Of Draugluin by Huinare

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Lossë

Justifications: Mairon has them.

When Mairon returned and I had given my report of Angband’s business during his absence, I asked,  “Is it true then?”

We walked on narrow trails, in the mountains north of the fortress.  He turned the coppery eyes of his lupine form full upon me for a second, and he asked casually, “Is what true?”  His eyes said he knew what I meant, but he was going to insist I speak the ugly words.  His attention went back to the path.

I barely managed not to bristle or whimper.  “Is it true that, if I do become unhoused from this form, I cannot take any other shape while the world lasts?”

We walked some paces in silence.  The mountains were grey and the flimsy snowfall put a white dust on them.  It almost gave an illusion of light, but there was no shadow.  “Yes.  Probably,” Lord Mairon said.

My stomach dropped as though my belly had gaped open and tossed it on the path.  I sank to a crouch.  Mairon stopped and looked at me patiently as I panted.  My blood was going too fast, and perhaps my heart would give out and kill me then and there.  “Mairon, don’t let me die, please–”

He sat next to me and said in a kind, reasonable voice, “You are not dying, you’re in a fit of panic.  A psychophysiological response–unfortunate, but not unheard of.  And of course I will act to prevent your death in any way I can, you need not doubt that.”

I calmed enough to get a reasonable sentence out, though I felt the panic a hair’s breadth away waiting to seize me.  “Yet even you can’t guarantee to prevent it.”

“No.  There are few in Endórë as powerful as I though.  You are as secure as you can be in my protection.  I release you from all duties outside the walls of Angband.”

“I thank you, my lord.” 

Then I was too relieved to feel wounded in my pride, though I would feel it later.  But my relief didn’t last long, for I knew that I would ever live in fear of Angband’s strength failing.  And if it failed, and my physical prison died, there would be no real release.  There would be a more terrible prison with no solidness or texture or warmth.  Existing as an unclad spirit had been well and good before Arda was made, before I knew anything else.  But now the Ainur had long since become a part of the world, and there was only terror in the thought of never being able to touch any of its substance again.  I was already alone in being an Ainu who could not change or put aside the form, but I had some company in the Nauri at least.  If I lost my form and couldn’t get it back, there would be no one like me at all.

I thought about this for a minute and the frantic feeling fell back, but the dread lay cold on me like the snow on the stones.  “Why is it that I could not just reform a new body, like any of the Ainur?”

“When I say that a portion of your being was made to inhabit your body’s cells during the integration process, I mean not just that it is confined within those cells, but that its very nature was altered to become organic matter itself.  It lives in your own cells and in those of all your progeny, which is of course what gives them their sentience and their increased strength.  It is changed and dispersed, and can no longer be reassembled.”

Mairon said all this in a gentle but not regretful way, grooming me about the ruff and ears as he occasionally did when he wanted to be friendly.  I thought about it some more while the snow came down thicker.  “Are you quite sure?  Maybe I might make a smaller, weaker body at will with whatever was left?”

I was thinking something like a garter snake, or even a small spider.  Those things weren’t very powerful or noble, but even they would do as some link with the physical world.

“I really would not count on that, Draugluin.  There may be a slight chance of it, but it is best not to look for that outcome.  The remainder of your being is, of course, made somewhat weaker and more limited by the exclusion of that portion which has been dispersed.  You may not find yourself capable of reforming into anything physical, if, as we shall do our utmost to prevent, you should be unhoused.  As you know, this matter was experimental.”

I turned my head to stare at him.  Normally I wasn’t so bold as to look openly in his eyes, but something strangling trampled over that reluctance.  “You withheld that from me.  You never told me I would be a weakened shadow until the end of all things if this form is slain!”

Lord Mairon’s eyes narrowed a bit and one of his ears twitched.  “But did you not know that all along, at the bottom of your being?  Why else did you falter and dawdle over the decision?  If you had ever truly believed that such was not the fate associated with this project, you wouldn’t have hesitated to participate in it, and you would have bade me tear your throat out as soon as the whelps were conceived in order to reattain freedom of form.”

