Dark Judgement 18

Dark Judgement

Part 18 - My Death

Posted: July 18, 2008
Title: Dark Judgement
Author: Chaotic-Binky

*****

I continue to delight the bitch Nienna with my progress.

I dare not content myself with idle fantasies of tearing Nienna limb from limb as she pleads for mercy. Not because she can pry into my mind or make my life extremely unpleasant, although one might think so considering my past experiences at her hands. No, it is because she is as evil as I am and far more refined and capricious in its deployment. I have truly met my match and she is better at the game than I am. I would feel a sense of failure if she prised my fantasies from me and sneered at them as puerile; I would rather abandon my thoughts, than give her the chance to do that. However, I refuse to feel completely at a loss. I terrorised her little pets for thousands of years. No elf, ever felt completely safe living on Middle-earth, not even in the protected realms and that is quite an achievement.

Nienna is regarded as a force of compassionate forgiveness; she weeps for the misfortunes and trials of the elves and yet that is all she does. Until now, she has never lifted a finger to help them. It is significant that when I tortured my prisoners on Middle-earth, not one elf in my care was ever gifted the early death or release from their torture that they invoked her name for. I decided when they should die and she never intervened once. It used to amuse me when they cried out her name in their desperate misery, but now I am repulsed by it. Not because I tortured them, but because they were led to believe that Nienna actually cared about them and was looking after their welfare. They were fully prepared to die, believing that she would make their passing easier, somehow. At least I never gave any of my captives false hope. They knew there was no way out, except to die, and that is what they did. None escaped. No prisoner ever saw the rays of Anor shining upon them once they entered my stronghold, except on the rare occasion where I might let one go on purpose, never for any altruistic reason.

I remember one elf who lay on the floor curled up like a small elfling, holding his open belly together as his most secret parts leaked over the floor. He wept and pleaded with Nienna to deliver him from the terrible pain.

“Nienna will not help you,” I told him and knelt down beside him. Looking at my hand I decided that it would suit the purpose more if it became a sharp, black claw. “Do you truly want to die?”

“Yes,” he said through his tears. “Please, let me die. I cannot take anymore.”

“You ask so prettily,” I taunted whilst running a claw gently along his back.

“What’s that?” he asked fearfully, his body shuddering violently.

I showed him the claw and he begged me not to use it on him. He cried and pleaded, then lost hope and invoked Nienna’s name, repeating it over and over, as if the mantra would remove him from what lay ahead.

“She is not here for you, and will not give you the release you desire,” I taunted and lifted his chin up so that I could see both of his eyes. “She has never been there for you or any elf.”

He stared at me tears running down his face. “Then I am without hope,” he cried.

“The only one you can rely upon is me,” I told him and delighted in the confusion on his face. “I am the only one who can give you what you want, not because the Valar cannot help you. They are all-powerful and can do as they please. They choose not to help the elves, because they care not what happens to them.”

“But Nienna weeps for us,” he replied whilst wincing at the ever increasing pain.

“That is all she does,” I sneered.

“Námo takes our fëa,” he said.

“If he did then he should have taken yours by now,” I laughed. “Would you not agree?”

“But...”

“No,” I said softly, as if imparting a big secret. “The Valar will never help you. I on the other hand have no more use for you, and so as a parting gift, I will give you what you desire. I will give you what Nienna cares not to give you.” I motioned for him to take a hand away from his blood-oozing belly and he did. “When my name is invoked, and a request made of me, I always answer,” I said gently as my claw burrowed between the slit muscle and behind the large artery that runs down the centre of the abdomen from the cleft in the ribs. “I promise you that it will be quick.”

My claw sliced through the artery and he gasped with the pain. As he lost consciousness, he smiled at me and told me that he was free and beyond anything more that I could do to him. He was wrong, but I really did have no more use for him, and so I decided against any further action.

Námo appeared beside me. “Take his fëa and get out,” I ordered.

“The time has not yet come for dealing with your wickedness, but it will,” he sneered at me. “You will know suffering as you have never known it before.”

“That will never happen, you impotent fool,” I said with no small amount of scorn and walked away laughing loudly.

Old memories, they arrive unexpected, and when one can take the least delight in them.

Today I wiped the memories of that particular elf. I replaced the dying by Sauron’s claw scenario with the fictitious memory of dying a glorious death at Helm’s Deep. It will not occur to him that he did not actually fight in the battle or that it happened many years after he died. He went away happy and Nienna sat smiling that I had done such a good job.

“My Lady,” I said after Nienna had seen the happy elf out of the door.

“Yes, Sauron?”

“I foresee some difficulty here.”

“Go on,” she said in a thoroughly unpleasant and menacing tone.

