Lothlann is a truly dreadful defensive position; rolling plains stretching for hundreds of miles, each Feanorian fortress sticking out of the ground like a burr clinging to silk fabric. They have held it anyway, for nearly three hundred years. Himring is the tallest and stickiest of those burrs in the landscape, forbidding and by Elven standards graceless, and it can house the whole civilian population of the area if needed and endure a decade's siege. All its windows look out on Angband. He can see the place every waking minute, and he does not often sleep.

When the girl appears, he sees her.

Warmth, she suggests, and if it burns, well, pain is more pleasant than cold. She saw to that. Where am I, she queries, come on, don't I know so many things, isn't it right that I know about this place too, and it's certainly nowhere she recognizes, chilly and flat and oddly still--and the nearest people--there's something off about them but she can't place what--they're that way, that giant building that sticks out like like a sore thumb--shouldn't I be able to see it better, she coaxes.

There is a man, looking out a window. Looking at her. She meets his eyes.

Powerful, talented, command of the world flaring up around her in a way he recognizes. He stands. "Pull everyone in," he says - they will hear him throughout the fortress - "and get ready for a fight. That stranger appeared out of nowhere."

Well, the stranger never asked to hear him. Since that building seems to be the nearest sign of civilization, she might as well go there. She's--not going to risk trying to teleport again and maybe get even more lost, but she can fly faster than she can walk.

They rush archers to the walls, they close the doors, they send the injured underground. The stranger is flying, now. Not even attempting to be subtle. In a way, that's reassuring. If it's not trying to deceive them, there's at least a chance it's not hostile. He doesn't believe that. He has a hard time believe anything isn't hostile, even people he'd known for centuries before the Sun. 

He watches her. That'd be the form of a Man, if Men flew, and if adult Men were ever that healthy or still had all their teeth.

"Hello?" She calls out in Germanic, when she's reasonably close. "I'm very, very lost. Can someone tell me where I am?" And then she repeats herself in Genoshan, Ashkenazi, Hebrew and Anglic, because she has no idea what language these people speak. If she's unlucky they'll have zero languages in common and she'll have to get creative.

"Please land and show us that you are unarmed," he says in Thindarin, and then in Taliska, and then in the other mannish dialect he's heard of he says "land and peace" because he doesn't know the whole phrase. She's trying to communicate, too, but in no languages he's heard of.

...
They have no languages in common. Lovely.

Well, she's not the greatest Sympathy mage of her generation for nothing. She dithers for a moment before deciding that there's no harm in just finding out what he said, he consented to her knowing it when he said it, it's not like it's real mindreading.

...

Well, she'll land, but...didn't he see her flying? She's a mage, does he really think lack of weapons is going to make her less dangerous? She holds up her arms and gives him a mildly skeptical look.

Her thoughts are easy to read even without a language in common. "I'm a Power," she's presumably saying, "what does it matter if I'm unarmed?"

Very confident, are we?  "I would like a volunteer to go outside," he says, and feels a flicker of pride in his people as most of them step forward. He picks someone who is appropriately afraid.

Hello, random person! Okay, how to communicate that she can understand them but can't speak to them...she cups her ear and snaps her fingers, creating a spark as she does so, the universal "I'm a mage" gesture, then sticks out her tongue a bit, taps it and shakes her head.

The gestures are meaningless, but he can catch the tenor of her thoughts. Tell her that this is a war zone and a bad place for unaccompanied strangers, even if they are powerful ones. It is also a bad place for us to receive them.

His volunteer echoes this, warily.

...Wow. What's that? Whatever it is, she likes it.

So...does she just respond...by thinking at him? I don't know how I got here--I was trying to get away from someone who was trying to kill me, and apparently I wasn't specific enough about where I wanted to go to, and my sister isn't here so I hope she isn't still back there with him, and where am I? I apologize for accidentally intruding on your war, but the sooner I find out where I am the sooner I know what direction to leave.

Tell her where we are, he orders cautiously.

Her interlocutor shifts nervously, sends a message that's a map of the continent. Beleriand. And an image of the fortress. Himring. And of the whole world, oceans and a distant memory of a golden glowing continent - Arda.

...

...

This is a map of the entire world, as she knows it.

She's broadcasting so oddly that the whole fortress can hear her; is that deliberate? It's certainly useful. 

She's not from anywhere in the world, or from a time so distant from this one that the continents have been reshaped. Or lying, of course likely to be lying, but she's powerful and for the moment it might be wiser to play along - 

You came very far, then.

Apparently.

Well, she'll just have to grit her teeth and try to teleport home, then, and hope whatever anomaly let her cross worlds duplicates a second time, much as she may dislike using too much Conquest magic over a short period of time. Home, she orders--

The pain slams into her with the familar bone-jarring sensation, but she doesn't go anywhere.

They all feel it. Everyone else flinches. He does not. 

I take it you cannot make the journey back, not immediately?

Apparently not. I'm sorry.

Convenient. Do your powers permit you to cross mountains? To the east it is safer to travel alone, and the Enemy is less likely to pursue you there, or learn of your presence. How long do you expect it to be until you can safely return?

How should I know? I've never even heard of someone teleporting between worlds before. Until I get strong enough to force it, I guess, but who knows how long that'll take.

I see. And if he sends her away she might arrive at Angaráto's doorstep, or Findekáno's, annoyed with him, and this seems like a risk worth weighing against the risk to his people. If you are not strong or consistent enough in your abilities to travel alone in enemy lands, you should come in.

What's this Enemy like? Are they a Great Mage? I'm...not, yet, but I'm a bit of a prodigy.

Your word is unfamiliar. The Enemy is a Power. And he sends -

Melkor in Valinor, in charming Elven form, smiling and laughing and ripping their people apart at the roots -

The Darkening, screams in the night, the darkness clearing to show their hometown shattered into rubble, what remained of Finwë's body strewn severla hundred yards across it -

dragged beneath the throne of Angband and forced to his knees -

Valar, we call them.

...

...

Well, that's sure as hell not Aten, she thinks, her hand going to a circular pendant with seven lines going down from it. That's...that's...she fails at coherency. That's awful and horrifying and it really should not exist, and it's sure as hell not her God, but if any human mage tried to do something like that they'd be unable to think from the pain, even her own lovely patch only goes so far--at least for now, maybe if she got used to it--she'll get stronger. She'll buid up her tolerances.

She doesn't seem to have consciously realized the certainty in her heart that she must oppose this being, but it's there, hard and tight and fierce and warm.

Okay, not friendly with Melkor. Or a really excellent actor. 

Thus why we name him our Enemy, and build these fortresses, and plan one day to throw down the walls of his kingdom. The Valar of your world are all good?

We only have one.

Aten, the sun-disc, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who led the Hebrews into Egypt and brought them prosperity there, who gave his revelations unto the prophets and delivered them from the pain of their workings so that they might perform miracles, The Lord, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal...

Well, according to my religion anyway.

The creator of our world is called Eru, Ilúvatar, father of all, and he is not said to be evil.

Sounds more like our concept of Aten than these Valar, in some ways.

The Valar are his agents in creation, but Morgoth rebelled against creation and now tries to deal the world as many hurts as he can. Your powers spring from your god?

I mean, maybe? Insofar as he created the world and magic with it, I suppose. Anyone can do magic, but not everyone's willing to do the hurting it takes to do anything serious.

Dark amusement. I wonder if you can teach us.

Um. I should warn you. Magic doesn't just hurt. It...changes you. I'm as good at magic as I am because I'm very resistant to the mental side-effects of sympathy magic, so I could make myself algolagnic, but most people who did as much sympathy magic as I do would be a simpering ninny incapable of disagreeing with anyone right now.

That does sound concerning. Are there other kinds?

Effort magic, which makes you more stubborn, and Conquest magic, which makes you more forceful and direct. When I tried to teleport just now, that was Conquest magic. I try not to use it too often, because I'm not especially more resistant than usual to Conquest's side effects.

Would you like to come in so we can discuss this further, without an audience of thousands?

An audience of thousands?

You are shouting your thoughts; we can all hear them. Was that not deliberate?

I'd never even heard of something like this before today! But she's quite obviously pleased by its existence. How do I not shout? How would you propose to have a more private conversation, we still don't have any languages in common.

Osanwë does not translate; we are probably capturing only the edges of each others' meaning. We could learn quickly, though, speaking and thinking at once. Once we are in the same place I expect you will be able to direct instead of shout. 

So she has to be a Man, if the strangest one. Perhaps the magic explains that she is not decaying as most Men do.

Osanwë. So that's what it's called.

I'll come in. Do you have any aesthetic or other linguistic preferences? I speak several with equal expertise.

One of my brothers will eventually desire to learn all of them, then. I personally have no preference.

About that or, well, in general. Preferences were peacetime luxuries even for everyone else. 

"Hello," she says in Genoshan when she reaches him.

If you continue broadcasting intent while you speak we should learn quickly. "Hello."

"Of course," she says, and thinks. "Let me know if I'm still shouting to everybody."

"Shouting less, but not private. Try being aware of your thoughts as addressed to me."

"Yes--actually let me try something."

This Osanwë was clearly something of this world, something not native to her own nor a capacity she naturally had.

But why shouldn't she have it? She was Odette Zavier, the woman who claimed masochism through sheer resistance to her own Sympathy, why shouldn't she--drawing a tiny bit on each person within this tower for a model--why shouldn't she have this capacity to?

The stinging headache of mind-magic barely registers.

He watches patiently. She seems to be trying to acquire something, but it doesn't seem hostile exactly so he's not immediately inclined to interrupt her.

Okay, how's this.

Her thoughts feel much more normal now, if still oddly untrained.

"Yes. Yes? I can - " he reaches out for the words, but now she's doing something different and they're harder to find - "hear you, but you're private. Is that what you intended?"

"Sort of. I was copying your telepathy. People can't just talk mind-to-mind in my world, and I wanted to be able to."

"Ah. It is ...good that now you can." He's still speaking very slowly, expressionless, sifting for words. "Your magic allows you to copy things you see?"

"It's not about--seeing, exactly. It's about having a model. A point of comparison. But that model can come in many different ways."

He nods. "You used it to... flee a ...danger and arrive here?"

"Oh. Yeah. One of my teachers figured that since I was probably going to be the next Great Mage he ought to kill me because that's some seriously abusable power and he didn't feel like taking the chance that I wasn't going to abuse it."

Amusement, again. Weariness. "Great Mage?"

"Most people who take up serious magic in the first place are sufficiently deterred either by the pain or the mental side-effect that they get in a couple of decades of decent mage-work and then retire. Sometimes, though, you get someone who's resistant enough to at least one form or sufficiently fond of pain to spend their whole lives doing it. And every once in a while you get someone who's both, and can exercize at least one form of magic with near impunity."

"What makes one resistant?"

"Your personality. I wouldn't exactly there are any specific mental features that guarantee resistance to anything in particular, but there are a lot that can help."

A grim smile. "In that case I would like you to teach me as swiftly as possible, particularly if it can be mastered to the level of useability in only a few decades as you implied. But first I am obliged to offer- food? drink? rest? warmer clothes?"

"I'm not tired, it was noon back home. I'm not particularly hungry or thirsty either. I've been handling the temperature with magic, but warmer clothes would be a better solution in the long term."

He nods and says something in his own language; there are no servants in the room, but presumably one can hear them, becuase he nods in satisfaction after a second. "In that case I would like to use your magic to destroy the Enemy. How would I start to learn it towards that end?"

"Good question. For direct destruction, conquest is usually best, but it's often more effective to slowly erode at things over time, which would fall under effort, or to poke at it until you can get at its weaknesses, which would be sympathy. Given what you've said, 'Destroy the Enemy' is likely not a single effect which can be achieved by a single magical effect. Tell me a step towards the Enemy's destruction, and I'll tell you how I would do it. How I would do it if I were fifty years older and a great deal more powerful, if necessary."

He nods. "Angband, the fortress, is inpenetrable. If the walls could begin to crumble..."

