Island of Sorrow RPG

[Anguirel]

At the edge of the lake, lying, calm now, in the muted obsidian of its waters, the dark ashen raft struck the grey shingle, and Malris and Tasa climbed onto land once more.

"It looks smaller, now that we have crossed it," Malris observed. He was not mistaken. As if the creature that had dwelt within it had been a manifestation of the lake itself, it seemed to have crawled back in on itself, like that vile monstrosity's wounded limbs. When the Elves regarded its surface, they saw not the obscurity of resisting filth, but the serene blackness of deep mystery.

"The lake is cleansed," Tasa seconded. "Now...I still recall that voice...Malris, you will struggle to believe me...but I think I know in what direction we should continue."

"You...you thought the voice was from within...Cirlach, Tasa?" Malris' voice had something of regret in it still. The sword's valiant destruction had saved their physical bodies from destruction and their souls from searing torture. Nevertheless, the blade had been a very old friend; and all that had been left of another very old friend.

"Yes, Malris, but not Cirlach alone. There was a voice...on this side of the lake, adding to the sword's excitement. I...it was difficult to tell them apart, but I think the other voice might have sounded first...might have...stirred your sword, somehow. I...an image of...chains. There are chains up ahead, Malris. Linked in...some manner...to your lost sword. And intending us no goodwill."

"I too felt strange things on that lake, struggling with that Thing...though where you heard, I...saw," Malris admitted. "Curufin. Memories of him. He told me what to do, told me to cast away the sword. And I now suspect his shade in Mandos tries to repair his troublesome handiwork. Cirlach was Curufin's creation. Perhaps these...chains...are, also."

"To avoid them, and get back to the land, we need to travel to the right," Tasa half-whispered. "But..."

"Indeed. But. But chains are made to be broken. We must face our apprehension," Malris, set in determination, concluded, "and walk down the left-hand passage."

And so they did, turning corners as Tasa guided Malris in the direction whence she had heard the grinding of the chains. Soon, though they did not know it, they walked on the same passages Endamir, Lindir, Lomwe, and fallen Oremir had trod. They heard, with the same surprise, the tapping of the craftsman's hammer...

***

"Valar, Valar, did you ever speak to me?" the Smith pleaded hoarsely. "Nay, ye did not. I was mistaken. Mercy is beyond you when it comes to exiles. You are as petty as Feanor thought you, on your lovely Western thrones! What did you ever care for us? Who then spoke to me? When will the lord return?"

A knock at the locked door into the armoury, echoing about the forge, interrupted him. The spirit left his doomed vigil over Oremir, travelling in a whipcrack of shrieking air to the threshold.

"He comes! He comes! Maedhros comes! All ills are ended! Make ready the armour!"

Lindir had not in truth continued the welding of the plate, but he hastily arranged it so that it would deceive the Smith momentarily. The prepared plate-armour was of truesilver, shining like Tilion's craft, seeming to exude a strange light. The design of Feanor's star was engraved upon the breastplate. At the Master-Smith's gesture Lindir half rose it up, a glorious but terrible assemblage of arms, apparently ready for dire war. As for the Smith, now bodily present again, he turned a key in the lock and opened the door.

The fetters pulsed excitement, and a great quantity of them fraved the doorway, sheets of beatifying light spreading out from their treacherously beauteous forms. And two Elves, one male, one female, entered the room. They were dressed in argent, intangible cloaks of-if such a thing can exist-light shadow. In that hour it seemed to all of the company, gripped by majestic madness, that they were of impossibly great height; that their long hair shone with power, the man's crimson with the royalty of dying flame, the woman's with the mixed enchantment of liquid gold and silver.

"Maedhros," the Smith said in wonderment, stepping back, "in the company of the Lady Artanis, called by the Sindar Galadriel!"

"Nay," replied a more prosaic, and deeply familiar, voice, "Maedhros is dead, Smith. I am Malris of Forlindon."

"And I Tasareni of Lothlorien," the woman added. Now the pair stepped beyond the doorway, and all of that last, repentant, faerie-glamour of Curufin, which he had bestowed through the fetters in whose creation he had been invoked, fell away. The Elves were scarcely even things of beauty; their hair tangled, their clothes grey with dust and blotched with filth.

At this moment too, Endamir recovered himself, and looked about in bemusement, a dread filling his heart as he missed his brother.

"Where is Maedhros?" the Smith queried, with uncertain rage and obvious anxiety.

"Maedhros is held in Mandos, old Elf," Malris answered, "as the song tells. I sought him long and found his corporeal bones at the bottom of a cooled fissure."

"You lie," the Master-Smith shouted, "you deceive, you lie! Chains, against him!" But all the fetters lay now, sedate, upon the ground.

"My hopes are broken," the ancient craftsman moaned, "and all that I encompassed has curdled to...blackest evil..."

