“Your trust does me credit, your majesty.”

Mablung sketches another half bow, and leads Luthien and She back last the throne room a few hundred feet, into a great cellar lit by lampstones, built into the earth, with stairs leading down. The walls are lined with weapons of all sorts; swords, spears, axes, and bows are the most common, but it also contains hammers, maces, daggers, and a great variety more. On stands sit hundreds of sets of armor, each made of impossibly tiny steel rings combined into a mail that seems almost smooth and looks light as a feather, and some have additional layers of heavier plate on top to cover vitals. Carefully packaged in boxes and bins are arrows, stored by the quiverfull for new equipment and in neatly stacked piles for refilling one only partly spent. These are all themselves arguably a work of art; they

Mablung ignores all of this, and leads them past it, to a door, where another Quendi stands guard. Something passed silently between them, and the guard steps aside to let them through the door.

Sue follows, quiet but keeping her eyes open - and turning a small part of her attention towards sensing magic. She might not really understand the local magic yet, but - if anything here can hurt her, she wants to know what it feels like.

Until she steps through the doorway, there’s nothing that manages to get above the background of Melian and Luthien, but the moment she does, it’s obvious to her senses; the doorway must have somehow blocked the traces. Each and every item in this room is magic, and strongly enough so that she can detect, although there’s some serious variation. One of them, however, feels different; dark, is the best word that comes to mind, albeit not in the same way as a witch is.

"...That one feels. Not particularly nice." She says, gesturing to the one she means. "Also I can apparently detect magic weapons, but the - whatever - was able to block me before getting in here."

It takes a moment for Mablung to locate the weapon in question, but when he does, he's unsurprised.

"This is Anglachel. It was Eöl's work, and bears within it much of the man's malice; he was a smith of great renown, and gave it as a vassal-fee to King Thingol for his residence in the realm of Nam Emloth, but Queen Melian warned him not to use it in battle, so it's stayed here ever since."

Mablung draws it from its sheath, and holds it up in the light; the black blade shines with a mirror sheen, reflecting its surroundings with crystal clarity, and its edge seems impossibly sharp.

She focuses, examines it more closely - mostly with her magical sense. "Did he say what it does?"

"He did explain what it was for. The theory is"

he starts, sheathing the sword, and stepping out of the room.

"That it can cut through anything."

He finishes, a few seconds later. as he steps back in, carrying a couple of pieces of steel equipment.

"I suggest you stand back for the demonstration unless you want to test your invincibility on it early."

Luthien is already moving back, giving Mablung a clear radius.

She steps back. "Hm. I'd be interested if it can cut through a magical construct like one of my barriers... That'd be a better first test than poking the blade with my finger..."

He tosses the metal into the air, one at a time, and swings the blade through, effortlessly slicing them in half rather than sending them flying off. 

"Feel free to put some up. if you can block this, there are probably only a handful of weapons in all of Arda that could possibly do the trick, which would mean in practice that as long as you have a line of retreat Glaurung, Gorthaur, The Enemy and the Feanorians are your only real potential causes for concern."

"Right. Starting with a standard barrier, like I'd use against an average magical girl - "

She gestures, and long arrows hover in the air before her, a shimmering field of white between them, the holes in the latticework narrow enough a rapier could be thrust through but not most swords, including Anglachel. She then steps out from behind it, nods to it, and telepaths, "That'd hold back the best common non-magical weapons in my world, and most magical girls could overwhelm it but it'd be more costly to them than to me. It's mostly useful to shape battlefields, cover retreats, and wear down opponents; if I was trying to seriously trap a magical girl or hold back the most powerful weapons I'd do something different. I don't think this'll hold up, but I might be able to get a sense of how powerful a barrier I'd actually need."

Mablung swings the sword, and Anglachel cuts straight through the barrier.

"I felt some resistance there, but that's not nearly enough."

"Yeah, that - was higher powered than anything I've encountered. I'm going to jump straight to most powerful barrier - I'll probably want a really brief joy song after that, or time to clear my magic normally, just to be on the safe side."

