****Author's note****

We're back! I hope everyone had a good weekend.

I'm not sure if anyone is actually following this story, but if you are, thank you!

This is my first story ever and I hope its turning out alright.

I'd love to hear what you think about it so far in the comments section below!

12

Ar-Tashk pulled Alaesia along the craggy rocks outside the fortress in the early dawn mists. In a sick sense, it almost seemed as if she were a dog, and the olog her owner. He would barely give the lead enough slack for her to stay behind him, which kept her heeled to his side. Should she slip and stumble, the olog would barely notice, and it was all Alaesia could do to scramble back to her feet to avoid being raked across the sharp rocks littering the area.

Occasionally, Ar-Tashk would pause, more for checking animal trails than Alaesia's benefit. Despite the olog's lumbering gait, he was surprisingly swift, meaning she had to keep pace with him by half-jogging. There had been no other scraps to make a breakfast out of that morning, leaving Ar-Tashk in a foul mood, and Alaesia's own body trembling with fatigue.

The odd pair was tailed at a distance by the goblin witch, who was, herself, tailed by a couple of Vezhir's own goblin servants. She noted to herself that the human woman's body was looking far more emaciated than it had the previous night. The uruk spawn was growing exponentially faster with each day, and the drain on the human's body was likely to kill her, even with all the effort to keep her alive.

The kind of magic the witch had used to accelerate the development of the uruk's spawn was taboo, even among goblin-folk, for a reason. All magic had a cost to be paid, and if not fulfilled, it could prove deadly. In the case of the uruk overlord's experiment, it seemed that the host's own body would be consumed if not provided enough food for the spawn to grow. The witch did a quick calculation in her mind; if the ratio of ten months condensed into one was the rate of growth, her ward might need the same ratio of food to survive the experiment. On a grander scale, even with the witch's magic, building the uruk's army might be completely unfeasible; gathering ten times the rations to feed even a handful of breeders would devastate the region entirely. Warriors produced from such conditions would never be strong enough to satisfy the overlord.

The witch shuttered at the thought of having to inform Vezhir of the assessment. If she wanted to keep her head, the witch knew she'd have to do everything in her power to make sure the human survived and proved the experiment a success. Then maybe the witch herself would find an opening by which she could make her escape. If she tried making a run for it now, before having lulled him into a sense of trust, Vezhir would undoubtedly sic his trackers to hunt her down, if her goblin entourage didn't catch her first. She couldn't let on that the overlord's experiment was doomed to fail, she would have to make arrangements to outwit him before he grew wise to the reality of the situation.

With the verdict in mind, the witch slowly and cautiously extricated herself from the olog's company, under the watchful eye of Vezhir's goblin servants, to make her way towards the coast of the Sea of Nurnen; perhaps sea bird eggs and fish would prove to be sustainable to the human for the time being. At least that would prove an easy source of sustenance that she could put the other goblins to work on gathering.

Ar-Tashk was acutely aware of when the witch and her goblins had slipped away, and it was perfectly fine by him. His slave's unsteady gait was already a hindrance to hunting, having the weedy, gaggle of goblins along was just an unnecessary irritant. They'd alert his prey and ruin the hunt if they had stuck around. He was more than glad to be rid of them.

It took some time, but eventually the remaining duo, human and olog, came upon a grove of trees through which Alaesia thought she spotted a rabbit. The olog tested the air, lashed her chain to one of the trees, and slipped quietly into the underbrush.

There was a part of Alaesia that longed for the life she once had; even as an outcast with a rough fight for survival, there had been mornings like this, where she would lean against a tree and watch the sun burn away the dew. Those fleeting moments of beauty and peace were precious and often short lived, but the thought evoked a memory of the day she had been captured.

A gentle breeze stirred the air, chasing away the stench of orcs that had permeated the night outside Alaesia's hidden abode. It was not uncommon to have orcs traversing the area while they were scouting and looking for weaknesses in the defenses at the great big black gate that barred the residents of Mordor from passing into Gondor. The monstrous residents were an infestation that could not be rooted out, no matter how many times Gondor's soldiers hunted them down.

Such had been the case for what seemed weeks on end, as a battle between orcs and man raged on. When Alaesia finally emerged from her cave, it was only because the sounds of battle had calmed into silent peace. The early morning dew glinted as the sun rose in the east. After hiding in the cradle of cold, dark stone for so many days, she craved to feel the warmth of the sun touch her cheeks.

The steep walls of stone around her would only permit the light to reach her for a brief moment before being cut off by the angle of the light. But she was desperate to not let it pass her by so swiftly.

