Voodoo Child

Chapter 12 – Like a Led Zeppelin

By Genoscythe

AN: Two chapters in one day? Sheer madness, I know. Unfortunately, that's just the way my brain works...

The trip on the zeppelin was going wonderfully, because Xan was asleep and the terrors waiting outside his mind couldn't touch him. However, a sharp crack brought him back into reality. Argam was gone, and now Zuridan was sitting in his place, gorging on a long green object in his hands. As Xan'Jin's eyes focused, he nearly vomited. The object was an arm, an orc's arm, and Zuridan was eating it. The noise that awoke him was the sound of Zuridan sinking his fangs into the humerus.

Xan wanted to ask what the hell Zuridan was doing, but a) Xan was afraid that if he opened his mouth he really would vomit and b) Xan was getting tired of asking questions all the time. Instead, he merely sat on the edge of the bed and watched in horrified fascination, hoping Zuridan would notice him and explain everything.

"Oh, don't worry," Zuridan should have said. "I do a little acting on the side, and right now I'm rehearsing to play the part of a cannibal. This arm's made of rubber, see?"

What Zuridan actually said was: "Want some?"

Xan excused himself with a violent shake of his head.

After emptying his bowels over the side of the deck, Xan sagged onto the rail. It was still night, but there were several people talking or posing dramatically on the ship's bow, perfecting the art of tossing their hair in the wind.

The only anomaly was a huge tauren lugging a huge fish from person to person, asking them something that Xan couldn't make out from his position slung over the side of the zeppelin. He crawled closer, until he could hear Argam's conversation with a stalwart-looking troll.

"Do you know any freezing spells?" Argam queried.

"Ja mon. What'choo need freezin'?" The troll replied cockily. Argam answered by holding up his fish.

"I want it frozen enough to use as a weapon," he explained. Both Xan and the troll mage gawked at him.

"O…okay…" the mage sputtered, swallowing his astonishment and grabbing the fish in both hands. He closed his eyes, and as they watched the fish seemed to be sprouting ice crystals from its skin. When the troll handed it back to Argam, it was stiff as a board. "Dat'll keep joo for a good while. Joo come see Zoso when it's soft again."

"Thanks," Argam said, his dark eyes sparkling. He took two practice swings with his new weapon, nearly knocking off Zoso's head in the process. The troll mage hurried off to a less disturbing part of the ship, while Xan trudged forward from the shadows.

"You ain' gonna really use dat thing, right?" He asked worriedly.

"Of course I am," Argam responded, as if Xan had just told him he wasn't a tauren.

"But…dat's a fish! What are you gonna do wit your axe?"

Argam nodded. "Thanks for reminding me." At this, he pulled his axe out of its sheath and brought the shaft down onto his knee, splintering the fine weapon in two. Before Xan could even moan in shame, Argam hurled the two pieces off the deck and into the gaping maw of the ocean.

"Well…" Xan sighed. "I be ready for anythin' now." He decided to check up on his cannibal partner.

Zuridan stuffed Gimpy's last remaining digit into his mouth, swallowing it with a crunch. The hunger was abated…for now. Hopefully, Xan hadn't jumped ship yet and he could convince Xan that he only ate orcs (not that this made it much better, but he had been abandoned many times before by teammates who feared he would eat them while they slept).

Within moments, Xan was silhouetted in the doorway. Surprisingly, he seemed calm. Even more surprisingly, he didn't have a legion of orcs bearing torches and pitchforks behind him. The fact that they were on a blimp in the middle of the ocean did not deter the possibility of an angry mob of peasants; they seemed to be able to materialize out of nothing if the need arose.

"Done yet?" Xan asked.

"Sorry about that," said Zuridan. "One of our first attempts to free Zorqua and Helmon had some weird side effects."

"Like cannibalism?"

"Like cannibalism."

"…do you eat trolls?"

"No, definitely not. You've got no meat on you." Zuridan laughed heartily. Xan laughed nervously.

"How long 'till we get dere?" Xan queried, wisely changing the subject. On cue, a booming megaphone crackled to life.

"This is captain Hin Denburg speaking. The Eastern Continent should just be peeking over the horizon if anybody's interested."

"That answer your question?" Zuridan spoke rhetorically. They sat in silence for what seemed like ages, until they sensed a disturbance thumping down the stairs and toward their cabin. When Argam pushed through the doorway, he took several wooden planks out of the wall. Now, at this moment Xan regrets saying "I be ready for anythin' now." It was a lie.

"Look!" Argam exclaimed, swinging his new weapon about. It was no longer just a frozen fish, but some mad variant of a scythe. There was a curved blade stuck through the fish's head, and it appeared both large enough and sharp enough to lop off someone's torso. Xan recalled seeing an identical blade protruding from the front of the ship earlier.

"Put that thing down before you hurt someone," Zuridan growled.

"You're not my boss!" Argam shot back.

"Put it down, mon," Xan said with a sigh. The fishscythe clattered heavily to the floor. Zuridan groaned and lay back against a stack of boxes. No sooner had he done this than he shot upright again. "What's up?" Xan queried.

"Do you smell that?" Zuridan asked dramatically, sweeping his head about. Xan was about to say no, but he knew enough to know that as soon as he did, he would smell it. So he waited, and in a few seconds an acrid brimstony smell invaded his nostrils. "It's Zorqua…" the orc growled, getting to his feet and pulling his wand with him. However, as soon as he rushed out the door, he was smashed across the hallway by a green fireball. His robes aflame, Zuridan rolled along the wooden floor to put them out. Argam saved him the trouble by smacking him with the fish edge of his fishblade.

Argam now rushed at the little imp, who was conjuring another fireball on the other side of the hallway. Before he could finish it, Argam swung his fishblade at the demon. It hopped out of the way, and the tauren's weapon crashed loudly into the wall. However, on the return swing, he caught the imp with the flat side of his fish and sent it careening through a cabin door.

Xan, as usual, remained safely in the cabin and hadn't even bothered to draw his weapons. He was more afraid of getting in the way of Zuridan or Argam than the imp. However, when he looked to his left, he noticed that the wall had begun to glow an ethereal green. A moment later, he realized it was on fire. A moment after that, Zorqua burst through the weakened boards and latched onto his face, much like the Vile Familiar had once upon a time.

Xan stabbed madly at the imp, managing only to nick one of his tusks. However, when the imp let go with its arms to cast a fireball in his direction, Xan was able to toss Zorqua off of him and back into the hallway for his comrades to deal with. From his vantage point inside the cabin, Xan could see the imp lying on the deck. However, it jumped out of the way just as a shadow bolt thundered forward from the left and a fishblade slammed down from the right.

The resulting hole in the floor gave Xan a perfect view of the ocean below, which he noticed was becoming more shallow now. Deciding that a highly flammable zeppelin wasn't the best place to drag on a fight with a demon and two maddened Horde soldiers, Xan jumped into the fray. He bolted past Zuridan and Argam as they chased Zorqua up the stairs and onto the upper deck of the ship.

What they found chilled Xan'Jin's blood. Zorqua was standing atop the stairwell, his hands pointed skyward as if praying for forgiveness. If the little imp gave a damn about morals, then he surely would have been. Instead, he was conjuring up the mother of all fireballs and aiming it at the gas balloon that kept the zeppelin afloat.

Xan guessed that he might have been able to stop Zorqua from torching the balloon, but he simply didn't care enough. He was still tired, and he much preferred falling to climbing up the stairwell and stabbing the little imp. So, the fireball was launched, as Xan was blocking the way of Argam and Zuridan.

Strangely enough, the zeppelin's inertia seemed to die the moment it caught flame. The balloon exploded instantly, and the remains dropped toward the ground (yes, they were over solid ground by now) like a rock. However, it wasn't ground that they landed on.

Their descent was halted as a massive shingled spire exploded through the center of the zeppelin, nearly tearing the wooden contraption in two. Xan and company were on the rear end of the ship, which was perched despairingly over a courtyard of some kind. From the architecture and the abundance of red decorations, Xan assumed the worst. They had landed on top of the Scarlet Monastery.

Herod, as his aides had suggested, was taking a walk through the outermost courtyard, trying to get a breath of fresh air before descending into the armory once more. What he actually got was a burning zeppelin perched despairingly over his head. He stood, in several seconds of stunned silence, before the zeppelin shattered and the back half came tumbling down the roof toward him.

