Fools

"Sweet! So sweet! So sweet!" Burzronk cried out as one of our fixers stuffed his brains back into his broken open skull and fastened a metal plate over the frankly fucked head wound he gained sometime during the celebratory feasting.

On anything else, even a Krogan, Burzronk's injury would have slain him. Likely in an instant. But the foul folk of Morgoth are tougher than even zombies and my friend who had followed me from the first moment I smashed Talion and our captain held on to life like only cockroaches, scorpions, and Hutts can.

"It was the Tark!" shouted Grishluk, for once not singing.

"Tell us something we don't already know!" growled Atbug.

"Atbug! Ishbug!" I yelled at the lethal pair, "Saddle up. The rest of you either get back to drinking or start doing something useful."

"Take us with you, boss!" Grishluk demanded the right to avenge his longtime companion.

"No." I denied, "The Tark is faster than us, and is already on the run. We travel light and wait for him to slow down or stop."

"More like lead us right into an ambush." Ishbug spat as he and his brother ran down to the caragor cages to mount up.

I silently loaded my dire caragor for a hunt and met the pair at the front gates were Dush shouted a heartening, "Fuck'em up!" as we passed by and ran the caragors around the fort to follow Talion's exit path.

"Shrahk's riding a caragor." I spat as our pursuit was now even further behind than expected. We rode for hours behind the tireless undead ranger until we came to the mouth of a cave where the scent of the caragor continued away and Talion's descended into the darkness.

"It's a ghul hive." I told the brothers.

"Noticed that." Ishbug grunted and twirled his daggers before sheathing them and drawing his cursed chopper.

"Hate ghuls." Atbug growled and applied his poison to his axes.

I pulled my axes, leaving my oversized chopper on my back and led the way. My supernatural resistance to beasts meant the horde type creatures within stood a cocks chance of surviving in a meat grinder of harming me.

Just like Talion hoped, the shuffling form of the ghuls swarmed us and our arms became whirls of death as we tore through the greasy creatures. I dodged their venomous spit for the integrity of threads more than an actual need to avoid danger, and soon enough we'd worked our way into the heart of the nest and were stomping eggs between slicing up the various ghuls from drone to matron.

I followed Talion's scent all the way to point it just fucking vanished, and my nose is sensitive enough to tell he didn't back track and pull some cheeky bullshit.

"The Tark fast traveled." I spat in frustration.

"He wut?" Atbug's face morphed in confusion with his rather large mouth and expressive brow pulling down in a frown.

"He can ghost walk between Sauron's Haedir crystals." I shook my head and grit my teeth at having been led around like a fool, "He shouldn't be able to do it in combat, but if he was stealthin under the ghuls noses he could have just poofed away… like a fart… in the wind."

"Damn Tark played us for fools." Ishbug cursed.

"He won't always be pulling cunnin shrahk like this." I told them, "We'll run into him soon enough. Then we take it nice and slow. He can come back from the dead, but he'll remember the pain."

We rode back to the fort with our head hung low. It'd been a long time since I failed anything, since anyone rubbed dirt in my eye. It sucked, but you can't be everywhere, and know and do everything. It'd drive you mad if you did.

Damn shame about Burzronk getting his thinky thinky bits fucked, but sometimes life throws a superpowered undead man of multifarious skill and ability and singular focus at you. You can either rise above and become invulnerable to all his bullshit, thus ruining his game, or you can get your shit kicked in.

"Alright bois, gather round." I ordered my captains, both Uruk and Olog.

The mates parked their asses around my table and some shifty as fuck looking orcs started serving up the grog. Not that looking shifty is something to get worked up around here as everyone looks shifty as fuck.

"The Tark picked up a win against us." I told them.

"So sweet!" Burzronk cooed as he nursed his mug.

"Interrupt me again, Ronk, and I'll thump you hard enough to fuck the rest of your noggin." I barked at the mentally handicapped Uruk who remained a captain by virtue of his fighting prowess being stored deeper than his social graces. "Then what you'd be, Ronk? A vegetable. And vegetables ain't sweet."

Burzronk shut his yap and I knocked back some firewater before continuing, "As I was saying. The ranger fucked Ronk's head and led me around by the literal nose before he pulled his ghost man ox shrahk and vanished. Tark is in the wind, bois. He'll get his and it will be Biblical, of that be assured, but we can't let an immortal thorn in our side stop us from our true goal."

"Fluffy Towels!" Dush shouted and the others joined in.

"No." I sighed while pinching the bridge of my nose, "Taking over Nurn and making those other dipshit Overlords in charge of the other regions pay through the nose to get the food they need."

"Oh, that goal." Dush visibly shrank and looked deeply into his mug for the answers to life's real questions.

Not that he knows the questions to ask.

"The caragor riders and are going to working day and night in shifts. I want the Ettin's boys locked up in their fortress afraid to come out." I explained, "Meanwhile the rest of you are focusing on finishing the fort and processing new recruits. By the time I sit my ass on the throne of Sharkhurz I expect our numbers to have at least doubled. Any new captains that crop up are open season to either recruit or murder. Just remember that we are foul folk of discriminating taste. If he looks fucked in the head or the bod, murderfy him. Understood?"

"Aye!" the gang shouted with one 'Sweet' in the mix.