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Mairon was pulled, snarling, from the freezing ocean. Over the seemingly endless journey to Númenórë, he had learned that he and Pharazôn had very different ideas of what a hostage was. He had not taken the lesson gracefully.
“Again,” Pharazôn said, “he’s barely bleeding.”
Mairon was bleeding more than he had in centuries. Thick and oily red fluid soaked his heavy, water-logged clothing. Pharazôn did not deserve to see it, but it was the price he demanded as demonstration of Mairon’s proper subservience. Mairon was certainly filled with something; it swelled up with the blood pulsing out of his chest and thighs and face. All the little indignities he was forced to let stay on his body.
Mairon’s familiarity with the wide range of tools for inflicting pain and humiliation did not make suffering them any easier.
One of his canines had chipped; his tongue kept seeking for the imperfection, the marring of his mouth’s symmetry. Mairon was in the process of forcing it out, glad that he had chosen a form modeled after the Eldar. He had sober black hair and a fragile yet ancient face and, most importantly, more than two sets of teeth. Usually he prevented them from developing since he did not wear them down. As a result, snapping the roots took effort, especially with one as long as this. This set had originated with a body older than Pharazôn’s whole line; it did not like going. It stubbornly refused to relinquish its claim to his skull.
Fresh blood welled up in Mairon’s mouth as he made progress. He was not pleased with Pharazôn for making him taste it.
I will flay you, Mairon thought as someone unimportant shoved him towards the edge of the deck. I will flense you. I will tan your skin into the binding of the sanctimonious codex that will undoubtedly be written about your downfall and then I will burn it and I will make sure you can still feel it when I do.
Pharazôn — deaf as any Man — did not hear his promise. He did not recognize the shaking of the viper before him for the warning it was. He kept pushing.
Mairon was put over the side of the ship again.
He plunged into the water, which was hard as stone in the first moment of impact. Then he began to sink. The sea was horrifically cold. Mairon — who distinguished not at all between Barad-dûr in the ravages of summer and Angband the first winter after Arien raced into the sky, when her view of the world below had been choked by volcanic ash — was shocked by it despite himself. Even this third time.
He could not swim. He did not know if Pharazôn knew this; in any case, it did not matter, because the rope around his wrist — mildewed and rubbing the skin raw — yanked him backwards under the ship. Mairon flailed where they could not see him, trying to get away from the hulking darkness above him even as he knew it would do no good. There was no safety for him below, let alone a future. He must allow himself to be injured — must allow his skin to be torn, his bones snapped, his muscles pulped — or Pharazôn would order it again.
And eventually someone important would notice.
There was no telling if they had already. The water was dark; not the soothing type which Mairon’s internal light could dominate, but a disorienting and full kind. Far too silent, the darkness asserted its own control over him. Even when Mairon opened his eyes he could see nothing. Anything could be lurking in the vast depths beneath him.
Mairon was not meant to be here — not in Endóre and certainly not in Ulmo’s domain. Ulmo was so much worse than relentless Oromë and even thieving Manwë. Always spying. He was not content to stay to one recognizable bird. Ulmo draped his Maiar in billowing and inhuman shapes akin to those they had agreed to give up and set them wherever incarnates congregated because they must drink or die.
Interfering bastard.
The bottom of the ship was introduced, again, to the outside of Mairon. They became quickly acquainted in a rude sort of way. The hull was not smooth or clean; Mairon gagged out a mouthful of water as his body was carved open, trading salt for salt. Tugged like a fish on a line, he was dragged across the jagged keel.
His head slammed into the wood with the movement; he could not tell if the fluid creeping under his hair was water or blood. The distinction quickly dropped to the bottom of his concerns, however. A second later, Mairon’s eye collided with a protruding barnacle.
The sudden pressure was too much. The structure caved in as his sclera was punctured, then was wrenched out as he was pulled further down. His already cloudy vision darkened as the cord at the back of his eye snapped, detaching from his body. Within a second, the jelly spilled into the water.
