Of Estel and Amdir
TRSB 2025 Collab piece for Slide 137 with @arlenianchronicles || check out the wonderful full arts here || for @tolkienrsb
Title: Of Estel and Amdir | Rating: Teen and up | Warnings: Major Character Death | Relationships: Elros & Maedhros | Characters: Maedhros, Maglor, Elros, Elrond | Word count: 8387
When sleep finally claims him, he dreams of the sword and the wind as it laps on the tent like waves in an unforgiving seastorm, crashing against the shores of faraway lands. It is a frightening dream, and it seems very real: the ground cracks around their piteous camp, the earth grumbles and roars. Deep fissures run along the woods and beyond the seas like a cobweb of dark chasms, liquid fire gushing forth from some of them as if Arda itself was weeping from the core. The Sea is furious, too: waves tower above the land like blue mountains of wrath and they crash against hills and trees and rivers and settlements with the power of a thousand battering rams. The whole world is burning, weeping, breaking, drowning; fire and water swallows it at the same time, and the only thing that remains is death.
And then, Elros sees it.
The waves slacken, the clouds roll away and the air is cleared; and above the mists of the dead world of old appears an island in the distance, with a great white city and a sharp-peaked mountain above.
The next moment, or maybe a thousand years later, Elros stands atop that mountain, and looks down. Eagles roam in the narrow chasms below him, the City sparkles like it is said of Elvenhome, and the sea-foam glitters like stars along the shores.
It is his City: he knows it in his bones.
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A fortnight after the Third Kinslaying, Elros starts to realize that his captors are either complete dullards, or they do not truly care if they live or die. Rescued unexpectedly by the leader of their party—who may or may not be a dragon in an Elf's skin—he is swept into a lifelong debate about the nature of hope. But who shall win—and at what cost?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
This one was an absolute pleasure (and challenge) to write 🩷 and also a "back to the roots" kind of feeling to me, because - fun fact - my first ever published fic on Ao3 was a Kidnap Family one, too, but focusing more on Elrond and Maglor instead of Elros and Maedhros, so now we've come full circle:)
>> click here for the fic if you can't see the Ao3 thumbnail for some reason <<
