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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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Still. That is a lot of range. You could pop down to the south continent, see if it's habitable in case we end up wrecking this one. You could pop in and out of Angband, though that'd be unwise.
purposeful_glory
Don't plan to visit Angband. I can check out the continent, though, do you know how far away it is?
A thousand miles southeast would have you there for sure.
She is in the middle of a desert. A warmer one than the one that separates the Men from the Elves.
purposeful_glory
She teleports up a few hundred feet, turns into a bird, goes for a surveying zoom.
No signs of human or Elven or Dwarven habitation. A very pretty continent once she gets out of the desert.
purposeful_glory
She makes a little illusion of a reasonably-sized surveyed area and pops back to Himring. Looks habitable. Mix of climates. Very discreetly if at all inhabited.
Good to know. If you want to pop over to Mithrim and tell them the good news I was about to ask for another courier.
He smiles, hands over a dozen letters. And one for Findekáno if you get a chance to pass it on discreetly, please.
purposeful_glory
She pockets them. What standard of discretion are we talking here?
'I'd prefer Nolofinwë not wonder why it's eight pages long', not 'it'll be a disaster if anyone sees you hand it to him'.
purposeful_glory
Okay. Seven pages of the letter become invisible. Consider it done.
Thank you. Will we be seeing more of you now that that's straightened out, or are you going straight for the full thing now?
purposeful_glory
Full thing will probably still take longer than nukes-based-on-eidetic-memory, I'm not going to drop work but you should feel freer to interrupt me.
We're managing fine here, really. Considering building more cities.
Unwise to have all our eggs in one basket, he explains.
I'm impressed with how quickly you pulled it together.
Every engineer I know says that about nearly every project of theirs. Macalaurë says it about songs.
purposeful_glory
My other spells are things of beauty! I wasn't in a rush with them! This one is patchwork and it'd be much prettier if I hadn't needed it in such a hurry.
Well, congratulations. You can do a prettier version later. If you end up finding a way to deny us free will, you can even tell me someday what you mean by pretty. I think it will be an enormous advantage next fight.