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"Make him stop."
The Maia's voice interrupted Galadriel's pleasant evening with all the forewarning of a particularly irritating storm. She placed a bookmark on the page, closed her book with a sharper than necessary snap, and raised an eyebrow at the uninvited "guest". The library was empty other than the two of them. It felt all the more isolated for the darkened corner he had found her in, tall walls of shelves stretching on all sides.
"Excuse me?"
"Celebrimbor." Annatar explained, the word elongated to make it extremely clear he thought she was being deliberately slow. Galadriel held back her automatic retort at his intent disrespect as the distinctly harried note to it registered, something odd about his form catching her attention. His hair was not quite as neat as she had gotten used to. There were smudges on the sleeves of his robe, the collars were in disarray, and a hole that looked awfully burnt for an Aulendil ran straight through his right cuff. "He is not listening to me."
Good. Her kinsman needed to learn not to give in to the highly questionable Maia in general. She slipped a finger between the pages of her book again, mind already on the collection of poems about the far East, but did not quite risk opening it yet. Annatar would not complain to her if it were so basic. "He is in charge of you by your own agreement, Aulendil."
"He is going to destroy the Hall."
She did not roll her eyes, though she wanted to. "He is an expert. I trust his judgement."
"With highly pressurized caustic vapor."
Galadriel paused. She did not lower her book again, nor close her eyes in exasperation as she felt her quiet evening slipping out of reach, but did give in to the urge to exhale deeply. That was new. "Excuse me?"
"He is playing with a new method of gem analysis," Annatar said, each word more stiff and irritable than the last. His eyes narrowed at her. She met the glass-like red evenly regardless of the flashes like pit of flame as he continued on.
"I am more aware of Incarnate needs than you both insist. He has not rested in too long and will miscalculate the pressure calculations soon if he does not stop, and then I will have to clean it up while you will have to summon the Herald—" the depths of restrained emotion in that word could have filled books—"for a more detailed healing. Stop. It."
She lowered her book to the table very slowly. The more detailed information did not want to process fully, though it was exactly what her much younger cousin would do. Pressure. If anyone could find a way to create highly pressurized vapors, then fail to control them properly, it was Celebrimbor. She had to assume the inability to stop when wisdom ought to intervene was an inheritable trait at this point.
Galadriel sighed, a swell of longing for Celeborn's steady presence rising in her. This would be so much easier if he were here. Everything in Ost-in-Edhil was, with his ability to casually coax information from Celebrimbor and Annatar alike before it reached these levels. Annatar only ever bent his pride enough to ask her, she who had so vocally spoken against his admittance into the Gwaith-i-Mirdain and Celebrimbor's life, when it was truly near too late for something to be averted, and so she had to handle it immediately. Celebrimbor's determined ignorance of physical limitations could only go on so long.
"If you find yourself so incapable—" the Maia did not grit his teeth, but she could feel the urge in his eyes as she stood, hand lingering on the book for just a second more—"I suppose I must."
Galadriel swept from the room, leaving Annatar to follow (unhappily) in her wake. His eyes bored into the back of her head as they navigated from the library in the higher points of the (technically) main Hall to the far grander Hall of the Gwaith-i-Mirdain. It was already dark. The wind rustled the hollies in a wonderful breeze in the small courtyard between the two and Galadriel sighed again. It would be so nice to sit out here with her book rather than deal with an irritating Maia and a fixated cousin.
Alas, she was responsible.
She opened the side door to the large Hall. The handful of artisans speaking in small clusters were awarded mildly critical nods of acknowledgement as she passed towards the back staircase. It was clear none of them had rested in days either. The most sensible blushed at her scrutiny, hands clenching a pile of papers even tighter. She could hear her exiting the Hall as she descended to the forges, Annatar's exceedingly light footfalls giving away his continued presence. She did not laugh as he muttered a few words to a craftsman on the stairs, voice pitched low in a way that was distinctly sulky. He deserved that for waiting so long to interrupt her.
The first right hand turn led to the general forge space for all. It was where Annatar was technically supposed to work, with its wide sweeping views out the hill over the city and easy access to both water and the track trails for supply drops, but she knew better. He'd stopped going there entirely several years ago. Celebrimbor had admitted as much one night when drunk, then promptly begged her not to tell herself.
