Chapter 24: Collar

[ Setting the scene: this chapter takes place during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. As King Théoden lies dying at her side, Éowyn faces down the Witch-king. Meriadoc the Hobbit is nearby, alive but overcome by horror. Caution: this chapter contains violence and nonconsensual sex.]

15 March 3019 (Third Age), Pelennor Fields

“Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shriveled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.”

“Do what you will, but I will hinder it, if I may.”

Éowyn’s defiant words belied her atavistic terror. Bravery’s hot rush of adrenaline froze to paralyzing ice in the presence of the Witch-king’s overwhelming darkness. Whatever desperate battle she was preparing to fight defending the broken body of her King, an even greater war raged within her. She could barely stand; vision and thought blurred in the face of an evil the intensity and power of which she’d never even imagined.

“Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!”

She was amazed to hear the words that issued from her lips, born from the tattered remnants of her once-indomitable will.

“But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Be gone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.”

His horrible winged steed beat its foul wings and pounced, falling in a pile of entrails and reek to a swift stroke of her glittering sword. She watched in dismay as her enemy rose from the wreck, his towering fury focused entirely upon her. He raised his terrible mace, a weapon that looked as if it could shatter the walls of Gondor in a single blow. As the spiked head swung closer, her bloody death written on every cruel point, she cowered and raised her shield in a last, desperate defense...

... blackness...

... silence...

... emptiness...

Éowyn searched for some fragment of existence to which to cling. There was nothing. She could feel neither herself nor the air that surrounded her. She couldn’t see, nor could she speak...

Is this death?

But it wasn’t silent any longer, though the sound seemed forged from pain. A hell-voice assaulted her eardrums and penetrated to her soul, every word boiling with infinite evil yet smoldering with dangerous intimacy.

“She is thine to break and to use in any way thou might wish, as long as she is preserved inviolate for the joining to come. Now I must depart to dispose of the remnants of the defeated West. But I will return to make her my vessel.”

Thick waves of fear shattered her tenuous grip on reality, and she fell back into darkness.

... the red flicker of torchlight on a high ceiling...

... a cold stone table...

... rough cloth abrading her skin...

Cautiously, she flexed each of her muscles in turn, testing their readiness. I might get only one chance at this. I have to make it count. Summoning up lightning-fast instincts honed by long training, she sprang from the table. There was a door at the far end of the room, and she bolted toward it.

The thudding shock of her face hitting the stone floor was the first thing she felt. As the painful throbbing grew, she realized that her legs were suddenly bound together, though she knew they hadn’t been when she left the table. She twisted, ignoring the ache in her jaw, and discovered the reason: the thin end of a leather whip curled around her immobilized ankles, its other end held taut by a threatening bulk obscured by shadows.

In a panic, she untangled the whip and again leapt for the door, tensing for the resistance that almost immediately arrived. A riot of hands clawed at her limbs, but she knew she was fighting for her very existence. Foot crashed into jaw, fist collapsed windpipe. She was a whirlwind, a frenzy, a berserker untamed, and she beat back a crowd of assailants and lurched for the door handle, only inches from claiming it.

A mighty forearm wrapped around her waist, bringing her to an immediate standstill. She struggled and flailed, but its strength was far beyond hers. Twisting violently to confront and do battle with her captor, her eyes widened in shock when she realized the impossibility of her predicament: she was face to face with a massive, scaly Troll. It regarded her with a curiously tolerant, dull-witted expression, but no matter what she tried she couldn’t get away. He carried her helpless body to the table she’d just escaped and pressed her into its surface face-first, easily holding her in place despite her desperate writhing.

Someone roughly grasped her hair and yanked her head backward. A thick black hood, ripe with the animalistic perfume of freshly skinned hide, was tugged over her head and secured around her neck. Her breathing, already heavy from exertion, grew labored, and she could taste her own fear in it. The abrasive garment that covered her was roughly tugged up her body; just how high she couldn’t tell, but she knew that she was dangerously exposed. If I don’t escape this can only end one way. She slowed her panicked exhalations, thoughts furiously seeking a way to avoid her fate.

What was it the fell specter said about breaking and using? They clearly intend to violate me, and it will be horrible, but what they don’t realize is that they can’t break me that way. My body is of little consequence. I can endure any sexual degradation they can mete out, for however long it takes, and in the end I will be avenged.

As if reading her thoughts, one of her captors finally spoke. “Your will to resist is impressive. Know that you shall have no further need of it. Your body is even more impressive, and defiling it will be an immense pleasure.”

