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Tumunzahar makes Menegroth look like a contract project. Which, the Dwarves assure her, it was. The stonework is astonishingly careful and beautiful, silky to the touch up close while from a distance it gives the impression of stretching on forever above, a sky of stone with crystals for stars. Vast natural cave systems are connected by dozens of perfectly smooth, gently sloped broad stone pathways from which the fall, if she fell, would be several miles down. There are handrails. "We use those to move materials carts," someone explains to her, "we're not going to be reckless."
There's an amphitheater, a place where a hundred of the stone walkways twine around to create space for a hundred thousand people to sit in close proximity, and someone is giving a lecture or a demonstration at the base of it, the seats closest to him filled with eager, tiny, bearded Dwarf-children.
And they spiral down, and down, and down, past waterfalls and egg-sized gemstones left half in the rock and halls of crystal. Everything grows gradually more ornate and more perfectly maintained and the clang of hammers fades behind them. "People say," her guide says, "that we only have a council instead of a single King because there were nine winners of the competition to design the throne so we couldn't just select one person to sit it." And they push open the doors to reveal, indeed, nine thrones so elaborate it would be hard to choose between them, and nine squat bearded people sitting them.
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purposeful_glory
- his preferences are complicated and many-layered things. I think my advice is that you at most express a willingness, through an intermediary.
Okay. What did you redact from your letters to me, and is now a good time to discuss it?
purposeful_glory
Nothing earthshaking, just things I wouldn't want intercepted about my progress and some help I got moving the Men, now's fine.
I have been pointed in the direction of your apartment and am heading over there. Feanorians are avoiding me left and right, it's a little gratifying.
If they're not going to admit wrongdoing, acting awkwardly around people they've wronged is better than acting like nothing happened. Also when you're outnumbered as much as I currently am it's reassuring for people to be nervous around you.
How are you doing?
purposeful_glory
I'm all right. I might have tactical teleportation in months.
Wow. So, closer to the fifty-year end of the fifty to two hundred years for dimension-hopping?
purposeful_glory
I'm not sure how hard that part will be, but it's certainly not bad news for the full version. I'm ripping large parts of it off from existing spells, I won't be able to do any of that for the rest of the pieces.
Still. Good news. And he knocks on her door.
"Hi. I'd have more confidently recommended relocation if I'd known you'd have this, this is great."
purposeful_glory
"I dunno, this time last year I had a really keen igloo."
He shudders.
purposeful_glory
"When I wasn't in the tower your people could have it and they were more comfortable that way," she explains. "Come in, come in."
He does. "We're establishing normalized diplomatic relations. Same as with Elwë or Círdan. It seemed the sanest way to go."
"Were you expecting to be? After Fëanáro told my father to stop talking or expect to die my father apologized to him."
purposeful_glory
"You were so suspicious when I said you could expect to move to Mithrim!"
"You've met Maitimo, right? How could I not be?"
purposeful_glory
"We have met, we have talked, we have an unfinished game of Governor, and the suspicion still didn't bode well."
"I can't figure out if Maitimo wishes I'd have died. He left me to, and now he professes sincere regret, and I'm just genuinely unsure. Doesn't change what's best for the war."