***** Author's Note *****
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83
The Reaper was usually unreadable in all but his instinctual, brutal emotions, which were never far from boiling to the surface, but the following morning all that had been shoved deep into unreachable recesses within his head when he had awoken to find the human woman right against his chest, still clutching her arms around her stomach defensively even in her sleep. A stoic calm fell over the olog at that moment; Zathra quietly watched it unfold through slight cracks resting his eyelids.
The olog practiced rolling her name across his tongue under his breath while taking in the sight of the woman, who finally was no longer wreathed in the scent of her own blood. With its absence, the Voice was disarmed. Try as it might to rile Ar-Tashk's animalistic hunger, it was so much simpler to suppress without his own body fighting against him. His thoughts were clearer now, as he contemplated the slave in his possession.
The pre-dawn light in combination with a slight hint of early frost nipping in the air cast a chill hue upon Alaesia's skin. Ar-Tashk shifted ever-so-slightly closer, noting the shiver that rattled her, even in sleep, grew slightly less pronounced after a few moments. A sigh escaped the women's scar-marked lips, almost twisting them, the olog would have liked to imagine, somewhat contently. She rolled without prompting, inching even closer in an unconscious search for the warmth of the olog's body.
Her breathing was dry and quiet, but each breath caused the faintest whistle to peep from Alaesia's throat which his keen ears just barely could make out. The olog had to restrain a snort; she sounded like a mouse. The touch of her cheek was so light against him, he could barely feel it; silk and feathers had more substance to them than her. The human's soft exhales tickled the edge of his mane, just below his neck, sending a flood of prickling heat through Ar-Tashk's gut. But he hesitated, not daring to move, though he had no desire to either. He would have given anything to savor that moment; to not ruin it with carnal cravings boiling up within him; to stop time just to listen to her sleeping, feeling her pressing against his chest, and musing himself on the curiosities of tiny, human women while sheltering her with his bulk.
However, his quiet mutterings had broken the spell. Alaesia stirred at the sound of his voice, eyes cracking slowly open with long, vacant anxiety. She froze as the olog spoke. His guttural tones had grown like a distant thunder in her sleep, pulling her from the peace of a dreamless black and into the wary, waking world. There she found herself looking up into the pallid, beastly face of her master.
This close, she couldn't stop the smell the sight singe of burnt hair lingering about him from accosting her nose and though the sun had yet to crest the horizon, she could just spy the scars of her handiwork lashed over the grayish-white rocky hide of his broad shoulders. And yet, the olog held no intent for vengeance or air of hunger about his countenance. No sense of deception lingered in the calm before dawn; even his eyes had less sharpness to them than usual. His body slackened, at ease, save for the shoulder he was using to prop his head up on.
Alaesia swallowed faintly. Her heartbeat was far too slow for such proximity when she thought it ought to be racing. A touch of madness in her argued fruitlessly that she should expect his demeanor to snap at any moment, that dropping her guard would guarantee her end. But no panic struck her. Alaesia considered the possibility that she might have truly lost all will to fight, but a sense of relief still lingered about, seemingly in contradiction to that assumption. She was relieved, despite the danger just inches from her; he wasn't grabbing at her, nor tossing her around for his own amusement.
He just gave a slow blink and purred deep in his chest, "Alaesia-izub..."
For a brief moment, she wasn't sure if she was hearing him right. She had become so used to the pet name he had given her, that she almost didn't recognize the sound coming from his mouth, but her mind cleared and left no doubt. Ar-Tashk had called her by name. Her name.
Why now...? Alaesia wondered, wincing at hearing the almost-foreign word cross his lips. It felt wrong, too human, coming from one better suited to the orcish tongue, barbarous and glottal.
Why now did he change his mind? Why now did this beast address her, as if she was more than a slave? Was he not content to have the parts of her branded by Mordor? Must he also take any humanity she had left for himself? She wanted to demand answers, but to what end? It wasn't as if he was a fellow slave screaming for rescue that would never come; this beast was her master, who owed her no such explanation— she already knew the reason, but she was adamant to deny it till her dying breath.
The olog wasn't even making a demand of Alaesia. The utterance was just as if he finally could see into her deepest recesses to her core, the final sanctuary within which she had weathered out Mordor's worst, most enduring sieges. Whatever walls she had left were crumbling, leaving her utterly vulnerable. The only one she figured she might have to blame for this development was Zathra; the mere thought of the meddling orc had caused her stomach to churn.
