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DS 11: To take that which I gave

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It is a requirement that you listen to this FF7 track since it sets the tone of things to come.  Don’t question it just do it.  And you really REALLY have to listen to the next song I have picked out for the next picture.  It will make you hate me and maybe cry. Maybe.

I will basing a lot/drawing inspiration for DS on Norse Mythology and Greek Mythology. Probably a whole lot actually.  Don’t be surprised when that stuff starts showing up which actually it already has. This is an AU after all. I have that horrible power to AU things up to stupid heights.



Where moments before the glimpse of the jagged cruel rocks far below had sent Mairon’s heart to lodge in his throat it now plummeted. All of the crippling hopelessness that had threatened to suffocate him prior by way of Melkor was erased in the moment he saw him.  He stopped his attempts to flee from his master and instead stared anxiously at the black robed figure and the gleaming pale mask that stared out from beneath the delicately patterned folds of an intricately layered hood. Where his ears not ringing so violently from where Melkor had choked him he knew he would have heard the unmistakable music that followed this sight.  

 Eru Ilúvatar had finally come.  

Never before had he seen Eru.  Not even in the before, when all was darkness and the world not yet made. He’d only ever heard him and felt his presence, assuming him to have no true form or not feeling a need to possess one. Yet it seemed Eru had proven him wrong, even if there was a simplistic nature to this chosen form.  Should Mairon have drawn back the cloak or removed the mask he had a strong feeling he would find nothing behind either.  Only the same darkness from which all the Ainur had emerged from.  No matter of the simple appearance he still wished he could have remained ignorant of it for he knew what it meant… and it frightened him.

 “Tell me, Father of All.  What has finally brought you from the safety of your glistening halls to those of us so far beneath you?” Melkor spat, drawing himself up to his full height in open defiance to the being he knew all others would fall on their knees in praise or fear of.  Mairon wished he could have shown as much foolhardy courage as Melkor in this moment but all he desired to do was flee from Eru’s eyes.  He had never wanted his attention, not before and especially not now. Even Melkor’s wrath was more desirable for him than the mystery that lay behind Eru’s empty eyes.  Beyond willing to forgive Melkor for nearly throwing him off the open balcony a few scant moments before, Mairon inched closer to him while Enyalië gave a piercing cry and took to the air to join Sanwë in hovering near Melkor.  If the Vala took notice of the man as he come to huddle near his feet he did not indicate it one way or another.  He only offered up his arm to Enyalië, the serpent wrapping its scaled body around it protectively as it bare its fangs to the unmoving Eru.

 “Was it the cries of my weaker kin asking for your help? Or maybe it was the wails of those miserable lesser creations of yours begging for salvation from the dark power they once thought gone forever?” Melkor’s words dripped of such palpable, mock, bitterness, and deep festering hate that Mairon felt he could have been knocked over by them.  He knew the man had a special sort of hate he reserved only for Eru. He’d glimpsed it on occasion when Melkor would speak of it in their far flung past but those conversations were always kept short and never amounted to anything more than a telling twitch around Melkor’s eyes that was indicative of a silent anger.  Now Mairon could see and feel just how deep his master’s hate ran for their creator.  Not even the hate Melkor had previously just shown for him could begin to touch it which, on some level, did offer him some bit of ease.  At least he could say he was not the most despised thing in his master’s heart…

 Silence was all Eru offered to Melkor.  

 Melkor’s gold dotted eyes narrowed to slits at the irreverence, his already unstable temper rising at the disregard.  “Even now you still ignore me...”  He lifted a hand, ticking his fingers off to add emphasis to his next words, “I make better your original thoughts and creations, you ignore it.  I prove myself superior to all others, you ignore me.  I tear apart your world and mold it to my will, you ignore that.  I finally ensnare your flame, suffer its pain, and use it to create things for myself far above anything you ever could and still you ignore me!”

Mairon’s head snapped up to stare at his master at the man’s final heated proclamation and it was at that moment it all clicked. Melkor’s secretive nature when he’d asked about the Void.  Melkor’s mysterious agony that he would not speak of.  The alien and seemingly free-thinking creatures he’d never before encountered… Was it possible?  Had his master finally found that one thing he had always yearned to have but was never able to find?  He had always thought it a fool’s errand when Melkor had spoken of it, sometimes in jest but other times with such focused seriousness it was frightful. The Secret Fire was Eru’s and Eru’s alone… how had Melkor come to find something that was only meant for Eru to wield??

