Voodoo Child

Chapter 17 – Stone Cold Crazy

By Genoscythe

While waiting for the signal from Argam, Xan'Jin contemplated why he put Argam in charge of spying on the 'campers' (as named by the residents of Sunrock Retreat) in the first place. Xan was quieter, he was smarter, smaller, less noticeable, less likely to forget what he was doing and try to make conversation with the paladins, and he could turn invisible.

But then he remembered that Argam was the designated meat shield, and if any shit of any type were to go down at any time, Xan wanted to have Argam between him and the shit (whatever it may be). The tauren was now scrabbling up the side of a cliff, trying to get a better view of the campers. Xan was hiding under the corpse of a guard, keeping one eye on Argam and one on the column of smoke from around the bend.

Atop the cliff, Argam peered off into the distance. A moment later, he was jumping and waving his arms about like a retard in an aerobics class.

That was definitely the signal.

Xan got out from underneath the smelly corpse, and waited for his partner to make it back down. Argam walked to the edge of the cliff and slammed his hoof into the dry dirt, shooting a crack through the entire rock face. The side of the cliff tumbled down, with Argam on top of it. Out of the dust, he walked calmly with the air of one who had just defied fate and gotten away with it.

"What'd joo see?" Xan asked immediately.

"They're all gone," Argam replied. "They left their things, too."

Xan lowered his head and fingered his chin, hoping this made him look like he was thinking deeply. As he did this, something rushed by them and nearly blew his hat away. He looked up to find a Forsaken mage, recently arrived via wyvern, heading for the road. He was turning right, probably heading down the mountain to the Windshear Crag. However, as he rounded the corner, a hammer swung out from behind the rock wall and took his head off.

"They're still here," Argam informed Xan.

Fifteen minutes later, Xan was pacing the width of Sunrock Retreat vigorously, in his deep thinking posture. He had suggested that Argam take five and visit Kaya, since he seemed to be more useful when a woman was involved. That had turned into a take fifteen, but since Xan still didn't have a plan he decided to let it slide.

A strange mewling filled the air, and Xan was making ready to yell at it when he saw what it was that was mewling. The wyvern that the mage had ridden in on had apparently taken a liking to the Forsaken, and it was now expressing its eternal anguish in the form of a piteous sound.

As heart-wrenching and disgustingly sad as this was, it gave Xan an opportunity that he desperately needed to exploit. The only hitch in his plan was getting Argam, and Xan would hang himself before he would witness two tauren going at it (like he thought Argam and Kaya were doing).

So, he waited. The wyvern mewled. A rhythmic string of impacts could be heard and felt from not too far away. Xan died a little inside.

Another fifteen minutes later, he saw in the distance an object rolling along the ground toward him. It was long, gray, and lopsided due to the protrusion of bone on one end. The object rolled closer, kicking up a mighty swirl of dust around as it stopped at his feet. If Xan asked why Argam was rolling on the ground instead of walking like a normal sentient being, he would first have to get rid of all the vomit he had been holding in his throat for the past fifteen minutes.

"Xan, I'm happy," Argam murmured, looking up at the troll from his position on the ground. "Content, even."

Xan just nodded, and gave a thumbs-up.

"Do you know why I'm happy, Xan?"

It was too late, there was no going back now.

"I'll tell you."

Xan held out his hands, trying to establish a telepathic link with Argam so he could tell him to stop.

"Kaya and I both got happy. All over the place."

Xan then vomited. All over the place.

After washing out his mouth and erasing half an hour's worth of memories, Xan was finally ready to share his daring escape plan with Argam.

"See dat wyvern?" Xan asked, pointing to the tormented creature hobbling about Sunrock, which a very flustered Kaya was now petting.

"Yes. It looks sad. Unlike me."

That cost Xan another five minutes' worth of memories.

"We gonna ride dat thing right over da campers' heads."

"But they only fly to cities. We're still killing goblins today, aren't we?"

"Ja," Xan gave a toothy, maniacal grin. "We be keelin' goblins today."

"Halt, in the name of…Lord…Pythas?" One of the druid leaders that the Fang spy told them about seemed very confused that Zuridan and Melchiah were running right past him, but moments later his skull was punched in by an angry voidwalker so his opinion no longer mattered.

Zuridan had long ago tuned out Melchiah, who spent the entire chase berating Zuridan and his stupidity without pause. A total lack of respiratory functions helped him accomplish this.