A part of her wanted to undo the folly of sharing her name with either of these monsters in the first place, while hot tears sprung to the corners of her eyes as the other half of her wished to demand Ar-Tashk revert to calling her by the moniker he had coined, the title of her slavery. It was so much simpler when mutual loathing was expected, but the shift in the dynamic left her confused and lost.
He met her gaze as if waiting for her to respond, but she couldn't find any words. To Ar-Tashk's great disappointment, Alaesia's mouth opened slightly, then closed, repeating once more as if trying to find something, anything, to say. When no words came, she quietly turned away and closed her eyes once more to wait; eventually, he rose to his feet and moved off elsewhere, before she opened them again.
Minor, last-minute preparations for travel were made in silence on Alaesia's part. The orc and olog conversed in mingled Westron and Blackspeech, but she blocked it out as she worked. She didn't want to listen to them, to let it drive her mad with feeling lost in translation while such monsters snapped and snarled at each other as they were apt to do. For the moment, she simply took up the task of bundling slivers of dried meat in scraps of the pathetic hide.
Zathra had done a terrible job of preparing the warg skins— for all his purported skills, it seemed he had no inclination towards basic survival necessities. Perhaps he had never needed to prepare hides before, raiding and looting his enemies, rather than ever crafting his own equipment. That would have explained the raggedy disrepair that the portions of his hide and leather armor were in.
A loathsome leech, that's what he is. Such thoughts felt venomous in the back of her mind, as though part of her wished to insult his shortcomings. But she held her tongue, still trying to sort her feelings towards the orc. He was not, under any circumstance, to be trusted. She wasn't even sure if she could stomach the idea of utilizing his offers of fellowship; not anymore.
All the while as she worked, Alaesia tried to keep her eyes averted to the ground. She could not help but spy a crusting puddle of orc blood from the corner of her eye, while her back was towards Ar-Tashk and Zathra, as they bickered like a pair of ghuls pissing over burrow borders. Frogblood's body, or what little pulp was left of it, had started to fill the air with a foul smell of rotting flesh. Huge, black, Morgai flies gnawed at the green orc's flesh, breeding maggots that were just starting to feast their way through him. A vile fate for a vile creature, but deserved nonetheless, she noted with downcast guilt.
In staring at the corpse, thinking of the orc's schemes and trickery, Alaesia suddenly remembered something. Her scarred hand patted against the folds of cloth held in place by the Gondorian belt, finding the berries she had pocketed at Ammatar's cairn. One or two had been squashed at some point staining her makeshift tunic with daubs of green juice, others had gone missing probably lost in the chaos of the previous day, but a couple had survived intact.
The pair of waxy, green berries seemed so innocuous, harmless even, for how small and perfectly round they were; Zathra's warning of Mokob-Hai's many dangerous qualities didn't seem so important now. They might have even been beautiful in a strange way, like pearls of emerald stone, or perhaps, serpentine eyes...
Sssleep, wilt-ed one, the echoes of Ammatar's curses hung in Alaesia's head, almost as if the forest spirit was right there, looking up at her from the palm of her hand and enticing her to submit to his judgement. Ressst the shade and shed the ssspawn blight. Sssuffer no more orc blood... and pleasssure.
The nape of Alaesia's neck ran chill. Unable to hold the stare of the berries, her gaze returned to pass over the pieces of meat she had prepared; it would have been so easy to slip the poisonous berries into a ration for her breakfast or just to down them in one swift movement.
They'll be none the wiser until it's too late, the shadow of her darkest self offered the temptation. But the scar across her sternum echoed with a sear of protest, and a flash of the foggy cliff of her long-past dreams flitted through her head, and she tucked the berries back away into her tunic with lips tightened and a shaky breath. To step off that cliff and to plunge into the unknown, still terrified her, somehow even more than the thought of subjugation did.
Once she had finished with what preparations she could make, Alaesia had returned to Ar-Tashk's side to wait for his command to depart the clearing once and for all. If anything there was a figment of comfort in that which was familiar and expected; such as the olog's orderly preparations of his own.
She watched him flex his once-injured hand, gather his ballista bolts, and ready himself for whatever their return trip would hold. The sight of the olog, adjusting his gear in the cold morning mist, reminded Alaesia of the first few days after the incident at the caves in Nurn; the first time she had helped dress his wounds. Though riddled with new scars, little did that bother him, or if it did, Ar-Tashk didn't show it. His movements were impassive and assured, and his presence, dominating. The calm with which the olog now carried himself sent a shiver down Alaesia's spine.
