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"Sauron" by John Gardner

by headshok

The tower goes suddenly white, as if struck by lightning. I stare south, amazed. They have destroyed the Ring! I cry, I bawl like a baby. I'll die! I howl. The night is aflame with winged men. Then darkness. I really will die! Cold, sharp outlines, everything around me: distinct, detached as dead Orcs. I understand. "Melkor!" I bellow. "Melkor, Melkor! I'm dying!" But his love is history. "It was an accident," I bellow. "Blind, mindless, mechanical. Mere logic of chance." I look down past the rivers of lava to a terrifying darkness. I seem to recognize the place, but it's impossible. "Accident," I whisper. I will fall. I seem to desire the fall, and though I fight it with all my will I know in advance that I can't win. Standing baffled, quaking with fear, three feet from the parapet, I find myself, incredibly, moving toward it. I look down, down, into bottomless blackness, feeling the dark power moving in me like like an ocean current, moving me slowly to my voluntary tumble into death.

Again sight clears. I discover I no longer feel pain. Uruks and Easterlings gather around me to watch me die. They watch with mindless, indifferent eyes, as calm and midnight black as the chasm below me.

Is it joy I feel?

They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.

"Poor Sauron's had an accident," I whisper. "So may you all."