In the Chains of Honor: Shades of the Past

In the Chains of Honor
Author: Tanesa Etaleshya, Email: tanesa_etaleshya@hotmail.com
Author’s Notes : Thank you for all the great reviews!


Part 1 In the Darkness, Two Beginnings…
Chapter 8

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TA 2163

He heard the water whisper in its gravelly, indistinct manner, its words about the Blessed Realm, of Ulmo’s good grace so long removed from these Hither Lands except but for small quantities. Its lure had drawn him deeper into the water, until he stood metaphorically on the very verge of stepping out of this life and into the colder beyond, a chill even there he felt it seeping into his bones, until he felt himself shivering uncontrollably, so violently in fact that he felt terrified of remaining where he stood lest he fall away into the chasm he sensed more than he saw looming just before him.

He felt the upsweep of the wind, a biting gale, battering him, adding to his fear that he would plummet through the distance to where he did not know. Throughout the vision, he had felt the water, heard its murmurings and then, when he stood still upon his perch, unsure of his path, he heard another voice break through the tumult of his thoughts. He heard it call his name, a voice more than tinged with despair and fear, a voice that infused him with its concern, its care, its high regard. He felt it echo through the hollow stillness of his soul, the wind and his tumultuous thoughts rendered of little import when he could hear that voice, that rich, glorious voice calling his name, bidding him to return, to come back.

He closed his eyes against the precipice on which he stood, closed his mind to all else but the resonant voice, now speaking to him in words that slid across his mind like a caress long desired, promising with no hint of trickery, not a note of ill-intended self-interest, to show him Imladris, to show him all that life had to offer, if only he would stay. “It is not your time, my Prince, not your time. Please, do not forsake this life, I will show you it is worth it, Legolas. I promise. I feel your anguish, the grief that drives you downwards. I feel it, yet even now there are those who will stand beside you against all odds. Can you not hear the Wood call to you? It calls even to me, begging me to save you. It needs you still, Legolas. We need you. I will need you. I will not let the years we have in Imladris go to waste, if you will but let me, let us. Do not go, come back, Golden One.”

And Legolas harkened to that voice, drawn in by its powerful, well-meaning assurances, the resonant tone seemed as a song to his ears and his mind. He knew whose voice it was, having heard it during their journey, always it had sounded nothing but soft, gentle, comforting. Always its owner had been naught but a balm to his soul with nothing but his presence, his protective gaze, his promise of friendship, for Legolas could not think of hope for more than this pleasure considered simple to most, but precious to this exiled elf.

Even as he followed the voice back to the life he had so long desired to forsake, he cursed himself and his gullible, perpetual need to not only regain his lost honor and prove himself to his father, but also his ineffable desire to prove himself worthy of the sacrifice that had been made for him by the only one who had deigned to find it within himself to love the fallen archer. He longed for affection he knew he would never have, never again. He had had his one chance, and he had failed, then more chances came and went, and ever did he fail. He knew deep within following the lure of the voice, the promises it made, would eventually come to naught. Even then, he knew he could not resist the chance. Although the optimism in him had long ago perished along with his innocence, he still retained the desire to strive against all the odds set against him, and he clung to slim possibilities as he would have the precipice had he slipped over its edge, by his very fingers wedged into any small cracks or crevices he could find, regardless of the cost to him.

Legolas neared the surface of his consciousness; saw the bright glare of the sun upon his closed eyes, the warmth of hands upon his clammy, cold skin. He sensed their unease, their anguish at his impending loss and he regretted making these illustrious, well respected elves bear witness to this submission to desperation he had so long held in careful check. He had failed again, and this time, as before, there were others who would suffer for his actions, his rash decision to cease fighting. He quailed at his own vehement anger, directed inwards though it was. He would not die this day. That was the easy way out, to escape. He would be no coward, and he would not let the Lords of Imladris see him fall into despair as he had. He would live. He steeled himself and forced himself into consciousness with a rush of will power, and he rose from the murky dark of his inner mind and the darkness into which he had fallen like a bubble rising through water to burst forth onto the surface and into the balming embrace of the air.

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Fourth Age

With the memory of the roiling cold dark of the ill-tempered river around him, encasing him in its numbing torrent, and a cruelly teasing hint of a promise of release slipping through his awareness as he focused his wood-elf ears upon the garbled speech of the water, he slipped innocuously back into the realm of his present reality: the chilly, damp darkness buried deep within the earth below the King’s palace.