"If you knew he could summon himself, then why did you make a soul shard?"

Zuridan didn't have the breath to reply, so he just ran faster. They entered a maze of small corridors, the floors of which were covered with snakes. However, as soon as they noticed the huge voidwalker gliding toward them, they slithered away with the kind of haste one usually sees in legged animals.

Zorqua fired off a few shots at the retreating soldiers, but imps are terrible shots to begin with and Helmon's constant bobbing didn't help matters.

They ran from corridor to corridor, sometimes backtracking on themselves and nearly getting caught by the demons. Zuridan felt ridiculous, but he was cool with it as long as he could still feel at all. There was no stopping the voidwalker; Melchiah had already tried touching it (hoping that the monster would disintegrate like all non-sentient creatures), but since being a demon is about as cursed as one can get, the Forsaken's hex had no effect on it.

After running across another pathway, Zuridan caught sight of a group of humans and what appeared to be a deformed brown wolf. Both groups halted, and the tallest human, a shaggy fellow with a goatee, pointed at Zuridan. Zuridan returned the gesture, and they all stood completely still for a good three seconds before Helmon and Zorqua came barreling down the row of pathways.

The Horde soldiers and the humans ran in different directions, never to see each other again.

The wyvern, promised its share of human blood, kicked off the parched earth and soared through the canyon. At the sound of the commotion, the campers all wandered out of their hiding spots to have a look. The wyvern's tail caught one in the chest, and Xan began a whoop of triumph that died when he saw ten healing spells immediately patch up the gaping wound.

The lion/scorpion/bat creature was turning around for another pass, but Xan reined it in and sent it in the direction of Windshear Crag. As much as he wanted to hassle the campers some more, he didn't want to test Satan's patience by trying to kill His loyal followers. Not that he could, but Xan still liked to fantasize.

By wyvern, it only took a few seconds to reach the Venture Company's deforestation operation. However, Xan almostfell offthe beastwhen he saw the enormous woodcutting machine that he had been so foolishly tasked with stealing the blueprints for. Sitting in the midst of a half-excavated bowl, it was the stuff of nightmares (and Xan vaguely recalled having a nightmare featuring a similar machine, although it was a biomechanical rabbit), all saw blades and treads and sharp bits.

"Xan, I don't think I can carry that," Argam muttered.

"We be stealin' da plans, notin' else," Xan corrected wearily. Already, several goblins and dwarves on the machine's scaffolding were jumping about and alerting their friends. All this annoying noise spurred Argam's innate goblin-killing drive, and with a vicious moo, he unslung his fishblade and vaulted off the back of the wyvern.

The wyvern flexed, glad to be rid of the weight; sighed, and crashed headlong through the window of the woodcutting machine's cockpit. As it tumbled over the control panel, its flailing scorpion tail skewered the goblin operator and the impact flung Xan into the ceiling. Four and a half seconds later, when gravity peeled the troll off of the ceiling, he got up to find the wyvern lying very still against the far wall. It let out one final meow, content that it would now be with its beloved mage.

Xan dispatched the other goblin operator with pathetic ease, and went to work looking for blueprints. Blueprints, blueprints, blueprints…goblin porn? The entirety of the drawers beneath the control panels were filled with stubby green centerfolds, and nothing more. Sure, Xan knew what it was like to be lonely, but this…

He tore the cockpit apart looking for the blueprints, which was unnecessary since there was nothing in the cockpit apart from controls, gauges, knobs, levers, meters, and a seemingly endless cache of goblin pornography. Every few seconds, the machine would rock violently whenever Argam made a swing with his fishblade. Then, the impacts abruptly stopped. Xan stopped too, as a pause in Argam's rage mode could only be bad.

However, the door to the cockpit swung open and Argam shoved his giant body through the goblin/dwarf/gnome/human-sized doorway.

"Xan, I found a piece of paper. It's blue!" Argam shook his head, and the blueprints – formerly speared on Argam's horn – fluttered to the ground. "Can we leave now?"

"Ja," Xan muttered, shoving the blueprints in his backpack and quietly cursing because he once again proved himself useless. The two of them squeezed through the door and onto the scaffolding wrapped around the Super Reaper 6000 (as the blueprints designated it).

