#terrifyingtolkien

But his early confidence is shaken all the same by the enormity, the longevity, the gut-wracking intimacy of Elwing’s pain. Day shades to dusk, and still she labors. Dusk slants into night, and still she cries out. Night deepens further and further, and still Eärendil’s soothing words, his hands, his kisses, take nothing of her burden from her.

For all that he never met the queen before her death so long ago, Eärendil has never felt the loss of Nimloth of Doriath so keenly. Neither, it seems by the barely-veiled panic in her eyes, has Elwing herself.

“It will be well,” he murmurs, ignoring the pulverizing strength of her grip on his hand when finally they coax her to lie down and push.

“Please, let all be well,” he pleads of the stars, when finally Elwing’s screams have drawn the midwives to shoo him from the room in concern.  

And it seems that the stars must hear him, for when finally he is permitted to return, Elwing is drawn but alive, and she cradles twin bundles to her chest.

Silent twin bundles.

“Are – are they well?” he whispers, ducking to place a kiss to her forehead. Surely even no Elven child is quite so noiseless?

“They are well,” a midwife clucks.

Elwing says naught, but blinks, blearily, and from their places at their mother’s breast, Eärendil’s sons watch him with wide, solemn gray eyes. He can almost imagine that their brows furrow in sync. Judging him.  

He did not expect that these children would be quite so aware of the world, having been within it only moments.

And yet, there they are, watching him.

 ~ ~ ~

One of the first things that Eärendil was told, when Elwing conceived, was that Elven mothers receive a premonition of their children – their temperaments, their minds, even their futures – shortly after their births. So he knows to expect that Elwing will name the babes – his sons, Eärendil has sons! – and that these names will herald something about the boys.  

But a day goes by – and then another, and another – and still Elwing has not proffered their babes’ names.

Not to Eärendil, and not to any of the nurses and midwives who hover about them, protective in a way that Eärendil imagines they would not be, were he an Elven mate.

But he does notice her, sometimes, looking down at them in puzzlement, as if the premonition has been received and it has puzzled her in some way.

“Perhaps if you just tell me,” he suggests, the next time he sees her looking at them so. “Will that make it easier?”

“I –“ She seems to consider this for a moment, and then shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

He waits. He does not understand what she is going through, but he will be patient, and supportive, no matter what she needs.

“Their names,” she starts, and then stops again. “I – I do not understand. Their names. . .”

She comes to some decision – he sees it happen. And he knows, then, that whatever she will say next, it is not the names that she was given for their sons.

“Elros. And Elrond.”

But Eärendil loves his wife, and he loves his newborn sons, and he trusts that if Elwing thinks to hide her premonition, she must have good reason to do so.

“Elros and Elrond,” he repeats, and he can feel the great grin growing across his face. “My sons. My sons!”

Elwing laughs at him, her voice low and weak, as he springs from the chair to whirl an imaginary partner about the room in an ungraceful jig upon air, but Eärendil does not care. His wife is well and his sons have names!

“Elros and Elrond, Elrond and Elros, Elros and Elrond! Welcome, boys, welcome!”

As if recognizing the sound of their new names, the twins open their eyes as one. They remain silent, and watchful, as ever they have been, but Elwing is still laughing, so Eärendil tells himself that he does not mind their stares.

 ~ ~ ~

And it is not that theirs are poor names – not at all!

Consider, for instance, how much worse they could have portended, as Eärendil has heard told of other mothers and their babes!

(Too-Beautiful Golden-Tongued Rash-and-Wrathful Deadly-Fair Little-Father Blood-haired Doomed)

But the twins’ names do sound familiar, somehow.

He would be able to puzzle it out, Eärendil thinks, if only he could remember where he had heard others like them before. . .

 ~ ~ ~

The children grow faster than even the midwives had suspected, given their half-mannish heritage.

Well. Say not ‘the children,’ though, and rather, ‘the twins.’

For Elros and Elrond look like children. And they sound like children. And they certainly act and speak as though they have observed children very closely, and are doing their best to mimic recognizable behaviors.

Eärendil loves his sons – of course he does.

But he has also come to suspect that they are not children.

Whatever the twins are, though, Eärendil does not take to the sea to avoid their too-old, too-watchful, too-knowing eyes.

He does not.

And neither does he take to the sea to avoid the way his wife looks at them – with a frown and a furrowed brow, as if she knows who or what they are, and is trying to persuade herself that she does not.

 ~ ~ ~

The Fëanorians never send an embassy demanding the return of their father’s gem.

Eärendil is far enough apart from the quarrels of his wife’s race that he never thinks to question why this this might be so.

 ~ ~ ~

When the time comes for him to sail again – and longer, and farther, than he has ever ventured before – Eärendil kneels before the twins and embraces them.

(for he loves them, he does, whatever other emotions he feels for them besides)

“You have heard that I am sailing into the West, yes?” he asks. “I go to seek the gods, to beg their aid for our people.”

They nod.

In synchrony.

“You will return,” says Elros. It may be a demand; it may be a statement.

“You cannot leave our sister,” says Elrond. It may be a premonition; it may be a command.

“Your – sister?” Eärendil asks.

Elwing has not told him that she had conceived again. And if she had, how would the twins know that they have a new sibling?

“She has lost enough,” says Elros.

“More than enough,” says Elrond.

“Mother,” says Elros.

