Chapter Text
Galadriel thrust all her weight backward, wrenching the pick of her mattock from the outer wall of Barad-dûr and kicked against the air. The momentum drew her upward. Then she swung mightily to wedge another hold on the wall, a whole body’s-length higher.
Disa had gifted after the fall of Eregion, during the time when the dwarf princess and her family briefly moved in with Elrond in the nascent Imladris. The pick was surprisingly light, given its strength and durability, and the rough chunk of obsidian at the base of the handle. Rising from the chunk were frenetic, whisping tendrils inlaid deep into the ash-wood, made from the same stone polished so clearly that it all but turned into an inky black oil. Elegant swirls smelted from white-gold sat over the obsidian and ash, not unlike a cage. No doubt, Disa thought the tool reflected Galadriel’s strengthened resolve to remain in the light after truly facing temptation and rejecting darkness for good.
She happily allowed Disa to linger under this assumption, and even convinced herself of it for a few decades.
Galadriel swung her mattock a second time, reaching a ledge formed by the enormous circular course belt she had just scaled. She allowed herself a minute to collect her strength, pacing slowly across the ledge and drawing in deep, even breaths.
It panged her heartstrings momentarily (though they were taught with more tension than she could bear already due to anticipation) that none of Arda’s free peoples would ever notice His love for patterns. Let alone appreciate it.
She was now about three-quarters of the way up Barad-dûr, and she noticed the
course belts jutted out from the tower proper in a precise pattern: Three belts, spaced evenly above and below each other, followed by a length of tower uninterrupted by a protrusion before the pattern repeated. Massive brackets reinforced the belts from underneath, carved into delightfully striking filigrees of thorny rose vines. The lowest belt in the pattern always had three brackets; the middle always had seven; the top always had nine. The blank section of circular wall must have represented “one.”
It was exactly this part of His love for patterns and special pet numbers she found endearing. She doubted He even realized the inexcusable cruelty He inflicted was often a subconscious response to when a pattern he designed was disturbed. Perhaps if, much earlier in His life, He had been given the freedom, support, and room in some safe pocket of existence to lord dominion over and order things just the way He liked, then His need for control never would have become so excessive. Never would have roiled and festered into the reactionary impulse to dominate more and more of the world around Him.
Galadriel turned and pressed her hand against the wall. The pumice was scorching, having absorbed the ambient heat of Mount Doom. However, it was more like palming feverish skin—the heat seeping through from the boiling blood underneath.
Or like caressing a sunburnt forehead to check for heat stroke after a day on a shadeless, sea-stranded raft…
Her pale, slender fingers, now glowing a salmon-pink from the chaffing of the mattock, with oval nails covered in a natural mother-of-pearl sheen, championed the beauty of Ilúvatar’s creation. But why did that have to mean the tower those fingers held could not be beautiful? Why did beauty and goodness have to be mutually exclusive, favoring one narrow aesthetic? What, then, did an artist who poured so much passion and attention-to-detail over centuries into this magnificent matte-black feat of architecture get to name his work? Was He fully to blame for claiming “awesome” and “terrifying?”
Galadriel rested her forehead on the wall above her hand.
“I see your beauty,” she whispered.
In preparation to resume her climb, she gulped down deep draughts of air. Nenya glowed opalescent white under her chin, sending a renewed puff of thick, cool mist down her throat. A second stream spilled over her shoulder, then over the belt-course-ledge toward Elrond below. There wasn’t much natural water in the volcanic landscape from which Nenya could pull, but the magical mist was enough to keep the two elves from utter dehydration.
As if in response, a cool breeze blew from below the ledge and enveloped her, carrying with it flecks of Vilya’s trademark glittering blue light. Soot and ash bounced off the bubble of magical wind, keeping her lungs clear.
Galadriel stepped forward so the tips of her silver doe-hide boots were flush with the ledge, then bent over slightly to check on Elrond.
He was still a few dozen yards below, but his face was turned upward, jaw set with determination. While she had jumped and flailed with no regard to the physical exertion and pain it caused her, he maintained a steady, serious pace.
And she would be forever grateful to him for it.
So different, this was, from glancing down at Thondir’s sickened glares as he begrudgingly dragged behind her on the ice cliff in Forodwaith.
In this case, Elrond had proposed the mission in the first place. He had arranged for both of their respective duties in Imladris and Lothlorien to be taken care of in their absence, sparing Galadriel the tedium. He even swallowed his pride and engaged in subterfuge, declaring the two of them were off to hunt orcs in Gladden Fields to prevent them from finding the One Ring.
Because only a friend like Elrond could understand the lust inside of her that, if not slaked soon, could twist into something more dangerous than Morgoth.
Elrond chipped up the wall in measured increments. Durin had crafted Elrond’s mattock in the same vein as Disa had Galadriel’s. His hazel-wood handle was encrusted with emerald, topaz, citrine, and beryl gems laid out to resemble a line of early-autumn leaves flying through a breeze. Durin had also included a plush waxed-leather sleeve around the middle to cushion Elrond’s “delicate downy-soft little feather fingers.”
Galadriel smiled despite herself, wondering what Durin would say if he saw Elrond now—His usually immaculate caramel curls riding a hasty knot atop his head, matted strands falling around his face like a badly-thatched roof.
With the cause of her rapid heartbeat switching from exertion to anxiety, Galadriel whirled around and took a third swinging leap.
Finrod had only given her “permission” to touch the darkness twice. And she had, both times in guilty delight. She had fled Valinor’s light to grasped the dark waters of the sundering seas and bathe in the freedom from Thondir’s and Gil-Galad’s condescension and insults to her intuition. She had pressed her chin into His delectably rough fingers as He offered to make her a queen, for a long moment toying with accepting it for no other reason than keeping her being closely bound to His.
But perhaps her life was meant to play out in threes. It was the third year of the Third Age, after all. Three maintained balance, as had proved true for the Elven Rings. She had known Him in three fair forms…
She reached a balustrade and vaulted herself over it, landing on the very highest balcony of Barad-dûr. Her heartstrings panged once more at the state of the lookout chamber. What had once been a marvel of carved stone and blood-red stained glass was now two jagged arches, filled with barren, twisted iron armature, on either side of the tower. Between them was a circular floor littered with rubble and a wounded, jagged gash of emptiness.
She ordered the catapult strike that had torn through here during the siege.
She must’ve been in shock for longer than she realized, because Elrond was suddenly at her side.
“What if it won’t work?” spilled of Galadriel in desperate whimper.
“It will work,” Elrond assured firmly, wrapping her in a soft embrace.
Her cheek pressed against his velvet tunic, the steady rising and falling of his chest as he caught his breath doing some to regulate her nerves.
“We’re assuming a lot about the power of the rings and His nature—“
“Both topics of which we understand more than any creature in all of Eä.”
“What if He isn’t here?”
“He is.”
At that, Galadriel whipped out of her friend’s safe embrace and jogged toward the wreckage.
Golden hour had turned to sunset, casting a glow like cherries, fire, and blood into the tower through the old stained-glass armature. Where moments ago was blank nothingness, something twisted and writhing was thrown into sharp relief. The red glow glinted against the outlines of a faint, weak spirit smoke—the consistency like silt drifting through a pond.
The deepest, truest depths of her soul lurched and roared. Since knowing Him, she could recognize Him in any form He took.
“SAURON!” Galadriel sobbed, sprinting and leaping through the rubble.
She plunged her Nenya-wielding hand deep into the glimmering smoke.