She was sorta hoping.

Both of the ash-Melkors sweep slowly south. Now that the city's defended they've stopped wasting planes to slow them down. 

They skirt the city. 

They destroy everything they pass.

Elspeth does not like it here and wants to go home. Predictably, this does not cause Addy and a bandolier of witch toes to swoop down on her crowing that they figured it out -

"Sure you don't want to make an Addy and company, and see if they can figure it out from this end?"

They don't know if it would work for her to make people at all, let alone witches who weren't witches while not vampires, and if she makes a Razi and it fucks up the mate bond somehow he may be incapacitated. The original might even be, depending on how it was fucked up, and then they couldn't figure it out from their end.

"Alright. 


Need a hug?"

Well he's not her wolf but okay.

He's not. Sorry. He gives her a hug anyway.

The searchers find a second Silmaril.

She'll enchant mirrors around this one too.

One of the ash monstrosities changes direction and plods slowly toward the city.

No one thinks it can enter it. They aren't sure what it's trying.

Maybe it can hurl things at them which ignore the protections. Maybe it's just going to stand there and besiege them. Maybe it's there to receive hidden defectors.

Maybe, thinks the girl whose power is to tell the truth so hard she can kill with it, it just wants to talk.

It does want to talk. 

It plods to the gates and says, surrender. 

That sounds like a terrible idea.

From the moment your people slaughtered their way across the harbor and stole ships and landed the ships here to slaughter, your works here have turned to nothing but evil. They are doomed to turn to nothing but evil. You cannot destroy me; your every effort makes me stronger. You could have avoided your Doom had you worked in humility with the natives. But your Kingship was hard-won, and you were enjoying it, weren't you? 

Maitimo looks bored. 

You are Doomed. You are doomed. If you surrender I will spare everyone who had no part in the monstrous crimes you have committed against my people and your own.

That sounds like a lie. Elspeth is not Maggie, but seriously.

Yup.

It hesitates, for a while, making odd sounds, trying to formulate itself in a way that permits it to speak aloud.

"And this I will swear: if anyone kills the King I will spare them, their family, and any others whom they care to name."

Findekáno is still sworn to defend Maitimo with his life in case anyone was thinking of forgetting that. The Enemy's promise does not sound like it's good for all his subordinates' sparing inclinations or lack thereof. Also isn't it interesting that the evil god wants the King dead. What fascinating information.

"Oh," it says. "One last thing. The third Silmaril is in Doriath."

And Maitimo exhales in something that might be a laugh.

Skipped swearing to it, that time.

Yep.

They stare down the thing. It continues not moving forward. 

Someone, Maitimo says, find out for me whether the third Silmaril is in fact in Doriath.

How are they supposed to find that out while besieged by a fallout cloud?

Not everyone I command is in the city, he says, and we haven't been able to use the palantiri to scry Doriath but we were not strongly motivated to try, and we can at need march with the Silmarils to Doriath's borders. 

Makes sense. What are they going to do if it's there? (How would it have gotten there?)

Take it back, we need it to end the war. I assume if it's there the Enemy quite literally handed it to them because it amused him to have us war.