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his eyefire was great, his tongue was flame;
Taller than most of the Men, taller than the creatures unnumbered at the feast, he nevertheless flickers wildly like a flame in a gale under the threat of going out, crashing across dishes and flagons. The complaints sound as if they come to him through a sludge and he thinks, I am a caged thing, I want for breath. When he stumbles gracelessly from the grand banquet and into corridors wreathed in the gloaming sanctuary of the night, the only thing that stops the discontent from following is a blaze of fire in his wake that feeds from his robes, more illusion than truth yet enough with which to cloak the painful shell that binds him. Would-be assailants stay away, and that is all that matters.
In what seems like a crypt but is, in fact, merely a disused hall, the clumsy noises he makes while floundering are met with the whoosh and woof of his fires the second a tall, proud window shatters into dust. He crumples in a heap of smouldering ruin where he doesn't become aware of his own howling, guttural screams until the echoes press back on his ears. Ears. Mouth. Tongue. Eyes. Hands, he sees, and hands he Sees again much clearer as his Vision is hammered into harrowingly weak bones, sinews, and skin.
This is not who I was. This is a lie; and I am wounded by it, my heart is bloodied in this fragile ribcage. I could tear myself apart and be no more!
Greater in power than the Eldar (Certainly! Always!) but diminished into a Maia made flesh. His hands tremble.
I could perish like this!
He recalls tiny fingers dragging the illusion of mortal flesh out of the sea as Númenor finally crumbled and fell into the great chasm that even he had not foreseen. Imps? Yes, imps, those filthy vermin scurrying about in this place. Had they bound him in it, in the fairness he had donned before Ar-Pharazôn? Had they the power? No; it was another. Stretching his Sight, his Eyes see much and spread to the borders of ... Caer Scima, they search and search and weep, and he snarls in frustration like a wild thing of Dungortheb. The lieutenant is furious with himself when his skull sears with an almighty, humbling migraine, of all things, and there he sobs on the black marble floor like a bird of embers cast out of the fire-pit where it nested, spirit fracturing in despair.
Tears leave permanent scorch-marks on the fine rock.
"It hurts," he whispers to the emptiness. Alone and confused, diminished, Sauron chokes on his own terror and peers with fire-bright eyes into the middle-distance. Daunted wonder wins out. "It hurts."
Like never before.
In what seems like a crypt but is, in fact, merely a disused hall, the clumsy noises he makes while floundering are met with the whoosh and woof of his fires the second a tall, proud window shatters into dust. He crumples in a heap of smouldering ruin where he doesn't become aware of his own howling, guttural screams until the echoes press back on his ears. Ears. Mouth. Tongue. Eyes. Hands, he sees, and hands he Sees again much clearer as his Vision is hammered into harrowingly weak bones, sinews, and skin.
This is not who I was. This is a lie; and I am wounded by it, my heart is bloodied in this fragile ribcage. I could tear myself apart and be no more!
Greater in power than the Eldar (Certainly! Always!) but diminished into a Maia made flesh. His hands tremble.
I could perish like this!
He recalls tiny fingers dragging the illusion of mortal flesh out of the sea as Númenor finally crumbled and fell into the great chasm that even he had not foreseen. Imps? Yes, imps, those filthy vermin scurrying about in this place. Had they bound him in it, in the fairness he had donned before Ar-Pharazôn? Had they the power? No; it was another. Stretching his Sight, his Eyes see much and spread to the borders of ... Caer Scima, they search and search and weep, and he snarls in frustration like a wild thing of Dungortheb. The lieutenant is furious with himself when his skull sears with an almighty, humbling migraine, of all things, and there he sobs on the black marble floor like a bird of embers cast out of the fire-pit where it nested, spirit fracturing in despair.
Tears leave permanent scorch-marks on the fine rock.
"It hurts," he whispers to the emptiness. Alone and confused, diminished, Sauron chokes on his own terror and peers with fire-bright eyes into the middle-distance. Daunted wonder wins out. "It hurts."
Like never before.
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... fucking infuriating.
All of those timeless ages spent gathering all his power again, for nothing. And to top it all of, this wasn't even Arda! Some she-bitch with Eru's eyes and long sight was purportedly responsible, but he paid about as much attention to that as a gnat.
