lintamande | don't touch me

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

imeanforever

Since she's pretty stuck here she is more interested in learning things about Melkor from his partisans. If she manages to get away it will matter more where she is going than what she is getting away from, won't it?

From:

lintamande

Melkor is in charge of the continent and working on repelling the Elf invaders who landed her all those years ago and slaughtered nearly everyone.

From:

imeanforever

And why isn't he done yet? He's supposed to be very powerful, right?

From:

lintamande

He was trying to scare them off first so they'd go away on their own. It was only after they committed lots of massacres that he resorted to killing them, and since then it's gone very fast.

From:

imeanforever

Where's "away", where are they supposed to go?

From:

lintamande

Back to Elfland? Or there's another continent south of here. Melkor even offered Maedhros help moving his people there and resources to get them started once they landed, but Maedhros came to the negotiating table with an army and attacked instead.

Edited Date: 2016-05-24 05:24 pm (UTC)

From:

imeanforever

That's very interesting.

Do the orcs happen to know how Maedhros lost his hand? He hasn't told her. (Well. He hasn't.)

From:

lintamande

They don't. Maybe he replaced it with a blade so he could kill orcs better.

From:

imeanforever

Do they happen to know why the Elves came over from Elfland?

From:

lintamande

To conquer and kill the orcs and rule this continent.

From:

imeanforever

Why would anybody move to a new continent specifically to kill orcs?

From:

lintamande

They hate us. They enjoy it. He enjoys it especially. Though most Elves don't like killing other Elves as much as he does so maybe he's unusual.

From:

imeanforever

"But why do they hate you?"

From:

lintamande

Shrugs. "We hate them, too. It's just the way the world is."

From:

imeanforever

"Would you still hate them if they all moved to the south continent?"

From:

lintamande

"Yes. We're sworn to hate them."

From:

imeanforever

"...Sworn to?"

From:

lintamande

"Yes. He's sworn to kill everyone who has things he wants, which is much worse."

From:

imeanforever

She's not so sure about that. "I know. Why are you sworn to hate them, though? Isn't that unnecessary if they're going to do things like slaughter people doing laundry?"