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“Fetch me another.”
Mairon’s gaze flickers briefly from Melkor’s twisted, rolling form to the stone slab he hunches over like a shade. The body of some nameless elf lies there, mangled and broken. Its pale skin is mottled with bruises and blisters, marred with hundreds of cuts, and obviously long-cold from death. It is merely one of thousands who have died here, upon the table, at Melkor’s hands.
Thousands more will eventually follow. None who enter these halls will escape unmarred.
“There are no others,” Mairon murmurs, turning his gaze back to Melkor where he stands amongst the dark fog of his own power. He has grown somewhat numb to the blatant cruelty of Melkor’s experiments over the years.
Now he does not flinch when they wail.
Now he does not glance aside when their spirits slip away from their battered bodies into death.
Now he does not close his eyes when Melkor tosses their corpses aside like broken toys to clear his table for another victim.
He still finds the entire act disturbing, of course. He does not know what thought beats within Melkor’s mind that drives him to such obvious madness, but it is one Mairon neither understands nor shares.
Trying to infuse one’s own power within the body of an elf?
It is obvious what the result of such an act would be. It is like attempting to fit the entire raging force of a volcano within a simple forge. Even now, after all this time, with all those who have perished here, Melkor has only ever succeeded once.
If the feral beast that resulted could even be called a success.
Melkor stills. His fingers, still tightly coiled around the hilt of a knife embedded within the elf’s gut, slowly uncurl, leaving the blade burrowed in flesh. Blood stains both the knife and his hands, though Melkor does not seem to mind such things.
“What?” Melkor whispers, as if he has not understood or heard Mairon’s words, still fixated upon his last subject of torment.
Mairon rather prefers when Melkor’s gaze does not land upon him.
“You have slain them all, my lord,” Mairon replies softly. He lingers in the doorway, a reasonable distance from where Melkor stands. “That was the last one.”
Reasonable, yet not safe.
There is nowhere truly safe from Melkor’s prying grasp as long as he is visible.
“Ah.”
There is something like disappointment in Melkor’s sigh that makes Mairon’s skin crawl.
“I can arrange for more to be collected,” he offers softly, watching as Melkor raises a hand and begins to pick blood out from beneath his dark, claw-like nails. No one had expected Melkor to suddenly waste all of the elves they have gathered over the last few months in the span of a few short days. Those stores were meant to satisfy him for far longer than they had. “In the meantime you shall simply have to wait.”
“ …Wait ?” Melkor echoes, the word dripping like a poison from his lips. As if he cannot believe what he has been told, as if such words have never been said to him before.
Melkor’s head tilts to one side, then slowly he reaches out, running a finger over the cheek of the elf that still lays upon his table. As if his touch might undo the death he himself had caused.
“Yes, wait,” Mairon repeats. “We have no others.”
Melkor hums, but it could just as easily be a hiss. He falls silent in contemplation, and some of that turbulence within his form settles. Mairon’s gaze flickers to the hallway behind him, and he silently debates making a swift exit before Melkor processes his words and lashes out in rage.
“The experiment still lives?” Melkor asks abruptly, slicing through Mairon’s thoughts with his words like the bloodied knife still embedded in the corpse.
“Yes,” Mairon affirms quickly. “The ah… orc still lives.” Dreadful beast. It does not wail or even speak anymore, but hisses and spits and attempts to bite at anything that comes remotely near it. The infusion of Melkor’s power within its body has clearly driven what was once an elf entirely mad. Just as mad as Melkor himself.
Death would have been a mercy. It is for most who are brought here.
It certainly was for the nameless elf upon the table.
“Shall I fetch it for you?” Mairon offers. He does not relish the idea of attempting to corral the creature from its cage, but offer he must. It is his duty.
His hand aches in a phantom pain where the creature bit the meat of his palm the last time he attempted to coax it.
He has met rats with better manners than Melkor’s pet.
“No, no,” Melkor replies dismissively, waving a hand. “Cannot break that one,” he adds, softer, as if saying the words to himself. His head dips as he leans forward more, over the table, over the body. A hand snakes out, toying with the elf’s once-golden hair, running the strands across the pads of his fingers in quiet study. When he speaks again, the words are barely more than a self-reflective mumble.