"Is there any reason they shouldn't? That wasn't a real question, that was your first lesson in Sympathy magic. The way you do that is by finding a point of comparison, and then convincing the universe that the one should resemble the other. There are limits--the more strained the comparison, the less likely it is to work, and the more power you have as a mage, the more likely it is to work. If I taught you the basics of Sympathy magic, and you went out today and stared at this fortress's walls for a thousand years and tried to coax it that it had the consistency of brown sugar, you would fail. But if you work up to it...it's not out of reach forever."

"Does the universe care about good and evil? Can I say that the walls should crumble because great harm is done behind them?"

"The universe doesn't care about good and evil, but you do, and the universe cares that you genuinely believe that the effect you're going for is correct."

"Ah, all right then. Should I practice on similar things? Smaller fortresses? How does it affect my mental state, again?"

"Sympathy magic makes you more diplomatic and more conflict-averse, Conquest magic increases your force of personality and decreases your ability to take no for an answer gracefully, and Effort magic increases your willpower and makes it harder to change your mind about things."

"So they cancel each other to some degree? Is it recommended to practice them in equal measure?"

"Not usually equal--even for people with no particular exceptional resistences you're usually not equally susceptible to all of them, so you want to balance your ratios that way, and some people find the changes unequally unappealing, and they don't cancel out perfectly. And many people have greater individual talent for one or two, and are willing to deal with the uneven effects."

He nods. "And great workings, like making Angband crumble, would be more destabilizing?"

"Yes. There are also meditation techniques that can be used to pick apart what the magic is doing to you and prevent at least some of it."

"Can you describe those?"

"Verbally, or...?"

"Osanwë is faster for teaching."

"I can imagine."

Breathe in. Breathe out. Center yourself. Who are you, and who were you yesterday? What do you feel? What did you feel yeserday? How much of what you're currently feeling, doing, being, is yourself, and how much is the magic?

He nods. "I think I can do that. There are worse things, from how you describe your magic, to be shoving around one's self and sanity."

The scars are not immediately visible, but once she looks they're everywhere; running across his face, across his features, across the one hand that rests comfortably on the the table between them. He wears a high-collared shirt and no other skin is visible. He doesn't appear to have any ears; his hair rests flat against his head.

"Do you, um. I can do healing. Even of wounds that have already scarred."

Her face betrays only srprise and concern, but across the Osanwë channel he can feel an abrupt, bubbling, piercing rage.

He goes very very still for a second, then places the other hand on the table. It ends in a stump. "That kind of healing?"

"Yes. I--yes."

"Interesting," he says. "It's been four hundred years. I'd rather grown accustomed. How long does it take you?"

"Um--it depends. A few moments each, for the superficial ones. Longer for the ones where there's structural damage."

"Not a priority, then," he says lightly. "Perhaps later." The remaining hand is balled into a fist on the table. "How was magic discovered by your people? How was it first learned?"

"I don't know. We've had it for longer than our historical records go back."

"All right."

"Most people don't get their ratios and resistances worked out for years, and it's customary to learn a roughly equal amount of each until then. Can you think of any mechanically trivial tasks that it would be valuable to be able to accomplish through force of will? You can't really do very much for the first bit."

"Tying a knot would be useful, is that complicated?"

"Tying a knot would be straightforward, but I meant...a lot of what mages learn is how to leverage magic. When every use of it carries a price in pain and personality, you want to put it where it will do the most good. Tying knots can be done by hand fairly trivially, in my experience. Given that this is a war zone, a more efficient use of magic might be deflecting projectiles."

"Tying knots can be done by two hands."

...

...

"Yes. Um, I actually know how to tie a knot using one hand and my teeth, but. Um. That was...thoughtless of me, I apologize."

"I'd much sooner people forget it," he says, "and I can also tie knots with my teeth but not conveniently in public, or on belts and shoes and so forth. If deflecting projectiles is similarly trivial it is a better choice."

"More trivial, actually. It's easier to convince an object in motion to go in a different direction than it is to convince a limp, at-rest object to undergo a series of contortions."

"All right. How is it done?"

Like this, she sends via Osanwë, after a moment of completely failing to generate words for what it feels like.

Hmmm.

Can you send it again? That's a lot to take in.

Of course. More of the same.

"All right. How do I know if I'm doing it? I can't fire projectiles at myself to check -"

"Well, you might not get it right the first time, so we probably shouldn't start with actual live fire. I can throw something at you and you can try to deflect it."

"Go ahead."

So she takes off her necklace, spins it a few times by the chain, and flings it at him.

It soars off to the side. He looks delighted. "Does the pain also scale up with the difficulty of the working?"

"Yes. It also depends in kind with what magic you're using--Effort always feels like muscle ache, and Conquest always feels like an impact in your bones, but for some reason Sympathy feels like a wide variety of things depending on what exactly you're doing."

"And if I practice this for a few hours a day for a few decades, you think I'd be able to make it work against Angband? In fifty years? A hundred?"

"I don't know. It depends on how strong Angband is, and I don't know that. To be sure, you could take down a normal stone wall within a few decades, but..." she spreads her hands helplessly. "I have no idea what this Enemy has done to the place."

"I don't know if we have two hundred years. If I practice twice as often, do I improve twice as quickly?"

"Ah--yes, that's generally how practice works. What kind of things does he usually deploy? I may be useful as a direct asset before I have a serious impact as a teacher."

"Not for, for example, swordfighting, there's only so much time you can put in in a day. All right. I can put some people on this full-time - dozens, if necessary - can you support another's efforts in that way?"

"Well, I mean, with most people there's a limit to how much it's a good idea to practice, since you don't want to burn yourself out, but it doesn't have a point of diminishing returns except psychologically. I'm not sure what you mean by that latter part."

"If I train a hundred people in this art, and we all try to knock down Angband, is that easier?"

"Oh. Yes. There might normally be some coordination issues with that, but I imagine the ability to share thoughts would cut down on that."

"We've been training together for centuries, too. Thank you. I need to get some messages off about this immediately. Is there anything you need from us?"

"Can you tell me if the Enemy has any resources or troops in the area? If I test myself against something, and you know how strong it is in comparison with other resources he has, and I observe how fast you progress, I might be able to give estimates for when you'll be able to do more things."

"That's wise, but it's been years since we've seen them. He tends to test our strength once a decade, with orcs or greater monsters, and pull them back once we react. You're always welcome to go slay spiders."

