Tag: Celegorm

Questions for a Bad Dog

–Drabble, hot off the press and written in great haste. Warnings for *:･ﾟ✧~mild gore~*:･ﾟ✧  Shoutout to @thearrogantemu for lighting a goddamn fire under me with their meta post jfc

I am the White Hound of Oromë

I am a Maia. My Master’s people do not take the shape of Men. We do not quite fit.

A Maia can choose to do many things; whatever skills or powers we put our Will into, we grow strong in that thing. Many can be more than one shape. I will always be this one; my mind and purpose are Hound-shaped. This fits me best.

I do not have as many skills as other Maiar. I do not craft, or write, or make laws; my songs are all hound-songs, my dances are running, wagging, leaping. It is my fate to speak in the language of Men

Three

Times

Only.

I do not mind. These things are not things I need. I gave them up in order to put all my Will towards fulfilling my purpose:

I kill wolves.

Not deer-hunters, not first-hounds, before-hounds, not foxes or wild dogs (though I could kill these too, if I wanted). Wolves that are the enemy of my Master and the Children of His Master. I run them down, I crush their throats. I tear out their bellies, bleed their loins.

There is no wolf I cannot kill, and there is one wolf that will kill me. I do not know yet, which wolf it will be. I will keep hunting until I meet it.

Not every Maia has a fate. I am proud to have mine. I am happy to be the White Hound, my Master’s hound, the servant of my Master’s servant.

I was given to him as a gift: my Master’s favorite hunter, MY hunter. Now I run where he rides, and we chase game together. He gives praise to Oromë when he eats the hearts of his kills, and shares what is left with me.

If I speak to him in my own tongue, he understands, just as he understands the tongue of birds and deer and all four-footed things. But it is a simple language, no good for important words or long talks. It is just as well, for I do not need to ask him who is right, who is wrong, where we are going, or for what cause he fights. I know who to protect. I know who is the enemy. I know who lets me lick butter from their fingers under the table, who has room on the end of their bed for me every night, who howls with me when we course through waves of yellow grass.

What more does a good hound need to know?

__________

“How did you know when to leave your Master? How did you decide?”

The black wolf blinks, the third eye on its forehead winking shut with vertical lids. For a moment, I do not know if he understands; if we have lost the ability to speak as Maiar, or as dogs.

“That is what you wish to learn, before you die?” he asks, poison spilling from his maw. Every hair on my back knows he is the enemy, that he is what all dogs everywhere were born to guard against in the night. But this is a question I can only ask someone like him– even if I am sick to trembling with the thought that even asking it brings me closer to what he is. These are feral questions, not fit for a good hound, a loyal hound. 

“I do not know yet if you are the wolf that will kill me,” I say, “and you are the only one I know to ask, who has left their home forever.”

He bristles at the neck, his paws flexing and restless on the blood-washed stone. What I say rankles him, and he is as eager as I am to feel fur and flesh between his teeth; but more than anything, he likes to talk, especially about himself.

“There came a time when I knew I could no longer obey my Master’s wishes and still remain true to myself. The trust that had been the walls and floor of my world crumbled, and could not hold me. Life as it had always been became impossible. It was almost no choice at all.”

The wolf is a liar, but his words find instant recognition in my heart, and my ears flatten in sorrow.

“Did you try to right what was wrong between you and your Master?”

“I did.”

“And did your Master listen?”

“It makes no difference that he knew what I wished for,” the wolf’s snout wrinkles, “he had no use for me as I am, only as I had been to him, when life was as simple as obeying one’s purpose.”

It hurts— it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, but I know it is true. The change has already happened, the decision made for me. My hunter long ago became something more, or something less, than his wild howl, his clear-eyed coursing. I cannot be the hound of one who hunts his own kind, baying only for power, his stalking grounds the stone halls of palaces, his prey the minds and hearts of men. There is another I must follow, whose voice is sweet and whose purpose is as fierce as my own. I love her— no less and no more than I will always love my hunter, whose quick heels I can no longer bring myself to follow.

“Thank you for your answer, wolf. I see my path more clearly now.”

“Much good may it do you, when I send your pitiful ghost running tuck-tailed back to Aman.”

The wolf’s back stands as high and as wide as an aurochs, black bristles shining like sharpened quills in the moonlight, his glowing teeth drawn like daggers.

Sauron, the lord of werewolves, can appear as many shapes; he is a much stronger Maia than I will ever be. But today he has chosen to be a wolf— and I am Huan.

There is no wolf I cannot kill.

‘Conversations with the crows’ for your meme? (I was GOING to request ‘it had no eyes’ but then I remembered Elurin’s already lost his.) 

thelioninmybed:

“Here,” said the crow. “Here, here!”

