"He didn't seem wildly optimistic but he said he'd try."

Vanyel takes a deep breath and wrestles his attention back to the moment. "Right, we were talking about history in the other Velgarth. Er, Darvi - that's Elspeth's son, the heir - falls down some stairs and dies in 795. Not sure how to avoid it on purpose, it was kind of a freak accident, but. Er, I end up redoing the Web significantly, we should probably do that even sooner as a deterrent to Karse - I could go do it now, in fact. However, we shouldn't redo the vrondi because we think that gave us issues with a lack of mage-gifted trainees. Hmm. King Randale, who takes the throne after Elspeth, ends up with a serious chronic illness. There's a child at Bardic, Stefen, who can painblock for him, but I assume he's not at Bardic yet since he was, hmm, probably about one year old in 792. Hopefully we can figure something else out sooner, though." 

"That Lórien almost definitely can handle."

"Oh, good. We should get my Velgarth's Randi over as soon as possible, then. What else... A lot of drama related to me being a stupid idiot and keeping the conversations with Leareth quiet for fifteen yea–" He stops. "On the advice of the Groveborn, Yfandes is reminding me, so not completely stupid. It sounds like the other Velgarth already addressed that, which avoids a lot of issues." 

"I don't know if you have to worry about this but - if you remember - in my Velgarth Iftel burst open like a horrible pinata and came after me personally."

"Ugh, right, you told me. I'm...not sure I know what we're supposed to do to avoid that, it sounds like bringing in out-of-world magic upset them, but what are we going to do, not that?" 

"Yeah, I don't know, but be aware of it."

"I think in the medium term our best plan to solve that is to follow through on Leareth's original plan but with a better power source. We've got several different magic systems to play with for that at this point."

Bella's Leareth gives him a startled look. "Really? You would help with that?" 

"Your world has people dying constantly and dozens of gods making it unsafe to operate in! I can't evaluate any of the details of the plan, maybe when you give it to the Quendi who can they'll say it doesn't work, but if they think it will, then we should figure out how to do it."

"...I mean, I do not think you are wrong, and I would be almost as grateful for assistance in checking the plan as with the power source. I - just - I suppose I do not have an expectation here of receiving help." 

"I find death objectionable and gods objectionable and if there are already preexisting plans to do something about both those things then I'd be duplicating a lot of work if I didn't even check whether they'll work."

Nod. Leareth still looks, well, about as visibly surprised and pleased as he ever does. 

Vanyel glances between them. "Anyway. There's also Lineas. Leareth, the family-murdering blood magic dagger plan was bad for multiple reasons, but one of them is that Highjorune is over a Heartstone tied to a spell that's stabilizing an earthquake fault and using the power destabilizes it. We nearly found this out the hard way. I assume the dagger's already there, since we thought it dated to Ylyna's marriage, but it should stop being there." 

Leareth's eyes narrow. "Oh. I see. ...In actual fact, it is no longer there, because," he looks over at Bella, "once I found out there were other worlds of magic, achieving the plan at all via invading Valdemar no longer seemed like a good tradeoff, the only reason for the Lineas plot was to secure an alliance with a kingdom neighbouring yours, and Vedric Mavelan is not exactly a trustworthy ally so instructing him not to use it would be a lost cause." 

"...Wow. Glad that got taken care of." A somewhat awed look in Bella's direction. 

"I was neither aware of the Heartstone, nor of the fault-line. Both are very intriguing to know but not, I think, immediately relevant." 

"Okay. I guess the next thing to summarize is what happened in our world. Leareth arrived when doing an experimental Gate of some kind, landed on some squash farmers outside Tirion, heard from them that our succession dispute had escalated to sword-carrying and came to the palace to see if he could do anything. I told him that we'd hoped to deescalate, but failed, so far. I did not tell him that we'd tried a dozen things that should have worked and they'd all been fatally undermined in some impossible way, that it was like we were playing a rigged game, because in my experience complaints to this effect just reflect badly on the people making them. But, uh, he was reading my mind, and he said immediately that we had an evil god trying to drive us into a civil war and he might be able to help. He did protective amulets and confiscated everyone's swords and investigated an attempted arson Melkor had arranged to spark a fight and spoke to the Valar about the situation and then Gated us out. Melkor attacked while we were departing, and then we were ambushed on the other side. We managed to escape to a cave system nearby, where we arranged to transport the rest of the Noldor over and where Leareth began trying to reestablish communications with Velgarth so he could ask for Vanyel's help."

I don't know why I'm even bothering to be surprised that he was reading his mind. remarks Bella privately to Rúmil. I guess it's convenient that nobody took that as an irretrievably hostile first impression.

Most people aren't you. Though they should be.

And meanwhile: 

:Oh. I apologize for my alt reading your mind: Leareth is telling Maitimo privately. :I know why he would have: for one, that Leareth had never met Bella, :and it may, in fact, have been the difference between him succeeding and failing to address your problem, but nonetheless: 

He touches his amulet; without context it looks like an almost absentminded gesture. When given better options you take them. 

"Leareth was captured by Melkor when he Gated Vanyel and Yfandes in from Velgarth. We think in hindsight that Melkor was able to spy through some of the orcs taken prisoner during the war, and then get close enough he could detect and respond to the Gate. At that point we fled, first to Tumunzahar - a Dwarf city east of here - and then to Valinor. Melkor manipulated Leareth into doing some Gates for him. It sounds like from talking to orcs the aim was to figure out how to do them himself, but he didn't achieve that, or to piggyback on ours, but he didn't have a chance to succeed at that either."

"Ainur don't seem to have a strong advantage besides infinite mana and being harder to damage in a mishap at arcana either, except for cancelling it."

"It's really lucky they're so bad at things. Uh, Vanyel, do you want to explain about the Tower -"

"Sure. So - in about 806, after the Senior Circle found out about my conversations with Leareth, I ended up going on a long journey to try to find out more about his past from, um, a non-Leareth source." Apologetic glance at Bella's Leareth.