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Tumunzahar makes Menegroth look like a contract project. Which, the Dwarves assure her, it was. The stonework is astonishingly careful and beautiful, silky to the touch up close while from a distance it gives the impression of stretching on forever above, a sky of stone with crystals for stars. Vast natural cave systems are connected by dozens of perfectly smooth, gently sloped broad stone pathways from which the fall, if she fell, would be several miles down. There are handrails. "We use those to move materials carts," someone explains to her, "we're not going to be reckless."
There's an amphitheater, a place where a hundred of the stone walkways twine around to create space for a hundred thousand people to sit in close proximity, and someone is giving a lecture or a demonstration at the base of it, the seats closest to him filled with eager, tiny, bearded Dwarf-children.
And they spiral down, and down, and down, past waterfalls and egg-sized gemstones left half in the rock and halls of crystal. Everything grows gradually more ornate and more perfectly maintained and the clang of hammers fades behind them. "People say," her guide says, "that we only have a council instead of a single King because there were nine winners of the competition to design the throne so we couldn't just select one person to sit it." And they push open the doors to reveal, indeed, nine thrones so elaborate it would be hard to choose between them, and nine squat bearded people sitting them.
purposeful_glory
My first reason would probably sound like 'even Artanis does not deserve to be trapped with the Valar indefinitely'.
Yeah, I know. Do you know where I was four days after we landed, which is when we'd have finished taking the ships back across the ocean and back? I was in Brithombar, which was close to being overrun.
Those people do not deserve to be trapped in the Halls of Mandos indefinitely, either. No one is getting what they deserve, and defeating the Enemy as fast as possible has to come before fixing that.
Also, who do you think is likeliest to devise a way to get people out of Mandos, and how likely to happen do you think it is if he's dead? Well, now that you're here might happen anyway, but we couldn't have predicted that.
Those people do not deserve to be trapped in the Halls of Mandos indefinitely, either. No one is getting what they deserve, and defeating the Enemy as fast as possible has to come before fixing that.
Also, who do you think is likeliest to devise a way to get people out of Mandos, and how likely to happen do you think it is if he's dead? Well, now that you're here might happen anyway, but we couldn't have predicted that.
purposeful_glory
Brithombar remembers you fondly if unpronounceably. Believe me, I do appreciate - very thoroughly - that getting rid of the Enemy is probably not going to come down to having a specific quantity of swords on hand.
Not when half of them are pointed at each other. If they'd stayed home, and you'd come and talked with us and somehow found out about it and pressed me on whether it was the right thing to do, I'd have said 'I think so'. Wouldn't have known for sure until we win or lose, and maybe not even until we'd made it possible for anyone to leave Valinor, but I'd have said 'I think so'.
purposeful_glory
Well, that's good, because she wants to take some of hers off. "Where should I bring my damaged gear to see if it can be fixed here?"
Fëanor isn't there. Curufinwë is. "not lethally," he says to Tyelcormo.
"Only a little bit," Tyelcormo says back. "Loki wants to know if anyone here can fix her armor."
"Only a little bit," Tyelcormo says back. "Loki wants to know if anyone here can fix her armor."
purposeful_glory
"...What's not lethal?" Loki asks, taking off a bit of it that got too close to one of the lash things.
"Last words we spoke to each other," Curufinwë says, taking it from her, "it's a falsifiable precaution but not trivially so. Hmm."
purposeful_glory
"Oh right, that. I will have to get into different notetaking habits." She marks down the last bit of her conversation with Tyelcormo and puts it in a new section of notebook.
"This is very nice, it would take me a year to make it. It would take a week to fix it, and I'd learn something from the effort, so I'm happy to do that at your convenience."
purposeful_glory
"You're sure you can do that without - melting it in some way that will interfere with its various properties I don't understand?" she asks.
"Enchanted metal is generally pretty resilient to reshaping, this is expertly done, and I can do most of the work myself with magic if that seems to be wise given how the metal is responding."
purposeful_glory
"At some point I need to interrogate somebody about how local, non-Maia non-Vala magic works. Maybe I can do something ludicrously hacky with it. All right, may as well take them now. Do you happen to have spares lying around to cover the same areas I could borrow?"