She forms a barrier of solid, glittering white - only bothers with a one foot diameter sphere of it, but it still dims her soul gem noticeably. 

Mablung slices straight through it, once more. This time, it's possible to notice the blade slow down noticeably as it encounters resistance, but Mablung doesn't need to strain to cut straight through it. he then sheathes the sword again, and sets it where he got it from.

"It's a bad habit to use mood altering songs in locations that need to be guarded attentively. How far does your song carry, Princess?"

"A hundred feet or so, at full power, but it's noticable for about two-thirds of a mile."

"Should we leave and return after the song, or are you able to continue?"

"I'll just clear my magic normally. Is it okay if I take something small out of my pocket space?" she sends. "If not I'd rather just continue, I'm not dangerously low, just being paranoid."

"I have no objection to you retrieving something from your pockets. Were I not confident you meant no harm, you would not be here in the armory."

"Meant from - a folded space. Didn't know if it'd be alarming." She raises a hand, palm up, and a grief seed unfolds into her palm. It's one of the ones she uses more often - a dark murky purple with tarnished silver casing. She raises her other palm to her neck, lifts up her necklace, and the white moonstone in the pendant glitters. It then shines, and the necklace folds together, revealing her soul gem - a brilliantly shimmering white stone encased in angular bands of silver. The top fourth looks almost damaged - speckled in a seething black. She touches the two together, and the grief sloughs off her soul gem in little charcoal flecks, darkening the grief seed even more. She then returns her soul gem to its necklace form, and the grief seed to the pocket space.

"Right. Done."

Luthien gasps.

”That poor thing! I have to-“

“Not now, your highness. It is suffering indeed, I judge, but its suffering is one of sleep. It will not begrudge your wait, unless it wakes.”

Mablung’s hard eyes turn to look at Sue, and what they lack in the brilliant power of Luthien, Melian, and Thingol, they make up for in the sheer danger they convey.

“More important than that by far, is the other matter. Sue: what sins could this Fae have possibly commited, that you would torment it so?”

"That's how grief seeds work, and the only normal way magical girls can keep from turning into witches. I wasn't aware they experience anything; they can't be contacted with telepathy. They feel like coma patients, and there's no - evidence - they have memories, or continuity of experience moment to moment. Witches can't learn and barely react to their environment, and grief seeds are... Less aware than witches. They naturally gather and feed on grief; it's - not even so much a thing I actively do when I clear my gem, more that I'm putting my own soul in easy range of their pull."

"I also knew the girl it used to be, and - while I'm not sure how meaningfully witches and grief seeds are the same person as the magical girl that becomes them, the way her moral system worked she would - acknowledge it as fair, I think."

As Sue continues speaking, Luthien’s expression changes; horror wars with pity wars with anguish and grief. She starts to sing a hauntingly beautiful song of mourning; there’s no magic to it, that much is clear, but it’s still achingly clear.

”This is what a witch is? This... and they cannot even die of grief, and go on?”

“As near as my eyes can see, that is the case; the Fae lacks senses, and rests as though in a dreamless sleep, trapped within  a cage. Her Majesty might be able to see more, but I concur with your observations that it is not currently awake in it’s suffering.”

"This is - what witches turn into when they're drained of magic. Witches are - much more despair. A grief seed registers to my magic sense, but I wouldn't be able to feel one more than a few hundred feet out. Most witches can be felt for miles."

"A grief seed can be destroyed. Same as a soul gem can be destroyed - they're pretty much the same thing, just... Different emotions. No one's - really sure what happens then, if it's like when a non-magical human's body dies or if we just stop existing. When a human dies it feels like something's fading, if I'm paying attention. When a soul gem or grief seed's destroyed, it feels like something's shattering. My guess is we don't exist if our gem doesn't, which's some of why I started hoarding the seeds instead of giving them to the Kyubey to be destroyed. I have - a few other reasons for that guess, too."