Chapter 422: Authority Over Souls
It might have looked, from the outside, like a cold and exploitative arrangement — a form of enslavement without apology.
But these house-elves were not natural creatures. They had never been part of the normal order of living things. Their souls came from half-Orcs, and Kael had used magic to strip away their original memories along with everything brutal and bloodthirsty that had defined them.
He felt no particular sympathy for them. In essence, they were half-Orcs. That was what he had worked with, and that was what they remained beneath the new flesh.
With four created, Kael called a stop. He left the laboratory and came downstairs to the sitting room, the four house-elves trailing behind him.
"Papa!" Elthir and Elríen looked up from across the room and came running — then stopped abruptly when they noticed the four small, unfamiliar creatures following at his heels. They stared with undisguised curiosity.
"Papa, what are those? We've never seen anything like them."
Arwen looked up as well, equally surprised. "Kael — what are these?"
"Magical creatures I made," he said. "They have a degree of spellcasting ability. They're house-elves — made to serve. Once they bond with a master, they follow that master's commands absolutely and will never betray them. There's one each for us — they'll be the most loyal servants you'll ever have."
"House-elves?" Elthir and Elríen studied the creatures with open scepticism. As half-Elves, their aesthetic sensibilities were not being particularly satisfied by what they were looking at. "These things?"
Arwen's expression was similarly uncertain.
Kael found the collective reaction mildly amusing. "They're not Elves — it's just a name. If you don't like it, you can call them something else."
The name was partly habit, and partly because the creatures genuinely did carry Elven blood in their making. There was also the matter of the half-Orcs themselves — legend held that Orcs had originally been Elves, twisted and broken by Morgoth over long ages of torment. So if one were to trace the lineage seriously, these beings made from Uruk-hai flesh, Elven blood, and half-Orc souls were not entirely without Elven connection.
In the end, Arwen and the children accepted the gift.
Arwen and Elríen each chose one of the females. Arwen named hers Elanor; Elríen named hers Niphredil.
Elthir took the remaining male and named him Tír.
Ork, the first, remained Kael's own.
Once named, the bond was sealed — the magical contract between house-elf and master completed. From that point on, each house-elf answered first to their named master. Even Kael, who had created them, could not override that bond and issue commands across the binding.
So Elthir and Elríen each gained a devoted attendant who would shadow them quietly, see to their daily needs, and watch over their safety without being asked. If it ever came to a moment of mortal danger, either of the house-elves would step in front of their master without hesitation, or carry them clear of the danger by whatever means necessary.
Elríen, despite making her distaste for the creature's appearance fairly plain, dressed her house-elf Niphredil in a neatly made little dress and fussed over the presentation until she was at least outwardly satisfied.
Arwen, gentle-natured as she was, knew from Kael what the house-elves' souls originally were — and still could not quite help feeling a faint thread of compassion toward them. She set aside proper rooms for them and had no intention of mistreating them.
Having the house-elves in the castle brought immediate practical changes.
Every surface was kept immaculate. The glass in the windows, the armour standing in the corridors, the portraits in their frames — all of it was polished to a reflective brightness. Kael and his family found that meals appeared, clothing was laid out, and small domestic needs were seen to before they thought to ask. It was, in the plainest terms, the most effortless form of living any of them had experienced.
The professors and students of the castle took notice soon enough. When word spread that the Headmaster had created these creatures himself, the reaction was one of open, undisguised awe.
They had seen the house-elves work. The creatures were magical prodigies by any ordinary measure — casting without wands, and more precisely than most wand-users could manage. Within Hogwarts, where Anti-Apparition protections prevented almost everyone from teleporting, the house-elves moved about freely, stepping from one part of the castle to another as though the wards simply did not apply to them.
That the Headmaster could create beings of such power from nothing — that he could make life where there had been none — struck the professors and students alike as something that put him in a category apart from ordinary wizardry. This was not the breeding of dragons or the magical alteration of existing creatures. This was the creation of a thinking, powerful magical species from blood, flesh, and bone that had held no spark of life.
In the minds of the Hogwarts professors — deeply versed in the lore of Middle-earth — only a very short list of beings had ever done anything like this. Ilúvatar, who had created Elves and Men. Aulë, the craftsman of the Valar, who had made the Dwarves. Yavanna, who had shaped the Ents. Morgoth, who had twisted life into Orcs and other dark creatures. Their Headmaster had joined that list.
Kael himself was under no illusions about what he had actually done.
His biological alchemy was genuinely remarkable — he could sustain and shape life, and his ascension to Maiar level had expanded what was possible for him considerably. But true creation of life was not within his reach. It was not within anyone's reach, save Ilúvatar alone.
The most critical element — the soul — was something Kael could not make. He could only borrow it. The half-Orc souls he had used were not his to have created; they existed already, and he had simply put them to a different purpose.
This was, in truth, the same limitation that had always applied. When Aulë had fashioned the Dwarves, they had been lifeless constructs until Ilúvatar granted them souls. When Yavanna had brought the Ents into being, the same was true. Even Morgoth — the most powerful of all the Valar — had possessed no ability to create souls. Everything under his command had been twisted from existing life. The Orcs, the Trolls, every dark creature that bore his mark — all of it had begun as something else.
Morgoth had understood this. It was why he had so desperately coveted Ilúvatar's Imperishable Flame — the force that was the sole source of free will and true consciousness. He had searched the Void for it. He had found nothing.
Kael had no particular desire to create souls. What he wanted was simply to use what he had learned to bring into Middle-earth some of the magical creatures unique to the Harry Potter world. The house-elves were a beginning.
Having made them, he found that the act of creation had lit something in him. He continued.
He travelled to Mount Doom in Mordor, where the volcano still held a last reserve of its ancient heat. Using that remnant fire — drawn from the earth's own core — and combining it with a drop of his own blood and a single phoenix feather, he constructed an alchemical array to gather an immense concentration of fire elemental energy, and from it shaped a phoenix.
This phoenix was far closer to the phoenixes of the Harry Potter world than to the form Kael himself could take. It was no larger than a swan. It possessed remarkable abilities — including the capacity to die and be reborn from its own ashes — but it was an entirely different order of being from what Kael became when he transformed. The gap between them was at least as wide as the gap between a fire dragon and a true ancient dragon. Perhaps wider.
He made a second phoenix from the same source of earthfire.
One male, one female. A matched pair, capable of producing offspring.
The creation of the two phoenixes consumed the last of Mount Doom's remaining power. The volcano went quiet — not dormant, but dead. Its fire, which had burned since the earliest ages of Middle-earth, was spent.