The next pull flipped him, scraping his flank as the shells dug in deeper than before. Chunks were bitten out of him; the padding of his pourpoint offered no protection at all. Nor did the warg fur lining his houppelande, which had been ripped nearly to shreds. He had lost an entire sleeve already, tattered like the skin of his jaw. He grimly hoped he would not lose the arm. He would not be able to replace it quickly enough for the loss to go unnoticed.
Mairon was bleeding heavily now, enough that Pharazôn might stop. It warmed the water around him very slightly. He was almost to the end of the ship, which — unlike the things that crawled over it — had no real desire to eat him. He was nearly out of this uninhabitable nightmare of a realm.
Mairon repaired his ruined, trailing eye and nothing else. At any other time, he would have been insulted by the end result. But it could move and vaguely see and looked the same as the one he closed his teeth around. The eye was thick and gummy, resisting the pressure of his tongue. It was as repulsively salty as the water coating it, but Mairon would not leave any part of himself here for Ulmo’s mocking perusal. With a little more urging, the vitreous humor spilled down his throat, leaving the structure deformed.
Something unfamiliar rose in him as he swallowed; the eye was slippery and did not like the tight clutch past his tongue. Water swept in to fill the open cavern of his mouth as Mairon struggled with the misbehaving flesh. There was no relief once he finally choked it down.
After it was built, Mairon spent a frantic moment correcting the pigment — he had forgotten his eyes were no longer his favored black, but a brown so warm and light it bordered on golden. Just on the edge of unnatural; worth a second look but not a third. Númenóreans, he had observed, liked gold things. Their collateral cast-offs certainly accepted his Rings easily enough.
The heavy chill pressed in around him, invading through his wounds. It burned like failure. At least, Mairon thought as he hung limply — tiny crustaceans inside his body and at the mercy of a race with the lifespan and intelligence of ants — he could not drown. That sentiment had become increasingly furious as he had been forced to repeat it.
Finally, he could see Arien’s harsh light brightening the water; an almost welcome sight.
As he was pulled into the burning air, upside down and trailing pink water, he found Pharazôn watching him avidly. He wanted to touch, Mairon saw. When he was dropped to the deck, Mairon forced every inch of his body into begging for mercy. He kept his head down, unable to shake the fury even as he approximated gasping, pitiful sobs. Strands of his hair slicked to his face, sending saltwater running down his cheeks; the rest of it was simply additional foreign weight squishing against his sodden casing of wool and silk.
As far as taking a punishment went, it was a poor showing. But this was something far worse than punishment: it was entertainment.
“The terror of the east, lord of the earth, looking like nothing more than a half-drowned cat,” Pharazôn narrated. His voice, amused and cruel, cut over the whistle of the wind. “How you must hate that.”
“My lord,” Mairon said through ungritted teeth, eyes downcast even as he lifted his chin enough to enunciate. It was always a safe reply.
Pharazôn made a chiding noise. “I’m your king, not a lord.”
You are a future corpse, Mairon thought. A footnote in my rise. “Yes, my king.”
“Contrition!” Pharazôn said brightly. Theatrically. He was not addressing Mairon, which grated. “I like to see it. But is it real?” There was a beat, and then the answer came almost simultaneously from his crew.
No, of course.
“What say you, Abrazân?” Pharazôn asked, as Mairon unfolded into a sitting position. His remaining sleeve slapped to the deck, too heavy to maintain its shape. He could not possibly feel the wind against the exposed bone of his jaw — especially with his blood clumping like a beard — and yet his mind kept informing him when it turned.
“I say you make it real, Ar-Pharazôn.” The sailor has a shy voice. He had not answered Pharazôn earlier, Mairon guessed. Perhaps he was new, or thought himself above what was being done here. He would not be able to manage that after Pharazôn followed his suggestion.
Pharazôn smiled at the answer. He had none of the beauty of Lúthien, who had looked as if the stars had kissed her face, but he was handsome as far as Men went. His teeth were unstained by blood.
Heavy pressure built in Mairon’s gums. He pressed his tongue to the back of his loose canine and shoved; something jolted in his chest, but the tooth remained firmly lodged in his mouth despite the urging of host and successor both.
