ACEDIA

"Annatar?"

It took three days for the elf to come limping to Annatar's door: three long, withering days of caginess and forced smiles and unspoken resentments.

For the most part they had avoided each other. Annatar retreated into the depths of the blast furnaces alongside Corannon and Vëantor as they laboured upon further modifications to the machinery that might exponentially increase their heat capacities, and Celebrimbor was embroiled in some pressing matter of state or other, talking late into the night with Gilthariel or Iskandar upon matters of civil planning or the increased immigration of refugees into the city.

The nights were growing darker, so it seemed, and when the dawn came it bled across the horizon. In the hands of a young Telerin messenger, her sweeping hair braided within a net of serrated sharks-teeth and pearls, came the news that the Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn, along with their daughter and a goodly part of their retinue, were withdrawn to the realm of Lothlórien in the East, and many muttered at what such things might portend. Coolly Annatar had accepted the news, it pleased him if indeed it bothered him at all as he tinkered elbow deep within the bowels of a kiln, yet he heard unattractive rumours of Celebrimbor's rage whispered through the halls of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, and to them he subtly hearkened.

And now the elf lord came crawling back to him, crowned in such simpering repentance for his boldness in the stables those days before, and it was only with a conscious effort of will that Annatar suffered his presence. It was a necessary endurance, he told himself firmly, and upon his own terms the elf's company was not so hateful, he supposed. Sooner or later, it would draw to an end.

"Come in," he called in response to the elf's quiet request, and as he heard Celebrimbor's footsteps pace through the outer rooms of his suite, he stretched himself upon the bedcovers where he languished. An antique book of Noldorin jewel-cutting designs was cracked open across his lap, a goblet of spiced wine he held curled elegantly between his fingers, and he quickly scanned the final few words upon the page before draining his goblet, and laying the book aside.

As Celebrimbor entered his bedchamber proper, Annatar stirred, with an almost painful reluctance he pulled himself up against his pillows into a slightly more formal sitting position.

"Don't…" Celebrimbor murmured; the word fell awkwardly from his lips to clot at his feet. "Don't trouble yourself…"

The elf lord wavered at the foot of the bed; his high-collared, regal attire was a poor mask for the discomfort that knotted through his shoulders. He stole a shameful glance at the Maia, at his friend, before sighing heavily, and for one delicious moment Annatar let him squirm in his unease. If Celebrimbor had come to grovel, he thought, then let him do it well.

For in the preceding minutes Annatar had thickened the glamour that swum about him, he wove his subtle illusions until they shrouded him like a mournful veil. A wounded, melancholy air he affected to himself, he clasped it before him like a shield, and with wary reproachfulness he looked to Celebrimbor.

"How… how can I help you, my lord?" he began timidly, and as Celebrimbor took a step forward, almost imperceptibly he shrank back into the pillows, he flinched away from that motion as a frightened animal cowers from its abuser. And at the wince that crossed the elf's face as he beheld that tiny, instinctive movement, a great slick of well-concealed glee spilled through Annatar's stomach.

Towards the left of the bed Celebrimbor moved, one hand trailing absently over one of its carven posts, while in the other was held a small cloth parcel. For a moment then the elf paused, he looked down at Annatar, and his youthful face seemed somehow haggard. Such a look of longing and injury twined together in his gaze, it was so abjectly pathetic that for a moment Annatar almost did pity him, in a condescending, remote sort of way.

"Perhaps you cannot help me, in the end," Celebrimbor sighed. He sank down to perch upon the edge of the covers, and morosely he looked down to the parcel now balanced in his lap. "I sense that you have only the power to wound."

"To wound, my lord?" Annatar murmured, and about him his glamour seemed to swirl, it curled and shimmered in all of its innocence and all of its treachery. "I -" Abashedly he bit his lip, he cleared this throat and sorrowfully he began anew. "That was never my intent, my lord. I did not mean to –"

"I am sorry, Annatar." The words tumbled from Celebrimbor's lips, raw and desperate and unstoppable; urgently the elf looked to him. "I am so sorry."

"My lord…"

Celebrimbor's fingers curled into trembling fists about the bed's quilt, his knuckles shone pale and bloodless through the skin of his hands. "I am sorry. For… for my actions, before. For my impropriety. I never… You, you make me…"

A painful quirk caught upon Celebrimbor's lips, he seemed to wrestle the slippery words out of his throat, and with fey, glittering eyes Annatar watched him suffer.

