They ventured out, in that first month, only a few hundred yards onto the Ice. People were going to die – Findekáno knew it, Nolofinwë knew it, the host now dug in on the shores of Araman knew it very well. But no one has died yet, and in a way it paralyzed them, waiting for it. They inched along the sheer ice faces and rolled logs across to test where it can bear the weight and were painstakingly, excruciatingly, careful. 

Climbing the ice was not in fact particularly difficult – not as difficult as Findekáno had imagined it, certainly. They had broken down the wagons into thick ice picks. You lit a fire at the bottom of a cliff and left the ice picks in it, to absorb the heat, so later they would slide like butter into their positions on the cliff. You stood there and held them, heat eating its way through your mittens and hand, and waited for the ice to freeze again around your new addition. And then you climbed down, grabbed another, climbed up, did it again. They were testing the best pick shapes and the best distances; the cliffs on the lip of Araman were studded with climbing holds, and with climbers.

“At this rate -” Findekáno said to his father -

“It would take us ten Years,” his father said grimly. “We won’t proceed at this rate, we learn more every day.”

On the one hand, this isn't the worst-case scenario. On the other, it's bizarre enough to not even have made the list of possible outcomes. The direction of down changed, but so did the geography. Upward in open air, downward next to an icebound cliff face, there really should have been some detectable change in between. The pilot sends a command and the sphere starts slowing down, but too slowly. It deforms and tears, gushing out the contents and leaving her drenched in warm but rapidly freezing water and sprawled in full view of anyone who happens to be looking.

And that's when someone comes crashing out of the sky.

Well, not crashing. More like oozing out of the sky, like she'd been inside a very large raindrop that had burst, and the descent is slow enough that a few thousand people have crowded onto the ridge to watch and a few dozen (he notices who they are, he should commend them later) have run over to try to help.

He hurries towards them.

Regardless of the method of exiting the sky, being in this sky in the first place is the main problem.

A look shows that yes, this really is some place entirely different, unless someone went to the trouble to transplant a location's worth of spirits. And none of these people are practitioners. The people who just saw someone ooze out of the sky. Brilliant. She stands, a bit shakily, and takes the mask off. Time to breathe air, apparently.

"Where am I?"

She doesn't speak Quenya. Inconvenient. Is she Avari? Did she get here from Endorë? Doesn't seem likely, and hardly makes it easier to talk to her, and also where would they have learned to do that?

"You're going to freeze," he says forcefully, and projects the image that'll communicate that. "Come get inside and undressed and then we'll learn languages."

Freezing isn't actually a risk, but you don't demonstrate magic in front of non-practitioners. Not if they might not know too much yet.

Not that this man is a typical non-practitioner. "What was that? Telepathy?" Hopefully it works both ways. She follows him inside.

Being soaked in cold water can kill you within an hour, there've been some close calls. Undress, he thinks anxiously, keep the lampstones near you for heat, I'll get as many blankets as I can and then we'll fill this tent with people to keep it warm.

Undressed in a tent full of people. Great. If this is how they heat places, they're almost as unprepared as if they had been the ones appearing out of nowhere.

And it is a lot less unconfortable when not actively freezing. She starts removing clothes, much less anxious than he is.  I don't suppose you can hear me? (If there's a trick to this, the answer's no. Maybe there isn't one.)

Oh, so she does talk. Yes, I can hear you. 

"How," no, how are you doing this?

It's an important question. Maybe he's already been brought into the fold by someone else and knows enough that it's safe to warm up more directly.

Everyone can do this. She's worrying about whether it's safe to tell him something - what? Who is she?

I've never met someone who can do this. Amber has no idea he heard anything she didn't italicize. Where are we?

"Araman," he says grimly. Not a safe place. I take it you did not mean to land here.

No. I don't even know what went wrong to bring me here.

Then I suppose you are one step behind us; I can identify precisely what I did wrong, though it's a long list. He calls something through the door, and four or five more people file in to press around the room and warm it.

You're not here by choice either?

 We'd planned on leaving.

That cliff... you're trying to leave that way?

Grief, anger, bitterness - We had boats.

I mean, that direction instead of the opposite one? If it's this place that's dangerous.

It's a bit complicated. We need to get to the other side, so we have to take the ice path. We're still learning how to do it safely, and won't leave until it's safer. But we can't go back.

Can I ask what you're getting away from?

Long story.

I'll take that as  a no.

My name's Amber, by the way, I don't think I said.

Findekáno. You hadn't. Where are you from?

A city called Toronto, but I'll be surprised if there are any places we both know.

If this were a book, the person in her position would be checking the sky for recognizable constellations. As it happens, that's unnecessary. The night sky here is missing something rather more obvious. The half-moon should be the same anywhere on Earth, there's no visible moon here, and also everyone's telepathic.

That isn't known to me, no. Cuivienen?

No. Earth?

No. Well. Do you have the means to go back?

No. As far as I know, no one has ever managed to get home from this far away.

Discouraging. If it helps, no one has ever done what we're attempting, either.

It does, a bit.

How long is this ice path you're taking? Where I'm from, when people explored the Arctic a lot of them died, and they did have ships.

Two hundred miles by the sea route; the land will be a little longer. Three hundred, maybe, until we're back into tolerable weather?

You're going to walk three hundred miles across an arctic wasteland. Unmapped arctic wasteland.

We are mapping it first.

Well that's less suicidal then, but are you even remotely equipped for this?

Does it look like it? We were not planning to do it, and can't generate the supplies out of nowhere. We're learning and trying.

If whatever it is on this side is unsolvable enough that the ice is the better option... then they could definitely use some help. Provided all magic use can be hidden from anyone who doesn't already know, of course. How much did you see when I arrived?

You were surrounded by very hot water, in the sky. The water rapidly cooled, and changed shapes, and softened somewhat your landing, and at that point rapidly cooled to the temperature of the Ice.

You can see temperature? People back home can't. 

(And it sounds like Findekáno didn't see enough to snap through to knowing about the magic. Good; if he had then everyone else probably would have too.)

Amber briefly pictures telling her heat elemental to warm up this tent; it'd be a lot more effective than body heat. It's a pleasant image, and probably manageable without the other freezing people knowing who or how. The spirit can follow commands complex enough that wouldn't be suspiciously warming up wherever she is, and of course no one else could see it....

She's thinking about heat, which is understandable, and whether people will be bothered if she somehow - heats the room? They can't see heat, but they can produce it?

We can see temperature. Warmth would be lovely.

Wait, he knows that's an option?

How much of what I think have you been hearing?

Most of it? I'm not pressing you, but you're being quite open. Was that not deliberate?

Don't think of an elephant. There are much worse things to fail to not think of, so don't think of an elephant.

I've been trying to send maybe a sentence at a time, and didn't know you were getting more than that.

Elephant.

Ah. I will stop listening, if you like. 

We don't share a language otherwise. Would you still hear the things I mean to send?

I heard that. I can try to only filter for things you're specifically sending me. I can also probably learn your language.

I should learn yours, since there's a plural number of people who speak it.

The bigger problem is if I'm broadcasting whatever I think and it looks indistinguishable from someone doing it on purpose. That would be pretty likely to go horribly wrong. Because of the elephant.

What is that creature? And mental privacy can be taught - and is taught, to children - with practice. I can explain it to you now.

Please.

That's an animal from Earth. I'm using it to avoid thinking of things I shouldn't say out loud. It's working?

I see the animal. We probably have something similar, I just didn't travel as much as Irissë. He looks at one of the other people quitely crowding the room for heat reasons, sends the elephant. She nods.

Yes, he muses, Valinor has most animals somewhere. Okay, so what you need to do is think of a way of delineating public and private thoughts. Some people do this visually, spacially, with other senses...

Assuming the delineation is supposed to be a metaphor, spatial works as well as anything else. Private thoughts can stay safely on the correct side of the cranium, and public ones can go here, held out on display or pushed from one person's forehead to another's.

