avelera:

Gah, I had to stop this one before it consumed me! Written to Ludovico Einaudi’s “Ascolta” – what a wonderful prompt! 

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It was meant to be a cure.

Hidden amongst the stacks of Erebor’s great library, written in the most ancient tongue of the nauglath, a clan of dwarves once loyal to the Enemy and now long gone, long dead, it was the only cure he had ever found for his sickness. For the dragon sickness. The wicked dwarves, they were called, but they had known of his malady, known because of their hand in creating its dark obsessions.

It came down in their runic tablets as a simple formula, but of dreadful ingredients. A cure for the madness of gold, but it threatened a cure as terrible as the disease. Even so, why had his grandfather never tested it? What horrors did it hold, that even as his kingdom crumbled around him, Thror had dared this last, desperate measure to banish the ancient curse from his mind?

Was the risk so great, or was he only so far gone in his own mind that by the time necessity overcame the risk, it was too late?

Thorin had no such luxury, and he had no time.

His people were masters of the substances of the earth, not only of metal and stone. Even elves did not share the depths of their knowledge, and the wicked creatures of the Enemy could only create shadows, mockeries of the gifts given by Mahal. But this was a formula created by wicked dwarves. Who knew what lay within its subtle workings? Did he truly dare?

Yet when Thorin closed his eyes he felt the rising tide of nausea. The sickly haze of gold that played in his eyes and across his skin as flame. It mirrored the sickness within, so briefly banished when he wrenched himself free of its influence to storm the battlefield, so briefly held at bay when his sickbed was a simple tent of wood and cloth without a coin or jewel in sight. 

He had kept the horror to himself, the realization when he stepped back within the hallowed halls of Erebor, pale and limping from his wounds but surrounded by the cheering of his subjects, his kin, and his loved ones, that a greater sickness lay within. A crouched, hulking shadow, slavering in wait for him, for his mind, his soul. Already he felt drifting in his mind the desire to wallow amongst the treasure like some twisted wyrm, to banish all living creatures from his realm, to kill any who disobeyed.

Thorin swallowed back the wave of nausea before it could overwhelm him, and opened his eyes. The formula was on the table, pulsing and phosphorescent. If all creatures of the earth showed their intentions in their form, then this was a form of waiting evil. And yet, what choice did he have? Those amongst the good, the wise, had no cure for his grandfather’s sickness, for his sickness.

It was for his family he did this, for his nephews, and cousins, his people. For Balin and Dwalin, for Bilbo. It was for himself. He wanted to remember again, what it was like to stand proud amongst them, to flinch and cower at every mention of the treasure that surrounded them. It was growing worse. He hid it well but ever it was growing worse, and soon they would know. He did not know how much time he had left as himself. There was no choice.

There was no choice.

Alone in the crypts beneath the city, Thorin raised the fruits of his long labor to his lips. His eyes clenched tight, a trickle of moisture at the corner of his eyes. He hesitated. Could there not be some other way than this, not knowing whether or not he would survive it, if what survived it would be him?

His company’s faces flashed once more in his mind and amongst them himself, as he had once been.

Thorin swallowed the potion.