I kept staring, seeing only the eyes that spoke no more than the truth yet lied without shame.  “I knew, but I did not know what I knew,” I forced out at last.  “You might have told me clearly from the start.”

Mairon’s ears twitched again, both of them, almost laying back on his head for an instant.  “And had I done so, would there be any Nauri?”

I couldn’t say anything.

“The Nauri will become a numerous and terrible race,” he said as if I needed convincing of that.  I said nothing.  “Such could not have been, without your commitment.” 

“There would be no Nauri to die at your will,” I said at last.

Mairon regained the look of fell pride in his eyes, which til then I hadn’t noticed he’d lost.  “Have a care how you address me, Draugluin.  I will no death for your wolves.  I will them to hunt and fight and slay in service to the dark powers.  Death may result from that, but at no time was that my express intent.  Why would I bring them into being, why would I put you through torment, only for the sake of death?  You’d do well to reflect before you wrongly ascribe such base and pointless waste to me.  The Nauri know the world is bloody, and they do their duty and complain not.  You might take a lesson from them.“

Torn between resentment and fear now, I muttered, “Long I complained of nothing.”

He paused for a minute and looked at the snow, then answered quietly and very seriously.  “True.  I’ve spoken in haste.  Yet now no complaint shall avail you though I would heed it if I could.  It was never ideal that your suffering should attend this undertaking.  I considered that it was for the greater good.  You shall see how this is, if and when the Valar withdraw their hand and the Eruhíni, these first ones and those still to come, spread over the land.  Your folk shall give them grief tenacious and unending, in all habitations they should care to claim.  Wolves are adaptable.  They may be white and soft in the winters of the far north, dun-colored and sharp in the arid places of the south.  We have contrived a new sentience, in despite of Eru and his Vala toadies, and no corner of Endórë shall lack of it in due time.”

I felt pride for the Nauri when I pictured Mairon’s words coming to pass.  But that did nothing for my dread, and still I was angry somewhere.  “I would you had told me all this before, sir, what I was getting into.”

“Would you have done it then?” he said simply.

“No,” I admitted. 

“Perhaps I have wronged you.  But consider the benefits of what has befallen you to the greater whole.  And consider that, if I did not think you deserved to know the truth eventually, I wouldn’t have been open with you now.  I omitted the information before, but I didn’t think you merited the dishonor of a bald-faced lie, once you asked about it openly.”

“Maybe it would have been better if you’d lied now.”

“How then could you take due precautions?”

Lord Mairon had trapped me with his arguments again.  I didn’t wish to resent him since nothing would be changed by it.  It was far too late.  I’d ignored my own doubts and taken what I thought was the safer route of giving him what he wanted.  And if the greater cause of the darkness was served, maybe my problems didn’t matter so much.  Even if the experiment hadn’t been done with my wellbeing in mind, neither had it been done out of malice toward me, that I did believe. 

“You must have thought me very stupid,” I said at last.

“If I that were the case I could never have abided your presence.  You may not be the epitome of intellectualism, but neither are you a simpleton.  All I thought was that you were someone who met the criteria I had in mind, one of which was that I find the person to be decent company, being that I would need to work closely with them.”

I put my chin on my paws, feeling resigned to the doom that came over me as quiet and cold as the thickening snow.  I thought I understood Mairon, as well as one like myself can understand.  He had seen the use of a thing, he had seen that it could be done, and so he had done it.  If his aim had been my suffering, I would even now be in some dungeon or mine, or an echo of a spirit drifting about.  And now he was the best chance of safety I had.  I had no more protests.

“I could still attempt to extract you from your form in such a way that you could reconstitute,” Mairon volunteered, settling down in the snow, his chin beside mine, “but I doubt it would succeed.  More likely, it would only serve to cut short your time with the physical world.”

He didn’t want to be responsible for that, if he failed.  Perhaps that was concern, perhaps it was pride.  In some ways his motives didn’t matter, for I did not want the risk and refused it.

Chapter End Notes

This is about where I originally had in mind to end this, though on a more dire and foreboding note.  But I never lack for ideas, so Draugluin will have more to say after I hash out the chronology and logistics of subsequent events.

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