Thank you.

You're welcome.

And Serik finishes his interdimensional transport spell.

That's a little nervewracking!

He hugs her.

"I'll be fine," he says, "I'll kill him and come back and tell you all about it."

Snuggle. Okay. Kill him good and dead, I love you. Kiss.

Kiss. "I love you too."

And he goes. In the form of a breeze, since that seems hardest to detect, and with his new spell-senses open to see everything around him, whether mind or matter.

He should end up somewhere in the sky within a mile or so of where Beka left from, but he's never tried this before so he isn't totally sure about the details.

Yep, that sure is a dark evil very magical fortress. 

Anybody around who's obviously a god? From the descriptions, it sounded like he'd kind of tend to stand out.

Several! One is definitely the biggest one.

A completely innocuous breeze circles the fortress. Nothing out of the ordinary going on here, nope.

And he reaches for power -

- and he doesn't have enough.

That hasn't happened in two thousand years. But there it is, clear as day. The whole hurricane force of his foundation spell's entire output is insufficient to kill Melkor.

But it's a fairly simple trick, if he can power it.

And pain is not a scarce resource around here.

He spreads out, inhabiting the air currents throughout the entire fortress. And anywhere he finds someone in pain, he picks up the power and feeds it into his foundation. More and more, spinning up into a storm of power ten times, a hundred times as big as he's ever touched.

If he was anyone else it would be insane to even think of trying to handle this much. If he fucks it up, he won't need to trip some kind of divine deadman switch to crumble the continent; it will be in pieces and on fire.

But Serik Tanaikon is very, very good at handling pain magic.

He picks it up.

He - makes - Melkor - stop.

Angband crumbles.

Most of the people in Angband have not done anything to piss him off. He dissolves stone into air, sweeps people away on the breeze - the continent is trying to fall apart too, as predicted; he holds it together -

Sauron instructs the orcs to disobey, inconvenience and if possible destroy whoever is doing this. Then he flees. So do the other Maiar.

Sauron dies. A lot of other Maiar also die, although his Beka wanted him to spare the lady Thuringwethil and it's pretty easy to tell which one that is.

He clears away the remaining rubble of Angband, heals all the prisoners and puts them on the far side of that mountain range over there, and in a moment of spiteful whimsy he levels the former location of the fortress for several miles around and adds grass and wildflowers and songbirds and squirrels and deer and rabbits.

(Lady Thuringwethil laughs.)

That seems to be that, just about. He relaxes his hold on the continent now that it's done trying to fall apart, and glances over it to see if he missed any minor earthquakes. Doesn't look like it, but - what's that going on up there on that icy bit?

People. Walking across it for some reason.

The nearly-negligible tremors that escaped his hold on the continent have shaken loose some snow and there is starting to be an avalanche.

The avalanche pauses.

I don't mean to pry, but what are you all doing here? he inquires. It really doesn't look comfortable.

- trying to get to the other side, someone says without missing a beat.

Oh. Want a lift?

That would sure be convenient.

He decides that it would probably be startling and disorienting for them all to turn into breezes and fly there, so he carefully separates a chunk of ice from its surroundings and picks it up and moves it smoothly through the air, careful to keep everyone steady and shield them against the wind.

Where to? he asks, with a vague impression of the current state of the continent - these guys over here, those guys over there, some underground cities that were a bit of a pain to keep stable, annoyingly perception-alteration-attempting hidden forest kingdom, field of wildflowers on former site of evil fortress.

- let's go with none of the populated places, they might get startled, and not near the evil fortress. 

It's not an evil fortress anymore, I tore it down and put in bunnies. But sure.