The prisoners were stripped slowly, Sauron relishing their shame and discomfort, then he flicked a whip of many thongs at the Eldar's slender backs protected only by their linen undergarments. He wasn't even in earnest but playing with them. The Elves' appearances were decieving; they could survive much abuse and neglect for the Fire of Creation burned hot in them and wasn't easily extinguished. And that's what made it so fun. After some time, when the captives' skin and clothing hung in tatters, he left them slumped against their bonds.
Sometime that night Miriel found the strength to weep softly, her tears sliding down her delicate nose unheeded to fall to the hard-packed dugeon floor. A week passed by and the tears stopped coming and was replaced by numbness broken occasionally by great anger. Each day brought a new torment even though their arm-shackles were replaced by iron neck-collars attached to the wall. By then the guards had no more fear of the emaciated and beaten-down Elves doing anything to escape or do them much harm. Morgoth made sure food started being left for them; he didn't want his new pets dying too soon. It was hardly to their liking, however.
Sniffing the slabs of bloody meath and stone-hard bread beside dirty water Miriel whimpered and backed away from it. Her stomach rumbled, however. She lapped some of the water to ease her cracked lips and burning throat, looking over at her companion. Like her, he was for all intents and purposes naked, his grey eyes growing big in his gaunt face due to the dimly lit cell they lived in day after day. Scars riddled their once-glorious bodies, the woman's finely chiseled nose now crooked and marred and one shoulder held above the other one. Sauron had had fun dislocating her arm as Morgoth looked on, the Black Tyrant overseeing the progress of his little brainchild.
Clutching a strip of nasty-looking meat Fingol started to bite into it when Miriel shrieked. "What if it's poisoned?," she demanded, shocked at his stupidity.
"Why would they keep us alive if they were just going to poison us? He--the Dark Lord--could easily kill us at any time." He bit the extremely rare meat and chewed, swallowed. He didn't keel over immediately and that was encouraging. Before too many more days Miriel joined him in eating the disgusting beast-flesh and maggot-ridden bread. Shuffling forward as far as he could on his leash Fingol smelled the air from the tiny slit in the wall. Melkor had broken his ankle and it healed wrong, causing the foot to turn in awkwardly. "It's night-time," he announced in a hoarse bark.
"So?," sniffed his companion.
"So, we've survived another day."
"And what good is that?," she asked crossly. "To be sport of these vile creatures?"
"Sport?," asked Sauron, Gorthaur the Cruel, almost kindly. "It isn't sport alone, my lovelies."
"Then what is it?," questioned Fingol.
"Now that would be telling," he evaded, approaching them quite intently. He was tall and angular like an Elf, but eyes weren't right, they were filled with such malice and perversion that there was no way he could be one of the Fair Ones. "I can smell your hate...hah. Your race have prided yourselves on your grace, restraint, and other high-minded ideals. Didn't take you too long to sink down to the rest of us."
"We had done nothing wrong! To do this to us is wrong!," screamed Miriel, voice going shrilly. "I hate you and I have good reason! Ahh--"
"Were you going to curse me?," he chuckled, quite amused. "Let me pour some invective in your pointy ear, milady," and he pinned her against the wall with his awful prescence, a long-fingered hand wrapped around her long, slender throat. "I hear lots of wonderful conversation from my Lord's slaves and servants." Whispering in her ear he began, "You haven't yet begun to suffer, bitch. Here at the impenetrable fortress of Angband you are naught but pussy-meat fit for the sport of my Hill-men. Little Elven slut, I wonder what would make you hate me more than you do already." She sobbed, never having been talked to like that in all her many years, emerald eyes widening as the whispers became softer and more menacing. "...would you like to see my special little toy, my little...probe? It's made of iron and studded and it's..oh, about this long," he held his hands unbelievably far apart. His perfectly-formed lips were touching her pointed ear so very lightly, breathing hard and inhaling the scent of her hair. "Yesss...I feel your fear and disgust, but oho! There's something else too: curiosity." He laughed vilely, running his hand from her neck to her small breast and squeezing. "Are you afraid I might use it on you? Or use my own personal tool on you? Hahaha, I don't lust as you do--I never had a mortal body or needs. Doing this is sport enough, but for you...for you I could make an exception."
