"- yeep!" says a voice.

She stops the horse at once. She looks around. 

The owner of the voice is very warm and short and she's got an ankle-length braid of hair that shines just barely copper in the dim light and her clothes are bizarre. She gets to her feet with a curiously perfect smoothness.

She maintains what appears to be no private thoughts nor concept thereof; she fairly blazes with presence and self-advertisement. Aredhel can within a moment conclude her name (Elspeth) and surprise and the fact that they won't have a shared language and that Elspeth has noticed her and the horse but is trying ways to contact her family before addressing that. The long-distance telepathy doesn't work and the technological device won't work and now she's trying to signal the precog via circuitous route. And her wolf is going to be frantic.

Aredhel decides she likes anyone whose first thoughts on landing somewhere exceptionally far from home are that their wolf will be frantic. Also likes her in general. Is she a kid? She has to be, or a race of very small people - not any race Aredhel's seen, not running that body temperature -

- she should probably stop reading her if she just doesn't know how to keep her thoughts private -

Hi, she says. Aredhel, technically queen of Nan Elmoth whoopdie-fucking-doo, what are you doing here?

Elspeth actually gives off the impression of being old, but in a bizarre sideways way, as though she can't lay claim all the years in her head.

- hello, she says. Elspeth Cullen technically princess of the Golden Empire, I seem to have had a magical accident.

It's not osanwë. She's doing something else.

She's telling the truth.

Weird.

Okay.

Does accident mean you can't go back? Because this is a shitty place for you to be and I can't recommend anywhere else in the world either.

The people whose magic produced the interaction that sent me here aren't present. They may be trying to reproduce it to get me back but I don't know how long to expect that to take if it's less than ten seconds, which apparently it is.

Great. I probably can't keep your existence from coming to the attention of my husband, and he's going to be intrigued, and then we're going to have a problem. The forest's enchanted to be impossible to leave but I think I know a way around that but I have a baby at home, I can't leave him and I can't get him out of the fortress. I can probably kill my husband but then there'll just be a civil war and my son'll be of great interest to everyone fighting in it. What've you got?

I don't know how I stack up physically against your species, you don't smell the same as anything we've got at home. I can incapacitate most people nonlethally or technically-nonlethally at range for hours, once per target unless I get the technically-nonlethal result, that varies by species too. I can unreliably produce sourceless truth but I've got nothing right now. What's the problem if your husband notices me?

He'll take you prisoner. He'll be friendly about it for as long as you play along. I'm expecting we're disable-able genuinely nonlethally from what you're communicating of the relevant species difference - we're immortal and mostly thousands of years old - and either way a couple hours would be enough time to correct the nonlethalness.

Being thousands of years old will probably help but memory crispness is probably also a factor. I am pretty hard to hold prisoner by the standards of my world but the magically inescapable forest may be a problem.

We don't have perfect memories, no. Very good, not perfect. I am getting the impression you're physically stronger than us, which will help a lot, but he has magic. 

What does it do besides make inescapable forests?

Confuse you about the passage of time, mean that you don't move in the ways you intend to, make things that can go badly in fact go badly. 

I may be difficult to confuse about the passage of time. No special defense against the other two.

Okay. You can also just hope he's not particularly interested. I can - try - on that front.

Why can't you get your son out of the fortress?

I mean, shitty thing to do, I'd stab my husband in his sleep but running away with his child is pretty awful - and if I were willing to do it anyway there are a lot of people who'd stop us and then he'd send an army after us and I know people who'd protect me but, ah, not for free, and there's a chance the King'd take it as an excuse to invade Nan Elmoth - to avenge me, you know - 

Child custody seems like a greater entitlement than not being stabbed in one's sleep.

Really? Not here, there are people who murder their enemies rather unflinchingly who'd still not take their children as hostages. 

I'm not saying I don't know anybody who makes a great parent who wouldn't have been perfectly reasonable to kill under certain circumstances but I was not getting a 'great parent' impression.

He mostly doesn't bother the baby. He doesn't want to name him until he's twelve.

This doesn't improve my assessment. You'd know better than I would, of course.

I don't exactly have lots of fantastic options here. Blasting the city and running might end up being more appealing than going home and hoping he can't be bothered to find you, but it's not going to be good.

No way to convince relevant parties not to start a war for you?

I'd be the pretext, not the reason. And none come to mind.

Okay, is there a way to win it quick and clean and with a stable endpoint?

I like the way you think.

Uh, if we kill the right people in the fortress on the way out and then I go to the King and offer to give him whatever public statements and whatever opening he wants if he lets my brother conduct the sack of the city it'll be as clean as you can get.

How clean is that? I'm assuming my mother's usurpation was probably exemplary even compared to other planets' histories of warfare.

How many people died? The King actually only killed ten, taking power, but two of them were my parents so I am not inclined to be too impressed with his restraint. My brother'll take the city cleanly, in the sense that no one who isn't holding a weapon will die, but I don't know how much people will want to fight back.

Fewer than ten in the initial sweep, a few more than that in enforcing unpopular laws. Why are these people waiting for a pretext to go to war in the first place?

My husband's country is technically a sort of protectorate of Doriath and the King can't afford a fight with them. Doriath won't help Nan Elmoth if they're invaded for my husband having kidnapped and forcibly married me, but if the King did it just because my husband's undercutting his relations with Belegost then they'd probably wade in.

I might like to know more about the geopolitics here but I don't know how long we have before I'm spotted.

Dunno either but I can turn around and go home and keep talking while you hide or whatever you want to try, the palace is only ten miles' ride from here.

I don't have that projective range.

Meaning the 'I am telling the Truth' thing won't be in effect? Because it's really useful and soothing but I can fill you in on geopolitics quite effectively without it. My range is hundreds of miles with people I know and you are - very knowable - so I bet I could reach you at almost that much already.

My telling the Truth thing is in effect however I communicate except in writing but I can't use it as a form of communication in its own right that far away.

