Light struggles slowly through the small, grated windows set high into the slate walls. Its very presence seems grimed. It sends strange shadows bleeding out across the floor.
The air hangs heavy about him, each breath seems an effort as subterranean claustrophobia claims him: each inhalation is at once stifling and unnaturally thick. Faint curls of smoke rise from the glowing braziers bolted to the walls, and they cast their gloomy light across the sparse furnishings. The stones scrape away before him and are interrupted only by an ornate bed and matching chair, discarded tributes from a foreign people long since brought to subjugation. The great ivory horns of some wild beast splay outwards at the bed's corners, black, oily wood carved into intricate geometric designs back the chair and the greased timbers glower in the firelight.
The silence is broken by his whimper. The noise is miniscule, half swallowed, but still it reverberates in shock clarity about the chamber. There is nowhere left for him to hide.
With sly entreaties his master had drawn him down to the deeper levels of the fortress, with insinuations that were just too tempting for him to quite refute they had traversed the quiet corridors, and as the lamb trustingly follows its herder to the slaughter he had allowed his master to lead him. Only as the door had swung open before him, only as he caught a glimpse of what might await him had he balked, had he refused, but by then it was far too late.
Half suspended, his toes just brush the floor; the stones oddly warmed by the channels of molten magma that burrow beneath Angband's foundations. Manacles encircle his wrists, the iron biting tight into his skin and his ankles are fettered by chains to match, bolted each to a metal ring set firmly into the stone. Firm indeed they must have been, for he had not come quietly. But for all his struggles, for all that he begged his master to let him go, to stop, his pleas fell on uncaring ears. Cold and fey and terrible his master seemed, and at last he submitted himself, though he trembled he had endured his master's fickle touch and he had allowed himself to be restrained.
Maybe it would be easier that way. Maybe it would be over all the sooner.
His trousers cling to his legs with sweat, each laboured breath hisses past his teeth. His arms jolt out their protest; muscles cramp and tendons blaze with pain. For how long has his master left him hung so cruelly? Knots coil in his shoulders; each tiny shift of his ribs sends prickles of discomfort flicking through his torso, his muscles stretched far beyond the realm of ease. A livid scratch curves down his neck and as he shifts slightly it flakes, the clotting blood sloughs from him to reveal the raw flesh below, pink and glistening in the torchlight. Droplets of crimson speckle erratically down his chest: such gentle marks of his master's affections.
His master lounges across the chair, one leg draped with feline elegance that is strangely at odds with his bulk over its blackwood arm. One golden eye flicks open, lazily his master appraises him, and despite himself he flushes. The sheer carnality of his master's gaze sets something entirely unwanted to twist in his stomach, and as if he could smell it, his master smiles. A sickening grin contorts his handsome features, all sneering carnassials and twisted lips, and with a languid motion he shifts, straightening up in the chair.
A knife lies across his lap, the stiletto blade flashes coldly in the light. From a gilt-leather handle it runs, the thin steel tapering to a wicked point. Such delicacies were rare in Angband's smithies, yet in them his master had once shown interest, and he talent in their forging, and with trepidation now he looks upon the blade that he had made those long years ago. Spells of breaking, of rupturing and unmaking trail in filigree script along its length; the puissant language of Aman twisted to his purposes and made corrupt.
His master grasps the knife's hilt; he toys with it before holding it upwards in a mock fighter's stance, poised and feral. Light moils down its length, the blade seems to shimmer in his hand as slowly his master arises, he steps forward, and pure, sadistic greed burns in his eyes.
With dreadful apprehension he watches his master step towards him; he sees the knife in his hand, the awful smile curving over his face. Instantly he feels his breath quicken, his throat tightens as true panic cuts through him and in his bonds he squirms. If he could work but one wrist free, if he could do anything to protect himself, to cover himself, to shield himself from what is so surely coming. But his contortions do not avail him, a whimper bleeds from his throat as his master steps closer, and desperately, hopelessly he begs, "No, no, my lord, please, p-please don't do this…"
But his master's trap is well laid, his pleas dash to the pitiless stones below him, and he is left exposed to whatever designs await him. He can only hang, a fresh canvas for his master's next tapestry of cruelty or affection or some dreadful mingling of the two. At that realization of his own utter helplessness he whines, he freezes as terror grips him, as the anticipation of pain seizes him and refuses to let go.
