"If it'll look consistent to the people it needs to look that way to, all right."

Loki dismisses the silence in time for the other orcs to hear the fiction. I'd like him too if he didn't stress me out. "If your fellow orcs sworn to the highest Melkor will trust you, then so will I," she says.

Vár looks extremely relieved. "Yes, it's all right. If the real Melkor is looking in on us from across all the multiverse, now is a good time for everyone to recognize him and renew their oaths!"

Loki looks at the other orcs of the new batch and raises an eyebrow at them.

"Thank you," Loki softly illusions in the ear of the skeptic orc, and then she distributes names to those who want names. Does skeptic orc want a name? Already have one?

"Have one. But that was given to me by the false Melkor, so I suppose perhaps I should get a new one."

"It's up to you."

"Do you realize how odd it is to insist on the willing and eager participation in your games of people you'll kill if they don't play along?" he mutters, but very quietly. "I'd like an Asgardian name, please."

"I really wouldn't mind if you wanted to keep your old name," says a quiet illusion again, and she suggests, "Tyr?"

"Thank you, prophet of the true Melkor."" The other orcs' thanks are slightly less sarcastic.

"The smoke over Angband was gone, so I scouted it again. Some of the prisoners are kept outdoors, chained to a cliff; only two were alive. I didn't know who they were, but I could get them out, so I did; one - Maitimo identified him to me as Rodyn later but doesn't know where he's from - ran off, whereas Maitimo I hauled a fair ways in this direction before he was willing to have enough of a conversation to express that he'd rather not hallucinate a family reunion. I've taught him to fly; he thinks it would be computationally expensive to simulate a whole continent so he's looking around from the air until the next scheduled rendezvous. I don't think it'll do the trick itself."

"Will you come inside and sit down?" He gestures back up the hill at the conference room.

Nod. She follows him.

Three Feanorians are already there; the rest arrive very shortly on her heels. Fëanor does not mention losing work when distracted. "When did this happen," he says, "and how is he?"

"After I left here last time. I did not know who I had, he wouldn't tell me; there are certainly more prisoners inside and many more outside were dead than alive - so I went to the Nolofinwëans to identify the people rather than interrupt the festival for what was more likely to have been a false alarm. He's - he liked flying. I think I had him happy for thirty seconds, learning to fly, before he remembered that I'm supposed to be some Maia servant of the Enemy who's trying to trick him so as to extract information."

"Well." Fëanor says. "We can convince him otherwise; if he's well aside from that that is all that could possibly be hoped for. Where is he?"

"I don't know where he is right now, because I taught him to fly. He doesn't want me to tell you where he is going to be, either, but I'll meet him in a few days and can relay counterarguments. How are you planning to convince him?"

"You can't fake technological advancement. There are things it would take me five hundred years to figure out, and if Maitimo learns them he can be confident that five hundred years have passed. He's not technically inclined but I'd expect him to be able to understand them once they're explained to him. It may take a thousand years but, as I said, probably not an age, for him to conclude that the enemy isn't that patient."

"By the time we've shown him technology that is obviously sufficient to best Moringotto with," Fëanor says, "it would be surprising to conclude that the war is still proceeding in a manner that would make whatever Moringotto'd originally intended hundreds of years ago when he started this trial valuable."

"I suppose. But this does sound like it might take a long time even if I come up with fifty things on the order of 'steam engine' that I can explain from memory so there's the question of the meanwhile; he's willing to live with people he doesn't know, would find the converted orcs uncomfortable neighbors, I'm going to sound out the Dwarves but think most local Quendi would turn away a rescued prisoner."