Houses of Might by MisbehavingMaiar

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Houses of Might

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When he had been a young god, fresh and brazen in his power, the earth had been too fragile for him.  

He had been made before it, out of scale with it. There was nothing put up that he could not knock down; from the densest mineral core to the plains of bedrock, all things were clay under his hands.  

It was in the ages lit by volcanic fires and two leviathan lamps that he delved Utumno, his first dwelling. 

 

 "Delved", not "built".  

 He had sunk his claws into the wet red rock, scooped up pillars out of diamond and onxy, leveled his chambers with a swipe of one arm. He'd rummaged in the guts of mountains and pulled out seams of gold and copper, with a breath melting them, pooling them, unhammered and unpolished, over the heaving floors of hell.

 The pillars he twisted and wrenched until they resembled coiled serpents holding aloft the jagged ceiling. Rivers of open magma lit his home, while the churning growl of the pits echoed forever through the halls. His throne was a high mound of raw jewels set in rippling, blue-black lava, and he sat upon it in naked and resplendent, or else draped in inky molten flows. 

 Nothing mortal could have survived his presence or his domain in that early time; no eyes but the Ainur's could see the subterranean splendors he'd wrought there. All things in Utumno glittered, darkly. 

 

He missed it, his rough-hewn palace, though he knew that if it still stood, he could not endure it.
He no longer fit its scale. He could not wade into oceans nor plunge his head in the streaming red clouds. He stood, yes, like a fearsome tower over his enemies, what a pittance that was! The rumbling of the earth now simply made his ears ache.

 All his works had been muddied since the beginning, wrestled down and made tame by his brethren. The primordial fires had cooled and green choking things crept over the earth. Even the icy walls and spines of Thangorodrim could not shield him entirely from the sun, the hateful eye of the Valar leering at him in his pain.

 

Angband had been made for war.  In the early days he had hollowed out its spiraling dungeon pits, the lava pools for the valaraukar to nest in, but the rest of the construction had been left to others. Nothing there glittered, but for steel and blackest glass. 

 It was a dull place. A designed place; built of quarried stone and the mind of an architect.
This was Sauron's fortress; his siege breaker, his battle trench, the breeding ground for armies, and though the loyal maia had done his best to accommodate his master, it was still cramped quarters for a Vala.  

The lieutenant had salvaged fragments of Utumno that had escaped the Valar's wrath; obsidian from the halls, gold from the floors, glittering gems from the throne. He'd sought to please Melkor, fearing perhaps that his master thought him idle during the long years of his imprisonment in Aman. He had reshaped the dark pillars, carving them beautifully into the shapes of wyrms, snakes whose coiling bodies sought the roof and whose glinting heads formed the capitols, their ruby eyes blazing. 

 What once had been wrung into an unnatural helix by a mighty and careless hand was now meticulously crafted. Every detail, each flute and column carved in the perfect likeness of serpents-- no longer nature but art. 

  Melkor had not been able to conceal his disappointment. 

 Hastily added luxuries brought the Vala little comfort. Porphyry basins that could hold a steaming lake were still a poor substitute for boiling seas, and a gold-plated throne room floor was less than a gleaming netherworld.

 His own body had a disgusting permanence now; form fitting function, fixed in mass.  He saw himself reflected in the volcanic glass mirrors of the walls and he hated this cage, almost as much as he hated the sun and moon. He could not suffer the world's surface in this state; the earth had grown strong while he had become brittle.
And he was afraid. 

 There had been a time when the bright gold god had not known fear. 

 When he had plundered the world, ran over it rough-shod, feeding the air and stone to his fires and freezing the heavens. His siblings had objected, but had he not been set above them in their Father's esteem? Had he not been named the rising star, the mightiest of the Valar? He had loved his power dearly, and the steaming earth and his freedom most of all. 

 Melkor had been made to know shame, but never fear-- not because he was brave but because he had not been introduced to it, and therefore was careless of its dangers. 

 He came to know it in a sound: the thunder-laughter of the one who fell as a comet from heaven, making great glass ripples in the desert. Tulkas, the Valiant, Champion of the Valar, came down to put an end to his freedom; a teacher of many cruel lessons.

Melkor had reared up in flame and fury, his face a lurking monster from the crushing depths of the sea, so hideous and needled it would have brought madness in a mortal mind. He had wreathed himself in an inferno and the sound he shrieked in challenge was a hurricane's wail, the sound of bitter ice grinding, the shuddering roar of an earthquake.  

 But the ruddy Vala had stepped forward onto the rock bridge and smiled, and all Melkor's fire turned to dripping tar. 

Fleeing to the bottom-most pit of his stronghold, he had not understood that it was fear taking him in the unguarded chambers of his mind. When there was nowhere left to run, he'd turned like a rabid thing and grappled with his enemy. 

Great bronze hands did not flinch from the barbs and crackling heat of Melkor's flesh; Tulkas broke the golden god's face with his fist, crushed the furnace of his ribs, wrapped mighty arms about the blazing head, so that strive as he may, his opponent could gain no purchase. Melkor flared, and snapped, and fought, and howled, but at last-- and from then forever after-- he was thrown to the ground by the Champion of the Valar, and his face struck the earth in bitter shame. He was collared, dragged in chains, broken and humiliated, to the surface of the world to face judgement. 

 

Three ages after, he had not forgotten. When time is wrapped up like a ball of twine and Arda is undone, Melkor will still not have forgotten the  day when he met Fear and learned to hate him. Yet having met fear, the golden god grew acquainted with it, and he was never again ignorant of its power. 

  

Deceit was the first art he learned, after three ages gnawing on his own thoughts in the monotony of Mandos. He learned, for example, to withdraw his cowardice deep and unseen into his heart, or reproduce all the outward effects of fear while inwardly he sneered and preened. 

Before the throne of Manwë he had shivered and pleaded. He flinched like a rabbit before the eyes of Tulkas and looked with contrition at Yavanna, who's hatred was expressed by the vicious curling and uncurling of her twining vine-hair; and for Nienna, who spoke in his favor, he conjured the most credible sincerity. And all the while inside, he laughed-- not like thunder, but like a stygian clattering of leather wings. 

 

Now in the darkness of his keep Melkor reflected, picking at the scabs of gold that sloughed off his unhealing wounds. Each season his skin shed, and unlike a serpent, it left him duller and more tarnished than before. Each shedding left him in a tighter skin, constricting his spirit within a smaller cage of matter. 

He considered that it had always been his flexibility and cunning that had served him best; his deceit, his patience, his poisons, his knives in the dark-- these had led victories, to escape.  Towers and walls were solid and immutable; they were a liability that he was forced to rely upon… Even Formenos whose doors had been slammed and barred against him had fallen. Angband was a mighty stronghold, fenced with mountains of fire and worthy iron gates, but it was still fixed. It was immovable, inescapable; as much a prison as Mandos had been. 

Even if he won the war against the armies that battered his walls, even if his kin did not rise up against him across the silver sea, he would be entombed here. He knew this with certainty… it would fall, eventually, as all things fell.
And though this terrified him almost as much as the thought of diminishing into nothingness, but it brought with it a gallows-comfort: The idea that all towers of might must one day fall, that no place of power was immune to decay, and that perhaps even, given time and strange turnings, the Halls of Eru too would crumble, returning into the endless, empty Void-- taking the One and the rest of hateful Eä with Him.