Sacrifice by SurgicalSteel

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Fanwork Notes

First Times

Fanwork Information

Summary:

Not everyone involved with the sacrifices at Armenelos were believers.

Major Characters: Original Character(s), Sauron

Major Relationships:

Artwork Type: No artwork type listed

Genre: Drama, Horror

Challenges: Akallabêth in August

Rating: Adult

Warnings: Mature Themes, Violence (Graphic)

Chapters: 1 Word Count: 1, 847
Posted on 22 August 2009 Updated on 22 August 2009

This fanwork is complete.

Sacrifice

Read Sacrifice

I left Armenelos behind many years ago, and few in Middle-earth would recognize me or would remember my small part in what happened there. In Belfalas, I am the surgeon and the sometime seller of rare herbs – in Umbar, a member of a merchant captain’s crew. In Armenelos? In Armenelos, in the Temple, I was something more, and yet something worse.

I went to Númenor as a young man, wishing to learn. I began my studies in my home in Belfalas with a cousin who was a lithotomist. He saw that I had some skill with the knife, and paid for more advanced schooling in Umbar. I had heard, though, that there was even more learning to be had in Armenelos, and I was eager to study everything I possibly could about my craft. It was more difficult than I imagined at first. My Adûnaic was not as good as my Sindarin – and to the ears of my fellow students, was heavily accented. My Sindarin name – Nemir – bore an unfortunate resemblance to the Adûnaic word for ‘Elf,’ and so I was teased mercilessly for being one of the Faithful, and they called me ‘Nimruzîr,’ which actually made me laugh. I’d never met an Elf, so why would I befriend one?

I digress. It took only a year or so to learn to speak Adûnaic more fluently and with less of an accent – less than that to train myself to not even think in any other language. The consequences were too severe. As part of my study, I dissected. I am a surgeon, how can one know how to fix what is wrong with the body if one doesn’t know how it’s normally assembled? All of us dissected, all of us paid large sums to the Guild for the privilege of dissecting. And we debated.

It is difficult to know exactly what purpose certain structures have if you’ve only seen them in the dead, and this is perhaps what led me to my experiments, and ultimately to what I cannot forgive myself for in Armenelos.

It was known that the heart had four chambers, it was believed by many that only tiny amounts of blood passed through the right side of the heart, and that the pulmonary vein carried air back to the heart where it mixed with arterial blood. A few believed that the entire pulmonary circulation simply carried air and that tiny invisible channels between the ventricles led to blood and air mixing and… I know the detail is difficult to follow. What is perhaps most important to understand is that many were not certain of these functions, and that led to study and to experimentation. The notion that air moved through the pulmonary vessels seemed ludicrous to me, for when these vessels were opened in the dead, all they contained was blood. The most logical explanation for that seemed to me that they carried blood in life. Others argued that when the natural suction mechanism of the heart’s filling ceased with death, blood must spill backwards into those vessels.

I was determined to prove my theory the right one, and so I paid additional large fees to the Guild for permission to experiment on the bodies of living animals. Frogs were most useful for the initial experiments – they are small, and do not struggle much, and their hearts beat more slowly than larger warm-blooded animals. It was clear from observing their hearts that the heart did not suck blood in from the periphery and have it sucked back out – that it acted as a muscular sort of pump. It was easy to measure the amount of blood pumped out with a single beat and to then calculate how much blood entered and left the heart in a set period of time. Working with frogs led to working with pigs, and again to the observation that the heart acted as a muscular pump, and that there was no air in the pulmonary vessels, only blood.

“Frogs and pigs are not Men,” they told me. I was forced to concede that particular point.

Why he chose to take an interest in the petty squabbling of surgeons possessed of more arrogance than sense , I am not certain – but not long after that dispute, I found myself summoned to the newly built Temple in Armenelos. It would have taken a far braver man than I to ignore his request, and so I went.

