The art of the trade, how the sausage gets made

"Swear that he would do that."

"And the rest of it?

I wish there were a way for you to not have to work for someone evil."

"Swear that unless Melkor orders us otherwise, if you give us your weapon and let us go I will try to use it to hurt and kill Melkor even though it probably does not work on him, no one will catch or question or order me if I can avoid it, I will tell no one about the weapon unless Melkor makes me, and I will not use it when killing Elves and helping others to kill Elves unless Melkor makes me."

"Good.
And you two? It only really takes one, but three works."

And is more likely to succeed, she doesn't specify.

They will make the same oath.

"Good.
It's more complicated than handing you a weapon. It's a type of magic. That's what I'm so sure Melkor would want to know. There's a strange sequence of things you'll have to do to get the magic..."

She gives the now-familiar description of the awakening ritual as best she can.

They listen suspiciously.

As usual, there's a couple of new problems.

"Do you use Elf letters? Not words, just letters. If not, I'm thinking you'd want no Elf head speech, I can tell you what sounds to say when. Letters would just be easier.

And you'll have to say your names. I thought you would want not to, earlier, but for this it's part of the magic."

"Swear?"

"I swear that I have not lied to you."

"We use the Elf letters but I can't read."

"Then I can say the things first and you can say the same. Will still work."

"...okay."

Yeah, this is probably the weirdest thing to happen to them in a while.

It doesn't get less weird when she's reading lines to naked orcs in a combination of English and that one dead language and prompting them to fill in the blanks in their own tongue.

Which they do, nervously.

Nervousness makes a lot of sense here. But at the end of it they'll see the world differently in a very literal sense; it'll be obvious the alleged magic isn't some kind of elaborate trick.

They verify that the magic is real.

"Okay," one says, "What do you want us to do?"

"This is the thing that has a chance to work on Melkor." She hands over one of the original Fëanorian bullets. The elemental inside isn't intelligent and can't be told to find its way out after being used, but can at least usefully self-destruct just in case. "It's tied to these twigs; when one of you breaks their stick this will move forward until it hits something, then it'll start. Don't miss. And you can only use it once, so the oath to use it on Melkor means no using it on anyone else." Still not handing them the triggers until they acknowledge that part.

"To get to Melkor, I don't know if he bothers being very guarded since he's so hard to hurt, but I can show you how to get past guards..." They were going to learn this by trial and error anyway.

They pay attention. They cut all the connections with the Elves, and are delighted.

When demonstrating that trick, she powers it with blood. Never a first choice, even for something as low-intensity as this, but it's effective in the short term and she doesn't want to explain better long-term sources. When the orcs imitate her, they seem surprisingly cavalier about the minor cuts.

"Doesn't that hurt?"

Blink. "Hmm?"

"It hurts a little for me to do that. Same for horses or Elves." Or animals in general, but it was horses that the Fëanorians had lying around when compiling words. "Does it not feel worse than normal, for you?"