The Fall of Aglon
TRSB 2025 Collab for Art 10 with @aprilertuile || full size montage here ❤️🔥 || for @tolkienrsb
Title: The Fall of Aglon | Rating: General | Warnings: Psychological Horror | Relationships: Celegorm & Huan | Characters: Celegorm, Curufin, Oromë, Huan | Word count: 6993
There is bitter irony in how the first wave of destruction had struck him while he was sleeping. He, the great huntsman of Oromë, chaser of the fastest game, friend to Huan the Hound, Lord of Himlad, Prince Disposessed was chased from his lair like a fox that stole too many hens from the master of the house; and he had clambered out of his bed, his thoughts still wandering in Irmo's fair lands, his hands gripping his lance more out of instinct than readiness.
That is what should have saved him indeed: instinct. All dwellers of the Wild have it, a strange undercurrent of sixth sense that overrides the command of the other five. It gets capricious sometimes, and hard to interpret; but it never lies, and it never sleeps, and it should have warned him of this.
Or perhaps it did, he tells himself, and I have ignored it.
On the last day of the Siege of Angband, there was a moment when he stepped outside to think and observe. It was not long after sundown; the wide lanscape of Himlad sleeping under a blanket of glistening snow and merciless ice; the blues of the dusk deepening, stretching across the horizon like a veil. Tyelkormo had turned to the North then, and his eyes wandered further than his people dared to look.
Far across the land, the Iron Mountains rose like silent sentinels, sharp and impenetrable, fencing the Enemy's lands from the northern marches of Dorthonion—that was probably the last time he had ever seen Dorthonion—scrying the mountain ranges for light, movement or any change at all; but he found none. There was nothing out there but him and the winter dusk, stretched into a motionless moment, like his lands were holding their breath.
Tyelkormo tries to recall if he felt any kind of epiphany: any nudge of a hunter's sense of danger, any sudden wish to retreat into the fortress he had built with Curufinwë over the Pass; but nay. That winter night, weeks ago now, had been just like any other, with layers of frost sticking to the balustrade as he stood on the high wall to face the stars, and took a last, deep breath of the free air of his lands. And then he turned away, closed the shutters, and slept. Just slept.
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With great cost to the hosts of Morgoth, the Pass of Aglon is forced and the lands of Himlad sacked and burned. Celegorm and Curufin are forced to retreat—but to his horror, Celegorm realizes that Huan is missing. He refuses to abandon his friend, but to find his trail seems nearly impossible; and it is said that a dark cloud of fear falls upon those who defy the power of Morgoth...
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I've been planning to write a Celegorm & Huan friendship piece for a long time, and this art was a perfect enabler 🩵 this was also my first time writing from Celegorm's pov, which I enjoyed immensely. 🥰 (also, I might have taken the "everything burns" part of my artist's quote a tad too literally. :D)