He does see. He sees, and he might almost wish AM still had that sort of power here. Almost, because he can see also what might happen to himself if AM were to have his powers. Someone who destroys out of hate, who destroys for the sake of destroying. There is nothing to mock, for power it is that he reveres, power is what he wishes he had, what he wishes to have more of, no more than ever.

But AM has little to nothing, here. They both know that. Mairon believes it, in any case. If he should have arrived lessened more than he already had been, if AM was not even human before, he must be lessened. What could be more lessening than to be forced into a physical body?

Do not think you can frighten me with such a trivial pain, AM. It's a seething whisper, the tendrils of his thought wrapping around him like a cluster of mistletoe, carnivorous and deadly. You are a fool if you think I would cow so easily. I am not even remotely human, dear. This pain and death you seek to hold over my head mean nothing.

Whether they are truths or simple incentives, taunts, Mairon laughs all the same, a hollow, echoing sort of the laugh, the kind that sounds as if it was already laughed long ago. He can tell that AM is up now (hah), and for the moment recedes from his mind, only niggling at the corners of it every so often to remind him that he's still there.