizing second, he reaches for the hem of her dress and fists it, aching for the scent of garden peony and sawdust that lingers in Nerdanel's every embrace.
The embrace does not come, only a numbing grip on his jaw forcing his face upwards.
"My sons," Nerdanel says past the wobble in her voice, "do not grovel."
Her kisses on his paper-thin eyelids force them closed. Maglor shivers, and lifts his sea-soaked arm to take her hand.
oOo
An arrow speeds past Maglor's head, the fletching snapping across his cheek and flinging a chunk of limp hair into his face. He whips around to face the inner wall where two young nérí with longbows on their backs sprint across the slanted rooftops. The wind catches their dark hair, and carries the familiar tones of their voices to him.
Maglor freezes in his tracks, heart quaking in his sunken chest. The breeze sears his eyes, but he cannot cease staring. He dares not blink so that the fleeting moment that he sees his young twins would not vanish.
The twins leap and holler in his direction. Twins. Two of them. Elrond and Elros.
Elros.
For a moment, Elros is not a distant and faded memory of an angry child. Not a sire of kings, or founder of nations that have long passed into legend, swallowed up in the long tread of time. For a moment, Elros is alive.
But the impossible hope shrivels. As the faces near, Maglor can see indeed that one of them is not his mortal son. Their faces are too young and their features bear harder lines.
The last thing Maglor remembers of Elros' face was the betrayal in it when they were sent to Ereinion. And forever it would remain so.
The pad of the nérí's feet is nearly silent as they alight weightlessly on the battlement before him.
"So it is!" says a twin.
"Kanafinwë Makalaurë Fëanorion," breathes the other, circling him in appraisal.
The first twin crosses his arms. "Hmm. I can see the resemblance. Can you?"
Resemblance to whom?
Maglor finds that his salt-caked boots are stuck to the flagstones, his shredded cloak still hanging off his frame like limp seaweed. Elrond's young face is pinned in mind's eye.
These boys can be none other than Elrond's sons. But are they the only ones?
"Yes," Maglor returns weakly. "That is I. And no, I will not sing for you." His voice is hoarse with disuse, and his rickety body no longer deserves to be called a prince. These boys nearly match his diminished height.
They exchange an amused glance. Just as Elrond and Elros would when using osanwë.
"Siblings," Maglor croaks. "Do you have siblings?" It is the only question that surfaces in his mind. He wonders what sort of woman his Elrond has married to produce such brash, jovial young men as these twins, for that is how Maglor perceives their mannerisms.
The twins glance at each other, a shadow falling upon their stricken faces. One bows his head with a grimace. "The grief of our sister's passing is yet too near for such an inquiry," he says.
"Arwen Undómiel," breathes the other, as if he had said these words to many others many times, "chose the mortal path. She is known to the world as the Queen of Minas Tirith in Gondor, a star upon the tower that has faded into an uncertain fate."
Their words and guarded gray eyes hide much sorrow. There is a dullness hidden there that contrasts with the vibrance of the land. They must have recently arrived to the Blessed Realm to go about unhealed in a place where the very atmosphere mends fëar.
"Arwen Undómiel," Maglor echos beneath his breath, testing the name and finding it worthy of many songs. "And your names are—?"
"—Insignificant when juxtaposed to those of our forebears," cuts in a twin. Or in other words, none of your beeswax. Maglor perceives their cutting gazes to be heavy with scrutiny. Deciding if he is worthy to be their daeradar.
"Elladan! Elrohir!" calls a voice as it rounds the corner. The presence that accompanies it is mighty and laden like the fëar of one very old and very wise; a paragon of the elven kings of old. Maglor half expected having to crane his neck up to meet the solemn gaze of Turukáno, or even the unearthly beauty of Melian.
But no. There stands Elrond, a halo of light trailing him instead of a shadow. Maglor's heart stutters in his chest even as the dying, shriveled thing it was.
"I asked you to wait for—" Elrond freezes when he sees Maglor, his kingly face the animated picture of shock.
Two beats pass as Elrond takes in his withered hand, hunched shoulders, and sunken face. A myriad of emotions crosses his face so transparently and so rapidly that Maglor can nearly see the storm brewing within his mind.
Then the tension snaps like a strike of lightning, and Maglor is nearly thrown off the battlements from the force of Elrond's embrace.
A child no longer. An angry adolescent, daring to brandish a sword against Maedhros no longer. A turbulent young ward of the high king no longer.
But his adopted son? Maglor hopes that relationship is not so fickle to be crushed in the treads of time.
Elrond's arms crushing him speaks more than a million words. The next word he whispers in Maglor's ear speaks more than ten million, "Atya."
oOo
Maglor walks in the golden fields of a waking dream. The road has tall, wispy grass that brushes his fingers, and the soil is solid and fragrant beneath their feet. Not even Anor's blinding rays unobscured by coastal storm clouds can rouse him from this state. He feels as though he is floating, watching himself from far away as he walks side-by-side with Elrond and his wife, Celebrían, as she preens and updates him on all the history that he missed between the waves and screeching of gulls.
"—High King, but he relinquished the crown and scepter to become the Lord of the Last Homely House west of the Hithaeglir."
