Vezhir perched on the balcony of his quarters and surveyed the comings and goings of the fort. He had seen the witch return through the gates earlier that morning, followed by his own goblins, each of which were laden with supplies. It was an odd sight to the uruk, but at least the witch was taking her task seriously. The overlord was always keen to assign goblins to menial labor which was too lowly for even the most pathetic orc.
The uruk thought very little of goblins. But they were loyal, little worms, if not much use for anything else. He knew that they would report any issues to him right away, especially if they thought they could gain something out of snitching. Goblin greed was easy to exploit that way for his own benefit. Still, Vezhir had an air of agitation about him that he couldn't shake.
Ar-Tashk's return the previous night was not necessarily unexpected, but after having unfettered access to the olog's slave while he had been gone quickly had become a drug. Unable to feed the growing addiction, put the overlord in a foul mood. Vezhir wondered briefly how he might be able to get access to the human woman without invoking the olog's possessive wrath, but it was a tenuous concept at most.
After deliberating, Vezhir donned his armor and readied himself for travel; once he tracked down the witch, he was going to take her on a little excursion to the far edge of Nurn where he would need the witch to weave her spells. If his first test subject was beyond his reach for the moment, he figured might as well find a new test subject sooner rather than later at the caves where he had had Ar-Tashk deliver the collected slaves.
Vezhir and the witch met Ar-Tashk at the gates just as he was returning with a great, big caragor carcass in tow. By the time the hunting party had made it back within the walls of the fortress, the human slave was swaying dangerously on her feet. Vezhir's hungry eyes roved over her body, noting her sunken, hollow features, not with pity, but with contempt. He seized Alaesia by the chin, and he barked at the witch, "I told you to keep the snaga alive, dum-shatraug. What's wrong with her?"
Ar-Tashk swung around, letting out a low, threatening growl at his overlord, "Do not meddle. Narl-nakh snaga-izub, shakh …"
For a tense moment, the world seemed to freeze as though waiting for a fight to break out; other orcs within earshot tensed and slowly reached for their weapons. Alaesia made a feeble effort to extricate herself from Vezhir's grasp, only to have him throw her from his grip and cause her to collapse onto the ground. Ar-Tashk rumbled deep in his chest, eyes narrowing on Vezhir.
The goblin witch quickly stepped between the two warriors to check Alaesia's forehead with the back of her hand and her wrist with the other. She could feel the human's pulse, but it was faint and unsteady, and her skin was cold to the touch. Ar-Tashk slammed an iron ballista bolt into the cobblestone between the witch and his slave, narrowly missing both.
The witch recoiled and hissed at the olog low undertones, hoping that Vezhir wouldn't hear, "Don't be a fool. You're going to starve her to death by sundown, continuing as you are." If Vezhir knew just how swiftly his test subject could decline, it would surely end badly for the witch.
Ar-Tashk snarled once more to send the witch scuttling back behind Vezhir's raiment. The overlord flashed a hungered glare at Alaesia, before turning swiftly away to leave; Ar-Tashk had become a little too disobedient a dog. Vezhir would have to beat the olog back into his place later. The stupid brute was going to ruin Vezhir's experiment with possessive neglect, and the overlord wasn't keen to wait an additional month for results.
He grabbed the goblin witch by her staff and flung her roughly out of the gate as he followed closely behind, while sneering at the olog as he passed, "Do what you want with your slave, Reaper, but don't forget to whom you owe your life. Never speak to me like that again." With no further exchange, the overlord and witch departed.
Ar-Tashk was in a raging temper after the exchange with Vezhir. He roared to scatter any nosy onlookers, and commanded for Alaesia to move and yanked her chains sharply, but she simply couldn't obey. Her legs had buckled in Vezhir's ravenous presence, as if his aura was crippling her from the inside out. Try as she could, she couldn't stand or walk. The woman was shaking, fight back hot tears, trying to do anything, but her body wouldn't respond. She was sure, for a brief moment, the Reaper's wrath was finally going to strike the life from her body and she closed her eyes in gruesome anticipation. But the deathblow never came.
In spite of the fury boiling his blood, Ar-Tashk lifted his slave like a ragdoll and swung her over his shoulder, where he also was carrying the carcass of his kill from that morning. Oil-black blood soaked across the olog's back and onto Alaesia's skin. Being carried like a flour sack was a strange sensation. If it weren't for the clamor of the monstrous men throughout the fort and the dead caragor's stench, the olog's swaying might have lulled her into a bizarre sense of security.
