He is reading in his cage. 

Then he is - eaten by something? - and then he is in a beautiful valley with obviously-Quendi architecture - nowhere he recognizes, but it must be somewhere in Valinor, which means - 

He tries to stand up. He cannot do that.

He tries to turn around. He cannot do that either.

He shifts his weight badly and ends up falling to the floor, not paralyzed but not able to take any volitional actions about this situation. 

"Really?" he says out loud.

Ow ow ow fucking ow she is now soulglued to two people and they are both far away ow ow ow where is she. It's... pretty, she guesses.

He twists around on the ground to look at her. 

"...uh," he says in Valdemaran because she's human and she's approximately the right ethnicity, "do you have any idea where we are."

"No. Who are you?"

"My name is Russandol. You?"

"Belrun. There was some kind of monster thing and it... ate me?

- are you injured, I'm a Healer -"

" - oh, no, I don't think so. I don't know for sure but I suspect that I am under some compulsions which, in the event that I manage to escape, prevent me from doing anything until I am collected or, I guess, starve. I wasn't told about them but I was told there might be some I hadn't been informed of, and it seems like the kind of thing he'd do, and I can't move, so."

"The kind of thing who'd do?"

"My husband. It's - kind of a long story." Sigh. "I was also eaten by a monster. ...are you up for moving us, if he does find me he's going to kill me."

"I can carry you with Fetching helping but I can't do it especially far. I should possibly first go see if there's anyone in the pretty buildings?"

" - they are probably going to alert people who will return me to my husband? I guess you could get them and not tell them about me?"

"I mean, I don't know where else we'd go, I have no idea where this is. You know where it is?"

"I do not recognize it in the specific but we have to be in Valinor, the place I'm from, humans don't build like this. No offense."

"You're not a -? Okay. And they're going to summon your abusive husband and... ugh. You speak Valdemaran, where is this in relation to Valdemar -"

"- it's in another world. I haven't heard of people getting between them without an interworld Gate or direct divine intervention."

"...wow. I'm at all skeptical of that part but I suppose less so than I would be if I hadn't just been eaten by a snake monster. Okay, so, where are we relative to where you want to be?"

" - looks like maybe the compulsions also affect forming... intentions about escape, ideas about where to go or what to do ... there's probably a way to think around it but it might be very sideways, he's really good at this -

- I'm going to list places I know. Tirion. If I am there, I'll be discovered and turned over. Vinyamar. if I am there I'll be discovered and turned over. Valimar, same. Alqualondë, same. Some small village in Valinor where maybe they haven't heard all the news, I don't know, maybe safe for a little while, but he's got to be looking for me. Haven. There are people there who can help me. Iftel - people there who can help me. Karse, people there who can help me - Pelagirs, recaptured, north of Valdemar, that's where my husband is -" 

"I'd love to get to Haven, that's where I was. North of Valdemar would be fine for me too. Rather avoid Iftel and Karse and the Pelagirs all else being equal but apparently all these places have a step of getting to the right world. Why exactly are so many people invested in your husband having you...?"

"You were in Haven?" Bewildered. "Uh, they're on the other side of the war, that's why they'd hand me over - I assumed you had managed somehow to be somewhere where you hadn't heard about the war, based on how you're discussing it, but there's no way to be in Haven and not have heard about the war -"

"...Valdemar isn't at war. I was there as an amateur diplomat trying to keep it that way."

"All right, I'm going to back up and also retreat to territory I have less reason to think I'm impaired at reasoning about. In 807, a mage from Velgarth made contact with my world. My world was at the early subtle stages of a war among its gods; the mage who first made interworld contact summoned Herald-Mage Vanyel to help him; six years later the war spilled over into Velgarth, and Haven was mostly destroyed in the incursion of the gods from my world and the attempted defense. It's been a year since that. To my knowledge two different Adept mages have done a Final Strike in the middle of Haven for different reasons so there is no possible way you would have missed this."

"I saw Vanyel earlier this afternoon. Also it's, uh, 803 in the Valdemaran calendar."

"- wow. Okay. I don't know what to make of that.  Uh, the war is very bad, you should try to avert it if you possibly can, things will go poorly in Arda without Velgarth's help but that might be worth it because the gods of Arda resurrect their loyal followers and the gods in Velgarth, uh, don't, and most of the dead in the Arda war are the loyal followers of one god or another. 

If it is - equivalently years before interworld contact here - then I don't think these people are at war with mine, yet, and they won't turn me over. It's probably worth checking."

"But they won't speak the language, if they haven't had contact before."

"In general members of my species have something similar to Mindspeech. I personally do not right now because my husband mostly keeps it disabled when he's not with me, but all of them will. It works all right across a language barrier."

"- does it still respect shields?"

"It's even more respectful than that, it only catches things you're deliberately sending. Which means they won't be shielding, they'll just be - categorizing thoughts as private or public, it's possible for Thoughtsensers to learn to interact with in a privacy-respecting way but it takes a bit of time to get the knack for it. But they won't get anything off you."

"Okay. So I go find out what year they think it is and where we are and whether they for some reason have agreed to send you home to your abusive husband if they ever catch you?"

"Opposite sides of the war. I killed twelve people. I was attempting to kill some different people than the people I killed, who were important military targets in the war, but they escaped, and the people killed were innocent civilians. I would have been executed, but the man who is now my husband wanted me. I - didn't want to die."

"Who is now your - eegh."

"The situation does not really reflect his best qualities and I'd feel better about it if I'd had the option of suicide at the time of the marriage but I do now and I haven't taken it, so -

- we should just avert the war. Wars are very bad."

"Agreed. Is it, like, about something - I can't rule out that someone will notice you while I'm talking to the locals even if I don't tell them, I'd like to know whatever I most need to know before that has a chance to happen -"

"Yes, I agree. Uh, the war in Valinor was between the god who made one species of sapients, called orcs, and the gods who made and protect my species, called Quendi, the god who made the orcs started a war of conquest and the gods who made my species want to eradicate orcs, there were not really any good guys. My country - I used to be a prince of a country here - was on the side of our gods. I split with them. It was complicated. When the war spilled over into Velgarth Iftel and Karse and what remained of Valdemar ended up allied against the Quendi nations and their gods, and some other groups - the Star-Eyed and her servant peoples, my husband's faction - ended up allied with the Quendi nations.

I don't know how long I've been a prisoner - they do Mindhealing so I can't consolidate memories, when my husband wants to see me, or when they want to interrogate me, or maybe for other things as well I wouldn't know - though I think it's been less than a year and I doubt the overall contours of the situation have changed very much. If people here have heard about it they probably heard about the thing where I killed twelve innocent people and was disowned by the King my father and exiled from the world for twelve thousand years."

"Mindhealing so you - aaaaugh okay I'm going to write down the facts of the situation right now as we currently understand them for you -" She gets out her notebook and does that, then tears out the page for him.

"I don't think that's in effect right now! At first they did it all the time but I had a breakdown about it and they backed off to only when they want something from me. The things in effect right now that I know of are the block on my osanwë - our Mindspeech - and a block on spatial reasoning so I can't navigate or draw pictures of buildings or consistently remember left from right, and compulsions against planning or contemplating escape or attacking or harming anybody, and the failsafes to those which apparently include shutting down if I observe myself to have, somehow, escaped. There might be things I wasn't told about but I expect that at this moment I have the ability to consolidate memory normally."