When he saw Mairon crumpled on the glossy floor of the foreign fortress at the far end of the antechamber, he didn't even have the good grace to act surprised
or delighted, instead bellowing, "Mairon!" His black-as-sin raiment trailed behind him in a kingly fashion, while he swept both hands back, to the chittering of the miniature orcs he'd swiftly bullied into trailing himunder threat of crushing them underfoot, otherwise. All his old armor restored, if not entirely his stature."Does the stone and earth confirm the madness these orcs chatter?" His hawkish nose wrinkled while he cast a look of dismal disapproval to the walls about him.
"Do you think we could take it down?"
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Turning where he sits, Sauron stares up open-mouthed at the sight of Melkor there, talking away as if it hasn't been absolutely too long since he was unbound and free to do as he pleased, with even a quotient of orcs dithering about his cloak-tails like so much useless foam on the fringe of the ocean.
Do you think we could take it down?
He laughs once, stunned, and finds himself staring back into his hands as he staves off the mild horror of being bound, truly forced into this crushingly minute body, with no easy escape. This isn't like when he faced Luthien and Huan, and she threatened to wrench his body apart and leave him little more than a ghost; what would he be now, if this small, wretched body broke? It is not of my devising, only my design! Melkor does not not dissolve like a dream
or a sweet nightmare, this is no game. Everything, from bone to brick, is a block in the self-same prison; flesh or castle, they are the same thing."I," he starts quietly, and though he fears Morgoth Bauglir almost as much as he is loyal to him, he cannot look up from his lap. The embers at Sauron's hems flare and settle, unnerved. Even his voice sounds hollow. "I —"
He is afraid to stare into those dark eyes and know he is not the one to have unchained him, afraid to say My Eyes are so weak, afraid that something went wrong at Númenor and now he has warped himself a pretty illusion in which to stay his own madness because the pain was so great as he was robbed of the shape in which he had wrought great evil deeds, no longer able to appear fair but scraped as thin as a shadow and a black wind —
"It hurts!" Of course it hurts, he realises, hands gripping his face where he remains dumped on the floor. You have been forced back into the skin you could not reclaim for yourself. His pitch heightens in a panic and he begs instinctively because I made their isle fall for you, do not leave me like this. He stood on the temple he had that fool-king build for Melkor and crashed down into the sea not to die, but to break as he has never been broken before. "Master, please —!"
If Melkor is even really there in the echoing, engulfing cavern of the antechamber.
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"Mairon, you will scrape yourself off of that floor before I give you a reason to beg," he warned, voice rumbling like thunder, so low it makes the stone quiver.
"Pain was an instrument I granted you, when first I wrought the manner of the world to my liking." Melkor had long known the awesome power of pain. Had long been given cause to fear it. It was a strange half-formed shadow of himself he saw in Mairon's cowering, and he detested it.
He detested also the thought that some other power had forced his servant so low. Jealousy and spite made his unfamiliar pulse hammer in his throat. The marbled floor was so well-glossed that it reflected his own darkness up at him as he covered the distance which separated them.
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'There everlastingly thy naked self shall endure the torment of his scorn, pierced by his eyes.'
He hates more than he fears and so, yes, he finds his feet by the time Melkor finds him. Embarrassingly, an arm flies around his midriff to stem a tsunami of nausea, wincing. Bright eyes remain squinted and narrow, unwilling to look much further than they absolutely have to as the crashing waves around the temple ring loudly in his ears.
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"Pain." Both pale, broad hands beckoned to his servant. Come to me. "Agony."
"It is the ocean. The steadiness of the shore is always on the other side. You are not so small a craft that it will sink you. And you are the navigator that has seen all these currents before drawn on the maps of other bodies. It is not the pain that matters, nor the body it wracks: but what you win and wring from it."
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"Master."
Less than a word, more than a sigh, he clings to him and finds everything fits like a jigsaw with no missing pieces, but the touch is so crass. Where is his lord's broiling fëa? His own tries to reach for it on instinct, accomplishing nothing but setting alight his trailing robes once more. The panic eases like molten lava cooling when kissed by water, and down die the flames on a conscious whim. Feeling more himself than in minutes past, despite their being caged so crudely in different, locked hröar, he gives a nod and raises his chin in a parody of the pride he ordinarily carries. Or carried, in a past tense, before losing Melkor to such a brutal prison as the Void.
