[GREAT] Awakening

[PepsiWhirda]

When Whirda awoke for the second time, muted sunlight filtered through the driftwood blinds, illuminating whirling motes of dust.  A cool breeze slipped through the shack, redolent of brine.  The shack was empty and showed no signs of battle, though Whirda remembered keenly her skirmish with the dreadlocked woman and her monkey pet.  Distantly, she heard the sound of crashing waves.

As before, Whirda swung her legs off the bed and rose to a sitting position, but this time she remained there.   Stretching the kinks from her back and shoulders, she tested her legs but found they still would not bear her weight.  Her head ached where it had met the cunning woman’s elbow.  She scanned the bizarre home of her captor, took in the innumerable trinkets, fetishes, and spellcasting ingredients hanging from the ceiling and crammed into every nook and cranny.

“Where am I?” she said aloud.  In all her time in the Omniverse, the most water Whirda had seen in one place was the fountain in the Nexus, so many long and harrowing years ago.  Had she returned home, she wondered, to the land of her birth, to Waterdeep or to Luskan?  She imagined wistfully, not for the first time, that her trials in the Omniverse were just a fevered dream or the delusions of a woman driven mad by loss.  

Whirda lingered on that last thought: loss.  Familiar guilt settled heavily on her shoulders as she took count of all those who had traveled beside her over the years.  Her mother, dead at the end of a poisoned crossbow quarrel.  Nyx, host to a parasitic demon, corrupted and destroyed by the creature.  Van Helsing, beheaded in retribution for his and Whirda’s perceived crimes.  Dobson, the plucky guard turned commander of Darkshire’s militia.  Blues, the robot boy whose relentless optimism showed Whirda that light could be found in even the most utter darkness.  Had any of them survived?  Could Whirda, so consumed by her own personal demons, have saved them?

The shack door creaked open, interrupting Whirda’s reverie, and in strode Tia Dalma with a large vase of clam shells on one shoulder and her capuchin companion on the other.  

The voodoo priestess froze when she caught sight of Whirda.  Jack scampered down her arm and hopped onto the table he had destroyed in their battle, now repaired.  The little monkey bared its teeth and hissed.  Deliberately, her eyes never leaving Whirda’s, Tia placed the vase at her feet and straightened.

“How about we try sayin’ hello dis time,” Tia said, flashing a disarming smile.  “Before we go throwin’ punches and breakin’ all’ a Tia Dalma’s tings.”

“Forgive me,” Whirda said.  She bowed her head low, ashamed of her mindless attack on the woman and her pet.  They had given no indication that they were her enemy, and yet the unquenchable rage inside Whirda, fuelled by her constant mental battles with the insidious contagion, had been too powerful to control.  

“It is forgotten,” the voodoo priestess said.  “I am Tia Dalma.  And you, my child, you have been gone quite a long time.”

Whirda froze when the woman uttered the word child in a voice so intimately familiar to her.  “You,” she breathed.

Tia nodded, understanding Whirda’s meaning.  “Whatever rages inside ya is powerful indeed,” she said.  “I been tryin’ to pull it from ya for many months now, but it is far beyond my abilities.”

“Ahn’Thrix,” Whirda muttered with a scowl.

Tia paused and her eyes went wide.  “I know that name,” she said.  “A shade--a lich--of no small renown.”

“He was,” Whirda said.  Her grim smile filled Tia Dalma in on the truth of the woman’s peril.

“You are shade-touched, den.  Dat explains da dagger ya carried, I suppose.”

Whirda could only nod.  The truth of her affliction, spoken aloud so plainly, sent a shiver coursing down her spine.

“And ya mean ta say you killed de ting?” Tia asked.

“With some help,” Whirda confirmed.  “I was not the only casualty of Ahn’Thrix’s foul hold on the Moors.  Professor Abraham Van Helsing perished in the struggle, as did a young blood mage called Nyx.  There were others… Dobson of Darkshire, and a robot called Blues.  Of their fate, I am uncertain.  The last thing I can remember is pursuing Scylla alongside Blues, to put an end to the blight plaguing the Tangled Green.”  The words came from Whirda in a rush, an outpouring of emotion and confession she had not anticipated.

Tia Dalma smiled.  “Well den, I have some news that may lift ya spirits, my child.  Ya friend Blues yet lives, and da dread witch Scylla met her demise at da end of his blasters.”

“You know this?” Whirda pressed, a gleeful grin finding its way onto her face.  “How?”

“News a dat one travels far ‘cross da Omniverse,” Tia said.  “Exploits ya might be hard-pressed ta believe if ya didn’t know any betta.”

“Believe them,” Whirda said firmly.  “I have never known as fine a fighter in all my years, nor one so true of spirit.”

As soon as she got out the words, Whirda doubled over in a fit of coughing.  It continued for many long moments, bringing tears to her eyes and stinging her parched throat.  When she straightened, her lips were flecked with a sticky black substance and the veins in her arms pulsed, rapidly blackening.

Tia Dalma raised one of her hands and uttered an incantation.  A stream of glowing light emerged from her palm and washed over Whirda, bathing her in warmth.  Gradually, her pains faded and she felt the strength returning to her limbs.  She stood tentatively, and found that her legs, while still wobbly, carried her weight.  She took a shaky step forward.

“I cannot keep it at bay much longer, I fear,” Tia said.  “It will take a magic far stronger than mine to cure what ails ya.”

“But there is a cure?” Whirda asked, hopeful.

“Perhaps.  Rumor has it dere’s a tournament, run by a man goes by Dante.  Few years runnin’ now da winner gets access to powerful artefacts, and some a da finest healers in da Omniverse will be dere.  If it’s a cure ya afta, dere’s no betta place ta look.”

“Dante…” Whirda repeated.  The name struck a familiar chord in her, brought back memories of white tents in Darkshire, of men in suits registering Primes for a survival competition.  She wondered if this competition was the same one from back then.

It mattered not, though.  Even in that moment, Whirda could feel the contagion roiling and churning within her, begging to be set loose.  She could not allow herself to fall prey to those baser urges any longer.  If the competition offered a chance of redemption, however slim, the choice had already been made for her.  

“Then I must go,” Whirda said, staring straight ahead with her chin held high.

Tia Dalma nodded.  “Dere is some time yet before da tournament begins.  Ya must regain ya strength if ya want any hope a survivin’.”

Whirda took another shaky step forward, then another.  “Whatever it takes.  I will win the tournament and find my salvation, or I will lose and meet my end.  Both fates are far preferable to this burden I bear.”

“Den I must find ya a ship and safe passage ta Costa Del Sol,” Tia said.  “I will send word dis very day.  Eat and rest fa now, child.  Gather ya strength.  Soon enough ya will ‘ave ya chance to fight, in Dante’s Abyss.”