I had heard – well, I am from Belfalas. There were always rumors about Mordor circulating in Belfalas, and so I’d rather expected my host to be ten feet tall and shoot flames from his eyes, and perhaps to offer me a warm cup of blood as a beverage. Instead, he was perhaps a bit taller than I am, dark-haired, pale-skinned, and with a hint of something other about his eyes. From descriptions I’d heard, I’d have guessed him to be an Elf, perhaps, and a courteous one at that – he politely discussed my experiments with me, and when I concluded with my colleagues’ observation that frogs and pigs are not Men, he cocked one eyebrow and asked the question that changed everything.

“Why not repeat the experiment in Men?”

“I believe some might frown on that, my lord,” I answered.

He snorted at that.

“What I have done with frogs and pigs – they invariably end up dead. No one minds this, and the bodies are generally used by our cooks. With Men – I believe they would call that murder, my lord,” I said.

“You are doubtless aware of what happens in the Temple,” he said in tones of strained patience.

“I am not certain…” I began, and I stopped for a moment as his eyebrow rose again. “Forgive me if this is disrespectful,” I continued. “I have witnessed Ossn5;’s wrath and Uinen’s peace once his wrath passes. I have met you. But my lord, a prominent family in Umbar tells the story of sailors who landed on the western shores of Aman after sailing east. We have been told this is impossible, we have been told the Valar would punish us with their wrath if we dared set foot upon their holy ground…”

Rather than looking offended, his look seemed to mix curiosity and amusement.

“If they are so powerful, then where was their wrath? Did they simply consider those sailors to be beneath their notice? And if they lied to us about the shape of the world, what else might they have lied about? I am not certain that I believe anything I have been told about the Valar, or anything that they have supposedly taught us. Perhaps there was no ‘Great Enemy’ at all and Beleriand sank beneath the waves for reason other than the Valar conquering him,” I said. “I am not certain that I believe in a Lord of Darkness.”

“Oh, Melkor exists,” he said calmly.

I held my peace. Arguing that point with Melkor’s High Priest would likely not be wise.

“There are Men you might use in the Temple,” he said.

My heart seemed to stop in my chest for a moment.

“Are the Men in the Temple not given to the flames?” I said carefully.

He nodded. “You can, I assume, sustain their life for a short period after your experiments?” he asked.

“I can,” I said.

“Come to the Temple, then,” he said, and I found myself following him.

It was strange, that first time. I had cut into chests for empyema, but never so widely and deeply into the chest of a still-living man, had never actually observed a human heart beat. I was mesmerized by that sight for just a moment, and wondered what I was doing for another moment.

I remembered that this man was destined for the altar in any case, and repeated my first experiment – the volume the heart pumps with each beat. From his rapid pulse, his shallow labored breath, I knew that he would not last long enough for other experiments and make it to the altar alive, and so I summoned his guards to take the poor wretch away.

I would like to say that I swore I would never do this again, but the truth is that I was eager to learn more, and returned as often as my duties would permit, often enough to demonstrate that it truly is blood and not air in the pulmonary vessels, and that blood circulates throughout the body in continuous loops, to note that the valves in veins always direct blood back toward the heart, to study the lacteals which carry chyle from the small bowel and their drainage into the portal vein of the liver…

Often enough to be renamed ‘Zigûrzîr’ by my colleagues.

What prompted me to leave, I cannot clearly say. Perhaps it was my colleagues looking on me with fear and horror, although they rapidly made use of the knowledge I obtained – or perhaps it was the mounting sense of dread and my nightmares – dreams of fire exploding from the Minul-Târik that woke me and left me shuddering in the dark.

Perhaps it was my wife begging to go someplace where no one cared if you could speak Sindarin – or perhaps it was the vague longing for home.

In any case, we fled Armenelos by night, not wanting to risk an accusation of treason for even wanting to leave. The ‘Faithful’ ship captain who carried us back to Belfalas robbed us of every damn coin I’d earned in all my years in Númenor and couldn’t be bothered to have his ship’s surgeon examine my wife when she miscarried our first child at sea. He snarled if I was truly a healer, I could look after her myself - and that most of the healers from the capital were in league with him anyway, and damned if he help one of his servants.

