The great deathcharger galloped from the Scarlet Crusade foaling field with a fury; sparks scattered from its flying hooves and hellfire poured from its mane as it thundered towards Death’s Breach. Behind it, hoots and hollers followed keening laughter, and the sound of a hundred tiny hooves. Clods of dirt, hellfire spittle, and churned mud sprayed from the column as they rushed past Hellvetica and Deathsprocket.

“Woohoo! Go number three!” she shouted, waving her purple pennant as the racers rumbled past.

One of the tauren—they were all tauren—turned, waving as he and his his tiny steed sped by; its short legs blurred like the blades of a fan as it ran as quickly as it could from Havenshire to the Breach. It wasn’t the only small horse; every minotaurian brute death knight had taken themselves a filly or colt from the field. Some black, some brown, and a couple grey, but none taller than the knees of their monstrous bovine riders.

“It’s tradition,” the gnomish ressurectionist explained. “Salanar long ago coughed up his own coccyx when someone arrived with a pony instead of a stallion. Since then people, tauren especially, have been stealing them from the field and delivering them. I don’t know when they started racing them…”

“Come back here, you horse thieving ruffians!” came a shout from the back of the race.

“That might explain it.”

“Hm?” Hellvetica craned her neck to get a look at the source of the shouting.

And swiftly the source came into view.

A tall man astride a lithe and powerful animal, thick muscles working under skin like black buttered leather, hooves that shook the ground with each step. Stallion. Thy name is horse. The great, dark steed that he rode snorted a fog and shook its heavy mane, wide brimming eyes watching from the distance. Then and there, she knew what needed to be done.

“I’ll take that one,” Hellvetica said.

“What?” Deathsprocket choked. “I don’t think he’s going to give it up so easily. That’s Kitrik the Scarlet Stablemaster. We should really get out of his way.”

The gnome started to move away from the impromptu racetrack, back towards the safety of the skeletal archers who continued to darken the sky with their arrows. But Hellvetica did not budge.

“Yo! Mr Sissypants!” she shouted. “Nice horse!”

The man on the horse pointed his sword at her and leveled a glare that could have incinerated her on the spot if it were not for the sub-zero temperatures.

“How dare you address me, vile thing,” he shouted, turning his horse toward her. “I will hoist your head high upon a pike as a warning to others who might stray into my field.”

“Watch this,” Hellvetica said to Deathsprocket while drawing her hand back into a pitcher’s pose.

“Famous last words,” he replied. “I am heading for high ground before your severed head lands at your feet.”

She hucked with all her might. The object in her hand flew straight and true, whistling through the frigid air to stick to the Stablemaster’s metal faceplate with a shtwonk!

The horse faltered a moment as he yanked at the reigns, reaching up he tried to remove it from his helmet. “What is the meaning of this? Abomination to nature! I will split thee from skull to groin—wagh!”

With his sword held high overhead, horse galloping forward intent on blood, he totally missed the shadowy man-form hurtling towards him at great velocity. “AGRRRGGUUGH. Want. Shiny!” It shouted as it launched through the air and tackled Kitrik neatly from the back of his horse.

Chuckling to herself, Hellvetica strolled up to the horse and patted its neck. It snorted at her and rolled its eyes at its former master. A man who now lay in a crumpled heap, waving wildly trying to keep the ghoul off of him and away from his—well…

“Agh, not my eyes!”

“Don’t worry,” she said, taking the stallion’s reigns in her gauntleted hands. “You won’t need them much longer.”

The chewtoy—an eyeball pickled into a rubbery consistency like a hardboiled egg—hurtled across the chamber, caromed off the back wall, rebounded from the floor, and sailed out the window.

Batsmasher followed, arms a-pendulum with barely contained joy. “Raaaaaggwwggh!” he gurgled as he flew through the window after his favorite toy and promptly vanished from sight in the pristine blue and fog. Plummeting.

“That never gets old,” Hellvetica said.

“He’ll just respawn,” Deathsprocket said.

“Yeah,” she replied, “but it makes him happy.”

The next step in her progress, her necromancer guide explained, would be to etch a rune sword with the Rune Forge—one problem with that outcome: the Rune Forge was currently occupied. It had been occupied for almost an hour now. A queue had formed out one side of the floating necropolis and around the outside.

“It’s like the opening of Star Wars out there,” she remarked.

“You should see the line for the bathroom.”

“Mommy!” The burbling voice of Batsmasher emanated from a particularly corpse-dense section of the room as the ghoul toppled a mound of severed heads then shambled over. It dropped the rubbery eyeball onto the floor at her feet; it bounced with a stomach-turning sqwinch.

“What’s this?”

A glittering light seemed to be connected to Batsmasher’s back like a pair of wings. Unwilling to actually touch him, Hellvetica managed to pantomime enough to get him to turn around and show his back. And there, between his scapula and backbone, was embedded a pristine axe; its twin, an ivory handled, silver bladed weapon protruded from how lower back on the opposite side.

Deathsprocket leaned closer. “Hm. It looks like he encountered some resistance down below.”

“Presents!” Hellvetica exclaimed and removed both axes.

She twirled them around a little. They were surprisingly well balanced for basically stolen loot; the blades sang in the air as she wove them in intricate patterns with timed movements of her wrists and arms. Almost like extensions of her own limbs. She rather liked them, in fact.

“Good ghoul,” she said as she holstered them through loops in her belt.

“Looks like they opened up another Rune Forge,” Deathsprocket said.

“Cool, let’s go.”

“You’ll need a sword.”

“What about my new axes?” she said. “My pet brought them to me special.”

“You’re still going to have to choose a sword. Check the racks of those taken from the dead, we’ll use one of those.”

“Fine,” she said. “Eenie, meenie, minie—ah ha.”

Hellvetica plucked a sword off of the rack, nodded, and presented it to Deathsprocket. He frowned at her.

“Leave it to you to find the only pink, floral print sword in the entire batch,” the gnome griped. “Don’t tell me—does it say something like, ‘My first training sword?’”

“No, but it does have S. Windrunner written in glitter at the bottom.”

“You would just really rather use the axes, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m a simple girl.”

“Fine,” the gnome said. “But we’ll still need to present you with a sword. Let’s just take that one, have it inscribed, and get on with our lives.”

