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Permalink Mark Unread

Malak rolls to their feet, drawing Sevrance's blade up the wizard's side as they come to their feet. She recoils in pain, but doesn't cry out or stop her spell and a moment later Malak's otherwise invisible skin sparkles and glitters. Well, fuck. Guess this is it. They slice at the wizard again, hoping to take at least one more with them into the abyss, diving forward to avoid the spells of the other casters behind them--icy cold blossoms on their left side, a tugging sensation--

Well, now.  What's this?

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It is somewhere completely different! No one is trying to kill them - in fact, no one is around at all. This is a field. There's knee-high golden grass. There are mountains in the distance.

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Huh. Did the mages... teleport them?  That's... It's within their power but not what Malak would have expected given their reputations...And if they were teleported, this... this is not the scenery they'd expect.

Maybe they died? This doesn't sound like most afterlives they've heard of. Maybe it's Heaven, but they wouldn't expect to wind up there and anyways, shouldn't there be someone around to explain things and be helpful and--

And shouldn't they have clothes? They're pretty sure dead people get clothes. Imaginary clothes at least. Right?

 

May as well make the best of this.  They change their features to something less likely to frighten any locals that might exist (Male. If She is fucking with them and that's all this is, then that choice will annoy Her. Not that that's smart.) and wanders mountainward, looking for a stream or pond or something.

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There's a river!

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People tend to live by rivers.  They follow it upstream, looking for any people.

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Here is the burned-out shell of a village that previously had perhaps fifteen buildings, three of them stone and the rest identifiable only from the scorched-out patches.  

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How old are the ruins?

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Probably less than five years, definitely more than one.

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Well, probably not a great place to stay even if whoever burned the place is probably long gone.  They will pick through the ruins looking for--clothes would have burned, but maybe they can find a weapon that survived the fire.

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There's an axe that's clearly made for firewood, not fighting; there are arrowheads that presumably once upon a time had accompanying arrows; there are some very thoroughly rusted knives.

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Lovely.  They'll take the best-looking of the knives and see if they can rub the rust off with...dirt?  Nevermind, not worth the bother. They take it anyways, hoping not to need it.

They head back to the river and eye the water.  Is it murky or clear?

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Clear! It's a wide river, fast-moving in the places where it temporarily narrows. The riverbed is rocky.

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They will head to the bank in one of the faster-moving spots and use their hands to drink some.  They don't trust it, it's water from a river in the middle of gods-know-where, but they're thirsty and there aren't really any better options. They really should have learned something about wilderness survival, that was quite the oversight.

They start heading upstream again, somewhat more on-guard than before.

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And here's a person, headed downstream, appearing quite suddenly out of nowhere with the air around her left arm rippling like the horizon sometimes does when it's absurdly hot out. She looks exhausted and angry and wary, but only slightly. She says something. Sounds like a question.

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Ooh, a local!  Malak bows slightly, smiles, and says "Hi. I don't understand your language but you might understand one of mine?" They then repeat that in the nine or so others that they know. They're still holding the knife but looking as nonthreatening as possible.

Oh, right, modesty is a thing. They cover themself with their hands.

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She actually just looks confused, at that. 

 

And then she sends something. It's a confused impression of thoughts and images - urgent, cave-city, do you know the way -

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Oh, great, because Malak has not had enough telepaths in their life.

Malak tries to think the concept of "No" very hard at the stranger. Hopefully she won't object to them following her, and Malak can solve the language problem tomorrow. Or maybe the telepathy is good enough that that won't be necessary, though it doesn't seem that way so far. Then, curious, Malak tries to think a question at the stranger.

"Are you my mother?"

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Confusion. I'm not married. (Along with the implication that her unmarried status should be obvious.)

(Or maybe humans can't tell that kind of thing, is this a human, she's never seen one before.)

 

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Malak fights the urge to respond flippantly, that would probably just confuse the person more. And their question has been answered. And they want to make a good impression with the single person they've run into in this place.

I see. Then, the concepts communication, words, tomorrow.  No idea if that will get through. They never quite got the hang of most forms of telepathy.

 

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Should be in cave-city by tomorrow. Less a prediction than a - necessity, of some kind. She heads off downstream at a jog.

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Well, hopefully she finds it.  Malak jogs after her, missing their boots.  Ow ow ow, and so slow.

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That does look painful. And if the human's human they're probably not going to be able to keep up for very long - 

 

want me to carry you?

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Um.  Well, they guess it's not going to really be much less dignified than their current situation.

If you don't mind.

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And she picks the human up and speeds up considerably, tracking the river, turning her head occasionally to look for Nargothrond's guards - it has to have guards, right -

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Malak tries to keep an eye out for other people but this is not a very good arrangement for them to act as lookout so they do their best to relax and not slow down this rather impressively strong woman.

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And a short time after that a really large dog hurdles across the riverbank at both of them.

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She drops the human. "Hello?" she shouts - dog could be with someone - and then the dog leaps at her and she barely dives aside -

 

It doesn't look like some creature of Morgoth's. 

 

It also doesn't look like it'll appreciate being patted and told to calm down -

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Malak lands in a roll that looks uncontrolled but keeps them from getting injured in the fall, then scans for other threats. They left the knife behind a while ago--too inconvenient when being carried--but that doesn't mean they're helpless. They start assessing the threat they know--Big dog, if it starts breathing fire, hit it with cold, otherwise...acid, probably...

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It does not start breathing fire! It wheels around and the woman dives into the river and it hesitates for a second before chasing her.

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Oh, no, it is not chasing away the one person Malak has managed to find in this place.  They conjure a fist-sized glob of acid and launch it dog-ward.  If that doesn't draw attention, Malak will shout.

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That draws attention; now the dog will snarl and leap at Malak. It's fast.

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And why did it just have to be a dog, Malak can hide from sight and sound and even echolocation and whatever the fuck it is that dragons have but never did figure out scent, maybe the water...

They jump. Over the dog's leap, they can still do that even without their boots--barely, that was closer than they thought it would be--and try a jet of fire to see if that has any effect.

And then they land and they're regretting the lack of boots again because ow that rock was sharp.  Fuck.  They turn invisible and stumble toward the river.

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Fire has an effect. It mostly has the effect of seriously annoying the dog. The woman is singing.

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It's very nice singing and Malak has no idea how to fight a seemingly impervious dog, certainly not unarmed.  They kind of doubt they can drag the woman to safety, but maybe the singing will do something. Maybe it's magic singing?  Malak has heard of people who could do that, but none that were particularly powerful...

They hide in the reeds and watch. They'll interfere if they think it will help.

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It's definitely magic singing, something in the vein of everything calm down which is having an effect on the water and the grass and the human and the singer herself, of course, she is marvelously calm about this Maia dog that might be a servant of the Enemy, the dog wades out into the river after her and closes its jaws gently around her upper arm and starts dragging her towards shore and everything is going to be very calm, very calm, nothing wrong at all -

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Well this doesn't seem like anything to worry about. Malak relaxes, and their concentration on the shapeshift and the invisibility relaxes, and then they're visible and back to normal and there's a brief surge of panic, but, no, that's not anything to worry about either.

Their eyes lack whites or irises, and their teeth are sharp and pointed and they have a tail. this is probably going to look bad murmurs a voice in the back of their head, but it's not anything to get worked up over, they can just calm down and relax...

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That is weird, but definitely not worrying!

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...everything about this is both weird and worrying - 


"Stop singing," he calls at the Thinda woman, "he won't hurt you - Huan, behind you -"

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The dog turns around. That person does look significantly more likely to be a servant of the Enemy, yep. 

 

He leaps.

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Everything is calm, nothing to worry abou--That is a very large dog.  Malak dives under it this time, turns invisible again. They're probably really fucking up any hope of a peaceful resolution but it's better than being eaten.

They look in the direction that the second person spoke from, trying not to calm down, calm down, calming down, visible. They would scream in frustration if they were less calm. They sit down, instead.  Much better idea.

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The dog puts its jaws around the human's upper arm without biting down. Her companion stops singing. The man approaches. He's on horseback.

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"I'm seeking Nargothrond, can you guide us there?"

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"I can, and will insist - these aren't safe lands. What are you seeking there?"

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"I need their aid in war with Tol-in-Gaurhoth."

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"A noble purpose. And she - uh, he - the human -"

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"No idea, I don't speak any of the human languages."

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He tries one.

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That sounds like a different language.  Are they trying to talk to them again? Hm.

Is he trying to talk to me? Is he a telepath too? I'm not sure what this looks like but it's probably not that.

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Looks like you serve the Enemy only you didn't try to kill me and the dog would probably be able to tell - 

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I don't believe I serve your enemies but I don't know who they are. I don't intend to kill you. They are also thinking I hate telepathy, telepathy is awful... in a loop but are trying not to send that. Not that they've ever been any good at that.

(Also present and trying not to send: anger, frustration, hunger, pain)

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"I've got food." He dismounts and pulls out a wafer of something breadlike. "My lady, if you've got mind-control that powerful you've presumably got healing -"

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"Right, sorry." She starts singing. Injuries become less painful; they don't start stitching themselves up just yet.

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Oh, that's nice.  Kind of them.

Malak accepts the food--wolfs it down one-handed, actually, they haven't eaten in at least a day and it wasn't exactly a restful day--and tries to hide most of their thoughts better.

Gratitude. They still hate telepathy but politeness to captors seems like a good plan for as long as they have captors.

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Should be pretty filling, it's magic. For communication that isn't telepathy, which the human apparently hates, they'll have to wait on his brother. 

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The song should be starting to stitch her up by now.

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And he catches up with them. Looks searchingly at his brother for a moment, then dismounts as well. "It is a pleasure and a surprise to meet such a gifted stranger here."

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"I am the daughter of Melian and Elu Thingol and I have already told your companion my intentions and I am in a hurry to get to Nargothrond."

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"I am honored," he says. "And we are in a hurry to take you there. But there's such a thing as incautious haste. If you'll extend us the charity of twenty minutes to sort this out -"

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"Someone I care about is being tortured."

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"Someone I loved was tortured fifty years as they're now counted, and none of us would now live if we'd rushed into rescuing him."

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"I'm half-Maia -"

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"I'd inferred that."

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"Twenty minutes."

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I need to learn your language quickly, he says to Malak, and then points at himself - "Curufin" -

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Malak points at themself. "Malak"

I'll be able to speak yours tomorrow. They can't imagine this stranger--Curufin--could learn a language quicker than that, but they know next to nothing about these people or their capabilities, so.

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How's that?

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Can cast a spell on myself. Need sleep first.

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...I see. "Tyelcormo, why don't you stay out here while I escort the princess Lúthien on to her destination. If tomorrow we'll be able to communicate better -"

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And if this is a threat better not to hand it the location of one of Beleriand's last hidden cities. He nods. 

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"So we can go right now -"

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"We can go right now."

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"I'm not faster than a horse-"

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"You may share mine." 

 

 

And they head off.

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Come to think of it, Malak's been up for at least 20 or 30 hours.  They should probably sleep now.

What time is it, locally?

 

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Mid-afternoonish? Still sunny. The dog lets them go.

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Pardon. Do you have spare clothes? I lost mine. Sleeping soon. Please don't kill me. They can't outrun a horse and they can't outfight this dog, it's not like they have any other choice. Sleeping in the captivity of strangers is never pleasant though.

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I can get you some when we get to the city. That's a thing with humans, right? It's not with us, so you're fine. 

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Malak snorts. If everyone who said they didn't kill people in their sleep could be taken at their word the world would be a better place. They don't try to broadcast it but Curufin's companion probably hears anyway. They curl up in a fetal position, covers their face with grass, and very quickly drift off to sleep.

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He actually meant the nudity taboo, not the not killing people in their sleep, but he pats Huan and keeps watch for the sleeping human and watches Lúthien and Curufin disappear over the horizon.

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Malak wakes well before dawn, given when they went to sleep, slightly but not terribly surprised. The protection spells at the surface of their mind have gotten loose with sleep.  Malak sits up and starts meditating, sweeping away the protection spells and starting to assemble a language one in their place. Thank the gods they have most of the foundations for that already, it would be awful to have nothing but telepathy to talk with until Curufin picked up Kalziran or Malak picked up whatever these people call their language.

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They can have some more food in the meantime.

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And, a couple hours later, they open their eyes.

"Hi. I'm terribly sorry about all that, and about hurting your dog--if I actually did, they seemed pretty resilient--I suspect you probably have a lot of questions and if you do I'd be happy to answer those first, but also where the hells am I?"

"Oh, and I've been thinking about places I might be and even though the relatively nice lady yesterday denied it I'm not totally convinced, so, are you quite sure you're not my mother?"

"...Or cousin or something I suppose that's probably much more likely given your apparent gender, though I'd be surprised if there are that many of us."

"Oh, I was supposed to be answering your questions. Sorry."

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"You don't know who your mother is? And you did hurt Huan but not badly, he's got a prophecied death so he's not scared of much, this is the river Sirion about a hundred miles south of Tol-in-Gaurhoth, and Curvo'll have the questions, I just want you to swear you don't serve Melkor."

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...

"I don't know who Melkor is, but I swear on...hm. I swear on my life and my magic and my love for my sister that I am not knowingly serving Melkor, and I further swear that I intend no harm to you, your companions, the woman with whom I was travelling, or the secret cave-city she was looking for. I hope this is sufficient, as I am reluctant to swear anything more exacting given my complete ignorance as to who you or your friends or this Melkor person are."

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"Yep, that works. You wanna go? You can have my shirt or something if you're going to go find humans."

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"I thought there was some Curvo person who wanted to ask me questions?  Are you not human? And really it's pants that are more important, I'm used to people reacting a bit more strongly to the lack of genitals than you have so far. Though I guess if you're releasing me I could just change shape again."

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"Curvo would absolutely love to ask you questions but we're not stupid enough to take a prisoner with unknown magic to Nargothrond, so if you wanna go you can go. I don't want to ride a horse pantsless so you can't have those. And I've never seen a human naked so I thought that was maybe a human thing, is it not?"

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"...Not where I'm from. But, uh, do your humans look like this?" They gesture to their face and tail, "Because humans where I'm from look a lot like you do. Your caution is understandable and commendable. Do you happen to know which way it is to some humans? And, if you're not human, what are you?"

And Malak is in human shape again, this time female.

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"Nah, our humans don't look like that, a Maia who was trying for human and messed up for some reason might look like that, or the Enemy could've fucked you up but you'd probably be more fucked up if he had, or you could be some new and exciting variety, humans come in different colors and stuff. I like the tail. I think there're some living in Brethil? Forest, thataway, don't try to evade the gives-you-a-headache-to-walk-this-way magic or you'll wander into Doriath and Doriath'll shoot you."

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"...Maia? Is that what you are?  And you can change shape? What else? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, I can go look for those humans--You just seem like you're more knowledgeable and interesting than they'd be."

Malak is annoyed at missing the chance to see this hidden city, especially now that they know the nearby humans live in the woods. Cities are interesting, small logging villages less so.

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"You can still come to Nargothrond if you'd rather, I'm just not insisting or anything - I'm not a Maia. Huan's a Maia -" nodding at the dog. "They can change shapes, but it takes them centuries usually to build a new one well enough they can shift to it at will."

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"...What. No offense, but it seems that if you've concerned about the security of your secret city it is monumentally stupid to be more willing to take free strangers there than people you've captured and are presumably intending to keep contained.  It's... You know, I'm just going to shut up now.  I would love to see your secret city if you will permit it."

Malak is not usually this talkative, especially not about why people shouldn't give them things they want, they really need to pull themself together.

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"You swore you're not working for the Enemy, and I can read your mind, and mysterious new magic is potentially a really big advantage too, and I'm not all that constrained in containing you, Huan can just follow you around."

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Malak does not give any further objections. 

"Where I'm from at least, mind-reading is considered rather rude and I have had some personal bad experiences with it and would strongly prefer that you do not do it to me." And they fall back into their normal shape and start walking in the same direction that Curufin departed yesterday.

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He stands up too. "Where are you from?"

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"Originally, Tylantia, by way of Qinshu and Sternhill. In Bael Turath, the Jade Dragon Empire, and Kalzir, respectively. I didn't recognize any of the places you mentioned, do you know any of these? I was hit by a spell and then I wound up here. The woman you found me with: Human, Maia, or whatever you are? Same question for Curufin, Curvo, and this Doriath person."

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"Lúthien's half-Maia half-Elf-like-me, Doriath is a place, Curufin is my brother and Curvo is his nickname, never heard of any of those places."

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"How is a place going to shoot--Oh, it has inhabitants, I suppose. You could have phrased that more clearly. Where I'm from has elves, their ears are pointier and they vary more in skin tone than humans. Tend to look like their environments, ones that spend a couple centuries in a city turn a lovely shade of brick-red.  Probably why they don't like cities much, or human cities at any rate."

Malak goes quiet, as their thoughts turn back to Sternhill and Istiell and how they got here.

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"Elves around here don't like human cities because they're really ugly and noisy and smelly. I could change my skin color if I wanted to, but it won't change if I don't want it to and I don't actually know how I'd pull off brick-red."

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"Mm. It isn't your color." And, a few moments later, "If you intend to keep reading my mind I would prefer to know. And should I expect that everyone around here has that ability, or is that just you and your brother and Lúthien?"

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"Nah, all Elves have it, it's rude here too but -" he waves his hands - "apocalyptic war, better safe than sorry, I can't promise people won't do it when they meet you even if it's rude. I won't."

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"Like I said, it's understandable. Your approach to security is really strange to me, but I assume what confuses me makes sense to you and it's probably just information I'm missing. What's this about apocalyptic? I thought you were just losing a perfectly normal war, is that hyperbole or is the fate of the world actually at stake?" Maybe they should see if they can work a spell to keep their thoughts hidden, they had a ring for that but that is long gone.

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"Perfectly normal war? This is the first one in written history, so it's hard to actually say, but I really doubt most wars where you're from are this bad or there wouldn't be a where you're from."

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"Wars tend to be really really bad but 'apocalyptic' is not generally an adjective that applies. Where I'm from we have more of a history of war than you seem to--Though maybe we just have more history, how long have you had writing?--but I've only actually lived through one myself. It was, as they go, pretty bad, but I'd still hesitate to say apocalyptic. No gods were involved--Well, one, maybe, but She doesn't count--and with them absent I seriously doubt there was enough power flying around to actually seriously endanger the world. I don't know if people around here tend to be more powerful than back home."

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"We've had writing three thousand years as they're counted now, my dad invented it. The other side in this war is an evil god."

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"I will concede that your war is far more likely to qualify as apocalyptic, then. Any strategy for wi--no, you think I might be a spy, best not tell me that." They lapse into silence. War with an evil god--and no opposing gods mentioned--seems to rule out every afterlife they've heard of.

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"I mean, the reason princess up ahead was all upset is because recently a bunch of idiots including Nargothrond's erstwhile ruler went and got themselves captured. We can assume the Enemy knows everything we were thinking of doing as of recently."

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"...Lúthien is a princess? And she's wandering the plains alone and on foot because...? Is the war going so badly that you can't spare anyone to guard your commanders?  I understand 'lead from the front', but 'lead from the front alone and underequipped' is...not common practice where I am from." From the way these elves seem to be running their war, Malak is not convinced that this Enemy is not just a moderately-powerful sorcerer pretending to be a god.

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"I have absolutely no idea why Lúthien was out wandering on her own and am hoping we'll get an explanation when we get there. She didn't say anything to you?"

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"We didn't have a language in common and I really do not like your form of telepathy, I assumed if it was of dire importance for a stranger she met on the road to know she would have told me anyway but my own curiosity could wait until I had my language spell."

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"It probably has something to do with the recent mess in which the erstwhile King got captured but what flavor of connection I'm not even going to guess at."

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"Of course. Well, if your King has been captured and you're not worried about information security, I look forward to seeing the full extent of the miserable strategic situation Fate has seen fit to put me in. And shoes, I look forward to shoes. How much farther is it?"

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"Five miles? And he wasn't my king."

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"Oh? King means leader, does it not? And you are living in his city, though I suppose you never said you were from there. Are you a diplomat, then?"

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"Something like that. My kingdom was east of here; it fell in the Battle of Sudden Flame, and we fought our way across to Tol Sirion in time to bail out its ruler when it fell, and then we retreated to Doriath while the dust settled, and then we were sticking around to help Nargothrond mobilize for the counteroffensive when its king became seized with temporary insanity and we had to talk him into surrendering his crown before marching off on a suicide mission."

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Malak opens their mouth as if to say something, then closes it again.

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"You need a lot more context, trust me."

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"Or don't, whatever."

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"You have more reason to distrust me than vice versa. I was waiting for context. You don't have to give it, though, I'm sure I can pick it up later."

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"No, I'm happy to give it, I'm just - you're from so far away I'm not even sure where to start on providing context. Uh, at the very beginning of time the gods warred over the shape of the world, that familiar?"

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 "Yes, actually. Though I don't remember if that was what they were warring over, either I wasn't paying all that much attention or my sister skipped over that detail or maybe the scholars back home didn't know it. Or this is a different war between the gods at the beginning of time."

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"Anyway, eventually the main continent is an appalling mess of competing artistic visions and all but one of the gods head off, raise a new continent, make it really pretty, and seal it off from the rest of the world. Shortly after that Elves come into being."

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Mm.

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"Melkor, remaining god, harasses and then kidnaps and tortures various Elves he manages to catch away from company, forcibly breeds them with things of his own invention, gets the race of orcs, magically binds all of them to his servitude at birth, is generally a charming fellow. Eventually - after centuries, of course - this catches the attention of the other gods and they go to war with him."

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Hm. Still consistent with what I know but again that's mostly due to ignorance.

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"The other gods win, the world's rather scoured and there are monsters running loose, they generously extend to Elves an invitation to come live in their paradise, some Elves accept."

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Nod

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"A while after that they pardon Melkor."

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nod

...

"Wait what."

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"That bit didn't make it out to wherever you're from? Yeah. They pardon Melkor, because it's been a really long time and he promises to be good now. And he pretends at it, for a while, secretly encourages a bunch of people in various forms of undermining the state, assassinates the King once the cracks start to show, put out the Trees, flees for this part of the world."

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"Put out the... trees? You're going to have to explain that part it makes no sense to me unless my spell is going wonky, but I think it's fine... I think it would be a bit of a stretch to make this history consistent with mine, so I'm going to operate under the assumption that I'm on another plane or something, not just on the other side of the world from home."

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"Another plane?"

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"Yeah, like Hell or the Abyss or Elysium or...you don't have this concept, never mind. Another world, sort of. Some of them overlap each other, so that points in the one correspond to points in the other, the gods live in some of them, dead souls tend to migrate toward the planes with gods, but don't ask me how they get there I didn't really study planar theory much..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We go to Mandos when we die but he's in Valinor with the rest of the not-overtly-evil gods."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh."

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"Are there reliable means of interplanar travel -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Apart from dying? Yes, some of the more advanced spells transport someone from one plane to another. That's one of my main hypotheses for how I got here, I was in the middle of a battle with a wizard--well, rather a lot of wizards, actually--and then suddenly I was here. There are also supposedly magical artifacts for interplanar travel, but I've never seen one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Any way to scale it to evacuate this one entirely?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Um. Theoretically, maybe, but as far as your hopes go, no, probably not. Sorry. I'm not powerful enough, and I'm not sure I even know enough planar theory to even put the spell together and I've never actually designed a spell from scratch before. I know people who could, probably, given a couple decades but I am not one of them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can you teach your magic?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Probably. And I can teach what I know of planar theory but it took centuries, maybe millennia, for people back home to develop the field enough to get the first plane shift spells working and even those can only carry a handful of people at a time.  Really, you should not stake your hopes on this. Teleportation might be more tractable, you could evacuate to Valinor?  That I could probably figure out in ten, twenty years. That might be an over- or under-estimate, every time I've learned a new spell before I've had books to help."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Valar'd kill us. We might have centuries, probably don't have millenia. What else can your magic do -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mine in particular, or magic like mine?  Magic like mine has very few limitations that I can think of, for the best practitioners. Though usually their abilities are confined by their area of study. Control the weather, heal the sick or wounded. Raise the dead, though very very few people can manage that without petitioning for divine intervention. I've heard of people creating or moving islands, or making private planes. Moving continents should be possible but I don't think there's ever been anyone powerful enough. My talents in particular--"Best not tell him everything, don't know how trustworthy he actually is--"You've seen me throw fire and acid, I can do a couple more like that, and can vary the dispersal.  Invisibility, you've seen. I can sense other magic, but it takes time and focus.  I can change my shape, with limitations. Languages, obviously, though that also takes some time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And all of this took millenia to work out how to do in the first place -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"A lot of it was quicker to develop than that.  But planar travel, resurrection, summoning spells--they all needed a lot of background about the nature of the planes, and that took a while to develop. In theory, that research is faster now, but only because we--they--have those tools. Easier to figure out what Heaven's like when you can visit, or call up an angel to answer some questions."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We don't necessarily need those right away, just something that could kill a god."

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Malak narrows their eyes "Oh, I see. Unfortunately I don't know anything about killing gods beyond 'it's really really hard.'"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We've noticed. Anyway, we pursue Melkor across the ocean and manage to kill the armies of orcs and besiege him in his fortress for four and a half centuries, and then the mountains around the fortress all erupt and kill everyone within a hundred miles and that was the Battle of Sudden Flame and that's a very brief history of the war."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And then Nargothrond's king ran off to get himself killed. Did he lose loved ones to the fire, or did the Enemy capture them, or he just...ran off. Did anyone actually see him run off or did he just go missing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Both his brothers had kingdoms in the north that fell with no survivors, and while he was riding up north in what would prove a futile mission to rescue them, his escort was ambushed and took serious losses and was rescued by some humans. He gave the leader of the humans a ring, swore him friendship in any need, arrived north too late, came back - he was torn up about it, of course, but functional.

 

And then the human's son showed up. The human had died, and the son had gotten it into his head to marry Lúthien, and her father had told him that the bride-price would be a Silmaril off Morgoth's crown. The Silmarils being extremely powerful extremely dangerous magic objects that my grandfather died trying to keep from the Enemy - my father made them - you don't need to know what all they do beyond that if we had them we'd have won the war long ago - 

 

- anyway, the kid takes this as 'so I have a chance' and shows up in Nargothrond to ask the King to help him steal a Silmaril off Morgoth's head, and the King agreed, and started mobilizing the kingdom for a suicide mission to try it."

Permalink Mark Unread

...

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. So we - told his people what he was mobilizing them to do, and I guess you could call it a very peaceful coup, they turned against him and he threw his crown on the ground and walked off and tried to do the mission with whoever stood by him, of which there were ten, plus the human kid. They were all captured. We didn't have quite the - consensus - necessary to actually stop him from turning himself and all his secrets over to the Enemy -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I assume that his dangerous instability was not, in fact, apparent when he was chosen to be king? How long ago was this?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Couple months ago for the dangerous instability, four hundred years ago for the chosen as king."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And his departure and capture?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Assuming he was captured as soon as he got to Tol-in-Gaurhoth, which is probably what happened, that would have been six weeks ago."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How defensible is Nargothrond, then?  I'd been assuming it's safety relied largely on secrecy, are you evacuating?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's only the one entrance over the river and there's nowhere safer."

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"...lovely." They fall silent again.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know."

Permalink Mark Unread

They continue to walk in silence for a while.  If they've been counting right they should be arriving soon... They shove any thoughts of godslaying to the back of their brain and start up a litany of Kindly stay out of my mind in the foreground of their thoughts. Hopefully it will help.  Gods, they miss their ring. 

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Here is a gorge through which the river picks up its past, swift and dangerous. They cross ahead of that point, and then walk a narrow one-person track that winds along the side of the cliff, and then there's a stone gate in the cliffside.

 

He stands there for a few minutes.

It opens.

Permalink Mark Unread

Kindly stay out of my mind kindly stay out of my mind

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The people look questioningly at Celegorm and then let them both in. 

 

It's pretty. High arched ceilings, in places natural and in places obviously carved in, every inch decorated with careful intricate detailing in some metal that shines as if it's white-hot. It's narrow for a while and then opens up into something resembling a cathedral, full of people. Some of them turn and stare, but most keep at what they're doing.

Permalink Mark Unread

Stares, they can deal with. They've dealt with stares before. Kindly stay out of my mind "Which way to your inquisitive brother? Actually, scratch that, which way to someone who might have some clothes they'd be willing to give away or trade for future favors?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'll have someone meet us at Curufin's with clothes, no problem."

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"It's a lovely city. Are all elven cities like this?  Tylantia was fairer, I think, but I left when I was young, that might just be nostalgia."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're prettier, actually, when not constrained by wartime and secretness and stuff. Tirion was -" he sends an image. It is stunning even in memory.

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Malak flinches visibly. "I see."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Something wrong?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Telepathy. Your other city is beautiful but I would prefer not to see it that way."

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"Sorry. People kind of use it all the time, really convenient, I can tell them not to -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you. Where I am from mind magic is rare enough that... well, there aren't many benign users. And I have met more of the other kind than I would have liked. I'll adjust, given time, but I'd rather people not use it on me unless it's extremely important for a few months at least."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'll let them know." He knocks on a door.

Curufin opens it. "Celegorm-"

"There are different worlds, different magic, you need to talk to them -"

"Oh?"

"Yes."

"Come on in."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hello again. I'm temporarily fluent in... whatever you call this tongue. I hear you're likely to have questions?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Temporarily fluent? How do you do that? And yes, there are other worlds, how many of them, how was this determined, how is it distinguishable from places far from each other, all created by Eru? How does your magic system work and can it do any of the following: summon things, extend range on other magic -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have a spell.  I can keep using that until I become properly fluent, I prefer to be able to perform basic tasks without magic.  Maybe two dozen known to the scholars of my home of which I can remember the names and features of maybe a dozen. Each plane is...infinite in size, maybe? No, that doesn't sound right I think the one I'm from is finite.  But many of them are infinite. I think.  Uhh, they don't connect physically at all. Some of them sort of overlap, so locations in the one correspond to locations in the other. This really isn't my area of expertise. I don't know who Eru is.  It works by gathering power from around you or from inside yourself--I don't know how that works, they described it one way in Kalzir and one way in Qinshu and I know how it feels but I can't really describe that and no I will not share it via telepathy until I'm much more comfortable with that, I'm pretty sure you can't get it without my cooperation and if you try I'm more likely to panic and mess everything up than produce anything useful." They pause, take a breath, "Kalziran mages then say some words and wave their hands around to make patterns to guide the magic and focus their will on the intended effect and if they focused hard enough and got all the patterns right it happens.  Jade Dragon mages move the magic around inside their bodies until it takes the shape they want and then release it. I studied both, but mostly use the Kalziran style, except that I do it all in my head so there's no words or gestures involved. Yes, it can summon things--Objects, sometimes creatures from another plane. Kalziran style spells can extend range or have other effects on jade dragon magic and vice versa, neither seems to be able to have much effect on the magic of the gods but that might just be the gods' magic being so much more powerful than mortal magic, I don't know of any other form of magic where this has been extensively tested. I, personally, have a very limited skillset: invisibility, destructive spells, minor shapechanging, and a tiny bit of divination including the ability to speak the language of the people around me if I'm appropriately prepared."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How can we develop other spells from what you know? How can we learn your magic?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If I were a proper Kalziran mage, I could demonstrate some spells and explain what each gesture or sound does and we could build new spells from that. That's the main benefit of their magic, it's relatively easy to learn, share, and develop. Since mine is all in my head, you wait until I'm capable of showing you. Your brother mentioned you might have centuries, it won't take nearly that long. Unless your mind-reading is much more powerful than anything I've heard of back home, in which case you can take that knowledge without my assistance and I can try to kill you." Malak would really like some clothes, are the clothes here yet?

