Five Things That Never Happened to Sauron by Russandol

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Fanwork Notes

Five Things That Never Happened To Sauron - MEFA 2011 1st Place, Ficlet: Elder Days

Note: "Lies in Eregion" and "Call to Aman" sit within my larger WIP story of Sauron and Eönwë (Chasing Mirages, posted also in this archive), but you do not need to have read it.

Thank you to my fellow lizards for comments and nit picking.

Most Likely to Make a Linguist Happy

Fanwork Information

Summary:

Five short scenes with a twist, in five different locations. Each of them harder to write than the previous one!

1st Place, Ficlet: Elder Days & Smaug's Treasure, MEFA 2011

Major Characters: Ar-Pharazôn, Celebrimbor, Eönwë, Sauron, Thranduil

Major Relationships:

Artwork Type: No artwork type listed

Genre: Alternate Universe, Experimental

Challenges: Fifth Birthday Celebration

Rating: Teens

Warnings: Character Death, Sexual Content (Mild)

This fanwork belongs to the series

The Secret Chronicles of the Ainur
Chapters: 1 Word Count: 674
Posted on 14 September 2010 Updated on 9 May 2021

This fanwork is complete.

Five Things That Never Happened to Sauron

Read Five Things That Never Happened to Sauron

Lies in Eregion (143 words without "u")

From the height of the stone city walls, Annatar watched two large birds of prey circling majestically above the plains. The cool breeze played with the loose strands of his hair, making them writhe like dark snakes.

‘I remember the eagles of Manwë bringing me tidings from my beloved Aman when I travelled in the east,’ he spoke pensively to his companion. ‘Once, one of them bore me on his back all the way from the Great Sea, to where Eönwë the Maia lived after the War of the Jewels.’

‘The Herald?’ Celebrimbor regarded his companion warily. ‘I last saw him when Mandos spoke the Doom of the North.’ He shivered.

‘A long time ago, we called each other friends,’ replied Annatar. A hint of sadness crossed his fair face and he shook his head. ‘No longer. I belong to the Gwaith-i-Mírdain now.’

 

Folly at the Sammath Naur (132 words without "i")

Sauron stared at the small band of gold that gleamed on the table, no more than a harmless jewel to those who knew not the truth about the power he had conjured and poured for days. When all had been done, he had staggered, weak and exhausted from the effort.

Dared the Dark Lord be cloven from the enormous potency he had crafted to sway and rule lesser creatures? Dared he separate power born before the remote days of the Song from the command of one’s purpose and thought?

What utter folly, to have ever contemplated such a plan!

A moment later, the round metal band was flung away and fell down to be melted by the stream of lava. Sauron drank back all the power he had ceded.

All was well.

 

Misjudgement in Umbar (120 words without "o")

‘A snake must be crushed if it may still bite. A wise strategist like Annatar surely agrees with me that this may be an inevitable measure when handling a vanquished enemy?’ The King smiled wickedly.

His retinue laughed heartily at the jest, while the chained man held kneeling at his feet by the guards snarled in harmless fury. Never had Annatar’s carefully crafted plans failed as utterly as this time.

The reward was rich; the risk had seemed acceptable. He had surrendered near Umbar, safe in the belief that the king might humiliate him but never kill him.

He briefly felt pain when the axe split his carnal shape. Freed, he flew away, a dark spirit wrathfully swearing revenge.

 

Victory for Mirkwood (113 words without "a")

The King of Mirkwood whispered hot words of desire, while he nibbled soft, flushed skin. He smiled mischievously when he felt his helpless lover, bound by the wrists to the bedposts, squirm deliciously under his touch. His fingers moved lower until they found keen, stirring flesh. Spurred by the wild eyes, by the incoherent cries of his prisoner, he bent down to first kiss, then devour his prize. Suddenly, he stopped.

‘More!’ yelled his helpless victim.

‘Do you yield?’ queried the king sternly.

‘I do, I do! Dol Guldur is yours, O King…’ conceded the sorcerer.

Oropher’s son renewed his efforts. ‘Slowly,’ he reminded himself, smiling secretly.

No, he would not rush victory.

 

Call to Aman (128 words without "e")

‘Will you go, Mairon?’ you ask anxiously.

Will I? I doubt it, but…

Long ago, Moringotto was a fair lord, a light dazzling as stars, an alluring song of shrill chords within our grand music. I sang with him, happy and proud, until I found I had sunk into a foul abyss far from joy, and my wish was to bring back my past.

War was fought and lost, my lord struck down by yours. All I hold now is my wisdom, dark as it may look to you, my kin of old.

You bid that I go to Aman and ask for pardon, that I throw away all that I built, abandon what I fought for, right or wrong.

Do I wish to do that?

‘I will.’