"I – I feel for you, Annatar. I do, and that I do not think that I can change. I feel… deeply for you, though – though I am not even sure why…"

Such misery sounded in the elf's voice, and for a moment Annatar simply rejoiced in it. But as Celebrimbor's anguished gaze slipped at last from him, Annatar then mellowed, and he murmured, "At times you fear that these feelings run too deep, do you not? They cut too close to the bone."

A quavering sigh parted Celebrimbor's lips, tension locked across his broad shoulders, and his eyes came to a fluttering, cringing close as for a moment he sat in silence.

"Such passions," he spat at last; a sudden vehemence seemed to wreathe him, and the bitterness of his words left his nose crinkled as they scorched over his tongue. "Such passions, they – they are ugly things. They are wild. They are destructive. My father, he – he succumbed to them in the end, and I… I do not want that."

Something feral swam in Annatar's eyes, yet ruefully he smiled, he smoothed the triumphant blare of emotion within him into geniality as he looked upon the elf sitting dejectedly before him. Upon the bed then he shifted himself into a cross-legged position, he leaned forwards, and almost sympathetically he murmured, "You are not your father, my lord."

"Am I not?" Celebrimbor's voice was distant; his dark eyes were glazed with some clouded pall of remembrance, and of what foul memories troubled him Annatar did not care to ask. Celebrimbor's right hand slowly curled about the parcel in his lap; metal crunched from within it as his grip tightened, and as if that slight sound jolted him from his reverie then he sighed, and curiously Annatar watched him as he began to flick open the cloth wrappings.

"I made this," Celebrimbor said softly; the slight hint of a blush reddened the tips of his ears as he unveiled his handiwork, and a fizz of vindictive delight bubbled in Annatar's stomach at the sight of the elf's discomfort. "I made this for you. As… as an apology."

A necklace of intricately interlocked lames of silver he revealed, and at its richness even Annatar was taken aback. The spiralling, interwoven strands of its chain were set at their core with a dark ruby the size of a swan's egg, and the gemstone's facets were set sparkling in a thousand red hues as the soft sunlight and the few lit candles about Annatar's bedchamber illumined the depths and whorls within the great stone. It was a kingly gift, and yet Celebrimbor offered it freely; and Annatar stared in amazement at it for a few speechless moments more until quickly he turned.

He swept his honeyed cascade of hair aside to bare the back of his neck to Celebrimbor, almost coyly he glanced back over his shoulder, a cheeky shrug belying his invitation, and his acceptance of such a sumptuous apology. Yearning burned in Celebrimbor's heart as he gazed upon the curve of Annatar's neck: the slight stud and shift of vertebrae under his skin, the soft ridges of tendons that ran from the light collar of his shirt to the base of his skull, a stray ringlet of hair that slipped down the side of his throat. Desperately Celebrimbor stamped down the ferocious blaze of arousal that ignited within him; he restrained the screaming impulse to simply melt forwards, to take Annatar in his hands, to kiss him, to possess him, and as the more sordid of his thoughts reared their heads, hurriedly he looked away.

Annatar did not want him, he told himself firmly. Let this simply be a gesture of friendship, he willed himself, a symbol of affection without lust, yet he was powerless to stop the aching tremble of his fingers as he lifted the necklace to Annatar's throat. The Maia dipped his head while Celebrimbor fumbled with the clasps, his fingers brushed over the warm, smooth skin of Annatar's neck and hard he swallowed back the moan of longing that coiled up in his throat. Quickly though the necklace was secured, Annatar swept his hair back over his shoulders, and with a tentative smile he turned back around.

"It is lovely," he sighed, glancing happily down at himself as he centred the ruby between the points of his clavicles, before sending such a radiant grin towards Celebrimbor that it nearly caved the elf's chest in with its brilliance.

Slowly Celebrimbor nodded; that stunning necklace curled about the Maia's neck did nothing but enhance his beauty, and gross, crude craving twisted in Celebrimbor's innards. But ferociously he pushed past such base desire, Annatar did not want him, and with a ruined, hurting smile he replied, "Yet it is still inadequate. It cannot do you justice."

"Perhaps I do not deserve your justice, my lord," Annatar murmured, and at that strange remark Celebrimbor looked more sharply to him.

But the Maia's gaze drifted away, dreamily he looked down to his hands folded upon his lap, and the flecks of crimson light that danced across them. For as he turned, the candlelight fell upon the great ruby at his throat, and it threw its ghostly refractions to scatter like a spray of evanescent blood upon Annatar's fingers.

