And back to exposition.

Eventually they have enough to go off and questions don't seem the best use of time. They'll try to build a building large enough to have electricity inside without being viewable from any distance; everything else he can try at a smaller scale in the workshop. Thank you. We'll let you know once we've built on this.

Good l– good skill.

A distracted nod. Maitimo smiles and holds the door open for Amber. That'll keep us busy for months.

Its origins will also be hard to explain.

Yeah. I was hoping to pass it off as sourceless, like how I as first human showed up with a language and everything so why shouldn't I know random uses of physics. But that wouldn't have flown even before getting into things that only make sense with a civilization behind them.

The Enemy had at his side when he darkened Valinor a monster from beyond the Void. 

You can fly.

He had a what.

No one mentioned that? He sends a mental impression, though it's not really an image because no one really properly saw it -

I mostly just heard 'killed the Trees.'

Um. OK. How do we know it's from beyond anything in particular?

We don't. Our legends say she descended from the darkness that surrounds Arda, the Void, made of nothing. 

That would be terrifying if true. Who started the legends?

All of the lore of the building of Utumno, which is the time period when first she is said to have arrived, was preserved in song, can't really speak to authorship. The Valar corrected us on lots of things but not on that one; maybe because we were right, maybe because we don't know.

And if they didn't correct you because they don't know, there's a pretty good chance they didn't know because it—she?— is an Other.

I thought they didn't tend to be obvious to non-practitioners?

They don't. Problem is, I could imagine that cloud of...anti-light...being a way to stay nonobvious. Maybe I'm just being paranoid; the Enemy would have had to meet her somehow.

Does anyone know why he needed her, or why she needed him?

Supposedly she drinks light. He offered her - I'm not sure, an opening to get into Valinor, a distraction while she ate the Trees - and he promised to give her the spoils of sacking Formenos, too. It is very unlikely that we're mistaken enough about what happened that they never met, or coordinated inadvertently, or anything in that vein - I think -

So they had some kind of an explicit deal, that at least suggests she's not an Other.

Do we know anything about what he thinks she is?

No idea. Non-practitioners having deals with Others is impossible?

It can happen, there aren't a lot of absolutes in magic, it just usually doesn't. And there could be whole categories of exceptions I don't know about. The most common deal case is some kind of a trick, where the human predictably goes beyond the terms of the deal and gets an entertainingly ironic punishment. This sounds like an honest mutual benefit for the both of them.

And if she's what I'm thinking she sounded like, I've never heard of one of them negotiating with non-practitioners.

Well, he is a Vala. And they did fight, after sacking Valinor, the whole north's scarred with it and the locals told us all about it.

Scarred how? I might have to go see what the north looks like. This could be an even bigger deal than something that can fight the Enemy would have to be.

Unless he killed her. That'd be nice.

What do you think she might be?

A demon.

They're among the most powerful Others there are, and they're malevolent. A lot of them have a darkness theme, they're supposed to be very old, and if there are any monsters beyond the Void the larger demons are decent candidates.

They destroy things, and what they destroy can be replaced but not regained. There are very few absolutes. That's one of them. 

I don't know if this is true of your world, but ours is on a time limit. Nothing is perfectly efficient, in a few billion or trillion years the universe runs out of usable energy. Demons are the magical side of that. If free, they eradicate. Eventually, and we're talking far enough in the future that it doesn't matter for practical purposes, everything's gone. This is widely believed to be inevitable.

That does sound a lot like what we know of Ungoliant. The Valar were under the impression that breaking the Silmarils would fix the Trees, though....

Arda's on a time limit for a different reason; it's fated eventually to be replaced by a perfected version. Don't think we have what you have.

And the Valar are probably right? I'd like to say that proves she's not a demon. But it might depend on the mechanics of how the Trees worked and what she did to kill them. If a demon cuts me with the irrevocable thing, it isn't going to heal. But that doesn't mean the blood won't clot before I bleed out, or that it can't be replaced afterward. And if I did lose too much blood, it wouldn't stop a really good transfusion from saving me.