Karis is still kneeling. It's starting to hurt.

My daughter. What should I say to him? A question not quite in words. Vkandis Sunlord isn't very good at words. 

Wow. That's - all right, hmm, what should Vkandis say to Sauron? 

I am not sure. Tell him 'good luck with that'?

Good luck with that, Vkandis says to Sauron. 

And then the man is blazing, overflowing with divine light, too much for a fragile mortal form to hold for longer than fraction of a second - 

- and a crack opens in the fabric of the world, below and around and inside of where Sauron's disembodied magical shape is floating. Vkandis has a particular connection to the Elemental Plane of Fire. 

(It won't last long, of course. Sauron is a Maia and he knows how to navigate between worlds, he'll find his way back. But it will buy them a little bit of time.) 

- in between snarling frustratedly at Vkandis he pays attention, he can find the ways between planes now but he has to recognize them -

And then everything is spectacularly on fire. It's really a very good concept for a plane, he should emulate it, but he has to get back, first - no inconveniences will matter once Melkor is returned from the Void -

These are not all of the agents he sent, only the ones who were in place six months ago, Karis is thinking to Vkandis; she's given Him access to everything she knows but she ought to at least help him to prioritize. They may know the names of others...

And she starts listing off names to her god. 

All over Karse, various Sunpriests are suddenly having extremely specific premonitions. Literal brief Foresight visions, in some cases. Also some miraculous powers, even for the ones who aren't mages. 

(Vkandis can't keep this up. The gods of Velgarth aren't infinitely powerful, and shield-walling an entire country plus all of the rest will cost Him. But there's no point saving up for anything past the finish line, which they may or may not still reach.) 

And in Iftel, a long way away, the High Priest, their Son of the Sun, has a vision of his own. 

- he wakes up on the floor, disoriented, but only for a moment. 

"We need–" he coughs, clears his throat, sits up with the aid of his very worried assistant. "Pass word. We need Gates to Valdemar. There is - war - betrayal - we need to evacuate them now." 

:We're ready: Vanyel tells Macalaurë. :Telumë is coming across now: 

Things are happening. He doesn't really know anything more specific than 'things are happening'. He can't worry about it; he's done his part for the war raging south of here, dropping Karis off, and now he has to focus, the next four to six hours are going to be critical. 

There are three hundred twelve thousand Quendi volunteers. Enough for the second stage, comfortably; nowhere near enough for the third. Valdemar and Karse might be enough for the third. Valdemar and Karse and Rethwellan and Hardorn - 

- they've told all the Quendi that Mandos is supportive of this plan, and he's supportive of the second part, but privately Macalaurë is not sure that anyone involved in planning the third will be coming back any time soon. 

Telumë is terrified, but the time for hesitation is long past. 

His mages who were still in Arda cross ahead of him, two dozen people, immediately fanning out and falling into position. For some reason everyone has decided that it is 'symbolically' 'appropriate' or something for him to wheel the physical focus holding his baby god across, even though it really doesn't matter who does it. 

He is really badly hoping it makes it across intact. It should, they've got a much better idea of it now - and if they have to start over with stage one, they can just follow exactly the same process and dispense with most of the checks–

He crosses the Gate into Velgarth, stepping into a field of flowers that feels oddly thematically apppropriate for trying to build a god that will stand up for the flourishing of all people everywhere. Quendi are good at flourishing, after all, especially the ones who grew up in paradise. 

The Valdemaran government is already here. Dara sits in Rolan's saddle, well back. Rolan is actually pretty helpful to have around for this part; he has an eidetic memory and can Mindspeak a hundred people at once and help coordinate the exact correct rate of power release for the mages they have to get this done as fast as possible. 

:Telumë, are you ready?: 

Not having Mindspeech has never been more inconvenient. Ready, Telumë thinks loudly as he disactivates the Gate behind him and dismantles it by dint of knocking the pieces apart. Throwing around a lot of magic near an active inter-world Gate is a bad idea. 

Deep breath. He's so scared, but Vanyel passed the point of ever hesitating because of fear a decade ago. 

