Chapter Text
ONE
It starts with dead goats.
Well—it started when, a short time after Tyelpe’s rebirth, Aule gave him a necklace.
But it has been a yen since then, and now there are dead goats.
Tyelpe sets out with a hunting knife and bow, thinking a predator has come too close to his small cabin in the woods. But when he catches the tracks, they take him further from his home and into the northern unexplored forest lands of Aman than he—or nearly any Elda, he suspects—has ever been. He has come as far north and west as it is possible to go below the Pelori and Araman, where the ancient trees have trunks the color of blood and tower hundreds of feet.
The forest, already quiet and cold, continues to dim. The predator’s trail winds further into the darkness, until the canopy is so dense even the ever-present rain cannot get through, leaving the ground below mostly dead, or fungal. Eventually, he finds the predator—a now-desiccated mountain lion—drained of life, half-wrapped in the remnants of a silky cocoon. After that he hikes for weeks, looking for giant spiders.
He must accept it’s not really about the goats. It's not about the spiders, either.
After a month in the dark, he enters a grove. Night has fallen, and the fog rolls in thick, decreasing visibility. He’s unsure how far he’s walked today, but his waterskin is empty. He can sense a barely-moving body of fresh water ahead: a glade of some type, fed by a sluggish stream.
Although he’s been tracking the remnants of animal carcasses and webs through the fog, he does not make out the dangers within the glade until it’s too late. There is a break in the trees, and he’s more focused on the water than his surroundings. One more mistake in an ever-increasing list.
The unease creeps up slowly as he bends to fill his waterskin. The water is not actually fresh, but stagnant and swampy. Wrong for this type of forest environment.
The hair on the back of his arms and neck begins to rise. From his vantage point, it is difficult to discern just how thick the webs have become, but when he hears the first clicks, increasing first in frequency and then in volume, he knows it is too late.
Tyelpe drops his canteen and draws his sword, but he’d have been better served with a torch. Spiders like this hate, hate, hate open flames. He grips the hilt and braces himself. He needn’t have bothered—he’s outmatched and will be overwhelmed.
He had expected one or two of Ungoliant’s heirs, large creatures the size of bears, considering they’d taken out the lion. He doesn’t expect a swarm. The rush of spiders covers the ground. They come out from between the trees, out from under rocks, seemingly out from the very earth itself. The smallest are the size of grains of sand. The largest is the size of a draft horse, and it’s approaching fast.
The part of him that survived the first age of Middle Earth is ashamed to have been caught so unawares. The part of him that perished in the second cannot help but believe this is probably what he deserves. If he is devoured by spiders, there will be no fëa left for Mandos.
It's not about the goats. It’s not about the spiders.
Of course, his sword ends up being moot when the entire glade erupts around him.
*
Back to the necklace.
It was his father that encouraged him to seek peace in Aule’s halls.
To the shock of all Valinor, among seven brothers it was Curufinwe, the cunning and the cruel, who was first released from Mandos—three thousand years to the day after his death. Carnistir followed some decades later; the most and least guilty Feanorian princes by common belief. Rumor spread that, acting as envoys for Arafinwe and Elrond respectively, Curufinwe was visited by Findarato and Laurfindele for questioning. How was it that he, a shameful pariah, a villain, returned while his innocent victims continued to languish in the Halls? Whispers claimed that vicious Curufinwe refused to repent.
Truthfully, Findarato and Laurfindele had visited his father as emissaries of Arafinwe, king in Tirion, and Elrond, lord on Tol Eressea. But Tyelpe guessed their discussion little resembled the imaginations of gossip mongers. Laurfindele indeed asked how it was that Curufinwe had been the first of his kin to find rebirth and forgiveness in Mandos. Findarato later wrote to Tyelpe, recounting what his father had said:
I have found no forgiveness. I do not require it. Rather, my place is here, for there are responsibilities I must see to that I cannot attend while in Namo’s Halls. He could not deny me without also denying those whose lives depend upon me.
The responsibilities to which his father referred was the restoration of Formenos; preparing a home where Tyelpe, and the other Feanorian loyalists, could reside upon release. Curufinwe dedicated himself to rebuilding the fortress and the surrounding city, laboring for countless seasons with his own two hands. He raised walls and forged gates, laid stone and cleared trees. Eventually Carnistir came to his aid for a time, before returning to stay with their mother.
