Three Black Islands by Idrils Scribe  

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5. The Depths

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This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here.

Nuclear site deterrence message. Sandia National Laboratories, U.S. 1993.

 

At the stairs’ end gapes the towering arch of the Nethermost Hall, that deepest of caverns where Morgoth’s throne once stood, the dark heart of his dominion. Now his keep has fallen, and the titanic doorway gives out into deepest darkness, framed by the twisted remains of bronze doors hanging half-molten in their hinges.

Beyond the door the light illuminates only a short stretch of flagstones covered in fallen masonry and debris. Telperinquar raises his lamp to shine into the hall beyond, but Annatar lays a hand on his arm, turning the beam aside.

“That hall holds nothing for us.” Annatar was never one for sentiment, but now he bears a strange expression, almost as if he grieves the wretches who perished in the final battle for Morgoth’s deepest cavern. “Leave it in the dark where it belongs.”

Telperinquar takes pity on his friend. An icy shiver snakes down his back as he turns away from that dreadful, yawning gate. He takes out the booklet once more and holds it open so they can both consult the sketched floorplan.

Annatar barely looks at it. “There!” he points at a side corridor. “Judging by the air shafts, the laboratory should be that way.”

How eager he has grown. Telperinquar tries to share his enthusiasm - the deepest secrets of the Valar now lie within reach! - but he finds he cannot shake the weight of Angband’s horror. This darkness is too deep for a mere Elf to bear.

He follows as Annatar leads, through twisting hallways of polished black stone. They pass many dark doorways, but Annatar does not spare them even a glance. At one only does he slow his step. He hesitates, then picks up his pace once more.

His interest piqued, Telperinquar stops to shine his light into the dark rectangle. Beyond the crumpled remains of the metal door the beam hits a cavernous space.

“This way,” Annatar gestures for him to continue along the hallway, but Telperinquar does not let himself be distracted.

He steps inside the room and raises his lantern. At first he thinks it is some kind of healing facility. On one side are tiled lab benches, still white and strangely clean after all this time. The spells set upon them must be strong indeed. The lantern light reflects off scattered shards of the many exotic glasswares required for experimentation in organic chemistry.

Behind him Annatar’s footsteps whisper against the flagstones as he silently follows Telperinquar into the room.

Telperinquar does not turn to look at him. A shape in the darkness has caught his eye. He walks further inside, still holding the lantern high.

The beam of blue light reveals a surgical table on a raised central dais dominating the room.

Telperinquar’s skin crawls as if with insects, but morbid fascination overcomes his revulsion. He steps up on the dais to examine the table.

The surface is stainless steel, gleaming cold and clean in the blue light. A harness of stout leather bands hangs off the sides. The straps have cracked and crumbled with time, but their purpose remains clear enough. Once strapped in even the strongest Elf would be held still no matter how fiercely they struggled. Neat little gutters direct bodily fluids to an ornamental grate in the floor.

Blessed Valar!

Even now some small, analytical part of him wonders at the unusual geometry of the room, the way the ceiling curves over the dais. His footsteps have grown unnaturally loud as he approached, and with a bone-deep shudder he understands.

This entire space has been designed to amplify the screams of the vivisected victim bound to the table.

Cold sweat prickles on Telperinquar’s back. His mind refuses to contain the nature of this room.  

Against the farther wall the doors have been torn off a large cupboard, revealing rows upon rows of surgical instruments, some in trays and others dangling from hooks. Yet more stainless steel  glistens coldly, reflecting the lamplight with evil intent. Vicious little lancets. Spreaders. Probes and pincers. Clamps. Bone saws.

Telperinquar had always been careful not to stare at Maitimo in the bath-house. Maitimo’s body was an obscene tapestry woven of scars. Knife marks and whip lines and knotted pink burns thick with proud flesh gouged into his torso, snaking off over his limbs, even across his neck and up to his cheeks.

Did Maitimo once thrash and howl on this very table as Morgoth’s blades laid bare his tender insides?