They went down the second left instead. It led into a single long hallway. Dark wooden doors lined the first stretch, both cut deeper into the hill for their long-term dwarven visiting scholars and extruding slightly out the side for those with more standard tolerances of ominous stony depths. The far end held two sets of large stone doors. Both shimmered slightly under the weight of protective enchantments. The one straight ahead opened to another shared space, she knew, this time workshops and a few extremely guarded forges for those who taught and researched fraught projects. It tunneled directly below her own Hall of Governance.
The left was Celebrimbor's. She and Ereinion alike had insisted he not share anything, given what had happened the last time a member of the House of Feanor created something uniquely powerful under their own devices. He had been so eager to agree at the time, happy for the implicit acceptance of any of his less acceptable research ideas so long as they were not able to be shared. He had remained eager until three centuries ago. She cast Annatar a very loaded look as she stepped closer to the door, but did not try to force him to move. That was an argument to continue with Celebrimbor himself.
She would. He deserved to have that point stressed the second his mind was functional enough to understand it.
Up close, the carvings on it were nothing like the other door. Each deep carving felt like a mountain range under her palm. They spiraled in something between Tengwar, Cirth, and pure art, depicting scenes that translated to phrases that had to be decoded to even begin to unlock the door without permission. She'd, admittedly, tuned out when Celebrimbor got too far into explaining. The important part was that only three of them were even coded to open the door in the first place. She would tell Ereinion if it had increased to four now.
Gold-tinted silver light spilled across the door from her palm. It lit the hall as if shining through water as, with a heavy creaking groan, the doors opened themselves to reveal a massive room. It was stunningly bright during the day. Peaking out the far side of the hill Ost-in-Edhil rested upon, great arches lined with moveable glass panels stretched against the long end. The right side was all stained glass panels. It would cast the star of Feanor in red and gold across a small rest area in the morning light, wax and slate tablets, chalk, and piles of paper scattered across a soft couch and several low tables. A small stove for food, unlit, filled the near corner next to a door ajar leading to a private office. Her cousin was not sitting there like he ought to be if he was taking care of himself.
Straight ahead sat what she could only describe as vaguely organized chaos. Long rows of tables, more than any one person should rightfully need, were covered in different apparatuses she didn't dare try to name. A cart of uncut and shaped gems alike sat under a massive bay of untinted window panes, tilted open to let cold air into the space. The crescent moon shone clear and bright in the middle. Shuttered Feanorian lamps cast shattered streaks of blue and white across each table, but did nothing to truly make the space feel welcoming.
They were only ever meant to be supplementary. Even during the later hours, light flowed in through a clever series of shafts and mirrors located in the wall above her head. The night here felt different. Empty.
Galadriel shuddered despite herself as a cold wind whistled through the space. The darkness seemed to linger. What she knew to be a welcoming space in daylight twisted and writhed into something haunted in the dark. Its great expanse only intensified the feeeling of something wrong. Shadows stretched longer than they ought to beyond each table and bench, conjuring the horrors of the Darkening of Valinor and the Helcaraxe in the corners of her eyes, only to vanish the moment she glanced that way. She snapped her eyes shut. The sensations immediately diminished, but did not disappear.
You are too old to be jumping at shadows, she told herself, and opened her eyes as she turned to the left. Annatar's presence burned behind her.
These doors were near as thick as the entrance. The entire wall was filled with them, multiple great and massive pairs that could be slid to the side to pass any object Celebrimbor could imagine through. Or, in this case, to protect the enclosed area itself. They did not shine with enchantments on this side but she knew the other side would if Celebrimbor had any grasp of his senses left.
She laid a hand on the door closest to the stone wall and pushed. It resisted. Good. She pressed her forehead to the door and murmured under her breath in Quenya as Annatar lingered back a few feet, the override something secret to only herself and Celebrimbor. It clicked.
Galadriel pulled back to stand barely in front of Annatar as the door opened. Riotous orange-tinted light shuddering into constant turmoil, not quite the firelight of a forge, spilled across the space. It cast new, harsher shadows over the workbenches that flexed as if the breath of some horrible creature. The sliver gold of the protections barely made a dent in comparison.