“Why is it so difficult to create another?”
“Elves are fragile, my lord,” Mairon says, though Melkor’s words clearly were not intended for him. Still, he feels compelled to comment upon them when the reasoning they keep dying is so obvious to everyone except Melkor himself. “When you treat them too harshly, they will break.”
The earliest years were the worst. Melkor, with absolutely no understanding of his strength, had squashed several elves at once simply trying to grab one from their shared cell. He had subsequently raged, as if he alone were not responsible for the death of his own prisoners.
Leaving Mairon, of course, to don the face of one of the dead to lure more elves to their dooms.
“Pathetic things,” Melkor growls, but Mairon is familiar enough with his ire towards the elves that he does not step back at the noise. “They die so swiftly, and with hardly any effort.”
Mairon once more glances to the lifeless elf and the knife sticking out of its abdomen.
“They are not like us, my lord,” he settles for saying instead.
“No,” Melkor agrees sourly with a small shake of his head. “They are not.”
Abruptly Melkor pauses, tilting his head to the side as if he has just taken notice of something. He rocks his head in the other direction, then suddenly straightens as much as he can within the confines of the room, twisting to glance over his shoulder.
At Mairon.
His mouth twists up in a beaming smile that can only be cruel.
“Lieutenant,” Melkor purrs, deceptively gentle, and Mairon’s hair stands on end. He lifts a hand, gesturing with a single finger adorned with a sharp, black nail. “Come here.”
Mairon only stares, uncomprehending.
“What?”
“Come here,” Melkor repeats, turning to face him completely, and Mairon’s gaze is drawn to Melkor’s face. Black sludge has begun to drip down from Melkor’s brow, covering his skin in a layer of thick, viscous tar. The same kind of change Mairon has seen whenever he grows too interested with whatever lies before him to bother with keeping a fair form. If Melkor notices his control over his body slipping into something more primal, he does not say anything.
He merely smiles.
Mairon takes a step backwards, into the hall behind him.
Melkor’s smile does not fade, but there is a twist in his lip that turns it into something more like a snarl.
“I gave you an order, lieutenant,” Melkor whispers dangerously, though he does not make any motion to chase after Mairon. The hand that does not gesture towards Mairon settles to rest upon the table, and with a flick of his wrist he rolls the body of the elf onto the floor. It crashes to the ground with a dull thud, leaving the table bloodied yet bare for a new victim. Yet there are no more elves here. “Do not make me repeat myself a third time.”
Mairon’s heart beats wildly within his chest, so loud that he is certain Melkor can hear it also.
Surely he would not.
Mairon takes another step backwards.
“My lord, please-“
Melkor’s hand lashes out like a whip, coiling around his arm, and with a swift motion wrenches him back into the room. Mairon stumbles, yet before he can correct his balance Melkor grabs ahold of his arm, his leg, his shoulder, his neck. A dozen black hands, covered in dripping black sludge reach out and dig into skin and cloth indiscriminately. A few catch upon his armor, and sharp nails tear through metal as if it were nothing more than mud.
Mairon winces, and the moment costs him.
In an instant Melkor drags him close until they are nearly touching, and Mairon’s breath catches as he finds hundreds of eyes gleaming down at him in delight.
“Wait,” Mairon whispers, trying to pull away, a word Melkor ignores. A dark fog swirls at their feet as Melkor’s power rolls forth, choking, dripping, oozing.
The hands grip him tighter, and suddenly Mairon finds himself crashing upon the table, Melkor’s crooked body hunched over him, blotting his view of the ceiling above. It resembles little more than a pile of black tar now with countless arms and eyes and teeth. Nothing that even resembles an elf, or any living creature at all. No trace of skin is visible beneath the muck, and as Mairon watches more glaring eyes roll into existence all across Melkor’s body. And Mairon…
Mairon does not know what to do.
His mind blanks, all thoughts evaporating like mist in the morning.
What should he do?
What can he do?