With incredible strength, Herod leapt out of the way as the ship thundered to the ground and crushed the beautiful fountain in the middle of the courtyard. Immediately, three forms flopped over the side of the zeppelin and landed, gasping and scorched, on the immaculate grass. When they looked up to find the Scarlet Crusade's greatest warrior standing over them, it seemed as if they were about to die of fright. Herod was about to die of glee.

"I've been waiting for a challenge that I don't need my shirt for!" Herod bellowed, tossing off his scarlet tunic and baring his revealing crimson armor. That was all the Horde soldiers needed. They bolted to their feet and ran. Herod could not help but laugh as they ran deeper into the armory. He leisurely walked after them, knowing they would either be stopped by his minions or they would run back into him. Either was fine.

Xan, being the most cowardly, naturally assumed the lead as they ran toward what they believed was the exit. Instead, they ran into a pair of Scarlet Crusaders standing next to a stockpile of fireworks. Xan skidded to a half and turned to Zuridan. "Light it up," he whispered, and the two crusaders whipped around at the sound of his voice. However, one of the barrels of fireworks had already been Immolated, and soon the hallway was filled with a multicolored inferno of joyous death.

The Scarlet Crusaders seemed to have been vaporized, and their way was blocked by debris and errant fireworks. That only left one option. They had to get through Herod.

"Any last words?" Xan asked grimly, turning around to face their destiny.

"I've got some," Argam grunted. "I always wanted to make a dress for you, Xan."

"Any less freaky last words?"

"No," Argam sighed. Just then, the silhouette of Herod appeared in the doorway. He said something that was probably very intimidating in Common, but to the Horde soldiers it sounded like gibberish. However, Herod's normally impressive figure was dwarfed by a shadow behind it. A moment later, something huge, green, and armored crashed into the crusader and thrust him into the ground.

An orc warrior stood up, pinning Herod to the ground. Xan guessed he was another survivor of the zeppelin crash. "Go!" The orc bellowed, though Xan's group was already running. As soon as they made it back into the courtyard, they heard the orc clashing blades with Herod. Argam and Zuridan hoped the orc would be okay, but Xan just ran faster.

Herod grinned, wiping blood from his lip and hoisting his prize into the air. The orc's head gleamed in Tirisfal's meager sunlight. "Just more proof that humans are good and everyone else is bad," he remarked, dropping the severed appendage onto the bloody grass. If he was lucky, the weaker soldiers hadn't escaped yet. He was feeling lucky today.

Xan slipped through another knot of crusaders, cursing internally. His group had run into a heavy iron gate, and the switch appeared to be through a dense herd of Scarlet Crusaders. Being the sneakiest one, Argam and Zuridan had given Xan the task of throwing the switch before Herod found them and ripped them apart. At the moment, he was climbing a ramp that led to one of the Scarlet Monastery's many sentry towers. The tower itself was empty save the switch, but the way there was clogged with humans.

Having finally made it, Xan concentrated on keeping his illusion as he pushed down on the lever. He didn't need to worry about his stealth, for as soon as the gate began to ascend, every one of the humans turned to look at it. Xan could almost imagine large exclamation points floating over their heads as they did so.

Argam and Zuridan ducked through the gate, and they gave him the 'okay' sign. While all the Scarlet Crusaders were rushing the gate, Xan let go of the switch and the gate crashed loudly to the ground. Feeling proud of himself, he stepped out of the tower only to be confronted by a terrifying sight. Herod had seen through his pitiful illusion, and he was charging up the ramp with madness in his eyes.

With a sinking feeling in his gut, Xan realized that both Herod and the gate were between him and freedom. However, he looked to his right and found a way to rectify that. Leaping onto the edge of the outer wall, he turned around just long enough to give Herod the universal hand gesture before doing a backflip off the side and into relative safety.

The backflip ended badly, with Xan on his stomache amidst a field of crash survivors. He looked up briefly, and noticed that Herod was seriously considering jumping after him. Before he did, a scarlet-clad soldier intervened and pulled the massive human away from the edge.

The survivors of the zeppelin crash cheered vigorously, and Xan was soon being pulled to his feet by friendly hands. Dey must've seen me give 'im da birdie… Xan realized wearily. He decided to chalk this adventure up in the 'Not a Complete Failure' category.

End of chapter 12

AN: Hin Denburg is really a zeppelin master npc, not a vain attempt at a pun (at least not on my part).