Fëanáro arrives. He's been wearing the Silmarils on a chain around his neck; he doesn't need to take them off or even make them visible for Vanyel to use them.

Vanyel gets out his spell-artifact, and contacts Savil. <Aunt. It's me>  It's always weird using the communication spell, like Mindspeech but not, it doesn't have any of the emotional overtones or intimacy. Only words.  

A world away, Herald-Mage Savil Ashkevron leaps up from her chair. <Ke'chara? Oh, gods - what - Dara said... Where are you? What happened? Are you all right?>

<I'm fine> Or close enough, anyway. <I'm in another world. Long story. Leareth came here by accident. There's...an evil god, he was scheming a war, Leareth tried to intervene. Decided he needed my help - he did ask first but it happened really fast and I didn't have time to tell Dara anything and then, um, it kind of became ten times as much an emergency...> 

Vanyel catches Savil up on the last six months, in quick summary because the spell is tiring even for him. It's probably less efficient than what Leareth could do.  

Savil catches him up on Valdemar as well. Diplomatic party claiming to be from Leareth's country/army in the north, stating that he's standing down the entire war here in Velgarth. Asking if they could accommodate refugees – two hundred thousand, can Valdemar's agriculture support that many? It wouldn't be forever but it might be for years. 

There were arguments. Mistrust. Quiet panic behind closed doors. It really did not help matters when Dara straggled in with Rolan, exhausted from riding eighteen hours a day for a week, and informed them of Vanyel's disappearance through a Gate. They did know Vanyel was agreeing to whatever it was, Yfandes had time to Mindspeak that much to her, but...not what. Suspicion. Paranoia. 

They're not at war. Everyone has been extremely stressed for months; Shavri is a mess, Randi is a mess; but they're not at war.

Vanyel asks to be put in touch with someone from Leareth's side, he has an important message for them. Savil promises to arrange it if he checks back in the next day.

He drops the spell and sags against the wall of the Work Room. 

Vanyel should eat a jelly pastry with powdered sugar on top. "They haven't heard from Leareth either?"

Vanyel switches to Mindspeech so he can eat and talk. :My side hasn't. They're in contact with Leareth's people, he sent a diplomatic party or something? From the timing, it was well before he was captured. I didn't speak to anyone in charge on Leareth's side yet, but Savil's going to put me in touch. But - they're not at war. Everything's been quiet. My aunt said they were making plans about accommodating your refugees. I told her Leareth was captured and I've asked to speak to his people, she'll arrange that, I can make sure they know that he's...compromised: Gods but he hates using that word. 

I don't know if you still had any doubts about who Leareth was before this happened. But for me, that he was in a way I could never possibly have verified making arrangements in his world to accommodate our refugees - settles it. 

Of course, the sort of organization you can pivot on a dime from a mass murder campaign to protecting refugees through a few messages from a world away is also the sort you can pivot right back with as little effort. 

Vanyel nods slowly. :I still had a lot of doubts when I landed here. But I don't anymore. I wish–: it's hard to even form the words, :I wish I had ever gotten a chance to - talk to him - when I knew that for sure. Our last real conversation was my telling him I was blocking the dreams for a year and investigating on my own because I didn't trust him: 

I am pretty sure he thought that among the most sensible things you could possibly do.

Vanyel does not say what he's thinking, which is 'do you think I'll ever have a chance to say I'm sorry.' It's an incredibly pointless question to ask and it's not like Maitimo knows either. 

:I, er, have a question that might be awkward: he says instead. It took him a while to notice, because he doesn't keep his Thoughtsensing open by default, and then it was embarrassing, and then he just...didn't. 

Mmhmmm?

:What's the deal with your shield-talisman? I, er, noticed that Quendi don't shield against my kind of Thoughtsensing – I haven't been snooping on anyone's thoughts, I promise, that would be so unethical and rude: 

It's been hard to avoid looking sometimes, since they do use osanwë with him and that's a lot like Mindspeech, and he might have maybe snooped a little bit by accident while he was getting used to it. Not a lot though and he tried very hard to forget the thoughts he saw. 