Permalink Mark Unread

"We might have centuries, we might only have a few years, it's really hard to guess. Are discussions of how to stop the end of the world where you're from usually peppered with death threats or have we done something to offend you?"

 

Clothes are delivered.

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Malak starts dressing.

"Yes, though obviously not intentionally. I get very touchy about mind magic, I have a bad history with it that I don't remember. I'm sorry, I probably overreacted, you've done nothing to deserve that. Some people have greater natural reserves of raw magical power than others, it tends to follow bloodlines, doesn't necessarily correspond to skill with creating or learning spells.. As I was saying to your brother, whose name I actually never got...?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Celegorm. Do people here have reserves of magic power? How do we check?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Celegorm. As I was telling him, I lack both the knowledge and power to cast a plane shift spell, so even if we could develop it we'd need to find someone stronger than me. It can be tricky to tell how much power--or potential--someone has unless they're throwing spells about. I can sense active magic, but energy that hasn't been shaped into a spell yet...It's much harder to pick up on, I don't know how to do it.  Your world definitely has magic available, so as long as you have souls you should have the ability to use my sort of magic if you learn how. It accumulates on souls when they stay...still. Like dust accumulates on an untouched statue. Sort of. It's a metaphor. The important part is that you need to be calm and relaxed and not feeling strong emotions for a while to recover magical energy. It takes a while, so usually mages where I'm from just let it gather in their sleep--Do you sleep?"

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"Yes, but we don't need to as frequently as humans do. Are you human? You didn't look -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Sort of. I am a Tiefling on my father's side--Do you have those here? They're like...slightly demonic or infernal humans. Either the first tieflings were humans that were cursed by a god, or they may have been humans that interbred with fiends, maybe both, nobody's really quite sure."

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"We do not have those. What are the material implications?"

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"It manifests in different ways. I can see perfectly in darkness, I have a tail, I'm slightly fireproof, and I have trouble chewing many foods."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I see. Food shouldn't be a problem. How do we start learning your magic?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Can you wiggle your soul? There are two parts, learning the spells and accessing the magical energy. A big part of the second is developing a good sense of your soul as separate from your mind and your body. I can teach you some of the Kalziran words and gestures, but I don't know very many of them--I just know some very basic spells by rote. I can also maybe lead guided meditations, that might be more helpful than 'wiggle your soul.' Food isn't a problem, I can change my teeth."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you don't mind sending the mental impression of what it feels like that'd help. We'd appreciate guidance as well. What do you need to live here and work on that?"

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Malak opens their mind, takes a couple of deep breaths, pushes down their fear, and reaches for their magic slowly, trying to draw out the sensations so the elves can get a good look at the process...a good look at Malak's soul gods what are they doing and fear shoots through them and bile rises in their throat and their mind is closed, safe, mine, not for you stay OUT

Malak's eyes are wide and their teeth have savaged their lower lip, blood running down the sides of their mouth and their hands are shaking

Permalink Mark Unread

"We don't have to do it that way," he says impatiently, "it'd just help."

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"I wasn't sure. Wanted to try, see if I--"They breathe in, out "Can we continue this later?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lithuiben will show you to a room." He jerks his head at the door and turns back to his notes.

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Malak steps out, mind still sealed up in iron, seemingly oblivious to the blood running down their chin, and tries to compose themself while they wait.

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And someone comes by, looks at them oddly, and shows them to a room.

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Malak closes the door behind them, sits on the floor, and screams silently for a while. In time, panic turns to disappointment and anger--how could they be so weak, there is a world at stake here and all they had to do was show these elves one! little! feeling!

When the fear comes down, so do their walls, for a time, until they realize they're broadcasting their self-loathing for the whole city to hear and then the panic is back and stays until it fades into exhaustion and they fall asleep on the floor.

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When they wake up someone's left breakfast; it's now cold.

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They give themself human teeth and eat a little, then take in the room for the first time.

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It's pretty! In the place of windows there are inset sections of marble with some kind of magical lighting behind them. There's a high ceiling and stone shelves just slightly crowded with glasswork and pottery, and on the opposing wall a very detailed and striking tapestry of an outdoors scene, enspelled somehow so the leaves seem to wave in occasional bursts of wind. There's a bed set into the wall.

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Malak admires the tapestry for a while, then leaves and wanders around looking for an elf who doesn't look busy and doesn't seem uncomfortable with them.

Permalink Mark Unread

There are plenty of Elves, and lots of them are not busy unless you count singing. Elves who aren't doing anything seem to spend their time singing.

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They approach one.

"I beg your pardon for the interruption, your singing is quite lovely and I hate to mar it. Might you direct me to a washroom?" they gesture at their face "And perhaps a healer?  I am acquainted with Lúthien. Ah, no telepathy if you please."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...sure. Washroom's that way - oh, if you don't want me to send you a map I should probably just walk there with you -"

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"Very well." Malak follows.

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Washroom! It is unsurprisingly, pretty. A little overwrought, some jewels set in places that don't strictly need them. 

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Malak thanks their guide, cleans their face.  Their lip is still puffy but at least they're not covered in blood anymore. It doesn't take too long--is the elf still there?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yep! Singing.

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"Could you lead me to Lúthien? Or another healer if she's likely to be busy, but I'd like to thank her for the kindness she showed me on the road."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh. Let me check with the Lord Curufin?" She closes her eyes and a second later - "Uh, okay, so, Lúthien apparently found out that the boy who was trying to win her hand got captured and is being horribly tortured, and she tried to rally Doriath to go march off and save him, and Doriath's King couldn't get her to stop so he arrested her, and she broke out and came for here hoping that we'd want to go march off and save him, which we can't do, so she said she's going to go alone, and they're trying to talk her down and in the meantime not letting her leave so you can go see her but - please don't help her escape, she will just be tortured to death horribly, with a little bit of time we might be able to convince her to do something less suicidal."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Oh. Don't worry, I won't try to help her escape, that sounds like a monumentally stupid thing to go off and be captured and tortured to death for."

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She relaxes considerably. "It really does, doesn't it? The King - well, anyway, let me take you to her." And she sets off.

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"The king...?"

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"I can't really forgive him for what he did to us."

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"Oh, that King. I thought you meant his successor, where I'm from when someone says 'The Prince' or something like that they always mean the current one. Yes, I suppose he did have an obligation not to get captured."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He was a good man, I'm sure he had a reason that seemed good enough, but -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I sympathize with his motives, but going without some means to ensure the Enemy didn't get any information out of him was rather foolish."

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Fervent nod. "It's probably too late anyway, but still."

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"...Only probably?  I was operating on the assumption that it was definitely too late, if they were captured six weeks ago."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I doubt they're dead, if that's what you were imagining -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Does the Enemy not kill prisoners? Or are you saying they won't have broken yet? Does the Enemy not have mind-reading?"

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"The Enemy keeps people alive long after he's gotten everything he needs from them."

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"I'm sorry."

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There's a guarded door halfway down the hallway. She nods to the guards, then opens it. 

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"I need to talk to the King - oh, it's you - I need help, we don't have much time -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lúthien. I don't think there's anything you can do but I'd like to hear your side of things and if you have a plan I'd like to hear that."

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"I want to storm Tol-in-Gaurhoth. They have an army, they are planning to attack Melkor sometime, I'm half-Maia, it should be possible somehow-"

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"Do you know that they're still on Tol-in-Gaurhoth and haven't been moved? Armies generally take time to mobilize, and you'll probably want siege engines and boats which..." Malak turns to the guards, "Do you happen to have those in large enough quantities and supplies readied to march off to war within the next, say, three months?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...no."

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"So, that's no to the army, do you have a plan beyond 'Singlehandedly assault a presumably-fortified island which may or may not have the people you're trying to rescue, and hope that being half-maia is somehow enough'?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If they'd help me come up with one instead of just going 'no, stay here, you'll meet another nice boy someday - the High King did it -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That... does not sound like a very useful thing for them to say, no. Is there a reason everyone is calling him a boy? He's not literally a child, right? Um. Would you like a hug? People back home found them comforting sometimes."

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She would love a hug. "He's way underage but humans age faster, it's different -"

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"...Right. I'm aware humans age faster, how old is he actually?" Malak moves to give her a hug, are there bars in the way or just guards outside the door?

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No one in the way. "Are our years even the same length? Twenty-six of ours..."

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"...Oh I hadn't even thought of that. Three-thirty-two days? Wait, for that matter how long is a week, how many days has it been since they were captured?"

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"A week's six days. A year's three hundred sixty nine."

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"Hm, so they haven't been captured quite as long as I thought but not enough to make a difference.  And your human is, let's see... around twenty eight of my years? So yes, an adult, probably, I guess your humans might be different than mine too." Malak remembers that they were going to give her a hug, and they do. "Sorry, distracted by thinking about time. I would like to rescue your human and the King and their companions but I do not know enough about what we're up against to come up with much of a plan.  Assuming they are still at Tol-in-Gaurhoth, what does the Enemy have there?  Werewolves, I'd guess?  Or maybe the name is old, but werewolves seem like the sort of thing an evil god would recruit."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, werewolves, and probably not much else - orcs, I guess - it'd mostly be him himself that'd be a challenge -"

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"Wait, the Enemy who is an evil god is likely to be there himself?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hmm, no, he's in Angband, but Gorthaur's in Tol Sirion."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Tol Sirion, which I assume is also called Tol-In-Gaurhoth? Who and what is Gorthaur? What are werewolves like and how many are there?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're - wolves, magic, hard to kill, human intelligence? And Gorthaur's one of the most powerful Maiar and Morgoth's lieutenant."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How powerful do Maia tend to be? What can they--Gorthaur in particular--do? How hard to kill are werewolves? Are they stronger or faster than normal wolves, or just tougher?  Werewolves in my world are vulnerable to weapons made of silver is that true here and do you have any?" The last question is directed at the guard again.

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"Yes and yes but we're not helping with any more suicide missions," the guard says wearily. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maiar vary a lot. Gorthaur can shapeshift, can probably just kill anything that's not magically protected that gets near him, can do music magic like you saw me do but more powerful and a wider radius -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not planning any suicide missions, I have no personal stake in this rescue, if we can't figure out something that seems likely to work then no mission is taking place. Just getting myself appraised of our options."

"What kind and amount of magical protection are we talking here?  And what sorts of magical protection do we have at hand?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Really good enchanted armor might do it. I might be okay anyway. I don't know what the options are, Doriath is protected -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Unless you have good reason to believe "Lure Gorthaur to Doriath and free the prisoners while he's gone" has any chance of succeeding that's off the table. How observant is Gorthaur, any chance that a stealth mission might succeed?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"He doesn't automatically see everything going on on a level that couldn't be fooled. Might be possible."

Permalink Mark Unread

"With invisibility?  Oh, speaking of, there is something I wanted to try... Do you have any magic singing that isn't going to have drastic effects on us or our surroundings?  I want to see if I can sense it." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I can do something mild..."

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"Um, it might take a while, my detection is slower than my other magic...about ten minutes, can't talk very well while I'm focusing on it." Malak starts casting their spell.

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She sits there and drums her fingers and worries.

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Malak mouths, can you read lips?

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Confusion.

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Of course not why would a race of telepaths learn to read lips. Inward sigh. Malak is pretty sure more telepathy right now would not be good for their mental health.

Ten minutes later,

"OK, can you try your magic now?"

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She starts singing.

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And does Malak sense it?

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Nope.

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"Huh.  I'm not detecting any magic, at all actually. Usually I can detect active spells and magic items, but either there aren't any of the latter nearby or I can't detect elven enchantments either. Odds are good, then, that your magic can't affect mine and mine can't affect yours."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That would be good, means we can sneak in with yours."

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"It means I can sneak in with mine, if I'm careful. I can't turn other people invisible, and even if I could it doesn't do inaudibility.  I'm very practiced in moving silently, are you?" Their tone of voice indicates the question is genuine, not rhetorical.

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"Yes."

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"Hm.  Could come in handy, I guess--" are the guards looking?

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Listening.

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"--if we can figure out a plan that lord Curufin and the new King might agree to." As they say this, Malak brings a finger to their lips, winks, and brushes their hand against Lúthien's, turning her invisible for just a second.

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"...I'll think how to convince them."

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"I'm going to go consult some other people, and see if I come up with any more ideas.  I'll be back tomorrow morning, or in a few--" Malak holds up ten fingers "--hours if something brilliant strikes me or if I need more information from you."

They turn and leave, smiling at the guards on their way out.

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Malak goes to Curufin's and knocks on the door.

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"Come in."

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"I'm sorry, I just... I'm not sure I can do this right now. I'm going to go to Brethil, your brother mentioned there are humans there, and take some time working through... stuff. I just don't think I can be around elves right now. I should be able to meet with and teach a few of you in a couple weeks and then maybe come back to the city in a couple of months but right now I can't. If you can tell me who to talk to about getting some paper and a pen and maybe a weapon for self-defense I will write down as much as I can remember about magical theory and introductory lessons and planar theory for you but I need to leave tomorrow or I feel like I'm going to snap and be absolutely useless to the war effort. I'm sorry." Malak let's guilt--plenty of that on hand--surge and roil. Even if they can't hide their thoughts very well, that should cover their intentions if anybody is prying.

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"Because of the telepathy? There're meditations to keep it out, it usually takes people months and months to pick up but if you're motivated you can probably get it significantly faster - the idea is mentally maintaining a distinction between private and public thoughts, and to simplify you can start by keeping all of them private. No one is reading you but once you have it down no one'll be able to. 

 

 

And I'm not comfortable risking you falling into Enemy hands. That'd be more of a disaster than losing the King was."

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"I'm not marching off to Angband, I'm going to a forest with some friendly humans. Anyways, no matter what happens, you might lose me--that's another reason for the notes--but the Enemy won't capture me."

A breath.

"Thank you for telling me about those meditations, I'll be sure to practice them. In Brethil. It's not so much the belief that someone is reading me but... just that they could be is enough to put me seriously, irrationally on edge and I need time away from any elves to get over that."

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"The notes are at an extraordinary risk of being intercepted, they are much much more of a risk than losing you."

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"I will write the notes today and leave them here, I don't send unencrypted letters what kind of person do you think I--OK, I guess you haven't seen enough of me to get a good impression, that wasn't fair. I take privacy very seriously, and that extends to my correspondence. Speaking of which, we should set up a cipher in case we need to send each other messages while I'm in Brethil..."

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"There are humans here, I can have some of them take you south along the river, opposite direction from the Enemy and if you do somehow catch his attention at least his retaliation doesn't fall on an entire civilian population. But yes, we should have a cipher."

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"OK. I'll go with them, tomorrow morning. Are you familiar with a Neripetor cipher?  No, wait, you wouldn't be, not by that name. So, you give each character a numerical value, you have a key, say, ten characters long.  You shift the first character of your message by the first character of the key, the second by the second, and so on, then the eleventh character of the message by the first character of the message so that the message itself forms the key.  I can provide a more detailed description in the notes... Our key probably shouldn't be a word, that can make it really easy to crack, um, cwaldh nt lakeb t. All those sounds exist in your language, do you need to hear it again? cwaldh nt lakeb t."

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"That works. All right. Be careful."

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"I will, I don't find the ideas of dying or being tortured until the Enemy gets bored even remotely appealing. Paper? Weapons?"

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"What do you know how to use?"

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"A variety. Mostly light blades--daggers, knives, short swords or fencing blades. I'm decent with a bow, but not as good as with a blade, and I can rely on my spells at a distance."

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"I'll find some people whose work can be interrupted and I'll arrange for supplies and weapons - armor? -"

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"Hm, it may be best for me to see what you have. Back home I wore very, very light armor, anything else slowed me down too much and wasn't worth the tradeoff, but without the other magic items I used to use I'm slower so it might be worth wearing more... I should probably just figure this out with the person you're tasking with helping me get supplies together, I'm sure you have something more important to be doing and this is probably not your area of expertise."

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"It's not, but I think I may still be failing to be emphatic enough about how much of a disaster it would be if you fall into Enemy hands, so I'd rather at least be as well apprised as possible of what you need."

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"I understand, though, again, you might lose me but he will not take me. If you need me to be more explicit, I can kill myself with a thought and feel no reluctance about doing so if captured. As for what I will need--A dagger or knife, maybe two--I'd like to try out some different styles of knives if you have more than one. Having a sword too would give me some more flexibility but isn't strictly necessary, same for a bow. Armor, I really don't know until I can try some on, probably leather unless you have an abundance of mithril or enchantments for lightness--actually, I don't know if you even have any of the same metals as back home. I used to wear an enchanted coat woven from spider's silk, I doubt you have any of those, but if you do that would be best."

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"Alright. Someone'll be here in a second to take you through what we have."

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Malak leans against the wall and waits.

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Somebody comes! And takes them to the armory, and they do in fact have mithril and they do in fact have metals enchanted to be lightweight but none of those lying around to spare, and Malak's headed south until they learn to do private thoughts reliably, right, so they're not likely to meet trouble and if they do it's probably not at the scale where enchanted armor'd save them -

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Yes, Malak certainly doesn't think that magical armor will be necessary where they're going, hadn't considered it even, but then Lord Curufin brought it up and he seemed so worried, so maybe the countryside is more dangerous than Malak thought. Or maybe he's just being overly cautious, he seems the cautious sort. Malak will try out some unenchanted leathers and maybe take a set of those, that should calm Curufin's nerves without costing too much...

As for weapons, they'll try out some knives and daggers, take one that they like--probably no need for magic there, either, right, Curufin's just paranoid?--There's been a lot of talk about this werewolf island, do the werewolves ever leave? If so it might be worth grabbing something silver just in case unless silver is really hard to come by, but if they all stay there, there shouldn't be any need for that...

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Curufin's paranoid. To be fair he's watched an awful lot of people die, recently, but all of them went towards the fighting, the south's still safe. The werewolves do occasionally leave the isle, the patrols take care of it but they should definitely have some silver just in case.

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So, the set of leathers, two daggers--one silver, one normal--and perhaps a sword if that would be OK? Do the elves have any long, thin swords, like for fencing?  Would it be OK if they take the weapons and armor with them today? They know it's not really rational in a city full of friends but they feel a bit more comfortable with a dagger at hand at least...

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It's not a problem at all, lots of people prefer a personal weapon. They have plenty of swords.

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Malak tries out some swords, chooses one, and then asks about pen and paper while they don the armor and strap on the weapons. At one moment when the elf is distracted, they grab a second silver dagger with their tail and tuck it away out of sight.

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Pen and paper are no problem, here they are.

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Malak thanks the elf and takes pen and paper back to their room and spends a few hours writing down everything they can remember about magical and planar theory and details on the Neripetor cipher. When that's done they re-cast the language spell, putting in some extra juice so it'll keep running for about twelve hours, then sleep--well, meditate--for six.

When they wake, it should be mid-afternoon?

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Hard to tell underground.

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Well, hopefully their timekeeping isn't too off.

They meditate for about an hour, unhooking the language spell from their mind and using the space to expand their shapechanging, then write a few more notes. They leave most of the notes on their desk, but tuck the new ones into their shirt.

Then they leave and ask the nearest elf if they know where the humans are preparing to leave? And also what time it is now.

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Elf will take them to the humans right now! And it is in fact mid-afternoon.

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Malak goes to meet the humans.

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They're - kind of stressed, actually. It's been disruptive here ever since the Bragollach and the King's - behavior and now the princess of Doriath is here in the dungeons - metaphorically, obviously they're keeping her in a nice place, but it wouldn't be unlike Elu Thingol to do something stupid - wouldn't be unlike Lúthien to do something stupid either - 

- someone else interjects that Elu Thingol has already done something stupid, arousing the oath -

- the High King has a plan -

- the High King lets his cousin fuck him and the cousin in question's a madman, used to be a prisoner of Morgoth's, those are the hands we're in now that the old High King's dead -

- and at least in Nargothrond there are walls -

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"...I feel like I am missing a good deal of context."

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"...probably? You're foreign, right? Why do you talk like an Elf? What do you want to know?"

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"Oh, if you say that in your language I'll be able to respond in the same, if it's more comfortable for you. Who is Elu Thingol, who is the High King, are these the same person, who is the High King's cousin and why is it such a big deal that they're fucking, it sounds like they're both men? When did the old High King die, was that in the battle of sudden flame? Are the other allied kings subjects of the High King or is the 'High' just for show?  And, just to be clear, Morgoth is Melkor, right? It sounds like they're the same person but plausibly one could be a servant of the other..."

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"...Morgoth and Melkor are the same person, Elu Thingol is the King of Doriath and Lúthien's father, all the kingdoms of Beleriand except Doriath are allied under the High King for the war effort -"

"- some, ah, nominally -" someone interjects -

"...yeah, true, but all of them at least nominally -"

"The High King challenged Morgoth to single combat."

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"...Is everyone around here as suicidal as the people you pick for your rulers?"

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"Elves," the crowd says emphatically, and "we didn't pick them," someone adds quietly.

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"Do you mean the elves picked them, or that only the aristocracy such-as-it-is gets to vote, or did the less-shitty-than-Melkor gods over on the other continent decide?"

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"Vote? The Elves - pick them, I guess, I don't know how they did it in the beginning but it's hereditary now."

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"Are there a bunch of different royal lines, or are all the different kings related to one another?"

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"All of them except Thingol are grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Finwë, the first King of the Noldor. The High King who recently challenged Morgoth to single combat was Finwë's son. Thingol was an old friend of Finwë's but he has no sons himself so obviously never passed his kingdom on."

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"...OK so this is actually pretty much a perfect example of why hereditary rulership is a terrible idea, you pick a family with a slight predisposition toward mental illness and then next thing you know kings are killing themselves left and right. Single-gender hereditary succession is even worse though I guess I wouldn't really want Lúthien running a kingdom so maybe it turned out OK this time but still."

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"How's it done where you're from?"

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"Well, the country I was born in... I don't actually know, I left when I was young and uninvolved in politics and now there aren't many records left. I lived in the Jade Dragon empire for a while, the emperor was selected by the dragons, I think they chose based on ability to govern.  In Kalzir there was a council of mages, the council chose replacements for retired or dead council members, there were rules against adding family of existing council members and everyone they selected had to have demonstrated skill in a certain field of magic, one field for each seat.  So you had the Lord High Summoner, Lord High Necromancer, et cetera.  It wasn't a great system but it was better than this."

How many humans are there?  How many are planning to go with Malak tomorrow?  How is the packing coming?

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Eight people are assigned to go with them, there are about twelve around, everything's mostly packed which is why they're standing around gossiping.

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Malak learns each of the eight's names, chats with them for a while, asks if they can take one of the packs with a bit of space left and pack up their spare weapons. It was nice meeting the four of them, see the rest tomorrow morning!

Damn, they feel kind of guilty about all this.

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Nice meeting them too, does Malak have a place to get dinner? Sleep? Elves tend to forget about those things.

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The elves put them in a room with a bed! And food has shown up occasionally, they'll be fine.

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Okay. First light, then, so they can be well south by night.

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Malak goes back to their room, moves all but one sheet of their unused paper to their pack--Checks to see it has food and a waterskin, too, they should have checked that before they picked a pack, stupid mistake.

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It does.

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OK, good.  They leave the pack and sword in the room, head towards Lúthien's room, timing it carefully. Are there any out-of-the-way corners or empty rooms near Lúthien's?

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Not especially.

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Well, this may make things slightly trickier.  The door to Lúthien's room is closed? (They check invisibly)

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Yes.

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Hm.  Potted plants, statues, any sort of space-taking-up hall decoration nearby?  Even in an alcove or something?

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There's a set of statues across the way a while.

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Hm. Looks close enough. Malak sticks a little bit of magical shadow to the base of the back of the statue. How far was it between the two rooms?

 

Malak moves out of sight of anyone nearby, turns visible, and walks up to Lúthien's room.

"Can I speak with her?"

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"Probably, let me ask Lord Curufin."

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(Room distance?)

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"Well, I'm leaving tomorrow morning, I wanted to say goodbye for now..."

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(Lúthien's rooms are about ten minutes from Malak's.)


"Yeah, I'm asking him right now, it'll take about ten seconds -"

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Malak waits patiently.

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"Says of course but briefly, please."

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Malak steps in, closes the door partway behind them--enough to block line of sight to the guards but not sound.

"Hi. I'm sorry, I couldn't think of any plan within the next few months that could save anyone instead of just getting more people killed. And I think I have to leave here for a while because all the elves around are driving me up the wall and I need some time to learn to shield my thoughts and get a bit more comfortable being around a bunch of telepaths. I'd still like to talk to you, though--I don't know how often messengers will go between where I am and here, but we can write letters and keep planning and maybe figure out something that works.  Here, I wrote down instructions for how to encrypt or decrypt messages so that nobody else can read them, and here's a key at the top--It's not the same one I gave to Curufin so he won't be able to read them, you should probably memorize it then destroy it--" Malak shows Lúthien a piece of paper, which reads:

You will have twenty-five minutes.  Go to my room and wait for me there.

 

And features a map of the parts of Nargothrond that Malak had visited last night, with a path marked between Lúthien's room and Malak's.

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"I'm really sorry I couldn't help. Hug?"

(And the guards still aren't looking?)

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Guards aren't looking.

Lúthien hugs her. "We can't write letters, I can't read."

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Can't...read? What kind of princess is illiterate and it's not like writing is new what hopefully she can read a map, no, fuck, no counting on that uuuugh can't read??

Malak taps Lúthien's head and their own and gently projects a mental map of the path between the rooms, tries to make it just seem like they're thinking about their own route back in case anyone is listening and they feel like they're going to throw up no time for that now though they hug a bit tighter and cast the spells one-two and

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And now Malak looks like Lúthien and Lúthien looks like Malak and Malak is whispering with Lúthien's voice, "go."

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...

 

She goes.

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When Lúthien has gone, Malak closes the door again--making sure the guards get a glimpse of "Lúthien" inside the room. They let a minute pass, then drop some shadow in the room, turns invisible, and steps neatly from one shadow to another.  They dismiss both patches of darkness and slink silently back to their room.

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She's there. What -

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Wince.

They had to think nothing changed. We're both going to walk out invisible in just a minute, together. I have to be touching you. Telepathy only in case of emergencies.

They write a quick ciphered letter to Curufin--Apologizing, explaining--and leave it in the middle of the notes on magical theory.  Ink and pen go in pack, pack goes on back, sword in sheath goes to Lúthien--hold it close to your body don't let it rattle or hit anybody.

Then, they guess two Malaks aren't any more suspicious than a Malak and a Lúthien...

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They clasp Lúthien's free hand, turn them both invisible, and slip out, headed for the gates.

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They can sense the presence of a mind even if they're not reading it, you know.

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AUGH FUCKING TELEPATHS.  I suppose invisibility doesn't hide that.

Well, you're halfway broken out and I can't see any way to undo that half, and an alarm has already probably been raised if they could sense the absence of anyone in your room. Do we try to get all the way out, or give up? My estimate of their ability to hold me against my will has just gone up so I am in favor of trying to leave.

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Yes, definitely, let's leave.

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OK let's go, still invisible, it can't hurt, if it comes to violence I don't want to hurt anyone do you think you can be more specific with your song targeting, get them and not us?...Does it rely on people hearing it?

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It relies on people hearing it, if we muffle our ears well enough we'd be fine, but everyone knows to react if someone starts singing a magic song in their vicinity -

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Sing loudly, it will at least buy us time and limit them sorry about this

And the inner ear's important, need that for balance, but the outer ear, ear drum, all more trouble then they're worth right now and for the next twenty-five minutes neither Malak nor Lúthien have them.

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They're running, casting, keeping so many spells going at once... They should last through the gate but not much farther if they're pursued. But once they're out they'll be a bit less restricted.

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She sings sleep.

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Only a handful of the people who hear her think to put out their eardrums; most of them collapse. The ones who don't draw weapons and run at them.

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Malak's magical talent might be mediocre but they are one of the best fighters of their homeland and they have the advantage of being able to see their opponents. They let go of Lúthien--she can probably handle herself for a few seconds--the first attacker gets an elbow to the throat, not hard enough to break anything unless elves are extra fragile, but it should leave him stunned for a while, they relieve him of the dagger at his side and the second gets a pommel to the side of the head, she's down. Third one gets some cuts across the thighs that shouldn't do any permanent damage but it will hurt like hell to run after them, the fourth gets a kick between the legs and then Malak is catching up to Lúthien. 

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She's running for the gate.

 

The gate is closed. The guards have put out their ears.

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Malak really hopes they have a healer who can treat that.

Is the gate barred from within or is there a gatehouse or something?

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Barred from within.

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Get the door, I'll keep them busy.

And Malak is visible, still running, channeling a gout of flame through their hand, sweeping it left to force the elves to back away from it, clearing Lúthien some space.  Then end the spell, recast, and repeat on the right side.

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Door -

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And then there's a semicircular wall of flames around them and the gate and the one elf on the inside of that wall is disarmed and incapacitated--at least a couple broken ribs by the sound of it but he should live, Malak is finding that this is in fact much harder when they're trying not to hurt their opponents too badly--And then they'll go to help Lúthien with the door bar if she hasn't got it by now and desperately hope that none of the elves are willing to leap through the flames to stop them, that would probably seriously injure them but they put out their own eardrums, so who knows what they'll do.

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Well, yes, they're assuming this is an Enemy plot and there's an Enemy army on the other side of the door and it's obviously worth dying to prevent that -

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Malak does not, of course, know this, and hardly has the time to think about it right now and continues to believe that the elves are really fanatically dedicated to keeping people prisoner "for their own good."

They draw their sword and stand between Lúthien and the elves. 

"I don't want to--"oh, right, everyone's deaf.  Ugh. I don't want to hurt any of you but if you keep leaping through fires and coming at me more than four at a time you will be making that very difficult.

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Everyone is, as wouldn't have been hard to guess, assuming you work for the Enemy and his agents are waiting outside the gate you're trying to force.

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Well as it happens I'm pretty sure that's not the case, when I give my word I keep it, I just think your reasons for holding Lúthien are really shitty and pretending that it's all for her own good does you no credit.

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And if you'd discussed that with me I might have decided that explaining several centuries more context on the three civil wars you are about to start was better than risking this but instead we have someone trying to force the entrance to Nargothrond and everyone here is willing to die to prevent that.

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You are keeping a woman imprisoned for no crime of her own, presumably so that you can pressure her father into joining your war effort what the fuck kind of context do you think can justify that? Tell your soldiers to stay back or stand down before they start dying needlessly.

Keep it together keep it together

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How's Lúthien managing with the door bar?

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She's given up trying to move it and started singing at it. It's glowing.

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I can't do that without more than your word that you're not doing exactly what it looks like you're doing. 

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Well unless you have a one-way door we're at a bit of an impasse because I have no intention of surrendering and becoming your prisoner. If I were plotting with your Enemy I would have just waited until the planned departure tomorrow, I am just trying to get her out. It is in your interests to open your gate less destructively than Lúthien is.

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People rush in in much, much greater numbers. 