"You! The troll and the tauren!" A tinny, high-pitched voice echoed across Windshear Crag from the direction of the forest and their escape route. Xan turned to look, and found an unofficial army of Venture Company loggers standing between them and the road to Sunrock Retreat. One of the loggers, a scarred gnoll, had a megaphone and was enjoying its use tremendously.

"You are TRESSPASSING on Venture Company lands! You have KILLED several of our workers, and you SEEM to be STEALING the blueprints for that fine MASTERPIECE of woodcutting design! Do you have ANYTHING to say for yourselves before I personally tear out your eyeballs and keep your skulls as SEX TOYS?"

"Get back in da cockpit," Xan muttered out the side of his mouth. Both he and Argam began walking backwards (inconspicuously, of course) toward relative safety.

"HEY! Hiding in the cockpit was NOT an OPTION!" The gnoll bellowed. He was bent low, shuddering as if out of breath. Xan hoped that if they kept ignoring his warnings, he would asphyxiate himself. At the moment, they were inside the thick metal cockpit; they and the Venture Company loggers were at a stalemate.

"What should we do now?" One of the Venture Company workers mused.

"Hurl insults at them!" Another suggested.

"Let's protest!" Yet another cried out. Within seconds, he had produced a sign reading GIVE US BACK OUR BLUEPRINTS and began waving it around. The other workers all began making signs of their own, until the gnoll pulled out a flintlock pistol and sent a rough ball of iron through the instigating protestor's head.

"What should we do now?" Argam asked as they nestled down in the cockpit with back issues of Wet Sprockets.

"Hurl insults at 'em?" Xan asked jokingly, until he realized that Argam thought he was serious. "Notin' we can do," he intoned, happily stabbing through page after page of goblin 'models'. "Dey got food, beds, numbers, an' guns. We got green midget porn."

"Not for long," Argam responded, who was tearing entire magazines in half.

"Don' waste it," Xan reprimanded. "Joo tear 'em all up now, joo gonna get bored later."

"That's okay. Just seeing these things lying around makes Moradon angry."

"Who?"

"He's – "

"Hold it," Xan interrupted, getting to his feet. "I got it, mon. We can drive dis ting out!"

Argam got to his hooves as well. "You know how to drive it?"

Xan picked up the blueprints, scanned them within fifteen seconds, then set them down. "Ja."

"Well, then let's do it!"

Xan walked over to one of the control consoles, hoping it looked like he knew what he was doing. He pulled a lever. One of the saw-blade arms lowered itself. He pushed a button instead. The saw-blade began spinning. He moved to a completely different control panel and twisted a knob. One of the gauges went up, but otherwise no reaction. He then got a tap on the shoulder from Argam that felt more like a roundhouse punch, and his attention was directed to the big throttle in the very center of the console that was dubiously marked 'DRIVE' in big, neon yellow letters.

The Venture Company workers were getting understandably nervous, seeing the big saw ripping up dirt like nobody's business. The gnoll was even more worried than the others, because unlike the others he knew that the ground under their feet had been hollowed out and used as a lair by some giant plant monster named Verdan the Everliving. This was what prompted the foreman to turn their mining operation into a logging operation in the first place.

Unfortunately, Xan and Argam didn't know this either. So when Xan put the throttle in the 'GO' position, after having twisted the speedomoknobber to its maximum…speedomoknob…the Super Reaper 6000 kicked off and plunged itself into the side of the bowl dug back when the Venture Company thought they were making a mining operation.

Earth churned, saw blades spun, and the weary ground slowly began sagging in on itself. Verdan the Everliving was not happy about it.

Zuridan and Melchiah were sick of running, but it seemed to do the trick. They had inadvertently killed all the minor Fang Lords during their chase through the Wailing Caverns, either due to Helmon's blind rage or an accidental slip of the sword or knife. However, it looked like the chase was over.

An especially nasty-looking Night Elf stood atop the incline before them; the spy had identified him as Lord Serpentis.

"Foolish adventurers!" Serpentis boomed. His voice quivered a bit when he saw that they weren't intimidated, but he seemed to be determined to power through his speech anyway. "Have you come to witness the power of the mighty serpent lord?"

"I love these guys," Melchiah muttered as they charged. "They make you feel good about how sane you are."

