"I swear not to go back to Moringotto if other avenues for me to serve him exist. I do not have standing orders to go back there in some fixed time."

"What else would you do, then?"

"They're learning how to grow food, that seems valuable. Vár says there are other realms, it clearly serves my Melkor for me to wait until it's possible to visit those."

"Okay, so you're telling me you can just go live peacefully on an island with highly religious converted orcs and behave yourself there and farm and wait and see what happens." She nibbles her lip. "Prompts the question of whether you're palatable as a guest to these Quendi until I've verified the availability of the island." Any Quendi hovering around listening to this?

The guards are still nearby."You probably want to talk to someone higher up," one of them says nervously.

"I'll need to talk to Fëanor's family today anyway about something else. Of course, he loses hours of work every time he's interrupted, but for the topic I have in mind he might even refrain from snarking about that; but I think it'd distract from orc-related matters and I'd like to get orc-related matters sewn up. Any of his sons around?"

"m'lord Macalaurë there's trouble with the orcs again," the guard says, even more nervously, and a minute later he emerges from the conference room in the center of town and walks briskly towards them.

Loki sighs and summarizes the situation with the skeptic.

"Can you do your illusion so the rest of them can't hear?"

"Done."

"It might be wise in future to avoid making it obvious they die if they don't comply," he says, "even though I imagine they'll already suspect it. All right," he says to the orc, "my first responsibility is to my people, and should this desperate effort to preserve yours cost them their lives or their safety in addition to their time and feeling of security in their own homes, I will personally kill you and more importantly, the whole project is off and we're eventually going to have to rebuild the orc population on some planet of Loki's from only the orcs who are gullible. That doesn't seem like orc greatness to me. If you manage not to harm my people, then we can have some people like you among the orcs founding a new world. This applies to harming us by planting the crops badly or salting the fields or other things we might not notice or blame you for right away, too. I am not an idiot. Do we understand each other?"

"I'll tell Vár to hold off on the death threats and avoid mentioning them myself prematurely," Loki sighs.

"Thank you," Macalaurë says. "We may also need to do smaller batches, since the success rate seems very dependent on who's the strongest personality around."

"Sounds about right. I'd offer to come more often but I keep acquiring to-do list items that require being halfway across the continent. Separate them and have Vár interview them first, maybe."

"That's one of the things the expansion of our walls is supposed to enable."

Nod. To skeptical orc: "Are you clear on his conditions?"

"When the other orcs can hear you again what are you going to say?" Loki asks the orc.

"You have presented me with sufficient proof of your Melkor, and I am angry to have been deceived by the false Melkor. I wish you would show everyone the proof, but now that I know it I can't have orc-children so I'm sure they don't want me to tell them."

"...Well, that's creative. Although I can't actually handle a large growing population of orcs and I'm the only healer available till I learn to teleport, and so except for a few test cases converted orcs aren't going to be having children anyway unless it turns out the chronic pain condition is introduced after birth and not congenital; do you have a replacement deterrent?"

"...do you have one? Nothing comes to mind. You've already taken everything from them."

"It might work anyway, if the babies aren't born in pain or they're all patient enough to wait for me to fetch other healers and get some of you learning it yourselves - I may be literally incapable of teaching others how I do my magic and won't know for a long time - but I'd rather not count on it if we can think of something else. Uh... I had to tell you terrifying stories of Melkor's various legendary servants who are not as nice as he is and now you'll never sleep well again? I don't know what you've been telling them or what they'll buy."

"We grew up in Angband. I can always say I got a direct revelation from your Melkor and it's beyond description?"

"I don't know what your living conditions there were like," she points out. "That is within his parameters as a very occasional thing... seems a little convenient and Vár might be upset but I can probably smooth it over, I guess..."

"Powers tend to act at dramatic moments," Macalaurë says.