Fair warning to readers: This is a AU story where some characters has been changed from males into females to fit the plot better. If you do not like to read a story with an OC as one of the main characters, then there is no need to read this story. Otherwise, enjoy reading the story and please leave reviews. No flames or bashing of characters, please.
~X~X~X~X~X~X~
Year 509 of the First Age. It was twilight in Angband, but impossible to truly know with all the black smoke that covered the sky. In a small ravine, two figures stood together. One of them wore a strange mask of iron which covered his whole face, the other one was a black-haired, black-eyed She-elf who tried her best to not shudder at the touch of the other person as he checked so her black hood hid her face.
"Go back to the Hidden City. Before the Dark Lord changes his mind and chooses to keep you here as a breeding slave."
Maeglin, the sister-daughter of High King Turgon, did not need to hear anymore, her half-broken mind deeply filled with self-loathing over that she had not been able to keep Gondolin hidden from the Dark Lord.
"Why did I not die before my tongue lossened…? If my uncle learns that I have betrayed them…"
One single tear left one of Maeglin's eyes, her stomach heavy with guilt over the betrayal towards Gondolin. She had broken like a twig after many weeks of torture, her body still bearing markings of what the Lieutenant of Morgoth had done to her in order have her reveal where Gondolin was hidden. On top of everything, to ensure that she did not warn Turgon of what she had done, Maeglin had been forced to become a concubine to Morgoth's only Elvish War Leader, named Rûsa. Carefully wiping away the tear from Maeglin's face with one unsure movement, Rûsa looked around over his shoulders, seeking for any possible movements that would reveal that they were being watched. A low growl from his large Warg mount close by, confirmed his suspicions.
"I think you are strong, who managed to keep quiet about the Hidden City for so long. I know myself how it can be to have the scars after Sauron's torture marks on your body. Now go!"
Well, that at least explained the large scars on his body that she had felt before. Maeglin did not need any more commands: she turned around and hurried towards another easy-to-forget ravine where she would find a short-cut to the Echoriad where Gondolin were hidden.
~X~X~X~X~X~X~
Rûsa quickly mounted his Warg and picked up his spear and battle sword in both hands. With a loud war cry which had stuck terror in the Union of Maedhros during the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, he answered the attack. The battle caused a huge commotion, and was very likely to draw Sauron's attention if it was not finished quickly.
"Can't I at least spend more than five days without having someone trying to kill me and take over my place as War Leader?!"
It was not uncommon for Orcs to try and kill him, often wanting to get his position as War Leader, one of the highest ranks as you could get in Morgoth's forces. No one really knew how Rûsa had managed to become the only Elvish War Leader, but many believed that he was favoured by Morgoth for some unknown reason.
"Oi, hands off my Skylight!"
His battle Warg who, funny enough, was named Skylight of all names the owner could have given him after the normally-by-orcs hated Sun and Moon, was not pleased in having an Orc trying to pull off his masked owner from the saddle and easy did bite off the unfortunate Orc's head.
~X~X~X~X~X~X~
Meanwhile, Maeglin was forced to stop running. There was a huge rock in front of her, and did not look easy to climb up on. But one look behind her, revealed that a minor pack of Orcs was coming closer to her. Remembering Rûsa's warnings that Orcs loved to harm slaves who seemed ready to make a attempt of escaping from Angband, she hurried to climb up. Getting up on the rock in the last moment, she barely escaped having her feet caught by a whip. But soon she had to stop again, or she would have fallen headfirst down the small cliff down in the forest of thorn bushes. Since her parents deaths, Maeglin had came to loathe high heights almost 110 years earlier.
"Oooh, one evil from another!"
Seeing the Orcs coming running towards her, and the wish to not be recaptured, settled it. Maeglin threw herself down the cliff, grateful for that Rûsa had given her a set of travel clothes of thick, black leather that was enough similar to the now ruined clothes she had worn when she first had been caught and brought to Angband. By moving her body into a ball, the thick leather clothes protected Maeglin from the big tags on the thorn bushes. While the landing could have been more refined, she was not harmed from the landing and could easy crawl thought the bushes close to the dry ground.