She knew what she should see. Directly in front of her would be a row of shelving with yet more items she could not hope to name, crates of ore and other hefty raw materials that could not be harmed by exposure to weather beyond them. The majority of the space would be empty. Near the far end would be a large forge, dwarfed by the full expanse no matter its abnormal specifications. Beyond it should stretch an open archway and small balcony overlooking the river and forest below. The arch had shutters layered with enchantments to pull down for security, but they were rarely used in comparison to the inner doors. Celebrimbor did not keep anything truly sensitive out here.
The scene she was greeted with instead was deceptively calm. The open space had been transformed, again, but that was not inherently concerning. A metal device had been created a few feet from the forge. It stretched towards the innermost wall in one long cylinder as wide as she was tall, with what looked like a giant curved metal door on the close end and a series of pipes running from it up and down into the shadowed arches of the ceiling. The forge was lit behind it, the bright white-orange of extreme heat clear from even here. The light variations came from something on the far side.
Disconcertingly, the entire space seemed to echo with a constant hissing noise.
Celebrimbor himself leaned over the top on the far end. He was backlit from the forge as he looked down into what she assumed to be another door intensely. Strands of hair had broken free from its single braid and floated around him as he ducked out of view, a clear sign that he had given up on noticing his own body hours ago. He hated being that messy. His hands peaked over the edge to fiddle with an oval thing jutting out from the top before he straightened up, eyes skimming right over them without paying attention, and dropped out of sight towards the forge again. The device shook in place.
Galadriel grimaced.
"Explain." She ordered Annatar. Annatar gave her a cool look at the tone. He still did it, so she counted that as one point for herself.
"Celebrimbor wished to investigate more about the conditions in which gemstones form," he said, as matter of fact as if he had proposed creating a basic metal ingot. Galadriel blinked. Annatar raised one fine blonde eyebrow at her and continued with put-upon doubt in his voice. "You are aware of how gemstones form, I presume?"
She could not wait to find an excuse to get rid of him without upsetting her cousin.
"I was under the impression the conditions are not replicable without Song," she said, accusation clear, as she racked her brain for the things Celebrimbor always went on about when he had given up on caring about if she was paying attention. Gemstones…far under the earth, with particular compositions, which would mean…
Galadriel looked at the closest door with much greater intensity. It rattled slightly, but seemed firmly latched onto the device at all possible ends. That flimsy metal device was meant to contain enough pressure and heat to match the depths that formed gems?
She did not back away no matter how much she wanted to. Instead, she directed her concern into a glare at Annatar when the Maia did not immediately answer her accusation. He had to be heavily involved in this. Celebrimbor's bad ideas did not typically veer so closely to social censure on their own. He was good at hiding those from her if they did, too aware of both of their tempers to risk a falling out from needing her intervention in a situation like this.
"This has been replicated once before," Annatar admitted, head tilting to the side in what did not quite meet consternation. "Celebrimbor was quite curious despite my suggestions to avoid it. I believe he will be more amenable to alternatives when he has rested and eaten properly."
Her glare deepened at the avoidance. Annatar met it evenly; the picture of innocence he projected did not fool her. But it would not help to press now, so she added it (and her new-found suspicion about who had invented it) to the list of problems to discuss with Celebrimbor in the morning and returned to the subject at hand.
"Is it currently dangerous?"
Annatar looked back at the device for a long moment. His eyes flicked from the forge to one of the oval markers on the side and up the lengths of pipe, and he frowned slightly. It took pacing to the side for a better view and back, while Galadriel tapped her foot for lack of anything better to do, for him to give an answer. "I do not believe so."
That did not fill her with confidence. But she wasn't about to admit as much to him, so she simply nodded once. "Shut it down. I will handle Celebrimbor."
He probably had a response to that, but she did not wait for one. She swept around to the other side of the device, keeping a careful space between her and it as it juddered slightly. The heat radiating out on this side sent her hair and skirt fluttering out behind her even as her irritation grew into concern. How long had Celebrimbor been this close to it? How was he still functioning well enough to do anything for it?
Galadriel covered her eyes as she turned the corner and was hit with the full light of the unencumbered flame. She blinked until the spots cleared, carefully lowering her hand, and the sight made her wish Celebrimbor had gone into bookmaking. The forge had been opened up. It glowed with orange-white fire, but most of her view was obscured by a large glass bowl. A metallic liquid boiled within like something out of Angband's iron hells, though she knew rationally that Aule's smiths had used a similar technique for millennia before from Celebrimbor's frequent urge to lecture. Metal and glass pipes extended up from this, the parts she could see filled with a silver vapor. This hissed loudly.