Faster than his eyes can follow, his master lunges forward. Something primal in him flinches, he screws his eyes shut, expecting at any moment that slicing, piercing agony of a blade beneath his skin. But the flat of the blade merely taps against his lips, parting them ever so slightly.
His breath steams across the metal, mottling it in cloudy white bursts as he gasps in surprise. His master smiles anew, he tilts the blade upwards, its tip pressing into his upper lip as he struggles to choke down his shock, his fear. Slowly the knife drags downwards over his chin, over his neck, only just avoiding breaking his skin. Its point teases the edge of the scratch upon his neck and at that familiar pain he hisses, the air drawn sharp over his gritted teeth.
The knife plays ever lower, slicing intricate curlicues across his sternum and his chest. White filigree lines bloom in its wake, his master watches with fascination as that visceral procession marks over his skin. At the base of his sternum its wandering pauses, his master sneers, and a terrible moment of anticipation grips him. But slowly then the knife trails left. It circles his pectoral muscle in a wide diameter at first, but soon it narrows, spiralling languidly in towards his nipple. And even though in his mind he hates it, he dares not move in case his master should then choose to hurt him truly, he watches in horror as his body betrays him. His nipple stiffens into an engorged little epicentre, and shivers prick over his skin that are not entirely prompted by fear.
The blade finds its apex, its tip digging sharp and cold into his nipple, and in uncontrollable reflex he inhales. A noise caught halfway between a sigh and a moan tears from his lips, he arcs his head back, his hair sticking in sweaty strands to his cheeks and neck. And though his mind screams at him to stop his chest thrusts forward, he curls into that insistent pressure, pressing the knife harder into his nipple.
Blood wells up under the knife's tip, and a boiling smash of pleasure erupts in his stomach.
"Oh, little one," his master purrs, the words dripping from his teeth. His cheeks flush pink as shame courses through him: he shouldn't like this, it is wrong, it is obscene; but his master trails the knife lower, scoring pink furrows across his stomach, setting his abdominals to clench and roll as pleasure strikes its way through him.
With his right hand, his master strokes his hip. His fingers linger over its swell; they toy with the waistband of his trousers. One sharp nail moves in lascivious circles over his pelvis, the muscles there splayed taut, before dancing away down his thigh. The knife moves to follow, his abdominals clench as a thrill of delight shakes through him; this humiliation, this joy and helplessness all crushed together and made bestial, and a moan escapes his throat before he has even the slightest chance of preventing it.
His master grips the back of his left leg, tight and urgent, and against that touch he jerks his hips forward, providing some small relief from that strange hold. Nails tap his inner thigh, they rake across the thin leather there, and hot bolts of unbidden arousal rip up from the base of his stomach. Desperately he tries to stop himself, to tame himself, but the knife's point catches the lowest point of his abdomen, balanced agonizingly between his hipbones, and an undignified little squeak worms from him.
His master's hand slides across his groin, plucking ever so slightly at the lacings on his trousers, and at that sly touch the last shreds of dignity relinquish their hold on him. A whine flickers out of his throat and he throws his hips forward into that pressure, his head arching back in the very image of abandonment. And a part of him is disgusted at himself, it wants to curl up and hide where no one can ever make him feel this way again, but it drowns out in the passion that throbs through him, as such forbidden desires escape their bounds and assert themselves at last.
The obtuse need to please races through him; the need to control, to be controlled pounds in his stomach, and before him his master sneers. And he feels himself stiffen against his master's palm, such desire manifested in crude flesh, but oh what delights it sends sparking up through him. Breath tumbles over his lips in beseeching little pants, a groan rings in his ears as his master strokes him harder, and his master's grin widens. Unbidden his hips angle into his master's fingers, he near grinds himself against his master's palm, just for one sublime moment he is consumed by the careless abandon of passion.
"Oh, Mairon," his master sighs. "When was it that you lost your grace?"
The words chill him to the bone. Abruptly he freezes; ardour curdles to icy shock in his veins. And for a split second he remembers, he remembers what he was: a proud Maia of Aulë's noble house; skilled, haughty even, but esteemed as mighty in his craft, and in his being.Once, it seemed, he was respected. Under the fair light of Aman he was sacrosanct.
And now brought so low, trapped in dungeons of his own design where lords and pawns play their fickle games and he just another one among them. Of his own choice he was corrupted, of his own choice he swore fealty to his master and all that it entailed, for the snatch at power dangled before his eyes. By his own blind ambition then he was entrapped, and he is now beholden to the demands of his master whether he wishes them or no.