The brothers had, between the two of them and with aid from their grandfather Mahtan, remade it all from the ground up. Curufinwe even negotiated a deal with the Valar, that no Ainu should breach the city walls nor step onto its threshold without invitation. Most Eldar took this as even greater evidence that the sons of Feanaro had failed to reform; but Tyelpe suspected it was a peace-keeping measure, and a wise one at that.
The city's revival heralded the return of the Feanorian Noldor. Many were shocked at how few refused to rejoin Tirion society. Some sailed to Tol Eressea, preferring to live with the Endorians, but over half chose to venture to the north, continuing to abide with the prince to whom they had pledged their lives, and their deaths. They distrusted the Valar, even now, and were distrusted in return. Formenos became a thriving city once again, but one isolated and alienated from the rest of the Eldar.
When Tyelpe agreed to re-embodiment, he had been unsure what to expect. A part of him dreaded that he would be left alone, the only of his family to stand on the far shore. A part of him dreaded that he wouldn’t be alone. In any event, many had come to meet him at the gates of Mandos. His father, grandmother, great grandfather Mahtan, and uncle Carnistir had all been there.
Initially, Tyelpe had been taken to Nerdanel’s house—closest to the gate of the Halls where he’d awoken—and for a time he’d stayed, together with them there. But when his father had determined it was time for him to return to Formenos, Tyelpe couldn’t follow.
Tyelpe had done much healing in Mandos, with respect to his familial relationships. He understood his father's actions and choices better now than he ever had during his first life. The tapestries of Vaire and souls of the other dead had painted a clearer picture of Curufinwe, one he had been too close to see, as was their purpose. The voices of the time—even Tyelpe’s own—had painted his father as someone cruel, slowly descending into madness. Tyelpe knew better now. It was both more complex and simpler than he realized at the time.
People spoke of his father as a fiend defeated by his own cruelty. Tyelpe saw him more as a failed politician who had played games not much different than those Tyelpe himself had been forced to play during the second age, when the stakes had been much lower. His father was a man who’d been politically outmaneuvered and gotten into an angry fist fight. He was a kinslayer, but so were they all. Any of his admirable qualities had been forgotten over time.
So, Tyelpe found that he didn’t hate his father. Resented him a bit, probably, but hated him—no. Nonetheless, he couldn’t bear to stay with him in Formenos, or even to stay in Nerdanel’s home nearer to Tirion. The issue wasn’t being around his father—it was being around anyone. Speaking of what had happened to him, speaking of Annatar was…impossible. Speaking at all was often more than he could bear.
And yet, he could not hold anything else in his mind. So instead of reconnecting with his family, he found himself paralyzed among them, silent, withdrawn, in pain.
Namo let him out of Mandos with the instruction to seek Irmo in Lorien. But while he’d professed agreement and compliance to the Vala, he’d learned a thing or two about lying, and was quite through with all the Ainur. He’d accepted the conditions of his rebirth, and immediately reneged.
The night before his father returned to Formenos, Tyelpe couldn’t sleep. Curufinwe found him alone in the dark at Nerdanel’s table, drinking from a wine cask.
“This cannot go on, Tyelperinquar,” his father said, taking a seat across from him. It struck Tyelpe just how old Curufinwe seemed; how very much he looked like Feanaro, with fatigue and worry pinching his otherwise lovely face. Tyelpe couldn’t reply now any more than he could've on any other day since his release. He’d embraced his father upon their initial reunion, but anything more was still beyond him.
Since then, Curufinwe had not met his gaze. After receiving nothing but hatred and scorn since his own re-embodiment, he clearly expected the same from his son, despite the work he'd put into building them both a home. It hurt Tyelpe’s heart.
If he failed to find words for his father now—to tell him, if nothing else, that Tyelpe’s fragmentation was no fault of his family—the weight of his regrets would crush him.
“It’s not you. It's—him. He lives here, in my mind, eating away at me.” His voice sounded like sandpaper. Terrible. Pathetic. (In his memory, a perfectly smooth voice chastised him. 'Honestly Tyelpe, caring for yourself is the least of your responsibilities...')