Thankfully, no vapors filled the air outside of it. Yet.
Celebrimbor was bending over the connection between the bowl and pipes, muttering something under his breath that she could not quite understand despite it being in standard Quenya. The clarity did not improve as she drew nearer. He was a mess. His hair was escaping the braid to the point the braid may as well have not existed any more, his simple forge clothes were covered in soot and streaks of things she did not bother trying to identify where he had missed the protective apron and gloves he wore, and the graphite he used for any more serious calculations that may be affected by heat had smeared all the way down his neck before disappearing. Galadriel sighed.
"Celebrimbor." She snapped out. It was that same deathly serious ordering tone most of them had learned to mimic from Finwe, sure to work on anyone within five degrees of the former High King. But he did not look back at her.
Celebrimbor just waved a hand dismissively over his shoulder. It pointed about a hundred twenty degrees away from Galadriel, and she sighed again, slightly heavier.
"I will be with you in a minute," he said, stunningly clear for the general state of his—she looked him up and down again—everything, and she knew by a "minute" he meant six weeks.
Galadriel rolled her eyes.
"You will be with me right now, Curufinwion."
"I am busy."
"You are not so busy you cannot have a brief conversation." The metal pipes made an ominous creaking sound as Celebrimbor leaned in closer. Distantly, she could hear something scraping on the other end of the forge space, in the secondary or tertiary fire access with protective shields he had insisted upon when designing it. "We will be having this conversation right now."
"No."
"Yes."
He pointed at the forge. A deep orange streak flame licked around the edge of the bowl. "I cannot leave it unattended."
"Annatar is here," she argued. Celebrimbor only stiffened up further. His lips turned down in what his family would never admit was their guilty pout, chest drawing up for a defensive argument, but Galadriel looked past him. The fires, indeed, seemed to have darkened slightly. The great rattling happening all around them felt slightly less intense even as a jet of smoke escaped on the other side. Good. Annatar was doing his part after all.
Celebrimbor's words were bitingly sharp. "I am sharing the finer details of my craft, as requested."
Galadriel raised one delicate eyebrow in immense doubt. Celebrimbor scowled at her. "Explain this."
The scowl froze. Celebrimbor glanced over his shoulder at her quickly, up at the pipes and apparatus, and the back down to the forge. She caught a glimpse of his face returning to that guilty pout, like a schoolboy who did not want to admit he'd copied his homework. "I wished to see if I could."
Galadriel did not smile. She pulled back on her irritation at having to leave her perfectly good book to suppress the fondness that threatened to leak back into her tone. Celebrimbor would take any positive emotions as encouragement, and then they'd all be here for hours more. "It appears you have."
"It is not done."
"What else must happen for it to be done?" She asked, eyes narrowing on him. Celebrimbor's shoulders raised even closer to his ears. Next to them, the device rattled more dramatically, yet the overall tempo of its beats seemed to be lessening as the forge slowly died down. Celebrimbor did not seem to notice it as he glared down his hands. "What is it meant to do?"
"What does that matter?" he snapped, changing the subject entirely, and her suspicions grew more certain. This was one of Feanor's projects. "I am busy. I will explain it to you once I have ensured it works, as I do with all my experiments and research. It is not as if you could understand it anyway."
"I will lock you out of your workshop for a month," she threatened. Celebrimbor spun to look at her fully, mouth open for another biting complaint, face dark and dangerous.
"I will—"
"Tyelpe," the damned Maia called from the other side of the device before he could finish the threat and Celebrimbor's words died in his throat. The voice was light and calm. It did not carry the traces of power Galadriel had become accustomed to from Melian's rare attempts at diplomacy, as benign as any incarnate voice, but Celebrimbor responded to it still.
He broke his angry stare-off with Galadriel to look around the slowly cooling forge at the Maia. She watched the tension in his profile fall away in small incriments, angry lines fading into a more general awareness as he stopped identifying her as the main threat—or, indeed, a threat at all. His ears even twisted forward towards his close companion of so many years.
