I won't tell you unless you swear not to, uh - to tell anyone about it or cast it or make any attempt to gather materials in preparation for casting it without Karen's permission.

I do think it might work.

I - really can't do that, if there's a way to get the Silmarils and Karen won't give permission then I'll just get shredded. If you want you can tell me it and lie about one of the ingredients.

I - augh. I think I prefer that to anyone doing it if she says no.

We shouldn't be discussing this here. Get us a room and I'll tell Karen and Karen can determine what to tell you.

" - sure, okay."

Karen's new room is much improved over her old one; for example, it has a window and a fireplace and bookshelves. (They don't contain books).

"Ooh. Neat."

- if I know a thing that might help you get the Silmarils - are there live Silmarils in this time period? - are you gonna have to - what is that gonna require you to do? Because this is kind of really stressful and the last time I had relevant information on this front it didn't go so well.

There are probably Silmarils in Angband. I - it depends on a bunch of stuff. If it's time-sensitive, like, the only way to stop Melkor is to do something in particular in the next week, then telling us is going to make things messy because we don't have that much latitude to explore alternatives. I told Wishbone he should fail to mention one ingredient or something. If it's not time-sensitive, then I don't think the oath complicates the situation any, we're not restricted from really thoroughly checking our options unless they're about to run out.

...OK.

Wishbone paces irritably.

All right. You know what? This is how it's gonna be. I'm going to tell both of you, and then you'll know why I really really really don't want to be dealing with this, and if at any point anyone EVER hurts Karen in ANY way because of this information, without her permission, under circumstances that could be reasonably considered your fault, at all, ever, then I won't tell you how to complete the ritual, ever, out of spite, and if that means that you can't slay your hellgod and that means that this entire continent turns into a hell on earth then I WON'T CARE.

Okay.

OK.

He jumps onto the bed and snuggles Karen.

There is a ritual that I believe I remember how to perform. It can be used to seal a god inside a human infant on the day of the infant's birth. Once the god has been sealed away, killing the infant will kill the trapped god.

But we don't have a -

- oh.

Wow.

- has to be human?

Yes.

Whimper.

Karen pets him.

"What's going to happen?" asks Karen, very quietly. "If you guys don't stop Melkor."

I mean - the thing that happened last time, probably. There'll be four hundred fifty years of skirmishes with a couple really big battles which we'll mostly win, and then he'll have built up his power enough to take the continent, and he'll kill everyone within a couple hundred miles of Angband with a volcanic eruption except I guess we'll know about that and can make sure most of them get out, and then he'll destroy all the cities one by one, and then overrun the continent with enslaved orcs, and then the Valar will come and sink it and stop him.

What's an orc?

So, Melkor can't create actually conscious life himself - only Eru can do that - but what he could do was forcibly breed Elves, and if you torture Elves all the time from when they're conceived for several generations you get something else. They're - ugly and don't have osanwë and they hate Elves and hate beautiful things, because that's how he wanted them, and when they're little they all swear to serve him forever and hate Elves forever - so they're stuck, see. There are millions of them. He sends them out to fight sometimes, if he wants a fight or if there're just more in Angband than he wants to have there. They breed really quickly, starting when they're still babies by Elf standards.

Ah.

So - so I can do it. I don't want to, but I can, you know, if I decide to. But I think - I think if I decide to, then - there are things that aren't OK to do, not ever, no matter why you're doing them, and - the things that'd have to happen to make this happen are in that category. And - 

- if I decide to do it then I think it'll be wrong, but I don't think I'll ever regret it, if I did it to - to help people? And if I don't regret it then I'll never repent of it, and then I won't get to - then I won't be absolved of it. Not ever.

You don't - uh, there might be other humans in the world. I know there will be in a couple hundred years and I don't know when they start but they might've started by now already, and I know approximately where we'd have to go to look for them. We can - 

- do this to someone else.

S'not really any better on any of the really important axes. - I guess it might be better if Ryan really doesn't want to, which, uh, would be super understandable...

It's better because it's not you. But - I don't even know if they exist yet.

Yeah.

How hard is that to check, how long until the time when you know for sure, what's gonna be happening in the meantime -

They started way, way east of here, I don't know exactly where. We'd be - searching a continent. - a continent that's currently full of orcs. It's hard to guess but if we hadn't found anyone in a decade I'd probably assume they're not there yet. 

There're - Karen, I don't want you to - 

- there're fights in the next decade - we lost a couple thousand people, the first time, but we can probably do better than that with foreknowledge - and a couple hundred thousand orcs die, and it's subjective centuries for all the people being tortured in Angband but that's ...hundreds, I think, maybe even fewer than that.