"I am usually ashore and not in the midst of such base suffering," he admits, trying to make light of it and succeeding as he adds more in an undertone. "Master, You feel ... Everything feels different. I am bound, I cannot be your Eyes so well again like this — this frail body is of no use to you.
"I — I should be nothing but a breath, crushed before I found myself in these halls."
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You had been so beautiful.
Melancholy crashed into the space rage had once ago occupied, a dizzying down to a breathtaking up. "Do you dare tell me what is of use to me?" He growled it near Mairon's temple. "I will use you until you are nothing, if need be, 'til even this low flesh and bone has long become nothing but so much dust and black dirt. You are mine, and even though your vision is lessened, your mind shall pierce some truth from this. Whether by force or treachery we will find the manner of unmaking this wretched witchery upon us."
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Blissed out on devotion, he murmurs against a throat, "I destroyed it for you. Númenor is gone." So far removed from his disgrace at Tol-in-Gaurhoth, he dares to hope it will allay his shame in some way. Years in the doing, it surely has to after six-hundred years alone. "The world was broken and the land was swallowed up, the seas rose over it. I went down into the abyss, but it is done. It is done, merely to please you."
The ruin had been more terrible than he could have foreseen, his spirit hunting for a dark wind to flee upon back to Middle-earth — but the imps had come, those hideous creatures, those spiteful, daring beasts he would crush under his heel if they had not delivered him back to his Lord and Master even amidst all this suffering. His spirit ill-fits the body he has been returned to, yet the agony of it is a sea, yes, just like Melkor said, and Sauron will navigate it nowhere but toward his true north.
He has been so lonely, inhaling of scents that take him back to the security and trust shared in Angband.
"It is not such a great hurt," he decides aloud, pensive and clinging, "it cannot be, not when it returns me to your presence."
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"Save your strength. I'll want every word you can string together of what happened after my banishment. Later." Right now, pressed so close, he wanted to rub the scent of himself all over this familiar-unfamiliar body, to claim and mark and possess him again. With the imprints of his teeth if not the brand of his spirit, bruises in the form of his hands—
He let the fingertips of a hand smooth through the ends of his servant's hair, down the slope of his back.
"You will bear it, as you do all else: for my sake, and to suit my will." The other hand lifted, catching the point of Mairon's chin between his thumb and the bend of his forefinger, turning that sharp-featured face up to him. "Is that not so?"
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"Yes, Master." Holding Melkor's gaze, he dares to incline his chin and buff a soft kiss against those fingers, respectful and devoted. "Allow me to make myself of further use to you now. Please, I beseech you. Let me See what else I may of this land, I will not let these restrictions cower me so easily again.
"I cannot with My Lord so near, for my place is by his side."
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The hand dropped, looped his brawny arm about Mairon's shoulders, and he pulled them both further down along the hall at a sedate stroll. "Yes! Tell me what you have learned, even in so short a while, and also what you See. Directionless malice won't win us anything but more pain and the wasteful passage of time."
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"This land is called Dorchadas, the dwelling place of a king and queen whose privacy is as a void in itself. They know I can See them and they fear none of their thralls. Reul and Morla. They see us as such, knowing us as little else once we are disgraced," he says, his voice deep and echoing as though all the places his Sight go also create walls around his artes. He frowns. "The Unseelie is how they name us, with shards of a precious gemstone alive in our very blood. This is what they covet. We are fine wrappings around each of these gifts."
Sauron drapes an arm around Melkor, not because he is scared but to simply feel him there after so long scrying in Mordor alone. Pushing his power to the limit, he finds new restrictions and hisses, squinting as his Eyes reach the borders of Dorchadas.
"They clip us like birds so that we cannot fly from here. Ah ..."
Bringing a hand up, he ducks his head and rubs at the instep of his lashes, blinking through thin smears of blood.
"They — They wish to win a war against the Seelie armies in the southlands."
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He used his own free hand to bat Mairon's hand away from his own face; used the pad of his thumb to neatly smooth away evidence of blood. Pain is an ocean. So see his servant bear what was certainly painful with such poise made a curl of hot pleasure wind through his middle.
"I was not Eru's dog; I will not be theirs. And before we set our strength to regaining power, we must first re-learn the shapes of what we are." Shards of gemstones in bodies; in flesh, so easy to break, to rend, to twist... His lashes fell low over his eyes and he tipped his strong chin up. "We will be as we were of old: force and treachery. By our might and cleverness,"
quite possibly mostly Mairon's cleverness, "We will regain all we have lost."no subject
Drabwurld. The drab part, he wryly thinks, is easily understood. One needs no far-reaching, piercing Sight to see how it affects those over whom it would seek to cast dominion.
