But speaks Elf-tongue, of course he does. She does not. She yells to someone across the room "he's awake! I don't know how I'm supposed to check for anything when we don't speak the same language, but I suppose you're going to tell me Ke's off-duty." Honestly Ke deserves the break, it's been a long couple of days, but she still sounds irritated.

The person across the room confirms that Ke is off-duty. 

Leareth does not speak any of the orcs' language. He waits to see what's going to happen next. 

The orc is going to grumble some more and then shine a light at his eyes, squint at him, shrug, offer him some food.

Either they're going to poison them or they won't, he'll still– not necessary, but either his immortality still works or it doesn't, and if he refuses to eat he'll starve. Leareth eats. It's awkward while handcuffed to a bed.

...He thinks of something that might still work, since his Thoughtsensing does and that's a different Gift entirely. Leareth gathers up his reserves and hits the unshielded mind in front of him, along the Mindspeech channel. It probably feels to her like being punched with osanwë, and it won't be hard enough to kill her but it would knock a human out. 

It does that to her, too; she collapses on the floor. Another couple of orcs hear the sound and come over - not running, expecting that a patient fell -

Leareth is way too tired to attempt it again. He lies still. 

They try to figure out what happened. Maybe she just collapsed? Maybe it was the otherworld patient, they have all kinds of weird powers, I heard that the other one nearly blew up a mountain - would've, if Melkor hadn't been there -

(Leareth gets some anxious stares) - 

Oh no. 

Leareth thinks for a moment. Chooses the gamble - he goes in for a more active probe on one of the orcs, what otherworld stranger, when, what mountain where - they might or might not notice, if it was a gossip-worthy event then their thoughts tugging in that direction may be less notable.

(Leareth is still baffled about what happened to him – his memory is firmly that he got the others out, and then a god was there in person, and now there are no gods or even Maiar anywhere within sensing range, they - don't seem to know anything about him - what...) 

This orc can easily be tugged towards thinking more about that. They heard from a friend that the otherworld stranger who was slaughtering orcs to provide power to the Quendi in the war to annihilate orcs was captured successfully, but his friends escaped, there were complications, there was more than one otherworld stranger somehow, and Melkor immediately raced over to track them down - succeeded, but the other otherworld stranger did something - and now they have this one and no orders and vague and frankly unreassuring reassurances from Sauron that this one has been effectively prevented from doing the same - Melkor's not dead but he's damaged somehow -

Sauron is a Maia, Leareth gathers. They've had a chance to probe his magic - stupid, he should have anticipated they would find a way to block it, only he's not at all clear on what he could have done to prepare. The cave location should have been secret but Gating to and from it was necessary, it could have leaked, Melkor might also have tracked the Gate that brought Vanyel and not doing that was even less an option and he'd taken all the reasonable precautions that he could on shielding. 

–Vanyel is dead, presumably, most likely Maitimo as well. Leareth is surprised by how much that hurts.

He does note to himself that it might not be true, it could be misinformation. Or misunderstanding. Vanyel channeling the Silmarils might be able to blow up a mountain and/or damage Melkor without actually calling down a Final Strike. 

He lies still, keeps skimming nearby thoughts, waits for someone to show up who can talk to him. Presumably they're going to do that eventually and in the meantime he's not holding very many cards. 

They find someone eventually. Maia; not a familiar one. 

Leareth. Is the orc going to be all right?

Leareth keeps his expression very neutral. Presumably the Maia understands Quenya. "Yes. She ought to wake up with a headache quite soon." 

Nod. Will you come with me? I don't have a specific plan, Melkor had those and I think they have now been substantially complicated. But it doesn't look like you need any medical care and I don't doubt you could start murdering them and more importantly they don't doubt that and it's going to be very distracting. 

Leareth is in fact unsure that he could murder the orcs with only his Mindspeech and mage-sight working and while handcuffed and not in possession of a mundane weapon. Probably they're right to be afraid of it, though. He - has a lot of experience with killing things. 