The lantern beam jerks as Telperinquar turns away like a man stumbling from a sudden blow. Beside the table on its dais, the light hits an enclosure of iron bars, its lock hanging in rusted ruin off its staple. Its floor is badly worn, the imprints of bare feet still visible in the timeless dust.

A holding cage for prisoners, Telperinquar realises, clammy dread seeping through him. The poor wretches were forced to watch and listen to all that befell on that dreadful table as they waited their turn. Sour bile rises in his throat. He swallows frantically to keep it down. 

“Telperinquar?” Annatar has been studying the diagrams hung up on the wall - the anatomical differences between Elf and Orc. Now he makes for Telperinquar’s side. 

“Let us leave,” Telperinquar blurts out, reeling.

“Does this room distress you?” Annatar asks in a tone of polite puzzlement, as if making a study of some strange but fascinating aspect of the Incarnates. His gaze is fixed on Telperinquar, drinking him in.

Telperinquar battles his own body, desperate not to shame himself by throwing up like a fresh recruit at his first skirmish. He, who stood at the Nirnaeth!

He swallows the spittle that has leapt into his mouth as he breathes his stomach back under his control. How to explain torture to a being that knows no pain? Mutilation, to one who can don and discard bodies like a man changing shirts?

“I never was one for the healing arts,” Telperinquar finally manages between deep breaths.

A sharp little blade of a thought slides into his mind. What has Annatar so fascinated of a sudden? He tried to lead me away from this room before.

He looks up at Annatar, and opens his mouth to voice that very question, but the words never take shape.

Annatar catches his gaze, and at once their minds melt against each other like two edges sealed with wax. Strangely intimate. Annatar is fire, strangeness, the incomprehensible void beyond the stars, the silence that was before time. Magnificent, and utterly alien to the Incarnates.  Annatar is not concerned with the body or its destruction, for he is above the substance of Arda.

Telperinquar shudders. How limited his own Elvish mind compared to the eternal vastness of the Ainur. How blessed he is by this chance to see beyond the bounds of his incarnate shape.

"Come, Telperinquar,” Annatar looks at him with a conspiratorial smile. “The forge is not far now.”

Onward they march through the maze of hallways that burrows through the black bedrock like crawling veins of rot. Annatar leads at a brisk pace. Telperinquar follows him in a daze. Down and down, ever down until in the very deepest abyss, the corridor ends in an arch.

The Host of the Valar must have descended even to this dreadful depth. Through the half-molten remains of a steel door blasted off its hinges, a red glow spills forth. Hot air wafts into their faces from the doorway, sharp with the penetrant stink of sulphur.

The chamber beyond must once have been a natural cave, so tall and cavernous is the space. The floor is smooth as glass and black as obsidian, but far above their heads a multitude of stalactites erupts from the ceiling. Their shapes look strange to Telperinquar’s eye. He halts and throws back his head.

Elvish slaves have carved every last stalactite into twisted and baleful shapes, sculpting the living rock into a malicious fever-dream of hanging corpses, grotesque mutilations, faces twisted into grimaces of suffering.

He looks away from the horror and turns to the hall’s far side, where the floor drops away into a glowing chasm from which spills red light that paints the cavern in blood. The very air trembles with heat.

Annatar is standing on the abyss’ edge. The magma chamber below lights him in a crimson glow, his silk robes fluttering in the hot wind that rises from the ravine. Telperinquar approaches, dry ash crumbling beneath his feet. He must blink his tearing eyes against the raw heat and the stinging sulphur-stench as he comes to Annatar.

Side by side they peer down into the depths of hell.

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The magma chamber surges, splashing up jets of molten rock to greet its returned master. Sulphur-yellow smokes rise from the roiling depths. 

Sauron steps closer to the edge, the better to hear the hiss and crack of stone and gas. The reek of the earth's bowels assaults His body’s nostrils, and He breathes deeply of it, basking in the radiant heat that scorches His skin. A spirit of fire He remains, and in this place His power is greatest.

Aeons ago when Angband was founded He dug this channel down into the secret fires hidden at Arda’s very heart, so He might harness their power for His own purposes. And now at last He has returned to the place that once was His.

A strange sensation stirs in His chest.

Ah, this body. It feels.

Sorrow is of the flesh. A pure spirit is above so base a thing. Oh, how Sauron longs to return to the perfect state of order! The time is not yet ripe. He must wear this form for many years yet while His long, slow scheme plays out.

Telperinquar’s frail flesh cannot bear to remain this close to the magma chamber. Sauron watches him wander off into the laboratory proper.

Doubtlessly this space looks familiar to him: a well-equipped forge, outfitted for every possible artful aspect of the craft.

Telperinquar’s eyes scan the anvil, bellows, crucibles for mixing various metals hanging from chains and rails in the ceiling. Gem-cutting tools. Vials of acids and oil for etching and quenching. Every possible utensil.

More complex equipment, too, for changing the very nature of matter. Telperinquar must recognize the lead-shielded reactor and the centrifuges. Sauron crafted similar devices in their laboratory in Eregion, to aid in the Rings’ creation.

Telperinquar runs a careful hand over the top of a uranium-centrifuge, wiping away an Age’s worth of fine volcanic ash. For an instant, his gaze leaps from the device to Sauron, as if wondering at the resemblance to the device standing in his own workroom in Ost-in-Edhil. He makes as if to speak, then thinks better of it and turns away.

Denial is a powerful force, Sauron has learned through his many manipulations of Elves and Men. Telperinquar does not ask the question because subconsciously he understands the answer would destroy him, and so his mind turns away from it.

Sauron smiles.

I have spun my net and wrapped it all around you. All that remains now is to draw it tight. Slowly, oh so slowly. But surely.

Telperinquar turns his back on the centrifuge and its unwanted questions, and makes for the row of metal filing cabinets that holds Sauron’s archived logbooks.

Sauron was always meticulous in writing down His findings. The dry heat of the chamber would long ago have turned paper and vellum to dust, but for the mighty Spells of Keeping He laid upon these volumes. Scrolls and notebooks remain intact, as whole and unfaded as the day they were dictated to the slave-scribes.

The Host of the West has left these notes behind. In a final humiliation, Eonwë spurned Sauron’s work and forbade all his companions to even touch it. That haughty coward felt too good for Sauron’s methods.

Telperinquar pulls out a book and leafs through, skimming the contents. He lays it down on the table with trembling hands, takes out another. His eyes dart back and forth as he eagerly absorbs the text. His mouth opens in a gasp of pure awe as he realises what the files contain.

The hot, satisfying glow of professional pride fills Sauron’s chest. The bait he laid to draw Telperinquar to this place is very much real.

A scientific marvel indeed. Entropy halted. The relentless decay of Middle-earth staved off. The very Eru-given laws of physics pummeled into submission, tamed like a dog to its master’s hand.

Telperinquar shakes with excitement as he frantically pulls out one notebook after another. The logs are in Tengwar script, but the language is Black Speech. The tongue proves no impediment to Telperinquar - Uncle Maitimo taught him many things, it seems.

Each booklet is written in a different hand. Sauron used captured Noldorin loremasters for their fair handwriting, but He never risked any one among them gaining full understanding of His experiments. As soon as a project was completed, Sauron discarded the scribe into the magma chamber to be replaced with a freshly ignorant specimen.

Telperinquar is none the wiser. “This is …” he gasps. “This is it!”

Like a man possessed he dashes back and forth pulling books from the cabinets, rifling through, and sorting them into stacks on a nearby workbench.

“Such treasure! These books cannot all fit on the sledges - alas, that we can carry but a fraction to Eregion!” Telperinquar mourns as he frantically sorts through the logbooks. “We should take care, Annatar - the very paper is so radioactive a Mortal would die at the mere touch.”

“Take your time to make a selection,” Sauron assures him, flashing a smile. “I will be with you soon, but first I must see to our safety.”

At Telperinquar’s questioning glance, He adds, “Balrogs once dwelled here. I must check the magma chamber for any remaining, lest we be ambushed as we work.”

Telperinquar had eyes only for the books, forgetting Angband and all its perils. Sobered, he looks up and his eyes find Sauron’s. “Thank you, my friend.”

“Think nothing of it,” Sauron says with a smile that looks friendly indeed.

He leaves Telperinquar with his nose safely buried in the laboratory notes. He will soon happen upon the most relevant ones. Sauron could point him to them now - He has won the foolish creature’s trust - but let the Elf search a while longer, and allow him the belief that he found them himself.

Less suspect, and it gives Sauron more time to fulfill the true purpose of this expedition.

He returns to the ledge overlooking the magma chamber, steeling His physical body against the crackling heat before leaping over the edge into the abyss. The magma below surges to receive him in its fiery embrace.

Standing on the molten rock, engulfed by the glorious heat of His own element, His power swells  to delirious heights. The heat grows more intense, the colours brighter - sharp sulphur yellow, the fell orange of magma, turning to red where liquid rock hardens into blackest obsidian.

Commanding the magma to solidify under His feet, Sauron walks across the surface. At the far end of the chamber He finds the place He has been longing for. A small ledge in a patch of obsidian, obscured from the main chamber by a curve in the wall.

He looks over His shoulder to check if Telperinquar is watching him from the ledge, but the Elf remains engrossed in the books.

His secrecy assured, Sauron runs His fingers over an unremarkable dimple in the crackling stone, and hums the Song of Power that will reveal its secret to His voice alone.

The hidden compartment proves undamaged. Those proud fools in Eönwë’s train only searched for prisoners. They utterly failed to find Angband’s true treasure.

The rock face melts away to reveal Melkor’s final gift. A single, priceless vial of heavily enchanted glass shines with its own deadly light.

The bottle emits a pale glow of radiation that would melt any eyes but Sauron’s. This isotope should not exist in Eä. Nuclei so loaded with neutrons that they would tear themselves apart in mere picoseconds.

Only within the raging heart of Varda’s largest stars is such an alien state of matter to be found. Oh, how they rejoiced when Lord Melkor’s might succeeded in creating it at will!

The power to make these precious atoms is lost, foolishly extinguished and thrown beyond the Door of Night. For that, Sauron will have his vengeance.

Sauron Sings again the spells that hold the unstable nuclei frozen in time. The radiation is intense, and even he must adjust his flesh by his will to keep the skin from blistering off his fingers when he picks up the vial.

This rarest of elements is what he needs to impose his will on Middle-earth, to forge it into eternal order under his rule. The final and most noble material needed for the greatest work he will ever make. The crown and capstone of his coming dominion.

My One Ring.

He cannot wait to take the vial to the great smithy he built in the magma chamber of Mount Orodruin.

He might have forged it here in Angband, in His beloved Lord Melkor’s memory, but this fallen fortress has been tainted and made into a symbol of defeat. Sauron needs a new beginning.

He will break down Middle-earth and build it anew as it should have been from the beginning. Pure, unmarred order. A perfect pyramid of peoples, with the lesser ones serving those above them, and Him at the apex. He has begun this great work with the more biddable races, Orcs and Trolls, but now His Rings of Power will set all others into their proper places at last.

Nine Rings for Men. Base creatures barely above animals, in need of firm control.

Seven for the Dwarves, whose proud heads shall bow at last.

The Elves require but Three, which they shall willingly forge themselves. Slave-collars for their own necks.

And once Sauron has used this precious vial to forge His masterpiece, His One Ring, He will rule them all.

His impending triumph sends fire surging hotly through his veins. The magma chamber grows restless in response, belching shafts of red-hot matter up towards the roof.