“Very well,” Pharazôn said, and made a gesture Mairon would not have understood the precise insult in if he had not carefully studied Númenórë through the minds of those he had captured for the past decades. It was an order to approach, directed specifically to a foreign and entirely Mannish servant. He was not intended to walk.
Mairon kept his expression blank. There was a kind of initial resistance that nearly all people exhibited when given orders of that kind, and it filled him now. There were twenty feet of deck between himself and Pharazôn.
When Pharazôn gestured again — the same motion, but more exaggerated — Mairon eased himself onto his knees. Eldarin bodies were terribly built for movement on all fours, and Mairon was made more ungainly by the way one of his legs shrieked when he put weight on it. A fracture, he thought, since nothing protruded through the skin. The clothing also made it worse; his skirt was as voluminous as his sleeves, even deflated as they currently were.
If Pharazôn had been Melkor, Mairon would not have minded this kind of order as much. His lord would have understood that the clumsiness was not Mairon’s failure. It would have been a shared mockery, aimed at incarnates and not Mairon himself, regardless of how he moved like one.
Pharazôn grew quickly impatient with the consequences of the injuries he had dealt to Mairon’s body. If Mairon had been asked, he would have advised that this was why it was important to have everything planned out ahead of time, and also that Pharazôn should show only amusement when focusing on humiliation, and furthermore that humiliation and pain were not as well mixed as Pharazôn was expecting. But Mairon had not been consulted.
Instead, Pharazôn stood from his throne to drag Mairon towards himself. His hand felt for one of the ship-inflicted gashes in Mairon’s houppelande and tore until he could reach the ties of Mairon’s pourpoint. Mairon tumbled out of both layers, catching himself painfully. The soaked rope tangled around his wrists, a reminder of the future he could avoid through this.
The sight of his bare and bloody flesh gave rise to whistles, which Mairon ignored. He was the most beautiful thing any of them would ever see, even in this diminished condition. It was good that they should know it, despite the crudity Pharazôn was inflicting.
Always had Mairon believed in the hollowing, clarifying power of isolation as a first step for breaking a prisoner, but then Pharazôn had never needed to be good at persuasion, had he? He acted and was obeyed because of his blood. The blood of his watered-down degenerating line, long-abandoned now that the pang of regret that struck the Valar at having allowed Mairon’s lord free access to his species had worn off. He could not win Mairon in any case. That he tried spoke poorly of him.
Even when Pharazôn impatiently tugged the rest of Mairon’s careful ensemble off over his narrow hips, Mairon was not truly nude. That Pharazôn was trying to humiliate him in such a way was telling — he did not understand what Mairon actually was.
Mairon was no incarnate. Mairon could rebuild this body entirely whenever he so desired. Pharazôn’s touch would be erased from it; a preview of his erasure from the world. This was no different than Pharazôn’s poor treatment of his clothing.
No, the humiliation Mairon felt was achieved entirely incidentally.
His unhealing wounds were exposed to the sea air and the uncomprehending view of Men. Some were clotted with his waxy blood while others were still open and flowing sluggishly. All were a reminder of the status Mairon must assume. No further round of comments was solicited by their display; an added insult. Why would Men expect anything different?
Pharazôn pushed a finger into one of the deep cuts in Mairon’s arm, watching with no small fascination as the blood thickened once it separated from his body. Pharazôn rubbed it between his fingers. It could function as lubrication if well-treated, Mairon remembered, but he did not share the observation.
From the inside, he ripped irritably at the more visibly damaged areas of his body, which kept opposing his will and trying to heal. They went easily as rotted fabric, stretching and leaking so the pause was hardly noticeable. If he let them disappear and Pharazôn had any sense, Mairon would be made to repeat the process from the beginning. It was what Mairon would do.
Mairon considered what else he would do if he was orchestrating this. Start with a finger and find this body’s prostate, he decided. He would force out pleasure, just enough for the one under him to learn how easily flesh could turn against them. From there he would test the waters; what would their mind conjure up as the worst outcome? And then he would do it. If that was not possible — as it was not for Pharazôn, who could understand only the imprecise languages of voice and, as a distant second, body — Mairon would remain gentle.
