He knows the voice. He doesn't bother to open his eyes. It's - maybe real, maybe not, and it doesn't matter, it was too late a long time ago. And apologies aren't worth much at this point. 

"We don't need ten people in here."

      "Your grace."

"Working from the assumption he will kill me or worse if he gets half a chance we don't need ten people in here. The necklace worked on Vanyel. We can do...four people. And three of them can shut up - out of Utumno they hate noise, they hate crowds - are you injured, Leareth -"

He shakes his head without speaking. 

"Okay. Do you need anything right now."

Headshake. He...wants to be curious, in some distant part of him, but at the same time he doesn't care, and if they leave him alone for thirty seconds he's going to go back to drifting. It's a fine moment. He is not, literally this second, being tortured. Maybe it's even real. 

"...with your consent, we'd like to take you to Lórien. He can put memories back, smooth over - trauma stuff - he helped Vanyel with a thing -"

"Do whatever you want," Leareth says tonelessly. 

"I'm not sure that really counts." Familiar voice. 

"Fine. You have my consent." Leareth closes his eyes and turns his head away. 

Sigh. "I think this is about as much as you get out of most rescued or escaped prisoners, before they've had some time. - arguably significantly more than you get out of most of them, really, he is speaking in complete sentences and following our conversation. I think Rúmil told me that took him...a Year, give or take."

"I should have figured it out faster," Vanyel says. 

"I don't think I missed a month you spent taking dance lessons. Or an hour, for that matter. I - I hate to even speculate, right, feels like tempting fate, but I think he'll be okay in time. We have lots of time."

"Same destination as the last time we went to Lorien?"
 

"Yeah."

Leareth lets it happen to him. He lets everything happen to him, nowadays, whether it's awful or neutral or somewhere in between (there is, generally speaking, not any 'good'.) This might count as good if it were real. He's unconvinced, but thinking about it would take effort and he doesn't try anymore. That isn't a thing that's safe to do and it doesn't help anyway. 

Lórien can put his memories back. A big dump of them, all at once, twenty-seven practice conversations before he first made Melkor some Gates. Eight times he was persuaded to do that. A few weeks spent working on artifacts for the Noldor, after he'd been captured. And then a yearlong haze of torture.  

OFTEN THE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAKES THINGS WORSE IN THE SHORT TERM, he says over Leareth's head to the familiar voices. 

"We understand. Thank you."

It certainly doesn't make him feel any more inclined to do anything. Leareth follows a halfhearted two or three steps of a train of thought about whether twenty-seven is a plausible number of times and then gives up. Trying to have true beliefs about the world via his own efforts is a lost cause. 

There continue to be moments which are fine, where he isn't particularly suffering, he'll take that. He wonders if they'll keep trying to talk to him. It might be informative, but then again, that would require caring about that. 

(Caring about whether or not this is real feels pretty dangerous, actually. It's on the path to caring about things at all, which is Proven Unsafe, and also if he's wrong then it'll hurt.) 

"You can have as long as you need to think about things," he says. "I think it gets easier with time, and we have time, and - probably there're other things we'll think of, too, now that we're thinking about this. 

Do you - want to be alive? I - I'm not actually promising anything, if you don't, you're not - not exactly the person I consider myself to have promised things to. But - do you?"

He - doesn't want things. Anymore. Also something in the phrasing of that is off, it doesn't feel like how Maitimo would speak of it, but why try to figure out what's real and what isn't, anymore. 

"I do not wish to be dead," he says dully. 

"All right." He squeezes his hand, too hard, and then harder than that, until both of them can hear the bones break. "We have time. I'm sure we can get there eventually."

Leareth is not working against them. In the first months, in Tirion, communications with the Outer Lands also frustratingly cut off, all they could do was play it out in conversation at the dinner table. If Leareth was working against them, he'd probably arrange compulsions on their commanders and disintegrate the host from there. He'd probably take down Doriath, Tumunzahar, the growing little cities south of there. They wouldn't hear about it, not directly, but there'd be a flood of souls for Mandos, sooner or later. 

He might or might not return to Velgarth.

Everything is recoverable as long as he does not return to Velgarth and figure out what Vanyel found there. 

There is no flood of souls for Mandos. Once they get out to Tol Eressea and can use magic to spy on the continent, it looks quiet. So Leareth is not working against them, not fully, not yet. 

His father makes Vanyel improved versions of that headband, even though Vanyel needs it less.

Vanyel is grateful for the headband anyway, because there are a lot of things he needs to rediscover from scratch. 

He can put together from Maitimo's recollection of Leareth's updates on his work that the inter-world Gate involved a complicated route through the planes of Velgarth, not the one he's used to. Vanyel does not know how to project his mind there. Fortunately, in his recent journey, at least he has experience of being brought into the spirit plane by a shaman (it's a long story).

It takes a month and some rather-too-risky experiments for him to figure out even that first step, and then once he's able to explore from the vantage point of the Void, he knows what order he should expect to find things in.

Out at Tol Eressea he makes himself a Work Room with magical shielding. Still manages to set the wall of it on fire, once. He tells Maitimo, ruefully, that it's an unfortunate talent of his. 

Leareth knew or had invented several dozen communications-spells. Vanyel knows - two. Neither is sophisticated enough to reach Velgarth even once he knows the way. He studies that as well. 

It takes six months, in total, before he does his first tentative, experimental tiny Gate to Velgarth, and then attempts to open communications with Valdemar, his home kingdom. He isn't sure whether they can help or whether it's even a good idea to tell them what he has planned, but they must be panicking over his disappearance. 

"Leareth said you were an advisor to a king, there?"

"Yes." And his best friend. And the biological father of his (officially illegitimate) daughter. It's...a complicated situation, what Vanyel's relationship is with Randi, and it's not going to be any less complicated now. "I'm," he blushes despite himself, "kind of a war hero, back home. I can't take that much credit for it, I wasn't braver than the others, I'm just stupidly powerful."

(Oh gods if he gets contact with Velgarth and brings anyone in then Maitimo is going to hear the songs about him and Vanyel might actually die of embarrassment over it...)

"Have we left Valdemar in a terrible place, taking you away for this long -"

"Honestly? No. Maybe a better one. The main threat against us was Leareth. I'd...just told the King about it, everything, before I left." Not - entirely voluntarily. "Gods - did Leareth say anything about contacting Valdemar to warn them what he was planning? His agent did ask me but, er, I didn't exactly have time to get a message out." 

"Was yours the - kingdom he meant to destroy to build his god -"

Shrug. "At the start, yes. I...think he hoped it'd go differently from the first time we spoke." Vanyel rubs his eyes. "I still don't - understand why that happened. Foresight doesn't have to work that way, it's pretty obvious at least one god wanted me to murder him, I'm not sure how They got any benefit from my talking to him. He's very persuasive." 

"Yes. Do your gods usually all see eye to eye? Ours don't."

"My hypothesis here is that they don't. One of them's been - more friendly to me in our conversations," he remembers the Shadow-Lover's embrace and feels a very brief pang of longing for the place outside of time where nothing hurts and he isn't tired, and pushes it away. "So probably there's more than one involved, but, who knows. Our gods are more cryptic than yours. They don't generally talk to people. They've...made some exceptions for me." 

"Do you expect them to object if we import a bunch of people and stuff from other dimensions to try to help Velgarth?"

"Probably. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. I think if we're fast, probably the Star-Eyed Goddess won't have time to object to, er, my stealing some buried weapons that her people have been guarding for thousands of years. The one nice thing about our the gods is that I don't think they react fast and I'm pretty sure they don't have personal armies." 

"The Valar are pretty slow too. The Gates thing was the fastest they've done anything in my life. Do you know exactly what you're going for, how long do you think you'll have to be in there -"

"...We should decide exactly what I'm going in there for first. I have translations of Urtho's notes, thankfully, they were in Yfandes' saddlebags. There are fifteen weapons left - that doesn't count the one Urtho set off during the Mage Wars. We know what some of them do. We can go through, see if any seem like they'll both work against Melkor and won't cause an unacceptable amount of collateral damage." He makes a face. "Though, I mean, even if they do kill everyone else on the continent, I'm...not sure how much of a choice we have. And we can fix it, afterward." 

"Not the Dwarves. It might be worth warning them. I'd have to think about it. Wasn't Urtho wrong about the collateral damage of the one that was deployed -"

"...Yes. He was." 

"Do you have the notes here with you -"

Vanyel does. He gets them out. They're not in a language Maitimo can read, but he can translate.

Fifteen weapons. They have varying amounts of information on what they can do. Vanyel is only confident enough in five of them to even guess at how they'd interact with Arda and its magic.

Weird cow skull and jewelry weapon. Unsure what it does. Nope. 

One summons a vast number of Abyssal demons (mindlessly hungry, incredibly dangerous beings). Probably not worth trying. Vanyel isn't sure that even an infinite number of demons can take out Melkor, and the collateral damage would be...high. 

This one sets off a mundane fireball. Not really any better than a Final Strike, especially since it needs someone to trigger it and that person is inevitably going to die. If they thought a big enough explosion would take Melkor down, Vanyel could try triggering it and calling a Final Strike at the same time, in hopes that it would stack. But...not a first choice. 

This one releases purely magical energy. That - might hurt Melkor a lot. Buy them time at least. It also leaks enough at the material plane, in the form of white-hot fire, that the caster is inevitably dead.

...Oh. And this one, Vanyel isn't sure he understands the notes fully, but it looks like the opposite of an explosion. Sucking in all magic in its surroundings. Probably via something akin to a temporary one-sided Gate opened directly to the Void, scaffolded on the weapon's design so it can remain stable long enough to do some serious damage. Possibility? 

"I like that one. - is it safe to trigger?"

"...I'm not sure." Vanyel pores over the notes some more. 

"All right," he says finally, "this...could be an issue. I'm not sure, Urtho didn't exactly document this clearly, but it's possible it was incomplete? It says the weapon calls for a non-living core acting as a channel of mage-energies, but that doesn't exist. If Urtho couldn't invent one then certainly I can't." Maybe Leareth could but that is not an option, Vanyel pushes back the ache, dwelling on that particular abyss of horror is not actually helping. 

