Worse and worse.

The one good thing is they can't have expected us to find out like this. We have enough practitioners to watch in shifts for when the Enemy agent leaves Angband, we can confront them with their doppelgänger.

Yep. Could be a lot worse. I'll tell everyone to start keeping an eye out.

And just because they haven't yet accomplished the same in the other camp doesn't mean they can't. Though it'd be harder.

Yeah, they do have Maitimo to see through it.

See through it and also have his people internally coordinated in a way that'd be hard to guess by observation - assuming the Enemy can't eavesdrop on osanwë - and also the Enemy'd almost have to impersonate him and he's hard to impersonate.

Plus if there were only one candidate here, we'd know who by now.

If it turns out all this is just because the Enemy stole something, feeling like an idiot will be such a relief.

I'll let you know if we think of a safe way to ask that.

I doubt there is one, but yeah. It'd clear things up.

I'll make sure to watch for the connection to move, when watching won't be conspicuous.

Yeah, we should set up shifts on that. 

They do. 

It's a few weeks before it moves.

As soon as Amber hears about it she's with the other practitioners watching the link get shorter and shorter. That rules out the captured object theory.

The clandestine meeting place isn't in easy view of the camp, so they end up taking to the air. And then the Elves can see that the suspect is meeting with–

She waves, hugs him, looks around, doesn't spot them. The conversation lasts about ten minutes.

Apparently it would have been too much to hope for for it to be one of the people they have with them.

Can anyone overhear it?

No, osanwë.

At least that means no new oaths.

We can ask the real Artanis to pretend to be the pretender, but that works as well any other time. I think we should ambush the fake one.

Agreed. Do we have anything to kill it with, if it's a Maia -

Fire and gravity elementals plus swords? If swords work then the bullets with the same enchantment should too; we could try and shred it from up here if we don't want to take it alive.

I very much doubt there's a way to take a shapeshifter alive without being sure it doesn't have illusions it could use to fake oaths.

Firing from above it is, then. She passes around the weapons, basically bladed and pointed hollow bullets filled with water. There are only the two water elementals but they're no longer short on ways to make objects move threateningly.

Or from behind, if it survives there's no need to give away our position.

Yep.

So they give some instructions more complex than "move that way," and the projectiles rocket into non-Artanis' back.

And it crumples and then it explodes, leaving a crater ten meters across and the area scorched for fifty.

They are within the blast radius. It knocks them painfully in whichever upward directions are most directly away from the definitely-not-Artanis. The heat easily overwhelms the ice spirits they were using to hide body heat, but there's at least some protection. It adds up to: ow.

After getting her bearings somewhere higher up than she remembers flying, Valarauka? They scaled up the explosion—

(Most of what she's thinking is still variants on "ow," but that doesn't need to be sent.)

...yeah, they did. And also it wasn't a giant fire demon - maybe if it explodes from a smaller start space it's more dangerous. Or maybe he figured out how to make them scarier. 

We know it's a shape changer, maybe it is a giant fire demon when it's at home. Was.

Scarier is definitely a thing he might have done. If we were fighting it with swords I think it would have got us.

And as far as he knew we only knew how to kill them with swords.

Right. 

Keeping it that way.

We could build fake memorials for people who died fighting—he probably doesn't have a full list of who came from Valinor and who didn't, right?—and tell the host it's a weapon the Feanorians made. Maybe even make it sound like they did the killing if that's more plausible.