leave of absence | Glowfic Constellation

purposeful_glory

"No, I'm wondering if Fëanor's available for consultation on a related matter, although perhaps you can answer the question. According to him actually generating sound is necessary for an oath to hold, absent sign language. I can blanket Angband in silence. The trouble is Moringotto might then decide that the thing for it is to move, and even though this will not be very effective it could disrupt the plans of anyone in his way. So I would like to time the thing intelligently."

"I think you might expect to find your magic opposed, if you do that," Macalaurë says. "The ability of other magics to work in the domain of a Vala is mostly a question of whose will is stronger. I have no idea how your abilities interact with ours - you can do many things a Vala wouldn't be able to do, not without millennia of effort - but that, bringing a lasting spell to bear on Melkor's home, is the sort of thing I'd expect to clash with his capabilities."

"Don't think he'll move," Tyelcormo says, "it took thousands of years to lay the foundations of Angband."

Macalaurë nods. "He'll probably develop a signed language - though I don't think he has a particular gift for that -"

"He can ask Nelyo," says Tyelcormo rather tightly, and they both go silent.

purposeful_glory

"I can darken the place too, if the smoke wasn't already doing enough of it. - Nelyo?"

"Very much doubt you can make anything in the vicinity of the Silmarils dark," Macalaurë says, "resisting magical darkness is a specific focus of theirs. Though you'd still presumably make his life harder logistically if his legions could only see in the Silmarils' immediate presence.

Nelyo was our older brother."

purposeful_glory

"These are illusions; technically speaking light and sound waves 'actually' exist even where I've obscured them, they just can make no impression. I do not know if the Silmarils will care. Another name for Maitimo?"

"Hmmm. That might work, then; hard to guess. Though if the sound waves still exist, I'm not sure they'd stop the oaths from taking.

And yes. His name is Nelyafinwë Maitimo; for political reasons my cousins have never used or acknowledged his full name, but we knew him as Nelyo."

purposeful_glory

"I may have to start writing more things down, with everyone having so many names, but I did not bring very much paper with me. ...We could test a silence illusion on the next converted orc."

"Good idea," Macalaurë says. "If they're illusions, do they expire when you die? Because the other plausible result of trying this is that he's going to throw everything he has at killing you."

purposeful_glory

"They probably will, but I don't see why he'd know that. I suppose he might try it anyway."

"He threw everything he had at killing my father, when we arrived on this continent, and save for you would have succeeded. You have a great many advantages but we have eighty thousand times the numbers."

purposeful_glory

"Yes. Although if he was aiming at your father in particular and did not succeed that could be taken as encouraging."

"I can't help but think he had other ends," Macalaurë says carefully. "If you wanted to kill my father would you send half a million orcs? No. You'd send one minor Power with the capacity to abandon its physical form."

purposeful_glory

"I occasionally get the impression that people are trying very hard not to offend me and I don't know where I gave the seeming that I am easily offended. If Moringotto can crush me like an insect this is important for me to learn in as unembellished a form as possible and I will not consider the messenger to be slighting my various abilities. I would like to know all available detail about how he might choose to do that so I can consider options to circumvent him and evade detection in the first place and so on."

"Moringotto has crushed everything that has gone up against him, save the other Valar, like an insect. I have no idea what that means, because I don't know your capabilities, and you keep revealing new ones. Moringotto's servants are Maiar, and should have all of the attendant abilities, and yet they haven't tried assassinations and we don't know why not. Perhaps the Enemy swore not to, at some point, back in Valinor when he was pretending to have reformed; if so that Oath might apply to you, or might not. We are facing an utterly unknown situation, which is why we are behind a mountain range and some thick walls rather than rescuing my brother. I assure you, this family does not like being ignorant and wouldn't pretend at it. If i'm telling you that nothing makes sense, or that the things we know are inconsistent, they don't and they are."

purposeful_glory

"I am actually running out of new abilities to reveal, but I can develop more if I know what to aim for. When I have sustained downtime I'm planning to begin work on a teleportation spell. It may be entirely reasonable for me not to approach Angband again at all until I can do it with a million Asgardian warriors and some of the technology they don't like to use because it's considered tacky at my back. What are the attendant abilities of Maiar?"