He shivered against the winter’s deep and biting chill, so steeped in reminiscent frame of mind was he that the very cold, wet smell of the air that he imagined himself again upon that precipice, staring down at his own end. But now, it seemed all the more alluring. There was nothing left for him, no promises made that could be kept, no ship to take him West. The fallen archer had outlived the King of Men, had seen him reign if only from within the confining invisibility of the shadows. ad kad kept his oath to the Man he had called ‘friend’ though he had been betrayed to bitter ends for his loyalty.

The disgraced prince had forced all who had cared for him to leave him be, and had done so with quite enough heartlessness and callousness that he was assured no remedy could be found to repair the rift he had driven between himself and all others. So, looking despondently and fruitlessly into the obscurity enfolding him in a wicked grip, he let his despair take reign over his mind, body and soul. He cried dry, empty tears, his sobs and the chittering of the mithril chains about his thin wrists and ankles providing the only sound in the cell apart from the steady dripping run of water down one of the walls.

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T.A. 2163

He remembered waking from the cold numbness he had felt with the biting wind as he stood upon the precipice in his mind, the glow of the two Elf Lords above him, the warmth of their hands upon him, the kindness in their eyes when he had finally found the strength of will to look up at them. He took note of the care and concern written in the lines carved into the forehead of Elrond, the tiny lines at the corners of his mouth and he marveled that two elves who knew him not would strive to save his miserable life.

And then he had looked into the eyes of Glorfindel of Gondolin who held his hand in a tight grip as if fearful that he might slip away from him if he should even loosen one finger. He saw the radiance of the Elf shine through his skin, the p rad radiating from him, a power Legolas realized the Eldar was sharing with him through his touch. He felt the tingling all through his fingers, his hand and traveling up his arm, a mild sensation to which he found himself attached. It felt so right, so correct. He did not break the contact, but rather listened to what the Elf Lord was saying, though he closed his eyes. He concentrated on the sounds, unspoken or voiced, and his heart was swayed.

In him flared a spark of hope he had thought long doused to darkness. He heard a promise of love and of friendship and he could not refuse it, rather, he forced himself to meet the gaze of the Eldar and to hold it in all its intensity, searching for the truth of what he had heard.


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Fourth Age

The memory of the Elf-lord’s promising words, his soothing touch, the disgraced elf shuddered in abject abandonment, that of self. He had had it all and had lost everything that meant something to him. It was a tortuous pain ravaging his soul already well battered. With the haunting and fond memory of the beginning of his fateful residence in Rivendell, he could scarcely bring himself to breathe for the crushing sensation in his chest. He took several deep breaths, concentrating on bringing his distraught mind back to the present, to his situation in the cold dark of the cell in which he had been housed he he knew not how many long years. He knew it had been years, for even here in the depths he had felt the seasons change in the drafts that came down from above.

He had felt the drafts of air stirring the stale, putrid damp air when elves journeyed into the dark unwillingly to bring him the meager amounts of food that would sustain his pitiful life for the pleasure of the King, and less frequently when he was taken to another cell just down the corridor, a cell that had been improved and prepared to the specifications of the elder elf who had taken him as his own, and inside which only he was allowed once the fallen archer had been placed therein.

It was a chamber designed specifically for the usage of the fallen elf during his long imprisonment, a room the archer dreaded to enter, and did not do so willingly. It had not been so very long ago, maybe days that he had last been taken to that cell, dragged by the chain attached to his collar and his once bright-blond hair. Once there he had been beaten, and had then been left chained with his hands behind and above him, forced to kneel unclothed in the center of the cell until he could not feel anything but the heaviness of his arms, the blood having long drained from them and unable to return, and the agonizing cramping of muscles long overtaxed. He had barely been able to stand by the time the elder elf entered the cell and locked the door behind him, brutally releasing the archer’s bonds to let him crumple to the floor before yanking him to his feet, his legs wobbly and unsteady beneath him. The archer had then found his arms stretched above him, the only force holding him upright.

