World of Warcraft®

"Of course we can stop in Goldshire and pick up some banana bread, my dear little child! We have quite the long journey ahead of us, so it would be best if you ate what you enjoyed. Your new family is looking forward to meeting you, and I would never think of turning you over with an empty stomach.." the priest's words were kind and thoughtful.

"Thank you, Miss Claudia! Bananas are my favoritist things ever! I hope my new family likes them as much as I do!" Suzette's voice was like a song bird when she spoke. Her voice was matched only by her beauty. Lovely red hair and big, beautiful green eyes, that were for once, filled with happiness. This was the first time in a long time the little orphan had something to celebrate. Her parents were killed during a gnoll invasion three years earlier and she had been staying in Stormwind with the other lost children ever since. Three long years of being alone without the love of a mother or a father, and she was overjoyed to finally have a family again.

"Please, my dear, call me Sister Claudia. I am, afterall, a chaste woman dedicated to serving the Light. Oh, to think how happy your new family will be to see you! Here my darling little one, put on this dress. I crafted it with my own hand, and you will look simply adorable in it." the priest cooed back to the girl as she finished plaiting her hair. She offered her a silken yellow babydoll dress with four large pockets - two in front - two in back.

Once Suzette was dressed and her hair in place, the two made one stop before leaving Stormwind - the Cathedral. Claudia made sure the little girl prayed for her new family and thanked the Archbishop for finding her a home.

"Sister Claudia! Another orphan finds a home thanks to you! What is that... seven this month?" Archbishop Alfonso beamed with pride. "It was a good thing indeed to have you lead up Orphan Relations."

"Eight, Archbishop. It is my lot in life to serve the lost ones." Claudia prostrated. She curtsied to him and left holding the hand of the young Suzette and offering a lollipop with the other.

They left the Goldshire Inn pockets brimming with yellow sweetbread and Claudia was telling the young orphan about her new family.

"Listen child, you will not be the only child in this family. They are sea people. They work nets and set lines from dawn to dusk. It is important that you learn the trade quickly. You will be welcomed among them as a child, but know that you must earn your keep as all good children do..." Claudia went on and on about Suzette's family for some time leading her through the forest until they reached Stone Cairn Lake.

"Sister Claudia.. why did we stop here? Are my new parents close by!?" Suzette's voice was excited and tears were starting to fill her eyes.

"Yes, my dear little lost one. They are very near. Very near indeed." The priest replied.

"Oh..Goooody...." the girls voice stopped directly as a loud thunk echoed across the water. Suzette lay there, head bleeding, and over her stood the Priest with a large rock in her hand.

Her pockets filled with rocks the same size as the one that hit her head, Suzette sank to the bottom of the Lake. There she met her forever family. Bones and rocks and bits of tattered silk.

Claudia returned to Stormwind, marking a name off of a tattered list and humming a jaunty tune.

Seven months after Suzette found her way to her 'forever' family, Claudia was captured by the Stormwind Guard. For weeks before that, tiny bones and bits of silk began appearing downriver near the Brackwell Pumpkin Patch.

Gnomish diving helms provided the guard a means to get all the information they needed. At the bottom of Stone Cairn Lake they found nearly 50 children - or what was left of them. All of their skulls revealed the same crushed temple. All of them with rocks in the large pockets holding the cloth to the sandy depths. Claudia's quarters were raided at the Orphanage and her tattered note found, tucked between her bosom.

She was held in the Garrison for 12 days until she finally confessed to her crimes. Each of those days brought a barrage of pain so severe, on many occasions she slipped in and out of consciousness. The whips were the worst. The Guard took great care to first soak the ends with oil before lashing her back. Those same whips were then salted in the finest grain of deeprock spice before unleashing a new level of pain on the already deep and bloody wounds. If she had been particularly resilient, which was often, the Guard would test new 'treatments'. Thumbscrews, head vices, even pulling on her tongue with tongs until it nearly snapped from her mouth. The final work of art - the Iron Chair. This device challenged Claudia to confess and she did so within 20 minutes of being strapped into it. It was something from a nightmare. A seat and back of rusty spikes attached to a large wooden frame. Underneath, hot coals were placed in a large copper bowl. With the turning of a sand dial, the priest was strapped tighter to the chair - spikes digging deeper and deeper - and another white-hot coal was added to the bowl.

Her words were barely understandable. Her jaw had been broken days ago and her tongue was swollen in her mouth."I am a Sister of Mershy! I gawf tha chiltren a home. A foreya home. They foun lawf at the end of theya life. Sometin they would hawf never hat in Dormwint. To gwow up and be paupers, begging for crumbs, perhapsh even stealing or worse - prostitutin demselves to make due. I saved dem. All of dem. I regret nofing!" Claudia spat blood and spittle on the ground when she was finished.

All of this said under the watchful eye of her superior, the Archbishop of Stormwind, and another man - unknown to her - who was dressed in scarlet robes and wearing a habit. Claudia was not in her mind to try to figure out who he was, and even if she did discover his identity, it would not have mattered for long.

"She is strong, this murdering who re." the unknown man whispered in the Archbishop's ear. "She is tainted with sin. Even these punishments are not enough for her. I could swear I saw her smile as she was whipped this morning. Something else, for this one, is the only way to bring her salvation." the Archbishop's words were frothing with acrimony.

"We will bring her salvation, Pontiff. The Crusade will usher her into her fate and we will ensure her suffering until she breathes her last. You must only say the word and she is your problem no more." His voice had a pleading tone. He walked up to Claudia in the chair and held her chin in his hand. He looked at her for a few minutes, feeling her squirm under the pain and heat of her torture. He ran his tongue up her face into her hair and then spit directly into her face. "Even we do not stoop to killing children, you wretch." The Archbishop instructed the guards to remove the priest from the Iron Chair. She was tossed at his feet and he looked down on her like a wolf to a lamb.
"Claudia VonAbsinthe, Cleric of the Church of Stormwind. You have been found guilty of the murders of 50 children..." he started. "Seventy-two.." Claudia whispered as she writhed on the floor in her own blood.

"For this crime, you shall be buried alive. May you final days of darkness bring you more than these 12 days of torture. May this land never remember your name and all of your likenesses be stricken from all Stormwind records. The Light remains." His voice was tenacious and filled with rage. The shame she had brought to the Church was immeasurable - let alone the guilt of the dead children weighing on the Archbishop's every waking moment, he nodded to the other man and left.

Three days later she woke up, surrounded by a dark heat. She could barely move, only able to reach a hand up to her face and spread her legs no more than four inches or so apart. She smelt the wood all around her, and something much more malevolent.
One week later, Claudia VonAbsinthe breathed her last in that pine box as her body wretched. Her neck craned at an awkward angle and her toes curled up tight. The dirt from the small crack in her box fell into her open mouth. The tainted dirt of the Plaguelands did its work while the body began to decay.

Three weeks later, the guards above her heard only one thing - a quick clicking sound that sounded like teeth.

A View from a Pine Box (Conclusion)

The pine box was decaying, finally. How long had the priest lie in her tomb, barely covered in dirt, near the Hearthglenn stronghold? Years. The hunger woke her from her eternal sleep and she lay, awake for many more years plotting her revenge. Her punishment was a fate far worse than death, to be buried alive for her crimes in Stormwind and left to rot along the Scourge under the watchful eye of the Scarlet Crusade. She could hear them around her. She learned (or believed) over time Stormwind provided for this lot, and her hunger for revenge grew like a tumor.

"Pathetic hypocrites." she mused as she picked absentmindedly the skin on her near bone-bare jaw. She ran her finger along her empty eye socket and clicked her teeth quickly thinking back to how delicious that tasty globe was in her mouth. It had been over a month since she had feasted on flesh, and the hunger was completely consuming her.

"True sight finally comes." Taking a splinter of wood from her box, the priest gouged the stick deep into her remaining eye. It did not take much force to remove it from the dry rotted orbital bone. Her long tacky tongue left its cave and wrapped itself around the green oozing eye, slowing pulling it from it's kabob.

She chewed on it for a week.

Three weeks later, the priest was unable to sustain herself on..herself. She pulled her malignant sack of skin from the pine box, dusted herself off and found Brill a short time later in the company of a few like minded Horde.

"Hello Priestess. What do you want?" the warlock's voice was charming and it sickened her to her core.

"I did not ask you what I wanted, orc. I asked you what you can do for me and no more." she spat out and clicked her teeth rebelliously.

"I can give you revenge. Stand by my side and be my Oracle. The battle begins soon." He was kind and had an air of nobility to his voice.

"Do not speak to me with your compassionate tone. When you have given me what I want, I will eat your heart while you watch. However, until then, you have my word I will stand by your side, Master Juralek." her voice was ever sarcastic and caustic. "Now, if you are done wasting your breath on me, I have a hunger to feed." The priest tugged on the Stormwind Cathedral charm around her neck, saluted, and headed off to the Brill graveyard.

She hungered so.

(( Wonderfully written! Nicely done! ))

((Excellent! Well written and interesting. Nobody should mess with Clottia.))

((So that is the origin of clottia))