Lip quivering, she tried to shrink further away from him and couldn't. "You...bastard," she croaked weakly.
Snickering he turned to Fingol, who eyed him tiredly. The torture had been especially rough on him, it seems. "And you, my pretty boy," Gorthaur laughed. "Perhaps I could probe you with my iron toy. Perhaps you would even enjoy it!"
"Damn you!," growled Fingol.
"That's the spirit!"
As the months wore on all they heard was profanity and abuse from and among the guards, and began greeting Gorthaur and his master with a hurled "Fuck you!"
"I love you too, my dears," quipped Morgoth one such day.
"You love nothing," spat Fingol bitterly.
"Ah, but you are wrong. I have put much work and labor into you. I don't cast aside things needlessly and I waste very little. Think you the words I spoke to you when you first arrived I actually felt? I blame you for nothing little ones. The Mighty take what is their due, and you have a will that cannot be denied. How do you purpose that you have survived all that we have doled out to you? I have made you tougher than iron or steel, tougher even than mithril." Holding out his Silmaril-scorched hand his Shadow passed over them, clouding their eyes and mind. The hazy memories of untouched forests and gurgling waterfalls receded even further, recalled only rarely in dream. The taste of lembas, the glow of moonlight and starlight on smooth-skinned, unlined faces, the smell of the first spring rains, they faded into the darkness and shadow. What was real was here and now, and what was real was pain. Pain...and their Masters.
Seasons passed in Middle-earth, and life went on in the lands much as it had before, and life in the Iron Tower also went on much like before, except that two forlorn figures picked their way down the steep mountain, avoiding the Sun as much as possible. Sauron watched them go, sighing and turning to his Lord. "Is this wise, turning them loose like this?"
"Whither can they go, Gorthaur? Who would abide or succor them now? And besides, they cannot escape me, my Mark is on them. Wait, and watch."
Using cruelty and the darkest magic, he had stripped them off all their positive attributes, everything that marked them as Elves had been taken from them. Stumbling along, crouched low to the ground the pair threaded their way down. Twisted by torture and black magic they were misshapen, horrible mockeries of their former selves, skin mottled and scarred, faces bludgeoned beyond repair.
"Do you remember the way?," asked Fingol.
"Yes, I think I do," answered Miriel. "D'you think we're being followed?"
"Hmm, I don't know, but the Sun is burning my eyes. Maybe we should travel by night." Reaching back into memories of their former life they made their slow way back to the forest they used to hunt in, catching small game in clawed hands and eating it as they went.
"Fingol, will they even know us when we get there? Our bodies have endured so much.."
"They'll know, Miriel."
"Garn!," swore the woman. "The moonlight is even bright, curse it."
The next night a feast in the clearing in the woods was disrupted by two hunched figures stepping toward the fire with arms outstretched in supplication. Two more miserable, wretched, pitiful-looking creatures none had ever seen in their long lives. "What is the meaning of this?," demanded the Elven-lord Maldun. "Who are you?"
"Please..help us. Prisoners of Angband we have been...," the pair croaked. At this some of the Elves cried out that they should be turned out quickly before they were all killed by the agents of Morgoth, and others exclaimed that any creature treated so beastly must be tended and helped. Compassion was the medicine for the Dark Lord's ills, they said, not more cruelty.
When at last their names were discovered some of their friends and kin-folk were amazed and dismayed, for they were unrecognizable to all who once knew them. The pair were fed and given clothing to cover their poor bodies, and they slept as ones dead for a night and a day. When they awoke they found their ordeal was far from over. Suspicion followed them everywhere they walked, and the other Elves could hardly bear to look at them. Then came the reports of fell beasts and creatures of terror finding their way to the hidden forests and enclaves. Werewolves and Wargs and others things to terrible to name preyed on the Eldar.
Fingers were pointed at Miriel and Fingol. "They led the monsters here," many said.
"They'll kill us in our sleep," said others.
Their lord Maldun heard all this and was troubled, for he felt it were better to have the wretches here under his eye rather than out somewhere causing michief, or worse yet back at Thangorodrim.