"Maybe I could do it? Urtho didn't think a single mage could manage - and it would probably kill me, honestly - but I'm not a normal mage. Or, maybe there's some kind of magic you have here that could help?" 

"No plans that kill you," he says in the same manner he reminds his father to eat when absorbed with a project. "....could a Maia do it?"

"Huh! Maybe. My understanding is that they basically are just an - area of magical control? We'd want to run some tests to see how it interacts before actually setting off the weapon. But that's a really good idea, it's worth investigating." 

"I might know a guy."

Vanyel smiles despite himself. "Oh? Is there a Maia who would be particularly enthused by, er, acting as a necessary component of a god-destroying weapon?" 

"There is! That's the thing about the Maiar, there's so much psychological variety, you get ones who only care about whether heaps of pebbles have the right number of pebbles in them and then you get ones who are passionate about free people leading nice quiet lives, and also explosions."

Vanyel chuckles. "That's fortunate for us, then."

(Is it horrible to be enjoying himself at all given what's happening? Probably. But he needs to ever laugh or he's going to go insane before they get as far as Urtho's Tower at all.) 

"Anyway. Why don't you talk to him, and I'll get everything I can from the notes, and - I don't know if it'll be feasible to Gate in twice, we should probably do the first Gate really fast and then go for it on the assumption Melkor can tract inter-world Gates, but maybe Valdemar can send help." He looks down. "And... Leareth's people deserve to know what happened." 

"Yes. - aaaaaand should really know to ignore anything they hear from Leareth at this point."

"That is an extremely good point – gods I hope it's not too late for it." Vanyel is realizing that it's been six months and Valdemar has had no way of contacting him and if Leareth had ordered his army after them then they would have been defenceless. "I'd better go do that right now. Er, can you politely ask your father if he can come to my Work Room with the Silmarils so I can draw on them?"

Vanyel likes Fëanáro and finds conversation with him fascinating and is also kind of scared to ask him for anything, particularly if it involves his Silmarils. 

"On his way." It doesn't seem likely, that the reason they've had peace here is because Leareth and Melkor are solidifying control of another world instead. But why not? Is it just because he doesn't want to believe it? Leareth abandoned his plan to kill ten million of his people, when he saw even distant prospects of a better one. But - maybe he doesn't see those distant prospects of a better one now. 

No. Velgarth will be as defenseless in a year, if Vanyel gets himself killed, and it wouldn't be hard for Leareth and Melkor working together to get Vanyel killed, even from across the sea. Even if Maitimo can't think how it'd happen he can be pretty sure it would. 

On the other hand he's successfully predicted exactly none of Melkor's moves so far and all of them have been successes, so -

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. 

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!!

- he's aware it's dangerous, Maitimo assures Vanyel after some practice. He's just - not inclined to make himself enjoy it less on that account.

That is a very mysterious way to feel but he'll take it.

Vanyel reads the notes some more. He remembers which room the weapon was in; he can Gate directly there, grab it, Gate directly out, it shouldn't take more than thirty seconds. Bringing a live world-destroying weapon through a Gate is not the smartest idea he's ever had but there's no indication Urtho thought this one was unstable, it shouldn't work at all without something to put in to replace the missing core.

At some point it's time to admit that there isn't any more useful preparation he can do on this end. Where's Fëanáro at on shielding? 

He has a very sketchy prototype that might help, but I don't really care to bet anyone's life on it. Three more months and I'll have something I'm happy with.

...Three months is a pretty long time. 

Gating to Velgarth is almost certainly going to get Melkor's attention. Increase the probability that he escalates and they have to set the plan off ahead of schedule. But Melkor might do that anyway and - if he does it'll be better if they've chosen the timing themselves, and already have the weapon. Getting it might take under a minute, but Melkor was able to pin down and trap Leareth in the mountain in seconds. 

(And three months out here might be three years in Angband, but the fact that Vanyel can barely think about subjecting Leareth to that, is not by itself a strategic consideration to move before they're ready.) 

Vanyel asks Maitimo what he thinks. 

If the shielding doesn't work, and Olórin can't make it stop, then you Gate it out. And maybe that gets him too, but he wouldn't be dead, just - hard for us to retrieve with our current resources. And if the shielding fails., and Olórin can't make it stop, and somehow you can't Gate it either - maybe if it fails much faster than expected, such that it gets your magic too? - then we have a couple of nonmages here and if the Valar can't fix it or are themselves dead there's no way to reach Velgarth. ....maybe leave Velgarth instructions on how to reach us, to mitigate that worst case scenario? But I don't think it's worth three months of waiting.

Vanyel doesn't like it but it makes sense. 

He'll take a couple of days to prepare – talk to Leareth's commander over in Velgarth again, get details on the artifact prototype they have for between-world communication, make his own over here. Since it can be paired with a Quendi-style artifact and thus powered indefinitely, theoretically it should be able to receive messages even if there are no Velgarth mages left alive in Arda. Probably they should leave it with someone Maitimo trusts, in Valinor, with the maximum level of protection between it and where the attack would happen. 

When that's done, and Vanyel has gotten a good solid night's sleep, he's ready. 

He leaves it with his mother. He has not had any spare energy to throw at his parents' relationship, lately, and Fëanáro's been working every waking moment on the use of the Silmarils for the war, but she's started going up to the city, guessing somehow the right moment to slip in and talk him through a problem. it's the first time they've talked in years without yelling at each other. 

Maitimo mostly thinks that wasn't Melkor but he's not going to say so. 

Now?

Now.

Drawing on the Silmarils to fuel it – Vanyel's practiced enough Gates now that he can do it simultaneously and exhaust himself less – Vanyel raises a Gate to Urtho's Tower, to the exact room where the weapon he needs is, and dives through. 

And something - slithers along the Gate, maybe, not destructively, not interacting with it, just there -

Vanyel snatches up the weapon, using a touch of Fetching to help – it doesn't look much like a weapon at all, more like an abstract sculpture of some kind, a pillow of hollow-cast bluish metal cubes stacked in a sort of random arrangement. The metal bears an odd sheen or patina, like rainbows in oil. 

He throws a hasty shield over it, just in case that does any good, and sprints back through the Gate and slams the Gate down. :Maitimo we have a problem: 

What

:Felt something - interfere with my Gate - magic, not Velgarth magic, it didn't damage anything but it was there. Has to have been from this end: He grits his teeth. :Do you think this means we need to kick things off now: 

Yes. - in some fashion that definitely definitely does not explode you because what if something got out -

:Oh NO: and he doesn't even have time to get out a warning back home, or, no, it's less that he lacks time and more that the spell is tiring, even with the headband from Fëanáro that increases his endurance, and he's going to need every scrap of his strength for what's ahead.

But he takes a deep breath, and feels - not calm, but clear, crystalline and transparent and perfectly focused, like a honed glass blade. Vanyel has always been better at pulling himself together when something is trying to kill him. 

:Get Olórin and your father: he snaps out. :I'm Gating to the place we decided: shortly outside Angband, far enough to be sure Melkor won't be able to counteract his magic, hopefully close enough that they won't need to have the weapon active for long. 

:–Oh, gods: he remembers it now, like an idiot, :I do not have time to get us a Mindhealer so that'll need to be after. I can put a lot of compulsions on Leareth in the interim: If they find him alive. :If I'm too tired or unconscious, drug him or hit him on the head or something, he can't do magic if he's not conscious. Reckon the attack itself should buy us time, he's going to have some unbelievable backlash from it: 

Understood. 

Angband is big; they can have an army help them search it but the army's not that close - they can be ordered to get there, right away, as fast as possible - that makes this rather all-or-nothing but there was never any hope of winning this without Vanyel -

Then Vanyel will have whatever time interval elapses until the others are there and ready, and then, Gate goes up. Moment of no return. He hesitates, but only for a fraction of a second, before stepping through. 

Angband is tall and black and imposing and looks like it was designed by an evil god who does not particularly go for creativity or subtlety. 

Fëanáro sets the Silmarils up to shield them.

Vanyel puts the weapon down on the ground. 

:Like this: he sends to Olórin, directly sharing his own mage-sight, gesturing at the motion needed to set it off. :Wait for our word. Then - it's going to basically suck all the magic in there through you and you need to keep it all controlled:

He throws his own shields over the Maia as well, for all the good that's likely to do. 

The ground shakes. A blizzard of black smoke and ash erupts from the nearby mountains; something seeps out of the ground with a hiss.

Vanyel clenches his teeth, waits until absolutely the last second he can justify. :Go: he barks to Olórin. 

SUPERWEAPON!!!

The first thing to happen is that a dozen motes of light dance along the cubes, toward the topmost one – and then spread in a ring, matching the full width of the device's base – and then, in an instant, everything inside the ring vanishes. There's nothing but a darkness deeper than darkness, it absorbs and swallows light. The Void. 

And the magic of Angband is sucked inexorably toward it. 

Their surroundings shrink to nothing but light against the darkness, rainbows swirling into the mouth now open in the fabric of reality itself, everything around them drawn through Olórin himself and then out of the world entirely. 

The fortress starts to crumble, without magic supporting it, crashing down on itself. 

- if that kills him - no, that doesn't matter, not right now. 

The doors of the fortress of Angband swing outwards, and then crumble to dust in the process of swinging outwards. Melkor is there. He's holding an enormous quantity of stone suspended in front of him. His face is unreadable. The ground shakes more violently, more violently - 

- then the ground shaking stops. Melkor is still standing there. To a Quendi eye he looks just the same, perhaps staggered somehow. 

The weapon is still functioning.

The Silmaril-shield snaps.

No - not yet - they need just a few seconds more, and Vanyel flings everything that he is into his shield - he blinks, trying to make his mage-sight line up, how much of Melkor can possibly be left–

By mage-sight it doesn't look like a Vala, nothing like Lórien. It looks like a - stone statue, actually.

Oh. 

That is when his shields give way, and he shouts :SHUT IT DOWN NOW: at Olórin. 

- I don't quite see how, he says calmly. Oh, hmmm.

