If you've made it even so far as the second chapter of this nightmare, I respect and thank you (and I also shake my head at you, just a little). In particular I'd like to thank canadiangold, eschscholzia, Grey Day, and FebruarySong, who left such nice reviews on Chapter One :)

Chapter One Recap: We have just met an interesting personage called Ulga who apparently has a thing for spying on humans, and through spying on her spying on humans, we have discovered that an evil exists in the world, and so does a certain White Wizard. Ulga is intrigued, and files this information away in her brain as she heads home.

Chapter Two: It's An Orc Eat Orc World

Ulga the Orc's "home" was a few days' journey east, in an area of western Mordor near the city of Minas Morgul. Before arriving at her place of residence, she decided to stop at a nearby restaurant to get a bite to eat. Ever since seeing those horses back in Anórien she'd been unable to chase the cravings for one out of her head, but she didn't like the idea of stealing one from a Human. Here she could get some nice Mordorian horse, she hoped.

The restaurant, a dim, noisy, cave-like place with no small number of rats and flies even in the winter, was crowded with Orcs and a few other characters. To tell the truth, they were rather unsavory. Not unlike the food.

Ulga did her best with the generous portion of horse meat she'd been served, but it was so tough and dry, even for her strong, sharp teeth, that she felt like giving up on it. Before this horse had been slaughtered, or died of old age, it must have been positively ancient. She gazed enviously at the table across from her where an Orc was enjoying a plateful of live cockroaches and a glass of curdled milk. She set her hunk of horse meat back down on her plate and looked around the restaurant at the other patrons. There was much to see and hear, if one paid attention. Really there was much to see and hear even if one didn't—the strident voices of Orcs had a way of making themselves heard, especially when shouting, as they did whenever they fought with each other. And fights broke out every five minutes or so, over various things. One Orc had gotten angry because her food wasn't served quickly enough, so she'd punched a waiter in the face, knocking out a few of his teeth. Another two Orcs had fought because one had accidentally stepped on the other's entrée in a drunken dance over the tabletops. There were squabbles over possessions and money, of course. Those were especially common and almost unworthy of attention. Then there was an Orc who clawed another Orc's face simply because the former thought the latter was ugly. Smooth skin, clear eyes, symmetrical features… Revolting. In those days, quite an opposite look was prized. There were contests for this sort of thing, and the current standard of attractiveness was a young Orc named Gothmog, known for his alluringly puffy, lumpy face, his irresistibly gravelly voice, and his unique, seductive gait. He'd been voted Sexiest Orc Alive twice now.

Ulga had her chance to clock someone too, but ugliness had nothing to do with it. The clockee wasn't ugly, and Ulga most definitely wasn't. Males tended to find irresistible her feminine charms of sparse stringy hair, dark yellow eyes that matched her teeth, powerful rippling muscles, and thick rough swamp-green skin that had an enchanting way of turning inky blue at the cheeks when she blushed. Most attractive of all, however, was her flat stomach. Orcs of both sexes quite enjoy mating and consequently the females are pregnant more often than not. (This accounts for Orcs' ability to multiply quickly despite their collective talent for killing and maiming each other.) Ulga was a bit more selective than most in her standards for a mate; she'd never actually been pregnant. So when a young male Orc with a bald head, warts, and unsettlingly orange eyes zeroed in on her (she saw the eyes light up to an almost impossible level of brightness when they met hers) she suppressed a sigh—she knew what was coming and she wasn't really in the mood.

Well, here he was.

"Did it hurt," he began, "when you fell from—"

"I'm going to stop you right there." Ulga's interruption was firm but gentle. "I'm really not interested."

The Orc stared at her blankly as if not quite comprehending what was happening, blinking his brilliant eyes stupidly. "If I told you that you had a beautiful body," he began again, "would you hold—"

"No, thank you."

"—it against me?"

"No."

Ulga's admirer was beginning to look angry. The glowing orbs were just small slits of bright light now. "No? What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I came here for food, not procreation." She gestured to her plate.

"You're turning me down?"

"Yes."

"What's wrong with you?"

"Currently the only thing wrong with me is that I'm trying to eat and some dunghill rat keeps interrupting me." Never mind that the food was inedible. Ulga needed an excuse and this Orc was seriously getting on her nerves.

