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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.
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purposeful_glory
And she sleeps. Decoy bird kinda has to be tied up for this part. Sorry, decoy bird.
Not a problem.
When she wakes it's because the sun is making the sand unbearably warm.
purposeful_glory
Delightful. She gets up, she unties the decoy bird, she proceeds.
Mid-afternoon Macalaurë announces that he has a better version of the uninteresting song.
purposeful_glory
How uninteresting. (She copies it, replaces the extant instances with it.)
How many more days to Thauron's deadline? Tyelcormo asks.
Where are you waiting for him, if you're waiting for him?
purposeful_glory
Not sure. I've only been through the desert once. I suppose I could stay here, or I could go a little farther to the edge of where the Men range - the first ones I met hadn't seen any 'demons' in person.
I'm entirely in favor of getting out of this stupid desert, but not sure we want to have a fight close enough for Men to see. If he wins and they saw anything he didn't want, he'll just kill them, and if we win we can go spread the word afterwards.
purposeful_glory
I could cool you off but that tips my hand. I don't suppose the warming song backwards will help.
Reversing effects isn't that easy. I asked Cáno but he's still obsessively refining unnoticeability, which I guess is a higher priority, the heat isn't going to kill us.
purposeful_glory
Yeah. I'm not sure exactly how close the Men get to the desert, they may not have ventured as far as the edge of it...
Don't think it's worth sending someone ahead to check.
purposeful_glory
Yeah, probably not. I don't think the heat's going to kill me, either, although whether it would sans healing spells I don't know.
Thauron probably doesn't know anything about incarnate limitations and genuinely didn't think of it as a barrier to his demand. Powers. I'm not sure if the Valar realized that crossing the Ice would kill anyone who tried it and therefore didn't count as having an escape route from the country.
purposeful_glory
I could live there just fine, turns out, although I'd get hungry. Maybe I could hug the coast and fish.
What did Nolofinwë's people do?
purposeful_glory
The ones who were alive when I got there all lived. Spells work on starvation, if not comfortably.
Thanks.
And they keep walking. Decoy bird is coping badly with the heat and frequently requires healing.
purposeful_glory
She provides. She is tempted to breathe a little chill on him but Thauron may be watching. Creeper.