"Hardly inconsistent with observations."

"...but no worlds have turned up that are nothing but torture factories for Melkor, so far, right?"

"In Evil Arda we were alive to the possibility of a deadman switch - Space Thauron had one and we almost missed it - so I talked to the Melkor first and he ran away to what sounded like a torture dimension, but of course that's going off his description and it didn't sound like an Arda..."

"Evil Arda sounds like a mess from every possible angle."

"Yep. Elspeth did good work there given what she had, but..."

"But it's genuinely hard to do better than a Maitimo for ruling a country, however objectionable he is, and the more fractious the population the truer that is? That was the sense of it I got yesterday, anyway."

"Yeah, pretty much. What've you told yours yet? I'm the source on free will if he wants it..."

"I haven't told him anything, it's five days' travel to Himring from here."

"I can teach you to teleport before I go."

"That'd be lovely."

"Have an eidetic memory necklace." She holds one out. "Maedhros will probably want the indelible version at least in the long run."

"Already have an eidetic memory, wished it. You mean as opposed to the necklace version?"

"Yeah. So there's no way to render him unable to teleport."

"Might help, once he believes this is real."

"Yeah. Mine had enough leadup that free will clinched it - Island dithered for a while and then got married and free willed and un-free-willed and married again - we are mercifully not so deluged in post-Angband Maitimos as to have a guaranteed six-step process or anything like that."

"We discussed marriage when Joy and Gem, uh, demonstrated the possibility. He doesn't want to. Maybe that'll change if he meets the alts."

"Maybe. Do you think he'd want to meet me, long as I'm here?"

"If the other hims like you, then yes, probably. Don't expect it to work miracles."

"They do and I won't."

He sends an image of this world's Himring. It's not shaped like an eight-pointed star. It's cold and austere and as ugly as an Elven city gets, and it looks out on Angband.

"Wow, that's depressing. You want to come along and introduce us?"

"Isn't it? I don't know what I was thinking, imagining I could rescue him. I'd love to come along."

Pop. "I was very frustrated with having only incompletely rescued mine."

Knock. I think he'd have been personally better off if I had shot him, but I also don't think we could have held on for the next four hundred years...

The door opens. "My lord prince! And this must be an alternate universe instance of the wish-granting Isabella."