There And Back Again (And The Last Word... And Some)
Five Snippets of the Sauron Story
1. there
The first thing he should do, Sauron mused, was get a pair of eyes.
All this floating around in the Void was doing him no good, no good at all.
Oh sure, there were no annoying elves around and thank goodness he did not sense those thrice-damnable Maia, never mind the fact that he was somewhat like them.
[That was all unimportant.]
But really, there was nothing around!
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
He idly supposed that it was part of his punishment, but really, he had expected something more along the lines of eternal banishment, or at least torture of some sort.
What was this, were they trying to bore him to death? Not going to work, buddy.
He sighed. [Or at least, that portion of his consciousness attempted to emit a puff of air but failed. Miserably]
This was b.o.r.i.n.g.
This is punishment, one portion of his consciousness hissed. You're not supposed to be enjoying it. It is supposed to suck.
The other half of his brain, [Oh sorry, he had no corporeal form, so it was more of his consciousness] scowled.
But what the heck am I going to do in the next god-I-don't-know-how-many-years, he muttered darkly to himself.
"You're going to stew silently and repent over your mistakes," the other half replied snarkily.
Heck no!
A third portion of his consciousness seemingly awoke. It chirped and Sauron was horrified. [He should not chirp, by…by… by… Melkor's name, he was not a cute cuddly bird and so he should not chirp!]
"You could always begin your plans for what you will do when you get out of this place," the new third of his consciousness smiled.
"Like?" The first third rolled its imaginary eyes.
"I dunno, you could start figuring out where to make base camp, what to feed them, how to organize them, what to teach them, and evil stuff like that I guess." The newest third shrugged, and Sauron saw the fleeting image of himself idly plucking daisies in a field flash through his consciousness.
He squashed that thought immediately.
And began thinking about more evil things like how he was so completely going to dismember that what'shisname when he next saw him.
Like yeah.
2. and
It was the year three thousand something, that much he was sure about. [You know, trifling things like the year never really mattered to beings like him who lived for like… forever.]
He was happily perched on his spiky metal chair in the middle of his nice shiny black room right on the top of what they had christened to be Barad-dur. [The chair was spiky simply because he had no form so it would not hurt him, but anyone who would even dare to sit on it would simply find themselves with a sharp metal protrusion through their rather tender regions.]
"Zere iz newz to report, my loard." Sauron winced at the speech of one of those disposable underlings, though not that said underling could see him. [Being invisible just added to the creepy atmosphere that he was oh so fond of.]
"Hng," he uttered. The underling twitched violently before looking all about him for the source of the voice. [Are you blind? Look at the tallest chair, you dolt. That is where I am.]
"We haz captored a…a…hoppit." The underling ducked his forehead so low such that the ground was mere millimeters away. Sauron raised an invisible eyebrow.
"And?" The underling jumped.
"A-A-And ze ring, my loard. It iz in the Shire." The underling squeaked.
"The what?" Shire? What, were they going to name the next place… Province, or County? Perhaps Area might be a more innovative suggestion.
"Ze Shire, my lord," a voice cut in croakily from the side. Sauron resisted the urge to hit a palm to his head at the sound of this voice. Just… fantastic. The Mouth. Exactly whom he needed to see for his day to be complete. Not.
He could not stand that thing. Good Melkor. What the heck was with that getup? That look? That smell? That sound? What was wrong with that thing? Was being smelly and ugly and stupid the in-thing for evil beings? If so, he must have missed the memo.
As it was, Mouth was still the most capable of all his associates, so Sauron bit back a sarcastic retort about Mouth's terrible Black Speech accent and instead replied a little less scathingly.
"And where would that be, Mouth?" Darn. His voice was still as gravelly as it had been after that horrible incident with the molten metal in the smithy.
"We will obtain it for you, my lord, it is no cause for your concern." The Mouth smiled and Sauron cringed at the too-yellow teeth, before the former bowed and took his leave.
The Soon-To-Be-Supreme-Ruler-Of-Middle-earth sighed.
Why didn't anyone ever answer his questions directly?
And why had he tried to teach them a new language when they obviously had their own and had no need to learn a new one because Melkor forbid, he was pretty sure that his own pronunciation of those guttural tones of theirs would be much better than their butchering of his newly created language.
He sighed again.
3. back
The palantir rung. [It was a sign that a call was coming through.]
It was vibrating even. [A sign that the call was probably going to be important.]
Sauron stretched and rolled off the spikes that adorned his ceiling.
Goodness. Why couldn't whoever this was have waited for the morning?
He had been having a pretty rough day.
