A Brief History of the Fall of Utumno by Huinare

A Brief History of the Fall of Utumno

_________________________________Fire Below the Mountains

As Angamando’s strength falters, Utumno marches to its aid against the Valar.  Desperate now, Aulë raises his hand against the peaks, thereby leveling Angamando.  Melkor falls back, thinking to fortify Utumno against similar assault.  His Valarauca rearguard leave a searing wake, lashing scrub, tree, sparse grass.  A wall of flame howls behind them in the uplands, stalling the enemy’s pursuit.

Mairon–most of his folk hidden, lost, dispersed–emerges from Angamando’s wreck and considers the ravaged lands, the miles-vast fire below the mountains, and Valinor’s host receding before him.  Sparks of fatigue and ire kindle in his burnished gaze.

_________________________________Drought Manifest

Besieged Utumno bleeds lava, rains ash.  Any overhead precipitation is obscured and evaporatively swallowed by the red-bellied smokes.

Aman’s host chafes in dry thirst yet gives no ground.  Mairon, alone but for a small company, essays fruitlessly to push through to his lord’s citadel.  He falls back and worries at his foe’s fringe, vindictive, fell, yet fearful for once of being subdued and captured.

Melkor is drought manifest, desiccated flesh, preferring the pain of it to the admittance of overmuch hated water unto his body; within Utumno, he feels not the rain’s absence but only that of his lieutenant.

_________________________________The Hated Element

Ulmo’s spies mingle with distant rivulets and wend painstakingly toward Utumno.  Obscure deep and claustrophobic ways, magmatic impediments, sheer passages...

Glaurung lopes and jolts along the corridor, hunched, once-humanoid form slowly trending reptilian.  He seeks the dungeons, another prisoner to bring atop the ramparts and rend before Valinor’s host, but pauses to note a dripping onto the floor.

Glaurung attacks Ulmo’s spy with what feeble flame he now possesses, but more pour down.  He thrashes and steams as the corridor floods.  Melkor, sensing the incursion of the hated element, summons several Valaraucar.  A violent skirmish arises in the deep.

_________________________________Gnawed Bone-Close

Mairon harries still the hem of Aman’s host, but loyalty shan’t feed Utumno.  Within, provisions are gnawed bone-close.  Some of its folk, by habit or desire, are become bound to their forms, irrevocably.  Glaurung chews claws and dead skin.  Ungweliantë falls under guard, lest she consume others.  Melkor, ignoring hunger, broods.

Mairon, beleaguered, returns to ruined Angamando to scrounge for weapons and potions, and mead.  Nor do the elite of Utumno want for drink, there being still store of gin, rum, absinthe.  This Melkor does not ignore.  Kosomot tips back a cup to vengeance before returning to the ramparts.

_________________________________The Bitter Deed

Utumno, hungry but unmoved, regards Aman’s host.  A monstrous crossbow visits the ramparts.  Its bolt, trailing cable, reels in a winging eagle.  Melkor’s captains, jeering behind shields, feast upon it.

Melkor will stand while Utumno stands.  Raze it, Oromë urges, by union of all their devices, in cataclysm that will mutilate Arda if need be.  They’ve no other option.

The Valar uplift their hands.  Foremost in the bitter deed, Aulë beckons the neighboring tectonic plate.  It lunges south, far beneath the Endórë plate and the Angoronti, rending bedrock, spitting magma.  

Utumno quivers, then begins to break in smoke and flame.

_________________________________A Swift Spring

Melkor navigates seesawing corridors, speaking to calm the seismic chaos.  He senses Utumno’s perimeters crumbling, yet he can maintain the deep places.

Manwë and Ulmo merge forces.  Embracing into a gale, Eönwë and Ossë storm the fortress, bringing down arches, halls; Kosomot, intercepting them, is quenched.

A swift spring, Salmar darts into the deepest pits.  Melkor greets him with tormenting strikes, yet his brief distraction is sufficient; Aulë’s hold tightens: the mountain overhead is altogether removed in eruption and quake.

A shaft opens above.  Light enters, a lance, and Melkor grimaces in pain.  Varda stands above.  Tulkas beside her laughs.

_________________________________For a Glad World

Humbled Utumno is barren and still, until midges find their way in.  The dank air above the waterlogged region pulses with them, harassing victor and defeated alike.

Prisoners of war curse them.  Those searching the ruins for captives swat them.  Melkor, hunched under Angainor, sneers, “Behold life in its glory.”

Three Eruhíni are brought up, marred nearly beyond recognition.  Nienna and Estë and midges greet them.  

Mairon hollers, “They are not for a glad world.  Are you merciful?  Kill them.”  He evades pursuit as ever, near enough to be remembered, too far for any to read despair in his face.

Chapter End Notes

This drabble series concerns one of my favorite time periods, the era leading up to, taking place during, and following upon the destruction of Angamando 1.0 and Utumno.  This era is like crack to me, and two of my three works in progress are currently poking about in it.

Angoronti: My non-expert rendering of Iron Mountains into Quenya.  If there is a canon Quenya title for said mountains, I have not come across it.

Re: Salmar.  Salmar, a Maia of Ulmo who only exists in one sentence of The Silmarillion, descends from a discarded minor Vala Tolkien referred to sometimes as Noldorin or Lirillo.  The Book of Lost Tales mentions this figure as having confronted Melkor along with Tulkas, though not during the War of the Powers.  Long have I sought to use some germ of this idea in my fanon, though my Salmar, a Maia who is more brains than brawn, could hardly be expected to withstand Melkor for an instant.  I was tickled that, watching the siege of Utumno unfold via these drabbles, I was able to appease this whim.