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

Don't want to wait for more? Now Available! Read up to Chapter 91 on my discord! Link in my bio!

If you are enjoying YRWYS, please consider leaving a comment! It really makes my day to hear what my readers think!


86

The river surface roiled as though boiling, but beneath it ran with a breath-stealing chill in its deepest channels, dragging even the largest masses along with ease.

Ammatar's long serpentine body, the roots, and branches, protruding from his overgrown hide, scraped across the grit and sediment of the riverbed; some snapped and gave way under the pressure, and other portions caught on rocks and tore away strips of his earth-scale flesh. The churning waters swirled with sappish-blood, forest green, mixed with the inky hue of night shadow. But he couldn't escape, pinned beneath the behemoth beast who had but one clear goal in mind: to destroy the forest spirit.

The screams of pain and fury of the snake that otherwise would have reached the sky were muffled into cold, almost melodious, tones under the surface of the water.

A bolt of wrought iron shoved into his spine, preventing him from slithering away with the current and Ar-Tashk's mighty grip hauled the serpent back until they clasped just between the base of his skull where it met his neck. The olog began to pull with all his might in opposite directions.

Ammatar's coils whipped and lashed fruitlessly to resist. Cracks as loud as breaking stones cut through the water. A chilling toll of death was ringing urgently in his ears.

Not like this, he would NOT die like this! How many orcs and their ilk had succumbed to Ammatar's fangs?!

Eras had come and gone defending his woods from the imps that had invaded and all but destroyed the forests north of the river! It was he whose sacrifice of blood and venom had held the tide of pests at bay for countless years! Even the elves and Carnan herself had failed and fallen, while he had remained steadfast in his oaths!

HE was immortal, impassable, indomitable, INCORRUPTIBLE! The forest spirit refused to let this mere animal, this mindless evil of Mordor, destroy him!

He couldn't allow it.

He wouldn't allow it!

Zathra could hear Ammatar's mind come crashing down in a maddened descent of panic, for he too was dragged along within the river current, entangled in the serpent's grasp and nearly trapped beneath Ar-Tashk's weight. He struck, claws and teeth, into the snake's hide, to free himself.

The orc felt the tension holding him tight lift as the snake's wailing and gnashing grew, and he kicked with all he strength to the dimming light above him. He broke the river's surface to gulp down as much air as he could.

But the serpent's malice was yet to be spent.

With his body nearly torn in two by Ar-Tashk, Ammatar's form melted way like mud between the brute's fingers. The olog clawed searchingly through the water around him, trying to find his quarry and grabbing at the debris of Ammatar's shedding form poured past in a torrent.

At the same time, another thick coil of muscle and greenery snarled itself around Zathra and drew downwards with the force of a whirlpool, sinking the orc below the water once more. He was the weaker of the two enemies Ammatar faced; if the spirit couldn't finish off both, he would simply have to end them one at a time!

Ammatar's voice in Zathra's head seemed to turn to a low deep lurch with his transformation, To crypt return you, thief of keysss! Ruin rebuke-ed! Undone! Undone must be Tacarmatan'sss propheciesss!

With no sword in hand nor makeshift spear, the orc had no way to fight back as more arms of plant matter slithered around him, and with his arms suddenly pinned in uncomfortable twines around his sides, Zathra was at the spirit's mercy. It was a struggle to make sense of the shadows of the monster around him.

It was no longer a snake that held him tethered, but a deep-water beast the orc had heard tales of amongst the slavers sailing the sea of Nurnen; not nearly the size that the tales told of— a ship-sinking monster— but otherwise matching the descriptions precisely.

The new form Ammatar had taken was a writhing mass of limbs that culminated together at a beak-like maw, and massive, hollow eyes with hooked pupils that just barely peered through the dimly lit water at its prey. The orc couldn't see the body of the creature, if it had one, just the razor-like beak and tangle of tentacles dragging him below the river current.

Damn this stupid tree-beast thing! Curses flew through Zathra's head.

His heart slammed against his chest, burning with his lungs for air and a darkness, a seed of raw hatred grew suddenly and wildly out of control in Zathra's gut; but his pulse pressed feebly to his extremities. Anger would only stave off suffocation for so long.

Given the chance, Zathra wanted nothing more than to cast the entity of the forest into the fires and molten rivers of Gorgoroth! To watch the disgusting thing burn after being chopped to bloody pieces. Sweet would be the snake's shrieks and wails in the face of Mordor's perfected torture— Zathra felt a glancing sting shoot through his mind curtailing his wickedly orcish musings and carried with it to the core of his body came a thought.

Or something almost like a thought, silencing him like a bolt of lightning.

For a moment the strike left him dumb; it both was and wasn't his own voice forming an imitation of intent he could not refuse. As intangible as a shadow's breath, the presence that now vied for his mind would not permit him the torment he fantasized of inflicting on the serpent, no matter how much the orc tried to fight it.

Was it the snake, or rather this now sea beast, ensnaring him with another of his blasted spells? Zathra wondered in dizzied fury; the fringe of his vision burst with small black blooms.

The unidentifiable power overcame him; foreign from the snake's magic, but at the same time identically familiar. Just like it both was and wasn't his own voice and how it was and wasn't verbal though. Everything about the presence wavered with contradiction; it was as cold as death but burned with life, sweet as nectar but bitter like rot.

It didn't make any sense!

He pressed back at the presence for answers; to demand the presence to make itself known, but only a couple pitiful bubbles trickled out of his agape mouth. Perhaps the delusions were just the panic of death settling into a broken and conquered mind, but then, it spoke.

