"Could at least ask her if she wants us to."

"Yeah."

"That'll be an interesting conversation."

"Probably. 'Hi, Melkor, the oaths were very nice and everything but the outside-chance downside potential of letting you out is extremely bad. However, we feel very awkward about "eternal imprisonment", want to experiment with death.'"

"Valar might not want to ask until we've determined that we don't in fact need her to help orcs."

"That's reasonable."

"I just want everyone to be okay."

"Yeah."

"How would mages be able to tell -"

"I'm not sure what angle on it would be best - if Valar are impossible to physically destroy or something it might have to be a psion actually -"

"Elves're similarly impossible to destroy, actually -"

"...huh. Well, as far as I know none of you maybe need to be obliterated?"

"No one I can think of, certainly."

"But anyone who did pick up the executing-Melkor skill would then still have it, so it'd have to be somebody very trustworthy."

"Yeah. ...eternity is a long time, it'd be a rare fourteen year old I was that sure of - particularly among ones who were willing to try to pick up a god-executing skill for immediate use against a repentant prisoner -"

"Well, 'immediate' meaning 'after however long it takes to pick up in the first place' and that's a pretty long time to a human. It wouldn't have to be a fourteen-year-old, older psions are just in higher demand because they already have whatever skills. You could in theory find somebody who just wants a one-time payout and was willing to go locked down after that, although I'm told that after one's had magic for a few days being locked down is kind of unpleasant. Not intolerable. People do it if they drop out of control training, or if they don't drop out altogether but do need to be out of virtuality on less than two days' notice for some reason."

"And most people don't go on murder sprees, and it's not that they couldn't -"

"Yeah. If only one person learns to do it they'd certainly get caught, too, possibly before even doing it, it'd be obvious who..."

"We can do another round of interviews, maybe several, we're in no hurry."

Nod. "If you'd rather filter older ones for this the next most available tier are 'just got out of school, no marketable skills yet, trying to fill in the gap until they have something', you'll fit right in with the military contracts and the fifteen-year-plans."

"Maybe do a mix? That sounds - potentially likely to turn up potential executioners, though."

"Yeah. I'll put out another ad."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Want to see the rest of the money-and-development-and-politics plans-in-progress, I finally wrote it all up so it follows a little better -"