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Loki goes instantly where Huan tells her. She has a safety against landing intersected with solid objects, her or any of her belongings, so dramatic as it would be she can't just appear with her opponent already impaled. She has to actually stab him.
So she stabs him, spikes him from there. And hollows out Lævateinn and channels ice into the wound.
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purposeful_glory
"Is he going to be able to persuade Elu?"
purposeful_glory
"Maybe not before I have interdimensional teleportation."
"And then you are going to change the Oath and call it a day?"
purposeful_glory
"I might be a little more delicate than 'free will for everyone'; it'll depend on how good a working relationship I wind up having with the infinity stones. But probably yes."
"I would object to Elu Thingol holding the Silmaril even were I not bound to stop him. We need them. We -" he bites his tongue - "you know what, Maitimo can stop meddling. If I had all three Silmarils right now I could get true sight at any range, amplification of magics is a thing they do when they're in conjunction. Enemy missiles would be visible anywhere in the world and instead of setting twenty thousand people to mass output of artifacts that cover a hundred feet square I could give them a day off or a lunch break or an education in the magic I'm asking them to wield with no understanding. Elu Thingol is a contemptible idiot and I will eventually take the Silmaril back from him whether I have to or not."
"Maitimo believes you that you don't intend to stop us. I'm not sure I do."
purposeful_glory
"When something other than the presence of the Silmaril can stand between Doriath and the Enemy, such as, say, the nonexistence of the Enemy - and I am working on that - then if necessary I will steal it from them for you myself and tell them to sit down and shut up. I am not prepared to deprive a substantial population of people who were safer before I taught you how to make bombs of its protection when they require it just because their king is a contemptible idiot."
"Of course we can't leave them defenseless! Having the Silmarils positioned to give the whole world true seeing also gives the whole world a radiation shield, or it'd be hardly viable; I think it'll also incidentally obviate nuclear weapons, but that's all right, we weren't going to use that again.
And the world may feel more dangerous than it did when the Enemy was sitting in Angband, but he was getting stronger faster than we were, there's magics at work that we don't even understand. I guarantee you that if we'd waited to bomb Angband until he'd started making the threat Doriath was under truly apparent, it would have done even less and left him much, much stronger and probably with a flying fleet of radioactive dragons.
You could've asked 'can we keep Doriath as safe if not safer with the Silmarils here', that's an engineering problem, we are good at those."
And the world may feel more dangerous than it did when the Enemy was sitting in Angband, but he was getting stronger faster than we were, there's magics at work that we don't even understand. I guarantee you that if we'd waited to bomb Angband until he'd started making the threat Doriath was under truly apparent, it would have done even less and left him much, much stronger and probably with a flying fleet of radioactive dragons.
You could've asked 'can we keep Doriath as safe if not safer with the Silmarils here', that's an engineering problem, we are good at those."
"Which is why Maitimo told me not to 'point out the obvious', that being that it's a pretty trivial engineering problem and neglecting it has a very high personal cost which mostly isn't even falling on my family."
purposeful_glory
"I am not convinced that you can protect Doriath if there's no solution to the political problem, and unfortunately its king is too much of a contemptible idiot to route around transparent manipulation from the Enemy and your hands are too tied by your oath and your reputations too corrupted for you to have a free hand at addressing the politics."
"What political problems are left if we get a radiation shield and true sight over the whole continent and possibly whole world?"
purposeful_glory
"He burrows under the ground. He learns to teleport - Thuringwethil can, over short distances, I don't see why he shouldn't be able to pick up the trick if he set his mind to it - and uses something other than radiation to attack them. He leans on the fact that they're prone to contemptible idiocy, lures somebody out in false hopes of finders-keepersing a Silmaril again because they don't trust you, holds whoever comes out hostage. He thinks of something."
"Having a Silmaril protects them from none of those except 'they might be tempted to do stupid things to acquire a Silmaril'." He sighs. "I need to put twenty thousand people to work on our current true seeing solution."
purposeful_glory
"As long as having it is mutually exclusive with being attacked, whether that's the Enemy playing along or not, they will not be safer if they lose it. Do you need any more accelerated perception songs?"
"Yes, if you don't mind, I need twenty thousand of them."
purposeful_glory
"Get me twenty thousand rocks or whatever, then."
And she attaches songs to them.
And she attaches songs to them.
And they start mass development of artifacts of true seeing with a warning signal on them.
purposeful_glory
And she goes back to her interrupted visit with Maedhros.
He's laughing again when she enters the room.
And they wind up the songs and ask her questions about her travels and it's a sociable, if substanceless, half hour. Then Lúthien comes.
purposeful_glory
Loki is in a bad mood but does not ask Lúthien why this is her idea of looking after somebody.
Lúthien was clearly not expecting to see her, and is delighted and gives her a hug. "You're here! How is everything? Tell someone to bring extra dinner -"