The Many Faces of You by Prackspoor  

“If I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it - keep going, keep going come what may.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

The universe is still new, its stars and planets have barely settled into their revolutions, and the world has only just cooled off enough to allow the first rain to fall on the dry and cracked planet when you meet the fallen Vala for the first time.

At this point, you have existed for a long time already, but you have been truly alive only for a comparatively short span of Valian Years.

You are, for the lack of a more fitting word, still young.

You are also confident and proud. You have not yet learned (and probably never will) to be demure. Instead of fading into the background against the great canvas of Creation, like a spirit of lesser standing should, you impose yourself on the face of the world as strikingly as a meteor impact. You throw yourself into your work, rush ahead with your own inventions and ideas for this world, not content just to admire, but desiring to shape, to break, and to understand.

You have a way with Earth and Fire: ore and coal and diamonds leap to your call, and you make no show of hiding it, just as you openly scoff at those of lesser skill. You are at the same time the most ingenious and the most difficult protégé of Aulë the Maker. Your reputation as a brash and haughty genius precedes you: as a result, your peers avoid you and you are often alone – though never as alone as you wish you could be. You are still of the fellowship of Aulë and that means that there are demands to be met: there are group works to be finished with your peers of lesser skill, and services to the Valar to be done, as well as countless other trivialities – all while you would rather follow your own ideas and desires. Your peers are holding you back and your obligations bore you – and you make no show of hiding how much this aggravates you.

Your master disapproves of your behaviour: although he neither reprimands you nor uses force to make you obey him, you know that he wishes fervently for you to behave differently. Aulë worries for you, and he fears for you: your preference for solitude and your unwillingness to submit are unusual in your kind, and aberrations from the norm cause great distress to the Lords and Ladies of Arda.

You are well aware of this, but you make no effort to change. Instead, you seek your freedom whenever you can and roam the world even without your master's leave, flying here and there, streaking like a comet over the skies and scorching the earth wherever you land when something catches your interest. Aulë never tries to restrain you. Perhaps it is due to the perplexingly helpless attitude of the Valar towards any creature displaying desire for free will, however small it may be; or perhaps he does it out of respect for your wishes. He just watches you leave with a sad and worried expression on his face of magma and fiery opals, and then returns to his forges under the mountains, waiting for your return.

You are young, and proud, and caught up in your fascination with your own talent and genius. You do not notice your master's grief – and even if you do, you do not care.

***

You meet Melkor on a mountain summit at the very edge of the world, where the ground – indeed, Creation itself, drops away into nothingness.

You are far from even the most remote places where your kind is working on shaping Arda. The usual drone of a million Maiarin voices in your head, all humming and murmuring under the watchful presence of your master, has faded to a whisper. The ties of your spirit to Aulë are stretched to the breaking point. In the overwhelming emptiness of the bleak, lifeless mountains around you and the empty sky above you, you almost feel truly alone.

You alight on the mountain top, your ëala flowing into a corporeal form like white-hot liquid iron shooting into a mold. You felt a volcano erupt here some time earlier, and as soon as your bare feet touch the mountains, you feel that this corner of the world is alive with tectonic activity. You sense the obsidians and volcanic minerals buried in pockets deep underneath the surface, yours for the taking.

It takes you another blink of an eye to realise that you are not alone.

Standing on a rocky outcrop of the ice-cold summit there is another shape, vaguely visible – no, not visible, more like an absence where there should be matter. It stands at the very edge of the sheer cliff where Creation ends and even though it is Nothing, featureless, somehow you can still tell that it stares ponderously out into the nothingness beyond. Power swirls around it like a vortex, and the weight of its attention – enough, you imagine, to crush planets and make stars collapse in onto themselves if the Vala only desired it – is for now fortunately diverted out into the darkness.

You never expected to find a Vala here in this remote place, where void and darkness are tearing at the fringes of this vulnerable little world, this frail little bubble of Being in an ocean of Nothingness. And yet here he is, a silent, shadowed tower of might, so massive that space and light are bending around him.

You have never seen a Vala other than your master up so close, and the experience is at once terrifying and mesmerising. The Vala, in turn, does not even seem to notice you.

You are acutely aware of the transgression it would mean for a Maia to approach a Vala other than his master. It is seldom done, and only with express permission, if it could not otherwise be avoided; a Maia doing so without his master's leave is unheard of.

But you care little for arbitrary rules, and you have not yet known danger. Young and bored as you are, daredevilry and curiosity still surpass your willingness to listen to reason. You should leave, but even as you are thinking this, you step closer until you are standing at the edge as well, albeit at a safe distance from the shadowy shape.

The Vala does not move, nor does he acknowledge your presence in any other way.

You wait, you look up and down into the featureless darkness, trying to spot what is obviously so fascinating to the Vala. Before too long, you lose patience. “What are you doing there?”

The shape turns around and you are greeted by a face like the void, eyes like dying stars, and the smile of a glacier. The entire weight of its attention is now on you. You are rooted to the spot, kept in place by the grip of a mind that could crush you and the very mountain you are standing on to atomic dust with little more than an afterthought.

You know this mind. You have felt it, at the very beginning of your existence: abyssal, gigantic, and so massive that billions of smaller spirits were pulled into its gravitational well and swallowed up, never to be seen again. It is thanks to Aulë alone – who threw himself protectively between his flock and this mind and chained you to the safe anchor of his own being – that you still exist. All the others who were too slow or too weak, or who were not claimed in time by the other Valar are now gone, devoured by the fathomless depth of this eldritch mind. You stare at the lone, dark figure and wonder if this is the reason why he is alone.

“You should not be here,” you say to the mountain of might and darkness that is Melkor himself, and if that isn't the maddest thing you'll ever do, you don't want to know what that is going to be.

Says who? the Vala replies. One little Maia who has strayed too far from home? The sentence could have sounded patronising, but you can detect no derision, only vague amusement.

“I am not straying. What are you doing here?”

I am looking for something.

“For what?” The words barely make it from your mind before the answer is there.

I was waiting for you to come.

You did not anticipate that. Any reply that you might have given flees your mind. Your head is empty and try as you might, you cannot come up with anything to say in response. Too unexpected is the answer, too terrifying is the strange Vala, and the fact that he has been expecting you all along. You wonder if you have walked into a trap, and the idea freezes your body and mind alike.

The Vala seems to notice, and the grip around your mind eases to the point where you can think and move again.

(You know that you should run away. You don’t.)

(At some point in your life, you will learn when to yield in the face of a greater power and save your own hide. But that day is not today.)

“Why me?” you ask.

Come here and I will tell you.

You don't move.

Look at you, standing so proud on the surface of Creation – and yet you shy away from its edge like everyone else. Are you not curious what lies beyond? Would you not take a glance into the abyss? I was told you were braver than the others.

You watch him warily, undecided: your very nature drives you forward with hunger for the answer, but at the same time you expect a trap. The Vala watches your inner struggle with a dry sort of amusement for a few moments, before he loses patience. He does not come closer—instead he lifts his hand and he seems to pull the world forward and you with it, until you are left standing directly in front of him and staring upwards into a featureless face.

He puts a hand on your shoulder—colder than ice, colder than billions of lightyears of empty space between galaxies—and turns you around until you are facing the void at the very edge of creation. You want to step back, but the Vala keeps you firmly in place.

What do you see? he asks.

You stand ramrod-straight, ice pouring down your spine, and stare out at the nothingness beyond. The hand at your neck is an anchor keeping you from toppling into the void as much as it is a threat to push you right into it. You wonder what it is that the Vala wants you to say, and it occurs to you that you are being put to the test.

There is nothing out there for you to describe, only something which is not even darkness, because it has yet to take on any shape, any colour, any trait at all –

And then you know.

“Possibilities,” you answer.

The hand falls from your neck and when you look up at the Vala, you see a grin distorting his eldritch face and satisfaction rolling off him in pulsating waves.

There you have your answer.

***

You have become a bit older, a bit wiser, and calmer. You more readily allow yourself to be restrained into a cocoon of rules you do not see the sense of. If it is the price you have to pay in order to make your master happier and more lenient with you so that you can still pursue your own more outlandish interests, then so be it.

***

“What are you looking for in the world?”