"The light is shattered," he mused, more to himself than in any declaration of intent, watching in fascination as he twisted his hands about, as the wavering points of crimson light hovered upon his knuckles.

"It is beautiful," Celebrimbor smiled, glancing fondly down at those slender fingers.

"It is broken."

"Can it not be both?"

The light burst into a thousand pinpricks of radiance as Annatar looked upwards, crimson shards spun giddily out across the room to dissolve into the daylight as he shifted himself to sit more companionably by the elf, one bare foot dangling off the edge of the bed while his other leg lay curled before him.

A look of confusion at Celebrimbor's last comment crossed his brows; Annatar was so devastatingly beautiful, Celebrimbor thought, so unintentionally alluring and somehow that casualness only made it worse. Yet stoically he wrestled down the rich growl of desire in his voice as he continued, "Many beautiful things there were in this world, yet now they are broken, or they are lost, it is true. But that does not deny them their splendour."

"Nay," Annatar replied, a rueful curl plucking at his lips. "Then their purpose is made void. For what is beauty without presence, without… substance? It is rendered hollow. It is unmade."

"It could be made anew." Celebrimbor's voice strengthened, his heart lifted from the muddle of his thoughts, and pride glittered in his dark eyes as they wandered to Annatar's balcony and gazed upon the distant sunlight beyond. "There is light yet in this world that we might snare, we might distil it and spin it into works of our own wonders. The heirlooms of my house are lost, but even if they might not be salvaged then their glory we might seek to remake."

A carefully toneless noise of consideration flickered out of Annatar's throat. Hard he fought to stop himself from arcing a disparaging eyebrow, from outright scoffing, from laughing in the elf's face at the sheer enormity of his arrogance. Celebrimbor was talented in metallurgy and jewel crafting beyond the ordinary measure of his kind, that much was undeniable, but his words only thinly veiled the grandeur of his intent.

Yet something in Annatar's gaze sharpened at the thought, cunningly he tilted his head, he glanced to Celebrimbor as slyly he said, "That is an ambitious charge, my lord."

"The mighty Fëanáro is my father's sire," the elf preened, and with every ounce of his willpower Annatar restrained himself from rolling his eyes. "You would speak to me then of ambition?"

Annatar's lip curled, his eyes gleamed, and lightly, coyly, he said, "Not so, my lord. I would not reprimand it, if that is what you imply. Merely I would suggest… nay…"

"What?"

Annatar reined in the surge of delight that rolled through him at the urgency in the elf's tone, and conversationally he continued, "The light of the Silmarilli was sacrosanct; it was blended of blessed things and now they are lost, they are placed now far beyond the reach of impious hands. Yet to my mind there comes a thought: it was not merely light that Fëanáro embroiled within those jewels. There was light, and there was all that the light possessed: purity, radiance, divinity. But there was also power."

Celebrimbor frowned, his eyes narrowed as he bade the Maia continue.

"If power could be sewn within a material, if the raw tendrils of puissance could be coaxed and channelled and harnessed and within a vessel therein stored, then what realms of possibility might then be opened to us? Alike to the Silmarilli a thing could be made, but where Fëanáro's jewels were static, this thing could be fluid. If it was not locked, not so rigidly bound, then it could be used to a purpose, it could be replenished and drained in strength without breaking its integrity. If such a thing were to be made, what power then could the bearer wield at their leisure? It would be a marvel, Tyelpë, a thing unmatched in glory and wonder, and its maker would be hailed in utmost renown even unto the end of days."

Intrigue swirled within Celebrimbor's mind; all that Annatar said was entrancing, was new and foreign and exciting, yet some small note of caution sparked within him at the Maia's words.

"Such power you speak of, Annatar," he said carefully. "This… this raw puissance, so you say, this is the dominion of the Valar, not of my people…"

"Power resides within those capable of wielding it." Annatar's voice was soft, delicate; it was laced with poison. "Not fickle deities who turn their backs from this world."

Eagerly Annatar leaned forward, with a roguishly conspiratorial air to his manner he lifted his head, and led by an impulse that he refused to give name to Celebrimbor found himself clinging tightly to Annatar's words.

