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"Look," he begins, "not that I expect I'd find this convincing in your position, but -" and then the ground shimmers under them and half a second after that it's not there at all.
They fall.
The ground they hit instead is cold and muddy. The stars are exceptionally bright, and close overhead.
" - what?" says Ryan.
Alex doesn't answer him. Alex is looking out into the darkness, horrified.
Look, I'll just - learn the language, talk tech, ignore it all entirely for a century. Okay?
The journey out of enemy territory takes them four days, as promised. He finds plants Ryan can eat. On the fourth night after six hours of hiking he pauses and says, "okay, folks, now you're gonna stand really still and look like it's not going to be a hassle to hold you during negotiations with my family at all."
Horses ride up. They're almost twice the size of human horses; it's startling. They're singing, at first, and you can hear it before the hoofbeats, but they stop singing as they get close. They encircle them.
Someone dismounts.
There follows a long conversation in Quenya, pretty but incomprehensible, in places quite heated.
("...so you've grown past all this and can't be bothered with it anymore. Well, that's an angle. Not one of the ones I was expecting you to take."
"You really couldn't have expected any of this, I wouldn't beat yourself up over it."
"Oh, I'm not. I'm absolutely going to beat you up over it, though. Will that panic your friends?"
"I think they're about as scared as they're going to get. I'd be embarrassed on behalf of our species, though."
"You're unbelievable."
"It's - most places, most people, most everything, sucks, enough that things sucking isn't even really a reliable marker that the circumstances are extreme, does that make any sense? If you hit me, now, and some Mithrim Elf who's been staying out of politics sees it, they'll figure I probably betrayed your family to their deaths or something because obviously it's something like that, if we're moved to violence over it. These people - my friends - they'll just figure you could, and you felt like it. Because that's enough, most people, most places. And I keep wanting to tell Karen that Quendi are better and then not being sure if I'm just drawing these imaginary lines."
"I don't think the years have improved you, Turko."
"This isn't experience talking, it's sleep deprivation, and ugliness, you have no idea how unbearably ugly everything has been. You can hit me if it'll make you feel better. I'm sorry about Elenwë. I'm sorry about everything."
"You're really determined to take all the fun out of this, aren't you."
"Sorry."
"Wow," she says. "All right. You want to speak to the King?"
"Yes, please."
"Nolofinwë, King of the Noldor in Middle-earth -"
"I would like to speak to Nolofinwë, King of the Noldor in Middle-earth."
"...all right. Keep walking.")
"We're okay," he says out loud in English. "For the moment, anyway."
"Did they grow the horses in the Earth?" asks Drusilla. "All sunk beneath the ground."
"No, they didn't," he says. "They were born in Valinor, where I was born."
("It's not from Angband. There are definitely some similarities and it was caused by torture but it wasn't Angband, just this - guy who felt like it.")
They keep walking. Eventually there's a castle up ahead of them. They get led in through a stone tunnel.
"Oh, uh, you can't leave that one with these two, they might eat him."
"I know. Just lock them up separately, it won't hurt them. He can eat most stuff we eat but you need to cook it thoroughly first, and boil the water. They drink blood."
"I take it that if this occurs you will not throw yourself between me and the executioner."
"Sure."
They leave Ryan and Spike and Drusilla in adjacent cells with Quendi looming over the doors.
"What are they?" Ryan asks Spike when Alex has left.
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