And he relaxes, suddenly. The spell swallows him. 

The artifact drops to the ground.

Vanyel sags to his knees, then forward and half-catches himself on his hands. He's empty, in a way he can't ever remember feeling before. 

:S'over, Melkor, s'gone...: he manages, to Maitimo, and then collapses fully onto the ground, not quite losing consciousness but certainly not able to move. 

He wants to pick him up but - 

One more thing to do. 

The orcs are confused. The orcs are - oh, of course, the oaths are gone, they felt it -

We are going to search Angband for prisoners, he tells every Noldo in range. That's about ten thousand, now, but it'll be more shortly, they're hurrying towards here. We need to find Leareth in the next hour, we can't be sure he'll be stunned from the backlash longer than that. Get him - Vanyel looks in no state to either Gate or install a lot of compulsions. If it's been an hour or longer, hit him over the head until he's not conscious. Try not to kill him. 

It is not the worst kind of moment but it's a very confusing one. 

Leareth seems to be lying sprawled on something hard and cold, there's a weight on his chest, a sharp pain he can't quite locate every time he breathes. His head is throbbing. He's not currently being tortured, though. That makes it better than a lot of the other moments. 

–He can feel his mage-gift again. It's not working, but it's not-working in a backlash sort of way, not as though it's blocked. 

It's very confusing and Leareth isn't trying to do anything about that, trying isn't safe, reasoning from the evidence of his senses is ruled out as an option – but it's distantly occurring to him that this is different, doesn't match anything else in his jumbled memories, and maybe that means something, if 'meaning' is something the world still has. 

Some people burst into the room. They confer among themselves at the door. Someone steps warily forward to look at him. 

A few minutes pass.

Also weird. Leareth tries to lift his head to get a better look and then gives up, it's not as though what he's seeing now is likely to have any particular correlation to what ends up happening.

It's cold. He's starting to shiver. 

Vanyel are you in shape to do the compulsions on Leareth in the next five minutes or should we knock him out.

:–Gods. Um, no, sorry, I - don't think I can: Using Mindspeech is still pretty much the limit of his abilities. 

It's fine. He's alive, we can fix everything later. You did great. 

He walks into the room Leareth is in. Meets his eyes, for half a second. 

Gestures for someone to club him in the head.

With the help of Quendi healing songs, and sleep, and something to eat, Vanyel feels up for doing the compulsions twelve hours later. He's going to be extremely thorough, he tells Maitimo – it seems kind of excessive and he doesn't feel very good about it but overkill is better than underkill, here, and...it's true, that the Leareth he used to know would completely understand this as a path of action. 

"I don't know very much about how the compulsions work but - yes, please do absolutely everything you can think of and then some."

The first thing Leareth notices when he wakes up is that he isn’t allowed to move. Not ‘can’t’. He’s comfortable enough and doesn’t seem to be restrained, but he can feel the weight of the rather clumsily done compulsion on his mind.

Melkor hasn’t tried that one before. He can’t do a real one unless he has Vanyel now no, it’s unimaginable that Vanyel could be tricked the way Leareth was, and he wouldn’t hesitate to Final Strike before he could be captured. It’d be hard to fake just the sensory experience of it, Leareth thinks.

Evidence of something, if reasoning from evidence were safe, which it isn’t.

I think he's awake, can you check?

Vanyel nods, unshields and opens his Thoughtsensing. :Think so, yes:

He should've thought about what to say. No, he shouldn't have, that would have been a stupid thing to think about. 

You should be able to communicate with us by leaving thoughts public, he says. If you use that to inform us that you want food or water or a blanket or to walk around we'll arrange that. If you don't do anything we are going to make you eat and walk around at intervals that are vaguely healthy for humans anyway. 

Wanting anything isn't safe. And it's generally been better not to interact, in the hallucinations, it only gives Melkor more opportunities to twist it into something wrong and awful. 

Leareth is thirsty, though, he - can feel that his Mindspeech is there but he isn't allowed, but he is allowed to sort of let that thought drift in a way where he expects Maitimo to hear it. 

The compulsion will let him follow simple verbal orders. "Get some water."

Sigh. 

We did something we hoped and expected would kill Melkor and we have reason to think it worked. The oaths that Melkor had all the orcs swear are broken. I do not know of a way that could have happened other than him being dead. Vanyel and Yfandes are fine. No one in Velgarth is having a war, at least not on your account. Vanyel told your people not to listen to you if you contacted them and they seem to have believed him. 

Leareth finds himself sitting up – his ribs twinge and he flinches a little – there's water beside him on a sort of folding table and he takes it and drinks.

...This is by far the most realistic-sounding Maitimo Melkor has done that he's been allowed to remember, which is maybe evidence of something but Leareth is not especially interested in taking the next step with it. 

I consulted some people about what to expect. They said you probably wouldn't want to talk. - actually they were more confident than that but you are enough of a psychological outlier that I downgraded it to 'probably'. If you do want to talk I'm not busy. If you don't want to talk I will wait several years before I start trying to get you to come around on that, Vanyel thinks Quendi are more patient than humans and we do not need anything from you and there's a strategic argument that being irretrievably extremely boring for the first several years after rescue is correct, right, it means he has to invest several subjective years into every pretend rescue and that's a lot of time not torturing people. 

Leareth stares blankly at him – following what he's saying requires a few steps of inference and Leareth is not inclined to put effort toward that, but he is fairly sure that none of his confusing and contradictory false-rescue memories involved multiple boring years, and maybe that means something. He isn't sure what. Figuring out what it means requires reasoning about it and reasoning isn't safe. 

...This is a tolerable moment. He's not currently being tortured.

Sitting up is tiring, and he would lie down and turn to face the other way but the compulsion won't let him decide to do that, and decisions aren't safe anyway. 

That's fine. That's expected and doesn't mean he messed up horribly.  

"Lie down."

He goes to check on Vanyel.

Vanyel is sitting on the ground with his arms draped around his knees, staring vaguely out at the sea of tents in front of what used to be Angband. 

:...I feel like I ought to talk to him: he sends, wearily. :But - I'm just going to get upset about it. Won't I?: 

He sits down next to him, puts a hand on his shoulder. 

You will probably get upset about it. But - I don't know. I think if it were me I'd want people to talk to me.

I talked to - a friend of my grandfather who went through Utumno. He said -

- don't ask what he wants, it's hostile, right, if you know what someone wants you know what they don't want. do try to pay a lot of attention to what he wants, since otherwise probably very important things that he wants won't happen as he won't think of asking for them. 

- don't touch him.

- don't - don't drop cues that there are bad things in the future, or him-requiring things in the future - we shouldn't tell him about whatever it was that happened with your final gate to Velgarth - or that we could use his help figuring out whether it's possible to fish a Maia out of the Void.

Vanyel nods. Leans against Maitimo’s shoulder.

:I’ll talk to him. Just - need to get my head around it, you know? I knew him for fifteen years, I’ve - probably learned more because of him, changed more, than with anyone else. And - it’s really hard to convince my mind that I can’t just talk to him exactly the way I used to. And - also still try to remember that it is him, there’s got to be - something left...:

Yeah. I'm so sorry.

Vanyel sits there for another minute. :Thank you: he says finally. He gets up. Walks back to the tent where Leareth is lying. Sits next to him. 

:I have absolutely no expectation that you believe anything I'm saying, right now: he sends. Leareth is compulsion-prevented from Mindspeaking, which is probably excessive but it can be used offensively; his Gifts aren't blocked though, he can hear it.

:You were right that I would want to know about what was happening here, and to help. You were right to bring me here, even if there wasn't a lot of opportunity to coordinate on it beforehand, and you - did a lot right, in those first few months, so that I could start out in the position I did. It was still really hard and I'm sorry it took so long, but - the fact that we still had a path to victory is thanks to what you did before me: 

He closes his eyes. :I'm not going to ask you for anything more than what you already did. And I'm not going to make promises, because I figure that won't be very reassuring. But I'm here and I don't currently have any intentions of leaving: 

Leareth doesn't move. Mostly it's because of the compulsions, this time; if he could move normally he might summon enough curiosity to turn and look at Vanyel's face.

Melkor...hasn't been this good at Vanyel, in the past. Though it's not like he can trust anything he remembers, anymore, any reasoning about it is built on quicksand. Melkor eventually figured out something convincing enough that Leareth fell for it; if he can do that in one area, he can do it anywhere. 

Vanyel sits there for a while. Tries not to cry. He can go do that later, somewhere else, it feels disrespectful to do it in front of Leareth. 

Eventually he gets up and heads to see if he's needed for anything. 

I think mostly the next priority is getting to your world. To warn them about whatever that was and to get a Mindhealer who can do something less restrictive than this.

Vanyel nods. :I'm going to need...at least a day, I think two would be better if we're not in a huge rush. The fight: if that's even the right word for it :took a lot out of me. But I agree that's really important. It's possible the healing songs would help me get back faster: 

I don't think it's worth exhausting yourself to do. Two days sounds good. 

And he leans his head back and sings. 

If Leareth doesn't let any of his thoughts drift where Maitimo can see them he'll make him get up and walk around and eat in two hours.

Leareth does not float out any public thoughts in the next two hours, or for the rest of that day, except very occasionally in response to one of them talking to him directly. 

Then he will walk around and eat every four hours while he's awake and drink water and roll over every hour and - do we need to tell him to sleep?

:The compulsions shouldn't stop him from falling asleep if he's tired, but it's not like there's regular day and night here - my sleep was all messed up at the start because of that - it might be helpful if we pick a schedule: 

Sure. We can match him to you, I think Quendi sleep less.

:Sounds good - and yes, I'd noticed that. Especially your father: Vanyel frowns. :How is Fëanáro? I haven't spoken to him since...: 

All right, I think. He's making plans to build the Quendi city we originally came out here to build. And making plans for diplomatic contact with the peoples of your world. 

:...Should I loop him in on the Gate I'm doing to Haven? I'm going to have to do it to the main part of the Palace and hold it for a bit, I don't know where Melody will be and I haven't coordinated with her or anything. Was thinking I'd use the time to update Savil a bit. She's probably worried sick about me. Anyway, your father could send through a party at the same time if he wanted: 

He probably would, but I don't know how many people we have who speak your language yet. I guess we have two days.

:Mindspeech and osanwë seem to interface fine? I could communicate right away even before I learned Quenya: 

Yes but it'd be like - showing up in rags, or covered in blood, or something, showing up not speaking your language. 

:I really don't see our King taking that much offence from it. He knows you've had more urgent priorities than learning a language: Vanyel shakes his head. :It takes humans months or years to become fluent, usually. I gather most Quendi are faster than that: 

Yes. A couple weeks, for most people - and words are very important, you're closing off so much if you aren't competent to use them -

:I suppose you do have a good point, there. Anyway, talking to people in my native language isn't tiring, and I'm not sure I'm needed for much else, so I'd be happy to give some lessons: 

All right. I'll put a diplomatic party together. Is it going to cause problems anywhere else that we went to Valdemar first?

:I can't see why it would? Leareth's side has a diplomatic contingent in Haven too, you could talk to them, and - I mean, your contacts in Velgarth are Leareth and me, of course you'd want to talk to our respective homelands first. Randi will figure out the political ramifications, he can help coordinate who else you should maybe talk to: 

All right. Thank you. 

He will set up language courses. While they're learning the language they can maybe pick up some cultural things as well? How is the King addressed? How is the King selected? What are Valdemar's biggest problems? Which of the Quendi fields of study and inventions are familiar?

Does Leareth have any thoughts in public before they Gate.

Leareth does at one point publicly think that he's cold, and on a second occasion wonders where he is. 

Cold Leareth gets a blanket. Curious Leareth gets a rush of relief and affection which he is careful to allow to leak into his osanwë only a little bit. 

We're camped out just outside Angband. In a few days Vanyel is going to Gate us back to Tol Eressëa, outside Valinor. We have an operations base there.

First he is going to Gate back to Velgarth, though, to get a friend of his who can block your Gifts and to formally open interworld diplomacy. 

...Huh, that's a surprising amount of detail. And the combination of friendliness and (frankly sensible) caution is very Maitimo. 

Leareth tries not to have any feelings one way or the other about having his Gifts blocked, though he can't quite suppress the flicker of curiosity at when and how Valdemar acquired this capacity and whether it's done by mage-craft, Mindhealing, or something else. He knew about it before, from Vanyel's declaration about blocking the dreams - he trusts his memories of the past before arriving in Arda a little more, though not entirely.

Leareth does not respond to the explanation in any way. 

He occupies himself organizing a diplomatic party! Anyone whose Valdemaran is accented still will have to stay home.

Randi isn't going to know what hit him, Vanyel thinks. The Quendi are lovely people and also terrifyingly smart and charismatic. 

After two days of solid sleep (with Leareth matched to his bedtime, though he can wake up whenever he does on his own, it turns out that if left alone he'll sleep several more hours per night than Vanyel), he feels ready for the Gate. They don't have a shielded Work Room, which he would really prefer given the minimal but not zero risk of accidentally letting in something from one of the non-material planes he has to get through. He'll make due with temporary shields flung up on a tent, draw on the Silmarils while Fëanáro holds them, and wait for the diplomatic party to line up. 

Which they do! Fëanáro is coming personally. If Maitimo is stressed about this he's not showing it.

Vanyel is going to get a quick private-Mindspeech word out to Savil warning her about Fëanáro's, well, entire personality, but with that he doesn't foresee any huge problems. Valdemar is pretty accepting. He's very curious what people are going to think. 

He raises the Gate to the small indoor chapel in the central meeting-rooms wing. It's exhausting from the get-go, but he sticks his head out and finds Savil with Mindspeech. :It's me. War's over, we won. Gate up from Arda, can't hold it forever. Need Melody urgently. Diplomatic party from the Noldor coming through, just so you know...: Context on Fëanáro. 

:I'm headed over, ke'chara. Need to see your face: Pause. :Melody's coming. Says she could've used literally any warning. What do you need her for?: 

:Blocking Leareth's Gifts. It's just a precaution. He's...not in good shape, we probably need her in her Mindhealer capacity too, but the Gifts part is more urgent: 

:You think he might–:

:I absolutely do not think he's going to betray us but we're going to be good and cautious: Vanyel nods to Maitimo. Diplomatic party can go through, someone's coming to meet them – oh, there's Dara already. 

The Quendi are so honored to meet the people of Valdemar which just saved all their lives by winning the war against their evil god. They're aware that Valdemar was largely unaware of doing this but they appreciate it so much anyway.  They have a lot of botanists who'd like to go catalogue all the plants in Valdemar and assume Valdemar has corresponding botanists who'd like to go catalogue all the plants in Arda and similar with every other field of study and they would like to enable this. Arda is reportedly getting a sun soon which should produce lots of interesting things for ecologists to study.  

Also, and they don't mean any disrespect but they heard that Velgarth has a huge problem with people ...dying? And not coming back? They would like to solve this, if they can, and in the meantime be directed to all the projects dedicating to mitigating it.

Dara takes all of this quite calmly. She introduces herself as the King's Own Herald to King Randale, who unfortunately is ill – maybe the Quendi can help with that? – and that's why he isn't here in person to greet them. She seems a bit bemused by the part about Arda getting a sun but takes it in stride. She suggests that they go sit down over supper and discuss what all the things are that both sides would like addressed in the next week. 

Melody arrives slightly out of breath, she jogged all the way over from her suite at Healers' in case Vanyel couldn't hold the Gate long enough and she's not in amazing shape. She is otherwise calm. Outwardly, anyway.

:Van, what are you dragging me into this time: Her mindvoice is also mostly calm, just kind of weary. :Also, can I just say that the last eighteen months have been the most surreal of my life and it keeps getting worse, and this is entirely your fault: 

Vanyel thinks it's mostly Leareth's fault, actually. He doesn't say so. :Need you to block Leareth's Gifts: He won't go into the rest right now. 

Melody sighs slightly and comes through the Gate. :I hope they'll be able to lend me a change of clothes. Didn't have any time to pack: 

The other side of the Gate is in a field of tents made of incredibly gorgeous silk sheets, at the base of an ancient crumbled fortress. 

Melody glances around briefly, then nods to Maitimo. :My name is Melody. I'm a Mindhealer - I assume Van explained to you what that means? Does your world have anything like it?: 

One of our gods does some of the same work but we have nothing like it among our people. Thank you for coming on what I cannot imagine could really have been any notice. Leareth's this way.

:When Vanyel says something is important, I usually trust him on it: Melody follows him. :...Do all the people in your world make your war camp tents so beautifully decorative? Our camps in the most recent war weren't like this at all: 

The war caught us a bit by surprise and we had to repurpose some things. Gods willing we won't have another one and so will have no chance to figure out what's more practical.

:Right. Hopefully: Melody falls silent, keeps walking. 

He shows her Leareth's tent. Leareth, this is Vanyel's friend Melody, a Mindhealer. She's going to block your Gifts. 

Right. Sure. That's the thing that's happening, then, if this is a hallucination then resisting it will just provide entertainment to a god he has no desire to entertain, and if it's not a hallucination then– Leareth doesn't finish that thought. He lies still, does not have any public thoughts on the matter. 

:Is this the sort of situation where you'd like me to do it regardless of whether he's consenting to it?: Melody asks Maitimo. Including Vanyel as well, who cringes slightly.  

- he'll send his answer to her and Vanyel and Leareth.

So we currently have him under a compulsion that doesn't permit voluntary movement. If he prefers that to the Mindhealing, then that's satisfactory to us, but it's a lot more restrictive. I expect him not to answer you because he was a prisoner of our evil god and our evil god is well known for not giving his prisoners much incentive to assent to anything that's happening. But if he says no, we'll leave him like this. 

Leareth does not think about what his preference is here. No response. 

Melody lets out her breath. She sits down beside his bed. :All right. This is a temporary block, it doesn't cause any kind of permanent damage. It shouldn't take longer than five, ten minutes; it might feel odd, but it won't hurt. Questions?: 

Presumably not, but she waits a few beats anyway. :All right, I'm going to start: 

–The Valdemaran style of Mindhealing is a very recognizable one, and not something Leareth would have thought could be faked from sensory impressions alone – he can feel it in parts of his mind that he has no memory of Melkor ever touching directly. 

Don't finish that thought. Lie still, reveal nothing, he can't trust any of his reasoning about whether or not this is real, and Leareth does not want to give Melkor any indication that he's still capable of experiencing fear. 

His breath still catches a little, even now he can't help it. 

He watches. Tries to entertain himself guessing what she must think of them, what Leareth must think - 

- Leareth's scared, he doesn't miss that -  

:I'm all done: Melody says after about ten minutes. :Leareth, please tell me if it's uncomfortable or bothering you at all, or if you need anything else right now?: 

(No answer.)

:Well: she sends to Maitimo and Vanyel. :Can we un-compulsion him now?: 

Vanyel glances at Maitimo, then back to Melody. :Sure. Leareth, I'm going to undo it, all right? Also, I really apologize for being terrible at compulsions, I know I did a messy job. I, um, haven't had much practice and I was really tired from, you know, killing Melkor and all: 

He is so clearly embarrassed about it and it's so very Vanyel and...evidence about something but that doesn't mean Leareth can trust himself to use it. 

The various levels of not-allowed melt away. Leareth doesn't do anything with it right away, but after maybe thirty seconds, he tries adjusting his position in the bed to something more comfortable. Nothing terrible happens. 

"Thank you," he says quietly in Valdemaren.

:Can we talk?: Melody sends to Maitimo and Vanyel, not including Leareth this time. 

Of course. My tent is the neighboring one. 

Melody nods, follows him. Folds her arms. :I don't know if you're able to tell me, if there's a part of it that's a state secret or something I'd understand, but – what in all hells happened to him? More specifically than 'prisoner of an evil god', I mean. I don't know said evil god - thankfully - and I cannot think of what he could've done to cause...that: 

He edits peoples' memories, inserts some, removes some, runs them through complicated scenarios to get them to give up information or do magic for him or become convinced that his old friends are enemies. Also he tortures them a lot. Most of the people we've rescued didn't want to be alive. I don't know what Leareth remembers about his lives or the war or any of us. I don't know who he thinks he works for or what context he has for what's going on. I know the Enemy got him to do some magic - not much, but some - for his side in the war. 

