A Drowned Flame

Part 3

The first sight of the sea brought back memories he'd sworn to forget: waves tossing broken bodies, water shining scarlet under pale lamplight, sand made dark with blood as he joined the slaughter on the shores of Alqualondë. Fighting and screaming and dying for ships that were then burnt on the orders of a self-obsessed lunatic (he'd call his father that now, there was no denying the truth of it any longer), and the horror that swept the Havens centuries later, as Maedhros and Maglor came to claim a Silmaril, prepared to murder anyone who stood in their way.

Finding young Elrond and Elros shaking with terror in the empty hall, unable to understand where their mother had gone, why she'd abandoned them to the monsters. For what else is there to think of those who'd invaded your home and murdered everyone you'd ever known? Call us what we are, Maglor had thought. Monsters worse than orcs.

In his younger days in Valinor he had been drawn to the earth, always collecting odd stones and pebbles; then to the sea, and the smooth pebbles turned to shells dusted with sand and washed clean by the incoming tide. It seemed only natural that he ended up here, Maglor mused as he gazed out at the ocean. A fitting place both for the carefree elf he had once been, and the Kinslayer he had since become.

Foam-tipped waves curled and broke upon the shore with barely a whisper, and the wind whistled across the exposed landscape. Dark cliffs to his left defined the coast and gave the beach a foreboding air. This land at the edge of the mortal world felt bleak and lifeless; an expanse of water the colour of dull iron lay cold under the sky, and the coarse sand was like needles underfoot. Strangely, Maglor realised that he preferred it to the bright water and clear skies of the Blessed Realm.

Inky grey clouds rolled in over the sea from the west, and in his troubled mind Maglor couldn't help but see it as a warning from the Valar, though he couldn't guess what they were trying to say. He glanced down at the Silmaril in his hand, a singular point of light in this dim world where it was dusk in the middle of the day. His blood had turned the light faintly crimson. Spots of it dotted the beach, leaving a trail, Maglor felt, which would have stretched all the way back to Tirion, if only he had been able to see it. He could certainly see it now. It was only here, closer to his home than he'd been at any point in the last few hundred years, yet utterly alone, that Maglor truly understood the consequences of the journey the Silmaril had led him on.

This relic of the uttermost west was the only thing he had left, but it merely served as a reminder of bliss in an ancient city, and how it was turned to fear and mistrust in the land where the elves were promised paradise. And paradise it had been, for a while. But Maglor had sensed how the hearts of the Noldor had yearned for change, to cross the ocean and prove themselves against whatever may have awaited them on the other side. They had been a wandering people, eager to leave a guarded realm for the unknown lands beyond.

The theft of the Silmarils and the murder of the king had been a good excuse for Fëanor, already a charismatic and popular leader, to dare to do what many of his followers were only thinking. He awoke a fire within them, a vision of future glories: their deeds of courage and valour would be sung throughout Arda for Ages uncounted, the story of the Eldar who vowed vengeance upon Morgoth himself and fled the Valar's rule to live free in their own land, and roam where they wished.

In his father's mind, it mattered not that their actions brought down the wrath of the Valar upon them and their descendants, or that in abandoning the safety of Valinor they learned the true cost of freedom, and fled only into peril and destruction. To Fëanor, and to Maglor and his brothers, the Silmarils were more important than anything in Arda, or outside of it, and at that time Maglor would have called for the downfall of the Valar themselves if it meant the Silmarils were returned.