Reflection, Refraction, Release by Lferion

Reflection, Refraction, Release

Mirrors were traps. Everyone said so. Especially the silvered ones, any reflection in still water. Bitter glass and burning silver. If one wasn't careful, it was said, one would fall through into a terrible world of too-bright yellow light that seared flesh, blinded the senses; dreadful white eyes shining in what should be ever-darkened sky, piercing, prying, deafening with silence, with song that stole the soul, tore one asunder from bond-gang and master, horrible, unthinkable fate.

They called out, ephemeral, peril and promise together. Which was real, and which the warped reflection?

The day the mirrors broke, Dwarur found out.

Galadriel watched the mirror-pool closely, tendrils of steam (smoke, fog, vapor) curling up and wreathing around her. The water seemed on the edge of both freezing and boiling, a nigh impossible state, but the images in it had finally stabilized: a scene too like Angband at the end of the War of Wrath, though these tormented people were mostly Dwarves, few Elves or Men. They were watched through peculiar mirrors, not quite lenses, not quite palantiri, but partaking of of both. A Dwarf was looking back at her, somehow perceiving her, squinting through glare, rippling lashes of fire, helplessly entreating, despairing, but not hopeless. With a stab she remembered her last vision of Fingon, caught in whips of flame, still fighting, and her resolve hardened to adamant. She *would* rescue these people. And immediately she knew exactly how to do it. The mirrors were linked, and she had worked with Fëanáro on the designs for the palantiri. The material used for these mirror-lenses was brittle, shoddy, more glass than crystal, no more stable than her mirror-pool. She slid her hand in the freezing-boiling water, willing the surface, the congruencies to hold, then pulled back sharply, fingers spread, shattering every mirror.

In the fog, the colors of the forest were muted, dim, one shade bleeding into another, reds and oranges, golds and browns blurring and fading, the blues and greens, lurid in the rare shafts of sun, were greyed and hard to see in the mist. So too were the furled banners and bright armor of the Elves, moving quietly on the hunt for the fortress from whence the army of twisted and misbegotten creatures had come, goaded on by a handful of Uruks to die on Elven steel. It was the Uruks who had died; they had spared as many of the unfortunate beasts as could be managed. They were not the enemy, though used by him. They lay behind the hunters, sung to drowsy stillness, tended by the healers and the singers while Dwarur and his fellows sought the poisoned well, the pent fire, the prisoned air. The mist hid them from malignant, watchful eyes, muffled footsteps -- the Elves walked quietly enough, but Dwarur could hardly hear the metalled boots of his fellow Dwarves on the unhappy ground. They would come on the fortress with the enemy all unaware of their approach, betrayed by the very stones they tormented.

Even Were-worms and rock-slithers and pie-bald tunnel-rats didn’t deserve to be pent up like this, thought Dwarur, wielding his hammer with a will against the iron reinforced foundation for the cages. They deserved new beginnings just like he’d been given, released from tribute-labor he’d never chosen. Let them go free, just as the Elves above were unchaining the winds, the things with wings. And when all the living things were freed, they would melt down all the metal in a great crucible, fire cleansing it of all ill, and they — Dwarves and Elves and Men all — would make something new.