The Orc snarled ferociously at her, baring pointed teeth. He was literally frothing at the mouth, and the bubbly saliva dribbled down his chin as he spoke. "There'll be a lot more wrong with you when this 'dunghill rat' is through with you."

The Orc leapt right onto the table (and the horse meat) with a jarring crash, wrapping his grimy, oily hands around Ulga's throat. In a swift motion, she stood and pried his hands away from her, slapped him hard across the face, and pushed him backward off the table. He fell onto his back and lay on the ground for a moment struggling to breathe, as Ulga scrambled around the side of the table toward him. Rapidly, he jumped to his feet and began charging toward her like an angry bull. Nothing daunted, Ulga dodged out of his way, spun, and threw a powerful punch to his carotid. He fell heavily on his face.

"If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go finish my meal now," she informed him. This time, being unconscious, he didn't argue back.

Unfortunately, to preserve the wittiness of what she'd said, she had to keep eating the awful horse meat. Oh well. At least before she'd sat down again she'd had the foresight to quickly deposit her dinner glass under the Orc's broken and profusely bleeding nose. She was going to make a pudding out of it later. It would be fabulous.

Back in the present, as she picked at her desiccated food, she became aware of another altercation in the restaurant, between the two males at the table closest to her. She'd missed the beginning of the fight, being lost in thoughts of blood pudding, so she hadn't caught what it was about—by now the two Orcs seemed to be past the talking part of the fight and well into the physical part. As she watched, one of them let out a fearsome Orcish noise that there is really no name for, before slapping the other across the face so hard he fell to the ground unconscious. He then picked up his chair, lifted it above his head, let out another fierce cry, and whacked the already prostrate Orc multiple times with it. When he was satisfied with his work, he hollered in a deafening voice that cut through the rest of the restaurant noise, "LOOKS LIKE MEAT'S BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS!" This is a traditional phrase for Orcs, and it means, "Guys, come help me eat this guy I just killed!"

There were plenty to answer the call. Ulga, who had the luck of being the nearest Orc to the table where the fight had happened, got one of the prime positions, where she could eat the intestines. They tasted so profoundly delicious after the horse meat.

The problem was that as she was eating she began thinking. She thought about the poor, dead Orc whose innards she was relishing the flavor of. He'd been a living, breathing being with thoughts and feelings only a few minutes ago. Was she being callous? Was what she was doing right now…wrong?

Well, it wasn't like she'd been the one who killed him. He was dead now, whether anyone ate his remains or not. She kept eating.

And yet…would Humans do this? She didn't know all the particulars about any of their many different cultures, but she'd bet that most of them frowned upon this sort of thing. She imagined what the cute man she'd seen a few days ago in Anórien would think of her if he could see her right now. She imagined the pinched, disgusted expression that might form on his beautiful features. She looked down at the half-eaten length of intestine in her hands. Suddenly her behavior struck her as just a mite uncivilized.

Oh, but this Orc's guts were just so scrumptious!

She finished her meal, but carried those same consuming thoughts with her as she rode her Warg down the grey, dusty road to her dwellings, a small cave at the rocky foot of a mountain of the Ephel Dúath. When she arrived, she noted with some surprise that the ill-fitting, ramshackle door over the cave's entrance was slightly ajar. She pushed it further open and was suddenly face to face with another Orc.

She sighed in mingled relief and annoyance. She knew this one. "Gorbra, what are you doing here?"

Gorbra, an extremely pale-skinned Orc with an exceptionally wide nose and mouth and sprinkles of tiny grey freckles over her cheeks, was the closest thing Ulga had to what a Human might call a "friend". Gorbra put her hand over her hugely bulging stomach. "I was hungry…"

"There's not much food here."

"I noticed." It appeared the part of the cave that served as a pantry had been ransacked. "Were you on another of your expeditions?"

"Yes."

"Ulga, it's…getting ridiculous."

"What makes you say that?" asked Ulga in an offended tone.

Gorbra gestured to the space around her. "I mean…look at this…stuff."

Ulga looked. "Isn't it neat?" The small cave was filled almost to capacity with various mysterious-looking objects. Ulga thought of her habit of sneaking into empty houses in the dead of night and taking things, and for the first time she realized that might technically be stealing. She bit her lip uneasily at the thought. At least none of the things she'd stolen were important, like a horse would be. At least…she hoped they weren't.

"It's not neat," said Gorbra. "It's stupid."

