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:

lintamande

"Questions that'll provoke him so he's likelier to kill us or kill us slower or go out and find our families and kill them. Other peoples' names because this is really scary and they'll be so sad and scared if it happens to them. Questions about the oath we make to Melkor once we're big enough."

From:

imeanforever

...At the first item she looks at Maedhros again.

From:

lintamande

There's nothing they can say that would get me to kill them slowly, unless somehow they had reason to believe that Mandos could help them more if they'd died after breaking their oaths, or something like that. I'd probably not make a concerted effort to kill their family members unless they happen to have family members who are important operatives for the Enemy, or if they have some way of communicating now with family members and so their loved ones know that you exist. In that case I would certainly immediately commit resources to finding them immediately.

From:

imeanforever

"What is the oath you make to Melkor?"

From:

lintamande

"To be orcs, and seek orc greatness, and hate Elves and kill them and take them back as prisoners, and serve Melkor forever."

From:

imeanforever

"Is swearing to be orcs functional in some way?"

From:

lintamande

"I'm not sure. Orcs are made from Elves, so maybe?"

From:

imeanforever

"Is me knowing your name so awful that you think other orcs would rather die than tell me their names, even if all I did was send them somewhere south and have them not attack anyone?"

From:

lintamande

"Not that awful. But you could ask me to betray my friends and dying would be better than that."

From:

imeanforever

...Promise looks at Maedhros again.

From:

lintamande

We do need to ask them if they've communicated in any way with any servant of the Enemy since they met you.

From:

imeanforever

Besides that.

From:

lintamande

No.

From:

imeanforever

"Is it just that I could or that you think I would?"

From:

lintamande

"You might. Might change your mind later, or he might make you."

From:

imeanforever

"Right, but if I didn't and he didn't, you'd rather be sent south than die?"

From:

lintamande

"Yes."

From:

imeanforever

Sigh.

"Since you were captured, apart from the other orcs in this room, have you communicated with anyone who works for Melkor?"

From:

lintamande

"No."

And, Maedhros says, does she have any reason to believe any of them could have been reading her mind.

From:

imeanforever

"Do you have any reason to believe any such person may have been reading your mind?"

From:

lintamande

"Didn't have orders to let them, no."

From:

imeanforever

Is that good enough for Maedhros?

From:

lintamande

He nods. If I thought it were likely I wouldn't have chanced it.

From:

imeanforever

What do you need a 'go south' order to cover?

From:

lintamande

If the Enemy finds them again he'll have them brought back to Angband, rescind their orders, he'll know how you work. They need to get out of anywhere he can find them, without drawing the attention of other orcs to the fact they've been altered. Once they're about two hundred miles south of here I don't think the Enemy's wasting any energy down there, though there are Men and they might shoot orcs on sight.