“I care not for your useless love nor do I want it but I do demand your attention and I will have it, Eru Ilúvatar! Am I nothing in your eyes?” Melkor snapped out angrily, baring his teeth to match his snarling serpents.

 Mairon watched in macabre wonder as a hand slid from beneath Eru’s cloak, the alien appendage lifting up to show it was attached to no arm and had only flames of deep blues and purples licking at where the wrist would have attached.   The hand lifted slowly, stopping as one slender digit unfurled to point at Melkor.

‘A mistake.’

Melkor reacted to the unexpected and appropriately cruel response, jerking violently as if he had been slapped hard across his face.  Eyes wide enough the black of his eyes swallowed his golden pupil; he stared in open shock in wake of Eru’s brutal and honest answer and for the moment he was silenced completely.  Mairon cringed and wrapped his arms around his master’s leg, burying his face in the man’s black skirts in a quiet form of reassurance. He glared harshly around his master at Eru as the being began to come closer to them, his tassels and attached ornaments swaying to and fro as the violent winds tugged and kicked them up with its invisible icy fingers.

You were the first and finest of all my children but you are also the most flawed. This is ultimately my fault for trying to give you too much understanding… yet not enough.’  Eru stopped a few paces away, his hand whipping in front of his face, the wrathful face now replaced with his mask of sorrow.  ‘There was a moment in those first few of your being that I had every intention of untwining your newborn form from existence for I knew there was no way to correct my errs done unto you.  I knew the grief that would be wrought by your existence should it be left to fester.’

Though Melkor remained silenced both his bristling serpents were not struck in the same fashion.  Sanwë and Enyalië both retaliated against Eru, Sanwë diving from above with a roar and Enyalië unwinding from Melkor’s arm to strike with a terrible mouth that wanted only to find purchase on the perceived foe.  Mairon could scarcely see it happen the beasts were so quick but the synchronized attack was over before it began.  He gasped and pressed closer to his master as the twin serpents screeched in pain, both falling to the ground with sickening thuds where they writhed and twisted in on themselves violently as if they were burning from the inside out.  Mairon became concerned when Melkor stumbled inexplicably; doubling over as his breathing became labored and laced with pain.

“Master?!”  Mairon gasped, rising to his knees and twisting his fingers into the man’s raiment as he tried to stable him so he would not join the wailing beasts on the ground.  He was at a loss as he glanced between the tortured serpents and Melkor, not immediately connecting the shared pain until he remembered Melkor revealing his possession of the Secret Fire.  Were Sanwë and Enyalië his creations too?  Considering how close the creatures were to him there could be no other explanation but what could possibly allow each to feel the other’s pain?  Mairon wracked his mind trying to come up with the reason, siphoning through his own knowledge of the arcane but he found himself no nearer to the answer.  It was only when Eru himself offered up a vague but telling statement that he finally understood.

‘Thought?  Memory? You should have been wary of giving so much of yourself to these two creations.’ Eru chastised mildly, flicking his disembodied hand to the side and cutting off whatever metaphysical attack that had assaulted the serpents and so too their master.

“Are you finished!?” Mairon hissed out as Melkor struggled to recover above him.  He was no longer able to keep his building anger in check that had begun with Eru’s calling his master out as a mistake.  It did not matter on what side of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ Melkor stood, the atrocities he had done, nor did it matter of his crumbled relationship – both as faithful servant and lover - that held him to the man and skewed his views on him.  Evil or not, not even he deserved to be called out so unfairly by Eru in Mairon’s eyes.  “Have you come to cast judgment or taunt my master?  He is no more a mistake than any of your other high held Valar!” Mairon haughtily countered, his entire body trembling with anger.  He shrank back when he finally felt the burning sensation of Eru’s eyes falling on him but quickly reined his fear in and glared back defiantly, unwilling to back down when defending his master.  “He deserves more respect than any other for not allowing himself to become the mindless sheep that follows the direction of a herdsman.”

“Stay out of this!” Melkor rasped, shoving blindly at Mairon’s arms to try and remove them from his waist as he staggered toward Eru.  “When will you learn I don’t need your pity nor for you to defend me?”  When his master’s hand twisted painfully into his hair in an effort to pull him away, Mairon yelped but still he refused to budge. It was unwise to go against what Melkor so obviously wanted. This he knew but he also felt it would be unwise to release Melkor, fearing what might happen should he do so.  More than his anger he feared losing him and with Eru before them he knew it was the only outcome.