"If you want food from me maybe you shouldn't call my things stupid, especially when you don't even know what any of them are. Just a thought."

"Do you know what any of them are?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," said Ulga.

She took an object off a rudely built shelf and held it up. "Do you see this?" Her eyes were wide and glowing. Her cheeks were beginning to turn blue. "It's a book." She said that last word with reverence. "Some Gondorian Humans like to sit and stare at them when they have nothing better to do."

Gorbra didn't see why anyone of any species would want to stare at such a flat, flimsy, unimpressive-looking thing. She snatched it from Ulga and threw it into the fire, laughing at the blaze it made. "I'd much rather stare at that!" she cackled.

Ulga stared at Gorbra in shock and anger. "Why…"

With her pudgy, clumsy hands Gorbra picked up an old vase that had been resting on a different shelf. Ulga had replaced its original wildflowers, which had long since died and rotted, with dry, prickly weeds, being unable to find any actual flowers growing near her home.

"No, don't—!" Ulga began, but it was too late. Gorbra had dropped the vase, and with a piercing crash it shattered all over the cave floor, into a mess of broken shards and dirty water.

Gorbra cackled again, clapping her huge hands with glee. "This is fun!" she screeched, reaching up for another object.

Ulga's hand was suddenly around her wrist. "No," said Ulga forcefully. "If the only thing you came here to do was make messes and destroy my things, you can leave."

Gorbra sighed heavily. "You're no fun," she groaned, giving in without grace.

Suddenly Ulga had an idea.

"I have an idea," said she. There was a tiny trickle of a stream that fed a myriad of little shallow puddles only a couple paces away from the entrance of her cave. The stream and especially the puddles would likely be well frozen over by now.

"Come with me," she said, tightening her hand around Gorbra's wrist and towing her outside.

"Do you see this?" asked Ulga, gesturing grandly to the forlorn, empty space surrounded by rocks.

"Yeah…?" said Gorbra in her usual unimpressed tone.

"Watch," instructed Ulga.

She bent, loosening a sheet of ice from the nearest puddle. With a quick, powerful movement of her arm she sent it careening towards the rock face. The crystalline crash it made was impressive, as all the little glistening shards burst and rained down onto the ground.

Gorbra's eyes glazed over.

Ulga took another sheet of ice and handed it to Gorbra. "You try it now," she said. "It's fun."

She accepted the piece of ice almost solemnly, and took a moment to concentrate before winding up and spiking it forcefully onto the ground. The ice exploded and she jumped up and down cheering and giggling at high volume.

"Did you see that?! Did you see that?!" her shrieks of joy were almost painfully piercing. "Let's do that again!"

So the two of them had a dandy time laughing and hurling all the ice sheets at the ground and against the rock face, watching them break and hearing over and over that full, satisfying shattering sound echo against the uneven rocks. When there was no more ice left to shatter, the two Orcs sat down on a ledge overlooking the road, still giggling.

"Have you got rid of your destructive energy now?" asked Ulga.

"Not really," said Gorbra, smiling cheerfully. "And I'm still hungry."

"I'm sorry, that's something I can't help you with right now. Have you ever thought of actually…obtaining your own food?"

"Okaaay," Gorbra whined, petulant but accepting defeat.

They sat in silence for a short time, and Gorbra's expression turned uncharacteristically thoughtful. "Hey, if you really need to spy on Humans, why don't you just go down South and find some Haradrim? They might be slightly less likely to slaughter you than the Tarks are."

"I could, and I have a few times. But they're not as interesting; they're too much like us."

"But that's a good thing."

"I guess."

"Well I guess I'll go obtain my own food now." Gorbra rose and picked a safe path down the hill to the road below, heading home.

As she walked along the road, thinking wistful thoughts of gourmet roast dung of Fell Beast, she failed to notice that she was not alone. Another Orc was making his way home as well, on a side road that met hers. He wasn't paying an excessive amount of attention to his surroundings either, being filled with thoughts of the enjoyable time he'd just had hunting bats (an Orcish pastime). Both Orcs were walking fast, and Ulga watched from above as they collided roughly with each other.

In half a moment they were at each other's throats. Pulling, kicking, biting, punching, scratching. Ulga observed the fight with little concern, thinking it would blow over soon enough and the two of them would walk away none the worse off, except for the addition of a few shallow cuts and bruises. But then she saw Gorbra pull a small, rough dagger out of her pocket, wielding it high above her head, rather as if she meant to use it. But the other Orc was faster. Instantaneous as a lightning strike, a dagger of his own was out of his pocket and in Gorbra's chest.