Some people get better eventually. Some decide to stay dead. I - I'd bet he'll be one of the ones that gets better. But I don't know. 

Melody sighs heavily. Looks around for a place to sit down.

:I don't make a habit of going around telling third parties about what I see in people's minds: she says. :It's been known to happen, but generally I wasn't given much of a choice. However, I also think we're unlikely to get Leareth's agreement for anything right now, and if we do it won't mean much. Given that – I know of him a little, through Vanyel, but you both know him much better. If he were - in his right mind - and knew that it might be useful context for the two of you, do you think he'd mind my sharing it?: 

Vanyel glances at Maitimo. :Probably?: 

I think he'd want us to figure out how to get him back.

:That would've been my impression. So - here, this is what I'm seeing: She shares her impression of it. 

Melody's Sight is complex and bewildering, but she can help them orient to it. There's...something like a tapestry or rug, woven in hundreds of colours. 

One side is a complete mess, all the way along. It's as though someone's gone through the entirety of it, snipping threads apart and stitching in new materials that don't belong to the original pattern at all, and then repeated that process several hundred times until it's more like a three-dimensional maze than a tapestry at all. 

There's a side that's mostly intact, but somehow dark, folded-up, not seeing the light at all. 

This appears to be because the middle, where the centre of the original tapestry's pattern must have been, has been thoroughly and messily unraveled, leaving a formless tangle of thread. That part...doesn't look like it was done from the outside. 

- oh. 

So even if we fix the stuff that Melkor did, there's - the stuff he did. In self-defense, probably. 

:That's what it looks like to me. I don't know what his mind looked like before, which makes it hard to interpret, but I think he kind of cut off his own ability to...take actions, or make choices, or have goals. I suspected before, didn't seem like the compulsions were doing much. I'd imagine he did some magic for Melkor and then stopped? And that this is why. He must've realized he was being used, and I guess not seen another way out: 

- nod. 

Is that the sort of thing your magic can fix.

:In theory, maybe? But I'd need his active cooperation. I don't know what's meant to go there: She lifts her hands palms-up, helplessly. :Maybe he doesn't either, anymore. If we can somehow get him to a point where he's willing to have a conversation with me at all, I can probably do something: 

That makes sense. Thank you.

:...How long has it been since you got him out?: 

Just a couple of days. The people who recover take Years.

:Right. In that case, I think he'll probably be a little better in a few weeks to months, even if I don't do anything. He's really exhausted. Which makes a lot of sense: Melody frowns. :What is your plan for the next while? Stay in tent city or go elsewhere?: 

Back to our operations base for this last year, on an island where he has never been. Quendi can't live in these conditions for very long - he gestures at the tent walls - and it's probably good for humans, too, having beautiful surroundings.

:Does seem better: Melody's hand darts up to her collarbone. :...You must've rescued other people from there, too, not just him. How many?: 

Uh, eighty-three, but twenty of them had standing orders to kill them if - this happened. Sixty-three here.

:Would you like me to see some of them as well? Honestly I have no idea if my Gift works on Quendi and I might want to test on someone who hasn't just been tortured for years first, but...I'm here anyway, not especially planning to leave: 

I can see if I can find anyone whose husband or wife thinks it's a good idea. Just a minute -

It is a minute exactly. 

- there are six people who are interested on their husband or wife's behalf. Would you want to see them now?

Melody nods. :I could use half an hour to get more situated – oh, and I missed lunch, if there's food around I'd appreciate that. Then I don't mind seeing them right away. I was in the middle of my workday back home anyway: 

I'll have someone bring us lunch. And I could give you a bit more background on the war, and on the differences between Quendi and your species that I've noticed? Though I've only met Leareth and Vanyel and I may be generalizing about humans poorly from them.

Melody makes a 'pfft' sound that isn't quite a laugh. :Gods, yes, if you start with Vanyel and Leareth and generalize to most humans from there, you're really not getting an unbiased picture of our species overall. Sounds like a good plan to me, though:

So he can explain the history of the Quendi, and the Valar, and the first war and what he knows about the survivors of it, and then he can explain what happened in this war. Quendi need less sleep than humans, and they don't die constantly which affects what their societies are like, and they love song and music and can die of being trapped, of their surroundings being unbearable. How Quendi marry also seems like the sort of thing that might be relevant to treating survivors of Angband, actually, so he explains it. How the local magic works. What Lórien will be able to do, once they return to Valinor.

In another corner of his mind he can listen for Leareth. 

Melody listens very attentively. 

Leareth is pretty quiet at first, and then spends a while shifting around kind of restlessly in his bed, maybe just because he can. About an hour into their conversation, he floats up a public surface thought that he's hungry. 

Larya will bring him a meal, about thirty seconds after that. She sets it down on his little table and then heads back outside to stand at the front door.

Leareth thinks he remembers her but feels very uncertain whether it's a real or a false memory. He eats and then stretches out again. 

(He isn't tracking time that well but it's been a while and he's still not being tortured and this is getting pretty surprising and unusual. A lot of the individual moments have been kind of unpleasant, but in boring ways. Leareth doesn't know what to do with any of that, so he curls up under the blankets and tries to sleep.)

And he can go introduce Melody to people who are hoping she can help their tortured spouses out.

Melody will gamely go introduce herself and talk to them even though she has never tried to do Mindhealing with Quendi before in her life!

Quendi minds are very strange! The way they process senses and attention is different. Their tapestries are sort of three-dimensional in a way human minds aren't, and there are a lot more...loop-like patterns, places they can stay in the moment without getting bored the way a human would. Other differences harder to name in words. The marriage bonds are very obvious, not quite like a lifebond or a Companion-bond but definitely in the same family of thing.

Melody isn't sure how much she can help on her first go, she hasn't oriented to where all the mind-parts are and what they mean, but she does know how to block off the panic-response to specific reminders of their torture, she can do that for the things that are bothering them most and if it helps she can try adapting more things she's done with humans before. She leaves the snipped-and-patched mazes of memory alone, it sounds like Lórien can help with that a lot more neatly than she can. 

It is appreciated. Maitimo is aware that he's probably encountering some of the most notable humans - Leareth, and then the person Leareth knew he could count on in a war on another world, and then the person Vanyel knew he could count on for this - but still, he's developing a very high opinion of the species. 

When Vanyel is ready he can Gate them back to Tol Eressëa. 

Leareth's room has skylights through which he can see the stars, and a library, and beautiful artwork on the walls. It opens into a courtyard. There are guards. They are not obtrusive, but they get him things, when he thinks of them.

The day after the Gate, when he's rested, Vanyel uses the communication spell again to contact Velgarth. Savil doesn't have anything burningly urgent for him, just a dry aside of 'it's been a rather entertaining few days', so – does Maitimo want to check in with his father first? 

That is probably a good idea. 

Neither of them has magic, but this is the design of artifact that only needs a mage at one end, so either Vanyel can relay with Maitimo or they can get Savil to do it on the other end. 

Vanyel can relay, Maitimo knows him and since he's here there's more opportunity to do damage control if his father is being thickheaded.

Fair enough! 

<Fëanáro, are you getting this? I'm here with Nelyafinwë, I can convey messages back and forth with him for you. How's everything over on your end?> 

Everything is going very well! We're making arrangements for scientific exchange and better healing and the crop songs might turn out to be very helpful!

That's good. Is there anything we've terribly misunderstood about them?

Their hair can grow long in their own world! They don't have too poor nutrition for that or anything.

I see. All right. 

We're probably going to take some people back with us for research exchange programs.

Sounds good.

<I'm really glad it's going well, Fëanáro. I appreciate you wanting to visit my people so promptly> The King of the Noldor has probably gotten to speak ten times as much with Savil as he has in the last few days, which feels kind of unfair, but...he can't go home. Not yet.

<When would you like the Gate to come back> he asks. 

Maybe four more days? So we can gather the people who want to come back with us. That might include your King? Lórien could probably fix him up and make him not die.

<Oh! That would be wonderful> Why hadn't he thought of it. Probably because he's had too many things on his mind to think of Randi much at all. Gods, though, he misses Shavri and Jisa. <Four days is good, and - do you want a Gate directly to Lórien, if the Valar allow it? We're at Tol Eréssea right now, I'm not sure how well our King would handle a journey from there> 

The Valar super won't allow it! Or maybe they can be brought around but it might take months, and it seems pretty urgent? 

<Fair enough. Then I guess I'll Gate you to Tol Eréssea. Anything else you wanted to add before I talk with my aunt> He wants to keep the remaining conversation brief, no point in exhausting himself. 

That's all.

<Good luck> Vanyel switches back to Savil. <So?> 

<It's been a really weird few days!> She seems excited about it, though. <Not that it wasn't a bizarre six months before that – honestly, and for the year before that too. Why are our lives like this?>

It's a rhetorical question, she doesn't wait for his answer. <Fëanáro's an exhausting whirlwind and I'm too old to keep up, but I like him. Shavri thinks he's great - I mean, he did offer to save her lifebonded's life, I'm sure that helped, but...this is the first time in years I've seen her really light up. She's trying to learn Quenya. Wants to go with Randi, right, feels that if they learned our language so fast to visit us, she ought to do the same> Pause. <Jisa wants to go too, obviously. What do you think?>

<Absolutely not. What part of 'this world was just at war' did she not get> The bigger issue is that's Gating them to his current location, and knowing Jisa it won't matter if she has literally five minutes, there's much too high a risk that she'll somehow find Leareth and Look at him with Mindhealing-Sight and he's not subjecting either of them to that.

<Maybe later on> he concedes. <Once things have settled a bit. It's a beautiful place, she would adore it here> Sigh. <I can't come home yet, aunt. Maybe not for a while. But... I miss you. I hope you could visit as well> 

He hesitates. <Any sign of - what we talked about the other day?> Mindspeech across a Gate may or may not be secure. The comms spell definitely isn't. If something did make it across to Velgarth, he doesn't want to give it any warning. 

