Sauron encounters: Television
"Careful with this!" Nathan bite his own nails as two goons put a large, flat tv screen in place. "It ain't cheap you know!"
Sauron observed their struggle from his armchair, not sure what to think of this particular gift.
During one of Militiades's visits he asked about those flat palantir's he saw when he first arrived in the city, and turned out that she had vast knowladge about the matter.
Like always, when you show interest in someone's hobby, this person is more than happy to tell you everything about it. And Militiades, at first shy, was no different and they talked for hours.
"Those humans has some knowledge about great song after all." Sauron thought. "To think they use frequencies to their own amusement..."
At first he wanted this tv to simply keep track of what is going on in the city, in whole kingdom and maybe even other kingdoms, but Militiades explained to him that there are far more interesting things to watch than "News", so called "tv shows".
Probably something similar to theater performance, but in comfort of your own house.
Goons finally put the tv screen in place and connected all the wires.
Nathan rose the controller, clicked one button, and television came to life.
"This button change channels, this one..." Yowwick wanted to explain, but Annatar rose his hand to shut him up.
"Do not ruin the joy of discovery." He commanded. "I shall figure everything all on my own."
Nathan shrugged his arms and handed over the controller.
"Have fun tonight Chief." He said and both he and two henchmen left Sauron's room.
He picked the controller, and pulled out the sheet of paper from his pocket, on which "Channel 378" was written.
he pushed few buttons and switched the channel to the one Militiades recommended, because apparently, a very popular tv series had it's so called "marathon", and two first seasons will be played one after the other.
And that was his main concern - In his perspective, staring at the tv screen whole night was a waste of time. He had so much ideas in his mind, many creations to polish, and to think that he would spent even one hour doing nothing was unthinkable. And they want him to spend a whole night!?
But, this humans are different from Numenorians, and if he wants to rule them, he must understand them first. And there was no better way to do so than to watch to finest products of their culture.
He looked at the paper again.
"First step: Make yourself comfortable" he read out loud and looked at his armchair. "Good enough. Second step: Grab some snacks." He doesn't need to eat, but maybe it is an essential component?
That's why he grabbed something from Cafe's storage. Another benefit of running one.
"And the last step: relax" He frowned, and read that again. "I shall skip that one."
There was only one way for him to relax, and it wasn't watching a tv.
Just when he finished his preparations, opening started to play on the screen.
First shot was on the well-made astrolabe made of brass containing a small sun within, but scene quickly shifted to the bird view on the whole different continent, which then zoomed to the large city with numerous high towers and symbol of the black stag on the gear, which rose the city from the ground, and before scene changed, he was able to read the name of the city: "King's landing"
"This world's Numenor." He thought.
Scene then quickly traversed to the far north, to another city, which yet again rose from the ground, and, much to Sauron's disgust, white tree started to blossom.
"So this is the Minas Thirth." he thought just as he read city's name: "Winterfell"
Scene shifted to the large wall made of ice, under which humans built small town. A guard post perhaps? Such structures as this Ice wall could not be raised by human hand, and, most importantly, something raised it to separate the whole continent from the far north.
"What hides behind the wall?" His curiosity sparked just when camera returned briefly to the King's landing, only to cross the sea, to entirely new continent, and stopped right above the city called "Pentos."
Then finally, title of the series appeared:
"Game of Thrones"
"So, this is about politics and schemes?" He chuckled with delight. "Bring it on humans, show me what you got."
This was nice sunny weekend afternoon, and the sun lazily traveled above the town, and, as usual in Limestone, people were gathering in front of the forge waiting for their dream items to be made and to watch the how Annatar, one of the most impressive people they ever heard of, is working on them.
But this time, the forge was closed.
Nathan peeked from the window on the crowd, they looked more or less pissed, probably wondering why forge is not open today. There was no information about the break and evening was closing in, so people stayed in hope that something will happen. But the building was still kept shut.
Other Junior employees were also uneasy, but they could not do anything - on the door to their employer's room was an information to not disturb him, so they were waiting.
He finally understood that it can't be helped, and he have to talk with Annatar, or otherwise his reputation will suffer.
He liked working for the Dream Smith. Unlike Junior, he never throws tantrums, blames them for anything without reason, and his rules are fair.
And he even pays them bonuses! No wonder why others are envious of him. And mere thought of losing that all…
He swallowed his saliva and rose his fist to knock on Annatar's door.
Sudden claps from the other room scared him a bit while rest of the goons hid behind the anvils and furnaces. Annatar is clearly having fun, and interrupting him now is a huge risk.