"Spiders?"

"There is a forest full of them. We believe them to be descended from an old ally of the Enemy's, and they are very persistent, so we mostly try not to travel through that forest, or to travel armed."

"How big are these spiders?"

"Six to ten feet, at the last I know. If someone recently tried clearing the forest again they may be a little smaller, it seems to take them a few years to reach full size."

"Huh. Alright, I'll see what I can see. Which direction is that forest?"

"Due east. I can send you a horse and escort."

"It would probably be safer and faster just to fly out of reach."

"Ah, yes. Enjoy the trip, then. The kingdom between here and there is my brothers'. If you get there ahead of my message, they'll likely be alarmed; you can stay the night here and leave in the morning, or expect to explain yourself to them."

"I suppose there's no particular hurry if this war is being fought on a scale of decades and centuries," she concedes. "I'll stay the night."

"The war has so far lasted more than four hundred fifty years. Is this unusual for wars in your land?"

"Very. It's considered exceptional for a war to last much more than a decade."

"Well, we tried to end it that quickly. It didn't work."

"So I see. I suppose it must be different--how long do your people generally live? I've gathered from context that it must be longer than mine, but that's not very specific."

"You resemble a Man, though a very unusual one, and they usually live fifty or sixty years, a hundred at the outset. We do not die in the same manner. If harm never comes to us, neither will death."

"Lucky. I'm--human, yes. We generally have longer life expectancies than that--I think the range for us is generally seventy to a hundred, and or course a mage can stave off the effects of aging for as long as they remain a mage. I'll probably live until something kills me, and so will my sister because I love her as life itself, but most people get less than a dozen decades. So you're not human? I noticed there was something strange about you, but once I realized this was a different world I attributed it to that. Humans are the only sentient species in my world."

"We are called the Eldar, the Firstborn, and we are very different from Men. I am not a typical specimen, though." A slightly frightening smile. "We usually, for instance, have two hands."

"Different how? I would really rather not offend someone because I assumed they were similar in some respect to my own species."

"We are spirits taking on physical forms, rather than whatever relationship prevails between the soul and body of Men - currently the topic of much debate, as I understand it. We have a great deal of control over our bodies. We are not destroyed when they die. We age more slowly - though, in these lands, only a little more slowly - and we are bound to Arda, to endure as long as it does."

"Noted. How close is it to nighttime? I should probably try to match this place's day/night cycle since I'll be here for the forseeable future."

"We're very far north, and have long days this time of the year. Another six hours. Would that be enough time for you to give me a hand, if that's within your capabilties at all?"

"Yes, I can do that."

There is a wave of anger towards the Enemy when he asks, but it doesn't show on her face at all.

"The Enemy technically didn't inflict that one," he says, amused. 

"Oh?" she asks, a little distracted.

"The Enemy shackled me by the relevant hand to a cliff to slowly starve or die of exposure. And then used magic to make it slower. A year later, a friend found me. He couldn't get the hand loose, so -"

Oh.

"Well, I can fix it regardless. Fair warning, this is going to be gross; I'll have to re-open the original wound and regenerate it from the skeleton out."

" I think I will manage."

"I expected as much, but some things make unpleasant surprises."

The first thing that happens is that the scar tissue dissolves. The wound doesn't bleed, however--presumably she's preventing that.

It takes three hours for the hand bones to finish growing back, another half an hour to replace the muscles, and less than five minutes after that to clothe the whole thing in skin.

He flexes it. "Thank you. We have a number of people disfigured or disabled by the war; how long until we attain your level of mastery of healing, do you think?"

"Well, I'm very good for my age, but that age is only twenty-one."

At that he looks slightly shocked. "I know Men are different, but - that's very young. Are you - all right? Do you need chaperones, or tutors?"

"Chaperones? Why would I--I do admit I was still in school, but I am an adult, as my people count things."

"When I was the equivalent of 21 I caused all kinds of trouble," he says. "Our resources are obviously at your disposal only insofar as you want them."

"I'm not offended, I'm confused. Why chaperones?"

"The nearest community of Men is in Estolad, and not native to there. I know that their customs cannot be the customs of Men in general, but I'd have to travel much farther afield to encounter any others, and they are very concerned with their young adults travelling in pairs, and would be distressed with me if I invited a woman your age into my office for an afternoon and evening and would decline to explain why." He shrugs. "I had concluded it was a cultural difference of some sort."

"I see. Well, if I spent my life pandering to the kind of person who thinks I've been having sex because I'm alone with someone of the opposite gender, I'd never get anything done. The offer is nonetheless appreciated."

He looks utterly horrified. "Is that what they think?"

"That's...what chaperones are for, is to make sure people aren't having sex."

"But - I'm not going to marry a 21-year-old human - who on earth would ever possibly think -"

"Who said anything about marriage?"

"You did!!"

"No, I said sex! People have extramarital sex sometimes! The human gestation period is nine months and my sister and I were born only six months after our parents' wedding!"

"Ah." He says. "For us those are the same thing. If I were to have sex with a human woman I would be married to her for all eternity. This would be a profoundly stupid thing to do, so I was surprised anyone would take precautionary methods to prevent it. Your explanation makes more sense."

"What, really? That's...very strange, on a wide variety of levels."

"Your way strikes me as equally puzzling. So - the fear is that if unsupervised, Men won't be able to get any work done and will fall to having sex that does not result in marriage, and then marrying while already with child?"

"The fear is that women will have extramarital sex and thereafter be considered morally defiled. It's not shameful for the men."

She's smiling. It's not a nice smile.

"Then why would they do it?" he asks, flexing the new hand and then waving it around the room in confusion. "Why would you need to specifically stop them, if it's considered dishonorable anyway? Are people going to think you did something dishonorable?"

"Because it's considered dishonorable for stupid reasons, so not everyone agrees, and because there are people who are perfectly happy to do dishonorable things that feel nice if they think they won't get caught."

He shakes his head. "Well. I will not comment on the customs of Men, and our resources remain at your disposal as interests you, and I am not personally inclined to care what assumptions the Men in my employ make for obscure cultural reasons if you aren't."