"The Maiar are powers like the Valar, but lesser. They can take any form they like, but biological bodies are extremely tricky, must be assembled from intimate knowledge, and tend to be slow. They can work and oppose magic; they can warp the landscape around them. Some of them can command the minds of others, with enough extended contact. They can destroy things they touch. They have foresight. They can distort the passage of time, they can prevent decay and create life. I don't know what else, I never expected to be fighting them. Tyelcormo, do you care to ask Huan -"

"She should talk to Thindicollo's wife," Tyelcormo says.

"Oh," says Macalaure. "Yes, she should; I should have suggested that first. The native population in this region is ruled by an Elf who married one of the Maiar. His name is Elwë Thindicollo, and we have not been able to secure an audience because he is professionally paranoid; his wife's name is Melian, and she uses her abilities to magically protect a realm several hundred miles across southeast of here. That'd be the person to ask about all this. Though, out of curiosity, what kind of technology is it considered tacky to use in an Asgardian war?"

purposeful_glory

"It is considered tacky to use certain technology in Asgard at all. At least visibly. There are materials we don't use because they can't be made to have the look and feel and weight of things we could have made before they were invented; sometimes it's hidden - the string I tied up the birds with was an example - but you have to look very hard to find anything that will admit to needing sophisticated industry for its construction. We could fit the complete written works of a hundred worlds in a box you could tuck under your arm and carry; but if you do that, your libraries will look empty and won't smell like leather and paper and vellum. We could make weapons that outclass a bow of any draw weight for range and shoot bolts of energy either more or less lethal than an arrow, as the wielder prefers; but if you do that it's hard to feel like a rugged warrior with hard-won combat skills. We could make vehicles that fly. They can even be lovely to look at, and if made well they can fly in silence. We ride horses because we like horses. I like horses myself but I think we have made too many of these concessions. But Asgardian engineers pride themselves on making their technology look like magic and their magic look like simple underdeveloped but exquisitely fine tools."

"...I know some people who would find that beautiful," Macalaure says. "I can imagine the peoples of Valinor developing their engineering talents in that direction, if they develop their engineering talents at all in the aftermath of my family's ignominious departure."

Tyelcormo shakes his head. "Nonetheless, at the moment there's a war on, and if there's any occasion to compromise our aesthetic sense..."

"I don't disagree," says Macalaure.

purposeful_glory

"Yes. So perhaps I won't go to Asgard except to verify that my mother meant me to survive, collect some treasure out of the treasury, and go to another realm and outfit an army of Quendi with ray guns and skimmer ships. I am afraid I do not know how to do most of these things myself. As a child I considered engineering as a pursuit - it's more socially acceptable for a girl than outright magic, as long as she walks the fine line of which projects she can and cannot bring to the sparring hall - but then I had my magic building blocks and it commanded most of my time. So I have read more books than most Asgardians on where all our technology is hiding but I haven't practiced to retain it well."

"If it's possible at all we'll do it ourselves, given enough time," says Macalaurë. "We just need to earn that time somehow. Thus besieging Angband."

purposeful_glory

Nod. "Where should I seek out Melian?"

A sigh. "Her kingdom is magically hidden. It's also large - several hundred miles across - so it ought to be chartable, but we're mostly surveying by climbing mountain peaks and that's not a good way to find a magically hidden stretch of territory. Southeast. The locals all know it, though they're on bad terms with Thindicollo for reasons they've yet to confide in me."

purposeful_glory

"Well, I'll look for it and be back the day after tomorrow to look after any orcs you've acquired, and I'll keep an eye out for a good place to put them as they accumulate. Is there anything else to discuss before I go?"

"How are you inclined to get the horses to my cousins?"

purposeful_glory