I can see the process you're choosing to delineate your thoughts. You want to go higher up - the fact you delineate is in the private side. The fact you think at all is in the private side.

It's weird to think of the fact of thinking as secret, but it does make some sense. Thought takes place physically in the private space, after all.

Does everyone just get used to doing this all the time?

It becomes instinct, yes. Most people pick it up in ten, twenty years? I've never known anyone to take more than fifty, and I have some relatives who are thoughtless and temperamental. Bitterness, grief, anger.

It takes years? If your year is anything like the same length as mine, a decade is a long time. Let alone five.

Not for everyone. Just - even if you're bad at it, you'd definitely have it down by then. You are older, motivated, you'll likely learn quickly.

I'd better. Wouldn't want to pick between broadcasting every thought out loud and spending half my life as a hermit.

Half your life?

Well, you did say those numbers were on the long end of the range.

You misunderstand the source of my confusion. Are you that certain your death is imminant?

Imminent? I hope it's far enough off that I wouldn't put it that way. But a hundred years would be a very long life span. Is your year just that much shorter than mine, or are people here immortal as well as telepathic?

We do not die, save by violence or grief.

Humans get about three score years and ten, or eighty if they're strong. It's better than it used to be, but there still aren't a lot who live to a hundred. Violence isn't required, but I don't think we even can die of grief if you mean that literally.

Immortals. That's good for them and all, but back home people who live forever tend not to have particularly human-compatible goals, let alone ethics.

You didn't conceal that thought, were you intending to? You need to sort of practice at it regularly. Are you a Man, then? I've never met one but the short lives are supposed to be rather their distinguishing characteristic.

Which thought? I meant to send the human life span summary. 

Anyone she shows or tells about the existence of the spirits and monsters becomes her responsibility. If after falling from the sky and everything else it's a telepathy accident that gives it away, then... that's probably exactly the same. Complete strangers who could and probably would accidentally inflict bad karma by violating a code they don't know about.
Anything about there being immortals on Earth definitely should have been private.

Yes, I'm human. The species gets called man sometimes, but the word's ambiguous.

The thought which accompanied the life span summary was that in your experience of our kind, we are unconcerned with yours. He grimaces. It turns out to be difficult to hear only the thoughts you're deliberately sending, save by not listening at all. I'm sorry.

Experience of his kind? Could be worse, but this implies elephant. (Should be private, but privacy isn't reliable yet. Back to the pachyderm it is, just in case)

I'll have to get better at privacy one way or another, if everyone here has this extra sense. Is there somewhere out of range I can practice?

No one will be able to hear you if you're a hundred yards off and not shouting at us, but it's a bit cold out there.

If it's between that and having my private thoughts indistinguishable from other people's public ones...

Might be time to take a risk. I should see if I can get my heating system working again. If it still works after the crash it'd be warmer than in here, and mobile.

You have a heating system? Lovely.

I'd be happy to share it, once everything works that needs to. At first it should probably just be whoever's testing the telepathy. Is there someone who's some combination of cold and trustworthy?

Everyone is cold, and to my knowledge everyone untrustworthy is very far from here.

Anyone who can be spared, then. I'd jump straight to using it to heat a tent, but for the moment I should be around as few people as possible.

Understood. He says something in his language to one of the people in the tent. She turns around.

Hey! Findekáno says you want to go outside, test a heating thing you have, and practice not thinking out loud?

Yep!  Your language too, maybe; it looks like I'll have to start learning that at some point.

I'm Amber, in case I wasn't shouting last time I said it, what's your name?

Irissë. This is quite unexpected, but nice to meet you I guess. 

Unexpected is a bit of an understatement but extremely true.

Head to the wreck, see what's salvageable?

The wreck of your flying thing? Yes, by all means.

The wreck looks like a large deflated polyester bubble. The entrance hatch is transparent and watertight, and the entire thing is frozen halfway under its formerly liquid contents. The cold bites at them on the way over.

Do materials like this fabric exist here?

She examines it. No.

I have no idea how it's made, unfortunately.

 The objects with the spirits bound into them are still here, as expected, looking no more out of place than the rest of this mess. The trick is going to be using it right in front of Irissë. Can you help me break it out of here?

It's not necessarily a two-person job, but if Amber happens to be on the side by the thermometer with the heat elemental there's nothing remarkable about that.

She happily attempts to help.

It cracks its way out easily, most of the ice being underneath. Once freed, the pieces are thin and extremely light.

Amber takes the chance to tell her elemental, in English, to move from the thermometer into the fabric. Much less thematically appropriate, but bound is bound and this binding is tight.

Do you have something to cut it with? We aren't going to need that window, and the rip could stand to be neater. I'll see if I can get it to start warming up.

She pulls out a knife. How are you imagining it?

Just around the circumference for the window, and we can worry about the edges later. That one's mostly cosmetic as long as it doesn't come under any tension.

She starts fiddling with the polyester. Hopefully it looks like straightening it for reasons or applying percussive maintenance, but what's more relevant is muttering "come on, work" and verbally telling it to warm up.

It starts generating heat, which is definitely a property of functional kite fabric and nothing at all to do with any spirit or elemental.

She's impressed and delighted and claps her hands together.

I just wish I could make more like this.

They're probably pretty visible right now, aren't they, if everyone can see heat.

They do have a bit of an audience. Well, it won't dramatically change the challenge ahead of us, but you'll have an easy time making friends. 

I'm not at all sure I'd want to try doing it with you. A lot depends on why getting to the other side is necessary in the first place, and Findekáno was talking as if that was secret. But as long as your whole world isn't frozen, I should at least be able to spare you the heat.

Oh, it's not secret at all, he's just heartbroken about it. There's an evil rampaging around on the other side, and he'll kill everyone if we don't arrive to stop him.

...That's one of the better possible reasons.

Yeah. You still might want to stay here, it's going to be one hell of a trip.

Evidently.

Is doing it on foot really less bad than building ships from scratch or whatever the next option is?

Do you see any ship-building materials? 

If you had no ship-building materials and everything you needed to trek across glaciers, I might agree with you. It looks more like you're starting from scratch either way.

She collects the armful of warmth and starts trudging away from the telepathic people.

Good luck, she says, amused. The Valar probably won't retaliate against a random stranger who doesn't know about any recent events, right? They're not that angry?

Uh. The guardians of that continent are extremely old, extremely powerful, and currently in a bad mood. You should tread carefully.

From what you said about the reason, I might want to cross after all. Will definitely want more background on those guardians either way, and on the other side of the ocean. 

Right now I'm just getting far enough away to be able to think without shouting to everyone.

Gotcha. See you later.

I'll be back soon. Hopefully with less telepathy.

She heads back in. Well. One more person, who can keep herself warm. And fly - or was that a one-off thing? And why isn't she discussing it? 

A hundred yards. Add in margin of error.

What she wants to do is wrap the improvised equivalent of a heated blanket around her head and shut everything out. There is just too much stuff going on. The fact that she'll probably never get home is coming in maybe third. But lying on the ice would probably just melt a hole, so wearing it like an inconveniently large cape it is.

This is also the first real chance to get the story straight. Can't tell about the magic, but they know Earth contains immortals and are safely assuming that means their species. Whatever it is their species is, which she probably shouldn't ask because they're supposed to be perfectly normal back home. Them and specialty heat-generating synthetic fabrics. And some method of flying, when they can see a complete lack of engine or anything. Probably can't get away with "it just does that" even if that does work for the heat. Great.

