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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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Children shouldn't be born in wartime.
No, it isn't. It's a horrible complication and I have no idea what to do about it. Since they haven't sworn any Oaths or committed any wrongs Mandos would probably sort them out quickly.
It is what I'd do, yes.
They're at the water.
Not visible from the surface.
Now it is. Fairly deep underwater.
purposeful_glory
She turns the water invisible.
She shifts midair, invisibly too; and she blasts at it, forming a column of ice in the lake; and she catches herself before she hits the surface.
She shifts midair, invisibly too; and she blasts at it, forming a column of ice in the lake; and she catches herself before she hits the surface.
Well.
There's no explosion, but that does not necessarily mean failure. The glowing spot hasn't moved.
There's no explosion, but that does not necessarily mean failure. The glowing spot hasn't moved.
purposeful_glory
The column will probably float eventually.
(She dismisses the shadow-tracking blue.)
(She dismisses the shadow-tracking blue.)
The column does float eventually. There's someone trapped in it. Human-shaped, not Balrog-shaped.
And finds a woman staring at her. "Astonishing," the woman says.
"My name is Thuringwethil."
She opposes the song-illusion. "You know, that's very rude."
purposeful_glory
"Hadn't been informed. Look, I don't really want to have a social conversation, I just want to learn some things and expect them to be facts. I can freeze you again if you don't like this plan."
"I am a Maia. Sometimes my interests align with Melkor's and insofar as they do I do him favors. This favor was to supervise diplomatic contact between a hundred orc civilians and the madwoman of the East, a title you wholly deserve; this form isn't my preferred one and you won't inconvenience me much by ripping it up, but if you find it cathartic you can do that."
purposeful_glory
"If you don't like the song and you aren't going to produce any oaths that seems like the least timewasting option, honestly."
"I swear that everything I have said in this conversation has been true."