"We're going to be doing magic weapons and armors, but it might be worth buying yours to work off. War servants we'll try to get as much information as we can - we should probably buy food, it might take a while to figure out how to grow it in the dark like this - do you think we can convince any other servantmakers to come along or is it just going to be you and Lári and Aydanci..."

"I can ask some of my co-prentices if they want to come - Aydanci's social circle is holding down the fort on storks, can't ask them - I don't think 'hey want to leave the world to go fight an evil god' is really appealing and I don't know how to present it more appealingly."

"I realize. And grabbing non-Aydanci babies is pretty indefensible. We can offer generous pay, maybe, if we don't all die... if anyone wants to ride a flying dinosaur, this will be their chance...I suppose with the three of you we won't be in desperate straits, anyway."

"I'll ask my co-prentices but I'm not optimistic."

He asks. They don't want to come.

Understandably. Two hundred thousand enchanted melee weapons for the whole Noldorin host is going to take half a Year, but they're leaning towards doing it anyway on the grounds it is better to arrive prepared and useful. Boats are being assembled meanwhile. They're training with non-enchanted melee weapons while the magic ones are developed and produced. By the time they depart they will be very good at sparring.

War servants will be reverse-engineered.

Maitimo can't be spared to go down south and pet more dinosaurs but Findekáno can. 

It's good to have company. Even if they have to be fucking discreet about how nice the particular company is.

Well, the Noldorin royal family now has effectively absolute latitude and he's fairly willing to abuse this when it's for his boyfriend whose husband just died in his arms. Kib is a valuable strategic asset and so Kib stays in his tent with a dozen guards on him whenever he leaves it. And the tent's woven soundproofed because he needs to be able to have classified conversations about the war, doesn't he.  They do make sure to have two separate bedspreads in the tent, and to leave them both looking slept in.

It's a month's travel in good conditions, and it's dark, might take us twice that. You want some projects for along the way?

Like what?

I don't know. The war servant reconstruction, communication shine relays, what else are you in the middle of?

Nothing else I can do on the road. Those I can do though.

They head out. Kib can keep up on a horse fine, if he's petted it. He will probably be pretty sore by the time they stop, though.

Yeah, kinda. He doesn't complain about it much.

Well, if he would like a massage he can totally have one.

He would like one. "Love you," he sighs.

Love you too. I am so sorry that we were not there.

Should've dragged him to the stupid festival.

Should've never paroled him in the first place - the Valar are all still consulting on Taniquetil, they haven't moved. Except to cry. Over the Trees.

Yes, of course, the Trees. Poor Trees.

I was sensitive to their grief over the ecological disaster before I learned that, in fact, people'd died. How they can't see...

Who else, I don't think I got a list.

Total of ten - palace, library, people who got in his way. Aydanci's the only one who seems to have been targeted, his other targets were things - Fëanáro's home and workshop, the books, various hard-to-replace tools and artwork - I think he was trying to anger us into going off to war, but I'm not sure that makes it the wrong decision....

...might depend on why he wants us to do it.

Presumably he thinks he will win. Maitimo thinks so too, honestly, but there are so many people in the Outer Lands and if it turns out all we can do is evacuate them....and I don't think he's realized the full potential of servantmaking, and those prophecies are from a thousand years from now where there are still civilian kingdoms in Middle-earth, so if we lost last time, we didn't lose very fast...

Nod.

I tentatively expect the Valar will fritter away twenty or thirty Years considering and then stop him themselves. I think we can hold on that long.