The magic components are still in working order. Nothing crucial broke. Just flying away is an option, maybe starting over on more controlled terms. But that would leave these people out in the cold, and if Irissë was serious about an evil that would kill everyone they'll probably need all the help they can get. Which means what, exactly? Amber could fly them over one at a time if there weren't so many of them, or probably help propel a boat if there were seaworthy ones already, but both of those would violate the Statute of Secrecy. Warmth is probably about all she can do. And it's not even all that much warmth. There are appliances that could do it better. This elemental isn't even very specialized for this; it was supposed to be getting rid of heat sometimes and generating it others. But it's not like anyone else is better equipped.

Haring off somewhere else to come back with more warmth-themed elementals? There wouldn't be any guarantee of success, and it'd show too much even if it worked. Ice elementals, though; those could be sent ahead to make something resembling a traversible path. That could conceivably be done secretly, even, with nothing to tie it back to her. Just have to find some spirits powerful enough to matter, somehow, and get them bound, somehow.
At least this one is a solvable problem. She sets down one of the two tokens containing a bound intermediate river spirit. Let it freeze in place, buried enough that non-practitioners won't even see it. And she directs it to flow power through a nearby chunk of ice. Wasteful, but it ought to attract something useful eventually. 

Whatever caused the accident, it probably does mean getting home is theoretically possible. But not only does Amber have no idea how, she's got no idea where to even start looking. Universe's revenge for years of thinking it needs fixing, maybe.

In the meantime, privacy is a little important. She practices partitioning thoughts into private and public until it feels as natural as it's likely to get, then goes to find Irissë.

The stranger is gone for long enough they'd be worried about her, except that all she does is sit down draped in heat, putter around on the ice, and then pace while presumably practicing. When she does come back, Irissë smiles at her. Any better?

I hope so. Got my head around all this a little more. Am I still leaking thoughts?

The hopefully-private background thought is a rhinocerous this time, but with luck that doesn't matter.

Huh. No. I can tell you're suppressing things but not at all what they are. 

Good enough, I guess. I don't have to avoid everyone.

Do you know where best to leave this? It can make one room warm, might not make a huge difference but it will to a few people.

We can designate a room for people who get wet or are injured or give birth.

Hopefully emergencies aren't so common that it ends up being exclusively for those. But yes, wherever it's most needed.

Amber takes off the flowing mass and passes it to Irissë. The night is just as freezing as it ever was, but everyone else is just as underequipped after all. She shivers.

You're generous.  Are you joining us, then? I would that we could offer you better options.

I don't really have enough information yet to say yes or no. What is your war being fought over, and who is the everyone that the other side would kill? Why are you bringing families and noncombatants instead of just sending an army? Who are the guardians of the other continent that count as old by immortal standards? Who are they guarding? There's...a lot I don't know.

But whether I join you or not, I'm probably not the one who'd benefit the most from this.

"We're all going because we got kicked out by the guardians of this continent, so now we have no choice but to somehow make it across. Those guardians are called the Valar. They're older than the world - they built it. They're guarding their paradise. We got exiled from it after we rebelled against them. The Enemy is - well, he likes murder and torture and he wants to rule the world."

Language along with telepathy, good idea. Amber doesn't have the language to respond in kind yet, so it'll come out as mostly just the telepathy with occasional spoken words when she remembers relevant vocabulary.

"How old is the world? Do the Valar handle their guardianship badly, or what was the rebellion about? I've never met the equivalent of the Valar where I'm from, if there are any."

"Many Ages," she says with a shrug. "They mostly handled it okay but when the Enemy murdered the King and destroyed the Trees they sat down to counsel and it'd been three years and they hadn't moved and the Enemy was running free in the Outer Lands and we had to do something."

"So you left? From the sound of 'rebellion' I thought you were going to say you tried to dethrone them, or fought your way out or something.

Also, you might have to explain the Trees. There aren't a lot back home that get capital letters, let alone the definite article."

"It didn't used to be this dark everywhere. The Trees lit the world so you could see in it.

And, ah, we tried to leave. We came here and realized there was no way out. So we went to the harbor, and I wasn't in the vanguard so I don't know how it happened but what we were told is that they tried to convince the people who lived there to loan us ships so we could get to the battleground faster, and they refused, and they tried to convince them to teach us how to build our own ships, or aid us in the making, so we could get there before it was too late, and they refused, and then they tried to take a ship and weapons were drawn and it escalated."

"Escalated– oh. I'm sorry.

The people at the harbor killed your vanguard and fled?"

"They were close to done with the job when my brother arrived. I think he'd have stayed out if he'd known that we started it but he thought they'd attacked us unprovoked, so he attacked them, and won, and we took the boats. The Valar were furious, and sank many of them in retaliation, and then sentenced us to die on those shores, and in vain."

"Oh. Um– oh.

So you've all been sentenced to die pointlessly on the other side, even the people who thought it was self-defense and the noncombatants, and your response to this is to try to get there as soon as possible?"

"The war that originally motivated us to leave is still happening! The peoples whose deaths we were in a hurry to prevent are still dying!"

"That is actually a good point. But if the creators of the universe, whose job you are doing, have decided to make sure you fail, then rushing across isn't going to help!"

"But we can't stay here, we're exiled."

"Stay here anyway until they provide some way to get across since they apparently want that so much? Never mind, I can see how that one could be even worse. Find some third set of shores? Even if you do have to leave this way, It sounds like you're planning to fight despite knowing in advance it won't help."

"Knowing in advance we won't win. We can buy the continent a few free centuries, make him waste his greatest weapons against us, keep our allies alive until they grow enough to deliver the final strike themselves."

"Actually, if you have allies there who haven't been sentenced, what happens if you join them instead of fighting as your own side? If you give this collective punishment thing exactly what it demands and your faction stops existing without accomplishing anything?"

"I have no idea. Once you have a better sense of our language I'll give you the exact words, in case they matter."

"I hope they do, but I haven't heard of the Valar before tonight. Have they done this kind of thing before?"

"No. But no one's killed anyone in Valinor before. Ever."

"Ever? Wow. How many people are there? Or, for that matter, here? Humans have dozens or hundreds of killings every year, in cities of millions."

"A million probably in the whole land. We're around a hundred thousand here. And the Valar kept it safe. You had dozens of killings a year? That's absurd."

"I agree completely. Used to be even worse; the last few centuries have gotten a lot less bad.

But you said your Enemy likes murder; if you're only just leaving the place where no one had ever killed anyone how do you know that?"

"Before we lived there, we lived on the continent we're travelling to now. There - we probably lost hundreds a year, and our population was much smaller. If you went out alone or got lost you'd never be seen again. The Enemy's creatures stalked the whole land. He'd take our people, take them prisoner, torture them, breed his servants from them. Eventually the Valar warred with him, and took him prisoner, and invited us to come to Valinor because his monsters still walked everywhere and it wasn't safe."

"That's horrifying." Unfortunately not unprecedented, but that doesn't make it less horrifying.

"And the Valar not only tried to sentence you to go back there, but decreed that you'd lose. As if they forgot they were supposed to be against this.
How did they capture the Enemy and how did he escape? If we're lucky there might be a clue to how to beat him."

"There was a war. It lasted a century. Continents crumbled." She winces. "We're a little overmatched."

"That doesn't add up. If he can crumble continents, what does he get out of having smaller-scale servants? And you are expecting there to be people to save, so it's not as if he's deploying that level of firepower in combat. If it's true that he can do that at all, it sounds like there's a catch to it."

"Time. The abilities of the Valar take centuries, sometimes millenia."

"And your strategy is to buy time? If he's going to become unstoppable eventually, that sounds like it calls for either a quick win or an evacuation while there's still a continent to evacuate from."

"We, too, gain capabilities over time. We don't have the means to fight him directly yet - or we're assuming we don't, we are planning to try at once - but if we can build a coalition while we're there, train, invent new weapons - "

"I might be able to help with that one. I have no idea how most of the technology my people use actually works, but there is a lot of it and maybe I can point you toward the things we replaced bladed weapons with."

"Great. Uh, the ice is more pressing as a problem."

