Leareth is lying in a stone room, and nothing in particular is happening right now, and he is mostly succeeding at not having any thoughts. It's a fine moment. He is not, literally this second, being tortured. This is not useful at all for predicting what the next moment is going to be like, of course, or for whether 'quiet stone room' has any particular resemblance to reality, but Leareth has gotten pretty good at not being curious.
All is quiet in her Haven.
:Everything go smoothly?: Sayshen Mindspeaks to her about five seconds after she's back. :I know you can look after yourself but I was still nervous:
Everything went fine. I got to meet some of alternate Fëanáro's kids. I still don't know exactly what they're trying but I guess I can be surer they're doing the right thing than they can be of me, so hopefully I'll get briefed after they can be less paranoid.
Bella will play with cute foals, and heal people, and see acute Mindhealing patients, and get Rúmil to sing to her over the earcuff, and make sure Ninquë is all right -
- and check in with Vanyel at the appointed time.
:Almost everyone. It was over pretty fast. We, er. We lost the Maia who was helping us with the weapon:
:Reckon we can tell you more about the plan now, at least in person - I would've wanted to keep the details from your Leareth at least until pretty recently, but then you seemed very sure of him. Anyway, it got Melkor and all of his Maiar but it also got Olórin, who was channeling energy for it. We're hoping he's not permanently gone. But not sure yet. Also I guess we have some mundane injuries, there was some fighting with the orcs, and we have other rescued prisoners. If you wanted to come do some healing:
Vanyel isn't sure what the end of that sentence is. He waits. :I'm sorry: he sends finally. :He knew it was very risky - we did as much shielding as we could but still... We can tell you more once you come across. Um, I don't know if your teleport works if the last place you teleported to in Angband is now buried under rubble...?:
Yes, of course, he can do that, he keeps forgetting this is higher bandwidth than the communication-spell he's used to.
They're on a plain with some mountains in the distance, black smoke and ash in the sky above them, at the base of what now looks like an ancient crumbled fortress. The Noldor army is swarming toward the ruins of Angband.
Coming.
She shows up a minute later after making sure it is known where she's going.
Vanyel is sort of slumped on the ground, looking incredibly tired. There's a weird cube-maze-y metal artifact on the ground, a dozen yards in front of him. It roughly matches the shape of what she saw in his odd shielded bag.
"Okay. I can keep that up nearly indefinitely by tapping patients unless they need two spells."
"Let me know if you're getting low and we can circle some other people around for you to tap, too."
And to Vanyel - Leareth might be worth bringing in on determining whether there were any major Maiar not in the fortress or major activities planned elsewhere -
:I hadn't gotten the impression he was particularly included in Melkor's recent strategic planning, but sure, might be worth trying. We'd have to ask Bella to teleport us there, I think, I don't really feel inclined to bring him back here:
I mostly meant the functional one. My people do not have any experience getting the orcs to tell us what was going on here yesterday. All we'd need from the not-functional one is which Maiar he knows of and if that stresses him out we can get it from the orcs too.
:...You know, that makes more sense as a plan. Bella can ask him over the earcuff and then probably pull him here. I can Truth Spell the orcs if you want? I'm tired but that doesn't take much energy:
That's probably a good idea. Just - want to make absolutely sure we haven't missed anything, that it's over -
:No, of course, I know: He makes an abortive attempt to stand up. :...I, er, can't really move, but if you bring me orcs I'll question them. I'm sure I haven't done that sort of thing as much as Leareth but I've done it some. And you can ask Bella about getting him here in person:
(Orcs who are presumably oathed to hate and never ever help Quendi, but Vanyel is visibly not Quendi.)
Ugh, this is kind of awful actually, but - he lays some coercive Truth Spells and starts asking about Maiar deployments, whether any Maiar who are often around in Angband weren't seen recently, whether they knew about offensives planned elsewhere - troops and weapons kept elsewhere - whether they observed any indirect signs of such, like supplies being moved around...