"There are other powers in this world, Tyelpë," the Maia purred, his voice low and soft and perilous. "There are things that were birthed in the Elder Days: dissonant notes of the great Music in the Beginning that wished to play their own tune, that have grown feral. They are wild, perhaps, but they too have power, and strength to challenge even the Valar should they give thought to do so. Blind things gnaw the foundations of the earth; leviathans prowl the deeps where Ulmo's fair folk dare not to swim. Dark, they are called, malevolent, yet on what authority? Their puissance is different to the tranquillity of the Valar, but does that inherently make it evil? It matters not; perhaps, the consequence only is that the power exists in things such as these. And there are some greater still, beings of such majesty and grace that the Eldar would only prostrate themselves before him in their squalid obeisance…"

A long silence flowed through the room, the sunlight seemed to flicker and dim from beyond the wispy curtains, and the burning wicks of the candles grew long and bright as Annatar's words washed over them. Celebrimbor blinked almost drunkenly as the Maia's voice wove its beguiling net about him, his head near lolled as his imagination swelled and waxed with the rhythm of Annatar's words: beasts of ivory and horn and blood bowed naked and terrible before him, ashen hands and iron crowned him, spears dripped in gore at his sides; revelry, chaos, it was all held within his palm; it infused him, it glutted him with such power that he could cleave the earth asunder, he could sup all red and bloodied and ruined upon its spilling entrails…

"These things," he slurred: it was so hard to focus, to push aside those lilting, reeling images that beckoned to him, that welcomed him in all of their perversions and all of their temptation. "These things that you speak of… how – how came you by such thoughts?

A cruel smile hinted at the corners of Annatar's lips, the words dripped from his teeth in a rolling, measured cadence. "In slothful gardens many a flower like thee, the amorous gods are used, honey-sweet to kiss and cast then bruised, their fragrance loosing, under feet."

"You recite to me poetries?"

"I recite to you truths, my lord," Annatar purred, yet a faint humour moved him. "Albeit in poetic form, I grant. A noble composition, penned by the greatest loremaster of our time. For when the body is abandoned to idle luxury, the mind may yet wander. It may turn to treasures, or to knowledge, or to secrets. Or to creations."

"What then would you create?" Celebrimbor asked. The words flowed greedily from his lips. "What might I create? This… this thing of power. Into what form could I shape it?"

A ponderous moment of silence hung in the air, it became almost hungry, until at last Annatar shrugged, tilting himself away from Celebrimbor and lazily reaching for his book once more.

"I know not, my lord," he said lightly, yet an indulgent smile played about his lips as the capricious potentials and cruel temptations of fancy curled through him. "It is only whimsy, after all."

The weeks rolled steadily onwards, and despite the ever-present thrum and prickle of unspoken tension that lingered in the air, both Annatar and Celebrimbor for the most part took comfort in their renewed friendship. They worked companionably upon ongoing projects commissioned to the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, from the forging of new ceremonial blades to assisting with the re-armaments and fortifications of Ost-in-Edhil's main gates.

For from the roads without, brought to the city upon the lips of frightened travellers or battle-hardened dwarves with grim iron in their hands, came foreboding omens of an oncoming darkness. Fell things stalked the moors at night, the dwarves muttered, and even the short road from the Elven city to the West Gate of Moria was growing unsafe. Screams were heard in the mountains, torn from unseen throats, cries and garbled ululations echoed amid the shale as the moon rose above the horizon. At every inconsequential rock-fall, or the light scrabble of some small foraging creature, the guards' stout weapons were drawn, and in the darkness there rebounded unearthly cries amid the fractured landscape. Travellers up the Great Road from the south were snatched by unseen hands should they stray far from their campfires, children and grown men alike were stolen into the shadows with nothing but screams and sodden, red furrows in the earth to mark their passing.

The fells were become perilous, ravens wheeled and cawed overhead, and despite the heavily armed parties of guards that Celebrimbor sent by day to make safe the lands, they turned up little evidence of misdeeds for their labours. A scuffed track of unrecognisable footprints one party found imprinted into the mud of a narrow, reeking gully to the south-west of the city; they followed its trail to a small dam made of chewed bones and clumped knots of hair, yet the perpetrator of such a grotesque massacre had long since departed.

Smears of blood daubed the walls of a cave far to the south-east, nearer unto the dwellings of the men of the Crossing than to Ost-in-Edhil, yet still the guards investigated. Their horses whickered and shied as they urged them nearer to the cave's darkened mouth, and upon their tentative entry they found only scrawls of gore plastered over the walls like some obscene mural. Half-intelligible sigils were scratched into the soft limestone; cruor dripped from stalactites sharpened like wicked staves, and such a foul stench lingered upon the air that before long the guards were forced to depart. With haste they traversed the long road back to Ost-in-Edhil, yet for their vigilance and skill among the wilds, they caught no sight of the creatures that howled their hatred to the night's starry skies, and stealthily continued to slake the lands in blood.

