Except tonight there is another person flying. She does not bother him; she stares curiously and then hovers for a bit.

...well, there could just be another demon around. Or one of the Maiar who are left, there's probably gradations between "incapacitated with grief" and "literally Thauron".

There are, in fact, gradations. 

She laughed when she felt them die, but it wasn't exactly happy laughter. 

She sort of wings in Cam's direction. She determines that the destroyer of Valinor is in addition to that pretty cute and wings faster.

...okay. "Hi?"

"Hey. I hadn't seen you before and the recordings don't really do the wings justice. Those are some sweet fucking wings."

"Thanks, made 'em myself."

"Likewise, but I cheated with magic, these wouldn't support an Elf in flight. You can't have cheated."

"I did pick the basic design out of a catalog."

She pulls up alongside him. "Then you can pass the compliment on, I guess. You in town for the conference?"

"Yeah. Who are you?"

"Can't tell you. Like, not won't, can't. I think in spoken language they go with Thuringwethil, which is sort of a sweet try."

Bit of a mouthful, but okay. "Here for the conference too or just incidentally?"

"Isn't there an Earth saying - I've done my reading, you know - it'll be a cold day in Hell when anyone invites me to an ethics conference. Though Hell is a vacuum, I guess, and they invited you, and worse than that they invited Sauron, or did he invite himself? Nah, I'm just flying. Haven't touched down in, y'know, seven years.

I thought about stopping you."

"I thought about that too. Well, not about you doing it."

"And you didn't even have the advantage of knowing the script." 

"Script?"

"Back before they built the world, y'know, they scripted it. The war was supposed to last five hundred years and then the Valar'd sweep in as saviors. They had it all down in triplicate. Ah, metaphorically, you won't be able to summon it."

"Five hundred - ugh."

"Yeah."

"How do you script that kind of thing, the Enemy obviously wasn't inclined to cooperate with the plan."

"We don't have oaths through hardware. We have them because it's the kind of thing we are. We play parts. Or did, until a few years ago. I think the rules might be broken now...

...we're reflexively deterministic, see. The kind of mind that, knowing what it'd do, wouldn't do that, won't become a Maia. There is, in the space of all possible minds, the kind of thing who will know exactly what our part is, and how it ends, and do it anyway, and all of us are that. Some more resentfully than others, to be sure. I thought it was a stupid fucking script."

"...so, what, do you just like existing enough that you decided it made sense to be the sort of person who could exist in Maia form...?"

"Yeah. Or, like, Sauron thought he could find a way out of it. By leveraging enough things that weren't reflexively deterministic, giving them enough power that history refused to stay on the rails. He was going to try to make Men the world's technological power, break loose with them, and then you showed up and made it way easier. Trying to find a way off the rails can be your rail. Though it wasn't mine. Mine was more just kind of watching the whole fucking thing play out."

"Oh, he has a shtick that isn't 'be a horrifying creeper'."

"He used to be quite idealistic, for the amount of systemically torturing people he did. He actually used to be idealistic and not torture people and it was kind of appealing even though we both knew that he was in fact going to eventually torture a lot of people."