"The technological solution to ice involves enormous metal boats that can crash their way through. On foot, the answer is to not do it."

"Well, we're not just staying here forever."

"I just mean I don't know what devices humans would use for this. If it's snow, people have had some success with sleds pulled by dogs, but then you have to get dogs from somewhere and feed them somehow, and I think it doesn't work as well on ice anyway."

"We've been scouting. We have ice picks and can fish and have rope we can use to get across the cliffs and haul supplies. And we're pretty tough. We'll make it, but people are going to die. That's why I was curious if you had other suggestions."

One, but that works just as well without ruining secrecy.

"I don't know any usefully replicable technology for this."

"No worries. You're welcome to come with us, if you'd like, but if you want to go on to Valinor I doubt they'd be mad at you."

"To be honest, I have more of a "stay very far away" reaction to people with prophecies of doom and broad opinions of guilt by association than to the ice. Even if it's practically impassible. That's not a fully considered opinion, though, not yet.

Do you really expect to be able to fish enough to feed a hundred thousand people?"

"Enough for us to not go hungry? No. Enough that we can stay alive? Maybe. We didn't have much chance to test our limits in Valinor. In theory we can endure indefinitely on very, very little."

"Indefinitely? Humans can't do that. 

I shouldn't try to cross the ice with you. That's probably not going to be the only obstacle where your people are relying on just being tough enough.

Are there ships that might take passengers who haven't been involved in any disasters?""

"If there were any ships at all we wouldn't be trying this," she says. "You could petition the Valar but that I'm nearly certain they'd refuse you."

"And that would also involve talking to the Valar.

Is that inevitable, on this side, or are the vengeful deities easily avoided?"

"Uh, if you stay out here they probably won't bother you, but you can't live here alone forever, and they'll notice you if you enter their territory."

"There's nowhere populated that's accessible from here and outside their territory?"

"No. We're on the northern fringes of their continent. No one lives here, obviously, and everywhere habitable is in Valinor proper. I am sorry."

"It's an inconvenent choice, but at least I didn't have the choice made for me."

"Yeah. Though I mostly blame the idiots who started the fighting for that, not the Valar."

"No rule against multiple people being evil simultaneously. Unfortunately."

She flinches. "None of them are evil, just scared and selfish."

"Sorry. I forgot you said they had been with you."

Which isn't a retraction.

"They're my cousins. They made some bad calls, and I'm furious with them, and sometimes I hate them, but - they're really not evil. The enemy we're all trying to stop is."

"It sounds like he's the rare person who's nothing but that. Which makes taking sides a lot easier."

"The Valar didn't think he was all bad either. Kept trying to give him second chances."

"Oh, so they do have a concept of walking back punishments. That's good news under the circumstances, even if they've also got really bad judgment in deploying it."

"Yeah. I expect if we headed home and fell to our knees they'd eventually pardon us. But we don't want to go back. We wanted to emigrate long before all of this, and now we're needed even more."

"Do they demand the kneeling and so on from everyone, or just from people they think committed crimes? Because if they know or care what people in their realm think of them...."

"You wouldn't have anything to repent of, would you? I mean, everyone's supposed to respect them, but the reason we couldn't just head home is that we rebelled against them, and we'd have to show that we regretted that."

"People who run countries vary a lot in how much they tolerate dissent, and I don't know what the Valar are like when they aren't at their worst. If I walk in there and someone finds out that I think their sentence was badly thought through and a terrible idea even as applied to the people who were actually at fault, I could imagine someone in the Valar's position considering that disrespect."

"They might. They've never issued a sentence like the Doom, before, though."

"I'm not realistically worried about provoking a repeat performance, I'd just rather avoid offending people that powerful without a very good reason. General principle."

"Wish we'd heard of it." She sighs. "Anyway, there was fighting after the Doom over the remaining boats, and it was about to get really bad, and the people who currently controlled the boats decided to sail off with them and not come back. Since then we've been scavenging for supplies and trying to figure out how to make the trip. You can't do your flying trick again?"

She does not say no.

"Flying is a very generous term for what I was doing back there, but thanks.

Anyway, flight has the same issue as the heat thing. Most of the more interesting devices humans use are black boxes to any single person. It wasn't just water in there, and unlike the fabric the liquid wasn't salvageable afterward. I couldn't reinvent gravitics even if we weren't in the middle of nowhere."

"I'm sorry. Uh, I'd be happy to start showing you how we're scaling the cliffs and things, it takes some practice to get the hang of..."

"Thanks, but I think I'm going to try the other direction. Much less suicidal for a human. So scaling cliffs probably isn't a priority."

"Gotcha. Best wishes. If you get admission in Valinor, tell my mother hi."

"I'll do that if I get the chance. What's her name?"

"Anairë. She's - well, I don't know what she technically is now, with the upheaval, but she should still be living in the palace."

"Anairë. I'll keep that in mind.

So, Valinor is in the direction that involves less ice. Is there anything more specific I need to know about getting there?"

"Uh. The people at the harbor might not be thrilled to see you, after what happened. Give them a wide berth. The whole place is dark and in ruin because of the Enemy we're going to fight. The city we're from is called Tirion, and it's white, and approximately in the middle of the continent, and was once very beautiful."

"Formerly beautiful white city, avoid the harbor, wait, how did he manage to darken the city?"

It probably isn't "sabotaged all the power plants," but that doesn't leave many candidates.

"Killed the Trees." A mental image accompanies this.

...okay. He did sabotage the power plants.

"When you mentioned that earlier, I thought it was a figure of speech. So it's going to stay this dark, not brighten in a few hours?"

"It's going to be this dark forever, as far as we know."

"My world has a sun," is sending mental images as easy as words? "and looks like this one sometimes, but only at its darkest. Usually there's either the sun or the moon vsible." Another picture.

"Neither of those look familiar. We can manage by the starlight, but it is a bit frightning after one's used to the Trees. And plants don't grow anymore."

"I can imagine. Did the Trees warm the world as well as light it? If the sun somehow went out, we'd freeze before we starved."

"They were warm, but the world was habitable without them. The other continent never had any Trees and we endured there for a thousand years perfectly well."

"Even though plants don't grow?"

"Some fungi do. The Vala of the waters is pretty good at his job and most underwater things are fine. There are root vegetables that can make it."

"You seem nowhere near as worried about this as I'd expect someone from Earth to be. On my world, if everything but those stopped growing it could be an apocalypse in its own right."

"It is. It's just an apocalypse that started several years ago, and has since precipitated enough other disasters we're rather inured to them."

"Oh. That isn't better. And here I thought my world had problems.

Did the Valar have any plans to react, or are they going to let the Enemy have his victory?"

"They have no plans to react. Thus us doing it, however doomed and underqualified."

"I meant along the lines of lighting the world with something else, since they can't possibly expect the rest of you to do that.

If not, I guess we're doing our wandering in the dark."

"Oh. They might do that eventually. No way to know, no plans in the works when we left."

"I really don't envy you trying to cross the ice in the dark, on top of everything else. Hopefully I'll be able to meet you on the other side one way or another."

"I hope so too, mostly because that'd mean the Valar tried to be helpful."

"Ha. Of course, if they decide to try to be helpful against an enemy who has been known to break land masses and the idea they come up with is sending me over, that would be new and exciting forms of mistakes.

Normally I'd wait to leave for Valinor when it's light, but you don't have mornings here, do you."

"He's not going to be able to do that overnight. And no, we don't have mornings. We've been trying to keep time by the movement of the stars, but it's hard."

"No clocks? Hourglasses? I guess you never had a chance to make those, if you left in a hurry after the lights went out."

"We actually waited several months hoping the Valar'd do something. Timekeeping devices weren't our priority, though."

"Right. Multiple concurrent disasters."

"The King had been killed and his successor wasn't qualified. Everyone wanted my father to rule instead, but they didn't want to have a civil war over it."