I'm both reading and sending, though I've been trying not to read everything since I noticed you didn't seem to have private thoughts. 

Oh, like her dad. That's fine, that doesn't bother Elspeth. Incidentally I'm a terrible repository for secrets and if mindreading is common here that makes me even worse at it than usual.

Yeah, everyone can do it. The King likes asking oaths you're not keeping thoughts tucked away from him. I wasn't really thinking we'd be keeping a lot of secrets. 

Wow, my mother would hate it here. Anyway, I can scurry up a tree and learn about geopolitics until we have a plan?

Better than nothing. And your mother's smart. There's a lot to hate.

Elspeth scurries up a tree very nimbly.

Wow, wish I could do that.

She starts riding home.

Okay, big picture: the continent is called Beleriand. A few hundred years ago it was ruled by Thingol and Melian in Doriath. They were in the middle of wiping petty-Dwarves off the face of the planet and they don't have the best relations with regular Dwarves either but they're all right except for that. There were a bunch of minor communities only nominally Thingol's to the northeast and northwest of him, and the Laiquendi to the east and the Falathrim to the west. 

Elspeth's with her so far. Wondering vaguely what the difference between petty and regular Dwarves is but assuming it's not relevant to the story.

So the Enemy comes, sets up camp in the north, rallies all orcs everywhere to his banner, begins capturing and enslaving everyone. Wipes out most of the northwestern communities and the entire east, has the Falas in bad straits, Doriath's holding on because they have powerful magic. 

Now there's the Noldor. We lived in Valinor, which is the continent just over. Before the Enemy arrived here he destroyed the Trees so nothing could grow in Valinor anymore, killed the old King, sparked a civil war, and took some powerful magic weapons. That's the civil war that the current King ended, the minute his father got killed, by assassinating a select few people and forcing loyalty oaths at swordpoint from a lot more, and then with a united host fought his way out of Valinor, landed here, conquered back everything the orcs had taken - Valinor had more advanced weapons - and then found the Enemy beyond his capabilities. So he settled down, started building, plans to absorb the whole continent politically and then take the fight back to the Enemy. Men came across the mountains in desperate straits because the war's even worse over there, and he made them all his vassals and is I think taking advantage of how rapidly their population increases, compared to ours. 

He's - very straightforward to work with, he makes it clear what will make you his enemy and that that's not to your advantage. He also murdered my parents and keeps my brother chained to his wall, so.

Elspeth is now wondering if there are enclaves of not being fucked up, because she can match most of this but she could also talk all day about perfectly lovely bits of Earth. The not-fucked-up is probably less relevant to the story.

Uh, I think some of the Dwarven kingdoms are perfectly nice internally, and Valimar's very strict but in a way that'd mean nearly none of this could happen.

Not exactly a stirring recommendation, but she did say she couldn't recommend any parts of the world. It's probably a good thing Jake isn't here, he's already presumably beside himself with worry but at least it's vague. That's four species here, Elves and Dwarves and Men and orcs, which is sort of as many as Earth has if you count hybrids as their own thing. She's still not sure what the Enemy is exactly.

Vala. They're immaterial and as far as we know indestructible and they're also - like, everyone else has some common elements to how they think and process and what their goals are. The Valar and Maiar are just kind of - different. Nothing they do makes much sense from our perspective. There are fifteen and most of them rule Valinor, not kindly but not heavy-handedly, but this one wants to do more mass murder and torture than the others would allow. Or different mass murder and torture. They don't really care what he does to orcs but they get upset if he touches Valinor or their favorite Elves.

Elspeth tentatively rounds to 'god, in like the pagan sense'.

Yeah, that fits even closer than you're thinking, Yavanna's the Vala of plants and Aule of ores and metalworking and Orome of the hunt and Manwe of the airs and birds and Varda of the stars and so on. The Enemy's the Vala of bad things, pretty much.

The difference being that Zeus and so on don't exist, but it's still nice to have a reference.

The Enemy definitely exists. And it's important to stop him. The King enjoys riding into orc villages and killing everyone in them far too much but it's not like I think he's wrong.

Assuming the orc villages are military targets one way or another sure.

All orcs are sworn to the Enemy. So even if right now they're just raising their children and doing their laundry in the stream, if the Enemy orders them - and he can do that at a range of several hundred miles - they'll murder you tomorrow. And even if they spend their whole lives doing nothing but raising their children, the Enemy doesn't want millions of orc children because he thinks orcs are cute, he wants millions of orc children so he can torture and kill everyone else.

That'd be 'or another'. Maybe Addy and the other witches will figure out a way to come here and the entire thing can be over, if the gods aren't too godlike compared to vampires.

That'd be great. 

Not sure what you'd do with all of us afterwards, but still.

Well, Mama is pretty humane with all the vampire ex-serial-killers. It'd probably depend on what Aunt Alice said about the future.

The King would be a saint if it happened to be to his advantage. So there's that.

Mama's standards are lower than that. Couldn't call Addy a saint by any stretch of the imagination.

I hope your friends find you. We probably shouldn't plan on it.

Elspeth is planning to assume that they will try indefinitely, that everybody but Jake will cope if they fail indefinitely, and that she shouldn't assume it will be anytime soon that she sees rescue.

Okay. That's everything I can think of about the local geopolitics. Want to murder our way out of here and try to make the ensuing war clean, or hope you can find another way out?

Elspeth has never actually killed anyone. Even in the dubiously nonlethal mnemic blast fashion; she only knows she can do that because Addy did.

Okay. We don't have to make a decision right away or anything.

Elspeth has hit a person with incapacitating memories and then let someone else kill them, that's happened. Maybe she should sit here until she gets some sourceless truth about whether Aredhel is legit or not. Or she could try the thing that doesn't work very well even for all Addy's coaching with the analogies, but, well, it doesn't work very well.

I can come back and swear to things, if you want to learn enough of my language for that to work.

Elspeth should certainly learn the local language but doesn't actually know how/that oaths work in the first place.

