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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
"Dragged you away from here," she shrugs. "I can stop compulsively apologizing to you for things if you want. If we ever meet again and it comes up."
"If any of this is real, I did other people a great wrong today. You didn't."
purposeful_glory
She blinks, confused about what he thinks he could have done, but doesn't quite feel she's entitled to ask.
"Someone volunteered for me."
"This was obviously the right strategic decision, since he may possibly have wanted me specifically, and is also something I would never ever have permitted had I been thinking clearly. But I didn't want you to tie me up. So I didn't say anything."
"Thauron probably wouldn't have killed me. He wanted me alive."
purposeful_glory
"I'm not actually sure that's an improvement, although without a firsthand review of the conditions in the Halls of Mandos I can't be sure."
"It's much much worse. But you won - I am assuming that you won, that is, because you're here - so no one would have died, had I done the right thing."
purposeful_glory
"I bolted. Huan won. I think I gave Huan a reasonable head start."
"If Huan won, you did something unspeakably impressive. Huan could not in general take Thauron."
purposeful_glory
"Do you actually want a blow-by-blow or should I leave you be?"
"As far as an ordering of things that are bad for my mental health, two days of Thauron talking in my head is sufficiently worse than interacting with you, and I don't think a conversation now is likely to harm me further. In general I do persist in preferring company which doesn't hold my fate in their hands."
purposeful_glory
She shivers, a little. "I'll leave you be."
And she turns into a bird and flies away.
And she turns into a bird and flies away.
Everyone else is flying back to the Feanorian camp.
purposeful_glory
They've had a substantial head start and she's not going to catch up with them when they're both benefiting from zoom songs. She cuts past Doriath.
Lúthien, thought you ought to know that the newcomers gave me backup, we ambushed Thauron, and he's stuck in Angband recovering for at least five years so I'm going to move in with the Men and help them as much as I can in that time.
Lúthien, thought you ought to know that the newcomers gave me backup, we ambushed Thauron, and he's stuck in Angband recovering for at least five years so I'm going to move in with the Men and help them as much as I can in that time.
Um. Wow. Good. Thank you for not telling me in advance you were doing that, I'd have told you you'd die.
purposeful_glory
He underestimated me; I wouldn't want to try it again without way more help; but this was a critical moment and I did not in fact die. I probably won't have a lot of time to visit for a while.
Okay. I'll miss you. Stay safe.
Next time you'll have more backup.
I have a few years. You will.