I'm glad I met you too, it would've been hard doing that on my own.

You would have probably died.

...Actually, given how long the war's been going on, this does explain the dearth of good people here.

...

Sorry, that was really dark.

It's okay. Are people here really worse than back home?

There are more heroically good people back home. I guess the average person is probably about the same.

That sounds nice. Heroically good people, I mean.

Yeah. The evil is less concentrated, too. That's... probably a good thing.

Anything's better than the Enemy.

Our closest equivalent is poorly organized and better opposed. But... I don't suppose you have decent population estimates? From what I saw of Nargothrond I'd guess my plane has a much larger population...

There're around four hundred thousand people in Doriath.

...Yeah if Doriath is considered a significant population center this place is blessedly unpopulated. Sternhill was around a hundred thousand and it's only the third or fourth largest city in Kalzir. And Kalzir is much smaller than the Jade Dragon Empire. Tylantia was a city of two million before.

Before something horrible happened?

Yeah. There was a war, a really bad one. Bael Turath was winning but... not decisively enough for them, I guess. They... I think they wanted demonic soldiers or something but it got out of hand and there were demons everywhere - they're like Melkor in temperament if not in power - 

It was bad and it was only stopped with a scorched-earth approach and some really destructive magic and that's why Turathi is now an endangered language and Tylantia gets referred to in the past tense. I think I should probably stop talking about this for now...

Okay.

They keep walking.

So, I think this is probably real now and you probably want me to explain that...

I mean, only if you want to.

It would not particularly hurt me to tell you now, I'm more stable at the moment. You deserve to know if you want to.

...I guess, yeah.

So, some features of magic are really hard to fake. Mostly self-targeted things. The sensation of casting a spell is pretty much unfakeable, but spell effects outside of yourself can obviously be faked, and you can be contained so that once you've cast the spell the energy is broken up and dissipates.

I have a talent that I've picked up that... it's very rare. For all I know I'm the only person with it, I developed it myself and have tried to keep its existence quiet. When I - When I kill someone, I take a bit of the magic that they had. Works for people who don't do spellcasting, they still have energy built up.

Works for orcs.

Nerikross could have simulated it if he was clever about it and actually let my spells be cast in the real world and had lined up a bunch of people to die just to keep this believable. But he's not that ruthless and he would have had to know about it ahead of time which he didn't. Alfirin is that ruthless but I still don't think she knows about this talent and it's still quite a length to go to just to convince me this is real when she has better options for that and still no good reasons I can think of to bother.

Ah. 

...Angband has millions of orcs. Could you - would that be enough -

I'm still limited by how much energy I can store at once. Committing massacres would let me stretch those limits faster but I doubt I could get enough to kill a god through raw power alone. I suppose I could maybe with enough time adapt this into a spell... something that keeps taking magic from me as fast as it comes in, if it causes enough destruction it might just keep building off itself and that could maybe destroy Melkor. But, it would be hard to test, and... if I can't stop it that would also be really bad.

...And there is a non-trivial chance that this is still a hallucination and I have a good idea why someone would bother, now.

To get you to make a really big explosion? Is that hard to do otherwise?

To develop - and cast - a spell that could maybe kill a god? Yes. Nerikross hates Alfirin, I wouldn't put it past him to sacrifice a Kalziran city for a chance to destroy her permanently. And Alfirin... I can't think of a reason why she'd want this particularly badly but I don't know most of her plans or goals.

Inconvenient that we really need a god killed, then. ...maybe you can do it and then find your way back and then also kill your mom?

...I hope you are not seriously suggesting that after I kill Melkor I go back to my world and blow up another city in order to kill Alfirin. It's not that she doesn't deserve it, but the cost seems a little high, I think she kills fewer than a hundred people a year.