My family in Belfalas welcomed us both with open arms, and I slipped back into life as a healer and an herb-seller, and put the experimenter and the scientist aside. Those studies are long enough ago now that few would likely recognize me or remember what I did. And now it is my young son who looks to study in Armenelos someday, and I must raise the funds for him to do it. I worry for him. I worry for what he might be asked to do in Armenelos; I worry for what the Faithful might do to him if they realize that he is my son. Nonetheless, I cannot deny him the opportunity to study.

And so, I will take ship with a merchant captain from Umbar as her surgeon, and I will hope we go nowhere near Númenor.

In Middle-earth, I am a surgeon and I help save men’s lives.

In Armenelos, in the Temple of Melkor, I was a vivisectionist, and I helped take them away.


Chapter End Notes

Many thanks to Pandemonium213 for the beta!

Nemir’s experiments hearken back to William Harvey, who is widely credited with discovering the nature of blood circulation – although Harvey’s vivisection was limited to animals.


Comments

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Pardon me while I squee like mad for a moment....Ok, better, somewhat coherant again. As you know, I really LOVE unique, and unexpected, perspectives of the Akllabth events. This was just the ticket!

I loved how you used a surgeon in this manner, how he studied those destined to die in the temple. Love the medically accurate details, as always. I loved your conversatin beteen Sauron and Nemir. Awesomeness! And your account of Nmir and his wife escapin back to Middl earth is heartwrenching, but believable. I loved how youshowed the perspective of a neutral, who just wanted to learn and expand hi knowledge, an how Sauron manipulated that, and how the Faithful loathed Nemir for it.....Just.....Wow. Thi is so powerful on so many levels, I'm actually flabberghasted and in awe of this.

Really really great job. I'm favoriting this. I'm dreafully behind on reading AinA stories, but I really thought I would cheat a bi and read this. Loved it! "hugs"

Thanks very much, Roisin - I'd sort of alluded to this notion in 'Survivors of the Downfall' (which is going to need a bit of revision once MEFAs are over), that at least some of the surgeons in Numenor were using some of the Faithful as anatomic specimens. I think that in my 'verse, it also helps explain why 3000 years later, there's still revulsion and suspicion when the surgeons in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith want to dissect cadavers to learn anatomy.

Thanks again!

I enjoyed this!  The storytelling is delightfully precise, and the triumph of scientific curiosity over, er, well perhaps some  rather slight qualms, is very plausible.  So is the use of victims for scientific research. (I have a vague feeling that the public dissection of executed criminals and possibly even more private vivisections went on back in the day in Alexandria, but I can't remember any details.)  The ending is a powerful paradox, past and present conflicting as so often happens.  Thank you!

Thanks very much! Yep, Herophilus and Erasistratus, the founders of the great medical school in Alexandria, had permission to vivisect condemned criminals. That's apparently one of the reasons that a lot of physicians of that era wanted to study in Alexandria - they knew they'd be able to study things in Alexandria that they wouldn't be able to study anywhere else in the world.

Thanks again, I'm glad you enjoyed this!

This is a darkly layered story that hits home personally -- not so much because I have been a vivisectionist of humans, but as a thrall to one of the three most reviled industries in the US, I have engaged in some research activities that some would find reprehensible although arguments for such research are strong. So I feel for Nemir. Gaining knowledge is not always pretty and pure.  It can involve moral compromise, and scientists tread a fine ethical line so much of the time. Sacrifice really captures that dilemma. And likewise, you capture Sauron's cold, efficient pragmaticism.

Well done, lad. ;^)

I've never vivisected humans, but I have dissected them: as part of gross anatomy lab as a student and as an assistant on a couple of autopsies where I really wanted to see certain things for myself (sudden post-op deaths).

