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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
Simultaneously? Ugh. No fire song, tempting as it is, they might just like being on fire fine and set off a blaze in the flora. She tries blinding and deafening them all.
That's obviously very bad for them, but the Men are utterly unprepared to fight them off, and they're still managing to find them by smell.
purposeful_glory
Fuck. She can't be in three places at once. She dives for one, aims for a quick clean separation of head from body.
Dead. They aren't that tough.
Is in the process of dragging someone off.
purposeful_glory
Now it is not, and the person it was dragging off is whole and well, and next.
The last one is running.
purposeful_glory
She flings healing songs at anybody left injured in its wake and chases it.
Others, the ones that didn't attack, join it, and the pack heads back over the hills at a run.
purposeful_glory
She'll let them as long as they don't stop to attack anyone. She wants to know where they're going.
They round another hilltop and then vanish entirely; she can see them flicker out of existence at a certain point.
purposeful_glory
The fuck.
She lands short of that and throws a rock at the place.
It halts in midair.
The air ripples and a man walks out, plucks it out of the air, examines it. He looks like an Elf.
The air ripples and a man walks out, plucks it out of the air, examines it. He looks like an Elf.
purposeful_glory
She was already holding Lævateinn but now she's holding it tighter. She was already invisible but now she's inaudible too.
"We meet at last," he says, still looking at the rock. "I didn't think it would be long but I didn't particularly expect it to be here.
This world runs according to a divine plan. You're rather making a mess of it."
This world runs according to a divine plan. You're rather making a mess of it."
purposeful_glory
"That would matter if I liked the plan," says her voice. From the rock. This probably isn't Morgoth because he is not in Angband wearing shiny rocks on his head.
"I hate the plan," he says, "and find that your alterations nonetheless matter to me.
What are you in this for? What do you hope to achieve?"
What are you in this for? What do you hope to achieve?"
purposeful_glory
"If your version of altering the plan involves werewolves savaging people I'm not sure we're going to find any common ground," says the rock. Maybe this is Thauron; he doesn't have Maitimo to play with anymore, could have branched out. He's fast for a Maia if he's already fucking with Men this comprehensively though.
"Only very occasionally. Keeps them motivated. I expect we have the common ground that we are interested in ways for you to walk away from here alive, tonight, if nothing else, and I've found that is often quite enough to start laying the foundations of a deeper friendship."
purposeful_glory
"You've correctly divined one of my interests, not that I give you much credit for the guess. Why might it be among yours?"
"You have free will.
You have free will and don't seem interested in having this history play out according to Eru's terms. I thought I was going to have to wait for those -" he gestures broadly at the direction she came from - "to have any chance of knocking history off its intended rails but you have free will and seem as interested in that cause as I am."
You have free will and don't seem interested in having this history play out according to Eru's terms. I thought I was going to have to wait for those -" he gestures broadly at the direction she came from - "to have any chance of knocking history off its intended rails but you have free will and seem as interested in that cause as I am."
purposeful_glory
"Eru's a neglectful hack of a designer with no personnel management skills and you won't find me defending him, but if all it took to get the right answers was disagreeing with fools it'd be easier to do."
"We really don't need to want the same things more broadly just to collaborate on the cause of averting the tragiheroic arc of Arda's history."
purposeful_glory
"See, you say that, but I can't help but think you have an informational advantage which in any sustained collaboration would wind up trending in favor of your preferences. Which seem to involve werewolves savaging people."