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facing that ultimate knowing of death or ending, would have pieced his God-headed vanity.
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Not death or ending: no Ainu can be killed within Ea. He was reduced to a shadow of malice gnawing itself in the dark, unable to grow or take shape again. "While no fëa can be annihilated, reduced to zero or non-existence, an evil spirit becomes fixed in a certain desire, and if it does not repent then this desire can become virtually its whole being. If the desire is wholly beyond the limits of the spirit, it will be unable to withdraw its attention from the unobtainable desire, even to attend to itself. It will then remain forever in impotent desire or memory of desire."
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
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