"If you want to slaughter your way across this world for its own good before you've reduced its population enough you feel justified in feeding it into a black hole  - in the futile hope it'll kill me or the warranted hope it'll badly inconvenience me - that's your prerogative."

"If I black hole Valinor and it's an inconvenience-level problem for the Valar too what are you imagining will happen?"

"Oh, it's fatal if we aren't expecting it. We have perhaps a nanosecond to react and need to think of the right thing to do. I need the destruction of Valinor to be fatal to the Valar - Mandos is his own backup for the dead."

"I recommend," Cam says, "that you not do anything to seem so categorically impossible to deal with that I have to do something drastic like inform the Valar that this deal has been on the table so as to commit my future self."

"If you were to do that I'd have no reason to leave anyone on this planet alive."

"None? Why were they alive before I showed up, then?"

"We don't want to annoy the Valar. Telling them this plan was on the table would annoy them more than wiping out this planet, though, and annoy them sufficiently much that marginal annoyance at that point does not inconvenience me."

"Noted."

"Have a lovely afternoon. Give Hitler my regards."

Sigh.

He continues sitting there.

"You done?" Cam asks Maitimo.

"Yep."

So Cam flaps back over to his shuttle.

And Maitimo walks, and they take off, and the ground stays stubbornly illusioned to look like mud.

"I wonder if there would have been a trap if we'd been insufficiently careful with the oaths or if he just sincerely wanted to offer you that deal."

"Could be both." Cam hands him a piece of paper. "Write something, anything, he's scary good at illusions."

I am not an illusion. I could be a shapeshifter who replaced Maitimo when you weren't looking but anyone with osanwe should be able to check that if they're sufficiently careful to direct it at 'Maitimo' and not at the person in front of them, and also I couldn't be convincingly impersonated very long, not knowing the names of everyone I've ever spoken to would be suspicious.

And in spite of this compelling argument Cam produces the last written work of Maitimo. "Congratulations," he says, and they're in the air. "Am I putting you back where I got you?"

"Think so. There's not really much to chew over, there, we can't agree and it sounds like the hope you eventually will is most of the reason he's not pushing the pace with war crimes."

"Did you mean the thing about the Silmarils?"

"Of course not. We couldn't get backups online fast enough unless he gave us the Silmarils first, and I have a feeling he wouldn't. 

If he did, then probably yes."

"Well, I guess if you had the backups it'd be only the Valar who I personally wouldn't mourn and - some number of Maiar."

"Nearly a million. If you can think of an avenue to end this war that results in less than a million irretrievable deaths, please do share."

"I'm thinking, I assure you."

"I'm expecting him to escalate in the meantime."