"And reality about the contents of books I read ages ago is most probably in another reality altogether, assuming Melian's right that it was very definitely empty here when Eru started his project. Not a very local effect."

He frowns. "No. Though even if only worked for people in this reality, it'd be a useful song to have. Has Macalaurë looked at something that'd let you see through hallucinations?"

"He mentioned a true seeing spell in the works, nothing for hallucinations, I'm not sure how that would help unless someone knew it had been cast on them before they were captured anyway."

"That's who it'd help. If we did it for everyone the Enemy couldn't pull off that specific thing ever again."

"Yeah. If it lasted long enough. I'd have to put it on either a thing or the person themselves and if the former the thing could be broken and if the latter they'd have to listen to it all the time."

"No, the Enemy couldn't fake the sound because the sound is the effect. Once they'd heard it enough to know it, then once it was played they'd know they weren't hallucinating."

"I thought he had general sensory input control? He can't fake a sound that isn't happening? I mean, if nothing else he can time-dilate, right, if I speed them up too much they stop working."

"It's a sound that isn't happening in a certain sense. It can be heard and that is all; I can't make it loud enough to knock a building over, I can't resonate it just so to shatter a glass; I could make things sound normal underwater even though normally they wouldn't, I could make illusion sound in vacuum where normally it has nothing to propagate through. The general category of bombs - there's so many kinds, but the basic idea involves, were you paying attention to my chemistry lecture?"

"Yes."

"So, you take an atom, and you break it. Or you take two, and you force them to get real cozy and be one atom. And then you level Angband." Pause. "Depending on where I went to go Angband-leveling-items-shopping I might come back with antimatter instead, in some decorously small quantity that would only level Angband and not annihilate half the planet. Antimatter is like matter, but backwards, so if they touch both of them cease to exist very violently."

"... I actually would entirely trust my dear uncle with that. It is not his style to use that kind of thing in random anger."

"He might be able to get somewhere with just what I could tell him now but it requires a lot of things I don't remember, including metals that are, let's call it poisonous, to be near."

"...that's a thing the Silmarils can do. Poisonous metals, I mean, they were present even in Valinor and Aulë would teach advanced students of geology about them and in the presence of the Silmarils they don't do the thing that makes them poisonous. I don't know what that means for your bombs."

"Well, it probably means you can't construct them the way I've read about in the presence of a Silmaril but would be well advised to have one handy in case you had a lab accident. But the Silmarils are behind this fortress which is as yet tragically unleveled."

"I mean, would the bomb go off in their presence?"

"The smushing-atoms-together kind might, the taking-one-apart kind probably not. Actually, I'm not sure you need any of the poisonous metals for the smushing variety, I could be misremembering, but there's some reason they're harder to invent."

"Morgoth is wearing them on his head, last I heard. So."

"Yeah. I could more readily answer the questions of whether poisonous metals must actively poison in order to serve as this sort of weapon if I remembered all the books I've ever read."

"I'll give it a try. And if we could give people back memories this way that have been tampered with -"

"...He's missing things," she nods.

"Does he know which things? Does he want them back secondhand?"

"Didn't specify either way; I can ask."

"Thank you."