I hope my cousins appreciate how badly we're alienating allies much more valuable than them for their sake.

Only their sake in the sense that they caused it. If it came to war, I wouldn't bet on Doriath forever.

I know.

So– we stall Melian, whoever's up tries to grab the Silmaril quick, and then we pretty much can never come back to Doriath.

Yep. And the Enemy might be able to take it back from my cousins, I have no idea how they expect to be able to defend it.

If he does get it back, we're no worse off than when there's a war to avert.

Maybe not.

Maitimo, if you've got practitioners here or any better ideas for getting the Silmaril, now's the time. We've only really got one shot.

It's quite plausible that a preview of our tactics is what the Enemy hoped to get out of this.

And you'd rather let him force you into a war than show him, or you're just waiting to see if ours works first?

A war would involve showing them anyway.

Sounds like a good reason to reveal a tactic now.

What are you going to try.

Weaken her the same way we've been doing to the Enemy and let the person whose turn it is to challenge go for the gem. If she's incapacitated we'll win, if not she will, no way to predict which.

Try that first.

Yeah. He probably doesn't even have a plan.

So: No magic except enchantment and elementalism, which can be done unrestricted, and they can totally argue that allows synchronized spam summoning from the sidelines. (This does tell Maitimo that it's an enchantment trick, but at this point it's just about whether he's still pretending he doesn't already know.)

She's the one who suggested he do that. He continues doing it.

It became a bit of a farce when Fëanáro spoke English, but this is very much not the time to discuss it.

On Melian's acceptance of the apparently unobjectionable terms, they start. "Melian, I summon you. Melian, I summon you. Melian." Repeated by a crowd of practitioners. That has to be uncomfortable.

And if the practitioner makes a run at Doriath they aren't thrown out immediately.

The view from outside is a bit too obstructed, but the light source moves and hopefully that means the Silmaril's been captured–

And then the chanting falters and the other practitioners send frantic reports about the Valley.

How predictable. Also, fuck.

Ungoliant's decided to issue a challenge after all, unless she just decided to eat the chanting people because they were annoying her.

They're all equipped to run, it's not obvious how fast Ungoliant is but the practitioners are scattered and fleeing—

We're really not equipped for this– is Melian? –

Did it once before, right - though Ungoliant was probably less motivated - what is she, can you tell at this point -

Probably once I see her, which I'm not looking forward to– I'm not even sure what knowing would add–  We know she's darkness, we should oppose her with light sources regardless of what else she is and we've barely got any of those– 
There's the small light spirit Amber uses on and off to help see, but that hardly counts.

Can someone who got far enough from Ungoliant to be safe send what she looked like?

The stars going out, mostly. There's some element of glinting carapace of a giant spider but no two people got the same things from that.