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This is going to get very bloody and I have no doubt you'll overpower us eventually but when you look and see that there's no horde of orcs on the other side of that door it will be quite embarrassing. I'm sorry that our words are not good enough for you but we have no other assurance to give. Please don't throw away lives over this.

Malak is not directing their thoughts. They don't expect them to dissuade everyone if Curufin won't change his mind but maybe it will save a few.

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They are mostly confident that's true. It's just hardly an acceptable bet.

 

- door glows brighter -

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Please

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If you surrender and you're telling the truth we'll let you leave -

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And I should trust you farther than you trust us because...?

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I haven't used weaponized area-effect magic in a major population center with no provocation yet today, if we're competing for trustworthiness -

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Luthien? I don't want to hurt these people if we don't have to, is their word good?

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They're the Kinslayers, that's literally the only thing I know about them - can't bindingly swear over osanwë, you'd have to hear them in person and we currently can't hear -

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...bindingly swear?  They can do that?

Your current song isn't going to melt us, right? If we had ears?  Well, if it is, stop it.

And Malak dismisses their spell and they and Lúthien grow ears again.

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Celegorm, swear it. Or Lúthien can swear to the purity of our intentions.

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I can't hear her. "I swear that if you're representing yourselves truthfully you can leave once we've verified that."

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And that you will attempt to verify it as quickly as possible, please tell me you have a healer who can treat that...

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"And that that'll be no later than tomorrow when we were helping you leave with all the resources you wanted anyway -" and yes -

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You weren't letting her leave please clarify that she is included in this deal.

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If she swears she's not working against us, absolutely.

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Do you have anyone who still has ears?

"Lúthien, would you be willing to swear that you are not working for or with the Enemy?"

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Not within range, there are mind control songs even more dangerous than the ones she's already deployed. 

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So are they willing to come listen to an oath or are you just stalling for time? Apart from her trying to escape from being a political hostage do you have any reason to believe she's working against you?

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Yes, which I will explain once you back down. "I swear I've been truthful, I swear you have ten seconds to decide -"

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Malak laughs, drops their sword, falls to their knees, and puts their hands on their head.

If she's not working with the Enemy and you exploit some loophole I didn't catch to keep her imprisoned, I swear I will break her out again. I can't make that magically binding but I take my oaths seriously.

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People come and drag them away from the door. Healers come to grab everyone who's been injured in the fighting - they do eventually ask if either of them require anything -

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"We're fine, I think--I am at least. Sorry to cause you so much work." 

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Raised eyebrow. Sigh. 

 

 

It is in fact a lot of work. And after a while -

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"I'm not actually the person you should be talking to, my brother is, but he's more than a day out from here so all I can do is strongly encourage you to go talk with him before you take any more actions that are all but guaranteed to cause several wars. Can you at least verify -"

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"I swear we're not working for the Enemy and I don't believe you ever thought we were."

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"Of course I didn't. I thought the risk was unacceptably high, which it was even with it unlikely - do you have any idea what happened to Dorthonion, did Beren ever mention -"

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Malak has no idea what happened to Dorthonion or who Beren is, so they just watch.

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"Yep, he said that the Noldor put a human kingdom on the front lines of their war and then when they lost a battle the whole city was positioned directly in the line of fire and the Noldor seemed very genuine in their grief."

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"That is a pretty fair indictment of people who were not me and over who I had no influence. My kingdom ceded lands to mortal refugees when they came across the mountains, gave them political independence, stood between them and the fighting. They're still all dead, of course, because when they needed to flee the only place to flee was into Doriath and Doriath as we both know shoots refugees on sight."

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"I'm not sure where you got the idea I approve of anything my father's ever done."

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"Are you going to help him orchestrate the war he's apparently aiming for?"

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"If Beren's alive all I'm planning to do is go south and be safe."

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"Swear to it-"

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"I swear if Beren's alive all I want to do is go south and be safe."

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"I want a promise not to endeavor to deliver the Silmarils to Elu Thingol."

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"Yeah, no. Maybe if you'd helped me instead of kidnapping me -"

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"Is Thingol having the Silmarils somehow worse than the Enemy having them?"

Have they actually been disarmed and shackled? Because this is starting to sound awfully loopholey.

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Yes, yes, they were very careful.

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"Thingol having the Silmarils is worse than the Enemy having them because four different nations are sworn to kill anyone who withholds them and thus if Elu Thingol takes them will be magically bound to war with Doriath."

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"...Four nations have sworn magically binding oaths to kill anyone who withholds the Silmarils? So, if literally anyone takes them you will be compelled into a civil war. How did four whole nations agree to swear binding oaths to kill people with Silmarils what the fuck is wrong with all of you."

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"It was a decision made five hundred years ago under completely different strategic circumstances. Perhaps they never justified it but they at least made sense of it. Anyway, after the Enemy is defeated if you want to punish everyone responsible that's fine but expressing your contempt for their choices by igniting that war is not defensible. And all we want is reassurance that you're not going to do it, given that Thingol specifically instructed your fiancé to do it and did so in the express hope that we would kill him rather than permit that and thus get him off Thingol's plate."

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"And I think all of the Noldor are lunatics with no business running anything larger than a butter churn and I'm not going to swear any oaths about my future behavior."

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"OK, how's this for a solution?  Lúthien and I depart as soon as you verify the nonexistence of the orc hordes, if we can figure out a way to rescue Beren and pull it off then he and Lúthien elope, which they sort of seem to have done already. No Silmaril for Thingol, everyone else is happy. Nobody swears any more ridiculous oaths, nor even sensible-seeming long-term ones because I can envision a strategic situation where giving a Silmaril to Thingol is the only way to actually win this war and making oaths is apparently what got you into this mess."

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"That outcome makes me very happy, though I'm not sure I trust your judgment on circumstances where giving a Silmaril to Thingol is a good idea."

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"I'm fine with that."

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"The four kingdoms committed to poorly-thought-out Oaths are wiped out by the Enemy, Thingol finally decides to help with the war effort, Doriath's the safest place to keep the Silmaril between uses. Is he a Maia or is that Melian? As far as I can tell the only safe place for a Silmaril now is on the Enemy's head, or did I interpret that wrong? Because it sounded to me like as soon as you retrieve the Silmarils you'll have a civil war on your hands whoever gets them."

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"No, anyone who will acknowledge the Silmarils as the property of their creators can have them without provoking any wars."

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"And who are those creators?"

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"My father."

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"...Convenient. Well, I swear I shall return any Silmarils that I come into possession of to your father as soon as it is convenient to do so, conditional on confirmation that he did in fact make them, and not with stolen materials, tools, labor, et cetera, and that he didn't trade them away afterwards or otherwise relinquish ownership of them, and also conditional on their return not having massive amounts of death or other tragedy as an immediate and obvious consequence. My oath is not magically compelling, but for what it is worth I take it very seriously-" Apparently more so than people who actually have magically compelling oaths "-and I hope that this will go some way to reassuring you that I have every intention of avoiding civil war."

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"Thank you. My father's dead, but you can give them to any of his children or anyone of his people. And I still strongly encourage you both against a suicide mission to go fight Thauron, you will almost certainly die slowly and horribly. Do you need an escort out?"

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"...Thauron? Oh, is that Gorthaur? People around here have too many names. I don't intend to launch any attempt at rescue unless I'm pretty sure it will work, I had the start of one but that was under the assumption that telepathy can't sense invisible people which I really would have preferred to figure out earlier than I did. I will also discourage Lúthien from reckless behaviour but as you may have guessed I'm not going to tie her down or anything if she really wants to go. I don't think we need an escort, though if you still intend to send the humans with me the company would be nice. But I imagine I've probably ruined that opportunity."

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"Yeah, almost everyone's terrified of you now. I will ask them if they're still willing to go -" Pause - "not unless it makes you less likely to make terrible choices, does it?"

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"Probably not. My choices since I got here have had worse results than usual, but I think that's a result of poor information more than worsening judgement. I suppose having someone around who can listen to my ideas and talk me out of anything too extreme would be nice, but that might not work so well if they're terrified of me."

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"I would be happy to give you more complete information, or you could just go take this whole mess to my brother in Himring, that'd be the best thing to do."

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"My desire to not be around many elves for a while was genuine, is Himring an elvish city?  I suppose if the journey is long enough I can practice meditations along the way and may be OK there. Speaking of, do you know if those can hide the presence of a mind entirely? Apart from that, probably the most useful information for me would be the Enemy's capabilities - abilities, numbers, and dispositions of his soldiers, emphasis on anything I'm likely to encounter on my way to Himring, in this area, or around Tol-in-Gaurhoth, notable lieutenants and their abilities, again with emphasis on those areas, divine capabilities of the Enemy himself, emphasis on anything long-ranged, scrying, teleportation come to mind, does he know if you speak his name or something, I think some gods back home did that.  Also, any more glyphs I should avoid stepping on."

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He pulls out a map. "Tol-in-Gaurhoth is here, there are Enemy patrols as far south as here - the meditations should let you make your mind undetectable, yes - there are blueprints of Tol-in-Guarhoth somewhere, let me ask someone to bring them - an orc isn't the equal of a single Elf in a fight, but there are probably a hundred thousand of them in the area - a werewolf is, and there are maybe two or three hundred of them -" and a strategic outline from there -

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"Were the elves I disabled earlier typical fighters of yours? Would they have been about a match for a werewolf each? About how many orcs to one elf? If you can use those four for comparison it would save time, otherwise perhaps I could spar with someone? Meditations can hide a mind from a Maia even, or just elves?"

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"No, the vast majority of people in Nargothrond are civilians, not soldiers - they could probably still take an orc, though - I doubt you could hide yourself from Morgoth in Angband but from Thauron maybe - Maiar vary tremendously - I don't think anyone wants to spar with you either, especially -"

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"Oh, that's good, I'd have been really shocked if I was that much better than everyone here. I don't need to spar anyone if you can give me an estimate of a werewolf's capabilities in terms of the four I fought. Or just - how much stronger or faster than regular wolves are werewolves? Are they tougher aside from resistance to non-silver weapons? Any magical abilities besides being wolves and presumably shapeshifting? Is lycanthropy contagious? Are people worried I'll hurt them if we spar, or do they just not want anything to do with me?"

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"Werewolves are probably five times stronger and faster than normal wolves, and significantly more durable even if you have suitable weapons. If they have other magical abilities they haven't demonstrated them - Thauron is very very gifted with illusions and frequently uses them to give his allies the appearance of other abilities, particularly invisibility - he might catch you in his fortress even if your invisibility does not interact with our magic if, for example, he has a door illusioned somewhere and you walk through it and it's a wall - healers are overstretched and people are stressed in general and don't want anything to do with you -"

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"Hm, and my magic doesn't seem to interact with local magic so even if I could figure out True Seeing it probably wouldn't help with that... Invisibility is insufficient for now, anyways, I never bothered to figure out smell before, that will take some time. I understand people wanting nothing to do with me, I will be out of your hair shortly."

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"I know you will. Other things - every free nation in the world except Thingol's is allied against the Enemy, the alliance has fracture points you can definitely stomp on if you wish and doing that will probably mean Melkor wins - do I need to convince you that's a bad outcome -"

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"Well, I was taking it on faith for the present, but given the existence of binding oaths some sworn testimony of his evils would be wonderfully clarifying and remove any need to ask orcs for their side of the story - though they seem pretty harmless maybe I should try that anyway. Anyways, I don't want to blow anything up, tell me where the glyphs are and I'll step carefully around them."

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He does that. "And - hmm, all right - the Enemy created the race of orcs by torturing and forcibly breeding Elves and crosses between Elves and other things, orcs are all bindingly sworn to obey him as soon as they're old enough to talk, when he takes civilian prisoners he invariably takes them back to Angband to torture in time-dilation in variously creative ways including repeatedly hallucinating rescue, such that when actually rescued those prisoners usually don't believe they're free. He has killed millions in this war so far and plans to kill all non-orcs in the world except some humans he'll keep around as slaves and particular enemies of his who he'll probably torture indefinitely. I swear everything I've told you today is true."

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What an interesting response.

"Thank you. I may need Huan's help testing inolfactability - wow, you have a word for that? Most languages I know don't - I guess I can come by here for that or if I desperately need some information Lúthien doesn't have or want to drop off more spell notes, I'll be sure to do that before doing anything even slightly risky. You don't seem inclined towards rescue attempts but I should emphasize again that they are extra futile if I happen to get captured."

Malak stands up, brushes themself off, stretches their arms.

"I think that's everything. Are we free to leave, now? I assume you have the keys to Lúthien's shackles?"

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Yep! They are free to leave.

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"Again, I'm sorry for the trouble I caused. I don't like you, personally, but your war seems about as just as they get and I'd rather we be able to work together towards winning it."

Malak gives a slight bow, then heads with Lúthien back to the gate. They're not going to ask for supplies or weapons - not after that.

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No one interferes with them.

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Then out the door they go.

"So, Lúthien... Do you know anything about wilderness survival? Any chance that we could pick up supplies at Doriath on our way to Himring or Brethil or wherever? Oh, and in about an hour this spell's going to run out and I won't be able to talk to you so we should figure out our plans first I can handle telepathic communication if absolutely necessary but I've been doing that a lot today, and you can't read?"

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"Can everyone read, where you're from? And yes, I can get us food - if we go to Doriath they'll try to hold me there again - thank you, by the way - and we're not going to Himring or Brethil we're going to Tol-in-Gaurhoth -"

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"I'm not going to Tol-in-Guarhoth without a plan and I won't stop you from going alone but please don't, from what I've heard of Gorthaur he'll probably just capture you and torture you and Beren in front of each other and he will be worse off than he would if you waited. About six out of ten people where I'm from can read, but nobility can almost invariably and your father's a king... I learned to read by the time I was eight, my father hired tutors."

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"Writing wasn't invented when I was eight and it's mostly a Noldor thing even now that it exists and the Noldor are nuts so no one follows their example - if you just make me invisible I can get in and out -"

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"Werewolves. They will smell you. I can fix that but it will take time, and I can't keep you invisible when I'm not touching you, I can fix that too but again that will take time.  Probably a couple months at least."

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"By then -"

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"I know. Waiting is hard. Really really hard. When someone you love is held prisoner it takes every little bit of willpower you have to not go rushing in there right away but if you don't hold back, you will die or worse and Beren won't be helped a bit. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry, but the best thing you can do is wait."

Hug

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"I might be able to take Gorthaur even without your magic -"

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"You are half-Maia. As far as I can tell, Maiar are the most powerful things around here short of the Enemy himself, and he's one of the strongest Maia and has an army of werewolves. Give me one month, I can probably figure out inolfactability and hopefully the mind-hiding meditations by then and maybe we can go in together."

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"Okay. I - thanks."

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"I was in a position a lot like yours just... Gods, just four days ago. It feels like longer. And I rushed in just like you want to do and it was a trap and now she's in quite possibly worse hands than she was before I did anything and I'm...here."

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"I'm sorry."

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"I'm OK. Anyways. Brethil was kind of close to Tol-in-Gaurhoth - on the way at least - it might be a good place to set up for the next month if the natives are friendly, let's head that way."

And they walk in more-or-less silence for the next hour until the language spell expires.  After that they're still silent, but there's an excuse so it's maybe less awkward.

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Yeah.

 

It's several days' walk.

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The next day they're speaking Sindarin again, lots - Using it more should help them learn the language faster, so they don't have to rely on the spell for talking and can use the brainspace they're currently using for that spell developing better undetectability. Some inane things, discussions of where they might acquire weapons in case "sneak in and out invisibly" turns into "fighting escape from Tol-in-Gaurhoth," which Malak is pretty sure it will because plans never work out as intended.  Malak asks about being a half-Maia, are they really common? Does she have any siblings? What about her mother, does Lúthien think she could be persuaded to help?

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"It's just me, Mum found it really hard keeping a human form for long enough to have a baby. She protects Doriath, and it's really well protected, but she doesn't leave it and won't fight Gorthaur unless he tries to enter it."

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"Huh. So do Maia not usually reproduce? Was it your father who wanted children then?"

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"Maiar can't reproduce unless they hold incarnate form for the whole pregnancy and Mum's the only one to fall in love with an incarnate."

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"...Back home, 'falling in love' was definitely not a prerequisite for half-bloods. People - well, mostly humans, actually - A lot of them apparently can't help...experimenting...with pretty much anything they can find that's willing. One of my half-sisters was half dragon and - "

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"Oh, I think I'd heard a rumor humans were like that - the not needing to be married to have children, I mean, I am pretty sure no humans here are half-dragon - where do dragons come from in your home world if you don't have a Melkor -"

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"I don't know where dragons come from, the dragons probably do but they don't like sharing. Elves are like that too, back home. half-human half-elves are actually the most common halfbloods. Marriage is often involved but not always. Are all elves here asexual then?"

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"Asexual?"

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"Not really interested in sex?"

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"...some people are, but what does that have to do with anything -"

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"...OK I feel like I am missing something. In my world, people have sex and if they have the right combination of parts then one of them might get pregnant. Is it just... not that way here?"

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"...if you did that you'd get married."

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"Ohhhh I see, the concept that my spell gives me when you say "married" is somewhat different from what you actually mean, just like the concept that the spell gives me when I hear "elves" is somewhat different from what elves are here in this universe. So married just means "have had sex," or at least "have had certain kinds of sex". Gotcha."

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"...I guess? And everyone can see if you're married, and your souls bond for the lifetime of the universe..."

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"...OK sex does not do that back home I have never been able to just look and see who has had sex with whom and also I'm pretty sure someone would have told me. The soul bond thing can happen, as part of a marriage ceremony - that's just a thing where a priest says some blessings over a couple and they commit to being monogamous forever - but it requires an expensive magical ritual so few people can afford it and most of those have political marriages so usually they don't actually love each other enough to go through with the ritual.

I'm guessing that elves - heterosexual ones at least - are pretty monogamous then?"

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"...yeah? You find someone, you marry them, you're together forever. That's how it works."

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"I see. You know, I was actually vaguely hoping that marriage - my kind - here was sufficient for children? Without the sex involved. I...might have wanted some, one day. Not that marriage is exactly my thing either, but it's not as bad."

Sigh.

"OK, this might sound really weird to Lúthien, but I've decided that there's a remote chance you're actually a person and I kind of like you so I feel like just in case you are I owe it to you to tell you that I don't think you're real.  Also, it's fairly obvious that you're not trying very hard to make this believable, so you must know that I know that it's not real, and rather than trying to second-guess which level of deception we're at in the vague hope that it might win me some small advantage, I'm just going to make it common knowledge."

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"...huh?"

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"...Do you want to know what gave it away? How about 'ranged plane shift doesn't exist' and 'involuntary plane shift doesn't exist' and the wizard who cast the spell that hit me right before I was here was a necromancer so I'm giving it about 85% chance I'm dead, 15% it was sleep or something like that and one of Nerikross' allies is setting all this up while I'm unconscious, and maybe 1% it's real. To start. Then there's this story you've cooked up that coincidentally resembles my own recent life so well. Alfirin's not that sloppy and Nerikross is probably not subtle enough for all this, which combined with the fact that I have very little idea what either of them would gain from this bumps the chance that this is real up to a whopping one in twenty."

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"Is there someone else here, who are you talking to -"

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"Oh, right, and having Curufin actually mention people living in simulations created by the Enemy, that's what convinced me that you're not trying. In case you're an actual person or a construct with no awareness that this is all fake: I have enemies who can probably do the simulation thing too and I think I'm in one. I'm not going to do any spell development beyond recreating things that already exist in the real world, by the way, that's one of my theories for why I'm here."

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"...oh. Uh, okay? 

 

 

...sorry, Beren's probably going to be the same way - I should probably get practice at it - what am I supposed to say -"

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"If I tell you what to say and you say it that doesn't really do anything to convince me this is real. If I tell you the things I definitely won't do because I believe this to be fake, will this make it easier for hypothetically-real Lúthien?"

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"...uh, I don't mean 'things that would convince you', I won't try to convince you, I see why that wouldn't work, I mean - I want Beren to be happy -"

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"Well I don't know exactly what his preferences will be like, that probably depends on exactly what's being done to him. It might help to ask him what things he is willing to tell you upset him - it probably won't be everything, if he thinks you're Gorthaur he won't tell you anything that could hurt him that he thinks you might not already know - but at least you'll know some things to avoid. I am pretty sure I was tortured this way once before but I don't remember it at all and I didn't immediately afterward so I don't know what would have been the right way to deal with me in the aftermath of that, let alone someone else entirely. This is going to sound really callous but I am not going to share any coping mechanisms I think of with him."

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"But you'll still help me rescue him?"

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"Yeah, sure. Worst thing that happens is we get captured and I commit suicide, which I've been contemplating anyways just in case this is Nerikross' doing, but have held out on so far because this simulation has been much more pleasant than I would have expected from either of them. I mean, all that's really happened so far is I've somewhat successfully recognized an obvious stand-in for my sister from an obvious stand-in for Nerikross - Curufin is slightly nicer than Nerikross, are you trying to make me more sympathetic to him? Not that I expect you'll answer, but it turns out it's actually somewhat comforting to ask those questions and not have my memory reset to the start of all this. - and also done it without killing anybody, which is nice. And I'm pretty sure inolfactability is already present in my world and accessible to both Nerikross and Alfirin, so I'm fine reinventing it."

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"...okay. If it's a simulation, could you commit suicide -"

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"Yeah, self-targeted magic is really hard to spoof or block. If Nerikross has me, I can kill myself as long as my body's not in an antimagic field, and if it were then his lackey wouldn't be able to affect my mind and create all this. Alfirin could spoof it and probably block it but if she has me I'm most likely already dead so it wouldn't work anyways. Maybe your Morgoth or Gorthaur could also spoof and block it, but they don't exist. I'll be sure to pull the trigger as soon as I'm captured just in case."

"Incidentally, if this is Nerikross' doing, I think I've just arranged so that we won't be captured by Gorthaur, he probably doesn't want me offing myself and winding up with Alfirin."

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"...I'm pretty sure I'm not a figment of your imagination, I have six hundred years of detailed memories and that seems like a lot of trouble to go to."

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"That's exactly what a figment of my imagination who was bizarrely trying to convince me that she was real despite this entire world being obviously fake would say, regardless of how many memories she actually had. Sorry. I appreciate the effort."

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"I'm not trying to convince you, I'm trying to figure it out for myself."

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"Oh, if you have internal experiences you're not a figment of my imagination, I don't think my imagination is quite that good. And I don't think even Alfirin would go to the trouble of creating 660 years of memories for you.  Maybe one in a hundred?  So if you have memories and internal experiences, you're about eight times more likely to be real than not, by my calculations."

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"Only eight?"

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"Seventy-five in a hundred that Alfirin is running this simulation, one in a hundred conditional on that that she bothered to give you memories and consciousness makes three in four hundred that you're a simulation Alfirin gave consciousness to.  One in twenty chance that you're real is equivalent to twenty in four hundred... Sorry, I was wrong, seven times more likely. I was just eyeballing it before."

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"...who's Alfirin? Or do you not want to talk about it?"

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"Alfirin is my mother and at this point I've concluded that if you're her she already knows all this and if you're Nerikross' lackey then you probably hate her so at worst you will use any information I give you to try to kill her, which will probably just get you killed. I don't particularly mind lackeys-of-Nerikross dying, nor do I mind Alfirin dying if you somehow pull that off, so I'll tell you things if you want to know them. The short version is that she is a body-stealing soul-stealing entity that has been around for a very long time but I don't know exactly how long because she likes destroying records of her and I think she might predate writing which is somewhat more impressive there than it is here. If you kill her, she comes back. If you kill her really thoroughly, then she possesses an unborn human child somewhere and comes back sixteen years later. I don't know if driving humanity to extinction would stop her but I'm guessing not, and I can say quite confidently that not even Nerikross is going to do that."

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"I'm sorry."

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Hug?

"You know, it is actually nice to be able to say that to someone, even if they're not real. I have half-siblings, I'm not telling you any more about them than I've let slip already because Nerikross might torture them to get at her - I think he thinks she cares about us as more than useful tools - and they don't deserve that. The half-dragon was named Syrilth and she took me in after I left home and Alfirin had her murdered."

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Hug.

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"Do you want to know more about my shitty childhood or shall we talk about something less depressing?"

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"I mean, that the things happened is a lot less depressing than that nothing will ever convince you they aren't still happening? I'm mostly thinking about Beren. Sorry. He had a shitty life but when he met me he knew it was real -"

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"Some day I might figure out a way to test it and thoroughly convince myself. I'll keep trying things, maybe I'll keep getting results that up the probability that this is real. How did you and Beren meet?" Think about happy things, like adorable fictional couples with an age gap that is only slightly creepy given species differences.

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Her eyes light up. "He'd been fighting a one man guerilla war in Dorthonion and the Enemy was really really sick of losing anything he deployed to Dorthonion but Beren knew the land like his own body - better, even, mortals can't control their bodies - and the trees and animals and all living things reported to him and helped keep him safe and eventually there weren't any living things left and he fled through the Valley of Dreadful Death and the trees of Doriath let him in, too - they're not supposed to do that, Doriath keeps everything out, Mum thinks Eru meddled - and he was wandering alone and he saw me. And I was kind of confused that I hadn't heard him coming and that he was a mortal in Doriath and he was such a mess - it'd been five years since he'd spoken to a person, he'd been so alone, and he was a mess - so I ran off and he kind of chased me, but - harmlessly? Like someone in a cave following a mote of light, I could read his mind, it wasn't predatory - and eventually I let him find me and he remembered some of the Elven language and he tried to explain himself and - I didn't know what to do, I just held him and listened -"

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Awwww. They've always been a sucker for love across species with age variations - in other people, of course - but this story seems especially cute. They put out of their mind for the moment all the terrible background context of the Enemy. None of Malak's smiles look forced but this one actually isn't.

"Go on"

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"I'm not allowed to leave Doriath. People have just been - fighting and dying - and I'm supposed to stay home and be inspiring. And I felt so useless - and so small - like my whole life I'd just been sitting on a shelf for people to admire - and Beren told me about a hundred battles he'd fought, battles that mattered, battles that slowed the Enemy, and I was just so - embarrassed, I had so many more resources than him and what had I done with them - I tried to explain it to Beren but he actually wouldn't believe it, he was convinced that I was great, and -"

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Nod, smile.

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"We don't have to talk about this."

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"If you don't want to you can stop, I'm finding this the cutest thing I've heard in about twenty years."

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"Okay. Uh. Anyway. We talked about the war and I felt so - inadequate - and he trusted me so much and I knew that it only felt like the most important thing I'd ever done, healing him and talking to him, because I'd never done anything important at all, but. Still. It did. And anyway after a while I wanted to kiss him so I - did that? And he said he loved me and I thought, well, this was going to feel horrible when he died like mortals do but - it mattered, nothing else did - and once I'd decided it wouldn't be a disaster to fall in love I noticed I already was..."

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Awwww! "That's sweet and adorable and I really hope you guys are real so that you can be happy together."

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"What do you get out of saying that all the time, exactly?"

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"It has a small chance of persuading Nerikross' mindmage or Alfirin to give up on the simulation and is the way that my thoughts are forming right now. I'm sorry, I'll filter to avoid saying things like that from now on. I hope we can get him out and he recovers quickly."

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"Thank you. Me too."

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"The situation is going to be tricky. There will probably be more than one prisoner, so I can't go in alone and bring them out invisibly. So, even supposing we manage to get in undetected I think we'll have to fight our way out. This is going to be a problem if Gorthaur can just kill me and all the prisoners with a thought. Or even if he can't, but it's an especially big problem that way."

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"I might be able to distract him or draw him out? He's expecting me and he'd love to get me. And - there might be more than one prisoner but we could do one at a time, right -"

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"We can do one at a time once and then they notice someone's missing and make it a lot harder the second time, and maybe we get another but I doubt we get three that way and there's twelve. The King and Beren are probably the most strategically useful but I'm not sure how I feel about condemning the others to staying. I could maybe kill everyone left on the second extraction but I'd much rather find a way for them to get out. If you can distract Gorthaur and draw him out there's a decent chance I can fight my way out with the captives, but that gets a lot harder if I don't have weapons and might require more spell development time."

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"We can probably get weapons somewhere."

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"Silver? The werewolves are the main concern, I suspect large numbers of orcs I can handle with effectively negative effort for secret reasons."

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"I would think yes but on the other hand my first experience of the Noldor was them being even worse than rumor had it, so -"

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"From what I've heard the rumor is pretty bad and I'd consider that to be a good deal worse than imprisoning you, your situation just happened to remind me of the circumstance that got me here."

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"What rumors have you even heard-"

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"Well, you mentioned Kinslaying and Curufin did his very best to gloss over the details but he did explain the potential breaking points of this alliance and it sounds like there was one massacre over boats and one indirect massacre over the same boats later and they bindingly swore to go to war with anyone who holds their shinies. I don't know how much of that was in the rumors you've heard but it's all a good deal worse than keeping one political hostage no matter how much I have personal issues about that."

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"That, and the shuffling around of civilizations of mortal vassals."

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"How so?"

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"Ladros - where Beren's from - should never have been settled on the front lines of the war anyways, he's probably the only survivor and they could have just settled them anywhere at all but there - also Beren's family is called the House of Beor, meaning 'House of Vassals', they don't remember what they were called before that - the Noldor reportedly sometimes keep mortals they like as pets -"

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Oh, so they're the ones who would have the ridiculously caricatured Jade Dragon accents. Though obviously whoever's running this apparently has that much subtlety at least, kind of surprising given how things have been so far. They don't say any of that, instead,

"Tearing civilizations down is never as good an idea as it seems, but if we somehow managed to defeat the Enemy I'd be really tempted. There is something sort of like that going on back in my world but I'm powerless to stop it, here I might be able to do something."

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"I don't know if they're actually that bad, it's all thirdhand in Doriath."

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"Yeah, I'd confirm it all first. But the massacres I have firsthand from the mouth of one of the perpetrators and while he swore everything he said was true he didn't swear to completeness and I get the sense they were probably less justified than he tried to make it sound, I wouldn't exactly be surprised. Maybe we'll win this and get the opportunity to put them on trial."

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"I'd like that a lot."

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"It might be worth it to see if we can get them to swear to be tried and accept the outcome if the Enemy is defeated, though unless it turns out nobody else can practice my form of magic I don't know where we'd get the leverage. Same for your parents, actually, shooting refugees is pretty fucked up - has anyone on our side not committed atrocities against people on the same side?"

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"...Dwarves're pretty okay? And I am mad at my father but he's a good king of our people and punishing him for Doriath not letting humans in wouldn't - help anything at all -"

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"Would trying Curufin and his brothers help anything? Other than perhaps establishing a precedent so that the next time there's a big war people commit fewer atrocities? Because precedents like that work best when they're applied evenly and your father seems to deserve trial as certainly as they do."

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"What should Doriath do - they can't actually let anyone who runs at the border cross it -"

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"Stop them nonlethally, check that they're not servants of the Enemy - can everyone do oaths here?  If not, you can read their minds as a precondition, then let them in as long as there's space?"

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"There's not space, humans can't do oaths, and it's possible to get good enough at blocking your thoughts that it's not obvious you're hiding anything."