“Father,” says Elrond.

“Us,” they say together.  

Eärendil simply draws them closer, the twins (his sons, his sons, they are *his* sons).

He tore off the man’s gag and his screams then fully resounded, bringing life into the chamber as the firelight flickered over the faces of the dead. In a circle laid their bodies, each meticulously murdered, no, sacrificed to the towering iron statue at their center. It was still the most dead thing in the room, but that did not stop Mairon, once enemy now adviser to the the Numenorean King. Melkor, his true Master, was many years gone, but he still had his work to do. 

His pale fingers pinching the man’s cheeks together, down came the poison. Now paralyzed the man could not squirm, so he laid stiff on the floor. Above him hovered his reaper who crouched down to press himself closer. The intimacy was anything but comforting. With the delicate motions of an artist, Mairon flicked open a small, ornate knife and began carving symbols into the man’s cornea. A star, a hammer, a heart, an eye, all were etched onto the man’s last moments of sight. 

Through them he saw his torturer grow in madness, no longer calm, no longer coiffed, but wild and desperate and shaking with grief. Or was it rage? The terrifying contortion of his face gave no clue towards his emotion, only his insanity. With each tiny motion of his hands, his brow twitched, like clockwork  wound so tight it was breaking down. 

Then with no warning and none of his previous delicateness, Mairon tossed the tiny blade and thrust his fingers into his victim’s pulverized breastbone. With the ease of a monstrous god, he wrenched open his chest. The crack was almost as sickening as the squelch. Like a flower, the man bloomed, but all he could do was scream thoughts at himself in his head.

Inside the insidious bloom lay the man’s heart, still feebly beating, although his consciousness was long gone to the pain. Mairon smiled and cooed at the gory thing and bent even closer, parting his red lips to let his even redder tongue out. On the tip of his tongue he felt the last twitching beats of the man’s bleeding heart.

No moment of indulgence to spare, he rose and called out from his blood drenched mouth,

“Belekôrôz!” as many times as he had killed. “Belekôrôz!”

When he finished his cawing calls, a pregnant moment held him still. As had happened many times before on his blood-soaked floors, no answer returned. The silence was deafening to his Discord-tuned ears.

It was then his frustration broke loose, all clenched muscles and shrieks of rage. He kicked the dead bodies, scattering their parts, but nothing came of it. Nothing could. Each man he’d chosen was tall and strong with long dark hair and deep dark eyes, but none were even a close match to whom he wished. It disgusted him that he even tried. 

He crumpled, feeling of dust even as he was shrouded in gold, but not for long, as his anguish tarnished it all to black. He buried his face into his fists and bawled. His tears were gold, then blood, then black bile, but never water. Pitiful he knew it was, but he no longer cared. He ripped the jewelry from his ears and nose and tossed them to the altar, flesh and all. It was a meaningless sacrifice, as his face soon reformed.

So captured by his grief he was, he didn’t at first notice the screams outside his hall. Weary, he turned to see his doom. A wave that was a wall was bearing down. It would reach him in his hall of horrors soon.

Only now Eru had sent his doom upon him? Only now did he pass his judgment? After he and his Master had done? Corrupted land into hell, corrupted beasts into monsters, corrupted elves into orcs, and now men into their true form. A few worthless deaths, and now it was his turn?

A putrid laugh bubbled in his throat, and like vomit, he could not contain it. He spewed his laughter upon the marble floor, echoed it off the columns and cast it into the high ceiling. It rocked him almost painfully so.

Mairon continued to laugh, even as the first of the water rushed up the steps. It gurgled and rumbled, but somehow did not even compare to the way Mairon roared. It caught his robes and swirled them about. The bodies floated, horrified faces up, for a moment and then sunk.

The wave struck deeper than any blow, washing the layers of blood from the floor, and the skin from his bones. But in the rushing tide he could not reform. It was then Mairon’s panic began, and there that Sauron begun.

Blood is thicker than water, and so he sank away.

This is close to horrifying as I can write. Hopefully it’s not the weird grammar that’s horrifying. ...Happy Halloween? 

They were seen, occasionally, as twin shadows — or perhaps memories, ripped from the night and forced to inhabit elven forms. Their legend grew, birthed from battles and screams and horror. Men, hidden safely away in taverns and behind locked doors, whispered to each other of the Twin Hunters, of the strange creatures whose elven-fair forms were blurred and distorted by the black of Orc blood.

They hunted Orcs relentlessly, and they soon grew blind to the stench of flesh left to rot and the whine of a creature lying desperate. 

(What did it matter how the Orcs died, only that they died slowly and painfully?) They forgot, in their fury, that they'd once worn stars on their brows and walked with grace in their steps. 

Their souls were tangled amalgamations, Maiar feyness mixed with Eldar grace mixed with Human strength. 

In their sister, in that lone creature who both shared their flesh and blood and still walked in the light, such a soul was made pure, and bright, and worthy. But for them? They had the same skin as she, for they appeared to all the world just as fair, just as graceful, just as star-bright. 

But beneath the stars in their eyes and the beauty in their steps, they were nothing. 

There was nothing beneath their souls but fire and blood and an all-consuming rage. 

Their rage consumed the foul creatures they hunted, devouring and obliterating Orcs and Goblins alike. 

But when they looked away—

When they faltered, weary of patience—

(Rage was forever hungry, forever watchful, forever patient)