***** Author's Note *****
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The throaty sounds of Blackspeech did not come easily to Alaesia, but to Ar-Tashk, hearing her practice even the simplest words captured his attention. The Reaper found himself drawn to the exchange between orc and human, while he focused on forging a new path through the mountains. It was a treacherous trail, needing almost all of his attention to scout and identify hazards, but when he could spare an ear, he listened intently.
Why the orc was training her to speak in the dark tongue, Ar-Tashk wasn't entirely sure, but Zathra also wasn't the best teacher, seeming to broadly mix dialects with reckless abandon. More than once, Ar-Tashk found himself correcting the orc's mispronunciation, mixed-up words, or misconstrued grammar, "Ta, nar za. Grothraum alai, nar kul."
"Ah... shrakh," To the orc's credit, he wasn't entirely too stubborn when he was wrong. Zathra gestured to the warg he sat astride, "He, ta, is called, bugdat, the gray storm, Grothraum. Ta bugdat Grothraum."
Alaesia kept to the warg's flank, clinging like a tick holding on for dear life. However, she refused to ride alongside the orc despite his offering. She insisted on keeping her feet planted firmly on the ground, ignoring the scrapes and chill of her toes, peeking through what scraps remained of her foot wraps. Even her lips had started losing color too, growing more pale with each day as the weather turned, while the clouds above them rolled in, thick and dark.
And alongside the clouds, the countdown had begun; there would be no stopping now they had truly entered the Ephel Duath. The meager meal of fish at the pool a couple days prior was the last they'd yet found on this side of the ridge; starvation and cold threatening the pace the trio could maintain. But they need to move as quickly as possible, and hope they'd find sanctuary on the other side. With such threats hanging over them, Ar-Tashk's urgency to get through the mountains grew, as did Alaesia's fatigue and the various schemes rolling in chaotic dread through her mind.
"Az Alaesia. Lat Zathra, snaga-izub—" the orc rolled his eyes at Alaesia as she practiced, "—Za- er... no... Skai..." It was impossible to ignore how, whether out of frustration or because she was imitating the orc instructing her, Alaesia cursed. A lot. "Ta Grothraum, lat warg."
"Latub warg," the orc corrected.
"Skai..." The ticking anxiety filling her chest was proving more a hinderance to Zathra's recommended plan than she had hoped, "TA Grothraum, LATUB warg."
Ar-Tashk snorted at her growing irritation; it was like listening to a moth cursing the sun.
"Ta Ar-Tashk... durba-izub."
The olog's small, pointed ear flicked back towards her. She couldn't roll her 'r's deep in her chest as a growl as the language was intended to be spoken, but he found he rather liked the softness of his name on her tongue. He murmured back, half encouragement, half threat, "Akh. Lat-izub."
Her heartbeat wavered in the air, processing what he had said. Ar-Tashk knew without looking back, she would understand that much or at least vaguely grasping the concept of his words after her few rudimentary lessons from the orc; he could scent her blood rise in her throat, and hear the whisper of hairs prickling on her arms.
"Agh az latub," he added, if only to see her reaction.
Her head snapped away immediately, but the tang of nerves lingered in the air every time he glanced her way.
"Hmm... ain't sure durba is the right word fer this context," Zathra chewed his melted lip. The olog was sure to take issue if he had told Alaesia the wrong term. Nitpicky bastard... He had never had to worry so much about his Blackspeech being correct in his life. It scratched like a bad itch across his lips, tongue, and throat, "Inn't that used more fer like—"
A master, crafter...
The orc suddenly went silent as that same foreign presence spoke up in the back of his mind; though it wasn't particularly helpful. He wondered, why would this thing, that he presumed to be a parasite attached to him of some blasted elf spirit, know the translation for 'durba' in Blackspeech anyways? Was it digging through his brain for such knowledge without his sensing it? Or perhaps, more likely, he had only imagined it butting in, claiming his words for its own.
Crafter... Artisan... it continued, but the thoughts it sang drifted, airy and unfocused, like chasing a cloud. Calanon... My friend...
Definitely not his own thoughts then.
"Used more for...? What, Zathra?" Alaesia's hesitant voice prompted.
The orc shook himself, looking down at her, trying to blink away a blur in his eyes and to recall just what he had been trying to say, "Er... More like..."
"Nar, not all wrong," Ar-Tashk interjected. "Durba... force follow, make bend, like forge iron—"
Forge... smith... It, or rather whatever she was speaking to the orc, had to be listening through his ears. That was the only explanation for the wispy presence responding to external stimuli, Tacarmatan Calanon... The keys... of his craft... A master... Durba...