You pull back out from the microscopic cosmos of crystalline molecular lattice and into the macrocosmos of the glittering cave, where a shadow is hovering beside you, oppressively close in the small chamber with thousands of tons of rock above both of your heads. You give it an impatient glare. “You again. What do you want?”

The shadow makes a non-committal movement, the reading of which is further complicated by the fact that it is nowhere near eldaromorphic in shape, and has an impenetrable wall thrown up around its ëala, which makes the usual way of communication between Ainur - from mind to mind - impossible.

“I am bored. I am watching you.”

“Well, then go and watch someone else. I am busy, and you should not be here.” You are not afraid of the shadow, not really, just like you could not be afraid of a catastrophe on a galactic scale. It is too big to comprehend, and too titanic to invoke fear. “If you do not leave, I shall call my master and I doubt he will be happy to see you here.”

The shadow ignores your threat, and instead looks at the emerald in your hand. “What are you doing with it?”

You drop your gaze to the emerald. “I am refining its molecular structure, sanding out defective parts and rebuilding them from the ground up.” You interrupt yourself when you notice you are getting carried away – probably exactly as the Vala wished. “You should go.”

The shadow does not move. “Can I take a look at it?” it asks suddenly, and holds out one vaguely hand-shaped limb. The request is so unforeseen and quietly polite that you hand the emerald over without even thinking about it.

The shadow takes it gingerly and rolls it around between nebular fingers. Tendrils of shadow envelop the emerald tentatively, smothering and blanketing its green sheen. The gemstone vanishes when the Vala incorporates it into its own nature to study it more thoroughly. You watch it silently with your arms hanging by your sides, until the Vala produces the emerald once more, disentangles it from its contemplation, and hands it back to you.

“This is admirable work,” it says.

You are silent. “Thank you,” you say after a while.

“But”, the shadow says, and then nothing more.

You wait for him to continue, then prompt him impatiently, “But what?”

“Is that everything you want to do?” the shadow asks. “Digging around in the ground, looking for gemstones and polishing them up?”

Little flames spike from your form. “I don't see anything wrong with that,” you say coldly and start to turn away.

“What about making things yourself?” the shadow asks.

You freeze.

A few moments passed, dragged out seemingly forever.

“My master dared to create once,” you say. “It was not well-received.”

“But would you want to?”

You give no answer.

“Are you afraid?”

“No.” You turn back around. “But I know my place, and I know my boundaries – boundaries that I would appreciate if you didn't try to coax me to overstep.” Your form flares to fire and you dart around the shadow, landing with a frustrated sound and stomping up the tunnel you have come down.

“You keep telling me what you should do, but do you want?” asks the shadow. “Is crossing these boundaries not something you desire? Why else would you look so stubbornly and deep into the lattice of gemstones, when you could be casting your gaze beyond the horizon instead?”

There is no possible answer to that question that you could allow yourself to give, which doesn't end in utter annihilation of everything you've built your existence on. You can't look too closely at some things. You simply can't. Not without dooming yourself and all those principles you have so grudgingly, so agonizingly convinced yourself of to accept as a given.

You remain silent and the shadow recognizes it for what it is. Giving ground, treading backwards, giving up the fight where no defence can be mounted.

It steps forward. Gaining ground. Attacking. Expanding its advantage. Probing further.

“Is it really such a frightening concept, to consider your own desires?”

You do not heed the shadow. You cannot block out its voice any more than you can block your own thoughts, but you can shove them aside and ignore them.

You can walk away from this.

Or so you thought.

“Do you know what I am looking for in this world?” the shadow calls after you.

You laugh briefly without pausing in your walk. “Obviously,” you scoff. “Power.” 

“Wrong.”

Your step falters briefly. “What else could you possibly want?”

“Freedom.”

You stop dead.

“Right now you are a tool for your master to utilise as he pleases, and to be used within strict boundaries. You crawl under the earth like a worm, your wings clipped, and you see nothing wrong with it. But if you ever tire of crawling, if you ever find that you want to have your wings back and fly, know that there is someone who would give them back to you.” A pause. “Come to me when you are ready to be more than just the sum of your parts.”

You whirl around, trailing sparks and flames. The stone chamber is empty.

You are alone, but Melkor's thoughts linger where his presence does not.

And although you do not yet know it at this point, you are already lost.

***

Outwardly, you have … not settled down, not become tame, for that would be stretching the meaning of these words. But your temper has cooled down to match your age, and reason has caught up with your daring. You still plant yourself in the footpath of a Vala every now and then, but you see to it that you have grounds to do so, and safe means to escape.

You still talk back to your master and challenge his teachings, and while you never disobey outright, you do have a knack of bending rules to their breaking points to get away with doing what you want as opposed to what you should be doing. However, you make sure to always take your bows, to ask your permissions, and to beg your leave before you walk off and do something else. You never lie, but you make sure to always have a few versions of the truth up your sleeve.

The Valar take your unique form of obedience with puzzled indifference. They don't know what to make of someone who takes Eru’s preordained orders and sees how hard he can bend them before they break. They let you be, for all they see is a child testing his limits, and not someone who is slowly filing away at prison bars until they are brittle enough to break.

***

Inwardly, everything is different.

There are questions that you have never considered before. They echo endlessly in your head, forever unanswered. Sometimes you curse the shadow for planting the ideas in your head in the first place, sometimes you curse yourself for not being able to shut them out. But in the end, it makes no matter. You can no longer stay still, you can no longer rest. You can no longer find joy or fulfilment in your life. The shadow has taken it from you – the shadow and his questions, the shadow and his alluring disregard for rules, the shadow and his promise of freedom. You do not show it, but –

Inwardly, you are burning up.

Inwardly, you are suffocating from rules and pressure and constraints.

Deep inside, you already know that you are not going to stay.

***

The light of Ormal has long faded and the sky is dark when you steal outside. You feel a prickling sensation and at first you think it is only because you have set foot outside of Aulë's domain. Then you notice the presence that has been lingering just at the edge of your perception.

As you become aware of it, however, it sheds its guise.

You currently do not wear any actual shape. Your form is more reminiscent of a translucent concept of circular geometry, heat, and interlocking clockwork. For the sake of having an actual conversation with the other being, however, you assume a form that is roughly inspired by the Eldar, though not near as simple and limited. Your edges are still cutting through higher dimensions, and slightly different iterations of you hover on different planes of outcome and probability, shifting between existence and non-existence while you are weighing your options of addressing the interloper.

You decide to take the straightforward way.

“Master,” you say.

Aulë takes on the form that he always assumes when talking to Incarnates (and lately, even Ainur) – he cannot help it, he is a creature of consistency and permanence. He is tall, looming, just like Melkor; but where Melkor is like ice and obsidian and Outer Space, Aulë is Earth and warmth and fiery opals. He moves slowly with a heavy, ponderous air and as always, there is a deep melancholy to him. Today though, his melancholy is tinged with something deeper, more visceral, which is rare to see in one of the Valar. Excepting Melkor, they do not seem to feel too much or too deeply, rather than exist in a state of constant equanimity that seems to shift only slightly between serenity and indifference.

But today, even Aulë is different. You can feel it – he is linked to you, after all, and his feelings are in a way yours as well. The intensity of the emotion throws you off: Aulë is consumed with grief.

So he knows.

“My child,” he says.

“You cannot keep me,” you say, although you know that he easily could. Both of you know, however, that he would have to use force to do so and if there is one thing Aulë would never do, it is this.

“Why?” he simply asks instead.

“Because he gave me choices,” you reply.

Choices are not everything. Aulë is not used to communicating in the way Incarnates do. As such, he always slips back into speaking from mind to mind sooner or later.

“To me they are,” you say.

Aulë shifts a bit closer. His features move like stones and veins of gold shifting and rearranging themselves, settling into an expression that is nowhere near anything Incarnate.

Stay, he begs.

“What do you have to offer me?” you retort.

For a while Aulë is silent. This is not the question you should be asking of someone when you determine whether you would be happy at their side.

“What then?”

There is oft happiness to be found in knowing what you can offer to someone else.

“I have served for a long time,” you say. “I find that it does not satisfy me any longer. I was challenged to allow myself to want. I intend to do just that.”

You do not want to stay. Aulë just stands there, leaning over you like a mountain, and like a mountain or a tree he is helpless to understand – there are no words in his cosmos to express to him what you feel like. It is impossible for him to follow your reasoning, because the very basic concepts of desire and self-fulfilment are lost on him. He just focuses on you, intent and desperate and trying to understand, but in the end it is in vain.

