I returned but a few weeks before the attack, and you had already left on your command to Barad Eithel. I had thought we had all the time in the world.” I sighed deeply, recalling those times. “But you and Forodhir did not return that winter. Instead we had the flames of Angband.”
Estarfin looked slightly troubled. “Everything that could have been was washed away, everything changed. Everyone changed.”
Ilvanyë as depicted in the First Age, then a soldier of the exiled Noldorin host. This portrait was commissioned by Ilvanyë's family and painted in the days leading up to the Dagor Bragollach in commemoration of what was to be a victory for the forces of Fingolfin, Maedhros, and Finrod, but as history shows, war was rarely ever so simple.
The current whereabouts of this portrait are unknown, but it is presumably lost for all time.
((for the previous part of the story, click here))
"Thus ended the Siege of Angband; and the foes of Morgoth were scattered and sundered one from another. The most part of the Grey-elves fled south and forsook the northern war."
[Lothlann. Year of the sun 455, First Age. Beginning of the Dagor Bragollach, Battle of Sudden Flame. Twelve hours after the unleashing of Angband's fires by Morgoth]
The winter's day had begun like any other - with the familiar routine of training exercises, then a patrol of the borders north of the Pass of Aglon. But as Makanárë and her comrades marched northwards, murmurs of uneasiness began to ripple through the ranks. Was it merely a trick of the light, or were the foothills of Thangorodrim draped in smoke? And why was there a faint, lurid glow of red upon the northern horizon?