It was a deep, resonant Voice: commanding, powerful, and threateningly seductive. Every instinct demanded that she treat it as wholly evil, for it bore the promise of a fate far worse than mere violence, but she felt strangely compelled to listen and obey. She struggled to clear her mind of such capitulations.

“You can’t hold me forever. Do what evil you will, but when you tire I will kill you for it.”

A slap reverberated off the stone walls, and she heard the echoes before the sting registered. Her exposed buttock burned where she’d been struck, and she spat her rage. “How dare you?!?”

Her other cheek quivered with the force of impact.

“Unhand me, you coward, and fight like a...”

Another sharp smack, easily twice as hard as the first.

She’d been spanked before; as a child, and more recently by Wormtongue and Gréor. It had also featured in her orgiastic dream at Dunharrow, and in the latter two instances she’d found a twisted pleasure in it. But they were idle caresses compared to the intent behind these blows. She continued to struggle against her imprisonment, but it was no use. Her strength, even in desperation, was no match for a Troll’s.

“Hold still! You but prolong a necessary lesson regarding the price of disobedience.”

A mighty rain of strikes followed, reddening the muscular curves of her ass with prints that would eventually darken to bruises. Her body shuddered under each, and she descended into a haze of pain amplified by her frustrating, helpless humiliation at being treated this way. Yet she refused to beg quarter, and so the punishment went on and on. Twenty blows. Thirty. Fifty. The ache grew, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to sit comfortably again. Her teeth clenched against the sting, biting back the urge to cry out. I won’t give in. I can’t.

There was a pause while some sort of ointment was rubbed into her raw buttocks. At first it feigned to soothe, but then it worked a devilish magic, pushing what had been a purely surface pain deep into her muscles. It was all she could do to keep from crying in despair.

The spanking recommenced ... harder, faster, and more even more brutal than before. As the count passed seventy she began to whimper in response to the terrible agony. Yet she was offered no respite, only the continuation of her assault.

Somewhere around 100 — she’d long abandoned surety — her punishment abruptly stopped. Despite her embarrassing exposure and her lingering fury at her imprisonment, she was nearly insensate with pain. Exhaustion overcame her will to fight, and she slipped into an unwilling unconsciousness...

... one from which she was jarred awake by the resumption of her correction. A new flurry of sharp slaps stung her ass, over and over. Her pitiful grunts became keening whines of pain, yet the spanking continued.

And stopped. Once more, she fell into the succor of sleep.

Her loud cry of protest at the second resumption of her beating was an involuntary one. She’d never imagined that mere hands could cause this much pain without breaking skin or bone, but the burning in her buttocks was turning to numbness, threatening to spread to her entire body, endangering even her mind’s grip on reality. She wondered how long it would continue, and if she’d ever be allowed to sleep.

The pattern repeated itself: further bruising of her brutalized cheeks, an unwanted but unavoidable drift into unconsciousness, and then the resumption of pain. At last she could take no more, having been subjected to what seemed like hours of assault without quarter, and cried out in desperation, “please! Please, no more! Please!!!“ When another blow fell in spite of her anguished begging, she wailed in misery.

The spanking stopped again. Her head was lifted with more gentleness than before, and the hood tugged upward just enough for someone to pour a scalding liquor into her mouth. She greedily swallowed, not caring whether it was balm or poison, desperate to soothe her parched throat, and by the time her head was lowered back to the table she was fast asleep.

Éowyn’s dreams were tortured, and seemed no more than a continuation of her grim reality: isolated on an exposed platform in some unknown prison, helpless and waiting for the next cycle of abuse. Attempts to force her thoughts elsewhere — to the still-unknown outcome of the Battle of the Pelennor, to the free fields of Rohan, to the simple cares of her youth, to the loving touch of another — were met with a deep, chilling void of memory and feeling, as if her connection to the rest of the world had already failed. Fell voices whispered a litany of despair without death.

Yet she was not entirely bereft of sensation, though whether it was real or imagined was unclear. Her unresisting body was lifted, stripped, and cleansed, outside ... and in. She knew she should fight the latter, knew she should resist the prelude to what she assumed would be a more intimate violation, but she was too weary. There was a searing heat at her neck, and though she attempted to ward it away her hands were useless. Just beyond the limits of her senses lurked a looming, ever-expanding terror with neither name nor obvious form. It drew closer, slowly coalescing into wheel of pure fire and extending a flaming tendril to encircle her neck and choke her life away. With a gasp, she snapped awake.

