Unhappy Into Woe by StarSpray

Two

Maglor woke to darkness and to cold. His head throbbed, and he shuddered as he curled in on himself as best he could—which made the chains binding his wrists to the wall somewhere over his head rattle. The iron of the manacles was cold as ice, and bit painfully into his skin. His throat hurt, too, and his mouth was dry, lips chapped and peeling. The stone floor and wall were cold, too, and it was very dark. It was impossible to tell how long he had been there, or even where there was. Somewhere beneath Dol Guldur, of course, but how far down, and whether there was any hope of seeing sunlight again…

A scream, either far away or muffled by thick stone, made Maglor jump, jerking his chains. It was a terrible sound, all drawn out agony that then cut off abruptly. And now that he was listening he heard other voices. Weeping, crying out, pleading. There were elven voices, and what words he caught were in a tongue strange to him. That of the Woodelves, he thought. Elves who had once, perhaps, called this place home, and now found it a place of imprisonment and torment. And others he thought belonged to Men, taken from the small settlements of woodmen who dwelt near the forest and the River. He shuddered again, from cold and from growing fear that he could not banish. There had never really been hope for escape—not since he had entered this place—but it was one thing to be defiant in front of an audience, and quite another alone in the deep cold darkness. Maglor could do almost anything in front of an audience, even if that audience was only the stars.

After a time, Maglor sat up. He felt dizzy, and somehow not being able to see made it worse. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the cold stone wall. Once he felt as though he knew which way was up again, he tugged experimentally on the chains, and followed them to where they were secured firmly into the stone. After a little more time, he stood, finding the ceiling high enough for him to do so but not by much. He found the next wall a few steps over, but its opposite was out of the reach of his chains, in spite of their seemingly generous length. He could not reach the opposite of the wall to which he was chained, either, and so he could not tell how large the room—the cell—truly was. A cold draft came from somewhere over his head, and the air was damp. He was shivering before too long, and retreated into the corner where he could curl up with the assurance that, at least, nothing would come for him from behind.

It was a very long time before someone came. In that time the draft from above came and went. Screams and cries rose and died away. Harsh voices echoed in and around them as orcs went about their foul work, laughing and singing their own discordant songs. Maglor slept, and dreamed unsettling dreams that faded like mist upon awakening, which brought only darkness and silence. No one brought him food or water, and he grew weak with hunger and thirst. But he made no sound. He did not call out—it would be better, he thought, to fade away from starvation than to face whatever the orcs’ attention brought. It would be a mercy, and so he did not expect it. Sauron would not let him go so easily. He had not been tossed away to be forgotten—not Maglor son of Fëanor. What Sauron did want from him remained to be seen. 

At last, the door opened. The light from the torches was dim, flickering red, but still Maglor turned his face away, closing his eyes against the sudden blinding brightness after so long in utter darkness. He resisted when rough hands seized him, hauling him up. The chains were released from his manacles, but others replaced them, and he stumbled on weak legs and numb feet when his captors—Men, this time, not orcs—pushed and yanked him toward the door. There were more torches, and lamps, and the light hurt, even as it was a welcome relief from the dark. Maglor flinched away from the lamplight, and his hair fell across his face. He glimpsed a corridor, carved into the stone rather than built up like the rest of the tower above, with dark doorways carved into the sides with no particular pattern. Then he was pulled into another room, large and cavernous, lit by many torches and braziers so that the chill was chased away so thoroughly that it was almost too warm—and that just thickened the metallic smell of blood until Maglor nearly gagged on it. The floor was stained rusty brown, and there were patches of fresher, slicker blood near the doorway. It was splashed onto the walls, and across the many and varied instruments that lay strewn across benches and hung from the walls and ceiling. 

Maglor resisted, then, but his feet slid across the slick floor as he was dragged to the center of the room. Hooks on chains hung from the ceiling, and he realized what was going to happen moments before his captors started to raise his arms. He swung at them, knocking one to the floor, and turned to flee—he didn’t care where he went, as long as it was away from there—but he got only a few steps out into the dark corridor before they seized him again, shouting both at him and at one another. Maglor twisted out of their grasp, but he’d forgotten his ankles were chained, and he fell hard onto the cold stone floor when it caught at him. As they descended upon him he twisted around, kicking and clawing, drawing blood but unable to break free. There were orcs among them now, and not only Men, and they were crueler in their kicking and striking, stopping short of a full beating only when shouted at to do so.

They dragged him back into the blood soaked room, tearing the remnants of his clothes off as they did so, and hoisted him up onto one of the chains, arms yanked roughly over his head, his feet only just touching the ground—until someone pulled the chain again and he was raised up several inches, all his weight now on his wrists, the iron biting cruelly into his skin. His feet kicked out instinctively, though there was nothing to hit, as he thought of Maedhros and wondered, for a hysterical moment, if Sauron would have him hauled up to the tower’s ramparts when his servants were finished in the dungeons, and leave Maglor hanging there as his brother had once hung from Thangorodrim.

He heard the whip crack before he felt the strike, a line of burning, searing pain across his lower back. A cry escaped before he could catch it, but he bit the inside of his cheek hard before the next blow fell, and kept silent. There was no rhythm or pattern to the blows, nothing to anticipate or be inured to. Blood trickled down his legs to pool on the floor beneath him. Maglor’s head hung forward, his hair in front of his face—a small mercy, that his face was hidden from his tormentors as he grimaced and ground his teeth and bit his lip until it too bled. His eyes screwed shut against the pain that after a time did not fade between blows. His whole back was a mess of burning lines and slick blood and torn skin. All the while the orcs laughed and jeered at him in their own tongue. 

It went on like that for hours, with no apparent point to any of it. He was asked no questions, had no demands made of him. The orcs just wanted to hear him scream, and complained bitterly when he would not give them the satisfaction. The Men were there, it seemed, to keep the orcs in check. 

All at once it stopped, and the chains were loosened, so that Maglor crashed to the ground, knees buckling. He landed hard on his shoulder, and only narrowly avoided smashing his face into the stone. “Watch his hands,” someone barked, as an iron-booted foot came very closed to crushing his fingers. Maglor could hardly hear over the ringing in his ears and his own harsh gasps, and he curled in on himself with a breathless grunt when that same foot kicked at his stomach. The blood pooled on the ground smeared across his skin, and he could taste it on his lips. The smell was thick in the air. 

He heard the pop of a cork and then something was poured all down his back. It burned, and he cried out, jerking and arching away, but someone grabbed his hair, and someone else his wrists, and held him in place as more burning liquid was poured down his back. He could feel the skin knitting back together, barely-healed scars, and it hurt—almost worse than the blows themselves had. Someone raised his head and poured something else—or perhaps the same stuff—down his throat. It was like swallowing fire, and he choked, only swallowing most of it because an orc clamped a hand over his mouth to keep him from spitting it out. 

Then they dragged him back to the dark cell and tossed him in, wrists and ankles still shackled but not this time to the wall, and slammed the door shut behind him. There was the creak of rusted metal as a key turned, and then silence. 

Slowly, Maglor pushed himself to his hands and knees, and then sat. He touched what part of his back he could reach, and though his fingers came away bloody, he did not touch open wounds. They were tender, and his whole body hurt—it burned and it ached with each breath he took—but it was not as bad as it could have been. 

Sauron wanted him in one piece. Maglor did not want to think about why.