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Sauron wakes up to a mighty pounding on the doors of his chambers.
There are few who are capable of making such a racket, and fewer still that who would dare, so naturally before even rolling over he draws in a breath and bellows: “What do you want, Gothmog?!”
“Check the gates,” comes the muffled response through the door.
“What?” Sauron sits up groggily, rubbing his eyes.
“Check the gates,” the balrog repeats. “You’re gonna want to see this.”
Sauron groans. “Alright, alright, I’m going.”
Angband has been Sauron’s seat of power since he went through the trouble of dragging it up from the earth himself, so it takes the space of a heartbeat to sink into it. He lets his presence seep through the fortress, grinning as he feels various orcs and lowlifes shudder and cringe when he passes.
His fana remains in his bed, and Sauron conjures up a shade of it to burble up from between the stones on the wall above the gates. With heavy, dense rock at his back, Sauron leans over the wall and peers down.
A short ways away from the gate, a lump of what was probably a balrog smolders and flickers, slumped in on itself and unmoving. Beyond that stands an elf.
Sauron blinks. The creature is nearly naked, with only a thick, ragged animal fur keeping it warm (according to some definition of the word), its matted hair pooling around it on the ground. It carries no visible weapons, but then there’s the balrog. From here, Sauron can’t even make out which of the fire demons it is.
“I wouldn’t go down there, sir,” squeaks a voice behind him and Sauron turns to raise an eyebrow at a trembling orc. The creature’s eyes are wide and its helmet is askew, and it clutches its jagged-tipped spear with a death grip as if the pole is the only thing holding it up.
“I’ll let you know when I need your input,” Sauron says drily. There’s no need to make a show of the creature for speaking out of turn this morning; not when there are much more interesting things afoot.
He dissolves the shade and slides through the wall to form it again before the gates, standing tall and peering down his nose at the elf. Setting his hair aflame and pouring a bit more darkness into his swirling cloak, Sauron strides forward.
“Elf,” he barks commandingly. “What’ve you done to my balrog?”
The elf watches him with eyes that glow fever-bright. It is a male, Sauron sees now, though his build is small and clearly malnourished. The wretch doesn’t step away from him or cower as Sauron approaches, remaining unmoving with his hands hanging at his sides.
When the elf opens his mouth, the sound that pours forth is painful to the umaia’s very soul, and he sees the balrog on the ground a few steps away shudder and tremble.
“The same as I’ll do to you, servant of Morgoth,” the elf croaks in a bare voice, unshielded by any trappings of a firstborn’s tongue; pure, stripped, Song.
Sauron resists the urge to freeze in place and cover his ears. He can feel the shade of his fana fraying under it even as he stands before the elf.
“What—” he begins to demand.
“I challenge you, Sauron called Mairon, the first of the umaiar under Melkor called Morgoth, for the rule of this land.”
Sauron does shudder at that. He hasn’t been full-named like this since he was a bare sprite running amok under Aule and Yavanna’s feet in their workshops.
He has to accept. There is no other option. This is a rule as old as time, as far as those under Melkor’s law are concerned. If the elf wants to be crushed, then that’s his own prerogative. Sauron won’t stop him, though the pitiful thing certainly won’t win. Even with that voice.
“I accept,” he says, meaning to fetch a weapon or armor.
“A duel of song,” the elf says.
Sauron pauses, incredulous amidst the way his very being shrieks to hear that terrible voice. “You cannot possibly believe you stand a chance,” he says, almost a chuckle.
The elf is silent for a moment, then he takes a slow step forward. It doesn’t seem like it should be possible, but the music of his voice bleeds clearer and sharper, undisguised in intent and power.
“I have seen you fall,” the elf says, both a whisper and a scream entwined in one breath, all together a Song of horribly honest truth.
Sauron takes a breath and will not admit that it shakes, then lifts his voice to battle.
The ragged slip of an elf proceeds to pound him into the dirt.
Even when the shade of Sauron’s fana is stripped away and he retreats to Sing with all the might of Angband’s bloody stones, the elf’s musical advance is inexorable.
You believe yourself aged? The Song cuts the questions into his very eala. You believe yourself powerful?
