Emotions-- A series of vignettes by MisbehavingMaiar

Schadenfreude, Pity, Angst

After the flood there is nothing; even sorrow is washed away.
The Shadow in the East muses on a use for his long-estranged brother;
And after an age of clinging bitterly to the earth, the new Dark Lord watches his last foothold dissolve beneath him.

(Warnings for gore, violence, and character death)

SCHADENFREUDE: 

"At last your face matches the grotesque parody of your soul, Zigur." 

The gaze of Elendil boils with hate, as does the elf-king’s eyes beside him. Here stood the two beings in all of Middle Earth who had most cause to despise him, and their loathing was not unreciprocated. 

"I should have thrown you on the pyre along with your precious tree.” The maia snarls in reply, though he slips and slurs and buzzes across the words as through a serpent’s mouth. His body is monstrous and powerful, but it is no longer precise. It is no longer beautiful.

 His tongue catches upon ragged wolf teeth, and the approximation of his old face is too wide, too long, too hard to be natural flesh. He is armored from head to toe and so are the enormous, mad-eyed wargs whose chains he holds. 

The men draw back in disgust and terror as he speaks.

This pleases him.
He no longer has any desire to negotiate with his enemies, to seduce or convert them. He is empty of feeling besides wrath. What he wants is to split their skulls, to feel their blood run into his belly and grind the bones of their children into dust and mortar. 

It was not he who sunk Númenor, but that distinction is trivial now. Looking upon the faces of the puny, impudent, crawling things before him, he would gladly reduce that island to a smoking crater himself, if given the chance again. 

Gil-Galad is the first to charge him, spear point glittering. Reflected in the king’s shield, Sauron sees the hanging, arrow-torn body of the lord of Eregion, the smoldering city and blackened holly trees.

The elf is quick and his spear is as deft as a surgeon’s blade. One warg falls to him, and there is bloody vengeance in his grey eyes. 

Sauron retreats from the assault, showing no fear in his patient withdrawal, pulling the elf away from the close guard of his companions. He parries and blocks with his war hammer, taking his time— and when it is too late and a step too far for the swordsmen to come to Gil-Galad’s aid, he demonstrates to his foes that his new body is neither slow, nor weak. 

With his ring bearing hand he grabs the spear, and in one motion pulls it away and snaps it. In the same space of breath he slams the spear-point into the elf’s eye.
His great hand smolders where it touches elf-flesh. And when Gil-Galad falls, burnt and smoking to the alarmed cry of men and elves, Sauron steps with careful deliberation upon the king’s neck, and severs the head from its shoulders. 

Orodruin churns behind him; the battlefield reeks of horror and there is such pain in the eyes of the elven host… he sighs with pleasure, and beckons his enemies to dance. 

PITY:

Ah, little brother. 

Even this simple thing you could not do. Fortified, and surrounded by fuel you were, and well-versed in our craft. You could not fail, you swore, begging to serve me.
You asked for armies; I supplied bodies, and steel.
You asked for my protection, and I gave it; for I do pity you, my thin white shadow. 

I remember— oh yes! With great clarity I recall how you, with your lesser craft, would take and gloat over whatever scraps you could gather. I remember how you spoke behind me in our Father’s ear, that his eldest, greatest maia could not be trusted, how proud Mairon’s works had been tainted by rebellion, and could no longer serve his purpose. Eager for praise, for superiority of any hue, craving a chance to boast and preen away from the shade of your greatest rival, your brother.

I know how you watched me, sick with envy, even as I fell from grace.
I know how you sought to fill my shoes after I was gone.

Oh, how that must have seared you— to be so close to a chance to eclipse me at last! But the Ring escaped you, as it did me. And so you came groveling at my feet and kissing my heel instead.

Sad, scrambling, smoke-wisp in your flooded tower... You cannot go Westward again for help, and you cannot go down to the enemy at your gate.
It is East you must turn, little brother. Your failures are grievous and humiliating, but I will give you this last chance to serve. 

Has it not always been your desire to be part of my power and out of my shadow? Come back to me, my dear little Curunír, my kin. While there is still red meat on your bones, and succulent light in your spirit, I can think of at least one use for you. 

ANGST:

There is a moment, between the perception and the fall, where time crawls. The Ring turns in the air above the magma, glinting, and he thinks:

"Might I die?"  

He has always known himself to be immortal; he was born knowing that creation and he would grow old together no matter what fate befell them. 

But he has seen a god diminished, thrust forth from the world in chains.

He has seen an island birthed and sunk again into the ruthless sea. 

He has poured the greatest part of himself into a trinket of gold, and now, he has the space of a fall to think that perhaps, perhaps there is a doorway he might fit through into death— and he has wrought it.

Chapter End Notes

Schadenfreude: Taking pleasure in the pain of others. 

Angst: Deep existential terror.