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"Forgive me if I'm skeptical about the lack of space. My world has seen a major refugee crisis in recent memory and "There's no space" was said a lot but as far as I can tell it was never actually true and the real reasons tended to be "There's no space for those kinds of people." "

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"Yes, the kind who might be working for the Enemy and kill everyone. I'm glad Beren got through but - even if you were completely guaranteed to murder anyone who took any part in protecting the borders, after the war, and all of them knew you do it, that wouldn't change a thing because letting the Enemy into Doriath is so, so much worse than that."

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"No way to effectively screen them is a problem, yes, one that I didn't anticipate given that all elves are telepaths. It is possible the choice was justified. Determining that is, in fact, one of the purposes of a trial."

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"I guess."

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"Did you think when I said I'd try the Fëanorians I would just...execute them?"

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"I mean - I have no idea how your world does stuff?"

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"People accused of crimes are generally brought before a judge or panel of judges, they plead their case, their accuser makes the case against them - usually both through professional proxies who know the law really well - then the judges decide whether the accused is guilty or not and what their punishment should be. People with enough political clout never get brought to trial unless their crimes are especially heinous or the evidence especially abundant because judges are corrupt and will dismiss charges out of hand if the right strings are pulled. People with enough magical power are rarely brought to trial because if they're in the habit of flouting laws any judge that finds them guilty would be afraid for their life. In Kalzir at least, magical power and political power went hand in hand, too, so there was really no way any powerful mage wound up in court. Sometimes people take justice into their own hands and murder people who got away with crimes due to political power - getting away with crimes due to magical power tends to also protect you from most would-be assassins, but occasionally other powerful people go after them and succeed. I did actually do a fair amount of that but if I can give people a fair and honest trial here I'd much rather do that.

Governments and rulers are basically never tried, especially for crimes committed during war, especially for crimes committed against foreigners, especially for crimes committed against foreigners from an enemy nation.

All in all it was a really shitty system that I don't want to replicate here. Consistent code of laws, equal application, as fair a trial as can be arranged, and if they're acquitted we respect that and leave them be. If Dwarves are pretty reasonable maybe they can be the judges, I haven't heard of any atrocities involving them so maybe they'll be unbiased."

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"They won't do anything that doesn't make them money. They're kind of obsessed with it."

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"I imagine if it somehow comes to that we can probably arrange to compensate dwarven judges, but if they're truly obsessed and that's not the baseless stereotype that it is in my world they might be a bit more bribeable than I'd like."

And they continue to discuss trial logistics for a time, because that is not depressing and still an excellent way to learn Sindarin and Malak does not particularly mind Alfirin and/or Nerikross knowing that Malak would love to bring them to trial if they could. After a while, Malak thinks they have their thoughts nicely partitioned into secret and public and asks Lúthien to check. These are public thoughts. (These are private thoughts.) These are public thoughts. (These are private thoughts.)...

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"These are public thoughts these are public thoughts?"

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Hug!

"It worked! Thank you, I'm going to try hiding all of my thoughts, see if you can sense me at all?"

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"Oh good!!!" Hug. "...nope, can't sense you..."

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"Oh, lovely. Now I just need to practice until I can do it and hold a spell and fight all at the same time and then we might actually have a chance. I'm really curious how this works with telepathy from my world," Probably not, not the sort of thing one usually teaches to prisoners, "Most creatures can't see in magical darkness, I can, so that's the metaphor I used, but some of the other creatures that do have telepathy too... I guess I could find a different metaphor to block them."

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"Don't know how it works with magic from other worlds. It'll work here even with people who can see in magical darkness though."

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"Oh, there are people who can? In my world pretty much everyone can see alright in the dark, but certain kinds of magical darkness will make them blind as a human. Fallen angels can see perfectly in any darkness, even magical, and about 1% of Tieflings have fallen angel blood or something because they can too. Sindarin doesn't seem to have a word for 'Tiefling' or 'Angel' so I'm guessing whatever you've got that can do that is different, we'll also have different kinds of magical darkness so that's something. Speaking of, do you have any different types of people around here besides humans, elves, and dwarves? And Maiar, I guess, though I'd put them in a different category from the rest."

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"There're Ents, who are tree people, and Maiar and Valar can probably all see in magical darkness just fine, and eventually I think there are supposed to be more species?"

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"Supposed to be? You've heard of them but not seen them? Uh, let's see, halflings, gnomes, oh, I forgot orcs, you have those, tengu, kobolds, goblins, fetchlings, changelings? You have words for halflings, fetchlings, changelings, but those all have an obvious construction rule so it's probably just that... My world has a lot more species but most of them are pretty rare, it's probably not worth listing every single one I can think of in case you've heard of them."

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"No, they don't exist yet but they're in Eru's plan."

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"Eru has a plan? All I've gathered is Eru made the world and sometimes opens up magical wards to let cute boys into otherwise inaccessible forests. How much do you know about this plan?"

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"Uh, it is very grand and very tragic and Mother knows a lot about it but isn't supposed to say?"

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" 'Very tragic'.  I'm so glad that is on the priority list for the actual creator of this universe."

Malak gives Lúthien another hug. They have a feeling she'll need lots of hugs if her boyfriend was sent to her by the universe-shaping being who thinks "Very Tragic" is an important feature to include in plans.

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"I think it has a happy ending. On the whole." Hug. 

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"Oh well in that case that's just fine."

Malak's tail swishes angrily.

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"It is probably not helpful to get mad at the all-powerful deity."

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"Sorry.  Does Eru actually intervene enough that it might smite me for that or something?"

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"Not smite you but make your bit tragic, yeah."

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It isn't already?

"So the Plan is tragic as a whole but not necessarily individually tragic for anyone who doesn't annoy Eru. Good to know."

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"More or less, I guess."

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"So what did Fingolfin's...children and self...do to annoy it? They seem to have had, ah, much tragedy.  How good is my speaking, my language spell ended now and I am using my Sindarin, um, knowledge."

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"You're doing really good! And I think it was mostly the Kinslaying, the Valar were really furious about the Kinslaying. And mostly Fëanor, actually. Fingolfin and his family just got - caught up in it all secondhand?"

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"I know many languages and learn them fast. What is this word? " translation " spell helps a lot. Most people who know the spell don't bother because they think it is...futile? Not that word, a different, um" connotation. "Like" pointless.

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She offers words. "I only speak this one but tried learning some of Beren's. Since it's lost since everyone's dead."

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"If keeping it spoken is important to him I can learn it if we save him. If keeping dead people's languages spoken is important to you I can teach you Turathi when we have time."

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"I don't know what'll still be important to him, once we -"

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"If it is or was important to him and he's willing to teach me now." Hug.

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Hug. 

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They walk in silence some more. Malak starts outlining inolfactability in their head. When it gets dark Malak asks if Lúthien wants to stop for the night, they can keep going for a while longer.

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"I only need to sleep around once a week, and I can sing through it if needed."

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"I can go without for a few days, though I really should sleep every day when I'm doing serious spell development. Or going into battle. But it seems worth it not to sleep until we get to Brethil, and I like the nighttime anyways." They keep walking.

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"I don't actually know anything about Brethil except that humans live there."

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"Isn't it right on the border of Doriath? My main thought is that it might be a safer place to plan and work than the, hm." wilderness?

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She translates. "Yeah, it is, but we should stay clear of the border of Doriath because if they see me I don't know what they'll do, and we fight to defend them from orcs occasionally but that doesn't mean we know anything about them."

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"Occasionally defended from orcs is another point in its favor. How likely is it that the Enemy has spies there? That's the main thing I'm worried about."

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"...wouldn't be hard. Maiar can shapeshift, werewolves can shapeshift -"

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"Lovely."

I don't see anything watching us now, have you noticed anything since we left? I assume Nargothrond was secure, it's all elves there and they made me swear an oath I wasn't working with the Enemy before I came in, that would catch a Maia too, right?

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Yeah, Nargothrond would be secure, I don't like the Noldor but they're competent.

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Well, then hopefully the Enemy doesn't know about me yet. I'm a Noldo who has been feeling terribly guilty about not standing with his King when he was deposed so when you said you were staging a rescue mission I decided to go along. What's a realistic sounding Noldor name? Also, I'm not used to long hair, could you help me get this into a braid?

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...uh, touching hair's - intimate. And the Noldor are dreadful at names, they just kind of squish letters together when translating from their native language - are you pretending to be a boy or a girl one -

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...Oh. Sorry. Malak starts braiding their new hair. I don't suppose you happen to know enough of their native language that we could make something up, actually just a few words in that language should be good enough that I can trigger my spell off of it. I was trying for male, did I mess some features up?

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No, just, with hair loose I wouldn't know how to tell. And my father banned the speaking of their native language on the whole continent because he was mad about the Kinslaying. I can give you some examples of their names? Fingolfin, Fingon, Turgon, Finrod, Amrod, Angrod, Aegnor, Orodreth, Maedhros, Maglor -

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Malak looks distressed. The hairstyles are gendered? Does this sort of braid match a gender, I'll just change everything else to look like that one... The top fourth of their hair is in a very basic three-strand braid.

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...you can do 'soldier' or 'in mourning' or other not gendered things, but most of them are. That one'd be'soldier' if you did the rest like that -

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They relax. I should have figured hairstyle signaled something other than personal preference. Thanks, I'll stick with soldier. Talrod? 

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Sounds sufficiently Noldo-trying-to-speak-our-language to me.

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OK, cover story's almost complete. We need an excuse for staying in Brethil instead of going straight for Tol-in-Gaurhoth. I have something in mind but if you have ideas...

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I mean, the lack of weapons is pretty obvious -

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Could you plausibly delay fixing that for long enough?

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Think so. Can't go to Doriath, can let us be assumed to be on bad terms with the High King -

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Well that is a much better plan than "give myself a visible injury". At least from my perspective. Ideally, we make it seem like we're delayed more than we actually are so that we have a chance of beating the news of our departure to Tol-in-Gaurhoth...

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Should be doable. I don't know how much we will actually be delayed, sort of depends whether we can actually get weapons anywhere -

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Do you think you'll be safe acquiring weapons on your own while I stay back and do spell research?

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It'd be good to have a plan but the Noldor definitely do not want me to end up dead.

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I do not want you to end up dead either, are you concerned they will try to imprison you again? We have a month to come up with a more detailed plan than "Be invisible, try to break people out."

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I am mildly concerned they might do that. I think the High King is less terrible than the Fëanorians? Then again there are the rumors that he's a front for Maedhros -

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Hm. Tell them to ask Curufin whether or not imprisoning you for your own safety is worth annoying your friend over? Assuming that elves are capable of performing my magic they probably want my continued cooperation on that front at least, even if not they might not think it's worth the risk that I try to break you out... If that doesn't work and you're willing to do something slightly risky to avoid imprisonment, you could swear to kill yourself if taken prisoner and that you have a friend who has committed to be sure the news of your death in their custody reaches your parents... That should stop them whether they are actually concerned for your safety or are using that as a pretense to hold you as leverage against your father.

I will swear to attempt to break you out or to inform your parents if either of those will help.

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Yeah, that sounds plausibly safe enough. ...he actually also did an insane solo Angband rescue mission so he might be sympathetic to me -

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Oh, so it's not as impossible as they were making it sound in Nargothrond. That's good to know, we're not even doing anything unprecedented!

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I mean, it was meant as a suicide mission and then the Valar directly intervened, and that was four hundred years ago when we controlled a lot more territory. But he's not even half-Maia -

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But Angband is supposedly more secure than Tol-in-Gaurhoth? I guess we probably can't count on Valar intervention.

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Probably not. And, yeah, Angband is supposedly more secure than Tol-in-Gaurhoth though they actually had that particular prisoner dangling from a cliff face out front to tempt someone into the relevant suicide mission -

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...I don't suppose we can tempt Sauron into dangling Beren out front for you...

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Seems unlikely. Seeing as last time it backfired on them - assuming that in fact it did -

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Oh?

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I mean. The Enemy had him for nearly fifty years, then he gets dangled out front and miraculously rescued - my father's super paranoid but you don't have to be him to wonder -

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Yeah. I don't know how paranoid the rest of the Noldor leadership is, but you'd think they would have found out if he was a saboteur...

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Depends how subtle, right? Or if there's a trigger for him to turn on them, or - but I know all of this thirdhand, it's even possible important details are wrong - and the rescue mission would have just been a mercy kill and suicide if the Valar hadn't intervened -

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Yeah, fifty years is a long time, if he weren't an elf I definitely wouldn't trust him, but maybe he swore to never do the Enemy's will due to conditioning in Angband? Or just that he wasn't conditioned to be a saboteur. Would that work

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Escapees of Angband usually won't swear things on account of believing they're still in Angband. But maybe he's different, dunno.

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"I swear that if this is real I will not do the Enemy's will due to conditioning experienced in Angband?" But, wait, if they think it's not real that doesn't actually stop them from doing things... What happens if you accidentally break an oath?

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Can't - like, if someone swears not to murder me, and then they stab someone not having any reason to think it's me, the oath won't attach at all - if it didn't work that way you could use oaths for highly effective divination -

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But if they actually murdered you, would they die or something? "I swear not to do cause material harm to the war effort opposing the Enemy, nor to cause material harm to simulations of the same"?

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No, nothing happens if you accidentally break an oath unless you swore that specifically, and even then it wouldn't hit until you knew you'd done it - that might work, depending that counted as material harm -

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"I swear not to knowingly or unknowingly cause harm to the war effort or simulations thereof" is probably too broad. What happens if it's broken?

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Most kind of oaths you just - can't break, if you're trying to ignore them everything else fades away until you don't care about anything else....

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Nod.

"I am sure that the Noldor have put much more thought into this than I have."

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Yeah, probably. But just in case we probably don't want to go to Himring even if Brethil's not working.

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"That sounds wise. I wouldn't trust a Fëanorian even if he weren't the Enemy's puppet." Well I would, but Talrod wouldn't. Could we use words mostly I still need practice?

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"The problem is I don't know if Eithel Sirion is much better and we need weapons from somewhere." Why would you?

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"I suppose me walking to the Doriath border and saying 'Your princess is about to rush into danger, want to give her some weapons so that she has a higher chance of survival?' won't end with us armed and provisioned."

I'd trust them enough to chance speaking to them and hearing their side of things. What you've passed on to me is now fourthhand. Celegorm seemed better than Curufin.

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"Yeah, they'd try to stop me and they'd probably just shoot you."

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"Well, that's why you wouldn't be going to the border, if we don't give them any reason to think they can stop you they might help. It's remotely possible that that reasoning might work with Nargothrond..." I have to write them anyways to arrange for Huan's help in testing things if possible...

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"I"m guessing Nargothrond wants me to get caught because then my father'd definitely join their war effort."

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"Perhaps they can be blackmailed into it, nothing to stop Thingol from hearing about how they didn't stop you and didn't help you..." That's a terrible idea and we shouldn't do it. Curufin doesn't want any risk of me being captured.

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Probably not, yeah.

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"We'll find a way. We'll get them out."

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"Thanks." And discussion of the scenary, so they can learn Sindarin.

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And do they eventually make it to Brethil without running into trouble?

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Yup. Brethil has a population of around three hundred. Little wood cabins, mostly. No streets.

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Little wood cabins!  How quaint. They probably don't have much space for visitors?

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...they'd be happy to help the visitors build a cabin!

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This seems like something that might take a while? They would be happy to help assemble another cabin but they also plan to leave in not-terribly-long. How long does it take to build a cabin?

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A couple months, probably. They don't really have anywhere for strange Elves to sleep, though. Aren't Elves usually happy sleeping under the stars?

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Stars are fine, he's just a spoiled urbanite who thinks the ground isn't great for sleeping on, and beds get wet when rained on. If there's cloth or rope he can trade labor for he can make a hammock, or just deal with the ground or treetops and not sleep very often.

Lúthien can speak as to her own sleeping preferences. 

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Lúthien will ask a tree to shelter her! The tree will do it. Half-Maia.

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...That works. Can the trees be persuaded to shelter Talrod too?

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Probably, she'll try to talk one into it.

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Meanwhile, Malak surveys the local bird population.

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Tree shelter arranged! It's cozy. 

 

There aren't many birds because Doriath shoots them down if they're small and the locals eat them if not.

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...Doriath shoots down small birds but not large ones? Would the locals maybe be willing to not shoot down largish birds until Talrod can acquire one? He's somewhat preferential to owls but really anything larger than yay big is probably fine.

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Doriath lets the humans shoot down the large birds for food. And the locals are confused about bird acquisition but they can definitely not shoot an owl next time they see one.

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Talrod can talk to birds! (It's another weird Tiefling thing. Malak consults with Lúthien about what a plausible-for-an-elf explanation is.)

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Celegorm can do that. It's not that weird.

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Oh, good.

Talrod spends some nights standing in the treetops until he spots an owl and calls it over to see if this still works here. Back home pretty much nobody talked to birds (not even other birds!) so just saying "Hey you!" was usually interesting enough to bring one over, but if lots of elves talk to birds that might not be good enough. Also, birds here might just be different.

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The bird will come over!

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"Hi there! The humans around here tend to shoot birds for food. I can make sure they don't shoot you and also catch some food for you if you're willing to deliver some messages for me."

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The owl is unsure how it could do that since most people can't talk to owls, but open to the idea.

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Can it carry small papers if Talrod ties them to its leg? The location of Nargothrond isn't terribly secret anymore so Talrod feels fine about giving it to random birds.

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Sure.

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OK! Would it like to meet him here tomorrow night? He will bring it some food and a paper then.

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Sure!

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When the humans are awake, Talrod finds out how much of their diet is usually owl and if it is not imposing too much could they kindly cut out that part entirely? He also asks for lessons in setting snares - If the snares haven't caught anything by evening they'll go catch a squirrel with their bare hands, which is easier when invisible. Malak does spell research, and writes a short encrypted letter in their tiniest legible handwriting.

"Curufin," (The name is not encrypted) "Please feed the owl. It will wait one day for return message. We are for now settled in Brethil. Have you had luck learning magic? I have gotten better at telepathy. I can give lessons that way in 2 weeks if needed. I can return to Nargothrond or meet people here. I would like to meet with Huan at the same time for testing. Confirm meeting and advise on location. Know and inform your brother that I have sworn to ignore or respond hostilely to future brinkmanship attempts." (They needed Lúthien's help translating "brinkmanship")

They feed the owl that night and give it instructions.

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The owl flies off. 

 

 

The owl returns four days later. "We will host you again to test magic + discuss."

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The owl gets a live woodmouse - Malak's been catching them when they need a break from spellcrafting. They let Lúthien know and see if she wants to come with.

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Not really, do you need me?

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Probably not. Promise not to run off without me? Not, like, bindingly or anything, but... try not to?

And in another five days they head south toward Nargothrond. The owl comes with, it seems to like them.

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Nargothrond is still standing and in the same place.

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Well, that's good. Talrod approaches the gate.

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It opens. "- that you?"

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"Expecting anyone else? I swear I am the same person who left with Lúthien about three weeks ago."

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He glances at Huan.

 

Huan nods. 

 

"Welcome back. How's Brethil? Last time I went through there they were besieged."

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"Quaint. Little wood cabins, hunting for food, lots of trees. Didn't see any orcs while I was there. Not what I'm used to." The last three weeks were the longest stretch of time I've spent outside of a city since I was twenty four. How's Talrod for a name, cover identity was probably something I should have worked out while there were still Noldor around to consult but the problem didn't occur to me until we were a day out.

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...sort of works if you're pretending to be from here and pretty young, my crazy brother knows everyone's name - I mean that, literally everyone who has fought or died on our side for the last five hundred years - and so the Enemy should be assumed to know all of them as of when he was a prisoner - come on in -

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Malak follows him in. I never actually asked about how your species ages, all I know is that your father was alive three thousand years ago, do I look 500? I haven't been telling the humans much about my history so that should help... It's also possible I was seen before I took this shape. I would really like the Enemy to not know I exist but I don't think we can count on it.

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There aren't spies here, I don't know about the open plains. In these lands we're fully grown at a hundred, you're fine there. 

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Are people going to be nervous around me if I cha - nevermind it's not worth the time to rebraid, I don't have much practice. Any news since we left?

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Not on the front you're interested in. Uh, Doriath's been sending me threatening letters, I don't suppose Lúthien would be willing to tell her father that he does not need to worry we're going to marry her -

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I'll see what we can work out but she thinks they'll try to imprison her again. She could dictate a letter to me and we could try to get that delivered somehow, but they have no reason to believe it's from her and not coerced...

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Sigh. I don't think he'll start a war over it, so it's probably fine.

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If you say so.

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Honestly if it wasn't for Nelyo being guaranteed to give me such a disappointed look, I would lose very little sleep over Elu Thingol starting stupid wars. It's a problem but it's not one I was expecting you to be equipped to solve. Are you actually here to talk magic or do you need something?

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Both? Figured you were leading me to Curufin and we'd talk when we got there, but I suppose while we walk is as good a time as any. Any luck with anyone learning it on your end?

They cast their inolfactability spell. Huan? Am I still normally smellable?

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He says not normally but he can smell you but he's a Maia of Oromë, the god of the hunt, and probably harder to defeat in that particular way than the Enemy. And we've made some progress, yeah.

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Lovely.  And let me just check that it integrates properly with invisibility... Still no normal smell?

They reappear in a moment. "Does Huan speak to anyone besides you?"

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"If it's urgent, but not usually, no."

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And they're at Curufin's. No point in knocking.

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"Hello. Thank you for leaving notes; I made some progress with them -" and he launches right in to discussing it.

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Malak points out a couple of places where he got a concept slightly wrong - usually due to incomplete or bad notes, oops. When Curufin's done updating them,

"I've been thinking it's probably best for you to focus on Kalziran spellcraft, for a couple of reasons. First, it's what I know best apart from my own techniques which are optimized around working for me and may not generalize well.  Second, it's scalable, easy for you to share new spells with each other or have two people working together on a single spell. Also, my enemies in my world know it already so sharing it does the least possible harm there. On that note, though I'm playing along for lack of anything better to do or a reason not to, I don't believe either of you are real, apparently you have some experience with this?" And Malak explains about being probably dead or maybe just unconscious in a high-security Kalziran dungeon.

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He doesn't react at all. "I have no objection to focusing there - how far does it scale, could we have a whole army working together on something -"

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"Actually casting together is really rare, I don't know very much about it but it should be possible, telepathy should make the coordination easier... I'd be surprised if you could get a whole army casting together, even so. The biggest group rituals I know exist have seven, but I don't know enough about ritual magic to know if that's because of coordination issues or because of some theoretical hard limit or because the marginal benefit of added casters falls off very quickly... I was more thinking that for inventing more complex spells, it's easier to split them into parts and have people working on it in parallel. After a certain point, spell development can only really scale as well as group casting can because any spell that needs fifty people to develop probably needs, not fifty, but five or ten to cast. You're much better positioned to look into ritual casting than I am, this is all I know..."

And Malak explains the little that they know about group rituals.

"Oh, it sounds like you did alright learning the spells I wrote down before," They hand over a sheet of paper, "Encrypted, in case anything happened to me on the road, anyone who you are teaching my magic or who gets involved in spell development should memorize this but not practice it, I Kalziranized a suicide spell. I don't have enough information on the Enemy's capabilities to be sure but I think it should work even from inside a simulation - if the memory of it isn't erased of course - and it seems like a good precaution if we want the Enemy to know as little as possible about this sort of magic, which we should since we have no reason to believe he or his servants can't learn it."

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"Most people choose to carry several methods anyway but I will tell them there's one more. Thank you."

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"Its main virtue over other methods is probably-working-through-simulations. Also there are some Kalziran techniques to cast spells without words or gestures. I don't know them but you or I might be able to rederive them and then it's also a suicide method that can't be physically prevented.

"Have you found any interesting interactions with your own magic? My magic-detecting spell couldn't pick up Lúthien singing so I'm guessing there won't be many... We have auditory illusions, depending on how your music work's it's faintly possible that those could work really well together. I suspect we won't be able to find things to directly counter the Enemy's magic but might have some workarounds. I think True Seeing works by showing you what's there rather than directly contesting illusions so that could be really useful but I don't actually know the spell myself..."

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"... and doing all the spell reconstruction and invention falls to us, probably. We should check if auditory illusions can have magic song effects, artificial means of producing sound can count for that."

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"Most of it, yeah. I think I'm unusually quick to figure out how to put a new spell together but I don't have the ability to store all that many spells in my mind, and trying to compress them to take up less space or format them for external storage slows me down to 'merely very fast'. Oh, spellbooks are important. You probably noticed how even if you followed the directions precisely spells wouldn't work the first few times? Not until you actually got the workings of the spell memorized and practiced a bit? I don't know why that is myself but I'm sure someone does. Spellbooks are magically created, there's a simple spell for that that imprints another spell on paper. Spellbooks aren't immediately intelligible to anyone besides their creators, but you can cast spells by reading them from your spellbook without having them memorized. Makes spellbooks very useful as a backup, and you can put any number of spells in there even though there's a limit to your memory. They can be deciphered eventually, though, so best not carry them into battle if that can be avoided.

"I can get an auditory illusion tomorrow to test if songs work through illusion, so you don't have to spend time developing an illusion spell that might not work - you'll still need to develop one for yourselves but I can at least figure out if it's worthwhile first. If there are any other things it would be useful for me to test like that I can do those too, limit one or two per day though and that uses up most of the resources I'd use for other spell development, I'm hoping to get short-range teleportation figured out and oh right if you're real then I have very important information for you - 

"I assume you've gotten through my notes on the planes? The important part is that my plane is paralleled by the plane of shadows and apparently so is yours because I managed to shadow-step here and that relies on being parallel to the plane of shadows. I didn't realize the implications until later, and I have been assuming it was just an oversight on the simulation overseer's part, but in case this is real this could help with developing plane shift. Alternately, you have your own plane of shadows whose relation to this plane almost exactly matches mine."

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"Is there a way to distinguish between the latter two?"

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"If it's the former that makes plane-shifting to my plane much easier, evacuation of all your people would become feasible and probably the best course of action unless the Enemy also figures this out. I can't think of any way to test which it is besides trying, unfortunately. Possibly the most likely explanation is one you mentioned when we first met, that we're still in my plane but very, very far apart, another planet maybe? I don't think interplanetary teleportation is any easier than plane shifting, and this would make transit through the plane of shadows inadvisable."

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"It doesn't help much with long distance?"

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"If we're a long distance away we're on another planet - Uh, how advanced is your astronomy?  I'm pretty sure apart from mine they're all empty lifeless rocks, but I studied astronomy even less than the planes so I could be wrong. It's faster to travel long distances by going into the plane of shadows and doing the travelling there, but interplanetary travel is really really far, and the space in between planets doesn't have air so unless elves here have an incredible ability to hold your breath...?

"Also, the space between planets is full of terrifying monsters, and the inhabitants of the plane of shadows tend towards more terrifying and monstrous versions of what exists in the material plane so I think interplanetary travel on the plane of shadows is quite likely worse than staying here. Unless what you're looking for is a quicker death than the Enemy will give you, but there are easier ways for that."

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Nod. "We hadn't heard of other planes or other planets."

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"...Oh!  I should explain astronomy just in case. If we're not on the same plane there's no reason to believe that any of this applies here, but maybe if I teach you you'll be able to think of a way to confirm if we are.

"So, the sun is a really really big portal to another plane that's filled with the sort of energy we use for healing magic. Planets are big-but-not-as-big-as-the-sun round objects that move around the sun in circles. My planet is mostly rock, I think others are different? Moons are really small - comparatively - planets that go in circles around bigger planets instead of the sun, my world has one, you seem to have one, some planets have more apparently. Some of the stars are not actually stars, but other planets, you can tell because they move around and if you look at them in a telescope you can see that they're different. I don't think anyone is really sure what stars are.

"If you've ever had a time when the sun goes dark in the middle of the day, it's usually just the moon moving in front of the sun and blocking it out, sometimes it's a space monster getting close and blocking out the sun. Mathematicians can predict the former, and they're necessary for some very powerful rituals, the latter are unpredictable and usually accompanied by a lot of bad luck and nightmares."

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"...our planet's not round and doesn't rotate its sun, the sun is a recent addition and is towed through the sky, so's the Moon."

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"...OK, so the 'towed through the sky' thing is actually what a lot of people on my world used to think, also that the world was flat instead of round, these are common mistakes to make but might actually be the case if the sun and moon are recent additions, how recently were they added?

"A lot of other planes are flat so that's the most likely option conditioning on this being real. Lúthien was uncomfortable with me mentioning that last part, should I avoid it with you too?"

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"Used to it. With Nelyo I tried suggesting different lines of evidence and he took them less seriously on account of my having suggested them than he would have if they had eventually occurred to him to check on his own, so I'll avoid that. The sun and moon were added four hundred sixty three years ago, the moon twelve days before the sun. Melkor had destroyed a couple of earlier lighting schemes for the world."

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"If things like the plane of shadows come up again, would you prefer that I tell you or keep it to myself? "Things like the plane of shadows" being things where keeping it to myself lets me keep testing if this is real, but the information would be useful to you if it is real. If I do at some point become convinced that this isn't a simulation, I'd be willing to do more spell development, right now I will not work on anything that Nerikross and Alfirin don't already have access to. Also, I will try not to think of any ideas on how to actually kill the Enemy, for the same reasons, I don't want either of them with the capabilities to kill a god."

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"Depends how much of an advantage you think you have over us in spell development, then."

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Nod.

"When working in spellbooks I have a moderate advantage over other people in my plane - 90th percentile maybe? - in terms of speed. How much of an advantage that is over you depends on how fast you are. Unless everyone here is well below the average for my plane, it's probably better for me to tell you when these things come up, especially given how I'm willing to work on basically every spell that exists back home. My personal preference would be to keep it to myself but it's not that important, I can put that preference aside when it seems like it would do good just in case this place is real."

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Nod. And he pulls out pages of annotated notes and spell development questions.

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Malak answers questions until they start to get tired and ask where they should sleep tonight.

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They can arrange a room. If Malak gets the impulse to leave they can just say to the gate guards "I am leaving" and then they will open the gate.

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Convenient! Malak will be sure to do that if they find any more political hostages.

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He hopes that Malak's last bout of ignorant conscience-serving doesn't actually result in millions of people being tortured to death but finds it mildly annoying that Malak considers this obviously worth it on principle.

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Malak thinks that inside of a simulation which may be intended to test when one compromises on one's principles is an especially bad situation in which to compromise on one's principles. And that taking hostages from neutral parties seems unlikely to prevent millions of torturous deaths and is definitely not worth it without a solid expectation that it won't lead to exactly the sort of civil war that he's supposedly trying to prevent.

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"I will be sure not to give you any opportunities to demonstrate your principles to whoever you think is running this. And the scenario I anticipated was that Lúthien would go to Tol-in-Gaurhoth, get herself captured, and thereby provoke Thingol into a fight he'd certainly lose and certainly attempt anyway. Even if you think you can influence her into not trying that, you must agree it's what she'd have done unprompted?"

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"If I believed for a moment that that were your motive then I still wouldn't think it was justified, judging from the letters Celegorm says you've received it seems as though trying to hold her would just provoke Thingol into war with you and I don't think that was non-obvious when you made the decision. And somehow I doubt that your intention in holding Lúthien was to prevent her father from warring with your mutual enemy."

