Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion
Pairings: none
Characters: Angrod, Sauron, random elven thralls (mentions Morgoth, the Valar, the Finarfinions and Galadriel)
Warning: extremely AU, slavery, rape heavily implied, starvation, torture, corporeal punishment, child-murder, mercy killing, cannibalism and dehumanization, lots of death, mind-games, sexual undertones (I could have missed something, but I think this is it)
Song: Maisou
Words: 1,574
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parade (noun): a pompous show: exhibition; the ceremonial formation of a body of troops before a superior officer; a public procession
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parade
Never would Angaráto forget his first sight of the three-peaked Thangorodrim piercing the gray sky far in the distance, their dark and ominous needles rising from a haze of ashy smoke and the dust of a million feet on the field of lost battle and death. A specter of ill-fortune and doomed fate if ever one had existed.
There were precious few souls who ever saw this sight and did not pass beyond their fleshy mortal cage in the torture chambers or sunless mines of Angband.
And, truly, Angaráto did not expect to be amongst them. Not even an ounce of hope did he allow to linger in his heart. He would die as a nameless prisoner of the enemy just like thousands had before him. He did not plan to seek special treatment or attention because of his status--indeed, any special treatment here was likely to be of the unpleasant variety--but nor would he hunt a quick death.
He had to be there for his people. And he thought, on top of crushing defeat and great loss, the death of their strong-willed and determined prince might be the fatal blow to an already-faltering collective spirit.
Men, women and children alike, the elves and men of Dorthonion, brought low in fire and death, the will and strength sputtering out as a dying flame in their breasts. Angaráto hated seeing their heads bowed beneath the weight of their suffering, an endless procession of defeat stretching on and on until they were no longer within his sight in either direction. So many who had survived, only to be plunged into a hell that made the savage destruction of their homes seem merciful.
They marched, the prisoners of war and plundering, numbering into the thousands. For once, it didn't matter that he was a prince or a commander. Before him and behind him in one great show of evil's domination over righteousness, they traversed Anfauglith's vast expanse, their feet scalded to blistering on scorched dust and cut open on sharp stones, their bodies lined with the marks of whips and hunched in submission and fatigue. No food, no water, no rest. And those who fell from lack of necessities were tormented or left to bake in the sun. Their screams still echoed in the wake of the resilient.
And as they approached the gates to the iron fortress inside which was hidden the most foul and wicked creature to ever stain the face of Arda, the prince found himself wishing that he could have done something to spare these people. What kind of a lord was he, that all he could do was sit by and watch helplessly--the jewel in the crown of his people's ultimate humiliation?
But it was only the beginning. He knew but a little of the tortures that his half-cousin Nelyafinwë dared to speak of after his sojourn in this pit of filth, but hearing about such atrocities and seeing them in the flesh were very different concepts.
Never again would he scorn his half-cousin for wanting to lie down and die after being subjected to this place, to these horrors.
And it was worse still, because he refused to speak. Refused to betray the information of his people--those who, he hoped, still remained on the outside, whole and hale and ready to rip the enemy to shreds. Refused to be the last ember of the dying flame of the last slivers of hope in this dark hell to be squashed out under Morgoth's boot when his people needed him to be as strong as his prophetic father-name.
His defiance had earned him unwanted attention. It was that intrinsic spark which had sealed his fate in this carnival of horror and death by catching the eye of the Lieutenant of Angband himself.
The Lieutenant who took the greatest pleasure in finding ways to make him suffer that would neither mar his body nor break his mind--a game that sickened the elf to the bone, but one in which he gambled recklessly for survival and sanity.
There was at first an array of unlucky survivors deemed unfit for the mines, brought in and ravaged and tortured closer and closer to the brink of insanity each day--incentive for him to part his lips and become a traitor worse than any kinslayer. But Angaráto would not break. And he would rather slay his people painlessly and mercifully and send these poor souls on to the Halls than let them linger for the twisted amusement of his diabolical opponent. This, it seemed, only amused his captor further and sent him to greater lengths.
"Thou art full of surprises, art thou not, slave? Thou dost intrigue me with thy resilience."