Zuridan wanted to come up with another piece of witty banter, but he was half-dead from exhaustion and he was afraid that if he opened his mouth his lungs would implode. Even so, he managed to cast a weak Immolate spell on Serpentis to get him to shut up and maybe kindly die for them as well.

The serpent lord's hair caught fire, but he quickly put it out. They were now within striking distance, so Zuridan dove past Serpentis's first staff swing and collapsed on the ground behind him. Melchiah made a jab with his sword, but Serpentis jumped back. The Forsaken lunged, and this time the Night Elf ducked and came up behind Melchiah.

He was about to cast an unspeakably generic evil spell on the two Horde soldiers, but then he was swept aside by a big foggy purple hand. The Fang Lord was thrown all the way back into a massive cavern to their right, and despite his cursing, they paid him no more heed.

Helmon rushed them, and Melchiah met the attack with his shield first. Zuridan followed soon after, swinging his staff and knocking Zorqua off his perch. Helmon attempted to push the Forsaken aside so he could strangle the weakened orc, but Melchiah refused to do anything of the sort.

During this brief power struggle, Zuridan noticed several rocks coming loose from the ceiling and pattering on the ground. He also noticed that Serpentis was prostrate on the floor of the massive cavern and chanting in a way that made Zuridan feel not good. After several seconds of chanting, vines and tendrils of branches began creeping toward him from the walls and floor. These vines kept coming, multiplying in number and wrapping themselves around Serpentis's body until he was five times Zuridan's height and fifty times as deadly-looking. This new aberration had arms like (and made of) tree trunks, and a disturbing multi-eyed head that made Zuridan wonder where the eyes came from.

Then, to his utter horror, Helmon threw Melchiah into the chamber with the Serpentis vine monster. Against all logic, Zuridan ran in after him.

The number of rocks falling from the ceiling had now increased and grown into boulders. A heavy thudding, scraping sound could be heard from somewhere above. Zuridan hoped it was divine intervention, finally paying its debts.

The vine monster had Melchiah in a squeezing death grip. Melchiah was too busy keeping his hands off the thing to try and escape, and Zuridan found that his supplies of mana were utterly spent. With Helmon drawing closer and Zorqua finally getting up from the shadow of the vine thing, Zuridan knew he was, at last, completely screwed.

At least, until the giant metal razorblade-equipped tank fell through the ceiling and onto the vine monster's back. The huge tank's saw-blade instantly turned vines, branches and leaves into a fine mist. Half of the Serpentis vine monster was crushed under the machine, and the other half was lying on the other side of the chamber with its body rapidly decomposing.

As soon as it hit the ground, the tank cracked, popped, bent over, and came apart at the seams. Out of one of these seams came Xan'Jin, Argam Stonehoof, and a whole mess of goblin pornography. Helmon took one look at the covers and began running his claws along his face, attempting to scratch out his ethereal white eyeballs. As he did so, the magic binding his foggy body seemed to alleviate, and he was soon a swirling pool of mist gathering at the bottom of the cavern.

Xan and Argam lay still in the mountain of dirty magazines, gasping for air and thinking up a new deity to pray to. Zuridan soon joined them, and he decided that goblin pornography made quite a comfortable bed. Melchiah hobbled out of the mess that used to be Verdan the Everliving's torso, saw his teammates asleep in the pile of goblin porn, scoffed, and went looking for a new place to brood.

At that instant, for a completely unrelated reason, Naralex woke up. He had had enough of sleep, and realized that he could just wake up from the Emerald Dream at any time. He wandered the caverns, musing over what his dreams had done to the place. Then, as he came upon his favorite meditating spot, he found three Horde soldiers that had seemingly fallen asleep in the middle of reading a stash of goblin pornography.

Naralex was horrified. He jumped to the conclusion that, by waking from the Emerald Dream, he had doomed the rest of the world's inhabitants to sleep forever. Of course, if Melchiah were there, he would tell him that this idea was crap, and that he was overreacting. Being a Night Elf, Naralex didn't know what it meant to overreact. So he slit his throat, hoping that doing so would awaken the world from its eternal slumber. As he died on the remains of his favorite pet, Naralex saw the troll stir, yawn, and move to a more comfortable position.

Thank Cenarion, thought Naralex. They're saved.

End

AN: And so ends my single most favoritest chapter to date (and will probably never be topped, but who's to know?). Thanks to all my reviewers, and thanks to the random hand of fate for putting me in the right mood to write this chapter.