<No. But we're keeping an eye out>

<Thank you> Vanyel drops the connection.

Turns back to Maitimo. :Four days, I'll Gate them here. They're taking King Randale on to Lôrien. No sign of any...magical trouble, over there, but they're going to be vigilant: 

Sounds good. Thank you.

Leareth does not do very much for the next few days. There's water at his bedside and after a day or so he'll start occasionally helping himself to it rather than waiting for somebody to bother him. He eats and gets out of bed only when prompted.

He has exactly one public thought, the day before the Gate is scheduled, a slightly frustrated mumble that he can't fall asleep. 

Well, he can sing?

Leareth doesn't do anything to acknowledge this, but he lets it happen, falls asleep.

The next day, Vanyel raises another inter-world Gate to Velgarth. Sticks his head through. :Savil, I hope they're ready:

Savil has been lurking in a meeting-room near the Heralds' chapel, halfheartedly getting work done while waiting for the expected Gate. She's there within seconds. Looks questioningly at Vanyel, then briefly steps across and hugs him hard. 

:They'll be here in a couple minutes: she tells Maitimo. :You must be Nelyafinwë? Herald-Mage Savil Ashkevron, a pleasure to meet you: 

This may or may not be the first time Maitimo has seen a really elderly human close-up, Savil didn't come all the way up to the Gate the last time. Savil's hair is completely white, her face more weathered-looking than wrinkled but with deep seams where the worry-lines around her mouth and forehead usually go. 

It's - terrible, honestly, but he smiles normally. That's right. A pleasure to meet you too. We are eternally grateful to your Vanyel and of course everyone who must be involved in enabling him to make a habit of this kind of thing.

Savil, who is pretty nervous about making a good impression on the otherworld people and also not the best at tact in generally, snorts despite herself. :I see you've gotten to know him. We - I know this wasn't really your intention, but I feel we owe you thanks for - your part in a situation that's led to us no longer gearing up for a war with Leareth. In addition to everything you're offering to help with now which we appreciate beyond measure: 

She switches to private Mindspeech. :And I have to say, some of my colleagues were a little startled and uneasy about your father's promises to cure death over here, but...from the bottom of my heart, thank you. It's really, hmm, refreshing, meeting a people who look at something most people in my world take for granted as a law of nature, and say 'no, unacceptable' to it: 

She nods to him and steps back across the Gate, just before Fëanáro arrives.

Randi is walking with him, moving slowly and with caution, Shavri at his side. He's not old but he does look visibly ill, frail and tired and with pain-lines etched around his mouth.

Another white horse who is a person comes through with him. :Thank you: she sends to Maitimo. She steps delicately to avoid damaging the floor. 

He bows to his father, greets the rest of the diplomatic party. Bows to the King of Valdemar. And then they can all go through and close the Gate so as not to exhaust Vanyel.

Randi bows to Maitimo as well. Smiles. "An honour to visit your world," he says in strongly accented but comprehensible Quenya.

Then he abandons decorum and hugs Vanyel. "Damn it, Van," he mutters in Valdemaran, "I am going to drag the whole story out of you at some point because no one's deigned to mention it so far but knowing you, you nearly got yourself killed pulling off this heroic stunt. Although, good work. Saving an entire world is a record even for you."

Vanyel looks down. "...I wish I'd done it a lot faster." 

- how long does he have to live? he asks his father, looking at the human King.

I don't know! Probably we should not delay very much in getting him to Lórien. Are we taking Leareth too?

- I think no. I think Leareth might benefit from a couple more weeks. The King, uh, won't.

Then once the reunions are over with they can get him on a boat. Is Vanyel going with him?

Vanyel is incredibly torn! He feels he sort of has a Heraldic duty to go with his King and be around in case anything awful happens, but when it comes to what he wants, he absolutely wants to stick around where Leareth is.

Are they going to be within osanwë range? It's unclear how much that helps because it's not like he can instantly Gate to Lórien anyway – though honestly he'd appreciate if Fëanáro could get on politely asking the Valar about it now rather than later, in case they end up preferring to Gate Leareth there rather than take a boat in whatever number of weeks. 

Yes, Nerdanel's gone to petition them.  I don't think you'll be in osanwë range the whole way, unless you know Maitimo much better than I noticed. But we could let you know about anything really important by relaying through a few people along the way.

Sigh. Duty comes ahead of feelings, and it's not like Leareth has been interacting with him in any way and that doesn't seem very likely to change soon. :I'll go with you to Lórien: On the bright side it'll give him a chance to catch up with Randi and Shavri, who are after all two of his best friends. 

Shavri is looking happier than he's seen her in years. She can't stop glancing around at everything, alight with curiosity. 

The Quendi are delighted to show off their world! It was prettier when there was light, but here is the port of Alqualondë, and here is the first road in all of Valinor. They don't carry much food, but just accept meals from farmhouses as they go. 

Vanyel catches them up on the war, and tries to enjoy their obvious enjoyment of the scenery and the Quendi's friendliness to their guests. He talks a little about Leareth. They try to understand it, he thinks. Shavri tries especially hard. But they don't have a decade and a half of background, they can't possibly get how viscerally upsetting it is to see Leareth like this. 

Several weeks pass. 

Leareth's problem, right now, is that he's bored. It is a bizarre problem to be having. He isn't really keeping track of days, but it's been a long time and he continues to not be tortured. He's occasionally uncomfortable but even that is in boring ways, such as lying in bed for several hours while he increasingly badly needs to piss. 

All of this would be fine - it's a set of moments all in a row where he isn't being tortured - except for the fact that boredom makes it harder not to finish thoughts, and finishing thoughts isn't safe but his mind keeps veering toward adding up all the confusing pieces, which is dangerously close to drawing inferences about whether any of this is real. 

...He wonders, publicly, where (possibly-fake) Maitimo is. 

He comes in a couple of minutes later. 

Hey. Vanyel is not here; he is taking his King to Lórien. He has some kind of human sickness we're not familiar with but we expect Lórien to be able to help.

That both makes sense (Leareth was aware of King Randale's illness and this is a very reasonable use of Arda's resources to repay a favour to Valdemar and to Vanyel), and is confusing (Melkor has not previously shown that much of a tendency to fill the fake rescue scenarios with side plots that are tangential to Leareth's existence and mostly don't affect him.)

He wonders what the story is for how they're supposed to have defeated Melkor, which seems rather implausible even for Vanyel to do in a way that didn't result in Leareth also dead in a Final Strike fireball. Leareth lets that thought drift up publicly. If this is Melkor trying to bait him into engaging, well, it seems like he's taking that bait, that's the thing that's happening now. 

I vetoed approaches that seemed likely to kill both of you since then we'd have no way off this world. As a last resort, sure, but Melkor clearly couldn't use you reliably yet. In his own world Vanyel had been to Urtho's tower. He'd had some assistance from a god. He'd found some ancient weapons. Most of them were unstable or we didn't know enough about what they'd do, but there was one that ate magic. 

...What. 

This wouldn't be conclusive proof that the scenario is real even if reasoning from evidence were safe, but - what. The fact that Urtho might have built other weapons and that they might even have survived the Mage Wars is technically something Leareth remembered, therefore something Melkor knows, but it's not like it's been salient to him before now. And...if Vanyel did get into Urtho's Tower then Leareth is pretty sure he would have some kind of feeling about that. He can't, though, because his mind is untrustworthy and he cannot in fact tell whether this is real–

–but for a moment he finds himself urgently wishing he could distinguish if this were reality, and that thought is public. 

I don't know how confident you'd have to be for it to be worth engaging with further. We're using Valdemaren magic, and I don't know of a way to fake it with Arda magic. In particular if Melkor could do compulsions he would just have you sitting somewhere making him Gates and magic weapons, none of this elaborate memory-alteration. - I think if Melkor could do compulsions it'd have been over within a week, really. 

That's a reasonable point. If drawing inferences and updating on evidence were safe then it would be a significant though not fully conclusive update. Even if Melkor did have Vanyel (hard to imagine), and in fact it was over in a week and now he's going to torture all of them forever, tricking Vanyel into using compulsions on Leareth for this weirdly slow-paced scenario in which Vanyel mostly hasn't even showed up would mean letting him have magic. Melkor is too paranoid for that. 

With a sort of mental shrug, Leareth lets all of that reasoning be public. 

Does not-safe mean that you think your ability to add up two and two and reliably get four is broken or that you think having a better world-model probably makes you worse for your goals or that you think the scenario gets worse as soon as you start thinking about it?

Leareth doesn't know how to answer that question. He doesn't remember how or why that part is broken, just - he's compromised, he knows there are gaping cracks in his ability to look at the world and form an understanding of it and then act on it based on his goals – and that means it's not safe to try, it's not safe to want things or have goals or care what the world is like, because all of those things can be exploited, and being exploited by Melkor into taking actions is definitely worse for...whatever it is that he cared about, once.  

- a flicker of a crumbled tower, a bloodstained sky - 

So he can't. And the surest way to avoid taking actions is to avoid having any beliefs about what is true, but he's not doing a very good job of that right now.

(All of those thoughts are public.) 

- Leareth's thought-sensing is blocked so taking off the amulet won't do anything. He's tempted to anyway. He could try the same thing, just by letting Leareth in behind the distinction he makes for osanwë. It'll do the same thing but maybe it won't have the same impact, maybe it'll work better if Leareth can feel it with his own senses. 

He could try it anyway, though.

