He died before you arrived.

Ah.

They were twins.

I suppose once the war is over your father and I can race to see who manages resurrection first. Maybe the soul gem can do that too if I wind up risking it, wouldn't surprise me. I might have to do something dramatic like literally move your entire galaxy to my dimension with the Tesseract so Eru doesn't get in my way, first, I am not well calibrated on infinity gem versus Eru. This would have unfortunate musical side effects, possibly, but...

Macalaurë will probably eventually stop sulking about music not working if that turns out to be the only way to end oaths and save everyone currently dead. Actually, he'll keep sulking forever. But just because it suits him aesthetically. Being robbed of his powers by the dramatic ripping of literally everyone out of the universe would be very satisfactory in some ways. Better so if he got to cinematically sacrifice them, but.

I mean, I'm sort of tempted to let various persons here of my acquaintance do the honors if I go the 'infinity gems' route and not 'sketchy weapons dealer' route, but the only reason I even sort of think this might work is because the Tesseract might like me.

It would be ridiculous to let any consideration but odds of success drive that. I don't have any particular desire to kill Thauron, just to see him dead.

Yeah. It could've killed me when I touched it as a child - this is in fact one of the safer things that can happen if you go fucking with infinity gems - and instead it gave me secret arcane knowledge. They're supposed to be sentient, although I'm not clear on their psychology to the point where I can be sure it "likes me" as opposed to having some other reason.

And you want to go and touch it again?

Well, the first time was awesome. I will probably stand there talking to it and asking it nicely not to kill me, first, and this is the 'horrendous emergency' alternative to the sketchy weapons dealer plan. I might also be able to wield it without touching it, maybe - could embed it in Lævateinn or something, wave it around - they don't have a very well-defined user interface, it'd depend on what mood it was in or something unclear like that. Most of the people who manage to use them to do anything desperately underuse them, if there were a systematic series of attempts to catalog How To Infinity Gem I'd be on more confident footing. When I was reading up on them because I wanted to know what the heck I'd grabbed I found a story about someone who was directly animated as a person by an infinity gem through complicated shenanigans, and he used it to shoot lasers as a mediocre midrange weapon. Like, he had other powers from it, but nothing that compensated for the incredible stupidity of using it as a mediocre laser gun.

He laughs. I don't know what a laser is but I will take your word for it that this was an absurd waste of an infinity stone. We're all doomed, so probably shouldn't wield temperamental horrors.

Yeah, I'll do it. The Tesseract alone would probably be sufficient to kill anyone who needs killing - maybe not, like, Eru, if he decides to show up and need killing, but I find myself skeptical that Morgoth could come back from no two fragments of him sharing a cubic parsec. It would also be the stone of choice for turning your stupid cylindrical planet into a sphere, although I'd want to establish non-waving-the-thing-around-based communication before I was confident it could do that really really gently.

What is objectionable about the shape of our planet?

You're only using a fraction of the surface area for useful planet functions, the edges have that gravity problem I told you about, and it's just incredibly dumb. The more I think about what it would look like from space being all stupid and cylindrical the more annoyed I am.

The Valar will certainly object.

The Valar should have made it a sphere in the first place like Eru supposedly meant for them to and provided incredibly bad documentation about. Melian says it's one of the things he deigned to scold them about.

He stops fake-amusement and is really amused, at that. The lie isn't obvious until the truth briefly lights up his face. They did not mention that to us.

His control over his facial expressions is amazing. I think Maiar might be considering me a sort of honorary Power and behaving a little loosely about what I may be told.

And if there are things they agreed not to tell Elves specifically, they're not bound by that when it comes to you.

Sure, though I specifically asked Melian what I shouldn't tell other people and she didn't actually constrain me hardly at all.

I'm sure insofar as her nature permits it Melian is fed up with the Valar by now.

Seems reasonable.

Though she could have communicated to someone that she had Elu entranced in the forest, saved us a manhunt and my grandfather years of anguish.

Yeah, that whole incident is sketchy on multiple levels. Batgirl judges her for it.

I have to admit to not seeing the appeal of - it'd be like one of us seducing a mortal with magical love songs, even if you had no principles there's also no challenge to it and not a particularly exciting prize.