Without bothering to acknowledge Mairon’s accusations against him, Eru instead asked a familiar question of Melkor.  ‘Why did you seek him out if you only intend to hurt him?’

 Mairon felt Melkor stiffen at a variation of his earlier question, the man seemingly becoming ensnared in the same conflicting panic as before.  But his master was just as unwilling to answer now as before, though this time it wasn’t going to end with Mairon cast down to the icy tundra below to silence and rob him of his mortal form.  Mairon’s sight exploded in blinding white when an armored fist found his temple, his slight form rolling back across the frigid stone ground from the forceful hit.  Finally rolling to a stop, he struggled to push himself off the ground, trying to ignore the way the world around him spun so sickeningly that he felt he might lurch the nonexistent contents of his stomach up.  Through the tangles of hair that had fallen haphazardly over his face he was just able to just see the blurry forms of Eru and Melkor ahead.  He gasped when his swimming vision cleared enough so that he saw Eru to be holding his master by the throat with a mask screaming its silent wrath in the man’s face.  He could just barely hear Melkor and Eru speaking but the deafening winds carried their words out of earshot so that he would never know what might have been said.

Their words didn’t matter though.  It was time. Mairon knew it was.  Eru had come with reason, had told him so himself when he’d offered that bizarre and unexpected comfort back at Melkor’s previous stronghold.  There was to be retribution and their creator was now ready to deal out that long overdue retribution.  It was only to be expected after all that Melkor and himself had done.  He was no fool but the idea of being forced to watch his master undone in front of his eyes before Eru turned his sometimes benevolent and other times cruel hands on him felt unfair.  This is not nor was it the way he wanted his and Melkor’s story to end.  Angband’s end had maimed him emotionally.  Forced by Melkor himself to leave him behind to his fate and suffer a world without him in it.  

Not again.

Mairon refused to let that heart wrenching moment of Angband repeat itself. Melkor might have decided their love meant nothing. That he meant nothing. Only a useless maia that caused his downfall… but his master still meant everything to him.  To stop Eru was impossible but he could try.  Even if it meant only slowing the inevitable.  At least before his own end he could take comfort knowing he did not run and instead tried to defend the only person or thing in the entirety of Arda that meant the world to him.  He’d sacrifice his pride, power, his lost ring and himself a thousand times over to do it.

Shoving himself up onto shaky feet just as Eru effortlessly tossed Melkor across the balcony, Mairon stumbled and tripped on numb feet toward his fallen master.  He gasped as Eru’s imposing form drew back and dove toward Melkor with spidery hands outstretched.  The wail of Melkor’s name and not that of ‘master’ which left his throat was devoured by the winds just as he skid to a graceless halt in front of the Vala with arms outstretched.  “Don’t!!  Please don’t take him from me again!!”  

Mairon shut his eyes as Eru’s robes fell upon him, fully expecting to find himself in indescribable pain, writhing on the ground in agony just as Melkor’s serpents had done earlier.  But pain never came.  He cracked open his eyes and found the balcony was gone.  There was now only darkness and a celestial twinkling that stretched as far as he could see and he knew he was being gifted with the sight of a thousand worlds far beyond that of Arda.  He did not care to stare long, his thoughts having not left his master, and he quickly spun around trying to find him.  He became panicked when he could not see him, assuming the worst, and started to run in an arbitrary direction with the man’s name already dancing on his tongue.  As soon as he moved he felt himself gently grabbed by an invisible force to stop his forward momentum, familiar tranquil warmth embracing his shuddering body. Eru’s melodic and disembodied voice began to whisper in his ear.

 ‘He will destroy you if you stay with him now.’

Mairon snorted, unsurprised Eru would repeat what he’d already told him before.  “I have already been destroyed.  You know this or you would not have left this reminder.”  He lifted his left hand and wiggled the stump of his ring finger that had been left with him to constantly remind him of a past life of cruelty and unyielding ambition.  He shook his head; not bothering to look around for Eru who he knew would not be there physically.  Instead he buried his face in his hands, shivering despite the warmth Eru was offering him.  “It will destroy me if you take Melkor from me.”

‘Your loyalty and fidelity for Melkor is admirable, child… but he must learn just as all others must.  I have been too generous with him.’

