"Thank you. I'm glad we can still work together. I will send Whisper to let you know before we depart, and again if we make it out safely. And I'll leave encrypted notes on teleportation once I have the spell working, they might be helpful in laying the ground work for developing a longer-ranged teleport or a plane shift. Did you have any other magic questions or last-minute advice?"

"It is worse than you are imagining. Everyone advising you against it is doing so from extremely painful firsthand experience."

"Acknowledged."

Malak pauses at the door,

"I don't think I did, but it is possible that I have completely misjudged your character. If so... I expect we will meet again but you seem less certain of that and if you want to correct my first impression before I go I think you deserve that chance."

"There are several hundred thousand things I care about more than your good opinion. Try not to die."

"At least you're honest." Malak waves their hand past their eyes in a lazy Kalziran salute on the way out. They realize the gesture would be meaningless a few moments later.

Off to the armory to arm themself as much as the elves can spare.  They feel most comfortable with six daggers and a sword - really one, a sword, and five throwing knives if the elves have those - but not all of that is strictly necessary. Enchanted armor sounds a good deal more important, given what Gorthaur can do? The armorer probably hates them, which might make this trickier.

Little bit. They might stand a chance in this war if there were more people willing to talk to each other and fewer inclined to try singlehandedly achieving whatever stupid goal they've got. But. There's armor in their size.

Maybe Malak will try to singlehandedly achieve a healthy amount of communication and coordination next. Being an outsider might help with that.

No comment on how "save people from a life of torture" doesn't seem like a particularly stupid goal to them.

They can have weapons. Then they can leave, yes? It'll be much appreciated.

And Malak leaves, armed and armored. At the gate, "I'm leaving." Wow, that was so much easier. 

A few days later they're back at Brethil. Lúthien?

Got everything?

Oh, good, you're still here. Yeah, I got some weapons.  Can you slip away and meet me by the north edge of the forest? Without anybody noticing if possible, I want as much surprise as we can get.

Yeah, sure. 

And, later,

"Hi! If you want to carry a weapon I can give one to you, I realized after I got there that I never figured out your weapon preferences, so you've just got your choice of the ones I picked for myself. Sword or dagger?"

"Dagger. Can we go soon -"

"We can go now, it'll still take a bit of time to get there and we can finalize plans on the way."

Malak gives her a dagger and a hug. "We'll get him out."

"Thank you."

"So, our best bet might still be for me to go in alone and you to possibly serve as a distraction. I don't think I'm in a lot of danger of being captured, I got a teleport spell working on my way back here so I can get out really easily. It's self-only though and it's probably worth going in before I can get it up to self-and-other."

"You can at least - confirm if they're still alive and still being held there -"

"Yeah. Do you think if I try to break them out and fail, Gorthaur will kill them? If he won't then it might be worth it to try a breakout using just invisibility."

"...probably would, that or take them to Angband -"

"Taking them to Angband might be OK, it could be a lot easier to rescue them in transit than from where they are. I don't know Gorthaur at all, but it sounds like he'd be more likely to keep them alive than to kill them, especially if he's still hoping to trap you. If my attempt fails he might assume that we'll try again and won't know that I have more capabilities... Still it's probably best not to risk it. I'll just look."

"Unless it looks like they're not going to make it much longer -"

"Yeah."

"Good luck."

After a lot more walking, they are there. What does it look like? How wide is the river? Is there a bridge to the island?