Ania of Mordor

Waves of heat played on the horizon as Ania looked across the Lithlad, the Ash Plain of Mordor. The flat plateau was completely barren, though slaves worked everywhere in Mordor. Today she worked far out in the wastelands surrounded by the Ephel Dúath, where the signs of work slowly began to dwindle close to the Shadow Mountains. It was against those looming shadows - they really were properly named - that the heat waves danced in her vision. They mesmerized her, being part of her hazy world that sent a disturbance through her sight. Her vision had begun to blur yesterday, and she knew exactly why. The wounds on her back were now adorned with green fringes, and a puss-like substance, not natural of these types of wounds, filled in the areas surrounded by the putrid green, forming canyons of disease in her back. She sweat harder than she had on the hottest day she could remember out working on the Lithlad. Still, she shivered with every breath. She found herself staring at nothing and seeing something, the heat waves rippling across it.

She saw bright yellow eyes staring at her from underneath flaps of skin that protruded from the forehead of the orc. It smiled at her, and she could no longer hold its gaze in her disgust. The orc snarled under her breath, and, seemingly without any effort, pushed her away, leaving her sprawling on the ground, a useful tool, perhaps, but an object nonetheless, and one that any orc hated to use. The red glow that kept the world around Ania from being dark was nearly at its strongest. The harsh luminosity streamed into huge pits around Barad - Dûr, many the size of lakes or larger, from the battle that constantly raged atop Mt. Doom. The heat from the molten lava, adding to the general heat of Mordor's climate, could be felt even down at the bottom of one of the pits. In the pit was cooler than outside, but Ania could feel the sweat pouring out of her skin in what felt like rivers. She constantly found herself trying to wipe it off her arms and legs, as it itched. But even more often, she found that she wanted to cry as she felt all that water running out of her body, all going to waste. She thought of the small swig of water she had taken of the life giving liquid that morning, that was to last her the much of the day. It was then that she wanted to gather all the sweat in her hands and pour it back into her body through her mouth, but she lacked the energy to do so.

Ania let her head fall to the ground to lay with the rest of her body, and looked up to see flashes of fire illuminate a black sea of clouds. It was a circular window to a hell that she looked into, though the hell around her seemed so real. She let her senses go to feel the world around her, to test its reality. Her nose smelt the sharpness of the constant burning scent, her tongue tasted grit in her mouth, and her ears painfully listened to harsh voices with thick, ugly tongues and undeveloped vocal cords.

"Why?" said one voice, hissing and writhing like a snake.

"The Master wishes it so," said another, seeming more fit for cackling, creaking and mocking like a crow.

"But which 'master' do you refer to?" came the snake voice.

"What does it matter? The slave is here to be used." This voice growled like an hungry bear, but it frightened Ania the least.

She was here to be used, she knew; it was something every slave learned quickly, if not immediately, with the branding of possession. Ania knew this, but she refused to understand it or accept it. She knew above all that this was against the laws of nature, wrong in every way. Here, in this hell of the physical plane, the laws of nature ceased to mean anything, and so, all here shortly forgot them and their meaning, accepted their meaninglessness, or knew nothing of them to begin with. Ania had had the chance to know them for all the twenty-three years of her life, for when she entered this shadowed land, her life ended. One of the few thoughts of hope, or at least of contentment, in her heat, was that she at least had had a life. This was a small, and it shrank to being void of consolation when she looked into her son's cursed brown eyes. They had not had the change to see anything green, which grew in the splendor of life in nature, which shouted of the natural gift of life. Her Jordo had never seen this gift uninjured.

Ania was only a month away from turning twenty-three when she became with child. She lived with her husband in the wilderness of Gondor. He worked as a lumberjack, and had carried his lumber into town by himself for less than a year before the shadow grew too large for the to live peacefully. A sub-human creature's hand reached out and stole their lives from her husband and her, tying their hands to the back of a cart. The orcs were so very cruel, and were so disgusting slavers to the point that they did not care what kind of shape the slaves were in or how many they brought back to their Master. Whether they were meant to be horses or cattle for the slaughter, Ania had never pondered.

After a full three hours march, it had been clear that Ania could not go on, carrying her child with her. Durian, her Durian, then sacrificed himself for her and his unborn son. Ania would not have let him, would have remained with him forever, as she had sworn to do almost a year and a half before, if another life would not have been affected by her decision. Durian demanded of an orc that his wife be allowed a place on the cart, with a growing number of slaves that had staggered and fallen on the long road, though there were some that had not risen from the road, and so remained there. Ania knew her husband; her was strong as an ox in body and mind, and so what the orc replied did not bring warning to her, at the time.

"There be room for one. You or you?" He pointed to Durian then Ania, and Durian pointed to his wife. "Her?" the orc asked, disbelieving. Her husband nodded. "You?" he then asked Ania. She turned to Durian. He smiled at her, and she managed to nod her head in answer to the orc's question. "Fool," the orc could be heard muttering under its breath. A glance toward Durian made it obvious who it was talking about. Durian's eyes darkened, and he growled like a beast. Ania had just a moment to stare at her husband in surprise until he charged at the creature like a wild creature himself. A sickening crack and the orc's neck was broken, but the four, five, six more orcs surrounded Durian. They brawled with the man for several moments, Durian putting up an amazing fight. Horrified amazement was what Ania felt, with quickly escalating horror growing up from her gut to her throat. She felt sick, but she could still find a scream in her mouth as an orc finally decided it was time to pull out his belt knife and finish the fight. As the scream only grew in volume and the horror consumed her, she could not help but feel glad that it was over. The pain was over for her Durian, and this miniscule, warming thought lay at the bottom of her stomach, making her feel all the more sick.

