***** Author's Note *****

The following chapters may be a bit delayed. I want to refactor a few things to make them flow better, so I'm working on that at the moment as well as writing the following chapters. But you can see content as sooner:

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51

There was never any time in Ar-Tashk's life that he had not been able to take what he wanted. Those that didn't have issues with authority would always submit before his demands, and those that did push back were easy to break. Very few orcs or uruks could hold their own against him, so if they had something he wanted, it was his, as simple as that. Other ologs might put up a fight but he knew how to deal with his own kind. As big as ologs were, that meant they typically had limited options when it came to their weaponry of choice. Forgemasters rarely cared to make custom, oversized weaponry. It was inefficient to the industry of Mordor. A club was the most common olog weapon followed closely by a club with spikes. If they were particularly lucky, their clubs might be imbued with curses or spells.

Ar-Tashk had never been satisfied with being relegated to such crude, rudimentary armaments. But for a good long while, it was the only thing he could get other than the toothpicks that the orcs used for swords. So when a marksman orc atop a parapet of the fortress in Nurn tried to stop Ar-Tashk's assault to take the fort alongside Vezhir, it had given the olog a brilliant idea. Even with a great iron bolt embedded in his gut at the time, Ar-Tashk had breached the wall and simply took the ballista the marksman had been stationed there. What became of the unlucky marksman, Ar-Tashk couldn't recall; he was blinded in his wrath when it happened, so the memories were a blur. But all that mattered at the time was that he claimed the ballista for himself. An olog with a ranged weapon was unheard of, and it had allowed him to always stay two steps ahead of any enemies' attacks. He had become unstoppable; everything that he wanted became his.

The olog's fingers curled around the butt of his ballista and he watched his own black blood oozing between his fingers as his mind wandered. If he really was as powerful as he thought, then why didn't he know what he wanted now? Why couldn't he just have everything? What was stopping him from taking it? The entire time he had been tracking down his escaped slave, there hadn't been a single doubt in his mind about what he was going to do, what he was going to take from her, what was his to own in its entirety. Yet when she had been laid bare before him, even within the bruising grip of his great hands pinning her in place, she wasn't his.

Her thin frame had been marked up and down by ghuls scratches, Vezhir's claws, and cauterized burns of his own infliction. The ribs of her chest had jutted prominently from under her small breasts that were lined with rake-like scars, no doubt from the overlord's rovings. The pale skin of her lashed legs had been coated in dried blood, her own, while her hands were black with orc blood. Her pulse had been wild and thrilling, making the predator in Ar-Tashk eager to taste his prey. But her eyes... They had flitted blindly through the darkness, catching the barest hints of light and glimmering like emeralds that only Ar-Tashk could make out through the shadows.

The color, green as a wild wood and hidden among the tangles of her fiery hair, had reminded him of Nurn. To him, an olog who had clawed his way from the desolate wastes in the southeast, Nurn was an Eden, a paradise unlike any he had known before. In Nurn, he never went hungry, never fell prey to bands of orcs who made sport of his weakened state, never scorched and blistered in the shadeless sun of the desert. In Nurn, Ar-Tashk had been in his element. It was the kind of wild place where he belonged... Like her eyes... He wanted to get lost in those eyes of Nurn.

Yet even as he had taken in her feral beauty, none of it was truly his! And the voice in his head roared at him to make her his in every way imaginable. Crush her! Eat her! Take her! Rape her! Split her like a pig! Yet he couldn't have her, at least not the way he had wanted. What he wanted felt like grasping for a wisp of smoke on a breeze. Uncatchable, unholdable. Not a single one of the demands the voice made could satisfy him. It perplexed Ar-Tashk. How was it that he held her in his hands, at the absolute mercy of his very whims, exactly as he had imagined, desire running hot and violent within himself, but he didn't have her? The contradiction was infuriating!

His arm twinged in protest as the ballista creaked in his grasp. The scar that webbed up the back of his hand was freshly splitting at the edges from having been strained in his charge into battle with the warg pack. Huge lacerations raked across his own hide from where the beasts had attempted to fight back and drive the olog away from their home. But in the chaos of the dust cloud, they hadn't stood a chance.

Ar-Tashk had ripped through them, unhindered by any claw they set upon him. No jaws had locked into him long enough to bring the olog down. Now, their decimated bodies lay amongst the rubble in the den tunnel and outside. One lay buried under the collapsed section of the cave entrance, killed before Ar-Tashk had arrived by a spear to its orbital socket, but the other two adults had tried to take down the olog to no avail. They were swiftly dispatched, necks broken, by the olog's brutally strong grip and they lay dead upon the ground. The yearling warg had made its escape when the olog appeared to claim his prize, and frankly, he hadn't even noticed it once he had found her, alive, in the murk. Every fragment of his focus had collapsed into a singularity upon finding her. It was then, Ar-Tashk's blind rage had faltered, before finally buckling when she screamed for the help of the orcs who had stolen her from him.

He grabbed one of the warg bodies and dragged it into the depths of the den. Drawing his short sword-dagger in an angry huff, he slammed the blade into the chest of the beast, sliding it between the ribs recklessly. The bones popped and cracked as he set about tearing it to pieces.

"Yer gonna spoil the meat if ya puncture the guts," a cool, irritable voice split Ar-Tashk's attention on his task. Frogblood had returned to the den and was leaning against a jut of stone near the tunnel. He held himself upright, in spite of the chains he bore. He seemed to be staring down his blunt nose at the olog, which made Ar-Tashk bristle. "Yer slaves is all chained up and dealt with. So wot ya gonna do now, Az-Korra? Eat 'em? Sell the lot of 'em?"

Ar-Tashk's pale eyes flashed dangerously in the dark. The implication that they might survive long enough to even be sold was darkly laughable, "Pagurz, Snagorsk. Latim mat mukhu az urdan. You find out." Then again... Ar-Tashk paused. What did it even matter if the lot of them were slave thieves in the first place? Why did he even care that much about this tark woman to begin with? He found himself at a loss, trying to work out who held the blame for her even escaping in the first place. Had he been wrong that she concocted the plan on her own? Did she actually escape herself... Or did the orcs he had captured snuck right out under his nose and steal her away?

She threw you aside to fall in with orc scum! The Voice broke in through the cracks of his doubt, making Ar-Tashk hiss and shove his sword up the sternum of the warg to break away the ribs. He flung gore and entrails towards Frogblood, grumbling angrily and trying to drive the nagging voice from his head.

The green orc hissed as the juices of the carcass splattered across his boots, but bit back his urge to spit at his captor. He wouldn't be the captor for long, if Frogblood had anything to say about it. But for now, the orc needed to bide his time until the time was right to shift the power dynamic. If this Az Korra was such a beast that he could track a slave across field, stone, river, and forest, as well as take on a pack of wargs and win, he would be an invaluable asset in reestablishing Frogblood's slaving empire.

The thought had crossed the orc's mind that if Az-Korra had been tracking Ku'Gohn's slave, then the olog might even answer to the Reaper himself. After all, she probably escaped in the chaos when the Reaper killed Ku'Gohn, Frogblood reasoned, and the Reaper would have sent a good underling to track down anyone that gave them the slip. Az-Korra seemed to fit that bill. Not too bright, but skilled at what he could do, and a damned good juggernaut in a pinch. If that were the case, Frogblood wouldn't even need the mannish female to track down his blood brother's murderer. He could just use this thickhead. If the orc could find the olog's price, it wouldn't take long to gain the upper hand and authority of the little group of captives.

"Let me handle yer slaves," he lilted his voice placatingly. "I know how ta deal with mans an' orcs alike. Done it fer years. I'll keep them in line for ya." Ar-Tashk ripped the tongue out of the warg's skull and tore into it with his own teeth, making Frogblood's lip curl. What a barbarian...

The olog didn't seem to acknowledge Frogblood beyond a furious grunt. Just out of the orc's eye line, Ar-Tashk's hand curled involuntarily, spasming and causing him to lose all grip on his short sword where it was embedded into the warg's flank. The freshened damage stung, but moreover, he was angry. Neither he, nor the voice, could blot out the image of the woman frowning as she tended to his mangled hand, back before she escaped. Her brow had furrowed in deep focus as she examined the peeled flesh, and she looked like she was going to cry when she had to cut away the dead flesh of the wound to encourage the healing process. What a silly thing to weep over, the olog had thought at the time. But now... Did he want her to look upon him that way?

No. That would be ridiculous, Ar-Tashk couldn't tell if it was himself or the Voice that rejected the thought. Injuries like that were an hourly occurrence in Mordor. Pity wasn't even worth giving to the dead, let alone the injured. Yet, even though the pain had emanated through his whole arm when she was treating him, he had been able to feel the softness of her hands as she bound rabbit skins on his wounds. That he knew he wanted to feel again. He wanted her to touch him, trace her hand along his wounds and see just how hard it would be to kill him. Orcs could never compare to the raw power coiled in Ar-Tashk's muscles. He wanted her to know that... to rely on that...