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"...Doriath was never ever going to march to war with us. Thingol deliberately attempted to invoke a centuries-old incredibly dangerous magic to force our hand into murdering someone for his convenience, there is no ambiguity about whether he would ever help us. He's threatening to go to war with us right now because we can't prove she's safe. I assure you that I very very much prefer Doriath not run off into a fight with Thauron, because I have seen four and a half bloody centuries of this and they would lose, badly, and the Enemy wouldn't even come out of it any weaker."

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"And you're definitely not the sort to write a politely worded letter, 'oh, Thingol, glad to hear from you, we stopped your daughter from chasing her boyfriend to his death, we'll happily return her to Doriath as soon as the area's safe enough for her to travel, unfortunately we have this werewolf problem and she'd just be in too much danger travelling back right now, my conscience couldn't bear it if anything were to happen because we sent her back too soon.' Right."

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"Thingol was also holding her prisoner, she didn't want to be handed back over."

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"And I find his stance on the matter equally objectionable and completely irrelevant to whether or not it's OK to use her as leverage against him."

Malak rubs their temples.

"This is not productive. I am going to sleep, talk to you tomorrow."

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"Sure. Do try to avoid deciding you know everything and lighting it all on fire because it's not real anyway."

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"Don't worry, if I decide to end it I'll only light myself on fire."

Malak goes and gets acquainted with a bed.

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In the morning breakfast is brought.

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Malak eats breakfast, then heads back to Curufin's rooms.  Knock knock.

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"Hey! Our team on this made some progress overnight -" and he would be delighted to tell her about it!

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They would be delighted to hear about it! And to test illusory music if anyone would care to provide a sample to copy?

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He'll sing something! It makes it windy.

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Malak will want to hear it a few more times to memorize it exactly, then the sound of Curufin singing is coming from empty air.

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Works.

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Lovely!

...So, what, exactly, tends to influence how well a magical song works? Does volume make a difference? Tempo? Pitch? What happens if there are three illusions of the same voice singing?  One illusion of three copies of the same voice singing? Two different people singing the same song? Illusions of two different people singing the same song?

...Unfortunately, Malak does not have an eidetic memory and is not particularly musically talented, and they want to scrap the illusion to work on teleportation tomorrow anyways, so they can't just memorize every magical song ever written, but it's still good that they know about this interaction.

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More people and more talent both make a difference; volume affects the radius of the effect if it's an area effect; faster tempo makes the effect kick in a little sooner up to a point where it stops working at all; if it's off pitch it doesn't go. 

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And how effective are illusions compared to the originals?

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Just as good as Curufin, who doesn't specialize in it - "Lúthien'd be better -"

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"Yes, she seemed very talented. So are you, by my world's standards. Depending on how quickly I can get teleportation compressed I can probably relearn illusions in the next week or so...

"Speaking of, if I stay here much longer I still think she's likely to run off to Tol-in-Gaurhoth on her own, so I should probably head back north today or early tomorrow. We are probably going to make a rescue attempt soon and while hopefully weapons will make no difference I am sure that not everything will go according to plan. I don't think you or your people have any obligation to help us with this, but you have a supposed interest in preventing her capture and a real strategic interest in preventing my death, and if you find those sufficiently compelling reasons to arm us I will be grateful."

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"You're going either way?"

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"Yeah. I'm not exactly unarmed even when 'unarmed,' and with invisibility and teleportation I think the chance of success is at least decent and the risk of death or capture is really quite low. Lúthien is at somewhat greater risk but I'm shaping the plan to minimize that and if I didn't go soon she'd go on her own."

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"Then by all means take whatever you need."

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"Thank you. I'm glad we can still work together. I will send Whisper to let you know before we depart, and again if we make it out safely. And I'll leave encrypted notes on teleportation once I have the spell working, they might be helpful in laying the ground work for developing a longer-ranged teleport or a plane shift. Did you have any other magic questions or last-minute advice?"

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"It is worse than you are imagining. Everyone advising you against it is doing so from extremely painful firsthand experience."

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"Acknowledged."

Malak pauses at the door,

"I don't think I did, but it is possible that I have completely misjudged your character. If so... I expect we will meet again but you seem less certain of that and if you want to correct my first impression before I go I think you deserve that chance."

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"There are several hundred thousand things I care about more than your good opinion. Try not to die."

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"At least you're honest." Malak waves their hand past their eyes in a lazy Kalziran salute on the way out. They realize the gesture would be meaningless a few moments later.

Off to the armory to arm themself as much as the elves can spare.  They feel most comfortable with six daggers and a sword - really one, a sword, and five throwing knives if the elves have those - but not all of that is strictly necessary. Enchanted armor sounds a good deal more important, given what Gorthaur can do? The armorer probably hates them, which might make this trickier.

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Little bit. They might stand a chance in this war if there were more people willing to talk to each other and fewer inclined to try singlehandedly achieving whatever stupid goal they've got. But. There's armor in their size.

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Maybe Malak will try to singlehandedly achieve a healthy amount of communication and coordination next. Being an outsider might help with that.

No comment on how "save people from a life of torture" doesn't seem like a particularly stupid goal to them.

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They can have weapons. Then they can leave, yes? It'll be much appreciated.

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And Malak leaves, armed and armored. At the gate, "I'm leaving." Wow, that was so much easier. 

A few days later they're back at Brethil. Lúthien?

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Got everything?

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Oh, good, you're still here. Yeah, I got some weapons.  Can you slip away and meet me by the north edge of the forest? Without anybody noticing if possible, I want as much surprise as we can get.

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Yeah, sure. 

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And, later,

"Hi! If you want to carry a weapon I can give one to you, I realized after I got there that I never figured out your weapon preferences, so you've just got your choice of the ones I picked for myself. Sword or dagger?"

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"Dagger. Can we go soon -"

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"We can go now, it'll still take a bit of time to get there and we can finalize plans on the way."

Malak gives her a dagger and a hug. "We'll get him out."

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"Thank you."

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"So, our best bet might still be for me to go in alone and you to possibly serve as a distraction. I don't think I'm in a lot of danger of being captured, I got a teleport spell working on my way back here so I can get out really easily. It's self-only though and it's probably worth going in before I can get it up to self-and-other."

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"You can at least - confirm if they're still alive and still being held there -"

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"Yeah. Do you think if I try to break them out and fail, Gorthaur will kill them? If he won't then it might be worth it to try a breakout using just invisibility."

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"...probably would, that or take them to Angband -"

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"Taking them to Angband might be OK, it could be a lot easier to rescue them in transit than from where they are. I don't know Gorthaur at all, but it sounds like he'd be more likely to keep them alive than to kill them, especially if he's still hoping to trap you. If my attempt fails he might assume that we'll try again and won't know that I have more capabilities... Still it's probably best not to risk it. I'll just look."

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"Unless it looks like they're not going to make it much longer -"

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"Yeah."

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"Good luck."

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After a lot more walking, they are there. What does it look like? How wide is the river? Is there a bridge to the island?

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Wide river, the other side immediately meeting extensive fortifications. It's a stunningly pretty fortress. There's a bridge. Narrow, stone, and swarming with both orcs and wolves. 

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Oh, good. They would have been worried if it was suspiciously unguarded. How much space is there under the bridge?

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Not none!

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Well, Lúthien can stay a good ways back and downwind, and Malak will cross (invisibly, of course) by clinging to the side and bottom of the bridge then. Any reactions from the orcs or wolves as they do this?

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Nope.

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Then they will scale the walls - gate is shut, right?

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Yep. Opens sometimes for people going in and out, though.

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OK, they'll wait and follow someone in. Less likely to run into magical traps walking through a gate than on the outside of a wall. Also, climbing is tiring and they don't have their belt anymore.

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They can walk in. It's a large, spacious courtyard, crowded - baby werewolves frolicking around, supplies being distributed, some forges, a blooming vertical garden, some orcs doing training exercises.

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The garden was unexpected but maybe not terribly surprising.  The abundance of baby werewolves is weird, but local werewolves are different from the ones back home so it's not really weird.

Malak is quite comfortable moving through crowds, even when invisible. They don't bump into anybody on the way to the tower.

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That gate's locked.

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That is of little consequence. Hopefully there's nobody pressed up against the inside, because...

There is no popping sound like some wizards have, Malak was quite exacting on that point. They're now on the inside of that gate.

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There's more orcs (none pressed against the door), and a staircase.

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Well that's good, because Malak is pressed against the door and teleporting inside of orcs is bad for stealth. Did the blueprints Malak saw happen to include a dungeon or prison?

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No, but there were storage cellars.

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Those seem likely to have been turned into a dungeon.

Down the stairs they go.

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Yep! They can tell by the smell, and the guards, and the tortured people chained everywhere.

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Smell, check.  Guards, check. Just in case they don't manage to ever get the multi-target teleport working, how many locked or lockable doors are between the dungeons and the tower entrance?

How many tortured people still alive? Do any of them look anything like the images of Beren that Lúthien sent them? (They really should have thought to learn what the King looked like when they were in Nargothrond. They have been doing really badly at planning in this simulation, they wonder if that's just the lack of headband or if their mind is being tampered with otherwise.)

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Five lockable doors, only two of them actually locked so far, all the cells are also locked, it is hard to tell at a glance if any of those people are alive but by rights none of them really should be. None of them have a special resemblance to Beren or, like, eyes, the absence of which might make it hard to notice if they did.

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...That will make this trickier. How many prisoners total?

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Sixty, seventy?

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...They do not think there is any way they can get that many in one day, their reserves are not that... oh. No, best not think about that, just in case.

They head back out.

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Unnoticed.

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They don't feel like waiting around for another orc, so they teleport past the main gate. Cross the bridge by clinging to the side again.  Back to Lúthien.

"I know where he's most likely being kept, but I couldn't confirm that he was there and alive. There were a lot and they were all unrecognizable. I'm so sorry."

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"Okay, so now we get them out. - how -"

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"That's going to be trickier than anticipated, if it was just Beren and the King and the people that went with them - I have no idea why I expected that, but I did - if it was just them then once I have the teleport improved for range and capacity I could get them all... It'd only take like thirty seconds but I wouldn't be able to get everyone out I don't have enough energy.  I could get twenty-five or thirty..."

"I can get thirty and that will probably convince Gorthaur to kill the rest which is terrible but also sounds like it's leaving them better off than they are..."

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"Yeah - just, get Beren, you've got to -"

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"Do you think you can identify him with osanwë? And check who's still alive..."

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"I think so - you can't take me with?"

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"I can - or I'll be able to, anyway - and I will on the first trip at least for you to point him out and tell me who's still alive, but it means one fewer person we can save each trip, and fewer trips because I have to teleport you in with me..."

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"Is there a way I can sing you more of your magic energy -"

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"I don't think so... It's not tied to physical energy or anything like that. Some people can extract it from their or others' blood but it's a really rare talent and there are not many records on blood magic and I don't know anything about it."

Malak feels kind of guilty about lying to her, but it's necessary and worth it in expectation.

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"Maia magic can do all kinds of random stuff but not fast enough - and if no one understands it then it'd be harder to write a song for it anyway."

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"Yeah.  I'm sure people understand, but I didn't get a typical education and... I'm not actually convinced that you'd be better off with a theorist, at least in the short term. We should find somewhere to camp near here until I can get the teleport improved enough. Downwind, if wind patterns are consistent enough around here and your trees-do-you-favors power can figure that out..."

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"Yeah, I'll ask them."

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And they go set up camp. The winds are obnoxiously inconsistent, so they have to move farther away (travelling inolfactably) to where the two of them both think is probably out of werewolf nose range. Lúthien watches the island and sings. Malak stops worrying about their shapeshift and spends most of their time spellcrafting. Mostly, this involves meditating, occasionally broken with experimentation.

A week passes. By the end of it, Malak can teleport with seven squirrels. They think once they get it working with humanoid passengers they'll be able to bring seven with them - the limitation is not total mass, but mass-per-target.  They get back to meditating.

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She works on a better healing song because she can't think what else would help.

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A better healing song is an excellent idea. It also means that Malak gets to listen to Lúthien singing while they work, which is definitely a quality of life booster.

They stop working on bigger targets and start focusing on range for a bit.  60 ft.  250 ft.  1000 ft.  It only takes a couple of days, but then they have to compress those developments down so that they can try out the target-size implementation they thought of...

Malak idly wonders if more people are dying inside or outside the simulation while they delay. They ask Lúthien to estimate the population of the world for them, and conclude that it's probably outside. Not that they can do anything about those.

Another day and they can teleport with Whisper and six squirrels, which is theoretically equivalent to seven owls. Two more, and they teleport with Lúthien. (They fall silently out of a tree and grab her and teleport on the way down, and apologize afterward. They needed to confirm that it works even if it's not expected.)

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So we can do it now -

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If we wait for tomorrow I'll be able to squeeze one more trip in, save seven more...

I know. It's hard waiting when we have everything we need, but.

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He could die tonight.

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Seven people who are not him will definitely die if we don't. If this is real then that's not a sacrifice I am willing to make. If this is real they're already sacrificing half the prisoners in the name of concealing all their capabilities they are not going to sacrifice seven more because one of them is part of an adorable romance.

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I'm sorry. I'm going to meditate now and recover energy and we can leave before sunrise tomorrow.

...

I don't know if you're thinking of going yourself but if you do then Gorthaur will catch you and read your mind and make it harder for me to save him.

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If I were going to do that I'd have done it the first day.

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Malak meditates for eight hours - works as well as sleeping for magic recovery.

Let's go.

Was there a bridge on the other side of the river?

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Yep.

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Unfortunate, it would have been nice if they could put a river between the werewolves and the escapees.

If they had been thinking about plans instead of just how to teleport things bigger than squirrels then they would have asked Lúthien if she could manage to make a large boat or raft or something while they were working on spells.

You will probably need to sing healing while we run, and endurance if you can do that. Pursuit seems likely.

They position themselves a ways south of the bridge on this side and they and Lúthien are invisible and...

(still no pop)

They're in the dungeon again.

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No amount of healing is going to have these people in any condition to run again. 

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Malak is used to rather unbounded magical healing and has not yet figured out that Elven healing is more limited. Is there anyone in the room besides the two of them and the prisoners?

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Yeah, lots of orcs.

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Well, Malak will be ready for them next trip.

Can you show me who's still alive, which one is Beren

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Beren's still alive. She points out everyone who is. It's most of them.

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OK, Malak, Lúthien, Beren, and five more are away from the island on the banks of the Sirion, and then a moment later Malak is not with them anymore and is back in the dungeon, how are the orcs reacting to six prisoners disappearing?

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They don't notice instantly. Then someone does notice, and prods someone else, and that person calls out.

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Well, in that time another seven prisoners have been transported and when Malak gets back to the dungeon they conjure a spray of acid into the orc crowd.

It eats through flesh and bone with a speed that natural acids just don't match and it's a painful, horrible way to die but it's also efficient and doesn't get out of control like fire does and

Malak feels the deaths and they're surprised and horrified because they knew it might happen but they didn't really expect it, not here...

Another seven.

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And now more are coming.

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Well now that Malak has killed some of them they're not going to kill more. Hopefully they're less suicidally fanatic than elves.  The doorway is blocked with a wall of fire. Seven more prisoners are free by the river bank and Malak has not bothered to check how well Lúthien is handling them all because that can wait.

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When they get back Sauron's there and the air is filled with some very sticky sort of smoke.

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Sauron's reaction time: About 33 seconds. Probably will be faster next time. Should get a read on his combat abilities. How does he react to a bolt of lightning?

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Sends a lot of knives flying out of nowhere at the source.

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Good thing Malak's in the habit of moving after attacking.

Bad thing that it didn't seem to do much at all.

Now does not seem to be the time for a protracted fight, with the amount of magic Malak's spent on teleports, there are still people here but are they even real, is it worth the harm if they aren't...

Malak chooses. They fill the room with fire, pouring as much as they can into it to make the flames hot, hungry, angry.  They grab seven more prisoners before the flames reach them and teleport out.

All the others are dead, Gorthaur is hopefully mildly inconvenienced but I wouldn't bet on that how fast do you think they can move. They probably cannot hide the distress they're feeling, not while sending things, but Lúthien can probably ignore that until later...

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I'm not even sure they can walk - 

And, indeed, wounds are closing, but slowly -

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...They are not going to get away on foot unless they leave most of the prisoners behind and that's unacceptable.

Malak has cold magic, cold enough to flash-freeze a person is cold enough to freeze water. And they have the magic to spare, after the dungeon, Lúthien can't read but she can probably count, she'll notice and ask about that but it's fine, whoever's running this obviously knows already - or maybe this is real, they'll need to recalibrate - 

They cut off their thoughts and start making an ice floe.

Once it's thick enough we'll have to move them onto this they can't walk but we can just float downriver it'll be faster...

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Nod - I can sing it along if you think that'll help more than healing -

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If you can sing water to ice then yes, that'd probably help more

It's spreading and thickening but too slow is there any response from the island yet?

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Yep. He's heading out across the bridge. Walking. Singing - well, his mouth isn't moving, but there's song, and something seems to be leeching out of the stone of the building to follow him in a black cloud.

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The ice is thick enough now, probably. Malak tells Lúthien to load the prisoners and keeps expanding the ice.

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The river begins to run backwards.

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...Oh. That's a problem. Sort of. The prisoners are loaded already, unloading would take time they don't have... They push off with a blast of force and keep pushing, aiming for the far side of the island and hoping Sauron can't make rivers flow sideways.

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Sure he can. Can also fly, looks like. The smoke billows out and gathers and the waters drag them back.

 

 

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How does that even work, where is the water going

Lúthien, any chance we can take him or do we take Beren and run? I don think we're getting away with all of them.

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She stands up on the raft and starts singing the river back around - Don't know, can try -

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Then let's try

Malak leaps to shore - still invisible - and throws another lightning bolt at Sauron.

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She gets the boat moving. She deflects something aimed at Beren. Sauron speeds towards her across the water, held up by nothing at all -

 

- and then the magical darkness encompasses the area where Malak is and they can see that, no, Sauron is still standing on the bridge, and hasn't sung the river backwards at all -

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So it's all an illusion, that's good. Except that illusions are almost always cover for something else so is he doing anything on the bridge or just standing there?

It's an illusion, but play along for now until I can figure out what he's up to and they send Lúthien their vision.

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Thanks -

 

The werewolves can swim; they're jumping into the water and going after the ice floe.

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...Cold enough to freeze water is cold enough to flash-freeze a body and even if it somehow isn't it's still cold enough to freeze water. Were-sicles can just bob harmlessly down the river no faster than the current.  What is Sauron up to besides illusions...?

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The singing tug-of-war with Lúthien for the direction of motion of the ice floe, and apparently not much else.

 

And then the ground attempts to swallow Malak.

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So invisibility is apparently not completely effective. Teleportation works for not being swallowed by the ground, though.  And a lightning bolt, arcing over the distance between them and the probably-actually-Sauron.  And then they move again, just in case.

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Sauron frowns.

...Sauron withdraws the magical darkness just around Malak, replaces it with an illusory purple wall.

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Malak moves, again - to the air, above and behind where Sauron was - a spray of acid, then teleport again - the walls of Tol Sirion.

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It seems to take him a few seconds to locate them, every time. When he does the walls go blazing hot.

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Malak falls inside the walls, stops sending vision to Lúthien, fireballs the courtyard, (takes the dying orcs' magic, prays this is real) teleports to the mainland foot of the bridge, still invisible.

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The singing is intensifying and making the world - shakier, somehow, the bridge isn't physically moving but they don't land exactly where they expect and the world spins aggressively even without Sauron's illusion complicating it. 

Sauron again takes a second to find them, tries something this time that feels like being swatted hard by a flying piece of metal -

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Malak is knocked off their feet and into a roll, how does Sauron like being flash-frozen and they teleport away, how's Lúthien managing

Sorry-thought-he-might-have-been-overhearing-my-sendings-seems-to-be-finding-me-another-way-still-don't-know-what-he's-hiding-with-illusions-it-might-just-be-trying-to-distract-us-waste-our-time

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She's singing.  The ice floe is in fact moving downriver. 

Can't intercept osanwë- not surprised he can find you somehow if you were in Doriath my mother could by the pressure on the ground or something -

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It takes him some time here goes nothing

Malak is on the bridge behind Sauron and, no, things are shaky now they're on the bridge behind Sauron and they thrust with their sword and then they're up on the wall again they can keep going all day as long as Sauron doesn't run out of orcs.

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Sauron is not in fact able to react in time but also does not seem seriously injured by the stabbing. Now everywhere in stabbing range of Sauron is on fire and so is he; he moves a hand violently and the raft tips and Lúthien steadies it.

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Malak is somewhat fireproof. They charge their sword with lightning and do it again. They'll give a convincing cry of pain, though, and dive into the water before teleporting away.

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The fire intensifies. The world-shaking seems to lessen slightly when Sauron's stabbed.

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So, lightning doesn't seem to do much, acid doesn't do much, fire doesn't do much, cold doesn't do much, stabbing has an effect. It's weird that Sauron seems to have spell resistance but they'll ponder the implications of that later.

Malak teleports away, hits their throwing knives with a separate invisibility, then right in front of Sauron, slashes at his eyes ow that actually hurts now, teleport away but not too far, fling a knife

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Yep that has an effect on the worldbending thing (and the ice floe slips off farther down the river) -

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Malak is mainly doing this to buy time but...

Once more into the flames, one more sword slash, teleport and two knives, another angle and two more and then they're headed back to Lúthien and the ice floe. They shapeshift elf before turning visible, no use showing Sauron their face.

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And then the water really does roar up around them, no illusion, and tip the ice floe, and Sauron vanishes.

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They seem not to have bought enough time.  They can swim, pull some prisoners back to the ice, not enough...

Lúthien do you have a way to see him

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She grabs Beren's hand and cries out and parts the river around them, lets them crash to the bank, pulls out the people Malak didn't get to - but that's absurd, it would require being in several places at once and she's not moving at all -

 

- uh, no -

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Uh, did you just save those people or was that an illusion?

Malak really prefers being invisible to having someone invisible hunting them, this role reversal is really quite unpleasant.

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No I got it Mum can do that but I didn't know I could - dunno if they're actually okay though -

The river crashes shut over their heads - 

She keeps singing -

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Malak extracts them, depositing them a ways away from the water's edge.

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And she picks herself up and runs at Tol Sirion. Can you heal Beren -

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I don't have healing magic, why are you going back there?

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I'm pretty sure if we knock it down he won't be able to follow us can you help me with that -

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Some...

They grab Lúthien, teleport where should I put you teleport there and Malak will make sure no orcs interfere and use that magic for acid at the base of the tower.

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And she will start to shred it brick by brick and - yep, there's Sauron, visible again -

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Well, there are orcs to spare, Malak has magic to spare, they really really hope Nerikross isn't just casually slaughtering civilians to create the deaths, because there's no other way that he and his would have the ability to spoof that...

They pour nearly everything into a lightning bolt, sparing just enough for one fireball or teleport...

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The fortress crumbles. Sauron vanishes again, Lúthien clasps her hands to her head - let's go -

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They go.

Not all the way back to the prisoners, that was more than one teleport away.

"Uh. We have to go the rest of the way on foot, it's that direction."

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"Okay -" Running -

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Malak runs too, the elf-shape helps with that. The sun hasn't risen yet, so the shapeshift will expire before sunset but it'll be self-sustaining until then.

They get to where they left the prisoners.

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Yep. Prisoners. Mostly still alive, even.

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Dead by drowning or from their wounds or suicide or surprise werewolf?

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First three.

 

Lúthien runs to Beren.

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"I love you do you mind if I hold you while I do the rest of the healing it's going to take days - we're safe - I think we're safe - I think he's gone -"

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There is no discernible answer but she picks him up and starts singing again anyway.

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Malak tends to the other twenty-eight. Moves them near Lúthien so they can hear her sing. Tries to pick soft ground for them to lie on. Moves away any rocks or sharp sticks or...

(Malak is conflicted about this but it's probably best to wait a while before letting them commit suicide)

Malak keeps watch for the rest of the day, they're not more than a mile away and orcs or wolves could be in pursuit...

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Beren wakes up. He blinks at Lúthien a couple times, and then says "oh, sweetheart, you shouldn't have risked it."

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"Um. Bullshit. And also I wasn't even risking very much I just pushed the river around a little."

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Oh, the rescues have eyes again.

"Um. You were definitely risking a lot. And your contribution was more than just pushing around an iceberg. You saved a lot of lives today, don't sell yourself short."

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"Who -"

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Uh, are you still doing the cover story -

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For now, yeah. There's still a chance Sauron and company will assume I'm just a weirdly talented elf or Maia, we can't be sure he doesn't have spies listening now, even if we could it seems good to stay in the habit...

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"I went to Nargothrond for help. He helped a lot. Uh - are you okay, I heard stuff about what he does to people -"

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"I know how to identify tricks of the Enemy. I love you."

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"Okay good."

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"...How do you identify - I don't expect it to be helpful but - how?"

He may be trying to convince Sauron that he's buying this simulation. It's what I would do - did.

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"If nice things are happening I believe it," he says cheerfully.

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"Well. We can go somewhere south and be safe and have everything okay for the rest of your life."

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Smile.

Malak steps off to give them some sort-of-privacy (Elf ears are amazing, so not much privacy is gained). They keep a closer eye on the escapees. (Suicide is easier when one has eyes to look for implements. Malak has decided at least a one-week waiting period should be implemented.)

"Tower at Tol-in-Gaurhoth destroyed. Sauron was invested in the tower and surrounding area and has been accordingly weakened and set back." (They get an explanation from Lúthien about what happened when they destroyed the tower) "Twenty-nine prisoners rescued. Names from those who would give them as follows...

"Heading to south Brethil. Intend to deliver rescues to Nargothrond or settle them apart from the city according to your recommendation. Will permit rescues to commit suicide in one week from writing of this letter (estimated four days from receipt) unless you advise other policy.

"Have made some discoveries regarding spells and my condition, will discuss in-person."

They send it off.

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Congratulations. Don't bring them here or settle them with humans if you have any alternatives - there've been problems with people seeming all right and then snapping suddenly and stabbing everyone around them, there're containment procedures but it's usually a few years or decades before they're non-traumatized enough to cooperate with those. Happy to provide resources for resettlement.

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"Thought that might be the case. Resources for resettlement appreciated. Suggestions for site? Is Thingol still giving you trouble over Lúthien, we can swing by the border on our way to let Doriath know you don't have her; couldn't persuade Lúthien to delay rescue for that." Actually they forgot to even mention it to her. Maybe a little bit on purpose.

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That would be appreciated. The mouth of the Sirion is arable and uninhabited and not exactly defensible but they'd have to go through here first. Can send support down the river, too.

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Malak gets the dagger back from Lúthien. They offer it to each of the prisoners. They offer their hands to anyone who'd prefer assisted suicide.

...

Against Lúthien's protests, they offer it to Beren. He deserves a choice.

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Beren is not going to do that to her, has Malak met her? What kind of horrible person - Elves don't even ever get over anything, they just mope forever -

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"Happy?"

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"I didn't think he would, but he deserved the choice. If he was miserable enough that he'd rather be dead, you wouldn't be doing him any favors by keeping him alive. And no, I'm not happy, I just cut four people's throats and watched seven more stab themselves in the heart."

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"Elves come back. Beren'd be gone."

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"And if what he was experiencing was so terrible that being gone forever would be better than that? I gave him a choice. He chose to stay with you. Isn't that better than him being forced to stay in this world whether he wants to or not?"

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"Not if he wants it because he doesn't even think it's me, or if I might be able to come up with something better -"

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"And how long did you plan to keep him alive against his will while you waited to figure something out?"

Sigh.

"I'm glad he chose you."

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Sigh. "What're you doing now, are you going to try to kill Melkor -"

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Blink.

"Um, no, I could barely annoy Sauron, I'm not going to stand a chance against Melkor. I think that'll be true no matter how long I have to prepare."

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"Okay. What are you going to do -"

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"Talk. Talk to Nargothrond's new king. Talk to Maedhros. Talk to the High King. I suspect I'd have trouble talking to either of your parents but... If I can make the Noldor alliance less in-name-only than it sounded, maybe even get Doriath on board," and teach them all my sort of magic "then maybe they'll have a chance."

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"That sounds good. I hope you're right. I hope it works."

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"Yeah. Curufin thinks the mouth of the Sirion is a good place to settle - for the rescues, he doesn't want to bring them into other populated places - you and Beren could join them unless you'd rather go somewhere else... I was thinking now that everyone can walk we can just follow the river, that will also bring us past Doriath so you can, uh, shout over the border or something that you're OK, your father keeps sending Nargothrond threatening letters. He thinks the Fëanorians are planning to, erm, marry you."

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"...if they thought it'd work - anyway, yeah, I can tell them I'm okay if we don't get close enough they can actually interfere -"

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"Elven eyesight and hearing are both really good, I'm sure we can just stand on a hill or something until a sentry sees you alive and well... How do you think they'd be likely to interfere?"

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"Come and grab me, probably."

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"..."

They might try

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Yup. Thanks.

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And, a week later - Lúthien and Malak could have made it in a few days, but the rescues mostly aren't up for nonstop jogging and Beren is slow, so they take it at a walk - they're standing at the joining of two rivers and Doriath is in sight.

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She waves. 

No one attempts to recapture her.

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"Do you see anyone? Are you sure they saw you? -

"Eh. If we're still following the river they'll have plenty of chances to notice you're not in Noldorin custody."

They keep heading south.

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"Yeah, they'll live." Sigh. Beren-hug.

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So they keep following the river.

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And when they pass Nargothrond there is a raft full of supplies. 

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"It would have kind of meant a lot to me for my family to suck less than the literal house of Fëanor."

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"I'm sorry. It's...

"It's really awful to discover that people you - your family - ...

"It sucks when they disappoint even really low expectations.

"...

"You are more than what they made you. You can be better than them. You are."

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"I want them to be it. A lot of people are counting on them."

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"I know. Maybe we can talk them around."

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"I've tried that. It - does sometimes help. But not enough."

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Nod

...

"I... I don't know if it's the best thing for you or if you have better options but. I stopped caring. Very deliberately, I stopped... thinking about how much better the world would be if She was actually a decent person. Dwelling on it wasn't helpful and it wasn't healthy, I wasn't living in a world where she was alright or was even capable of being alright in the relevant sense and in the end it was better for me to focus on the world as it was."

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"I think your mother's a worse person than mine, though."

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"Maybe. I don't know for sure, maybe she has some ridiculously complex scheme that ends in a world at peace forever. But, that's beside the point, it's more that... if you can't change them into better people, it's not worth worrying about their failings? Treat their flaws as obstacles to work around. Their failure to be...optimal monarchs... is the same sort of thing as Melkor's failure to not be totally evil. Not to nearly the same degree, but..."

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"Maybe. Yeah."

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"It's... it's not a good mindset for setting goals or deciding what values you should follow, but it's good for deciding how to deal with other people, for planning how to achieve your goals... From this perspective your mother's main virtue compared to Alfirin is that she can sometimes be talked around to agreeing with your goals, not that she's never stolen a child's body or turned someone into a sword or possibly committed genocide..."

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"...those are things your mother's done?"

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"Many children, twice that I know of for the sword - well, only once if you're being pedantic, the second is a belt - and I don't know about the - the third. I think she was involved but she might have been trying to stop what happened."

Malak takes a slow breath and the signs of distress slide off their face.

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"Like I said. She's an obstacle. I don't think I can make her stop, I don't think I can permanently kill her. It might be best to protect her even, so that it doesn't happen very often..."

