Book of Hours by heget

Control

I was dared to write my version of Sauron/Melkor.

The whispers start with control. Break apart the monument and machinery that is their existence, pull apart the systems that have governed him to find the cogs, the cords that bind, the breath that fuels the bellows, the foundation of the forces that ordain his being and control his thoughts and actions -and how even when He will no longer be there, how He has shaped him, built him like a factory and how every moving part and worker inside has been motivated by control. Control was the ore and the hammer and the anvil and the melting heat. His Master wanted control, offered control, re-framed the systems of existence into the framework of control. 

Whispers at first. Emotions, trivial ones fools would label as if they were not precisely the feelings and thoughts that became the bonds that leashed him to His Master stronger than any base metal, bonds so strong and heavy and so utterly invisible. Merely the aggravation of having to work with his peers, having to share his work with theirs and thus having to make concessions of his ideas to theirs. Team effort, pah! Debasing his ideal creations to their incompetence and inadequacies. If he could just create without having to involve them, having to share with these lesser servants, less talented, slower, more insipid. Why build gears with cogs of mismatched teeth, of some inferior metal that would shatter or warp under pressure, forcing him to make crude weld jobs to repair something that could have been perfect had he been allowed to make everything himself, uniform and up to standard? To soothe the easily bruised egos of those that were less talented? Because of their envy for the inequality of their respective genius? Fold the brittle substandard iron enough times and it would -barely- compensate for not starting off with decent ore in the first place - but his first Master would not even allow the necessary hammering in the first place. This was where the true Marring was happening. Freedom, those whispers said, to not be burdened by placating the lesser talents and limitations of others. To stretch to the fullness of one’s own talents. I will give you that freedom, to order your projects as you see fit, that control to remove the shackles of your lessers, the voice whispered. 

And in his joy, he does not perceive the collar that he places around his neck, the blindfold and the cuffs, how when he breaks others, strips their will and control, delights in how his hands have scooped out all his victims’ thoughts and will with terror and placed only his orders upon their tongue, molded them into his image, made them his - subservient tool, head empty of thought and slack against the hand that cups it and runs fingers over the lips that now speak only words that praise or parrot back His thoughts, blissfully and unwittingly enthralled.