"Okay, but you have contingencies you didn't know about, there could be more, or the Mindhealer could just have fucked up because they were working on an alien without patient cooperation, so." Paper.

"Thank you."

He writes. 

"You haven't told me much about yourself."

"I'm complicated. What do you want to know?"

"Uh, how did you end up being an amateur diplomat, who are you diplomacizing between? How do you know Vanyel?"

"Uh, my lifebonded wants to take over Valdemar for reasons but Valdemar got spooked ahead of schedule, through Vanyel actually because he has this shared dream situation with my lifebonded and I can sneak into it if I'm close enough to one of them while we're all asleep, and everything was looking to escalate unpleasantly and ideally there'd be a non-invasion way to deal with the reasons - the reasons are secret, sorry - so I went as a costly signal of good faith to talk to them? And also jailbreak some Companions from the divine mind control, that turns out not to be as hard as it sounds. And it actually went really well but now I'm in a separate universe from Leareth - that's my lifebonded - and Amshalan - she's my Companion, I got one to make Heralds pay attention to me because they're pretty bad at paying attention to people who don't have Companions. Which hurts a lot but I'm trying to ignore it."

" - huh. I'm sorry. Quendi marriage bonds are a little like lifebonds but they're more convenient, they don't - hurt like that just from distance."

"Sounds like an improvement." Sigh. "Anything else we should cover before I meet the locals?"

"I don't think - oh, the locals will also if they haven't heard of anything else about the situation be upset about the 'husband' thing because that's illegal here, two men marrying."

"Like 'pelt you with rocks' upset or -"

"It depends where exactly this village is."

"Okay. What's his name, then, if I have to refer to him without mentioning he's your husband?"

"Telumë. Though any Quendi who looks at me will know that I'm married, we can see each other's marriage bonds. I guess we could let them imagine I am unrelatedly married to a nice girl I met six hundred years ago who is on a sabbatical in the north." 

"Okay. - how far north?"

"She went all the way to the northern ice to measure some things about gravity. She's a mathematician. - it is probably better not to lie if you can possibly avoid it, you can mention Vanyel or something and see how rock-throwing they seem, if they just make horrible faces it'll be fine."

"No I mean in real life, you said your husband was north of Valdemar, are we talking the belt of subsistence farmers not technically within Valdemar's borders south of the mountain range, or like, in and around and north of the mountain range -"

"Northern mountain range. I actually think - I am not sure and it seems like a very provocative thing to say when unsure, but your - lifebonded - in my world Leareth died in the war, and, uh, he sends pieces of him back but not the whole thing, not exactly - Telumë is a later incarnation."

"Gosh. And there isn't a me running around?"

"No. Not a hole in him either so - 

- I am mostly extremely confused."

Belrun considers this for a while.

At length she says, "I don't know why - this event where we are talking to each other here - but -

- I'm now kind of wondering if gods' Foresight involves spinning up conscious instances and seeing what they do. Or, uh, what - we do."

" - wow. 

You know, that makes sense! And also I hate it! And am now significantly more sympathetic to Telumë's war with them - wow -" 

He suddenly scowls anxiously over her shoulder. There are some people descending towards them, with swords and not entirely pleased-looking expressions.

"I know, right - uh how worried should I be about the swords there -"

"If this is Valinor they shouldn't really know how to use them, the gods are mostly really strict about violence in Valinor, but if we're in some ridiculous corner of probability-space related to some collision of attempts by the gods to do things about Leareth or Telumë then I have much worse predictions!"

:Hello?: she attempts at the sword-wielding aliens.

Hello. What are you doing here?

:I don't know and neither does he, we were both very confusingly and in separate places and times eaten by a monster and it landed us here and we're trying to figure out what's going on:

I see. Is he injured? 

:He says not, he's lying there like that because he has had mind magic done to him:

Do you know why he won't speak to me?

:He told me his osanwë is disabled. He can talk aloud if you share a language:

He draws closer. 

He is looking at Russandol like he - knows him quite well - he is maybe crying -

- he tries to flop over into something that's more of a sitting position. "I apologize for appearing here unexpectedly," he says in Quenya. "May I ask where we are?"

" - Imladris. You -" He looks at Russandol's hands, for some reason.

...can he lift them in a gesture of surrender? Apparently he can! "That's...Sindarin?" he says cautiously. "I don't know the place."

"You died before it was built.

Do you remember me."

" - no. I'm very sorry."

"Do you remember anything."

"I have no reason to think there were any gaps in my memory up to the Year of the Trees 1490? I guess we speculated lots of people might have gaps, from Melkor's works. It has been seven years of the Sun since then and I am pretty persuadable that I don't remember many features of them. - I don't think I died at any point."

"It has been five thousand, four hundred years since then."

"Can we maybe go - inside or something - and figure out some conversational protocol that loops in Belrun, we're being rude - how do I know you -"

"That's a very long story. You may come in to Imladris, if you'll swear to your peaceful intentions."

"I cannot take actions that might harm anyone. I'm - reluctant to swear things on top of that, especially if I'm missing memory -"

" - that's fair. But I need to - talk to some people. It is a lot to ask of them, having you here."

" - okay. Take as long as you need."

 - sorry, he says to Belrun. I need to discuss with my people whether we are able and willing to take him in. Do you want to stay here with him or come back to the city with us? We will leave him company, if you'd rather return with us.

:Uh, I'll come in with you: She stands up and walks over, picking her way carefully along the forest floor, at one point slipping and Fetching herself back up to a standing position.

He tells some people to stay with Maedhros. 

He turns his back on him, with some apparent effort, and heads back up the beautiful river valley.

Welcome to Imladris, he says. I'm sorry the circumstances of your arrival were so confusing.

:As far as I know that wasn't your fault. Do you know him? He wasn't sure exactly where we'd landed so we didn't know whether to expect him to be recognized:

About five thousand years ago, an army he was leading sacked the refugee camp where I and my twin brother lived. We were six. They were after a powerful magical object of theirs, which my parents had stolen and which might have turned the course - though by then it might have been too late anyway - of their war against an evil god.

They killed a lot of people. They didn't kill us. They took us back with them. They, uh, raised us. And when the war with the evil god was over he committed suicide. 

Our god of the dead usually returns those we lose in accidents or violence, once they're ready. He had been - damaged very profoundly by the war - enough so that I can actually imagine that the best way to send him back was with no recollection of any of it, which is what he says he has. I am - very confused - by dropping him in the world without telling him what happened, though, because he is the most notorious mass murderer and war criminal in our history and it would be - atrocious, to send him back with no knowledge of what - 

- are you familiar with the differences between humans and Elves -

:I'd never met an Elf before just now. Uh, it may be relevant that he and I both know of my world, Velgarth, but we know different versions of it - we remember some of the same people but it's different years and different historical events have taken place. My current best guess is that we are somehow from a simulation a god is running to see what will happen in the future and that in reality it's an earlier year still, but I don't know where you come in there:

Do the gods where you're from do that kind of thing? Our evil god was capable of it but he's dead and the good ones wouldn't.

:Uh, they do a lot of Foresight. I did not previously think this involved simulating people but Russandol and I are apparently from very different versions of the same world. I think mine is nicer:

He nods.

