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.
Do you want to borrow my earcuff and talk to the other Vanyel? He asked.
I wouldn't have exactly suggested in precisely this frame that if you wanted to borrow my ability to do telepathy stuff to anybody in five worlds as though at touch range just by knowing who they are you could let me read your mind but since you already did it I can acknowledge it really didn't hurt.
:Fair enough. I had not even considered that axis, to be clear - I mostly was thinking that it matters a great deal to me if you can help my alt be okay again, and showing you my mind seemed to be a prerequisite. Anyway, yes, I would like to borrow the earcuff and speak with Vanyel:
Leareth thanks her and takes it and tries to find the Vanyel from his alt's world.
:I did, er, I do. I had some clarifying questions about the shielding work you sent over. Also, um. I heard you let Bella read your mind and I'm really surprised:
:It makes sense that you are surprised. She has demonstrated significant trustworthiness, and I find myself in a situation where the upside to trusting her is high. Also her powers mean that if I am to work with her at all, which I am kind of committed to since she rescued my alt from Angband and possesses the only means of contact with you, she could read my mind with or without my consent, so there is hardly much protection in refusing. Also, I expected that her having true information on me would lead her to cooperate more rather than less, which it did:
:Hmm:
(That really does convincingly sound like Leareth. Then again, Leareth is the one they should most expect that Melkor could pull off... He's not sure.)
He asks some questions about magic. Leareth continues to convincingly sound like himself. At one point, he says he needs thirty seconds to look something up.
Vanyel takes a deep breath. :Maitimo?:
:Talking to the 'Leareth' over there. He - sounds like him, a lot, but I had the thought you might be able to tell better. Or learn more from it in general. Want to talk with him after? It's direct, not relaying through her:
Then Vanyel will suggest it to the local Leareth, who's a bit confused but agreeable to it.
And Leareth takes Vanyel's careful instructions for trying to reach Maitimo, who he hasn't met any version of, and gives it a go. :Are you hearing this?:
Leareth. I can hear you. Thank you for talking Vanyel through your magic research; I can imagine that the position your world is in with respect to this war must be very frustrating.
Leareth starts taking notes.
:You are welcome. I can only be grateful that you have Vanyel there - more, a Vanyel with whom my alt had an additional almost fifteen years to speak. He seems very clever and competent:
He's wonderful. I have been reminding myself that I have a deeply unusual sample of humans and probably they are not all like the two of you but if they are we are quite outmatched.
...Wow.
:Most people are not like Vanyel, tragically. The Vanyel in my world is eighteen years old, and it is already quite apparent that he is exceptional. I can see why the other Leareth invested so many years and so much effort - and costly signs of good faith - in attempting to build trust with him. You met another me, you must have noticed that trust is not something I do easily:
Sigh. :Most people are not like me either, and - that might be a good thing, I am not sure:
I cannot think of anyone with your resources it would have been better to have land on us. Melkor had driven the factions of the Noldor to the brink of a civil war despite our repeated best efforts to mend bridges and it hadn't even occurred to us, that that was the sort of thing that might be enemy action, enough bad luck in the wrong places -