Ost-in-Edhil itself remained free of such perils: Celebrimbor's stalwart rule ensured that his citizens slept safely behind their high walls and keen-eyed guards, though slowly, unstoppably, the pollution of these unseen terrors encroached upon his lands. Yet no creatures dared the might of the city, not yet, save one, and he wove his concealments cunningly.

Daily Annatar would walk with Celebrimbor, Corannon, and a score of other engineers and artificers of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, and he would aid in consultation of how best to barricade their gates in an emergency, where best to construct secondary fortifications should the need, however doubtful, arise. The courtesans were apt to waive their suspicions, they viewed such troublesome reports as exaggerations or mere mishaps upon their roads and hardly the prelude to war, yet as the weeks dragged on and the numbers of such incidences did not dwindle, even the most frivolous of lords began to pay greater attention to their city's affairs.

Into the stones then the elves poured their strength, into the mortar that bound them they let flow the true power of their smithcraft and their magic, and ever Annatar aided them, or so he appeared to. With subtle little spells of his own he corrupted their wards, he blighted their safeguards, he weaved his own will among the stones and timbers with but a dusting kiss of power and he bade them stand strong, he bade them hearken to the elves but ultimately bound their subservience to himself. He smiled as he felt the hidden splinters of his own puissance pulse back at him as he laid a caressing hand upon the outer walls, his power dormant and yet readied.

With Ennemirë, Commander of the City Guard he would talk upon occasion. Though he protested his innocence in matters of war, he would advise upon where seemed best to him to post additional soldiery as lookouts, or upon what ramparts new catapults might best be mounted, and ever to Ennemirë's ears his advice seemed uncannily accurate. Still, she supposed, Maiarin folk were not apt to mistakes, and such was the subtle authority with which Annatar spoke, and such was the utmost trust with which her lord regarded him, that any doubts about him that she held were soon assuaged.

In the midst of such militaristic industries still Annatar kept himself busy within the more minor projects of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain's halls. Upon a month-long commission from Ost-in-Edhil's trade council he laboured upon introducing the art of silver plating to the elves; the gilding of base metals with a thin veneer of silver which might then be traded at an increased cost.

A small beaker set with a rudimentary circuit of charged metals he had left to steep within a solution of silver chloride, and in the dim morning light of Celebrimbor's workroom the elf lord peered at it curiously.

"Well," he said, eyeing the beaker admiringly. "It has certainly worked!"

"Indeed," Annatar replied, busying himself with lighting a small gas burner upon one of the workbenches with a slight flicker of puissance, for lack of a match to hand. "I said that it would, did I not?"

He crossed the room to retrieve a basket laden with myriad jars filled with metal chunks suspended in oil, and he glanced curiously to Celebrimbor, who was still staring in rapt wonder at the beaker. "It is quite simple, really," Annatar drawled. "The silver in the solution is inherently positively charged, and is therefore attracted to the negative cathode, and oppositely the chloride is attracted to the anode. It is little more than magnetism."

"But you… you catalysed this reaction, didn't you?" Celebrimbor frowned, yet eagerly he peered at the wafer-thin flakes of pure silver that clung to the cathode. "Else from where does the energy transfer occur?"

"There is no catalyst," Annatar explained, laying out the jars beside the gas burner and rummaging about in a nearby drawer for a small pair of tongs. "No catalyst save for a small spark of power. The particles of the reaction must be coaxed into motion, and the goad must come from somewhere. Easily you could replicate this, if you concentrated even a small portion of your fëa's strength onto it. I could teach you, if you so desired."

"Later," Celebrimbor nodded, wandering from the workbench to sit heavily behind his desk, and morosely he stared at the voluminous pile of paperwork that lay stacked upon it. "Still, it is a wonder…"

Annatar did not deign to give a reply. It was really rather mundane, he thought. Far greater works than this trivial little beaker had he seen begun in the days of old: he had called down the lightning and channelled it into electroplating upon such a scale that had seen their dark fortress swelled with riches, great swathes of dull metal they plated in gleaming chromium or dusky copper to be traded or sold or shaped as they willed. It was pitiful how little even the foremost of the Noldorin smiths truly knew of industry.

Still, Annatar mused, there was a smug sort of satisfaction in their ignorance.