“I am altering elves memories and yet when they meet up with others who used to know them they might tell them what really happened, therefore undoing all my work.” I wondered if she would have one of her characteristic fits of anger where I would be made to suffer or whether she would give my point the consideration it deserved.

“I see,” she looked perturbed. “You have done very well so far. What would you suggest?”

“Well, my Lady,” I said, hoping that she did not throw me into the void for pointing out a flaw in her quick fix plan. “I suggest that instead of wiping their memories, that I should take the edge off them, in anyway you choose, of course. The process might be made much slower, so that they can adapt naturally and take part in the process.”

“Show me what you mean,” she said, and pointed over at the wall. “Project your mind onto that blank space over there and show me what you propose.”

I showed elves having the memories taken so that they knew they had died or suffered but could not remember the experience fully or the full unpleasantness of it. Moreover, the previous life experience did not seem to upset or affect their ability to enjoy life in Valinor.

“You might need to see the elves over a period of time,” Nienna suggested, “and take full life histories, so that you can coordinate the experiences of whole families so that everything matches up.”

“My lady,” I ventured. “Maybe we should start with those in most need and include their families too?”

“I think that is the way we will have to go,” she said unhappily. “I do wish you had not been so wholehearted in your evil.”

I did not tell her that it was due to their unwitting assistance, in their refusal to aid the elves, that they ensured my success. She guessed anyway. She made her presence known inside my thoughts and punished me with the thing she knew I feared the most. Waves of extreme nausea shocked through my being as pain ripped into me, a thousand tentacles shredding me to tiny pieces as I screamed in my agony. She used my memories of the void to torture me. When she was finished, I lay on the floor unable to move, complete once again in body and mostly uninjured, but still in agony and hallucinating. Tentacles moved towards me a second time. In my extreme terror, I cried out for them to keep away, but they edged towards me and three entered my mouth and nose with a suddenness that sickened and terrified me. I gagged and hoped for release, but then I remembered Maglor and wanted more than ever to stay alive.

“Interesting that you do not invoke my name,” Nienna taunted and pulled the tentacle out of my mouth. “After all, I am the one causing it and I can make it stop.”

“Why would you help me?” I asked, flinching in pain as she placed her hand upon my forehead and it seared red hot into my skin.

“Exactly,” she replied and waved her hand. The tentacles disappeared. “Why would I help the elves? They were the cause of their own troubles. All I could do was grieve for them as they fulfilled Eru’s role for their race. It was Eru’s command that I grieve and so I did. Otherwise...I would not have done.” She added the last part as if she were lost in some memory, but quickly came to and twisted one of my ears, so hard that the skin split and the cartilage separated from my head.

My body arched with the overwhelming pain and when she let go I could not stop shaking and yet I still had one thing to say to her, even though my tongue was swollen and bloody beyond measure, due to the rape of my mouth by the tentacles. “My Lady, Melkor and I were the cause of their problems; they merely reacted to the events we set in motion. We cannot blame them for their own troubles.”

“They did not have to react. Dead or alive they would have ended up in Valinor anyway.” She seemed so cold hearted and matter-of-fact about it.

I could not believe my ears. I lay on the floor stunned from her revelation that she had never cared for the elves. Perhaps that is why she had pleaded for Melkor’s release so that he could finish the job quickly, all those years ago. I was covered in my own vomit, my bodily functions were uncontrolled during the ordeal and I was wet and soiled. My mouth tasted of blood and tentacle slime. It was a bitter and confusing realisation that I cared more about the fate of the elves when they inhabited Middle-earth than the Valar did, even if I was the cause of their unhappiness.

Nienna pulled me up by the neck of my robe. As usual, the walls of the room gradually faded and the one of the rooms I lived in, came into view.

She let go and I dropped to the floor. “What have you done to him?” Maglor screamed at her.

“Maglor,” I called to him, but he ignored me. He stood before Nienna and shouted at her, demanding to know why she was continuously cruel to me.

“Because I feel like it,” she smiled.

“He has already paid many times over for everything he has ever done.” I had never seen Maglor this angry and he looked as though he would attack her. I desperately hoped that he did not.

“He learned nothing by it and so he is still being punished,” Nienna smirked. “If you continue to defend him then I will punish him further. He will be your whipping boy.”

Maglor walked towards me and took my head in his arms whilst the bitch Nienna sneered at him. His eyes watered but the tears did not spill over his lower lids. “I love you,” he said, as though he were dealing with a very difficult moral problem. “I cannot let you suffer anymore. It is too painful and I love you too much.”

My eyes widened in realisation. “NO!” I cried and I saw him mumble that he was sorry, before he jerked my head to the side and broke my neck.

Once again, I was dead.

*****

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