Hi there! Enjoy my story!
Disclaimer: I wish I did but I don't own any of the recognisable names, places and events.
Eönwe walked down the dark corridors of Utumno with a group of fellow Maiar under his command. His fána was able to see through the darkness and choking smog of the fortress without much difficulty, but he wished it wasn't, for what he saw truly filled his heart with horror and sorrow.
After the war was won, they had gone into Utumno with the intention to search it for more foul beings and free its prisoners. Currently they were wandering in one of the giant pits that even he could not see the bottom of, it was so deep within the ground. After their victory, they did not have time to rest and recover, they had to dispatch parties of soldiers into the pits of Utumno, as the prisoners they were overjoyed to free would starve fast. Eönwe did not realise at the time that those prisoners will likely never truly be free of their experience.
And nor would he, he thought, as he walked down further and further into the hot pit that reeked of rot and smoke.
The black walls of what the dark lord would refer to as a fortress were of roughly cut stone and hastily crafted metal, blackened over time by the thick, choking smoke that cascaded from an unknown source in the pits into the open air, veiling the sun and the stars from shining on the atrocity that Utumno was. There were black metal holders for torches at roughly regular intervals, spikes sticking out of them as some twisted form of what one could call decoration. The spikes were matted with dried grime and some other things he wished he would never be able to identify, as were most parts of the walls and the floors.
When they entered the fortress, he tried to step around the things on the ground. There were faeces in some places, as well as what was clearly dried blood on top of layers and layers of dirt, grime, and probably more blood. Red as well as black. The worst were the rotting pieces of things that he could not identify. Some were still moist, although blackened already, some were dried to the ground and shrunk. After a while, he realised that his attempts at not stepping into these vile things were fruitless and only distracting him from the task at hand: find survivors and take care of any evil maiar, beast, orc or other disgraceful thing Melkor has made.
They have only been in the fortress for about twenty minutes and were quickly descending to what must have roughly been two hundred feet underground. They knew that the lower one went the more dangerous and horrid things one would encounter, which is why they left the top portion of the fortress for the Children to search through, while the Maiar delved deeper into the appalling fortress. Up until not, they have only found a few council chambers along with many rooms for storage of weapons and supplies, as well as some halls crudely cut from stone and bare, with a few things scattered on the floor here and there, as a broken hilt of a knife, a piece of rough lint and a torn article of clothing. They decided it was most likely a barrack for the orcs to sleep in. Strange. No beds, no furniture, no possessions. Just the scattered remains of broken things. And that is what they were first: broken and tortured beyond recognition, their fëa diminished and their minds corrupted until nothing but a foul, imitation, twisted to spite the Children, remained. This thought made Eönwe hate Melkor even more, if that were possible at all.
After having swept the room with their eyes and finding nothing, the group of Maia decided to break into smaller units to hasten the search: more than two hundred floors still remained.
Eönwe prayed to Eru for the safety of the Children that were held captive and enslaved in the monstrous dark fortress. He only hoped they could get to everyone in time.
He did not know yet the extent of the horrors the Children have been submitted to by Melkor.