His skin was blotchy, and his eyes were bloodshot as he writhed, naked and sweating profusely, against the cold steel that held him.

In many shockingly dispassionate ways, he reminded his finally revealed enemy of the horses the Children rode into battle, and which ran themselves ragged before being “delivered” by a merciful blade.

For darling Tyelpë, there would, of course, be no such mercy before he’d not given up the secret he so stubbornly tried to withhold from one immeasurably more powerful and terrible than he could even imagine.

By nature and design, Annatar himself had no notion of ugliness—even his unchained anger and boundless hatred only gilded him and, if anything, made him even more unbearably, uncannily beautiful.

Indeed, the flush of ire in his cheeks and the flash of calculating disdain in his eyes only heightened his bewitching pulchritude, and this alone seemed to further distress his headstrong captive if his frantic squirming against unbreakable bonds was any indication.

No, the hideousness of rage and fear was something Annatar had learned and studied throughout the ages.

“Hey, look at me,” he purred, lifting Celebrimbor’s head—lolling feebly to and fro—by the deceivingly tender touch of a single finger. “Tell me where those silly, inconsequential rings you made, according to my design and thanks to my help, are, and I’ll let you go. We could even try to rekindle…”

His lips curled into a petulant moue of displeasure when Celebrimbor gave a raucous, brittle, distinctly derisive chuckle.

“Or not,” Annatar continued smoothly. “It doesn’t matter. Just tell me where you’ve taken them!”

The light—once so compellingly bright and pure—within the young Elf was failing fast now; already it seemed reduced to a single flickering point of defiance within his otherwise dull gaze, and Annatar gave a long, regretful sigh.

“I’ve known your great-grandfather,” he said with an impish smirk. “And your grandfather…and Fëanáro, of course.”

As he spoke, Annatar let his long, slender fingers touch the steel construction onto which he had affixed Celebrimbor’s painfully stretched-out limbs. In honour and mockery of his heritage, Annatar—who had once been Mairon, The Admirable—had returned to his own roots and had handcrafted a beautiful eight-pointed star such as the boy’s grandfather had elected as his sigil.

A muted grunt that Annatar could not quite interpret escaped his captive at that.

“Let it sink in,” Annatar purred. “Understand who and what I am—what I’ve seen, what I’ve done, what terrible and wonderful power I wield!”

Even if the incarnates, quick to forget the lessons their ancestors had carved out of history by blood and suffering, seemingly invariably swallowed his disguise line, hook, and sinker, Annatar remembered everything.

“There is fire in your blood,” he whispered fervently. “It has been kindled within your line long before you were even a distant dream.”

Pressing his lips against Celebrimbor’s sweat-sheened temple, Annatar let some of that life-giving heat he’d carried within himself since before Arda had been created flow into the other’s fading being.

“I can keep you alive.” It was a promise. It was a threat. “I know what you need, and I shall give it to you while stripping you of everything else.”

Again, Celebrimbor merely moaned before clamping his pale, bloodless lips shut.

“As you wish…”

With deliberate, teasing precision, Annatar chose a sharp blade from his collection and made the first cut.

“I’ve perfected this technique on your uncle,” he explained cheerily as he splayed a warm, soothing hand against the concave, trembling stomach of his doomed paramour. “He was also such a sacrificial fool.”

As he meticulously severed ligaments and detached muscles, Annatar let his supreme energy flow in a steady, sustaining stream into Celebrimbor’s agonised body.

“He wouldn’t give up his secrets either,” he muttered, still peeved at the recollection of Maedhros’s laughable obstinacy. “Much good it did him.”

“He lived.”

“Not for long.”

Celebrimbor, even as he was divested of his pristine skin piece by piece, had the nerve to utter another guffaw that echoed like a scream through the empty chamber.

“You know nothing about time,” he ground out. “And you shall never learn where the rings are.”

“You’ll die a terrible death,” Annatar prophesied darkly.

The almost pitying gaze the moribund Elf gave him made the unveiled Maia bare his teeth in frustration.

“And I thought you knew my family,” Celebrimbor hissed. “As ever, you overestimate yourself. I am undaunted.”

For a while, Annatar continued his gruesome work in sullen silence. He kept that flayed grotesquery of his own making suspended on the very edge of death as he peeled back the layers of his beloved Tyelpë to reveal his sworn enemy.

That last insult had hit him harder and wounded his pride deeper than he’d anticipated, especially seeing the unequivocal power dynamic in which they presently found themselves.

Despite his instinctive reluctance, Annatar searched his near-perfect memory for hints and clues.

There were many things for which these pesky incarnates would die gladly, and he couldn’t decide which one was at stake presently.

Could it be a home Celebrimbor had never really had since leaving the Blessed Realm?

The idea of another lover was so outrageous that Annatar discarded it instantly—it was inconceivable to him that any other being, no matter how handsome or kind, might have eclipsed him in Tyelpë’s affections.

Family. The certainty hit the malicious Maia like his former Master’s icy breath—if there was one thing that turned even the most loquacious of Elves into unmoving stone, it surely was the safety and happiness of their kin.

“They’re all dead,” he spat distractedly.

“Well,” Celebrimbor breathed faintly. “Then the rings are lost, and you shall never retrieve them!”

-> Masterlist

Lots of love from me!

@fellowshipofthefics Here's a really dark one one!