One of the differences between Elves and humans is that Elves can swear magically binding oaths about our future behavior. Maedhros - did, about the magic jewelry, in about the time period that is the last thing he remembers. I think that maybe Mandos made him forget, and that while he's forgotten the oath cannot affect him. That makes me reluctant to explain to him what he did, in case that - reactivates it, somehow. But he's very smart and it's hard to keep things from him. I don't really know what to do, there. 

I have never heard of other worlds and don't have a guess about how that fits in to everything.

:Wow. I wonder why he's under compulsions at all instead of one of those - maybe specifically because of the thing where they don't work if you forget, I guess -:

I don't know what a compulsion is.

:Magic thing from my world. People can have Gifts - most people have none, some people have one or a few, and one in particular is called mage-gift, and it can do magical compulsions to do... whatever. I don't have mage-gift so I don't know a lot of details but I think it works even if forgotten. He also mentioned he'd been modified by a Mindhealer - they're called that, but can actually do an extremely wide variety of mental modification that doesn't have to be geared toward a constructive purpose at all:

There aren't any Silmarils anywhere anyone knows about and he was - wherever he could, wherever the oath let him be - a good man. But - I don't know that that's unnecessary. I'd need to understand a lot more about what is going on.

:I definitely do not understand a lot about what's going on, but I can corroborate about features of my world if not the last few years of history insofar as that's useful to you getting information from him:

Sure. We can at least try to reconstruct everybody's timelines and identify divergences and so on. 

- do you happen to know who he is married to. 

:I didn't recognize the name he gave me:

- uh, sure, but I might.

aaaah she doesn't know if Elf names are gendered :Telumë:

Huh. Maedhros never married. Does he know where she is -

:North of Valdemar, he said - Valdemar is the country I was born in, and was in earlier today, but I have actually lived elsewhere most of my life:

I do not think we have the resources here to go hopping between worlds but there are some people I can ask.

:My lifebonded might find me eventually. Uh, I don't know if you have lifebonds, Russandol said Elf marriage bonds are different, lifebonds are a thing we have where you meet somebody and are reasonlessly drawn to them and if you accumulate enough total exposure to them it's irreversible and being far apart hurts and they're very appealing in general and stuff, gods do them for god reasons:

We don't have that! It sounds ...bad. Are you all right?

:I'm fine, but it's a reasonable question. I also have a Companion, who is a magic horse person who is also glued to my soul but slightly less so and it was more under her control and she was able to wait till I asked, which I would not normally have done but was kind of wedged about. She saw what happened and can presumably tell people such as my lifebonded, though she'd take some time to get to him:

All right. I'll let people know to maybe expect them, at least. They're in ...the same place as Maedhros's wife? Or the same part of the world but in different eras? I'm sorry, there's a lot to track, here...

:My world is a few years earlier than his version. My Companion and I were in Valdemar's capital city Haven at the time I was eaten by a monster; my lifebonded lives north of Valdemar, which is not a formal political unit:

All right. Sigh. 

Everyone I've spoken to is all right with it if we bring Maedhros in here. But we want to avoid discussing the events of our world with him. Can you be careful not to mention it?

:The whole war with the evil god? Yeah:

Just for now. Probably at some point we will come up with a better plan. I'm assuming that the people he was with had some kind of one. 

:Maybe, but they were keeping him prisoner so I doubt he knows a lot of detail:

They were keeping him prisoner?

:Yeah. There was a war in his version that is not happening, at least not yet, in mine - my Velgarth hasn't had contact with Arda - anyway the other side of the war grabbed him and that's whence all the mind magic:

I would really like to speak to his wife because I assume that she has all of the context on under what conditions the Valar saw fit to restore him to life and whether there's information he shouldn't have or a plan to introduce him to it gradually -

- but also I am pretty concerned? If he doesn't remember anything about the last five hundred years of his life, and they involved fighting a doomed war against an evil god and being tortured for decades and losing everyone he loved and then eventually losing himself to his terrible oath and committing lots of crimes - and the decision that has been made is to keep all of that from him for the time being -

- then he is in no state to get married!

:- I brought up the alternate versions of the world thing because it seems plausible to me that this world also has alternate versions, if mine does:

Oh. Maybe. 

We should talk with him and try to figure that out, I guess.

:Yeah, I think so:

So he has Maedhros, or maybe just Nelyafinwë Maitimo, the man who'd been dead a long time by the time Elrond met him, set up comfortably in a room in the houses of healing of Imladris, and gets a lot of paper for taking notes, and then they can go in there to compare them. 

"I am pretty confident that Leareth found his way to Arda by accident while doing magic research in 807. He is a secretive person but I think if he'd found his way over years or lifetimes before that there'd have been some things that went differently. His intervention precipitated the war, in some ways, but I don't think that was his fault, the gods saw a new piece on the playing field and sprung any plans they had in wait that they didn't want ruined. Melkor attacked Valinor and killed one person, my grandfather. My kingdom retaliated and killed - gods, tens of thousands of orcs. Leareth was on the side of my kingdom. I hadn't defected yet but my father and I were fighting constantly."

"In my world it's 803 in Valdemar, Leareth and I were lifebonded earlier this year when he was on a business trip to Petras in neighboring country Rethwellan, and there has been no contact with Arda except for my appearance here today. I was working on preventing Leareth from going to war with Valdemar and I think I got that mostly sewn up before disappearing, fortunately."

"I don't know all that much about the political situation back home at that point but Leareth felt the discovery there were other worlds obviated his original plans, and when he asked Vanyel to come help kill Melkor Vanyel agreed, so they must not have actively been at war.

Melkor captured Leareth, turned him to his side - through lots of iterations of attempted persuasion, I think, he can modify memories and other features of minds. Leareth did some work for him - only little bits that we saw, he Gated orcs into Valinor so the Valar panicked and banned Gating, which made it much harder for the Noldor to fight the war - I don't think they were uncomplicatedly allied and there was probably a lot of torture and mind-control involved -"

"I'm sorry.

Vanyel figured out a way to destroy Angband using - um, I'm sorry, using very powerful magic that I think Vanyel made the deliberate decision not to let Leareth know he had, just in case, so I probably shouldn't tell you -"

"...okay..."

"Leareth died when the war spilled over into Velgarth - this was in 813 - came back as Telumë, which is Quenya for the same thing - night sky - but for about a year we hadn't heard from him. Once Melkor was dead, the war turned into an excuse for everyone who'd ever wanted a war to have it. My father wanted to build Leareth's god, with or without him, faster than he'd originally planned, kill the peoples of Arda to do it.

I left the Noldor. It had been - while we were fighting Melkor it didn't really matter what I thought of my father or what I thought of all our allies or our end goals because obviously it was better than Melkor, but then he was dead and the war wasn't over and - I left. Went to Haven. There was war between Iftel and Leareth's people in the north, between Valdemar and the Star-Eyed's people - and by this point Valdemar and Karse and Iftel were all allied, I don't know if that's true in your timeline - I spent most of my time trying to stabilize the relationship between Rethwellan and Valdemar, the Queen in Rethwellan was assassinated and they looked likely to join the whole mess from some angle - they didn't, they're still at peace as far as I know -

- and Telumë and his allies made a plan to get me back. They - succeeded. I hadn't expected that to be possible. Kidnapped me right out of Haven and had one of the Star-Eyed's mages step through the Gate they dropped me through and do a Final Strike in the middle of the city so no one would know what exactly had happened. I woke up in Telumë's custody. That was about six months ago."

