Prologue
The dry winds blowing across the Barrens sent sheets of dust streaming across the land, disturbing the legion of flies off the bodies they polished. They startled and resettled, ebbing and flowing with each warm draft. One body not quite dead, stirred. The orc slowly gained consciousness and moaned with it. After a time he scraped back puffy eyelids and winced at the brightness.
"Oh, what the fuck," he croaked, struggling onto hands and knees. The clay, dust, and dry air was faintly familiar. The distant memory of visiting his sister in the deserts of Arizona wafted to mind. What was he doing back here? He thought he'd flown home.
Flies crawled over his face and he risked eating dirt to swat them away. The action only agitated them and the poignant stench he'd been choking on. Roadkill, had to be. Something was definitely dead and rotting. He didn't dare breathe through his mouth, too afraid to taste the smell. He waved a dismal hand at the flies again, and snorted out the ones climbing up his nose.
He was only vaguely aware of the wrongness of his hand, so assaulted were his other senses. He leaned back, sitting heavily on his legs to look around. There it was - the dead thing. "Shit." The shape was too familiar, it attached in all the wrong places for a coyote, and yep there was the skull. "Oh shit."
The corpse twitched.
"Fuuuckkk no!" He scrambled back, crab-crawling away with kicking feet. Green feet. "What the-?" The cadaver momentarily ignored, he held the hands up to his face. Huge dark green fingers, palms, and wrist loomed in place of his human hands. "What. The. Fuck?"
"Uuuuughhhhug," the dead thing groaned. Lee stared, rendered speechless with horror. The animated carcass grumbled something akin to language, jarring him into panicked babbling.
"Oh, my God, no. No, no, no, no," he pleaded, watching the mangled body fling a bone-arm at the flies. Was it a bad trip? Had to be, what else could it be? Or was this lucid dreaming? It had to be. That thing was clearly an undead, and he was most likely an orc. He examined his face, touching on the tusks protruding from his maw.
The undead raised its head and they both screamed.
"What is this?" the Forsaken shouted hoarsely, sending flies abuzz. Its mouth and nose were shaped out of old leather and was stitched to the rotting skin of the face. It had no hair, and the motley skin of its head was sown together in the same crude handiwork. Lee gagged, but couldn't look away from the ossified humanoid. It was too grotesque, he was irrationally afraid it would come closer. The moldered eyes could apparently see. "Orc?"
Lee nodded slowly.
"WoW or LOTR?"
"WoW for sure," Lee answered automatically, dumbfounded.
"Damn." The Forsaken slowly sat up, carefully maneuvering its limbs as if under some strain. "Barrens?" it asked after a good look around.
"Uh." Lee dared take his eyes off it to survey the area. "Looks like it."
"Gotta watch for Jurassic Park here. Creepy." It gave the horizon another quick glance.
"Raptors."
"Yeah. What did I say, 'Jurassic Park?'" It rasped out a laugh, but stopped short. "Wait."
Lee cringed as the Forsaken's posture alerted, startling flies into a swarm. "Creepy," he agreed, anything to get this thing's putrefied eyes off him.
"How did you know?"
"How do you know Lord of the Rings?" he asked, fighting the growing knowledge that he recognized this creature. Its decayed stare was taking on a disturbingly familiar cast. That and the homespun intonations and vocabulary confirmed the suspicion. "Holy shit."
"No..." It hesitated, coming to a similar conclusion.
"Eli?"
"No fucking way," the Forsaken said, stunned. Flies crawled into the sunken eye sockets and onto the festering goo that use to be eyeballs.
"Aw man." He regretted fully grasping the situation. "Look. Don't freak out, but it's better you hear it from me..."
"Why are we Horde?" his sister asked in bewildered irritation. She rarely played Horde.
"No," he corrected, "that's not the worst part-"
"No man, this is bullshit-"
"Listen," Lee interrupted, but it was too late. She had spied the skeletal fingers in her gesture.
"No," she denied firmly with a hard blink, squishing overly-contented flies that didn't lift away in time. Lee's orc face soured in disgust and pity.
"Get wrecked, kid."
"B-but I never roll Forsaken!" Lee nodded, well aware that neither of them ever chose Forsaken or leveled in areas with undead willingly. "Welp, this was terrible." Eli nodded to herself, annoying a small cloud of flies into flight. "On to death, thanks."
"Yeah," Lee agreed wholeheartedly, it's what he'd do. No question. She uncurled riddled limbs to stand and he vomited.
"What the fuck, man?"
The breeze had blown the fetor straight to him, and what he imagined was contaminated dust had brushed across his face, along with a handful of sticky flies. "You fucking reek, dumbass! Go over there!"
"Fuck you!" she responded, but walked a few paces away.
"Out of the wind, Jesus Christ!"
"Now you're just trying to piss me off," she warned, stepping aside and taking the host of flies with her. She swatted at them once reflectively, but stopped at one, knowing it was pointless.
"Bitch please, can't you smell?"
Eli stopped short, sniffing loudly. "No, actually..." She brushed the bony tips of her fingers down one arm, "Don't think I can feel anything either. Weird."