All he can think of is the countless elves that have fallen upon this table before him. He knows well what comes next, yet he cannot seem to muster any thought as to what he should do next.
A hand reaches out and wraps around his throat, forcing his chin up. Two more smaller hands reach for his mouth, nails wiggling beneath his lips to pry them apart and force his teeth open. A fourth hovers over him and a noxious ball of Melkor’s power is already gathering there and Mairon’s brain sputters to life and-
“Wait!” Mairon shouts, lashing out his feet, flexing his arms to break the grip pressing him into the table. He manages to kick himself up onto his elbows, but Melkor has boxed him in well. There is nowhere he can run.
Miraculously Melkor pauses, squinting down at him with a hundred eyes.
“What?” He rumbles, annoyance staining his words at the interruption. Something foul drips down from the hand that still hovers above Mairon’s face and onto his cheek, narrowly missing his lips. Mairon flinches away regardless, and shivers as he feels it slowly run down the side of his face to dribble onto the table.
“Release me,” Mairon croaks. He does not want to be here-he should not be here. There are some lines even Melkor would not dare cross.
To do such a thing to one’s kin?
Unthinkable. No one would dare.
Yet something like dread pools in Mairon’s stomach all the same.
Perhaps Melkor would dare.
“Why?” Melkor asks, tilting his head to the side, as he can honestly not understand why Mairon does not wish to be upon the table, the next subject of his torment.
“I…I wish to leave.” It is difficult for Mairon to try to keep his tone as even and as calm as he can. Melkor has never responded well to demands. Even now, even in the situation he is in, he cannot afford to act rashly, lest Melkor grow frustrated and do something worse. Mairon’s shout was enough to draw out Melkor’s annoyance. He dare not escalate annoyance to anger.
Melkor, fortunately, does not frown.
He grins instead, wolfish and terrible.
“Oh?” He croons, a playful tilt to his voice. He leans forward until he is mere inches away from Mairon’s face, and Mairon recoils from him as best he can while still boxed in. “Where would you go?” His eyes squint in mockery, and several eyes migrate across his body to better stare down at Mairon. His pupils blow wide until there is almost no visible light amongst the darkness, then abruptly shrink to tiny pinpricks. “You are my lieutenant,” Melkor hisses. The dark, cold muck that is Melkor slithers up the sides of the table, shapeless at first but slowly forming hundreds of small hands. Mairon shifts, but they creep from the table to his body and sink in, biting like teeth. "My servant, my maia, mine." The darkness climbs higher and higher, grabbing ahold of Mairon’s hands, arms, thighs, back, legs, feet. “You will do as I say.”
The tar crawls higher, and it takes everything within Mairon’s power to not retaliate with fire. He dares not.
They… they are still simply talking.
He can convince Melkor not to do this.
They do not need to resort to violence.
“Unless… you wish to stop being my lieutenant.”
“I did not-“ Mairon starts quickly, but the darkness that has managed to creep up to his neck suddenly squeezes, and Mairon chokes.
“Shall I release you back to the wild?” Melkor asks in a low purr, leaning closer until his lips hover beside Mairon’s ear. As if sharing a secret. “Let you loose in the forests with neither home or master?”
He huffs some small laugh, and his breath is frigid against the side of Mairon’s face.
“Perhaps I should turn you back over to the dogs of Valinor,” Melkor muses, and Mairon can do nothing but stare, stare down at the darkness that has begun to climb higher. Melkor’s very touch is poison, and he can feel it scrape across his skin like rough sandstone. He is certain beneath the tar, he has begun to bleed in some places where Melkor bites harder “I am sure they would welcome you back with delight knowing you have been in my service for all these years. The blood of these elves is on your hands as well, my dear lieutenant. They will not care that you were not the one to hold the knife.“
Melkor is right, of course. The Valar know of his allegiance to Melkor, and they know the way in which Melkor torments elves. Of course they would believe Mairon to be the same.
“Without my protection, our kin will hunt you down,” Melkor murmurs, and fingers suddenly rake through Mairon’s hair, nails dragging across his scalp. Sharp and scratching, but without enough force to actually draw blood. It is some mockery of comfort that Mairon would like nothing more than to flinch away from.