"The plan to build a god matches... uh, Elrond, the killing people is a power source thing, way more people are projected to die if nothing of comparable scope is achieved to deal with the next magical disaster expected in a couple centuries but I acknowledge it is very horrible... Valdemar has an alliance on paper with both of Iftel and Karse at this time since they won their war with Karse and endorsed a claimant to its throne instead... I am bewildered to hear he had an alliance with the Star-Eyed, she's historically been very hostile to him even for a god."

"I was confused by it too. She's having some kind of dispute with Vkandis but that's probably only one piece of the story. There was fighting in Lineas, which she was very upset about because there's a Heartstone there that's holding some kind of horrific magical fault line closed."

" - can we backtrack a little bit, is Telumë a man or a woman."

"....I mean.... in an important sense kind of neither, Telumë is the latest incarnation of a thousands-of-years-old mage spirit that takes new bodies when it dies."

"And you're - married?"

"We were not at that point married."

"Why did he want to capture you, anyway -"

"Well, Valdemar and Iftel and Karse were at war with his people. I didn't have any kind of formal position of power, and as I said my primary focus was relations with Rethwellan, but a lot of people listened to me, and I'd known Leareth and how he operated, and I helped them tried to find him. Reasoning backwards from - what would he be able to derive as soon as he woke up - cracked his system of supply caches - I don't actually know if this is what had them motivated to capture me or if it was mostly my father, who was furious. Or for that matter if they had a different primary target and I was a bonus, though I don't think they successfully got anyone else out. Or if it was just about war intelligence - Quendi - can pay more attention to things than humans, I can do the thing the Groveborn does a little bit - I knew a lot about the state of Valdemar's defenses and alliances."

"I mean as opposed to killing you."

"I think they spent several weeks interrogating me after I was captured. But I think this based on the growth of the hair of one of the humans who was guarding me, so I'm not the most reliable source here."

"Ah."

"I don't think it was all about -"

He looks at Elrond, looks back at Belrun, unhappily. "- I guess this is probably relevant too. While I was in custody Telumë married me. I don't remember any of our other interactions but I remember bits and pieces of that one, because after it happened I begged them to let me remember it so I wouldn't wake up to it every day and they agreed. I do not think that Telumë meant to marry me. It caused some diplomatic tensions. And it wasn't the first time -

- uh, Belrun, the way Quendi marriage works under ordinary circumstances is that when a man and a woman are intimate for the first time, they are married. It doesn't work between two men, and I wouldn't have expected it to work between a Quendi and a human, and Telumë says that it wasn't the first time and that we didn't marry on previous occasions of it. I don't know what made that time different. 

- anyway I think Telumë thought it was some harmless fun I wouldn't remember anyway and the part where we married was an accident and it would be very out of character for him to have made a substantial strategic expenditure for that reason and I doubt that was it."

"My Leareth - I'm pretty sure, since I can directly feel his emotions when we are near each other! - has not been attracted to people besides me-with-the-lifebond-operative in any of his incarnations thus far. I can kind of square most of this if I assume the most extreme possible circumstances were in play but that part makes no sense."

"It also doesn't make a lot of sense to me but I expect I am missing most of the context that would let it! - also he's really, really different. I would be more confused if it were Leareth, I think."

"Most people are substantially changed by being tortured in Angband for years."

"He did say at one point that he hadn't - made a habit of this kind of thing - since a very long time ago when he needed lots of anonymous children."

"How did he get that different, did he wind up in the wrong species somehow, that's never happened before but I can't think of what else would break the streak -?"

"I would've noticed if he was a Quendi? - I think you might be underestimating the Angband piece of this. He - he has a kind of continuity, right, with his past selves, he can be confident in claims that they derived for him - and in Angband they chop you up and shuffle your memories around and rerun interactions hundreds of times until they like how they steer you - lots of perfectly nice people come out ready to murder their whole family - and then he died, and he doesn't take very much with him, just some particularly salient memories, which could easily have been from Angband."

"I know he doesn't keep all his memories, but he never does - if it were dependent on that kind of detail I'd expect this kind of variation to have come up before."

"Do you want me to swear that I'm telling the truth or something."

"I think that would probably be helpful."

"I also have Thoughtsensing? Which I haven't been using and won't if you don't want me to but if it would help."

"I am kind of vaguely traumatized around Thoughtsensing because he uses it constantly to make sure I haven't figured out how to hurt him somehow but this is important, I can probably get over it. Would you be willing to stop if I get overwhelmed -"

"Of course."

"Then you can try."

He is attempting to think loudly in her direction that there's a little more context on what happened which might be helpful but which he doesn't want to share in front of this Quendi who seems dubious about the 'hey in a sense Telumë doesn't have a gender' claim. In particular he and Leareth had dated, briefly. Less than a month. But if that helps put the pieces together - I can show you the memories of that, too, in addition to the memories of the interaction leading up to the marriage - uh, I don't want to show you everything but I could show us talking up until he kissed me?

He has a lot of attention, more than most humans one would try to thoughtread, and he is spending most of the rest of it singing a complicated song in his head to avoid showing other things he doesn't mean to or getting more panicked.

She has negligible Thoughtsensing experience so she doesn't actually know if this is a normal amount of thought, but she nods when he suggests the memory.

So here they are before everything, sitting on a mountain.

"Okay, I don't know what to make of that, I guess 'Angband changes people' might be as good an explanation as any."

"I'm sorry. I didn't have very long with - the person he was before that - but he had a lot of qualities I very much admired. - maybe if we can somehow arrange for the two of them to meet the more stable one can impart the correct shape, I think Telumë wants to be a Leareth."

"Maybe. How did interworld transit work in your version -"

"He discovered it. By accident, working on a way to shorten the effective distance of within-plane Gates."

"I'm not a mage but I am a Fetcher."

"I have no idea if that would work. Maybe try it on something you wouldn't mind accidentally squishing, first, but - maybe it'd work.

- what is the situation in this world, is it going to cause problems if we summon a bunch of people -"

"It's peacetime. Sauron's out there somewhere, so we try not to be totally incautious, but we haven't seen any signs of the Enemy massing forces. If your friends or - spouses - or whatever else - want to negotiate here and agree to peace while they speak, they can speak here."

"Sauron's still out there? It's been five thousand years."

"He has eventually recovered from each of his previous defeats."

"I would be very interested in hearing more about that - he is still one of the parties involved in our war - but possibly not right now."

"Well, don't trust him, and don't trust other pretty and talented young Maiar who show up wanting to help, because they're him, and don't take magic immortality rings from him."

"Magic immortality rings?"

"He developed in collaboration with some of the Noldor - including your nephew," he adds to Maedhros - "very powerful magic artifacts that among other things made the bearers immortal. However, they also enslaved them to Sauron, so. Decline them."

"Thanks for the heads up."

"And at one point he persuaded a large human kingdom that the Valar were responsible for withholding immortality from Men, and got them to invade Valinor. They lost, horribly. So - don't go for that either."

"Lost horribly how? No one in Valinor has armies or weapons..."

"Eru sank the continent that they departed from, and then made the Pelori mountains collapse on the heads of the invading army. - and made them invulnerable, so this did not kill them but just encased them in stone forever, possessed of the immortality they'd sought so desperately."

"Okay where are we on the plan to kill Eru."

"You need to stop killing people and have a quiet retirement."