If he was bored — and he very often was — the gentleness would become a game. How much would it take to convince them that part of them did want it? That disgust and desire were one and the same? It was easier to win against Eldar than Men; they were less used to being betrayed by their bodies, and had fewer defenses against it. Rape twisted them up. For many Eldar it was worse than any physical pain he could inflict. They believed it would kill them and so it often did.
Mairon knew better.
Pharazôn followed none of these steps. Instead, Mairon was pushed down — at least he did not have to look at Pharazôn — and his body was shoved into without anything else to ease the way.
It — hurt. Obviously it hurt. It was intended to hurt. The body tensed. Mairon looked at the planks of wood that made up the deck and counted the dissected rings, ignoring the sensation. The pain was duller than his open cuts. Less important.
Cold metal pressed against Mairon’s back, then drew away. Pharazôn had retained his armor.
Mairon’s hair was still bloated with seawater; it leaked slowly over his back with each thrust, stinging all the way. Even the parts of Mairon which had not been scored were scraped. Funny. Pharazôn had found the only part of him which was dry.
A century at the absolute most, Mairon reminded himself. He could count dozens of them laid bare in the wood; these trees were old by Númenórean standards. He had known there would be degradation when he allowed Pharazôn to capture him. He was not the body he wore. He would not simply kill Pharazôn now, though he could.
He could.
Sometimes — particularly towards the beginning and the end, if for very different reasons — his true lord would put Mairon through his paces. The game was one in which Mairon was forced to use all his skill until he had exhausted it before Melkor’s might; it truly pleased his lord when few things did. So Mairon was not unfamiliar with this kind of invasion.
And yet it was different.
Mairon could not focus enough to slick himself properly or even loosen as Melkor would have expected. If he tried, he would lose the wounds. So he must wait it out and let himself tear. When force and friction rubbed him raw, his blood was too thin inside him and too thick on Pharazôn’s penis to be properly lubricating. It clumped like wax, encouraging more to follow.
The way that Pharazôn had clearly stumbled into forcing Mairon to stay in the moment was galling. Did he even know he was doing it?
On a professional level, Mairon was offended.
On a personal level, he was — something else.
“Is this how you treat your cousin, my king?” Mairon asked before he could stop himself. He needed to let Pharazôn think that he was beaten. He needed to lay here and take it, to let the humiliation burning in his gut show on his face and not the fury — or if he did let the fury show, it must be in his eyes and hot. Not the cold thing that would make even the most bull-headed Man pause and wonder at the coming retribution.
Pharazôn did not rush to defend his wife’s honor, which would be useful to remember. “You think you deserve to be treated like a queen?”
Mairon clenched his teeth despite the ache it caused. That was not the position he was angling for. Intimacy was not among his favorite tools; it was imprecise and required far too much maintenance. Still, if it was the path of least resistance, Mairon would take it. It was capable of delivering results. He already hated these little creatures; more reason simply added fuel to the fire.
He was distracted from the thought and Pharazôn’s next thrust by the damaged tooth finally coming loose. Another foreign body in his mouth; Mairon hoped he was not forming a habit.
This one he did not swallow.
When he spat onto the deck, his saliva was red rather than pink; even as he disposed of it, more blood gushed from the hole where the tooth had been anchored. The taste of it suffused his tongue as stray flecks of blood spattered his bound hands. More pleasant than the eye, Mairon decided, but less so than the saltwater.
The tooth tumbled out with the rest of the mess, clinking against the deck. The off-white surface was concealed by congealing fluids. Some were twin to those dripping down his chin; he had not bent far enough to avoid staining. He bared his teeth at the Men who laughed, and his attention unsettled them enough that they attended again to their task.
The replacement came in quickly, sliding through his gum with only three of Pharazôn’s thrusts. Though it slotted into the ragged empty space, it hurt quite badly, Mairon observed. He spat out another mouthful of blood. He had been overlooking potential here. Perhaps he would pull Pharazôn’s teeth before he killed him.
Mairon had not answered Pharazôn’s taunt; Pharazôn seized on his silence. He reached down below Mairon’s body to where his sex was soft, squeezing it. “You’ve certainly got the parts for it. Barely a cock at all. I’ve had girls bigger than you.”
He was so terribly bad at getting under Mairon’s skin. Managing him would not be difficult. Pharazôn was reliant on one tool for humiliation; it was insulting. The size of his genitals was nothing compared to the way Mairon was still dripping with blood, skin tinting orange as he held himself open for all these Men to see. What an amateur. Why would Mairon care if Pharazôn derided this set when he could alter them at will? Why had he not considered that Mairon had taken as much care here as with every other aspect of his appearance?
“Only wanton ones, though. Sickened by desire. We know how to deal with undisciplined women, don’t we?” Pharazôn asked the crowd.
The murmur of assent was slightly uneasy this time, more quiet. Sympathizers of the queen? Or did Pharazôn only publicly rape men? It could not be only Mairon; Pharazôn had too much confidence, and the crew was not nervous enough. Foreigners, always? Or was this what they expected him to finally object to: the specific charge of woman? Or perhaps they were thinking of their own wives. What revenge might await them there?
The puzzle was at least something to consider. Pharazôn did not let go of his sex, pressing the flat of his hand against it from root to tip. “Are you hiding a cunt?” he asked, grinding down. “Or has that disappeared with your stones?”
“No, my king. I have no need for them.” And no desire without a partner. The penis and anus were concession enough to Pharazôn’s expectations.
Every thrust jolted through Mairon’s body. All of them rubbed him raw, but some bumped against his prostate. It intensified the feeling of Pharazôn's flesh against his. Despite the exertion, Pharazôn’s armor was not any warmer.
Mairon felt as if he was swallowing his eye again. The same unfamiliar feeling was lurking here, burning through him. His skin was crawling. He wanted to disengage from his body, even though that would undo all his work. Why did he have to keep convincing himself?
Mairon ordered; his body followed. That was how it always went.
And yet here he was not reacting like the Maia he was, but an animal. An incarnate. A Man. Something trapped within the living corpse it wore, something which would die; something that could be violated. Pharazôn was inside him, making his flesh filthy, pushing against the weave of his veil like he thought he could break through if he used enough force.
Mairon realized distantly that he was hissing, an inhuman and enraged sound that he bit back. His penis was still in Pharazôn’s hand, and less soft, which was — unsettling. He couldn’t remember ordering it to do that. Though it was sensible, Mairon supposed. If Pharazôn thought he liked this, he would be less likely to use it as punishment.
“Ah, you can learn,” Pharazôn observed. “You’ve never had a good fucking before, have you?”
“No, my king,” Mairon agreed. Still, pride compelled him to add, “Not from a Man.”
Pharazôn finally dropped his genitals as he slapped Mairon over a cut. “Not a Man; a descendent of Elros.”
Aye, sainted Elros; granted a kingdom upon adulthood for embracing death. As if he had been even a shadow of his great-grandmother. “Not from an Adûnâ, either. I had not realized your power until you marched upon me. I understand my place, my king.”
“Who showed it to you first, then?”
Why did he care? Mairon fell back on the general shape of what he had said to — someone else, long ago. “Others of my kind are not so forgiving as I. They do not understand the limits of their power.”
“And you roll over and take it.”
“Yes,” Mairon agreed, though he did not. Only for two, after he left Aulë’s service and learned more of the world. And one of those had been an accident. An aberration. Both were now unrecoverable. He forced blood back into his penis, which had gone limp again. His voice was absent of the distaste he felt. “It is the natural way of things, for those of us built to serve beings higher than ourselves.”
“Did you buy your way into the Nimīr kingdoms like this too?”
If Pharazôn had any sense of what precisely had unfolded within the Eldarin kingdoms he would not have said it. Mairon fixed his eyes on his tattered, bloodied clothing and said without a hint of true feeling, “No, my king. They would find it rude.” And unbelievable as a show of loyalty. It had taken Celebrimbor over a century to broach the topic with him, so earnest and unpresuming—
The taste of blood filled Marion's mouth again, but when he spat nothing came out but pink foam.
Mairon did not ever think about Ost-in-Edhil. He kept those memories — all memories — tightly sealed in their own portion of his mind. Compartmentalization was the only way to live through endless centuries. Were Pharazôn the immortal he claimed to be, he would know that.
Pharazôn was like sandpaper on his insides. Why wasn’t he coming? Mairon turned his mind off complaints. The pathetic whining voice that wanted this to be done served nothing. Had he thought this would be easy?
Pharazôn wanted him to be aroused. Fine. Mairon knew how to make this good.
He tried to move with Pharazôn, easing the stress on his body at the same time. Yet Pharazôn remained unappreciative of the attempt.
“Quenya has no word for whore. It has bitch, though.” Pharazôn punctuated the words with sharp thrusts of his hips, sac slapping against Mairon. He spoke Quenya with a deliberately heavy accent; no one could mistake his place of birth. So he would break the law when it suited him, Mairon noted. Though he already knew that. His reconstructed eye hurt, swimming with salt again. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, my king.” Mairon heard the distance in his voice. He hated it even as he did not work to stop it. This was what prisoners did to make things easier on themselves. This was what Mairon prevented them from doing. Pharazôn was only a Man and could not stop him. All he could reach Mairon through was his body. And Mairon wanted to be done. He wanted to be on the other side of it.
He had felt something like it before, but very different. When Mairon-as-Annatar had felt a particular itch that the standard configuration of his bodies could not scratch, he sometimes — as Pharazôn had insinuated — gave himself a vulva. Pharazôn would never see it, regardless of what else Mairon plied him with. That was a certainty. But Celebrimbor had; it fit with the desirability Annatar projected, the innocence that came with never having really hurt anyone. Annatar's worst crime had been incomprehension. And how the good people of Ost-in-Edhil had worn away at that!
Celebrimbor had liked to lick Annatar until he was soaking wet, begging Celebrimbor to let him go and fuck him with more than a tongue in the same breath. Celebrimbor was just as enthusiastic when putting his mouth on Annatar in any other way. He had been so delighted by every part of him. At least until— But Annatar’s body had been leaky; desire had poured out of him with no shame. Even when he tinkered with his glands and his chemistry, it continued to defy him. Sometimes he felt as if he might drown in it.
A gentle kind of drowning; a pleasurable one. Nothing like the real experience.
Only once Celebrimbor had pulled Annatar over the edge several times, as was harder with his usual sex — until he thought he could bear nothing else — would he deign to hilt himself inside Annatar. Mairon always felt so triumphant and full when he finally did, especially as Celebrimbor’s mind and sticky mouth met his own and Celebrimbor began to shudder through his single and well-earned climax. Almost like he was with his lord once again. I have you, Mairon would think, legs around Celebrimbor’s waist and shared pleasure humming between them. You’re mine.
Mairon had been convincing as Annatar; he had found what Celebrimbor wanted.
He could do that with Pharazôn, too, he reminded himself. He could make himself want it. Even if he had not had to try very hard with either his lord or Celebrimbor, Mairon was sure it was possible. Eventually. The body could be coaxed into obedience.
Mairon tried to lose himself in the feeling of Annatar’s arousal, but thinking of Celebrimbor was like breathing glass. Every memory was tinged with anger at his stubbornness, his stupid and suicidal refusal of Mairon’s compromises. There was no reasoning with Eldar; they had a blind hatred of progress which stunted them. Never would they go far enough. That was why they were losing ground to Númenórë.
Númenórë was the future, the obstacle standing in Mairon’s way. Once he destroyed it, he would take the world.
Mairon’s certainty felt hollow as he laid limp and aching on the deck of a ship, Man inside him and Men around him, but that was how it always went. Always he must start humbly. At least he was demonstrating that he could adapt to his role; he was selling it well, Mairon thought. This was the humiliation Pharazôn wanted. The surrender. It would make him more arrogant than he already was, and therefore easily swayed. Easily controlled.
Pharazôn had planted the seeds of his own downfall in these actions. Mairon let his face rest on the deck. His displaced tooth pressed into his cheek from the outside, but though the blood still smelled of iron it would not smear on his skin. A small comfort.
