"I've never even heard of a Maia having two parts, it might be possessing that - creature? I would not expect it to be in fighting form, from that image."

"Hmm. I think we'd better be really careful, still. Maybe once we've all had a rest, half of the mages can go out there, Gating to a good distance away - I think Leareth has to be one of them, he can do the weird kinds of Gate - and some of us can stay back here just in case something goes wrong and we need to, er, scheme a rescue, or, um, not that." 

Nod. 

"I don't think there's any reason to have him on the floor inside a barrier when he's out like this and his senses are scrambled too," Melody points out. "I can properly block his osanwë again just in case, since I'm sitting here anyway, and also he won't be tracking much if he somehow does wake up, not without painblocking. Can we get him in a bed?" 

"Yes." He can show her where a suitable room is.

With several different peoples' help, they can get Maitimo into a bed, and then Melody settles herself in for a long vigil. It doesn't take a lot of her Gift to keep him under, so the limiting factor really is going to be how long she can stay awake. 

Savil and the two Vanyel's are syncing up. 

"I'd best not go," she decides. "I'm not much in a fight anymore. And - hmm," she looks at the older Vanyel, "you don't have the problem with Gates anymore? One, we should figure out how to replicate that, but two, probably you should be the one who goes." 

Younger Vanyel eventually takes over keeping an eye on the scrying so the other one can grab some sleep. 

Neither Sauron gets up to much. 

Weird shriveled Sauron curls up to sleep.

Leareth snuggles Belrun to sleep, which doesn't take very long, and thinks about getting up, but he's actually feeling tired as well; his suspicion is that her exhaustion is hitting him too, via the lifebond. Which at least means that she should recover faster. 

Melody redoes some blocks. Fidgets. Eventually asks Elrond if he has any books in Quenya, which she can read fairly fluently. 

He has lots of those.

In which case Melody can keep herself amused by reading while she maintains Maitimo's unconsciousness, which doesn't take a lot of concentration. 

Leareth wakes up a reasonable number of candlemarks later, and checks if Belrun is awake with a gentle Mindtouch that won't wake her if she isn't. 

"Mm?" Snuggle. Awake, technically, but very flopped.

Leareth squeezes her. He'll give her some time to wake up while he checks in with Vanyel, then. :Do we have a plan?: 

:Gating to the, er, strange creature we're seeing in the scrying. Elrond thinks it's possible Sauron is possessing it and using it to search for the Ring, so if we killed it maybe that'd slow him down, and at the very least we could get in some reconnaissance that isn't as risky as going near the actual Sauron. You can do Gates to places you haven't been, right?: 

:Yes, if I have a bearing and distance, and a scrying-image would help: 

:All right, that seems pretty feasible. Our other thoughts are to maybe drop Maitimo in the earlier-timeline Velgarth, and maybe pick up Findekáno first to ask advice, but it seems riskier to do an inter-world Gate when we're not fully sure Sauron can't sense our magic in here:

:Makes sense: 

Leareth cuddles Belrun and waits for her to wake up fully to relay the plan. 

Yawn. :Everything okay?:

:Well, nothing new went wrong while we were resting: 

He passes on the updates. :Vanyel wishes to take about half the mages, in case we run into trouble and need rescuing. I am planning to go. You do not need to, of course, and one argument says you had better not. Then again, your Fetching had already proved very useful:

:Van's got some Fetching, are you expecting to need a lot of it?:

:We have very little idea what to expect: