Vanyel gets some sleep, and is reminded to eat when he wakes up, and then translates more of his notes into Quenya for Maitimo. (He can't write in Quenya yet but he's had six months to become pretty comfortable speaking it.)

"Urtho didn't think this was very, er, usable as a weapon," he says. "He was worried it would swallow all the energy in its vicinity, including the mage triggering it. And I'm not sure a Maia is immune to that either – the whole idea is we think it'll get Melkor, Maiar are more vulnerable than him – but, maybe we can figure out some sort of shielding that draws on the Silmarils?" Shrug. "It should be possible to activate it and shut it off in a controlled way, if the person in control is still alive." 

He closes his eyes. "...I guess in the worst case scenario, we can't shut it off. In which case it won't harm the Quendi but it might get all the other Maiar and Valar, if the shielding around Valinor isn't enough. I don't think that's likely – at the very least I can Final Strike at short range if it's going out of control and that should destroy it, but is that...worth risking?" 

" - there are a lot of Maiar.

The Valar could if warned probably make sure that wouldn't happen but I am worried they'll just refuse us permission to do it. I don't think I want to ask them. Let's - get ready to deploy, and then delay to try some kind of shielding with the Silmarils. But if anything happens to make us conclude we don't have enough time to do the shielding - I think we risk it. And if it's spreading out of control you can try to Gate it off this world."

"You know, that's a much better idea than my first one," Vanyel admits. "I think it wouldn't harm Velgarth the same way - I mean, it'd be bad, but it wouldn't kill our gods, they're not just magic, and it wouldn't kill mages who weren't right next to it although I bet it would be the worst backlash ever– oh. You know, I just realized that if it's reliant on your Maia friend, if he stops cooperating," or gets eaten, "then I'm pretty sure it just shuts off anyway, it'd be missing a key component. Maybe. I'm not sure. I need to think about this more carefully." 

He rubs his eyes. "After I get in touch with Leareth's people. Need the Silmarils in the Work Room again but hopefully this time will be quicker." 

"I'll tell my father."

Vanyel casts the spell. 

He reaches Savil, who transfers him to someone else.

He explains the situation, quickly, but without sugarcoating any of it. They need to know how bad things are. 

...It seems like they believe him. It seems as though Leareth, in whatever communications he managed before the capture, instructed his people that Vanyel was an ally.

They confirm that they haven't heard anything from Leareth in six months. That they were worried but not panicked over this. The truth is worse than they'd imagined, but - not unrecoverable from, maybe, if Vanyel is there. They promise that if Leareth does contact them, they will absolutely not listen unless Vanyel has contacted them first to say that Leareth is out and okay. 

(Vanyel, in a moment of paranoia, switches back to Savil and asks her to get Leareth's representative to say all of that under Truth Spell. They do. They're not lying.)

(Leareth is not going to be okay. Vanyel doesn't say that, maybe he should but he can't bring himself to.) 

"My friend is interested. His name is Olórin. Can you explain to him what you need him to do -"

"I'm not going to know exactly what he needs to do until we actually have the weapon," which might be five minutes before they deploy it, "but I can walk him through what a mage-channel normally does, and test it with the Silmarils – him channeling their power through to me ought to be similar enough to be a practice case." 

"Sounds good."

Maitimo's Maia friend is so excited about this plan and so pleased to meet Vanyel.

Vanyel does his best to be pleased to meet him in return. It's hard to be pleased about that kind of thing nowadays.

"Can you sense me doing magic?" he asks. "I can show you how I would act as a mage-channel. The idea is that you can do the same thing, but with a lot more power." And without dying because Olórin is the kind of being that can't die. Hopefully. Maybe. 

"All right, I'm watching."

Vanyel demonstrates moving magic through himself. He can also share his own sense-impressions of what it feels like, if that helps. 

" - I think I should be able to do that!" He sounds very pleased about it.

"Good!" Vanyel is pleased as well. "Let's go find Fëanáro and ask to test it with the Silmarils – you try being in contact with them and drawing the power out to 'hand' it to me?" 

:Maitimo, can you ask your father about the Silmarils?: He still generally chickens out of asking himself, even though he's needing them quite often now for his research. 

Shocking everyone, he has gotten so sick of having his research interrupted for this reason that he gave me permission to ferry them.

:Wow. I did not think that would literally ever happen. He must be really tired of my face: 

Vanyel leads Olórin to his shielded Work Room to test their idea. 

He's trying to figure out the shielding side of this. And maybe yet another update to the headband.

:That's really good. I can go over and talk to him at some point about what kind of shielding I think it'll need, if that helps: 

I think that's a good idea. The shielding won't be ready as fast as the weapon, so we should be prepared to go ahead without it, but - if we have time, it seems much safer.

Nod. :...What's our trigger to go ahead anyway? Just Melkor escalating, or...?: 

Melkor escalating. The Valar deciding to intervene, though first I'd just try to make them hold some hearings about it. 

Any action on Melkor's part that ...looks like Leareth shaped it. 

Nod. 

Vanyel tests whether Olórin can successfully channel power to him. He'll warn the Maia if it's more than he can handle, he's pretty sure even he can't take the maximum energy output from the Silmarils, but he'll also want to check if Olórin thinks he could handle more. He's not sure of the weapon's exact specs and there may not be time to find out but he's pretty sure it'll be more. 

Olórin would be delighted to channel power at Vanyel! He needs a bit of practice at it but he thinks he could do a lot of it, more than that, more than that...

–Nope that is enough, Vanyel cannot deal with more power than that. But they can dial it back down to something comfortable and then practice a lot, get the technique as solid as possible, in hopes that it'll transfer for the real thing. 

Cool!!