“You can behave,” Pharazôn said. To his crew, he added, “You see? Even the mightiest will fall before our strength.”
Finally, desire sated and point made, Pharazôn emptied into Mairon with a grunt. He sounded like a pig. The semen stung Mairon’s raw flesh, but not as much as the relief trying to rise in him. He knew better than to let it.
Mairon rarely raped prisoners more than once with his own genitals. They did not deserve the intimacy and anything else worked just as well for the majority. But whenever he did, he made sure his own orgasm was never the end of it. Only with the sweet ones — the ones who were already half-dead and needed just a bit more pushing to release their spirits from the world — did he even have one. Unlike Pharazôn, Mairon worked with purpose. He did not chase his own pleasure.
A lesson would need to be ground in before they were truly finished. Luckily for Pharazôn, at this point Mairon was inclined to let him believe he had learned it.
Pharazôn dragged Mairon up, exposing his sex — and particularly the space where his sac was not — to the crew. “I want to see you squirt, Tar-Mairon.” He said Mairon’s title with a malicious mockery, rubbing at the base of Mairon’s penis like it was a clitoris in truth.
Mairon let his mouth purse with distaste, displaying some of the dignity which could not be broken out of him. He would want to lean on it in the future. The full weight of his pain crowded in as he did. He let it show as he stayed on his bruised and scraped knees, turning in an awkward circle towards Pharazôn. He reached for his cock; a boot caught him in the ribs. Mairon’s face spasmed in a snarl before he suppressed it.
He needed to do this. Then it would be over.
Mairon folded his hands behind his back as he straightened. He did not close his eyes, but did let them fog over; the repaired one was leaking again, a thinner liquid than what it was made of. Mairon clenched the muscles in his thighs rhythmically, making sure the effort was visible even as he focused on the internal structures. Thirty seconds, he judged, would give Pharazôn enough of a sense that it was a struggle and yet that he had liked it, despite his near-flaccidity. How else could he have come so quickly?
Mairon stared at the gaudy golden armor buckled over Pharazôn’s chest. It would not protect him when Mairon took his vengeance. He would crack Pharazôn out of it like an egg — or perhaps he would not even bother. Mairon might become a weasel and scoop him out handful by bloody handful.
Pharazôn began his tiresome insults once again. Mairon felt every one of the seconds pass in a way he rarely did, but he was no longer within his body. He was directing it from above, moving it mechanically.
Eventually, enough time passed that he could force an approximation of semen to spatter on the deck. Possibly he would be made to lick it up. There would be no point in it — Mairon had no instinctive aversion to contamination and Pharazôn could not know if he actually tasted anything — but certainly there was no reason why Pharazôn should choose now to stop treating him like an incarnate.
When it was done, he crawled to Pharazôn without being asked and pressed a kiss to his boot. The movement was easy enough when compared to the rest. Not any more humiliating. “My king,” Mairon murmured. He appeared perfectly contrite. Willing to perform loyalty.
Pharazôn considered him for a long moment as his crew laughed at the spectacle Mairon was making of himself; there was more relief in the sound than he had expected, but it would not save them. He would boil them into glue and save the horses, Mairon decided. It would spread some good cheer among the Uruk, who always became so unreasonably attached to them, considering they did eat the beasts. Or perhaps he would keep all of them together, and kill them one by one. Starve them until they were forced to rely on their former crewmates for nourishment. Let them suffer Mairon’s indignity tenfold.
But he had not proven himself well enough.
“Put him back over,” Pharazôn declared. The rope around Mairon’s wrist pulled taut once again. Mairon staggered upright over his abandoned fluids and clothing, walking bare and proud to the gunwale. He would not be dragged. “And this time, don’t heal yourself.”
Mairon allowed himself precisely one scream of absolute fury as his unmarred body broke through the water once again. The rope slackened enough for him to sink below the sharpness of the barnacles, and he knew that every filthy incarnate aboard had heard it, had felt it rattle through their bones and loosen their brains within their skulls. Perhaps even now they were oozing through their noses.
When they pulled him up again, Pharazôn told him they were approaching Rómenna. Mairon was to make himself look presentable.
They did not put him under a fifth time.