Virodeil's Prompts #70: I Am Still Here

Appendix 2: The Polter-Maia of Minas Morgul

Minas Morgul was a strange place, Sinistra mused. On the outside it was still every bit the stronghold of evil it was known as, but its inner walls were no longer exuding the eerie green light she had seen in some of her husband's drawings of the city. The dark magic was far from gone though. The green glow seemed to swirl and dance in the walls still, playfully fading into silvery moonlight and reappearing again in a pattern that almost resembled breathing. Sinistra felt at home there. Just like Hogwarts, the sorcerer's tower possessed a bizarre type of sentience, caused by the great amount of magic in its walls and foundations. When they had entered the cursed city for the first time, Sinistra had felt its magic apprehensively reach out to her, inspect her and resonate with her magical core… and then it had allowed her inside, no, pulled her inside was more like it, and it had appointed her as its new ruler. It felt a bit like she imagined becoming headmistress of Hogwarts felt; she could feel the wards of the city as if they clung to her skin. It was odd, but not uncomfortable. Sauron said it was because she was a sorceress, a witch who was magically aligned with him, that the city so readily welcomed her. It was a place of magic after all, that greatly missed its previous ruler, the Witch-King.

It was because she knew so well how the magic of Minas Morgul felt that she could easily tell when something was out of the ordinary. Most of the time, that something was her husband performing some kind of spell, but now it was a distinctly different feeling. It was as if the tower was annoyed at an intruder. Not a hostile presence, more like an unwanted houseguest. She couldn't pinpoint where the feeling came from, but it was definitely there. Around the same time she started feeling the presence, she also started noticing other things. Doors would sometimes randomly open and close. Pots and pans would start making ruckus all by themselves. Knocking could be heard from inside empty rooms. Sauron's tools disappeared from the forge to resurface under his pillow or in the kitchen cupboards. In fact, it was as if someone was playing pranks on them. Given the fact that it was just the two of them living in Minas Morgul at that time, it was rather disconcerting.

"I think we have a poltergeist."

"A what?"

"A poltergeist. We had one at Hogwarts too; you've probably met him. Peeves."

"Oh. Yes, that one."

Sauron didn't particularly like Peeves, but well… no one really did. The Maia looked a little confused at his wife.

"No such creatures live in Middle-Earth, maathûn. What makes you think we would have one here?"

"I can feel a presence in the tower, an annoying presence that has a certain amount of foreign magic but no true physical manifestation. It doesn't feel malicious, just annoying and perhaps a bit mad. And lately all these weird things have been happening… I really don't think you put your hammers in the wardrobe yourself. The only thing I can think of is that it's some kind of Poltergeist."

Sauron over-thought that. He knew that although the sorcerer's tower recognized him as authority, he was not the ruler of the city. That –perhaps questionable- honour had gone to his wife and there was nothing he could change about it. If anyone could feel an intruder, it would be her.

"Then we will have to find and exorcise this… poltergeist."

"They can't be exorcised; they choose where they want to live and as long as they want to stay nothing can remove them. They've tried to remove Peeves from Hogwarts often enough."

Sauron frowned, and with dangerously glowing eyes he stated,

"Well, then we'll just have to make sure he doesn't want to stay here any longer."

And so they went on a hunt for the suspected Poltergeist. Sauron left drawn diagrams he called "spirit-traps" on the floor near the places where the intruder often came to perform his annoying pranks, and then they had nothing more to do but wait. The wait wasn't very long… Only a couple days later one of the traps had caught something. Sinistra couldn't tell what it was, but it was definitely… something. It seemed to shimmer, half there and half not there, and while it exuded mad giggling she could almost discern the face of an old man in it. While she stared at it in wonder, Sauron recognized the Something immediately. There was both anger and surprise I his voice when he growled.

"Curunir!"

The something named Curunir giggled in answer, and seemed to take a little more shape, one moment looking old and weary, the next young and beautiful, as if he couldn't decided what face to use. His voice broke up sometimes, as if interrupted by static.

"Teeeheeheeehee… S-Sauron… Back from t-the... the V-Void?"

"How dare you come here, you traitor?"

"M-Magic… It h-helps… Y-You s-should know… you've b-been d-disembo… bodied often enough in t-the p-p-past… hihihi… Nice f-form by the w-way… left N-Numenor behind y-you at last?"

Sauron clenched his fists, and Sinistra got the idea that this creature stemmed from another part of her husband's past she had yet to hear about. No one she had heard about so far would have dared to speak like that to him… Politely she inquired,

"Who and what is that?"

Sauron glared evilly at the still derangedly chuckling Curunir, and then sighed.

"Sinistra, meet Curunir, also known as Saruman and probably by some other names as well. He's a currently disembodied and apparently rather... insane Maia. You could say he's... a former colleague. He's also a treacherous little bastard and I'm going to rid us of him very soon."

The ghost-thing laughed outright now.

"W-Want to s-see you… t-try!"

Sauron raised an eyebrow.

"You doubt I can destroy you?"

"No… I doubt y-you can k-keep me caught! A-Also, n-nice wifey you got y-yourself…"

Curunir's appearance seemed to become a tiny bit more solid, and then Sinistra saw how the lines of the diagram shifted a tiny bit, just enough apparently for the disembodied Maia to flee away, cackling madly as he disappeared into nothing. Sauron yelled something very foul in Black Speech.

"That… that…"

Sinistra put a hand on his shoulder.

"We'll put spirit traps on all the important locations. If he lets himself get caught again you can kill him, or whatever you do to get rid of him, and if he stays away from the traps he won't bother us either."

Sauron had to admit that Sinistra's plan had its merits. He didn't know how exactly he would banish that wretched traitor, but he could make traps that wouldn't be so easily broken through, and if Curunir retained at least a bit of his former mind he would know to stay away from those. Also, he suspected that the Maia needed the magic of Minas Morgul to be able to do even the most rudimentary things such as communicating, so there was no risk of him wandering off and alerting others of their presence in Mordor. With that the issue was somewhat solved, and as the new traps proved enough of a deterrent they didn't really experience much trouble with Curunir anymore. Occasionally his mad chuckle could be heard in the corridors, and as more people came to live in Minas Morgul they would sometimes find their things disappearing and reappearing in the strangest locations, but it was something they got used to. By the time Sauron and Sinistra got children, Curunir the Polter-Maia was a well-established inhabitant of the sorcerer's tower…

(Author's Apologies)

So, here I am again! The time period on this is during the first years of Sinistra and Sauron at Minas Morgul. The sentient-building-thing is a bit of head canon that I am very fond of... In Harry Potter they often enough hint at the semi-sentience of Hogwarts, so why not? And as for Minas Morgul appointing Sinistra as its new ruler; she IS a mortal witch who is magically bound to Sauron (in marriage) so I guess she would "feel" rather similar to the Witch King (in a non-undead way), at least to a ruler-deprived semi-sentient building.

I found myself wondering what happened to Saruman after the war, because I knew he had been banned from returning to the West, or something like that... and what is a disembodied, broken and defeated Maia to do when that happens? He looks for a place or thing of magic that he can draw power from, of course! I like to think that he has somewhat lost his mind, or at least lost the urge to pretend he hasn't... xD

The "spirit-traps" are basically diagrams drawn on the floor in their most basic shape; I'm sure Sauron can easily make a few that our dear polter-maia can't escape from...

PLEASE REVIEW!

So, I just felt like posting something again... Please let me know what you think? Please?