The elf had then stood for a long moment in contemplation before he had gone to the small chest in the corner of the room and retrieved the method of his first enjoyment of the day, or night as it may have been either as far as the fallen elf knew. All he knew at that moment was the lacing pain burning across his bwithwith the stinging slap of the cane, quickly followed by another and another, each blow parallel and just below the last, until the archer could no longer find the strength within himself to stand, reverting to simply hanging there by the mithril bands about his wrists, the sharp metal cutting into his skin, forming new cuts over old scars and fresh, red welts rising on his back. It was then that the elder elf moved the center of his attentions further down, beginning where he had left off moments before. Now rested, his burning fury, spawned by the archer’s passive stance and his very being, began to find its vent yet again, and the flesh of the archer’s behind grew as red and striped as his back, red welts replaced by bleeding cuts where the lacework intersected.

The fallen prince bit back the cries of pain for as long as he could, and when at last he could no longer hold them in, they burst forth from his lips as ragged, hoarse cries, so long parched of water he had been while left hanging in this cell awaiting the august presence of the elder elf. Each day this elf had come to him, paraded around his bound frame. Three days it had been, or so he had been told, that the fallen elf had been bound and forced to remain on his knees upon the hard, stone floor. His hands had been tied behind his back, the chains linked and then tied through a ring in the wall behind him, his arms pulled upwards until the angle was most uncomfortable, nearing painful. His ankles, too, had been bound and tied to the wall. A collar placed there years before and impossible to remove as the lock had been well crafted, the key long lost if it had not been purposefully destroyed, had been attached to a chain as well and that, in turn, was attached to a ring in the floor before him. The result was that he could barely move, tied up and tethered like an animal, on his knees.

After several hours he had believed it unbearable to be left there longer, the sharp pains in his knees only a shadow of the ache growing in the muscles of his arms, legs as he was forced to remain in the same position. He fought the urge to cry, fought the need to cry out in injustice, though in his heart he felt this instinctive reaction to be wrong. He deserved this. He deserved this treatment, as he always had.

He took comfort that he was home. He was in Eryn Lasgalen, if only deep inside the earth, sheathed on the sides by the very roots of the trees he had long loved. And he took comfort that here his treatment was much kinder than that he had been forced to endure in the realm of Men. Humiliating that had been, and painful. Here, humiliation and domination were the two keys to his treatment, and familiar it was to the elf, for he had known this torment for at least two millennia and always at the same hands, hands guided by an elf who did not do permanent damage other than that which could not be readily seen with the eye.

The elder broke the archer’s reverie with the snapping of the short whip promptly followed by the first swift bite into the already swollen, tender skin upon his back. Ten lashes he received and barely conscious he was when he felt his tormentor’s sweaty hands upon his skin, teasingly light in touch, dancing over his ribs. It would have been a ticklish touch if given under circumstances other than this.

“This will be our last time together, little whore,” the elder elf spoke as his hands slid lower, gliding over the younger elf’s bony hips, to his thighs, still muscled from long training and use in his days as a warrior.

The fallen elf shuddered at the epithet by which he had been called before, and by this particular elf. He had been made into that which he had been called at the hands of this elf, slowly destroyed from the inside out over the course of the many years of his life. And he did not speak, could not, for he wore the branks once again, a crudely fashioned helmet obtained from Men. It was formed of two metal bands, one of which went across his mouth, the other from his mouth over his head. Attached to the lateral one was a metal spike which penetrated his mouth, preventing his tongue from moving and him from speaking, if he had any thoughts of speaking. Mostly, it was to prevent him from the comfort song seemed to bring him, his own small voice, hoarse as it was, filling the room seemed to comfort the archer, this the elder elf knew well, having listened often to the sorrowful songs in which he had immersed his consciousness.

Now, the metal bands were still cool against his heated face, only the metal spike within his mouth had warmed as it pressed his tongue down and held him from speech.

“So enjoy it and know that I do not. You disgust me, you are filth that does not deserve even the slightest attention, but I tolerate your… ‘services’ as that alone. You are nothing more than a whore to me, and no better though royal blood flows through your veins. You are naught but a cruel jest, a curse to be born for only so long as necessary. It is no longer. I can rid myself of you and rejoin what you took from me. I cannot see any nobility in you, nor could I ever,” he paused his speech as the younger elf shivered, the hands having come to rest for only a moment before the hands began their upward, return motion, sliding to the back of his thighs, over the twin mounds of his ass, where they stopped. He felt one hand slide to his hip, the other slid to the crevice between the two sensuous mounds of taut flesh, tickling and teasing, mocking the touch of a lover.

