"- and we have four hundred, now, of the endurance necklaces for Velgarth mages," he says to Telumë. "They still don't stack well with the endurance songs but we will have to try to correct that on the song end at this point, as the song doesn't take months to distribute once we have it down." He pushes a box of jewelry across the table. "If we have six more months I'll push out another iteration but it's not a priority at present.
Next...Telumë has looked at my math, everyone else can look at my math if they'd like, I think with the latest modifications for drawing mage-power from the Silmarils we can do the first stage of the god plan without blood power. In light of that we might want to do it now, in Arda where the doing doesn't potentially tip Sauron off; we might kill it, Gating it over, but if so we'll learn something from that, too. This also implies lower necessary casualties from later stages, probably about five percent lower for the next stage, two percent after that. We've got a couple of leads on ways to eke even more out of it, but we're not talking about much more.
Research teams are not yet sure of all their math, though I think we're more optimistic than we were six months ago that if Sauron forces our hand it is net worthwhile to go ahead, and we're definitely more confident in the first stage."
He looks to Telumë. He has been extraordinarily focused and professional in every one of their interactions for the last six months and has at no point betrayed the slightest interest in whether Telumë decided to keep Maitimo alive.