Witch-King of Angmar by hennethgalad

Chapter 1

The Witch-King of Angmar

   Annatar took his right hand and slid the ring onto the longest finger. Angmar looked down at the ring in delight, the wide gold band was set with a single faintly yellow diamond, cut in the shape of the pupil of a cat's eye. Angmar wriggled his fingers and winced - the points of the diamond were pin sharp, and extended wider than his long narrow fingers, cutting into the flesh of the other fingers. He watched the lines of blood appear, and drip onto the cold polish of the floor. The euphoria evaporated like mead in a furnace. This ring was designed to cause pain, this was the gift of Annatar, the Giver of Gifts. Dread froze him. If such was the reward for loyalty... 

   Annatar stood in front of him, sneering openly 'You miserable festering mortal, did you really think I would share the slightest particle of power with you?'

  Angmar felt his breathing stop, he ordered his body to inhale but nothing worked, his very eyelids were locked open. He was thrown onto the floor, face down; unable to defend himself his face smashed straight into the stone floor, breaking his nose and putting his teeth straight through his lips. He lay watching the red stain of his blood spread under his eyes, still unable to breath. Annatar stepped onto his back and put a foot on his head and slowly pushed down, crushing Angmar's broken nose and splitting his lips wider open. He stepped off and suddenly Angmar could breath again.

   'Eternal life' he croaked 'You promised me eternal life' 

   Annatar snorted derisively 'You are mistaken, mortal, I promised you endless time. As my puppet. ' Angmar was hauled upright and stood to attention. 

  Annatar held up his own right hand and the plain gold ring he wore suddenly blazed as fiery letters appeared, engraved around the ring

  'You will be privileged to observe as I use your miserable life-form to destroy the rest of your species in this disgusting 'Arda' ' Annatar spat on the floor 'I loathe it, I loathe you, I loathe this 'earth'. I will complete my master's mission and scour this filth, YOU filth, from the universe.'

  He stopped in front of Angmar and looked at him with contempt. Angmar found his own hand pulling a kerchief from his pocket and wiping the blood from his face, but his eyes remained fixed in his head, not a single muscle was his any longer, he had become a mere spectator.

   Annatar stood in front of him and looked down into his eyes, Angmar recoiled internally, Annatar's beauty was changed somehow; in his pain and shock it took him a few moments to realize what had altered. The pupils of the large golden-yellow eyes had become slitted, vertical slits, the pupils of the eyes of a cat. The expression of the face distorted the previous perfection, lines appeared and seemed to write 'cruelty' in letters of flesh, as though the clouds had parted to reveal darkness where the sun should be. No, he thought, not darkness, not just the absence of light, but an inescapable vortex of nothingness into which everything must fall, darkness and light. Suddenly Annatar was transparent to Angmar's novel perceptions, the vortex was behind Annatar, waiting to engulf him, and Annatar wanted to drag everything in existence down into the void with him.

    The flame of rebellion rose in Angmar's heart, but Annatar leered at him 'Alas, already you reject me. Remove the ring, puling mortal, remove it and be free.'

   Still Angmar could not even blink. Annatar snorted. 'Now then, you have much to accomplish, puppet, but at least I can rest in the certainty that you will do exactly as ordered'

  Angmar's mind suddenly filled with detailed instructions and plans, as if he had been studying and preparing for years but momentarily forgotten so. He bowed low to the sneering Annatar and found his body turn him sharply around and march him away across the smooth black floor.

Chapter End Notes

for the Halloween thing on tumblr