I don't think we could have done that here. Not without knowing when their plan was going to activate.

Maybe we should be faster to act, so by the time he reacts we've already made a move.

That'd be nice, unless it pushes him to escalate when he's currently holding back for some reason.

Which he is, it just may or may not be a reason that stops applying...ugh.

But if we sit on our hands and build defenses to avoid provoking him, we definitely don't win. And eventually we miss something and lose.

Losing later is better than losing sooner, if those were in fact the only options.

I don't think they are.

We were expecting swords to be theoretically enough if we could get a chance he'd never give us, and we've already got a way to do the same thing better. Probably not enough better, yet, but it's not like we're just picking when to lose.

I agree. If that changes, though, letting him set the pace might look wiser.

They head back in to report.

It is technically a victory. Shapeshifter deceased and probably not easily replaceable since there was only one of it. But they can't confirm what the plot was, and that's because of the unnecessary casualty.

They can kill minor Maiar, though, that's something. The King approves a cover story and a story for the Feanorians and procedures to protect against future occurrences.

The host sings for a week.

And when she next goes to the Fëanorians she will immediately notice a problem of a different type.

That's impossible. He swore.

There are ten Fëanorian practitioners. Several of them notice her.

They're not the ones at fault; that'd be even more impossible.

Maitimo, what did you do.

She's probably interrupting a lot of things. Really hard to care right now.

Oh, hey. They figured it out on the trip to Doriath, did you not tell Melian it was a secret even among the Noldor because she doesn't seem to have known that.

I told her it was secret from anyone who didn't already know, in with the list of all the other risks. I didn't tell her it was especially secret from your camp because I was trying to make it sound like we were more unified so she wouldn't ask why—

How did you arrange for them to figure it out while still being able to swear what you did, that sounds like it'd be legitimately impressive for a betrayal.

I would really prefer you didn't feel betrayed. I kept the promises I made to you and I got lucky anyway and will be very, very cautious with it. 

I'm very sure you kept the exact words. I'm not calling you forsworn. Just that I accepted your promises as proof you weren't going to spread it, and here we are. Are you actually going to tell me it's just because Melian is more tolerant of risks than I am and you didn't aim for this result at all.

No. I wanted some practitioners who were safely not part of the family but under our command, I'd told you as much, we heard that explosion, we know what the other host's suddenly capable of. 

Safely not part of the family? You realize they pretty indisputably are following Fëanáro. I hope we don't suddenly find out how karma interacts with Doom, but treading that line doesn't do wonders for your credibility on the being careful front.

And why is keeping up with us the motivation? We're not trying to manufacture my world's technology, this wasn't a competition. If you'd said you heard the explosion and know what the Enemy's capable of, I would have agreed that was a good reason!

We already knew what the Enemy's capable of. You're capable of noticing it, of matching it, of killing his agents.

And wanting that is a better reason.

You got it by skirting the edges of promises, and now Melian and I are personally responsible for any skirting your minions try to do.

I hope you're happy with whatever you came up with, I bet it was really clever. And I bet the spirits would agree with me about it being a betrayal.

Did you come by here with a purpose in mind, or was this initially a social visit?

Checking for suspicious connections to Angband. There aren't any, but I guess you don't need to rely on us for that anymore anyway.

Yep, all set. Appreciate your time. We'll communicate anything we discover. I have a couple hundred pounds of things that were on the ships, if you'd like to pick them up now or arrange delivery.

Right now I think I'd rather not land. I'll let people know back at the other camp.

Thank you. See you later.

And so she's unencumbered with stuff Maitimo voluntarily returned (and probably spent political capital doing) when she tells everyone the bad news.