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

That works.

From:

imeanforever

Anything else?

From:

lintamande

You could try your healing spell on them. Orcs are in constant pain. I don't think it'll do much but it's worth attempting. We did, sometimes, and they always refused to tell us whether it did anything.

From:

imeanforever

"Do you mind if I try a healing song on you?" Promise asks the orcs.

From:

lintamande

They do mind. No Elf-magic, thank you.

From:

imeanforever

She thinks this is their prerogative. Is Maedhros going to make her do it anyway?

From:

lintamande

He is not.

From:

imeanforever

Right then.

"If you would rather die than be sent south or risk him deciding to do something that isn't sending you south, that is up to you. If you would prefer to be sent south than let him kill you I need your real names."

From:

lintamande

All but one give their names.

From:

imeanforever

And she repeats the agreed-upon order set.

From:

lintamande

And he has someone escort them all out, the one who did not agree separately.

From:

imeanforever

Good. She doesn't have to look.

From:

lintamande

He seems to prefer that she doesn't. "There's still some time in the day. Music lessons, or do you want time alone, or do you want to talk?"

From:

imeanforever

"I'm curious what you have to say about the conversation."

From:

lintamande

"They must have standing orders to give a recruitment talk to anyone they meet who's not an Elf. Us they mostly just spit at and scowl at. I have the transcripts so you can look through them if there are specific things you want to ask about."

From:

imeanforever

"The thing about the town with the orcs doing laundry -"

From:

lintamande

"It amuses the Enemy sometimes to order his soldiers to carry out some atrocity - in that case, burning a village and nailing all its inhabitants to trees around the area - and then to order them to put away their weapons and settle down peaceably, so when we track them from the site of the crime we find innocents. And I suppose they are innocents. Just following orders."

From:

imeanforever

From:

lintamande

"What would you do, in my place? Let them go whenever their orders do not currently involve the rape and torture and slaughter of my people?"

From:

imeanforever

"If you could prevent them from getting new orders maybe."

From:

lintamande

"I can't. They can be delivered telepathically at a range of hundreds of miles."

From:

imeanforever

From:

lintamande

"Does that answer your question?"

From:

imeanforever

"Yeah."

From:

lintamande

"I am not a good person. But in my place you either died heroically very early or you stopped being a good person or you stopped - making decisions at all, stopped trying to steer the world."