"Do you happen to know if Leareth's god'll be able to do that, I don't know how Velgarth gods stack up against, apparently, Eru -"

"I don't think Leareth's god will be able to do that. Eru's not - there are not actually meaningful avenues to kill Eru - also I am worried that since Angband fucked up Leareth so much the god will also come out wrong, it has the wrong base - I guess in your world there's not that problem -"

"He has all those researchers, I was figuring they weren't decorative? Maybe yours is fucked up in a way that can get around that."

"I don't know anything about the management of his army or government or research institution except that he had free enough rein in the department I do know anything about."

"Fair enough."

"I find that really concerning, by the way. I will have him here for peace talks, if there are some wars that could stop if the right people have the right peace talks, but -"

"He's not going to hurt any of your people."

"I would like to say mine wouldn't hurt a fly but while he's generally sane and has never hurt me his harmlessness is in fact historically narrow and conditional. Still, I wouldn't expect him to show up at a peace talk under false pretenses."

"I would like to be somewhere else before mine is invited but I think he ought to be invited, there is probably quite a large achievable change in his behavior with the right incentives and that matters."

"I don't know where to send you. Maybe Círdan would take you since you are not, in fact, you."

"There's a sense in which it makes sense to hold me responsible for whatever I apparently would have gotten into without Leareth and Vanyel showing up to complicate our war, though."

"There's not no sense in which that's true but it'd be more true if not for the intervening decades in Angband. I think you are meaningfully a different person - and regardless of what kind of person you are, what happened shouldn't have."

"Well, I'd be happy to go to Círdan's if he'll have me."

"Círdan is?"

"The ruler of one of the other Elven polities in the world at this time. There's also Lothlorien but I would expect him to be even less welcome there, and Eryn Lasgalen which definitely won't take him, and ...various human countries?"

"I like human countries, especially if they're familiar with Quendi and know how to interface with osanwë and decorate livable places for us. I lived in Haven until I was captured and was very happy."

"Decorate livable places?"

"We can't live in ugly environments! It is a sort of embarrassing weakness as a species but there you go. I have had success with analogizing to horrific background noise all the time."

"That's so weird! I guess that explains why it's so pretty here."

"Yes. It's lovely," he adds to Elrond, sincerely. "Everything we hoped we could eventually build in the Outer Lands."

- nod. "We also die of being confined, which - those compulsions to not move were very unsafe -"

"He intended to kill me if I escaped. We talked about it. Or - not even just if I escaped, if anything outside his model of why it was safe to keep me happened. This wasn't my fault but it's still that. - I have been assuring myself that if I ask to be carried around your city I will be -"

"Of course you will be."

"Then I should be okay for at least a little longer, just knowing that, and later you can give me a tour."

Belrun shivers.

"Are the compulsions not removable, then?"

"A mage could do it. I'd prefer not - him - any version of him - but there are other mages competent to do it."

"Vanyel from my world, maybe? Since you know him? If we can get ahold of my world."

"Yes, that'd be fine."

"I was thinking I'd try to Fetch letters home. I don't have a clue how I'd go about it but if it was possible to Gate between worlds while Gating to the other end of the planet remained unsolved then it might be feasible."

"Ooooh. That's a great idea. I don't know very much about the interworld Gate but I can send you random snippets of things I overheard."

"Anything might help."

"So it routes through other planes, and when Vanyel was trying to trace Leareth's work during the early stages of the war he had to figure out how to hit them each in order..." and he can come up with a serviceable explanation.

He is pessimistic, though. His Leareth is just as motivated to find them and already has interworld transit and as soon as he gets here it's all over. And without osanwë he can't even cry out into the empty countryside around Imladris - Sauron, Sauron, come find me - 

"Is that also my nephew's work?" he says to Elrond, pointing at the magic ring on his hand.

"Yes. From the - doomed collaboration with Sauron, but the Elven rings he managed to get out before Sauron could corrupt them."

"Thank you. I would like that tour of the grounds now, I think -"

"Of course."

Belrun starts trying to figure out how to put to paper an explanation she wants to copy twenty times and Fetch into the void.

"Can you explain to me how compulsions work?" he asks Belrun a few hours later. "The state he's in is very bad for him and it'd be really good if we didn't have to leave him that way until someone from another world comes. But I don't know if they can safely be addressed with our magic."

"I'm not a mage so I don't have a lot of detail. They're - spells where if one is cast on you you do the thing the caster is trying to make you do. Uh, I think Mindhealers might be able to interact with compulsions, and they're not mages, which suggests that it might be safe to come at them from yet a different angle, but I'm seriously only guessing here."

"Do you know if anything goes wrong if people try to break them and fail?"

"I... think based on circumstantial evidence it can't be that bad because Leareth uses them as a condition of employment for sensitive jobs and if this made all his sensitive-job type staff really vulnerable he would probably not do that."

"- huh. Okay. Thank you."

Does Maitimo know anything about this.

"You can give yourself a little bit of a headache snapping a badly placed one. It won't kill you. Dislodging ones that are much more skillfully placed might hurt more, I guess, but - it's worth it to me. If you think you have some way to try I would like it very much if you did."

"I also have no idea how I would target particularly the ones restricting your movements."

"Well, it's not as if I was hoping to keep any of the other ones in place. I don't even know what they all are. Do you have any kind of way to see them, that feels like it might be a necessary element and maybe it'd also give a hint about who was doing what?"

"I cannot see your spirit. I can sense that it is very - pinned, contorted -but not with sight."

"I didn't even know it was possible to do that much."

He glances at his ring. "We have learned some things since you died."

A second's hesitation, figuring that out -

"Of course you would have." Proudly.

"How does magic work in Velgarth?"

"I don't know much about it. Belrun has Fetching, you can see if you can learn anything from watching her."

"I have Healing too. And Thoughtsensing and Mindspeech but I only found out about those recently and can't do anything fancy, though they should be safe enough to experiment with if it's useful. Uh, to clarify, I have enough general Healing training that I don't expect I'd hurt anybody by mistake even in a new species, but my actual specialty is microbiology so I can't promise I'll be able to do anything useful in other domains - not that this is applicable to Russandol's issue but in general."

"Does Thoughtsensing allow for reading more than what osanwë permits -"

"It does."

"Some people take Gifts like that and unconsciously use them for shielding instead of having uncontrolled active use, and I'm one of those, I didn't know I had either Mindspeech or Thoughtsensing till Leareth checked me and the extent of my actual historical use of Thoughtsensing is what I looked at when Russandol offered, and also accidentally catching a stray thought off my father when he let me check to see if I could Mindspeak him even though he isn't Gifted."

" - okay. And your - lifebonded, if he shows up -"

"Mage gift, Thoughtsensing, Mindspeech, I think that's it but mage gift is very flexible when you're good at it and he is."

"Telumë doesn't have Thoughtsensing or Mindspeech, he just uses mage-gift to make me send thoughts. - when he gets a new body he gets new Gifts."

"Are there any other people we could send a message about how you two are trapped in the wrong world."

"Belrun's Vanyel, maybe? He managed to derive interworld Gating himself, in our timeline. But I don't think either Leareth or Telumë will hurt your people as an opening move. - I guess Leareth did secretly practice compulsions on my people as soon as he showed up, to make sure they worked as he expected. ...but they won't hurt your people very much."