As soft as a song, formed a single word, whispered clearly into Zathra's ears; a chiding word, a sorrowful word, a longing word, one that tickled the orc's recollection. Nordorion...

Zathra had disappeared into the black waters, slipping from Ar-Tashk's view in a blink just as Ammatar eluded him. At the same time, the current around them was thrown into whirling disarray. Where Ammatar's serpentine body had been, a huge mass, just slightly smaller than Ar-Tashk himself, had replaced it. It split the river with its bulk before it too dove to escape the olog's murderous grasp. The moment he moved to pursue the newly formed creature, whips, and coils of forested roots sprang through the water striking Ar-Tashk across his face.

Rows upon rows of needling thorns that lined each arm's underside raked across his face, tearing gouges in the softer hide of his eyelids, mouth, and nose. Beads of black blood dashed across his vision.

The forest spirit rumbled as he watched the olog lunge in a blind attempt to capture his enemy, overshoot, slip, and drop beneath the water. The weight and mass of the troll sank like a stone. A tether of mud swallowed the olog's feet, binding him to the riverbed more and more with each attempt to free himself. The once-serpentine beast had no such impediment, rebuilt as he was for an aquatic environment.

Ammatar thrust himself along with the current pulling the smaller enemy, the orc, under the current with it, sure he could elude the olog now. He was just inches from passing beyond the troll's reach, then Ammatar would be free to dismember the orc within his grasp.

But Ar-Tashk would not be so simply ignored.

Terrible was the curse of his rage, and the poisonous Voice that fueled it. The suppression of all his basest animal brutality in Alaesia's presence had no use in this moment. Every rotten, bloodthirsty incitement he had at one time or another curtailed, now ripped up through his chest like a terrible flame, embroiling his entire being in molten fury, and sending him launching after Ammatar.

Crashing through mire and moss, he tore from nature's bindings, granting just enough reach, before the forest spirit could slip beyond his fingertips.

The olog's hands seized one of the spirit's arms, and sheered it from his body with ease. Then another and another! Tentacles were torn away like they were little more than cuts of meat before a butcher.

Ammatar screeched and turned back upon Ar-Tashk in fury.

Zathra felt the spirit's mental influence tear from his own mind to strike out at the troll, only to see for himself... the Eye. It bore down through Ar-Tashk's mind in rebuke. Flames filled the olog's mind, defying Ammatar's faltering attempts to drive away his attacker. And its Voice...

That unhallowed, dominating Voice crashed upon all three combatants like the blackest of storms. The most vile curses even in the tongue of the orcs could not describe the devastation it spoke, now unbridled by Ar-Tashk's will. It whispered through the conduit of the olog's mind, to any who had the power to hear, both the orc and the forest spirit, letting the olog wield its wrath as his own as he continued tearing Ammatar limb from limb.

Zathra was crippled by the enthralling tongue of the Voice and the soft, foreign presence that had only briefly breached his thoughts was scoured away like parchment burning away in the wind. He tried to shut his mind, to block it off, anything; doing all he could to weather the Voice's storm.

For a moment it felt as if the Voice would take him too, but Ammatar seemed to be the only thing in its sight; for that was the olog's singular target, and he would see his enemy finished.

The orc felt the tentacle holding him slacken and fall away; decimated by Ar-Tashk's assault.

Finally, only the current of the river rushing by was left in a dull roar in his ears and faint echoes of Ammatar's own anger and agony quickly faded from his mind.

Without warning something else clamped onto the limp orc, dragging him upwards and he found himself hurled clear of the river. Zathra hit the rocks with a dull thud, gasping for air and vomiting up water and sap.

Just a stone's throw away, Ar-Tashk flung waves into the air from the water's edge, barely taking a moment to catch his own breath. The olog's deep voice split the air, rasping like an animal caught in a trap, "SHRAKH! SHRAKH! AMAL LAT! GHASHKRUT IZ, ALAESIA!—!"

"Hol'... on a momen–" Zathra's mouth filled with bile and river water again as he tried calling to the olog as he searched the water fruitlessly. The orc's vision was spinning, which was answered by his gut retching between words, "She's safe... upriver... Th' warg got 'er out."

Ar-Tashk stopped.

He swept the blood from his eyes with a rough hand, surveying the river once more, torn between his need to scour every inch of the riverbed, believing the orc's claim, and absorbing the raw hate burrowing through him. Reason vied against the burning rage of the Eye and fought for the control he had denied to it for so long. Lashes of flame left stripes whipped across his reopened consciousness.

The Voice detonated with deafening thunder within his head, speaking curses he knew not the words for, but were unmistakable to his soul; Ar-Tashk's eardrums felt as though they would split from the pressure. He knew there was no chance of reconciliation with his Dark Master, not after his moment of absolute defiance.

Even if he were to return now, every sweet promise the Voice once offered him for his loyalty moldered to maledictions.

An oath even formed against him within the olog's own mind; he would be punished.

The very thing he had defied his Master for would be seized from him. He would be brought to heel, broken like a dog, and his slave forced to endure every torture imaginable, for the olog's transgression of thinking he could ever escape the Dark Lord.

But the olog charged up the riverbank, ignoring the burning sensation threatening to strangle him to utter his own threat, "Lat kramp narku orsk na!"


***** Translations *****

Tacarmatan - ? (to be revealed)

SHRAKH! SHRAKH! AMAL LAT! GHASHKRUT IZ, ALAESIA! - SHIT! SHIT! WHERE ARE YOU? ANSWER ME, ALAESIA!

Lat kramp *narku* orsk na! - You will *never* take her!