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"Why can't you stop her?  - or do you not want to tell me, that's okay too -"

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"She's more powerful than me, I wouldn't be able to kill her without a lot of help. Coming back from the dead is probably part of... whatever she is, and hard to stop. Nerikross killed her once, he's a necromancer so he's almost certainly acquainted with the usual methods of stopping someone from being resurrected. He would have tried them. They obviously didn't work. I tried researching her, once, sought out records She hadn't messed with yet. Talked to theologians, powerful wizards. Tried to find a way to at least stop her resurrections from being so harmful. Or at least, that's what I think I did, I don't remember any of those ten years."

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"...the Valar can help with putting memories back. I don't know how it'd interact with your world's magic, but -"

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"I rather think more memory tampering from this world's only-sort-of-Good gods is not to my taste."

Sigh.

"It took me another three years to even notice that I was missing anything. And...

"I'm sorry. I'm torn between telling you this as a - as a friend, someone who I can trust, and. Asking. 'Why would you do this to me?'

"I think. Rationally it's more likely than not that you're real, that you're my friend Lúthien who I met after strange interplanar travel but... Emotionally, you're still Her and I'm. Scared -"

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"It's okay. You saved Beren. I don't care if you think that's real, it is, and it matters."

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They smile. It doesn't look strained.

I am terrified that you are going to... to take it all away, make me forget this, make me forget Istiell and then. Give me another goal that I think is my own, put me in a place where I will be useful to you.

I want to die so that you can never use me again but. Lúthien is probably real. She should. You should. Stop. me. if I try.

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If you only want to die because you think this is fake I can try to stop you but I thought you had a very reliable method that was why you didn't need to worry about capture by Sauron? And I'm probably worse at keeping unwilling people alive than Sauron.

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I don't really. want. to. Rationally. I will probably warn you. There was a calming song. When we first met. Curufin. It will probably work.

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That I can do. 

 

 

...why do you now think I'm probably Lúthien, you didn't think that before -

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...Not. Not a good time. Sorry. So sorry.

They are crying. And they no longer look like an elf. They do not seem to have noticed either of these things.

Unfortunately, other people nearby probably have.

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Yeah.

 

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She starts singing something calming.

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Malak stops crying. Wipes their face.

Sorry. Sorry.

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Keeps singing.

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Calm.

They are not particularly focused right now, but that's OK. They're aware that they fucked something up just now, but when they try to think about that it slips away. It's not important. They can worry about it later. Now is not a time to be worrying, now is a time to be relaxing, the fuckup will still be there later (Yes! Exactly. That's the... problem...) it can wait.

(They don't want to die. They don't exactly want to live either, just...accept...things...as...they...are...)

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You should look like an Elf again.

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They can do that. It's not hard, if Lúthien reminds them it's important. They can be a calm elf.

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And downstream.

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Calm Malak doesn't think very well. They keep being a calm not-thinking-much elf until Lúthien stops singing, then

I'm OK. Sort of. Thank you. I built too much of my stability on... not thinking of her as a person. And, I don't talk about it much so it didn't come up before... I think talking through some of it might help, but it doesn't have to be now, and in private would be better. And it doesn't have to be you, I can find someone else. I, uh, probably need to explain things to everyone else here... I think we should probably go with 'friendly Maia' I'd rather not blow my cover completely...

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Yeah. 

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So they explain - They recently decided that they should do something about the terrible war here. They came to Endórë (No need to specify the order on those two) and took a human form when they got here so that they wouldn't scare people. There aren't any humans in Valinor to base it off of, though, when one of the elves who found them saw what they looked like he said it looked like they'd tried for human and messed up pretty badly. After that, they decided to look like an elf, because they'd heard that Endórë had humans but they hadn't seen any yet, but they were still very accustomed to that first shape, they spent a lot of time on it and it was the first one they ever did. So after Malak helped Lúthien save people from Tol-in-Gaurhoth they were kind of overwhelmed by how terrible everything was and forgot to keep looking like an elf and wound up looking like a weird human instead and they are so sorry for scaring everybody. And they swear that they're not a servant of the Enemy and all of that was true.

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This reassures everyone.

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And nobody who might have overheard the spoken conversation looks confused by how all this talk of mothers and sword-people and body-stealing and genocide fits in with the "I am a slightly clueless maia" story?

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The people who are suspicious seem all suspicious in the 'this hallucination of escape is unconvincing' direction.

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Well, trying to be a more convincing escape hallucination would probably be unhelpful.

Thank you. For listening, for stopping me.

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You rescued Beren.

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...You don't owe me anything for that.

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Uh. Yeah, I do.

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You really don't, I didn't even do it for you.

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But you did it. No one else did.

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Plenty of people would have if they could.

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Do tell, I can't seem to meet any.

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...I'm pretty sure most of the people in Nargothrond objected on the grounds that it wouldn't work and would just get people killed, not on the grounds that it wasn't worth doing if they could.

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Maybe.

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Even if they wouldn't have... It doesn't give you any obligations toward me. You're not in my debt. Beren's not in my debt and he's the one I actually saved.

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Well, yeah, he didn't ask you to do it. I did.

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...OK. I understand where you're coming from with this and I think you are wrong but I don't think I can convince you of that.

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Probably not. Being convinceable to back down hasn't really helped me much in life.

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Sigh.

Unfortunately I do not really feel comfortable getting lots of emotional support from people who feel strongly obligated towards me.

 

 

 

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Why not?

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...

You owe me your boyfriend's life so now you will sympathetically listen to me talk about my family issues? That's... It's just unappealing. It feels exploitative. Especially when it's over a debt I don't think you actually owe.

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...I'm a princess. Everyone'll do whatever I say. It'd kind of suck to accordingly never have any friendships.

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I guess.

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Definitely.

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Is... is that what happened?

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Uh, no? I just figured out the thing I actually wanted to avoid, which was 'people spending time with me and doing things for me even though they didn't want to', regardless of whether they felt obliged to.

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...Oh. Should I assume from your phrasing that you actually want to spend time with me and help me regardless of your imagined obligation?

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Yeah, obviously.

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...So, it probably sounds dumb but I had not even considered that as a thing that could happen. Ever.

Hug

I, um, think I'm bad at having friends.

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Kinda sounds like it, yeah.

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In my defense, it is not a skill that I've had much reason to develop or opportunity to practice.

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You're not actually doing all that badly at it.

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Smile

I am really glad you were the first person I met when I landed here. I'm... You're a good person.

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I'm glad I met you too, it would've been hard doing that on my own.

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You would have probably died.

...Actually, given how long the war's been going on, this does explain the dearth of good people here.

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...

Sorry, that was really dark.

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It's okay. Are people here really worse than back home?

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There are more heroically good people back home. I guess the average person is probably about the same.

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That sounds nice. Heroically good people, I mean.

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Yeah. The evil is less concentrated, too. That's... probably a good thing.

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Anything's better than the Enemy.

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Our closest equivalent is poorly organized and better opposed. But... I don't suppose you have decent population estimates? From what I saw of Nargothrond I'd guess my plane has a much larger population...

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There're around four hundred thousand people in Doriath.

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...Yeah if Doriath is considered a significant population center this place is blessedly unpopulated. Sternhill was around a hundred thousand and it's only the third or fourth largest city in Kalzir. And Kalzir is much smaller than the Jade Dragon Empire. Tylantia was a city of two million before.

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Before something horrible happened?

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Yeah. There was a war, a really bad one. Bael Turath was winning but... not decisively enough for them, I guess. They... I think they wanted demonic soldiers or something but it got out of hand and there were demons everywhere - they're like Melkor in temperament if not in power - 

It was bad and it was only stopped with a scorched-earth approach and some really destructive magic and that's why Turathi is now an endangered language and Tylantia gets referred to in the past tense. I think I should probably stop talking about this for now...

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Okay.

 

They keep walking.

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So, I think this is probably real now and you probably want me to explain that...

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I mean, only if you want to.

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It would not particularly hurt me to tell you now, I'm more stable at the moment. You deserve to know if you want to.

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...I guess, yeah.

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So, some features of magic are really hard to fake. Mostly self-targeted things. The sensation of casting a spell is pretty much unfakeable, but spell effects outside of yourself can obviously be faked, and you can be contained so that once you've cast the spell the energy is broken up and dissipates.

I have a talent that I've picked up that... it's very rare. For all I know I'm the only person with it, I developed it myself and have tried to keep its existence quiet. When I - When I kill someone, I take a bit of the magic that they had. Works for people who don't do spellcasting, they still have energy built up.

Works for orcs.

Nerikross could have simulated it if he was clever about it and actually let my spells be cast in the real world and had lined up a bunch of people to die just to keep this believable. But he's not that ruthless and he would have had to know about it ahead of time which he didn't. Alfirin is that ruthless but I still don't think she knows about this talent and it's still quite a length to go to just to convince me this is real when she has better options for that and still no good reasons I can think of to bother.

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Ah. 

 

...Angband has millions of orcs. Could you - would that be enough -

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I'm still limited by how much energy I can store at once. Committing massacres would let me stretch those limits faster but I doubt I could get enough to kill a god through raw power alone. I suppose I could maybe with enough time adapt this into a spell... something that keeps taking magic from me as fast as it comes in, if it causes enough destruction it might just keep building off itself and that could maybe destroy Melkor. But, it would be hard to test, and... if I can't stop it that would also be really bad.

...And there is a non-trivial chance that this is still a hallucination and I have a good idea why someone would bother, now.

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To get you to make a really big explosion? Is that hard to do otherwise?

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To develop - and cast - a spell that could maybe kill a god? Yes. Nerikross hates Alfirin, I wouldn't put it past him to sacrifice a Kalziran city for a chance to destroy her permanently. And Alfirin... I can't think of a reason why she'd want this particularly badly but I don't know most of her plans or goals.

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Inconvenient that we really need a god killed, then. ...maybe you can do it and then find your way back and then also kill your mom?

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...I hope you are not seriously suggesting that after I kill Melkor I go back to my world and blow up another city in order to kill Alfirin. It's not that she doesn't deserve it, but the cost seems a little high, I think she kills fewer than a hundred people a year.

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With the leftover from the orcs, I mean. They don't even die forever, they just go to Mandos.

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Oh. Sorry for snapping at you. It wouldn't work, I'd still have the storage problem. I get... less than a twentieth, more than a fiftieth of my total capacity from one person. The only way I could make it work for Melkor is if the effect was mostly self-fueling outside me, if I tried to take in and keep anything even close to what I'd get from a million orcs... I don't know what would happen exactly but it would almost certainly kill me.

People back home don't exactly die forever either, they go to an afterlife. Sort of. Their soul goes to an afterlife with their essential personality, everything else is erased. Is Mandos better than that?

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You keep your memories and if you're - okay - Mandos'll bring you back to life, but if you did a lot of terrible things you have to repent first and most orcs don't. Repent, I mean. Also they're sworn to Melkor and Mandos can't erase that and he won't bring them back if they'll still do evil stuff so lots of them are kind of stuck.

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"Okay" by what standards? I haven't been told much about the Valar, other than that they are "not overtly evil," better than Melkor, and, um, excessively merciful? The Fëanorians are good at the damning-with-faint-praise thing.

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Don't know. I've never been to Valinor, they sealed it off when the war started. 

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Ah.

Most gods back home claim not to have much control over who winds up in what afterlife, and won't offer to guarantee someone a particular afterlife or anything, I don't suppose Mandos might be a bit more willing to do that?  Or if there's a way to ask him that's likely to be more effective than shouting "Hey Mandos, take me when I die please?"

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I was planning to petition him to send me on with Beren wherever mortals go - they don't get reembodied -

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Are you sure they go anywhere? They might wind up facing the usual afterlife situation for people from my plane. How does one go about petitioning Mandos?

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Uh, die and then talk to him.

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...Oh. That won't work for me then. I don't think that I'll be seeing him if I die unless I get a chance to petition him first.

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If Beren dies first then I'll ask him for you while I'm asking.

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So you're planning to die when he does?

...It's weird to think that, barring violence, I'll outlive you.

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How long do you live? And - yeah, otherwise we might end up separated -

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I'm a hundred three of my years now. Tieflings usually reach five or six hundred, the oldest can - could - get to nine hundred or so. I might get some extra longevity from my heritage.

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That's much better than a mortal, nice.

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And yet I keep expecting the people who matter to me to live much longer. What do humans get, around here?

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Like sixty.

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About the same as my plane, then. I hope Beren dies old and happy.

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Yeah.

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How is he doing? He seemed OK when we saved him but...

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I think he's okay. Assuming he'd say.

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Yeah. I could try talking to him about it? I... probably wouldn't be able to tell you, if he tells me and he didn't tell you then he thinks it will hurt you to know... But it might help him to talk to someone.

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It'd really surprise me if he'd tell other people things he wouldn't tell me, but you're welcome to try.

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Yeah, I doubt it would help, but...

Tomorrow, maybe.

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Okay. 

 

And they keep following the river.

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This river is really long, are all rivers this long? (Malak has spent their entire life in cities, they are kind of clueless about rivers except "good for trade" and "Water is important for survival")

The next morning comes.

Hey, Beren, can I talk to you?

...That doesn't work, Beren isn't telepathic.

"Hey, Beren, could we step off for a bit and chat?"

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He looks at Lúthien. She smiles. He shrugs. "Okay."

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Once they are out of elven earshot - it's a while, even with the Brethil trees to break up sound - "I swear not to reveal any of the contents of this conversation without your permission. I swear that I am not intending to hurt you. Are you actually OK or are you just pretending for her sake? If the latter, I'd like to help you recover without revealing to her that you aren't, if that's what you want."

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Blink. "I'm okay."

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"You answered 'Do you want to die?' with 'Do you know what that would do to her?' and this does strike me as the sort of answer one gives if one is satisfied with their lot in life. And... it seems like it would be really hard to get over being Sauron's prisoner for a couple of months. Especially within a few hours of rescue."

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" - I promised I'd get her a Silmaril, do right by her. I should do that."

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"Uh. No, you should not do that. Her father is nuts and she wants to elope with you."

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"Yes, but she shouldn't have to."

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"So, you're willing to commit suicide and leave her distraught forever so long as it is suicide by Melkor?"

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"- no, we'll make it out somehow."

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"You are really optimistic about your chances to steal jewels from the crown of an evil god. And also overestimate how much Thingol's opinion matters."

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"She was safe in Doriath - she deserves to have someone do it right -"

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"...Thingol imprisoned her when she tried to save you. She wasn't allowed to leave. This is not what I would call safe.

"And... You'll do more right by her by living. The only person you'd be doing right by going to Angband for a Silmaril is Thingol and he doesn't deserve that."

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"And still I promised him I'd do it."

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"It would be intensely hypocritical of me to tell you to break your word but people around here give their word far too easily.

"...And you should really talk to Lúthien about this if you aren't already."

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"We've discussed it."

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"I think you shouldn't have made that promise and are going to come to regret it but I accept that you may feel unavoidably honor-bound to follow through on it.

"I also think that you are going to get yourself and Lúthien killed and this is sad."

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"You could help us."

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"I will admit that my skillset is very well tailored to stealing gems from evil deities. You would still die, though. So would I. Maybe if you're both willing to be very patient now that it's just some shiny rocks and not your life that's on the line we could come up with a plan that might work.."

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"We can wait, yeah."

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"I hope we can figure something out. I also won't help unless we can figure out a way not to start a war in the process.

"Um, would you be willing to help counterfactually traumatized Beren by taking a few more walks like this with me over the next however long, in order to give him plausible deniability?"

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"...what?"

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"So if you were not alright and talking to me about it would help, you might prefer that Lúthien not know because it would hurt her to know. But, if we kept taking long walks apart from the rest of the group it would be pretty obvious that you were in fact not OK. So I would like to take such walks even when you are OK so that our behaviour is indistinguishable between those cases."

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" - say again?"

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"I want to act like you're not OK even though you are, because knowing that I've committed to do this people would be unable to tell from my actions if you were OK and...

"I'm not communicating this well. Does 'I have good reasons that are somewhat convoluted but important for protecting people's privacy' suffice?"

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" - sorry, I really haven't been around people much. It's a people thing? Sure."

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"It's a people thing. Thanks." On counterfactual-Beren's behalf.

After a while they head back to the main body of elves.

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She would like to cuddle Beren.

 

They do that.

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There is more walking. Malak continues to be really impressed by the length of the Sirion. Also Doriath. That is a lot of trees.

The trees end. The river spreads out. Have they reached the mouth yet? No, they have not. Rivers are soooo loooong.

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It hasn't been very long at all, really, if you are hundreds or thousands of years old. 

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Their surroundings continue to be devoid of people and buildings and there is so much of it. It's weird! Malak has lived one hundred and three years and not spent more than two consecutive weeks outside of a city of a hundred thousand or more. (They don't announce their age out loud again, shouldn't remind people that they are actually a baby by local standards.)

Malak and Beren go on a few more walks to help counterfactual Beren. Malak explains to Lúthien that they would go on long walks with Beren if he were OK so that she would not be able to conclude that long walks meant Beren was not OK.

They reach a series of waterfalls. The elves spend some time gawking. Malak tries to develop a healing spell while they walk but makes no progress for weeks and eventually gives it up.

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Lúthien has better than Elven hearing and is totally listening when they go out for walks. But whatever. 

 

We're probably far enough south.

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Malak does not know this and is thus not annoyed with her in the slightest.

OK! I don't know much - anything - about settlement building, so I may have outlived my usefulness here. And I should probably check in at Nargothrond soon. But now that I know where you guys are I can come visit when I have time.

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Thank you. For everything.

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You're welcome. Thank you.

Hug

I look forward to seeing you again.

And they're off, northwest towards Nargothrond and much less wonderful company.

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They are not disturbed.

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Nargothrond! Knock knock.

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It is good to see, ah, him again, by all means come in.

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Yep, he sure is a him. He is so great at gender.

They'd like to go talk to Curufin and see how spell development is coming, is now a convenient time for that?

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He's busy at the moment but they'll let Malak know as soon as he's free.

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Good, it would be rather weird if he wasn't. They will go look around Nargothrond, it is very pretty and there are large parts of the city they never saw.

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They will have a slightly tense escort.

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...Would it be more comfortable for everyone else if they were to wait in a room alone with guards at the door and the presence of their mind kept public rather than hidden? So that the guards would know if they tried to sneak off. Because frankly that would be more agreeable to them as well, they just didn't want to impose by asking for a room.

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If that works for them, yes, that does sound less stressful.

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They go to a room. They close the door behind them. They make their presence public.

They dismiss their shapeshift because ugh, they'd been wearing that shape for a monthconstantly, oh wow their head feels so much lighter. They run fingers through their hair now that there are no elves to see.

They sit down and start thinking about divination and how to build a true seeing spell.

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And eventually they are notified (by a knock on the door so they can shapeshift again if they need to) that Curufin is free.

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They can't shapeshift into braided hair but they've gotten lots of practice and they can be decent reasonably quickly.

They consider teleporting to Curufin's office but that would just make the guards more nervous so they walk instead.

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"Hello - you all right?"

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"I'm well, Lúthien is well, Beren is surprisingly well, everyone else we freed is unsurprisingly not OK. I still make people here uncomfortable so hopefully this can be a rather short stay. How goes the spell development?"

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He pulls out notes. They are rather extensive.

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"...OK this stay won't be quite as short as I'd hoped, that is a lot to get through if you want any sort of thorough guidance, though I have faith in your abilities and suspect there won't be that much guiding for me to do. Overall, what ratio are you splitting between 'things that would be useful in the war' or 'evacuation plan'? I figured out tactical-range teleportation for myself, but writing long explanations in cipher is tedious, I'll write up the principles as best as I can here and share them unless you've also got teleportation by now. It's a good step forward for both."

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"Since you handily defeated Thauron on your own we've been focused on winning. We don't have teleportation sorted yet."

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"OK. I'll get those notes to you as soon as possible, teleportation is useful. Sauron seemed to be magic resistant, though I didn't exactly collect a lot of data to figure out exactly how. I'm not sure if he has spell resistance - some beings in my plane have it, spells just fail to affect them. Sometimes one gets through, it depends on the skill of the caster and the level of spell resistance. Or he might just be resistant to fire, and cold, and lightning, and acid - creatures have those too, but not usually all four at once. The third option is that he actually was seriously affected by my spells but pretended not to be and successfully tricked me into using weapons against him instead. Those seemed to work a bit better.

"Also he's an illusionist and a very good one so I'm reluctant to believe we actually defeated him until we can get a lot more evidence."

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"And would be additional reason to believe that he didn't give accurate impressions of what was effective against him. Maybe we can ask Huan how Maiar interact with your magic system."

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"That is a good thought, also if he and Celegorm are willing to spend a couple weeks on it it might be good to take him up to the island and see if he can tell how injured Sauron was? This seems like it might fall within the purview of a maia of Oromë. And possibly track him down if he's nearby, if I actually managed to injure him badly it might be worth the time if we have an opportunity to finish the job...

"Also, is there someone here who is good at recognizing faces? Someone I can show the people we saved, if they had friends or family that would want to know..."

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"Yes, I'll schedule a meeting for that purpose. And I cannot imagine Celegorm and Huan have any project more urgent than hunting down Thauron."

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"Excellent. Shall I describe the fight with Sauron in case it reveals any capabilities of his you weren't aware of? Then I think I'll go skim these notes, write up what I can on teleportation, and catch some sleep, and if you think you can arrange the meeting tomorrow then I could leave with Celegorm and Huan right after that."

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Blink. "If you like, but no one's expecting you to."

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"Uh. Assuming I did injure Sauron pretty badly I'd probably be helpful in finishing him. Assuming I barely inconvenienced him I can teleport the three of us away safely, or at least Celegorm and myself I don't know if it will work on Huan yet. Or do you mean it doesn't have to be tomorrow? I suppose with the amount of time it's already been a few more days probably won't matter, so I guess you have a point there. My continued presence here makes people understandably uncomfortable, so I'd rather not linger but if tracking down Sauron isn't urgent and it would help for me to spend more time on the notes that seems worth it."

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"How long ago was the fight?"

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"Um... About a month? Three days before you got my letter informing you of it."

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"Then yes, it'd be more valuable to have a few more days of spell advising."

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"Very well. A recounting of the fight with Sauron now, or is getting teleportation notes to you faster the priority?"

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"Whatever's convenient."

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Then Malak will give an account of the battle, skimming over the repetitive bits and leaving out the killings of orcs apart from the ones who were in the dungeons. They make no mention of their ability to steal energy from the dead.

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Nod. "You should check with Huan if your inferences were correct. And teleportation?"

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"Can try to describe it. Might be easier to do with time on paper, but I'll give it my best shot now while you can ask questions as soon as they come up... Mine is largely cribbed off of my shadow-stepping because it's easier for me to fit it in my head that way. More efficient teleportation - less energy cost, it would also probably help with range - would go through the Astral plane instead of the plane of shadows so I'd suggest you try developing it that way from the start."

And they launch into an explanation, osanwë'ing the sensation of teleporting - if Curufin's learned basic divination then he can detect magic while they demonstrate, for an outside view. Curufin has plenty of questions, and Malak answers them more confidently than before - they paid more attention to the development process this time for precisely this reason.

A few hours later it seems about as explained as it's going to get and Malak heads back to their room to read over Curufin's notes on the elven spell development. Unless Celegorm is currently around and they can test things with Huan.

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He is not. They can depart with lots and lots of fairly exhaustive notes.

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Which they will read, taking notes of their own until they fall asleep. And in the morning they will read some more and wow, Curufin's thorough, but they are done by noon and ask their unnecessary guards whether it would be rude to osanwë Curufin now and if so is there another way to get slotted into his schedule?

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They'll get an appointment as quick as possible, but yes, don't osanwë people at range unless it's an emergency, think what running a city would be like if everyone did that.

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Good to know! Malak waits.

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And is escorted to an appointment!

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They don't say anything to ruin the illusion that guarding them would serve any purpose at all if they were malicious.

"You've made a really solid start! Your magical energy capacity - oh, tangent, you should probably come up with a Quenya word for that, something less clunky than 'magical energy', I've only been using that phrase because the spell didn't autotranslate - anyways, your capacities seem to be about normal for beginners, maybe a little higher than usual but not significantly so. You've been making decent progress at destruction and enhancement magic, I'm really impressed with how far you've gotten with shapeshifting but it's using way more energy than it should, I have some thoughts on where the efficiency could be improved..."

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"Go on -"

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And they do! There are a few other areas that could use some steering that Malak can provide - the elves also have not made very much progress in the areas outside of Malak's expertise, but hopefully they will start to make inroads there once they have a bit more practice with magic in general. They talk for hours - Curufin is much easier to get along with during a technical discussion.

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He clearly really enjoys technical discussions.

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Unless other business interrupts them, Malak is both willing and able to continue this...not indefinitely, but at least all day.

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That's enough time to make a lot of progress. "Nothing here I see destroying Melkor, though."

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(Malak has forgotten to renew their shapeshift and has been looking their normal self for the past hour or two)

"Killing a god is not a trivial prospect. We have gods in abundance back home and the turnover is generally pretty low, it can be done but it requires a very powerful mage. Um. I have had some thoughts on how to get around that, but I'm not going to share the specifics with you now."

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"- okay. Maedhros isn't optimistic we have a century, but thinks we definitely have a decade, if that affects your planning."

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"A decade should be more than enough time to settle any doubts about the reality of all this and decide who can be trusted with god-killing capabilities."

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"Great. Then by all means take it."

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"Well, I'll hardly just be sitting around the whole time. For one, I need to determine who to trust with this - no guarantees it will work, by the way, it just seems like it would be the best shot we have so far - and that will require speaking to people. Perhaps after we check on Sauron I will go to Barad Eithel and meet the High King, then maybe Himring, then maybe dwarves. I may try to see if they'll let me into Doriath to talk with Melian and Thingol though from what I've heard odds of that are not good."

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"They really don't like letting people into Doriath. The rest of those choices sound good."

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"I could swear to a degree of nonhostility at the border, and I suspect if I really wanted to enter they couldn't stop me but that wouldn't be terrible conducive to diplomacy. Speaking of, Beren may in fact still be committed to giving Thingol a Silmaril but if that happens I am much more confident in my ability to steal a Silmaril from Thingol than from Melkor so please don't kill him over it or anything like that."

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"You can't swear to things bindingly. And stealing a Silmaril from Thingol would have quite a lot of collateral damage."

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"I can look like an elf and not tell them about my inability to swear bindingly, even if they assume I'm a Maia shapeshifted to look like an elf they should still assume my oaths hold unless they have reason to suspect there are more possibilities. Do you mean that he would go to war to take it back, or just that you don't anticipate it being doable safely?"

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"Melian could tell you weren't, almost certainly. And I don't think it'd be doable safely and don't know if he'd go to war to get it back but wouldn't rule it out."

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"Hm. Will still try to talk to them if possible. I'll also encourage Beren to hold off on the Silmaril-stealing, he already agreed to be more patient about it than last time...

"Anyways, I should probably deal with all that biology stuff - food, water, sleep - And then tomorrow can someone let me know when Huan is back? Oh, and that meeting with someone who's good at faces...

"Do the people guarding me know I can teleport or is that going to start a panic?"

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"Might freak them out a little. I'll have your meetings scheduled for tomorrow."

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In that case Malak will accommodatingly change shape and braid their hair and walk back. They eat and drink and sleep and spend their morning going through the magic they know and looking for places where the spells can be compressed. (They can't, much, Malak already optimized them pretty well and that was when they had their equipment and were smarter.)

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And someone comes by who has lived in Nargothrond a few hundred years and would be happy to try to identify people!

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"Hi! Pleased to meet you. So, what I have is seventeen elves who we saved and are as far as I know still alive, sixteen who we saved but committed suicide, and about forty more who I couldn't save but are probably dead. Those last ones will be a lot harder to recognize and it might be upsetting. Where should I start?"

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"- I guess with the people who are still alive."

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Malak bounces seventeen faces.

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"Thank you. - and the others?"

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Sixteen more, then...

"I didn't get as good of a look at the others and it was when they were still in the dungeon. Not healed at all. They might be harder to recognize and it will probably be really unpleasant to get the images so if you need a moment first..."

The elf takes a moment.  Malak bounces all the faces they didn't save.

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Nod. "Thank you."

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Malak isn't quite sure how to respond, so they don't.

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After a minute he gets up to leave.

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"I'm glad I could save the ones I did but it feels like I didn't do enough and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for your friends who died."

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"May Mandos judge them justly."

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...sure.

After the elf leaves, Malak will fill their time speculating about Enhancement magic and making magic items, until Celegorm and Huan are ready to go.

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Doesn't take them too long.

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Then off they will go. They are happy to be leaving Nargothrond. Most of the people are happy to see them go. How mutually beneficial.

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It's starting to get chilly. The trees turn golden.

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Malak is slightly resistant to cold like they are slightly resistant to heat. They bundle up anyways. In a few days Tol-in-Gaurhoth is on the horizon.

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No one appears to be there.

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And Malak is totally 100% trusting their senses on this.

Celegorm? What does Huan think? Is there anyone here? Can we track Sauron if he fled?

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He lets Huan roam around. Yeah, some orcs still there, not many, could go in and clear them out. He thinks Sauron went north. Probably to Angband.

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...So not particularly pursueable then. Damn. I shouldn't have waited as long as I did. Can he tell how badly injured Sauron was?

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He was insubstantial the whole way but no, not besides that.

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Eugh.

...How much did we miss him by?  Should I be kicking myself for escorting the prisoners all the way that I did?

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I find that never helps.

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...I will take that as a well-intentioned 'no' that actually means 'yes'. If I'd asked for you right away we might have caught him.

They take a long breath and let it out again.

I'm going to clear out the orcs, then head to Barad Eithel. Do you want to help with the former?

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Unless you're attached to not having company I'll stick with you for both, Nelyo might be there.

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Hardly. I just thought you wouldn't want to see any of your cousins. I think I'm running into the everyone-has-too-many-names problem again, who's Nelyo?

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Technically speaking, the orcs put up a fight. But Huan is here and Malak is here and despite Celegorm's apparent skill he's not contributing very much and the orcs don't stand a chance.

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Nelyo's Maedhros. In the Quenya, which is banned, but I don't actually give a fuck what Elu Thingol wants anymore. And I don't mind Fingon, as cousins go he's fine. Crown's a little big for him but that's why Nelyo will probably be there.

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I don't think Lúthien gives a fuck what Thingol wants anymore.

...Want to teach me Quenya while we walk?

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- yeah, actually. 

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Great! Usually when I'm learning a language I cast the translation spell and then just pay attention to both what I hear and what I understand. I can't do that right now because I don't have space for translation right now, but we could do it with osanwë?

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Yeah, should work.

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So, no more Sindarin until we reach the city. What would you like to talk about?

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Oh, if you were hoping I'm an entertaining conversationalist that's not going to work, I fight the Enemy and that's pretty much it.

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Can you repeat that in Quenya?

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He does.

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"I fight the enemy and you fight the enemy. You not an entertaining conversationalist. I an entertaining conversationalist? I were hoping you an entertaining conversationalist." Do you do strategy at all or just fight?

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"Even before there was an enemy to fight I mostly didn't get on with people. People kind of suck." Strategy got all shot to hell in the Bragollach. I don't know what the plan is now.

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"I mostly get on with people. People mostly suck. Mostly people are not entertaining conversationalist." Some people are alright?

