"The notes are at an extraordinary risk of being intercepted, they are much much more of a risk than losing you."

"I will write the notes today and leave them here, I don't send unencrypted letters what kind of person do you think I--OK, I guess you haven't seen enough of me to get a good impression, that wasn't fair. I take privacy very seriously, and that extends to my correspondence. Speaking of which, we should set up a cipher in case we need to send each other messages while I'm in Brethil..."

"There are humans here, I can have some of them take you south along the river, opposite direction from the Enemy and if you do somehow catch his attention at least his retaliation doesn't fall on an entire civilian population. But yes, we should have a cipher."

"OK. I'll go with them, tomorrow morning. Are you familiar with a Neripetor cipher?  No, wait, you wouldn't be, not by that name. So, you give each character a numerical value, you have a key, say, ten characters long.  You shift the first character of your message by the first character of the key, the second by the second, and so on, then the eleventh character of the message by the first character of the message so that the message itself forms the key.  I can provide a more detailed description in the notes... Our key probably shouldn't be a word, that can make it really easy to crack, um, cwaldh nt lakeb t. All those sounds exist in your language, do you need to hear it again? cwaldh nt lakeb t."

"That works. All right. Be careful."

"I will, I don't find the ideas of dying or being tortured until the Enemy gets bored even remotely appealing. Paper? Weapons?"

"What do you know how to use?"

"A variety. Mostly light blades--daggers, knives, short swords or fencing blades. I'm decent with a bow, but not as good as with a blade, and I can rely on my spells at a distance."

"I'll find some people whose work can be interrupted and I'll arrange for supplies and weapons - armor? -"

"Hm, it may be best for me to see what you have. Back home I wore very, very light armor, anything else slowed me down too much and wasn't worth the tradeoff, but without the other magic items I used to use I'm slower so it might be worth wearing more... I should probably just figure this out with the person you're tasking with helping me get supplies together, I'm sure you have something more important to be doing and this is probably not your area of expertise."

"It's not, but I think I may still be failing to be emphatic enough about how much of a disaster it would be if you fall into Enemy hands, so I'd rather at least be as well apprised as possible of what you need."

"I understand, though, again, you might lose me but he will not take me. If you need me to be more explicit, I can kill myself with a thought and feel no reluctance about doing so if captured. As for what I will need--A dagger or knife, maybe two--I'd like to try out some different styles of knives if you have more than one. Having a sword too would give me some more flexibility but isn't strictly necessary, same for a bow. Armor, I really don't know until I can try some on, probably leather unless you have an abundance of mithril or enchantments for lightness--actually, I don't know if you even have any of the same metals as back home. I used to wear an enchanted coat woven from spider's silk, I doubt you have any of those, but if you do that would be best."

"Alright. Someone'll be here in a second to take you through what we have."

Malak leans against the wall and waits.

Somebody comes! And takes them to the armory, and they do in fact have mithril and they do in fact have metals enchanted to be lightweight but none of those lying around to spare, and Malak's headed south until they learn to do private thoughts reliably, right, so they're not likely to meet trouble and if they do it's probably not at the scale where enchanted armor'd save them -

Yes, Malak certainly doesn't think that magical armor will be necessary where they're going, hadn't considered it even, but then Lord Curufin brought it up and he seemed so worried, so maybe the countryside is more dangerous than Malak thought. Or maybe he's just being overly cautious, he seems the cautious sort. Malak will try out some unenchanted leathers and maybe take a set of those, that should calm Curufin's nerves without costing too much...

As for weapons, they'll try out some knives and daggers, take one that they like--probably no need for magic there, either, right, Curufin's just paranoid?--There's been a lot of talk about this werewolf island, do the werewolves ever leave? If so it might be worth grabbing something silver just in case unless silver is really hard to come by, but if they all stay there, there shouldn't be any need for that...

Curufin's paranoid. To be fair he's watched an awful lot of people die, recently, but all of them went towards the fighting, the south's still safe. The werewolves do occasionally leave the isle, the patrols take care of it but they should definitely have some silver just in case.

So, the set of leathers, two daggers--one silver, one normal--and perhaps a sword if that would be OK? Do the elves have any long, thin swords, like for fencing?  Would it be OK if they take the weapons and armor with them today? They know it's not really rational in a city full of friends but they feel a bit more comfortable with a dagger at hand at least...

It's not a problem at all, lots of people prefer a personal weapon. They have plenty of swords.

Malak tries out some swords, chooses one, and then asks about pen and paper while they don the armor and strap on the weapons. At one moment when the elf is distracted, they grab a second silver dagger with their tail and tuck it away out of sight.

Pen and paper are no problem, here they are.

Malak thanks the elf and takes pen and paper back to their room and spends a few hours writing down everything they can remember about magical and planar theory and details on the Neripetor cipher. When that's done they re-cast the language spell, putting in some extra juice so it'll keep running for about twelve hours, then sleep--well, meditate--for six.

When they wake, it should be mid-afternoon?

Hard to tell underground.

Well, hopefully their timekeeping isn't too off.

They meditate for about an hour, unhooking the language spell from their mind and using the space to expand their shapechanging, then write a few more notes. They leave most of the notes on their desk, but tuck the new ones into their shirt.

Then they leave and ask the nearest elf if they know where the humans are preparing to leave? And also what time it is now.

Elf will take them to the humans right now! And it is in fact mid-afternoon.