She frowned and averted her gaze, but found nowhere else she could turn to without similar conflicting emotions flooding her throat. Behind her, the cliff face with the half-collapsed cave and the warg den was like a fortress wall, massive and restricting; a banner of Barbaurak's blood still clung to portions of its face. Off to Ar-Tashk's side, a section of the tree line was rent asunder from the great snake's pursuit, near the corpse of the slaver captain. And to the olog's other side, Zathra's eyes and mouth were emitting faint wisps of blue for he was lost in concentration. Alaesia shifted her eyes to her feet, but even the ground, scorched and splattered black, wouldn't allow her to escape into her thoughts. As her only resort, she tilted her head up to look at the sky, wishing for rain clouds instead of Orodruin's trailing smog.
The trio ventured into the trees just as the sky grew bright enough for Alaesia's weaker vision to see into the shadows of the forest. The woods were still silent around the clearing, when dawn did finally break, and Ar-Tashk was the first to cross the threshold of the serpent's boundaries. Zathra held his breath as he followed both the olog and Alaesia, waiting and watching.
Alaesia followed close behind, her chains once more in the Ar-Tashk's grasp. He held her leash short, nearly under his arm as they hiked through the undergrowth, none too eager to let her beyond his reach. To her, it seemed a matter of possession, while the olog was intent on not letting anything or anyone have the opportunity to get at her. Alaesia was too tired to resist, instead falling obediently in line. Ar-Tashk seemed satisfied enough that she was in his shadow again. At least he wasn't bristling with his usual intensity; Alaesia was grateful for just a moment where she could breathe without fearing his wrath or his attentions.
Of course, he's in good spirits, she thought, scanning the forest around them; his arm was healed, his slave recaptured, and the fortress awaited their return with a void of authority, likely his for the taking she figured. Alaesia's vain escape attempt had amounted to nothing more than a detour, perhaps delaying her fate by just a few days more.
The dalliance served to only solidify the understanding that she would never taste freedom again. There was nowhere she could flee that she wouldn't be captured again or worse. No more would she hopefully count herself among the outcasts; a pitiful slavish creature of Mordor, she was, until she was ready to brave the end. By monster or poison, she wasn't sure which doom would be worse, but she wasn't ready, not the way she had once believed herself to be. Not yet. It felt as if a lifetime had flown by and with each moment, her fear of death had grown stronger. However, as far as she knew, this was the final time she might feel the breeze around her, hear a creek burbling quietly nearby, and smell the sweetness of damp earth beneath her feet. She wanted to savor it, before stepping back into the cold, stone fortress again; the tomb awaiting her.
A bitter amusement made her wonder if Ar-Tashk planned on taking up Vezhir's quarters as overlord upon returning to Nurn. The idea of being taken to the ex-overlord's chambers had once stopped her heart with dread. Now she didn't know what to expect. Would he keep her with him, or would he have her dungeon cell in the kitchens rebuilt? Either prospect had miseries Alaesia knew she needed to prepare herself for.
Zathra had claimed Ar-Tashk didn't want to hurt her, but she could not fathom what that meant; the olog probably couldn't even comprehend what was harmful to a loathsome slave like herself. What was a mere nuisance to a monster like him could easily be deadly to her, like the sap-burn scars he could so easily dismiss, where a single burn left her hand mutilated beyond repair. Nor did she know what his wants meant of his plans for her; she was only useful as a servant, toy, meal, tool, lifemaker – Alaesia could see it all happening at some point, but it was mainly the last of that list that bothered her the most.
Perhaps, the thought jumped unbidden into her head, that might've contributed as to why he had agreed to let Zathra live; not just as a slave, but... as a stud for picking up where Vezhir's schemes had left off. Her face blanched and she staggered slightly as dread turned to vertigo in her gut. If that was to be so, perhaps then she would dare to consume the Mokob-Hai berries. The prior night's premonitory dream, Vezhir's presence in her nightmares, the violative feeling of Zathra's touch, and the familiar gray eyes of the orc child in her dream had frightened her. A silent prayer filled her, hoping the dream was indeed just a dream, but even that plight seemed to stir the leaves along the path with sibilant derision. The trees were listening.
***** Translations *****
Alaesia-izub - My Alaesia