"That sounds like a mess best addressed by not being a monarchy in the first place, but given there already was one... yeah. Disputes like that are really common when kings aren't immortal.
Who was the successor?"

"The King's eldest son. My uncle. He - well. He has strengths. Not really strengths of character, none of those that I can think of, but he does have strengths."

"Very diplomatic.

Is this the same branch of the family as the cousins who aren't evil?"

"He's their father."

"What are these non-character strengths? Other than having been born first, that is."

"Brilliant. Absurdly so, knows more about several different disciplines than everyone else on the continent combined and is competent with literally every field of study known to our people. Relentlessly hardworking, has a very careful hand, artistically talented."

"A powerful force to have on your side, but not necessarily leading it?"

"Yeah, exactly. The things he's worst at are moderation, caution, working with people, trust - and his father's death amplified all his paranoia and all his unhelpful tendencies. We sort of thought we'd just have to bring out the best in him, and we were going to try, but our people didn't want that. They wanted my father to lead. And when Fëanáro - my uncle - realized that, he regarded it as treason."

"Understandably. A king finding out people want to try to replace him. You did say there was never a civil war, though, right?"

"No. They just left, when they found out. With the remaining boats. And then set them on fire on the other side, as a sort of parting 'fuck you', I guess."

"What, they're up against an enemy that's having a good try at ruining the world, and they wanted to get rid of allies that badly? I see why you don't want him as king."

"Yup. He'd rather have half the numbers under his personal command than all of us, just because we noticed that he's not actually any good at ruling. And he left us stranded here, which is pretty damn likely to get some of us killed. We're going to have quite the confrontation on the other side, assuming we make it." She shakes her head. 

"You're going across the way you are because of the Valar kicking you out and the Enemy needing to be fought, and he knows both those things. Taking the ships sounds like what someone would do if they wanted you weakened or dead but wanted to dodge responsibility for it."

"So what exactly do you think are our choices here? Repent and go home? Go across, weakened and possibly dead, and hope that his mood has improved by the time we're on the other side? Go across and fight a war on two fronts?"

"It sounds like you're right about having no good options.

I admit to being curious about what exactly the Valar do if you go back and say you'd be happy to leave if it were remotely feasible but this is no better than banishing you to the middle of the ocean, but that definitely counts as antagonizing the vengeful deities."

"I don't think they'd harm us. That's not really how they operate. If I had to guess I'd guess they'd mercifully lift our exile and then shoo us home to Tirion and tell us to sit there and work on repentence for a few centuries. With some of their guards at the city gates."

"That definitely sounds less bad than a forced march across barely passable ice when it's permanently night and winter. But I can imagine people thinking otherwise."

"Some people turned back. I think my uncle assumed that we all would."

"So it's not that you have to leave by any means necessary, you decided staying was worse.
How many people are you expecting to lose?"

"I don't know. Probably thousands; probably not ten thousand. All making their own choice."

She nods. "I can see taking that risk. It's much better than this many humans would do, though."

"What would you do? We've, uh, only heard about humans from the Enemy and it's been confirmed he was not lying but that leaves some latitude to skew the truth."

"I mean that's much more successful than humans would manage. I haven't seen a lot of the ice, but if we were in your position and tried simply walking a population across our frozen continent, a lot more than ten percent would die. We'd probably tell the Valar banishing us isn't going to be very effective if we can't leave.

Feel free to ask about humans. I haven't met any from this world, though; they might be different."

"Kinslaying is so common among humans you distinguish between, like, mass kinslaying and interpersonal kinslaying and random kinslaying and familial kinslaying? You have children while still yourselves children and have children even if there's no one to care for them and as a result your population grows so quickly that you quickly crowd out all other races? You have invented weapons Melkor would abhorr and used them to wipe each others' cities out, you marry people unwillingly sometimes, you force your children of eighteen or twenty to kill other children the same age to settle arguments?"

"By kin you mean all members of the same species? We reserve the word for family.
All those types of killing have happened. I'm not sure how useful a benchmark 'common enough to distinguish between' is; unlike the Enemy, we measure how common things are with numbers. I don't have those in front of me, but I think something like a few deaths in a hundred thousand are homicide.

For anything about children, the most important answer is that humans age faster. An eighteen- or twenty-year-old human isn't a child. Most people who have children at all do it before they're thirty. If the Enemy knew all this and said that humans in general have children while themselves children, I'd call him a liar even if the Valar didn't.

Forced marriages have happened. They're even common, in a few countries, and in most it's considered a violation of human rights.

The thing about the weapons is true. No idea what he'd abhor, but if it includes this then most humans would agree with him. It got used once, ending a war by destroying two cities. Two hundred thousand died."

"...wow. Okay. Uh, we've got a very narrow icy cliff of moral high ground to cling to here, but still. Wow."

"Not all Men, obviously. There have been a hundred billion or so. But the worst is pretty bad."

"Everyone's pretty bad at their worst.

I'm going to head back in before I freeze, I think."

"And I may as well start for Valinor, I guess. Thanks for the background on this world; I'd be even more lost without it. Pass that on to Findekáno too?"

"For sure."

There's a brief errand on the way out.

Shifting to a practitioner's second sight for the first time since arriving, it looks like an ice spirit did decide to stop by the improvised bait. Its appearance is distinctly not humanoid; more like a few connected mounds of snow and ice with spindly attachments that might be analogous to limbs. A small elemental, but strong enough to be better than nothing. Now to catch it.
It's settled in enough to not flee as soon as it gets noticed, but it's probably not about to be metaphorically eating out of anyone's hand either. 

Amber circles around it, low to the ground and drawing in the snow with a talisman taken from around her neck. Having the heat elemental back would be awfully convenient, partly because it's freezing out here and mostly because it's more effective to bind spirits with their opposites. After getting all the way around, she touches her pendant to the circle and charges it with power from her water and air elementals. Hopefully the target is docile or weak enough that it can be bound by similar forces as well as opposite ones; water is about as similar to ice as anything is, and she's pretty sure the wind that accompanied this air elemental when it was free was a cold one... this is kind of tenuous. But it does react when the circle gets completed, and it does stop at the boundary, so it's probably at least temporarily bound. Or at least not trying very hard.

She starts talking. In the new language where she can; her voice isn't going to reach far enough to be overheard anyway, and it's not as if nature spirits pay attention to the exact text of the human-language words. Or nonhuman as the case may be. "My name is Amber Atreides. You've accepted the offering I left, I returned for you, and now I've bound you. Now I want you to do something for me. These people are planning to trek across the ice, and they need help. I can show you one of them, her name is Irissë. I'll ask how a certain person knew about a recent human invention, the person I ask is her. I want you to keep the ice from breaking under Irissë, give her handholds when she's climbing, help however you can without being seen. I'm not asking you to go anywhere not frozen." Ideally she would have been binding an elemental powerful enough to make a way for the entire host, but in this short a time even this was lucky. "In exchange, I'll break the circle and give you as much of the energy that drew you here as you would have gotten if you stayed an hour. Or I could strengthen it, come back better equipped, and tighten the binding until you have to obey me."

It's an elemental. It doesn't understand what she's saying, in the human sense, but it gets some impression of what it's being asked. But it doesn't indicate an answer; instead it changes form from ice to snow and back and sloshes around the interior of the circle. It moves surprisingly quickly and occasionally stands upright, but stays inside the circle.

Well.

"Findekáno," she says, "you listening to our guest?"

The spirit freezes, colloquially as well as literally. Then it jolts, hard enough that part of the circle gets filled in. It quickly oozes out and escapes. It's almost like the reaction an elemental this size would have if someone spotted it enough to form a connection, to which there is only one response.

"Huh?"

"Everyone's listening. Want to, uh, go say 'hi' again, except knowing now that she's -"

"We don't know what she is," Irissë says automatically. Honestly it had sounded pretty cool. Confidently making a deal with ...a minor Maia? But you couldn't threaten those...