A jolt of realization hit Zathra. There was that word again, a title of some kind perhaps. It was seemingly vaguely related, but the concept was nebulous, and particularly annoying, to attempt to grasp. He tucked his hand into his pocket where the stolen pendant lay tucked away, tracing its shape and letting the image of it grow in his mind's eye. He pictured its waves and curls of silvery tendrils, the jeweled ornament, and its life-like pulse against his fingertips, Was this friend of yers, Calanon, a smith? Tha' what 'Tacarmatan' means? 'E made this lil trinket I found, din't 'e? So why was it so bleedin' important ta yer lil snake bastard?
Nordorion... The presence let out a distant sigh and fell silent, all but disappearing entirely until only the echo of it remained.
No! Answer me, skaita! The orc hissed, answered only by a painful headache that swelled to his temples in the presence's absence.
"—Want to follow, nar 'durba', nan 'goth.'" The olog continued, oblivious to the orc's silent argument and confusion, for his attention lay entirely upon Alaesia. She could feel Ar-Tashk's impatience for a response. His mixed Westron took some effort to unravel, but it seemed he was hoping for her to say something, but what, she wasn't entirely sure what that could be
But before she could venture a guess, Zathra let out a low, uncharacteristic growl, eyes flaring with raw magic, "Lesson's over. We'll pick up again later."
"Wha- wait!" Alaesia's hands slipped, or rather, Grothraum tugged free of her fingers suddenly. His fur slid passed through her grip without warning as the glow in Zathra's eyes mirrored to the warg's and he spurred the beast into a lope, leaving the human without her anchor to hold onto. The confusion scrawled on her face melted to wide eyes of panic.
"I SAID LATER!" The orc and warg charged past Ar-Tashk, nearly clipping him in their haste, both lost in a haze of magic; above the trio, the sky had started to churn, taunting and warning the travelers, until finally, it split. Mist and rain crashed upon the stone slopes, quickly muffling the sounds of Grothraum's footsteps knocking slate loose.
"Mulkrut, urukdug!" The olog cursed after Zathra, but made no move to stop or pursue them. He wouldn't, because Alaesia had stopped dead in her tracks. He turned back, at the drop of her heartbeat, to witness her thin form be buffeted by the turning of the weather. Torrents of rain bore down upon them, just at the cusp of freezing to ice, but it wasn't the chill that held her in place.
Alaesia wavered at the edge of the precipice Ar-Tashk had decided to lead them upon, a sheer drop only a step or two away to one side, and a sheer mountainside to the other; she wasn't looking down, though the void before her was uncomfortably familiar and inviting. Rather her chin tilted slightly up to the sky, welcoming her to drink in the downpour, until she lifted her hands up to her line of sight. Empty.
They started to shake; starting with what one might easily mistake for a shiver in this kind of weather and for her threadbare clothing, but it quickly became an uncontrollable rattle that traveled to the whole of her arm, to her body. Her chest felt like it would crumple at any second.
She had let go... She wasn't supposed to let go—
"ALAESIA." A word full of urgency, or dare she hope... worry?
Before all sense of control began to spiral, her head snapped around to the reverberant sound of her name, finding a large chalk-white hand, lacerated with ugly, black scars, held out to her; those awful, dark scars, scars taken for her. That hand offered comfort she never dreamt she could experience again, a ghost of her past she had buried along with the memory of her parents.
Alaesia grabbed Ar-Tashk's hand before the numbness could seize her, feeling her legs turn to jelly and laboring to just simply breathe.
"I have you..." Ar-Tashk caught her feathery weight with his single hand, feeling the deathly tight vice with which she clung to him. Her skin was as cold as the wind against his, kept warm by the hammering of his heart, and though slowly she calmed, no color returned to her face.
"I'm sorry..." Alaesia finally murmured, when she found her voice again, though her teeth had begun to chatter. Ar-Tashk drew Alaesia closer, allowing her the shelter of his shadow, but it was hardly enough; her whole body shivered violently.
"Lat bolk nar znugat. You..." He paused trying to remember the right word in her tongue, "bolk... ah... need, no sorry."
"Please, we can just turn back... Az nar... narkramp..." Just as he struggled, so did she. Her hands squeezed tighter; this wasn't working, it would never work.
Zathra's sudden frustration and flight into the unknown could only have been that he realized the hopelessness, fleeing before her master had the wherewithal to stop him from saving his own hide. A part of her still wanted to see the worst of the orc, to justify how cruelly she had judged him. It spoke deep in her gut, of how the orc must have similarly concluded there wasn't the time for his overly optimistic plan to learn enough Blackspeech. And why would he think otherwise? She couldn't even form a coherent sentence, let alone any argument try to convince Ar-Tashk to alter course before the mountains claimed them. Or worse if they actually made it across.
Without such a plan to hope for, that meant... Only one other possibility lingered at the back of her mind; a small ember of a thought that both burned and frightened her; but anything was less frightening than succumbing to mortality. Who knew what awaited her after death, if it might be yet worse torment in penance for allying with her captors or granting mercy to such abhorrent creatures.
