"That's where the distractions come in."

"What distractions have you got?"

"Superficial irritants like itching powder give you the least dramatically different results than for a non-daeva; you can also get decent results by applying multiple kinds of stimulus rapidly and unpredictably, lemme get my notes..." she conjures a computer and begins sifting through files. "Of course most of these results are contaminated by the fact that I was my test subject, so I was expecting everything, but it's better than nothing."

"Try itching-powder Melkor into not noticing you're building a giant lightleaper around his planet?"

"Into interfering with his reaction time so I can counter anything he tries to do in response better."

"Do you happen to know any demons who'd be willing to help with this in exchange for all our nice shiny tech. Or anything else, frankly, the stakes are high enough, but maybe we won't tell them that."

"I know a couple people who might do it for just the chip's telepathy function," she muses.

"Then it can be several on one, at least. Can you counter him if he starts feeding the planet into a black hole."

"Probably not. What if we got a fairy or two to yoink him far enough off the surface of the planet to make a light-leaper around him?"

"They take some time to set a course and get up to speed, I don't think you could make one at just before the leap point."

"I can't make one at speed," she acknowledges, "but if the state of having set a course is a physical one I should be able to work with that."

"I'll talk to my father, see if there's a way it can be done."

"Probably a good plan. Your dad's an engineer?"

"He invented faster-than-light travel. And heavier-than-air flight. And the printing press. He's, like, singlehandedly half of Valinor's technological progress."

"You have FTL and your dad invented the printing press."

"...yeah? That was over two thousand years ago..."

"Right. Resurrectible. I just. Wow."

"If anything I think we developed slowly, technology-wise, there was no real hurry."

"Yeah, we don't have FTL but we do have spacecraft and we invented the printing press significantly less than a thousand years ago. Still. The guy who invented the printing press. Wow."

"I wish you'd met him before the King was murdered."

"Yeah."

"Anyway, I've been telling him your suggestions so far and I'll keep doing that. Let us know if you come up with anything."

"I--hm. Have people tried daeva-assisted methods of finding catatonic summoners or would that be illegal?"

"Super illegal but I've tried it anyway. Pulling 'scale model of Melkor's summoner and the planet under them' doesn't do anything, complete works of Melkor's summoner are pretty generic stuff, some summoning circles with proper bindings, nothing in the last couple million years."

"Maybe the summoner's not on a planet," she suggests.