Jagger [English version]

Chapter 43: The universe and the Lord of Fire

The mangled bodies of the warriors lay on the ground. Voltar released the head of the female Iluvar who had threatened them and let her burned body fall to the grass.

Both he and Árides were covered in serious and deep wounds all over their bodies. They were tired and sore, but at least they had been able to protect their children.

The blizzard that had protected them before was gone, since Árides didn't have the strength to hold it. The snow on the ground had begun to melt, but the walls of ice that covered the house did not seem to take notice.

"Come, my wife, let's go to the house to treat your wounds," Voltar said affectionately and helped Árides to walk.

"This time we were lucky, Voltar, but next time..."

Árides was suddenly silent. Until then, they had not realized that one of the ice walls had a gigantic hole in it. They ran and went into the house with terror on their faces. Voltar entered first and felt his heart break at what he saw.

A human was sitting in the room quietly. At his feet lay the lifeless bodies of Ebet and Mabet, bloodied and bruised. Voltar lunged at the human and picked him up by the neck. He smiled and, with superhuman strength, gripped Voltar's injured forearm, forcing him to release it. So, after all, it was four Iluvars who had come for them.

Árides fell to her knees as soon as she went into the house and crawled weeping over to the bodies of her children. She lifted their heads and placed them on her lap. Her tears fell profusely on Mabet's face, which was still a faithful replica of her own.

"Why?" Voltar managed to say, too consumed with sadness to dare to kill. "Your entire army is dead; you knew if you did this, we would kill you. Why didn't you just run away? Why did you look for them?"

The Iluvar sat back down and looked directly at him with merciless eyes and a smile on his face. Voltar felt like a vile animal, alienated and worthless.

"The problem with the monsters is not them, but their progeny." answered the Iluvar.

"We cannot allow demons like you to populate the earth. It belongs to the humans."

Both Voltar and Árides felt the need to throw in his face the fact that both Ebet and Mabet were human, and that they did not deserve to die for such selfish reasons, but they stopped.

The truth was that the Iluvar's words echoed painfully inside them. They had thought of it before and had suffered greatly in doing so.

Árides and Voltar could not conceive, which meant that the Iluvar's opinion was not isolated, but shared by the very fabric of reality: they were monsters who should not be parents.

Mabet and Ebet had filled a void that they never thought could be filled, and they loved them unconditionally for it. Now the sight of their broken bodies filled them with such grief that they almost wished they had never met them. Voltar hated himself for even thinking this. Memories that he treasured, full of Ebet's kindness and Mabet's innocence, flooded through his mind. If he had been able to choose which children he would have, he would never have been able to choose individuals as wonderful as them. For an instant, he had been able to make sense of his long and miserable existence, but it seemed that fate was only there to mortify him. Voltar's soul was filled with rage and resentment against creation itself. If the universe opposed him, then he would oppose it, rejecting the existence around him and molding it so that his will could surpass it.

His body was covered in flames once more and he turned to look menacingly at the Iluvar. He didn't move and sat expectantly in the chair.

"Kill me if you want. I have just completed the task for which I was sent along with this army. From the beginning, our intention was never to get out of here alive, although those brave soldiers you massacred out there did not know it. In the great and beautiful Marinor there are many more of us, and they will take care of this and finish off what's left of this cursed family." he added with a haughty smile like someone who considers himself a level above the others on the moral scale. Voltar glared at him with an intense and transcendental hatred, and the temperature of the cabin rose considerably.