Eru’s voice began gentle but became stern toward the end of his statement and it caused Mairon to jerk his head up.  He looked pleadingly into the cosmos around him, trying to ignore the sinking feeling that was dragging his stomach to the ground.  “W-What will you do to him??”  Eru’s voice did not immediately respond and for a time Mairon thought he would not.  Finally he was graced with an answer that he did not want to hear.

‘I will take the gift of which I gave him so long long ago.’

“No!” Mairon cried, spinning around madly so that his hair kicked up wildly. “Don’t take his life! Please!! Can I not offer myself in his place?  Have I not wronged others just as terribly as he?  I will suffer whatever tortures you wish to invoke upon me on both our accounts.  Force me to relive having my soul wrenched apart day after day!  Pluck my eyes from their sockets! Skin me alive and force me to roll my skinless form in a bed of knives! Anything!  I will suffer anything just please don’t do this!!” He begged, looking desperately around, hoping Eru would be tempted by his offer.  His despairing heart tore in two when he sensed arms encircling him in a incorporeal show of comfort.  It was just as finite an answer than if Eru had spoken aloud and it made him sob out loud.

“Damn you!” He cried, lashing out at the darkness in an effort to relieve himself of the entirely too forgiving arms of Eru.  “Damn you, damn the Ainur, and damn your filthy men and elves!  I wish I had had the strength to challenge your complacent Valar and been able to eradicate them and those vile lesser creatures from this miserable planet!  Things might have been different with Melkor if I had!”  Mairon hoped his scathing words would enrage Eru on some level, cause the being to turn on him and treat him as cruelly as Melkor had, but maddeningly the arms refused to leave him.  Worse than all he knew - he knew - there was forgiveness and pity in this offered touch and it angered him, causing him to cry harder in the face of the unwanted knowledge.

Mairon wiped viciously at his tears as he was shoved forward unexpectedly, causing him to stumble into what felt like the softest of materials.  He bit back a startled gasp as he fell through the invisible seam that cut through the contained twinkling universe, finding himself standing back at the tallest spire of Melkor’s bastille.  His eyes widened in delight when they fell on Melkor just a few feet away, the Vala staring in suspicious bewilderment at him from the ground.  The relief he found at seeing his master still of their earth and without harm caused his stomach to flutter but it was severely tempered by what Eru had just revealed he would do.  The words ‘I will take the gift of which I gave him so long long ago’ assaulted Mairon’s memory.  Before he could so much as step toward Melkor, he felt a hand come to a rest at the small of his back and he turned his neck to look over his shoulder to find Eru, an impassive mask staring down at him with from the shadows of his hood.

He shook his head at the creator of all, started to verbalize his denial of what Eru was to do but he was shushed as the being lifted its free hand and placed its finger in front of its porcelain lips.  Finished with silencing him, Eru lifted his head and stared back at Melkor.  The Vala glared back through his windswept hair with a challenging defiance.  “You intend to kill me now.”  It was a statement and not a question on Melkor’s part.

 ‘I intend to take what I freely gave you.’

Mairon wished his tears would cease but they would not.  The utterly hopeless situation insured that.  He looked dejectedly at Melkor, trying to burn the man’s image into his memory, knowing this would be the last moment he would be allowed to do it.  The only thing he wished his master would do was at least look at him a final time so he could try and remember his eyes.   They had long since been stained black and gold to reflect a tainted pride but they were just as enthralling to him now as they were when they were an intriguing shade of hazel.  It was Melkor’s eyes that had first drawn him to the man.

Melkor scoffed at Eru as he shifted his position on the ground so that he was sitting on his knees.  He opened his arms up, “If you wish to take my life then do it!  I care not for your games or vague lessons any longer.”

Eru’s head shook side to side, the hand he had previously let rest against Mairon now pulling back to hover just behind the mourning and oblivious man.  ‘It is not your life that I intend to take...’

---

...Nah. This couldn't be going where I think it's going...

--

Ultimately this is some sort of AU angbang art series called 'The Different Story' that follows a silly story idea I've had mulling around in my head for a while. Previous picture/story in the series here:

DS 10: Beginning of an End by Gypsy-Rae

___

Tumblr: lae-rae-the-spoony-bard.tumblr…

Melkor, Mairon, Eru (c) Tolkien
Designs (c) Me

Image size
2523x3269px 4.25 MB
© 2016 - 2024 Gypsy-Rae
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