With a small notebook and quill left at the ready, Annatar unscrewed one of the jars before him, grasping a small slice of silver-ish metal with the tongs before plunging it into the flame of the burner. For a moment he waited, until swiftly the flare beneath him transmuted to a vivid lilac in colour. Casting aside the smoking metal to a sterile length of cloth beside him he recorded his observations before turning to the next jar. He worked methodically through the samples, noting as the flame was turned yellow, viridian, and phosphorescent orange with the differing metals, and he made careful notes upon their hue.

At arms length he held his last piece of metal: it hissed and spat as the oil about it ignited, yet it imparted no new colour to the flame. With a click of his fingers he extinguished both the gas burner and the shard of metal, leaving it gently steaming alongside the other scraps as he turned aside.

"Have you any lithium?" he enquired, squinting at the jars that clustered along Celebrimbor's shelves, and finding none apparent.

"In the store, I think," Celebrimbor replied distractedly, his gaze flicking up for an instant before he hastily scribbled out several lines of writing upon the end of a lengthy-looking document. Once finished, he cast a fine drying sand across the parchment, and with a sigh he laid his quill aside. "Some was mined a few years back, as I recall it. A seam of petalite was hit within the granite mines to the north, or perhaps we traded with the Hadhodrim for it… Some certainly we acquired, though I do not know how much of it was purified to its elemental form. We do not commonly use it. What purpose do you need it for?"

"I wish to observe its flame colour, that is all. The other metals here are akin to it, save the aberrant, yet there is no lithium among them. It matters not if it is mineralised: I can distil a small amount for my purposes."

Celebrimbor's eyes narrowed in puzzlement for a brief moment, to his recollection the purification of lithium was anything but simple, but softly then he shook his head, and he pushed himself to his feet.

"Come, walk with me," he bade Annatar, "for I too have things that I must collect."

Together they traversed the halls of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, and companionably they chatted as they strolled through the expansive corridors. Nobles nodded politely as they passed; Corannon hailed them enthusiastically through the ajar door of his workroom, the hem of his sleeve perilously close to being singed by the hydrogen flare that seethed above a bubbling vial of aluminium shards soaking in lye, and at that Annatar stifled a contemplative smirk. They clove through a knot of apprentices grumbling about the repetitive acid-base titrations that Narvi had set them to do, they skirted a rather dejected-looking elf who was sporting some magnificent scorches across his flame-proof leathers, and at last Annatar found himself trailing Celebrimbor down the stairs to the cellars that housed the grand store-room.

The narrow stairwell opened out into a colossal chamber; countless rows of filled racks stretched on into the gloom, and Annatar squinted off into the store's inky depths as beside him Celebrimbor lit a slender lantern and handed it to him. He indicated a row of shelves to Annatar's far right, saying, "Lithium, or petalite at the least, should be upon the topmost one, about three-quarters of the way down the row, if memory serves correctly. I shall meet you back in my workroom, when you are readied. Take what time you need."

"My thanks," Annatar intoned, and he and Celebrimbor parted towards opposite ends of the store. Dusty jars and cobweb-strewn boxes cluttered over the shelves, more so as Annatar proceeded into the store's depths. Great swipes were clawed through the film of grime where items had been recently collected, but otherwise the shelves remained undisturbed, and for how long so Annatar could only guess.

Easily enough he found a chest containing large chunks of glassy petalite, and this he pulled from the shelf and placed at the ready upon the floor. He poked through a few nearby vials, but finding little there of interest he swung aside, the lantern held aloft in his hand. Yet upon the opposite shelf an antique label caught his eye; in a spidery hand half-faded with the passing of time was scrawled 'warning: toxic', and upon closer inspection Annatar could just glimpse the fine arsenic powder through the discoloured glass jar.

A sadistic curl of interest needled him then, and further down the row of shelves he wandered, and that interest sharpened into a vindictive sneer of glee at the treasures he found there. Immense jars of hydrochloric acid were stacked over a huge swathe of shelving, all neatly prescribed according to their concentrations, and fondly his fingers trailed over their capped lids. The screams still rang in his ears: even now, even with the turn of millennia and the countless tortures that he had been privy to, that one still amused him the most.

So deliciously the elf had writhed in his bonds as the searing acid bit into his skin, so thinly he had shrieked as they submerged him in it; he had come up coughing blood and sizzling phlegm as the sensitive tissues of his trachea and lungs were eroded. It had snorted from his nose, it had bubbled all pink and frothy upon his lips as he spluttered, as he jerked, as his eyeballs corroded and melted down his face in two thick, chunky drools of viscera. It was almost beautiful, in a way; they dribbled down his cheeks almost like vitreous tears.