She woke in darkness, the stifling blackness of the hood still blinding her vision and trapping her exhalations. It stank of sweat and fear. There was an unfamiliar pressure around her neck, and as she explored she discovered that she bore a heavy metal collar studded with rings. She could locate neither latch nor seam, and though she tugged and clawed it was in vain; she couldn’t figure out how to free herself of its confinement. Worse, it and the hood were now all she wore.

“You cannot remove it.”

It was the commanding Voice again. She ignored him, continuing her search for a clasp. Suddenly, she felt a sharp pinprick at her neck. Then another. She held still, for every struggle or shift in position caused another needle to press against her vulnerable skin.

“The rings are secured to the collar with pointed metal screws. Submit and they will stay in place. Resist, and...” Another screw bit into her neck.

Éowyn’s hands returned to her sides, as limp and useless as in her dream.

“Good. Learn quickly and punishment will be your reward. Learn slowly, and the price will be pain without release. Refuse to learn, and your agony will be eternal.” His words made no sense — punishment will be my reward? — and though the screws pressing into her neck receded one by one, the collar still weighed heavily against her tender flesh. Anger welled until she could no longer control it, and she scrabbled to raise her hood as furious words fled her mouth.

“Punish me for what? For wishing to kill my enemy? For desiring freedom? Anyone would do the same. If you won’t let me go then I will see you or me dead in that struggle, for there is naught you can learn or gain from me.” Her words were overly proud given the helplessness of her position, yet she pressed on. “And if you’re just going to kill me sooner or later, I suggest that you do it now and stop wasting my time.”

The Voice laughed, but it was a sound without mirth and full of threat.

“Kill you? Why waste the effort on someone of so little consequence? I will not kill you, nor will any under my command. It is necessary to keep you alive because you cannot suffer otherwise. You must suffer. And you will be punished.”

“For what?” she demanded.

“Punishment is its own reason. At the moment, it is being earned because you are still trying to remove that hood.” Sharp points dug into her neck from all sides, and she gasped as fear constricted her throat and arrested her breath. A trickle of blood ran down her collarbone. I told the truth when I said I was prepared to die, but there are deaths and then there are deaths...

A tense, quiet whisper. “I don’t understand. What do you want?” She feared she knew all too well, yet his words suggested otherwise.

“Pain. Obedience. Submission.”

“Never!”

Another dark chuckle. “In fact, soon you will beg for punishment. This I promise.”

“You’re wrong. And you’re a monster.”

More icy laughter. “Perhaps, but I am only a servant. The monster I will unleash is within you. My task is to teach you to see it, know it, and obey it. Your path will be paved with the release of pain and the ecstasy of submission.”

Confusion. Then defiance. “I’m not...”

“Silence. The time for talk is at an end.”

She listened carefully, tense with readiness, for any perceptible movement provided an opportunity, no matter how slim. There was a rustle of noise from far corner, then the grind and clank of wood, steel, and stone moving against one another. Heavy footsteps approached, and there was an exhalation just to her right. She pieced together a mental map of the room and her jailor.

Now or never...

Anchoring herself against the table, her foot lashed out, all her remaining strength behind it. There was a clatter of implements and the thud of a weighty form hitting the floor. She tugged violently at her hood, but the ties caught on her chin. If I could just...

Strong arms enveloped her waist. These were human arms, and though they rippled with muscle she elbowed, kicked, punched, and thrashed to the best of her ability. But her wild flailing amounted to naught; the raw strength that imprisoned her was no easier to counter than the Troll’s had been. As she fell limp she was dragged backwards and flung onto a hard wooden table. Consciousness wavered as her head slammed into the unyielding surface. Any further urge to escape was immediately quelled as every one of the screws of her collar were mercilessly driven inward, right to the point where one more twist would pierce skin.

I’m not afraid of blood, not even my own, but am I willing to bleed to death so early in this struggle? No ... I’m not yet desperate enough. I’ll endure the horror I know is to come, but there may still be a way out. And I will see this monster dead by my hand. If I could just...

Again, he laughed. “Dream of resistance if you want. Divert yourself with plans and schemes. The outcome will be the same.”

There was a loud click, followed by unexpected relief from the pinpricks at her neck. She attempted to twist her head, couldn’t, and realized with horror that she was attached to the table by one of her collar’s rings. The knowledge that she was trapped and at her captor’s mercy sent her into a panicked convulsion, lashing out with every tired limb. But it was no use, serving only to bruise and strangle her already damaged throat.