When we give our word - spoken aloud - it's binding. Forever. Using it to promise to do things is really dangerous and stupid but using it to promise 'I've been telling Elspeth only the truth and everything I'd expect her to find relevant' is safe, it doesn't commit you to future actions. Of course, I guess I could be lying right now about that fact.

That would be the issue, yes. It's possible Elspeth's magic will go all delighted over another form of truth magic and she'll know a real oath as soon as she hears one or something; failing that, analogies or waiting for soothsaying.

Which usually takes how long?

Analogies are easier when she knows a person because she has to draw the analogy in terms of what would make an idea make sense to them if Elspeth said it. It'll probably take a while. Sourceless truth is totally unreliable and it was probably dumb to have her near magic experiments just in case she had a bolt from the blue about them.

Well, you have until my husband finds you. And a while after that I guess if you want to just play along.

What would she be playing along with?

He'll probably hit on you. Nicely, for as long as you're playing along. He doesn't even acknowledge being the reason the forest's enchanted, isn't it terrible how we're all trapped here, let's ride along and try to find a way out.

Elspeth wonders what happens if she claims to be taken. She has never had to actually claim to be taken to fend off an advance before; Jake is monogamous by obligatory species feature and she's monogamous to the extent she's gamous at all through lack of interest but people usually don't hit on her and the ones that do take a bare no for an answer.

Well, he's never going to see you again, is he.

Not unless Elspeth's family find her, and they'll be looking, and has she mentioned she can't keep a secret, okay she technically can but she's really bad at it and it involves making sure every single thing she says to the person she's trying to hide from is at least technically false so they don't know what it sounds like when she says true things.

He knew taking me might start a war with people significantly closer and more obviously inclined to murder him at the slightest provocation, and he did it anyway.

If playing along means pretending to be attracted to him or something Elspeth is going to be really bad at it. So, so bad at it. If it means actually sleeping with him and he reacts badly to "no" that would be the point where Elspeth would no longer need oathful confirmation that he should be deluged in too many memories for his brain to handle.

Okay so I'd better start planning for breaking our way out of here, then, even if the timing's inconveniently dependent on how long it takes my husband to get impatient. If you kill him and we don't immediately leave there'll be a civil war and my son'll be a pawn in it. So please do let me know when you do so we can get out.

Elspeth can do that. If Aredhel wants to see if the truth magic thing happens they could also do that; it'd be faster if it worked.

,,,sure.

She turns around.

Rides back to where Elspeth is.

"I swear that everything I've told you today has been true, and that I haven't withheld things to mislead you."

Elspeth talks to herself.

Magic is delighted.

Okay, I believe you. Who do I need to blast?

...depends whether it's effectively fatal. If it is, then we can probably keep it down to around two hundred people, if not I'd rather blast the city and then slit a dozen throats.

I only have a couple hundred yards of range. And this doesn't work twice on a single person and does leave them with lots of random people's personal memories.

Okay. Ride as far in as we can bluff, take down the guards when we can't, get my son, take down the guards going out, there are a dozen specific people who need to die and I can point them out to you, head for the borders and attempt the strategy I think I have for getting through the enchantments, if they don't collapse once my husband's dead.

Elspeth hops down from the tree. Okay.

I'm sorry.

Will the guards actually have to die die or can they just lie there processing memories if it turns out Elves can do that?

Only a dozen people have to die die if it turns out Elves are not erased by the memory-blast trick.

Okay. Should I sit on the horse with you or just go on foot?

I get the sense you can keep up?

Unless your horse is a lot faster than any horse on Earth, yes.

Then just run alongside, probably.

It's significantly faster than any horse on Earth. She can still keep up easily.

Elspeth wonders why this horse is so fast. It's a good thing for this purpose she's not a full vampire, animals hate full vampires.

Raised in Valinor. Valinor makes everything stronger and healthier and longer-lived.

That's an interesting effect. Addy would want to know all about the local magic; Elspeth kind of does too but mostly for practical reasons.

Valar can do all kinds of things but lots of their effects amount to making their territory more something and in Valinor's case that's more alive, vibrant, strong, healing, blissful, etcetera. The kinds of magic Elves can do are songs and enchanting metal. Enchanting metal takes months for simple things and years for complicated ones and decades for the real triumphs of magical engineering - Aredhel's husband does magic swords that are sapient - and songs have near-instant effects but they only last while you're singing.

Elspeth wonders if she should expect to be able to do any of these things. Probably not. Someone would've noticed if singing were magic at home, probably.

Probably. Magic items should work just fine for her. They can ransack the armory for some weapons if Elspeth wants them and some rings that glow in the presence of enemies and so forth.

Might be useful if it won't compromise their escape. Elspeth doesn't want to have to bite everything that might need holes in it.

I'm a good shot and mediocre with a sword but if your main advantages over us are strength and speed you'd probably want a sword or something. Or a mace but you don't strike me as the bludgeoning weapon type.

Elspeth's never tried to wield a weapon before. Would've been pretty useless against anyone she couldn't casually overpower untrained with her bare hands. She doesn't know if she's the bludgeoning weapon type. If some of the swords are sapient maybe one of them will like her or something.

Maybe. 

I really am sorry.

As far as I know none of this is your fault. Elspeth is now addressing herself again. Memory is hunting down information on sword use, she has to have somebody who's picked up a sword in here, there we go, sword information processing underway.

Nah, but, like, your life was nice and now everything sucks and we're about to make it suck more. I know the feeling. I don't like being a part of it even if it's not my fault.

That's fair. Well, last time my life suddenly started sucking it all turned out to be an improvement in the long run.

Oh?

Yeah, for the first few years of my life my mother and I were constantly on the move hiding from the previous shadow government and then they found us so she had to take over the world and that worked out pretty well.

I'm glad. 

No guarantee this will turn out the same way but it's vaguely encouraging.

I think things are likelier to turn out badly if we go into them intending to take over the world. The King'll notice and not be amused.

I don't intend to personally take over the world. I run public relations, not any of the administrative stuff.