The Maia has him thoroughly outpowered, but also is going to be closer to knowing what's going on. He has to figure out what options he still has (and hunt for hints that the story he heard isn't true, it's plausible but it's also well-chosen as propaganda.)

"All right," he says. "How exactly did I end up here, anyway? My impression is that Melkor came for me personally, and yet I woke up as an ordinary patient in an ordinary hospital. Why did he not kill me immediately?" 

"Well, he never meant to kill you, he wanted to talk to you." He steps a little closer and handwaves the handcuff out of existence. "And then he left you with the army to go chase down your friends, as soon as he heard where they were. And then - you probably have a better guess than I do, honestly, we're very, very confused."

"Really. If you know enough of my magic to block it – which I assume is what you are doing currently – then I am surprised that you are confused." And he isn't planning to enlighten them, though despite his personal shields being in place it seems very possible the Maia can read his mind anyway. "I suppose I might as well ask what you know so far." 

"I think I have blocked everything except your osanwë, by first blocking everything and then carving out an exception for that. I wasn't sure we had a language in common - you have very good Quenya, for the time you've had to learn it. We knew you could move yourself and others around the continent, put up shields, take them down, use magic to apply force, probably do a hundred other things we haven't heard of, but we assumed you could not leave half the continent a crater and Melkor badly damaged because - well, mostly, we assumed if you could do that you would have. And none of the things we had seen were anywhere near that much power.

Melkor was right, not that I expect he feels very smug about it."

Half a continent is a much bigger explosion than he'd expected even Vanyel's Final Strike could manage. If Melkor is that badly hurt then - maybe the war still has a chance even presuming Maitimo and Fëanáro are both dead, maybe even if he assumes Vanyel blew up himself and the Silmarils in order to do it. 

He absolutely cannot ask the Maia what the state of the other side's army is. Maybe he can find it out by mindreading at some point. 

"What was Melkor's reasoning in wishing to speak to me," Leareth says, very neutral. 

"He was hoping to convince you to switch sides."

"It seems extremely unlikely that I would do that, in any scenario. I know what he did in the last war." 

"Do you? I haven't been welcome in Valinor for some time but I can try to guess their account. Melkor...decided to be evil, for fun, and kidnapped Elves and tortured them into orcs - is that how making new species works where you're from -"

"Their account of his motives was not clear. They did mention the orcs." And they were telling the truth about a lot of the harms done, even if some others he doesn't have direct proof of. He was mindreading Maitimo and all of the others constantly. He saw Maitimo's memories of interacting with the traumatized survivors. The part about the orcs doesn't make much biological sense to him, but 'decay as a natural process can be banned across a continent' makes even less sense. The gods of this world control reality in a different way from what he's used to. 

He doesn't say any of that. It's not exactly in his interest to. 

"We made a lot of mistakes. We were trying to get Elves that the gods couldn't - bend. It doesn't work. But if it had it would've been much, much better than -" He gestures expansively at the corridors they're walking through. 

"Than what? What exactly did Melkor intend, if he won the war?" 

"Eru has a plan for this world. A - narrative for it, I guess. He likes - certain kinds of conflict, he likes tragedy, he likes it when people are - undone by what should have been their strengths and betray those they cared about most and lose everything precisely because it was so important to them to protect it. That world needed an antagonist, and that is why Melkor was allowed to exist in it. Why the orcs are allowed to exist in it. The orcs so the Elves have an antithesis to fight, Melkor so the Valar do. An endless stalemate, contrived to stay that way, with coincidences piling up to destroy any party that held the upper hand for too long. And that's how it went. 

Melkor thought, at first, that there were two ways to push the world off the rails. For us to surrender and permit the slaughter of all the orcs, or for us to win, and kill the Elves and the other Valar. We - 

- we tried the first one first. It didn't feel fair, there were more orcs than Elves, but we had an obvious way to achieve the first one and no way at all to achieve the second."