Sauron sees the light of the Trees in hundreds of thousands of marching soldiers, stars that cut down his greatest works and gleaming gold that sends the rest into flames.
He tries to counter with what darkness the elves have known and is rebuffed with blood on white beaches and blood on blue-barked trees and the sound of tiny feet pattering through it as they flee real, true darkness in elven hearts.
You think yourself wise? You think you KNOW?
Angband quakes. Sauron quails. Just as he feels fit to be shredded and torn apart at seems he hadn’t known existed—
The little elf stops singing. The world falls quiet.
Lying in his bed still, Sauron opens his eyes with a desperate gasp, struggling for breath as he sits up. He doesn’t have to be at the gates in person to hear the command the elf gives.
“Admit me.”
With a shudder, Sauron opens the gates. It’s not as if he needs anyone actually there to do so. When the elf enters, Sauron can feel the footsteps on his stones and tries not to quake with each one, still shivering from the power the little beast had inexplicably wielded.
“Shit,” says Gothmog when Sauron opens the door to his chambers, dressed for the day but fully aware that he looks pale and wan, and unable to do much about it.
“Shit,” Sauron agrees vehemently. “Let’s go see what the bugger wants.”
Gothmog eyes him. “He beat you.”
“No fucking shit,” Sauron spits viciously. “That little shadow of a creature is our new fucking overlord, Gothmog, unless you’d like to challenge him yourself!”
Gothmog does not have the power to beat Sauron himself in a physical duel. In Song? Unlikely. He raises his hands in placation and trundles along beside Sauron as he stalks through the fortress—no longer his, though he is it and it is him, in him and through him—
Sauron snarls at nothing and stomps a little harder.
The tiny beast has taken up in the throne room and they find him perched on the edge of the massive throne as most of the fortress’ denizens gather to look on. Melkor’s throne, which only Sauron should be allowed to warm while their master is gone. But all of that is changed now as their new master watches them with cold, bright eyes.
“What,” Sauron seethes, “would you have of me, master?”
The last is spit like the curse it is, for Sauron had never in his life intended to bow before anyone but Melkor, and Melkor is far, far from here. But he couldn’t beat the creature, so by Melkor’s own law, he will serve.
The elf’s expression twists into one of unexpected distaste. “Don’t call me that,” he grates out. Sauron smells blood on the words and it’s gratifying to know that his opponent had to work so hard for his win. Though not gratifying enough to negate the loss’s sting.
Sauron bares his teeth. “What would you have us call you?”
The elf shifts. “I am…” he says slowly, “Maglor. And only that.”
Sauron sneers. “Very well, Maglor. What would you have of us?”
Maglor is quiet for a few long minutes. The fortress waits in silence for him to decide their fates. Sauron thinks of many possible displays of fealty and weakness he may be asked to give, his dread and rage growing exponentially with each new idea.
The creature they now answer to speaks at last, horrible voice creaking. “Do you have… coffee?”
Sauron blinks. Just behind him he can hear Gothmog let out a rumble of breath.
“We do,” the lieutenant says blankly. Coffee and beer are half of what the orcs are paid in for their labor and though most of that is right shit, they do have good coffee for the higher ups.
“A pot of that then,” Maglor decides. “And bring me your elvish prisoners.”
Sauron grimaces for that is a far larger demand than just a drink, but he nods anyway. He turns to the rest of the hall. “Well? You heard the elf! If you’re not doing that, get back to work!”
The denizens of Angband disperse in a clamor, chattering, shrieking, and generally making a ruckus as they pour out of the throne room. Sauron thinks he spots a hint of a smile on Maglor’s face at the tumult of terrible sound. Strange, strange elf.
They have a great many elvish slaves, and it takes time to halt their work and bring them up from the pits, but eventually Sauron and his orcs have them all lined up as neatly as possible in the throne room, forced onto their knees.
Maglor has accepted the requested pot of coffee from one of Gothmog’s underlings—a literal pewter pot which he drinks straight out of without bothering with a cup—and sits on the throne still, a small figure against its might. Sauron watches the elf wipe his mouth on the animal fur with a shiver.
