"You're really rewarding to be nice to!" Kiss.

Kiss!!!!

Yes. Like that. That is an example of how being nice to her is rewarding.

It's so fun that I can just be happy about nice things and you think it's so great!

"Well it is!" Scoop. Kiss. "Are you a books sort of person, do you want to see the library - I could read to you -"

There aren't really books in Angband and most orcs can't read but I can because I'm an actress! But I don't know the language. It'd be fun if you read to me.

"An actress? Exciting. Or, I don't know, is acting in Angband horrible in some way, everything else seems to be -"

Oh yeah literally everything in Angband is horrible in some way. Acting is being a character in a hallucination for a prisoner.

"I'm gonna guess these are not nice friendly take-your-mind-off-being-imprisoned hallucinations."

Some of them are not all torture all the time, but those ones are usually designed so if they ever get out of Angband they think it's a hallucination like the last six times they got out of Angband.

"Wow. Nasty."

Sounds like something Hali would do - he used to have a best friend, she was very pretty and very horrible and her favourite hobby was also torture but unlike Serik she was super into mind games. In the thousands of years since she died he has concluded that she was probably secretly laughing at him the whole time they were friends. To be fair, the whole time they were friends he was a huge mess.

Sounds like she'd get along with his lordship.

"Who's that?"

Melkor's lieutenant. He really likes the mind games part of the torture. Also the sex part. Before the snake thing came along I was going to try kidnapping his lordship's boyfriend out of a hallucination and running away with him so his Elf family would take me in.

"Let me guess, his lordship's boyfriend does not want to be his lordship's boyfriend."

I don't think anybody wants to be his lordship's boyfriend. He's not one of those people it's safer to be fucking.

Snort. "If I was a better person maybe I'd go find this place and burn it to the ground."

That'd be really hard, Melkor's protecting it, it's not just a plain fortress.

"Well." Snuggle. "I'm not a better person and I'd rather stay here with my delightable orf."

I miss my brothers and sisters and friends and kind of my parents but they're all sworn and stuff, even if you could beat Melkor in a fight if you went and got them they'd probably be trouble.

Snuggle.

"Sworn?"

Snuggle! Orcs have to swear oaths to serve Melkor - and other stuff, mostly about Elves - as soon as they can talk. So if Melkor, like, objected to you stealing my family from him, he could order them whatever he wanted on the way out and they'd have to do it.

"- like, magic oaths?"

Yeah. I've probably sworn some but I space out when I'm tortured enough to do it so I don't remember what they are so it doesn't work.

"...that's really fucked up."

Snuggle.

"Do I even wanna know why you only kind of miss your parents -?"