Finally deciding to take it for the team, Nathan slowly pushed the door and peaked inside, trying to hide his worried expression with a smile.
"Hello Chief." He greeted Annatar, who kept staring at the screen and slowly clapped his hands.
"Well done, human, well done." He said with a smirk. "Almost took me by surprise."
Sensing his subordinate's confused stare, former dark lord left a sigh.
"They killed King of the North in the ninth episode." Sauron explained.
"Ned Stark, Chief?"
"Exactly."
"That's why you are clapping Chief?"
"Indeed."
Nathan gulped nervously and then, trying to sound as polite as he possibly could:
"Chief, it's a little wrong to applause Joeffry."
Sauron stopped clapping, and slowly turned his gaze to Yowwick, and Nathan felt himself tremble under this stare.
"I didn't give my applause to that little worm." He hissed. "This pathetic excuse of a man made a critical error, his actions were born out of inflated ego and childlike temper tantrum. This execution sparked a civil war that he should do everything in his power to avoid. This incest vermin should not sit on the Iron Throne."
Yowwick rose his finger, but Sauron didn't stop there.
"Of course, Stark sealed his own fate: he trusted wrong people, acted the way he did on the hostile territory, directly confronted the Queen, who already killed in her quest to not let the truth go out, brought his children to the lion's den..." Sauron shook his head in disapproval. "All in the name of 'honor'. He had all the cards and wasted every single one."
Yowwick wanted to say something, but Sauron yet again interrupted.
"Watching his demise was... satisfying. Not only because fool got fool's death, but also hie face seemed too familiar to one member of the Fellowship."
"Fellowship?"
"Forget it."
Yowwick nodded and immediately stopped caring about this "Fellowship" at all. Annatar pays him enough to not care about such things.
"Then, to whom you were clapping Chief?" Nathan asked.
"To the writer of course." Sauron answered with a smirk. "He skillfully subverted expectations of the audience – By that point in the story some might even relate to Eddard Stark, and most of the humans watching certainly thought he is the main character. However, his lack of understanding of the political spectrum, as well as young king's madness were hinting that he will face a tragic end."
He looked at Yowwick with superiority in his eyes. "It was possible to predict, yet I didn't. That's why he subverted expectations correctly."
"Good for him, I suppose."
"But now, to the important matters." Sauron rose from his armchair. "How much time until we open?"
Yowwick looked at his watch.
"We should have opened like… seven hours ago?" Sauron looked at him with disbelief.
"What!?" He rushed to one of the windows and moved the curtain away, allowing the sunlight in. "Whole day!? How could I lose a track of time!? Is this what she meant by 'television will suck you in'?" Sauron thought about a conversation with Militiades earlier, and he now understood.
Television is a very powerful tool.
"Umm…"
"Leave, I need to refresh myself." Sauron ordered, and Yowwick quickly left the room and closed the door.
Five minutes later Annatar left his room, smiling to the waiting people,
"I sincerely apologize for my absence!" He said. "I shall do everything in my power to remedy the situation." As he walked towards the anvil, he whispered to his subordinate:
"Clean my room from any remaining trash." He ordered, and Nathan nodded, grabbed the broom and went into Annatar's room.
As he cleared the floor from any remaining tidbits, he chuckled to himself.
Yeah, guy is a little weird, but that's fine, makes this job more interesting.
He noticed some paper attached to the tv screen with something written on it, and approached it.
On it was written few words in language he couldn't understand:
Er lumenn' an er úrin randa.
Sauron encounters: shady business
Black truck stopped on the parking lot, and from it, three of Junior's goons jumped out, and behind them, Annatar left the truck.
"Are we here?" he asked, looking with suspicion at the large building right before him.
"Yeap." Nathan confirmed "They are well known throughout the city for the best and cheapest mattresses."
"Best quality and price?" Sauron gave him a suspicious look, and Nathan nodded.
"Yes, and this is one of their smallest stores." Goon said as they were walking towards the entrance. "They have four more spread around the city, the largest being near the town's square."
"I see…" Sauron muttered, pondering on henchman's words
Automatic doors opened before Sauron and his guards, and behind the counter a bulky man waved to them.
"Good afternoon! How can I help you today?" He asked with a smile.
"I am looking for a comfortable mattress for my bed." Sauron answered.
He won't use it of course, he has better things to spend to his time, he only need it so any speculations will be cut short before they appear.
"You couldn't find a better place!" Worker said and left the counter. "Yukaza and Sons have the best mattresses in Vale! Follow me and we shall choose the best one suiting your needs."