NEXT >> Chapter Thirteen: My Kingdom for Your Horse

The author Helvetica writes the Helvetica Venture and Hellvetica Chronicles for Vox Ex Machina and proudly supports the works of Kyt Dotson, whose writing includes Mill Avenue Vexations (a gothic webserial featuring cab driver Vex Harrow), Black Hat Magick, and Helljammer and invites you to check out the novel, The Specter in the Spectacles by Kyt Dotson.

The Lich King, Prince Arthas and the shade of Ner’zhul combined, brooded over the war torn domain from gaping maw of an icy balcony—great clouds of billowing white foamed in the chill air and whipped past his ragged cloak, stoking the azure flames that fumed from his ghastly armor. His sword, Frostmourne, balanced point-down on the icy rock floor awaiting his grasp as he fiddled with his gloves.

“When do I get to meet the big guy?” Hellvetica asked, gesturing with an onyx gauntleted hand towards the looming figure.

Deathsprocket shifted uneasily, as if he was uncomfortable in his graying skin; his glowing eyes flickered unsteadily and a frown pursed his lips, wrinkling his cheeks.

“Maybe later,” came his reply. “I think that we can skip the introductions until after he gets his morning coffee…”

Hellvetica raised a serrated eyebrow, wondering if it would tear through her cowl. “Arthas drinks coffee?”

“Iced cappuccino, with wintersbite sprigs. He’s cranky until he has his first five cups.”

“Of course,” Hellvetica said.

If Deathsprocket noticed the irony in her voice, he didn’t show it in his graven expression; instead, he turned away and waved towards the expanse of the sanctum’s circular masonry. Here and there long-limbed, rubbery-boned geists crawled like loosed Japanese ghosts cleaning dust and delivering debris from the floor into a chute. The rest of the clean up crew, a shambling division of ghouls, quietly devoured anything that didn’t move out of their way. Boney vacuum cleaners all, but they seemed to keep the place clean.

At least the death knights and necromancers didn’t need to worry themselves with 409 or Windex—not that there was a glass window to be had anywhere in the place.

“This way,” the gnome said.

He lead her down a shallow spiral staircase set into a casement carved as if out of giant skulls, their hollow eyes casting gazes out into the breathless clouds and relentless blue sky. The quieting stones hushed the chanting of the ressurectionists and the guttural whisper of the Lich King in her head (who had little useful to say except for the occasional, “Kill them!” and “If Starbucks fails me again I shall vent my spleen through their souls.” Hellvetica wasn’t certain about the second message.) Their descent was slow, but before she knew it, they emerged into another level.

“We do need to introduce you to your ghoul,” Deathsprocket said. “We just have to find you a proper corpse.”

And, if she ever needed a proper corpse, where he had taken her would be a good place to get one—the chamber into which she gazed appeared to have all the hallmarks of the castoff from a charnel house. The dead lay in great heaps. Stitched Frankenstein abominations lay quiet, dead upon metal slabs, still awaiting the spark of life to drive them from their silent slumber. The nimble-fingered stitchers and thew-armed chiurgeons worked ceaselessly amid the corpses; chopping limbs, heads, removing spines, deboning flesh, sewing it together. Their ceaseless conversations echoed in staccato consonants as if a radio had been tuned to a talk station had been left on.

“This will do,” Deathsprocket said, standing over a particularly singular specimen of what-once-was-living humanoid. Days of rot had already taken flesh down to bone, and the once ruggedly handsome face, now slack in death, to bits of paper thin skin covering shriveled cheeks. Hollow sockets gazed empty and pitiless without eyes.

“Maybe we can cover it with a sack or something?”

Deathsprocket handed her a bag filled with a dust that reeked of death. “There’s a fellow here who carves excellent and lifelike false eyes to deal with that situation, but right now, we just want this one walking. Use the corpse dust.”

“It smells like corpses, that’s for sure.” She wrinkled her nose, pinched some of the awful grit, and sprinkled it.

The cadaver shuddered as if electricity bolted through its limbs, muscles twitching with maniacal marionette motions. A blue glow suffused into the sockets of the eyes and it rose up, laboriously at first, gurgling deep in its throat. It breathed out a foggy breath and turned its empty eyes to her. The face was uncanny in its severity, a gaunt skull visage without emotion or eyebrows. Certainly, she wondered for a moment if sunglasses would be preferable to wooden faux eyes.

Hellvetica checked the nametag hovering over its head: Batsmasher.

“Cute name,” she said.

“Me. Like. Shiny,” said Batsmasher.

“Of course you do.”

Hellvetica cast a pleading eye towards Deathsprocket; but he wasn’t offering any solace today.

NEXT >> Chapter Twelve: A Sword for All Occasions

The author Helvetica writes the Helvetica Venture and Hellvetica Chronicles for Vox Ex Machina and proudly supports the works of Kyt Dotson, whose writing includes Mill Avenue Vexations (a gothic webserial featuring cab driver Vex Harrow), Black Hat Magick, and Helljammer and invites you to check out the novel, The Specter in the Spectacles by Kyt Dotson.

“Stand and be measured, death knight,” the necromancer said.

Hellvetica stood, stretched her newfound muscles. She felt good, power coursing through her veins. They had placed upon her a garb of black robes, embroidered with runes of pain and suffering. She could sense the fire in her veins burning in her eyes. A voice in her head whispered sweet horrors to her. Cajoling, commanding, but she pushed that aside and with it the rapture of her resurrection.

“Thank you,” she said, “for…” She paused, she couldn’t see anyone standing in front of her—until she looked down.

There, coming to about knee height, a gnome wearing one of the necromancer robes and a nametag: “Student Resurrectionist.” He even had a book in his hand entitled like a manual, “Necromancy For Dummies: Or How I Found Death and What I Did With Her.” His green hair had been bleached somewhat, his beard shaggy in places, and his face appeared to be absent of blood. A rock hard expression creased his wrinkled skin as he scanned the book as if trying to determine what happened next.

“Student?” Hellvetica said.

“Ahem,” the gnome said. “Well, yes. We have to start somewhere. Alright. So you have risen, Herald of Arthas, today is the dawn of your resurrection! Prepare to meet your maker—not me, the king—and serve him with all your will and might.”

“I’m Hellvetica,” she said.

“Deathsprocket,” the gnome said; then frowned when she stifled a laugh. “What? It’s a perfectly acceptable name for a gnome after-the-fact, don’t you think? Why does everyone laugh? Okay, it says here that I’m supposed to have you get a sword and inscribe it and then you can go see his highness…or something. Would you like a tour?”

“Everyone? How many resurrections have you done?”

He made a dismissive gesture with his other hand. “Well. Not many—”

Hellvetica tapped her foot.

“Alright. Just you,” Deathsprocket said. “Happy? You’re my first, can you—just ixnay on the riticismcay? By the way, do you feel alright?”

She raised a sharp eyebrow. “I’m fine…” she said. “Should I be concerned about anything?”

The gnome glanced up for a moment, breathing a puff of fog. “No,” he said. “Nothing to concern yourself with. Ah, except for, apparently part of orientation is all about hygiene. Interesting. Odd.”

Hellvetica crossed her arms. “Spit it out.”

“Well, ah,” he said. “There are some weird side effects of reincarnation that you should be aware of, such as odor and hair loss. Well, not hair loss so much, but a lack of hair growth.”

“Great,” she said. “So I become one of the walking dead and I have to concern myself with skin care and my hairdo? Does this rocky mountain even have running water?”

“Nope. And here, just listen to this part: A bloodbath a day keeps the living away (although bubbles is frowned upon.) Hm, and: Heed your unintelligibility. Should you misplace your lower jaw, you may be reassigned to a position where your gurgling is not amiss and few of these hold prestige.

“I can remove my lower jaw?”

“I suspect so, if this book is to be trusted.”

She tried, but it would not budge.

“Not an alcoholic, are you?” the gnome asked, Hellvetica shook her head. “Good, because apparently your brain and liver no longer care. That could have been a rude awakening.”

“Ruder than waking up dead?”

Deathsprocket shrugged. “And finally: Those pants no longer make you look fat.”

“That’s more like it!” she said with chilling cheer. “I think I’m going to like this job.”

NEXT >> Chapter Eleven: Zen and the Art of Ghoul Maintenance

The author Helvetica writes the Helvetica Venture and Hellvetica Chronicles for Vox Ex Machina and proudly supports the works of Kyt Dotson, whose writing includes Mill Avenue Vexations (a gothic webserial featuring cab driver Vex Harrow), Black Hat Magick, and Helljammer and invites you to check out the novel, The Specter in the Spectacles by Kyt Dotson.

Hellvetica’s head hurt. All she recalled—aside from the name change—was downloading and activating the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and rolling a death knight. Of course, this did help explain one thing: why she was currently among the dead.

The battlefield was littered with them, every race and class accounted among the valley of corpses as slouching half-human ghouls worked amid them. Bones exposed, dripping ribbons of rotting flesh, the ghouls labored to carry and drop dead body after dead body onto the backs of creaking wagons, which then conveyed their ghastly cargo unto Acherus.

Necromancers clad in dread black picked their way through the dead, casting boney fingers and watery eyes over the putrid crop. Hither and thither they resurrected the dead. By and large, though, the wagonloads just lay there. Alliance and Horde alike dumped together unceremoniously onto the floor waiting their turn.

After a while, Hellvetica noticed that other corpses were blinking. Apparently she wasn’t alone.

“How long have you been waiting?” Hellvetica asked a burly tauren to her right.

“About ten minutes,” he said. “The server must be overloaded. The queue message keeps popping up…”

“Everyone wants to be a death knight.”

“It’s a death knight spree,” said a troll corpse to her left. “Teach me to roll a new class on the day the expansion comes out.”

Hellvetica would have smiled at him, but she discovered she couldn’t move. In fact, she could only stare at the ceiling from where she lay. Heavy, depressing masonry creaking with giant chains and censers full of blue coals—and somehow foreboding had been carved into the stones.

“Where am I?” asked a gurgling voice, echoed a thousand times against the stones. “What is this place?”

In her peripheral vision, she watched a large man wearing heavy armor point at a kneeling animated corpse and say something in a stern tone. Gangrenous ghouls pulled themselves up from the floor and fell upon the newly reborn man with a savagery—they tore him limb from limb, spraying sluggish blood across the floor. The gurgle of death reached her dead ears and if she could, she would have winced.

“They certainly went all out to goth this place up,” she said. “And judging from the story that I got on my way in, I’ve gone from emo to goth anyway. Did you see the outfit they had us in when we loaded? It’s all embroidered black and blacker.”

“I’m a corpse,” the tauren said. “I have no opinion on fashion.”

A low chant somewhere behind her caught Hellvetica’s attention.

“This one,” another, deeper voice said. “She’ll make an excellent harbinger of death.”

“Looks like it’s your turn,” the tauren said. “Enjoy. I’ll see you out there.”

“Thanks,” she said.

Then the green light took her.

NEXT >> Chapter Ten: Student Necromancers from Hell

The author Helvetica writes the Helvetica Venture and Hellvetica Chronicles for Vox Ex Machina and proudly supports the works of Kyt Dotson, whose writing includes Mill Avenue Vexations (a gothic webserial featuring cab driver Vex Harrow), Black Hat Magick, and Helljammer and invites you to check out the novel, The Specter in the Spectacles by Kyt Dotson.

“Could you pass that? No, not the blue—yeah, the green one. Thanks.”

Felendren didn’t seem so bad; at least Helvetica didn’t think so. It wasn’t like he had any fight in him, certainly not while he was toking on the huge bloodthistle bong. Except that it didn’t look like any bong she’d ever seen in her life. For one, it appeared to be made out of a Burning Crystal—the shard truly took offense to this and continuously shook with rage, producing a strange humming noise. The bong itself burbled constantly with a green-orange fume, and a pair of red eyes glared lazily at nothing. They also seemed to have bloodshot lines running through them.

“Dude, I wish that I had asked that Shara Sunwing chick for extra crispy spider legs,” the wretched blood elf said for the umpteenth time. Apparently he had run out a few days after he’d been banished, something about having a tremendous case of the munchies.

