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Akibel Mowar is on his way home from the blacksmith's when he spots it. People are shrieking and fleeing from it, which seems reasonable, as it's a fuckoff huge snake with a mirror for a face. A big mirror.
Kib can't so much flee. He can shriek - he can lurch in the direction of the nearest house and try the door - it's locked. He can amble briskly...
He can break into a run when the snake gains on him and fall flat on his face.
And he can get eaten up.
And it's too bright too bright too bright and he flings his arm over his eyes.
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secondchance
Well, if the future is terrible by all means let's evade it. Who says so?
secondchance
Melkor. Came by, showed me some stuff, I got Findekáno to help me translate an oath wording to be sure he wasn't just making it up for purposes of being pointlessly upsetting, he swore it.
...huh. Okay. So he's being upsetting with the truth, if he's being upsetting. What stuff?
secondchance
It's about you, it's really bad, do you want to see or have it summarized.
You want it summarized, says Findekáno. You can see it later if you need to for some reason.
....Okay.
....Okay.
secondchance
Kib goes through it in order, in spare neutral phrases, levelly, because it's not going to happen now, is it.
Did Melkor swear to it that it was me, or just show you someone with my appearance?
secondchance
He did not actually swear it was you, Kib says. The voice was the same too, and he swore to the truth of a statement to the effect that he would not have been able to share the contents with you; but it is technically possible that somebody wrote a whole lot of groundbreaking golem instructions on one of Nerdanel's sculptures of you and sent it off, except that wouldn't have been in the prophecy because I'm not in the plan.
I quite literally cannot imagine any string of circumstances under which I'd do that. I'd be sort of reassured if I'd become evil in some more - strategic or meaningful - way, then I could resolve to avoid that - I'm not sure how most effectively to resolve to avoid something I would have already considered myself very resolved to avoid.
On the other hand, there seems a sense in which it's easily avoided. So.
On the other hand, there seems a sense in which it's easily avoided. So.
secondchance
I'm not sure how having destinies written out in advance is supposed to work but I imagine whatever leads up to those events would be very compelling and not something you can sidestep just by now being very much disposed to avoid things of their nature.
I'm sure. I cannot imagine what would be compelling enough. Melkor says he doesn't know?
secondchance
He says there is preceding Noldorin politics about which he has fuzzier information, and people settling their differences about it with swords, but didn't want to tell me details, doesn't trust me enough. Claimed to lack more explanatory context.
Not sufficient. As an explanation, I mean, or even as a significant part of one.
Thank you for telling me.
I wish I knew if I could trust Melkor. One thing to do would be to quit, here, so that if I later develop murderous tendencies I at least can't command an army to help me carry them out, but if he's still evil then it could be he'd prefer that.
secondchance
Yeah, the source here is really kinda dubious. Do you suppose any other Valar who are more obviously not evil would like to dump prophecies on me?
If any of the other Valar knew I was going to do things like that they would act differently than they do.
secondchance
But they might know other things which, if pooled - as they normally cannot do, apparently - would make it come together somehow -
Worth asking.
secondchance
You want to put together the inquiry or is that the sort of thing I should ask myself?
My instinct is that it's safer for me not to do things, but I'm not sure that's justified.
secondchance
I didn't set out to completely paralyze you. But if you don't want to do it should I ask somebody else or bet on my ability to be diplomatic with Valar...?
I haven't had much chance to evaluate how you act towards people you don't respect. And completely paralyzing me might in fact be best - I could move to Valimar and study chemistry for a thousand years, I'd be very unhappy but it seems vanishingly unlikely to cause any deaths....