The stag’s head snapped up, long strands of autumn grass still hanging from it’s mouth, but much too late. Celegorm had already loosed his shot and the arrow took it in the ribs, just behind the foreleg. It fell kicking, sharp hooves scuffing at the drifts of damp, dead leaves, but the shot had been a good one and it had stilled by the time Celegorm and Huan reached it. 

He field dressed it there in the clearing, the bright stink of fresh blood and offal mingling with the flat scent of wet earth and vegetation. 

The bird watched him from the canopy, bright eyes following every flash of his hunting knife. “For me,” it said, flapping down to alight upon the heap of discarded viscera. “For me, for me, for me.”

“For you,” Celegorm agreed, hefting the carcass. 

“Here,” said the crow. “Here, here!”

To an archer as skilled as Celegorm, orcs died as easily as deer. So do elves, added a treacherous, tickling voice at the back of his mind, but he paid it little heed. He wasn’t Maglor to write ballads or Maedhros to flagellate himself. He was a hunter and he’d known as long as he could hold a blade that all things died much the same. 

“For me,” said the crow, when the battle was done and all was gone to stillness. “For me, for me.” 

Celegorm let it have its due. 

“Here,” said the crow. “Here! For me! For me! For me!” It alighted upon the corpse’s foot only to flap away again when it groaned and twitched. 

“Not for you,” Celegorm snapped as he drew close enough to recognise the crest upon the armour, and then the figure’s waxen features. Caranthir’s ruddy face was corpse-pale, his eyes blown black from side to side with shock and pain, but he still lived. Enough to fumble weakly for his own weapon as Celegorm knelt over him and drew his knife to cut away his breastplate. “Be still,” he said. 

“The battle?” Caranthir rasped. 

“Lost.”

“Our brothers?”

“All far better off than you. Be still, I said,” he added as Caranthir tried to rise. 

“For me,” the crow repeated sullenly.

“There’s a whole mountain of corpses for you to pick over,” Celegorm snarled over his shoulder. “Get gone before I use you for fletchings.”

“Here,” the crow croaked, somewhere high above.

Celegorm could not bring it into focus, saw only a blur of flat grey sky and clawed black branches. The snow had leeched the pain out of his wounds and would leech all else away soon enough. 

“Here,” said the crow, again. “For me?”

“Why not,” Celegorm rasped. It was hard to speak, harder still to laugh but he did both anyway. “For you.”

gonedolin:

imindhowwelayinjune:

I’ve been thinking a lot about Celegorm lately. Not Celegorm the handsome, sometimes charming, often crude rogue who teases his brothers and alarms the genteel, but Celegorm in Beleriand, Celegorm the terrifying.

Celegorm the Fair, dripping in blood. Celegorm all the more frightening because he can seem so jovial, and laugh so brightly. He who you do not believe could be subtle, as he stalks through the halls with a pack of jubilant dogs at his side, he who drinks hard and laughs loud and does not temper his voice – but who walks with absolutely silent tread, who comes up on you unawares, whom you do not sense until his breath is on the back of your neck.

They all have stories of Celegorm the Hunter, Celegorm the Wild, Celegorm the Mad. 

Once, on a hunt, his bow broke, and his knife was lost, and so he tore the hart’s throat out with his bare hands.

That’s nothing; I saw him do it with his teeth.

Ai, wait until you’ve seen him do the same in battle…

Celegorm who needs nought but hands and teeth and fear to hunt, whether his prey is a rabbit, or a deer, or an orc, or a man.

Or an elf.

They whisper of the rites he performs in the woods, when he returns with dried blood crusted under his nails and his eyes bright and burning. He still burns the offerings of the old world, and whispers fey prayers in an ancient tongue, and they shiver, and say he is invoking his old friend, the Huntsman.

But he is of the Seven Dispossessed, the Irreverent, they who recognize no gods, no over-lords, no Valar…

It is not homage. It is respect. 

It is habit.

It is not worship.

(It is worship, a little.)

Do you think the Huntsman still hears him?

Well, has he ever missed a kill?

He hasn’t.

Celegorm the Fey, who whispers dark things in the ears of picketed horses and laughs to see them pull up their lines and flee.

He likes his fun, says his brother, the crafty one, the shade of the Spirit of Fire, his eyes like flint and his tone dismissive. Pay it no heed. (It is not a suggestion, but a command.)

Celegorm the Damned, who fears nothing in the dark forest, for there is nothing more terrifying than he. Celegorm the Blood-Soaked, Celegorm the Merciless, Celegorm who paints himself with blood for battle, who tattoos thorns beneath his skin, who dresses his pale hair with pretty beads, made of bone; brilliant gems, grinning death-heads.

Celegorm the Fair, aye, fair indeed. Fairest of the monsters. 

oathsayer

All of this. 

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