VII.

Freedom. she wondered if the one raised by golug realized that it felt more like a prison now than being taken out of a cage. Though, when considering some of their previous conversations and spats, she supposed he did. He had challenged her after all, making her fight against the iron bars of her own mental prison, wording it so that if she did not follow him, she would be the lowest of the lowest to her own principles. 

She was still angry and feeling betrayed by him though. The Snaga, this false brother of The Weakling had played both of them like the strings of a fiddle, no doubt. Tugged at the honour of one and the desperation of the other (for it was desperation that drove her now). And while there was no proof of his words, aside from a braid she had clasped firmly around her right wrist like a bracelet, there had been an inkling of truth in his words.
'The best lies are the kind where we just don't tell you something. It was really too easy to play with you like that, wasn't it, Whelp? You fell right into it. Did you really think it'd be that easy for you?'

There had been truth in all of it, except for one thing. The Weakling was not an ally of the Enemy of the Free People. He might have handled and examined orc runes and spells, but he didn't reek of Corruption; that smell, too sweet and feeling like some heavy sticky mess slowing you down, had not been on him. After living and fighting among those drowning in it, she knew when to recognize it. Truly, the Weakling had smelled like daisies and felt like some fresh air compared to the one who had whispered so many things in the ears of those in the Pit.

Assaj glanced at her...whatever the one raised by golug was now. She didn't know anymore. She was angry, wanted to do nothing more but to make his guts spill all over the ground for having sided with the Snaga.
But the Savage Woman could not hate him. That burning fire was reserved for her new enemy. However, she could not forgive; she wouldn't know where to start with that. But she could forget, eventually maybe, only to bring the memory back up in a moment of weakness where she would consider the option of trusting the golug lover again.

Both were still going after the Weakling. But not for the same reasons it felt any longer and the tentative trust that had built between them was all but shattered. It was an uneasy feeling that lingered in her, like the aftertaste of bile. No, he wasn't going after the Weakling because he cared anymore for that one person. Something 'bigger' apparently concerned him now.
And the only emotion it brought forth for her was betrayal. For the man was not as much of a person after his word as much as he had claimed to be. He would kill Pellam without hesitation, just like the Snaga, if he felt he was a lost cause. 

If he did, then there was a stiletto that would only exist to gouge his eyes out and cut off every single one of his fingers.