[piosenniel]

The fog that obscured his thinking had begun to clear away. Through the haze that still remained Endamir sent out a questing thought. There was no answer . . . no trace, even, of a presence.

Ghosts of words rumbled at the back of his memory. His brow furrowed as he tried to recall them . . .

Take care of Endamir especially, Lindir my boy. Keep the wine flowing, pass it round, keep Endamir in a...sound, sedate mood. I need to attend to his brother. He has been hurt slightly. Only a little. He will get better...

Hurt? Hurt . . . Then he would be here, somewhere. Endamir’s legs felt weak; his knees nearly buckled as he struggled forward from the workroom. The need to find his brother propelled him on; just as the fear of what he would find made his muscles turn to jelly.

It was in one of the rooms that led off from the workroom that Endamir found Orëmir’s body. His brother’s face was in repose, peaceful. Endamir recalled that look, one which would grace Orëmir’s features at a task done to his satisfaction.

Bits and pieces of what had happened surfaced in Endamir’s thoughts. He saw his brother, blade in hand, fighting . . . but who opposed him he could not say. Thin silvered fetters had crept about his brother’s legs. He saw them inch up Orëmir’s legs, tightening about them, hampering his movements.

A painful look passed over his brother’s face as he parried his opponent’s blows. There was a moment of hesitation, and then one of acceptance as a resolution was decided on. A hand plunged forward, the blade it gripped pushing deep and then deeper into his brother’s chest. There on the killing blade all but faded from the crosspiece were faint traceries of words in a fine and fading script . . .

* Ever may you defend one another *

Their mother's words, put there when she’d designed the twin swords, etching them on her sons’ hearts as much as upon the metal.

Endamir moaned low, his heart breaking at the knowledge of what his hands had done. He dropped down to his knees, leaning over to cradle his brother’s head and shoulders in his arms. Tears crowded at the corners of his eyes. And such great sorrow there was that o’er came him that there was naught that could comfort him.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

With the destruction of the sword, Tasa had fallen into a state of deepest calm. Her words came slowly still but not now because of of the effort that they took. Rather was she lost in thoughts and very little could shake her from them.

Why had the voice of the sword felt so fatally cruel? The chains that called to her... they were silent now that she stood before them. At the lake and before, she had felt within her mind the touch of a will cold and uncaring, angry and destructive. Malris had identified the sword and chains as those of Curufin, yet why would they attack her while leaving him alone? Why had the sword given Malris the ability to save them even while seeming to drive its point deep within her heart with a frigid disinterest?

Was it a weakness of her mind, brought on by her battle with Giledhel, that left Tasa so open to the baser whims of any others? Could she no longer strain any one thought from another? Could she no longer protect herself from assault?

She stood now beside Malris, before the others, and she was suddenly conscious of those rips in her garb where scraped flesh shone through in the deceptive light, seeing spots of blood, noting one black feather that had escaped Malris's prior notice.

She felt a growing horror from Endamir, a stubborn defiance from Lindir... from Lómwë a sense of deception directed toward someone not her.

Could they read her as easily? Why now, and never before, was her fëa so open to such things... she pondered as she stood tall. She never saw nor heard the Smith and it was only later that she learned of him. Rather did she stand now alone amongst companions, unable to concentrate upon one thing only; lost, trying to sift through the vast amounts of information pelting her senses.

[Anguirel]

The Smith was at once no more to be seen, and Malris saw Lomwe standing awkwardly in frond of him, as if held by force. In a moment he had taken in the glint of the silver rings that seemed to bind the Elf's legs fast.

"What..." Malris began, unsteadily. The impressive glamour upon he and Tasareni as they entered the forge had not entirely left him, and his movements were still slow, solemn, and dreamlike, his mind struggling to keep up with the pace of events around it. It was another sight that dragged him into reality-the look of stark shock and incomprehension in Endamir's eyes, reliable Endamir, Endamir who had risked even his brother's ire to follow Malris.

And his brother himself. "Where...where is Oremir?" Malris uttered, regaining the more of the faculty of realisation. "Smith! I care not for any old bond; ye do not imprison and abduct my friends at will, not with any cause at heart..."

The impulsive former elven-captain felt for his blade, but found nothing, remembering past events with a disturbing sting. Keeping his head, he sidestepped to a rack and took a spear from the wall.

"Smith! In the name of your late lord, release Lomwe and show me where Oremir is to be found..."

Endamir had rushed out of the main armoury, like a lioness searching for a missing cub, and Malris found himself gripped in his friend's anxiety. Only there was something yet worse to be uncovered. Looking aside, he beheld Lindir, apparently at liberty, but with a countenance of leaden sorrow.

"Lindir, Lindir, my friend," Malris gasped out, "in the name of all pity, what has happened here?"

