Chapter 3 - Through the Purple Portal

It had been, what, a week? More? Who knew at this point. The weathered group of men moved with confidence now. Nothing was in their heads but their destination. Feet ached, open sores throbbed, guts rumbled and protested. But they persisted.

Josh lead the way, shield at his side, spattered with the dried blood of various beasts and monstrosities. The cat was next, alongside its confident master, Stephen. He had taken to holding his bow in such a way that he could very quickly nock an arrow and blast an attacker with a stunning shot. Raleigh and Pat walked to the side a bit from them, Pat remaining close to the shrubs and tree trunks lining the path. Adversaries never seemed to realize he was among them, until he appeared at the back of a beast, sinking well worn instruments of death into his target. Raleigh shifted his heavy fine-stone mace to his other shoulder, where it made a dull clang against his yellow and pink metal shoulderpads.

Near the back were the other three men, Alex who could now, at will, vanish and reappear as a vicious wild cat or a proud stag. His battlestaff made a rhythmic knocking sound against his leather vest as they walked. Jason found this soothing, though. He used it to keep himself pushing on. His glowing blue vestments were perfectly smooth and clean, though they had been so far soaked in his own blood, the blood of various beasts and ghouls, muddy earth, and a number of other substances which he did not want to identify. The sleek silk defied  imperfection.

Garrett at his side had taken to playing with blue and purple and pink orbs of magical energies while he trekked. He would bounce them around in his palm, juggle them from hand-to-hand; anything to distract himself from pulsing and burning feet and toes.

When was this strange lucid fantasy going to end? When would they find themselves back in their homes, with their children and wives and girlfriends and jobs and cars and their own computers and troubles and their own lives? It was curious. It was fun. It was painful and rewarding all together. The first several days were like a vivid dream, they had taken to mastering the powers these strange bodies seem to grant to each of them. But now, it was just tired. They were tired.

The men had made their way back to Stormwind, a bustling city of hundreds of thousands of unbathed humans and dwarves and elves (the dwarves were especially ripe, with yellowing teeth and dirt-crusted beards and the stale tinge of bad beer permeating their clothes).

There was a crier there, passing out pamphlets that issued dire warnings about a place called the Blasted Lands, a deep purple portal, and an entire world which you would be teleported into by this void, called simply: Outland. The men at first were excited by the prospect. To explore the epic experiences of the video game, The Burning Crusade again! But after a full weeks drudging southeast from the capital, it began to dawn on them the magnitude, the immensity, the implications of the task in which they were undertaking.

"We are here for a reason. Think about it," Stephen implored. "Clearly we aren't going to just sleep this fantasy off. There is something we have to do".

Jason posited that the final boss of the game was Kil'Jaeden, deep in the bowels of the Sunwell Plateau. Maybe if the men were able to confront him, to slay him, they would be plunged back into their real selves.

There was a fair amount of resistance to this idea, not the least of which was Stephen pointing out that in the game, it took twenty five of the best players, working for weeks and dying perhaps hundreds of times each, to defeat the powerful demon.

Regardless, the men all had the inclination that their escape was somehow tied to the strange and treacherous world of Outland. Alex at one point suggested they all just take up residence some place peaceful, Westfall perhaps or a nice secluded cove in Stranglethorn Vale, and live out their days fishing, hunting, poaching, and trading. A side perk: they could maybe meet a few nice female night elves and actually go through with what was surely the deepest fantasy of thousands of basement-virgin gamers. The men all had a good laugh, but none took that idea too seriously.

"I miss my daughter," replied Raleigh simply.

"When does she turn eighteen, again?" joked Jason. Though Raleigh was an even tempered man, Jason received a sincere -whack- to the side of the head with a blunt warhammer. After wincing and apologizing to Raleigh, he murmured a quiet spell to himself to bring himself out of the daze and the pain in his skull receded.

Blasted Lands was a dreary landscape of fire and jagged mountains and spiked structures of Orcish architecture. The hills were stained orange with rust and the beasts that roamed them limped decrepitly from the bluster of hot-sanded wind and jets of steam or lava that would erupt without warning at one’s feet.

"Tighten up, stick to the path," issued Josh, who was by this point unanimously leading the group. So far no real challenge had the men yet faced. Nothing but rabid dogs and giant insects and disorganized gnoll packs. But the sharp pointed towers in silhouette in the distance made their skin creep. Orcs were nearby. And they were mean.

Hot bits of gravel and sand pelted their faces as they traversed the terrain. Each of the adventurers, in the video game world, had probably traveled this path fifty times or more. But it was so different in reality - it was massive and it was intimidating. They passed what they knew to be ogre dens, great stinking burrows dug into the side of hills, with the heads of less fortunate adventurers gruesomely squashed onto pikes jutting upright from mounds of red earth, the message was simple: ‘stay away’.

A few hours in and the men climbed a slight ridge in the wavy ground to a view of arresting menace. An impossibly vast rock arch carved, seemingly, from a single piece of smoky stone. Two looming hooded figures bore shining swords on either side, also in great stone, and the face of a dragon was sculpted atop the masterpiece. At its heart, probably sixty feet wide and twice as tall, a swirling mist of dense green and black smoke, like a drain plug pulled, sucking and spinning and twisting matter toward in.

“What happens when we step through,” Pat asked rhetorically.

Each of the quaking men knew precisely what would happen. At the threshold of the twisting, spiraling green and black smog, they would be immediately teleported to the cold orange world of Outland. They weren’t, however, prepared for the sensation of ripping. One foot slid into the void, then the torso and head, then the trailing foot was sucked off the ground with force, like a vacuum hose thrashing about with no handler.

---

The sky was black like burnt pitch, sluffed off a tree trunk after a wildfire. Alien stars twinkled blue and violet and yellow. The earth before them was like powder, equal parts red, brown, and orange. Miles in the distance towered mountains that shot upright from wavy terrain violently. But just before them, a platform of stone, vast and crawling with activity. Blue-skinned Draenei soldiers clad with polished silver breastplates and gleaming shields stood in formation, attentive. Orders were being barked on either side of the disoriented men - none directed at them luckily. They were simply being ignored or shunted to the side as the tang of steel footplates on stone processed past.

Only a few minutes later, each adventurer found himself on the back of an enormous winged gryphon. The demon invasion was pushing toward the Dark Portal, in an attempt to enter the tranquility of Azeroth. The Alliance army had established a taxi system that allowed travelers to securely whisk beyond the danger far below, ruins of smoldering soot and teeth-gnashing demons of tremendous size and vileness.

They touched down hard, the feathered animals in haste to return for their next charge. Jason slid off the back of the creature and stumbled, the ground was farther below his feet than expected. In his non-crazy-fantasy-adventure-priest-hero body, he stood easily over six feet; acclimating to a dwarven stature was not easy.

“What now?” wondered Alex.

“Well, this is obviously Honor Hold,” said Stephen.

“Which means we’re about halfway across the Hellfire Peninsula,” added Raleigh.

“Well, I don’t know about y’all,” said Josh in his coolest tone of voice, hitching up his shoulders into an assertive posture, “but I want to get going,” and he strode down the path westward, toward the gaping expanse of dirt and hill and demon.

The rest followed. Honor Hold was swallowed into the a hazy dust cloud behind them as they moved wordlessly.

There was a subtle wobbling to the area, like the ground was shuddering with a cold chill, the very earth below repulsed by what it had become. The scorched swathe was desolate, martian-like, and uninviting. The tremble against their feet grew in intensity, as a metallic clanking screech sliced through the air behind them.

A fel reaver was moving their direction, shaking the ground beneath with each step it took. Towering forty feet tall, the perse and green metal shined with an oily exterior. The humanoid-shaped machine had no face, rather a glowing green bulb at its crown. Plumes of orange and brown dust shot into the air, as it viciously slammed down each foot, advancing on the men.

“Run bitches, run!” shouted Pat. The command was followed and the adventurers scattered in all directions.

Stephen fell to the ground, in a very good impression of a fallen hero, and was promptly ignored by the steel beast. Pat and Jason split off to the left, moving at full tick, the reaver didn’t seem too interested in them. Alex poofed majestically into a proud stag, galloping off at great speed to safety. Raleigh did his best veering to the right, but the bulky armor slapped at his thighs and weighed him down: sprinting was made impossible.

That was inviting to the reaver, as it loomed over him, only feet away. a behemoth stump of a leg raised high into the air above Raleigh’s head, ready to unleash a great shattering onto him. There was a powerful -TCHINK- noise as Josh collided, shield first, into the backside of its planted leg, intercepting its attention.

“Come at me, muthafucka!” he cried. The machine shifted, revolving around clunkily and facing its challenger. In a quick swipe, Josh was knocked off his sabatons, back twenty feet, crashing to the ground in a puff of loose dust.

