"So there are three powerful - magic things - they're called the Silmarils - which my mother made, and which could have stopped the Enemy and won the war. And more than six hundred years ago when the Enemy stole them and the other Valar were positioning themselves to make a claim that the Valar were the rightful owners, my whole family swore an oath - a magically binding oath, humans don't have those, Elves do, if I swear something I literally cannot break my word - to kill the people who withheld the Silmarils. 

And for five hundred years that was just the Enemy and that was fine because she needed killing, but then some idiot stole a Silmaril, and we told them that the oath bound us to go after them and they wouldn't give it back, and - you can resist an oath. You stop caring about anything, you stop feeling anything except intensifying psychological agony, but you can...for a time...until you've stopped caring about peoples' lives, and then you have no further reason to resist, and then you act."

"Yes, it was astonishingly unforgivably stupid and evil, I know, I've known six hundred years, doesn't help us any now."

"That must have been what they were gesturing at when they explained why they were under attack - did they think they were going to win, what do the Silmarils even do that they wanted them so badly -"

"Healing and light, by default, we could have killed the evil god with them but no one else knows how to use them for that - and we'd teach them, obviously, but it's not 'oh, you enter the secret password' it's 'oh, you decipher from what remains of my mother's notes the magic that she used to do it and then you adjust it and it'd take ten years of research to get anywhere'."

"Oh."

"I don't know if they thought they were going to win or if they just didn't care because everyone in the world is dead anyway -"

"...they showed me to the healers because they said I might not get killed if I was there."

"Then probably thought they'd win." She shakes her head. "The King was really young, he was only three the last time this happened, he must have had advisors who could have told him that we've spent six hundred years at war and are really good at it but I guess he could still just have miscalculated..."

Annie gets some more soup.

"Anyway. Don't know if you saw that part but the King jumped off a cliff into the ocean with the Silmaril, which means as far as the oath is concerned no one's holding it and so the oath - stopped. It'll come back if someone acquires it again somehow. We did check, couldn't find it on the shore."

"I can't see and my weird magic replacement sense has a range limit and he wasn't in it."

"...okay. Well. That's what happened. ...these are the King's daughters. They haven't told me their names, maybe they'll want to talk to you on account of you not being a mass murderer."

"Hi," says Annie to the girls. "I'm Annie."

They watch her cautiously. One takes the other one's hand. They do not offer their names.

...oh well.

"Um, I probably can't evacuate the world. If it turns out I can't evacuate the world what do I... do."

"Uh, pick how you want to die, I guess. I'm sorry."

"We probably have some time left. Ten years, maybe even fifty."

"...mm."

"...yes, we're mass murderers not capable of expressing anything resembling the correct affect or emotions surrounding having just been magically coerced into a massacre, yes I just told you Nelya's not sane, no we're not wrong about any of this, no it's not really safe to verify but no one will stop you from trying."

"It's not particularly that I don't believe you. I just don't... know what to do." Pause. "Can I have some paper, the language thing cuts through the deafness thing and I - would like to see if I can read."

"Yes, sure." She doesn't move. After a few minutes someone comes in with paper.

"...how'd you know to bring paper?" Annie asks the paper-bearer.

"Uh, the princess asked?"