Okay. And I guess if your mother's people come and find you they'll be powerful enough that it might not matter.

She will probably not try to take over the world unless Aunt Alice says she can do it.

If she has enough power to make it look to the King like it'd be a close fight she can also just ask him to swear to be less awful in exchange for being left alone, I expect he'd agree to that.

Might do. There's plenty to do back home and a substantial improvement here for negligible time investment would probably appeal.

That would be a good thing for us to be intending to do, if we want to go anywhere near the King.

I can only intend things so confidently on Mama's behalf, but noted.

If you think you'll be able to truthfully tell your mother that that seems like a good way to make things lots better here without requiring a ridiculous amount of work, think that'll do.

They encounter some people. "This is Elspeth," Aredhel says impatiently. "She was expected, do you pay any attention to orders at all? We're going back to my home. Ride along with us, we require an escort."

Elspeth did not think she was expected, and everyone present can read Elspeth's thoughts. 

Expected by my husband, not by her, Aredhel tells them privately. 

Elspeth can't understand the local language yet. She is however totally Elspeth.

That'll have to do.

Their commanded escort is more resentful than suspicious. They ride on in. They have to switch to memory-dumping people as soon as someone thinks to ask Eol, but hopefully they'll be close before it comes to that.

Elspeth is mostly thinking about swords. She wonders what sapient swords are like.

And there it is. The gates open for them. The gatekeepers look confused by Elspeth and consider putting the gates back up.

Elspeth is just following Aredhel's lead here.

Aredhel is lying as aggressively as possible considering the person she's lying about has no private thoughts. I found her in the forest. My husband asked the guards to bring her in. She's not dangerous, she's barely out of childhood, I don't know why she's that warm but it's hardly going to burn you, I promised her I'd show her the armory. By all means call Eol down here, he'd be delighted to see us.

They get warily waved in.

They're about a hundred meters past the gates when someone says, "wait, stop, our lord doesn't know anything about this!"

Elspeth, guards out, now. 

Have a few thousand years' worth of assorted memories.

Armory's on the left, let's go.

Elspeth runs for it. Hi swords. Any swords want to leave with her?

One of the swords introduces itself as Anguirel and will totally accompany her.

Elspeth swipes it - what else should she take in Aredhel's opinion?

Armor won't fit her and is probably going to be too much of a hassle, she can grab a bow if she thinks she'd be supernaturally fast at learning to use it, those weapons over there are poisoned be careful, there's more guards at the door can Elspeth drop them -

She can. She grabs a bow, it's not going to encumber her too much and she's probably got some archery in here - anything else -?

Let's go get my son.

She looks at the guards on the way out and stabs two.

Elspeth is not going to eat them this is not the time and she's got a perfect record and she will get squirrels or something on the way out.

Uh. Hadn't actually picked up on that until now - I got that your mother prohibited eating people but not that it was super tempting -

It's not for me. If I was a full vampire it'd be worse.

But most of the people who might take over the world are?

Yes, but they're expected to control themselves these days. Most of them would need to hold their breaths around exposed blood, though I'm not sure if they'd react the same to Elf blood as human.

Well. I guess we're mostly also terrible and have even less excuse. 

Up the stairs. Her son looks three or so. Lomion, baby, be quiet, we're leaving, please be quiet...

Well, three if he were a human, couple months if he were a half-vampire. It's important, Elspeth adds to the child helpfully, because he will believe her.

And now they're carrying him. She knows the ways out that'll have the fewest guards - three here, two there - there's someone around this corridor that needs to be definitely dead -

Elspeth blasts as-needed.

She tries to make sure Lomion mostly doesn't see people dying violently. Falling over is okay. It has occurred to her that people Elspeth blasts may be beyond even Mandos, may be erased truly irrevocably, but she didn't mention this to Elspeth because it's not as if there's a convenient alternative. 

Eol's waiting at the bottom of the stairs. 

Him, she says.

Him Elspeth has fewer qualms about.

And stab. 

And more guards. And the horses. Let's go.

Elspeth is still faster than a horse - My sleep schedule will adapt to the time zone eventually and then I will fall asleep almost unavoidably for a period of time every day. Can't stay on a horse easily asleep. I think we take one horse and you'll have to hold me on it if I crash while we're still in here.

Gotcha. The baby sleeps too. We might be out of here in a day, if I get lucky.

And Elspeth falls into step beside the horse, racing through the forest.

Plan is to claw their way through the enchantments, now that she knows how they work. The trees are threaded to each other to redirect you in circles. There's some give to it. Find threaded trees. Insist on going between them. Twist it, and twist it, and twist it until the threads are trying to hold the whole forest in one spot.

They ride for hours. She sings over osanwe to her son.

Elspeth introduces herself to her sword. What is it like to be a sword?

Being a sword in an armory is pretty tedious. Being a sword running through the forest is pretty great. It'll be better if she knows how to use him, does she?

She's working on it. Here's what she's got. None of the people in her memories had smart swords, though, so perhaps that is different, and also on her world swords are mostly a human thing so the tactics aren't adapted for her strength/speed/agility/sensory acuity.

Her sword is delighted to work with her to figure out the best swordfighting tactics for a half-vampire! Elves do have superior-to-humans strength, speed, agility, and sensory acuity, but they don't even come close to equalling her on any of those but the last.

What a helpful sword. She hopes she doesn't ever need it - sorry sword - but it will be nice to have an option that doesn't involve sinking her teeth into things if situations call for violence.

She'll probably need it! Most people around here should really be stabbed. He'll also cooperate with sparring.

Sparring could be interesting.

After about eight hours of riding she says that she thinks she's getting somewhere. 

How does this inescapable forest even work, anyway?

So she explains how the enchantment chains the trees together so trying to travel between them lands you somewhere else, and what she's trying to do.

...would it by any chance help if Elspeth asserted that there was enough space between various trees?

Yep. That might help.

How would I say it in your language?

"There's space to pass between these trees."