"Genosha--The Free City of Genosha, where I'm from--has pretty much gotten over this, but there are enough places in the world where that's the custom that it's easy to recognize. It's annoying, but going out of my way to avoid having people think that would be even more annoying."

He's smiling slightly to himself. "All right. There's a guest room across the hall, someone will take you there. I need to compose the letters explaining the situation."

"Thank you."

And someone knocks on the door to show her to the room. He pulls out parchment and a quill and an inkwell, still using the hand he'd been accustomed to. "Should I have them bring you food as well?"

"Oh," she says, surprised. "Yes, thank you. I forget about hunger, sometimes, when I spend a while on a workng."

"Anything in particular?"

"I'm not picky."

"Noted. Good night, ah -"

"Odette" Given name, the name of her mother's mother "Zavier" Fathername

"Maedhros. Just the one name." Another bitter smile. "Good night, Odette Zavier."

"Good night, Maedhros."

Her room is very small, but clean, and contains only a bed. A short time later someone brings up some kind of stew and bread.

The fact that they have food so similar to what she's familiar with probably shouldn't even register as strange, compared to everything else, but it does.

It's nowhere near the time she would normally go to bed, back home, but luckily for her plans to adjust her sleep cycle it's been an exhausting day, and she's out like a light as soon as her head hits the pillow.

In the morning there is hot stew and bread placed on the table, apparently recently but by someone who did not wake her.

She idly formulates a handful of variously stew-related hypotheses, and looks around to see if someone also happened to leave a change of clothes or if she should convince what she was wearing yesterday that it was clean.

They didn't think of a change of clothes, apparently.

Yesterday's clothes it is. And she has no idea what time it is, but if she was expected somewhere at a certain time someone would surely have told her. She opens the door and looks around.

The hallway is empty. At one end there's a sort of balcony; at the other, a staircase.

Leaving without saying anything feels rude, butting into whatever Maedhros is doing feels rude, he seemed awfully important--but does she think she oughtn't bother him because it's true, or because she's only resistant to Sympathy, not immune? Well, Osanwë would be less intrusive than some of the alternatives she's used to, she can try that, assuming she can find him by it.

Odette Zavier! comes the thought as soon as she attempts it. We're outside attempting Sympathy training. Please join us.

Balcony it is, then!

From the balcony she can see about thirty people in the courtyard, tossing projectiles at each other. There's a staircase down to join them.

Bothering with staircases is for people who aren't her. "Good morning," she says when she's landed.

Everyone looks impressed. "We were eager to begin practicing," Maedhros says, "so you'd have a sense of our rate of progress and could estimate how long until we can bring down Angband."

"Sensible. For a group this large I would definitely want to throw in Effort and Conquest exercizes as well. The odds that everyone here is most suited for Sympathy are negligible."

"Wise," he says. "Can you lead some?"

"Yes. Off the top of my head I can't think of anthing as trivial and useful as deflection for the other two, but--" she scoops up a clod of dirt. "For effort, you can focus on compressing it" like this "until it happens, and for conquest you can order that it crumble" like this. "Unless you're very talented with conquest this will take more than one try, since unlike effort or sympathy it either instantaneously works or it doesn't."

They all immediately start trying it. 

"We've been unclear how to obtain an advantageous position against the Enemy for a very long time. It is good to now have one."

"I wish I knew where my sister was, but I think it was a very good thing that I botched my teleport."

He smiles. "Fortune is rarely in our favor, and I wouldn't trust it. Nonetheless we'll seize this opportunity as if the gods have been generous with it."

"Sounds sensible to me."

"Did you still want to head east and bother the spiders? It's a good day for it, if so, long sunlight hours and clear weather and my messenger should by now have reached my brothers."

"Mm--I want to, but I'm not sure I wouldn't be better off here for the moment. It might be better to figure out everyone's aptitudes before anything else."

"Very well. By talking with them individually? Is it based on personality?"

"Yes, but the connection isn't always obvious. Most people are surprised that I have as much of an aptitude for Sympathy magic as I do. Trying to guess based on peoples' personality from a few hours' conversation isn't generally reliable. The best way is generally to have them try everything and see how fast they're taking to what and ask them how it feels to do each one."

"All right. Shall we start?"

"What you've been doing is a good start. Keep practicing with conquest and effort for a bit, and then we can compare."

He does both successfully, his face quite blank. "I think I find Sympathy most natural."

"Feelings like that are almost always accurate. Now, for Sympathy--" and she segues into a lecture on the efficient use of Sympathy magic.

Everyone has stopped practicing to listen.

She's only twenty-one, she hasn't even graduated yet, and people centuries old are stopping in their tracks to listen to what she has to say, because she's the only mage in the world right now--unless she dragged her sister with her and she just managed to end up somewhere geographically completely different, what're the odds and anyway it wouldn't really change the issue--and she's so young and inexperienced and, right now, incredibly important.

She very carefully doesn't broadcast any of that, but instead dredges her thankfully excellent memory for the relevant information because she is not looking like an incompetent in front of these people, not if she can help it.

Maedhros encourages the next thrown object to soar back towards the thrower and bop him lightly on the nose. "What sort of workings are painful?"

"...All of them."

"Oh."

"I mean, little things like this, it should only sting a little bit, but there should definitely be something.You're not feeling anything at all?"

"I may not have noticed."

"I'm going to assume it would be hilariously optimistic to guess that you didn't notice because you were distracted by how nifty magic is."

"Do you not grow desensitized to the pain after enough time?"

"I do, but I still notice when I'm in pain."

"You are twenty-one."

"Do you just stop noticing things about your body after enough time? I mean, pain stops bothering you when you've been in worse pain before, but it's still a sensation."

"When I raise my arm, I feel at least thirty sensations that could be characterized as pain. Old wounds. None of them particularly register as painful anymore, unless there's cause to be on guard for it. These injuries are more than four hundred years old."

"...Do you want me to try and fix that? I'm pretty sure I can fix that."

"Perhaps when you're done teaching this? It is not a personal priority."

"Alright." Back to teaching, then.

It is one thing to know that war is terrible, she privately reflects, and another to meet someone who is so damaged by it that repair is no longer important to them. One is enough to raise a flashpaper-bright fury, but the other--

The other will break your heart.

