Maeglin

Spending hours and days confined to the top of one of the many towers, bound to the place by Morgoth's will and guards, Maeglin still wist neither of why and what for he had brought him from the Void, nor how much time had actually passed since then. What supposedly was weeks at most, felt like eons. Whenas he looked through the window at times, the world outside was alway samely, dark and eerie, black and non-ending as the Void itself and... yes, still as his father's dwelling land. Father loved the night most, the Elf thought bitterly. He himself bore no such love, and the night here, that seemed endless around the queer, ice stronghold, rather made his body chill and his heart tremble. We are different. Obviously different, thinking a lot of Father these days, Maeglin kept convincing himself.

At last, an Orc, other than the one who would enter occasionally, bringing water and fare, walked into his room and stood before him. A tall, undeniably hideous creature towering over him and shadowing thoughts like a nightmare. I am nought better than him, Maeglin repeated to himself, though. Nought better.

"Come," the Orc barked. "The lord wills your presence."

It crossed the Elf's mind how verily ungrateful he had been to fate before, complaining in spirit about his peaceful time in this room. Dwelling in the brooding tower compared to the company of Morgoth now seemed like a blessing to him. Lingering, he at last followed the Orc out of the room, and, once the creature grabbed a torch from an iron bracket on the wall, they began to descend the unmercifully long spiral of the tower's stairs, the quiet clang of the ringmail rubbing against the Orc's garments being the only sound disturbing the silence.

After a while, noticing the absence of the little, facing the forest windows that moments before had been still recurring regularly in the tower wall, Maeglin realised that they were going lower even than the ground level. Erelong a distinctive smell and warmth began to spread through the air of the underground passageway, and suddenly Maeglin's heart fluttered, yet for the first time in, as he thought, a very long time not because of fear, and almost sweet memories of Gondolin's smithy came to him like a breath of spring wind...

He would have anywhere recognised the thick smell of heated iron and the heat itself gushing from furnaces. He was sure that they were heading for a forge, and he eftsoons beheld that he had not been mistaken as the Orc opened the door and the vast expanse of dozens of hearths and anvils, the hiss of smelting and forging steel, and the steady thuds of huge hammers as loud as storm thunders spread out before him like a land of bliss. It was an orkish smithy, yet it was a smithy nonetheless, and Maeglin's eyes wandered awhile over all the moves and tools as though enchanted, only, though, till they reached Melkor's figure, that glittered in the workshop's semidarkness like an icicle magically melting not under the fervidness of fire.

"Mairon alway liked that better than I did," Morgoth said as an unexpected greeting, looking around the smithy with reluctance or even disgust painted on his luminously bright face, the sounds of hammers disturbing his words a little. "Thou for sure as well, Lómion."

Maeglin flinched again at that name uttered by his lips. I shall never be used to it, he thought, yet said nothing. He only kept waiting. Melkor, however, spoke not for a long while either, gazing only at the works unfoldingin the forge, till Maeglin at last could bear it no longer, the heavy silence like a stone hung around his neck, making him suffocate, and he blurted outa question, "Why have you summoned me, l... lord?"

Melkor smiled. The whole castle, every tiny, gloomiest, innermost corner of it, and Morgoth's entire figure, every slightest gesture of his made Maeglin's body and soul shiver, yet his smile was the worst. Nought seemed darker and more blasted than his smile.

"To offer thee a gift. A precious and shiny toy that should bring back childhood memories of thine," he said.

He turned thereafter and limped along the vacant space amidst the dozens of stithies at which the Orcs were working, towards a heavy and closed door with iron fittings on its timbered wings. Having bidden them open, he eftsoons disappeared in the murk of the room located therein. Maeglin reluctantly trailed behind him.

What he found inside was a separate, small and nearly empty swordsmith's workshop, with only one furnace and one stithy, whereon fell the light of an oil lamp set beside it. Or on what was laid on the stithy: a sword, or rather its ripped ruin like a butchered in battle body, blacker than the blackest of nights, yet shining still like the brightest of stars.

Maeglin's eyes themselves widened as the fullest of full moons and he froze as though had seen a ghost... It was forsooth a ghost, a vibrant shade of the foretime. This sword, the same as the smell of a forge, he would have recognised anywhere.

"Anguirel!" he whispered, and awhile amazement veiled wholly his fright, and the Elf looked directly into Melkor's palely blue eyes. "How have you managed to own it? It was lost! I-"

"Do you verily deem me unmighty of such a trifle?" Morgoth mocked, smiling boldly. "There is no thing that being mislaid might not be retrieved."

"I will you to reforge it for me and render it as forceful as it was in the day when forged by Eöl," he added afterwards almost carelessly.

Why would you need it?, Maeglin thought anon, yet then slowly approached the anvil and gently, as though afeard of hurting it, of destroying it further, he grasped the hilt and pointed aloft the remains of the blade, whilst with his other hand he stroked the crossguard tenderly, memories of how, in the olden and dark days when he had been a child, that sword had fascinated him in Father's workshop returning to him like a flood, shading his thoughts.

Father forged it from a meteorite that was one of a kind. How might I replace the broken parts now?, he wondered, his eyes not leaving the black blade that seemed to be looking at him as well to the point that Maeglin was not sure anymore whether it was Morgoth or it that answered his thought, "How would thy father replace it? You ought to be knowing that."

We are not oneness!, the Elf thought, anger suddenly gripping him. I..., he hated Eöl. He had hated him erstwhile and he did still now, a genuine hatred that was filling him to the brim like water in a jug.

"Or ask the sword itself," Morgoth went on mockingly, yet then mused, staring at the blade as well. "Do you believe, like many of thy kin, that swords may have souls? That they know when the same blood flows within them? That the same hand created them? Even Mairon believed that, it seemed to me ofttimes." He raised his silver brow sceptically.

Maeglin doubted that Morgoth truly expected an answer from him; rather, he seemed to be conversing aloud with his own thoughts. The Elf, however, snapped nonetheless, once again forgetting his fear, "No. I believe that not."

He then threw the sword back on the stithy, as though the hilt had all of a sudden begun to sear his palm. He hated that sword as well, hated it, and at the same time... he nearly cherished it, it still fascinated him so...

Yes, his thoughts answered Melkor's question, yet Maeglin was not sure whether it truly were his own thoughts still that were speaking. Yes!

Ty for reading, and sorry for the long wait, the chap is not long, yet somehow it took me a while to edit it properly :) The next one I have mostly done, so the update should be much sooner :)

Next POV: Turin, then Gerion