"We made mistakes. I know." He shivers a little. Maitimo. "I wish to read my notes, first, and then hear all of the details on what has happened. And then I will re-derive the method for communicating with Arda." He pauses. "...I chose a different name, already. I apologize if this is confusing." 

"No. I understand this is - usual." She smiles slightly, crookedly. "It is rather odd seeing you wear this face, but - from the moment you opened your mouth it is very clear that it is still you. I missed you a great deal and I am glad that you are back." 

He's still him, but - different. He doesn't say that out loud. "Telumë," he says. "It has the same meaning as my previous name, in - in Prince Nelyafinwë's tongue. It seemed fitting." 

"Yes. I agree." Nayoki hesitates, then reaches out and squeezes his hand, briefly, before letting go. "We are going to win this, Telumë." 

"Yes. We are." And he's going to rescue Maitimo, as soon as it's humanly possible, and - fix it. Somehow. "Nayoki, I am going to wish to know everything I can on conditions and leadership within Valdemar." 

"I will prepare a report on it for you." 

"Leareth's escape to the north is disastrous for Valdemar and for Iftel," he tells the mages when they assemble. Sauron is here, drifting between them, immaterial; Maitimo can't see him but some of the mages probably can, if they are looking. "He commands, there, an army that rivals Iftel's, and has been training for a long time for an invasion south of there. Without him it was headless; with him, it will be very dangerous to us. 

Was this new information to anyone here."

It was not new to any of them, no. There are bowed heads and shuffled feet. There is a great deal of barely-concealed fear. 

"While it would be nice to capture Leareth alive, this will be extraordinarily difficult to do while he is conscious; he is willing to call down a Final Strike and is only moderately inconvenienced by doing so. This I cannot imagine is news to anyone, as five months ago he did it and we presently stand three minutes' walk from the ashes.

I think, if it is not obvious, that it was a very stupid mistake to stop trying to kill him because he asked you to. But it is not actually what I am angry about; plans for wars, I think, ought to have some affordance for a badly timed moment of collective stupidity. The part of this failure analysis I have been troubled by, tonight, is that the situation at that point was still retrievable. When a Gate opened it was still possible for every person in this room to kill Leareth. I know you don't come back like he does. But the tens of thousands of people who will die in this utterly preventable war don't come back either. It troubles me, that no one corrected this grave mistake of yours, once you noticed you had made it."

Dead silence. 

He nods. (He argued with Sauron, about this part. Sauron thought it would be more instructive to drag it out and Maitimo thought it would be more instructive not to.)

Three of them fall over dead. 

"I made this decision individually for each of you," he says. "To be clear, I think any of you should have died at that pass. But if you struck me as capable of learning from the mistake I will give you one more chance not to make it. Iftel needs you. Dismissed."

It turns out that being a mage is AWESOME!!! Once the horribly painful part was done, anyway. 

"Stef! Watch this!" Jisa makes a shield, and then throws fireballs at it, nudging it incrementally further away from herself. 

"Please don't set the furniture on fire again," Stef says from the corner of Vanyel's old Work Room, sounding bored. 

Fireball! Levinbolt! Spinning wheel of force knifes thing! 

"Someday you're going to have to stop practicing magic for murdering people and do Gates, you know," Stef says, rolling his eyes. 

"Gates are hard. I'm practicing control in general." Fireball! Fireball! 

–Her shield splinters. "Oops," Jisa says lightly. "Hmm. I'm tired, I should take a break and come back." 

Quendi can provide meals and music and company for breaks. 

Jisa grins and bounces and hums to herself as she eats. The situation is still pretty dire overall, but she's a MAGE and she has Vanyel's notes and everything Yfandes remembers about mage-craft, not to mention her entire life spent around mages as friends and family, and she's going to reinvent Gates and then reinvent inter-world Gates and then find a way back to Velgarth and rescue everyone. 

And well away in Tol Eressëa a staffer of Maitimo's, named Tannelë, wears a communications artifact whose other end was destroyed in Haven as an earring. Just in case.

Trial number thirty-three. Even with all his notes and the ground Nayoki's research team had covered, it still took several weeks to re-derive the path to Arda at all, and another week after that of repeatedly trying slightly different iterations, trying to line up with the other end of an artifact that he's pretty sure is still in Arda.

<Can you hear me>

<Eeugh - uh ->

Tannelë has no idea whether Leareth is on their side or evil again or what! Probably he shouldn't talk to him! Probably he should talk to Prince Macalaurë and King Treven instead!

Hey uh Leareth just messaged the artifact that was left here.

:Oh. Um. Let me think. Probably don't answer? Er, would you be able to talk to him later if you want to, though?: Treven can't recall exactly how the artifacts were supposed to work. 

That's definitely some sort of contact! They sound very startled. Telumë waits. 

I already made a startled sound at him but I won't answer beyond that. I - don't know if we can talk to him later, I think maybe if Jisa's on our end?

:That makes sense. Keep listening, though: