In LOTR with Harry Potter system-Chapter 455: Star Creation

Upon Sylas's arrival, the mighty Valar had already summoned one another through letters and heralds, gathering their number at the peak of Taniquetil, the uttermost mountain, and convening within the great hall of Ilmarin. It was Sylas's first time standing before all of them at once.

There was Aulë, the Smith, tall, broad-shouldered, and powerful, clad in robes the color of burnished bronze, the God of Craftsmanship, lord of all earth and stone. Beside him stood his wife, Yavanna, the Giver of Fruits, goddess of all growing things.

There was Mandos, Námo, the Doomsman, draped in long black robes, his expression cold and unyielding as ancient stone. Beside him was his wife, Vairë the Weaver, goddess of History, who records all things that have ever been.

There was Oromë the Hunter, riding a great white steed with hooves of gold, his eyes sharp as an eagle's, the god of the forest and the chase. Beside him rode his wife, Vána the Ever-young, goddess of youth and beauty.

There was Irmo, most gentle and ethereal of the Valar, known also as Lórien, clad in flowing green robes, radiating an aura of peaceful stillness. He was the god of dreams and visions, and beside him rested his wife, Estë the Gentle, goddess of healing and repose.

There was Tulkas the Valiant, immense, rippling with muscle, his spirit wild as a storm, the great warrior of the Valar. Beside him was his wife, Nessa the Dancer, fleet-footed goddess of grace.

Also present was Nienna, the Lady of Mercy, goddess of grief and compassion, she who teaches pity and endurance. It was she who had long been teacher to the Maia who would one day be known as Gandalf.

And last to arrive was Ulmo, Lord of Waters. His helm was crowned with sea-foam, dark and ancient in color, and his form was armored in scales like the deep ocean's hide. He carried with him an aura of profound, fathomless depth, silent and vast, yet utterly and instinctively trustworthy.

Together, their assembled presence made Ilmarin feel more sacred than ever before, radiant with divine light, solemn beyond measure.

By custom, Sylas held no right to attend the council of the Valar. Yet through the unyielding support of Varda and the blessing of Manwë, Lord of All, Sylas was made the sole exception, the only non-Valar member ever admitted to the Máhanaxar. The Valar regarded Sylas with undisguised curiosity. Aulë the Smith and Mandos the Doomsman, in particular, showed him a surprising and genuine warmth.

When the council was called to order, Manwë explained that the gathering had been convened to address two great matters: the fashioning of new planets, and the expansion of the Void beyond the borders of Arda. He also spoke of Sylas's part in it, how this plan had not arisen among the Valar themselves, but had been conceived and proposed by Sylas alone.

The Valar were astonished. They turned to look at Sylas with new eyes, and the admiration in their gaze was unmistakable. That a mind outside their own order had envisioned such a magnificent cosmological design, it was a thing worthy of wonder. In that moment, Sylas stood among them not as a guest or a curiosity, but as an equal.

Regarding the expansion of the heavens and the creation of new worlds, the Valar voiced their agreement without dissent. This was a work that would perfect and enrich the music of Arda, a culmination, not a deviation, and none could find reason to refuse it.

And so, after a full year of deliberation and careful refinement, the plan was set. The council rose from debate and moved toward action.

They journeyed together to Ilmen, the upper airs, that vast and luminous star-sea beyond the world's breath, with Varda at their head and the others arrayed behind her. The great work of creation was about to begin. Sylas, as the architect and originator of the plan, had been invited to join them, not to wield power directly, but to provide theoretical guidance and to witness what his vision would bring forth.

Varda reached into the Star Sea and drew out a single light, a silver ray born from Telperion, the elder of the Two Trees of Valinor, whose silver radiance had long illuminated the blessed realm. She breathed her power into it, working it with her will, shaping and kindling it until it became something new: a luminous core, brilliant and blazing, more beautiful and more terrible than any star yet set in the sky. It shone with breathtaking radiance, and within it stirred a powerful gravity, a deep, irresistible pull that drew the surrounding matter of Ilmen toward it like iron drawn to a lodestone.

Varda passed the core to Aulë.

The great Smith moved swiftly. Though Aulë bore the title of Lord of Craftsmanship, his true dominion was over matter itself, the earth had been shaped by his hands, and to shape a world was no more difficult for him than a potter forming clay. He gathered the drifting material of the void and condensed it rapidly, wrapping the glowing core in layer after layer of stone and substance, building outward from that luminous heart until what floated before them was no longer a mere light, but a sphere, a true planet, enormous and weighty, spanning tens of thousands of meters in diameter.

The newborn planet's gravity was immense. It reached toward Arda far below like a tide, and the atmosphere of the world, Ilmen itself, groaned and shuddered under the pull, straining instinctively downward toward the earth. But Varda would not allow it to fall.

She placed her hands beneath the new world and lifted it, raising it slowly, steadily, then turned and pressed it outward, beyond the outermost boundary of the atmosphere. She moved with care and deliberate precision: the planet must be placed far enough from Arda that the two worlds would never collide, yet close enough that they would remain bound together, each aware of the other's presence.

Carrying the planet in her arms, Varda passed through the world-barrier, and stepped out into the absolute darkness beyond. Into the great Void. Into the silent, eternal abyss that had known no light since before the Music was sung.

And then the planet blazed.

Its light poured into the emptiness, brilliant, white, and new, illuminating a realm that had never known light before. The Void, that hollow and lightless expanse, received its first radiance. The darkness drew back, and where there had been nothing, now there was something: a star shining in the deep, and below it, the distant curve of Arda, finally visible in its own world.

Varda guided the planet to its proper distance and released it. The new world hung in the void, steady, shining, and it and Arda regarded each other across the darkness for the very first time.

The gravitational force between the two worlds settled into balance, strong enough to bind them in relation to one another, yet not so overwhelming as to draw them into collision. The new planet found its rhythm. It began to rotate upon its own axis, and as it did, it also traced a wide, sweeping arc around Arda, moving through the void as a satellite moves around its parent world, steady and sure.

When they saw this, Varda and the assembled Valar broke into joy, and Sylas with them. The first step of their great planet-forging plan had been accomplished.

With the method now proven and the blueprint in hand, Varda no longer needed to draw individual stars from the star-sea by hand. Instead, she rose above Ilmen and stood at its uttermost height, and there she began to sing.

Her voice was beautiful beyond reckoning, a sacred hymn that swelled and shimmered, carrying the deep authority of one who had scattered the stars themselves across the heavens. As she sang, light poured from her body in waves, brilliant and expanding, until it seemed to envelop the boundless star-sea entire. From the surface of Arda far below, those who looked up would have seen the sky turn white. The sun, the moon, the stars, all were swallowed in that radiance, the heavens made unreadable by her dazzling light.

Beneath the power of Varda's song, countless stars rose from the star-sea like flowers blooming all at once, each one coalescing into a radiant core. And the other Valar, the laborers of this great work, added their own voices to hers. Their calls were wild, unrestrained, and vast, weaving into Varda's song and filling the upper airs with a chorus of creation.

Around each star-core, matter began to gather and compress. Layer after layer of crust was laid down, ancient rock taking shape over the burning hearts of newborn worlds. And within those crusts, deep veins of gold and silver, iron ore and diamond and mineral wealth beyond counting were laid into the stone, woven into the very bones of each planet as it formed.

Manwë, God of the Sky, mightiest of wind and air, raised his power to cradle the forming planets, holding them aloft so that not one should tumble and fall toward the earth. Other forces joined the chorus, each Vala pouring their particular nature into the work. Under their combined influence, the surfaces of the new worlds took shape in wildly different forms: some were drowned in vast oceans, becoming great spheres of water; others churned with volcanic fire, their surfaces cracked and seething, blazing worlds of perpetual eruption; still others were wrapped entirely in swirling gas, or locked forever in shells of deep and lightless ice.

Sylas watched it all, this magnificent, miraculous chorus of world-making, and could not help himself. The words escaped him before he had thought to hold them back.

"This is truly worthy of being called the world-creating movement of the Ainulindalë," he breathed. "Even the making of planets requires song."

He had learned something today that no book or blueprint could have taught him.

As the last notes of the great chorus rang through Ilmen, hundreds of millions of spirits were born of its power, Maiar and lesser beings called into being by the music, each one shouldering a portion of the immense weight of what had been created.

Together, they cast the newly formed worlds outward, launching them one by one beyond the world-barrier and into the open void beyond Arda's borders. Then, with fierce and tireless effort, they guided and propelled each planet through the darkness, steering them according to the original design, placing each one into its proper position, its intended orbit, its destined place in the new cosmic order.

Sylas took part in this work alongside the rest. He threw his strength into propelling the planets, following the plan he himself had laid out, seeing, at last, his own vision made real in the turning of worlds. And he was not alone in the labor. Gandalf was there, Olórin, still clad in the nature of his Maiar form, and Aiwendil, and Curunír, and others among the great and the lesser: swift Elven warriors lending their grace and power to the great displacement.

It took a thousand years.

But at the end of that thousand years, every sculpted world had been set into motion. The new cosmos was arranged: planets of varying sizes, low-order worlds, satellites, asteroids, comets, and countless lesser celestial bodies, all distributed through the boundless void that lay outside the borders of Arda. They pulled at one another with gravitational bonds of varying strength, each one moving along its proper path, each one catching and reflecting or generating its own light. The void, which had once been absolute and featureless, was now alive with motion and radiance.

It was unlike anything from Sylas's former life. In his old world, stars had burned by their own natural physics. Here, under Varda's blessing, every world she had kindled carried her light within it, and so the void that had once been silent and dark now shimmered and glowed, each planet a lantern in the deep.

From the perspective of those living on the surface of Arda, on the great Central Continent and in all the lands of Middle-earth, the night sky appeared much as it always had: a canopy scattered with countless quiet points of light, familiar and eternal. None who looked up would have guessed how much had changed. But in truth, everything had changed. Beyond the world's edge, in the vast turning dark, an entirely new architecture of creation now moved in slow and stately arcs, all of it centered on Arda, revolving around the world like a great wheel. That which had once been mere void had been redefined. It was now, by every measure, a universe.

And within it, one star shone brighter than all the rest.

For Eärendil's star, the great wandering light that seafarers had long called their guide, Varda had done something singular. She took the Silmaril bound upon Eärendil's brow, the headstone he had worn through all his ages of sailing, and used it as the core of a new and extraordinary world: a planet of incomparable brilliance, the most radiant in all the new heavens. She set it in place among the stars, and there it blazed, outshining all others.

And with that, Eärendil's long labour was at last complete. His vigil was finished. He was finally able to return to the shores of Valinor, to lay down his ancient burden, and to be reunited with his wife Elwing, and with his son Elrond, and all that family that the long ages had kept apart from him. After uncounted years of solitary sailing across the heavens, he came home.

With the star-system complete and the new cosmos set in its courses, the Valar turned their attention at last to the two greatest lights, the ones that would govern not the void, but the world itself. The Sun and the Moon.

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