He's so angry. He wants to kill Melkor again, except that won't help. He wants to go back in time and kill Melkor at the beginning of history, except - it's never really been good for him to dwell too much on what he'd do if he could go back in time and do it again. (He did it a lot when he was younger, replaying conversations in his head until he got them perfect. His eventual coping mechanism was to just get them perfect the first time, which took the edge off the urge.) He wants - 

So it's true that Leareth is plausibly compromised to the degree where most concrete things he does in the world will make it worse. That is the entire thing Melkor tries to do and he would've tried very hard and he had a lot of time (we couldn't have gone any faster) and it is after all why Maitimo wanted Leareth stripped of his magic, taken prisoner - but that's enough, right, that's sufficient, he saw Melody's impression of the tapestry. That's not what it looks like for Melkor to have woven himself so thoroughly through a person that the person will pursue Melkor's aims at one remove. That's hacking and slashing and rethreading to try to hold together a single thread of experience that's cooperative. It'll take a lot of repair but it's not clean enough to hold together better with more information - the opposite of that, it's so fragile, Melkor must've been threading such a fine needle - 

Leareth is confused. 

Confusion is dangerous, it's too close to curiosity and curiosity is too close to trying to understand anything and he can't, but – Melkor couldn't ever fake Maitimo's thoughts. The times he tried were incredibly unconvincing even when he could get the speech and osanwë and mannerisms sort of right. 

–So, either way, if he could update on evidence then he would believe it, that this is Maitimo. Which doesn't necessarily mean the rescue is real, maybe Melkor did discover compulsions and handily won the war and now they're both prisoners and Melkor is trying a more creative storyline–

–only, he doesn't actually think it would work, Maitimo is smart and paranoid and it's definitely been subjective weeks and Leareth can't imagine Maitimo being this thoroughly fooled even for subjective hours. Also it would be a shocking increase to Melkor's self-control to hold back from torturing Maitimo a bit first, and Leareth is pretty sure there'd be hints of that even after the memory of it was erased, and there aren't. 

(And he can usually tell, when an experience is something that Melkor's iterated on hundreds of times to get it convincing, there are slight echoes and feelings-of-wrongness and he doesn't have any of that now.)

It's not literally impossible that this is still a hallucination, but - it would certainly hold up in the strictest court in the world, a sane person would make the leap and believe it. 

Leareth is not currently very sane, he knows that, and so he just hovers near it, and lets all of his thoughts be public because, damn it, even if this is all fake it's still the real Maitimo in here and Leareth trusts him. 

- he's sure he's not in Angband, if that's important to Leareth's decisionmaking here, he coordinated ten thousand soldiers to comb through Angband when it fell and he coordinated setup afterwards and picking the diplomatic party and talking to the other rescued prisoners and their next of kin and handling logistics for the return to Tol Eressëa and the start on the new cities in Beleriand and it's not impossible that with all the resources of Angband and the opportunity to retry repeatedly and access to all of Maitimo's memories you could put together thousands of convincing conversations but it'd be the work of Years, and a stupid work of Years if you've already won. 

- Melkor would be bad at him, they never spoke, and now in hindsight that's obviously because Melkor wasn't even sure he could lie to him face-to-face, he'd feel satisfied about this if only it had actually fucking helped -

- Leareth might not remember what it was that he was supposed to protect, but Maitimo does, it was everyone, all the people in all the worlds. And they're going to get to that, eventually, once they've had the chance to rest a bit first, and it's all right, if Leareth needs a break, needs a very long break even, but - but he's one of the people in one of the worlds, so someday, somehow, they'll have to fix this.

All right, fine, it seems like it is probably just true that Leareth is not in Angband anymore. 

–He's not sure what to do with that. He's compromised, still, it's not safe for him to act, Maitimo knows that, it's why his magic is blocked (because Maitimo is not stupid), and - it may or may not be safe to reason about things...

Maybe it's safe to have an emotion? 

Maitimo was very firmly advised to definitely never touch him unless very unambiguously invited so he is not going to offer a hug he is going to sit here on the other side of the room. He is pretty sure that it is safe for Leareth to do anything it is possible for him to do and really it ought to be the responsibility of the not-tortured people here to make sure anything he should not do is impossible, not on Leareth to handicap himself further.

Then...it seems like it's not going to damage anything that (a previous not-yet-broken version of himself) cares about, if Leareth tries slightly less hard to take zero actions including mental ones. He - hasn't really bothered to have real emotions, in a long time, he's pretty good at cutting off the place where they come from, there were a lot of moments that were bad and mostly consisted of suffering but that isn't the same thing. 

–It turns out the feeling he's going to have, if he lets it happen, is scaredscaredscared and helpless and his heart trying to pound its way out of his chest, and it's hard to breathe, which doesn't exactly help with the scared part because it feels like maybe he's dying and, no matter what else is happening, no matter how irreparably damaged everything about him is, he doesn't want to die. 

- he's not going to die. - well, at least, Quendi can't die of having a panic attack and if humans can (which would be terrible design, but so are many other things about humans) then Maitimo will knock him out before that happens and fetch two world's worth of magical healing and he will not die. And if he does then they'll go find baby Leareth somewhere and catch him up. And if something completely ridiculous happens they will find a world that can fix it.

This doesn't exactly help Leareth calm down, not right away, but it does help him remember that feeling an emotion doesn't mean it's reality (especially doesn't mean that for him, right now, maybe ever again.) 

Though he does want Maitimo to know that his immortality setup is probably possible to sabotage, it'd be hard and he doesn't think any version of him would've cooperatively told Melkor about it, but he thinks he remembers Melkor, or someone, threatening that he would permanently die if he died in Angband. (Not that they were going to let that happen, while he was there, he's pretty sure he understands Melkor well enough to know that that would be way less fun for him.)

...Thinking that through does not help with the panic but it gives him something concrete to anchor on, and now Maitimo knows about it and he trusts Maitimo and he can just lie here having a pointless emotion for a while until it stops.

What would possibly be helpful - he's not any good at this - he should've gotten good at this, he should've spent more time around the survivors of Utumno, he didn't like to because they didn't really want him there but it turns out, what do you know, there are things more important than universal popularity and he should've gotten good at this - understood what the parole meant - and then none of this would have ever happened - and if it had he could do this part right -

Leareth also has no idea what would help, he's not used to inexplicable-panic-attacks either. It helps that Maitimo is there at all. It helps being able to see his thoughts, it's so - so recognizably Maitimo-shaped, that reasoning process, and - faint wistful flicker that he would prefer Maitimo felt guilty about fewer things, it's definitely a mental motion he does more than is helpful. 

...Leareth decides to actually try to calm down, that's a purely internal action so it's safe, and he focuses on his breathing, and over the next couple of minutes the scaredscaredscared recedes. He still feels very, very helpless but that's...probably all right. He shouldn't be the one trying to do things. 

He doesn't usually feel guilty about things where people can see them - it's such a self-centered emotion, it's almost never the best thing for another person to interact with (he is thinking of this as agreeing with Leareth, not paying very much attention to the distinction between 'does more than is helpful' and 'is there to be interacted with more than is helpful', because that'd be an in-depth conversation that should wait)

- but pulling any emotions away from where Leareth can see them feels like it might break the trust, here. 

It does not seem all right that Leareth feels helpless but there are not a lot of ways around it while it remains objectively stupid to give him all his magic back, which it does. Sometimes prisoners seem all right for a while and then kill everyone around them and he doesn't have a working model of when and why enough to guess whether they're past the point where that might happen or not - and if the risk were actually literally just characterized as 'Leareth might kill everyone around him' then that'd be fine, really, at least while Vanyel's not around, a good trade for Leareth feeling less helpless, but probably he should not conclude that that's the only possible bad thing. 

Still, he could try to do some problem-solving about Leareth feeling helpless. He could...give him a knife, in principle, that follows from being fine with Leareth killing everyone around him but not with anything more complicated, except it would clearly be an injustice to Leareth to let him kill himself right now, not that he seems inclined to, but better to be safe - once Vanyel's back they can get the Mindhealer to unblock some Gifts, at least the ones Leareth uses to read people and shield himself - 

Leareth appreciates the problem-solving. He...does not currently feel at all inclined to kill himself and thinks it would be really surprising if he did in the future, but he also doesn't trust anything about his mind anymore, so. Having his purely receptive Thoughtsensing and mage-sight back would help. He's not sure if the way Melody does the block can easily make that distinction but he would let her experiment.

...Can he have a shield-amulet, if they have any working ones available? He mostly feels helpless about defending himself, since he can't use his own magic to shield an attack if they happen to be attacked for some reason - that also means he can't check if the amulet is working but he would trust Maitimo on that part. 

- yeah, easily. He'll call for one. (He doesn't want to give up his because it has been very important for having assurance Vanyel wasn't reading his mind.)

Which makes perfect sense and if Maitimo had tried to hand his over, Leareth would have been, one, suspicious, and two, angry at him for being stupid.

It's probably been really good for Vanyel that Maitimo was around for the last - however long it's been, Leareth realizes he has no idea how long the war took. 

Six months. Vanyel is very decent and very competent and doesn't require all that much, you just have to feed him and teach him sleep songs and remind him of plans that aren't 'leave a crater'. Maitimo is actually accustomed to all his allies requiring far more support - management - well, honestly, far more manipulation - than Leareth or Vanyel have at any point.

Leareth is grateful to Maitimo for not letting Vanyel go straight for 'leave a crater', and...speaking of sleep songs, he's really tired now, it seems like he's out of practice with both thinking and having emotions and so doing both at once is exhausting. He wants to sleep but he would feel better about it once he knows he's shielded. 

Someone comes in with a shield amulet a minute later. Maitimo gestures for them to leave it on the table near Leareth. 

Leareth reaches for it - hesitates - picks it up - hesitates again - it's stupid, he knows he's safe or at least he's already made the decision to act as though he is, as far as he can tell he doesn't have any fake memories of Melkor specifically using fake shield-amulets to trick him into thinking he was safe and then hurt him, but...taking any kind of deliberate action in self-defence is still terrifying. 

We're safe here, he wants to say, but Rúmil recommended against that - concrete things, facts about the world, neutrally presented -

It's a good idea. I should've done it sooner. Tol Eressëa is ours and I am confident in all the people here; the other prisoners we rescued aren't here. Vanyel set up a lot of precautions when we were working on the war effort.

That fits as a thing Vanyel would do, yes. 

Leareth grits his teeth and puts the shield-amulet on - is it working? He wants it at the emergency level of shielding right now even though that's kind of ridiculous overkill, can Maitimo use osanwë to make sure it is – also that's something he can check, by banging his arm against the table and noticing how the shield deflects and absorbs the blow. 