(Something warm and heavy and tight lodges at the bottom of her heart, and this is terrible, but at least she has the opportunity to do something about it.)

The lessons consume most of the rest of the day. In the evening he invites her back to the conference room, more hesitantly because apparently mortals have absolutely ridiculous customs about this.

If she notices his hesitation she doesn't remark on it.

"You want to try to cure various old injuries of mine?"

"It's probably petty," she admits. "I know that a war means that people get hurt, badly, and die, and that those who survive are often never the same, after. But I'm still young and naive and it bothers me that you've been hurting so long you don't notice anymore."

"You are very young," he agrees, amused. "Are there no wars where you're from? In any event you are welcome to try."

"There have been no wars in my lifetime, and my country is very young as countries go and has never been to war. I have never seen the aftermath of one." Pain has a purpose but this pain is clearly no longer fulfilling its purpose it has lingered too long it should just leave now its work is done--There.

He raises an arm, raises an eyebrow. "Interesting. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"If you haven't seen war, are you confident you'll handle it well? Some people find themselves unwilling to kill an enemy."

...

"I said I've never seen war. I didn't say I've never killed anyone."

Another distant smile. "Far be it from me to challenge your credentials in personal violence, then."

"I'm sorry. I do know--it's not the same thing. But I..." one of her hands curls into a fist. "I am as sure as I can be that I will not falter when it matters. How well I'll cope when I have a moment to myself--that I don't know. But that's not what matters, in the end. Is it."

"No." He shakes his head. "Twenty-one. Do you need anything else from me?"

...He's concerned for her, because she's so young, she realizes privately. It seems almost backwards--at least she knows that bad things happening to her is bad, even if it's less important than other peoples' lives--but it does make sense.

"No, I don't think so. Not at the moment, at least."

"Very well. I'm going to continue practicing, then." And he glares a rock on his desk into dust, starts painfully reconstructing it.

It's late, so she returns to the guest room she slept in last night. She can go take her feelings out on spiders tomorrow.

In the morning there's training in the courtyard again. This time they have left her a change of clothes. There's a dress that clearly has no practical uses, and a men's uniform, both folded next to breakfast.

She's actually slightly tempted by the dress, since if she has to engage in actual melee something has already gone far wrong, but--assuming things aren't going to go far wrong seems like a terrible idea at this point. She dons the uniform.

He nods as soon as she steps within view. "I apologize for the limited options; our people have less physical differentiation between genders than Men."

"I appreciate it, regardless. I think now would be a good time to see what can be done about spiders, and then I can come back and see what else I can meaningfully teach you once you've had more of a chance to practice with what you already know."

"Thank you. Travel safely; send my brothers my regards." This, like almost everything else, is said with an air of faint irony. He concentrates and the rock in front of him crumbles. He concentrates more and it starts to piece itself together.

Someday she is going to be a Great Mage, and someday she is going to become so powerful she could tear the earth apart, and someday she's going to destroy this Enemy utterly.

And in the meantime she can fly in a direction that will ultimately get her to a spider-infested forest where she can turn some giant arachnids into goo.

The plains eventually turn into mountains; there's a pass through them, or if her flight has enough altitude she could go over them.

She was supposed to give Maedhros' regards to his brothers, whatever baggage might be attached to that. She'll follow roughly the path that a non-flying person would.

The pass is well-defended; there are two fortresses, bristling with archers, but the message must have preceded her because they do not fire.

How did he even get a letter here? Not the point. Is there anyone visible from the air?

The archers at the ramparts are recognizably humanoid, if not identifiable beyond that.

She descends.

One of the archers pulls his helmet off to reveal rather a mane of long, blond hair. He appears to be smiling at some private joke, but it's a happier smile than she'd seen on Maedhros. "Our otherworldly visitor," he says. "Welcome to the Pass of Aglon."

"Thank you. To whom do I have the honor of speaking?"

"Celegorm son of Fëanor," he says, "my brother says you spoke to him. You're Odette Zavier?"

"Yes. He sends his regards. So far the things I have found useful to do here are teaching him and his people magic, and I'm going to kill giant spiders to see how difficult it is so as to have a point of comparison for what kinds of the Enemy's creatures I can take on and how long it will take to learn to do more serious damage to him."

He likes her immediately. "Sounds good. Spiders are thataways."

"Would you like me to show you the basics of how my magic works? Getting very good at it is a major time and effort investment, but one of the basic exercises I started your brother's people on was deflecting projectiles. For that matter, as long as I'm here, is there anyone with old wounds that could use fixing? I regenerated your brother's hand and cleared up some chronic pain issues he had been having."

He raises an eyebrow. "He must have been entertained. I think we're okay over here, for the time being. Once Maedhros has decided what he wants I am sure it'll be communicated. You can heal anything? Can you bring back the dead?

"Not if they've been dead more than a few minutes. Maybe someday."

"It can be done with enough expertise in your style of magic?"

"I have never heard of a mage who could ressurrect someone more than an hour dead, but before a few hundred years ago no one had ever heard of a mage who could enchant a city to fly with only a little maintainance from mages inhabiting it. As far as anyone can tell, there is no hard limit to what magic can do, only what mages are willing to bear, and to work towards. Today the oldest living Great Mage is nine hundred and seventy-four years old. If I live to two thousand, I will be able to do things he could only dream of."

"I see. Well, good luck. Tell the spiders hi. Need anything?"

"Nah, I'm good. I'll see you on the way back, probably."

"Sure."

Well, that was significantly less depressing. Not that she's going to say so.

He snorts. "Nelyo's quite upbeat if he thinks that's what you need. Take it as a compliment, kiddo."

"Oh. I will, then." It doesn't make the actual problem less of a problem, but she supposes it's something.

"The actual problem is the Enemy."

"Quite. Hence the killing spiders."

"We've tried exterminating them. If you miss even a few small ones, which you will because it's a forest and it's quite literally impossible to get them all, they're right back in ten years. Just in case you get carried away out there."

"Okay, but do you have magic to detect the presence of spiders? I'm not planning to look for them physically."

"Not general-purpose enough that I could go "hey, how many spiders are there in this forest", so if you can do that, go ahead. Actually if you can do that you should probably just will Angband into a puddle, but I assume Maedhros is on that already?"

