"...That is the conclusion I came to eventually," Telumë admits. "You said it much more clearly, though. I thought I would notice if I were - being insane in that way..." 

"It's the kind of distortion that's hard to notice from the inside. I know a lot about that, trust me." A long sigh. "I think you made a mistake, but - I think we failed you, too, in that nobody pointed this out. That's also kind of an understandable failure; I think everyone who knows you is used to you being very good at the thing you do, and - it'd be hard to notice from the outside, even for Melody, that you weren't able to think clearly."

He's pretty angry with Melody too, honestly, but he also sort of understands that - it must have been crazymaking for her as well, being responsible for watching Maitimo and preventing him from damaging anything, while he was suffering so much - probably in a way that's at least a little manipulative and strategic, that would be the best way to make sure Melody and Jisa and Nayoki were too distracted and upset about having to basically torture a traumatized prisoner to notice how not-okay Telumë was. 

Nod. "Findekáno thought that maybe I ought not be in charge of the war effort right now," Telumë admits. 

"Hmm. I mean, I think you shouldn't be just from the perspective of it clearly being very unfair to you and bad for your wellbeing. And it's possible it's also bad for the outcomes, in expectation, but I'm - not sure. We should talk about it." 

"...If I am not the right person to be leading this then I want to know. I want to believe true things, here. And - I am not longer sure I could tell from the inside." 

Vanyel nods. He drops the Truth Spell. "I'm really sorry. Everything about this is so awful and the root of the awfulness is definitely not your fault even if, er, your decisions have contributed to some of the awfulness happening right now. Gods, I hate Sauron! I - don't think that any of it is unfixable, yet. I think  probably we can go from here and somehow eventually get to a world that's all right again. I want to help you do that. Also I'm kind of still angry with you and need to go cool off about that before I can be maximally helpful, but... Do you want a hug?" 

Telumë has been sort of hugging himself for the last while. He seems startled at Vanyel's offer. "...Yes, I think so. Please." 

He spends six hours or so more with Maitimo. Singing to him, updating him on the progress of various arts and science projects. Probably there's some way to use that for evil but- he can't guard against every possible avenue and he suspects that this topic of conversation is much safer than their earlier one. 

Eventually he asks Maitimo if it's a good time for him to step out and talk with Leareth and Vanyel. Maitimo says it is. He promises not to be gone very long.

He steps out, closes the door.

Vanyel?

Vanyel is stretched out on a sofa in one of the auxiliary rooms with his head in Stef's lap. They've been talking for a while. He sent Telumë off to bed, it's obvious that no one else has been doing a good job of making sure he's sleeping lately. Another thing to snarl at Melody about, later. He should save it until he's feeling slightly less snarly, though, it'll be a more useful conversation if they can have it like levelheaded adults. 

:Yes?: 

I talked to Maitimo. I want to send it to you for - a sanity check, I guess. It is very unfair to him that he can't have any privacy in all of this but also - I am fairly afraid, right now, that we are going to fail him yet again by letting him do more awful things. 

:I think that's a good idea. I think that - once we have him back: if that ever happens, but he doesn't put that into Mindspeech, :he'd understand the privacy violation. I had a long conversation with Telumë, made him tell me everything from his perspective under Truth Spell, and - I think I have a failure analysis that I'm reasonably confident in, now. I feel really bad. I think I should have been able to - guess what could go wrong here - and tell someone to tell Telumë and to plan some sensible safeguards, and I didn't, and I'm sorry. Stef and I have been talking and we're not sure how much detail to go into, it depends to what extent you think you can keep any secrets from Maitimo going forward - we assume you're going to keep spending time with him - but other than that angle, I'm comfortable just sending you the entire conversation too: 

I am not any better than anyone else at keeping things from Maitimo but I'd like to have a little more context that he presumably already has on - what in two worlds is planned here and who is planning it - I'm not surprised that with Maitimo gone Fëanáro has no idea how to utilize his own people except for a bunch of math researchers, but this could easily have been prevented if there'd been Quendi here to supervise.

Stef strokes Vanyel's hair. I think we should just tell him, Van-ashke. We know Maitimo's guessed the plan so it's not even meaningfully a security risk of him finding out, although I'm not sure he's guessed the math researchers in particular are a key requirement. But I think we can take enough precautions around that specifically to prevent Maitimo really interfering. And - the utterly obvious point of failure that I thought of in thirty seconds is Maitimo telling Findekáno himself and using that lever to maybe start a civil war. I can at least hope it'll go over better if he learns it from us. 

Vanyel nods. Sends Findekáno a flash of where they are. :Come over here and we can talk: 

He finds them.

Vanyel has extracted himself from Stef's lap and is sitting up, hands clasped in his lap. He puts up several different layers of privacy-barrier, against sound and osanwë and Thoughtsensing. 

"How much context do you have on what Leareth originally wanted to do in Velgarth, before contact with Arda happened?" he asks. 

"Maitimo told me he was planning to invade your country and kill millions of people to make a good god who could - do the things our good gods did for our world."

Vanyel nods. "All right. Hear me out and ask questions at the end, please." He pauses, collects his thoughts. "Fëanáro's first thought when we found out - before we knew the part about Melkor, before we had re-established contact with Telumë or had any idea where he was - was that we were completely not equipped to fight an alliance between Vkandis and Sauron as mortals. And that the only path to winning this is making Leareth's god as fast as possible. Leareth had wanted more time to - finish checking things, the math researchers are helping with that aspect."

