...Some critic you are. OK, I will probably be willing to teach some people off of this much, more once I'm more convinced that he's not secretly evil or something. Hm.

A pause, while Malak thinks over the details.

I will be willing to teach up to twenty people, to start, if they are willing to swear to keep the teachings secret until I grant permission for them to be revealed. I expect to grant that permission within a year, but it would be better to start some of them now even if they can't share it so that when I've confirmed Fingon's non-evil nature they will be able to help teach the next batch and may have gotten some useful research done in the meantime. Could you pass that message on, I don't want to interrupt Maedhros or the High King but you probably have a better sense of how to let Maedhros know without inconveniencing him and he would know how to tell Fingon. I can start tomorrow if I'll have students assembled by then.

Yeah, sure. Why're you worried he's secretly evil?

I'm not seriously concerned about it, just being overly cautious.

Whatever floats your boat, but I'd be way more worried about the Enemy getting it than Fingon being - I don't even know what kind of secretly evil would be relevant, Melkor still needs to die...

Accepting one terrible evil as the cost to ending another one is... not necessarily always the wrong choice, but not one that should be made lightly. I don't yet know if it will be necessary to teach Fingon's people magic to win this war, and if it is it will be won on a timescale where taking a month to verify that nothing horrible will come of it is not a great cost.

Like I said, whatever you want.

And they're walking through a mountain pass. They're kind of at their limits for teleportation, unfortunately, can't get it long-ranged enough to be an efficient form of travel. Also, they are a perfectly normal elf without any strange abilities like that, no, none at all.

Huan is there!

Hello Huan!

Malak will check to be sure there is nobody watching them - or even within eyesight - then

Uh, Celegorm? Should I be relaying things through you?

Yeah, probably, if he wanted to talk to people he wouldn't be a dog.

OK. I assume he's OK with me casting some spells on him, since that's why we're here. Does this include damaging spells?

Yeah, it's fine, there's a prophecy about how he dies, anyway, and it's not you.

You mentioned. I just usually don't try to set my friends' dogs on fire without permission.

Permission having been granted, they attempt to set Huan on fire.

Works, until he puts it out.

...Can you ask him how he did that?

- wanted to stop being on fire.

...I probably should have guessed that. Next test is comparing magical and nonmagical fire.

Malak ignites a fallen branch they gathered from the roadside a ways back, waits a few seconds for it to catch properly, and touches it to Huan's side. At the same time, they wreath their hand in magical flames of the same temperature and lay it on a different spot on his side.

Can you ask if one of those is hotter than the other?

- same, he reports after a moment.

OK, I'm going to set him on fire again and try to keep him that way while he tries to put it out.  He still OK with all this?

And when they get that confirmation they try it.

He can stop being normally on fire; he can't stop being magically on fire, but he can change his fur after a few minutes to something unaffected by being on fire.

OK. I assume this sort of adjustment can also be done for acid-proofing or lightning resistance or cold resistance, it's good to know that's in a maia's repertoire. How many of those adaptations does he think he can do at once?

If he knew in advance you were going to do that, he could just pick a form that didn't have any of those problems, or be immaterial, but they'd be about that speed to figure out individually. It wouldn't be hard to have them all at once unless they contradicted somehow.

Very few things in my world are resistant to more than one or two, let alone completely immune. But, if I understand correctly a Maia doesn't have to have a functioning biology? So it would not be surprising if they can get a bunch of different resistances stacked up. Does the Enemy have servants that are likely to be particularly resistant to one of those and less flexible?

Last thing I want to test would be teleportation. Could you tell him to go along with it the first time, not really do anything about it the second time, and actively resist the third?

And they try to teleport Huan three times. For a non-Ainu they could expect to do it with all three with increasing amounts of effort, it would be good to know if Maia are categorically immune or vulnerable.

Only works if he's actively trying to go along.

OK! I think this is all I need that I can actually test now. I may have some more suggestions next time you're down by Nargothrond, Curufin's people have been picking this up pretty well and should have access to some things outside my specialty. I'm going to head back and get a lesson plan together for whenever I've got volunteers here.

They do that. Once they've taught these students they're going to start scrapping most of the spells they know to free up space, but it will be useful to have those on hand for teaching.