“Nothing but a common whore. I have tolerated you in the absence of she whom you stole from me, her grief too great for her to remain, and the fault was yours and yours alone. This fate you will have, whore, to be just that for the rest of your long life, or until one of those you ‘service’ sees fit to put you out of your eternal misery. Forbidden you have been to enter Eldamar, or to set foot upon the Blessed Shores. To the Hither Lands are you bound, through folly and disgrace, all your own. You should have died that day instead of he who was the Light of this wood. It should have been you; and hope I still do as ever I have that you rue the day you drew your first breath and more so the day you let him die in your place.” With that, he felt the elder elf’s finger enter him roughly, without lubrication, his other hand pressing him back upon the finger, now fingers within him. Once the elder elf had found that spot within the archer, the spot w ten tended to cause the elf pleasure enough to distract him from the reality of their situation, a place long ago memorized by the current perpetrator. It was the only pleasure ever allowed the archer in their ‘meetings’ and it was a pleasure twisted viciously to humiliation that he could be so easily manipulated against his will. The fallen prince could not resist the impulse to once again hang his head in shame even as he swallowed the low moan trembling in his throat.

He trio mio mitigate his eternal shame by imagining it was the blond Eldar with whom he had long resided that caressed him, held him against his firm body. He thought back to the scent of Glorfindel, his vivid elven memory bringing it to the very brink of reality, overlapping and extinguishing that of the elf here with him with its poignant strength. He imagined Glorfindel’s hands upon him, his resonant voice lowered with desire to a`husky pitch as he whispered into the fallen archer’s ear. He tried to think it was other than the reality in which he had lived perhaps for a century, maybe less, perhaps more. He tried to assuage his tortured mind, but found the cruelty of this elf too much and turned his mind from the comfort of memory in order to preserve its purity, unwilling to soil it with the immutable reality in which he found himself, cold, beaten, lonely.

The elder elf slipped his left hand upwards, taking one of the archer’s tightening nipples between his fingers, rolling it, stroking it until it was stiff before he moved to the other. It was then that he reached to the table beside the elf, the table on which he had placed several things. He found what he was looking for, brought the cool, metallic clamp to one peaked nipple as he removed his fingers from the archer’s warm entrance, and screwed the clamp slowly tighter until the elf sucked in his breath in a short staccato before repeating the procedure with the other nipple.

The elder elf then quickly reached above the archer and released the archer’s chains from where they had been strung. The fallen archer slumped to the ground in a heap, unable to remain standing. He moaned, rolled onto his side only to open his belly up to the more than willing foot of the elder elf. “It should have been you! Why did you have to be at all?” The fallen prince no longer tried to fend off the blows raining upon him. He groaned when he felt one of his ribs give way, yet he made no move to avoid the blows still. He had learned that it was to no avail and over more quickly if he simply took the beating stoic reserve, depriving the elder elf of the pleasure of seeing his pain, his discomfort. It stifled and quelled the fire of anger in the elder elf if he did not incite him further with resistance. And so, he submitted, and found himself dragged by his long, tangled, matted hair to the table- the only piece of furniture present so far as the fallen archer knew.

He fell against it, stumbled to his still sore knees, and was dragged to his feet once again by his hair, thrown against the sturdy wooden frame, bent forcibly over. He thought about the familiar, cool surface under his skin rather than he hands tying the leash to the small ring in the table’s surface so that he could not raise his face more than two fingers width. His hands were under him, uncomfortably so and still tingling from the renewed sensations the simple movement allowed thus far awarded him. The elder elf adjusted his position behind him, insinuating his legs between those of the beleaguered elf, pushing the younger elf’s legs apart roughly, fixing the chains tightly to the feet of the table’s legs so that the archer could not move them.

The archer knew what was coming, as he always had. The sounds of the elder elf unlacing his leggings seemed to fill the quiet room as if it was a roar of sound. He heard the movement towards his head, felt the mask removed roughly from his face and the metal plate replaced swiftly with the member of the elder elf. Narrow as the table was and positioned as he was, it was not hard or uncomfortable for the elder elf, and, with practiced ease, the archer skillfully brought the elder elf to the brink and then released him in obedient fashion. Well taught he had been, and had had much practice to know exactly what the elven lord wanted of him, what gave him the greatest pleasure.

The archer knew what the next step would be in this depraved coupling, yet the knowing made it neither easier, nor less painful as the elder elf placed the leaking tip of his member at the entrance to the archer’s body and entered him slowly yet unhesitatingly, drawing out the stretching agony in the younger elf. The archer bit his lip to stop himself from crying out at the painful intrusion as he recognized that the elder elf had wiped the archer’s lubricating saliva from his member before he had penetrated him.

The elder elf gave the archer no time to adjust or grow accustomed to the fullness before he set a relentless, manic pace, as if sickened by the very touch, the very connection with the disgraced prince. And that was, indeed, how it was. How it had always been ben ten them. It did disgust him to be so very near this elf, and to desire this act was tantamount to abomination. Yet he viewed this as his right, and a just punishment for the elf now beneath him, spitted like a pig and writhing. That was the true reason for this act, not to enjoy it, nor for the pleasure of taking the archer, but for the sheer humiliation of the younger elf, to punish him. And for this end, the elder elf endured the shame, the repulsion he felt for the younger elf. He felt no desire for the archer. Instead, the archer had been well taught in how to bring the elder to completion, how to make his body’s response come about in the absence of physical desire.

Fueled once more by his abhorrence of this act, the loathing of the archer and his forced contact, he pounded into the elf at a relentless pace, leaning over slightly to grip the archer’s broad shoulders, pulling himself forward into the elf with every thrust of his hips in an effort to drive his hardened shaft with the greatest amount of discomfort and pain. His efforts were rewarded with the first renewed sounds of pain from the archer who was crying as he frequently did. His eyes were tightly closed, the thin trails of tears snaking down his face as his shoulders shook with his sobs. The elder elf smiled, pleased that his efforts were not in vain. And with that pleasure of seeing the tears of the former prince, he removed himself from the archer and spilled himself over the archer’s red-welted back. The archer had cried as the elder had chuckled, slapped his ass, dressed and left him still bound to the table.

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That had been earlier this day. And now, he found this memory, of humiliation and pain somewhat of a comfort as increasingly it had been. He allowed himself to feel every ache, every sore upon his weathered frame. He felt every cut and abrasion as if newly inflicted, for it distracted him from the deepest source of agony: his utter loneliness. For there was no one left to hold him, to search for him. His Golden-maned Elf-lord and savior had long ago set sail for the Western shores, to regain the shores he had left millennia ago, and who, like all those Eldar who had turned from Aman and Eldamar he had ever felt the yearning need to set foot upon those Blessed Shores again, and at long last, he had done so. It had been with heavy heart that the fallen prince had learned of their departure, and with a small measure of well-forced joy that the Elf-lord was well and would be rejoicing amongst friends and relatives, and fallfallen archer mourned once again for himself, and their star-crossed, ill-fated love.

Still he lay bound to the table, his body stiff against the cold air around him. He pressed his face down into the table, turned his face away from where he knew the door to be and he allowed himself to wallow in his grief until it threatened his very ability to breathe, the pain in his chest swelling so greatly. Yet he would not allow another tear to pass his eyes. He concentrated on his memories once more, remembering the day he had crossed the river and had very nearly allowed himself the ease of passing in its tumultuous flows. Even then he had been unable to resist the call of the Eldar Lord with the freely flowing golden hair and the dancing, morning blue eyes, eyes always filled with the innocent promise of a new-born day.

From the waning comfort of his waking dreams, he slipped into the sleep of an elf long bereft of hope.

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To be continued…

Author’s Note: I apologize that the chapter is late, but I broke my finger this past week and it makes typing incredibly difficult, and not to mention how busy I have become. Well, I hope to have at least one chapter out every week. This goal I will strive to reach. But, at the most it will be two weeks. I hope everyone is still enjoying the story. I kind of ran into a blank wall with this chapter and I am not so sure I likeall all that well. I have written it twice thus far. If anyone has any suggestions on how it might be improved, please let me know and I will revise it.
Please note that in the passages referring to the Fourth Age, there is a reason why I do not use his name. Please have patience as I will be getting to that explanation eventually.
As for the 'requests' for a happy ending, or at the least the fear that it will end badly for our heroic elven prince, I am seriously considering having two possible endings, and writing both of them, and leave it up to you, the readers, as to which you will read. But, that is for the future, as I am far from finished with this tale. I hope to keep you all interested.
But remember, I am open to suggestions. I will consider all. I love feedback!
Kiril Tanesa