eyefire | but don't make me your enemy

He will begin his studies on the morrow. Not only with you, but with tutors of my own choosing.

[ Adar will be involved (otherwise he will riot) but Sauron is escalating his plans for the boy, walking away from them both with a bark of a command for his werewolf general to follow. ]

[He is such a terrible not-husband(wife?).

Adar stares at him, mostly due to his tone, and then a moment after he marches off decides to take Etelo home unless he gets told otherwise since he was not called away with the werewolf and frankly preferred not to be near them if he could help it. The wound may be gone but he still remembers Sauron biting into his arm a little too clearly to enjoy the company of any dog.]

Edited 2022-12-18 14:01 (UTC)

[ At the appointed time of Adar's summoning to Sauron's personal chambers, he is not permitted entry for the first time in years. One of the giant spiders crawls down to bar his way, huge body covering the doors as its eyes stay focused on him; inside, somewhere to elven ears, is the sound of entwives putting Etelo to bed, and further away than that the laughter of Sauron and Draugluin's roughened voice.

But Adar is cut out cleanly, without warning, for displeasing his master. ]

[Games. They were back to games again.

Adar regards the spider with distaste.]

You are not, by half, the most frightening spider I have seen and our master cannot summon her. [Can the creature understand him? He neither knows nor cares. When it will not relent without him resorting to violence, he decides to just sit against the wall, eyes closed as he listens to his son whining for his song like he did every night that Adar was late.

Without much care for if Sauron comes and skins him he just sings it, loud enough for the melodic sound to slip through the door and reach their son assuming it is not wared against outside noise.]

[ Sauron can hear that song and it does nothing to improve his mood about Adar. Black wraiths seep out of the walls to lay their rotted hands on Adar and drag him away, if he will not leave by his own will, and more spiders crawl down to cover the doors so that it seems as if the entire ceiling has shifted lower. ]

[What a boring, cowardly way to play, Sauron. He does make the wraiths drag him away, rotting or not, for what else does he have to do with his day if he is shut out? Yelling fuck you to the walls will not help.

He is dumped somewhere adjacent to his own rooms, which though not a cell is also not a home. It is with all the others, close to his "work". It is loud and riotous and disgusting.

And all he can think about is his son and that somehow the wind had changed and Sauron was pissed with him (again).

He stays there, now leaning against the door to his own room, unmoving. For days if he is left alone, a knee drawn up to his chest and his head back against the wall.]

[ Adar is left to his own devices. Sauron has Draugluin and Thuringwethil summoned to the upper levels on a daily basis, along with orcs. Handfuls. Three at a time, once in the afternoon, again in the evening. Screams can be heard from the topside of Angband as well as the bottom, the howling of torture echoing through the heavy doors that keep the riffraff out even far below Sauron's private chambers.

Days, then a week. As Sauron has his generals instruct his growing son, Adar is not summoned. ]

Edited 2022-12-18 14:24 (UTC)

[It is the longest he has not seen his son in the boy's short life. He is aware of every minute that passes. He wants to scream and to rage but he doesn't even move until he must, perhaps eight days, grabbing something to eat on his way out and back up to the door he hopes it isn't filled with tiny little Ungoliant impersonators again or worse.]

[ Adar is barred from getting anywhere near the spider-guarded doors; he is limited to the floor above the dungeons where he lives, held at bay by the orcs guarding the passes. They respect him more than any other of the generals but cannot allow him anywhere near the upper echelons of Angband and only repeat what they were told, as well as a few whispers from those who have known him longer: Sauron is furious and bends all his artes and thoughts on the Black Star, raising him to shift his shape into more lethal forms (Draugluin and Thuringwethil are the teachers in Sauron's absence). Training the child. The orcs who march upstairs never come down anymore ... so they apologise, but they cannot let Adar pass or they will share the same fate. ]

[He has half a mind to take them out and go up anyway. They eventually get a fine the best outcome they could hope for in this situation and Adar turns and marches away, back down and down into the very bowels of Angband where he risks running into fouler things but there is also something that will draw Sauron's attention:

His way out. He knows of dozens of exits, the one blocked from his last little saunter into the wilderness is not the only one there is and while no one is looking he slips between the stones and passageways until he eventually ends up outside of the gates. Elves would do anything to know these routes but he brings none, nor does he go to fetch any but slips into shadows where vampires will not find him and the orcs are frankly not bright enough to look.

Come out little wolf, take another bite if you wish.

It isn't running, exactly, for he means to return–but if Sauron will not talk to him like a fucking adult, well. Why the fuck not it wasn't like he could take away from him what he had already taken.]

[ Sauron knows when Adar leaves. He has spies that are not of flesh and eternally cleave to the mountainsides, so when his little elf-uruk has a tantrum he sits himself down with Morgil on his lap and instructs his son to send his thoughts out. Speak to your father, beg him to return. If you love him, you will call to him.

And so, the child does. Across the wastes comes his voice as if on the wind around Adar but stemming from his mind.

Daddy, where are you? ]

[Well it worked, if not quite in the way he had meant it to.

Etelo? he both thinks it and says it aloud, unsure which would be more useful to the child, or Sauron masquerading as their child depending on how lucky he is.

You would have to ask your father for he has kept me away and will not let me come up anymore.

He was trying not to scream about the fact their child could possibly speak, certainly to more than other maia at least and he hadn't been there.]

Edited 2022-12-18 14:54 (UTC)

[ Words are difficult, thought-speech is not, and a week with Sauron has made the child learn a great deal in a short time. Etelo sounds sad, his hair being stroked by his papa.

Papa says you do not love us. Why are you leaving me? Was I bad? ]

[I am not far little one. He would not talk to me or allow me to see you. Leaving was the only way to get his attention.

I have loved you since before you were made, and I will love you until the world is remade. Your Papa knows that. That is why he made you, partly at least.

Stop being a little bitch, Sauron.

Are you well? I have missed you more than words can say.]

[ I am sad you have left.

Sauron offers the boy some snacks as the child focuses on mind-speech, letting him munch on soft honeybread and sip apple juice.

Louie and Tilly are funny. Papa says you may return if you will kill uruks. Please come home! I miss bedtime songs. ]

[I am sad I was barred from seeing you. Dragged away by his henchmen when I tried.

Is there a reason I should have been killing uruks? He did not ask me too before he shut me out. Has he told you that is what I am? An Uruk? He made me so. I used to be an elf, only. A lot more like you.]

[ Uruks are punished every day because of you. I don't understand.

He is more focused on the honey dribbling off his papa's fingers, giggling into the thought-speech.

I miss you, Daddy ...

And his attention shifts, the connection failing to leave Adar alone in the wastes. ]

[It is not that he isn't moved by his son's pleas, but an hour or two makes little difference and he lays in the dark, looking up at the sky that he so often missed.

If he were running he could be most of the way to Himring by the time he gets up to move again. He cannot work out what he possibly did this time. He had taken their child, as Sauron wished, to the gathering. He had not claimed him, had not drawn attention to himself, had taken him home to tuck him into bed and then never seen him again.

Eventually, he is back within the walls of the mountain he knew so well. Better, maybe, than anyone except for the lords who reined over it. if there are still orcs guarding the doors when he gets all the way up to Sauron's room, they will be regretting it if they don't let him past. He's had enough and apparently all the screaming has been in his name anyway. What was a few more? The spiders too are at risk of meeting his sword if they are still there. Fuck them all.]

[ The passes are silent and empty when Adar returns, the guards relieved by the usual shadows that swoop the corridors and act as far more subtle (and effective) guardians. He isn't allowed entry to Sauron's personal quarters but directed to the main miniature throne room where the lieutenant of Angband conducts his business of running Angband. There sits Sauron at the far wall wearing his crown, the walls shifting with wolves and vampires alike.

The herald that moves in front of the lieutenant's dais speaks up over the snarling din when Adar appears. ]

Father of Uruks, you will fight until it pleases Lord Sauron for you to stop.

[ And his gnarled little hand gestures to the weapons laid out on one of the walls as a confused-looking orc is shoved into the middle circle. ]

[It would be too much to ask to just be told what he has done wrong, wouldn't it? He eyes the room, but settles only on Sauron staring past the herald and ignoring every wolf and vampire whose eyes are fixed upon him.]

As my lord wishes. [Did he expect him to protest? To riot? His gaze lowers only so he can pick up a weapon. Two, in fact, two matching swords that he spins easily in his hands as he checks the weight of them and then when he turns to the orc he is as quick as a viper as he lashes out and stabs him in the stomach, ripping the sword upward as he imagines that instead of one of his children (he is sure they will be his) that it is his master there instead. The orc crumples to the floor, blood spraying him.

Doesn't want to kill them and cannot are not the same thing.]

[ Sauron's smile is soft as orc after orc is set upon Adar, sometimes in twos and threes, fours .. back to one ... a younger orc, more scared than eager to fight, an old one who can barely raise his sword, but by and large they are all orcs who have known Adar. Sauron has had the dungeons scoured for the uruk that Adar was most involved with over the last hundred years and thins out the ranks of those who might revolt with their father if he ever flees again.

It is hours before the bloodbath is over, the bodies fed to the onlookers as vampires shriek in joy and werewolves give their hungering packs something to chew on. Black blood slicks the floor like thick oil.

Only when Sauron rises from his chair does the noise in the hall die off.

He shares one last, spiteful look with Adar, then dismisses everyone but his lover. ]

[Even an Uruk of his quality should be tired after that. And he is, but the exhaustion is purely mental. Though he had tried not to look upon them, he of course knew them all. Every last one of them as the bodies piled higher and the floor became slick with black blood. He was painted with it too, with barely an inch of pale skin left to see by the time the hall empties.

Adar doesn't even turn to look at him immediately, wiping off his swords as best as he can on what little of his trousers aren't putrid before he slowly turns, careful not to slip on all the blood.]

Was the spectacle as you wished it to be, my Lord? [He is going to turn you inside out one day and not by how good he is at finding a prostate.]

You are an insolent, ungrateful, proud creature. As much as you may wear my illusions of fairness, what little was left of that in you passed into another months ago.

[ He walks down the dais, step after step resonating on his way toward Adar and his swords. Uncaring. Eyes burning, he walks right up to him and seizes Adar by the throat, real anger in his grip. ]

I am a Noldo. [What do you fucking expect? They didn't kill their kin and sail across the sea in stolen ships because they were fair and wise and full of grace. They had defied all of the Valar to chase the last remaining one. You could not be less than insolent and proud to do that. He should back away from the coming storm but there is true anger in him, too, and he neither drops his swords nor flees across the slick tile or begs for mercy like he sometimes did.

That isn't to say the hand around his throat doesn't frighten or hurt him, it does both of those things in equal measure, he just doesn't care.] What. [he spits, gasping for enough breath to speak.] Did I even do? [It is not the "running", this started before he ever considered leaving again.]

Edited 2022-12-18 16:15 (UTC)

[ The way Sauron grows larger, to full Maiar-height, speaks far more of his rage than the hand that swells large enough to grip Adar's upper-body in his fist and force those tiny blades to the floor. ]

You belong to me. Everything you are and have is at my grace. Nothing in these walls is yours by debt or because you are owed it. You grow too stupid in your simpering, no more my prized uruk than the corpses on this floor, all because you were given a gift and indulged yourself above my pleasure for you to do so.

[ The sconces in the walls flare to the ceiling, Sauron seething as his eyes brighten and his words echo through Adar's skull, forcing their way inside. ]

Do not believe in your foolishness there is nothing more for me to take away from you.

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