Celebrían walks with a proud tilt to her chin that is uncannily reminiscent of Artanis, even though there is an old knobby scar cutting over her jaw. He knows this will guarantee an appointment with his young cousin, now called 'Galadriel', they say, and can't help an apprehensive shudder. He heard legends of a might in the Golden Wood of Arda that are worthy of nightmares.
But despite his fear, Maglor can think of no other daughter worthy of his Elrond than that of the Lady of Light.
Caught in his musings, Maglor nearly forgets to respond to Celebrían's words.
A slow smile spreads over cracked lips. The sunlight gives his clear eyes a hint of madness.
"Ah, he knew it as well as I; the title of High King of the Noldor comes with a serving of gruesome death. I recognized the pattern as soon as we saw Nolofinwë's mangled corpse dangling like dead game from the Wind Lord's claws overhead." Maglor shoves his ruined fingers through the holes of his tattered tunic, chortling madly under his breath. "Such a kingly death. If only song could capture his air of 'drowned rat'."
Celebrían's brow is knit, and there is a small dimple next to her mouth that deepens her frown. She exchanges a pensive glance with Elrond, who continues to glide through the grass, paying very close attention to where he places his steps.
Maglor continues on, his eyes too bright like the thrashing sea lit up green with lightning.
"Death is strange, isn't it Elrond? More of a cycle than an ending. (Unless one is an orc or doomed; my father is both). But it is not so grim to think about when one knows they will end up here. Home." He spreads his arms out wide, the sash of his robe flapping in the breeze scuttling through the field.
"It was a contest between my brothers and I," Maglor chuckles, too many teeth showing. "Seeing who would make it longest in that hellscape. Seeing who Moringoþo wanted to ruin least." His cracked lips twist to the side in disappointment as he lets the swaying daisies tickle his palm. "Maedhros did not take the contest very seriously, as you know, and I never had the chance to let them all know that I won. I can only imagine the pleasure of speaking those words. I win." Maglor grunts and lets out a tired breath.
Elrond stares sullenly at his and Celebrían's interwoven fingers. "You can."
Maglor whips around to look at Elrond. "They are doomed to the Halls. Unless you inherited a spare key from Lúthien Tinuviel, I do not see how that is within the realm of possib—"
Elrond shakes his dark head with a wince, as if Maglor is a very strange and very silly child. "They have been reembodied. Your mother made certain of that."
Maglor stares at him, a tempest roiling in the seas of his irises as he struggles to comprehend Elrond's words.
"That is where we are going. To Formenos."
Maglor shades his eyes and gazes across the meadow. A walled city crowns a nearby hill, glittering with banners of gold and red upon its spires.
To Formenos.
oOo
Elrond goes inside first to have a word.
Have a word.
It sounds like many words to Maglor as he stands wringing his hands in the main hall of Formenos.
The ceiling is high and carries sound like nothing else. Ivy drips down the walls and raises its scraggly arms to the latticed windows many stories above. An iridescent chandelier sways gently overhead, shining with a colorful brilliance as if it has just been crafted the day prior and not many, many lifetimes ago.
Maglor's heart clenches, laboring in his chest as he gazes upon it. The diamond shards of the chandelier twinkle. Fëanáro's work.
He ignores the rushing of the fountain spilling from the rock wall, and the golden stars swirling through the marble beneath his feet. Most of all he ignores the memories of standing in this very spot as a child, performing for highborn crowds and royalty. Memories of the finest handcrafted toys strewn across the floor with diapered Tyelkormo and Carnistir wriggling across it. Of the room thick with his mother's sculptures like a maze.
But mostly he is ignoring the footsteps nearing, like claps of thunder. Ignoring the rattle of the doors at the head of the stage, and the seven figures emerging from behind it. Ignoring the way his cold, mad heart bloats with strain as if it were about to burst.
They are all here. Each and every one of them. The Ambarussar. Atarinkë. Carnistir. Tyelkormo. Maitimo. They are whole, and alive, and dressed like princes.
Maglor's garments bear more holes than patches and are stained by years of the sea. His hand is shriveled in his sleeve, his eyes lit with madness.
Maglor stares. Six pairs of eyes stare back.
There is a taut, breathless moment in the hall. Each breath echoes in the chamber like wind. Maglor stares at them, cold, disheveled, insane. Maybe even too far gone.
He moistens his lips. Opens his arms as if he were the star of a grand performance. His eyes glint.
"I win."
The six pairs of eyes exchange glances. A beat of silence follows.
Then one of them laughs, a sound so warm and filling and beautiful that it is not fit for reality.
The tension snaps. A terrible weight nearly drops Maglor to his knees, but his brothers are there to catch him. There is laughing and embracing and back-pounding aplenty. Maglor feels a shocking, familiar presence in the doorway and lifts his wet eyes.
Fëanor stands there, smiling. His fëa is a faint glow instead of a blaze.
"Welcome home, Kanafinwë."
oOoOoOo
A/N: It took a couple years but I finished lol. Check out the rest of the series for the full story! Feedback would be appreciated! Thanks for stopping by :).