The Cruel by MisbehavingMaiar

The Cruel

How Sauron Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Orcs.

Read The Cruel

"Eru is a jealous father" he’d been told. “Remember how your former Master was treated, when he deigned to sculpt the beginnings of new life? Aulë, whom our Father is fond of, created out of love and the desire to become parent to something new and profound; and was he praised for his work? You must remember his shame on that day, when his creations were locked back into stone. How much more wrath must I endure from heaven on behalf of MY children? I, whom our Father does NOT love.” 

In the ages before the sun and moon, in the primordial forests where bloodless things grew and illumined themselves, Melkor’s children stirred and howled, hunting the newly-wakened races. They cut their teeth on naked, sunless flesh and dragged the quaking First-Born into cracks in the earth where they were not seen from again, unless it was as something changed.  

Mairon observed them with mingled disgust and academic interest as the orcs formed nests, then colonies, then ranks, then orders. They bred strangely, but not without care. Their laws were brutal, and they kept them. They learned to speak their own brutish dialects. 

Mairon could not bring himself to look upon the orcs. Nor could he easily tend the seedling eggs that would become dragons, or the scaled and bony terrors that his Master had twisted into being without feeling a quiver of horror. These creatures that Melkor had birthed himself seemed unimaginably grotesque to his eyes, still hampered by the quaint veil of Ainur aesthetics. This squeamishness shamed him, but he trusted Melkor. He admired that his creations were strong instead of beautiful; His master valued adaptivity and resilience over symmetry, and his children came in great variety.  Some were clever, with the same malefic genius as their progenitor. Others moved like cogs in a machine with their own efficient elegance. Some, like the goblins, were so variable that they could hardly be classified. 

And Mairon, who loved Melkor, and yearned to love all that his Master did, eventually learned the trick of viewing their unique, asymmetrical faces through lenient eyes.  

 

The infant predators were not themselves unhunted in the dark world; Oromë and his maiar road above the forests, finding them, and culling them without mercy. 

"Murdered! Gutted like thoughtless beasts! My kin claim more honor than they have right to! Perhaps I should be flattered that Oromë sends no proxy, but sees fit to slaughter my children himself!" Melkor fumed. "My brood has no defense against the spears of the Valar, and though they speak and thrive and build, they are offered no parley. I would go myself to their aide, but I dare not stand against the host of my brethren…"   

Aulë’s disciple heard these words and made a bow, knowing with what he had been tasked. 

 

In the fields lit by distant volcanoes and starlight, where occasional, wary camps of the Eldar guarded themselves with fire and stones and spears, the maia descended.

He was prepared, though terrified, to make a stand against a Vala— not knowing if he had the wit or power to make a difference against a being of a higher order. He quietly smothered the still-whispering voice that bid him obey and serve the Ainu lords. 

Mairon waited, disincarnate. Below he observed a skirmish between orc and elf, pike against fang. He steeled himself to intervene--

But Oromë did not come. In his place rode a white stag, its rider a lithe and ethereal bowman, driving off the orcs and scattering the elves (who knew not yet what manner of being they saw, only that he was fearsome). 

In response the maia grew a body, skin all shifting molten obsidian. He drew out the red hammer of Aulë, that had been his first possession, the first tool of his craft, though now it appeared pointed and repurposed for war. 

He drew up suddenly like a dark wall between the silver arrow shafts and the orcs, sweeping away the bolts and casting fire between their retreat and the bowman. 

The hunter gave pause, reigning in his mount. “Admirable One, Once of Aulë. We thought you lost. What is the meaning of this interference?”

 

"Tireless One, of Oromë." Mairon nodded in recognition, though he did not lower his weapon. "Why do you pursue these beings as if they were game to be coursed?"

 

Oromë's maia nocked another arrow with a shrug. “They are corruptions of Eru's will.”

 

"Eru’s will is all that is. How can anything be a corruption?"

 

"They eat the flesh of beast and elves and each other."

 

"You of all beings should know that to hunt and eat is natural." 

 

"They are parasites! They create nothing and do no good in the world."

 

"They raise and care for each other. They speak, and sing, and build dwellings. They make art of and on their bodies."

