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– A Francis Ford Coppola adaptation of Lord of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
Weathertop, I was still at Weathertop. It’s been weeks now, on the mission, and every minute Sauron gets stronger and The Ring feels heavier. I wish every day this ring had never come to me. I was going to the worst place in Middle Earth, and I didn’t even know it yet, up the River Anduin and through the wretched swamps directly into Sauron’s lair. It was by no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Sauron’s manifestation. There is no way to tell its story without telling my own.
My mission was to proceed up the River Anduin, pick up Sauron’s trail in Mordor, follow it, and find Mount Doom, The Ring’s birthplace, infiltrate it, and terminate the Ring’s power, with extreme prejudice.
[much later … ]
The more I got to know the Ring, the more I admired it. I was at the far reaches of Middle Earth. It was devoid of life, a place of decay and melancholy, as if all living things had forsaken it. He is dead, thought I about Sauron as I toyed with the ring--wondering whether I had been striving against someone completely without substance, or whether his substance truly did manifest itself in The Ring. Sauron discoursed, a subliminal voice, “We must appear in the nature of supernatural beings—with the might of a deity—we can exert all of our will and all of our power upon them for might, and great things unbounded.” The eloquence covered the malice of his dark dark ring. The wastes of my weary brain were haunted by wraith-ish images, obsessively revolving around this ring of noble expression. A burning eye … he was very little more than a burning eye glaring out from an impenetrable darkness. I began seeing very clearly what needed to be done … but had difficulty thinking clearly enough to be able to do it. I am beyond caring. The Horror.