"Yyyyeah that's weird."

"We sent some people to the parley. He was offering us a year to evacuate the continent and a Silmaril to hold the position we evacuated to, and this was the week we besieged Angband and before we had any expectation of successfully holding it. He betrayed the parley and tried to take them prisoner and ended up killing them all, of course. I shouldn't have let anyone die for additional confirmation that he was terrible but - it is sometimes useful to have a concrete example in persuading other Elf and human nations that whatever terms he offered them he does not mean."

"A Silmaril?"

"The delay in leaving Valinor was caused by a nasty little trick of the Valar's, which is that Elves who live there long enough become partially dependent on the magic that sustains the continent. And by a separate concern that I'm inclined to call incompetence rather than a trick, which is that they hadn't invented the Sun and Moon yet and Endorë was entirely dark. So my father invented a way of containing Valinor's magical light and restructuring it for our own use. It would have sufficed as a light source for the continent and prevented our gradual decay-by-way-of-dependence. They are three gemstones called the Silmarils, and they were a rather extraordinary undertaking and have many other uses. Melkor stole them; he wears them on his head, apparently, despite the fact they burn evil things and are probably singeing him constantly."

"Melkor is a weirdo."

"A competent enemy with his capabilities would probably have destroyed us, so I've never really thought to complain. But - yup."

"Why isn't he competent?"

"Maybe I should say 'a competent enemy who wanted to destroy us, and had his capabilities, would have destroyed us'. The Valar in general are - extraordinarily indifferent about how long things take, and I think Melkor, given his conduct in Valinor, prefers fomenting internal strife and chaos and evil which then bring about his desired ends to directly going about them, and most of his magic takes a long time to build up to flexible, powerful use."

"So he's killing time as evilly as possible before - something?"

"Probably, yes."

"Eugh."

"I won't look back on these four centuries very fondly. But - I think we can do this. I think we can end it."

"Uh, anyway, there's a small manageable risk in a rushed spell that I'll get too artistically accustomed to using certain metaphors or something and won't be able to do as good a non-rushed version but that seems like a reasonable tradeoff."

"I think so. While you work on that we'll work on avenues of getting more information."

"Okay. What should I know to start out?"

"I'm having a dozen different people write down everything they know and then compile you a list."

"Snazzy."

"Anything we can do for you in the meantime? I realize it's terribly unfair to ask for this much of your time when your own world is so very recently saved even presuming the news is good when it arrives."

"I wasn't going to complain," he says. "I don't have anything I urgently need to get back to."

"Nonetheless."

"I have very little idea what to do with the offer, honestly, I don't have expensive tastes or whatever."

Nod. "And is there anything else you wanted confirmation on before you do it -"

"...nothing from you folks, no. I would really like a way to talk to other people safely but I appreciate that even if you're completely on the up and up that doesn't imply good diplomatic channels with everybody else that I can casually use."

"We have channels with Doriath for urgent tactical information. With Valinor not even that. Relations are good with all the Dwarves, but I take it you've already had the chance to speak to some of them."

"Yeah, they were great."