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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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"Hello." They look disconcerted. "Can we help you?"
purposeful_glory
"Hello. I'm looking for my orc colony. Did they go to the island?"
"They did. Still out there, as far as we know. Someone checks in on them occasionally."
purposeful_glory
"Cool. As long as I'm here anyone I should talk to or hear about?"
They clearly do not know who she is. "...no?"
purposeful_glory
...she's gotten used to everyone knowing who she is on sight. "...I'm Loki, the weird alien with the science lecture."
"Okay. We don't need any science lectures at the moment."
purposeful_glory
"Okay. Have a nice day." She turns into a bird and flies out to the island.
It's certainly large enough for the numbers they have. There's a dock. There are orcs fishing. There are, in fact, orc children.
Twenty or so.
purposeful_glory
...that's kind of more than she had in mind, but not out of her actual capacity.
She lands.
She lands.
Someone sees her and runs off, presumably to spread the news.
And soon everyone is crowding around. "Loki!"
purposeful_glory
"Hi. How are the children?" (The ones in her camp were briefly in Angband.) "Do I need to heal them?"
"We're not sure," someone says, "none of us would have said we were hurting all the time, before you stopped it -"
The children, it transpires, are born in pain.
"We were worried you'd died. We were worried you'd gone after Vár or something."
purposeful_glory
"No... I'm sorry. I should have visited sooner. It makes me nervous to be away from the Men since I'm looking after them but I should have been looking after you too."
"We're okay. The Quendi helped us get settled and taught us how to fish and their god said it was fine if we were here as long as we didn't poison the waters or anything."
purposeful_glory
"That's good, good for Ulmo. It looks like you're doing really well."
They beam. "We are!"