Or week.
Or month.
Or a few months, at least.
Firstly, there was the issue with the Ring. The largest issue. [Of course, the attached issue would be the incapability of his underlings to do anything, anything at all, that required the tiniest section of brain. But never mind that for now.]
Mouth and the Nazgul had obviously failed, because the Ring was not with him.
The stupid irresponsible unreliable things who somehow felt that they were pretty damn clever. The memory of them groveling in front of where they had assumed his feet to be was pretty disturbing.
All that saliva coming from just one person. Creepy. [Yeah sure, he liked things to be creepy, because the chill that just ran up your arms felt good, but this? This was creepy in a bad, bad way.]
Then that idiot of a Maia, [No, not that one. The other one.] had gone ahead and gotten himself imprisoned by a Tree.
A Tree, for goodness' sake! It was a friggin' tree. Never mind that fact that it could move, talk, or break down stone walls with its bare hands. It was a tree and it was flammable. Why had Saruman been incarcerated? Sauron had no idea.
And the idiot had the grace to not only not finish up the work he had started in Rohan, which was, by any standards pretty devious if he might say so himself, but he had also gone ahead and made it into a situation that that thrice-damnable Mithrandir or Gandalf or whatever the heck they were calling him these days, could twist to his advantage.
For Melkor's sake, could his underlings be any stupider?
That crazy-happy last third of his consciousness, the only portion that was unhappy with the lack of any corporeal body because he wanted to pick daisies, grinned.
'Course not. Who else would follow you so blindly and be willing to die for a stupid cause like your world domination?'
The first third, the part that he had always listened to, growled and demanded that third to shut up.
The daisy-loving, flower-picking third shrugged.
The palantir creaked.
The door slammed open.
"My loard," [Oh Melkor, it was that idiot of an underling again.] "Ze palantir iz ringing. Pleaze pick it up."
He picked up the nearest spike with his special levitation powers which he had somehow acquired, and tossed it nonchalantly at the door.
The underling squeaked and ran.
He idly noted that it was not the same underling he had previously met, before rolling over and levitating the palantir to his eye level, which was about a hundred and ten meters plus minus five.
And blinked.
4. again
The palantir rung. Again.
It better not be that wimpy hoppit, Sauron muttered darkly to himself, as he rolled his invisible and not-really-there body out from wherever he had been to crawl slowly towards the palantir.
That previous mind probe had been a dismal failure. There was nothing interesting in that weak weak hoppit's mind except for stuff that was completely irrelevant. Like the fact that there were three other hoppits and they all looked the same. [To him.]
Or like the fact that Gandalf or whatever it was they were calling him these days was not so Grey anymore. In fact, he was pretty White.
Or like the fact that blasted King of Rohan looked less dead than he had previously been shown by Saruman.
Whatever. The hoppit had seemed so traumatized by the random filler images that he had been shown that he hadn't managed to see much else other than random clips of people singing and dancing and drinking around fires. Ew.
[Well, it wasn't really Sauron's fault. He had to let the hoppit see something, right? After all, it would be creepy if someone was running their invisible fingers through your mind while you were staring into darkness. He had had to give the hoppit an illusion that he was getting something else in exchange. It was not his fault that the hoppit had not liked it.]
Sauron personally thought that his flaming eye was pretty darn cool and made for a nice animated background, not that anyone besides him would ever do so, anyway.
He sighed as he picked up the palantir. [No, he didn't really pick it up, but never mind the details.]
Ooh.
Man.
He was intrigued.
5. and the last word
When Gil-galad of the Undying Realm was told that he was to shepherd someone from the realm of life to that of death, he had not been expecting much. After all, everyone did that for people they knew, so he supposed it was time for his turn.
When he was informed that he was to, under no condition whatsoever, let said being do whatever he pleased, a nagging doubt grew in his stomach. What kind of instruction was that?
When his eyes met those of a straggly-haired scruffy teenager-almost-adult, he had almost turned and demanded Mandos give him an explanation. Who was this… thing?
When said straggly-haired scruffy teenager-almost-adult's eyes lit up with an almost predatory and yet more probably familiar light, he merely stared back in confusion. Did he know him?
"Hey, I'm Annatar." it was a long slow drawl as a mischievous, almost evil twinkle came to the teenager-almost-adult's face.
Said youth reached out a perfectly clean and stunningly pale hand.
"I'm the Maia that killed you."
He winked.
Ereinion nearly fainted right there and then.
Sauron beamed.
It had been a long time since he had managed to disturb someone so deeply.
Man, it sure felt sort of good to be home.