"I have been assuming that Angband had magic making it sturdier, which would make it harder to will into a puddle. I could be wrong, but on the other hand, to be quite frank his injuries and how he got them make me...cautious...about approaching the place before I'm sure I can take it down or at least get away. And he was practicing magic quite diligently when last I saw him."

"I'm actually surprised he let you leave without insisting you carry a single dose of a fast-acting poison. All his people do."

"It's possible he guessed I could commit suicide via magic. I could."

"Welcome to Beleriand."

"It would probably sound sarcastic if I said 'glad to be here,' but since I'd rather save a large number of other peoples' lives than preserve my own, I actually mean it."

"We actually had to work pretty hard to get here, and were departing from somewhere that was entirely safe, so the sentiment is understood."

"Really? I'm curious what kind of place would be entirely safe from the kinds of things Maedhros showed me..."

"The Enemy has brothers. They decided they didn't like the pain and suffering in the world, so they built their own sealed-off continent without it. We used to live there."

"Uh, why aren't they fighting him?"

"Depending who you ask, either because that would almost certainly destroy the continent and everything living on it or because they're selfish and lazy and can't be bothered."

"That first one...sounds reasonable and also like if I follow my current plan of 'become magically powerful enough to smite him' I should be exceedingly careful about collateral damage."

"We can evacuate to a hundred miles with an hour's notice and two hundred miles with a day's. You will kill hundreds of thousands of people if you sink, burn, blast or otherwise render uninhabitable land of any greater radius in your fight with the enemy. It might be worth it."

"At which point my main concern is 'does he have a deadman's switch that will do a great deal more damage than that set to go off if he dies'."

"He didn't the last time the Valar warred with him."

"Were there a lot of people in harm's way last time that he could kill out of spite?"

"I don't think so, no."

"Then I don't want to bet that he wouldn't do that this time."

"His continued existence is also a lousy bet. Orcs are, as far as we know, not just produced from tortured Elves but in constant pain."

"Eugh. I don't mean that I'll hold off on killing him, don't worry, I mean that I'll make a mental note to check to see if I can find a deadman's switch and get rid of it if there is one before I do it."

"Sounds good. Am I keeping you from spider-killing? Because it sounds like you have quite the ambitious plans here."

"Not by a lot, and the deadman's switch thing at least was valuable. What exactly are the Valar, that seems relevant if the Enemy is one of them, what properties do they have?"

"They created the world, they can mostly take physical form at will, most of their abilities are very slow-acting - measured in millenia, for the serious ones - they can read minds even if you're not willing, as a much stronger variant on our abilities - the Enemy has some mind-control powers but they seem to be unreliable and demand you've been in his presence. He can breed monsters of various new and interesting varieties. He can induce hallucinations that are so persistent there's no known way to convince someone reality isn't one."

"...What, really? That's awful--"

"Oh, God, did that happen to Maedhros."

"He decided long ago to pretend we all existed, there was probably going to be a war if he didn't. Maybe sometimes nowadays he actually believes it, I'm not sure."

"That explains a really depressing amount of his behavior."

"If you tell him it's obvious he will probably modify the relevant behavior. What are you thinking of?"

"...It wasn't obvious, exactly, it's just that he was really depressing and also mentioned that he had been captured. And--the way he looked when he said some things, like that I should take his regards to his brothers. Like there was something horribly ironic about it."

"He asked his rescuer to shoot him. I would have, but I wasn't there."

"If he prevented a war I think I'm glad his rescuer didn't kill him. I don't know if I'm glad for his sake or not." She pauses. "If he was going to pretend at all he'd have been pretending all the time, right? To be happy."

"He pretends to think we exist. He only pretends to be happy for the benefit of the people who need to believe that, and I guess in his assessment you don't, particularly. If you seem to be significantly more effective if you think he's happy he'll start pretending for you too, if that's what you're worried about."

"I'm not going to be less effective because he's massively depressing. I'm probably going to be more effective because I will be righteously enraged on his behalf, but please don't tell him that; I don't want to give him incentive to pretend in that direction either. No, it's just--I got him to smile, for a moment. When he got magic to work for the first time."

"When we win the war I think his life will be worth living most of the time."

"I hope so. I hate the idea that someone couldn't ever be happy for more than a minute again."

"You must be from a very nice place."

"My people aren't immortal and my religion teaches that the afterlife is a lovely place. It's not really enough, but it's enough that I don't get too hung up on it. And no one does mind control. Ever."

"I'm surprised your magic couldn't do that kind of thing, it does so much so easily. Or are you saying that no one'd stoop to it? How would you know?"

"My magic could do that kind of thing. It could also find out that someone else had been doing that kind of thing. If you're a mage, there are some things you just don't do if you don't want all the other mages to band against you and kill you, and mind control is one of them."

"Fair enough. You want to come in, if you're here for longer than to secure leave to go spear our eight-legged neighbors? We have food and drink and other Men your age if you care about that sort of thing."

"No, I just wanted information. Thank you for that. I'll be off to--well, probably implement a more efficient method of killing spiders than spearing them, but you get the idea. I'll see you later."

"Have fun."

"Here's hoping."

Off to the Forest of Giant Spiders!

She crosses a fair stretch of fertile, populated farmland, and then a river, with a few guard towers on one side and a forest on the other.

Maedhros said he had multiple brothers, she should stop by the guard towers and see if anyone notices her.

The guards have been apprised that there is a magic flying Man coming to kill spiders, not to bother her, and not to rescue her.

If no one responds to her presence she'll go back to flying towards the spiders. Zoom.

She crosses the river into a fairly dense and yet fairly dead-looking forest. There are spiderwebs, but no spiders are immediately visible.

Well. Are there spiders here?

The universe confirms that there are hundreds of thousands of spiders in this forest, and that most of them are normal spider sized but that thousands of them are very very big.

Are the very big ones people? She had better check that too.

They have human-like intelligence, yes.

Fuck's sake.

Fine, she had better try to communicate with them before she does anything drastic. Good thing she copied that lovely telepathy. She lands, making sure to keep a read up for the presence of spiders and readying herself to deflect if any attack, picks a nearby one, and broadcasts a greeting.

The greeting is answered by two spiders dropping out of the canopy onto her head.

One of them can go tumbling to the side. The other one can get fixed in place. That was rude, she informs her captive.

It snarls at her. Intruder.

You've been killing people. It needs to stop, one way or another.

We don't leave our lands.

You could try asking people to leave in ways other than "kill them as soon as they set foot inside."

It clicks its pincers in a manner that might be laughter. Leave.

Not until I get this resolved, one way or another.

And several more leap down from overhead.

They can get deflected too. Look, you really can't kill me, I am incredibly powerful, I really want to come to a diplomatic solution but if I can't I will look elsewhere in solution-space.

If things come in, we'll warn them to leave, then eat them only if we're starving or they don't listen.

How will you warn them to leave? No one who isn't a spider is likely to understand your vocalizations.

Jump in front of them, clickclickclick.

Most people aren't going to understand that you're people from that, much less trying to actually communicate. Oh, and are you affiliated with Morgoth in any way? It might be relevant.

Sharp anxious chittering, no answer.

I am not going to immediately start murdering you if the answer is yes.

We don't know what you mean. 

Morgoth is [this person]. He has been hurting a lot of people. Some people think you're working for or with him. I want to know if this is true.

Born here, never left here, no one tells us what to do.

Well, that'll make this easier. Of course "easier" is a relative concept here. Are there any non-spider persons in the forest or near it so as to probably need rescuing?

No.

I'm going to talk to some people about what to do about this. I will be back. Please don't kill anyone while I'm gone if someone wanders too close. I won't ask you to forego self-defense if someone attacks you but if they're just intruding, I will be back soon and can remove them without killing them.

Click click click click click.

That's probably as good as she's going to get.

She flies back to Celegorm's fortress, in considerably more of a hurry this time.

"You're back early. Get bored?"

"Nope. Turns out they're people, and not working for Morgoth, and they're pretty casually amoral from what I can tell but mostly they seem to just want people to stop tresspassing. I thought it would probably be a good idea to explore other options before jumping straight to murder."

"Every once in a while a couple thousand swarm over their borders to eat everything they can before they're driven back, and also their territory keeps expanding. Their - proginator worked for Morgoth, I doubt he has much use for specific individual spiders, except as a constant drain on our resources."

"That definitely sounds like a problem to be solved, but unless they're going to swarm now it still doesn't seem like the best answer is to jump straight to murder. My first thought was that I could put up a wall encircling their territory too tall and smooth for them to get out or for anyone else to get in."

"...you could do that. It has some other drawbacks, namely that if the north is a war zone, which it will be as soon as fighting breaks out again, there's then no way to get west of here without going more than eight hundred miles out of your way, at least for those of us who cannot fly. The spiders' southern border is the northern border of a hostile kingdom that has specifically a policy against letting refugees through in times of need. I don't suppose you could make a giant sealed enclosure that we could travel across the top of, should we need to move a lot of people west?"

"Hmm, maybe. If I put up a giant glass dome--but that would cut off the air--but I could leave tunnels and holes small enough that they couldn't get through--but if I gave it enough traction to walk on that would presumably interfere with the sunlight..."

"You could have a fairly narrow strip that has enough traction to walk on, and still have the situation be an improvement over the current one from the perspective of using it as an evacuation route, and also for the spiders. If you care about that, which - their mother definitely worked with Morgoth, if any of them grow into something like that we will not notice until it's way too late -"

"I'm not inclined to literally commit genocide because someone's ancestor was horrible. I honestly don't think any solutions I could possibly come up with to the situation as it stands are good, but--tell me more about this mother and her hazards, I may be able to build something in to deal with that."

"She fed off light, and grew larger and larger until she could walk across a mountain range, rip all light out of the world, and consume it to grow still more powerful. Were she still around or one of her children to grow to the same size she'd eat the Sun and Moon, which would seriously inconvenience us and also kill all the Men, I don't think they can handle that sort of thing."

"...It seems like you would notice the spiders approaching that size before they got there, but--noted. Definitely noted. The spider I talked to...strongly implied that they eat people, when they kill them, but I suppose that doesn't preclude also eating light."

"They do eat people. They also eat light, but I'm not sure how literally. And we'd notice, unless the forest was under a giant dome and therefore we couldn't see that the whole dome was now taken up by a single spider until she was very large indeed. For example."

"That does seem like a problem. Dammit, why does this world have so many intractably terrible things."

He laughs. "I'm sorry. Do grant us some credit; the tractable problems we've solved."

"I wasn't blaming you. Whoever was responsible for creating it has some explaining to do, though."

"We're on really bad terms with them, so I can't disagree with you there either."

"On really bad terms with them?"

"The creators of the world. I think we've been specifically told that their wrath lies against us from the west to the uttermost east, and that they shall fence paradise against us such that not even the echo of our lamentations can reach their ears, and also they will torment us when we die."

"That sounds like a really shitty religion."

"What's a religion?"

"Um. It is...the set of beliefs a person has about a god or set of gods, including what they intend and want for people to do?"

He looks baffled. "The 'implacably set against us' bit isn't a problem because of any particular beliefs of ours about it, it's a problem because it means all our endeavors are fated to fail and we have eternity in the Halls to look forward to and so forth."

"Why do you think your gods are implacably set against you?"

"...they said so? Quite loudly? The mountains shook with their voices and people quavered and dropped to their knees and my father laughed in the face of fate and so forth? I was there, how else would I know?"

"...No one on my Earth has ever had actual proof of the existence of a deity in thousands of years, if then. I...appear to have been assuming things I shouldn't have been. Wait, so when Maedhros said that Elves go on existing after they die and humans don't--"

"We go to the Halls of Mandos, Mandos being the god who spoke that sentence I just mentioned. We don't know what happens to your kind. There might be something, no one can tell."

"Your dead are on this same plane of existence?!"

"Due west of here, just keep flying, eventually you'll meet some very angry gods."

"When I said I couldn't raise the dead--no one's sure what happens to the souls of Men in my world either. I don't know if it would be different for Elves, but--it might."

"Oh. Wow. You can raise the dead?? Or might be able to? My father's dead, my brother's dead, my cousin and best friend is dead -"

"Maybe. I make no promises. I could try."