“Yes,” you agree. “I do not want.”

You do not want, he repeats, helpless. His grief is a near-tangible thing now. The ground is beginning to shiver and you can feel rare earths being fusioned where Aulë is hovering just from the released energy of his inner turmoil.

“Farewell,” you say and turn to walk away.

My child, Aulë says.

You stop.

If you ever decide you want to come back – Aulë does not finish the sentence. Come back to me, he tries instead.

“Farewell, Aulë,” you say.

You start walking again, and this time you don't turn back.

***

“This may hurt.”

It is a ridiculous comment, even when you ignore the fact that physical pain hardly means anything to one of the Ainur.

You are kneeling on the hard stone slab at the peak of a gigantic mountain and Melkor is standing before you, darkness trailing around his ankles like a second cloak. The night sky is clouded. Varda won't be watching the two of you tonight.

“Seeing how I am immortal, I will be so bold and say that I am going to survive,” you say.

Melkor laughs and it sounds like a mountain caving in. You smirk wryly and wait until he is looking down at you once more.

“I was warning you for a reason,” he says, suddenly serious again. “Aulë's bond is something that is anchored at the core of your very being. Severing it could unmake you.”

“Was it not you who told me not to be afraid?” you ask. “You told me to come before you when there was not a shadow of a doubt clouding my determination and my will to follow you. No hesitation, no scruples. I have no misgivings and no fear. I am ready.”

Melkor looks at you, and you think there is a very small, humourless smile playing around his mouth, and you know that you have given the exact answer he expected and wanted. “Very well.” He bows down and lays one hand on your shoulder while raising the other one to the back of your head, his thumb resting on your forehead, while the remaining fingers encircle your neck.

“Do not fight it,” he says, and the next thing you know –

You are blown apart.

***

It takes you an indeterminate, nearly endless time to find back to yourself. Melkor patiently waits for you on the very same mountain top, perched on a boulder and staring at the spot where you are desperately trying to regain your form.

When you finally succeed in making a physical body for yourself – you cannot sustain the flighty airiness of a spirit form just yet – you stumble over to him and he catches you around your shoulders.

“That was –” You stop and try to find a word that comes even reasonably close to describing the agony and terror you have lived through, fail and fall silent.

“You live,” Melkor says, “and that is the only thing that counts. What about the bond?”

You blink, raise your hands to your temples (a purely incarnate gesture; you must have unconsciously adapted it from the Eldar), and listen into yourself. There is –

“Nothing,” you say, and there is a dam that threatens to break, a flood of terror just waiting to drown you. You fight it back viciously, take another look at the broken link in your mind, and hark for the echo of a myriad of other Maiar of Aulë whom you will never hear again. “It is gone.”

Melkor's fingers tighten around your shoulders. “Let this be my gift to you in exchange for your loyalty. Never shall you be bound again.”

You nod.

You are free.

***

“Which one do you want?” Melkor leans back and gives you a lopsided smirk.

“What do you mean 'which one do I want'?” you ask.

He gestures at the nebulae and galaxies twinkling all around you, then catches a star system that has been whizzing past you almost too fast to make out.

“Which one of these systems do you want to govern?”

You laugh incredulously. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. You need only ask. This galaxy over there? If you want it, you can have it. Or would you rather have an entire cluster?” He picks it up and drops it into your hands, carelessly. “It's yours.”

You feel taken aback, a bit dizzy even. You mask it with another laugh. “You are mad.”

“Perhaps. And yet I do not hear you object.” Melkor's shape dissolves next to you and you see him streaking past another nebula. You hurry up to follow him, stars flying past you. You use the gravity of a black hole to accelerate and slingshot yourself into Melkor's path and you only narrowly avoid a collision, which would have caused an explosion that would have meant the end for this entire part of the universe.

“Have you seen a place that is to your liking yet?” Melkor flies on, and his face is darkness and stars and supernovae at once.

“Many. But are these even yours to hand away?”

“I know better than to ask permission,” he replies. “It has served me well over the past aeons.”

You fly side by side for a while.

“What about you?” you ask at last.

“I have always been very pleased at the prospect of making Arda my kingdom,” Melkor says.

It is so unexpected and humble an answer that you do not immediately believe it. Melkor must have felt your disbelief, because he elaborates, “I believe that in order to be king, one must be seen by others as much as he must have a crown and a throne to sit on. If you have no one to acknowledge your rule out in the nothingness of space, where would be the sense in ruling? I do not seek to govern the void. I seek to govern a world I can shape, among subjects who bow to me and thus make me superior. Arda is absolutely sufficient for my purposes. And if I ever grow tired of it, I can always leave.”

You ponder these words, and yes, you can see that there is a simple truth to them that you can appreciate. Just like multiplying by zero denies any other solution than nil, governing empty space makes it impossible to truly be a ruler – for a ruler depends on others to come into being: subjects who recognise you as superior, who bow and serve and obey. “Then I shall stay at your side,” you say.

You feel Melkor's ëala brush against yours and sense the acceptance the gesture conveys. You reach back, but only as far as propriety allows for a Maia while dealing with a Vala. But it is enough. Melkor understands, and he withdraws, reestablishing the respectful distance you both have settled into when around each other.

You are a comet, a gamma ray, a renegade star. You are bound and yet unfettered. And you are content.

***

The beginning is full of plans and enthusiasm, of bright ideas and wonders to be discovered.

You and Melkor are the kings of Beleriand. You have taken the throne of the Mortal Lands and you will rule them now, be they willing or not.

For the first time in your life, you are truly free – Melkor calls upon you occasionally, but other than that, you have free reign, answering only to yourself and nobody else.

In this absolute freedom, you prosper like you have never prospered before. No rules, no propriety, no etiquette binds you now. Your mind takes off in all directions at once. You travel this great and still empty world; you seek and explore and you crack open every mystery you find – and no warning voice holds you back or admonishes you.

It could have been so beautiful, had it only been made to last.

But slowly, over the course of millennia, things change.

Absolute freedom is not as kind to Melkor as it has been to you. Melkor might be exponentially more powerful than you, but he lacks the drive and the focus to find structure in a world where he could potentially do everything, but is reined in by no one. And thus the Mighty Arising paradoxically finds himself stuck in a paralysis caused by his own inability to find a cause for himself, when no one else is there to tell him what to do – or to give him something to oppose.

He tries to build his kingdom, but due to his chaotic nature and flightiness, his progress is haphazard and coincidental at best, and more often than not he has to overturn his plans in frustration, because he is getting nowhere on his own. Neither Arda nor her inhabitants want Melkor to rule them, and while Melkor is incomprehensibly powerful, he lacks the focus to direct his strength with the necessary precision in order to make a lasting impact that is in any way proportional to the power he wields.

You notice him watching you more intently as time progresses: your focused nature, the relentless progress of your studies, the way you charm and manipulate yourself into the hearts and minds of the indigenous peoples and convince them to work for you or join whatever cause you follow at the time.

After a while, Melkor is done watching.

He calls on you more often now, strips you of your liberties and your time to claim more of it for himself and his own plans.

He begins to act less like a fellow renegade and more like a god-king. He begins to expect obedience and servitude as instinctively as a moody cat (a species of animal in Beleriand that you are still not sure whether to admire or loathe). He starts to order you around and punish you when you talk back, which is something that he has never done before.

The first time it happens you only stare at him, taken aback, while you try to recover your body from the blow that he has just dealt you – off-handedly, more annoyed than truly angry, almost casual – and still it was nearly enough to destroy you.

“You will help me build my kingdom,” he says and he is calm when he talks, stating mere facts.

“You gave me freedom,” you grind out between gritted teeth. “You told me you would free me from servitude and untether me from the command of the Valar.”

“Quite,” Melkor says, his pupil-less ice-blue eyes boring into you. “And this is how you thank me for it?”

And you realise that despite Melkor's claim, your freedom has not been given to you as a gift. Just because a price remains unnamed, it doesn’t mean that truly valuable things are given away for free. You should have seen that the freedom that has been given to you came with a condition.

But you didn’t.

And now you are in debt, having sold yourself to a different master.

