"I'm sorry to hear that. I'll try." She goes back to her window. She tries to extend feelers of sympathy information-gathering to see if she can find them. She recoils.

"No - maybe someday, or no - never?"

"More like, you didn't mention that his nasty had metaphysically soaked into the countryside. Ugh." She shakes her head. "I'll try again, this time expecting to have to wade through metaphorical raw sewage."

"Ah. All right."

She wrinkles her nose and tries again. After a while she shakes her head. "His--whatever the hell that was--was messing with me too much. I have no idea if this is the kind of thing I'm likely to grow past before I've gotten strong enough that it ceases to be an issue; I've never seen anything like it at home."

"Don't worry about it. More mountains?"

"Yep." Grind grind grind.

Around midafternoon, the earth quakes and the mountains around Angband erupt, throwing millions of tons of rock, ash, and smoke into the air, near-instantly killing everyone within eight miles, and sending a superheated cloud of smoke and dust racing across the plains of northern Beleriand. The siege of Angband ends.

The fuck?

She has good reflexes, but not that good--she doesn't react to the initial blast in time--she can't destroy the emissions, not quickly enough, but she can--they can clump together and halt their horizontal momentum, they can fall to the ground without killing anyone else--

Most of them can, anyway. She isn't perfect. Not yet.

They're moving. Get back to Aglon, Maedhros says.

Odette seems busy, but she can fly me in in a day or two even if everything's besieged, it's not going to fall in a day. Is everyone north of here dead?

Yes.

Eventually she has gotten all the volcanic matter she usefully can out of the air, and she sends, What the hell was that? Besides the obvious.

We were worried we did not have much time. It seems the Enemy has begun an offensive. 

My cousins Angrod and Aegnor have the heights of Dorthonion, the mountain range north of the spiders and east of here. They settled a bunch of Men in the foothills. Can you get them out?

Yep. They'll probably be confused and alarmed by sudden flight, but that's better than dead. Where can I put them? she asks as she launches herself out the window.

Southern Thargelion. He lights up a stretch of a map. Or here if that'd take you too long, I can have them escorted the rest of the way. Food there will have to be a problem for three days from now, we had cavalry on the plains of Lothlann and there are some survivors coming back in, injured.

I'll see what seems sensible when I get there, she decides.

She doesn't bother trying to muffle the sounds of her approach this time. She can fix her ears when she gets there.

Human villages, more populous than those in Estolad, and with defenses, and currently dusted in drifts of smoke and ash. There's a lake. It looks like many of the people have run to it and jumped in. There are thousands of them.

She can destroy mountains (if slowly) and clear tons of rubble she can lift these people--

I'm on your side! she sends. I'm here to get you somewhere safe!

This causes, if anything, more panic. People turn wildly to look for her.

Well, she's floating in the air, a chunk of her hair mussed wildly from her braid by the supersonic winds, her eyes are glowing silver, and she has an expression of intense rage and concentration on her face. She's...probably not a very calming sight.

And then Maedhros's voice, calm, chilling, loud even though he must be back at Himring. We are evacuating your people to safety in the south. Necessities will be provided there. You have time to find your children, no time to gather possessions. It may be possible to come back for them. Please assemble on the shores of the Aeluin, this may take several trips.

To Odette: Will it?

Er, I'm already floating all of them.

Amusement. I will trust then that you didn't float anyone straight through the ceiling of their house.

I'm floating all of the ones I could see, she amends. Hadn't quite gotten to checking for the ones I couldn't when you entered the conversation.

I did not realize how fast you fly. There should be small children in the houses.

Doors and shutters fling themselves open, and small children--and anyone else who was still in a house--gets collected too. In your opinion would it be tactically better to have me sooner or the men you would need to escort these people?