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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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"If you were me, how would you feel?"
purposeful_glory
"If I were you my opinions on the subject would be pretty thoroughly oath-warped. That's the problem."
"The oath changes what I have to do, not what I want. All I want is to go home and see if my little brother's big enough to walk yet. I don't think the oath has anything to do with that."
purposeful_glory
"I'll flip your question, then: if you were me, what would you do?"
"Leave us alone. Let us go home. Your enemy having five more soldiers doesn't matter to him, doesn't matter to you. The only people we matter to are us."
purposeful_glory
The illusion shakes its head.
"He'll notice if you come back or not. That matters."
"He'll notice if you come back or not. That matters."
"Which way does it matter? How do you know that it's not sending us back that gives him the wrong piece of information, and killing us that confirms whatever he wanted? And - we're people, we're not - pieces of evidence about you, you can't say 'killing people: what does this communicate to Thauron' like it's 'smoke signals: what does that communicate to Thauron'. And if you send us back you can send us with any message you want."
purposeful_glory
"I know you're people. All orcs are people, and you didn't get personier because you happened to be sent to me with a message and others did not. I know what causes orcs to attack Elves, I know that you are thus afflicted and that I cannot repair you, and the fact that I am on hand right now to make sure you don't attack any Elves does not change that. You could circle back while I'm asleep and attack the Men or local Elves. You might have contingent orders to do exactly that if I let you go which you didn't tell me about. Or you'll just go live quiet lives doing internal Angband things for a few years and then go out and kidnap Elves to be tortured into insanity because that's next on the mission list. And if you had those orders you'd follow them because you are under oath. I cannot supervise you. I have work to do and when I have done enough of it maybe I will be able to pry you out of Mandos's claws and fix the problem at the root but I don't currently have that luxury. I'm just thanking my luck that he can't send me adorable orc children with his next message because they can't have doubly sworn effectively."
"I'm sure it must be very hard to be you."
purposeful_glory
"Oh, being you's worse, I have no doubt about that. But here we are."
Illusion draws its sword.
Illusion draws its sword.
She doesn't run. She doesn't fight.
"The bit about being tortured by the Elf gods after we die, do you know if that's true?"
"The bit about being tortured by the Elf gods after we die, do you know if that's true?"
purposeful_glory
"Inconsistent with what I've heard from everyone except other orcs and Thauron. Possible that the usual torment of being an orc persists, possible it doesn't, but you're healed now. If there's a difference to be made I hope it makes it."
"So then what does happen? Do we just - stop? Like falling asleep?"
purposeful_glory
"I don't know. But I'm not planning to leave you there if I can help it," says Loki. "Small consolation though that likely is."
She can get them all in one ice blast. They won't see it coming.
She can get them all in one ice blast. They won't see it coming.
It's a pretty day. Sun shining. She probably shouldn't let the Men see the bodies.
purposeful_glory
Yep.
She turns Lævateinn into a hook and turns the bodies invisible and drags them off, away, and makes a firebreak and burns them.
She turns Lævateinn into a hook and turns the bodies invisible and drags them off, away, and makes a firebreak and burns them.
By the end of the winter some of the Men are definitely expecting baby Men, to the horror of the Elves and the morbid fascination of most of the Men themselves. Werewolves do not seem to have baby Men and some people who really do not think having baby Men appeals have asked to become werewolves.
purposeful_glory
Okay. Irreversible sterilization is not the birth control method she would have picked, but if it works...
Everybody expecting gets a healing object to carry in case something happens and Loki herself cannot be fetched immediately.
She increases the guard. Some Elves, some Men. It should not be easy to sneak in and slit everyone's throats.
Everybody expecting gets a healing object to carry in case something happens and Loki herself cannot be fetched immediately.
She increases the guard. Some Elves, some Men. It should not be easy to sneak in and slit everyone's throats.
He does not, in any event, try that next. Instead he sends an Elf.
The Men come running for her. They've been told to do that. There's someone horribly disfigured and very thin and in very poor condition at the edge of the desert, Loki, do something.
The Men come running for her. They've been told to do that. There's someone horribly disfigured and very thin and in very poor condition at the edge of the desert, Loki, do something.
Her channels of communication are at least adequate. There is someone horribly disfigured and emaciated at the edge of the desert, and he has no eyes with which to see her and does not otherwise react to her approach.
purposeful_glory
Well, there's nobody else around, if he turns out to be a Balrog.
She approaches. She fixes him.
He still doesn't move. Then - "you're Loki?"
purposeful_glory
"Yes. Are you here to tell me that people whose well-being I value are being tortured in case I had forgotten or is it something else?"
"Please just kill me."