Dry lightning by Idrils Scribe

---

Chapter 1

This chapter contains a graphic description of dead bodies.

---

Lalwen had studied enough Ennorëan meteorology to know that the towering cloud-castles building on the horizon and that strange pale yellow tint to the light would bring their company nothing good. The hot wind of high summer was bone-dry, howling down the plains from the blighted north to bend the brittle stems of Ard-Galen’s grasses like an army of thralls might bow before the Morgoth.

An ill choice of day to venture out onto the plain, but her nephew was the one in charge of this investigation, and whatever else he might be called -- The Valiant, The Commander -- The Cautious was not an epithet any Elf in their right mind ever applied to Fingon son of Fingolfin. It explained her brother’s insistence that Lalwen join this expedition of his.

With another stab of concern Lalwen inhaled the metallic scent of ozone. The building storm would bring not a drop of rain, but soon great forks of lightning could set the tinder-dry plains themselves ablaze and burn horse and rider alive. They needed to get out of the long, yellowed grass -- and fast.

Lalwen eyed the reason for their ill-advised expedition. The strange furrow before her was a drab brown of decaying vegetation plastered to the ground by some foul-smelling, slimy substance she prayed would prove non-flammable. The stench was eye-watering, strangely reminiscent of rotting fish. The very idea of touching the foul ooze was repulsive, but soon these mysterious tracks where horses refused to tread might be their only refuge from roaring lines of flame, wind-whipped across the steppes faster than Elvish cavalry could ride.

She raised her hand to Nandaro, the chief of Fingon’s household knights, and brought her pale stallion to a halt to swing down from the saddle. Sírdal snorted nervously, loath to set foot upon the rotting soil, but Lalwen knelt down at the very edge of the eerie band of decay plowed through the vastness of Ard-Galen unto the horizon, and tentatively reached out her gloved hand to touch.

She could feel the keen eyes of Fingon’s cavalry upon her back. Unsurprisingly, Fingon himself soon knelt beside her, the fire of curiosity alight in his steel-grey eyes. Never did he shirk from any danger he would command others to dare, and the principle extended to his elders.

“Has Yavanna ever told you of aught such as this, Aunt? Or perhaps it was recorded in the library of Tirion? It might be a salamander of some kind -- unless the Sindar failed to inform us that Ennor harbours giant snails.”

When she was still Fingon’s tutor, in simpler days in Tirion, Lalwen had always been patient with her nephew’s exasperating flights of fancy, his lack of scientific rigour. Even at this deluge of nonsense spoken before his warriors she did not rebuke him.

“The largest snails in Yavanna’s gardens are the size of a dog. Any larger and their flesh would no longer withstand gravity. If it cannot be achieved in Valinor it should not be possible here in Ennor either. The same goes for giant amphibians, by and large. I fear this is something else entirely, and doubtlessly the Morgoth’s work.”  

She stood to follow the alien track with her eyes. At the point where it disappeared into the northern horizon her eyes could just discern the miniature, blue-tinged reflection upon the atmosphere itself of what lay beyond: the three peaks of Thangorodrim in all their ugly, piled horror. Fingon followed her eyes and his jaw clenched in determination.

“Whatever abomination he bred in those foul pits, I will have it on my spear before this summer is through.”

Lalwen shrugged. “At present the matter calls for the scientific method rather than spears, Nephew.”

She crouched once more and lifted a pair of tweezers from the pouch at her belt to pick up a flat, grey thing the size of her palm. Her other hand swiftly produced a small, exquisitely wrought magnifying glass -- the late Fëanáro’s work -- a perfectly ground lens caught in a setting of engraved mithril. What she saw made her wish she could swallow her condescending remark.

“On second thought, do not put down your weapons just yet. This is an osteoderm.”

All she received was a highly disappointing blank stare. Her remark would have sufficed to strike terror in the heart of any of Fëanor’s clever sons. It galled her to no small degree that Fingon, her own student, needed to have such things explained to him.     

“The bony skin plates on certain creatures’ scales. They make up the beasts’ natural armour. Whatever made these tracks may shed a mucous poison, but it is most likely reptilian in nature. By the shape, this particular scale has come off the side of the jaw. I estimate the creature itself about the size of a horse, possibly larger.”