Well, there's no one nearby who could have scared it off. It could have been seen, but at this range it would have at worst just looked like she was playing in the snow for some reason. Maybe there wasn't anything setting it off at all; it was a very weak binding.

At least no one needs to know she tried.

"Melkor does that," he says.

"No, whatever Melkor does is different. That was - she asked it to help us."

"She asked it to help you."

Oblivious to the fact that they aren't oblivious, Amber collects the bait elemental from the failed trap and resumes walking Valinorward. Maybe the next spirit will be more cooperative, if there is one.

"Alright, go. Take five people with you, stay out of sight, be careful, call for help if -"

She nods impatiently and starts walking.

She only started a few hundred yards ahead, and they're faster.

"Irissë?"

Amber doesn't recognize the others of the six.

"Hey. Thought we'd walk with you, or is it not the sort of thing we're supposed to watch?"

"Um. Which thing?"

"'You've accepted the offering I left, I returned for you, and now I've bound you. Now I want you to do something for me'?"

"Yes. That was very much not something I should have let anyone see. How did you even hear that?"

"We were still at the camp. You were barely a quarter mile off."

"I was almost a quarter mile off!

Of course. Telepathy, immortality, implausible good looks, and super hearing. I don't suppose you can fly on alternate Thursdays?"

"What's a Thursday? If it's bigger than an eagle, I can probably fly on it."

"It's a day of the week. I guess if you aren't counting off days based on the sun you might not have had much reason to get the hang of Thursdays. Not important.

What's important is, if you could catch that from the camp, how many people heard it? And are they listening now?"

"A lot of people heard it. I'm sure many of them are listening now."

"So anywhere from six to a hundred thousand. Um. Is there a way to talk without being overheard by several stadiums' worth of people?"

Like we were doing when you arrived.

"That works. OK, I'm about to tell Irissë why it was secret."

I have magic. There are different specialties, but I work with nature spirits: water, heat, wind. You heard me binding an ice elemental, but it got away. My kind of magic comes with drawbacks, of which the relevant one is a system of karma. If you tell someone the practice exists, you become partly responsible for any mistakes they make. This is mistakes as judged by the magic itself, and it has a system of right and wrong that as far as I know no one actually agrees with. As long as people don't themselves become practitioners, the universe isn't really paying them much attention and whether they slip up or don't even try barely matters except in extreme cases. But I just informed thousands of people, so maybe there is an extreme case or maybe it just adds up and the universe compensates by throwing bad luck my way or outright destroying me.

The other reason is that there are Others. It's usually a catchall term for nonhumans, but you don't really fit that categorization. A lot are malevolent, but most can't hurt innocents. Non-practitioners are protected, people who don't even know all this exists are more so. Combine that with the karma, and there's a very strong rule against going public like I apparently just did.

I'm sorry. I can come up with an explanation for everyone - that it's a private religious ritual from your home, and that listening to those is considered somehow rude. You're now in trouble for mistakes I make? What's a mistake?

You and however many other people. I'm not in much trouble, yet, because none of you have become practitioners. This would be worse back in my world, because anyone who wanted could awaken the people I told risk-free. If I'm literally the only person who knows how to do that, it's safer than it could be.

A mistake is anything the spirits consider wrong; this has a general theme of betrayal and is heavily influenced by cultures that died out thousands of years ago. I could explain some details, but at the moment it's...maybe not stable, but at least not currently harmful. You can act as you normally would without worrying about this. The accident with the boats might have counted if they were close relatives and you did it on purpose because you wanted them dead, but it takes a lot for a non-practitioner to get a karma score.

A religious ritual, that could work. If people think human prayers involve threatening our gods, that's not weirder than them thinking synthetic fabrics generate heat.

The other problem is that you can now be attacked by Others. I haven't seen any sentient ones since arriving here, and I suspect there aren't as many. But if something decides to cause an avalanche, the universe won't go as far out of its way to prevent that from hitting you as it would for innocents. For me it wouldn't step in any more than it would for a natural one. And there are probably some actively malevolent ones. if your children have stories about monsters under the bed, there are probably Others that fit into that mold.

Oh. That sounds...worse than I expected. Alright, I'll tell everyone that mortal religious rituals involve threatening their gods.

We have no stories about monsters under the beds, we grew up in Valinor. Is this an Outer Lands thing? 

Valinor is probably the exception there. I thought it was an everywhere thing.

Others tend to be more powerful and last longer if there's a theme or some other kind of consistency. Imitating human concepts is common, and the Others attached to scarier concepts gain more from it. They can be fought even without magic, and not all are hostile, but it's a risk.

Well. Halls. I'm sorry I didn't think to mention that even with the winds as bad as they are here we can hear for a few miles, and when it's calm much much farther than that. We can't really afford too much more hostile forces at work in this mess - is there a way to win them over?

Collectively, not really. They don't tend to take sides in messes. The exceptions are on an individual basis, and I doubt there'll be enough Others who are people for exceptions to be common. I did have a plan that might conceivably help affect spirits and Others in general, but I wound up here before finding out whether or not it was possible. And I can't try it here.

Case by case, working with Others is very possible. That's what I was trying to do with the ice elemental, and I've got a few that are more thoroughly bound than that one would have been even if it had worked.

And how do you bind them?

It varies. They might agree, for payment or as part of a larger plot or just because of shared goals. If it's by force, it might come down to figuring out this specific Other's weakness and throwing it at them. Sometimes literally. I have it easier, working with nature spirits, sometimes it's less obvious.

I'm not really sure how much detail to go into here. If you awaken you'd need this kind of information, but otherwise I'm leaning toward having as little of this out there as possible.

You have my word I won't share it lightly. And you've said 'awakens' several times now - what does that mean?

Oh, that's just the name of the ritual for becoming a practitioner. I'm not sure whether or not all the components exist in this world, but making it work is probably an option. For a very few trustworthy people.

For binding Others, it's not innately secret the same way the existence of magic is. It's just that five minutes ago I didn't know I had been found out, and haven't thought through whether keeping as much as possible secret might be instrumentally valuable.

How did you learn about all of this? How widely known is it within your world? Do you regret knowing? If we had your abilities, would they let us cross the Ice?

I got it from my family. Most cities have people who know, but in small enough numbers that they mostly all know who the others are. I could cross the Ice, but that's dependent on resources that took a lot of time and effort to collect. Some of which almost certainly aren't here to be found. I don't know of a way to get this many people across.
Whether I regret knowing... I don't like the world behind my world. Half the time it's thoughtlessly enforcing rules and half the time it's malevolent. Knowing put me and my family in the line of fire, in a way we wouldn't have been otherwise. But I can't say I'd rather live alongside a world like that and not know about it.

She nods. What resources? Can we help you collect them? Is this world thoughtless and malevolent in the same way, can you tell?

It's similar as far as I can tell. Since my magic works at all, I'd expect the weird ideas of right and wrong to come along with it, but I can't tell that just by looking.

Of the things I use to fly, the hardest to get were collected from fast-moving rivers and another was a magic item I traded for and don't know how to make. Also the heat elemental I said you'd have more use for than me, to avoid freezing on the way.
Some of those I might be able to find in Valinor. None of them are likely to be here.

I see. Are they damaged? Is that why you can't fly again? Or is it the reason you gave us earlier?

I could fly right now. The only damaged equipment is the outer layer and I wouldn't need that for ordinary flight. I just surround myself in water and move that. Limiting factors are that I can't bring all that much with me, I'd need the heat back to fly anywhere water would freeze, and I can't really picture taking a hundred thousand trips to fly you across. And that doing it where people can see would be a bad idea, in case there's anyone who doesn't know yet.

Sorry about misleading you earlier, I was trying to hide having magic at all.

Hmmm.

Hmmm.