They walked deeper and deeper into the large building, passing mountains of well-made and extravagant bed inserts. The worker, man named Jimmy, was talking very professionally about almost all of them, but dark lord could not shook of the weird feeling that something isn't right. Something was lacking…
"Where are other customers?" Sauron asked.
"Excuse me?"
"We are walking for ten minutes and we didn't met a single soul, where are different customers?"
"Well, they will probably come later…" Jimmy tried to brush the matter, but Sauron persisted.
"This is weekend afternoon, most busy time for any business, yet I am the single customer, that does not make sense. How many people daily do you provide services to?"
"Chief, you are just overthinking it." Nathan interjected, but Sauron didn't pay any attention to his subordinate.
Jimmy looked into Sauron's eye, and he could not force himself to lie.
"We… have two customers daily if we are lucky, usually there is one or not even that."
"And I suppose that rest of your locations have similar statistics?"
"You are… correct good sire…" Worker couldn't force himself to break the eye contact, this lava like eyes were like the center of massive star, they had their own gravity.
"That makes around six hundred customers for one store for a year, that being generous, two thousand four hundred yearly for all, how much on average does a mattress costs?"
"That… would be… four hundred lien…" Jimmy was not looking into a star, it was a nova.
"That makes nine hundred thousands lien yearly, without expenses for keeping the store running, yet your company claimed over thirty million liens of profit last year. How is that possible?"
Yowwick and three other goons looked at each other in confusion, now thinking about the matter, while Sauron approached the clearly scared man, and whispered to him:
"You are laundering money here, aren't you?" And when he said that, worker's face changed.
He was no longer scared, his face like stone and his eyes trying to pierce Sauron's head with his gaze, but to no avail.
"Think you have all of this figured out, don't you?"
Sauron chuckled while all the sudden, other workers started to surround them, much to Sauron's guards confusion.
"Of course, it is pretty good scheme." He said with a smile. "I am almost impressed."
Jimmy clenched his fists.
"You are still going to buy a mattress, aren't you?" Jimmy said with a threatening tone.
And Sauron smiled in response.
"Goodbye and thank you for your service." Sauron said as they were leaving the building with newly acquired white mattress.
"Pleasure is all mine!" Jimmy waved to them with a genuine smile, army of workers standing behind him.
As they walked away, Nathan finally gathered the courage to ask the Smith.
"What was that all about?" And Sauron chuckled.
"I just gave him advice how to better hide their activities and made an agreement, which is beneficial to both parties." Sauron gave his subordinate a glance. "Unless you meant something else?"
"I meant that whole 'it costs you that much and that and…' " Yowwick said, and Sauron chuckled.
"That? It was a trivial task." He said with smirk. "I prefer to know everything about those, who I made business with, so I run a little research about Yukaza and Sons, and some of the data was… inconsistent."
"But why did you tell them all of that?" Nathan insisted. "You could have them on the hook!"
"Truly, I could blackmail them." He looked at Nathan as the goons were packing the mattress into the truck. "Which would either make an unreliable asset, or my greatest enemy. But by giving them advice and help, not only I got the very useful favor for the future, but I also didn't lose the hook."
Sauron chuckled and Nathan blinked, trying to comprehend what Sauron just said.
"No matter how you look at it, I won." He climbed onto the passenger seat in the truck, and gave the store one last look.
He definitely needs to check how deep this "mattress mafia" is.
Authors note:
Well, that will be all for today, wait, what is going on? Hey...!
...
"Author of this story is deeply sorry for accusing Yukaza&Sons for any kind of criminal activity, we are a company with immaculate reputation on the market, well-known for our quality products. There is no "mattress mafia"."
...
Lesson learnt - better to buy a new mattress and don't ask questions.
Anyway,
Hello to you all in this brand New Year!
As you noticed, I finally decided to change the format to the one more appreciated on this site. And, during this process, I also tried to fix all the grammar mistakes I made, but some those little buggers are probably still there, "hiding" somewhere.
One day, I will catch them all.
To you all, who gave this story a shot: I am very grateful and wish you all the best!
To answer some of the reviews:
In response to Teo Char:
I am glad you liked forging the ring! I tried to make it as much interesting as possible. And, as you can already tell, it will be a major plot point in the future. But I don't think Sauron will be the one, who helps Jaune find the balance between the light and the dark. But who knows? Plot is still in the development.
As for the Blake and Yang's storyline, my philosophy is this: I made this story as a crossover between Lord of the Rings and RWBY, which means (for me) that leaving main characters of the show in the dark is unfair to RWBY fans. Not to mention I decided to write this story from the very beginning of their hero journey, and it is up to me to develop their plot in this particular story.
I hope it does make sense.
See you in the future!