Meanwhile in Mandos, Loki is bored.

The Loom of Vairë bears a great resemblance to a legendary lost piece of Asgardian technology that his mother, or even Thor, would probably be interested in. He doesn't care at all. There isn't much mischief to be made standing around watching Fëanor and Míriel fix the thing. He goes wandering through the Halls.

Eventually he realizes he's probably made a very wrong turn, because he's in a place that looks much more like an actual prison. In fact, it looks like nothing so much as the dungeons of Asgard where he had once been himself confined, though he knows that his own mind is supplying that particular image. The inhabitants of the cells are hideous and twisted in form, ranging from what seem to be mockeries of elves to creatures of fire with skin like coal, and stranger and more terrifying things besides. Once he's sure he sees a frost giant. Many are clearly mad, throwing themselves against the force-fields that hold them in place, vainly, over and over again.

"I know you're looking for a way out of here," says a voice from behind him, light and mellifluous and yet commanding. "There is none. Trust me, I've looked."

He whirls around. "Who are you?"

The figure is, in contrast to most of those in this area, beautiful. He is shaped like an elf but obviously not one; he seems more like a statue given life by some demon inhabiting it. Every line on his face, every strand of his red-gold hair, is formed with utmost precision. He sits against the wall of his cell, hands and feet bound with golden chain.

"I am no one," he says. "My name was destroyed, unmade in fire long ago. But once, yes, once I had many names. Precious and Abhorred, yes, those were my names, the Lord of Gifts and the Lord of Wolves. Now I am none of that, but I am as I remain: a re-arranger, a shape-shifter, a deceiver and the Lord of Deceivers." He changes his form, looking to Loki's sight exactly as Loki himself had after his mother's death, beaten and disheveled.

Now where did he get that image from?

"I, too, am a deceiver," says Loki, furious, changing his own form to match the stranger's original one, "but you are not my lord."

"Am I not?"

If Loki tries to change back to his original form, he will find that he cannot.

At that moment, a ghostly grey figure, one of the Maiar who serve as the caretakers of the halls, rounds the corner and sees Sauron standing in the open. An alarm is raised immediately, and within moments many grey figures are swarming upon Loki, binding him in chains against all his protests, while the real Sauron, wearing his form, is set free and admonished not to wander this way again.

They've nearly put the last piece back in place on the Loom when the Halls are pierced by a brilliant light.

Four living souls enter, one holding a Silmaril aloft.

"Father!"

"Macalaurë. You're—I knew you weren't dead, but—"

"I've been okay. For a realistic definition of 'okay'."

Well, that's better than he'd expected.

"I guess Mother's message got through. We can leave immediately, although Loki seems to have wandered off."

"Loki? Odinson, of Asgard? You have met him, here in the realm of the dead?"

"Yes, do you know him?"

"He is my brother. I did not know he was with you, else we would have prepared a rescue for two."

"The one I gave my message to didn't seem too keen on reembodying him. He must have failed to tell you intentionally.

"Is it true that he tried to conquer Endórë and killed thousands of people?" (This is not a question she wants to be asking, but she should probably know the answer before assisting in unleashing Loki on the world of the living.)

"Yes. He was banished from Asgard for a while, and fell into Thanos' grasp. He is still my brother, and he died honorably. We would receive him into Valhalla, if it yet stood, and so I will receive him now."

Loki arrives a few minutes later.

"Sorry. I went looking around and got lost. Are these our—"

Then he sees Thor.

"Brother. I'm sorry."

"There is nothing to forgive, brother. You died well."

And so, Maglor carrying the Silmaril before them, they walk out of Mandos onto the silent shore of the Outer Sea, where the android body Wakanda made for Fëanor is waiting. (Loki will have to go without one for a while, but his illusion magic will let him appear to be there.)

Fëanor, disembodied, is lost in the mist of the living world, where crude matter reveals no form to second sight. But his son glows brightly, and the Silmaril brighter still, and they guide him.

Maglor presses the Silmaril into the android body's chest, to guide his father's spirit.

He follows the light into his new body. The new medium onto which his fëa is to be installed is strange to him, not like a body of flesh and blood at all, but with great effort he can bend it to his will.

The moment they make it out, Loki vanishes.

"Loki?"