"Sounds reasonable. Hopefully my translation magic doesn't glitch on me. Once it had all gendered pronouns turned around coming and going and I didn't notice for months."

"Are Asgardian men and women not visibly distinguishable?"

"I was on Midgard - Allspeak is not necessary on Asgard, everyone speaks the same language there - but Midgardians are quite as easily told apart; I just didn't spend a lot of time talking about Midgardians to each other. The result was that after I'd been wandering around telling Asgardian stories they had the genders of every character wrong."

He laughs. "Well, there you are, orcs. Thirty-six of them. When the argument happened we only had nine but Fëanor had said thirty-six so out went eighty scouting expeditions. Macalaurë, who manages logistics, looked like the world had really better appreciate him."

"I appreciate him, and I hope the additional twenty-seven orcs will too." She goes in where the orcs are held. "Good morning. I'm Loki; I'm here to heal you. Did Vár tell you to expect me?"

Suspicious grumbles and mostly-silence. Then someone says "you are the powerful sorcerer of the other Melkor?"

"I am the powerful sorcerer who knows stories of the other Melkor," amends Loki. "Who wants to be healed first?"

Silence.

"No preferences? All right." So she starts at one end and goes down the line, tap tap tap tap tap -

Several of the orcs cringe and try to shy away, but several of the others look desperately curious.

They will all be tapped. She smiles at the curious ones.

Vár scampers up at this point. "See?" she starts in on one particular orc in the middle of the line. "I told you."

Loki finishes the line and stands off to the side, listening to Vár the missionary at work.

"The Melkor we know is but a shadow of the real Melkor, and acting against the real Melkor's will! When we serve the false Melkor, we suffer. If you serve the real Melkor, you'll never suffer like that again. But the Melkor we knew is too cowardly to try to demand we make oaths to him, because the real Melkor would smash him down. So he has us make our oaths to the real Melkor, and then tricks us into thinking we're sworn to the lesser false one! Don't be tricked anymore!"

Wow, Vár's good at this. Loki lucked out.

An hour later they have thirty-five converts and one who is stubbornly refusing. "You've been brainwashed by Elves," he says. "You're an Elf-slave and a fool. I know who I serve. I know what they are. They're Elves, whatever they tell you, and should die like Elves. And so should you."

"Do you think I'm an Elf, too?" Loki wonders.

"An Elf-servant, with Elf-magic."

"Oh, I don't serve the Elves and my magic's all my own. I grew up in another realm altogether and had never seen an Elf in my life until a few weeks ago. I got my magic from an artifact," she makes a little illusion of the tesseract in its blue box, "and hard work and no one else has any like it."

"You're a lying Elf-servant."

The illusion vanishes. "I'm sorry to hear that. If only you knew more about Elf magic you'd know the difference, but if I tried to teach you you'd think I was lying."

"Yes, I would. Because you are. There isn't another Melkor. These are Elves, and you didn't even deny that these are Elves. These are our sworn enemies, and I hate them, and my oath was to hate them, whatever they call themselves, and I swear it again."

"You silly fool," says Vár sadly. "Melkor is going to smite you. He doesn't like it when people deny him." And she stares expectantly at Loki.

"I said nothing of the kind," Loki says. "People can deny him all day long and nothing happens to them; he's above such minor concerns. The problem is that in so denying this fellow has fully bound himself to the Enemy, who does things of which Melkor would certainly not approve with his servants." She shakes her head and looks at the guards. "Is Fëanor available to pull another clever idea out of nowhere, or...?"