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"My brothers are good. All the other alright people are dead, pretty much."

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"You - " knew? - "all the alright people?"

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"Knew. And in Valinor we had forever. Nelyo made a point of actually knowing everyone, I was more - acquainted. But if they were alright I'd know of them."

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"Most people I knew weren't alright but there are mostly people I weren't knowing."

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"I don't know all the locals or most of the humans but I have very low expectations at this point."

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"Lúthien -" said Dwarves "- are alright?"

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"Yeah, Dwarves are great. I'm surprised Lúthien said so, the Thindar used to hunt 'em for sport. Curufin adores them, stayed up all night working on steam engines and whatnot before everything fell apart."

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Blink.

"The Thindar hunted Dwarves for sport."

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"People. Fucking. Suck."

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"..."

Your point is made.

What is a "steam engine?" Have I figured out grammar perfectly already or are you just not correcting me?

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Oh, sorry, I can correct you, you're mostly close enough. "A steam engine is, like, you burn a lot of coal and you get compressed air you can use to do most kinds of mechanical work, like mining? No idea how they work."

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Blink.

"You burn coal and then air does mining? I'm -" confused. "- I will have to ask Curufin to say about it. Or dwarves."

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"You're confused. You will have to ask Curufin or the specific Dwarves he was working with to explain it to you."

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It's not more than a day's walk to Barad Eithel, and Celegorm needs a lot of prodding to keep talking much, so Malak's not fluent by the time they get there. They switch to osanwë once they're within earshot of the walls.

So, do you know how much they've been told about me?

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The setup for communication we had was - disrupted during the battle, I don't think they'd have heard anything. We didn't risk a messenger.

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OK. I'll be Talrod until I can speak with Fingon and/or Maedhros privately. I suspect spies here are more likely than in Nargothrond.

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Yeah, probably. I'm talking to Nelyo now.

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Ah, so he is here.

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I figured he would be.

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Well, I will permit you to introduce us.

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Nah, you should meet the High King first, there's complicated politics there.

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I assumed there was politics and that it would be easier to get an audience with the High King if Maedhros introduces me but if it makes more sense to do it the other way, then let's do that.

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Maedhros thinks we should do it the other way, I don't know, I hate politics. We'll do what he suggests. He has in fact probably told the High King about you by now but I guess shouldn't formally introduce you? Dunno. Maybe so it's clear you're not, like, aligned with us in any respect. I really hate politics.

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...Should I not walk through the front gates with you?

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I'll ask. 

 

- nah, that's fine. Apparently.

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OK. I assume Maedhros has suggestions for how we can get an audience with the High King?

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That won't be a problem.

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Malak will readily follow whatever those suggestions are.

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They approach Barad Eithel and are greeted and escorted inside and invited to rest and change.

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Resting! Changing! Correctly interpreting the invitation to change as not extending to faces!

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And then they can have an escort to meet the High King in his study!

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How lovely. They will follow someone to said study.

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There's an Elf sitting at the desk. "Do come in. This is about resuming shipments to Brithombar?" Please confirm that it is.

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"Yes, it is." How soundproofed is this room? My ability to keep up a convincing conversation on shipments to a city I know next to nothing about is limited.

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I am very confident in the soundproofing. The door closes. But there's not much cause to speak aloud.

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True enough but people might wonder why we're carrying on a trade discussion over osanwë. What have you been told already?

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You helped Lúthien drive Sauron out of Tol-in-Gaurhoth, with magic we haven't seen before.

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...That is true but very incomplete. Please don't panic.

"I swear that I am not a servant of the enemy, that I presently intend you no harm, and that I shall do everything I can to ensure no harm comes to you during this meeting."

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He doesn't even blink. All right. What's the more complete version?

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I'm from another world, I showed up here due to a still-unexplained magical accident, or it's possible that I was captured by one of my enemies and all of this is an elaborate hallucination trying to trick me into committing great evils. The magic that is common to my world works here and doesn't seem to directly interact with local magic at all. I ran into Lúthien, then was led to Nargothrond. I broke Lúthien out of house arrest in Nargothrond - mostly - and then we went north, came up with a plan, and I snuck into Tol-in-gaurhoth to save her boyfriend and whoever else I could get out. I saved thirty-four, sixteen of whom committed suicide shortly thereafter. I gave them a choice. Lúthien and I went back to demolish the tower at tol-in-gaurhoth and stop Sauron from following us, he fled incorporeal in an unknown state of injury. The surviving rescues are settled near the falls of Sirion, I went back to Nargothrond and got Celegorm and Huan to come north with me and see if we could track down Sauron and finish him off, but he's already made it back to Angband we think. My form of magic can be taught to elves, probably local humans and dwarves too, and I'm willing to instruct some of your people. There is potentially a way for me to kill the Enemy with it but I am not revealing details on that yet because I don't know who can be trusted with it. That's the short version, I can give more details if you want them.

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What can your magic do, and how long does it take to learn? How much use would it be to the Enemy if it fell into his hands...

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Theoretically, anything. Individual practitioners specialize but you can specialize in a lot of different ways. The ones I can teach best are destruction magic, shadow magic, shapeshifting, and teleportation. I can also do invisibility but I can't teach it well. The basics can be taught in a week. You get more powerful with practice, it will probably take longer than we have for any of you to get up to my level, but I'm pretty powerful even by the standards of my world where this is much more common. Learning a particular spell takes a week to a month, generally. It's possible to learn spells that you can't cast because they are too powerful for you. Lots of useful spells need to be reinvented because I only have access to the ones in my head, Curufin has a bunch of people on that and they've made some progress over the last two months but not a ton.

If it fell into enemy hands it will probably be very bad. I don't know if he can use it himself, or how good a maia like Sauron would be, that would be the worst case, but I don't think elves have a very large natural advantage at this sort of thing, if any. And there are supposedly millions of orcs.  Also, it can potentially do plane shifting and it would be a bad thing if Melkor conquered this world and then plane shifted back to mine, mine has a lot more people than yours does.

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How many people know of it right now?

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Of it's existence? Lúthien, Beren, seventeen elves, all of Nargothrond, Sauron, Celegorm, Huan, you. Know the details I've just shared? Curufin, his students, Celegorm, Huan, Lúthien, Beren, you. Probably Maedhros, I expect Celegorm may have told him by now. It's possible that most people assume that I am a Maia and don't realize it is a separate magic system. Possible but unlikely that this extends to Sauron. Odds of him knowing anything about how it works or that it can be taught are pretty low, fortunately.

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It would not be out of character for the Enemy to track down the rescuees and learn what they can from them; what would they learn if they did?

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That I can teleport - already known to Sauron - and that I look weird, and that I did not have a pleasant childhood. Probably will have enough to piece together that I am not a Maia if he hasn't already. If they get Lúthien alive, also that I can change other people's shape and... the general shape of what I would use to kill Melkor, probably with enough details missing that it would take them a long time to develop it. That is actually a very worrying prospect.

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Is Lúthien still at all inclined to the task that would bring her directly into Morgoth's reach -

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She is not; Beren is. He agreed to wait and see if I could come up with a plan. I think we have at least a year and I will probably talk to them again before then. And then I can tell them that I'm planning to kill Melkor within a few years and that he'll have a better shot at getting a silmaril when it's only all the Noldor who would be trying to kill him for it. Or who knows, maybe I'll pull another Miracle out my ass and Thingol will give them his blessing and release Beren's obligation.

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But it sounds like it would be a disaster if they made an attempt on Angband and were captured?

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It would be pretty bad, yes.

...If you're plotting to murder or imprison them because of this, be aware that I am going to take issue with that.

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I will probably attempt to stop them if I learn they're going to Angband. But I was actually thinking how it'd go over if we sent some people down there for protection in case the Enemy does decide to pursue them and learn what they know of how they were rescued.

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That is a very reasonable course of action, forgive my paranoia. Ruthlessness from someone in your position would not be surprising and seems quite characteristic of the one member of your family with whom I've become acquainted.

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I am surprised he acknowledges us as family, it used to be a point of serious contention. Shall we talk politics? Nargothrond would be an interesting place to get your first sketch of the landscape there.

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...I am not sure that he acknowledged you as such but he described a family tree for me in the course of telling me what not to do to avoid tearing this alliance apart.

Yes I would love to be caught up on politics from a different perspective.

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My cousins were until now our best hope of figuring out a way to win the war and they are completely impossible to get along with. But that you must have noticed already. Thingol wouldn't help us even if he liked us, he's too conservative. His occasional threats of war suit my cousins because they like having their enemies be so unlikeable and suit him because he gets to appear to be taken seriously. 

 

The Silmaril oath is less manipulative than it looks; my uncle in addition to the qualities he shares with his children was also terrifically paranoid and demanded the oath of them so he could trust that they wouldn't turn from the war, and they took it because he could have ended the war two hundred years ago and they thought it'd be better to be trusted by him than not. But the Enemy, knowing that, killed him, and here we are.

 The House of Fëanor has issues with authority even when they are, in every sense, authority; ruling them is herding cats in the best of times and only tractable at all if they believe their brother to be secretly running things; everyone else will barely tolerate being in an alliance with them, despite the fact that every major technical advance of Elven history has been Fëanor's or that of his children and grandchildren. So everyone who needs to believe that Maedhros rules the Noldor believes that, and everyone who needs to believe that I am entertaining Maedhros in the belief that he has any role in the strategic decisions of the Noldor believes that. You'll forgive me for not clarifying the truth of the matter; I can't promise I'd be honest. 

 

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...Are only Fëanor's sons bound by the Silmaril oath? Because I was definitely lead to believe otherwise.

I would imagine that the situation between you and Maedhros is not so simple as either of those extremes, relationships rarely are.

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Very slightly raised eyebrow. That's a fairly fraught thing to say even if you don't specify who it is you're insulting. And only Fëanor's sons are bound by the Silmaril oath, but their people would follow them.

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...what?

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- to which part?

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"A fairly fraught thing to say even if you don't specify who it is you're insulting"?

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Yes. I don't know who you heard it from, but they intended an insult.

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Uh, some humans in Nargothrond were gossiping. It didn't sound like it was meant nicely but you're both men so what is the problem, exactly?

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- that? Are there very different norms where you're from?

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What. Wait, really? I thought they were upset because you were cousins. That's. What. Why?

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The gods have communicated that it is the will of the one that intimacy be reserved for marriage. I am - surprised that this is surprising, to be honest.

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Your gods are shit. Also your form of marriage is weird.

Um. There is no such taboo in Kalzir, or the Jade Dragon Empire, or Bael Turath. Growing up I heard that it's really bad for people to sleep with their opposite-sex cousins and closer relatives because inbreeding like that leads to really strange and usually bad manifestations of, um, tieflingness? They send an unpacking of the concept. I guess I don't know if that taboo carries across to Kalzir or the Empire and I guess you're not tieflings so I didn't really have good grounds to assume it would be the same...

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That's frowned upon here too but - not the insulting portion of the accusation, not at all. I have been unimpressed by the priorities of our gods on many occasions.

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I have yet to meet anyone who wasn't unimpressed but that's probably a selection effect.

If I were gay I would be very tempted to be very open about it and throw it in people's faces but I am not, so I cannot.

So, politics. You spend your time herding cats because the Fëanorians are immature but also still your best hope of winning. Apart from me. Things between you and your boyfriend are complicated and unofficial because your gods have terrible priorities, and hopelessly muddled up in the practical running of this alliance because you are cousins and hereditary succession is terrible. Thingol is hopeless and because gendered hereditary succession is extra terrible doesn't even have an heir so we're stuck with him. If he somehow actually gets his hand on a Silmaril this does not mean inevitable war, merely that six people need to be removed from power. Did I miss anything important? Do you see any reasons it might be bad for me to teach a bunch of your people magic?

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It'd be pretty inevitable war, my cousins' people are very loyal to them. We would almost certainly have to kill them and there'd be at least a minor civil war. I do not see a reason not to teach my people magic. I am, should it actually be relevant, not even involved with my cousin; incidental touch gives him panic attacks, our rumored activities would probably outright kill him.

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It is your personal life and really none of my business, my earlier comments were assuming it was common knowledge. I'm sorry.

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There are, whatever the gods think, worse things that could be said of me.   

 

If Thingol gets a Silmaril I could probably preempt the civil war by executing a couple hundred carefully selected people but I really do not want to do that.

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Assuming that Beren has no chance of success unless he tries shortly after I kill Melkor it's not something to worry about. This particular mess would be entirely Thingol's fault, as far as I know I could just take it from him and kill him so that he doesn't go to war for it.

Oh, speaking of, if we win this war, there are a lot of people who I would like to try for war crimes when it's done. Do you think it might be feasible to convince them to agree to accept the verdict of such a trial?

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...depends who, and what sort of verdicts you'd be handing down.

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I would not be handing down any verdicts. Panel of judges, supposedly dwarves are reasonable. I'd make sure there aren't verdicts like "Fine: one silmaril" but death sentences are possibly on the table. 'Who' is mostly the Fëanorians and Thingol and Melian, but really I'm thinking "Anyone in a position of power who someone wants to bring charges against."

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Death sentences would be less problematic than imprisoning people. I cannot imagine how you'd get Thingol and Melian to play along; Maedhros would but probably on the condition that any charges against anyone under his command be answered by him instead, with immunity for all of them.

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How noble of him. That would probably be acceptable. I do not have a very good read on Thingol and Melian yet, I am guessing they don't hate your cousins enough to agree to a trial conditional on the cousins also being brought to trial? Is there anyone else still living who committed a bunch of atrocities that I haven't been told about?

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I participated in the Kinslaying, if that failed to come up in whatever summary of it you received. Thingol and Melian wouldn't risk their own lives to see justice done and, to be fair, Melian personally sustains the ecosystem of Doriath and would be wronging her people if she did. 

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I heard about your role in the Kinslaying, I suppose we could try you but if I heard correctly you would probably be acquitted. I don't suppose I could put the Valar on trial.

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That would be interesting. I do not see how you would achieve it. Eru either. 

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True. A person can dream, though.

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Indeed. If Dwarves are drafted to arbitrate your court they might be poorly positioned to bring their own grievances.

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Yes, a dwarven panel was my idea before I learned that the Thindar used to hunt them. I am rather cross with Lúthien for neglecting to mention that. A mixed pool of judges might be best, and select the ones that would be unbiased for each particular case...

We may be getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. I will need to meet with Maedhros at some point, for a second opinion on your trustworthiness and the wisdom of teaching your people.

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He's an interesting choice for a second opinion on that, but by all means. How long are you planning to be around?

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Do you have someone conveniently at hand who would be less biased? I'll probably stay long enough to teach people, at least. A month or two. Then probably to Doriath on the off chance they'll let me in to talk, then to Beren to reassure him that there's no need to charge Angband just yet. Then maybe I'll come back here, it would be good to be near at least one of the groups of people doing spell research and I make people uncomfortable in Nargothrond so here seems as good as anywhere.

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I can recommend you plenty of people to talk to but my recommendation would make them less than a reliable source on my trustworthiness - unless I'm unclear on what it is you're worried about? 

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I'm reluctant to give out powerful new magic to people who I haven't had a chance to verify are the sorts of people I want to give out powerful new magic to. I gave it to Curufin without checking because I was not exactly in my right mind at the time.

I'll probably give it to your people just because I don't want the Fëanorians to be the only ones with it, that seems politically unbalancing. But if I can verify that you're a more-or-less-decent ruler first I'll be a lot happier about it.

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Which is very reasonable and probably not best achieved by asking people I pick out for you.

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Yes. Maedhros and Celegorm and hopefully they will point me to others. Thus far everyone I have talked to has praised you, if faintly.

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I'll arrange you a meeting with Maedhros.

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Thank you.

Waiting! Presumably not in the King's office.

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Nope! The nice guest suite has a little study. After a while there's a knock at the door.

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"Come in!"

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"Talrod? I heard you'd arrived and had to stop by, it's been the better part of a century. How have you been?"

 

Door closes. And a pleasure to meet you.

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They laugh with joy. "Maedhros! Of course you would hear so quickly, I haven't even been here a day!" Likewise. How much do you know?

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What you told my brother and my cousin. Is there more I need to know?

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Not really, I haven't been saving secrets just for you. Would me wearing my own face make you uncomfortable?

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Not at all.

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Thanks. So, do you trust your cousin? Would it be a terrible mistake to hand him and his people the knowledge needed to use my kind of magic?

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Not at all.

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Lovely. Does he have any critics around here?

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Probably. It would cause a lot of trouble if I went around courting people with complaints with the High King so they wouldn't have voiced them to me.

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By your reputation I'd expect you to know who they are anyways.

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I'm not omniscient, just nosy.

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They laugh aloud at that.

I've said those exact same words. Very well, then, I will try to find them myself. Apart from giving your cousin magic, do you have any suggestions for what I should be doing?

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I like travelling to pretty densely inhabited places that would be very energy-intensive to simulate, personally, and checking whether the people in the streets repeat.

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Ooh, that's a good one. I've been mapping people I've run into here to people from my world, some of the correspondences are really close. For the amount of effort put into all this you really aren't trying, it's confusing. Am I at least an interesting feature of your hallucinations? Has Melkor gotten more creative than me, yet?

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I will confess I didn't pay the backstory much attention, sorry. Want to repeat it so I can compare?

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Oh, sure, would you like the whole life story start-to-finish? It would probably take Melkor's scriptwriters a while to plot out the whole thing.

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By all means!

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Alright! It may be a bit rambly and out-of-order at times, I haven't done this before.

I was born in Tylantia, the capital and greatest city of the empire of Bael Turath.

They send an image, Tylantia seen from the air. The city fills a mountian valley, stretching from peak to peak. Homes cling to steep mountainsides and cluster along the valley floor. Seven wide, glittering roads paved with glass and obsidian lead to an open city center spotted with street vendors. Elegant stone towers rise above the rest of the city; at the north end of the valley they rise out of a lake, connected by bridges to each other and the shore. The roofs are colored in mild shades, blending into each other in an enormous wheel of color.

My father was a senator. My mother is... Not a person, exactly. She is cruel and manipulative and powerful and she cannot be killed and is older than recorded history, probably. She seduced him, controlled him, used him for his connections, and left him as soon as she had no immediate use for him. She showed up six months later to leave him with me and tell him he would have no other heir. He tried, anyways, with other women, with magic. It never worked.

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- ah.

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Oh, right. Biologically obligatory monogamy is not a feature of my world.

 

I was in some sense very lucky, a senatorial family has access to a lot that other families do not. I had private tutors, I was fed. I did not lack for material needs. I did lack for a loving family. He resented me for what my mother had done. He resented me for his inability to have other children. He resented me for being a girl. He resented me for not being a girl, when that he found out.

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Raised eyebrow -

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Well, I'm not. Gender is confusing and more trouble than it's worth. Bael Turath had strict gender roles for the upper classes, a son would have been most advantageous. A daughter would have been acceptable, especially if he could have more kids, but... I was useless to him, politically. And otherwise.

I left, of course, when I was around twenty. Stayed in the city for a while, living on my own. Stealing, mostly, to survive. He didn't bother looking for me, but eventually someone did. A mage found me, told me that my sister sent him. I didn't know that I had a sister, but I went with him anyway, I thought he was probably loaded with magic items and I could just take them when he slept. We left the city, got on a boat, and. Well.

There was a war. It had been going on for about ten years by then and by all accounts Bael Turath was winning. The giants were pretty much wiped out, the empire was gobbling up Kalziran territory, the Jade Dragon Empire was sitting things out counting on an ocean to keep them safe. Or, it looked that way. There was apparently a big research project to develop something - a spell, an artifact, who knows, the details never got out - something to end the war in one fell swoop. Bael Turath must have caught on at some point, because they got desperate. They started summoning a demon army to end the war faster and. It got loose. Demons are temperamentally similar to your Enemy when free, and, suddenly, they were everywhere. Nobody was prepared for it. People in isolated areas survived, people in small towns were torn to shreds or eaten alive or burned to death or - 

To the best of my knowledge, the populations of the Turathi cities are still, technically, alive.

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We were far enough from Tylantia that magic still worked, and the Turathi anti-teleportation wards fell when the city did. The mage had a long distance teleport ritual and he used it.

It turns out, my sister was real. Half-sister, technically, on my mother's side obviously. Her name was Syrilth, and she was a half-dragon - my mother had interesting taste in partners. Alfirin handed her off to two women who ran a shipping business and didn't want to go through the process to have children of their own, probably in exchange for some nefarious favors. Lovely people. They used to joke, sometimes, about how Syrilth had such an excess of mothers. I... I didn't know them very long. Nothing terrible happened to them, just - they were human - 

The three of them - Syrilth and her parents - took me under their wing. I learned a bit about running a business, and a lot about trade and politics. Syrilth and I were close, we worked together on everything after her parents died.

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Nod.

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Alfirin had her murdered about forty years later. I still don't know why. I heard the commotion but got there too late to do anything about it - not that I could have, I barely knew any magic, I wasn't a great fighter, but. I tried to get her resurrected, after. It didn't work. And then I discovered that someone had forged a new will for her, I was disinherited, and all the money I took out for the resurrection was, in the eyes of the law, stolen.

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- your magic does resurrection?

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In theory. It's incredibly difficult. Gods in my world will resurrect people sometimes, if a priest petitions them to do it, that's much more common than a mortal pulling it off. There are ways to prevent it from working, too. Why?

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I know a lot of dead people.

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I might be powerful enough, but I've been unable to ever figure out healing magic. Everything else comes almost naturally to me but I can't get anywhere with healing. I expect elves might figure it out within a century if you put a lot of resources towards that. I heard Mandos does a lot of resurrections?

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Of people he approves of, yes. He does not approve of any of the Noldor.

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...Ah. I have no idea whether or not he'll be able to prevent resurrections once you figure it out, but he might. Sorry.

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It's fine. I'd personally rather it not exist, but I'll follow up, people'd care.

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...When this is all over and we have plane shift working, I can take you to my world and have you killed in a way that prevents it. If that's what you want.

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Yes, I'd caught that that was the next plot point. 

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I'm sorry your last moments will probably be wondering what's going to feature in the next simulation.

Anyways. My life story. I fled. I studied magic, and swordplay, and less socially acceptable skills. I stole to survive for years, easy to adapt that skillset for murder. I found the people who killed my sister and repaid them. I found who hired them and before they died they told me that they were just a middleman. I learned that Alfirin arranged it. I learned Alfirin was, supposedly, dead.

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Nod.

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About a year before that, twenty years before now, Alfirin was the power behind the throne of the Kalziran magocracy. She helped the magocracy form and overthrow the old government in the last desperate days of the war with Bael Turath, and in exchange for that she had a seat on the council and the ear of the archmage. A man named Nerikross was envious of her position - the council seats are reserved for masters of particular areas of magic, he was a necromancer and she held that seat so there was no other seat available to him. He convinced the rest of the council that she was too much of a threat and they took her by surprise and destroyed her safeguards and killed her. I think she planned it all.

Once I learned it was her I traveled to Kalzir. I wasn't thinking terribly clearly at the time, if she'd been around there's no way I could have killed her, but. I discovered she wasn't. I didn't know what to do with myself for a time, but about fifteen years ago I decided to learn as much about her as I possibly could. Figure out why she did it if nothing else.

Five years ago, I learned that another one of my half-sisters was alive and, apparently, the prisoner of the magocracy. I tried to track her down and free her, but didn't get anywhere for over a year. Alfirin came to me then, said we had interests in common. I hated her, I hated her so much but... I knew I wouldn't stand a chance. And... better to focus my efforts on saving the sister that was still alive than avenging the one who was dead.

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Nod.

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I agreed to work with her, she gave me a lead which took me to Sternhill. It's a Kalziran city, not huge but it's a real city, about a hundred thousand people. I followed leads there for about two and a half years, always one step behind her captors. Alfirin sent some more people my way - unwitting pawns of hers, mostly. Mostly she sent them to stir up trouble, I think. One of them was alright - Marius, he was an alchemist and an assassin and, despite that, a good person. And a friend. There was some other trouble in the city, seemed unrelated at first. A new sort of magic-user popping up, mostly destructive powers. People were afraid and the local guards kept escalating, and the conduits - that's what they were called - the conduits escalated back. We tried supporting the conduits at first but it just got so bad...

Anyways, in the middle of all that, I find out where they were keeping Istiell. And, I wasn't even thinking, I just went, and Marius and the others came with me and she was there but it was a trap. Nerikross was there himself, and two other council members, and some Knights, and a handful of other powerful mages.

All I was thinking about was getting Istiell to safety, I pushed her behind me and told Marius to take her and run. I told them to go to Alfirin. And then I went into the room alone and I fought and then I was here.

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I see. Thank you; that was a lovely story.

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They raise an eyebrow.

That's an adjective.

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I think once the Enemy's dead I'm supposed to take my people to go stop the demons in your world. I will. If you were wondering.

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The demons mostly aren't in my plane anymore, those were all destroyed, eventually. There are lots of them in the Abyss. The limiting factor on the evil they can cause is not their numbers but the availability of victims. Given that, any attempt to go into the Abyss and end their evil is counterproductive, please don't try.

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What makes it counterproductive?

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You and anyone you took with would be very available victims. 

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No, I mean, can they be killed -

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Yes. Most forms of summoning, killing them will just send them back to the Abyss. Killing them when they've been Called - a more permanent kind of summoning - or killing them in the Abyss will stick. But many of them are very powerful, and there are tens of millions of them, at least.

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So, it takes a while. Fine.

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Please, please don't. You would not be the first to try.

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Look, something is going to happen such that suddenly I have to, that's how it works.

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I'm sorry. I won't let that happen, if you try to lead your people into the Abyss I will not wait until it will stick to kill you.

It will be different from Angband. Angband apparently includes hallucinations that are no worse than if you had never been taken, apart from PTSD.

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 - briefly, so that if they ever do let you go you'll just kill everyone. 

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And yet here we are. Presumably better than actively being tortured? And I don't think you've gone on a murder spree since... I guess you'd view it as the start of this one?

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The premise of this game is that I got rescued via the intervention of the Valar before he was done with whatever he was doing. I have no impulse to kill lots of people. This is better than actively being tortured but still there hasn't been a moment since the purported rescue that was more pleasant than nonexistence.

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My magic gives me a suicide trigger that should work even through a simulation but you have no reason to believe me when I say that and my simulation is definitely better than nonexistence.

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I don't believe you and also can't die yet, on the off chance this is real.

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Like I said. You have no reason to.

...Um. Can Melkor create minds?

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No. 

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Oh, that's really good to know. I can safely assume that you are not still in Angband and I am not a feature of your hallucination.

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He could have captured you and erased relevant memories but that'd be a lot of trouble to go to and you said your life is tolerable moment-to-moment so I doubt it.

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Yeah. I'd tell you to be worried about the reverse but with my current probabilities the chance that you are just a construct designed for my simulation is negligible conditioning on you having conscious experience. It wasn't always, when Lúthien and I were talking about this I told her that if she had conscious experience and a life's worth of memories she was about eight times more likely to be real than not. In some areas, Alfirin's capabilities seem to outstrip Melkor's.

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No one but Eru can create life, that's why he had to breed orcs from Elves.

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"No one but Eru can create life" does not seem to hold on my plane. We have lots of gods who claim to have done it, powerful wizards and alchemists sometimes manage without divine intervention. I suppose not all of those cases count, owlbears are probably more like orcs in that respect...

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Well, we'd already established it would be terrible if the Enemy got your magic.

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Yeah, I suppose we have. Do you have any suggestions for strategic things to do? Other than be computationally expensive and/or doing a better job of appreciating all the hard work you put into the crowds.

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Teaching the magic sounds like the major one. The High King said you want to try people for things?

 

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When the Enemy is dead, yes. It's not a priority now. Mainly people in command who ordered terrible things done. In theory, this would look different from "Try everyone who held a command" but from what I've heard it... might not.

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If it solves some problems to execute me instead of mercy killing me I don't really care.

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Yeah, I didn't think you would. I'll be sure you die unresurrectably even if you get a more lenient sentence.

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Mmmhmm. 

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I know, you don't believe me and you never will, because the only piece of convincing evidence will be erasing you from existence forever. Thank you for coming to speak with me. Unless you have other things to tell me, or want to suggest ways to find critics of Fingon's, I would like to take some time and think over things?

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By all means. 

 

And he leaves.

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Malak does, in fact, think over things. They still cannot think of any good ways to find people who have complaints about the High King. Announcing over osanwë that they are accepting anonymous complaints about the government seems unlikely to work. They could ask Celegorm for more details on fine-as-cousins-go Fingon. And perhaps solicit other opinions farther afield. Celegorm first, wonder if he's in range.

Hey, Celegorm, this is probably rude but I don't know how else to get a hold of you here. Would you mind chatting with me a bit about your cousin? Also, Huan and I never tested how my magic affects Maia, this seems like a pretty big oversight.

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Yeah, you can come and test stuff out on the Mithrim side of the pass any time that works for you. And what about him?

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Now works, I'll start heading that way. Specifically, I was hoping you could expand on "As cousins go he's fine". I'm deciding whether to give his people magic, leaning towards yes, but I'd like to hear from some critics of his first. You're the closest thing to a critic I can find.

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You should definitely give them magic, we're gonna need all the help we can get. 

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...Some critic you are. OK, I will probably be willing to teach some people off of this much, more once I'm more convinced that he's not secretly evil or something. Hm.

A pause, while Malak thinks over the details.

I will be willing to teach up to twenty people, to start, if they are willing to swear to keep the teachings secret until I grant permission for them to be revealed. I expect to grant that permission within a year, but it would be better to start some of them now even if they can't share it so that when I've confirmed Fingon's non-evil nature they will be able to help teach the next batch and may have gotten some useful research done in the meantime. Could you pass that message on, I don't want to interrupt Maedhros or the High King but you probably have a better sense of how to let Maedhros know without inconveniencing him and he would know how to tell Fingon. I can start tomorrow if I'll have students assembled by then.

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Yeah, sure. Why're you worried he's secretly evil?

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I'm not seriously concerned about it, just being overly cautious.

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Whatever floats your boat, but I'd be way more worried about the Enemy getting it than Fingon being - I don't even know what kind of secretly evil would be relevant, Melkor still needs to die...

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Accepting one terrible evil as the cost to ending another one is... not necessarily always the wrong choice, but not one that should be made lightly. I don't yet know if it will be necessary to teach Fingon's people magic to win this war, and if it is it will be won on a timescale where taking a month to verify that nothing horrible will come of it is not a great cost.

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Like I said, whatever you want.

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And they're walking through a mountain pass. They're kind of at their limits for teleportation, unfortunately, can't get it long-ranged enough to be an efficient form of travel. Also, they are a perfectly normal elf without any strange abilities like that, no, none at all.

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Huan is there!

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Hello Huan!

Malak will check to be sure there is nobody watching them - or even within eyesight - then

Uh, Celegorm? Should I be relaying things through you?

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Yeah, probably, if he wanted to talk to people he wouldn't be a dog.

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OK. I assume he's OK with me casting some spells on him, since that's why we're here. Does this include damaging spells?

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Yeah, it's fine, there's a prophecy about how he dies, anyway, and it's not you.

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You mentioned. I just usually don't try to set my friends' dogs on fire without permission.

Permission having been granted, they attempt to set Huan on fire.

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Works, until he puts it out.

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...Can you ask him how he did that?

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- wanted to stop being on fire.

