A Hundred Miles Through the Desert - Prologue

[starspray]

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: T
Characters: Sons of Feanor, Elrond, Feanor, Daeron, various others
Warnings: n/a
Summary: After years in Lórien, Maglor and Maedhros are ready to return to their family and to make something new with their lives--but to move forward, all of Fëanor's sons must decide how, or if, they can ever reconcile with their father.
Note: This fic is a direct sequel to High in the Clean Blue Air.

Unhappy Into Woe | Clear Pebbles of the Rain | High in the Clean Blue Air

AO3 / SWG

Next Chapter

 

Valinor
The Darkening

 

The light outside the windows shifted—slowly at first, then more swiftly. It grew sickly, gold turning to yellow and silver to green—before it suddenly dimmed. Finwë went to a window just in time to see the Light go out, and a great cloud of darkness billow up from the direction of Ezellohar, as though the darkness itself was something real, like a storm cloud. It covered the sky—the stars—and dread filled him at the sight: dread and sudden horrible grief, and fear such as he had not felt since before Oromë had first brought him to these shores alongside Ingwë and Elwë. 

The Trees were gone, their Light destroyed. The promise of safety and bounty and beauty, for whose sake Finwë had parted from his own nearest kin and led his people across all the world—just like that, it was gone. 

His thoughts went then to his grandsons, who he had sent out of Formenos to get fresh air and to escape the tension that remained there even in their father’s absence. He thought of his other grandchildren, at the festival of the Valar, and of his sons and daughters—of Indis, too, all of them so dear and beloved, all of them now plunged into darkness, and he not there to offer the reassurance and protection a father and grandfather should. 

Anger arose in him, as sudden as the darkness had fallen over Valinor, at the broken promises and the inability of the Valar to keep their brother in check, and he gripped the sill so tightly his fingers ached, clenching his jaw until it hurt as he tried to see what was happening, what had caused this, whether there was any movement in the darkness. He tried to see if his grandsons were near at hand—but a wave of even deeper darkness rolled suddenly up over Formenos, like a fog over the sea, and horror gripped his heart. 

Better for his grandsons if they remained lost, far away from Formenos, and the thing that had come to it. Finwë knew what it was—who it was—without even having to think. It was the Dark Rider, it was the monster that had filled everyone with fear when clouds hid the stars by the waters of Cuiviénen, when loved ones who ventured away from the waters and the fires to hunt, to look for food, or even just to explore—when they left and did not come back. And the Dark Rider was Melkor, who had never repented at all, who had just put on a fair face and form and smiled so brightly at them all, offering knowledge, friendship, though those like Finwë who remembered why they had left the lands across the Sea were unable to set aside old fears entirely. Finwë had tried—oh, how he had tried, tried to trust the wisdom of the Valar, to the promises they had made—and it was all for naught. 

He turned from the window and strode through the dark halls, finding his way by touch and by the way his footsteps echoed off the walls. As he went he summoned all the anger in him again, until his spirit burned with it, and he began to sing, chanting in an ancient tongue, words of strength, words of protection, of defiance against the dark, letting his voice sink into the stones of the walls and the wood and iron of the doors, words that his grandfather had taught him long ago before he too had vanished, combined with the arts he had learned of the Valar in the long years since his coming to Aman. Finwë had only narrowly escaped the clutches of the Dark Rider’s fell servants himself, when they came not to take but to hack and burn and destroy, filling the shadows with their gleeful malice, and he had wept tears uncounted for his grandfather—and his father, and his brothers, and all the others who had been lost. And now, he knew, as a power arose outside the doors to challenge his own, his own grandsons would do the same. 

But if they stayed away, if they kept away long enough, if he could withstand the horror of the dark for just a little while—surely someone else would come, someone stronger than he, and they would live to weep those tears. And someday, perhaps, he would return to them—unless Melkor had indeed arisen in all his might to slay not only the Trees but the Valar too, to plunge all the world into this foul and unnatural Unlight that blotted out even the stars. Finwë sang songs of light to chase away the darkness, and around him the crystal lamps that his son had made flared to life, and the Unlight was chased back, retreating back beneath doors and through the window panes. He lifted his voice again and again against the one that roared like thunder outside of the doors—its song of breaking and bending, of melting stone and splintered wood, of the stars falling from the sky and the Trees withering, of the Sea flowing with blood to stain the fair beaches of Eldamar black—until his throat burned and his head ached. Backwards and forwards the music swayed; Melkor had not expected resistance, and for a few astonishing minutes Finwë could feel him falter.

Then great shout shattered the doors and ended all the song, plunging Formenos into ringing silence. The force of it threw Finwë to the ground. He could not get up again, could hardly catch his breath as the figure that embodied all of his childhood fears stepped over the threshold. Laughter like boulders tumbling down the mountainside echoed around him, shuddering through his very bones. Heavy footsteps crunched over the flagstones and the pieces of wood and iron, until one came to rest on top of his chest. Finwë looked up, unblinking, into eyes that burned in a face made all of shadows.

“Finwë Noldóran, King of the Noldor—of fools and of thralls. Did you really think you could forever escape the dark?”