“This is all of them?” Maglor asks. He hasn’t toned down the bare music in his horrid voice and many of the elves cringe at the sound.
Sauron nods. Well. “There remain a few in my workshops,” he says, “but they’re largely in no state to be brought up.”
Maglor frowns. “I’ll speak to them later,” he says. Then he turns to the rest of the hall and stands up on the seat of the throne. “Do you lot speak Sindarin, or proto-Quenya?” he asks, in the first language then an approximation of the second.
None of the slaves dare raise their heads.
“Well?” Maglor demands.
One of the orc guardsmen kicks a dirty, muscled elf in the side. The elf sways, then lifts his head just enough to croak out assent in the wood-elves tongue.
“Great,” says Maglor. “There’s been a change in management in Angband. You are all free.”
Sauron gapes. Many of the elves look up, disbelieving.
“You can’t just do that!” Sauron snaps.
Maglor stares at him long enough that the umaia shrinks back from it.
“I suppose you can, then,” Sauron mutters. Then, louder, he says, “Who will work the pits and mines, Maglor?”
“You have orcs, don’t you?” Maglor says coolly. “You’ll figure it out. No more shall elves work under your whips in the dark or above—they will be freed, one and all from now until the end of times.”
Many of the elves have begun to whisper among themselves, huddle, and cry. Sauron resists the urge to squash them all, because then he’d probably be squashed right after.
“However,” says Maglor, and the room collectively freezes. “You should all also know that I’m offering employment with benefits if you want to stay or have nowhere else to go. I swear to you that you shall never be chained again under my rule.”
The words echo with a power that is ancient yet new and scours Sauron’s skin and the stones of his fortress like a too-rough scrubbing.
The elves wait for more and when none is forthcoming—for Maglor has sat down again with his pot of coffee and is taking another large gulp—they return to their huddling and whispering.
In the end, most choose to leave and Maglor orders supplies provided for them to return to wherever they came from or wish to go. A few brave or stupid creatures stay, despite the glaring and low hisses from the orcs and other, fouler creatures of Angband.
An acid spitting lizard beast attempts to take a bite out of a white-haired one (or, probably white, though it’s difficult to tell with the dirt), and is promptly flayed alive by a single shout from Maglor. No one else harms or even hassles the rest of the elves.
Maglor has rooms made up for the elves where orcs and other creatures are prohibited from disturbing them, tells Sauron to work out a payment plan for the lot of them, then announces that he’s off to have a nap.
The new lord of Angband is… a strange one.
Sauron does as he’s ordered to, though he resents it. The white-haired elf who names himself “demon” certainly negotiates like one. Sauron is willing to respect that, if nothing else, about his new colleagues.
The next day, one of the lesser balrogs is stupid enough to challenge their new leader. Maglor turns the bones over to his elves—some of whom are apparently artisans—and asks that they make something useful out of them. The day after that, he has a twisted, bleached white crown.
Angband… gets used to it.
Sauron can’t say he quite likes sitting at a council table with a shifty-eyed elf curled into a seat across from him—with new cushions like the rest, too, because Maglor announced that just because they’re supposed to look stiff and in charge doesn’t mean they have to be uncomfortable.
But neither can he deny the willowy new elf’s executive genius when outlining tax breaks to assist the struggling lower orcish classes, or her debating skills on the topic of infrastructure for those same neighborhoods. (“That’s not a break, Othwen, that’s blowing up the entire damn!”)
So he too gets used to working with the elves alongside his orcs and lesser umaiar. There’s something uniquely uniting about putting your back together with someone over some stupid bureaucratic bullshit that your loud, annoying overlord won’t allow you fight unless you can prove its lack of usefulness with logical reasons and a presentation (and not just smash it with a hammer).
Maglor himself requires minding occasionally when he speaks only in painful grating and his stare seems far away and detached from the world they walk in, but Sauron doesn’t mind it so much. The elf is, on clear-eyed and soft-voiced days, a mite more thoughtful than their previous ruler.
