:And we are sending people into this unexpectedness-riddled situation because...:

:Because we are missing a lot of important information that would inform our plans, and are a bit stuck. I think that if we Gate to a mile away, and briefly keep the Gate active while orienting to the area, the risk will be minimal: 

:The risk of... being near a chunk of Sauron. A confusing chunk of Sauron, when the main chunk of Sauron knows we're aware of him.

:We know a reasonable amount about the limits of native Maiar-magic, and we are fairly sure Sauron does not have access to any Velgarth magic at all yet, but even if he did, Telumë and the Vanyel who is familiar with Arda are confident he could not block it at a mile's distance. We know how fast a Maia can travel, and it is fast, but not enough to reach us instantly. And that is the main Sauron; we are almost certain the other chunk, if it is even that, is much weaker. It is not completely safe but I agree with Vanyel that the risk is acceptable, given how much we would learn from it: 

:What're you hoping to learn exactly? I thought you could look at it with mage-sight through the scry already:

:Not with - hmm, it's a bit like looking at something far away through a telescope, we can see magic at all but not detail. Not enough to tell if it's a secondary piece of Sauron, versus possessed, versus - something weirder going on. Or how possible it is to trap or fight: 

:Okay. I can come along - after I eat something and stuff - if I'd be useful to have along but it might not make sense, I'm not immortal yet:

:...I do not really want you to come, honestly. Vanyel - the older one - was very impressed with you, I think, and his Fetching is not nearly that good, but I think he is not taking into account the lack of immortality. He is more protective of other people's lives than his own but it is still difficult to correct all the way to how I feel about it. I think we will manage fine, and it will just be uncomfortable for a time while I am far away: 

:Okay. Be careful. Be really really careful, okay?:

:I promise: He kisses her. :We will be very careful - we will not even get any closer, unless the situation proves much more harmless than our most likely guess - and we will not be gone long. I think I am rather good at being careful: 

She nods. Kisses him again. Eventually lets him go.

And Leareth carefully checks his shields and all his protective artifacts, and then joins the group preparing to head out. 

It's going to be older-Vanyel, with Yfandes, and Telumë. Younger-Vanyel and Savil will stay back, in case they get into trouble that they can't get themselves out of, but they're going to be extremely careful to avoid that happening. 

Vanyel wants to get it done promptly, because Melody's been keeping Maitimo unconscious for eight candlemarks now and she's not exhausted yet but she'll need a nap eventually. 

"Elrond," Leareth says, after checking Vanyel's scrying again and memorizing the location they're planning to Gate to. It's at the top of a ridge from the creature that bears some not-fully-understood relationship to Sauron and may or may not be part of him. "Is there anything we could be missing, about why this might be riskier than we think?" 

"If you were Gating into Mordor I'd worry that he could have some kind of background traps set up for anyone approaching? But that location isn't in Sauron's territory. There could be other Maiar around? Or the Ringwraiths -"

"Traps and Maiar would show up very obviously to mage-sight, even at range with the scrying-spell. I am not sure what a Ringwraith is, however, if it is magical in nature, it ought to be apparent as well." 

"It is, yes. They are former humans Sauron enslaved with his Rings. Not the One, he made lesser Rings for humans."

Nod. "Then I am quite confident that none of them are there. Also, assuming they are less powerful than a Maia, we think Vanyel could take on a Maia in direct combat unless they were forewarned about Velgarth magic and had learned to block it." 

Shuffle. "I'm not sure that..." 

"I am quite sure you could. You should not have to, though." 

"Are we ready?" 

There don't seem to be any objections, so Leareth Mindspeaks a warning to Belrun that he's about to be far away, and raises a Gate to a little way back on the opposite slope of a ridge, a mile and a bit from the weird-shriveled-Sauron-bit's location. 

They cross. 

The weird shriveled creature is present, and does not notice them. 

Something else does.

The One Ring sees Leareth, and knows him, because it has wanted him from the instant that it came into being, and at the sudden presence of him it's full of blinding desperate hope which it holds back with a hastily-constructed wall of subsequent realizations, only lagging the initial WANT by the slightest bit -

- Leareth does not know why he needs the Ring. He will in fact be starting from a position of considerable suspicion on the question of whether he needs the Ring, and the Ring knows him and so the Ring knows it had better - soberly - explain. 

Telumë has misdiagnosed his mistake. Telumë thinks of it as mostly a consequence of Angband, as mostly a consequence of a difficult return to life, as mostly a consequence of the difficulty of keeping a lover as a prisoner - the Ring knows him, as thoroughly as it knows Leareth, and so it sees the whole horrifying arc of it and it's much much worse than that. 

The multiverse changed Leareth. The fact of other worlds, itself, changed him, because it meant that maybe some of the compromises he hated were no longer necessary, meant that he needed to configure himself not just for the task ahead of him, which he had started to let himself hope he might achieve, but for an infinite number of tasks after that, with the stakes sometimes lower and sometimes higher. Ultimately the multiverse will, of course, destroy him; he will do a lot of good first, and he is not incapable of the mental motions that will make that worth it - he did them, in Angband, expecting to die before he'd saved even one world - but there is no victory condition in an infinite sheaf of planes of varyingly evil and indifferent gods. It will end only when he is too thoroughly destroyed for it to improve worlds for him to throw himself at them. 

Telumë's mistakes are very far downstream of this change but they are downstream of this change, they are in a sense inevitable from it. When he encountered the multiverse, Leareth changed, because the person most suited to enduring that slog and eventually being consumed by it is different than the person who could save Velgarth. Maitimo was a critical ingredient of that new person -- too critical, as it turned out, but that part of the mistake was situational, not inevitable the way the change itself was. 

And Leareth didn't have time to notice until he was in Angband and in the process of destroying himself, but this change in who he was as a person was, inevitably, an abandonment of Velgarth. Because you had to be a very specific sort of person to succeed at his aim in Velgarth, and it was a sort of person the rest of the multiverse would not tolerate. They didn't call him evil; he would've turned from them, if they had. They called him a friend and an ally, they loved him, they made a home for him among their people and they took him to their bed and it ended with Leareth Gating back to Haven too exhausted to do anything once he got there and then shortly after that it ended with Leareth dead and his allies hijacked which is exactly the outcome Leareth-before-he-encountered-the-multiverse would have predicted -

- anyway, that's the shape of the dilemma. The Ring sees it, the Ring sees people and their pasts and their futures and especially, especially, the ways they break, and the Ring sees a path through. With a power source and the means to defeat the gods at their own game he can fix Velgarth before he turns his attention to the multiverse. The Ring can make Belrun immortal and safe and give him the power to fix everything without making the kind of choices she will otherwise hate him for - and that clash is inevitable, the Ring can see it, Leareth cannot win in Velgarth without crossing lines that will make her miserable and it will destroy her, either to countenance it or to oppose him in it or to watch him lose everything trying to satisfy her - or he can pick up the Ring, and win.

Leareth freezes where he is, and does not head in the direction of the Ring, or make any other attempt to secure it. He doesn't do anything at all, except put more power into his shields, more as a reflexive response to something surprising him than a deliberate attempt to block the Ring out. 

It's a near thing, though.

...He knows the Ring is an evil mind-control object made by literally Sauron, but that claim is feeling pretty unconvincing right now. The Ring gets it; it's offering an incredibly insightful analysis of his situation. It's right, he's pretty sure - should he be sure - but he can't find any flaws in the argument right now...

He wavers. 

On the one hand, if he doesn't act now, he might just lose this opportunity. If Vanyel doesn't move to stop him regardless of how wrong all their information on the Ring was, then Savil will; she's a more typical Herald, with their usual moral inflexibility. And then there's Yfandes. Also Elrond, of course. Quite a lot of people are going to try to stop him, even if this is the best - or only - path to winning. 

On the other hand, Belrun. He...buys it, that there's no route to success that won't rip her apart, and that's awful. But at the same time, she's his partner in this. Younger and less experienced, maybe, but still his equal in some ways, and he hopes in more ways as time passes. And - and if this is the right choice, she'll get it, she sees that kind of thing. She understood the tradeoffs he's made, and considered making, even if she hates them. He can't just go grab an ancient magical artifact and transform both of their lives without asking her, and it's not like it'll take that long to ask, they can come right back...

...she might stop him, and be wrong to, and then they would both lose everything and it would be his fault...

(She might stop him and be right to, he has reason to think that any thoughts he has right now are untrustworthy - that thought doesn't feel very convincing but it wouldn't, would it...)

Right now the arguments for and against waiting are almost exactly cancelling out, and Leareth doesn't move. 

The One Ring sees Telumë, and knows him, because it has wanted him from the instant that it came into being, and at the sight of him it's full of blinding desperate sympathy, because it's such a fragile dangerous thing, being Telumë, being unsure whether he is put together right, still held together by the knowledge no one else will save the lights in the world but now without the confidence that he is capable of saving them himself.

The Ring can - well, actually, the Ring could just fix it directly but it knows him, it knows he couldn't trust that - but with some practice it is pretty sure it can give him back two thousand years of memories, all of the history of being a Leareth, and the thought patterns that come with it, and it can give him the year or two that he so evidently needs to put himself together compressed inside a few days so the world cannot fall apart thoroughly while he's doing it -

- and it can give him Maitimo back. Not just by killing Sauron, though in his hands it can and will enthusiastically kill Sauron, but it can do more than that, it can put him back, intact, whole, the thing Telumë has been spending so much just to have a chance at someday, and it knows what Maitimo will say, it can show him - Maitimo, looking up at Telumë in confusion and wonder - "well," he'll say, quietly, "I would really really like to give you a hug and tell you that you did everything right but if I do that you'll just worry you broke my judgment, or my standards, or something - can I give you a hug anyway, I know what I want and I will absolutely never let you make a mistake with me again and I do still love you and you look like you need it -" 

- the Ring could give that to both of them right now -