Book of Hours by heget

Wizard's Duel

Ilmarë and Sauron

Her Admirable One, who stood at the side of the Smith of Invention as chief of his servants as she did for the Lofty Lady of Stars, existed no more. Her brother bled out before her eyes, body leaking blood, more endangering the soul leaking out spirit and pain and loss of will to carry on, to fight, and to hold a shape. It was easier when they took bodies of the material essence of Arda to contend with one another in battle and work upon the world that the One had set for them to shape and tend, their focus as sharp and narrow as staring through a pinprick. Once she described the feeling of crafting a body and inhabiting it for the little one that delighted in casting visions and learning from the Weeper as a sensation akin to the immense gravitational pressure condensing to create a star - but also the ignition of light in what was once darkness to give another dimension to perceive.

Her brother’s chosen body lay broken before her. That one that had been once admirable stood over her brother, responsible. She was Starlight, mightiest and paramount of the Star-kindler’s disciples, and her chosen body grew taller and heavier, lengthened the heavy beak and the talons of her feet, and sparks flew off the midnight blue of her feathers. Shrieking she entered the clearing, short wings outstretched in a gesture of warding and anger, tail fanned behind her as her own crown, motes of light drifting off her feathers like the tail of a comet. She was tall and beautiful and terrible as a meteor impact. Her beak, greater than her king’s eagles, slammed down on the immense feline that had ambushed and mauled her fallen brother, her enraged will behind the strike. Furiously she shrieked as the Cruel One dodged the blow, his red eyes laughing at her. She kicked out with her lengthened legs, the longest talon ripping through his flesh. She could feel this strike connect, could smell the iron of his blood. This delight of hurting him overpowered her, and the rage and revenge-thirst intoxicated her better senses, the layer of her mind that would be horrified at causing pain to another of her brethren.

He had betrayed her. He had danced with her at the wedding of the Laughing Golden-hair and the Young Deer. He had pretended to be loyal, to love her and her brother and the Powers and creation. Yet here he was, no longer Admirable, no longer a creator, only a destroyer, only a cruel one inflicting pain. She wanted to hurt him, to shred him to pieces, expel his spirit from any material body. She had not hurt him enough; one shallow wound did not answer what he had done to her brother, the betrayal he had done to her.

The Cruel One danced away from her striking feet and sword-like beak, so Starlight pursued him. Into new slender forms he shifted to avoid her strikes, all the while mocking her with his eyes, daring her to attack. Crane-like she lengthened her neck and beak, twisting with him as two serpents intertwined, desperate to constrict the life from his material body, to force him into a shell-less spirit retreating to his dark master. Her focus compressed to answering his contempt with her vengeance.

He was laughing at her, mocking her attempts to rend him to pieces, still whispering how beautiful she was, how powerful, singing to her shrieks of rage as chords to remove dissonance. She wanted to silence the Cruel One, and he thought this a duet.

She did not notice how dark her feathers were, that the sparks of light -which the one she once loved had compared to the sparks flying off metal when he worked in the forge- had burned out and were no longer generating. She did not see how dark the clearing was. She gave no second thought to her injured brother. Only the smell of blood mattered, her brother’s and hers and of the red eyes before hers.

Then the earth heaved beneath her feet, rising up to trap her and throw a wall between her and the Cruel One, shards of stone and metal like the claws of a mighty badger reaching for the fallen servant in vain. The Cruel One shed his former body for that of a featherless, hairless creature of flight, sweeping up into the sky on naked black wings. She wanted to pursue him, though with every second that the tendril of the Smith’s power held her back less possible would it became to have any hope of catching the Cruel One. She watched him escape, and screeched her thwarted rage.

"Come back," called her brother, "Come back before you sink your song into his, become like him and like the Storm Terror, like the others that followed our King’s brother because his song drowned out the melody the One wished us to play." Her falcon-eyed brother pulled her back, stopped her from lengthening her wings into something useful for flight. "This is not you, dear and gentle sister, you are more than bloodlust and violence. You are light and creation, not destruction. He was taunting you to become like him. Had you followed him, you may have hurt him, maybe terribly so, but you would have become a monster of the Rejecter, one who only delights in drinking blood."

Starlight wept, her grief layered with fear of what she almost became, for her brother who ignored his injures to preserve her soul, and the heartache of a loved one’s betrayal. She diminished her form in her shame of what she had almost become, became a lamenting songbird, and her brother copied her. Together as two piping chicks they cried and huddled next to one another, until the King of Air found them in the form of a great eagle. Gently he shielded them under his pale wings, singing the soothing tones of shared grief. To the Healer and the Weeper he carried them, like two gentling burning embers in the soft cradle of his talons.

"Never do I wish to see him again," whispered Starlight.

Chapter End Notes

"Terror bird"