Elspeth repeats that. She has reason to believe her senses are lying to her; she can talk through that just like she could if it were one of Zafrina's illusions.

Brilliant. That'll speed it up - can you do those trees right there, those trees over there -

Elspeth can do that! She can repeat the sentence over and over.

And suddenly there's sunlight streaming through some trees. Aredhel is delighted. Those trees, those trees -

There's space between them! Elspeth says so and if Elspeth says so it is because it's true.

And they're clear.

They're on an open plain, hilly, mountain ranges to the north, forest to the west. 

We head east, she says. And you meet my cousins.

Okay. I'm really surprised I've stayed awake this long and now there's a visible sun I'm pretty sure my sleep cycle will snap to it. Early evening is most likely when I'll fall asleep.

Okay. We can be in Himlad by then at this pace, we can sleep over there.

Okay, good.

You doing okay?

Depends on what you mean. She's usually not awake this long, she's hungry and hasn't seen any squirrels yet, she's worried about Jake and her family, but she's not failing to hold together or expecting to have that problem.

I can ask Tyelcormo to shoot you a deer or something before he comes by.

She could eat a prekilled deer and it'd probably be a little tastier than whatever the Elves would be eating but 'recently dead or with its heart still beating' is really the optimal condition for an animal to be in if she's going to drink its blood and not just eat the meat.

I can ask him about a live deer.

Tyelcormo? It's rude but she thinks he'll get over it.

Yeah?

Need a favor. I'm in your debt etcetera etcetera but actually I'm expecting you'll take this one to your brother. I've been in Nan Elmoth for twenty years. I wasn't allowed to leave.

Oh, fuck.

Nah, let's just go burn the place to the ground and tell the King afterwards.

I'm married and have a son.

Well, he's going to be the only survivor.

I thought you'd say that. Can you come pick up me and the person who helped get me out, and then we'll talk about it?

Coming. But there's not much to talk about.

Can you also talk a live deer into coming along? My companion drinks blood.

And to Elspeth, okay, food and rescue on the way.

Thanks.

Yeah. He currently wants to murder every single person in the kingdom but if I can't talk him out of it I can at least get a message to the King.

If Elspeth weren't likely to fall asleep any moment it might be more relevant that her sword thinks she's stronger than an Elf and she could probably prevent somebody from wandering off to commit mass murder. Since she is convincing him is probably the way to go.

If you killed the prince Tyelcormo you'd also have to kill, like, everyone, they'll come avenge him. Or are you just planning to wrestle him? That might do it. I think I can be persuasive, anyway.

Elspeth was not planning to kill him. If she's planning to kill somebody her physical strength is pretty irrelevant.

Okay. Well I'll try talking to my cousin and if that fails I'll try to stall so you can wrestle him. 

Nod.

Lomion's sleeping. She slows down.

Elspeth matches her. Continues telepathying sword stuff with the sword.

He shows up with a live deer mostly because it's an interesting challenge. He does have Himlad mobilized to go wipe Eol's shithole forest off the map, and says so when he finds them.

Elspeth chomps the deer. It doesn't last long. She does not want the entire forest wiped off the map, that seems disproportionate. Aredhel's awful husband is already dead and Elspeth's willingness to help hinged on the expectation that the subsequent war would be clean.

"I promised. Look, just tell the King, he'll be delighted. Save your energy for the Enemy."

"Fine. You want an escort up to Himring or you want me to tell him from here?"

"Elspeth and the baby need to sleep. And I do want to talk to him in person, or expect he'll want to talk to Elspeth, anyway. I have some conditions on his present."

"...careful, okay?"

"Trust me, I have a very good sense of what your brother is like."

Having drained this deer of all its blood, Elspeth is now very sleepy. Yawn.

You're safe here, ah, Elspeth, was it? No wars starting overnight or anything.

It's Elspeth, she agrees. That's good.

And she flops on the ground and sleeps.

You sure -

...that I don't want everyone in the city murdered? Yeah. It'd be satisfying but she'd be upset and she's super powerful and also I get why she'd be upset, it's not like most of them could have done anything. Sweet of you, though.

Wish I'd found out sooner.

Would've been nice. It's okay.

And they spend the night talking through what she missed, and singing, and worrying about the fatherless baby.

Elspeth wakes up early in the morning.

We're getting escorted off to talk to the King, that okay?

Yeah.

Need more deer or anything?

I don't really need an entire deer every time. I should have something at some point today but it doesn't matter exactly when. I could just eat some of the deer now.

That'd probably be most convenient. 

So Elspeth eats some raw deer, and then follows where the Elves lead.

The Elves lead north, through some populated valleys, across a river, and then the terrain gets drier and sparser and hillier and there's a foreboding fortress on the horizon.

This whole place is so low-tech. It's weird. She isn't sure she likes these people enough to unpack any memories of how to make anything they don't have. In her own right she doesn't know the engineering for anything much.

Yeah, it might help against the Enemy and that'd be really good but I wouldn't expect the King to stop at that. 

Elspeth's a terrible repository for secrets but she doesn't have to sift through Aro's payload for inventors and physicists and scholars he ate once, executed long ago. So she doesn't. She thinks about swords with her sword.

And she tries to be totally calm about this and assume that the King's too careful to just seize Lomion and then laugh at the idea she meant to negotiate with him.

And they approach the foreboding fortress.

Do you want me to hold him?

I don't think he will. He doesn't usually throw his weight around to start out, and my request of him is reasonable, and he'll want to size up you before he does anything conspicuously awful in your presence.

Okay then.

Which means, since you're powerful and useful and would disapprove, he probably won't be awful at all. I just don't want to lean too much on the assumption. 

Reasonable enough. Elspeth knows lots of people who are fine as long as they're getting what they want by being fine.

Well, there are some things he wants that aren't compatible with being fine. But for the most part, yeah, exactly.

Elspeth isn't positive she has enough clues to actually put that together but she has enough to make wild guesses.

