Mairon had always known how to stroke his master's ego best. And Melkor craved the affirmation of sensation, the slide of silk-smooth skin against his own, fabric, hair, warm breath. Where Mairon had been pained, Melkor was exhilarated, and suffered the familiar confines of flesh with a growing pit of hunger for more. For anything of substance.

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?"