He shook himself and looked down at his curled hand. Slowly but surely he forced it to flex at his will, before grabbing the sword and yanking it out of the carcass. Ar-Tashk spun on his heel, turning to face Frogblood.

Frogblood held back a sneer, but readied himself in case Ar-Tashk was about to attack him, but the olog threw the short sword at Frogblood's feet, with a clatter. The olog's guttural voice was difficult for the orc to understand even while speaking Westron, but he uttered a pointed and dark order to the captive, "Fetch wood for fire, Snagorsk. I handle snagim-izub. Nar-irzkrat. I kill if you flee."

Even as blood poured from Az-Korra's sliced-up hide, Frogblood couldn't help but feel a twinge in the pit of his stomach as the olog towered menacingly over him. He slowly bent to pick up the short sword, eyes not shifting from watching the olog, waiting to see if this was some sort of trick, but the brute didn't seem to be deceiving him. Frogblood felt the olog's eyes boring into his back as he clambered back up the tunnel of the den to follow the commands of his captor.

Once out of sight, and presumably out of earshot of the olog, Frogblood snorted to himself under his breath. The stupid troll had no concept of slave dealing. Handing a captive a weapon? What a joke. It would seem he had no concept of backstabbing! And he certainly had no idea what to do with himself without someone with a brain to give him orders. No, the fool was just going to devour the carcasses of the wargs like a mindless animal. For now, that suited the orc captain just fine. Let the brute sate his appetite; a fed olog was easy to tame. Frogblood knew without a shadow of a doubt, he would have ample opportunity to take command.

As he reached the edge of the den entrance, the sound of voices make Frogblood pause. The orcs and humans seemed... to be conversing about names? He paused, almost entirely out of bafflement, and listened closer. One of the orcs was rambling on about elvish for some reason. What anything had to do with those knife-eared prisses was beyond Frogblood. Surprisingly even the human seemed engaged in the discussion, which disgusted the slaver captain. Orcs and men shouldn't intermingle. It was that kind of shit that had flooded Mordor with uruks, filthy mix-bloods that always acted so superior to orcs. He could barely stand them. But her faint voice whispered something that immediately grabbed Frogblood's attention.

"Th-the R... R-r-reaper."

Frogblood silently scrambled forward, careful not to be seen, but as close to the entrance of the den as he could get to hear what exactly the human was going on about. One of the orcs, the one whose face Frogblood had beaten bloody demanded to know what she meant, and Frogblood eagerly crept forward, short sword in hand. Maybe, just maybe, the pinkskin would reveal critical information about Frogblood's quarry, but she fell silent instead, making the green orc scowl.

The orc that Az-Korra had pursued through the woods responded, giving more than Frogblood could have hoped for, "The Reaper's her master, the same olog in that den over there. He stole her off toad-face's blood brother an' 'e killed the overlord of Nurn over... claim of her."

An explosion of blind redness filled the Frogblood's mind and his fingers curled around the handle of the blade with a ripple of cracks. Tension set into his shoulders like that of a caragor in a cage. He almost couldn't believe what he was hearing. Fate couldn't have planned this kind of irony if it wanted to! That stupid troll, big empty-headed, the fool of an olog, Az-Korra WAS the Reaper?!

He simply couldn't fathom it. It had to be a trick! He shook himself, trying to regain some semblance of self control, but an deep, inescapable instinct was fighting to take hold of him at the same time, as if his blood-pact with Ku'Gohn held some magic that spurred him toward turning around and killing the olog on the spot. He forced it to the back of his mind, trying to reason through the wrath. The trio of captives must've known Frogblood would be listening to them talking and hoped he would kill their captor in a blind rage of blood-brother vengeance and leave them to escape! Turning one against the other was their only path to freedom. It was the only explanation and Frogblood refused to be fooled.

Still, it was as if Ku'Gohn was whispering into Frogblood's ear himself, if there was a chance that it was true, Frogblood had no choice. He had to take blood for blood... But how? Maybe as if by some luck, or the benefit of his doubt, he resisted turning around and charging back down into the den to assault the olog outright. No, he was cleverer than that. He needed to create an opening, find a weakness.

Frogblood peeked over the edge of the rocks at the den entrance to glance at the human, bloodshot eyes narrowing coolly. What was it the stump-armed orc had said? The Reaper had killed his own Overlord over that pinkskin woman?

***** Translations *****

Az Korra - The Reaper

Pagurz Snagorsk. Latim mat mukhu az urdan. - Stupid slave-thief. You will all die when I decide.

Snagorsk - Slave-thief

Snagim-izub - My slaves

Nar-irzkrat - Don't run (Don't try to escape)

Pinkskin - Human