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Confirmation reaches them in the spring that Elwing of Sirion has the Silmaril.
It takes as long as the spring only because they weren't looking. They can stretch the oath that far, they can be disinterested in knowing - but now they know, and so there it is. Elwing of Sirion is twenty-three. Half-man, so fully grown. Sirion is a city of refugees. Elves and Men and, since there are Men, children. Elwing herself has infant children.
They debate whether to send messengers. Debating is allowed, even protracted debating. The Oath, these days, is loud in their minds, and louder when they're pushing it like this, but they drag out the debate for a few months. Messengers will probably be shot on sight. The last time Elwing of Sirion received news of the House of Fëanor it would have been the news that her brothers, twins, aged seven, had not survived the sack of Menegroth.
They send messengers anyway. The messengers are shot on sight. They have good armor, Fëanorian armor, and return home injured but not lethally. Maglor's songs no longer stitch them together. War makes you worse at healing. Maglor's songs are more powerful than ever - he can knock back a wave of approaching enemies, he can make a blade's next touch deadly, he can make them faster and more impervious to danger, but he can no longer do healing.
Maedhros, when he thinks about this, thinks that perhaps there needs to be part of you that is not broken for healing spells to draw on. Or perhaps the Enemy is amused to strip that away first. Perhaps the Enemy finds it suited to the theme as the Oath tugs and yanks and twists them into violence against the lands they once defended and the peoples they once sheltered.
They send messengers to Sirion again. The messengers deliver a plea for the Silmaril, an offer of anything at all in exchange. The messengers do not return at all.
The Enemy is many many hundreds of miles from here but at night Maedhros can hear him in his head. Is it so implausible that I really let you go? the Enemy likes saying. You serve me better free than you ever would have willingly.
The Oath allows them to work slowly. They begin planning the sack of the refugee camp even more slowly than the Oath allows, so slowly that its currents are constantly tugging at them. Any slower and the currents would erode all the things they care about which are not the Oath, and it would be a disaster to go to Sirion once they've been stripped of their capacity to care about anything that is not the Silmaril. So they do not hold out forever. But they work as slowly as they can.
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imeanforever
I'm only a little tempted to go with the redemption arc and he didn't even have me very long.
Maitimo's not going to think about that except insofar as he asks himself 'will I be fully functional with him around'.
imeanforever
Well, Eru also advises me to 'keep his family around' so if this is the trade I'm potentially making I will sooner chuck Sauron into a black hole.
I think that means that they can build you things and you can save them from themselves. It's a full time job; are you sure you want it?
My cousins are dramatic and Eru likes dramatics. So.
He sighs.
They're the most intelligent people you'll ever meet, once they recover a little bit - all of them very narrowly, but differently narrowly, and they usually fill in for each other as needed. They aren't good people but that's because our world has kind of a fucked up understanding of what goodness is. I don't know what task he thinks they'd complement you for.
He sighs.
They're the most intelligent people you'll ever meet, once they recover a little bit - all of them very narrowly, but differently narrowly, and they usually fill in for each other as needed. They aren't good people but that's because our world has kind of a fucked up understanding of what goodness is. I don't know what task he thinks they'd complement you for.
imeanforever
There was a lot of back-and-forth about where to put dead people and Maedhros thought you were going to wind up somewhere else but the actual algorithm was where they'd be best served to wake up with somebody getting a second-best option if there was likely to be violence so I guess Eru didn't think there would be violence.
He shakes his head. All right. How are you doing? You don't have to, like, continuously command Eru to not make the world stop, do you?
imeanforever
No. I haven't actually been enforcing any orders recently, I got him to agree to cooperate on the big stuff.
imeanforever
I think I may not have gotten all the dead people because apparently different kinds of people go different places when dead, so I want to check on that, and I don't know if he'll want to give Melkor a redemption arc too or what, aaaaaand Eru says he's personally necessary if Maedhros wants to stop existing altogether but I'm sort of hoping he will change his mind about that.