But he cannot move. That dark, swarming tar resists even the smallest of motions, even breathing.
“Without me, you have nothing.”
It climbs higher, clawing at his cheeks.
“Without me, you are nothing.”
The darkness abruptly recedes. Much swifter than it had crawled up his body it slides away, down the table, leaving him with tattered clothes and battered armor and numerous small lacerations across his body. It retreats back into the form of Melkor who kneels across from him upon the table. Melkor proper as Mairon knows him, when he is neither lost in madness or obsession.
Hair. Flesh. Bone.
Deceptively normal .
Melkor reaches out with the only two hands he possesses, and they do not hurt or bite or drip darkness as they touch the sides of Mairon’s face. Gentle. Careful. As if everything that had just transpired were nothing but a horrible vision.
“Oh, lieutenant,” Melkor murmurs, smiling down at him. “I am the only one who can keep you safe.”
The smile is the last thing Mairon sees.
Like a great wave Melkor suddenly inverts and his power swells, sweeping over Mairon, wrapping around him, smothering him in frigid darkness. Before Mairon can even think to close his mouth Melkor is there, crawling down his throat, tearing it to shreds as he passes, seeking out something deeper.
And he finds it.
His body seizes involuntarily the moment Melkor’s power finds Mairon’s spirit. Every muscle feels as if it is suddenly being torn to shreds in a pain that far surpasses any that could be caused by physical force alone.
It is cold. Colder than winter, colder than ice. Colder than anything imaginable.
“Hush, lieutenant,” Melkor murmurs, the voice shaking Mairon from every direction, and Mairon chokes down the scream he had not realized he was making. “You will be fine. After all, you cannot die.”
He can feel Melkor’s power curl around his spirit, swirling around it like a tempest just as it swirls around his body.
He can feel it poke and prod, searching for some weak point that does not exist.
He can feel the moment it decides to simply make one.
It is the trigger. Blinded by his agony, Mairon can do nothing but ignite .
Distantly, he hears Melkor hiss, and a moment later Mairon crashes back onto the table as Melkor releases his hold upon him. He barely notices. The table immediately buckles, turning to slag in an instant under the fierce fire pouring from every pore in his body.
It hurts.
It hurts.
It hurts.
He can feel Melkor’s power writhing within his spirit, crawling under his skin. Nowhere is safe from his touch, and despite the heat of the flames it refuses to burn .
He chokes and gasps, curling in on himself, cradling his own arms. The very air around him distorts from a heat so mighty his tears evaporate before they can even fall.
“Oh dear,” Melkor’s voice says from far, far away. “My table.”
It is too much.
Where Melkor had at least attempted restraint with elves, he spared none for Mairon. Clearly fueled by the knowledge Mairon is incapable of death, he had poured much of his power into Mairon. Too much. Far more than the small droplets he usually reserves for elves.
The pain is blinding. He can do nothing but curl in on himself, desperately trying to hold together the pieces of himself that are mercilessly hacked apart. Never before has he suffered a wound of the spirit. He did not even think such a thing possible. Such a thing has never been recorded.
Perhaps they were both wrong.
Perhaps this may kill him.
Perhaps that would be a mercy.
Melkor’s power slices through his spirit like a knife, butchering his very being, tearing it to shreds. It claws indiscriminately, leaving nothing but tatters in its wake until-
Until it stops.
Having carved a place for itself within him, Melkor’s spirit abruptly settles. He can still feel it, but the sensation, that sense of intrusion like no other is beginning to fade. Along with it, the pain too rapidly begins to fade.
Everything fades.
As if it were never there.
Mairon shivers within the fire he has created, hugging his own arms tighter. The blaze is beginning to grow too hot even for the enchantments upon his clothes to withstand, yet he just feels cold.
“Lieutenant,” Melkor calls, and Mairon lifts his head, squinting at him through air distorted by heat. “That is enough. If you continue with this nonsense, you are going to melt through the ceiling.”
Mairon merely stares from within the inferno, uncomprehending, trembling.