As the sun began to creep higher, Alaesia found herself drawn further and further beyond the safety of the crevice she called home. She had only just stepped outside the fringe of rocks, when she heard a gruff voice bark.

"EY! Lookit what I found!"

Alaesia snapped to her senses, only now realizing just how far out she had wandered and she scrambled to retreat. It was too late. An orc strutting with banner held high, heading a regiment of fellow orcs had just crested the hill and spotted Alaesia as she was absorbed in her thoughts. Another orc, at the center of the company, with the head of his predecessor stuck firmly on a trident, pointed his weapon at the human and shrieked a challenge to his followers.

"The orc that brings me that tark will be my new second in command!"

Alaesia clambered up the face of a boulder, trying to get beyond the orcs' reach before they got close enough to grab her. She clawed at the stone until her finger tips began to bleed from the strain. But she was quickly surrounded by a half-dozen of eager-to-prove-themselves orcs.

Alaesia grabbed a loose stone and smashed one orc's hands as he reached the top of the rock, sending him tumbling backwards with a loud thud when he hit the ground. A cleverer orc of the bunch stood back while his companions tried climbing after the human woman. The moment he saw an opening, he sent a bolas whipping up at Alaesia's and it locked around her legs in an instant.

The force sent the woman sliding back down the rockface, colliding with her other pursuers in the descent. A number of them were knocked off along with her and they all fell into a pile at the base of the rock-face. The orc who had brought Alaesia crashing down kicked the others out of the way so he could grab her and drag her before his new leader, Ku-Gohn the Gourmet.

The memory of Ku-Gohn wielding the orc-head-trident like a scepter sent a ripple of nausea through Alaesia's gut, and she couldn't help but dry heave. There was not an ounce of food in her gut, leaving only bile to burn up her throat. By the time she got her stomach under control, tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her nose had begun to bleed from the violent gagging.

When she looked up, she noticed an ever so slight movement in the bushes across from her, then her eyes came to meet a pair of feral, feline eyes, as she realized a caragor was stalking her. She fell silent. It felt like the world was frozen as they simply stared at each other. The moment Alaesia blinked, she knew it was over.

A thundering bellow split the silence at the same moment the caragor roared and made its move. Ar-Tashk's hulking form intercepted the pouncing beast's trajectory and he tackled it to the ground. Leaf litter was thrown into the chaos, blinding Alaesia's view, but she could hear snapping, snarling, and the impact of two monsters colliding. Ar-Tashk throttled the caragor with one arm, and held its seeking claws at bay with the other so he could expose its jugular.

Before he could bite down, the creature landed a back leg kick to his stomach and tore across the thick hide of the olog. The movement separated the pair momentarily, at which the caragor attempted to flee, but Ar-Tashk was fast. They wrestled back and forth until the caragor latched its fangs into Ar-Tashk's shoulder. He heaved himself over and slammed all of his weight into the predator, and finally split its skull with a merciless stomp.

His breathing was heavy, but as the dust settled, he looked triumphantly towards Alaesia; in a strange way he hoped she had witnessed the fight. He was the true nightmare that she should be afraid of, the one who owned her life in its miserably small entirety.

Alaesia had hunkered between the roots of the tree that she was tethered to. She had tried to avoid the thrashing of the monsters; but as the blood of each combatant splattered around her, her nausea had made her head spin. Ar-Tashk found her curled in the root hollow and hiding her face in her hands. Alaesia felt the olog grasp her leg to drag her from her hiding place, bringing back haunting visions of the uruk overlord doing the same when he wanted to pleasure himself.

She screamed and tried to make a hopeless scramble to escape the olog's grip, "NO! STOP! Let me go!"

The human's pleading sent a satisfied shiver down Ar-Tashk's spine. He leaned over her and commanded, "You beg for life now…"

The woman's confused sob caught in her throat, "Why… why won't you just kill me? Just… get it over with?"

Ar-Tashk was absorbed into Alaesia's terrified gaze; it overwhelmed him, along with the scent of sweet fear that she emanated. It would be simple to end the pinkskin's life. He could already see bruises forming on her leg where he had grabbed her. Even goblins and orcs were tougher-skinned than this tiny, fragile thing. Something about having such a delicate life at his mercy was enthralling.

The hunger in his gut from the night before was growing, tempting him to simply sever her head from her shoulders with a good bite. Yet he shoved himself away with a growl, half addressing his slave, half as if convincing himself, "Az urdan gurut. I choose when, kill you. Caragor is enough for eating."

Hefting the carcass over his shoulder, Ar-Tashk led Alaesia back to the fort.

****Translations****

Tark - human

Pinkskin - human

Az urdan-gurut - I decide death