The thing that immediately comes to mind is flying to the people who abandoned us here and letting them know we're crossing the ice and they can meet us with food or with swords, their choice, but they're going to pay for everyone we lose along the way so maybe they should try to make sure it's not too many. But you don't know anything about the politics and that's quite an ask. 

I would be more than happy to tell them their sabotage didn't work. I doubt they'd be directly dangerous if I'm prepared. Less than happy to let them see the flight.

I can't see them shooting a messenger, but if you have preparations you can make, all the better. Not sure how they wouldn't see the flight. We can see things about fifty miles off pretty clearly, and they'd see something hot coming in across the water.

Then there probably isn't a safe way to do that.

When are you planning to leave? I could try to collect whatever spirits I can and hopefully meet you back here with at the very least more heat, assuming the Valar don't decide to keep me there. No guarantees of finding anything, though.

Couple months.

....if you teach me how to do your spirits, I can do it in a way that doesn't reflect badly on your reputation, right? What does that take, just being generally upstanding and honorable?

I wish. Upstanding and honorable according to a culture that otherwise no longer exists as understood by an aggregate mass of spirits that aren't even sentient. We can't lie, for instance. Harder for some people than others, but all of us have to keep at least one secret. Sometimes the rules makes sense, like how it's a bad idea to take something you don't have a claim to, and sometimes it doesn't. People are almost interchangeable by these rules; the reputations belong to bloodlines. That's one of the big ones I object to.

Oh. Hmm. How - directly bloodlines? If I just plan not to have children, am I protected? Or are cousins involved, in which case awakening anyone in the family fucks all of us over forever?

It's direct. If you never have children it'd be a bloodline of just you, unless a parent or grandparent also awakened in which case anyone directly down from them would be contributing to the same pool. But it's usually only actions taken after becoming a practitioner that count very much, so even if everyone awakened you wouldn't necessarily start out doomed.

More doomed. Sorry.

She giggles. Got it. Can you use cold spirits to hide your body heat, so you can fly out there?

Maybe. It'd depend on which elementals I happen to find, but that's definitely a doable thing.

Heat's the only problem, they wouldn't otherwise be able to see me until I land or watch me leave after? I wouldn't be able to, but relying on that would be the same mistake twice.

Heat's the only thing we can see in the dark. You might want to hike in from a few miles out, but no one's going to be watching for something with no heat flying across the ocean.

Good. I'll try, then.

Catching a new ice elemental might be a bit of a wait, even here. And I really should use the heat elemental to help in the binding, since I'll need to take it back anyway to fly without freezing solid. Is it in use for anything important yet?

No, I can definitely get it back. Let me go tell everyone about your strange Mannish religion.

Thanks. I guess if you've never met humans before they won't have any reason not to buy it.

But if they do believe it and notice that miracles happen when asked for? Oh well, they'll have heard exactly one intelligible "prayer" and that one didn't end up with magic behind it. The rest can just be in English.

We haven't. That's honestly what I thought it might be, so - She turns around. Later.

Amber resets the bait. One advantage of being here, whatever turns up will probably be useful for disguising heat. This time it gets a more detailed diagram drawn ahead of time.

She heads back to camp and explains about the stranger and her strange religion. "Men," she concludes, and everyone nods gravely.

Father, none of that's true, but there's magic at work such that more people knowing it is a problem. How do you want to proceed?

There's nothing much to do at the moment but wait, so she starts back toward the camp for lack of anywhere better to be. After setting another spirit attractant with the other medium-size water elemental a short distance away from the first.

I want to know it, he says instantly. 

So she explains.

Collecting the sole source of reasonable heat actually sounds incredibly tempting. Fortunately, it's important for reasons.

They'll probably be up to date on explanations by the time she returns. Humans are slow.

She brings the fabric with the heat elementals back. I told my King, everyone else got the story we agreed on. He's not going to do anything that hurts your reputation, don't worry.

Thanks. I was a bit worried you'd take advantage of the fact that there's nothing coming down on your head if you don't go out of your way to keep my secret.

You offered to help us, and gave us the heat thing even though you can make use of it.

I could always replace that, eventually. The only reason it's attached to this thing in particular is so I could point and say "I have no idea how to replace that" without lying. And you were the ones about to cross the ocean on ice.

If this were my world, I'd expect someone or other to take advantage of the situation.

She giggles. I think we're all decent people. To oversimplify a bit, a little while ago there was a way across the Ice but you had to be a dishonest, amoral asshole to take it, so everyone who was, did.

Ah. Nice and self-selecting.

...I am more and more looking forward to passing on an angry message and letting them worry about how.

They'll have a lot to worry about once they realize we're alive.

I thought you said they expected you to turn back, not die. Or do you mean alive and relevant?

Yes. Alive and if they want to change that they no longer get to do so passively.

It'd be a lot better if even that weren't an option. Since it sounds like they'll already be fighting a war and you will have just come from a humanly impossible journey, if they pick swords it doesn't sound likely to end well.

I really don't think they will. There's a difference between selfish enough to strand people in an impossible position and forget about them, and ruthless enough to go out and murder them as they walk by, and I knew them well enough to know they'd do this so I'm pretty sure I'm right they won't do that.

I believe you, it's just an awful lot to stake.

If you can fly disguised, you could also look out and warn us if it looks like they're going with plan: swords and then we can decide what to do.

That I can do.

Speaking of disguised, there's something I should test before there's anything riding on it. Can you look away for five seconds and then back?

She turns around, counts to five, turns back around.

There is an unusually uninteresting thump sound shortly after three, and no one present when she turns around.

Huh. You still there? she thinks, and finds her immediately. Wow, cool!! You're invisible!

Kind of!

Amber reappears as soon as Irissë thinks at her, lying undignifiedly on the ground. She gets up Unnoticeable would be closer, and that was unnoticeable to you specifically. If anyone else had happened to be looking—they weren't, I checked—they would have seen me fall over for no apparent reason. I wanted to check it against your senses, didn't realize your telepathy would break it.

Oh. Sorry. 

No, that's good to know. Since I'll likely be trying it on your cousins later, and conceivably on the Enemy, much better to find out now. I think they'd have a harder time getting through it, too.

Oh good. Why?

You knew there was supposed to be someone there, and you even knew who once you thought about it. If I'm sneaking away from whoever they send to follow me, there'll be less of a connection for them to reestablish.

Makes sense. What cool powers. I'm sad I can't use them without the doom thing.

I said earlier you wouldn't necessarily start out doomed, but on second thought it is very possible that the regular doom could count for both. Which would be bad.

...how many people could you fly over in one trip?

Lifting capacity is a few tons, maybe more if it's slower, but most of that has to be water. I could take a passenger, maybe a couple of them if it was urgent. It'd be cramped. And if it's people, breathing is a complication.

Hmm, okay. What were you doing with that thing?

Cheating.

Eh, whatever. Irissë knows Definitely Too Much already.

I have a magic item for that. Traded for it from someone who used it for diving, which I assume is what it's for. No idea how it's made.

Okay. Well. I should check with the King about the actual content of the message, but that's the plan I'm currently leaning toward.

Good. I like this plan.

Presently, something does turn up inside one of the diagrams. One of the few areas where local eyesight isn't better: can't see magic. Given the surroundings, it's probably something useful.

Think I got a bite. Um, you probably shouldn't be around while I try to bind it; that might conflict with the cover story.

Right. Heading back. See you!

Let me know what the king says the message is!

This attempt at a binding involves a lot fewer words to overhear than the last one. Anyone who does hear might recognize the same tone, but the content is all in unintelligible English.

The King says the message is "we are crossing the Helcaraxe. No one has died yet, which means it's not too late yet for you to set this right." Irissë solemnly promises to convey it. 

Capturing the spirit actually works this time, with the better preparation. Getting it as secured as the originals takes longer, but this isn't time-sensitive on an immediate scale. It's not even freezing, thanks to the opposite-of-cold generator being used for the binding. Once that's done, she has the new spirit assemble a thin sheet of ice and instructs it on what it's preventing.

