Thanks.

"We have everyone nonessential out," he says to Cor the next day.

"I'll do the painting whenever."

"They have everything set up for you downstairs."

Cor goes downstairs.

They've bled a cow for him.

He draws in soot first.

He draws - Arda, stylized, tiny, almost cute.

And over it an arc of blood, painted to look like one sweep of red but carefully managed so the blood drips into the ash just so, a little here, a little there, a lot in a few places.

He crowns the arc in three fire-motif shapes in ash.

And he sits and he stares at it and he says:

"As though Melkor has never been, I end him. He is not. As though Melkor has never been, I annihilate him -"

It goes on like that, culminates in the standard final "I destroy, I destroy, I destroy".

Darkness pulses through the city and past it.

And Melkor isn't. And Angband crumbles. The sound is audible from Himring, if you're an Elf. 

People go still with apprehension. Nothing happens. They start crying.

Cor hugs his knees.

There are a few more minutes of cautious silence and then there's shouting and singing in the streets. 

Cor reaches for the brush, shrugs off his shirt.

"You're not supposed to do unauthorized magic," says a guard automatically, eyes fixed to the north.

"I killed Melkor. I'm leaving."

"There's still Sauron, war's not over - talk with the King -"

"I - I don't even have details on -"

"All I know is we're not supposed to drop all our precautions until he's gone too."

"I am leaving he said I could leave!"

"Then talk to him!"

"He also said he wouldn't arrange for me to ever interact with him again!"

"Maybe we'll get new orders in a little while but we haven't yet."

Cor starts painting himself anyway.

Guard kicks the bucket over. "Are we really going to do this again?"

"You talk to the king if you can't do anything without hearing from him I want to leave I killed your fucking god for you let me go!"

The door opens. He looks distracted. (He's watching Angband from six angles and Utumno from two and notifying Doriath and notifying Círdan and notifying the relay to the south continent and he wasn't going to watch Cor go -)

"Don't we still have to kill Sauron, your grace," says the guard. 

"Yes but it'll go quicker, lot of the orcs know him."

Cor snarls.

He doesn't even have to chant aloud for someone to be able to clap a hand over his mouth, no, osanwë works, all strung together -

ThereisnothingthereandsobeginsmydestructionthereisnothingthereIdestroyIdestroyIdestroy -

- a spot of Maitimo's forehead is suddenly terrible to look upon.