"Is it though?"
"Shut up before I go there and touch you."
Lee gaped, making a strangling sound as the thought tripped him up. "Touch me and die."
"That's the point." The orc spasmed to his large feet, keeping his eyes fixated on the Forsaken cloaked in the shifting mass of flies. "No seriously though, I'm not staying like this."
"Yeah - go wander around and get killed then, I'm not doing it." Lee surveyed the area, looking for landmarks to direct him to the nearest camp.
"Pussy."
"Real quick though, which way would you say Orgrimmar is?"
"Um," Eli hummed thoughtfully, inspecting the landscape again. The flat scrubland left things visible even far off in the distance.
"Those are mountains, those tiny points, right? So the ocean is that way, which means," Lee gestured and pointed, turning as he thought out loud, "it's that way, and Ratchet is south."
"Yep. Probably want to do Ratchet first, make some money, find a group headed north. Otherwise you're going to die trying to get there."
Lee tutted, "Pfft, I'd make it to Crossroads."
"Bet."
"Let's go then." He dared with a tilt of the head. "Stay behind me though, you're a nightmare to look at. And if you touch me," he glanced over a massive shoulder to emphasize, "I won't be responsible for my actions."
Eli's eyelids stiffened toward his back as they began walking. "We should have some rules, like, not fighting with each other."
"More like not talking about real world shit."
"Okay, but you should take it easy on me -I didn't choose Forsaken...and I haven't said anything about how you look, which...well."
"Holy shit!" Lee gasped, stopping dead. Eli automatically scanned the area but couldn't see around the bulk of orc.
A small humanoid lay half-buried in a mound of dirt, what could be seen of its skin was sallow green.
"What? Goblin?"
"Yep. Dead, looks like. My God, fuck off over there, you're killing me," Lee admonished with a dark look at the Forsaken who'd crept up to look around him.
"I'm not dead," the goblin spoke up, tiredly. "Just wishing this wasn't happening. By the way, it's me."
"Raf?"
"YES!" Lee exclaimed, bending down to pull the goblin up. Raf dangled from a leg as the orc held him at eye level, an arm-length away.
"Ow."
"Can you believe-" Eli started to explain from several yards away.
"I heard everything, and yes, we're hideous. You especially."
"Fuck yes! I thought I was going to be stuck with this idiot. No offense, but you know-?" Lee briefly looked at Eli to confirm, not feeling the need to repeat the 'you suck' this time. "You're a mage!?" he noted, attention back on Raf, "hell yes! What spells can you do?"
"I don't know. Put me down, dick."
"You're so small." The orc grinned.
"Your breath!" Raf complained. "Put me down -gently!"
"What you're smelling is her."
"I don't think so," the goblin said, rubbing his bulbous nose. "But damn, we need to do something about you." He turned a critical eye on Eli.
"Them is fighting words, and we have a rule about that," the Forsaken griped, "and I may suck at the game, but in real life I'm killing it lately so fuck you both. Actually, I'm outta here."
"Oh please, you mean Andy is killing it lately," Lee said, referring to his brother-in-law.
Eli stopped mid-march and swirled around, sending flies into a vortex of movement. "Shows what you know. We don't compete. You'd know that if you weren't such a cunt-faced little bitch-"
"We need a tank," Raf interjected.
"No man," Lee argued, "fuck her. Let's do our thing."
"Dude, I'm damage, you're a healer. She has to be the tank."
"Fuck no."
"Hell to the nah," Eli agreed.
"How am I the healer?" Lee asked, finally checking the clothes he was wearing. "Damn is this the shaman dress?" He looked over at Eli unhappily. "Fuck that, I can tank and heal until we find a good alternative for either."
"You're in rags, and this is linen," Raf explained. "We'll be shredded to pieces and we don't know how healing works yet. She doesn't feel pain or need food. Trust me there's plenty of advantages to Forsaken. Unlike you pussies I did play them. It'll only be until I get an elemental that can tank the hits."
"...Whatever. Stay if you want," the orc said, distracted with his clothing.
"So I'm a...?
"Warrior," they answered in unison.
"Great, exactly what I don't play. What the fuck?" the Forsaken grumbled. "Whatever I'll stay until then."
Raf nodded at her once, then made brief but meaningful eye contact with Lee.
"Who knows, maybe you'll take to warrior," Lee said after some consideration.
"Yeah, right. You guys are never going to trust me as tank -and me either!" she allowed, accepting the truce.
"We should go to Ratchet first, we might have friends or family. Carry me." He looked up at the orc. "My legs are short."
"All of you is short," Lee chortled, reaching down for the goblin.
"One sec...I think..." Raf fiddled with something on his belt, pumped a button a few times and became airborne. "Hell yeah!"
Lee reach up and caught him before he sailed past, and set him on a shoulder. "You're like a pet."
"New rule-"
"No it falls under the no fighting each other rule. It's a trigger so it counts," Eli argued before it could be contested.
"We need a 'no spending rule' too. We'll have to pool our gold to get some decent gear. Linen," he remarked with distaste. "Silk at least."
