For AzureSkye23, my good friend. Happy Birthday, Skye! :) This story also references one of Skye's brilliant concepts: that Sauron and Gandalf are brothers, for those whom that will confuse. ;)

I.

I made the mistake of summoning her.

The beating of black wings against the still air of what is now my throne-room denotes the messenger's arrival.

"Thuringwethil." I try to smile but fail.

She was beautiful once, before novelty seduced her into the darkness. Were not we all? She could not have known that those same alluring shadows would destroy her. All it took was one mistake; our master leapt at the opportunity. But the new fána he formed for her was unsatisfactory.

So he gifted her to me: a failed experiment, a broken toy held together by the strings of a cruel puppeteer. Her soul suffocates within the monster, and I look on in powerless pity.

"My lord-" Such a raw and high-pitched voice pains even its listener. "I came as soon as I could."

My gaze quickly absorbs the legs and body of an emaciated rodent, the iron-grey fur, the delicate pinions culminating in unnatural metal claws. But the hair, it could almost belong to one of the Children of Eru; the maimed face, to a being free.

Almost- if not for the mats of neglect in those ebony tresses, the overgrown canines stained scarlet, the feral eyes that betray little spark of thought. And a rivulet of wet blood traces its way out from the parted lips.

"I see you stopped for dinner."

"I needed strength for the journey."

"I would have fed you here, you know." I bend to the foot of the throne, dip my finger in the silver basin resting there; the digit drips crimson as I remove it. "What if I had needed you sooner?"

"You would have nagged my thoughts until I arrived." The tilt of the creature's head and the tone of its voice carry a comical amount of pride.

But I suppress my amusement; in her place, I too would cleave fast to the dregs of my dignity. "Indeed," is my thoughtful reply. The bat remains silent before me, head now bowed, waiting. "Since we are then in no hurry, how are the stars tonight?"

She glances up, puzzlement contorting the scarred features. "My lord?"

"I asked how the stars seemed to you. What were they like? Dim, distant? Do they shine brightly enough to see by? Tell me; there is all the night before us."

She was once among Varda's servants, a folk aglow with an inner sheen. On dark wings now she forever mounts the heavens, shrouding the very stars she helped to craft. She is her own antithesis.

"I- I cannot remember," the creature stutters. "My eyes were for the ground alone."

"Then you could see that ground, I deem; they must be shining fiercely. How I miss them, how I miss them..." The wist in my tone does not intend to mock, yet the bat's dull, black eyes flash briefly with a sudden fire. An ambiguous smile is my apology-there are some things of which one cannot speak.

"For what have you called me here?" demands the shrill voice, cracking. "Is there no errand for me?"

"There is always an errand for you. Go hence to Melkor; tell him this: the elvish defenses at Minas Tirith have been broken."

II.

The argent stump frowns up at me; its jagged edges barely perforate the dying grass around it. Surrounded by a short, stone wall, here lies what is left of Nimloth. The dark smoke of her burning has finally dissipated, cast far and wide by Manwë's four winds. That was the end of an era.

I smile down at the argent stump; I know my twisted lips must be pallid from exposure to the frigid air. Even this chill shows that I have succeeded here: the Valar have abandoned the land of their gift-but I am not to blame. Númenor has been decaying for millennia; I am merely a catalyst, hastening the inevitable process.

The lifeless stump before me and the stream of grey smoke ascending from the temple dome to kiss the ashen sky are the climax, not the introduction. Will this story end happily? That's a matter of perspective.

I shiver, drawing a burgundy mantle closer around my fána against an insistent breeze. A smattering of brown leaves is tossed through the air, a remnant that fell from downed Nimloth's evergreen boughs-a dozen swirling trophies that name me victor of the day. This must be the look of a Valar-forsaken land-

Sudden footsteps resonate behind me on the courtyard's stone ground. "Sauron." My skin crawls as a golden voice states the title-yet still I turn. Yet still I bow.

"Come to admire the view, my lord?" I don a smiling mask, crossing one leg nonchalantly over the other as I lean against the stone ring that surrounds what is now the stump.

"More or less." He pauses, smirking briefly. "It is fairer, this courtyard, now that it no longer bears the token of our enemies. What mockery, that the Eldar would deliver us so blatant a reminder of our curse."