Glancing around the place where she sat, Helvetica realized that he’d gotten a rather cozy setup after being banished. The golden, open-aired, balcony that they sat in had been covered wall-to-wall with ottomans, divans, and big, fluffy pillows. Upon her arrival she had tripped over one of them, in fact, going face-first into their silken embrace after getting lost in the sweetly smelling “fog” that permeated the entire room.

Overall, Felendren looked like every other blood elf that she’d met. He was thin to the point of anorexia, possessed long, floating hair, and glowing eyes. The major exceptions to those similarities, however, appeared in his skin pallor and a total lack of personal hygiene. Being banished apparently had turned his skin grayish and he looked as if he had not washed his clothing in years—it was graying around the edges, frayed, and beginning to breed its very own lint bunnies. Helvetica mused that if this is what got someone banished from blood elf society, a lot of city geeks would be in trouble if they ever joined.

“What did you do that was so bad anyway?”

“Huh?” Felendren stopped gnawing on the pillow in his hand and looked up.

Helvetica sighed. “You were banished, right?”

“No,” he said. “Not that I can remember… Hey, do I know you?”

“Then why are you named Felendren the Banished?”

His face lit up at that. “It’s a band name, dude!” The bong set aside, he stood up—or tried to stand up—the entire affair took several long moments of flailing around, slipping on pillows, and he finally ended up instead perching precariously on the edge of a divan. “Jaxus over yonder plays the drums.” He gestured to a towering, anthropomorphic blob of smoky quartz light with the words “Tainted Mana Wraith” over it. “Exota and Exoma are guitars,” he gestured to some similar entities hanging out near the open edges of the room; they turned and waved when the names were said. “And, of course, I do the vocals.

“Would you like to hear one of my songs? I just wrote it.”

She quickly waved dismissively. “No, no, that’s okay. I’ve had bad experiences with song writers in the past.”

A cold breeze touched the back of her neck preceding the sound of scuffling feet and ringing chain armor that emanated from the stairwell behind them.

“There he is! Get him!”

Surprised, Helvetica turned just in time to see an arrow leap across the room and lodge itself in Felendren with a thunk. The archer seemed familiar, she recognized him as the one who got her mana wyrm.

A sword-wielding blood elf emerged from the smoke at the end of the hall and charged directly for Felndren, while an elf wearing a long red robe started throwing fireballs at Jaxus. More arrows rained down, quickly turning divans and pillows alike into pincushions.

“Oh no, not them again!” the wretched blood elf whined. “Last time they broke one of my bongs. Dude this sucks.”

“Quick! Invite her to the team!”

Skullbreaker has invited you to a team? Do you accept?

When Helvetica clicked Yes a drum-roll sounded and the portraits of three other people appeared in her view: Skullbreaker, Agony, and BubbleHearth.

Somewhere in the distance something died with a scream as Agony—the mage—burned a Mana Wraith to the ground and focused on Felendren. In a matter of moments—arrows, fireballs, and sword strokes—the magic (and bong) addicted, wretched blood elf had been rendered into a pile of ashes and smoke.

Skullbreaker has received [Felendren’s Head].

Agony has received [Felendren’s Head].

BubbleHearth has received [Felendren’s Head].

“Did everyone get the head?” asked Skullbreaker.

Puzzled, Helvetica looted the corpse.

Helvetica has received [Felendren’s Head].

“Everyone’s good,” said someone else in the group. “Thanks Helvetica.”

“Yeah, thanks.” “Thanks everyone!” “See you later, Hel.”

You have been removed from the group.

She looked at the head in her inventory. At least now she had something to return to the Paladin Sunstriker.

A movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention; she turned to see Felendren himself bending down over his own corpse. Normally this would have bemused her, but Helvetica had discovered that in game certain people didn’t stay dead for long. After all, if everyone had to come and kill someone for their head it wasn’t possible if they were already dead.

The matter of one person having four heads, however, still disturbed her.

“Don’t stay dead for long, do you?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I have a pretty quick respawn rate. I just wish they wouldn’t break my stuff when they did that.”

Felendren the Banished has received [Felendren’s Head].

“I need the reward silver for more crispy spider legs,” he said. “The quest is still red to me anyway—it’ll give me mad experience!”

Five heads.

NEXT >> Chapter Nine: Waking Up is Hell

The author Helvetica writes the Helvetica Venture and Hellvetica Chronicles for Vox Ex Machina and proudly supports the works of Kyt Dotson, whose writing includes Mill Avenue Vexations (a gothic webserial featuring cab driver Vex Harrow), Black Hat Magick, and Helljammer and invites you to check out the novel, The Specter in the Spectacles by Kyt Dotson.

On her way back to the Sunspire with her plundered goods, Helvetica began to notice a queer thing: cat corpses. All over the place. As far as the eye could see. Dead black cats, dead white cats, calico, torties, seal point, not a single one spared that unknown wrath. It seemed as if a family of rats had gone on a vengeful spree and slaughtered every cat in sight.

She had examined a cat once. “Critter,” it noted, “Level 1.”

Tough creatures they were not, possessing of apparently little hit points, and couldn’t usually survive a single blow from even a dagger—except that someone, or something, had taken it upon themselves to obliterate the population. The smattering of corpses continued through the Sunspire as she trotted up the curving ramp to where Solanian stood.

As she passed through the ground level audience chamber, however, Jesthenis Sunstriker stopped her with a look. This is not to say that he simply looked at her. No, the gaze of a potent and well trained paladin is a terrible thing. Caught in the full glare of his stare, Helvetica found herself rooted to the spot, unable to move. His glowing eyes pounded down upon her like mallets on bass drums. Thoom, boom, doom.

“Um,” she said. “Can I help you?”

“I sense a soul in search of answers,” he said.

“What?”

“Never mind, Blood Scout,” Jethenis said. “You have done well. Taken on your first feathers and already you have blooded yourself. I am impressed, to say the least, not many have gone so far in so little time.” His eyes flickered to the Burning Crystal shard floating nearby. “Now that we are out of earshot of those fools, I would like to congratulate you. I don’t know a single of the Blood Knights who has managed to gain such a powerful weapon. In all my time, in fact. You should be congratulated.”

The drums maintained their saturnine pounding, back beating his voice and punctuating his periods.

“Thank you,” she said.

“It is time that you were elevated in rank.” Jesthenis raised a hand

Foom!