One of the witch's underlings met them in the hall outside the kitchen. He pointed a fractured nail at the human woman, and timidly informed Ar-Tashk, "The dum-shatraug arranged food for your tark. I'm s'posed to take her to it."
Ar-Tashk was having none of it, "Snaga-izub nar adhn-gon-izub. She stays with me, worm."
The goblin looked as if he were about to protest, but thought better of it and slunk from the olog's presence.
When Ar-Tashk threw down the caragor, his slave slid off his shoulder as well. Alaesia sucked a pained breath through her teeth, trying to stop her head from spinning. The last thing she wanted was to fight her stomach's urge to heave again. Her whole body was starting to shiver already within the dark, cold walls of the olog's kitchen.
The pitiful sounds his slave tried to hide only attracted Ar-Tashk's attention. She did look even more frail than before, if that were somehow possible. Next to the muscular build of the caragor's body, she looked very nearly like a wraith. Perhaps the witch had had a point, he briefly considered, grog was hardly enough, and that had been all he had left her to eat previously. Ar-Tashk set to work cleaning his kill, while his slave hovered in a state of semi-consciousness.
Alaesia's mind only came back into focus when she felt her neck be forcibly grasped by the olog's massive hand as he tilted her head upward. Some sort of stewed slop was poured down her throat, causing her emaciated body to involuntarily choke it down; though her mind tried to reject it, starvation caused her body to take control in the moment.
It was a familiar taste, not unlike rabbit brains she had once consumed out of desperation, though far more metallic than she recalled. Even as she swallowed the putrid gruel, Alaesia became increasingly aware of the nearly instantaneous drain taking every ounce of nutrients it could from her own stomach and putting it into the stomach of the thing growing inside her. Tears began to roll down her cheeks as Ar-Tashk force fed her caragors brains until she begged for him to stop.
Satisfied that his slave was no longer in immediate danger of starvation, Ar-Tashk allowed Alaesia slump against a stone pillar. She watched Ar-Tashk roasting a dismembered limb from the caragor. Even as she felt her overly full stomach's contents being redirected, the scent of roasting meat made her mouth water. She could tell it wasn't her mind speaking; it was the spawn within her.
Ar-Tashk was not blind either; he noticed the slave woman staring intently at his meal. A rumble broke the silence, and it took Alaesia a moment to realize it was the olog laughing. He deftly pulled a knife from his belt, sliced a chunk from the haunch of meat, and dangled it at the slave, "You want, you beg."
Alaesia tried to fight herself, even to the point of drawing blood by biting her own tongue, but found she couldn't resist the insatiable hunger that elicited a plea from her lips, "Please… can I have some?"
The olog grunted, as though satisfied, and held his blade threateningly towards her throat, the slice of meat still dangling from it, "Eat, snaga-izub."
Despite having been stuffed full of brains to the point she felt her stomach would burst, the tough meat of the caragor leg still caused her mouth to water uncontrollably. The thing growing inside her was quick to demand a constant stream of food, to which Alaesia could only submit. She cautiously unhooked the piece of meat from the end of the blade, and retreated to her pillar to contemplate.
She was slowly beginning to notice a pattern to the olog's behavior towards her; whenever he exerted power and control over her, Ar-Tashk seemed to be agreeable, though still behaving with unpredictable, threatening undertones. Perhaps that sense of control was why he refused to kill her; there would be no power to exert over a dead person.
If that were the case, she suspected the olog would never take her life; it was very likely that she would have to take it herself, her only means of escaping this hellish nightmare. When that chance would arise, she wasn't sure if she would have the nerve to do so. She choked on a lump forming in her throat at the thought. Just as the witch had threatened her with a lifetime of torture, it seemed she would never be free until sickness or old age took her. She felt her eyes begin to sting once again at the prospect.
To Alaesia's surprise, the olog's knife appeared in front of her nose again, as he held out another strip of meat and commanded her to eat. She accepted the offering, half wishing the caragor it came from was carrying a deadly disease and half ravaged with insatiable hunger. When he held out a skin of grog, Alaesia obediently took it, mindlessly consuming as much as her stomach would hold.
****Translations****
Snaga - Slave
Dum-shatraug - Fate Witch
Tark - Human
Narl-nakh snaga-izub, shakh - Keep away from my slave, sir (in a disrespectful tone)
Snaga-izub nar adhn-gon-izub - My slave will not leave my sight.
Snaga-izub - My slave