Gorbra screamed, a raw, feral scream of pain and rage, but before she crumpled onto the ground she raised her huge arm and thrust her own dagger squarely between the eyes of her opponent, twisting it sharply with one last savage scream. He fell backwards and she fell over on top of him. By the time Ulga reached them they were both dead.

She was surprised at the pain she felt as she stood helplessly over them. This was senseless, meaningless. And deaths like these happened every day, every moment here. Hadn't she just seen one back at the restaurant only a couple hours ago? All at once she was completely and profoundly tired of this place she had been born and lived in her entire life. She thought of its ever-present atmosphere of filth and animalism, and it disgusted her in a way it never had before. She wished violently to be somewhere else, someone else, even. She suddenly realized…she wanted to be a Human.

There wasn't any help for that, was there? There was no way to change what she was, and she knew no Human would ever accept her. She was an Orc, an enemy. She knew very well what they all thought of her kind. To Humans every Orc was exactly the same, and equally deserving of the same fate—a violent death. Of course she couldn't blame them for thinking the way they did. They were right, after all. Mostly. Oh, what could she do? How could she cope with this most impossible of wishes?

Ulga came back to the present with a jolt. Here she was thinking about herself when there were two dead Orcs at her feet, one of which had been her closest…acquaintance.

A few minutes later she was shoveling the rocky, hard-packed, frozen soil by the roadside with all her might. She worked quickly, hoping she could finish her task before anyone passed by and saw her. Passersby might be curious. Or hungry. When two large, long, and reasonably deep holes were dug, she wiped the sweat from her brow and then got to work carrying Gorbra's hefty body to the first one. Once Gorbra was carefully lowered into her grave, it was the male Orc's turn. Ulga hoped they wouldn't mind being buried in such close proximity. They had killed each other after all. But maybe their spirits, if they had any, would make up with each other in time. Ulga liked to think that. Maybe spirits, once they weren't attached to the bodies and brains of Orcs or Humans or Trolls or any other kind, were more harmonious, more similar than different.

Once she'd done her best to cover the two bodies with the displaced soil and then pack it down so the roadside looked as undisturbed as possible, she decided the next order of business was to find some flowers. She was basing all this on a vague memory of a Human funeral she'd seen from a distance once. Flowers didn't really grow in Mordor, but she was able to find a few very scraggly weeds nearby. They didn't seem quite the thing, but they would have to do.

Next was a funeral song. Music was also scarce in Mordor, and among Orcs in general, but she felt a song simply must be sung; she wanted to send these two souls off as respectfully as possible, and she knew a dirge was one of the most important ingredients, if the funeral she'd seen was anything to go by.

She racked her brain for something singable.

Try as she might to think of something more sophisticated, the only snatch of music she could remember was something the goblins of Goblin Town in the Misty Mountains had sung when she'd visited that one unforgettable time. (She'd found and "adopted" Warg during this visit; but that's a story for another chapter.)

"Clash, crash. Crush, smash," she rasped out dismally,

Hammer and tongs. Knocker and gongs.

Pound, pound, far underground.

Ho, ho! my lad.

Ulga had an uncomfortable feeling that this song wasn't at all the thing.

She stopped singing and laid the weeds on the graves, even watering them with a few tears. At least she'd gotten that part right.

She supposed that concluded the funeral. With slumped shoulders she sat on the cold ground and began to consider what to do next. Warg trotted over while she was considering and lay down beside her. The wolf sighed deeply and started quietly considering too, in an effort to be helpful. Ulga rested her head on Warg's shoulder. She felt that she simply couldn't stay where she was anymore. There was nothing to tie her here, really, except for her cave and all the Human Things she had collected there. It would hurt to leave them, but she thought it might hurt more not to. And she could choose a few small, extra special mementos to take with her. Her fingers closed around the little object in her pocket.

"Warg…" she said slowly. "How would you feel about leaving? For good this time."

Warg considered again for a moment. Then she growled something gently in Warg-speak and licked Ulga's face with her enormous forked tongue. Ulga pulled a handkerchief (like the Humans used) out of her other pocket and wiped off the wolf slobber, smiling a little.

"Alright, then. We're going to find the White Wizard."