Malediction
Our Winterfeast prompt #8 - First Age Adar x vampire OFC
cw: breeding pits of Angband. Nothing explicit in this one, but I do plan to continue the scene with all the spice this chapter implies...
Credit to @gingeragenda for assigning Adar the name Nelque (13) for his time in Angband. I'm sure Mairon appreciates the efficiency.
She hissed at him when he entered the room. She couldn’t stop herself—when she was feeling many things at once, the safest emotion to display in Angband was rage.
“I see your mothers have been teaching you their very best manners,” Nelque said, his pale Elven face implacable as always. He shut the heavy door behind him with a gentle finality. They both knew it was not to be opened again until the deed was done.
“What use is propriety,” Mal scowled. “My fate is sealed regardless of anything I might say or do.”
His stony face softened, almost imperceptibly, and his next words were gentler. “Some here find that dignity is one of the few pieces of ourselves that we may retain.” He stepped toward her, but stopped when she recoiled, her wings flaring. He settled into a comfortable stance halfway across the little room. “And from what I’ve seen of you, I think that you agree.”
Mal resisted the urge to spit at him. Because he was right. She had sisters that had let themselves degrade into beasts, nearly mindless in their passions to merely feed, avoid, or destroy. She had always wanted more for herself than that. And still, she had ended up in the breeding pits. She looked away from him, hollowness opening up in her chest. “How do I suffer this with dignity?”
Nelque extended his hand. “By stepping toward your fate, not away.”
She looked at that hand – large, white, masculine, strong-boned with perfect Elven proportions despite the scarred flesh that covered it. Melkor’s first draft of corruption, still so contemptibly close to Eru’s design. Did she want to fit her own within that palm? She looked down at her hands, smaller, her elongated fingers tipped with tiny claws that her aunts loved to belittle. Such a far cry from their powerful talons. Mal had inherited too much of her father’s Elvishness to truly fit in as one of the vampires. Though she had tried. Her body may have been frailer but she trained twice as hard to be battle-ready and more vicious than any of her cousins and half-sisters.
Now her dream was broken along with her wing. Mairon had always been evaluating her, she knew; his special little experiment. Spawn of a vampire bred to a Moriondo—not Nelque, thankfully—just to see what would happen. Malediction had happened, and now that she was done growing Mairon had evidently decided that she was not good enough. Just a first draft. Only useful to him now to beget the next generation of his horrors.
Nelque dropped his hand when she did not take it, but moved closer and took a seat on the bed beside her. “How did you get your name,” he asked softly.
Oh, so now they were to get to know each other. Not that she hadn’t always wanted to. Mairon had certainly paired her with Nelque on purpose. She’d always had eyes for him across the halls of Angband, standing with such quiet yet powerful presence beside her father, Yunque, when they attended court, bellowing at his troops during training and whirling with deadly grace when he dueled. When she was very young, she had wished that he was the one that was her father. Then she got older and had secret, pleasurable reasons to be glad that he was not.
It had once been her most exciting fantasy, to imagine what it would be like to be down here when the Uruk generals retired to their breeding duties. She imagined she would find Nelque’s chamber, and he would be just as excited to find her there. She wasn’t exactly sure what the act of breeding even entailed, but he would teach her. All she ever wanted was a visit, secret and unsanctioned. Not an assignment, a demotion, an order to carry children rather than to fly afield and do battle with Elves and Men along with the women who had raised her.
Nelque nudged her arm, reminding her he had asked a question. “Malediction?”
“It means curse,” Mal answered. “I think that’s what my mother saw me as. The vampires did not appreciate being asked to breed with Elven males rather than their usual way.”
“I remember. I still bear scars from the encounter.”
“And I was the only one that incubated to term. So my mother was the only one that had to squeeze out a half-breed, and be subjected to the indignity all over again.”
He looked at her sidelong. “You’re not one of mine, are you?”
She shook her head.
He grunted. “Good.” His brows came together, as if he had suddenly thought of something else. “Vampires are all female, are they not?”
“Yes.”
“So they do not usually lie with males.”
“No. Only to drain their blood.” Mal shivered as she remembered the first time she was brought out for a hunt amongst mortal Men. They had thrown cloaks over their wings and made lewd offers to those that staggered out of an odd building called a ‘tavern’ late at night. The Man’s hands on her body had felt odd, exhilarating, but ultimately unpleasant and she had been happy to kill him before his groping went too far under her clothes. She had wondered if she would feel the same way if it was someone like Nelque touching her. Her mothers certainly seemed to enjoy caressing each other in similar ways, when they were back at the nest and able to rest.
“No wonder they resented us,” he said, halfway to himself. He turned to catch her eyes, peering past a stray lock of his midnight-black hair. “A powerful name, regardless,” Nelque said. “Well met, Malediction. I am called—”
“Nelque, I know,” she rushed to say, oddly embarrassed that he might treat her as a stranger. His eyebrow cocked. “We all know each other here,” she covered. “And, call me Mal.”
Nelque nodded. “Mal. I suppose you would have a special interest in learning about the Moriondor.” His eyes wandered across her face. “You do resemble us, more than your mothers.” His gaze flicked behind her head. “Aside from the wings, of course.”
“And they’re not enough.” Bitterness dripped from her tongue as she considered the bandages setting her broken left wing.
“Not enough… for what?”
“For me to earn my place on the battlefield, fighting alongside the rest of them.”
Nelque tipped his head. “You are a warrior, then.” Respect tinged his words.
“Of course,” she barked back, drawing herself up. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“And now Mairon has sent you here.”
She wanted to hoard her pain, keep it for herself, but it leaked from her eyes in the face of this proto-Uruk’s empathy. “I can be so much more than this! Why won’t he see?”
Nelque’s eyes flicked to the bandage. “Perhaps this is only while your wing heals—”
“He didn’t make it sound like that. Told me that taking me down here was my last chance at usefulness to him.”
Nelque’s hand covered her own. It was warmer than she expected, and she surprised herself by not pulling away. “We can do this at your own pace, Mal. Though we do have to do it.”
She bared her teeth, more at the situation than at him, but he withdrew his hand. He was the one she would have chosen, but this was not her choice. “Then do it,” she said into the empty stone wall in front of her.
Nelque shook his head.
She whirled on him. “Just get it over with! It doesn’t matter how I feel about it. Breed me and be done with it.”
He shook his head again, a sad sort of kindness in his eyes. “Not like this.”
She drew herself up. “You don’t want me?” she choked out. Humiliation upon humiliation…
He reached up and cupped her cheek with that warm hand. “It’s not that. Never that.” His thumb traced her cheekbone, eyes dancing across her face. “You are exceedingly beautiful.”
Mal swallowed, didn’t know what to say. ‘Beautiful’ didn’t sound like a flaw when he said it. But what use is beauty in Angband? “Then why?”
He tipped his head, and a hint of a smile graced his lips. “There is an … art to making a baby among Elves.” She sneered at the word and he rushed to rephrase. “Neither of us are truly Elvenkind, but some facts remain the same even under Melkor’s roof.”
He leaned in closer, tucking a strand of Mal’s hair behind her ear. She’d never been this close to Nelque, and all her old fantasies about him started creeping up the back of her mind.
He spoke low into the small space between them. “For me to breed you, you need to enjoy it too. You need to surrender everything to our passion, and let me bring you to climax just as I do.”
She puzzled over that. When her mothers lay together, bringing each other pleasure, it usually ended with one or both of them groaning or squealing. Was that the “climax?” She didn’t want to ask.
Nelque watched her thinking this over, pulling back and letting her consider. “We won’t start until you truly want me, too.”
Mal’s face burned as she considered telling him about her long-held secret admiration for him. But she couldn’t find any words that were willing to be spoken. “So what now?” she asked instead.
“You are a warrior,” Nelque echoed their earlier conversation. He stood, and shrugged off his robe, clad now only in body-hugging leather trousers and a wide belt. “Fight with me.”
“What?” Mal asked, pulled from her introspection by the sight of his beautifully-ruined chest. Someone had taken their time on him—Mairon, probably—carving intricate patterns into his silvery flesh.
“Demonstrate your skills on me,” he urged, settling back into a fighting stance, hands open and ready to grapple. “Show me who you are.”
Mal stood up too. “In here?” she asked, eyeing the tiny hollowed-out room, the closeness of the walls. The bed took up most of the space.
“Are you not trained in close-quarters fighting?”
She bristled. “Of course I am.”
“Best for you not to use your wings right now anyway,” he pointed out, guessing at the reason she thought the room was too small.
She glanced over her shoulder at the bandage, testing her range of motion on that side and wincing at the restriction. “Best not.”
Mal swallowed down a rush of nerves as she turned to face him squarely. The Moriondor were possessed of enhanced strength and endurance while retaining all their Elven speed, reflexes, and intelligence. And Nelque was a considered the greatest fighter of the Thirteen. He also outweighed her by at least fifty pounds.
Their match would be a farce, a condescension, but she would rather do that than whatever it was Mairon wanted them to do in here. And, she found she was excited to show off her prowess to Nelque. She had never seen him fight someone who used a cunning style like the vampires’. Perhaps she would surprise him.
Malediction raised her arms, ready to spar, and felt more like herself than she had all day.
Part 2 - Respite
