This was a fic I posted on the Silmarillion Writer’s Guild in 2016. It was a long time in the writing, and it is one of my favorites. I am posting it again after extensive editing and reworking, so if you liked it before, I encourage you to reread it now in its polished state. And if it’s new to you, enjoy! 🙂
There’s science! Smut! Goldsmithing! Soldering techniques, and more!
And now in this anniversary edition: Beleriand angst! Twice the daddy issues! Five times the readability! And extra helpings of canon-induced suffering!
Celebrimbor, lord of Eregion, ignores the advice of his peers and welcomes a stranger into his city who promises to teach him techniques in smithing that will grant power over time and entropy. He learns many things from his new teacher that he was not prepared for.
The rest is history: Beware of Maiar bearing gifts.
This boss fight was, if nothing else, extremely pretty. Doomed? Absolutely; but pretty! Painting with Sauron’s blood all over the place like we’re playing Okami…. Good times!
Wow though god damn is this game full of face grabbing and throat holds and forcing people to their knees. >__>; now i gotta kinkshame a high elf.
they go, we go, I want you to know
what I did, I did
—
maybe something will break.
maybe loosely curled fingers will drop the hammer, the chisel, the knives the lies the chains.
(maybe he can go back and never open the gates–but he knows, he knows he would every time)
there’s still good in you, he tells himself it’s in the hesitation, the way fingers linger on the next knife, reluctant. there’s still good in you, and he counts the seconds in rattled, ragged breaths thinking just one more moment and maybe they can still put this behind them somehow.
there’s still good in you, he thinks wildly, desperately, pleading as those too-familiar fingers curl around the hilt of the knife.
Firstly, I would like to know who thou art to be demanding answers of me. Which power does my lady serve and who might her nephew be? I would remember a half-maia under my knife if I’d had one.
“He wasn’t half-maia. His cousin, my daughter was. I believe she went by the name I gave her then, Mormiriel. Her cousin was Tyelpe, my nephew.”
“Which power? My dear, I’ll keep that to myself, but as one of the boy’s last living relatives I think I have a right to as such questions, Sauron.”
“Forgive me for questioning why a mourning relative should wish to know such things. Did I enjoy torturing my apprentice, my friend of nearly 200 years? No. But it was necessary, and tactically expedient.
Your nephew fell under the wheels of machinations greater than himself, like so many poor fools before him. That is all I have to say on the matter.”
I have made it a habit not to ask futile questions of the past.
How long could I have maintained my disguise? Not indefinitely– and so whatever else I may have intended in this hypothetical future, Celebrimbor would have learned my true nature eventually.
Perhaps I would have revealed it myself. The trust between us might have grown and flourished, until my foolish heart believed it possible he might accept me as I am, all past crimes forgotten.
…Can you imagine that story having a happy ending? I cannot. Except in dreams.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Elves may have precious little need of sleep, but I have no need of it. When we found ourselves working late, engrossed as we were in our plans, he would often keep pace with me until sunrise… then I’d turn around and find him sleeping with filigree knife still in hand, face pressed into the table and his furnace cold.
Hah… dear, foolish boy. I ofttimes had to walk him back to his chambers as if he were a drunken student. He had tremendous stamina for his craft– but like any genius he often forgot his own health in the pursuit of it.
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 