[GREAT] Awakening

[PepsiWhirda]

When the first raindrops landed on Tia Dalma’s face, she stirred.

The night had grown cold around her.  The sky, a wrinkled mass of swollen clouds, hung fat and dripping above her head.  Beside her rested Captain Deudermont, softly snoring.  Tia observed the nicks and bruises that marred the valiant sea captain’s handsome features.  Not for the first time, she questioned the futility of life in the Omniverse.  Violence, chaos, and pain defined each step of the journeys good men like Deudermont undertook.  The realms offered up a seemingly endless horde of mighty foes.  And while there was no shortage of heroes to stem the dark tide, the scales seemed to tip forever toward the side of evil.

The voodoo priestess’s head throbbed where Blackbeard’s weapon had laid her low.  Shaking her head vigorously, Tia sat up and examined her surroundings.  Her companions had brought her from the Sea Sprite onto the surviving pirate ship, she realized.  She owed her life to Captain Deudermont and--

“Whirda?” she whispered.  The last memory Tia had of the plagued woman was abandoning her in the corridor of the Sea Sprite to join the battle above.  She feared the worst.  Had the unconscious Whirda been slain in the battle for the Sea Sprite, unable to defend herself?  Had she gone down with the ship and drowned along with the rest of the men unfortunate enough to have survived the fighting?

“Kill them.”

The words drifted to Tia Dalma on a chill ocean breeze.  While the voice was unmistakably Whirda’s, Tia could sense a shift in inflection, a rippling undercurrent not quite normal--not quite human.

“Leave me alone.”  The second voice, while it still belonged to Whirda, was markedly different.  While the first voice exuded confidence and strength, the second sounded timid and fearful.

Tia snuck closer, her bare feet padding silently up the small staircase to the ship’s quarterdeck.  When she neared the top of the stairs she dropped into a crouch, sweeping a stray dreadlock out of her eyes.  Whirda came into view.  She faced away from Tia, leaning heavily on the quarterdeck railing.  Her black leather armor still glistened with the gore of battle.

“They are weak,” the first voice hissed.

“They are my friends.”

“Friends?” A throaty chuckle.  “You see the way they look at you.  They are no friends of Whirda Windstrom.  They merely use you to achieve their own ends.”

“Liar!”

Tia retreated back a step as Whirda cast her gaze around nervously, worried her raised voice might have attracted attention.  Even in the dim moonlight the voodoo priestess could see Whirda’s black veins, pulsating unnaturally with the woman’s every breath.

“How long must we keep up this game?  Your lot is that of a shade, a creature of darkness, a creature of power unimaginable.  It is foolish to deny who you are.”

“I will not kill them.”  The timid Whirda’s voice found a measure of resolve.  “Tia Dalma saved my life.”

“That filthy witch tried to take you from me.  To divest you from your very destiny.  Did it not feel righteous, pounding the life out of the mighty pirate?  Did it not feel true?  You may lie to your ‘friends,’ Whirda Windstrom, but you cannot lie to yourself.”

Whirda stood silently then.  Long moments crept by while Tia Dalma tried to make sense of the conversation.  Then, “I cannot sail this ship alone.”

Tia’s blood ran cold.  The implications of the words settled over her like a heavy blanket, making it difficult to breathe.  Whatever shred of humanity had remained in the plagued woman, whatever hope she had clung to all these years in the battle against the contagion, it seemed now had abandoned her.  In that moment, the two voices of Whirda Windstrom had become one unified voice.

“But perhaps I don’t have to.”  

Whirda turned away from the railing, and Tia Dalma could not stifle her gasp.  Deep gouges etched the woman’s face, leaking shadow like pus from a suppurating wound.  Her lips, dry and cracked from dehydration, were twisted into a maniacal grin.  And her eyes--gods, her eyes.  Though flooded with black like the rest of her, Whirda’s eyes glowed in the night, at once utterly dark and blindingly bright, drawing Tia Dalma into their hypnotic depths.

She had witnessed the transformation before, when the contagion took hold of Whirda in their skirmish back on Tia Dalma’s island, and again during the battle with the naga.  But this was different.  Whirda exuded a power so profound, so terrifying, that the voodoo priestess found herself rooted to the ground, unable to will herself to move even as the plagued woman advanced.  

Whirda’s stare never left Tia’s own, never faltered, as the wicked dagger of Ahn’Thrix hissed from its sheath.  The voodoo priestess could not fight back, could not even breathe as the weapon, leaking an opaque cloud of ash, slid easily between her ribs.  Whirda Windstrom leaned in close to the dying priestess, her cracked lips brushing against Tia Dalma’s ear. 

“Thank you,” Whirda hissed, lowering the lifeless body to the deck.

The last thing Tia Dalma saw was the boots of her corrupted friend walking away, toward the slumbering form of Captain Deudermont.