"Yet such foolishness."

"On our part, or on theirs?" The king's eyes flash almost dangerously.

"Theirs, my lord, naturally, to presume that Númenor would forever stand such an insult." The next words roll like drops of poisoned honey off my tongue. "To imagine that the lords of men would never aspire to more."

"You speak of the Darkness."

"No, lord, of the Light." Glancing down at the ring of stone that supports me, I run a finger in distracted loops over its surface. I have cast my bait.

"The Light? To my ears, you have only ever scorned it. Darkness, you said, is supreme; all else is vanity, void delusions of gullible fools. The Light, I hold, is not a fitting aspiration."

Mirth wells up within me, a twirling, singing emotion that must now be reduced to a flippant laugh, bearing "Indeed not!" in its train. Ah, Pharazôn-the world soon will see you're fool's gold, fair enough by appearance but proved worthless when crushed. "The only ambition a man has for that beneath him is to subjugate it."

And on this note, it seems my melody will take (for now) its rest. A trembling servant enters the courtyard, approaches the king, whisks him away on some task more important. But I care not; I'm patient.

Alone once more in the courtyard, I peer down at Nimloth's rough-edged base, noting for the first time the splinters of white timber that surround it, a fine mulch shorn by the steel of saws. I stoop, take one fragment between my fingers; a sharp point punctures my skin.

I remove it quickly, gently, biting back curses. I hold it up once more, snap the stiff fibers in two; to the ground it flutters from my hand, broken.

III.

I will my gaze to rend the shadows, casting weary eyes over the desolation of this realm. No movement is to be descried among the piles of jagged slag, the smoking pits like countless open graves; the Mountain's wrathful glow illumines nothing. Gorgoroth is dead, in every possible sense of the word-as it should be.

I pace to the other window, across this prison-cell of a chamber for the hundredth time today. The metal walls close in on me; the stone floor sends icy tremors through my bare feet, soundless on its surface.

Thick shadows, thick shadows through a tinted pane, again my eyes pierce them, now to watch my forces. A sickening swarm of insects that makes even my skin crawl, a vast horde of puppets tied to but a few dancing mental strings; there can be no defeat for them.

For if, brother, you and yours possess the Ring, you haven't brought it with you, haven't even named it to yourselves. I would know. If you had stolen a part of me, I would know.

It never departs my thoughts; I am tied to it by adamant bonds, marriage vows to an adulterous bride. Throbbing, burning: ever I feel our separation; it chars a golden circle into my fëa. Yet another scar. I brush a hand over the blackened stub where the Ring was once enthroned. And realize I've seen marred hands like this before.

Hands whose beckoning would not be resisted. Hands whose fatherly caresses served only to mock me. Hands that strangled, twisted, fractured, mangled (me). Hands seared sable by the Silmarils. Hands like mine.

I've become him, foolishly pouring out my essence into something lesser than myself, all for power, all for dominion.

And now I am dominated.

My head pivots involuntarily toward Orodruin as four little words resonate through every dark crevice of my soul. "The Ring is mine." Something-rather, everything within me shatters. This tower, the very ashes upon which it stands, tremble; I can do nothing but run helplessly to the eastern window, sink to my knees as impotent rage overwhelms me.

Olórin, Olórin, I see it all now. What cruelty was this to be? That you would seek to raise yourself or another, overthrow me by my own might, I fathomed, but this- this? To defeat me quietly, by destroying the only part of me that has long mattered-this scheme never entered my wildest nightmare. My only comfort is this: you've failed.

Some detached part of me calls the Wraiths, but why? All now is futile; let them perish. I shall; it has begun. The psychic stitches binding that Ring and I have been ripped to shreds, and the blood gushes forth. A part of me has been suddenly amputated, and I feel already the phantom pains.

But more! Burning, burning. Sammath Naur. Our ties could never be fully severed, and now they never shall. I bow my head to my my shaking knees. Burning, burning. The Ring and I are one; we both are torn apart.

The land rises beneath me- or does the tower crumble? I see with other eyes vast black fingers cross the sky. They withdraw- am I that shrinking shadow? Olórin, Olórin! I cannot bear this, your revenge. My fëa breaks free, leaving the rags of my fána forever among the ashes, broken.