"It would be nice to have some comforting platitudes that wouldn't ring hollow," she mutters.

"I am not really in need of them. But thank you."

"You looked like a lost puppy."

"My cousins are very hard to hate and very hard to forgive and there is no conceivable crime for which Maedhros could have deserved five minutes of what he went through for fifty years."

"That's true."

"People will think I have poor judgment if I am too bothered by this."

"Fuck that, I wouldn't even want Morgoth to have to go through what Morgoth put him through."

He laughs. "That is very - good of you."

"Torture is bad."

"Yup."

"Like many bad things, it continues to be bad when you do it to bad people."

"I have neither the means nor the particular desire to make Morgoth suffer through what he does to his prisoners. But I wouldn't  feel much impulse to spare him either. As I said, it is good of you."

"I will admit that if someone else was hurting him I would find stopping them to be dramatically low on my priority list," she admits. "But then that's because there are so many things on it."

"Will there still be when he's dead and gone?"

"If someone is managing to torture him once he's dead and gone I will applaud their resourcefulness and tell off their priorities."

"Maedhros will tell them to stop. He'll be very convincing."

"I can imagine."

"You have not seen him at it, but he wields it when he needs to. I think that's good for him."

"Here's hoping."

"If teleportation may be only a month or two out, are you still thinking that the power to face the Enemy is fifteen? Outfitted with the right magic and armor it seems that teleportation'd practically be enough, that and some dangerous things that explode."

"I'm not sure I want to try teleporting into the middle of Angband. I couldn't get very good feedback when I tried poking at the place with Sympathy and it's possible it mucks with my magic in some way that makes this go horribly wrong."

He shudders. "Yes, don't. Teleporting people in Angband out, though, if you can do it remotely, and then if that works it might be worth chancing someone on an in-and-out."

"That would require better feedback to find them in the first place," she sighs. "Which may or may not be a tractable problem. Oh, and I tried dropping boulders on Angband, it didn't really work."

"Suppose not. Well, obviously do not risk anything before you're certain of success."

"It is a war," she sighs. "Some things are worth risking. But, no, anything that risks leaving someone alive in the Enemy's hands does not qualify."