How pliant the elf's flesh had been, Annatar recalled, how sticky, how easily it had peeled away from the bone. How wet the elf's last breaths had sounded, how drowned in despair and pain. He wondered what Celebrimbor now would sound like, gulping like that, his breath coming in soft, erratic clicks through a half-dissolved throat. Would he try to beg, Annatar mused. Even at the end of everything, when words became meaningless moans and coughs and gurgles of agony, would he still try to plead for mercy? Truly Annatar was unsure: Celebrimbor was no craven, of that he was sure, but oh how the possibility of experimentation lapped its tempting little urges through him.

A surge of vicious pleasure hummed in Annatar's stomach as he turned aside, as he wandered yet deeper into the bowels of the store, untouched for years if the thickness of the dust was to judge by. Such wondrous labels leapt at him: slender vials of ethylene were stored opposite jars of cherry-red dichloride of sulphur, and the very thought of their combination made his eyes smart. For all too keenly he remembered that particular trial: even thickly layered in greased, protective leathers as he had been, it had taken weeks for the blisters to recede.

Vesicants clustered next to corrosives; rummaging to the back of a shelf Annatar fished from its depths a tightly sealed jar of a singularly vicious compound of methylated chlorine, and his heart soared at the discovery. It would not be so complex, he thought: a simple catalyst of any generic amine with a solution of hydrofluoric acid to create an intermediary, a sharp spark of puissance and a solvolysis reaction with isopropyl alcohol, and then what glorious terror might he unleash. A silent holocaust he could bring to the bleached walls of Ost-in-Edhil, he could crown himself king of a city of their twitching, suffocated corpses.

The temptation of it gnawed at him, but for now he batted it aside. With a vindictive smirk curled over his lips he turned about, noting the location of the chemicals before backtracking to his box of pelatite, and retreating upstairs to Celebrimbor's workroom with only a solemn billow of dust to mark his passage through the cellars.

With a few minor refinements, his flame experiments were carried out well, and soon enough he returned to aid Celebrimbor in his personal projects once more. Phosphorescent trails of turgid, molten metal he let flow into the crucibles that Celebrimbor held; he taught the elf new methods of tempering steel, of variations to the temperatures or the quenching agents utilised that might strengthen the steel dual-fold.

Hot and sweaty then one afternoon they emerged from the great furnaces, already ripping off their thick leather gloves and face masks as they walked back to Celebrimbor's workroom. Once inside they stripped in earnest, peeling the heavy leather aprons from their damp jerkins, and Annatar stepped aside his pile of clothing to unbind his hair from its braid, running his fingers through its locks and grimacing as they came away coated in grime. Hurriedly then he yanked off his steel-capped boots and thick socks, and tugged off the heat-resistant jerkin that clung to him, wriggling it off of his shoulders and leaving him clad only in his sweat-stained shirt and breeches.

His back was turned to Celebrimbor, who was occupied with stripping off his gear alike, but as he twisted to straighten out the rumples of his shirt, he could feel the fabric stick uncomfortably high up his spine, and from behind him he heard the elf suddenly gasp.

"Annatar," Celebrimbor said, his eyes bright with concern as quickly he stepped forward. "Annatar, your… your back…"

Knotted white scars groped over the Maia's spine, some curled even to the edges of his ribs, thin and wiry and cutting and so long concealed from prying eyes by the safety of fabric, and Annatar froze as Celebrimbor stepped yet nearer. His left arm moved to clamp protectively against his bared side, he began to tug down the traitorous material that left him so exposed, and quietly he said, "It is nothing, my lord."

"Nothing?" Aghast, Celebrimbor reached forward; he cared not for propriety as tenderly he reached for his friend's shirt, as he shifted it gently upwards, and almost numbly Annatar let him. A vicious clutch of horror squeezed about his windpipe as he saw the true extent of the scarring, of the ugly whip-lines that marred the Maia's muscled back, that ridged over his skin.

"How can you say this is nothing?" he whispered, his eyes shining with dismay. "For… for Eru's sake, Annatar, you look like you have been flayed half to death!"

"It is just a memory…" The Maia's voice was bleached, dead; he looked emotionlessly to the rough wood of the workbench at his side as the memories flitted through him. Before the court he was splayed, his master sent the whip shrieking across his back and smiled as he did it, he had carved those shameful marks through his skin and had made them indelible, and for all of the power intuitive to him never could he lift the cruel marks of his master's punishment, of his ownership from his skin.