She'll probably figure it out if the King agrees to Aredhel's terms.

Probably has something to do with keeping Aredhel's brother chained to a wall.

How good at guessing she is.

Anyway. Hello fortress.

They are expected; they are parted from their weapons and escorted in to meet the King.

...taking Elspeth's sword away kind of makes her strictly more lethal but okay.

The guards take this very seriously but nonetheless no guests with swords in the throne room, sorry, arbitrating that on an individual basis would waste a lot of time and there's a war to conduct, about to be two of them.

Sure, makes sense.

This throne room has an actual throne that someone sometimes sits in probably because the locals are not vampires and find sitting restful.

It does. 

Aredhel kneels, and coaches Lomion into the best approximation his toddler knees can manage.

Elspeth doesn't particularly know if imperial princesses are supposed to kneel to kings. She will if he wants her to she guesses but she suspects radiating the opinion that it's very silly will defeat the point.

There's no protocol for imperial princesses, he says agreeably, and once we pick one it will certainly have to be one you don't find silly. Welcome to Himring. I've heard what's going on but would hear it firsthand.

Well, Elspeth can just condense her entire experience since she has arrived here, calibrated for human-brain-speed just to be safe, and fling it at him, if he likes, how's that.

He blinks.

He goes still for a few seconds.

He beams at her. That's astonishingly useful. Thank you. I'd set some people to working on sending you home but we don't even seem to have the relevant kind of magic. You want me to take Nan Elmoth with as little violence as possible, and Irisse asks that I give the assignment to Findekáno in exchange for her help communicating to everyone relevant what grievance exactly prompted the fight?

Irissë?

Nan Elmoth bans our native language. Irisse's my name in Quenya, Aredhel's Sindarin. The King's scrutiny almost but not quite tempts her to lisp the last word.

Oh. Then yes, Elspeth is not sure why he had to ask for clarification, Elspeth doesn't usually have to repeat herself. She really ought to learn the local languages. The telepathy will probably speed it up, it's so nice that everyone has that.

I was clear on what you were asking but can't put 'burst of memories' into the formal record. I would be happy to see the conquest of Nan Elmoth occur with as little bloodshed as possible. Irisse, can you write to Doriath?

Happily, your grace. May I speak with my brother?

I'll ask him.

Elspeth wonders vaguely how he's going to conduct an invasion chained to a wall. Presumably they will have to let him not be chained to the wall at least temporarily.

He'll be under very restrictive oaths. But he'll ride out with the army.

It's nice that these people have ways to verify honesty but the other thing mostly reminds her of this one witch with the compulsion power who died with the Volturi. He was a creep.

Send me all about that? We don't have your world's magic.

If she wraps up everything she knows about witchcraft and sends it at a human safe speed it will take days and days, she has Addy's memories and they're up to date, but he can have a summary of Pyotr's power, only worked some of the time and Addy never did figure out why but when it worked people who he told to do things just did them.

The Enemy employs oaths that way. I do not. 

Well, Elspeth now knows that he wants her to think that he doesn't do that.

He likes her. 

He has a place arranged for Irisse and her son, and a place arranged for Elspeth where live animals can be easily brought, and he sets Irisse to the letterwriting and then goes to speak to Findekáno. 

Irisse is safe. 

From who?

She was in Nan Elmoth. Eol married her. She murdered him.

Hmmm.

She wants to talk with you, and she wants you to be the one to go take over Nan Elmoth for me. She thinks you won't cause unnecessary bloodshed. 

Findekáno is quiet for a moment. What is your will, my liege?

You swear to take my ends as your own until you next return to me, and then you go collect me Nan Elmoth. Or I have Tyelcormo do it.

All of your ends, not just with respect to the campaign?

Yes.

I'll swear it for all of your goals that I currently know of, with the qualifier that I will not swear additional oaths while under the influence of that one and if I learn of new ends of yours I won't take them as my own.

Thank you, Maitimo says, and kisses him. He grits his teeth. He usually does that. When Maitimo doesn't want him to do that he asks his cousin to swear himself temporarily in love. 

And an hour later Findekáno comes to find his sister and Elspeth.

Elspeth can't talk to her sword from where she is, and has been unpacking memories in real time to occupy herself. She will take ages to run out like this, playing through the lives of random Roman peasants. Pity it's so Eurocentric. She's saving Aro's lunches from his rare trips to other continents for special occasions. Who's this guy?

One of Maitimo's ends is learning more from the stranger; therefore he wants that too, just as much. Hello, he says. You must be Elspeth, and it's nice to meet you but I am actually mostly looking for my sister who apparently commissioned me to conduct a war. Have you seen her?

Last I saw her she was writing letters - Impression of the place.

Thank you. 

He finds Irisse. 

Hey.

Hey, she says. I'm not even sure how much it's you but I had to try.

It's me, he says. Maitimo's war but my - way of thinking, Maitimo's steering but on a course I got to choose, it will be as clean as anyone possibly can make it. I appreciate the thought. Congratulations on making it out.

Thanks. Means I shouldn't tell you things, though. Can I have a hug?

They hug.

I don't want to make you lie to me, she says. So I'm not going to ask anything or volunteer anything you'll be obliged to cover for - uh. If you were really here you'd want to meet your nephew. He's sleeping, but...

Findekáno is delighted by his nephew. 

Someone brings Elspeth some medium-sized live animals a while later.

That's nice of them. She drinks up. Since she's not venomous the meat's not going to be poisoned for anyone else who might want it.

Good to know. They'll make sure not to waste it. The King would love to talk with her at her convenience.

Now's fine, where is he?

Smaller, less dramatic room. It still has places to sit, since Elves are not vampires and need to sit down occasionally. He waves at her. 

Hello! I am rather desperately curious about your world. Do you have a summary for that, or should I pepper you with questions?

I have a summary designed for humans from my world who didn't know vampires and magic existed, but not one designed for Elves.

I am happy to start with that if it's what you have convenient.