Children were brought from the dungeons as far below the reach of the sunlight as could be kept, pale and wane and starving to death, their eyes dulled. Exhibited before him like crude animals on chains as they were led to slaughter for tender meat and a few hours of shrill shrieks and maniacal laughter. And Angaráto could do nothing to help them but sit still in his cell and pray to Mandos to end it quickly. At least their torment was finished when the wails cut into eerie silence.
With mockery, the Lieutenant always offered him a taste of young elven flesh afterwards. Angaráto did not think he could ever despise anyone--not even the Dark Lord himself--as much as he hated this sick freak who smiled blissfully in the wake of dismembering defenseless elflings and cooking the little meat on their bones as though they were cattle or deer hunted and strung up to be gutted.
"They taste so wonderful--juicy and tender. Dost thou not want a taste, my lovely slave?"
Never had he wanted to enact bloody and vicious wrath upon anyone as much as that golden-haired beauty when he purred out a feigned thanksgiving in Morgoth's name and devoured neatly cut squares of roasted flesh and licked blackened lips. It was a sacrilegious distortion of the sacred sacrificing of animals so that they might sustain the thankful hunter, and it enflamed Angaráto until he thought he might die for the hatred squeezing his innards like boiling, grasping hands.
But that the children died quickly, he could at least be grateful (in a horrifying way that made guilt twist his intestines into noxious, painful knots). He did not even want to know what became of the women brought into this place, but he suspected it was somehow worse than even the most horrendous fates his shadowed mind could imagine. He could not bear to think about it for long lest his stomach revolt against its iron-hearted master.
The worst of the Lieutenant's games was undoubtedly the one where he was made to behold the punishment of a fellow thrall. To stand chained to the wall and watch bodies being dismembered and mutilated, taken apart and somehow kept alive. Broken and battered and drained of gallons of blood--or so it seemed--but still clawing and crawling for survival. Still left whole enough to be dragged back into the dark pits of the earth and made to slave away until their bodies gave out.
"I will even let thee choose the punishment for today, my beautiful slave. But choose wisely."
Sweet Eru Almighty, he hated Sauron.
Hated the parade of horrors that never before would he have imagined, beginning with chains and shackles and a trek across the barren, scorching sands of the desert and ending in backbreaking labor until bodies faltered from neglect and mutilation or were ripped to pieces by torture and rape and murder for the sick amusement of the demons haunting this fortress.
This was his personal torture, and it would never end so long as the Valar refused to smite down their wayward brethren upon his dark throne. He could not even be granted the death of a common laborer, death by dirt-clogged lungs hacking up bloody phlegm, a slow suffocation from the toxic air and a lack of Arien's caresses soaking into coarse, scar-broken skin. No, he would linger in physical perfection and rosy health, kept as a pet for the amusement of the Lieutenant forever, not allowed to die and not allowed to live. Not allowed to leave his cage of grimy stone walls and his own iron stubbornness.
And part of him hated the Valar. Part of him wanted to curse their names in the Black Tongue, call them cowards and avengers seeking punishment of his people as wrathful deities full of arrogance and egocentricity. For though his people had rebelled, had killed and had left in disgraced exile, it was because of them--because of their edicts and their morals and their punishment--that he would never again see his wife. Never again embrace his brothers. Never again kiss his sister's cheek.
Never again have any future but the endless parade of death. Stretching so far back into the horizon that he could not see the beginning and so far forward into the foggy distance that he could not make out the final destination.
But until his people were delivered from their suffering, Angaráto would suffer beside them, their lord and prince to the end. This, he swore.
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This story did not turn out as I planned. It kind of got away from me and spiraled from there. In any case, this is another one of those plot-molestation type stories where I'm fishing for ideas about what should happen next. Maybe I'll find somewhere to put in Angrod-Gelmir or Angrod-Gwindor interaction. That might be at least a little interesting and possibly spark ideas. We'll see. Anyway, didn't mean to be so disturbing
I blame the song. Truly, I do. Maisou (Burial--from Naruto Shippuuden OST II) makes me cry almost every time I hear it. Damn you, Yasuharu Takanashi! Why must you create such heart-wrenching music? Of course, this is Asuma Sarutobi's death song--I didn't even like the guy that much, but he grew on me. And I feel sorry for Shikamaru.
Anyway, sad music + depressing topic = angst to the EXTREME! (
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