When the mountain growled, Sauron knew something was wrong.
In the next moment, a thrill of excitement and pain ran through him that could only be the nearness of his treasure in a place of great danger: inside the mountain where he had crafted it so long ago.
No!
With a thought, he forced his riders to abandon their attack on the pitiful forces at his gates and deal with this greater, subtler menace.
But it was too late.
The scream of pain as the Ring disintegrated was only echoed by his own scream of fury and betrayal. How had this happened? His was the greater force, the more clever strategy! And yet, now all was undone.
His connection to the greater part of himself – everything he'd invested into the Ring –evaporated in the little space between one moment and the next, and the tower beneath him begin to collapse. When the mountain exploded, and chaos and death engulfed his armies without mercy, he knew there would be no escape this time.
All that he had been, and all that he had planned, shattered into a million bits, to be swept away through the merciless gate and into the Void.