"Your might," he gently corrects him, "and my service."
Clasping to the hand in his, he also squeezes lightly around the waist ensnared by his warm arm.
"Return with me to my new tower when we leave this place, Barad-dûr in Mordor is a land where Men fear to tread, they think even one of the Maiar an unassailable force. If you would but join with me again, your servant will offer you all he has," thinking of the Rings of Power, he hesitates to add, "and all that is left of him."
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Anything that wasn't Void.
He catches a curl of Mairon's hair, winding it around a thick, blunt forefinger while they walk, his servant conforming to his side. "Your service," he amended thoughtlessly, a corner of his mouth twitching.
"Barad-dûr." The name rumbled from him like the distant threat of thunder. "If all that is left of you is enough to send soft-skinned men from your domain, then you have not done poorly for yourself." It seemed to Melkor little more than a bat of the lash since the days when Edain and Eldar dared wage war on the North. "But I knew what treasure I took for myself when I bound you to my service. Ever were you peerless among your kind." His fingers paused, releasing his servant's hair to instead gesture through the air before him.
"Barad-dûr. A tower. I shall grow it into a mountain fit to stagger our strongholds of old." Something strong enough to defy the wind and pierce the sky, and the dream of revenge was a taste like blood on his tongue.
"And Mordor. What other change has been wrought in the world since last I touched it?"
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All in time, and they have plenty of that.
"The world is smaller than it was, with Men living in a city so close to the border of Mordor that they can see the fires, and they call it Mount Doom." Laughter bubbles up for the first time, pleased with the tyranny that rumps rampant with barely a skirmish of his dark creatures. "I walked among the Eldar as Annatar —" Lord of Gifts, does the jest please you? "— and the fools made me such prizes."
Bolder now, his accomplishments alone riding up behind his brightening eyes, he steps before Melkor and tries to coax him into a shadowed alcove. His tongue touches behind his teeth in anticipation, excitement banked only for propriety's sake now that he has the chance to unveil his doings. Hushed, he grins fleetingly, and his eyes burn as he confesses, "I have spread my power into many rings — three for the Eldar, seven for the dwarf-lords, and nine for Men.
"And the One Ring that commands them."
Secrets, I have such secrets, take them all from me if you will it.
Standing so close to his Lord, he raises the hand wearing said ring; and it is bright and beautiful and glorious, but it does not ripple with life. And Sauron, so thrilled to have this opportunity to show him, does not immediately notice.
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His arm dropped from around his servant that they could face each other in the shadows, and his body clenched at the sight of the fire in the maia's eyes. He loves only one thing better than well-lain plans, he thought, mouth cutting into a grin that was knife-sharp when he closed one broad, strong hand over the finer fingers of his pet.
The pad of his thumb touched the cool metal of the ring, sensing nothing, stroked it so that it rolled easily around the finger it rest upon. He moved the hand nearer to his face rather than lean to inspect it, and under the great force of his gaze, it began to heat, the fine script winking into view. "But what is the manner of its command, Mairon?"
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"Why, is it not clear? It ..."
The second he focuses his full attention on it, his smile wipes. His touches and closeness to his master are forgotten as something unhinges in a white panic, though Sauron remains very still and very silent, and for all intents and purposes he forgets entirely what is occurring beyond an assault on his very core.
Their wills have gone, I cannot call them. I cannot feel any of them. The Ring is mere metal! This cannot be. It is mine. It is mine!
He grows hotter by the moment, anguish and fury bridling. Snatching himself away from the figure before him, he seethes and ignites in the large outer corridor, hands as claws as his spirit swells and pushes against the constraints put upon it. Madness beckons him back into its breast.
"No! No!" Raging, his voice thickens with the echo of his new position, and there is no longer sweet Mairon whimpering and clawing at his powerful, beloved Vala — a Maia so changed as to live as a Dark Lord compared to Curumo and Olorin's haggard, stunted little forms in the Second Age.
The air blisters with heat that would incinerate any mere immortal, any onlooking Eldar would be ash.
"Ｙｏｕ ｄａｒｅ ｓｕｌｌｙ Ｍｅ! ＹＯＵ ＤＡＲＥ!"
