Indeed the Everlasting Darkness shall be our lot by Erdariel

Indeed the Everlasting Darkness shall be our lot

Maglor casts the Silmaril into the sea. He wanders the coasts. He sings. He wanders. He does not count the passing time, it just goes by him as water of a river around a rock. He doesn't know when it begins - if it even has a real beginning at all.

All he knows is that a heavy cloud or thick smoke has slowly gathered on his mind, making it hard to think, sometimes, hard to clearly grasp or understand his own thoughts. His memory is slipping too, strangely, as the memory of an elf never should, things shifting or being lost under this shadow.

But forever clearly, almost becoming more clear while other memories are shadowed, the words of the Oath echo in his mind. Why did he cast away the Silmaril? Was he so weak, so incapable of bearing pain? He should have kept it. He was a fool. He should seek it out again, but how? how? he cannot breathe underwater, it is gone beyond his grasp.

Slowly, stealthily sneaking up on him, the shadow clouds his sight too. At first a faint mist, hardly noticeable, just making traveling that much more irritating. But eventually he realizes that it has been night for him… much much longer than is possible. That he must have walked in seeming darkness for years now, and morning and day have never come, no, in fact the night is only deepening…

At last, he is groping blindly in utter darkness, in the world and in his own mind alike. He huddles where he hopes he's sheltered, and sings, and feels his way aimlessly onward, and sings, and lies down alone in the horrible night that no light can penetrate.

But he remembers. He remembers. Once there was light, he remembers. Bright, bright light. It burned him, and he threw it away. Fool, fool. He was such a fool. Why did he throw it away? That light was bright enough that it would be able to dispel even this darkness, he's sure. He was a fool to throw it away.

And he remembers, he had sworn to regain the light (he remembers other voices also swearing the oath that echoes in his mind, but the faces of those who swore are long since lost in the shadows upon him). He should not have thrown away what he had sworn to regain. But now all is dark, and he cannot see his way enough to know where he's going when he walks, seeking the light he cast away is now an impossible task…

So instead he lies still where he last fell down, and sings of loss and cruelty and foolishness, sings something he has sung so many times that his mouth knows it without thought, the words burned into his mind even though, with the shadows in the way, he can no longer grasp the memories and knowledge and history the song was born out of.

Chapter End Notes

I don't write Maglor often, but I had some thoughts about the nature of the Everlasting Darkness (specifically, that it is not a punishment enacted by an outside force like being cast into the Void or locked in Mandos forever or such, but rather the consequence of the Oath itself wearing down the mind and soul of those who took it, and that it is something that would affect a living person just as much as a spirit of someone dead) that were easiest to illustrate through him, and rambled about it on one discord server the other night, and then went and edited those ramblings into... whatever this is