25. Palantír: Leathery Wings

The thought of wings came to Aragorn as a reaction to the thought of Éowyn, of powerful eagles and flying dragons. Then he saw a nest on a high mountain, and there were nine eggs in the nest. He saw the shells cracking, a beak appeared in the crack. Then he saw Sauron, stroking the newly hatched creature almost lovingly despite its unpleasant smell. He fed it a piece of bloody meat, and when it stretched the tiny leathery wings, his posture was one of pride. So the Fell beasts were born…

In the core of their being, they were the memory of Morgoth's dragons and Manwë's eagles, meant to proudly sore high above the stratus of clouds. In Sauron's eyes, they were beautiful, even though they reminded a vulture more than an eagle, and their will, subdued to the will of their rider, was ever turned to one desire - to kill and maim, to seek death and feed on it. Messengers of bad news like the Crebain, and the bad news themselves. And first of them, the strongest of the hatch, the steed of the Witch-king, fed by Sauron's hand.

The line of Eorl proved to be its bane - the line of dragonslayers, for Fram, son of Frumgar who killed the dragon Scatha was an ancestor of Eorl the Young. What an irony, that it was a daughter of that line who ended the life that started there, high upon the cliffs of the Mountains of Shadow, in a nest protected by Sauron himself. And what a pity - Aragorn could feel Sauron's grief for both the Witch-king and his steed...