A lot of time, yes. People are delighted and awed. There's cheering. They scramble to test layered enchantments with the higher fidelity in mind.

Oh good. Elspeth will in the meantime be curious to study the principles of getting rocks and stuff to listen to her.

It's not that rocks are sentient; it's that if you talk to them there's an echo, and the echo is what does the magic. It works in certain kinds of rock and metal, and the Elves are happy to point her at examples. If you're willing to do enough talking to a sword you can get a sentient one like hers. But that'd be the project of several decades.

She wonders if she could put people she has backed up into sword-or-something form and if that would be a good idea.

Huh.

Well, it should be possible to do something that can move of its own volition, if they are likely to prefer that to being swords.

Most people probably prefer that.

Resurrected people sometimes come with their witchcraft attached, especially if they had it while human.

Are they going to be dangerous people? Perhaps the one who had the capacity to back people up in the first place should be a sword or something else that doesn't move.

She is not planning to resurrect Aro, he's dead for a reason. She is considering trying to duplicate the teleporter witch, but since he's alive this is awkward.

...is there a way to get the powers without the whole person?

Not that she knows of, and it might not even work because Razi wasn't a witch as a human and the case studies (Didyme, Harry) indicate he'd have to turn to get his power back, which a sword can't do, and also he has a mate although not as of the time at which she has him backed up and that would be a mess. It's possible she should instead make an Addy, Addy probably wouldn't mind and doesn't have a mate and may or may not have been a witch as a human and would probably have lots of useful ideas on the local magic system... but can swords have vampire mental capacities...?

In principle if you are making a mind in a sword it should be possible to make it an arbitrarily sophisticated mind, even if takes a lot longer and is ten times as complicated. 

Her ability to make magic items rapidly is incredibly exploitable anyway. They can have enchanted armor and swords for the whole army within a week, and if absolutely necessary they can do a charge of Angband on foot and carry the nuke to the gates and then detonate it. 

This seems like a high casualty operation unless somebody wants to invent nukeproof armor.

That is not technically impossible but it would easily be a millenium's endeavor. So, yes, high-casualty operation. The improved planes are much preferable.

She's happy to help improve planes.

Better planes are developed. Two dozen of them, all but one a decoy, just in case it takes the Enemy a little while. And they think they've improved the nuke so it's likelier to detonate even if blown up. But it's hardly a sure thing. 

Elspeth enchants planes.

It's a clear day. Two dozen planes take off from the planes of Lothlann and head for Angband, watched intently by a hundred thousand eyes. 

The Enemy fires on them.

They keep on flying.

The Enemy fires again. One plane, indestructible or not, spirals down out of the sky.

Then three more.

And then they're close enough.

The horizon goes blindingly white. There's a shockwave that can be felt all the way from Himring. 

They had people dug in besieging Angband. They didn't pull them out - it would have tipped their hand. 

The air curls upwards into a roiling, fiery cloud.

Maitimo smiles. 

(Now she is become death, destroyer of worlds...)

"Thank you," he says to her, as the Elves start singing. Singing and weeping and laughing, it's a bit of a mixed mood.

He's welcome, more or less.

He can't go get Findekáno back if he leaves now.

Findekáno doesn't look like he's leaving. Just staring at the mushroom cloud curling in the northern sky. 

Well, that's Findekáno's prerogative.

"Your grace," he says after an hour or so. "I don't like that."

Doesn't like what?

The mushroom cloud is moving again. It looks a little bit more directed, a little purposeful, like there are currents swirling in it from someone poking them.