"Annatar?" He asked. His voice was weary and wary still, but piqued distinctly towards the brighter tones so absent from their own conversation. It was as if had merely been irritated, not verging into so overwhelmingly defensive he no longer cared about conseuences as she had experienced, as he tried to argue with Annatar as well. "I promise I am capable of continuing, there is no need—"
"You are tired, my lord," he said, the words unfailingly smooth despite what should have been a stiff phrase. "I do not doubt your capabilities"—liar, she thought in a rush of protective anger, filing it under the list of things to bring up that Celebrimbor would no doubt ignore—"only your ability to fully engage in the process like this. Will you not listen to your cousin's earnest care?"
"It is not—" he tried again, stepping around the forge towards Annatar's voice, but the words had lost their bite. The anger that came so naturally for Galadriel was fading as his form seemed to dim away from fixation into reality again.
A deep, deep dreadful worry settled into her bones as she watched the interaction, though she could not hope to say if it were borne from memory or foresight or some grounded intuition. It could have been his father in his place as the shadows from blocked fire painted his hair a deep black, his face lit up in harsh relief by the slowly fading fire. Curufin had not always been haughty. There had always been some moments of softness, once, as children when he looked at his friends and family and various stolen pets. The perpetual sternness on his face would fade, creases vanishing, eyes brightening up in a true smile. Celebrimbor had the same.
Miriel's features did not lend well to kindness. It took true depth of emotion to remove the lingering coldness and seem so open.
It was already too late to try to separate them, wasn't it? Her window of opportunity had closed when she was not looking, distracted by little moments of daily life and grand schemes. Other things had always seemed so much more pressing that the little hazard her cousin invited in. The stressors of politics and negotiations never ended, the days short and demand high as they drew more attention from further lands. Annatar had slipped into the background rather than the focus he deserved.
There was no true proof for concern, she reminded herself, but the reassurance fell flat. She could feel it like the claws of some great monster, scraping along their backs when they least expected it. Doom. Galadriel shuddered.
She would bring it up with Elrond to compare to his own portends, she decided, and tried to set it aside. She could not act without proof. Celebrimbor would not allow her, and that break between them alone could be the warning she felt so clearly now.
The conversation had carried on without her. She could not bring herself to care as she noticed the weakness in her cousin's stance, the hints of exhaustion beginning to poke through now that he was not so fixated on his task to ignore his body. He seemed small now. The great fervor of his blood that drove him on had dampened into normalcy even as he tried to—desperately—argue his case for strength.
Celebrimbor blinked mid-word and Annatar fell silent immediately. Her younger cousin's hand lifted up to rub at his temple, steps slowing to a halt, and he shifted his shoulders from side to side as if in pain. Galadriel took her chance.
"Tyelperinquar," she said. She kept her voice less stern, almost gentle as she carefully approached him, hands outstretched as if handling a wounded animal prone to bite. Celebrimbor blinked again, heavier this time. His palm pressed to his eyes rather than looking at her.
"I am fine," he said, but his voice wavered. He pressed his other palm tight against the other. "Just—just distracted, it is—"
Galadriel came to his side in a few quick steps. She rested a hand on his shoulder and he fully swayed into it, words cutting out as his body recognized the offer of support for what it was. He felt hot to the touch despite the protection he'd worn. She frowned, but did not comment other than slipping her arm around his shoulders properly. A healer might be in order regardless.
"We are taking a break," she informed him. He opened his mouth, eyes still closed, but Annatar cut in from across the room.
"The vacuum is not sealed properly," he informed them contritely, though Galadriel had no hope of guessing if that were true or not. Celebrimbor sagged into her arm with a small noise of despair. His eyes opened slightly, only to close immediately with a louder groan at the sight of the no longer shaking metal device. She sighed.
"He will find the flaw for you to fix once you have slept," Galadriel promised her little cousin reassuringly, making eye contact with Annatar around the forge. Celebrimbor would be crushed if it were not. The Maia's eyes burned into hers with distaste but he nodded in one tight movement, all those negative emotions he never allowed Celebrimbor to see etched throughout his unwilling agreement.
Celebrimbor flopped more of his weight onto her arm in relief. She rolled her eyes at him even as she prodded him in the side with slightly more force than necessary to make him stumble after her, gradually pulling him out of the forge and into the workshop proper. No appreciation for the work she put in, honestly. She should have stolen Elrond and left Celebrimbor to be Ereinion's problem. He would at least apologize while being physically dragged into a bed.
(And if her lecture on Annatar's presence in his private workshop the next morning was less of a lecture and more of a late brunch with a few reminders Celebrimbor immediately brushed off, well, that was between them.)