It is no mere tantrum, no lieutenant thrashing in battle. An Eye of flame scalds his form as he tries to return to it, blood dripping down his cheeks; fangs gnash toward the paltry ceiling. If I were myself this castle would be laid waste. The great Eye wreathed in flame flickers hither and thither, locking onto an indistinct direction as his power bristles, boiling against its bound limit to press against the Unseelie monarchs' private Void. The floor around the Lord of Mordor bubbles like living lava, black as pitch, and he throws his whole livid spirit into clawing at Powers that remain out of reach.
Come out.
"Ｉ ＳＥＥ ＹＯＵ."
And then, at the height of his frothing, flaming fury, an invisible weight, thick yet fleeting in an eyeblink, bats him across the corridor. Marble shatters, glass bursts, and Sauron crumples in a heap; bone and blood, flesh and hair.
He does not move in the lingering smoke.
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How beautiful.
Melkor watched in strange, almost detached fascination as his servant became undone. The blast of heat scorched his face; lips parted, he stood, buffeted by power the like of which reminded him of the first days of the world. His dark hair whipped back from his face like a lash of shadow, and he closed his eyes, feeling for what Mairon would do in the grip of such red rage, for just maybe—
His black eyes snapped open when he felt the invisible force move, swift as a shark in the water, and they just schooling fish, now—
The stone at his feet have hardened into warped shapes, without Mairon's heat, and his form flickers like static in shadow, reappearing beside his servant. He cast the shelter of his own power over the ruin of blood and bone, jaw set. Bid bone and flesh to knit together, though even that simple task strained him thin, forced a degree of focus that quickly set his temples to panging.
He smoothed fair hair from a fairer brow, and told himself he would not flee, he would not flee, terror would not rule him again. For they were just fish now, half-blind and mostly senseless in a world full of predators easily their match. Mouth set and eyes flat, he says only,
"I am taking you from here."
And begins indelicately to gather Mairon to him.
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"It is mine," he whispers to none by himself. His hand bearing the One Ring lies curled up protectively against his chest, covered by another. "Mine alone."
Eyes closed, he tips his cheek against his Master and wonders at the simple calming action of breathing with real lungs. Wheezing, really, after what passed for a broken Maia's panic attack.
"Do you remember Angband?" Quiet now in the aftermath of howling firestorms, he knows it is foolish to try and leave this form again, wanting to try and only stopping himself with the brush of Melkor against him. "You made it for me ...
"I think of it, still, and often."
Mordor is a fractured parody of that place.
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"I remember every stone." Sweat filmed his brow, his head ached. Had this ever been easy? Grimacing, he shook his head, reaching inward for the well of his power. Surely, there was more. Surely.
"Diving into memory...was... the only thing that gave me peace, in the Void. I remember every stone. How the great columns of obsidian would gleam like gold when you were in your power."
He walked to clear his head, the thin, gravely soil crunching underfoot, the tall, autumn-deadened grass brushing his legs in hushed, whispered sounds.
"In the Endless Dark, there is nothing. Not even yourself, if you do not cling tightly enough. Remembering and remembering and re-living every moment so perfectly you cannot forget it, unceasingly... for the Void will devour it otherwise. Passionlessly, with neither care nor consequence." Like the grass, Melkor spoke in a whisper, as if he were confiding a secret.
"Angband, I remember."
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He is sweating, sickening. Sliding to his feet, Sauron wavers but determinedly brushes back through inky black hair to cup a strong jaw. He has been wronged beyond all cruelty.
Evil they are, assuredly, in deeds and words with others, but never each other. Mairon recalls the beautiful Vala who caught his eye on Almaren and holds fast to him still.
"You will never be parted from me again, not even if Eru Himself wills it. I will stop such a course of action dead."
Fingertips slip over his Master's lips, curling their way back up a nose and across a brow as if painting him back into reality. The air is so refreshing, this rotten world could be Valinor for all he cares. He has what he wants.
"Whether you are diminished or not, if this is to be our lot, your claim upon me still stands the test of time. In any land, I am no one's but yours." His voice hushes. "I cannot heal you in turn or right the wrongs that cast you into the Void, but I will not suffer a distance between us again, I will take it into myself first so that you may go free.
"I only ask that you stay with me of your own volition if given the chance, in this world and all others."