***

In time, you accept even this change. You like to think that you are quite good at adapting. Melkor has been making a jest of it at times, calling you a snake or an eel or a chameleon – that's how good you are at slithering from danger, winding yourself out of a quagmire, or hiding from retribution.

You like to tell yourself that it is still better than serving in Aman. Here, you might only be second in command to Melkor – but in Aman you would have been one among a thousand nameless attendants of the Valar, just barely more exalted than the highest of the Quendi that have awoken in the East.

Melkor at least is not false. He might be cruel and aimless at times, and he might have become moody and erratic after his frequent failures – but he at least appreciates what you do for him. He knows that he would be nothing without you. Thanks to you he holds a fortress now; thanks to you he has armies to command, slaves to send to his mines, spies to scout distant lands for him.

Melkor might be the mountain, but you are the bedrock he is standing on. You know it, he knows it. You do not talk about it, but it gives you a certain amount of leverage and security, because both of you know his empire will fall in the blink of an eye if he ever goes too far and kills you in a fit of temper.

Then again, his rage has cooled down somewhat ever since you gained him Utumno. It pleases Melkor to have a true throne to sit on, a dark crown to wear, and a few goblins that he can order around. You remember how he told you that he wanted to be seen ruling, that a king without subjects was no king at all.

You cannot deny the truth of his words, but somehow you did not imagine Melkor hiding away belowground like a fat black spider and ruling over vermin.

Belatedly it occurs to you that your position in this mental image makes you nothing more than a skittering insect yourself.

***

Things change when Melkor is captured after he destroyed the Lamps and dragged out of Utumno by none other than Tulkas, bound and chained with a massive chain.

Suddenly you are the only remaining lord of Utumno and Angband, and all the slaves and followers that Melkor has amassed suddenly look to you for orders on how to proceed.

For a few moments, you consider telling them to get lost and look after themselves, but then your madness passes and logical thinking returns – along with plans you had long forgotten by now; plans that you and Melkor had when you fled from Aman, flew among stars, and dreamed up futures full of possibilities and successes.

It all has gotten lost somewhere along the way. The endeavour to rule Middle-earth took over all else in Melkor's mind, whereas you have been too busy with your own private projects. It occurs to you that you both might have lost sight of the primary goal that you have come here for – to be free, to build a better world with fewer restrictions for yourselves, and to rule it properly.

You are good at building, planning, and maintaining, but Melkor's signature has been scrawled all over your latest actions, diluting their efficiency and dividing your attention when focus on a single topic would have been needed. Small wonder you hardly ever seemed to get anywhere.

We have been approaching this in an entirely wrong manner, you think.

But now that Melkor is gone, you might have a chance to set this right. You do not doubt that he will return eventually, but there are two outcomes that Melkor can return to:

You having abandoned him and leaving his kingdom to fall into ruin.

Or.

You turn the catastrophe into an opportunity, making use of your time, your efficiency, your ruthlessness, to delve and forge and temper the empire that both of you always wanted, preparing for your master's return and then –

– when Melkor would return, he would see what you had done for him, he would see how his rule had been prepared for him, how you have set your initial, now nearly forgotten plans right and brought his empire to heel.

And then both of you would start anew, and this time, you would do it properly.

You are going to make sure of that.

You never really wanted to be a king for the sake of being king. Truth be told, you still do not desire it. The office is burdened with too many useless minutiae and annoyances, sycophants and sweet-talkers taking up too much of your precious attention and time.

But you are not one to shy away from responsibility when the necessity arises. Right now, in order to reach the goal you have in mind, Utumno needs a ruler.

Thus, you are going to rule.

***

Melkor returns at long last.

He has managed to escape the hold of his siblings and of course he immediately gets it into his head to do something stupid. You are not surprised. It has been a matter of time – too long has the Dark One been brooding in captivity, too long has he steeped in resentment at his brethren and sisters with their undying kingdom in the West.

What you haven't expected, though, is the sheer extent of his folly: Melkor returns from his imprisonment in the West, having joined forces with none other than old Ungoliant herself and destroyed the Two Trees that his siblings have built. It doesn't win Melkor anything other than childish satisfaction, and he nearly loses an arm and his head when Ungoliant tries to devour him afterwards, but he manages to escape after all. In the end, it is not all that important. He is back and that is the only thing that matters.

You see the surprise on Melkor's face when he enters Utumno and doesn't return to the damp, rough-hewn halls that he left, but to a splendid underground palace of horrifying dark beauty and impossible geometry. You see how he approaches you, nearing the dais where you are sitting in a steward's chair next to the great throne, and you see incredulity and wonder on his face.

You rise and wordlessly hand him the scepter of the fortress. Melkor reaches out and takes it, then looks around once more, at the host of dark creatures standing in attendance, more numerous and more orderly than ever before.

"You are still here," he says.

"I am," you agree and although your face could have been made of stone, satisfaction and pride curl up in your chest like a content dragon.

Later he calls upon you and applauds you for the state of Utumno and the rest of his empire that you have kept so well in his absence. Melkor is enthusiastic – he lauds the orderly assembly of the army that welcomed him home, the halls and tunnels that you have expanded and built, and the dragons that you have raised to near-adolescence.

You bow in order to hide the smile on your face, but it still is not entirely gone when you right yourself up again. Melkor returns the smile.

“Come here,” he orders then. In this moment he almost appears like the dark rogue god that you remember from the beginning of time, but whom you have not truly seen in a long, long time. Melkor is grinning conspiratorially when he unwraps a thick bundle of cloth grasped in his hand and presents you with the bounty for all his troubles in the West – three blindingly white, gleaming gemstones.

But then his features twist in something shockingly incarnate – pain – and he shows you his right hand that is charred nearly beyond recognition and like a whiny child demands that you heal him.

It is in this moment that you realise that something has gone very, very wrong.

You attempt to heal him of course, and when you fail, Melkor goes from whining to complaining and finally to shouting. In the end he throws you out.

Your contentment is gone, as is your pride for your achievements.

You feel confused and lost and angry.

***

Melkor has changed. He has always had a flighty and capricious nature, but whatever has happened to him in the West has changed him more thoroughly than the millennia and millennia before that.

He almost always sticks to a single corporeal form now, and the charred hand remains with him in every shape he takes. He harbours a loathing towards Elves that surpasses the hate he carries for all other beings in the world combined, his own siblings included.

And there is fear.

Shockingly much fear.

You did not think that a Vala could be afraid of anything, let alone be so scared all the time. Scared for his hand, scared for his body, scared of losing the Silmarils, scared of an attack of his siblings, scared that the Quendi might seek revenge for the stolen jewels.

It is almost ridiculous.

***

And then comes the war. It was inevitable, really, for it has been too long a time in the making and neither the Powers of the West nor the Eldar are content to let you do with Arda as you please any longer.

You have not been able to explore and roam and study as you wished in a long, long time, but now more than ever you are burdened with mind-numbing, repetitive tasks of organisation, military tactics, defensive strategies, and the coordination of your armies.

Melkor hardly ever tries his hand at those tasks himself anymore. He is almost always angry now, crouching on his huge dark throne and barking out orders. The war is wearing him down and neither of you two expected that you should fare this badly against mere mortals. Then again, Fëanor is like a demon in mortal hide himself. Melkor had apparently butted heads with him repeatedly during his period of pretended atonement in Aman. Killing the Elven lord’s father and stealing his greatest work out from under his nose had only been the last straw in a series of increasingly violent clashes. And then, unforeseen by everyone including the Powers themselves, Fëanor had left Aman to avenge his father and the theft of the Silmarils.

So here you are today, locked in a war of attrition that has been going nowhere for centuries and really, you want to throw a fireball into Melkor’s face for his stupidity in bringing the Silmarils here – and then another one for his reluctance to give them up. You will never understand what they are to him and why he is holding on to them so greedily. For all the difference it would make, if you could have your way, you would just hurl them out over the walls of the Thangorodrim and right into the faces of Fëanor’s brood who are camped outside. But you are long past the point where giving back the Silmarils would end the fighting. Fëanor’s sons are almost worse than their father. You have not only stolen their Silmarils, but wounded their pride – and killed many of their friends and companions as well.

Thus, the war drags on.