Fingon eyed the broad swathe of festering grass before them. “I could have told you that, Aunt.”

Lalwen silently dropped the sample into an airtight silver container for future testing, and scooped a glass vial’s worth of slime. Her field laboratory was a far cry from what she had in Barad Eithel, and an even further one from Tirion, where Yavanna’s Maiar once worked alongside the finest minds of the Noldor to explore the mysteries at the very core of life itself. Still, she had a decent enough microscope at her disposal. She would wring every last piece of intelligence from this piece of bone to better arm their warriors against this new, mysterious abomination Morgoth unleashed upon Beleriand.

---

The greener grasses announcing the safety of the wetlands around the Fen of Serech were tantalizingly close when a fast-moving dot on the northern horizon resolved into one of Fingon’s warriors, her wild-eyed horse in a lather.

“My Prince! Princess Lalwen! The scouts found yet more dead, fresh from last night by the look of things! Will you not come?”

To his credit Fingon did cast a look at the menacing cauldron of roiling cloud that was the northern horizon, already shot through with lightning, and at Lalwen’s concerned face.

“I will go, with my personal guard. Pass me some of your vials, Aunt, that I may bring samples of whatever I find back to you.”

Lalwen shook her head. Knowing her nephew there was precious little point in arguing about mitigating risks. In Fingon’s eyes, the very concept applied exclusively to other people.

“I do not fancy riding through the gates of Barad Eithel bearing your charred remains in a litter and explaining to your father how I was twenty miles into safe territory when lightning struck. I promised him that I would remain by your side. My guard and I will burn beside you, if necessary.”

----

The storm was nearly upon them when they reached the corpses. The sallow half-light filtering through the roiling thunderclouds seemed to slide off the remains of Fingolfin’s messengers with revulsion.

Mere days ago Lalwen would have known the dead men’s faces well enough. They were in and out of her brother’s council chambers bearing messages at all hours. Today she could not have put their names to them if her life had depended upon it. Whatever black sorcery or unknown weapon this was had burned hot enough to blister faces to featureless charcoal and heat muscles to the point of twisting the bodies of Elf and horse into a strange, eldritch mockery of dancing poses.

Nothing remained of the couriers’ livery and the royal banners they had flown so proudly. Only the engravings on their weapons, found by the glimmer of metal through sheaths turned to soot, marked them as the swift riders Fingolfin had dispatched from Barad Eithel to bear word of this new threat to Maedhros in Himring.  

Fingon stepped back from the smouldering mound of horseflesh that once was a fine Valinórean thoroughbred. He was wiping flakes of carbonized leather from a dagger engraved with the star of his House wrung into a strange, waving shape by the heat. His voice was carefully neutral.

“This was sheathed when it burned. They never drew blade.”

The dry, hot wind howling across the plains did not prevent the miasma of smoke, charred flesh and the acrid fish-stench of the strange slime from scorching Lalwen’s throat raw. She knew she must not flinch, that she could afford no outward show of her shock and horror. She was the oldest of the House of Finwë present here, the greatest Noldorin loremistress East of the Sea, and these warriors needed her to tell them what to make of this.

“This was no Balrog. Whatever did this wielded stealth as much it did fire.” Fingon sank to a crouch to touch the black, beslimed earth.

Lalwen turned her face toward Angband. “Slime, stealth and fire. And it moves only at night.”

Thangorodrim had been swallowed by menacing towers of cloud, but the sleepless gaze of the Dark Vala emanating from it weighed no less heavily upon the land.  

“It has fled the daylight into Angband. We will learn nothing more today. I see only one way forward, Nephew, but it is an utterly perilous one.” Lalwen paused for a moment, gathering her strength to speak the dreaded words.

Fingon stood straight, and the calm determination in his steel-grey eyes granted Lalwen another measure of courage. His mind was cool and gentle against hers as he deftly plucked the plan from her thoughts and voiced it for her.

“We will set our ambush here, on the plain. I will be your defender, and you my father’s eyes and ears.”

---

Chapter End Notes

Thank you for reading, a review would be wonderful!

What prey are Lalwen and Fingon hunting? And where is Maedhros?

Chapter 2 is coming soon!