 

"They are hideous! Foul creatures unsightly to our Creator and all faithful Ainur!"

 

Mairon’s eyes flamed. “Must all things be beautiful, to be worthy of respect?”

 

"Admirable One… If you are arguing for these abominations, you have indeed been lost to us. The poison of Melkor speaks through you. How can you imagine that anything good could live in beasts so hideous?" Oromë’s maia curled his lip— his duty was to cull the wild things that the Valar deigned unfit to share the earth, and so it would remain. 

 

"If I am lost, then you are blind! You believe only what is easy and convenient to believe, as the Valar, complacent and obstinate, would have you do!"   
His outrage smoked hot and righteous within him. 

Had he really once been as this maia was now? Had his thoughts ever been so free of dissent? How disgusting! Glad he was to have left such unenlightened foolishness behind.

The earth shuddered and split a smoking crack beneath the two maiar’s feet as Mairon’s anger rose and mastered him. 

The hunter and the forgemaster collided in a fury. The hills rattled and fires burst forth, silver arrows flew like shooting stars into the endless night. 

 

Oromë’s maia was swift, but Mairon was stronger, and soon beneath him crumbled the body of the pale stag, his hammer dripping the glittering ichor of Ainur blood. Within his breast he felt something rise; a feeling that purred and roared at the sight of the helpless maia, the smashed skull of his steed.  

His heart did not at once recognize the sensation of lust or cruelty, though they contained notes he was familiar with; the swing of a hammer, the heat of exertion, pride in his cleverness, his own raw force upon malleable essence… He had missed these things, more even than the comforting sense of purpose he’d had at Aulë’s forge, or the love of his old mentor. Laughter swelled in his broad chest. 

 

"Shall I send you back to Oromë marred, Tireless-One? Shall we see if his love of you endures, despite your unsightliness?” 

 

 At the beck of a sudden inspiration, he drove his hands into the fëa of the bright hunter, feeling the unearthly flesh and spirit part beneath his fingers, slick and sharp. It took great effort, but power thrived in him. The younger maia screamed, pain and hatred ravishing his voice as his body was twisted like hot metal.

"Abhorrent! Abomination! You are not worthy to your name, nor even the memory of Aulë! Cruel and foul as your master, you are a scourge, a demon!"  

At once the maia’s cries were changed to shrill squeals and grunts as his mouth elongated, even as his neck shortened and grew thick, his legs and arms shortened to pointed nubs, and bristles sprouted from his arching back. 

Soon a fear-crazed wild boar, silver in color, bucked into the darkness of the heath, shrieking and squealing in madness, trapped in a body that was not its own. 

 

"The Cruel One I shall be, then." Said Melkor’s lieutenant. "I no longer have any wish to be Admirable in the eyes of lords so petty."

 

 A chord of regret rang in him, quickly stifled, as the path that had been his old life became shut off from him irrevocably. 

Watching as the enraged creature he’d reshaped scraped its tusks against the earth in grief and pain, he felt not pity, but the tug of ritual— the need for ceremony to complete his metamorphosis. 

On the ground lay the fallen bow and silver darts of his enemy. He hefted them and took aim, red eyes flickering as the bolt tore through the throat of the screaming boar. 

Then Sauron drew a steady breath. He could see the confused fëa of the maia flickering, trying to work itself free and fly back to Aman and its master. 
Before it could escape the dead flesh it was tethered to, Sauron crouched, now a wolf the size of a hill.

 He was strong, and tenacious. He could choose his own road, unclouded by sentiment. To hunt and consume was natural. 

He crushed the boar between his jaws and in three bites, swallowed it, along with the struggling fëa.  The energy he had expended in transforming his fellow maia flowed back into him, costing him nothing. 

 

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Chapter End Notes

I must apologize for the Ainuvore. It's become a reoccuring theme in my work. If it's a particular squick of yours, just look for it in the story notes above.

Another reoccuring headcanon of mine is the idea that the maiar are given names that are discriptors, either of their personality or their function. Sauron goes through a lot of names, as you may have noticed, and none of them are terribly flattering. (Someday I hope he'll pick a name for himself that is just... a name.)