"Mine has to keep me happy, which I think, uh, tones him down some in the messing with people's heads department. Also like he'll be able to tell that I'm not dead or alarmed as soon as he's close enough because lifebond."

"What exactly is a lifebond?"

"I described what they - I guess I described how they happen and not as much about what they do afterwards? Uh, hurts to be far apart, usually drives people to suicide if the other party dies, direct experiential access to the other's emotions within range though I wouldn't expect him to get anything at this distance, I'm not. Though I can tell he's alive, I think I'd notice if he weren't or at least if I were too far away to tell then not being able to tell would feel like him being dead. Lifebonded partners find one another particularly appealing and interesting and attractive and important. It wasn't actually obvious to me right away that he needed me not only happy but genuinely happy without my own slate of mind control keeping me that way while things sucked around me but that was cleared up pretty early on, it does seem like he either actually can't take shortcuts and have that work or he's strongly enough averse to it that he wouldn't try even if it wouldn't be directly disabling."

He does not venture a guess.

"Our marriages don't involve any kind of mind control. They have some of the same sensory effects, varies by couple -"

"We get shared dreams, and empathy - attenuated over this distance - and I can sense when he's doing magic, and details of it when I'm closer."

"Empathy is kind of mind control."

"You can send emotions with osanwë but they don't show up like your own emotions, they're - a sort of sensory input - it's like that. - though I can hurt myself and it hurts him too. I...have done that, when I was in custody of people who wouldn't stop me. I know it's very childish. I haven't done it recently."

"You've been shuffled around between custodians?"

"Earlier on, yeah. Not for a while now."

"Why?"

"At first the King of the Noldor - my father - thought I could be talked around into remembering my place and rejoining my people - and he was angry with Telumë about the marriage, and didn't want him to keep me. Then it came out that I'd told the gods he was planning a massacre, prompting them to intervene, and he disowned me and sent me back to Telumë and - Telumë says told him to do as he liked. Telumë could be lying about that but I bet he isn't, sounds exactly like my father when he's angry."

"Augh."

"Alqualondë?" he says distantly.

" - is that where it happened in your timeline?"

"A lot of things happened in my timeline that I don't think occurred in yours. But - yes, Curufinwë Fëanáro led the Noldor into a massacre at Alqualondë. Over the boats, the Noldor needed them to leave."

"He doesn't need the boats, in my timeline, he just directly gets magical power from killing people, and he figured out how to use the Silmarils to do it. I don't know where he was planning to go first."

"Elves can get magical power from killing people too?"

"Not normally but my father figured out how to use some powerful artifacts of his to channel blood magic for use by Velgarth mages."

"Channel it for them?"

"For the plan to build a god, I think. I don't actually know very much about this, on a technical level it was never my area of expertise and on a political level no one told me they were doing it, I just pieced together that the massacres were planned and warned the Valinor gods. I - understand why Telumë wants to build his god, I could imagine a situation in which it'd conceivably be worth it, but -"

"I mean, the Cataclysm is coming back around."

"If you don't alienate them by murdering hundreds of thousands of people the gods of my world are very useful for that kind of thing, I could've talked them into helping. And - five hundred years is a long time, long enough to figure out how to use the Silmarils for that instead of for murder, long enough to evacuate if you absolutely have to -"

"He wasn't sure we had five hundred years but perhaps the argument holds as well for two or three hundred."

"I think that there are viable alternatives in my world - plausibly not ones apparent in yours, before interworld contact - which are not being explored because 'kill everyone in the countries at war with us' is a more appealing plan to many of the people involved in planning."

"Can you explain what plan this is that involves killing hundreds of thousands of people."

"Oh, it involves killing lots more than that. Telumë wants to build a god that's on his side. He thinks it'll take ten million deaths."

"There's potential substitutes but they're all controlled by or directly are hostile deities."

"The Valar aren't hostile. ...they are not very good at working with people but if you're patient with them they'll try."

"Humans in this world will be unable to petition the Valar; after the invasion from Númenor Valinor was sealed to all of them."

"My Valar have diplomatic relations with Valdemar and Karse. Telumë is kicked out but just him, they didn't even extend it to his allies."

"I don't know if the Valar control any resources that could be substituted. The Star-Eyed does, enough Heartstones would do it, or in theory one could cannibalize Vkandis for parts if we knew how and he wouldn't fight back but we don't and he would."

"Again this is outside my area of expertise but I think there was technical research ongoing, by the time I defected, on using energy differentials between planes. It was still a hard problem but - if you can get the Valar to just handle the Cataclysm then you don't have a time limit for figuring out the rest of it."

"Except in the sense that people die even if nobody murders them, yes."

"I don't think the risk and the cost are justified under his framework if there are better options on the horizon and no catastrophes coming. I have never been able to persuade him of this, which might mean I'm wrong or might mean he has gotten too accustomed to the mass slaughter of civilians to properly account for its costs."

"I don't think mine's accustomed like that. At all desensitized but -" She makes a vague gesture.

Nod.

"This is what you - defected - over?"

"It's complicated, there were a lot of elements - we were doing awful awful things and I felt like most of my effort and energy was spent - not even on successfully executing them, I could have lived with that, but on making sure we internalized as few of the costs as possible, and that was obviously just driving us further down that road - and my father is impossible to get to ever apologize or change course or admit a mistake - and it seemed pretty likely that if Telumë even noticed I was thinking about leaving he'd just - so once I had the thought I had to either leave right away or decide right away I never would, or it wouldn't be in my hands anymore -"

"I think I'm getting confused about the timeline here, can I get all the events in order -" She readies a pen.

"Yeah. The war started in 807, Velgarth time. The war opened with Melkor assassinating my grandfather. Leareth Gated our forces to Beleriand and we started setting ourselves up to assail Angband. Killed all the orcs on the continent. Leareth concluded that he didn't have a good way to kill Melkor and sent his people back in Velgarth looking for Vanyel, who was out of Valdemar at the time, in Jkatha - Valdemar's leadership had taken it badly when the talks with Leareth came out - about a year later, Leareth's people made contact with Vanyel and Leareth brought him over. Shortly after that, Leareth was captured by Melkor. 

Vanyel got to work in Valinor working on adapting - uh, the magic thing that he made the decision not to tell Leareth about and I think he was right to and am not going to tell you. The war in Beleriand ended up at an ugly mostly stalemate along both the western and eastern fronts. It had exacerbated a lot of existing political divisions - for example, we were trying to maintain alliances with both the Sindar and the Dwarves, but the Sindar had only recently stopped hunting Dwarves for sport.

After he'd been in Angband for ..I think a year...Leareth started doing some magic for Melkor. Not very much of it, and not very strategically oriented. We figured he was only partially compromised, we wouldn't have stood a chance if he'd been uncomplicatedly working for Melkor. The Valar reacted by banning Gates into and out of Valinor, after he Gated some orcs in for Melkor. 

Vanyel figured out the thing he'd been working to figure out. He deployed it, and it worked.  Melkor was destroyed. We got Leareth back, after he'd been in Angband four, five years. I guess that would make it 812 in Velgarth. There was still a bunch of stupid fighting - a lot of orcs weren't dead yet, the Sindar and the Dwarves still hated each other and now we'd sold the Dwarves tons of magic weapons and there were lots of skirmishes though it hadn't descended to outright declarations of war  - Vanyel nearly started a war with Doriath when they attacked his lifebonded, the Avari tried to kill me and Leareth and the delegations from Valdemar and so then we were threatening them - My father was getting close to - being able to use the Silmarils for mass killings, and he and I argued over it."

