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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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"For escaped prisoners of Angband. They're - a bit of a wreck, you know, and also everyone else is frightened of them, and we have healing but it doesn't do anything about that, and the idea was to make the memories less vivid and stop the panic attacks and help them work around missing memories and so forth, but then the King adopted the policy about none of them in Doriath and so I dropped work on it."
purposeful_glory
"Well, I only know where to find one of those but I imagine there are likely more."
"There are. The Enemy is terrible indeed."
purposeful_glory
"I wonder what would happen if I stuck that song in Angband."
He raises an eyebrow. "You can do that? Hmm. I expect they'd just deafen the prisoners, but it's a clever idea."
purposeful_glory
"Well, I probably shouldn't actually do it for the same reason I shouldn't make the whole place silent, but yes, until the Enemy did something about it I certainly could. I'd probably want to put it in a silence baffle, get quite far away, and dismiss the baffle from a distance."
"Why shouldn't you make the whole place silent?"
purposeful_glory
"I tested with Melian; if she doesn't want an illusion of mine in place in Doriath, she can shut it down and it takes concentration to oppose her. The benefit I'd want from the silence would need the illusion effortlessly sustained to achieve, and it would also draw attention I probably can't handle."
He nods. "Fair enough. Songs - move effortlessly through trees? Clean a poisoned river? Comfort a crying child?"
purposeful_glory
"I'm generally uncomfortable with mind-affecting magic and I do have to listen to each song myself at least once to copy it; the one for escaped prisoners is an exception since not applying mind affecting magic to them seems to do them so few favors. There might be demand for the others - I don't know how many composers you have who can make magic songs or how long they take."
"It's not really considered appropriate to pick a desired effect and write a song about it, you're supposed to compose from the heart and then improve the song for results. It takes around a year, usually, though it doesn't need to.
The song for children was learned before we found Elu and Melian, when we'd be trying to stay quiet to flee from orcs and your other choice was to strangle them. It doesn't have an effect on people over five."
The song for children was learned before we found Elu and Melian, when we'd be trying to stay quiet to flee from orcs and your other choice was to strangle them. It doesn't have an effect on people over five."
"It's designed so you can sing it as osanwë."
purposeful_glory
"Ooh, I probably can't take advantage of that since I don't actually have osanwë but that's cool."
"The interactions between the spellwork of our world and that of yours are fascinating. Making songs work through osanwë's significantly harder, though, and we couldn't deploy it over Angband long-term."
purposeful_glory
"It seems sheer luck that illusory songs work, it could have gone the other way."
"Well, it's past time fortune did something to favor us."
"Mother says she'll talk with you now," Lúthien says. "Sorry, that is not the answer I was expecting and I thought you two'd have time to copy useful songs or suggest ideas for them first...she sounds very worried about you, by the way, I ended up promising her you were all right even though I'm not sure if that's even true."
purposeful_glory
"I'm fine, just shaken up," Loki says, and she grabs a last handful of nuts and eats them as she heads to the throne room.
Melian's attention is fully present, perhaps more fully present than Loki has ever seen it; her face is more expressive, her eyes wide with concern, and her eyes shine with a frightening intensity. "Daughter," she greets Loki. "It is good to see you well."
purposeful_glory
"Thank you," says Loki, inclining her head politely, although wow does she ever have mixed feelings about random demigods addressing her as "daughter".
And the room goes suddenly quiet around them. "Lúthien says you encountered the Enemy."