“You are now a level four Blood Scout and have acquired the rank of Squire,” he said.

“Er, wait, level four? Didn’t I just skip—”

“Think nothing of it, Blood Squire!” the paladin boomed, puffing his chest out. “All in the service of your people. We cannot leave talent like yours wasted.” He lowered his voice to a near-whisper. “Plus, with this sort of power level you won’t have to go back up there and talk to you-know-who again. In fact, just sell his stuff to Shara, she likes shiny things.”

Doom, boom.

“Okay…but…”

“I do require one task of you, before you are to report to the Lady Liadrin I want you to hunt down a rather surly individual. One of the Wretched. Bring me his head.” He handed her a parchment with a briskly painted glaring face, scratched out in dark lines and angles, depicting bright teeth, glowing eyes, and a haze of smoke. Scrollwork beneath gave his appellation: Felendren the Banished.

“Be careful not to fall. Do not become one of the Wretched.” Thoom, doom. “Now go. Do not disappoint me. Your people are depending on you, Squire.”

Stunned, and uncomprehending, Helvetica walked away. She tried to recall the conversation but much of it became scrambled in the text and melted into a blur. Something about selling someone’s head to Shara and shiny things for Felendren still remained before it rattled into confusion by the deep booming of the drums in the Sunstriker’s eyes.

A player wearing purple and red robes—a color pair that clashed so badly that it brought her mostly out of her bemused state—trotted up, followed by a small creature who seemed to have the worst case of Athlete’s foot that she had ever seen.

“Hello,” the player said. “Do you know where to find Dath’Remar?”

Dazed, Hevetica said, “I’d love to help, but I haven’t the faintest idea…” After a moment she added, “Is there any chance you know how to turn down the sound of those drums?”

“Drums?” the player said. “The sound track to this place reminds me of Lord of the Rings.”

Behind her a Blood Knight sauntered past, swaggering like a peacock, pausing only to dispatch a cat. Merwf!

NEXT >> Chapter Eight: At Felendren’s Pad

The author Helvetica writes the Helvetica Venture and Hellvetica Chronicles for Vox Ex Machina and proudly supports the works of Kyt Dotson, whose writing includes Mill Avenue Vexations (a gothic webserial featuring cab driver Vex Harrow), Black Hat Magick, and Helljammer and invites you to check out the novel, The Specter in the Spectacles by Kyt Dotson.

She slices! She dices! She also makes kindling of vaguely anthropomorphic trees!

Not too far into the mission, Helvetica quickly found herself wading through cords of firewood as every tree-like creature in the area came for her blood. Between the snapping of boughs, limbs, twigs—and the shocked and startled expressions on the treant’s faces as she cleaved them in twain—she let all of her frustration out on the woody nuisances.

Of course, she had also carefully made certain no other players were camping them before she waded into the fray. She really didn’t want to deal with arrows-from-nowhere thudding into her kills.

“Yeah, run you malicious dendrite!” She didn’t know exactly what dendrite meant, but it seemed appropriate to scream at the Feral Tender’s back. It had taken one look at the pile of firewood corpses that had once been its brethren and fled in the other direction.

The Burning Crystal shard hovered nearby watching her every move.

“Do you actually do anything?” she asked it.

The shard glared.

Getting the scroll and the scrying orb were a piece of cake after Helvetica’s singled-handed, bastard-sworded Forest Massacre at Sunstrider Isle. Those items tucked safely into her new bag, she surveyed the scene. It reminded her rather directly of public service announcements of the dangers of clear cutting: a field of green, dotted with forlorn stumps jutting up like leg stubble.

Here and there a stump glittered with sparkling motes of light.

Curious, she sheathed her blade and trundled over to one of them. When she approached she noticed that the sparkles were coming off of stuff lying around the stump. In this case, it was a pair of pants hanging from some of the shattered remains of the canopy of the small tree.

In this fashion she gathered up some pants, a cape, gloves, and a new pair of earrings.

“So killing is a lot like shopping!” she said cheerfully. “Who knew? And they’re also all in my size.”

While normally she would have been self conscious about changing in public she started putting them on anyway. After re-outfitting with her new ensemble she spent a moment looking herself over. The treant’s taste in clothing appeared somewhat drab, browns and greens seemed to be in fashion.

Plucking at the tough material of her new pants, Helvetica wondered aloud, “Why do they have this stuff anyway?”

“So, how do I look?” asked the Feral Tender. It stood straight and tall, boughs arched out in a strongman pose. The chain mail shirt with a red doublet hanging between his branches twinkled in the mussy light of the island.

“I don’t know,” said a nearby mana wyrm sporting a green beret. “You might need to dye your foliage orange to go with the red.”

The treant turned to the Springpaw Lynx at its right and spun slowly to show the outfit off.

“I don’t know if I’m fit to comment. I am only a cat,” the lynx said—of course, it was wearing a green and grey shirt with gold trimming.

“I rather like it,” said the other Tender. It wore a purple robe, through which its various branches poked holes in the fabric and created a strange, amorphous bulk to its frame. The effect gave it a kind of round, tent-with-too-many-stakes effect, but the others weren’t going to tell her that she looked stupid. Since she was proud of her purple robes and would run away in tears if they mentioned it.

“Thank you,” the Feral Tender said. “At least someone appreciates my fashion sense.”

The glitter of the chain mail caught Helvetica’s eye from several hundred yards away. Checking her equipment, she realized that she didn’t have a shirt yet and that one looked alright to her. So she headed directly for them.

“Maybe we can all go shopping later,” the Feral Tender said. “I know of a great place down near the Ghostlands where a buddy of mine can get us some really stylish gear.”

“I second that,” said the lynx.

“Sure, I’ll come,” the mana wyrm added.

Being that blood elves don’t understand Tender, Springpaw Lynx, or Mana Wyrm speak, she missed out on the conversation entirely and instead rudely crashed their water cooler gathering with a vengeance.

Unaccustomed to stealth, she rounded the corner with her sword brandished high and leapt directly for the Feral Tender wearing the stylish chain mail shirt. “Momma needs a new pair of boots!”

Slash! Slice! Smrunch!

After the wyrm dust settled and the various bits of leaves had fluttered to the ground, the young paladin walked away from the devastated group wearing a new, shiny chain shirt.

NEXT >> Chapter Seven: There’s War Drums…In Those Eyes

The author Helvetica writes the Helvetica Venture and Hellvetica Chronicles for Vox Ex Machina and proudly supports the works of Kyt Dotson, whose writing includes Mill Avenue Vexations (a gothic webserial featuring cab driver Vex Harrow), Black Hat Magick, and Helljammer and invites you to check out the novel, The Specter in the Spectacles by Kyt Dotson.

“So, you just ran into it and this broke off?” It was Yasmine Teli’Larien speaking. She did so in a hushed, considering tone. Her eyes never left the shard of Burning Crystal that floated nearby and glowered with barely restrained menace, time-sharing between everyone in the group as equally as it could.

Helvetica’s return had assembled a small convention.

In the gathering were Kariel, the Rogue trainer; Sallina, the Hunter trainer; Arena, the Mage trainer; Jestenis Sunstriker—didn’t say what he trained, but from his gigantic sword and disapproving expression she figured that he was her mentor-to-be—and even Shara Sunwing, who sold stuff. Attracted by the commotion, like moths to a flame, two magical brooms also hovered nearby, followed closely by several cats. Always cats. The Sunspire was lousy with them and the amount of fur they shed seemed to give the brooms something to do in their down time.

“Someone should be sent to the Burning Crystal to make sure that it isn’t leaking,” said Matron Arena.

“They leak?” Kariel said.

“Quite,” Yasmine said. “A crystal spill can be a dangerous thing—“ She gestured to one of the passing magical brooms. “They’re not mops, after all.”

“It wasn’t leaking,” said Helvetica, “just glaring.”

“I can send someone to tend to it,” Jestinis said to Arena. “The Blood Knights are ever ready, and we probably have some expendable recruits…” Helvetica didn’t like the way he was looking at her.

“Um,” she said. “I found this book. It says that it belongs to someone named Solanian…”

One of the brooms paused in its sweeping and held up a sign. It pointed towards the looping ramp that ran along the side of the Spire and up to an open door. Under the arrow the sign read: To Well Watcher Solanian.

“I sell sponges,” Shara said helpfully. “Five for ten silver. We could use them to soak up the spill.”

While the discussion spurred on, several players—evidenced by the blue names floating above their heads—entered the Spire and wandered around a few moments before joining the convention. “I’m looking for the Mage trainer.” “Hey, why is everyone over here?” “Where do I find a bathroom?”

One particular individual, a small mage with big eyes and a red robe walked up with the rest, holding a map spread like a newspaper. “Can anyone tell me where the…” He checked a Post-It note on the map. “Shrine of Dath’Remar is located?”

“Not now,” Matron Arena said, trying to shoo the players away. “Come back after Blizzard does a server reboot. We have a minor crisis on our hands generated by one of Jestenis’s Blood Scouts.”

“Where did the girl go anyway?” asked Jestenis.

“I think this is yours,” Helvetica said, handing the book to Solonian.

He was a rather tall blood elf, as blood elves went, wearing a long purple robe and bearing a staff with a red crystal on the end. His blonde hair spilled over his chest, tied up with a green band. He seemed lost in thought, right until she tried to hand him the book.

“Ah, thank you,” he said. “I was wondering if I was ever going to see this again.” He tucked it under his arm. “Say, I have some other things that I accidentally left around the island. If you could pick them up for me, I would be extremely grateful.”

“The island doesn’t look that big,” Helvetica said. In fact she could almost see both of the shores from where she stood. The island did stretch out rather long in either direction, but the ocean was vivid and blue in both directions. “Why haven’t you picked them up already?”

“I have to stand vigil over the Sunwell,” he said. “Not the well itself, I’m afraid, but where it used to be. The magical residuals where it used to sit still resonate here and there is a lot of work to do. My belongings would help me tremendously in my work.”

He bent down to a huge mound of cloth piled next to him and plucked up a small purplish sack. “Here,” he said, “take this. You can put my belongings in it so that you don’t mix them with your other stuff.”

“That’s a lot of bags,” she said. “How many belongings do you have?”

“You just brought me my book,” he said, patting it—Helvetica made a sidelong glance at a gigantic stack of similar books that teetered dangerously near the edge of the balcony. “But I still have a scrying orb and a scroll that I need returned to me. If you would be so kind.”

“Sure thing,” she said, trying not to notice the pile of rolled up papers and the pyramid stack of shiny crystal balls peeking around alabaster curvature of the Spire nearby.

“Just return to me when you’ve found them,” he said. “I’ll give you some silver for your trouble.”

“I’ll be right on it!” She smiled and walked away. “Come on, sparky,” she said to the Burning Crystal shard, which trailed after as she headed back down the ramp. Behind her, Solanian was handing another bag to yet another player who was talking to him.

“And be careful,” he shouted down after her. “Some of our treants have gone crazy and are trying to garden people. You’ll want to take your sword!”

“I never leave home without it!” she shouted back as she trotted down the stairs.

“Good, I wouldn’t want to see you pruned and trimmed into a shapely hedge or anything.”

NEXT >> Chapter Six: Helvetica Gets a New Wardrobe

The author Helvetica writes the Helvetica Venture and Hellvetica Chronicles for Vox Ex Machina and proudly supports the works of Kyt Dotson, whose writing includes Mill Avenue Vexations (a gothic webserial featuring cab driver Vex Harrow), Black Hat Magick, and Helljammer and invites you to check out the novel, The Specter in the Spectacles by Kyt Dotson.

– Huntson –

When it comes to pass that you’re being chased from a crumbling farmhouse by a slavering dead thing that used to be your neighbor, now animated by an unholy carnivorous lust for your brainmeats, it’s only natural to toss the pants and shirts you’re carrying over the other shoulder, peel that nasty pair of ugly pink undies from your head, and ask yourself the big question; just where did it all go wrong?

Fortunately, I know the answer to that question. I chose the exact wrong time to get drunk.

When the great Plague came to Tirisfal and the dead rose from the freshly-cursed ground, most people fled. Others tried to fight off the wave of undeath that crept over the land. The rest died from the plague itself, screaming into their graves. I slept through it.

There’s a universal truth to a case of dwarven shimmer stout, and it’s that a human simply shouldn’t drink the stuff. We’re not built for that sort of thing. It’s not good for us. I was discovering this very personally as the room rocked and swung in its own merry dance set to the pounding of drums in my head. A fortunate lurch hurled me over in a sprawl across the bed, and since I now had something stable to hold on to I decided to stay there a while, maybe see if the drum chorus knew any tunes I liked.

The last thing I can remember before passing out was the darkening sky through the window. Birds were rising up, a wave of feathers and screeching that almost, but not quite, blotted out the rolling green clouds descending over the horizon. Then everything went blissfully dark.

If you ever get a chance to wake up in a cold crypt, alone, and wearing a dress, give it a try. You’ll learn all sorts of things about yourself, such as how I learned just what my femurs look like. They were stretching out in a jaunty way from the ruined and torn remains of my thighs. I reached out towards my legs in horror, only to pull back in sheer terror when the fleshless bones of my hand came into view.

This was not a normal hangover.

I’ll say proudly, it only took me maybe an eternity and six days to pull myself together and get to work on the business of being a walking corpse. My flesh had rotted and fallen away in places. Okay. My bones were showing through. Alright. My eyes glowed. Hey, a new trick for parties. I checked down my er, skirt. Whew. Which left only one thing, the tattered, stained, but still very red and lacy dress that someone had filled with my dead carcass. I wrapped my hand around a nearby legbone and commenced to hunting for stairs and some answers.

Crawling out into the night, I turned my fierce gaze to every direction except the one filled by a shambling wreck of decay and misanthropy who laid a cold, entirely too firm claw on my shoulder and, after coaxing me down from the closest tree, introduced himself as Mordo the undertaker. In a voice that sounded three days deader than he was, Mordo told me to seek out the town over the hill and a priest by the name of Sarvis for an explanation. I had a more important question in mind, though. Rounding on the good, if dead and walking, fellow before me, I raised up the crushing bone club in my hand and inquired sweetly as to my present state of garmentage.

Mordo turned a deeper shade of drowned-rat blue and gave me that look which means in all cultures and across the boundry of life and death, “well…it seemed a good idea at the time.” He coughed, expelling from his throat something small and green which hopped away into the underbrush, and shrugged his shoulders. “Any clothing a corpse was wearing had to be burned,” he said, “On account of the Plague. So our new recruits get whatever we can find. And, ah, I thought you would look cute in that dress. The red brings out your eyes.”

I hope it took him a week to find where his head landed.

After liberating a more appropriate outfit from its former owner on an open cart full of fresh bodies, I shambled my way into town. A picturesque vacation spot nestled snugly in the low mountains of Tirisfal, the village of Deathknell rotted and sulked in the moonlight before me. The hulking remains of the local church seemed to be the most likely place one might find an undead priest, so that’s where I went. Smoke rose above the steeple from a wild bonfire behind the graveyard, and skinless soldiers milled about in crude uniforms. One of them laughed at me, or maybe his lungs had collapsed and he was gargling his own vital fluids, I didn’t stay to find out.

Sarvis was indeed a priest, but judging by his robes, whatever he venerated seemed awful fond of spikes and leather straps. When I came in, he was watching the fire through an open back door, and the scent of charred flesh came seeping through the air like Hell’s own incense. I knocked on a pew and Sarvis turned at the sound. He lurched over to me.

Imposing, decayed, and missing most of his lower face, the priest leaned heavily on his staff and laid out the news. His tongue, loose and hanging down openly where there should have been a jaw and throat, seemed to be enjoying its new freedom. It curled, it coiled, it bore no relation at all to what he said. I think I saw it snap out and eat a passing fly, but I was trying not to look.

He told me that while I was …indisposed, a war broke out and a curse claimed the lands of Tirisfal. A magical Plague, sent by a cheerful charmer known as the Lich King, engulfed many human towns and killed everyone it touched. Some rose again as the walking dead, bound to the Lich King’s command. But of those damned souls, a few held the strength of will to resist, and broke free of his control. They found each other, they collected together, and they rebelled. Although the war itself had burned out, Sarvis told me, these rebel undead, the Forsaken, still fought on to save themselves from the Lich King’s domination. And now, I had joined their ranks.

“Wonderful,” said I, “Can I go home now?”

The dead priest’s upper lip wriggled in the manner of a worm poked by a stick, which may have been a sort of smile. “Of course,” he said, “All those of the Forsaken may do as they choose.” But then he leaned in close, and that wandering tongue curled up as if to strike at my neck, “Though, only those still enslaved to the Lich King’s will would refuse to fight to keep their freedom. And I do so hate wasting my time on potential spies who need to be burned.” His eyeless brow rose as he nodded towards the back door, still open on the roaring bonfire. I could then see what appeared to be a leg sticking out of the kindling, and darker shapes, more skeletal. Suddenly, something humanoid lunged from the flames, only to catch a crossbow bolt between the eyes. It fell back and broke apart on the pyre.

I turned to Sarvis. I looked at him. His hanging tongue lashed.

“Um…long live the Forsaken?” I said.

And that’s how I found myself, no more than a day dead and risen, trudging through the
streets of a plague-infested ghost town. It turns out that Mordo, for all his poor fashion sense, was right. The Forsaken were badly in need of supplies, clothing mostly, and were stripping the remains of Deathknell clean. For some reason, dead and naked was not the impression they wanted to make in the world. I thought it would have gotten some attention, but the old priest outvoted me and sent my bony butt into town proper to bring back the goods.

“Oh yes,” Sarvis said, while I pondered this whole Forsaken thing versus working in a haunted house, scaring kids, “Do be mindful of the other undead in Deathknell. Not all are Forsaken, and the Lich King’s slaves will seek to rend you apart. Even the dead can die twice.”

Such a ray of sunshine, that Sarvis.

The Forsaken had been set up in town for a while now, meaning that the close and invitingly safe buildings were already empty of anything worth braving the spiders and rot inside. Other undead were searching through the ruins as well, and I gave them their space, just in case they were the type to return my company with the pointy end of a knife. Most didn’t look very happy about recent events, which I could relate to. Those who seemed more upbeat I avoided on general principle. You just know the sort of person who can rise from the grave with a spring in his step and a whistle on what’s left of his lips has some cute little story, probably about all fourteen of his cats, and is bursting to tell you all about it. About ten minutes of that sort of horror and I’d be well into pondering the merits of Sarvis’s dying twice thing.

Because of this well-reasoned caution, it took me rather a while to find a home worth invading. The night was still, the chorus of insect vermin silent for the moment, and even though my eyeballs had jumped ship to adventure in a magical land along with a certain priest’s lower jaw, I could see perfectly fine. Yeah, a creature of the night! Nothing worse than me out here. Nothing at all. Summoning my courage, I went right up to the house, stood straight with a terrible resolve, and boldly knocked on the doorframe.

“Anyone home?” I called.

“BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!” came the response.

Fortunately, the next house down the street, across a field, behind a woodshed, and left of the blacksmith’s shop was more hospitable, mainly in the fact it boasted a rather heavy wooden bar that fit neatly across the inside of the door. Safe for the moment, I left my special friend to pound on the woodwork as I explored this new home and hearth. Figured if I was stuck here until Chompy got bored and left it’d be a good idea to look around.

I didn’t live in this town before my unexpected mid-death crisis, but humans build the same sort of place everywhere they go. Kitchen and wash on the ground floor, cellar below, bedrooms upstairs. Since most folks don’t keep their clothes in the pantry, anything I might find was going to be on the second floor. I tested the rotted plank stairs with a few good taps from my boot before going up, just to be sure. To my dismay, the wood held.

It turns out I wasn’t the only person to die in bed. I won’t discuss the details of this particular find out of respect for keeping what shred of audience might read this account, but suffice to say that if I looked half as bad as what stared back at me from that bedroom then old Mordo must have the courage of a god on a drunken dare. I closed my eyes, turned toward the wall, and tried very hard to pretend that part of the room just didn’t exist. It didn’t work any, but that was all I could do and so long as no noises of the dead-body-rising-up-to-eat-my-head variety came from the forbidden zone, it was good enough. That’s how I searched the room. And the next. And the one after. So understand I wasn’t exactly keeping count of the expected corpse-to-room ratio as I cleaned out their linen closets and that’s why the note I found at the bottom of a drawer caused what blood was left in my patchwork body to run cold.

The story of the family catching ill, that didn’t bother me.

The part where his wife dies, rather sad but not my problem.

No, the single sentence which reached into my soul and squeezed out all that was warm and joyful started with the words, “But she rose again before we could bury her,” and ended with the ill-scrawled, “…we locked her in the cellar and chained the door shut so she could not escape.”

I had been in the kitchen. I saw the cellar door. There were no chains on it.

I stood there, the note in one hand and a huge stack of pants, skirts, shirts, and woolen puffy things draped over the other arm. For about ten seconds, the world was very, very quiet.

In that silence, I could hear the distinct sound of a rather heavy wooden bar being removed from the inside of a door. Things got much louder after that.

The bad thing about the mindless undead is they’ll charge right for your tasty, tasty skull and try to pop it open to get at the yummy parts. The good thing about the mindless undead is they really don’t know what to do when you charge right for them with fifty pounds of laundry leading the way as a battering ram. Dear Wife and Chompy were just up top the stairs when I hit them at full steam and believe it or not, zombies do indeed sound exactly like clattering nine-pins when you bowl them over a balcony. Sadly, they didn’t stay knocked down, and the chase was on.

In life, I can proudly say that anything even vaguely related to physical fitness not only passed me by, it crossed to the other side of the street to avoid me. Whiskey wasn’t just part of a complete breakfast, but also made the lunch and dinner menu as well. But all my hard-earned sloth was for nothing, as the newer, deader me sprinted across the countryside with the carefree enthusiasm of an excited puppy. Which was good, since two more excited puppies were coming up fast to nip at my heels. Somehow, they gained up the distance I put between us, almost as if pulled like a kite on an invisible string. One of them clawed at my back and shredded a furrow through the thick cloth of the vest I so recently stole. Something pink peeled away from the pile of garments over most of my upper torso and smacked me in the face. Blinded, I plowed forward and reconsidered that haunted house gig, maybe I could get a sheet to wear as a ghost and…waitaminute.

I tore the awful pink thing away and flung it behind me. I watched it go flapping to the ground only for one of the wonder twins back there to grind it underfoot into the dirt. They were close. They were running shoulder to empty arm socket where a shoulder should be. It could really work.

Ever tie a sheet around your neck like a cape and then run about proclaiming to all and sundry that you were Lord Lothar come back from smashing orcs in the East? Of course you did. Remember how it billowed, how it spread out, and how it whipped around in the wind to smother your stupid kid face and slip under your feet to trip you up as an encore? I do. And every sheet in the house was flapping off my arm as I ran.

When Sarvis told me the minions of the Lich King were mindless, I thought he was just referring to their self-will, being controlled and all. He wasn’t. They really are dumb as a sack of wet mice, and that’s probably why they ran right into the bedcloth I swung out behind me. It caught them about the head area, then, true to form, a corner of the sheet gracefully arched down to tangle up their legs with a knot to make the Lordaeron Youth Scouts proud.

Teeth shot out when they hit the ground.

I broke through the Forsaken palisade in Deathknell at roughly nine-thousand miles an hour, whooping and hollering to beat all Hell. One of the soldiers, a captain of some minor honour, came out to either greet me or more likely order the ballistas to open fire. Then he saw the stack of loot I was carrying and his face just lit up. Who knew he could fit a candle in there?

“Ah,” he said, “So good to see one of our newest recruits return from the field. And with
something to show for it. Yes, perhaps you will find a place among the Forsaken yet.” He helped me toss the clothes over a nearby crate. Some soldiers began to sort through them. “Still, it is only fair you receive a reward for your deed, perhaps something from our salvage to replace that unfortunate vest. This will do.”

The captain pulled a garment out of the pile, unfolded it, and held it out to me. He looked up, his rictus grin positively feral. The dress swung languidly in the chill wind of the night, shadows casting through its lacy ruffles. “The red brings out your eyes.”

There’s another universal truth, and I discovered it about two seconds later. Be you human, orc, dwarf, or maybe even elf, for all people and across all cultures, be you dead, alive, or somewhere inbetween, it damn well hurts when you punch a man straight in the head.