Melkor. Unspoken. Melkor, my Master. A small shake of his head is all the answer he gives his own foolish presumption, grateful to be scolded for it when he receives so much reassurance in return.

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."