Bearer of Chiaroscuro by AdmirableMonster

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Fanwork Notes

prompts and locations as chapter headings

general warning there's a fair bit centering around pregnancy and also ... how to put this...allusions to both noncon and attempts at nonconsensual impregnation (though that doesn't happen)

Fanwork Information

Summary:

Mairon flees Angband to warn his lovers in Gondolin of the impending fall of the city.

Written for the 2022 Matryoshka Challenge (Difficult setting! :B)

Major Characters: Unnamed Female Canon Character(s), Aredhel, Celebrimbor, Curufin, Gothmog, Sauron

Major Relationships: Celebrimbor/Maeglin/Sauron

Artwork Type: No artwork type listed

Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama, Family

Challenges: X Marks the Spot

Rating: Adult

Warnings: Character Death, Check Notes for Warnings, Domestic and Partner Violence
Chapters: 8 Word Count: 4, 852
Posted on 15 October 2022 Updated on 15 October 2022

This fanwork is complete.

Table of Contents

angband: under (a leaden sky)
anfauglith: splendor lost
taur-nu-fuin: never laugh at live dragons
nan dungortheb: weaving a tangled web
the dry river: a character stumbles across a secret
gondolin: something lost is found
mandos: after a character dies
bonus epilogue: aman: the dream of a faraway place

Comments

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You made this run through a "difficult" strand of the Matryoshka Challenge quickly, and produced a story that has touched my heart. I've just read through it again on SWG and love it so much. ❤️

I really liked this!! The snapshot format was great - the cut from finding the necklace to the Fall of Gondolin was awesome and hit really hard. The transition from realizing he’s lost the children (and everything else) to therefore having nothing to protect was a great emotional impact too. I loved how you wrote Mairon’s interactions with the ghosts, and the memories of Tyelpe and Maeglin!! Ah! I could picture them both so clearly. I also really enjoyed the detail of Mairon corroding in the damp, and how it affected his resonance. And the scene of him eating the spider made me laugh 🤣🤣 

Bittersweet and really enjoyable, thank you for writing! 

I suspect that some of this connects to other work of yours that I haven't read, but it is very effective throughout!

Amazing scenes with the ghost (is it Rian's?), the dragon, Gothmog, and Tinweriel. Among others,..

 

Oh my goodness!  I feel like no comment I leave can do this story justice - but not leaving one would be unthinkable.

So many little delights, like hidden gems - the friendship with Gothmog, the fallen necklace, the echoes which led him...

I was so terrified when I read him bleeding, and I thought the worst had happened at first!  But then his defiance, his hope!

The way the three of them were there to help when he woke in Mandos, to support him, to love him, to assure him that he was not alone and abandoned.  How the Valar slowly began to come to his side, or at least his aid.

This was so unexpected, every chapter I could not imagine where it would go!  💖