A deep breath. "Telumë can't power it by himself, obviously, from a starting position of not having the empire he needed. Fëanáro spontaneously offered the Noldor for that instead. Since Quendi come back. Also possible orcs although that's - not ideal for several obvious reasons. We're also really hoping we can get another Velgarth god on board with it, given - well, conditions have obviously changed, Vkandis seems to be using Sauron to make a power grab here and we're pretty sure both the Star-Eyed Goddess and the Valdemaran god behind the Shadow-Lover are displeased. If we can get that help, then we can have an additional power source and probably won't have to massacre all the orcs. But it's not clear yet. When I spoke to Fëanáro before coming here, he - didn't think Telumë's awful judgement in this particular situation was a reason not to make his god. Since it's just math at this point, the math is either right or wrong and we can check it."  

"Maitimo guessed this, because obviously he did," Stef says. "I suspect he'd be plotting to tell you, frame it in a way that made it likely this would disrupt the alliance and cause a civil war. Figured it'd be better for you to hear it from us first and ask all your questions now."

"If I were the King of the Noldor and - planning something like this - I would have told everybody about the situation in Velgarth, regularly, so that people understood that it is desperate and that it is as important with as much at stake as the war here, and I would've invited their help with logistics of - making sure families aren't separated very long, making sure animals are taken care of, making sure we'll be able to take back up everything we set down - and ultimately so that if some people decide they would rather leave the Noldor than be a part of this they have time to think that through and decide. 

If he just announces one day that we all need to die to make a god - people are going to panic, they're not going to listen, there's not going to be any time to have any sort of collective conversation about what the King has the right to ask of us and there won't be any confidence he's planning the logistics on the other side of it any more thoroughly."

"Fëanáro is predictably terrible at that aspect," Stef says dryly. "Not having Maitimo on our side leaves a really big hole. I - probably should've thought to tell you sooner, actually, or bring anyone in on it, but I think all of us have been failing at good long-term planning lately. On my end at least, it's mostly because I'm really scared, and because I couldn't really think properly when Van was injured and trapped in a different world, and it's taken a while to - get my head around things enough that I can even try to be reasonable. I guess also because all my attention was on getting Maitimo back, and then that happened, and then things got worse and then," helpless handwave, "they got worse again somehow." 

"Okay. It is not obvious to me that the King of the Noldor does not have the right to ask this, so long as it is understood that some people will choose to walk away. And so long as he steps down afterwards. I want the people who leave to have a place to go; my father hasn't been working on his city but we could get at least the site defended and some food growing, so that it's meaningfully an option. And - I imagine there are security concerns about just telling everyone the truth and a timetable right now, because Sauron will hear of it, but - I think you'd need everyone to have a month to think about it, if you don't want a panic. You could maybe tell people one by one and swear them to secrecy. 

I know that there are advantages to using the Noldor over inhabitants of Velgarth because we come back, but there's also the major disadvantage that - right now people are on board, broadly, with the idea that our new destiny is to learn of, and go save, all the worlds. I think if everyone dies that might break that. There's only so much you can ask people to give in the space of barely ten years."

Nod. "I really wish I'd just gone ahead and talked to you earlier. I'm - worried that at this point we shouldn't involve you in the details of our plans here, because you're going to interact with Maitimo - I think probably that's the right thing to do, here, even if he's evil he's also still very traumatized and needs you a lot. But that's already a really hard thing to ask of you and it'll be worse if you're also trying to keep detailed preparations secret from him. Probably you shouldn't know the specific people who are involved, even, but...do you have any suggestions for what criteria I should use to pick who advises us?" 

" - you need to involve my father. It won't be a civil war, we learned our lesson about that, he wouldn't fight, but when the King announces it he will announce that he's leaving - just because people deserve a choice - and I think more than half of them will go with him. Unless the King is planning to have you blow them up as they walk away he absolutely cannot do this without a united house of Finwë. I bet he'd rather just resort to murder than -" Sigh. "I'm not very charitable about Fëanáro. I don't think he'd prefer to have a giant mess on his hands I think he just consistently fails to think of ways to not have that. You need to involve my father."

Stef nods. (Fëanáro is probably planning exactly that, actually.)

"...We will do something sensible there," he says quietly. Somehow. He doesn't actually know what yet. "Anyway. I think we need to talk about Maitimo-specific precautions and how you fit in there. Because somehow it's ended up being my job to think about that," a fond glance at Vanyel, "–for context, I went to school at the Bardic Collegium, and Bards are unsurprisingly completely about being persuasive in order to get what they want. Exactly the kind of lever I expect Maitimo to push on. I have some experience with the kinds of adversarial scheming humans get up to constantly, which I think the Quendi are far less equipped to guard against, and which it's very important we be clever about now. I don't think we can realistically be cleverer than Maitimo - I know I can't - but maybe we can at least reduce the surface area where he has influence, while still letting him - have some nice things and not be miserable, he's a person and he deserves that even if his current goal is to torture everyone forever." 

(He doesn't mention the spy training, or Katha and the fact that she's still alive and could plausibly be consulted here. He's not sure if Maitimo has that contex; it's possible no one knows whether he does, but trying to find that out will itself reveal it.)

"To start, what were you thinking you'd do?" he says. "If he'd wanted to leave with you immediately, I mean."