Many Journeys by Elleth

Cut (*)

Another entry for 15_minute_fic, the prompt being 'cut'. Thangorodrim scenario, not for the squeamish. This owes much to Lyra's The Tempered Steel.

It was easier than he thought it would be. Not physically, elven bones were made to last, and clinging to an outcrop of rock with bare toes and fingernails made it difficult, but there was none of the begging for forgiveness that he had expected at setting out, from neither of them. For one thing, Maitimo was barely conscious to begin with, and awareness failed him altogether later on. He hacked, first at the fetter, then at the flesh, reasoning that the hand was dead already, and red streaks of blood poisoning crawled up the arm past the elbow. There was none of the begging (not anymore) and none of the tears, but there was certainty that he was thwarting Morgoth as well as his half-uncle and his father; every cut at the broken bones a slash at the dividing lines between them (and every slash a cut in return for Alqualondë and Losgar and Helcaraxë).

The flesh and sinews and bones gave way at last, and clinging to the starved body the precipice tumbled past him as they fell - rocks awaited beneath, and then feathers and wings and a rush, up into the low clouds and away south-west, both of them saved for now. The wound bled weakly, the foul flesh mostly gone, Maitimo's heartbeat-rhythm purging little by little of the foul blood (in return for the oath and the ships and the fire), and his own fingers were bloody as well; Maitimo's blood and his own.

Years later, with the Balrog's mace crashing down, he wondered how and why blood made people heroes.