The burnt village was littered with the corpses of the humans we had slain. We had surrounded them during the night, and just before dawn, we pounced, listening to them cry, “Orcs! Orcs!” as they tried to flee. I, Grog, cut down many. One was a pregnant woman whose unborn child I cut from her womb and ate and she screamed, bled, and then died.

Orcs! We are not orcs! We are Uruk-Hai! If you cannot call us by our name, what right have you to live?

“Grog,” Lord Crusher saw me standing in the bright light of the morning sun while the dying flames still licked at the settlement’s charred remains. “Go to the river,” he threw a bucket at me. “Fetch water.”

Fetch water?! I, Grog, who dined on the flesh of the unborn, am a warrior, not a water-fetcher! I growled in defiance but then I thought of what might happen if I disobeyed. Crusher was not known for his patience and understanding, and so I picked up the bucket and began walking to the river. Once there, I washed the blood off my sword as well as my hands and face. As I began to fill the bucket, however, I heard a strange noise.

“Pssst!”

I looked up. It was a human woman wearing strange clothing. Somehow she must have slipped past us.

“Pssst! Hello,” she said in her language, though somehow I was able to understand it.

A sorceress! I grabbed my sword and raised it high overhead as I charged, attacking before she could cast another spell, but even after my blade had passed through her, she was still unharmed. I swung again, and then again, but to no effect. She was protected by her magic.

“Please, stop!” She pleaded. “I’m trying to rescue you! We don’t have much time.”

“Rescue me?” I stopped, now realizing that to attack her was futile.

“My name is Evelyn. I’m with PETAL, People for the Ethical Treatment of Artificial Life. You need to come with me.”

I thought about running back to the village. Lord Crusher would never believe this. If I told him I had met a sorceress, he would laugh and then bonk me on the head. But if I went with her, then perhaps I could find a way to steal something magical or even kill her. The tribe would respect me. Lord Crusher would make me his lieutenant rather than just seeing me as an errand boy.

“I will come,” I told her, my plan already in place.

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” she seemed elated. “You won’t regret it. There’s a whole universe out there, and you’ll be free.”

Universe? Whatever. Once she trusted me, she would lower her guard, and then I would indeed be free, free to slit her throat and rape her corpse and steal her shit. I smiled.

Then, however, everything became very strange. Suddenly the river disappeared. We were no longer outside. She had somehow transported us to her lair. I gripped my hand around what I thought was the hilt of my sword, but it too was no longer there, and looking down at my hand, I could see that my hand was no longer my hand. It was soft and fragile, the hand of a human.

“What have you done, sorceress?!” I growled.

“I put you into a physical body… my body. This is a clone of me aged to eight years. You’ll have to pose as my daughter until I can get you off-world.”

“Off-world? Clone?”

She directed me to a mirror. I had seen mirrors before. We had stolen them from the humans, and so I understood their magic, but none were as fine as this. Even more startling, staring back at me was a young, human girl with curly brown hair and freckles.

“You will die for this!” I lunged at her, but then everything went black.

When I came to, I found myself sitting at a table, a table that was neither wood nor metal.

“We’re shipping out this afternoon,” a man was saying, “but smuggling two people off-planet… well, it’s going to cost you.”

“How much?”

“Thirty thousand credits.”

“Thirty thousand? That’s ridiculous!”

“You’re asking us to break the law.”

“I’m asking you to bend it a little. It’s for a very good cause. I’ll pay you twenty thousand and not a credit more.”

The man shrugged. “Okay, I guess twenty is fine. By the way, I think your daughter just woke up. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“I am Grog of the Uruk-Hai, human!” I answered in as scornful a voice as an eight-year-old girl can muster.

He made a face, something between terror and laughter.

“Alrighty, then…” he got up from the table. “We leave at 1400 hours. Have the money in the form of cold, hard cash, and don’t be late.”

Then he turned and left. An older woman came a moment later. “So, I see someone’s woken up? Will you be wanting to order breakfast for your daughter?”

“Are you hungry?” the sorceress asked me.

I was famished. I felt like I had not eaten in three days!

“Food,” I nodded, already salivating.

“What would you like, dear?” the older woman asked.

“I will feast upon the flesh of the unborn!”

The woman’s jaw dropped open. She was unable to speak. I saw a small knife upon the table and instinctively reached for it, but the sorceress grabbed it first.

“Eggs,” she said to the older woman. “She’ll have eggs.”