"I know you."

Waves of immaterial force battered at her, forcing her to her knees, but still her voice rang with defiance. "Oft have I fought you, in the silence of my mind."

"The elf-witch." His flames burned hotter, their smoke reaching out to smother her. "Name yourself."

Amid the red darkness, a fleeting smile touched her face. "You know me."

"I know you." The tower trembled, blackened stone seeming to lean in, prying at her. "I have faced one like you, who thought to stand against me in song." A pause, filled with the crackle of the fires. "He erred."

"My brother." She pressed her hand to the floor, bracing on the cracked slab. "In his defeat he saved that which was most precious, and brought you to ruin."

The creak of masonry, the clash of swords, the snarl of the wolf - all blended together in his anger. "Another fled before me, left the gates standing wide."

"My nephew broke." Her other hand found the floor, starlike radiance flickering fitful between her fingers. "But he learned, and grew strong, and stood firm thereafter."

A crash echoed through the black chamber, a great gauntlet striking stone. "Yet still his son, who thought to bear arms against me, fell at my feet in utmost defeat."

"So he did." Her hair flowed down her back, a golden cloak that fought back the encroaching shadow. "And as you gloated over him, one you had thought irrelevant slipped in and took everything from you."

He growled, deep and foul - and then, more loathsome still as his mind battered at hers, he laughed. "And so you see yourself, witch, as the little thing I have neglected? You think to succeed where all your kin have failed?" A rumble began, deep in the sorcerous tower, and the fires around burned like holes into the abyss. "I know them. Their weaknesses are yours. I see you."

"You see them." She sought within herself, finding the stubborn strength of her family - and then looking past it, into bottomless wells of light. "But I am more than my kinsmen." She raised her head at last, meeting the red horror of his gaze. "This one, I learned from LĂșthien."

She had enough time to see the Lidless Eye widen in shock, and then her song washed it away in a wave of light.


This is an alternate take on Galadriel's encounter with Sauron in Dol Guldur, during the White Council scenes of the Battle of the Five Armies movie. Given that there is no canon detail to that scene, I feel entirely justified.

It isn't immediately obvious how much history Galadriel's family has with Sauron, but between Finrod's death on the Isle of Werewolves, Orodreth's (pegged by Tolkien as son of her brother Angrod, though in the Silmarillion as her brother) eviction from the same isle by Sauron's shadow of fear, and Gil-Galad's (again, Tolkien had him as Orodreth's son, though the Silm makes him Fingon's) fateful duel... she has a lot of personal reasons to hate the Necromancer, and to relish driving him out of yet another Dark Tower.

hS