Alex was ready. Where there once had been a stag, now a fierce bear stood tall with a shining brown coat and sharp silver claws. He was at the reavers back before it recoiled fully from the slam it had just issued. With all his weight, Alex threw his bristled claws at the leg and the machine stuttered. It was knocked off balance and swayed for a moment. Garrett, whose body had somehow turned translucent before them, now shimmered back into existence, as he conjured a great bolt of magical energy. It danced around his hands, gaining in momentum, and then he hurled it at the creature. A sound like gunfire, no, like cannon fire rang out and the machine turned toward the blue-garbed mage.

Josh was back, though, and he slid almost without moving his feet, in front of Garrett and bore his dented shield with determination on his face. The reaver didn’t have a choice, it had to go through the plated gnome to reach its real target. It slammed massive iron fists downward and the gnome tucked and rolled and narrowly avoided the metallic-green masses that were now sunk feet into the loose soil below. From the scuffle, clouds of dust danced into the air and set the area in a deep fog. Vision became impaired and confusion increased. The men were being pushed backward. Though they could coordinate attacks and defenses well by now, the machine was so massive, so solidly metal, that their attacks like bee stings on the back of an elephant.

Raleigh was the first to the ground, unconscious. His helm had been bashed off and blood pooled below his face. Alex, too, fell. His body withered back into its elven form and a deep blunt wound could be seen at his side. Pat vanished into smoke, as Josh, then Garrett, then Jason collapsed in either exhaustion, pain, or a total loss of consciousness.

Stephen, the only man still standing, at a great distance outside the cloud of muck witnessed a horrifying sight. The reaver was preparing to step on his fallen friends. Its full weight would push every ounce of life out of them all and it was straightening up for the killing blows. In a move of pure instinct, he nocked an arrow back, pulled beyond the bows breaking point, took aim, bowstring cutting into his fingers like a razor, the projectile snapped and within an instant plunged deep into the green “head” mass of the reaver. It recoiled, shuddered as if in pain, then turned abruptly toward him and set its sights on its new target. Stephen turned around and darted in a blur in the opposite direction. He was leading the reaver away from his friends, shouting taunts behind him as he ran. Did the beast hear them? Who knows, he didn’t turn to look, just kept moving, wind whistling in his ears as he picked up speed.

Jason, totally drained of magic, crawled into a fetal position and sucked in air. His ribs ached. His eyeballs pushed sharply into his brain. His back spasmed and jerked backward as he took shallow, steadying breaths.

Pat stepped out of a powdered black smoky dust to kneel next to his friends. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, surveying whom he had always seen as great heroes, all damaged and cringing or gnarled on the ground. Josh could walk - he didn’t have a choice - as could Pat. Jason crawled on his knees toward a great hulking stone  jutting out of the ground in the distance. The rest were dragged, a few small trails of blood betraying their path.

“Please tell me it’s been less than five minutes,” prayed Josh.

“Just give me some space, I think I can do this. I.. thi…” Jason pathetically murmured. His magic was tipping over the ledge into failure. His hands burned. The words weren’t coming to his cracked lips. He swore in frustration.

“Try Alex first. He looks better off than Raleigh and he should be able to help with the others,” offered Pat.

With a grunt of acknowledgement, Jason rolled up his sleeves, closed his eyes, and placed his hands on the forehead of Alex, where a combination of orange dust and sweat were congealing.

Seconds passed. Nothing happened. The ground began quaking again; the reaver was returning. Were they tucked well enough behind the stone? Would they be spotted? Will the trails of blood serve as a beacon to the reaver?

The thoughts were forced out of his head. Nothing remained, but well-practiced words. An even tone of voice, the intonation and timbre of which were rehearsed and perfected and adjusted again. Alex’s knees slid up into his chest. His head rocked slowly with confusion and strain. He grabbed for air with his teeth. The men gave an inaudible cheer of relief as he sat upright, blinked his eyes, shook his head, and breathed a deep sigh. Jason wobbled, tightening his torso muscles as if voiding his stomach.

“Alex, we need you to work quickly. We need to you bring back Raleigh. Raleigh can bring back Garrett. You need to do it now, it’s almost been five minutes,” explained Josh.

Understanding the direness of the situation, Alex was surprisingly agile as he moved toward Raleigh. In the however-long it had been since the men had found themselves in these bodies, within this world, he had only performed this bit of magic twice before. But he didn’t think about that, all he thought about was his desire to save his friend and the sheer empathy within him made his own head throb, to match Raleigh’s wounds.

The spell was executed skillfully. And then Raleigh, after a moment, moved toward Garrett. His eyes, however, were open.

“You fuckers were gonna let me die,” Garrett coughed and sputtered, but managed to harass his friends, as he sat up slowly.

“You’re still in bad shape, bud,” said Raleigh and moved toward him nonetheless.

“Nah, I’m fine,” Garrett replied feebly.

“Garrett. Your arm is literally hanging off you,” Pat interjected. And indeed, his shoulder joint had been exploded by a great tumble. His arm hung so low, the elbow drooped beyond the long-sleeved cuff.

After a few minutes of rest, each of the men felt better. Their wounds had been healed, they stuffed down a calorie-packed snack of dried bore meat (which Stephen had become adept at dispatching and Jason at preparing), and their heads became clear.

“You guys? Where is Stephen?” asked Alex.

“He threw a distracting shot at the fel reaver and took off that direction,” indicated Pat, the only one who had been in a position to witness it.

The shaking of the earth that foretold the presence of a nearby reaver was long gone to the south and so the men felt comfortable standing up, moving back to the path, and heading northwest toward their ally.

“Those fuckers are way easier in the game, what the hell,” mused Garrett as they walked.

---

The landscape had only moments ago smoothly transitioned into blues and soft greens and glowing purples. The air was thick with moisture. It made the men have to suck in with more effort, as if grasping for a liquid with outstretched fingers.

“We’re in Zangarmarsh,” Josh said, to a knowing group. The men had each spent hours here in-game, over several years.

“I always hated this place,” said Jason, in wide-mouthed awe, as he moved his head across the expansive blue-glowing sky above. “But this looks incredible.”

It had a smell to it. A spore-laden tinge, which could be explained by the massive fungi clusters wrapping both sides of the fine-pebbled path beneath them.

Elven architecture unfolded before them: two tall, proud spired structures. The Cenarion Refuge, an outpost that offered safety to travelers, courtesy of the Cenarion Expedition, a sect of the Circle that set out to explore the flora of the strange Outland.

As they approached, the stillness of the place issued a sense of foreboding. That was quickly accompanied by a horror they laid eyes upon. Stone bricks toppled from the tower before them, the symbols of tranquility of nature defiled, plunged roughly into the moist earth below. The smolder of smoke and fatigued coals popped and fizzed, strewn across the wreckage. Blue and green bodies littered the ground. They were quiet and sad. A crimson-red banner had been proudly driven into the ground outside the tall tower. Its rough wooden post stood ten feet high and the scarlet flag rippled with beads of moisture.

A horde banner.

The men immediately drew weapons, sweeping the area with their eyes and shifting uneasily, as reality seeped in.

“This isn’t in the game,” said Stephen slowly.

Pat had slunk into the misty shadows, Alex morphing into an orange-coated cat and prowling, silently flanking off to one side.

“Be ready,” commanded Josh in a soft voice.

“Let’s just get the hell out of here. Teledeer? Is that the place?” commented Jason.

“Telredor,” corrected Stephen. “Yeah, agreed, let’s head north and keep our eyes peeled,” he finished.

“Aren’t we gonna check for loot? Maybe there’s something we can salvage,” said Garrett.

The men agreed uneasily, and they moved toward the lower of the two buildings. There was an ominous rustling coming from within and they all quietly hoped it was just a feral animal scavenging as they readied their blades.

The ruined dark hovel betrayed only cracks of light, where stone had been ripped out from the outer wall and toppled to the earth beneath. The rummaging sound was coming from behind a narrow counter near the back of the room. The men stalked in silence, Pat descended carefully into the shadows, disappearing.

“Who’s there!” barked Josh in a gritty, commanding voice.

There was a high pitched screech, a cry of shock, and the counter burst onto its side toward the men, piles of refuse and clutter and broken bricks and pieces of wood spilling out in every direction.

-POOF- - a cloud of smoke erupted from the epicenter and, as it fizzled away, a fluffy white-coated animal stood, looking curiously at the men.

“You sheeped him!” hollered Jason, in riotous laughter.

Garrett stood with the stance of an action hero, arm outstretched toward the linty cloud-white animal. The men broke down, half of them falling to their knees and grabbing their sides.

“I didn’t know I could do that,” he chuckled.

“Ok, so… heh… who is this asshole?” asked Alex.

“One way to find out,” said Stephen and he moved toward the long-faced creature, reached into a deep satchel on his belt, and pulled out a small round tin. He squeezed and flexed and pulled levers and arms and springs, then placed it carefully, with all the strategy of a chess master, between the four legs of the animal. He backed up, surveyed it a moment, then turned to Garrett and nodded.

Garrett understood and, with a flick of his staff, another cloud of smoke and accompanying sound, the beast was replaced by a squat purple-robed fellow, complete with bright pink mohawk and matching staff that glowed and vibrated slightly, as luminous plates revolved around it at both ends.

“If you move, you will set off that freezing trap. And you will die,” warned Stephen in an even tone.

The stalky gnome looked up at the men, surveying each face, bit his lip, and slowly outstretched his hands in surrender.

“Who are you?” interrogated Jason.

“Name is Snaps McCracken of Loch Modan,” he squeaked with unease. “I’m of the Alliance, as are you,” he said, nodding to the proud insignia emblazoning Josh’s readied shield.

After a moment, Stephen’s trap was safely tucked away at his side again, and all the men, including Snaps were sitting on split chairs or else the uneven wooden floor. Raleigh had managed to rustle up a few unopened bottles of warm mead and the men passed them around, taking long draws, and comparing notes on what was known about Outland.

It had been a month ago maybe, a Horde force led by a real mean lookin’ orc (as Snaps explained) swept through the lot of Zangarmarsh, killing any Alliance they came across, leveling homes and pillaging treasures in their wake.

The men pondered silently. This didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t part of the game. There was a sequence of events that unfolded during the video game and it was well studied by the group. They knew what would happen and when it would happen. And this didn’t fit timeline of the Burning Crusade, as they knew it. Regardless, they decided to move out of the ruin and carefully out back to the swamp, where they continued northwest, hoping they would find Telredor intact.

“I haven’t been up that direction in a whiles, so, quite, it coulda endured the Horde I s’pose,” the gnomed creaked.

“Hey Snaps, have you heard of a place nearby called the Serpentshrine Caverns?” asked Jason.

“Oh sures, I hearda them. That place was raided and came topplin’ down a few months back, maybe more. Some elite groupa Alliance fighters er somethin’ like,” he said, annoyingly.

The same was true for the Tempest Keep; the whole place had been cleared out of crazy mana-ish beasts. Though he was ineloquent, the men understood his meaning.

Aside, Josh and Jason and Stephen were having a conversation, with Alex listening in, ready to add to the debate.

“I wonder how closely this world is gonna follow the events of the game,” Jason was saying.

“Well we know a few raids are done, and presumably they aren’t, uh, replayable,” continued Stephen awkwardly. “So that leaves, what… Karazhan, Gruul’s, Mount Hyjal, and Black Temple.”

“And Sunwell Plateau,” added Josh.

“He doesn’t know about those, so it could go either way,” commented Alex, who had an ear in each direction, as Snaps continued to rattle on about happenings around Outland.

“I’ll bet Karazhan and Gruul’s are clear too; they come before Serpentshrine in the game, after all”.

“I just wonder how real this is going to be, how visceral, you know?” asked Jason to a curious group.

“What specifically?” asked Josh.

“Well, our power seems pretty good. Aside from that ridiculous fel reaver... Does that mean we’re ready to take on some of that higher-end stuff? Do we need a set number of people?” pondered Jason.

“I think it’s going to be a lot more fluid,” said Alex.

“How so?”

“Well,” he said, “this world is just so much more - real - than the video game. I mean, the game has systems in place because they need to be there. They are ways to express things a game cannot otherwise.”

Stephen nodded at this, “like the set number of people that can enter a raid zone. In this real world, there isn’t going to be anything that’s going to lock anyone out.”

“So that means that the raid bosses aren’t necessarily meant to be taken on by a full set group of twenty five or X or whatever,” agreed Josh.

“Right,” said Jason, “it’s not like they are tuned for a certain number of people. Each boss has a certain level of power. We just need to make sure we’re not getting in over our heads before we face them,” he finished.

The men continued to walk. They talked in hushed voices, as Snaps babbled to Raleigh about how he identifies as a warlock by trade, but his real passion is raising and breeding rabbits for show.

At that moment, the men all looked up at roughly the same time, to realize they had come face-to-face with a gang of mean-faced orcs and trolls. There were green-toothed grins and blood-stained spears and war axes, and hoarse chuckling, as if giddy to have a fresh batch of flesh to dispatch.

He couldn’t count properly, but Jason saw at least twelve of them, not including two large rough-wheeled wagons wrapped in barbs and adorned with tusks and cracked skulls and spikes.

“We might be fucked here,” was the last thing out of Stephen’s mouth.