"Vanyel's... lifebonded?"

" - I guess he wouldn't know yet, right. He gets another lifebonded. Named Stefen. You should not introduce them yet because Stefen was sixteen when he and Vanyel got together in our timeline and that was awkward enough. Lovely kid. Bardic gifted. I - it didn't seem horribly unhealthy to me but I might have low standards."

"Is he a reincarnation or a random additional person?"

"I have no idea. Is there reason to think he'd be a reincar - I guess the timeline matches up all right - uh he does not particularly in personality resemble what little I have been told of Tylendel but honestly most of what I was told about Tylendel was that seventeen year olds should not have the option of suicide fireballs, Van never really liked to talk about it. - I was also told that it was kind of Leareth's fault, I guess. He felt badly about it, in his own unapologetic way."

"It kind of was but in a 'the gods were here' kind of way."

Nod. "Anyway. 813. The Noldor started recruiting mages in Velgarth for our wars in Arda. There was some discussion of operations in Velgarth, too, down the line - we were allied with Leareth, he had his plans to build an empire and a god, we had an army that was very much in his debt for the war with Melkor - initially the Noldor were welcome, when we started doing diplomacy in Velgarth. But then the local gods told the local governments not to trust us. My father figured - well, fuck the local gods, and if they'll listen to the local gods then we'll have to go right through the local governments - and suddenly the Noldor were at war with Valdemar, and Karse, and Iftel. I left. I don't - like the local gods either, but - suddenly it felt like we were either just bringing a lot of armies into a bad equilibrium and hoping that a better one emerged, when it looked much likelier to just leave ashes in our wake, or we were just trying to kill ten million people and it didn't feel like we'd tried at all to not do that. And - and maybe if we'd just said up front 'we are starting these wars with the intent to kill ten million people and build Leareth's god' maybe I could have worked on that, but it felt instead like we got there sideways, like we started killing people and then noticed that it wouldn't be quite as awful if in retrospect we'd been doing it for a reason -"

"I find Valdemar's local god situation pretty opaque and quiet to, uh, foreign policy interests, how did that manifest -"

"Companions got some divine revelations, the Web stopped working, Leareth got suddenly and implausibly set upon by a truly astonishing number of gryphons."

"Wow, that is a major style shift, that's more - 'Vkandis took over Valdemar' than 'Valdemar's god got spooked' -"

"It is possible that's what happened. Or the Star-Eyed, it's a Heartstone that powers the Web. Or both of them working together. I don't know how we'd ask. I guess Vanyel could have a near-death experience, except right now he's the only mage in Arda and also no longer suicidal about the dead lifebonded so I expect he's reluctant to take chances with his life."

"...a near death experience?"

"Vanyel used to be able to talk to Valdemar's god by  - well, by dying. Valdemar's god would send him back to the world of the living to complete his appointed task. I guess maybe all the instances of that happened later than 803, or at least Vanyel hadn't told Leareth by then. It's the reason Leareth's assassination attempts failed. The worry is that - the reason the god was sending Vanyel back was for the war with Leareth, who knows whether they'll send him back now that that's ....obviated, after a fashion. Maybe it's not. I am unclear on what Vanyel is up to lately, I haven't seen him since my capture and he was in Arda when war broke out on Velgarth."

"Vanyel could have mentioned that when I was flailing around for a way to talk to Valdemar's god - is Valdemar's god just the Shadow-Lover, given the death thing -"

"Not just the Shadow-Lover, I think? I think the Shadow-Lover is an element of the god or an entity created by the god or something in that genre but doesn't have access to all of the god's motives or reasoning. Vanyel might not know yet, I don't know when the first time it happened was. 803...the war with Karse had been over for a couple of years...I'm sure one of Leareth's assassination attempts had happened by then, but maybe Vanyel hasn't put all the pieces together."

"Maybe." She scans her notes. "Well, this sure looks awful, and much though it annoyed me to be surprise lifebonded I think if our respective timelines are just tests for what happens with and without that, or something, we should try to make my version look more appealing to the operative gods than yours, except it's not remotely clear how we'd do that from here."

"Yeah, I'm not sure what being here adds at all - 

- oh." Scowl. 

"Vanyel thought that the Velgarth gods don't have very much access to the kinds of concepts we use to reason about the world. They can see a path works but not why. Maybe if you - stick a couple of paths together then their residents will just explain to you what the operative differences seem to have been.

This makes me want to be uncooperative, I don't know about you."

"I mean, the main quandary is what do they think constitutes 'it works' versus 'bad plan', it's not as clear as I'd like especially since we don't know who'd be simulating us. Also they're bad at receiving verbal explanations, try though I might! How do you want to go about being uncooperative?"

"I dunno. Get the compulsions off, if there's some way to do that. Go spend a couple of decades taking in the scenery."

"I don't really want to spend decades looking at scenery."

"That is very understandable. I guess you can try to get the gods' attention and communicate that we both like your world better, and I can be called away from scenery if anyone thinks of a way I can help with that."

"Okay."

"This assumes we have a way to fix you."

"I have been sort of - contemplating only the worlds in which you have a way to fix me because otherwise I think Telumë will derive how to find me faster than Belrun's Leareth and then he will kill me and then it will be irrelevant."

"I am in fact going to tell your husband to go away, if he shows up."

"If you promise him that you were unable to do anything about the compulsions and I don't have osanwë and can't move and can't formulate plans for escape then maybe he will go away if you tell him to."

"He can't have any reasonable objection to you looking at scenery and you can do the oath thing about that being your plan."

"Sure. I swear -" and then he scowls. "Well, I could, if I weren't additionally compulsioned against making oaths. I guess that's a reasonable precaution when you're messing with someone's memory, having made contradictory oaths you don't remember is incredibly dangerous."

"Oh dear. ...he'd probably be very tempted by the prospect of allying with mine?"

"He probably would. Yours, uh, allies with people he knows to be doing much worse than Telumë has ever done, even if he's himself more restrained these days."

"Yeah. So to keep that option open he has to not have me dead set against it nor tampered with in any way mine'll notice."

" - I mean, I am not expecting you to be dead set against it on my account, there's a lot more at stake here."

"I know, I get that, but this whole thing sounds like a nasty mess and you might be a useful indicator of how flexible he is and how damaged he is by the Angband and the body swap. So you're an available bridge to not burn."

Nod. "Thank you. - still much rather be out of here before he comes. If you think you have any ideas -"

"I can try some things. I can generally oppose most magic worked here in Imladris, I'd just want to make sure I understood what I was doing."

"I can send you a mental impression of a time he did one sloppily and I snapped it, if that helps."

"That might. Thank you."

"I don't think I can be of much help, even if there's a creative Mindspeech or Thoughtsensing application I'm not going to figure it out on my own any time soon."

"Sounds good. I will update you on whether we make any progress."

"If he can do it at all - you might want to have him try it for you. Just - in case -"

"...I guess it couldn't hurt but I don't think I'm compelled to do anything."

"It seems pretty unlikely but if it were a contingency against betraying him or something you wouldn't know and you might still want it out."

"Yeah, sure, if it doesn't have any side effects to try I'll try."