 

 

Chapter End Notes

For any cryptography geeks amongst you (I count myself as one), these are the vowel frequencies in The Silmarillion (ignoring accent symbols): E (13.08%) A (8.40%) O (7.59%) I (5.75%) U (2.43%).

Comments

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Thank you, Dawn! I am pleased you like them! I am surprised at how they turned out, considering it was such a weird experiment, and I had never written short pieces, I never know when to stop! After doing the first one, I began the second one and then it took a while for the idea to do the lot so that I could contribute to the "Five Things" theme! 

These are well-done little ficlets, each one packs a bang within the short space.  I got a big kick out of all the things that didn't happen to Sauron. Enjoyed your imagery, "writhe like dark snakes," as well as the sly humor.  I think my favorite is Call to Aman, but yeah I quite enjoyed Thranduil getting one over on him too.  Even without the challenge you set yourself of not using words with certain vowels, these would be good. I wouldn't have even noticed if you hadn't pointed it out. I think the challenge might have caused you to think about the word usage more and so it added rather than taking away from the little stories.

Thank you, elfscribe! I am so very pleased you enjoyed them!

I am not sure which one is my favourite. The ring one was the most difficult, but Thranduils's was the first one I wrote, and slashy too, so I was rather pleased with myself. Then, Call to Aman was done without "e", which is allegedly the hardest, so that one was a little triumph on its own. And Pharazon one, well, it had to be done!

Yes, I certainly had to think every word of the text, which is surely a very sensible thing to do, with or without challenges on missing letters.

Reposting my Mefa review here:

A very clever set of ficlets each of which packs a bang within the short space. Not only do they depict five things that didn’t happen to Sauron (and each one made me smile, I so enjoy Russa’s sly humor) but Russandol added an extra challenge of not using a certain vowel in each ficlet. If she hadn’t said that’s what she was doing, I’d have never have noticed because the language flows quite well. I enjoyed the imagery [“From the high stone city walls, Annatar watched two large birds of prey circling majestically above the plains. The cool breeze played with the loose strands of his black hair, making them writhe like dark snakes.”] I can’t pick a favorite out of the five, although I must say I did enjoy Thranduil’s little bit of manipulation. Knowing Russa's Sauron from her marvelous "Chasing Mirages" fic gave these ficlets an added bit of spice.

I'm so pleased you like them! I'm not sure I have a favourite either. Folly at the Sammath Naur and Call to Aman were the hardest by far compared to the others, so I felt proud of completing them. The kinky Thranduil was a victory (not just for him) because it was the first one I wrote and a bed scene.

Thank you very much for your posting your review here, otherwise I guess the comments get lost at the MEFA site after nthe new year starts.

Wow, that was amazing! Was it hard to write? I admit I couldn’t help checking if you really hadn’t use the vowel you shouldn’t have, because each little drabble flowed so well it was hard to remember you had restrictions while writing them.

I take this as little Aus from “Chasing Mirages”, because this Sauron has the same feeling your Mairon has. The first one, Lies in Eregion, actually seems like it could fit very well in your story… what he says about the eagle giving him a lift, it’s like he’s telling Eönwë’s story to fool Celebrimbor.

While all of them were interesting, I think my favourite was the second one. Making the Ring seems like such a stupid idea when you put it like that… And really, Sauron was such a great manipulator that he could have ruled most of Middle Earth if he had retained his subtlety. Trying to copy Morgoth was doomed to fail.

And of course, the last one. Not because of all the suffering Sauron caused, but because no one can convince my “Chasing Mirages” isn’t what really happened, and I want Mairon and Eönwë to be happy together.

Seriously, great job!

Oooh, thank you, Alasse! Yes, this is my Mairon from Chasing Mirages, I had already written the first ten-twelve chapters at the time, though I had only begun to post them, so he and I were well acquainted by then. They are indeed AUs from that story, though you they also fit as AUs in the original canon, and you don't need to have read Mirages to follow these ones. Believe me, I did not accidentally slip any of the "missing" letters, I checked. It was hard to do but fun, having to think of each single word, however tiny. The Ring story was one of the hardest. No "i" for "ring" or for "it". The one without the "e" was tricky, too.

I had great difficulty reconciling Sauron's clever, subtle seduction of the elves in Eregion and the Númenóreans with some of the really unbelievable (i.e. stupid) things he did, not so much making the Ring, where he grossly miscalculated, but at least he thought he was gaining something in return, but mainly during the Third Age. Tolkien gave us the hints of a great backstory only to turn him into a very pathetic stereotype of a villain in Lord of the Rings. I love the story, don't get me wrong, but it would have been so much better if his Sauron had been as cunning there as in the past.

You want Mairon and Eönwë to be happy together? Ay, so do I. At the moment, that's looking highly unlikely, pero quién sabe...

This was a really cool idea on all levels. I love especially the second ficlet with the destruction of the Ring, when he drank back the power ... what a stunning image!