"We cannot straightforwardly do that but a Vala could. Why would that not completely solve the problem?"

"Nothingness is not the same as emptiness. Nothingness also destroys - distance. People have tried to use nothingness to make tunnels but it doesn't do tunnels - it does gates, which are great, but work by making there be nothing between point A and B. Our planet is shrinking."

"Huh. Do you have guesses about whether other peoples can use your magic, or only people from your world - are you even confident it will work here at all -"

"I would expect it to work but I obviously haven't tried it. I don't have a strong expectation about whether it's human only but you have to attach to a nothingness spread point first thing."

Nod. "What sorts of things can the magic do?"

"It's purely destructive but that's more useful than it sounds, you can destroy diseases even if you're not very good at it and you can work your way up to more abstract. And gates."

"Is a gate how you got here?"

"No, I did something experimental where I weakened the barrier between worlds, on the hypothesis that there was such a thing, and surprise surprise."

"There is such a thing!"

"Apparently!"

"What are your next steps now that you're here?"

"Since the place is inhabited and you'd object to it disappearing I stick around long enough to determine what else you've got that might help, bring it home, and try again."

"Can you set up some people here with your magic before you go, presuming that works?"

"Not if you don't want the place disappearing. Like I said, you have to set up at a disappearance point. I'm still attached to one at home but I don't want to overdo it."

"We'll consult on how to balance our risks, then. Doom this world but have access to other ones, some of which might have magic that can reverse what was done..."

"Yeah, exactly."

"What happens to people who are in a place that gets - disappeared?"

"They're gone. Used to only happen as part of really extreme total warfare - set up a point over a town, connect a few mages to it - but it happened. Then one of the disappearance points that was just aimed into the ground, wasn't even over an aquifer, who cares - punched through the planet and obliterated half a city and started a war and then it got a lot worse a lot faster. Things are lighter than they were when I was a kid, there's that much less planet."

"You said we'd have a few millenia? If we used it only once, and then stopped entirely -"

"Uh, yeah. We've been using magic pretty indiscriminately for millennia and it took till last year to get through the planet."

Nod. 

"I mean I do want to be a little circumspect about destroying an inhabited planet even if it would take a while."

"Not moreso than us, I imagine, we live here. But it might be worth it to destroy Melkor. I think in a few thousand years we could figure out enough even if we don't find promising other words - that's long enough the Valar might even act -"

"The Valar is or are...?"

"The -" creators "of the world."