don't touch me

[lintamande]

Confirmation reaches them in the spring that Elwing of Sirion has the Silmaril.

It takes as long as the spring only because they weren't looking. They can stretch the oath that far, they can be disinterested in knowing - but now they know, and so there it is. Elwing of Sirion is twenty-three. Half-man, so fully grown. Sirion is a city of refugees. Elves and Men and, since there are Men, children. Elwing herself has infant children.

They debate whether to send messengers. Debating is allowed, even protracted debating. The Oath, these days, is loud in their minds, and louder when they're pushing it like this, but they drag out the debate for a few months. Messengers will probably be shot on sight. The last time Elwing of Sirion received news of the House of Fëanor it would have been the news that her brothers, twins, aged seven, had not survived the sack of Menegroth.

They send messengers anyway. The messengers are shot on sight. They have good armor, Fëanorian armor, and return home injured but not lethally. Maglor's songs no longer stitch them together. War makes you worse at healing. Maglor's songs are more powerful than ever - he can knock back a wave of approaching enemies, he can make a blade's next touch deadly, he can make them faster and more impervious to danger, but he can no longer do healing.

Maedhros, when he thinks about this, thinks that perhaps there needs to be part of you that is not broken for healing spells to draw on. Or perhaps the Enemy is amused to strip that away first. Perhaps the Enemy finds it suited to the theme as the Oath tugs and yanks and twists them into violence against the lands they once defended and the peoples they once sheltered.

They send messengers to Sirion again. The messengers deliver a plea for the Silmaril, an offer of anything at all in exchange. The messengers do not return at all.

The Enemy is many many hundreds of miles from here but at night Maedhros can hear him in his head. Is it so implausible that I really let you go? the Enemy likes saying. You serve me better free than you ever would have willingly.

The Oath allows them to work slowly. They begin planning the sack of the refugee camp even more slowly than the Oath allows, so slowly that its currents are constantly tugging at them. Any slower and the currents would erode all the things they care about which are not the Oath, and it would be a disaster to go to Sirion once they've been stripped of their capacity to care about anything that is not the Silmaril. So they do not hold out forever. But they work as slowly as they can.

Comments

[imeanforever]

I can only tell who you're talking about if I can use whether the name snaps into place or not.

[lintamande]

Fëanor.

[imeanforever]

When is he going to not be around?

[lintamande]

He's going to go talk to Melkor, right?

[imeanforever]

At some point, presumably.

[lintamande]

"Uncle, did you ask Sauron if there's an efficient algorithm for the satisfiability problem where every clause has three terms?" Findekáno says, and Fëanor goes off to ask this.

Findekáno does not smile until he's gone.

[imeanforever]

"I don't even know what that means," Promise says, "I'm really going to need to get some kind of more thorough education than Fairyland had to offer me when I was newer. Uh, so. - Eru is hoping to give Sauron a 'redemption arc', I don't know about Melkor but it seems not unlikely he'd like him to have one too."

[lintamande]

Maedhros doesn't move. Then he says "yes, you should get someone to explain algorithm theory to you, it's the root of all our magic that's not through music directly.


Why Thauron? Why not some random orc who never would have hurt people if not for their orders?"

[imeanforever]

"...The orcs are all okay too, I don't think we were going to throw any of those in a black hole?"

[lintamande]

"Does by 'redemption arc' he just mean 'no black hole'?"

[imeanforever]

"No, he also means removing whatever abilities he uses to do harm, possibly putting him in a cute or pitiful form, and encouraging him to remorse and compensating for the harm he did. I mentioned this to Sauron and I don't think he's going to cooperate but Eru's the one who can ambiguously see the future -" She relays the proportions and clarifies that she checked Eru was using her definition of "harm".

[lintamande]

He raises an eyebrow. "Ask Sauron to swear to care about all and only the things you care about and only employ means you'd use."

[imeanforever]

"Do you think he'd rather do that than go in a black hole?" she asks in a small voice.

[lintamande]

"Both of them are ceasing to exist," he says. "I'm not sure. You could ask."

[imeanforever]

She goes and waits for Fëanor to be done with his question.

[lintamande]

Fëanor's question gets an answer that is satisfying to Fëanor but makes no sense to her.

[imeanforever]

That was predictable.

"As compared to being chucked into a black hole," Promise says to Sauron, "how do you feel about swearing to care about all and only the things I care about and only employ means I'd use?"

[lintamande]

"...indifferent. In both cases you are ending me and deciding what to do with my body. That is a clever way of making use of it, though."

[imeanforever]

She sighs. "Anything in the neighborhood you'd actually prefer?"

[lintamande]

"I'll swear to work towards only the things you'd care about, if I can care about whatever I'd like."

[imeanforever]

She goes out to mention this to the assembled Elves.

[lintamande]

The assembled Elves think that this sounds like a lot of bother for the sake of Thauron and if he's indifferent between the two methods of execution why not get all the Maia-power on their side with none of the drawbacks?

[imeanforever]

"Well, I'd find it kind of horrifying in a way the black hole option isn't."

[lintamande]

It is kind of horrifying. So is Thauron.

[imeanforever]

"Thauron is horrifying because of things he did and having him make a mind-altering oath like that would be something I was doing."