Actually, as I'm considering that statement, it's not entirely true - I cut into living people as part of my daily work. ;)

Gaining any sort of medical knowledge is often ugly - all one has to do is pick up the Journal of Trauma and read the experimental descriptions to realize that. I once knew someone who was studying resuscitation fluids for trauma using head-injured rats with hemorrhagic shock as an experimental model, and she managed to disgust a table full of surgeons by describing how she managed to give each rat the exact same head injury. She didn't prove what she was hoping to prove - but she still got some extremely useful information.

I'll stop babbling now and just say thank you. :D

*shudders* What gets me the most about this story is that his actions are logical. Very powerful and it brings up a ton of ethics questions.

I love the conversation with Sauron. The part where he says Melkor exists made me laugh.

The last two lines are my favorites in the story. Light and dark, with the dark ever in mind.

Thought-provoking and very well done.

My profession is full of lots of sticky ethics questions, which makes it interesting.

And if it's any consolation, I made myself shudder writing this - at least partly because I can't really say with certainty that I wouldn't have done the same thing.

Thanks so much for reading and commenting!

Another fascinating, if uncomfortable look at the events of the Akallabêth from an unusual POV! The idea that people from the colonies would seek to study in Númenor is great. And Nemir's decision, horrifying though it is, doesn't lack a certain logic. If these people are going to die anyway, why not use the chance to find out a bit more about how the human body works? *shudders* I think that's part of the effect of this story: To think that even reasonably good people might, for all kinds of reasons, participate in something horrible. (Ah, one of the recurring themes of human history...)

Thank you for sharing!

 

An interesting study in corruption; Nemir doesn't have much wiggle room even if he did not want to vivisect humans; but it is obvious that his thirst for knowledge overwhelmed any reverence he might have had for human life - and Sauron took full advantage of it, as he took advantage of Pharazon's greed. 

If the Faithful sea-captain believed that all healers from Armenelos were involved in the torture of other Faithful individuals, I can't blame him for being hostile to Nemir.  I would say that the only difference between Nemir and Dr. Mengele is that Nemir finally heeded his conscience and voluntarily abandoned the practice of vivisecting humans.  (as far as I know, Dr. Mengele either didn't have a conscience or didn't pay any attention to it)

A quite compelling story.

I really liked this story, and I know it is probably creepy that I use that word, but I thought it was such an interesting, intriguing, multi-layered portrait, and it completely grabbed me from the start. The first person voice works really well for the kind of narrative, and Nemir is very compelling in his story-telling. But, I really appreciate that it is not only Nemir that we get to know, but society in general, and even the Faithful captain that denies Nemir's wife the care she needs is nuanced and not quite as Faithful as he wants to believe himself. It was also awesome to see Sauron and his grasp on human nature (and I like to think that a lot of his power comes, precisely, from this uncanny ability to pay attention and read people. It's amazing to see that in action!).

Great job! I have really enjoyed reading your take on all these events. Thanks for sharing your talent :-)

Thanks very much, Fireworks!

I grew up in Texas, and realized at a fairly young age that there are multple sides to all sorts of stories - what our history teachers said about the US Civil War was quite different from what was in the history books, and my native Mexican Spanish teachers had very different ideas about the Mexican-American War of the 1840s than my native Texan history teachers did. I think it's because of that background that I like exploring what the other side of the story might be - whether Ar-Pharazon might've actually been a decent person, whether everyone involved with the sacrifices really believed in what they were doing, whether the Faithful were really as saintly as some stories make them out to be, etc.

I'm really glad you enjoyed this!

This was chillingly great. The uncomfortable thing about it is perhaps that Nemir is such an utterly normal person. No a hero, alright, but hardly a villian, and not stupid enough to make his decisions seem like simple mistakes. 

Raksha the Demon here compared Nemir to Mengele. It strikes the little historian in me as somewhat inaccurate. Mengele's so-called "research" had little if any scientific value; as recounted by the Auschwitz survivor Alex Dekel, he was doing it "for the evulz", being not sane enough to derive valuable data from what he did. Nemir is more like Shiro Ishii, the leader of Imperial Japanese Unit 731, whose research was just as inhumane but in fact useful for science and was motivated by real need of information rather than homicidal wackiness.