...It feels safer to sleep now, but he's still tense and shaky enough that he doesn't think he can fall asleep, can Maitimo sing a sleep song to help. 

Of course.

Leareth instinctively resists the song's effects. Tries to get himself to stop. Falls asleep within a few minutes.  

- that seems like the best that could've gone, really. He has someone relay to Vanyel that Leareth is doing better. Tucks his thoughts back away where they belong and contemplates for how much longer to actively hide from Leareth that there's still a problem of some kind somewhere in Velgarth.

Probably tomorrow if today's progress lasts he should ask Leareth about Lórien. And anything that wants action for him can wait on that.

Leareth wakes up panicked and disoriented from a nightmare in the middle of the 'night' - five-second process of orienting - remembers where he is - leaves a public thought of Maitimo where are you - scared -

On my way - this is unfamiliar territory and it feels very strange -

He steps into the room and stands at the far corner. Do you need anything -

Leareth isn't sure. 

...Can he check his memories from yesterday against what Maitimo remembers? It'll help a lot to try to get information on how much his mind is currently failing him. He's - so disoriented - everything is quicksand and he can't orient to it - maybe it'll help if Maitimo helps him take some notes on it? 

- yeah. Yesterday Leareth thought that he wondered where possibly-fake Maitimo was. So he came in to talk to him. He explained where Vanyel had gone. Leareth wondered how they'd supposedly defeated Melkor. He explained about the things Vanyel had discovered in Urtho's Tower.

They'd talked a little bit about what would constitute enough evidence for Leareth to conclude he was most likely not in Angband. Maitimo had argued that the Enemy couldn't do compulsions and wouldn't do things like this if he'd already won. Leareth said that the Enemy didn't do convincing Maitimo thoughts. Maitimo tried sharing his thoughts, which were mostly about being upset that this had happened and unsure how to help and sure that they would figure something out eventually.

Leareth had decided to conclude he was out. He'd tried having emotions, found them overwhelming. Been scared. Maitimo hadn't been much help, but he'd figured it out on his own. They'd talked about how Leareth could be less helpless. They'd gotten him the shield amulet.

All of that seems to line up with what Leareth remembers, in the right order. He asks for paper. Takes notes on it, with as much detail as he has the energy for. Thanks Maitimo. Goes back to sleep. 

He goes to sit just outside the door, this time. He can work from there as easily as from anywhere else.

Leareth will be okay. If anyone can be okay after this it's Leareth. Melkor had a lot of disadvantages, compared to his usual - he couldn't emulate lots of Leareth's magic, he knew rather little about lots of Leareth's life before Arda and some of his closest relationships - he remembers what the tapestry looked like. That isn't going to be fixed for a long time. But it's got to look better today.

Leareth sleeps for another six hours. Wakes up - orient - check his shield-amulet is working by hitting his hand on the table again - he remembers his notes first, this time, retrieves them. Reads them over. Remembers to add a note that he woke up in the middle of the night. It's kind of wastefully time-consuming to write down every single mundane occurrence like this but it's not like it's taking time away from anything useful.

"Maitimo?" he says, out loud this time, when he's made sure that the written record and his actual memory match up. 

He comes in. "Yes?"

...Oh he should probably check, shouldn't he. "Am I taking your time away from other important work?" 

"My work is to help my people recover from the war, right now. And you're - uh, I don't mean this as any kind of political claim - you're my people, and you want me here. There couldn't be anything more important."

Leareth ducks his head. He believes Maitimo - and it makes strategic sense, too, he can notice that at a distance without following that thread too far, it would be really valuable for the Noldor if Leareth could safely do things again.

...The trouble is that he doesn't know what will help. He's aware that Maitimo doesn't know either, that they're trying to navigate unknown territory, but at least Maitimo is sane right now, he might have any sense of what kinds of things Leareth can try to be less...like this. 

"Melody offered to do more, once you were lucid enough to talk to her about it. - I don't think she liked being assigned a patient who couldn't form enough expectations about the situation to seriously consider whether they agreed to what was being done to them, though she was very polite about it. And Lórien can give you back all your memories, and do something to help you distinguish memories that you actually at some point experienced from ones that were - stuffed in as background -"

Unfortunately Melkor was also aware of Lórien, which means that rather a lot of Leareth's jumbled memories of fake rescues involve something horrible happening in Lórien's garden. Also gods are terrifying.

...he does need to get his memories eventually, that's a mandatory step toward anything making sense again, and he's pretty sure Valdemaran Mindhealing can't do it, but Melody has the advantage that Melkor had no idea she existed and never tried to fake Mindhealing. Probably it makes sense to eat something and then attempt to talk to her. 

They are keeping the other recovering prisoners on the other side of the island from Leareth because Leareth is more dangerous and more likely to pose some kind of complication that need not stress everyone else out. Melody can be asked to make her way over while Leareth has something to eat.

Leareth eats. He's starting to pay enough attention to his surroundings to actually notice what food tastes like. 

Also to draw a several-step chain that he hadn't managed before. "...Is my hair going to bother people?" he says dully. It's grown pretty long and nobody has tried to do anything with it - nobody's been touching him at all - so it's thoroughly matted, and if he's modelling Quendi sensibilities right then this is definitely going to be some variant of horrifying to them.

(Also it's kind of uncomfortable, when he's in bed it gets caught on the pillow and pulls, he didn't care much because it's a very minor discomfort but it is tiresome.) 

"Does it bother you?"

“I guess a little.”

"It looks like it will be pretty complicated to detangle it but I am sure we can do it, if you are okay with someone touching it."

Leareth thinks about it. Nods. That seems better than just leaving it like this forever - and, it's an action, right, it's a decision he can make that he's pretty sure cannot possibly result in damaging anything he cares about. 

He's tempted to ask Melody if she'll do that but it's really really really not the best use of her right now. 

It's fine. 

(The last time Leareth will have seen him this expressionless is when Leareth asked for braiding help.)

"All right. I think Melody is almost here so you should do that first but then I will get some things together to detangle your hair."

"All right." Leareth looks around. "Can I...go outside, for a minute?" Seems probably safe but he wants to check. 

"Yeah, of course. If you wander right up to Vanyel's or my father's workroom you will be stopped but you can go anywhere else you want."

Very reasonable. Leareth gets up, goes to the door.

Stands outside. Looks up at the stars. They...mean something, he thinks, something he can't quite remember? Something he - was supposed to never put down. Except he's lost it, now. But...Maitimo still has it, he's pretty sure. So maybe it's all right. 

Melody thinks you shredded - most of your motivation system - yourself. So that you couldn't be tricked again into doing things for Melkor.

Oh. 

It's a relief and it hurts at the same time. And...again? How many times did Melkor trick him? He - it's hard to even go near - did he hurt people - how much damage was he responsible for, thanks to being the shape of person who Melkor could exploit in this way...? 

Not that much, not that we know about, and at this point it seems unlikely there was lots we didn't know about. Melkor Gated some orcs into Valinor. I don't even think they killed anyone, just made the Valar ban Gating which was inconvenient for the war effort. Some of them were near Vanyel and I but - you can't have been trying to kill us, no one tries to kill Vanyel with eighty orcs.

"I am sorry for that." It's confusing what it means to apologize on behalf of a past Leareth who he doesn't remember being and isn't anymore, but it's not like that past Leareth is around to apologize for himself. "I - am glad - it was not more." 

He looks at the stars for a minute longer and then goes back inside and sits on his bed. 

This is delicate enough he should send it rather than say it, probably -

He's not angry with Leareth, obviously. It's hard to guess what exactly Melkor did but if it were him he'd just erase all Leareth's recollection of being in Arda, feed him all the same input that put him on the side of the Quendi from within Angband - and probably Melkor is at least that smart - and it wouldn't be better if Leareth wasn't the sort of person who did things. 

He'd been angry at the time. Mostly scared, but - some amount angry. He'd been unsure if - if maybe Leareth had just decided that actually the most important thing, given his goals, was to have powerful allies - it felt a little off but not impossible, and there were Gates popping up all over Valinor to prove that Maitimo wasn't paranoid enough -

- and he'd thought about it and decided that even if that was what had happened, he would use Vanyel to kill Melkor and rescue Leareth, and then - what, right, hold him prisoner forever? For wanting to save his world more than he wanted to save Maitimo's? For being the kind of person he had to be to have landed in Arda in the first place instead of dying thousands of years ago, a person who played the cards in his hand, even if none of them were nice ones - 

- it's not even an applicable line of reasoning right now, not having seen what Melkor did to Leareth's head, but - maybe it's a useful bound on things. If Leareth had spent this whole time devotedly working against them Maitimo would, well, firstly be confused that they'd still won and then he would work on making sure that he was on all of the best roads to accomplish Leareth's goals.

Probably the part where he held him prisoner would've hurt less, though.

...Leareth doesn't know what to do with any of that, yet, mostly what he's thinking is that this is such a Maitimo-shaped line of reasoning, and, and–

–And it seems like he's curling up into a ball and crying now, that is definitely the thing that's happening. 

Possibly he should not have told Melody to come right over. But he doesn't want to make Leareth wait, once he's ready, and - probably it's a good idea to have people with more expertise on hand, actually.

Leareth is aware that crying is not helping right now and the main effect is in preventing him from doing anything else. That's not enough to stop immediately, but does give him enough impetus to find something else to focus on, and calm himself down over the next couple of minutes.

...He wants to make sure Maitimo knows that he didn't say (well, think) anything wrong and this isn't his fault and Leareth is sorry for having completely random emotions in response to everything that happens. 

This is incredibly unsurprising and does not require an apology at all. (has Leareth gone all these lifetimes in Velgarth without ever having - well, yes, he probably has, since mages who don't like their surroundings can emphatically say so and ones who'll resurrect are probably more so inclined than average -)

Melody Mindspeaks him from outside the building before coming in. :Now still a good time?: 

Maybe give him five minutes? He just found out that he did some things for the Enemy during the war.

:Yes, of course - I'll wait. Food around here anywhere?: