The Ghost of Malice by just_jenni

Chapter 1

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Sauron drifted through the dungeons of Angband, casting his malevolent glance over the unfortunate elves who had wandered too far from safety and into his captivity. In a separate part of the fortress he kept the freshly captured elves whom he had not yet corrupted and twisted into the terrible orcs that were the foot soldiers in his army.

He laughed cruelly on seeing the elves trembling with fear under the terrifying cloud he cast over them, but his laughter belied the anger that he felt because only eleven elves had been captured on that day. It seemed to him that not as many elves took to wandering off by themselves as they used to do in the past when they were freshly awakened and as naive as babes.

"Let them wait in the dark and cold until I have time for them," he sneered before clanging shut the iron doors to the chamber, leaving them alone and frightened.

After he had gone the elves huddled together moaning softly in a lament that they could hardly form words to because they knew not what had befallen them.

Sauron had fashioned a shape for himself that was ghost-like and pale, yet shrouded in black matter that resembled storm clouds. He returned in a gust of icy wind that blew open the chamber doors a few hours later, terrifying the elves into whimpering or outright sobbing. They were cold, hungry and did not know what was to become of them.

Sauron had stripped all eleven of them naked and left them trembling in the gloomy atmosphere of a torture chamber, yet the elves did not know what waited for them inside the room. It was dark and smelled like sulphur, smoke and death, but these elves were not to be put to death. They were very young - two of them looked barely past their childhood. Sauron did not usually like to take very yooung elves because he would have to let them mature before turning them into effective soldiers. Sauron stared down at them and reached out a skeletal claw of a hand to stroke the silky hair of one of them. The young elf recoiled in horror and tried to scuffle away from him along the cold stone floor. But Sauron continued to stroke the fine fair hair before clamping his bony fingers around the youthful skull, and holding it in a grip so firm that the elfling could not free himself from it, Sauron ripped a clump of hair from his scalp.

"AI!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" The young elf cried out in agony but Sauron laughed, a terrible booming sound that filled the room. The other elves fled to the corner of the chamber in terror, covering their eyes and looking away.

But Sauron loved to pull out their hair until he was satisfied with the result - he would leave bits of hair sticking out in tufts upon their heads, and in between the tufts were red patches of blood upon their scalps where most of their hair had been torn out.

He hated their soft, silky skin and so he had devised a three-step system of burning it. First, he would force them into baths of steaming hot water just short of the boiling point, for he did not want to burn them to death. He wanted them to suffer as much pain as possible without dying because he had plans for them. The next step was a session in a blistering hot oven-like chamber into which he would usher several elves at one time, where they would be cooked until their skin turned a peculiar reddish brown. The last step consisted of actual burning with torches only small parts of their skin so that it would blacken until some of it fell off, leaving uneven colors and patches upon their bodies. Each step would be done on separate days, leaving the elves' skin time to heal in between treatments.

Sauron would giggle to himself with glee, not knowing which burning method was his favorite but enjoying each one in turn.

By the time the elves healed from their burns, they had undergone such horrific pain, both physical and mental, that they began to lose some of their sense of identity. In the blistering heat of the ovens they would usually lose their voices, their vocal cords becoming scorched and unusable for a long time, until their voices finally returned but much changed. After the treatment they had received they could only speak in hoarse, guttural sounds. They were forced to develop their own language as orcs that reflected the torture they had received.

Some of the elves Sauron thought were still too pretty despite their bald scalps and terribly scarred and blackened bodies. For them Sauron would use a torture device which would make them as ugly as possible. This was called a head crusher. It was a vise-like contraption in which he would force the elf to place his head, and it would be tightened so that it squeezed the skull, crushing the teeth and the facial bones and changing the shape of the face into a hideous form that looked nothing like the elf's former appearance. These poor elves would always faint dead away after such an awful treatment, but as long as they were still alive Sauron was pleased.

The elves that had to undergo this torture would need a much longer recovery time. Sauron usually saved the head crusher for the youngest elves so that they would have time to grow up before the next step of their transition - training.

By this time they were almost orcs but needed to be trained as Sauron's foot soldiers and he had a strict regimen for doing this under the auspices of some of his most trusted orc leaders, the captains of his army.

Sauron knew that once the former elves had suffered the pain and indignities that he forced upon them, they would be filled with helpless rage, which could be channeled into training them to fight. They would be looking for a leader and would be forever loyal to this being, since it would be someone to give meaning to their lives. Their old lives would be forgotten.

During their military training they were not treated as cruelly as they had been when Sauron was re-shaping them. He would change his form, now appearing as a kindly man approaching old age, who would ensure that they went through a strict regimen of exercise to make them strong, and he fed them well so that they would develop large muscles. He let them make friends and even bunk together in fairly comfortable quarters if they wished. He wanted his orc-soldiers to become efficient killing machines and this could happen only if they were permitted to bond with each other.

After being tortured they were left feeling lonely and suspicious because of the trauma they had suffered. They had all endured terrible physical and mental abuse during the period of alteration and were traumatized. This manifested itself in various ways depending on each elf's psyche - these were anger, withdrawal, isolation, insomnia and sexual dysfunction in those who were old enough to have experienced normal sexual practices.

When they finally became orcs they united as one killing machine because of the post-torture treatment, ready to be unleashed on the world. Sauron's regimen effectively made them forget where they came from originally and who they had been. They now had one single purpose and that was to kill the enemy. And the enemy was anyone who wasn't them.