Before long, Sauron finds that the elves have infiltrated Gothmog’s trashy romance novel reading club, and there’s a section for elvish cuisine in the mess hall on the uppermost levels (which is hatefully, undeniably good), and there’s an orcish lobbyist at his door asking him his opinions on labor unions, which is just not done—
“Maglor!” Sauron snaps, bursting into the elf’s rooms without bothering to knock. The elf has converted Melkor’s tall-ceilinged, ominously dark quarters into a multi-leveled arrangement with the curtains on the towering windows almost constantly pulled aside.
“What?” Maglor asks from above. Sauron climbs the stairs in a huff.
He suspects that wherever Maglor was before arriving on Angband’s doorstep, he hadn’t been using his voice much. It’s taken years, but with enough time and practice the elf has begun covering the pure music of it with something more distinctly elvish, that doesn’t make the average person cringe soul deep whenever he speaks.
Maglor is in the huge bath on the second level up, washing his hair. It’s slightly shorter now than it had been when he’d showed up, but still nowhere near a reasonable length. Sauron knows the elf isn’t bothered by his own nudity, so he marches right up to place his hands on the side of the tub and lean over it, and the elf in it.
He gets a face-full of flowery-scented steam for his efforts, but spits out his vitriol anyway: “I had someone ask me about labor unions today, Maglor! Unions! This is not how Angband works!”
Maglor blinks at him, his eyes still too bright and too intense. “Isn’t it?"
“No!” Sauron nearly shouts. “Bureaucracy is not very evil!”
“On the contrary,” Maglor says. “I think it’s perfectly heinous. But since when have you been evil anyway?”
Sauron frowns, taken aback. “Since, Melkor—”
“Pass me that vial there, thank you,” says Maglor, emptying the oil into his hair after receiving it. “Was he not supposed to be mighty? You don’t have to chuck babies off cliffs every day to show everyone how powerful you are. Nor do you have to quash workers’ rights when they, who have so much less than you, are trying to build up power of their own.”
Sauron’s frown deepens as he considers that.
“Should that not be the true worship of your Vala?” Maglor asks. He picks up a comb on the edge of the bath and begins to tease out a tangle. “Doing what you can to gain your own might? I think, ow, it must take more strength to put the world back together than break it apart, no?”
“But—” Sauron says.
“Are you disagreeing on principle, or because you don’t want to agree to fair work days for your smiths and laborers?” Maglor cuts in.
Sauron snarls. Maglor splashes him. “Oh get over yourself,” the elf says derisively. “Is this your perfect world, Sauron? When you have to take time away from your projects to argue over these things?”
“It is not,” Sauron hisses.
“Well then,” Maglor says. The water seems to pull away from his body as he peels back the thin veneer of normalcy over his voice. “Challenge me and make it happen, or sit down, shut up, and work with other people to make theirs.”
Sauron tells the orc representatives from the labor union that their asking wage is too low in the first place, and if they want something they should really just take it. The rest of the council overseeing labor laws in the pits gapes at him, and Sauron gives them a rude gesture and a wicked grin, then fucks off to burrow into his forges for the rest of the day.
He’s not allowed to work on elves anymore, but there’s a new blooming industry for orcs who’ve lost limbs or mobility in the pits and need mechanical assistance going forward. Before Maglor came, they’d have been elven slaves, and they’d have simply been killed, the bodies dumped in with the wargs for food. Now, Sauron has time to experiment.
“You are far too happy,” says Rog, the white-haired demon elf who has claimed a space of his own in Sauron’s deep forges. “What’s got you grinning like a loon on shrooms?”
“A perfect world,” Sauron tells him, thinking of the immediate argument that had erupted as he left, the voices of the labor reps growing louder with their challenge. “And just small evils, to help other people make it for me.”
Rog raises his pale eyebrows then shakes his head and moves back to his area. “Just small evils,” he says blandly. “Eru help us all.”
Sauron has on good authority that Rog only remained in Angband because he had nowhere else to go, and in hopes of watching Sauron himself get beaten into the dirt by Maglor again. It’s an odd sort of friendship that’s beginning to build between them now, centering mostly around times when Maglor has come down to yell at Sauron for something or other, while Rog watches and smirks.
Aye. Sauron has gotten used to it. A perfect world can be many things for many people, and until they arrive at that point, he’ll continue to perpetuate his small evils.