And so Jordo was born in Mordor, and was - though Ania never would have believed it to be so in the days of her free life - her only son. He had been allowed to live, but had it really been worth the struggle to keep him alive, and so keep her alive? The realization that Ania could have died then, and gone with her husband, was a startling one. She had lived to see death and to see her son grow up to be an offspring of this madness. Her son sickened her too often for her to feel more than an attachment because she had carried him within her. But she was not sure if this would stay her hand when she found herself waning to end the madness. Besides, wouldn't this be freeing the boy, particularly from his fear? The sad part was, this fear was all that there was to blame for the boy's sub-human actions, and, Ania was afraid, his sub-human mind. She would set him free, and, of course, herself. They would be free together, and then she could love him.

Ania thought now that, perhaps, she had made her mind up. After all those years of struggling within her mind and heart, she decided that this was the right thing to do. This was not at all the first time she had considered this option, this possible escape route. And she had floundered when it came to doing to right thing, especially when she actually looked at her son, even into his eyes that were filled with fear and vacant of hope, or even anger, disgust, hatred. This was what was so unnatural about the boy. He did not even feel hatred toward the orcs, his named masters, for he did not know what to hate them for. And Jordo could not see what was wrong with his position - even if it could be painful - and, even more so, with his behavior. Part of this came simply from the fact that he knew of no other way of life. Ania had tried countless times to tell him of her old life, and of the life he should have. But - and she knew this all very well, even if her son did not think she did - he did not believe. And how could he believe? How could he hate? How could he even think for himself? Fear trapped him in a tiny corner of existence, and obedience poured from his soul. And there was no one to blame for putting Jordo in his corner except for Jordo himself. Ania's mind thought this logical, and her mind was able to convince her heart of its truth, as always. She could not blame the orcs for this; she had a logical explanation as to why, but her subconscious played tricks of its own in the formulating of her thoughts. If her mind truly worked logically, it would realize just how similar she grew in any of her thoughts to her son. Though perhaps a little heart needed to be involved of its own, as well. But for now, it was a prisoner of her mind.

"You. Slave. Come here." Ania stared at the orc, looking indignant, still lost in her thoughts, and angry to find someone interrupting them. But then a warm sweaty hand, covered in a tough hide, grabbed her bare arm with the force of hatred. All simple indignation was gone, but it was replaced by a loathing that made her forget to be afraid. She stared into the creature eyes of the orc, making sure that he saw the deep hatred in her, which went further than her eyes. The orc's eyes actually widened at what he saw, but he did not forget himself. His grip tightened on her arm, and he held her gaze as he spoke to his comrades behind him. "This ones got fire in her gut." It was the crow voice.

"We'll be putting it out soon, I think. Never have seen 'em come out of this one fiery," the bear growled.

All three of the orcs laughed, obviously finding some sick amusement in what they were going to do to her. Usually Ania would acknowledge this as a warning, but now she felt no fear. As it the orc who stared into her eyes were reading her mind, or at least reading what he saw, he told her, "you feel no fear because you don't know what we plan to do to you, yet."

"Should we tell her now?" asked the snake voice, a wild laughter making his voice almost squeaky. Ania finally looked away from the orc's eyes, and looked at the one who spoke like a snake. He was standing over a small pit filled with a sick brown-red substance, thick and steaming with the heat, that Ania hoped was simply some kind of mud, a natural substance. The orc then stuck a large wooden pole that he had been leaning against into the pit. A crazed orc head rose from it with a roar, then went back in to writhe beneath the mud-like, thick liquid. To her surprise, no sick feeling grew in the pit of Ania's stomach. No feeling at all filled her or consumed her as the orc that still held her by the arm proceeded to tear what few garments she had from her. He then led her to the pit of brown and red that still writhed, telling her that she should "close her eyes." Ania felt nothing but the heat.

She squinted at another pair of orc eyes, staring down at her, as the sweat stung her eyes. She looked into them and her eyes began to burn. She squeezed them shut at the pain, and when she opened them, there was only one glowing yellow eye. Looking away from the sun, she realized that the sun was not what blurred her vision. This time the heat waves were not the only things that made the Lithlad hazy. And then realized why; remembered. It really was getting hard to focus her mind. She blinked several times, trying to refocus her eyes, but with no result. Ania then smiled, as she understood one more thing: that this world was blurring, disappearing in a hot fog. A hot fog…she found the strength to laugh slightly at this; everything was hot here. She hoped that where she would soon depart to was cooler.

Her skin burned, as it could not turn away from the sun. The fires soaked in through her skin, and she could feel a searing pain being poured throughout her body. Her bones began to ache with the knowledge that she was dying, though her soul felt light. A heavy weight was lifted from resting upon her heart. Her mind cried out that this was a blessing, and, as she thought of her son, she felt no regrets. She knew that he should envy her, as she had found the way to freedom. As she thought of how long it had taken her to find what looked her in the face every day, she cursed the day the brand on her hand began to heal. She had passed the first test, and now she failed the last, and she was happy. Ania greeted the cold, away from the blinding light and the burning sand of the Lithlad, the Ash Plain, of Mordor.