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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
"Do you need anything? I have some songs I can attach to stuff - would you like telescopes? -" She runs down a list of things she can provide.
They are happy to have all of the things. Telescopes get handed around eagerly.
purposeful_glory
She can make a pretty arbitrary number of telescopes. Warm songs and healing songs and ugh she shouldn't have left them alone this long the Elves are rubbing off on her or something.
Soon everyone who wants a telescope has one. Do the healing songs do anything about baby orc pain?
purposeful_glory
She doesn't think so. She will check next time she meets an orc she hasn't healed yet, though, she's not sure.
Everyone disperses happily. Tyr's avoided her. The children are laughing and playing with their new toys.
purposeful_glory
She has no reason to talk to Tyr right now as far as she knows. Okay, if that's everything... on she goes.
They wave and shout goodbyes as she flies off.
purposeful_glory
"Bye!" her voice calls back.
All right, eight pointed city and then home. Probably.
All right, eight pointed city and then home. Probably.
With a swift's speed and the improved zoom song, she's approaching eight pointed city by early afternoon.
purposeful_glory
Hello eight pointed city.
She's learned to knock. She looks for a likely knocking location, lands.
She's learned to knock. She looks for a likely knocking location, lands.
The walls are thirty feet high. There's a steel gate.
No one is apparent, but as she approaches it some of the bars move so a face can be seen behind the gate. It's a Dwarf. "Hello. Identify yourself, please."
purposeful_glory
"I'm Loki. I can turn somebody into a bird and back to prove it if you like. You may have gotten my messenger about Maiar-repelling sigils recently."
"We did. You can approach and turn someone into a bird, if you can do that through the bars, but in future we'd like you to have an illusion on the inside of this wall which you can dismiss at need."
purposeful_glory
"Oh, sure, what of?" she asks, reaching between the bars.
He takes her hand. "Supposedly small, looping illusions aren't continual effort for you? They are for the Enemy. I think the Elf has a design in mind."
purposeful_glory
Bird, unbird. "Sure thing. Actually, large looping illusions aren't continual effort for me either, once I set 'em up they just go on like that."
The doors unbar and open outwards. The city is paved; the cobblestones are sigiled. The buildings are three or four stories tall, and their elaborate decorations don't quite obscure that it's very very thick stone, but the streets are wide enough that it doesn't yet feel crowded. Maybe when it's populated.
purposeful_glory
"Where's Maitimo? I assume he's not too reluctant to talk to me if he's planning to tell me his proposed illusion design."
The Dwarf falls comfortably into step beside her. "The palace. It's not far from here. He's a very strange Elf, in a different way than the other Elves."
The streets have steel gates that close one section of the city off from another. There are markings in the metal, so tiny she can barely see them. There are Dwarves doing paving and stonework and installation.
And then they round a corner and there's what has to be the palace. It's beautiful, sort of, though again constrained by the very thick stone. It's windowless. There's another gate; this one opens for them.
And then they round a corner and there's what has to be the palace. It's beautiful, sort of, though again constrained by the very thick stone. It's windowless. There's another gate; this one opens for them.
purposeful_glory
Windowless. Well, that's depressing and not in the way she expects from Nelyafinwë "I like having a view of something I could jump off" Maitimo. Or whichever order those names go.
She follows Dwarves.
She follows Dwarves.