:::
“Maglor!” Sauron forms a shade directly at the foot of the elf’s bed, shaking the room itself to wake him.
The elf sits straight up, staring at him.
“They’re at the gates,” Sauron tells him, an echo of those many years past. “You’ll want to come down for this.”
Maglor makes a face.
“Come on,” says Sauron, well acquainted with their elvish overlord’s many and varied opinions. “Put some clothes on, let’s get moving.”
Maglor grumbles at him in an unshielded voice that frays the edges of Sauron’s shade form, but he does drag himself out of bed. To the balrogs guarding the gates, Sauron sends a shudder of the walls that says hold on, our loud elf needs his pot of coffee.
An orc runner has brought up a tray with snacks and that one craved beverage by the time Maglor is somewhat presentable, and the elf wastes no time chugging it. The orc—a butler of some sort, whom Maglor refuses to get rid of despite their constant impudence—pushes a cloth napkin into their overlord’s face before he can use his shirt or hair.
“Thanks, Ghezzeg,” Maglor mutters. He turns to Sauron as the butler fusses and straightens his clothing. The original challenge of consistently getting the elf into any garments passed, Ghezzeg has been focused recently on presentability. “Now, who’s at the gates?”
Sauron, leaning against the door with his arms crossed, shrugs. “Some elves,” he says, like it isn’t an army of genuinely concerning size, and from what he could see, a number of maiar as well. “Very shiny ones.”
Maglor blinks and frowns. “It’s a bit early,” he says, mostly to himself.
Sauron has no idea what that’s supposed to mean. “Sure,” he says.
“Eh,” Maglor waves a hand. “Let’s go then.”
As they approach the gates, the noise of the army setting up camp on the other side becomes louder and clearer. Maglor’s ears flick back and forth and he pauses.
“Sauron,” he says slowly. “The leader of these elves—he didn’t happen to look a lot like me, did he? Dark hair, bright eyes, but with lots of jewelry and an impressively superior expression?”
Sauron narrows his eyes at the elf. The one leading the little group who had come to bang on the gates had been very similar to Maglor but didn’t quite fit that description. He’d seemed less superior and more desperate, if anything. Which slots right into Sauron’s building suspicions very neatly.
“Are we about to have a new overlord?”
Maglor shakes his head firmly. “No,” he says. “Not even for him. I will not bow to anyone this time around.”
Sauron… can’t really doubt that.
Maglor waves for the gates to be opened without fanfare and Sauron sinks his presence deep into the stones, prepared to attack and defend at the slightest sign that it might be needed. Maglor is an odd creature, but he’s their odd creature and has been for too many years to let go of him easily.
Sauron hates to admit it, but life has been… better, if not easier, under his rule. With the vague sort of armistice they’ve established with Doriath and the other peoples of Beleriand, the umaia has had to devote less precious time to war, taking more purely for himself.
Angband itself is less bloody than it once was, yet somehow more orderly too. He can see it in the posture of the orcs and balrog guards they pass as well: they’ve grown attached to him just the same as he has, and they will protect their overlord, should he need it.
Gothmog himself hurries down from the walls to catch up to them as they pass under the gates.
Maglor steps out into the dim, starlit expanse beyond the gates and Sauron follows him. The elf, as always, looks small and frail in comparison to the dark beings and heavy shadow of Angband. They all know differently by now, though.
A small party of elves had broken from the main force when the gates opened and now rides toward them.
The leader of the group—the same one from earlier, if Sauron’s keen eyes don’t deceive him—breaks from the lot and presses his steed to charge forward with a cry. He’s followed by several others, though they’re all a bit slower.
Gothmog shifts to step in front of Maglor, but the elf forestalls him with a soft sound and an upraised hand.
“Kanafinwë!” the charging elf cries and promptly throws himself from his horse, drawing his sword and running the rest of the way. “Get away from those hellspawn!”
Sauron grimaces. “That violates code nineteen about slurs and profiling,” he mutters, from deep in his despicably evil, bureaucratic soul.
