Oh well. We can collect dozens of spirits, it'll just take time. You free?

I am.

They'll end up with ice vastly overrepresented in the arsenal. At least a couple elementals will inevitably be suited to setting the shape of the projectiles, and after that keeping ice frozen is a simple enough trick to get boring quickly.

If me showing up doesn't convince Maitimo to back down, are you going to want to be at the rescue?

Will it be useful?

Yes. If we were spending prep time differently I could have ended up redundant.
I mean, for practical purposes you and Irissë haven't really specialized yet. Do you want to personally be the one effecting the rescue? If it were someone important to me I wouldn't want to leave it to other people.

Maitimo's not important to me.

Blink.

You mean he isn't when you're not mind-controlled, she doesn't ask. The ring is a bit of a dead giveaway but saying so would imply he lied.

Oh. Well, the same goes for a personal enemy who needed rescuing, to be honest. Though that comes up less. You seemed more likely to have an opinion on who should go than Irissë.

I'd like to go. I don't want to talk with him, so if that's part of the plan it should be you and Irisse for that part.

It isn't. I'll be talking to him ahead of time, but alone because they don't know yet that anyone else can cross back and forth.

In that case I'll go for the fight if there is one, no problem.

Good to know.
Or maybe I shouldn't have asked yet; for all I know he can deduce that you'll be there just from talking with me.

He knows me well enough you can assume that given any information about the constraints I'm under he'll know what I'll do. I don't think he'll deduce your general capabilities just from talking to you. Convince you to tell him, more likely.

I would be very surprised if he pulled that off. Maybe if the cat was already out of the bag on magic.

I'd be surprised too, but not very surprised.

Well, now I want to see what he'll say. I would be a lot more effective with their help, and knowing would help them propose plans against the Enemy involving me, but I already know both of those and don't expect to tell. I guess we'll find out.

Don't trust him.

There is vanishingly little risk of that.

He returns to ice spirit capture in meditative silence.

It takes less effort than time. Eventually they'll accumulate somewhere less than a hundred very frozen ice bullets.

And they get to work on that while she heads off across the ocean again.

Flying is, whatever else is happening at both endpoints, still fun. 

This time she knows roughly where the Feanorians are in advance. All the elementals can stay with her while she walks up making no effort to hide, but the giant bulk of water would be a bit obtrusive.

"Hello!" she calls out when someone inevitably spots her from an impossible distance.

Declare yourself.

I'm Amber. I'm here to talk to Maitimo about– something that probably isn't classified but I don't know who I'm talking to.

If she changes direction to walk more directly toward the sentry, well, they can overestimate her vision.

Your oath that you don't serve the Enemy?

I swear on my name and my blood that I have never willingly or knowingly served the Enemy.

It comes through with the same weight and the same absence of thunderclap that some of the statements during the demesne rituals did, despite not being spoken aloud.