Should probably test this against an actual person with the infrared vision.

Does the telepathy work at range? If not, no harm in trying.

Yep. Forty miles easy. You can do hundreds if you know people well enough.

Wow. Lucky.

I think your idea worked, but can you confirm it before I go be visible at a second crowd of people with super-senses?

Sure. What am I looking for, are you flying already?

Just a minute.

Checking that no one else is currently looking at her...nope. Can't know no one else happens to be looking directly above, unfortunately.

The machinery assembles quickly. Even when the water's warm it's not quite comfortable, out here in the middle of always winter and they probably don't have Christmas, but it'll do. She ascends, in a human-sized water droplet surrounded by an almost decorative sheet of ice.

I'm up. Can you see me?

Nope.  Oh, wait, I can see where I assume you are. You're not the same temperature as the outside air, but it doesn't look like a person, just a spot.

Suspicious enough that they'd connect it with the mysteriously appearing messenger? I can try to adjust the temperature, up or down?

Down, but I don't know what ambient air temperature on their side of the lake is.

Good point. Probably higher than this, if they're living there on purpose.

Doubt they'll connect it to you. They probably have a lot on their plates, and I actually expect they don't look at the ocean much.

All right.

Is there a final version of what I'm telling them, or is it your line about meeting you with swords or food? Anything I should make sure not to say?

Uh, similar content, less confrontational, message is 'we are crossing the Helcaraxe. No one has died yet, which means it's not too late yet for you to set this right.'

That does sound less confrontational, but if they don't have the boats anymore it means it's going to be too late by the time there's anything they can do. That doesn't decrease the odds of them cooperating?

They definitely don't have the boats anymore, they set them on fire. I think their reaction will be valuable even if they actually can't save everyone.

I can pass it on.

And flying. Flying is the best use of, well, a lot of things.

She flies low enough and slow enough at first to get a view of the ice on the way. It's even worse than it sounded; half the time it's free-floating floes without much continent to speak of underneath. They're planning to simply walk across? Maybe some descriptions of it from the air will at least help with planning the trip.

After accelerating to speeds for crossing an ocean at, she flies east and periodically checks for lights denoting the presence of people. (Do they have an east? Oceanward. This can be east.)

There are no lights. There are the sounds of a fight going on.

Seeing infrared is one thing. But seeing only the one subset, did they just not bother? Oh well. Toward the fight, then, watching for any suddenly appearing connection marking her as having been spotted.

Is it obvious who's fighting and on which side?

Both sides are humanoid; one like the people she met on the other shore, except armored and bloodied and exhausted-looking; the others are shorter, mutilated, paler-skinned, mostly hairless.

That answers that, then. Hovering above the battlefield, the next question is now what.

Humans and presumably other humanoids contain a lot of water. Messily killing some of the Enemy's minions one by one without being spotted is...probably doable. Also really bad karma: this is technically someone else's fight no matter how justified and joining unprovoked would cost. And it would magnify the risk of someone from this camp figuring out too much.

Battles with swords and armor are not a normal thing to stumble upon! Are there people about to get stabbed and in immediate need of an opponent disappearing? At least those extreme cases would be worth it, if there's enough warning in this kind of battle.

With no lighting, it's really hard to see who might be in a position of extreme need. The Elves don't look good, but they're not about to be massacred either.

Yeah, even with light that would have been a bit of a long shot. It's not like she's from a culture where all women are brought up from a young age to be able to interpret the events in medieval-style melee combat at a glance.

On second thought, this doesn't have to be directly fatal. If it's the allied side doing the actual killing, that's at least less wrong from the spirits' point of view.
She sends down a water elemental, incorporeal, to go from one designated target to the next and blind them. 

It's not the most gruesome thing on the battlefield. It's a battlefield. But she knows exactly what she's doing to the insides of their eyeballs, and that's very far from making it more tolerable to think about.

The fighting doesn't end with anyone declaring a retreat, or anything like that; eventually the exhausted Elves just seem to run out of orcs to kill, and the orcs that remain seem to decide to pack up and go home. At which point one of the Elves apparently orders a charge and races after them.

It probably isn't worth taking on more bad karma just so the Enemy will have a handful fewer soldiers later. And at least now the boat-stealing cousins aren't in as much immediate danger as before.

She follows above the charge anyway.

The man leading it is very good with a sword, and very reckless, and now quite far out in front of his host, and there are more enemies racing at him from Angband, glowing fiery against the night.

And it's obstructed enough that he doesn't have a clear line of sight no matter how good his vision is. Unless he can see the glow from where he is, which, maybe.

Awfully convenient that the telepathy doesn't give away a direction.
You should rejoin your army. The Enemy's got reinforcements coming straight at you.

That stops him from running, at least; he whirls around, presumably looking for the source, and then stays warily in place until his army catches up with him. By then they do have a light of sight on the glowing creatures streaking at them.

It's glowing creatures? They look almost exactly like Balrogs but without the wings. This is a lot more intimidating than soldiers carrying fire. She could give updates on where they are and how many, but with the kind of vision the people here have it'd be redundant.

Is the army retreating, or is there about to be another round?

The man who was ready to charge out without his army looks disinclined to retreat. 

Okay, then.

What's really weird is that the fire monsters aren't Others. They look exactly the same to a practitioner's sight as when she briefly stops using it. Apparently this world just has those. Inconvenient, because if they were fire spirits a binding would at least be a scaled-up version of a known problem.

If the creatures happen to have eyes vulnerable to the same trick that worked on the humanoids, they can lose them.

Doesn't seem to do much.

Makes sense. Her elemental was out of its, well, element. Next up: any water around to see what happens when a creature gets doused?

There isn't any nearby, but it's cloudy and could be induced to rain.

Not with this set of equipment. Anything in the clouds isn't currently liquid.

Either of the two larger water spirits can provide enough force to hold her bubble in its shape and in the air. If a regular-sized drop separates, has its shape maintained the same way, and several tons' worth of force continuously accelerate it toward a monster, how does the creature react? Better have it start from somewhere other than the floating sphere, in case anyone looks for where the gunshot crack came from.

That knocks it backwards hard; the fiery glowing briefly goes out, and it lashes out at random. The Elves press this apparent advantage, but they're still overmatched.

It didn't penetrate? Really should have; either the target is even tougher than it looks or it's the recently earned bad luck coming around already.

More of the same, then, with less spherical drops that might be more likely to break through its skin. This is easily repeatable; it can have one shot after another until she thinks of something else.

They're more denting the thing than penetrating it. Maybe it doesn't have anything that can be thought of as skin.

This would be easier if she could shoot it with more than one thing at a time.

But hitting it this hard is doing something; maybe if the next order is to just hold it down the people who were fighting it on purpose will get an opening.

They do manage to batter it pretty hard. It has serious and visible injuries, now, white-hot and not-exactly-bleeding out across the ground. 

And then it explodes into a fireball.

It's hard to tell from up here who's injured and who's dead after the explosion.

Doing the same to hold off the other creatures is probably the best move in any case. Whichever of the remaining monsters is outmatching its opponents by the most can have a bead of water pressing down with several tons behind it. (Seriously, how is this less damaging than swords. Something's up.)

The Elves are now wary about killing the things, and warily hold off when another one gets battered to the ground.

If there's an injured one, she might let this one up while she checks whether their not-exactly-blood is water-based. Attacking it from the inside can only be better.

Yes, whatever it is is water-like in the relevant sense.

In that case, the overworked water spirit gets ordered to seize the liquid dripping out of the monster, and the adjacent liquid inside the monster, and tear it in every direction possible.

While the monster's opponents are as far away as they're likely to get, just in case having all its probably-not-exactly-blood-vessels ruptured simultaneously both works and is explosively fatal.