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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.
"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?"
"You're a pleasure to work with, "Curufinwë says, but distractedly; he's already turning the armor over in his hands and making notes.
Construction is underway on one of the rivers that feeds Lake Mithrim. The camp looks content and busy.
purposeful_glory
Right, now she has a few days to kill before Maitimo expects her. She hmms to herself, considering a trip to Brithombar versus Doriath versus just parking here or with the Nolofinwëans for the duration, spellcrafting.
"...If anybody has an opinion about where I should be for the next few days, I'm feeling indecisive."
purposeful_glory
...Oh, and that reminds me I should make sure that I'm capable sans native osanwë of the distinguishing-between-people trick you're using for identity verification.
I'll grab someone, there's an easy test of that - and he outlines one similar to what Tyelcormo had proposed.
She can target when using osanwë to communicate. Well, that's a relief. Macalaurë says. You have other ways to verify your own identity.
purposeful_glory
Yes, although it shouldn't be "shapeshifting" or "becoming invisible", I suppose. Oh, and general identity confirmation measure: I may or may not now have cool ice powers and I mean to find out.
How does one discover cool ice powers? Was it not previously the case that you either may or may not have had ice powers?
purposeful_glory
Prolonged exposure to a Balrog wore off some of a spell that seems to have been keeping me in extremely convincing Asgardian form since I was, presumably, kidnapped as a baby. Under that I seem to be an unusually short frost giant. They have cool ice powers. I will try to figure out how to use them in some sort of controlled environment.
purposeful_glory
Want the rest of my extrapolation? It's also horrifying but in a fascinatingly convoluted way!
purposeful_glory
So what I think happened is Odin decided she wanted to end the entirely too prolonged war with the frost giants, and because to her mind 'parenting' is not a concept, she assumed that a foolproof plan for doing this would be to kidnap a frost giant baby - possibly even an authentic frost giant baby princess; actually, for all I know I could have originally been a prince - and raise it as her own. Then, because parenting is not a concept, it would be trivial to install this legitimate-by-blood ruler on a recently conquered Jötunheim and operate it as a puppet monarchy. Nothing could possibly go wrong. There is no danger that raising a baby frost giant to think that the galaxy would be a better place if frost giants were extinct could have unprecedented psychological consequences, it is no great setback if your adoptive child displays a temperament which does not seem suited to imposing Asgardian values on others, and of course there is no need to teach your secret frost giant baby anything about her future subjects except insofar as she learns - in the course of her perfectly normal Asgardian princess upbringing - to kill them. Isn't this a wonderful plan? The only question is whether Frigg knew about it or if Odin decided she'd like to spoof the ostensible father of her stolen baby frost giant. It's certainly not biologically impossible, just inconvenient.
Is taking a child from its parents a crime even a Queen can be prosecuted for, in Asgard? Because it certainly would be here.
purposeful_glory
You know, I'd have to look up the war crimes code, I know that normally killing infants is on there but I don't recall anything about adopting them. But we do have a lot of exceptions for frost giants, so she's probably in the clear about me. I'm going to have to be awfully careful when I tell Thor so she doesn't just decide to exterminate me on the spot for pretending to be her sister.