The Illgotten Son by Gadira

Epilogue: The Fall

come, play the song of death... (1)

The night was quiet, almost deceptively calm as the noise of steel against steel, of deathly screams drifted on and off from a faraway distance. A rigid body lay on the ground, surrounded by a puddle of blood, and torn in so many different angles that it had become almost sinisterly unrecognisable.

The raven-haired lady shrouded in mist knelt at its side, in silence. Her hand tried to hold the broken head once, twice, thrice, but it always slipped through her pale fingers.

Her face contorted in a powerful, tearless agony.

"Look who is here." a mocking voice spat behind her back. She turned back with the well-honed instincts of a hunter, only to see a familiar form emerge from the shadows. "The Houseless Lady of the Noldor."

Though already faded by death and time, Eöl´s eyes alone still posessed the gleaming spark of the living as he fixed them on hers.

"You are trying to weep? Our kind does not have tears."

Aredhel tore her gaze away from him, abruptly. Eöl approached them, and his stare reverted towards the remains of the lying body.

"My worthy son." He smiled. "He coveted the precious light of the Noldor as not even I did. "His eyes went up to the summit of the precipice, and for a timeless second he seemed to bathe in the faraway sounds and smells of destruction, a shout, an Orc´s growl, smoke, the roaring swish of a Balrog´s whip. "And he avenged me magnificently, on this city of Kinslayers, on their light, on you" he lowered his glance again," and on himself."

Aredhel tensed even more at those words, but she still refused to look at him.

"It was your curse."she whispered."Itr was you, who killed him because he didn´t want to be yours."

Eöl laughed, a terribly eerie sound.

"My curse? I spoke no curse. That was foresight."

"Foresight!" She spat that word as if it was a terrible blasphemy. He did not flinch.

"And you are as much of a hypocrite as always, my wife." he added, mimicking the disgusted inflection of her voice to speak the last word. Aredhel did not answer, trying once more to touch her son´s forehead in vain.

"Oh, yes." he continued after a pause, his voice brimming with malevolent glee. "Do you think I do not know what you did? Do you think I did not see you back then, as Maeglin fought that mortal on the stairs above?"

Her hand began to tremble.

"You blinded him. You killed him."

Aredhel jerked at the accusation, flinching as if she had been pierced by a spear.

"I did not."

"I saw it."

The trembling became shivering, and she faced him in anger.

"It was you all along. Your... your darkness posessed him!" she cried. "He had become the fell tool of your designs!"

"You killed him because he didn´t want to be yours." he quoted, in frozen irony.

Aredhel´s anger grew into a burning, all-consuming wrath. A raging gale surrounded them, wringing a shrill concert of screams from the stones and rocks that drowned even the turmoil of war.

"Even after Arda is broken and remade, Dark Elf, I will still hate you!"

Eöl´s eyes sparkled for a moment, then fell back to their initial emotionless expression. Sending a last glance in the direction of his raving wife and his shattered son, he turned his back on them.

"He is still breathing." he muttered, before disappearing into the shadows.

(The End)

Chapter End Notes

(1) Blind Guardian, Thorn.