Curufinwe reached out and took him by the hand. His fingers were thinner than Tyelpe remembered. His palms were cold. He must have known something about Tyelpe’s demise, because he didn’t require any additional explanation. It was a good thing, because any other words stuck fast in his throat, splintering there and digging in. But at least he could see some relief brought to his father’s face.
“Perhaps,” his father suggested, uncharacteristically hesitant, “You need to seek closure with another who knew and…cared…for him.”
Tyelpe raised an eyebrow in question.
“He was one of Aule’s at one time, was he not? I’ve heard Mahtan speak of it before. He was admired in Aule’s halls, before the fall. They called it a ‘seduction.’ There was some care there, at least. At one point.”
Tyelpe scowled, but his father just blinked at him tiredly, not rising to the bait or raising his voice. That was new. There was a time that a single defiant expression would have been enough spark to light his father’s angry flame.
“Not sympathy,” Curufinwe said. “But there are none here who knew him as you knew him. Perhaps one day you might be able to tell me about him, but I will never understand what it meant to be at the other end of his manipulations, or his anger, or his love. It seems possible that is why you could not find healing in Mandos, or here, or with me in Formenos.”
In the following years, Tyelpe would look back at that moment and recall the anguish on Curufinwe's face. Later, he would learn that his father had forced his way out of Mandos just to make a space where Tyelpe could find healing with him. But in that moment, he did not see it, too lost in his own mind.
The next morning, he watched in silence as his father rode away. His grandfather and his uncle Carnistir followed shortly thereafter. He did not make a choice immediately, but he knew something had to change. A few weeks later he left Nerdanel’s home.
(Had he stayed a fortnight longer, he would have been there for his father’s return. Curufinwe had every intention of begging Tyelpe to come back with him to Formenos after all—but Tyelpe was already gone.)
And so, Tyelpe rode to central Aman to find Aule. To his great surprise, the Vala granted Tyelpe and audience immediately upon his arrival and did not seem surprised that he was there.
But even then, Tyelpe couldn’t bring himself to question Aule, to learn about Annatar, to learn about the fall. He didn’t want to know if Annatar— “Mairon, when he was here,”—had always been fell and cruel and filled with darkness, or if he’d been brought low through corruption against his will.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He’d had to find at least some words to make it this far. “I don’t know why I’ve come.”
Aule had sat with him—a mountain of hot stone condensed into a vaguely man-like shape—for an entire afternoon in silence.
As the sun fell, and after seemingly considering something deeply for a time, Aule had given him the necklace: a citrine gemstone held within curling gold, with a burning heart.
*
The clicking of the spiders is upon him. This is the first time Tyelpe has used a weapon other than a hunting bow or knife in his remade body, and he is almost surprised to find that his muscles remember the basic forms drilled into him by his eldest uncle an eternity ago. He aims for the delicate joints of their slender legs, but it’s a doomed battle. The tiniest of them skitter over his feet and crawl up his legs; the largest of them are leaping toward him, their pincers wide, stampeding over their mutilated brethren whenever he is successful at bringing one down.
He is overrun in less than a minute.
Or at least, he would be, but for an inferno of flame spilling around him with the heat of a forge and the rage of a volcano.
The flame spirals up into the surrounding trees. The heat is tremendous—it sears Tyelpe’s skin, blistering his hand where it grips his sword. The spiders that have made it onto his person are killed in an instant, smoking and falling away.
The necklace around his throat has super-heated, and with a cry he rips it off and tosses it to the ground. He acts not a moment too soon—the center gem flares sun-bright, and the citrine cracks with a loud snap. All around Tyelpe, the webs ignite. Chittering spiders immediately begin to run, but many are too slow. He hears their shrieks and smells cooking flesh as they burn.
The trees themselves light, and in minutes the entire forest is engulfed in the blaze. It is fortunate that Tyelpe has not been eaten by spiders, but less so that he immediately begins to choke on the billowing smoke that rises from the necklace and its now-split gemstone.
The flame around the necklace begins to coalesce, taking shape amid the smoke. It stretches, as tall as the trunks of the trees, before slowly starting to pull inward and thicken. The smoke gathers, shaping itself into a great black demon. Sauron stands before him, in all his terrible glory. Tyelpe recognizes him from Vaire’s tapestries.
A heartbeat after the shape settles, before Tyelpe can even truly realize his own fear, the flame begins to morph again: the dark smoke ignites into flaming red hair, and eyes form, their bottomless depths at once drawing him in and horrifying him. This, he realizes, is the last fair form of Sauron, the guise he wore at Numenor.
The red begins to pale, turning a warm bright white-gold. Now an elegant figure—a familiar figure—a beauty made of fire and light. The fairest face yet, his Annatar. Sauron looks away quickly, and Tyelpe is denied more than the briefest glance at his face. He is so lovely it is painful to behold. Tyelpe chokes on his own spit.
This form lasts longer than the other two—long enough that Tyelpe thinks it has settled. But he is mistaken. The form begins to shrink. The hair warms to honey gold. Now he is shorter than Tyelpe; shorter now than the shortest Elda; shorter now than a man, shorter than a hobbit. His blazing armor fades into softly glowing, diaphanous robes made of curling smoke.
Still Sauron’s size decreases. Now, the size of an elfling. Now, the size of a toddler, just old enough to stand on two feet without support.
The fire around them dies out as quickly as it ignited, although leaves and tree trunks still trap the smoldering remnants. The largest of the spiders are gone now, although hundreds or thousands of their smaller many-legged brethren lay dead. The necklace is gone. The only living things remaining in the now-barren glade are Tyelpe and the slowly solidifying baby that was his greatest enemy, his killer, and his one-time love.
A baby who starts to cry.
*
The necklace was a finely wrought, sparkling gold chain. At its center, a citrine pendant, glowing with a flicker of inner fire. It was undoubtedly a creation of the Great Smith himself; the necklace hummed with his power, plus another familiar heat.
He’d known what it was without explanation, could feel it the moment it contacted his skin. Tyelpe flinched and nearly tossed it away. It was only his shock that kept his palm steady as Aule carefully handed him the necklace.
“What have you done?”
“I never told my brethren what happened,” Aule said. “I will not forbid you to tell them, but I entreat you to think carefully before you do so; it will be the Void for him. But I shan’t stop you, if that is what you decide, for all that my heart will be broken.
“I have bound his eala here. It took me many years to gather what fragments remained after the destruction of the Ring. The remains of his soul were scattered by the eastern wind. But this is all of him, or as much of him as still exists. Perhaps speaking about him is not the way forward. I am no Irmo or Namo or Este, to know of healing. But your kin are of the forge. If you put your mind to it, I daresay you could destroy him, restore him, torture what’s left of him…”
Aule’s face looked terribly pained, and Tyelpe knew then that the Great Smith was making vulnerable a piece of his own heart in the hope of Tyelpe finding peace. It must have been difficult even for one of the Valar to locate all the remnants of Sauron. To just hand them over to one that might destroy them was more than Tyelpe could imagine.
He never would've—could've—given up Annatar’s soul. But then, it was not the only time Aule'd offered up a beloved child to face judgement and potential destruction.
Tyelpe closed his hand around the necklace. He didn’t want it, but to reject it or give it back seemed like the highest disrespect considering the gift's intention. He had no idea what he would do with the necklace, but—
“He can’t hurt anyone like this?”
“He is too weak,” Aule said. “What you feel there is the entirety of his strength. Should you destroy him without delivering him to Manwe or Namo, he will go the way of the Faded, never to incarnate a fana again. It is my…hope…that you will not choose that path. But I will neither stop you nor condemn your decision.”
Tyelpe nodded, and with shaking hands, he fastened the necklace around his neck. It would stay there for a hundred years. Part of him always thought he would notice the necklace, that it would whisper to him, threats or endearments, hatred or love. But it was silent then, and it remained so. It felt like nothing more than a vaguely familiar warmth at his throat, disconcerting in its own way, but not terrifying.
When Tyelpe left Aule’s halls, he ventured north. He passed by Formenos. He could not return to his family, instead taking Annatar’s necklace and making his own way.
He traveled until the forests grew thick and dim, and the towns vanished. When he stood alone in the isolated wilds, among the birds and the old growth trees with their giant roots, nourished by the endless rain, he built himself a house. He acquired goats, and a few chickens, and started a small garden.
Decades later, a predator began to kill his goats.
*