“Annatar!”

Sauron does not startle. Inwardly seething at this pathetic creature that dares disturb His moment of triumph, He closes His fist around the vial to block its phosphorescent glow. He slides it into the lead container He brought for the purpose, then into a hidden pocket. Only then does He turn around.

Telperinquar is standing on the ledge, calling down into the chamber. His weak Elf-eyes pinch to slits as he struggles to pierce the fumes and shimmering heat.

Ordered around by a mere Incarnate. I, who Sang at Eä’s very making! Curse that fool. He will pay - oh, how he will pay!

Sauron allows himself a moment to relish the memory of Telperinquar’s terror at the sight of Sauron’s old laboratory.

I will make another table, Tyelpë dear. Especially for you. And then we will see if you are made of the same stuff as your Uncle Maitimo. Oh, how you will scream before I am through with you!

Briefly His eyes grow red with the lust for pain and domination, the torturer’s ultimate pleasure.

But not yet, not for many long and subtle years. Telperinquar’s usefulness has not yet run its course. The prideful creature must be further harnessed, and Sauron must remain patient like a stone.

He molds His face into benevolence as He crosses the magma lake back to the ledge and swiftly climbs up, commanding the rock face to melt into fitting hand- and footholds that cool crackling in his wake.

“All is safe,” Sauron smiles as He gains the ledge beside Telperinquar, but the Elf does not return it.

“They used isotopes on prisoners - on people!” Telperinquar bears a wild, wide-eyed expression as he thrusts a sketchbook into Sauron’s hands.

After all this time, Sauron is pleased to see that His series of full-colour drawings of the skin blistering off an Elf-prisoner force-fed a dose of plutonium remains quite lifelike. He only ever used the finest inks.

“We should not be reading this!” Telperinquar backs away from the book as if it might attack him. “No one should. I thought the Host was foolish for leaving these documents behind. Now I understand why they sealed this place with everything inside. We should never have come.”

“All knowledge is worth possessing,” Sauron answers with all the patience He can muster. Calmly he leafs through the sketches detailing a series of comparative radiation exposure experiments on Amanyar versus the Dark Elves of Middle-earth. The results had been most instructive.

“You would throw away such precious data, after all you did to obtain it?” Sauron believed He knew Elves and their ways, but this development has Him genuinely baffled.

“See how it was gained!” Telperinquar cries, and thrusts the sketchbook into Sauron’s hands.

Sauron gently closes the book, taking the tone of a wise but disappointed mentor chiding an errant pupil.

“These experiments have been performed. We cannot undo them,” He appeals to Telperinquar’s rational side. “All that remains for us to decide is what to do with the results. Would you have all this work be in vain?”

Telperinquar lets out a wordless cry of disgust and spins around as if to make for the door.

Sauron curses inwardly. Has He misjudged His hold on Telperinquar?

“Tyelpe…” previously, the Elf would shudder in delight at the sound of that name from Sauron’s lips.

Under pressure, seduction seems to have lost its effectiveness. Sauron has observed this before in test subjects, once the sense of threat grew great enough. He must calm Telperinquar so the Elf will be amenable once again.

“We have come to the final pass. I know it is bitter, but stay the course. Think of all we shall achieve!”

That steely look of rejection remains in Telperinquar’s eyes.

“I see that the destruction of Elvish bodies brings you distress,” Sauron pleads, “but that has no bearing on our purpose here. And see the matter in perspective - Unhousing is not permanent. Námo does return such spirits to flesh.”

Telperinquar eyes him with a sharp, piercing gaze. “What are you, Annatar?”

“I was created a Maïa of Aulë, as you know already. The incarnates’ preoccupation with their physical bodies is alien to me. ”

“Have you no decency?” Telperinquar exclaims, pointing at the sketchbook in Sauron’s hands.

“The past does not concern me.” Sauron allows his voice to be tinged with the slightest edge of disappointment. “Only the future. I did not come here to mourn those long dead, or catalogue their passing. My purpose is to bring Middle-earth glory and bliss to surpass that of Valinor. I believed you, a scion of Fëanor, to be a fitting companion in that greatness. No other among the Eldar has shown such promise.”

Sauron drops the sketchbook to the ground - a thing of little meaning - and steps over it towards Telperinquar. “Please, show me that I chose well. Of all the Eves in Middle-earth, you alone possess the skill and wisdom to build our vision of a new world.”

The flattery fails. Telperinquar’s eyes still shoot fire. His suspicions run deeper than Sauron first estimated.

Damn that stubborn Elf!

Sauron should not have left him to freely browse the archive, but distracted him with some less perilous task while He retrieved the vial. He is appalled at His own mistake.

If Telperinquar turns hostile Sauron will have no choice but to kill him here and now, long-years before he has served his purpose. It would destroy His cover as Annatar and cost Him what control He has over the Mírdain. He needs those Elf-smiths to make and distribute the lesser rings.

Sauron’s entire long and careful scheme now rests upon a knife-edge. One more mistake and it will fail. He must deploy his final and most desperate stratagem.

The very idea has always repulsed Him. He never could fathom Melian’s willingness to submit to the physical indignities of the flesh. Despite all his loathing, Sauron must now follow in that besotted madwoman’s footsteps.

From a technical standpoint it is not so hard. In these very halls Sauron once methodically observed scores of prisoners ordered to perform such acts. He now draws from those experiences to improvise His own variation.

He steels himself, raises both arms, and lays them around Telperinquar’s quivering form.

“Telperinquar-” he whispers softly. “Tyelpë … look at me?”

Telperinquar’s face softens from the mask of outraged anger. Sauron gently takes it between his palms. “Please, Tyelpë. Never forget who you are. You are destined for greater things, son of Curufinwë. You and I.”

The Elf takes a deep, shuddering breath. His eyes are wide with some emotion Sauron cannot fathom.

“Annatar…” the Elf whispers.

Sauron sees his chance, knows what he must do now. He tamps down a wave of disgust, tilts his head, and presses his lips to Telperinquar ’s.

Telperinquar eagerly opens for Him. Telperinquar’s mouth has no particular taste, He notices, methodically filing away the fact for future reference. He has sampled Elf-meat both raw and artfully prepared in Angband’s kitchens, but never noticed this particularity about the tongue or cheeks.

Telperinquar pulls Him closer, so their bodies touch all over. They stand locked together amidst the scatter of notebooks, wreathed in the yellow fumes that belch from the roiling magma below.

Sauron wants nothing more than to snap his jaw shut and bite off the Elf’s probing tongue, but harsh necessity stays him. He must carry His chosen tactic on to its end.

At last, Telperinquar pulls back.

“Apologies, Annatar.” Telperinquar seems to have returned to his senses. The anger has ceased, and his heart rate is lowering. “I panicked.”

Sauron presses another small kiss to Telperinquar’s lips, a detail he remembers. “No matter.”

Telperinquar seems content now. “We found what we came for. Now let us carry it home and begin our work. Together.” Then he pauses.

Sauron needs all His subtle senses to perceive the slightest edge of hesitation in his manner, a flicker of doubt in his mind.

He is not wholly won. Not yet.

To sweeten the deal with a promise of more pleasures to come, Sauron reaches for his hand.

“I am looking forward to it,” Telperinquar agrees, and allows him to take it.

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

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Chapter End Notes

Hi everyone!

I'm more than fashionably late, finishing my Halloween story in February. Thanks for your patience!

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter and the story as a whole. What do you think about Sauron's true reason for this visit to Angband? I feel like I'm massacring Tolkien's Ring-lore, but the One Ring's corrupting influence being nuclear in nature seemed like a cool idea. 

And of course I owe many thanks to the incredible Marchwriter for her excellent beta read that vastly improved this story.

Thanks for reading and commenting, it means the world to me!

IS