[Himaran]

The orc blade was sharp, but Dwali felt not the blood running down the side of his neck. He saw before him the most hideous creature on earth; a slavemaster, the slavemaster, the Uruk that had tortured the dwarves as a daily routine in the past. Part of the dwarf told him to relax and die -- it was inevitable, anyway -- but another voice in his young head was screaming for him to fight back. Somehow, the second thought was far more appealing to one enslaved by such a burning rage.

The brute's grin quickly disappeared when Dwali headbutted him, and Lurg stumbled backwards. Still holding onto his knife, he charged the dwarf, but Dwali had already scooped up his smaller weapon and caught the blow. Lurg was, however, in perfectly good shape, having lived on the best of plundered rations ever since he was rotated to the tower. The smaller of the two had been released nought thirty minutes earlier, after teetering on the edge of starvation through three years of the most inhumane treatment imaginable. Naturely, the Uruk began to force him back, and death had never seemed closer. But then something deep inside Dwali's mind simply snapped.

Years of hatred compressed inside his withering frame were suddenly released in a virtual explosion of rage; one which Lurg would not survive. The dwarf, bloodshot eyes flaring, roared and grabbed his opponent's blade with his free hand. The Uruk, obviously surprised that his target completely ignored the sharp steel cutting into the flesh of his left hand, lost sight of Dwali's right. The pair toppled to the ground, with the dwarf's fingers digging into the rough skin around Lurg's neck. Brór and Dorim simply watched in awe as their young companion began throttling the beast that had been the primary cause of their past misery. But then, for an unexplainable reason, the spell was broken. Lurg forced the dwarf off of him, then planted a knee in his forhead. The Uruk left the unconcious dwarf on the ground and turned on the others, though in a much slower manner.