“It does,” Gothmog rumbles. He’d helped write the code with a few industrious elves and orcs, if Sauron remembers correctly. “Stay back,” he adds more loudly to the new elf, sidling closer to Maglor.
“Kanafinwë,” the sword elf says, though he stops moving towards them as the others come up alongside him. He seems confused. “Wilt thou not come to thy father? What is going on?”
Sauron pictures exactly the sort of shouty elf that might produce one of their overlord’s caliber with a shiver.
“I will not,” Maglor says. Sauron turns to him in an instant, alerted by the utterly raw sound of his musical voice.
“Why?” the elf seems to be trying very hard not to beg; Sauron would know, being very familiar with the appearance of begging elves. “How—why did they take thee?”
“No one took anyone,” Maglor says, his voice scraping and ringing eerily. “I walked.”
The swordy elf appears stunned. He opens his mouth but is cut off as a red-haired female elf slides off her horse and races past him to throw her brawny arms around Maglor, sweeping his dwarfed form up in her embrace.
“Makalaurë,” she whispers. Ah. Maglor.
Maglor appears frozen.
“Maglor?” Sauron asks carefully.
“Ammë,” the elf whispers brokenly. Sauron can see the effort Gothmog is putting into not sweeping up their mighty leader and taking him back to much less confusing safety inside their walls.
The elf pulls back to hold her son at arm’s length, then shakes him slightly. “What in all of Eä possessed thee to go and do something like this?! Thou had best explain thyself right quick before I start going after people with my hammer for answers. Introduce thy friends!”
“Ah,” says Maglor, wrapping his fingers around her wrists with white-knuckled grips, though she doesn’t seem to mind. “That’s Gothmog the balrog—valarauka—and Sauron, formerly umaia of Morgoth—Melkor—now mine. Because I. Sang. At him.”
“That’s an incredible simplification of events,” Sauron says, crossing his arms and putting his weight on his back foot now that the potential danger seems to have settled.
“It’s not my fault I’m mightier than you,” Maglor tells him. “Nor that your original system of government was stupid. I just took advantage of it.”
“Mightier than—” Maglor’s father starts, looking faint. “My son, please explain.”
Maglor shifts uncomfortably and Sauron narrows his gaze at the elf’s father, who’s obviously done something to upset their overlord. “Shall I clear the council room, Maglor?” he asks.
“Yes,” Maglor says, muffled in his mother’s embrace again. “This might take a while.”
:::
Melkor was released in Aman, apparently, and made contact with the Noldor shortly before Maglor decided to walk across the Helcaraxë to Angband. The dark Vala had been acting suspiciously enough to promptly be accused—loudly and fervently—of having stolen prince Fëanáro’s son.
Manwë looked for Maglor but could not see him through the snow, and didn’t see him in Angband until recently, at which point armies were gathered, ships were volunteered, and the host of the west set sail to cleanse the darkness of Beleriand and retrieve the one singing elf. Apparently.
Sauron leans against a doorway into the council room as Maglor haltingly explains his rule of Angband from within a feral dogpile of elves claiming to be his brothers.
“’Cleanse the darkness’,” Rog mutters with a scowl, draped over Sauron’s hip as the umaia currently stands half-again his height and makes for a good elbow rest. “And not one of them was even interested in us before Maglor did something!”
Sauron shrugs. “At least he did,” he points out. He’s not sure when the idea of Rog or any of their coworkers being enslaved once more began to unsettle him, but he can firmly say now that it does, and he’s rather glad that Maglor made that change.
Rog snorts.
Sauron pats him patronizingly on the head—he can feel Maglor’s side-eye from across the room and cheerfully ignores it. “Are you sure you’re not just grumpy because those little Amanyar following Maglor’s cousin around keep making eyes at you and you don’t know how to deal with your feelings?”
Rog’s jaw drops. “Screw you!” he snaps, and pushes off his resting spot to stomp away.
Sauron snickers after him. “You let me know when you want to drink about it!” he calls lightly.
He shakes his head wryly. Drinking and bemoaning relationship issues with elves, of all people. His Angband has become a strange, strange place. But he can’t say he entirely regrets it, either. Admittedly, these small evils are worth fighting for.