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...I probably should have guessed that. Next test is comparing magical and nonmagical fire.

Malak ignites a fallen branch they gathered from the roadside a ways back, waits a few seconds for it to catch properly, and touches it to Huan's side. At the same time, they wreath their hand in magical flames of the same temperature and lay it on a different spot on his side.

Can you ask if one of those is hotter than the other?

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same, he reports after a moment.

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OK, I'm going to set him on fire again and try to keep him that way while he tries to put it out.  He still OK with all this?

And when they get that confirmation they try it.

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He can stop being normally on fire; he can't stop being magically on fire, but he can change his fur after a few minutes to something unaffected by being on fire.

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OK. I assume this sort of adjustment can also be done for acid-proofing or lightning resistance or cold resistance, it's good to know that's in a maia's repertoire. How many of those adaptations does he think he can do at once?

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If he knew in advance you were going to do that, he could just pick a form that didn't have any of those problems, or be immaterial, but they'd be about that speed to figure out individually. It wouldn't be hard to have them all at once unless they contradicted somehow.

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Very few things in my world are resistant to more than one or two, let alone completely immune. But, if I understand correctly a Maia doesn't have to have a functioning biology? So it would not be surprising if they can get a bunch of different resistances stacked up. Does the Enemy have servants that are likely to be particularly resistant to one of those and less flexible?

Last thing I want to test would be teleportation. Could you tell him to go along with it the first time, not really do anything about it the second time, and actively resist the third?

And they try to teleport Huan three times. For a non-Ainu they could expect to do it with all three with increasing amounts of effort, it would be good to know if Maia are categorically immune or vulnerable.

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Only works if he's actively trying to go along.

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OK! I think this is all I need that I can actually test now. I may have some more suggestions next time you're down by Nargothrond, Curufin's people have been picking this up pretty well and should have access to some things outside my specialty. I'm going to head back and get a lesson plan together for whenever I've got volunteers here.

They do that. Once they've taught these students they're going to start scrapping most of the spells they know to free up space, but it will be useful to have those on hand for teaching.

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They are discreetly assigned students.

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Can they be discreetly assigned a large room to teach in? It will be more efficient to teach all the students at once.

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Yep!

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OK, twenty elves who are presumably willing to take an oath not to share any of what Malak is about to teach them unless they later give permission, nor to demonstrate outside of an emergency situation where the skills are necessary to save lives. And once they have done that, Malak starts to teach them. This is how magic works, this is the experience of how you draw on your magical energy (Yes, we're calling it "magical energy" for now, it's unwieldy but they don't want to use something that sounds more like an actual word for it until a standard has been established), this is what it feels like to shape a spell. Here are words and gestures to help with a very minor spell, it just gives things a very light push, practice those until you're saying them right, then combine that with drawing on some energy and see how it goes. Oh, good job, that was very fast, you're a natural. You can't get it? Osanwë me everything you're doing as you do it, ah, I see, the problem is right here, you want to do it more like this...

Malak likes teaching.

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They are attentive and hardworking.

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Hardworking is good, because Malak is pushing them pretty hard. They're training these people for war, so everyone gets to learn Destruction. (They learn about Balrogs one day, and "long distance Destruction" and "Cold spells" get bumped up the priority list) Protection is useful, too, so even though it's not Malak's area of expertise they get trained in the basics of that and once Malak thinks they are up to the level where they can start developing spells some of them are encouraged to focus there. Alteration is wonderful, and elves have a natural talent there, but probably not everyone should bother picking it up because specialization is important. Here's how you make superficial changes to your body. Here's how you change shape entirely, animals are good to mimic.. Here's how you mix and match traits of different creatures, be very careful with this. (Here are some horror stories to drive the point home. This is the story of a mage who grew wings and tried to fly with them, but the wings gave out and he fell. This is the story of a mage who heard that story, thought "Oh, I know how to avoid that pitfall", gave himself stronger wings, and broke his own spine.)  There are twenty schools of magic and twenty students - Everyone picks up Protection and Destruction and one more. (Two go for Alteration and four for Enhancement, at Malak's suggestion. Mind, Death, Summoning, and Fate magic are not on the intro curriculum.)

Three weeks later and if this were a typical batch of human apprentices, Malak thinks half of them would have cracked under the pressure, but these are elves handpicked for this and they are doing fine. Keep practicing to improve your energy limits, keep studying spells - here is a copy of everything Nargothrond developed before Talrod came to Eithel Sirion, see if you can build on that at all. If something unexpected happens and I don't make it back within a year you have permission to share all this then. Good skill.

They take a day off, then go to say their goodbyes to everyone who's not their student.

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Celegorm? You still around? I'm leaving soon, going to check on the Falls and on Nargothrond, maybe try to open relations with Doriath or the dwarves. You and Huan are welcome to come with, if you want, otherwise I wanted to say goodbye before I left.

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We're going back where we're needed. Have fun.

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Riding an ice floe down the river, it's a fast trip. Geography makes Doriath the first stop, which... It will either be a productive trip or a short one. They disembark on the Doriath side of the Sirion.

"I assume I am being watched. I would like to speak to his Grace Elu Thingol, for I believe that I can help him achieve some of his ends."

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And after a minute - "go ahead and speak."

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"The first and foremost goal we have in common is saving Lúthien's life. We should probably start there."

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Silence.

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"Beren is rather thoroughly committed to his word and to doing right by her and at some point soon he is going to go to Angband in an attempt to fulfill his word. And because she is extremely, hopelessly in love with him she is going to follow and they are both going to die. And I can't stop this but His Grace can."

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"It has been attempted."

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"He can bless their marriage and release Beren from his oath."

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"He cannot."

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"He cannot?"

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"How could he bless something that is objectively a horrible idea which will bring only misery?"

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"Because they are going to marry regardless, and his blessing now would prevent a great deal more misery by keeping his only daughter out of Angband. Surely that is worth more than pride."

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"He cannot give his blessing to a bad idea. It's not a matter of pride, it's - that's not what a blessing is."

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"Did he intend to give it if Beren somehow miraculously acquired a silmaril? Can he at least release Beren from that ridiculous task?"

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"That would prove Beren worthy of her after all."

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"And nothing less would suffice? He cannot possibly be worthy unless he personally breaks into Angband and steals a jewel from right under Morgoth's nose? His commitment to this task in the face of impossible odds is not enough? His deeds fighting against the Enemy in Dorthonion? These and his ability to win it are not enough for him to be worthy of her love?"

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"They are not."

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"Is there any deed he can attempt which would satisfy His Grace and not risk Lúthien's capture?"

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"Yes, he can avoid endangering her by not involving her."

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"He tried that, and if I recall correctly she left Doriath and was very lucky to find help at Nargothrond because otherwise she would have gone to Tol-In-Gaurhoth alone and been captured already.  She won't let him go without her, this is outside of his control."

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"That is proof he is not worthy of her."

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"That she loves him? Or that he doesn't think he can do a better job of imprisoning her for her own good than everyone else who's tried?"

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"That she feels the need to rescue him constantly, and that he endangers her by enabling this."

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Wow, this is frustrating.

"I see. I think we are unlikely to come to an agreement on how to save Lúthien from centuries of torture today. I will endeavor to delay their departure as long as I can, but he is human. I doubt I can give His Grace more than five years to reconsider his standards.

"If I have not strained His Grace' patience too much already, I would like his thoughts on the High King of the Noldor. I also wish to offer knowledge that will help in the defense of Doriath but I will not provide that without more direct negotiations."

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"That is a very conditional willingness to offer assistance. No."

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"Very well. I intend to give this same assistance to the Noldor unless His Grace wishes to caution against that."

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"He does, because they swear stupid oaths and rule over peoples who were previously free and throw their lives away to protect their own, and believe those who have seen the light of Valinor superior to those who did not, and the Enemy could get it from them."

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"What stupid oaths has Fingon sworn? I was under the impression that was only his cousins."

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"As far as we know they are purposefully ambiguous about it so everyone can benefit from the threat posture when convenient."

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"If I am to give this knowledge to someone, and will not give it to you, who would you have me choose?"

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"The Valar."

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"...Someone reachable."

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"They're reachable."

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"I will look into that. Anyone else? Dwarves? Other Sindar? Men?"

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"All more vulnerable to the Enemy than even the Noldor."

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"The Noldor it is then. They can use this to protect people, they can maybe use this to win the war. If they don't have it we're all dead anyway.

"If that is all, then I will depart. I hope that His Grace reconsiders his estimate of Beren's worth."

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"I hope that he does not get Lúthien tortured to death out of his incompetence."

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"That is an incredibly mild way to express feelings about one's daughter being tortured to death over the span of centures"

"I don't happen to hold his inability to steal from a god against him"

"At least he loves her"

"It would be a terrible shame if a combination of stubbornness and merely mortal competence were to get Lúthien tortured to death"

"Fuck you."

...

Malak is trying to be diplomatic and does not say any of those things.

"I will endeavor to prevent that as best I can."

So much for a productive visit to Doriath. They start hiking through Brethil just outside Doriath's headache-inducing-disorientation border.

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They are not disturbed.

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And eventually the Falls of the Sirion where they left Lúthien and Beren and the traumatized elves are in sight.

Hello?

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Hey!

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Hi! How have you been? How's Beren?

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Good! We got married.

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[Excitement, joy] Congratulations! I'm so happy for you! I've never known anyone who got a soul-bond and the elf version is probably different anyways, what's it like? Or. Sorry, that's probably really personal, isn't it.

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Little bit? Don't know. I can tell when he's in danger and I can always squeeze his hand if I want, no matter where he is - that's the feeling, it doesn't exactly work mechanically - and I think my songs do more, not sure.

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That sounds lovely. And useful. Do you just know you'll be able to tell or has he been in danger some time in the last few months?

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No, we've been safe, I just know.

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That's good. I talked with the Noldor high king, he is considering sending some troops here to make sure it stays that way. They seem trustworthy and I'm probably going to continue teaching them magic.

 

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Dishonest people usually seem honest.

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And yet. They are on the front lines against an Enemy that is objectively terrible. I've asked both groups of Noldor what they think of the others, I've asked your father, I'm planning to ask some of the humans under them if I can get to them in time. So far nobody has given me anything more concrete than "I don't like them" or "Once they got into a fight with some other elves and I kind of liked the other elves" or "They may or may not be treating their client states approximately as poorly as everyone always treats their client states". And that's not enough to justify keeping from them the tools they might need to win this war. Or at least to minimize the damages.

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If they can defeat Melkor it's worth it. But - the oath isn't just generic unlikeableness -

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And they are overly committed to enforcing their own property rights, which would be a big hangup in most situations I've encountered in my everyday life but really this is not one where it's worth worrying overmuch about. I'm not planning to teach them exclusively, just prioritizing them because of their greater need.

Worst case, the oath is solvable with seven murders and that makes it one of the most tractable problems on our plate.

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...okay.

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It's not a very elvish approach, I know. And it's not my first plan for dealing with the situation, but.

The war will probably be over in five years and we can give them their fucking rocks and the problem is solved.

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You really believe that?

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I think... well, your plan will probably work. And can be executed in that time. I suspect it will need support, and have no idea how wars generally go, but armies can probably be mobilized, etc. within five years? I'm less certain that giving the Fëanorians their rocks will be a complete solution to that problem but maybe people will be sensible for once and not try to steal them.

Speaking of, if Beren wants to learn magic, it will probably have to be a ritual with multiple casters and I think even your father would have to accept "Destroyed Melkor" as sufficient qualification to marry you...

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Ooooooh. I bet he'll want to learn magic, I'll ask.

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Beren unsurprisingly favors destroying Melkor.

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Well, don't, ah, spread that part around. The fewer people know it's on the table, the less chance the Enemy can hear and figure out a way to defend against it.

Also, you don't get to start with Melkor-destroying magic. Humans are basically blind at night (Well, all the time in comparison to elves and shapeshifters) here are some spells that make light. They're as adequate as anything for expanding your mana capacity and doesn't seem likely to involve serious injury if there's an accident. Once he's got that down, what does Beren want to focus on?

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Combat.

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That's... pretty broad. Lots of things have combat applications. He could learn to turn into a tiger or enchant his weapons or throw fireballs or teleport or create wards...? Or teleportation, that's useful.

...Actually, the fireballs are the closest to the other thing, so maybe we'll start there.

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Fireballs sound great.

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Eventually, Malak should probably leave and check in with the Noldor again.

Um. Beren is progressing well but probably won't keep doing so as fast on his own, and leaving a lot of written notes here seems really risky. It's not like they have to, but if he and Lúthien want to come along he could practice with the Noldor who are studying it. They don't have to, but it would be horribly irresponsible of Malak to pick anyone besides the most competent for the ritual, and they would like Beren to be among the most competent because that might solve the vaguely-personal vaguely-political mess that is Thingol's opinions on a suitable dowry.

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"And you're sure they won't just murder us because it's convenient?"

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"I'm sure. If you think I'm too trusting of them - well, it's not in their self-interest to murder you. Certainly not before the war is done. I kind of have leverage and have demonstrated a willingness to look after your interests."

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"Okay."

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And all these other traumatized elves - are they going to be... well, not OK, but as OK as they can be on their own?

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They actually seem pretty okay. Lots and lots and lots of singing.

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Well, if there's nothing Malak is equipped to provide them then they'll just get going then. Off to Nargothrond, this time with company.

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Nargothrond will tolerate the company if they promise not to suddenly attack everybody again.

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Well, just so long as they'll promise to let everyone lea - 

...OK, actually, they're going to drop this subject, they've been over it before and there's no point sniping at each other. Thauron fled back to Angband, no new evidence on how seriously he was injured and how much he was faking it. Malak has a better sense of what winning the war might look like and has some suggestions for research priorities.

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Those they'd be delighted to follow up on.

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So, because I am in fact kind of wary of your oath and don't entirely trust anyone on this plane yet and your actions are cursed to end horribly, I'm going to be handling most of the development for the god-killing spell myself. What I have thoughts for you on are auxiliary priorities. Divination is the big one - just in case Angband or Melkor's presence interfere with magic somehow, divination is the only really reliable way to test that at a distance. Also, solid divinations will be a huge help for targeting. Better teleportation will help logistics immensely, and is tactically useful. General research into targeting spells through divinations, because I don't think we want to have to get within line-of-sight to Melkor to destroy him. There are some spells in the Enhancement sphere, which can be worked into magic items or made permanent, which will boost some aspects of intelligence. Doesn't really speed up spell development much, but it can help with casting more powerful or complicated spells. I still cannot for the life of me get healing down myself, and yours is more sustainable, but I still think having both will help immensely.

...

Time and Fate are still super dangerous and hard to do any experimental research in but Fate might be worth it. I don't know if it's possible or how it would work but it seems like Fate might be able to do something about oaths or the Doom - it can break curses in general, but those are curses that run off a similar magic system and aren't laid by deities. Having all your efforts not fated to end in disaster seems like it might be a very worthwhile step to take. Or the Doom might cause your attempts to subvert it to end in tragedy. I could look into it myself but that would take a lot of time away from my other project.

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We'll look into it. As long as it's unrelated to the war effort the scope of potential disaster is limited.

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I'm not convinced of that, but I don't know enough of the relevant theory to have more than a vague sense of what a disaster might look like. Also, if you ever happen to have any brilliant ideas on how to capture an enemy Maia it will probably be worthwhile to have a test case for an ainu-killing spell.

"In the meantime, do you want to catch me up on your progress so far?"

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He'd be delighted to! Teleportation's going really well, here's what they have on that, they reconstructed another couple of the things from Malak's notes and got something slightly different than the described result in these three cases, any ideas why? And here's where they're at on planar shifting...

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Well, the first one is an Enhancement spell, best guess is that particular one interfaces weirdly with elven biology, unless...? no, some of the humans tested it too, and humans here seem like humans back home. This second one is a spell Malak had never actually cast themselves, that's probably just an imperfect description from imperfect memory. The third one might be behaving weirdly just because this is a different plane, if the connection to the plane of shadows is a little bit off that might mess up some Darkness spells like this...

Oh that's pretty good progress on plane shifting, well done! But. Oh, shit. Um, this was almost really bad, fortunately the elves haven't developed the mana capacities to actually plane shift successfully because this spell does not have precise enough targeting. For weird reasons that are probably mostly theological and not really things Malak studied, it's weirdly easy for spells to mix up Heaven and Hell and so while this was a good idea assuming the plan was to fetch some angelic help or start evacuating people it would probably have been a coin flip between Celestia and Baator. And it wouldn't even have been obvious, devils have some really nice looking parks and open spaces in Hell probably for exactly this reason because they are universally awful.

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"How do you know? That they're universally awful, I mean -"

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"I have fairly little firsthand experience with devils, ancestry aside. On my plane it is generally considered common knowledge. It's pretty well confirmed that many-if-not-all people become outsiders of some sort after they die, and the people who have been confirmed to have become devils are, by my standards at least, evil. Warlords, tyrants, scheming vice-chancellors, corrupt officials. There are no stories of devils ever showing kindness without later following it up with an - attempted at least - betrayal. There's speculation that Outsiders in general are not really capable of acting outside of their nature, and part of the nature of devils is cruelty and treachery. I may in fact be wrong but I think the chances of that are small enough that it's worth assuming that they are universally evil and untrustworthy."

"Admittedly, people have said many of the same things about Tieflings, though I think in part we're tarnished by association."

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"People like saying things like that about their enemies, in general. But I'll be cautious as if it's true, at least."

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"In general, this is a bad habit that many people have, yes. But I've seen human factions that hated each other and would say these things about each other come around to grudging acceptance in a generation and I don't think anyone has ever been of the opinion that devils and demons are basically alright. Not even in Bael Turath, where you'd expect it to happen if it did anywhere at all."

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He nods. "Is there a plan to handle them, or just - avoidance?"

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"People here are better coordinated than back home. In theory, I think Heaven is working on it, but Heaven and Hell have been at war for all of recorded history and I don't think there has ever been any meaningful progress for either side, so I'm inclined to think their definition of 'war' is also avoidance."

"The Abyss is worse and I don't think there's a plan for that at all. Attempts have been made but they've all failed to accomplish anything."

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"Well, one problem at a time."

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"What a refreshing attitude. Tackle the easy problems like Melkor and Alfirin first. When did I get to the point in my life where 'An evil god' is the easy problem?"

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"I've always found it at least a reassuringly straightforward one. He is horrible and should be eradicated and once he has been the problems caused by him will mostly cease. Few problems offer so much clarity."

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"We have overtly evil gods, too. In theory those are as tractable as Melkor - gather enough magic and they can be killed - but in practice getting that much power without being noticed and stopped is difficult. It seems like Maia - and hopefully Melkor, too - can't directly affect my kind of magic, so our odds are good that he won't be able to figure out countermeasures in time. I'm used to problems that are easy in that the solution is obvious and hard in that the obvious solution can't be implemented."

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"If he noticed us he would be displaying capabilities he hasn't yet demonstrated, at least."

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"Do you mean that in that he'd be displaying the capability to notice what we're up to, or in that you think he's holding something in reserve that he would be deploying?"

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"I don't think he has intelligence sources that'd let him have noticed this. I am certain he's holding things in reserve."

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"Sauron - Thauron? - made it back to Angband. So Melkor at the very least knows that I exist. I don't know how much more they might be able to infer from that. If we assume that they're at least as smart as Alfirin then it would not be safe to bet on the continued secrecy of our projects."

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"If I were Melkor and knew nothing but that you existed and fought Thauron as described I'd try very hard to kill you."

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"If I were Alfirin and knew nothing but that - well, assuming my fighting style and magic were foreign to her - I would try very hard to coopt me. I think. I think it's reasonably likely that she would try to get as much information as possible before trying anything, or she might go for the 'shoot first, interrogate the corpse' approach. I don't know, predicting her is hard."

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"Melkor wins by default. I'm sure he'd like to have your magic but I don't think he'd gamble that, and he'd assume that once you're gone anyone you'd taught would be easier to gather. Does your magic system make it possible to interrogate corpses meaningfully?"

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"Yes. Necromancers can get corpses to answer factual questions about things the body would know - they can't answer questions about their former occupant's motives, or make any inferences - but they can recount events and stuff and a clever necromancer can get anything they need from that. Some criminal organizations are known to break the jaws or remove the tongues of their members not to keep their silence in life, but afterwards."

"So, how much of that reasoning is your model of Melkor, vs. what you would do in his circumstances with his resources? What conclusions should we be drawing from the fact that we've as of yet seen no serious efforts of his to kill me? Is he not approaching this the way you would, or is it likely that there are attempts in progress on my life that we've yet seen no sign of?"

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"He's a Vala, he's slow. I think it's likely that if he made plans to kill you he wouldn't have put them into place yet. He tolerated a four hundred year siege apparently just because he hadn't gotten around to crushing it yet."

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"...So exactly how short am I expected to cut the 'gathering evidence that might prove this is a simulation' in order to act before Melkor gets around to killing me?"

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"We discussed timelines last time, right? I think we have a few years."

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"Yeah, I was just concerned things were going to accelerate suddenly. If a few years is still the timeline I'm not worried."

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"I have no new information relevant to the timeline."

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Smile.

"Sorry. I'm a bit twitchy around, um, plot twists. And I probably haven't been sleeping enough, I'm used to using a spell to skip sleep but I forgot it to make space for other spells."

"You asked about necromancers speaking to the dead, did you have an idea or was that just curiosity?"

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"It would be valuable to consult my father on technical points but it doesn't sound like you can do that."

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"Ah. Yes, that would be useful. But unless you've kept his body awfully well-preseved over the last few centuries...

"Well, actually, from the sounds of it he's the sort who might be a ghost. If elves can even become ghosts. But, local metaphysics is different enough that I wouldn't naively expect that's possible..."

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"We go to Mandos, typically."

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"And atypically?"

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"We can choose to instead just wander but then you're at risk of the Enemy getting a hold of your soul."

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Bilnk.

"...choose? That's different. But not helpful unless you think your Father was likely to take that option. If he did and Melkor didn't get him yet, we probably could. Beats me how, but that's definitely the sort of thing necromancy should be able to do and judging by all this - " they wave their hand at the stack of notes " - I don't doubt your ability to figure it out."

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"I don't know what he'd have done. I suppose we'll look into it just in case."

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"Do you expect the chances that he stayed are good enough that it's worth diverting the resources from other research?"

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"He would have if the possibility occurred to him and he was very very intelligent. And it'll be useful if other people die in future, too."

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"A fair point. And it might even be able to do resurrections, for you. I think usually the hardest part is getting the soul back from wherever it's gone, but if people can be told to stick around..."

"There is the slight problem that I don't know the second thing about Necromancy. And, also, I have never known a non-evil necromancer and that is a little bit worrying."

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"Have you known very many non-evil people."

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"I've known a few good people and a lot of boring ones. I've only had even a passing acquaintance with three dedicated necromancers in my life. Nerikross imprisoned my sister for twenty years hoping to use her as leverage, probably-but-not-provably murdered his way to power, and thought that plagues were a wonderful way to fight a war. Yi Min liked eating people alive. Alfirin is Alfirin."

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"Huh. Okay. We could have people working on it swear to not do harmful things."

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"Yeah that is probably a good precaution. I'm not sure the link is 'necromancy makes you evil' and not 'evil people are more willing to meddle with corpses and undead' or 'non-evil necromancers tend to keep really quiet about being necromancers' but playing it safe really seems like the right way to go here. It's not like we're talking 'tortures squirrels' levels of evil here.

"I should probably get some sleep, I'll see you tomorrow and we'll see if we can get to the bottom of that Enhancement spell behaving weirdly. Let me know when you've got volunteers lined up for learning necromancy and I'll teach them what little I have."

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"I will get them lined up as swiftly as is feasible."

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And the next morning

"Hi. I have a new research priority for you."

Antimagic. It's mostly going to be in the Protection sphere, I think. It probably won't do anything against Maia or Melkor, but...If we want Melkor dead instead of just down one physical form, that's necromancy. And I'd been putting that off and not really thinking about the implications of it until but I can't really avoid it any longer. So you should develop some good antimagic wards. And any sort of offensive antimagic, if you can figure that out.

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All right. What do you know?

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There's a personal ward that blocks hostile magic, but it can be tricked into thinking a spell is non-hostile, success rate depends a lot on the relative skill of the casters - there are usually other ways to slip a spell through a ward like that, also generally dependent on the skills of the casters. Generally you have a bit better than even success rate blocking spells from someone at your own skill level. I've used it before, - they send the words and gestures -, If you remove the exceptions for friendly magic the success rate goes up a lot but it can interfere with other active spells. There's also antimagic fields that shut down all spellcasting in an area - suppress ongoing spells, too - usually not very large, not very long-lasting. I've seen them after they were cast but I have no idea what the spell itself looks like. They can be made more permanent.

Divinations like True Seeing will usually see through invisibility, but there are ways around that - I had a ring that did it before I came here - and while I don't know them now you should expect that if I turn evil I will probably research them.

That's it for general things I know of, but a lot of Spheres can counter themselves - Warp can block teleportation, for example. I think necromancy is one of those spheres, but conditional on necromancy turning me evil you probably shouldn't be very trusting of any of your researchers who claim to have figured out such a ward.

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Why do you want to study it personally, if you can't swear things to protect yourself -

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It needs to be powerful enough to kill Melkor and I'm significantly more powerful than any of you right now, in part for reasons that I don't want to share with Alfirin or Nerikross, and waiting until you are at that point would take decades at best. At least a decade to teach you the things I don't want to share, much longer if I don't.

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Sigh. Can other people study it and you just employ it, or does that not work -

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I need to know enough to cast the spell. Other people could do most of the development, I guess, and I could study what I need to when they've got the parts they can do figured out. That minimizes the risk, at least.

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Let's do that. Sigh. But it means it should be a priority. All right. 

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Yeah, I'm not liking it either, but better to handle it now just in case than scramble to put something together five years from now when you suddenly discover you need it. I trust you will not keep me appraised of your progress on this.

"So, shall we see if we can figure out why that Enhancement is behaving weirdly? I have a couple theories but it might be good to see some of your people casting it and get some observations firsthand..."

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And they can fill the rest of the meeting with that while he quietly assigns people to the more important work.

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Once there are people sworn into safety, Malak can explain to them what they know of necromancy - It's not very much and most of it is in the form of "Some necromancers can trap people's souls and put them in swords, I don't know how." rather than "and this is how you raise a zombie".

After a few days they'll check in with Lúthien and Beren.

Hey. How are you guys settling in, here?

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Good! What are you running around doing?

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Mostly helping Curufin with magic. Trying to figure out how to win the war as safely as possible.

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Getting anywhere?

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...Kind of. I think there's a way and it's probably safe but it uses a kind of magic whose notable users are people like Alfirin and Nerikross. We're concerned that studying it to use it might turn people evil.

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Oh. And it's the only way?

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It's our most promising lead. There are a lot of avenues for helping us fight the war better but very few for actually winning it. No matter how well we can handle hordes of orcs, or dragons, or whatever he comes up with next we still need to deal with Melkor himself.

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My mother could maybe help but I don't know if she would.

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I don't suppose it's possible to open negotiations with her without your father involved?

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Not really. She'd tell him - I'm not sure she could keep something from him -

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Yeah, I didn't think she would, but... If there's a way to set it up so that he's not directly involved? I agree that it would be good to have her help, but I don't see us getting it if we're negotiating through Thingol.

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He's more reasonable sometimes.

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Hasn't he been pretty consistently opposed to taking a more active part in the war? I am sure he is reasonable sometimes, I just doubt he'll come around on this topic in a useful timescale.

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At the very beginning he was more active but then a lot of our people died, some close friends of his, and he got more defensive about it.

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That explains his stance. It doesn't really make it any less inconvenient, though. Do you think that he's persuadable enough, or that Melian is willing enough to go against his advice, for talking to them to be a good way to spend my time? The alternative being helping the Noldor study magic and advising on the war.

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Sigh. That's probably better.

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It may be that I don't have that much to do - Curufin and his people are really talented - they're not particularly powerful spellcasters but they're doing a really good job of deriving the theory and that pretty much covers the teachable part - if the Noldor in Barad Eithel are as competent then my instruction will probably be obsolete after not too long. So if war-advising isn't constantly needed I might have time, or it might make more sense to go teach other populations magic. If I do go to try to talk to Doriath more, do you have any advice on how to get through to them?

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The thing my parents care about is that Doriath is safe and peaceful. That's it.

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I got the impression that they care about you, even if Thingol's prioritization of your happiness vs. suitability of your marriage seemed a bit out of whack. Does "We have a plausible shot at winning the war which will keep Doriath safe forever" sound like a convincing line of argument?

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Yeah, probably. And the marriage thing is that once Beren dies I'll be unhappy forever.

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...Oh, right. You get a nice cushy afterlife with all your memories. That does make "will be sad after he dies" a bigger concern than "will probably get killed trying to help him fulfill this stupid quest you've given him and refuse to retract" Unfortunately, I don't think my magic unlocks any routes to immortality that aren't ethically dubious.

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I think Eru means for Men to be mortal. Don't know why.

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There'd better be some good reason for it. Maybe they have a nice cushy afterlife that's just inaccessible.

...I don't suppose he - Thingol, not Eru - would accept "Well, too late, they're already married,  you should probably focus on doing things that will make 'Beren dies' a little less immediate than when he runs off to fetch that war-provoking rock you wanted?" Uh. More diplomatically than that.

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Might help. Definitely more diplomatically.

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"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, your daughter seems to have gotten married... yes, I agree, it seems like something of a rash decision, marrying a human soldier in the middle of a war... well, at least he's far from the front lines while he recovers from his recent ordeal...?"

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Maybe said from a great distance, just in case.

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There's a saying, back home, about stabbing messengers. Specifically, how you're not supposed to do it. I am guessing this saying is not particularly common here. I doubt they'd let me close enough that I'd have to worry, anyways.

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I've never heard that one, no.

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I guess if you didn't really have war before Melkor it might not have come up. It's to make it less costly for opposite sides in a fight to communicate with each other, maybe resolve things peacefully.

At this point they're at Lúthien and Beren's door. Telepathy is weird and they're not entirely used to having been conversing for so long before actually meeting up. They knock.

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Door opens. "Hi!"

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"Hi!" hug!

Does Beren want a hug? Beren probably does not want a hug, Beren does not seem the huggy type and Malak is not Lúthien. They will make a vaguely hug-offering gesture anyways.

"Do you want to take a walk? It's so pretty here and they seem to have stopped with the armed escort thing - or maybe they're just being really discreet - either way, they aren't making faces whenever I try to go anywhere. Though I guess I should probably..."

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"That looks so cool."

(Beren declines a hug).

 

"Yeah, let's go for a walk."

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They haven't managed to figure out how to make their hair come out braided, so instead they briefly cover their head in shadow so as not to offend while they do it manually.

Is Beren joining them on the walk?

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He is!!

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Then Malak will ask how his studies are coming, if he's had any trouble adjusting to working in a group or with the elves, etc.

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He doesn't especially care to be around people who aren't Lúthien but he mostly hasn't needed to.

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They can help him learn magic faster, which is kind of important. If Lúthien wanted to study magic they could do that together?

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Sure!

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Oh, good. It will be interesting to see if being half-maia affects Lúthien's ability to do magic at all, this really is the sort of thing they should have thought of sooner. They are a little embarrassed about forgetting to offer to teach her earlier.