And as Annatar stood so vulnerably before him, all at once an inexplicable sense of guilt cramped through Celebrimbor's innards; a feeling of responsibility, of protectiveness, and his fingers brushed tentatively, sorrowfully over the gnarled edge of a scar upon Annatar's waist. As Annatar began to pull away, Celebrimbor stopped him; his hand clamped about the Maia's wrist and held him close.

"Annatar," he said gravely, passionately: he could not fathom from what well of emotion his words sprang, he knew only that he ached as he said them. "Annatar, did somebody hurt you? Did somebody do this… to you? Why? I – I do not understand…"

A long pause curdled the air between them, yet determinedly Celebrimbor's fingers clutched about Annatar's wrist. They left reddened marks upon his skin.

Softly then Annatar sighed, the glamour about him seemed to dim, and melancholy stabbed suddenly through Celebrimbor's heart.

"My past was… complicated," the Maia said slowly. Carefully he chose his words, he compelled himself not to lie but only to twist the truth to his own purposes, for misplaced sentiment here could yet prove his undoing. But swiftly he glimpsed the path to his salvation, and into his words he wove a slight undercurrent of sorcery, and with feigned, stumbling innocence he continued. "I was not always… I have made many mistakes, my lord, and my previous master did not always look upon them with kindness."

"But this…" the elf spluttered, "Annatar, this is appalling…"

"Not all have such tender hearts." A shy smile pricked at the corner of Annatar's lips, a faint blush mottled his pale cheeks, and hard he fought to keep his veneer of coyness in place as a flare of naked lust bolted through the elf's eyes. "Not all have regarded me with such grace. Not like you do, Tyelpë. For you are very kind to me here."

He felt the elf's grip upon him shift; shakily, nervously perhaps, Celebrimbor's fingers slipped down his wrist, across his palm. "I could be yet kinder."

Celebrimbor's fingers gently nudged Annatar's apart, they slipped in between them, and Annatar swallowed back the whimper of abhorrence that threatened to slip from his throat; he transmuted it into a strangled noise that might have passed for shyness.

"I could be so kind to you," Celebrimbor crooned, subtly he rocked his hips into Annatar's body, "if you would only let me."

His fingernail clipped over a thin golden ring that Annatar wore across his forefinger, and the slight jar of the metal seemed to slam up the Maia's arm. For like some unholy firework burst inside of his skull an idea erupted within him; his eyes flew open as it suffused him, even as the elf pressed into him a wild, reckless smile creased over his face.

Ash nazg…

So powerful was the thought that it need not have been spoken, so foul were the syllables that instinctively Celebrimbor jerked backwards, his hand springing free from Annatar's wrist as if somehow that touch had become scalding. A strange pressure thudded at Celebrimbor's temples, his tongue felt as though it were coated in grit, yet he blinked to Annatar in confusion. For nothing had happened, the Maia had not moved save for the incredulous expression unfurling over his handsome face, and yet still something felt wrong, the air seemed suddenly dangerous and fey.

"Annatar?" Celebrimbor began slowly; the Maia's name seemed to buzz and scratch through the sluggish scramble of his thoughts in an entirely unpleasant sensation.

Yet animatedly Annatar turned to him, a bold smile curved over his lips, and such an air of ecstasy seemed to wreathe him that Celebrimbor found himself tentatively grinning back as the Maia hissed, "A ring!"

"What?"

Ash nazg durbatulûk -

"Rings, my lord!" the Maia exclaimed, his golden eyes imploring and excited and oh so beautiful even as he whirled upon his heel, as he shoved his shirt back into his breeches and scraped his hair back into a ponytail.

"I have to go," he said abruptly, flinging on a pair of boots with such uncharacteristic abandon that Celebrimbor simply stared at him in surprise. "To the library. Yes… yes, they should be there. Excuse me, my lord. I – This will be the making of us all!"

Annatar almost sprinted from the room in his haste, and Celebrimbor stared in utter confusion after him. After a long while of puzzled stillness then he shook his head as if to clear it, he strode over to his desk and took up his quill pen, and desperately he tried to ignore the ugly flush of churning, thwarted, desperate arousal that Annatar had left squirming in his innards.

Thanks for all of your patience, and I apologise that this update was a little slower than usual. But still, I hope it was worth the wait! Until next time, theeventualwinner xx