Shadows that drank light. Shadows that made him feel fear for the first time in a long time. Ilúvatar could remember the last time. Details, quirks that you picked up in the life of a soldier. A habit of bouncing on his toes, knees flexing as he did, axes loose in his hands, looping in thin air as though that was somehow helpful. It was not. He looked for a moment like one of the girls at temple who skipped rope between morning classes. They would giggle and run though there was nothing to chase them, pleased merely to be alive, and to live for half of each day under Bahamut's sun - then spend the other half under Lorien's moon. Breath misting in front of you could seem like a dragon's breath if you let it. Time seemed slow enough for Ilúvatar to draw his initials into it. That morning had been a long time ago, now. Here it was warm. Here things were happening too quickly. Ilúvatar wanted things to slow down.
Eibhear, not trusting him with... with what? An infatuation? Aeotha, her face as beautiful as the moon, the only creature living that made him wonder what he'd missed when he surrendered to the absence of Lorien in his life. Knees flexed. Bobbing up and down, up and down. His brother had a snarl on his face. He was trying to be intimidating, and this was what soldiers did, was it not? But he did not know how to shriek your opponent's death into that opponent's mind, into his soul, so that minutes before the death actually occurred your opponent would know that it was coming. Ilúvatar's face was blank. He only stared at his brother, axes twisting easy and reckless in his hands, staring while his feet began to ache.
Are you going to fight? his brother had asked.
Nothing.
Then die! his brother had called.
Ilúvatar shrieked as he ran forward. The sound was deep and low, menacing, evil; it was the sound that creatures of nightmare made as they began to consume the flesh of the righteous. It shook birds from the branches of trees. It made children weep without knowing why. The sound was one of malice, of greed, of destruction. The shriek came not from his throat but from his chest. It carried all that way, so that his mother had fainted when she heard it for the first. Servants who'd arrived to see the fight had not come in time to save his brother. Ilúvatar stood over a dead body thirty seconds later, wondering how the wound in his flesh had appeared. Wondering why his brother was not breathing.
All while continuing to scream.
The first Drow that appeared faced a wrenching twist of his neck as Ilúvatar's axe collided with his cheek, bound in his skull, and snapped his neck as it was jerked back the other way. Ilúvatar managed to kick the Drow off the weapon with a vicious sweep of his leg.
Stay there, he willed her silently. Don't come down here.