When Snaga awoke his brain was in a thick fog. His memories were blurred; it was a struggle to recall the events of the night before. He remembered feeling afraid, being struck, being screamed at. To his great humiliation, he recalled getting on his knees in front of Elaenar and sexually propositioning him. The memory of it made him want to die of shame. When Snaga woke up he was confused to discover that he was lying, not on the stone floor, but on an elevated platform. He turned on his stomach and fell back asleep and woke up and went back to sleep again almost five times. Snaga had no idea what drugs he'd been given ("given" wasn't the right word, more like forced down his throat) but they were incredibly strong. The brain fog he was in felt like a hangover; a hangover that admittedly wasn't nearly as wretched as binging on hard liquor.

Snaga sat up in his bed, alert, when he heard the door open. It was Elaenar; looking strangely agitated with Snaga. What had he done wrong?

Snaga noticed that elf wasn't armed; it was the first time he had ever seen Elaenar without his sword, which slightly put him at ease (only slightly).

"Get up and follow me, Snaga." Elaenar ordered.

He hesitated, nervous. "...are you going to free me?"

"No, and I'm not going to hurt you either. Now get up and come with me before I lose my patience with you."

Snaga hesitantly pushed the covers aside, got out of bed, and shuffled over to the elf. The elf grabbed him by his wrist and tugged him into the hallway, giving him an impatient push on his back, saying "come along."

Elaenar brought him to another room; it had a fire, a chair, and a tub of water.

"Strip down and burn all of your clothes in the fire."

A pang of dread filled his heart; Snaga crossed his arms over himself and cast his gaze to the floor.

"Do you want me to look away?" Elaenar asked. Snaga nodded his head.

"Fine. I want you to take this," he said while shoving a sponge into his hands. "And I want you to scrub every damn inch of yourself until your skin is raw. Then when you're done, I want you to do it again. Take your time and be thorough about it. If you finish too quickly, I'll be displeased with you."

Elaenar gave the orc a strange block the size of his palm that smelled pleasant and had the texture of wax and instructed Snaga to apply the object to himself using words that he didn't recognize like "lather" and "suds". He was ordered to scrub everything from his armpits to the skin behind his ears. Elaenar even ordered him to clean out the dirt from underneath his fingernails. Snaga obeyed all of these bizarre instructions to the best of his ability; not because he wanted to, but because he still feared his elvish master (even though; according to his fuzzy memory from the night before, Elaenar had sworn to never hang him upside down and flay him; a promise that Snaga wasn't sure he believed, nor could he even say with certainty that it had happened).

As he bathed himself, he anxiously glanced over at the elf to make sure that Elaenar wasn't watching him, just as he promised that he wouldn't. Elaenar kept his word; he sat at the other end of the room with his feet propped up on the table, whittling at a piece of wood, with his back turned to Snaga. Nonetheless, Snaga still felt violated.

Because he had been ordered to burn all of his clothes, Snaga had anxieties that he would have nothing to wear, but the elf gave him a long shirt (and nothing else) to dress himself with when he was finished washing himself.

When he was finished, Elaenar inspected him. He gruffly snatched Snaga's wrist and twisted his arm so that his palm was facing upward.

"What is this thing on your arm?" He asked with disgust, referring to the crude numerals tattooed on the orc's skin.

"My number," Snaga answered meekly.

"Your number?" Elaenar scoffed. "You have a number, but you don't even have a name?"

Snaga said nothing and looked down at the floor.

"Good God, you really are a slave." Elaenar muttered under his breath.

The elf gruffly instructed him to sit in the chair, then proceeded to cut all of his hair off. After this, he led Snaga to the mirror and basin. Snaga looked into the mirror astonished; he had never seen his own reflection before. He was broken from his trance when Elaenar barked at him to pay attention, and handed him a strange, bristled tool to brush his teeth with. Then he gave him a very thin string of twine to run between his teeth. When Snaga complained that it was causing his gums to bleed, Elaenar simply said:

"Good. That means you're doing it right."

When Snaga finished, Elaenar grabbed his jaw and inspected his teeth. Snaga must have done a good-enough job, because the elf didn't tell him to do it all over again. What Elaenar didn't know was that while Snaga had been scrubbing his skin clean and brushing the filth off of his teeth, he was frantically scheming in his mind about how to get himself freed, how he might bargain with his captor.

"What about my reward?" He asked abruptly when Elaenar let go of his jaw.

"Yourwhat!?" Elaenar exclaimed; outraged at the little orc's audacity.

Snaga gulped; he wasn't a skilled negotiator, not in the slightest. Although he was trembling, he puffed out his chest and tried his best to act boldly.

"I saved your friends...what's my reward?"

"Your reward…" Elaenar snarled, "is that you get to live instead of being executed. You don't fool me, Snaga. I know you didn't save anyone out of the goodness of your own heart; you obeyed me because you were coerced. You had no choice but to do what I commanded; so I don't want to hear any more talk from you about a "reward".

Snaga looked crushed as every hope he had of being released was finally and officially dashed.

"But I-I" He faltered.

"Enough." Elaenar commanded. "And furthermore, about your actions last night…"

Snaga's heart dropped into his stomach.

"Now that you're here to stay, I command you to abstain from every foul orc behavior and filthy mannerism that you're inclined towards. I don't care what wicked, learned behaviors you may have ingrained in you. From now on, you will conduct yourself with decency and you will act like someone with regard for your own integrity, not a debased whore."

Snaga's jaw dropped, and an expression swept over his face that was equal parts enraged and hurt. Tears formed in his eyes, his face contorted into an expression of ugly malice, and he looked up at the towering elf with pure hatred.

"Fuck you!" He spat. Elaenar slapped him across the cheek.

"Don't ever let that filthy word come out of your mouth ever again."

Snaga's hate-filled gaze met the floor and he muttered something in his own coarse, native tongue.

"What did you just say?" Elaenar growled.

"I heard you say it once." Snaga mumbled. Elaenar was ignited with fury to be talked back to that way; how dare the little orc slave speak to him like that? (Also, when had he said the f-word in front of Snaga?) Then he remembered: it was actually one of the first things he had ever spoken to the orc. Being caught in his own hypocrisy only served to make Elaenar even more livid. He ignored the accusation and replied:

"Don't ever speak in that detested language around me ever again. You are forbidden from speaking in your native orcish tongue, not a single word. Understood?"

Snaga stared down at the floor and didn't reply.

"Answer me when I speak to you!" He snapped, already pissed off.

"I hate you." Snaga whispered. Elaenar snorted in reply.

"I'm sure you do." And with that, the elf promptly grabbed him by the shoulder and escorted him down the hall back to the orc's holding cell.

The door slammed behind him and Snaga stood there in a stupor. He looked up and down at his small, stone-walled prison cell. He realized to his immeasurable horror that he would be spending every day for the rest of his life in this room. Every. Single. Day. He would be left to rot in this cell until the day that he died. This was his reward; Snaga began to wish he could have just been executed.