Normally it's distributed in pamphlet form because there are more humans like that than there are chunks of Elspeth-time and because some people find her a little overwhelming on top of the whole "vampires are real" thing but she has all the content memorized and can translate it into language-independent meaning pretty easily. Vampires and werewolves and hybrids and their traits and history and the Golden Empire and eating people and forcibly turning them are both illegal now and this is the form you'd have to fill out if you wanted to be a vampire except that's moot here because Elspeth's nonvenomous.

And I'm not at all sure that would work normally on Elves; for one thing, when tortured we can usually just choose to stop having our body, and we can be brought back from being dead.

It's entirely possible Elves can't turn into vampires. Werewolves can't either, at least not active ones, for different reasons, and neither can hybrids for still other reasons.

Okay. How vampires in your world fight wars is therefore not very plausibly helpful to us; I am very interested in how humans do it.

Yeah she still does not think she likes these people enough to dig up any engineering. Now she is contemplating Jasper's Civil War days. There was a lot of malaria going around.

Is that likely to change if I provide you with suitably shown-true information about the Enemy, and promise only to use weapons you give us against him?

Maybe if the promise was really airtight.

You might have to learn our language, or really trust at least one person who speaks it, to be satisfied with the wording of such a promise. But if that's a promising avenue then I want to tell you about the Enemy. Is now a good time, or are you still acclimating to around here?

She totally wants to learn the language, it shouldn't take her long, she has a perfect memory. Now seems fine, she wasn't doing much active acclimation before.

Language first, or Enemy first?

There doesn't seem to be any obvious reason they couldn't happen simultaneously what with the telepathy.

"Okay." He translates while he speaks. "Did Irisse tell you about the Valar and the Maiar? They existed before the world itself and they tell us that they created it. One of them is named Melkor and he destroyed what the others created, but at the time the world had no people except the other, also indestructible, Valar and Maiar on it so this was as I understand it not a very big problem.

Melkor'd messed up the major continents tremendously and there was very little alive on them except his monsters and the things his monsters ate, and the other Valar got tired of working with him and retreated to Valinor, which they built to their precise preferences. It's exceptionally pretty. " He sends memories.

"It is pretty," she agrees in a fairly precise copy of his accent.

"Oh, you might be as fast with languages as my father! I never imagined that was possible."

Did he have an eidetic memory?

"No, just a very very good one and a passion for languages and lots of knowledge of syntax generalizations across languages so he could make inferences quickly."

"I have lots of languages," but I haven't considered linguistics per se very much.

"If that brain dump turns out not to be fatal to us I expect he'd be very sad he couldn't get it on purpose."

Some people did want it on purpose. It does contain a lot of genuinely personal information, some about people who are still alive and aren't as cavalier as I am about mindreading, so I'm not casual about it now that I'm not trying to take over the world. I got all the languages out of it, though.

"Well, my father is dead, so it's not really possible to teach him the languages. Maybe someday."

Elspeth nods. She can resurrect dead people but only with a combination of human (?) sacrifice and the person to be resurrected having been a vampire who Aro or Addy downloaded at some point, no point there.

"The Valar can resurrect dead people. Possiby not if you overwrote them with memories, but certainly if they died as my father did."

It's a pity that the people she blasted could have been okay if she hadn't done that even if Aredhel had stabbed them anyway, but she hadn't been going in assuming that this was an option in the first place. Her memory-overwriting is the only method for it at home and she didn't know the Valar could do that.

"Yeah, I can't imagine how you would have, and it doesn't sound like the two of you used it needlessly anyway. The Valar might be able to help them anyway, I am not at all sure it's beyond them. Unfortunately we can't take our world's method of resurrection to your world even if we find a way to send you back. The Valar don't do mortals - our humanlike people."

"Don't or can't?"

"They would say 'can't'. I'm not actually sure."

Well, Aro's dead, no way to back them up now even if Addy and a bandolier of witch toes shows up with perfected interworld travel in the next five minutes.

"I think our world's magic can fix immortality, but it'd be a centuries-long project for anyone who isn't my father and I have the engineers working on the war instead."

Mama's trying to make everyone at home immortal but has to balance that against blood supply and not disrupting literally all the cultures in the world and turning into a vampire hurting like crazy so it's time-consuming to roll out. The synthetics still taste awful.

"I doubt our solution will have any of those drawbacks, though it also won't come with the benefits of being a vampire, and it won't be ready in time for anyone currently alive unless you decide to win me the war after all."

Elspeth is not sure she contains enough information and power to singlehandedly win a war against an evil god.

"We are winning as it stands. We've had him besieged in the north for centuries. I am sure that the inventions that'll level Angband and destroy him are in our power, it's just going to take another few centuries. He's asked us for peace terms, several times. I think he also believes we're winning."

Where did they fail to come to agreement on the peace terms?

"We didn't go to negotiate with him, he can't be trusted."

Then it's sort of hard to know if his suing for peace says anything about the balance of power. Are leveling Angband and killing him supposed to be one and the same?

"No, killing him will be harder. Levelling Angband will stop him torturing people and breeding monsters, though, so it's a good step, and if they catch it right we can also destroy his body and make it really hard for him to reconstitute a new one, buying us several centuries."

And in several centuries' time you think you could actually kill him?

"A lot can happen in several centuries. With a united populace and a lot of resources going to magic and science, I am very sure it can be done."

He can probably convince her to unearth a nuclear physicist but he might have to stop keeping a dude chained to his wall because if that's anything like what she speculates it's less defensible on every level than vampires forcibly turning their mates and if it doesn't turn out she has even that much leverage he's probably not the right person to tell about nuclear physics, there are probably other people who would like to know about nuclear physics.

"I would very much like to know about nuclear physics. But if you'd rather tell one of my brothers about nuclear physics that'd be entirely acceptable. Findekáno's commanding the war in Nan Elmoth."

She was assuming he was originally intended to go back to being chained to the wall after that. She was also assuming that people who are not (related to / tacitly endorsing / possibly just as fucked up as) King Chain A Guy To The Wall exist and might like to know about nuclear physics. Aredhel said some Dwarf kingdoms were nice internally.