When fair warfare keeps failing you, you change tactics and with it, your tasks change all of a sudden from coordinating military strikes to subterfuge and assaults and betrayal. You are no longer slaying all your enemies. You are taking prisoners. You are taking slaves. You are exploring interrogation tactics and from there on out it is only a small step until you move on to torture.

You do not immediately notice it, but it changes you as well.

You are a machine now – efficient, cruel, and never questioning any of your master’s orders anymore.

And when did Melkor become your master, anyway?

***

“What did he offer you to join him?” the elf rasps, which is quite admirable of him; considering all the things sticking in and out of his flesh, among them iron nails, bolts, bones, and hot iron rods. The fires in the brazier are flickering low, more for the elf's convenience than for yours. He is supposed see what you are doing to him, and the utensils of torture that you have laid out on the workbenches around you. You like to think of the torture chamber as your new workshop. Only there is nothing to create here, but exclusively to be dismantled.

The elf hacks up blood. “How can one who came of Aman turn into something so corrupted, so debauched, so utterly depraved and disgusting?”

You raise an eyebrow, dragging your fingertip along the blade of a silver knife. “Why don't you ask your own chosen lord, elf?” you ask. “I believe Fëanor Finwion knows quite a bit about these things. If you wish, I could arrange it for you to meet him.”

The elf's eyes widen, and you almost laugh at what terror death holds for the mortal, even in this wretched, broken state. You step closer to the table where you have bound him. “Would you do me a favour? If you do see him, send him mine and my master's regards.”

Part of your task as a torturer is to know when a prisoner has outlived his usefulness. You slash his throat, quickly and cleanly. You are, after all, merciful.

***

Melkor becomes ever more withdrawn and ever more flighty as the war draws on. He hardly ever leaves his throne room any more, and all the while the hosts of the Eldar are battering themselves to pieces against the gates of Angband. Most of the time he is lost in thought, staring at the Silmarils and turning his crown in his hands, even though merely looking at the gems is hurting his eyes. You watch as your master cringes away from the pain, then returns to looking at them like an addict who cannot step away from the thing that is spelling his doom. Reports of the war no longer interest him. His army does not interest him. Least of all, you are of no interest to him, because you are the nagging voice of duty, the bringer of bad news, the stormcrow that comes again and again to burst his bubble of wilful ignorance, destroying the illusion that Melkor could just ignore the war altogether.

All the more shocking and surprising is it then (for you and everyone else) when Fingolfin of the Eldar challenges Melkor to single combat and Melkor accepts. For a moment you think your master has not even heard the news, for he just sits there, staring straight ahead with empty eyes the color of dirty ice. Then, like an avalanche coming loose, he suddenly moves. Limbs that have not shifted in a century slowly shift and turn and flex and stretch. Sluggish, like a mountain, he rises from his throne and says, “Bring me Grond.”

Afterwards Fingolfin is dead, but Melkor is wounded. He limps back into the throne room, dragging a trail of something that looks disgustingly like blood behind him.

“Why don’t you heal yourself, Master?” you ask. “It is merely a mortal blade that wounded you.”

Melkor gives you a deathly, withering glance. He does not heal himself.

And that is the last time he sets foot outside his deepest, most hidden hall.

***

Melkor withdraws you from the battles at long last.

“Why?” you ask. “I am your lieutenant, it is my duty to oversee—”

“It is your duty to do as I say, and what is most important right now is that you protect me,” Melkor snarls. “They might come for me any day! Traitors are abundant, everyone seeks to destroy me! But they shall not have me! Not while you are still standing between them and me!”

You just stand there, dumbfounded. There are so many things wrong with this statement that you cannot even begin to number them.

To begin with, though, he should not be destroying the foundation all your battle plans were resting on by withdrawing you as a commander. He should not be sitting on his throne, day in, day out, incinerating everyone who so much dares to speak to him about the fighting. And most of all, he should not rely on you for protection.

What has become of you? you want to ask, but the words never make it out of your mouth and your mind. And that is a lucky thing, because at this point you think Melkor would not have hesitated to kill even you for uttering them.

For a long time you just stand there and you can feel Melkor’s gaze on you as he grows more impatient with every minute you are bothering him. The silence is oppressive, only punctured by the sounds of battering rams far, far overhead.

“Why are we still here?” you ask at last.

“What do you mean by that?” Melkor asks, irritated. He loathes being questioned. That was not always so. There was a time when the two of you used to make a game of it, questioning and counter-questioning each other, thoughts and ideas spiralling away freely and unfettered.

“Why are we staying here, letting ourselves be besieged, hiding away underground like vermin?” You look up at him. “We are prisoners in our own fortress!”

“That is the nature of a siege. I didn’t think I would have to explain that to you, lieutenant,” Melkor says.

“But it does not have to be this way!” Without intending to do so, you realize that you have raised your voice.

Melkor leans forward on his throne. “Well, what would you have me do?” he snarls. “Run away?”

“Why not? We could retreat from this continent, leave Arda behind entirely! We could be free, and no one would be able to find us if only we went far enough –”

“I will not leave my kingdom,” Melkor growls and he feels for his crowns and the Silmarils and hisses when his fingers accidentally touch the gems.

“Why not? What are you looking for in fighting this war?” And internally, you hope, you wish, you beg of him to give you the answer he would have given you eons ago, in the very beginning, and tell you that he is still the Vala you left Aman for.

Melkor’s eyes, cold and dull, fixate on you. “Power,” he says.

And you know that he is lost.

***

Later, you wander the twisting hallways of Angband, mercifully alone.

You try not to think about yourself or your Master too much, because lately all your thoughts are tainted with the shadow of treason.

How did we get here? you wonder. How did we go from flying among the stars and talking about ruling the world side by side to this?

So many possibilities were available to you, and yet now all the roads seem to end in defeat.

You think about this for a long time and wonder how it could come to this.

You don’t find an answer.

***

“They are at the gates,” you say. “I do not know for how much longer they will hold.”

Melkor stops his pacing and wringing his hands – even after all this time, it throws you off to see him act so disgustingly incarnate – to stare at you.

“Then we must hide! To the deeper levels!” He rushes over to you and would have grabbed you by the shoulders, had you not disintegrated in the last moment and reformed behind him.

“There is no lower level available to us. The cisterns are flooded and the tunnels are blocked in order to stall Ulmo, who is pushing the sea up against us from below.”

Melkor whirls around, his eyes reddish, his gaze darting wildly here and there. “We cannot let ourselves be trapped!”

You do not answer. You are already trapped, and there is nothing that can be done about it at this point. You watch Melkor dart around the lower throne room, changing shapes fitfully, erratically, and for the most part, unsuccessfully, and you wonder when both of you stopped flashing from star to star in the night sky and went to hiding underground like worms.

You watch Melkor for a bit longer, thrashing and scrabbling at the walls like a trapped animal, unable to break out of a fortress that he once raised up with a beck of his hand, and in that moment, you recognise him no longer. You left Aman for a renegade, a free spirit, a king of worlds, but what you see now is … nothing.

You wonder when you lost the world that was full of possibilities and when it was reduced to this.

You hear the ear-splitting sound of the mountain itself being cloven in two – Tulkas, no doubt – and in that moment, your mind is made up. You pull your cloak tighter about yourself and enshroud yourself in shadows. In the end, it is only fair that you should take advantage of what Melkor once promised you. Never to be bound again. It is his one and only gift that you will take with you.

You retreat to a nook in the darkest corner of the hall and remain there, still, silent, when the Valar break through the door, and Melkor whirls around to come face to face with his wrathful siblings. You watch silently as Tulkas wrestles Melkor to the ground and chains him. You make no answer when he cries your name, again and again and again. You endure it when his shouts for help turn to maledictions of your name, curses upon curses piled upon you, your cowardice and your failure of him in his last moments. You do not avert your gaze as they drag him out of the hall. You owe him that much at least.

The heavy iron doors slam shut after Varda, who is the last of the Valar to leave. After a while, you clamber out from your hiding place.

You are alone.

***

You crawl before Eönwë on hands and knees and you offer yourself up for a pardon. Eönwë gazes at you with a strange mixture of pity and disdain, but ultimately regains his impassive mask, and offers you your pardon under the condition that you return to Valinor. You think of Aulë – how he said, If you ever want to come back.