~X~X~X~X~X~X~
Rûsa arrived just in time to hear large shouts and screams of pain mixed with foul words, all belonging to Orcs. Hr smirked behind the iron mask, happy to understand that his involuntary concubine had managed to escape.
"That black-haired elf-slave managed to escape! The Dark Lord is not gonna be pleased about hearing that Fire-head's new mate got away!
On the other hand, he felt a hint of annoyance at hearing that damned nickname he had been called for as long as he could remember. Dismounting Skylight and telling the Warg to stand guard, Rûsa walked over to see how things were going. He hid a laughter behind his mask at seeing the guard Orcs having a lot of big tags from the thorn bushes in their thick skins and clearly having some trouble in getting them all out. Rûsa revealed his presence by roughly pushing down one of them back in the thorn bushes as he said:
"My, my, you guards are getting lazy, it seems. Unable to prevent one single Elf-slave from escaping from Angband? It looks like high-born Noldor captives are very hard to keep chained down indeed, seeing that the red-haired leader at Himring managed to escape with the help of those giant birds over 500 years ago."
The escape of Maedhros Feanorion was often used as an direct insult about someone's skills, as Morgoth had been very displeased about said Elf's escape.
"Not our fault that you can't keep your own bed-slave under control and allowing her to run away, Fire-head! As her master, you were in change of keeping her locked inside a cell or chained down! Had you just put your seed in that belly of hers so it had gotten swollen with offspring right after taking her as your mate, she would never…!"
The Orc was suddenly muted by Rûsa's sword, beheading him.
"No offspring of mine is going to be born while the Dark Lord still is in Middle-earth!" hissed Rûsa in a deadly voice, as he walked over to the other Orcs with his black eyes burning like cold coal, the bloody sword ready for another act of killing. Having possible offspring was a, to say it gently, very sore point for Rûsa. Being born as a slave himself, he had never known the faces of his birth parents. It was sadly far too common in Angband that some male Elf slaves was held away from work in the underground mines as breeding slaves along with whichever female Elf slaves the Orcs managed to catch. As far as Rûsa knew, his enslaved Noldor mother had been weak, ill-fitting for being a breeding mother slave, dying soon after his birth and he had been his Avari father's last known bred offspring before the male Elf in a moment of surprise had thrown himself on the spear of a guard Orc.
"Not a change that I will have offspring, birthed by a concubine or lawful wife, unless the Dark Lord is gone…!"
Dark Orc-blood was now all over his body and his iron mask, but Rûsa did not care about that. What he was more pleased about, was that all the Orcs had now been killed by his hands. A weak laugh left his lips as the battle madness left his mind, before he did spit on one of the corpses. In truth, Rûsa felt a wave of relief over that Maeglin had not been there and witnessed the slaughter. Yes, Rûsa was well aware of the fact that he might not be most sane Elf around thanks to a hard life filled with battles and violence, it was impossible to remain that way when you were a War Leader of Morgoth, but he was actually also a little proud of it.
~X~X~X~X~X~X~
"Skylight, feel free to eat a early dinner. Feast on the free meat."
As his Warg happy took the change of getting a free meat meal, Rûsa turned around to see the last light of the vanishing twilight sun so far away as he took off his iron mask from his face. His face, covered in old scars yet still handsome in the way of a ruined Elf who had seen far too much violence and death. Someone whose black eyes were almost dead, and far too old for belonging to a fairly young Elf just over 500 years old. But sadly an Elf who never had been able to feel any sort of happiness for an long time. Knowing how his life had been earlier, Rûsa already held very little doubt that his enforced relationship with Maeglin would soon end in a very painful way, just like that he had lost his birth-parents, foster-parents and several close friends thanks to Morgoth in some way, no doubt with her own death if that ache in his heart told him anything.
"Lómiel…I am sorry for all that is to come, and that you had to become the reason for the Hidden City's coming fall,", Rûsa whispered in the dry wind as he tried to spot Maeglin somewhere as a tiny black dot far away in the vanishing twilight, using Maeglin's mother-name in Quenya that Aredhel had gifted her daughter in secret so long ago.