His cousin is so beautiful in his wrath; all that fine-boned arrogance and twisting kelp hair dripping pearls. It reminds him of the Dawn of Arda when all was wild and fierce and unbound by laws designed to keep fragile lives safe. (It was that spirit Melkor coveted, he remembers, that freedom he sought to restore to Ainur).
Dark water laps at the cave floor, hungrily pawing up the rock as Ossë writhes in power, as if the sea is seeking him. Brooding watersnakes flee their stony hideouts and drop into the lightless pool, seeking the safety of the open ocean waiting just beyond the cavern– he might be wise to find his own refuge, but he has risked more for less gain, and far less entertaining ends.
Instead he drops his collar further, disrobing of his apron and vest, rolling his head back and letting the tips of his fingers trace the contours of his throat.
“You want for nothing, Terror? Where is the ancient stormchild, the wrath of the tide that made the old earth tremble?” He steps into the water, wrapping black and frigid around his knees. He bites his lip hard with the points of his fangs, and lets his blood join the salt of the sea. “Have you ever tasted the flesh and fëa of your own kind, Ossossai? Ever drunk power from another’s blood? There is nothing like it, no food or drink of this earth that compares.”
The water washes past his hips, up his belly, The whiplash tendrils of his cousin’s eerily luminescent form churn perilously close; indignant, wrathful, betraying their master’s vows of contentment as lies. …Lies he aches to rip from Ossës lips, even if it leaves him drowning.
“You want for nothing? Then there is no reason for you to catch me.” He plunges, a streak of shining white and black cetacean skin, teeth and fin, racing for the midnight sea.
Blood in water is not so rare; people are often scraped or bitten near the shore, or wash wounds however they can manage. But another Ainu’s blood – that is an all but forbidden nectar. Where Sauron’s blood drips into the sea water, the ripples sing. Ossë’s gills flare in response and he emits a low, keening note of warning.
Gone is the tamed Sea Master who worries about fear and manipulation and logic and thoughts, and in his place is the Terror of old, the spirit who followed its instincts and sought power and the unbridled euphoria of chaos and destruction, the being that sought to tore the earthen stone from its foundations and cover creation with spuming seas.
There is no hesitation, no question of ‘what if’ or of retribution. As Sauron turns and dives away, all that matters is that someone has challenged him, taunted him, then fled into his home. Perhaps in a desert Sauron would get away with such mockery, but never will his arrogance survive in the sea.
For at swimming and in deeds of bodily strength in the water none of the Ainur, not even Ulmo’s self, is Ossë’s match.
He shoots after his cousin into the icy darkness of the wild sea, shape warping and distorting into his truest form. He is all scales and fins, teeth and tentacles, burning eyes and dusted with starlight. The Elfin inspiration melts away to a monster of the darkest depths, the Ošošai that made the Aratar tremble.
It is this monster that overcomes Sauron, slowing to match his speed so he can descend from above. One dark, starry limb curls around Sauron’s sleek tail to halt him while another snakes around his torso to pin his arms to his sides, a combination of crushing strength and powerful suckers making sure Terror’s prey will not writhe free. Another tentacle coils round his throat, but it is delicate in comparison, loosely circling and slowly tightening just enough to be uncomfortable.
Ossë looms above, peering down at his handiwork. His eyes are large, bright spots of glowing teal, and his face shows no ‘human’ expression. But his gills flare as he surges closer, gaze fixed on Sauron’s face, until he stills nearly close enough to touch. With a rumbled chitter, darkly amused, he darts out a forked tongue to flicker over the remnants of the wound at Sauron’s lip.
There is a delicious sense of helplessness as he looks above, seeing the filtered moonlight darkened with his Cousin’s monstrous shape, matching his top speed effortlessly, almost lazily. The chase, the fear, the adrenaline… what wolf and prey feel running through the tall grass at midnight– it’s seldom he experiences the thrill of the hunted in that equation.
He knows he will be overcome, it is inevitable, his blood rushes with it; before the first of the seeking tendrils find him he plunges down, down past reef and rock, down as far as his cetacean-mimic form can take him, where it is dark and the weight of the sea presses him like a vice all round. This is not an escape– there is no escape here. His Cousin’s tentacles catch his tail while he is at speed, and the loss of momentum cracks through his spine. They wrap and entangle him in their smooth, python grip, engulfing him up to the throat. The only illumination between them comes from within the clicking, laughing leviathan; spots of eery luminescence reflect in the black of his eyes, wide with panic as the air is forced from his lungs in a cloud of bubbles– he has no gills, after all. The water is still his enemy.
He is brought face-to-maw with his captor. A shiver runs through him from stern to prow as Ossë’s tongue traces his lip. With effort, he twists and bites the grasping arm that snakes near his mouth– not gentle, but inviting. Their blood mingles. He has no breath to speak, but his mind reaches out with a question: “Do you like it?”
Even if this body is forfeit, he wants the answer to be yes.
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