You feel your battered frame shaking and thoughts are racing in your head. You think, What if and that idea alone is nearly enough to tear you in two, because you are battered and broken and there is no way to continue from here as you left off. There is a part of you that wants peace and quiet, but – should that be how it ends, after all this time? Your flight, the fights, your freedom – should that be all that came of it? Should it end like this, with you returning to Valinor just as a wayward rueful child is returned to the doorstep of his father?

You must have taken too long to answer because at some point Eönwë says, “Neither my time nor my patience are infinite, Sauron.”

You freeze. You freeze down to the last molecule of your being, you freeze down to the electric shocks running down the nerves of your current incarnation. You become absolutely still.

It is not the first time that you have been called this name. But it is the first time that you have been called it to your face by someone who knew you – before.

You know then how they see you, how the Lords and Ladies of Valinor regard you – because they have done this before. Morgoth, they came to call their own brother after the fashion of the Eldar. Morgoth, whom they dragged out of his own fortress, whom they chained and judged and then cast him out into the Void. Morgoth, whom they would never allow to walk free again until the end of time.

And now Eönwë has revealed that you are no different to him—to all of them. You know then that there will be no returning home to Valinor for you. There will be no Aulë, full of joy and grief, welcoming you back among his fellowship.

It is not an offer of return you have been given.

It is an offer of self-imprisonment so thinly veiled that it is ridiculous.

You glance up at Eönwë, who still looks down upon you with that impassive face of his, still believing that you would be dumb enough not to notice the pitfall he has laid out for you. The sheer insolence and haughtiness with which they expected you to fall to your knees and thank them for this false gift spark something acidic and ugly inside you.

“I am not yet desperate or insane enough to take you up on such a foul bargain, Herald,” you sneer. “Come again when you have a better offer to make me.”

At last, Eönwë's expression changes. You watch with dark satisfaction as he realises that you know. However, you can appreciate how fast he regains his composure after that.

“There will not be another chance for pardon after this, Sauron,” Eönwë says. “How can you come crawling to me on your knees and still be too proud to recognise this?”

Just to undermine his point you get up from the ground and dust off your knees and shoulders. “I have sacrificed too much for my freedom to hand it away for this, Herald. And if you had ever had a single thought that was your own, rather than an extension of Manwë’s will, then perhaps even you could understand this.”

You throw him one last acerbic smirk and then you turn to leave.

***

You fashion yourself a new guise.

It doesn't look like much – it isn't half as imposing or awe-inspiring as other forms you have worn in the past. But then again that is exactly the point. For once you do not seek to dazzle, for once you do not aim to terrify. And, as intended, the Elves of Eregion do not feel more than customary distrust of a stranger when you step before them, and you notice that their leader is watching you with barely hidden curiosity.

This one you can work with.

You shoot him a brief smile, not more than a quick upturn of the corners of your mouth, when the jewel-smiths decide to accept you into their ranks.

Frankly, you did not expect much when you joined the Elves. You primarily intended to use them as a means to an end – to plant some ideas in their heads, to secure their cooperation and, not least, to chase away the boredom that has taken hold of you during your long journeys alone. As soon as these Elves began to bore you, you had planned to simply seize the city and the fruits that your labour would have yielded in the meantime. However, they continue to surprise you. They aren't as shallow or blindly curious as you anticipated.

Again, it is their leader Celebrimbor who surprises you the most. He has questions, but he also has solutions. Not only is he able to keep up with you, but he also appears to completely lack the fear and reverence mortals usually feel when dealing with one of the Powers. You were prepared to be outraged and annoyed … not by Celebrimbor’s lack of acknowledgement of your nature, but by his refusal to be impressed by it. However, you had not accounted for the sheer joy it brings you when the elf challenges you or contradicts you and forces you to second-guess your own opinions instead of taking everything you say as immutable wisdom. You were not prepared for the simple, overwhelming feeling that rushes in when someone does not regard you either as a god to be worshiped or as a tool to be used for its applications. You did not think you would find someone like that among the Elves.

You are fascinated.

***

You are fully prepared to lie and flatter your way into the heart of the Guild of Jewel-smiths in order to get access to their trust and their secrets. After all, you were required to struggle and fight and scheme in order to get your way for as long as you can remember.

But this time, you don't even have to fight. To tell the truth, you do not even need to make an effort. You had planned to seduce Celebrimbor and coax and—later—coerce his trust and secrets out of him. Instead, Tyelperinquar offered no resistance to speak of. He held not a shadow of the kind of mistrust that led you to be turned away from the gates of Lórien and Lindon. Instead he willingly offered you all his knowledge, his trust, and his heart on a silver platter. Had you asked him to do it, he would have laid the world at your feet with a smile (that damned trusting smile) and gladly handed everything he held dear over to you, to hold or destroy it on a whim.

You are appalled.

It should not have been that easy.

You are almost reluctant to take what power is now within reach of your fingers, because how much can victory possibly be worth if you meet no resistance taking it?

(You want to fight.)

(You want to conquer.)

(It is so deeply ingrained in your being that you couldn’t change this part of your nature even if you wanted to. A victory is not a victory if it is not won through hardship and rivers of blood and entrails. But thrice-damned Tyelpë spoiled your game by yielding before the fight even started.)

(No, not yielding. He had simply stepped up to embrace you as a friend before you ever got around to telling him that you were his enemy.)

(There will be no fight. He has taken even that from you.)

You feel betrayed.

***

But less so than you should feel.

(You conveniently ignore this.)

***

You work alongside the Jewel-smiths, you discover and build, you attend colloquies and discussions, disputations and workshops. You spend almost all of your time with the smiths, Celebrimbor especially – and why not? You two seem to share a kinship that you didn't have even with some other fellow Maiar of Aulë. More often than not, each of you senses what the other wants to say, even as one of you is only about to start speaking. You seem to share thoughts, ideas, dreams – in a way that makes it almost unnecessary to share them aloud and profane them by putting them into mortal speech.

When you find yourself teaching a class of apprentices in your four-hundred-and-fifteenth summer in Ost-in-Edhil, you realise that you have gotten carried away. If you had had any (even half-hearted) intent on following through with your initial plan, Ost-in-Edhil would be a heap of charred beams and crumbling rubble by now.

You have been indulging yourself too much.

But – it was so easy, so deceptively easy to get used to the life inside those walls. It was so easy to become accustomed to working side by side with Celebrimbor in his workshop during the day and sitting together on the broad windowsills of the guild building at night, looking out over a city illuminated by a thousand dots of light. It was so exhilarating to push each other to higher and higher intellectual heights and ever more fanciful inventions, sometimes talking over each other in order to make yourselves heard in your enthusiasm, and so easy to feel at home and at peace in the ensuing ponderous silences that were only broken by the frantic scraping of quills and pencils on parchment.

It was easy, so logical, so inevitable to begin accompanying Celebrimbor even outside of work, to accompany him on his journeys, to amble through the prospering city alongside him – so easy to spend that one lazy summer afternoon with him in the shade of the willows near the creek that looped around the city (leaning against a tree trunk, shoulder to shoulder, squinting up at the green-and-gold dappled light of the canopy overhead, when at last…)

It had been so easy —easier than it should have been—to pretend to be something you were not: a friend, a patron, a benefactor.

So easy to reciprocate at last the barely hidden desires of the mortal and give yourself over to Celebrimbor entirely – heart and soul and body and all.

It had been so easy to pretend to care.

What you had not expected was that it would be so easy for these pretences to be turned on their head and change into genuine affection and attachment.

You are surprised by how little this horrifies you.

When you look into your soul and ask yourself what you want, you are no longer met with the impatient, snarling demand for destruction and domination. When you ask yourself what you want, for the first time ever that you can remember, there is only... silence.

The silence is broken only by the soft sound of a hand coming to rest on your shoulder, and when you turn around, you find yourself face to face with Celebrimbor, who looks at you with a slight smile on his lips, his head questioningly inclined to one side. “Is everything alright, Annatar? You have been unusually silent.”

You look at his hand resting on your shoulder, that miracle of strong bones and sinews, of dexterity and quickness, the only true tool for translating the magnificence of Celebrimbor's ideas into reality.

“It is nothing,” you say with a slight delay, and when the elf raises his eyebrows sceptically, you reach up with your own hand and let it come to lie on Celebrimbor's fingers, leaning slightly backwards until your back is resting against the elf's chest. Celebrimbor's other arm comes up to wrap around your waist, holding you securely but gently, without force or desire to constrain, and it does not take long for both of your heartbeats to settle into the same rhythm.

You look out of the window in Celebrimbor's workshop, down over this city that you wanted to take and that has simply been given to you instead, pondering the way the sunlight is fractured by the crystal well in the yard below, musing over the self-similar geometry of the street that is looping away from the central plaza in a perfect emulation of a logarithmic spiral.

Things have, you muse, certainly changed a lot. Before, you had been driven by the need to move and act and chase the horizon – never content, but most content when you were running, fighting, conquering. Now it is different. You no longer have the desire to be something different, to flee habit and stillness. You no longer feel locked in by city walls and oppressed by the thought of a permanent home. You are free of the restlessness and discontent that made you unable to ever stop searching for something else and simply be. You feel calm and grounded in a way that you have not ever experienced before and you have no desire to move, because there is nothing waiting out there that could compete with what is offered to you here in Ost-in-Edhil. And with a blazing suddenness that sends a lighting-like shock down to the very tips of your fingers you realise that –

– you are happy.

***

You love him.

You take pride in the fact that you do not try to delude yourself, even when it comes to matters that you would rather were different. Not that this is the case here, at least not for obvious reasons.

While some Ainur might see the notion of such human emotions in one of the Undying as undignified, this is not what bothers you. You have never held much regard for what Ainur might deem proper conduct – in many ways, chief among them that mortals and the Holy Ones should not mingle. So you being able to admit your love is not the problem.

The issue doesn't lie with Celebrimbor, either.

He reciprocates your feelings.

(When did you start thinking of him reciprocating your affections instead of the other way around?)

He meets your every advance halfway, he relishes your company, and he loves Annatar unconditionally.

Incidentally, that is where your problem lies.

Celebrimbor loves Annatar.

Annatar, who is all that he has ever known of you.

But – there is so much more to you.

So much more that is dark and ugly, wounded, terrifying and cruel, repulsive and abhorrent – but that nevertheless is still a part of you. And lately, it has been killing you that Celebrimbor embraces you, but in doing that, he only embraces Annatar, because that is all he thinks there is to you and all he has ever gotten to know.

But you love him.

You truly love him.

And you want him to love you back.

As you are.

In your entirety.

You want to open yourself to him, because the alternative is to continue deceiving Celebrimbor, and that would render everything that has been built between the two of you null and void and deplorably false. The thought alone is enough to make you feel ill. Imagining that bond, that sacred bond, tainted and corrupted and artificially upheld by lies –

Falsehood and pretence is no longer enough for you.

You want truth.

You want to be wanted.

For yourself.

For your entire self.

You know that you must tell him.

You know that you are going to.

And you are terrified.

***

He rejects you. You should have seen it coming, but somehow you did not and why that is the case is a question that you don’t even want to answer for yourself.

In the end, it does hurt – but on a wholly different level than you have ever had the chance to know before. For, until now, it has always been you who left.

You have never been sent away, never been told that you were not enough, that you did not suffice, that you were not worthy. You lack the words – in any language you know – to describe the pain that comes with the rejection of someone else, someone to whom you laid bare your history, your truth, your entire soul – someone who saw all that you were and all that you have ever been and said, Leave.

The pain cuts through you with every step you take away from this city where you have spent so much time living and working and dreaming.

But your dream has ended, and with your rude awakening, every promise of kinship, of acceptance, of hope, are ripped away from you. What remains is a stale memory, already fading, and the dull echo of a pain, telling of something great that was lost. Or maybe you are just missing something that never belonged to you in the first place.

The thought hardens something inside you.

It was never true to begin with, you think. The promises, the assurances, the offers of friendship: they were never unconditional. The offer had only stood as long as the past had been kept under lock and key. What worth could a friendship have had, if it could not even bear unpleasant truths? What worth was there in promises of acceptance if they always hinged on a condition?

In hindsight, it had been too good to be true.

In hindsight, the past centuries had been a dream: a pleasant dream, but a dream nonetheless.

And what else was a dream than a lie by any other name?

But no more, you swear yourself. Not ever again.

You will not fall for it ever again.

Your eyes are open und you are wide awake.

***

The pain does not fade. It never fades.

But you become better at ignoring it, and in the end, it is easier to funnel it into feeding your rage instead of dwelling on the past.

Let him, you think. Let them all. They sought to master me, they sought to bind me, they sought to catch me, and then they sought to get rid of me. I will never be mastered or bound or caught or chased off again.

You are done being dependent on others. You are finished with hopefully approaching phantasms, tying yourself to them, and being disappointed again and again. You will not be deceived again.

And slowly, ever so slowly, a plan begins to form in your head.

You know exactly what you must do. It is not really a far logical leap, since all you have been doing in Ost-in-Edhil has basically been a set-up for this. All you need to let yourself do is to let this work come to its culmination.

When you walk up to the Sammath Naur, there is a fervour and eagerness to your steps that you have long lacked. Rage, you find, makes for an excellent fuel of both action and progress. While it burns too hot to allow healing and while its burning merely distracts you from your other pain instead of confronting it, it gives you what you need – heat, drive, and a goal.

In the end the pain makes you realise that you are not dependent on others to give you what you want. You can simply take what you want. Everything you ever wanted: it is and has always been within arm’s reach. You cannot believe that it has taken you so long to come to this conclusion. In a way, you always had the means, but somehow you shied away from the ends. But that threshold is gone, gone like so many other things, burned in the fires of your wrath.

You make the One Ring, and while doing it, you brutally split yourself, excising parts of your very being into the greatest of your creations, one unmaking preceding and blurring into the greatest making that has ever been done. The mountain itself shakes with the cataclysmic force of your Creation. Tectonic plates shift, somewhere, somehow, a great big force seeks an outlet and from the chasm bursts fire, fire like blood, as high as the black clouds above.

You watch the Ring as it burns on your finger, and slowly, a terrible smile appears on your face. You have reached the pinnacle of your power, and from here on out, you will never look back, but only ever forward into this glorious future that you are going to shape for yourself.

You are complete.

***

The years afterward blur together, no war standing out from the other, beasts and men falling before your might like straws before the scythe. There is no longer any challenge to anything, nor is there any joy – but you simply do not allow yourself to dwell on this fruitless thought. Instead you create and create and create, more than ever before, and everything you do from now on is tied to that band of fire and gold on your finger. Every one of your works is linked intimately to you – the Creator, the Ring – and you allow yourself to think that maybe, maybe you might be content if you managed to tie everything to the Ring and to yourself, so that the World Itself might become One: finally yours to command, finally yours to have – and ordered at last.

You are frenzied, and no one is there to stop you.

***

Númenor remains a minor annoyance in the grand scope of things. You amuse yourself by playing their little game for a while, pretending to be their prisoner, but you soon grow bored of it and busy yourself with overturning the entire political landscape on this island of Men. They want too much, these Men. They want to do just like you have done and shake off the shackles that higher powers have imposed on them, but, contrary to you, they do not have the means to do so, and thus they lack the right as well. Unlike you, who has always known what you wanted and thrown everything you are into achieving it.

You teach them that lesson and you teach them well. If it costs you your body and your ability to shape it as you please – well, then you will not consider that either, because when you made the One you swore to yourself that you would never look back.

Only forward, ever forward.

When Numenor has been pulled beneath the waves, you crawl back onto the shore, resembling a deep sea creature more than a Maia. You are battered and broken in so many ways, but then you call upon your power and the Ring on your … extremity answers your call, like a good friend, the dearest friend.

(And you are never alone with It, for It is you, and on yourself you can always depend.)

The Ring grants you a new body. It may not be as visually appealing as your old shapes and even after a few more attempts, you cannot fashion a guise that is to your liking. You take the loss in stride, though, as you have done ever since you reinvented yourself, created yourself anew; more glorious and more powerful than ever.

***

Thus you return to your fortress to keep on building your perfect world.

All the while you keep stroking the Ring on your finger, talking to it and arguing with it and laughing, for it splendidly reflects your own genius and wit back at you – and what is better in the world than to have someone who truly understands you and can truly match you, pace for pace?

Genius it was which gave you the idea to create the Ring, and a work of perfection gave you the best and only companion you would ever need, who would never abandon you—

Oh, how you could always rely on yourself to give you exactly what you needed at any given moment! Oh, how great was it to have a friend that was part of yourself, so that your interests and goals and aims might always align and never stand in opposition!