"Okay. I swear not to chain him to any more walls if you teach our engineers the things known to your nuclear physicists."

He didn't really think chaining him to a wall was the exact specific problem, did he? Metonymy should be obvious both because Elspeth and because mindreading.

He was not confused about what she meant, no. 

You can go talk to him, ask him what he wants.

This might be a stalling tactic. A stalling tactic would be pretty smart honestly because Elspeth is not a suitable repository for secrets and trying to be is very difficult. She will probably have to run off into the wilderness if she decides he's doing that. She's faster than a horse, at least. Could also be a diversion. Might be able to get Findekáno to say anything.

"I'm not stalling. If you're trying to take a stand on his behalf you don't do him any favors by going off secondhand reports. We really need to win this war and we'll both live if your condition for that happens to be 'never speak again' but neither of us will be happy about that. I swear I haven't threatened him with retaliation if he speaks his mind or anything like that."

Elspeth is probably ill-served by not knowing more about how oaths work. Maybe her sword knows how oaths work. It's probably a disinterested party.

"It would surprise me a bit if it did, not itself being an oath-swearing species of person, but you are welcome to ask it. Or go around meeting our neighbors and asking them, I can give you a map and it sounds like you wouldn't be in substantial danger. All of them will tell you that Findekáno could have sworn never to speak ill of me or something. I can swear myself that he never so swore to my knowledge, but if that's not good enough then I guess you will just have to decide what's best for him without consulting him."

Elspeth can think of all kinds of things that would have that effect without being literally that.

"I swear that to my knowledge he hasn't sworn anything that'd stop him from accurately representing what he wants."

Then she'll talk to him, she supposes. She should still fly less blind in general. A map would be useful.

A map! And an offer of some translators - "who I swear I've chosen only because they're good at translating and should work well with you" - if she wants to go talk to people who don't speak Quenya, not that other languages should take her much longer. There's an ambassador from Tumunzahar right here in the city, too, if she'd like to meet him. 

Sure why not.

"Thank you."

Insofar as she has provided him with anything of value yet she supposes he's welcome.

"You have good priorities and sensible questions and I have faith we'll come to an agreement for nuclear physicists eventually."

She wonders how much of that is flattery but it doesn't seem likely to matter much.

"I swear that while I do like most people I meet you struck me at once as one of the people I like most of everyone I've met."

That's interesting. Why?

"The making yourself known. I would like to have the relationship with myself and my goals that made that work for me. It's extraordinarily compelling. And it makes you very reassuring to be around; it is clear what you want and what you care about and how people can do right by you. A lot of people are very hard to do right by. And, like I said, very sensible priorities and good judgment."

Elspeth has had to talk to people who were put out about forcible turning being illegal before but none of them ever complimented her priorities while she did it.

"Given the information you have your demand makes perfect sense and you're going to get more information. I don't really have grounds for a complaint."

She laughs a little. "Okay."

He points out to her where all of the people she might want to talk with are, and then leaves for a meeting.

Elspeth goes looking for the nearest person-she-might-want-to-talk-to and introduces herself.

The ambassador from Tumunzahar is delighted to meet her. He's about three and a half feet tall and very bearded. Her translator - mind-affecting magic categorically does not work on Dwarves, they can't sense her truth or talk with her telepathically, so she needs a translator - communicates that the ambassador regards meeting her as a good use of his time.

Elspeth will pick up more of the language over the course of the conversation but there's no substitute for volume of vocabulary and nobody has offered her a dictionary to read (...is there one around?) so translator it is. Hello ambassador. Elspeth is from another world and curious about local politics!

Sure! There are two major Elf kingdoms - the Noldor and Doriath - and lots of Men also live in the Noldorin kingdom. There are seven Dwarven kingdoms and they trade with the Elves, because Elves haven't got much common sense and need to trade for lots of things. He talks about commodity prices in earnest and at length.

In what way do Elves not have much common sense?

Elves hadn't invented currency until the Dwarves explained it to them. Elves are really annoyingly fastidious! Oaths! Oaths are dangerous and kind of ridiculous. Soul-bonding! Dangerous and kind of ridiculous. The King murdered half his own family! Dwarves select their leaders by popular vote and they have term limits and things. Elven leadership wields absolute power, that can't be healthy. 

Many human governments back home have the voting and term limits thing! Elspeth's mama wields absolute power but a popular vote by vampires would have eating people and turning them against their will legal so that's a special case in Elspeth's opinion. She likes the truth oaths, they are a little bit like the thing she does that the Dwarf cannot receive. Which is sort of like her mama, the immunity to mind magic thing, but she can make an exception for Elspeth as needed.

Yes, vampires sound like a case where the normal incentives don't produce very good results. He's very curious about Elspeth's world and how Elspeth's mother ended up running it.

Elspeth can deliver a history lesson! She has literally written history textbooks on this topic.

The history lesson is very appreciated! The Dwarf ambassador would be delighted to pay her in history lessons of his own, though he has not written any textbooks. 

That would be lovely.

So he tells the story of the founding of his Dwarven kingdom, and the story of how the Noldor swept in on stolen boats and conquered the whole aboveground continent from the Enemy.

Elspeth is not sure why an evil god uses armies of orcs. Vampires are probably a step or two down from evil gods in terms of power, and do not use armies of humans, and this is not just because vampires are traditionally secret from humans.

Yeah. The Elves might be underestimating their Enemy because defeating his ground troops was so easy for them.

Does the ambassador think it would be a good idea to level Angband in spite of that?

Oh, definitely. Angband breeds orcs and then the orcs march out to their inevitable violent deaths and also the Enemy tortures prisoners in various horrifying ways but uniformly so, when released, they beg the first people they see to kill them. So levelling it seems entirely reasonable.

That's good to know. Should she trust the Elf King with things that might let him do that or should she maybe tell somebody else?