:And you're not the only person with a shield-artifact that Leareth made, but you are the only one who has one set up to provide a shield against Thoughtsensing too: Which must have been tricky to develop, actually, a spell that lets osanwë through and will work with someone who doesn't have any Velgarth-style Gifts at all. :I'm curious how that happened: 

Well, Leareth was reading all of us constantly, at first - I think he makes a point of trying not to be swayed very much by whether things are unethical or rude, if they seem important - and, uh, I found it distracting. It made it hard to think about whether I trusted him, having him listening. So he made it for me. 

Vanyel nods. :Leareth is very, very paranoid. It sounds like that might have been - really important, for getting your people through the start of the war. I don't think I could've pulled it off: He fidgets with the quartz communication-spell-focus. :But, wow - that's a sign he trusted you. A lot: 

It seems like maybe a thing about building an organization that can kill ten million people for you is that you end up starved for friends who want to save everyone.

Gods but that makes him want to cry. Vanyel blinks hard. :He's talked about that kind of thing a bit. I think - he recognizes that he made a lot of choices which made him sort of...untrustworthy as a person. That mean good people won't want to work with him. And, I don't know, it sounds like he tried it both ways, and he had a hard time finding others who wanted to save everyone and having them - stick around? Because the gods were trying to take apart everything he did. So he decided he had to sacrifice that too, had to be as ruthless as the gods in order to have a chance, and that meant not even trying to have allies who would object to his methods:

Nope it is a losing battle not crying but at least he can turn his face away so Maitimo doesn't see. :I think he really, really didn't want to kill me. He said I was a light in the world that burned brighter than most and it'd be a tragedy for that to be extinguished. But - he would have, if it had come to that, he wouldn't have let caring about me be a barrier in the way of winning. I, just...:

Vanyel doesn't have any words for the emotion he's feeling. 

Well. A neat thing about this plan compared to the very big explosion plans is that it might not kill him?

- not that I know what to do with him, if we don't kill him. He won't be okay, most of the rescues from Utumno killed themselves and less than half of them have ever come back.

:Right. I...have a hard time imagining anything getting Leareth to kill himself: though maybe that's just wishful thinking. :I don't know. We could see. Was there something that helped with the people from Utumno who did end up coming back?: 

Lórien can restore memories - Melkor can remove them, edit them, stuff like that. And heal physical injuries, of course, if there are any. And do some - uh, if every time you touch water it hurts you, you'll have some expectation-of-getting-hurt whenever you see water, Lórien can smooth that out too. But that's usually - less than half of what's wrong, I think, and most of the rest is more complicated.

:...Having his memories removed sounds like Leareth's worst nightmare: Vanyel lets his head fall back against the wall. :Hmm. In Velgarth we have another kind of Gift called Mindhealing, which is basically what it sounds like. I know someone, I trust her. That might be able to help with the more complicated parts, although it's not perfect or easy: As Vanyel knows better than anyone, probably. 

–He sits bolt upright. :Oh! And they can block Gifts. My–: he cuts himself off before saying 'daughter', :the King's daughter invented it. She's twelve years old - er, that's pre-adolescent for humans - and there is no way in a million years I am bringing her here for this. But she showed Melody, her teacher – that's what Melody did to block my Foresight dream, it's presumably still blocked. And, it's been occurring to me that if we do get Leareth out alive, we can't really trust him. It'd simplify things if we could block all of his magic. I...can't imagine him being happy about that...but I also can't imagine that it's worse than - whatever's already happened to him in there: 

Oh good. I didn't know that was possible to do at all. 

I think...Leareth-the-person-we-knew would want us to handle a potentially dangerous prisoner that way, no matter what Leareth-now feels about it. 

Nod. 

"I should get some rest," Vanyel says out loud, starting to drag himself up. "And then I'll work on the notes and I'll check in with Velgarth tomorrow and we can ask that Maia you mentioned and..." He trails off. "Um, do you think you could do the singing thing to help me sleep again?" 

Vanyel has picked up one healing song well enough that it works at all. If it were at all justifiable he'd be spending a lot more time learning the Quendi music, it's beautiful, but he isn't exactly a bottleneck on singing to do magic and he is a bottleneck on a lot of other things. 

"Of course." 

And he sings.