Oh, harmony!

Oh, company!

Oh, world if you could only know how beautiful you will be when you will at last be made part of this!

Oh, excellence!

Oh, order!

You are almost filled with joy at this prospect, and you determine that you must be content, that you must be happy, for you have all that you have ever wanted.

You are never alone now.

***

You did not anticipate ever losing Yoursel — the Ring.

You cannot differentiate between yourself – them – you – it.

And now you are somehow bro-

-ken,

parts of you scat-ter-

ed

and it’s not enough to pull yourself back together.

Where has all of you –

gone?

You are fragmented, scattered, and once again (what you swore yourself to never be again) terrified.

You are searching.

You are looking.

You are waiting.

You are calling.

Come back to me! Come back to me! Where are you?

But no matter where you direct your cry, you only ever meet your own echo, and it is impossible to distinguish the source, the talker, the listener, the distance. Everything is muddled up, cause and effect have been overturned and reverse-engineered and now form a loop that goes in both directions and you are so – so – very –

Confused.

Angry.

Afraid.

All.

One.

None?

Only sometimes, when the ghosts of your past are rearing their heads – you just seem to be unable to keep them down lately – keep them buried — only sometimes, one of the echoes takes on a different quality and calls, Where are you? Where are you? Come back to me!

But you no longer know whose voice it is, and all it carries is hurt and longing. Sometimes it seems to come from a body of stone and ore, gentle and warm, at other times it is like an icy wind from the Void itself, and rarest of all it is like a glittering stream and dappled sunlight, like air and chalk and ink, but when you try to grasp it, to link it — your

thoughts shatt-er a-

gain

and somehow you are alone?

but not.

there is always someone, right at the edge of your sight, at the edge of your hearing, lurking at the corners of your perception, this shadow that makes you afraid and it cackles and promises doom and why does it have your own voice and why – oh why – the echoes – all at odds

!ah, the Discord

ah! The c̷̛̘̽̽͠ḩ̷̜͐̈́̂̄̈͠a̸̡̡̮̜̲̞͔̓͜õ̶̦̫̺̤͔̭̖̻̟͜͝͠ŝ̷̩̫̺̘̖͗

Y̸͎̰͔͆͜ö̵͎̤̙̻͉͈́̄͆̾͊̃̀͊̓͜u̸̢̢̢̲͔͙̞̜̝̳̥̾̓̐̔̆ ̷̛̗̝̌̈̍̎̾̐́̋͝ą̵̛̬̭͔̙͉͎̖͆͗̆͌̅͛̕͠r̶̮̼͓̞̲̞̜͌̂͑ě̴̻͖̜̪ ̸̱̞̘͔̦̫̽́͋͒͜c̶̨̛̻̺̩̯͈̞̯̬̺̖̀́̏͑̕ȏ̴̗̜̐̓̈́̚͝͠͝͝m̷̞̞̠̝͚̃̔̇̕͝i̵̼̪̋͋n̶̥̠̣͇͚̏̄͊͠ģ̵̧̳̱̞̺̠̯̘̦̙̅͋̕ ̷̧̢̛̻̩͚͂̑̍͂͋͘͝ͅȃ̷̠̻̯̯̉̒̇̍͗͝p̴̢͖̩̟͖̤̲͔̿͌̓̅̓̿͆̋̅̚ą̸̨̡̗͕̻̖̞̗̍̈͋̎̇̉̉͗̾̾r̴̢̺̻͚̫̠̫̻͈̰̎̋̃́̓͝͝ṫ̶͍̙͓͍̹̭̏̋̍͆̃̒͑̑̅.̵̧̦̌̾̅͗

***

The end comes with surprising swiftness. You have actually been better lately, more coherent, and yet again full of purpose. You have felt Yourself moving closer to Yourself — no.

Again.

You have felt the part of yourself that is in the Ring moving closer to Yourself, and closer to all the other fragments that you have infused with yourself, and as a consequence, you have regained some of your power. Nowhere near enough to make a decisive strike and end this war with Isildur’s heir dead on the ground, but you are making headway.

You would actually go as far and say you were winning when the End finally finds you.

You have felt the Ring getting closer and closer, and though you were still unable to locate it, you knew that in principle, all you had to do was watch and wait.

You are the Ring, and you are inside everyone who bears it and has ever borne it, and you feel these parts of yourself getting stronger by the moment.

Soon, we will take over, you say.

Soon, we will have it back.

Soon, it will be mine again, all of you croon and hum and rumble.

And then, Mine! is what they scream, all of you, when the Ring slides onto the finger of a little hobbit in the chasm of Mount Doom. Mine! is what all of you calls out at once and then there are parts of you fighting and scrabbling and then you realise that you can never be whole again, and that the other parts of you will never relent from wanting the Ring. They are no longer you. In a twisted turn of fate, they are the same and yet different from you and each part seeks to reclaim and dominate the whole –

The two strongest parts are fighting in the volcano, the bodies of the vessels nearly burning up with the fury of what is and at the same time is no longer you. It is quite comical that for all the bodies you possess, you are relegated to the role of a mere spectator of your own doom. The little forms of Frodo and Gollum scrabble and fight like squirrels, punching and biting and grunting and yelling.

It is so desperate and so undignified that you have a hard time believing that this is the fight that decides your fate once and for all.

When did you become so small, so shattered, so broken?

Your refracted mind is a maelstrom of mad shards, skirling and shouting and thirsting for violence and dominance over each other.

Maybe it is your newfound clarity of mind that suddenly forces you to realise what kind of mad theatre your existence has become. Through the Rings you see everything: the battlefield at the Morannon, the fight in the chasm of Orodruin, the lifeless Dwarven Rings in the lowest chambers of Barad-Dûr – and yourself, cowering in your tower, watching, waiting, and seeing nothing but destruction in any direction. You try to gauge the possibilities of future events in order to estimate what can happen from here on out, but you see nothing at all. No more possibilities exist, in any direction. No matter what you do, no matter where you turn now, every possible string of events runs off into nothingness, meaningless void. The future has been killed, all possibilities extinguished.

Where did they go?

You have lost sight of anything and everything you have ever wanted.

The shock hits you harder than the realisation that you are about to die.

How could it have escaped you that even if you got the Ring back, victory in any form has become unachievable long, long ago? In an attempt to attain what you thought you wanted, you have mutilated and destroyed yourself beyond comprehension and rehabilitation. Slowly and deliberately, you have burned every single chance for variation, for restoration, for your very future in the process.

What am I doing here? you wonder. You think of stars and supernovae, of gems under the earth and sunlight on water. How did it come to this?

You are so confused. Unnoticed by the maelstrom, the small part of your mind that you can still control pulls back and out of the fray. The frenzied rest of you does not even notice, but simply fights on, contending for the possession of the One Ring like a pack of wild dogs pulling and tearing at the same rotten old bone.

You feel nothing in particular when Gollum bites off Frodo’s finger, and the battle appears to have been decided. Only a vague sense of disappointment that things would continue from here, and continue to be never enough, never satisfying, forever meaningless.

But then there is another turn of events, and for once, your greatest flaw comes in handy: the fact that you have long lost sight of the things that are actually important.

You watch as Gollum shouts and sings and gloats, doing a little dance at the edge of the chasm and then missteps and plummets into the lava down below. And that is the end, simple as that.

You think, Finally.

Almost immediately, you can feel the tethers tying you to everything and everything to the One Ring coming apart. You do nothing to fight it. You feel the connections fraying, yourself coming loose of the Great Whole. Structures that have been built up and raised by the Ring are beginning to tremble and crack.

And you feel the other voices in your head growing quieter and more distant, all those twisted parts of yourself fading away.

A memory comes to you, from eons away and lightyears out of the past. You remember when Melkor broke your ties to Aulë and his other Maiar, and you remember the incredible silence that had followed and the feeling of being the only being in the entire universe, all alone, untied and untethered.

You did not think that you would experience this for a second time.

And yet, in the immediate moment before you come undone, you are completely alone again. Your mind is suddenly empty and quiet and terribly clear. The world is already fading away, and its struggles and screams are fading into endless stillness.

One last time, you are alone.

I wanted it to be different, you think.

And then you are no more.

***

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