The Darkness Between the Stars

[ten_of_swords]

This.

This place.

It is Angband.

It is Angband.

Not an illusion.

When Gorlim wakes, he is in his cell. Beaten. Bloody. Tortured as he was, starving and thirsty, dizzy and exhausted, as if the Bar had only been a dream of possibilities and nothing more.

Screams ricochet over stone.

Flesh is rended.

Blood flows and drips steadily as the moan (so close now) ceases.

Heavy footsteps cross the sticky, stained floor. Brutal breathing, the sound of a creature whose mouth and nose are misformed, that must breath in a thick, mucousy manner just to live.

It was time.

Comments

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

And just like that, he's passed off, out of mind and unimportant. He who had done so much, for so long, now as quickly forgotten as a dreamless sleep.

The shame has not been lessened by three Ages in hell and a year in a bar. The fear, the horror when Melkor touches him is real and immediate. Time does not by itself change what a person is, and even through love and loss, through trial and trivia, a man may seem to be altered by his experience, but the heart of his soul never will. Nothing changes what a man is, and Gorlim is this. This moment, this treason, this failure. This desperation. It doesn't matter how many times a man might be in his element, and work his soul's purpose. It does not become easier or more trivial an experience.

So the man they drag away is the same man who had never seen his doom, had never dreamed he might die this way. And even still, as he is taken from Melkor's presence, and the fear of looking into the eyes of the Devil Himself grows less, and his mind and his memory recovers, he waits for the vision to end.

He waits for the illusion to be cut off.

Any moment now it would all freeze, like a television-thing when Random pushed that button, and from behind that wall, or from that door, or perhaps from nowhere at all, Ruin would saunter forth, laughing and mocking him just as Melkor had done. He would watch the Adan broken, possibly drag him to watch his Lord and friends butchered (as if he had not seen it as a ghost -- as if he did not see it in his dreams every night -- as if he did not see their faces now and then on strangers in the bar, and see them change before his very eyes to the hollow- blood-spattered disbelief of their deaths). Then, at last, their bargain would be complete, and Ruin will leave him in some wooded patch or in the middle of the bar or out by the lake, bleeding and shattered, and that will be that.

Any moment now.

Suddenly he feels cold air on his stinging back. The icy breath of the Helcaraxe. He looks around desperately. He knows what's coming. Surely, surely it must end now! He squirms and twists about, and his struggles are met on one side with a feral laugh, and on the other with a curse, and from behind a sharp blow between his shoulders that makes him cry out.

"I thought he'd make it easy," a dribbling voice hisses behind him.

The one who had laughed, who held one of Gorlim's arms in a vice grip, did so again and squeezed. "Is it so hard to hold this infant?" he mocked his underling. "Let him squirm. They bleed more that way."

Gorlim looks about, becoming more desperate. (Even now, even now there was still time for them to come for him. Here, alone outside the stronghold, twelve men against three orcs, they could take him and flee. Even now...)

"They're not coming, worm!" laughed an orc. "Not all this way! This is the end."

The end.

He was released with a shove, his arms and legs unshackled, leaving bright, bloody rings on the filthy flesh. The ground was trampled into mud from the comings and goings of armies, the surrounding land dotted with temporary camps, and matted with filth. Even in the Helcaraxe, snow never stayed long on the ground here. What was not warmed by bodies and fire and shit was trampled under metal and claws and hooves.

"Do it quick," muttered the one who had stood on his left, and cursed when he wriggled. "It's damn cold out here."