Melkor tips his head to one side. He is himself once more, something Mairon only just seems to recognize.
“If you destroy this room any further, I will be mad ,” Melkor rumbles.
The fire leaves him instantly, vanishing into vapors, leaving him shivering amongst the melted remnants of the table
“There you are,” Melkor hums approvingly. He waves a hand, dispersing some of the residual heat, though Mairon finds his gaze slipping from Melkor to the floor between them. It is distorted and warped, the stones misshapen from the brutality of the heat. “Now, how do you feel?”
“Cold,” Mairon whispers, voice hoarse. His throat hurts with the word, but the pain is physical, not spiritual. He hugs his arms tighter, yet the chill does not go away.
He has never been cold before.
“Oh, you can still talk,” Melkor remarks, as if surprised. “Very good. What else?”
“Cold.”
“You have said that already,” Melkor huffs, annoyance staining his tone, and Mairon drags his gaze back to him. He opens his mouth to reply, yet cannot seem to think of any other response. All he can seem to do is tremble.
“Hmm. How… disappointing,” Melkor mutters sourly. He stares down at Mairon a moment longer, then turns away, waving his hand. “It is just as well. Go send for more elves to be collected. You are dismissed, lieutenant.”
Mairon staggers to his feet. The movement is clumsy, his limbs not working as they should. As they did? He does not know.
Everything just feels wrong. As if his skin no longer fits. Like how a too-tight shirt pulls and pinches in strange places when one moves.
Yet his hands are his own. His body is his own. His skin is not the problem.
His soul is.
He picks himself out of the remnants of what was once the table and stumbles to the doorway, into the hall beyond. He moves slowly at first with short, shuffling steps.
Then faster and faster still until he races away from the room, away from what happened to him, away from Melkor .
Mairon flees.
He flees and flees and flees, stumbling past stones and doors that blur together in his haste. He moves with no purpose except away, yet his feet unconsciously guide him to familiar land.
Familiar, not safe. Not here. Never here. Never again.
Why is he so cold?
His hands move clumsily, not responding like they should when he tries to grasp the door to his study. His hands are wet- why? With what? -and the smooth metal slips from his grasp innumerable times before he finally manages to wrench the door open. He strikes his hip on the side of the door as he attempts to enter when his foot does not move as it should, then yanks the door closed behind him as swiftly as he can.
There is no lock.
There is no lock.
There is no lock.
His hand blazes with fire that does not feel warm until the handle turns to sludge in his grasp, and smears the melted metal upon the side of the door, haphazardly smoldering the door closed.
It will not hold.
There is nowhere here that he can hide. If Melkor wishes to find him, he shall. If Melkor wishes to gain entrance to his study, no door will keep him at bay.
He needs to escape.
There is nowhere he can go.
He needs to run.
There is nowhere he can go.
Why is he so cold?
He needs….
He needs….
He needs…
A noise- pained, desperate, wordless -tears itself out of his throat against his will despite his racing thoughts, and he leans his back against the door, trying to find some stability there. It is as if his mind releases every thought it had built up during Melkor’s cruel torment. He cannot move right, he cannot even think right. His clothes are tattered, torn to shreds in places, and where his bare skin touches the door it prickles and burns.
His heart beats wildly, erratically, and his breathing follows the dreadful tempo. With each breath his chest tightens and his throat throbs with a terrible, horrible pain.
His hands reach up, trembling, fingers encircling his own neck. He sinks to his knees upon the floor, but near instantly rocks backwards to free his legs out from under him. He does not-he cannot have them trapped beneath him right now.
He cannot stand to have them stretched out before him either.
He settles for them half-bent, curled near his chest, yet not actually touching. He cannot stand the feeling of skin upon his skin.
The hands around his neck are his, but they suddenly feel like nothing but Melkor’s. He drags them away from his throat and buries his face within his palms instead, blotting the room into darkness.
His face is wet with tears. He chokes back a sob, a noise he has never before uttered, and his throat aches. Like a truly vicious cycle the pain only draws forth more tears, and Mairon is left trembling upon the ground, desperate in his attempts to not make any noise.
He just.
Feels.
Cold.