If only she had the nerve to act, "This is too dangerous. Gondor is too dangerous. We can stay here, in Mordor."
"Shar... Come..." He rumbled and scooped her up so she could maintain a solid grasp upon his arm, but kept her tucked against his leeward side in an effort to take the brunt of the weather's wrath. The olog scanned their surroundings, but the sudden downpour made it nearly impossible to see beyond their noses. The narrow ridge along which he moved had become its own little world. Frosty mist rolled over them like a death shroud, heavy and glittering with crystals that warped and hid shapes within it. Moving forward would be equally as precarious as attempting to retreat, regardless of her insistence to do so.
"Ar-Tashk..." She shifted, moving her hands to his side, as if she might press him back by sheer will alone.
No, he couldn't retreat. They had come too far to turn back now. Her death was all but guaranteed if he had any hesitation about his decision. They had to keep moving, even if it was just her and himself; to the pits of the black mountain with that stupid orc and warg, wherever they had run off to!
Even he, the Reaper, infamous throughout Nurn for his hound-like tracking skills, would have a difficult time following their scent in this kind of environment and weather. But if anything, the small hints of the duo's trail at least let the olog know where he could and couldn't step as he kept going forward, until they came to a split in the rocks. A wide maw of an opening lay before them where two walls of stone met, just large enough for an olog.
Ar-Tashk shoved his way through some loose debris into the gap, finding they were graced by an overhang of jutting stone that blocked the freezing wind and rain. Further within, it opened to a small cavern that whistled with the sounds of air passing through it. Where they had entered looked rough and jagged, like recently crumbled stone, however the cave walls within looked well worn from the ages, strung with long stripes of fibers marked up and down them in all sorts of patterns. Dripping water landed in pools and formed many strange formations around them; sentinels of stone waited in silence for the trespassers to pass.
The olog's sharp sense of hearing could hear a clatter in the deep recesses of a tunnel branching back into the heart mountain, and by the sight of the wet paw prints splattered across the ground, he surmised that damned scrawny orc might have made his way through this pass first. The thought of him made the olog bristle, or was that the tiny human hands that tickled his mane?
"Please... go back... I won't try to run again. I won't fight," Alaesia took his free hand with one of hers as he grabbed at the offending touch.
There was not the strength in her muscles to shift Ar-Tashk's hand, but at the press of her guidance, he moved his fingers until she pressed her icy cheek to the warmth of his hand pleadingly.
The corner of her lips caressed his palm at her whisper, "L-Let... Let me prove it to you..."
***** Translations *****
Ar-Tashk: *Ta,* nar za. Grothraum alai, nar kul. - *He,* not it. Grothraum is an animal, not a thing.
Zathra: Shrakh - Shit
Zathra: Ta bugdat Grothraum - He is called Grothraum
Alaesia: Az Alaesia. Lat Zathra, snaga-izub - I am Alaesia. You are Zathra, my slave
Alaesia: Skai: Damn
Alaesia: *Ta* Grothraum, lat warg - He is Grothraum, you warg
Zathra: *Latub* warg - *Your* warg
Alaesia: Skai... *TA* Grothraum, *LATUB* warg - Damn... *HE* is Grothraum, *YOUR* warg
Alaesia: Ta Ar-Tashk... durba-izub - He is Ar-Tashk... my master
Ar-Tashk: Akh. Lat-izub - Yes. You are mine
Ar-Tashk: Agh az latub - and I am yours
Zathra: Durba - Master (Contextually a master associated with force or manipulation but also carries a subtext of the action of mastery, such as mastering of one's craft.)
Mysterious presence: Calanon - An elvish name meaning Son of Light
Mysterious presence: Tacarmatan - ? (Zathra surmises due to the context, that 'Tacarmatan' might be an elvish smithy of some sort.)
Zathra: Skaita! - Dammit!
Ar-Tashk: Nar 'durba', nan *'goth.'* - Don't (use) 'durba' (contextually a master by force), but (use) 'goth' (contextually a master by will and desire) (i.e. Ar-Tashk is trying to imply to Alaesia that using 'goth' to refer to him as her master has a context of showing willing, or even wanting, submission to him, whereas using 'durba' is usually a title used expressly by one subjugated by force. The best way I have to explain this is like a 'boss' versus a 'leader,' but with far greater disparate connotations behind each title than in english. Granted this is all in the dialect Ar-Tashk speaks, so take that with a grain of salt.)
Ar-Tashk: Mulkrut, urukdug! - Get back here, orc filth!
Ar-Tashk: Lat bolk nar znugat - You need not apologize
Alaesia: Az nar... narkramp... - I not... won't...
Ar-Tashk: Shar... - Hush...