So he gets to work on trying to undo the foreign magic that has Maedhros's soul pinned into such a bizarre configuration. It is frustrating work. In places it feels like trying to peel back an oath, which can't be done; in other places it feels like it might tear away a bit more cleanly, but that doesn't make it straightforward to actually do. Maedhros's can't let him work for very long without breaks to go wander Imladris, even though he's clearly trying very hard to get this done with as soon as possible.

He has more luck while Maedhros is sleeping. He finds his way around the mind, finds some of the more loosely-attached foreign magic, studies it, gets a very detailed feel for it, reaches for it with Vilya. Tells it that this is Imladris, where the universe works the way he wants it to, and he wants Maedhros to be healed, to be free, more than anything -

- he wakes up with his head ringing -

" - I can sing for it but not quite yet, I think, I want it as a diagnostic first. Does this feel like the time you threw one off -"

"Think so. Bit worse. I - thank you -"

"I'm not going to be able to get all of them that way. Some of it's - more like an oath, I can't budge that. But some of it should be possible to get off, I think. If we do one per night then in a few weeks -"

"Please do them all tonight."

"No. I might cause you brain damage. If you lie back down and accurately report your symptoms I will consider whether we can do them more frequently."

"It's my head."

"You can shop around for other healers in possession of Rings of Power who have fewer concerns about this, then. I will of course have someone carry you anywhere you want to go."

Sigh. "I just don't want to be - dreading it for weeks - wondering when Telumë will come -"

"I know. Lie down, drink some water, accurately report your symptoms, and we'll see how quickly this can safely be done."

"Okay. ...I apologize. I appreciate that you are inventing something new and not known to be possible on the spot for me."

"It very clearly ought to be possible, the Rings do interactions with other magics and they almost always win. I'm actually kind of puzzled about the part I don't see an angle to shake loose of your head. Do you know if it might be some other kind of magic?"

"He could've made me swear an oath but I don't think he would have done. Mindhealing and compulsions might look different?"

"Might be. We'll see where we're at once I've removed what I can. How are you feeling?"

"Tiniest bit dizzy. My ears aren't ringing, exactly, but it's like they remember that they were. The last time I snapped a bad compulsion it wore off in a couple of minutes, I don't notice anything suggesting this is different."

"All right. Have a bit more water."

He does this. "Tyelperinquar made the rings?"

"Yes. With Sauron, who - came to us under the name Annatar, a Maia of Aulë's. Offered to work with him on all kinds of projects. Human immortality, resurrection outside Valinor, interfaceable artifacts, shielding of cities -"

"My father died before accomplishing any of those?"

"Your father died in the first weeks of the war."

"Oh."

"He made enough stupid decisions to damn you all and then died before seeing the price of any of them."

"That sounds about right. Is he back yet?"

"He is not. None of you are."

"What, not even the cousins? It is hard to imagine they could've gotten up to much wrongdoing at my father's insistence."

"Not his, but yours.

- I think some of them are back. Not all. We get word from Valinor very infrequently."

"I assume I'd cause all sorts of problems if I showed up, never mind that I didn't do any of these things."

"It would be very complicated. Maybe you could stay atop of all its complications."

"I'd prefer to stay here, I'm just - worrying about Telumë."

"He sounds worrying."

"I feel better."

"All right. Close your eyes, try not to have many thoughts, and I'll see if I can get another one."

A day later he can be found out of the healing halls singing on a balcony, looking at a waterfall.

"Hey, you're looking better."

"He got most of them! There's a couple more of the type he knows how to undo, which he's going to get to later, and then some he doesn't, but they don't seem to be doing anything which is actively crippling moment-to-moment so I am inclined to live with it for now, maybe ask the Vala of healing someday."

"There are types?"

"To whatever sensory apparatus he is using there are types. My best guess is that he can get compulsions but not Mindhealing."

"Mm. I wonder at Nayoki not just quitting after - I guess maybe she doesn't think Elf marriage is like lifebonds."

"Nayoki?"

"His Mindhealer. I think he only has one, they're rare, though I guess he could wind up needing to replace her in the next few years."

"Can his staff even quit?"

"Yes, I checked when I found out about the employment compulsions thing."

"Well, if I met her I don't remember it but they do the memory thing with Mindhealing, and the spatial reasoning thing, and maybe some other stuff they didn't mention. Means I can't really wander very far."

"Why'd they do that?"

" - the spatial reasoning thing? It's related to the thing Elrond mentioned, where it's dangerous to imprison Quendi, we die of it. It's - a shock reaction, a thing humans do have which is vaguely analogous is mistaking a food for a poison and swelling your own throat closed trying to fight it. - anyway they must have discovered that if you break a Quendi's spatial reasoning then it doesn't happen."

"I guess that's... clever..."

"He's very clever." He sounds kind of wistful.

"Yeah." Sigh.

"Anyway. If there's anything else we should compare notes on I am leaving in the morning. And will still be reachable for about a day after that, but we should probably try to cover it now."

"I don't really know what's likeliest to be applicable."

"I don't know either. I didn't pay a lot of attention to Velgarth history during our war....did Leareth already do something stupid that almost caused Lineas, Baires and half of western Valdemar to be swallowed in an earthquake, if that has not yet happened he should definitely go get his powerful artifact out of the palace in Lineas before his allies there do that. The Valar can fix Randi, and they should, because Treven turns out to be really hard to work with. The new King's Own is great, though. There's - some lord in Valdemar, I wish I had a name for you - funding the rebels in Karse, Vanyel's future lifebonded and his roommate at Bardic will discover the plot eventually and almost get murdered in the process but maybe you could scoop them, get it over with sooner. Jisa does not really ever get better at patient ethics. Someone should maybe try harder on that front because Treven's head over heels for her and I do not think political power will be improving. Uh, King of Rethwellen dies peacefully of old age in his bed and his successor's fine."

"...remove artifact from Lineas to prevent earthquake, okay," she says, writing that down. "Valar can fix Randi - who's Treven? - in my world Dara listened to me too hard and Rolan repudiated her, is she who you mean, she's great but - Jisa doesn't get better? That's terrible -"

"Treven is the heir they scrouge up for Randi. Maybe at thirty he'd be good at it but they should not put it on him at 16. Dara's the one who is great, ouch, don't....I don't know what to do about that. Jisa gets....subtler? It's awful but no one parents her, Shavri's too busy trying to save Randi and Randi's too busy dying. Vanyel will get to the earthquake if Leareth doesn't but hundreds of innocent people will still die, and hundreds of guilty ones. Maybe just try to talk him down from making artifacts that pursue to death all blood relatives of the initial target anywhere in the world."

"...why did he even do that?"

"We don't really have the kind of relationship where I question him but I'd be fascinated by the answer yours gives."

"Welp, I have written down this question now."

"If it is before that it is also before the time he assassinates Vanyel accidentally; he placed a compulsion years ago on Vanyel's family priest, to murder him if he ever got a chance, and then - lost track of it?"

"That's so... specific? I guess I'll mention that to him too." Note note.

"I assume there were at one point lots of people wandering around with similar orders but he says he revoked most of them, just missed this guy. I'm not thinking of anything else but probably I should think about it a while longer before I leave."

"Do you think you need to know anything from my timeline?"

"I'm not sure. Probably some of it will be useful to Telumë but - by that point things had deteriorated far enough I didn't even want him to win, right, so - I don't know. It sounds like they should go look for a version of you somewhere?"