:Macalaurë, first block now: 

(It's really very convenient that Quendi can suicide on purpose, really, it makes this a lot less...messy.) 

Almarë squeezes Ertuon's hand. Makes her heart stop. It's weird, she's thinking, yesterday almost no one had ever died, in all of history, and tomorrow most people will have died, something they'll all have had in common - Mandos won't be angry, they said Mandos won't be angry, but it still feels like something you might need some time, to put yourself back together from...it feels right now like they might need a lot of time actually -

And four hundred Velgarth mages equipped with endurance artifacts channel the energy released into the empty container waiting to be filled. 

It's going to take a while. 

There's no room for fear anymore. But there's plenty of space left for grief. 

Natti clings to her mother's hand as they sprint through the streets of Haven. "Mama mama where are we going–"

"I don't know!" her mother admits, in between panting for air. "Somewhere safe." 

...Natti's getting tired. She just turned five and she's a big girl now but her legs still aren't long enough to keep up and her heart is pounding out of her chest with exertion and terror. "Mama I can't..."

So her mother scoops her up and runs. There's a glowy magic Gate ahead. Most of the Gates before now meant that bad things were about to happen, but this one isn't at a Temple to Vkandis and maybe it's different. 

There's a funny-looking man with long white hair standing on the other side of it, in a very funny-looking forest, the trees aren't normal trees at all... 

Some of the Valdemarans are hesitating, but Natti's mother doesn't. She dives across the threshold. 

...Elsewhere in Haven, and every other city and town in both Valdemar and Rethwellan with a population above ten thousand, Gates are springing up. (They have lots of extremely disoriented Rethwellani mages near k'Treva Vale, some of whom are finding their balance fast enough to help with this.) 

In towns and villages too small to justify a Gate, village priests and wise-women and anyone with the slightest connection to even a minor local deity is suddenly getting VERY LOUD PREMONITIONS. They need to run. Scatter into the countryside, spread out - along the river if they can, water will both move them quickly and slow down magic. 

The gods are at war. 

Sauron comes back, along with the hundred-feet-or-so of whatever was nearest to him. This causes a forest fire, which doesn't advance his goals but certainly suits his mood. He moves faster. There's no cities to circle, he can kill people as he passes them but that won't get him to two hundred thousand in time - he can, and probably should, head out of these gods' territory altogether, really - he reaches out for the minds of his agents who are mages, to demand a Gate - 

He's going to have to reach pretty damned far to find one of them who's still alive. Under ordinary circumstances it would be pretty hard for locals to kill mages, but when random god-coincidences and flickers of possession and miraculous powers keep happening, and the gods in question know the names of some of his agents, and Valdemar still has plenty of Healers around who have Thoughtsensing, it goes a lot faster. 

Well, on the bright side, if he can get Melkor at all the rest of the gods will be pretty much conquered already, he can tell they're spending everything on this. 

On the less bright side he is INCANDESCENTLY FURIOUS and it is too damned inconvenient to murder people about it and his nearest mage who hasn't died of a bizarre coincidence can't even Gate him to Jkatha, though with Sauron determinedly steering and no need for the mage to survive afterwards they can make it more than half the way there.

They're almost halfway there.

There is a field of waist-high flowers, full of dead Quendi (and some still-alive Quendi waiting for their turn).

Telumë is extremely focused, but a small part of him hangs back, detached enough from the process happening around him to leave room for a thin rime of emotion. Mostly a deep sadness. Not regret, exactly - the math isn't complicated, here, this is one of the most clear-cut and justifiable ways that murdering huge numbers of people to build a god could have gone. But... 

...but Fëanáro's family will be going with the volunteers. Might have already; he doesn't know who's in which block. The King of the Noldor can't ask his people to die for him without going as well, apparently, though Fëanáro himself is still needed for the third stage. It's - understandable - but it means that if they do win, Maitimo will have no friends or family nearby to be with him as he recovers, if he recovers.

(And Telumë is sort of assuming that Maitimo won't want to see him, not for a long time, though he supposes he could be wrong.)