Before Lindir could reply, Malris's spear-haft snapped as if struck by a great forge-hammer, and he threw away the stave of matchwood, readying his arms to resist without weaponry, if need be. But the Smith-if the blow had indeed been his-did not seek further confrontation. The anvil was knocked to the ground, overturning an array of bright, star-embossed shields.

The falsely prepared armour in Lindir's hands itself shattered. The sound of the destruction seemed gradually to alternate with the frenzied grief-howls of an old, old being, a being that has seen and done too much. Lomwe was forced to step from his carefully positioned fetter to avoid a collapsing halberd's path. The armoury was being utterly ruined by its aged, loyal keeper. Tasareni watched in a manner terrifyingly akin both to the serene and the desperate, to the side of the spectral vandalism's way.

"It was I who slew him, I and whoever I saw in the dream vision," the Master-Smith's voice resonated, ricocheting off the piles of shattered iron and wood. "I slew your friend by his brother's hand! O, Mandos..."

A silence fell. Malris seemed dumb, even blind, in that moment, but not deaf, nor innured to pain; his slender frame shook, slightly, but thoroughly. The Smith seemed bent on considering his folly, and even the wanton hammer-strikes now ceased.

"It is true?" Malris asked Lindir quietly, almost entirely as a statement, not a question.

[Firefoot]

It all had happened so quickly. Lindir’s assurance that he had not, in fact, turned to the side of the smith, Malris and Tasa’s arrival, the smith’s rampage… Lómwë barely had time to collect his thoughts and react. He was not entirely sure he wanted to react. He felt numb, numb and shamed. Yes, there was hope, there was always hope, but he had despaired. He had assumed that he was the only one who still cared and remembered and that they would never find Malris and Tasa… or that they would find them, as it turned out. He had assumed there was no good left on the island and despaired.

He had given into many things in his life before: passion, grief, pain, apathy, even fear, but never despair. Always before, he had had hope, whether of something specific or vague, it mattered not. Always before, there had been hope shining at the end of the journey like a star however dim. Not then. At that moment, he had given into despair, and he reproached himself bitterly for it. To despair was the part of one weaker than he had ever thought himself. So noble you are, holding onto what was right and good, yet lacking faith in those very things!

Even in light of their current victory over the smith, such as it was, Lómwë only felt defeated.

[Child of the 7th Age]

"'Aye, Malris. Sadly true." Lindir's voice was laced with regret as he turned a cold face towards the Smith who sat huddled and quaking by the side of the room. "For the first time, in his frenzied madness, the Smith has spoken words of truth. The hand that slew Oremir was that of his brother, but the mind and will had surely been removed. He trapped us within this prison, demanding we work to accomplish his ghastly purpose in crafting mail for his master Maedhros, who was certain to return."

Lindir pointed an accusing finger at the flagon of wine that still sat upon the table. "Nor did he stop at this trickery. When his words did not persuade us, he turned to poison. Endamir drank the wine in friendship, too trusting to comprehend the treachery of one like this." Glaring at the Smith, the Elf continued, "Those who still would not agree were bound in chains or, like myself, had to pretend to comply while secretly plotting."

Lindir's voice waivered as he spoke, "My lord Malris, your return has rescued us, but for Oremir and even for Endamir it may be too late. Oremir angered the Smith, since he refused to bend his knee to his monstrous plan. Rather than raise an honest sword against his opponent, the Smith treacherously manipulated his brother's mind. Oremir slew his brother, not even understanding what he was doing."

"But for every minute we waste talking, Endamir slips further from us. Let us do something. I have had enough twisted words from the Smith to last a lifetime. Endamir rushed out of the armoury through this doorway. Perhaps we can still find him and prevent one tragedy from becoming two."

With that, Lindir shoved open the door and began racing down the hall, not even bothering to glance behind to see if anyone was following.

[Anguirel]

Malris bowed his head as Lindir quickly explained the day's terrible culmination, praying that the grace of Valar would speedily come upon Oremir-and Endamir still more.

"Let it be so. I am with you," he agreed, and ran after Lindir, pausing only, with his practical soldier's mind, to retrieve a long knife, its handle set with opals, from the debris of the armoury. Following the other's lead, he passed through the forgery and its warm hearth-which the Elves now knew to be such a false refuge-and hurried on into the room where Endamir had fled, bewildered despair in his eyes...

Such a cold wind. Well, it was the Isle of Chill. The Hill of Ice. But the forgery had been so benevolent in its temperature before...and as the wind passed the fire, apparently sucked of its power, retreated to its embers. Himring was cold. But the company now, to their great disadvantage, knew that that coldness could signal the passing of a spirit...

And the Smith's voice was heard again. "I am coming with you, to remedy what I can, though I know not how. You despise me as a traitor, yet your loathing cannot equal the hatred I feel for myself. I seek peace now, the great surrender. You may find my tomb...it is in the Keep...I ask that you lay my bones to rest then. For now, I shall serve you as far as lies in my...ability..."