Tasks he is set and ardently he sees them done; mechanisms of war he fashions with eagerness, weapons the like of which even the most adroit of the Noldor cannot match zealously he forges, trinkets gorged with jewels he weaves and gladly would give to all who ask them of him. Crafty are his counsels of war, precise are his dealings with Angband's economic matters: to whatever task his master commanded of him he would pay nothing but his best efforts. For so he is bound, so he had sworn on his knees before another throne, in a different land.
His loyalty he sold all those millennia ago, and his skill, and cunning and expertise and resolve. But not this. Though innocent desire might even then have blossomed within him, he did not sell himself so crudely.
So swiftly he recoils, as far as the chains will allow him he arcs his hips away from his master's touch. Loathing sparks amid his desire, it burns incandescent at his core, and fervently he writhes, wrenching at the chains that hold him. If they would give but an inch, if he could just move he could stop this; he could put an end to this terrible creeping arousal, his master still palming him through his trousers.
"P-please," he gasps, looking desperately up at his master, "please… I – I don't want this, my lord, please… Stop. S-stop… oh!"
His master's fingers stroke him a tiny bit harder and he moans as pleasure courses up through him. A smirk of triumph curls over his master's lips, an eyebrow arcs in wry surprise, and with a sinister note of derision in his voice his master says, "Come, come, little one. Doubts, now? Misgivings?"
The breath stops in his lungs.
"It is far too late for that."
With those fatal words still hanging in the air his master cuts him down, with a swell of puissance the manacles snap open about him. He collapses to the floor, landing hard down upon the stones, and he whines as the blood flows anew into his arms, as blazing tendrils of pain seem to lick beneath his skin.
He scarcely has the chance to begin composing himself before his master grabs him. One hand twines through his hair, the other grasps his upper arm, and with terrifying ease his master drags him across the room before throwing him down onto the bed. His hands scrabble for purchase upon the silken sheets, frantically he tries to rise, he tries to get away, but before he can move much more than an inch his master pins him down. One hand forces his head down into the sheets, his master's fingers knot tightly into his hair as the other rides the curve of his hip, the knife still balanced in his fingers.
"No…" he moans, the word muffled into the bed sheets, and whether his master has heard him or not, his protest goes unacknowledged. The blade slashes down his left leg, his trousers part under its tip, leaving a bloody scratch darting down his thigh beneath it. Shock wars with the last remnants of desire still running in his veins, a whimper caught dangerously between protest and pleasure gags into the bedcovers. But still he shakes, he bucks and twists beneath his master in some last hopeless stand against the inevitable.
The fabric of his waistband jerks into his hips, his master flings his trousers aside leaving him painfully naked and pinioned beneath him. The knife clatters to the floor, and he knows what is coming, he knows it, and he reviles it; but some tiny, traitorous part of him welcomes it. Again he writhes, but this time it is gentler, it is resigned as the pointlessness of resistance spreads its torpor through him.
He feels his master unclasp his own robe, one hand still forcing his head into the bed sheets while his knee slams down upon his lower back, with such distressing ease holding him still. Suddenly his master's knee releases him and reflexively he bends into that relief, raising his hips, until with dreadful certainty he feels his master position himself behind him. Something cold drips down him, around him, and the muscles in his back knot in such horrid anticipation as he waits.
Time seems to congeal, what gasping breath he can draw in seems to stick in his throat, it crawls through his lungs in some nightmare viscosity. His hands clench into fists around the bed sheets, his eyes squeeze shut in horror as his master pulls him closer, as the horrible, seductive words crash through him.
"You can scream if you want, little one. No one will hear you. No one is coming to save you. No one will care."
"No… no please, please, my lord, d-don't…"
"And this is going to hurt."
And with that awful proclamation still ringing in his ears, his master slams his entire length into him in one savage thrust that punches the air from his lungs.
He screams as the pain explodes through him, he sobs as his master rocks him against the bedcovers. Lieutenant he is no more, commander, betrayer; in those hot, aching moments it all comes apart. For now he is just a toy, a thing to be debased and abused at his master's whims; not a Maia, not a being, just a thing. Just a thing for humiliation. A thing for pain.
And he sobs as gradually his master's thrusts change, as each press of flesh into flesh loses its sting, as slowly his master rubs up against something exquisite inside of him. And to his abject horror that pain transforms, that wrongness blends and shifts and prickles within him and it becomes something else.
It becomes something torrid and gasping and right.
