[GREAT] Awakening

[PepsiWhirda]

Tia Dalma’s ramshackle home sat on a small island, perhaps two-hundred feet square, at the outer limits of the charted islands of the Vasty Deep, a speck amidst a vast expanse of blue.  Far off the normal course of merchant vessels and ignored by Empire and pirate fleets alike, hers was an isolated existence, just as the medicine woman preferred.  In the more than two years since Whirda’s plagued and comatose body appeared on the shore outside her shack, with no further explanation than the speck of a departing ship on the horizon, Tia had not seen another soul, content with the companionship of her capuchin friend.

Now the presence of Whirda Windstrom cast a pall over Tia’s measured existence.  Scarcely sleeping for fear of Whirda experiencing another episode, and forced to share her meager rations with the woman, who devoured food as if she had not eaten in… well, years, Tia accepted the burden stoically, buoyed by the knowledge she would soon be rid of the woman with the black veins.

Despite her misgivings, Tia found she liked the enigmatic Whirda well enough.  After their first conversation, in which Whirda revealed the trail of friends, and of bodies, she had left behind during her adventures in the Omniverse, the two women had shared few words.  

Whirda occupied every spare moment with her training for Dante’s Abyss.  She rose each day before the break of dawn, stretching the sleep from her bones and taking to the beach outside the shack, dagger in one hand and the tarrasque scale buckler strapped to the opposite forearm.  The story of that buckler, one of the few Whirda had shared in her time on the island, enthralled Tia.  It caused her to look back wistfully on the days when she had walked the path of adventure, alongside the likes of Jack Sparrow and Hector Barbossa, before she had answered the call to the Omniverse.

While Tia slowly warmed to Whirda’s presence, Jack grew ever more anxious around the woman.  Each day, when the sun neared its peak and Whirda climbed the creaky stairs back to the hut, glistening with sweat from the exertion of her training, the capuchin scampered behind Tia’s legs and peeked out at the woman as she entered, teeth bared and eyes wide.  If Whirda was deserving of such treatment, Tia had seen no signs since that first night, but she appreciated Jack’s caution all the same.

One week passed, and then another.  One afternoon, Whirda set aside her weapon and shield, stripped free of her leathers, and dove headlong into the waters of the Deep, a refreshing reprieve after a long day of training.  She closed her eyes and moved through the water with long strokes.  With the long hours of training she was improving rapidly, strength returning to her limbs and the exertions of imagined combat suppressing the worst of the contagion’s effects, affording her a measure of peace.

When she felt the tug on her ankle, Whirda assumed she had become tangled in the thick seaweed lining Tia’s short stretch of coast.  She kicked her foot lazily, trying to free herself.  The grip did not relent, and in fact tightened, cutting her forward movement short.

Whirda cast a panicked look back.  At first it seemed her leg had indeed become wrapped in seaweed, until she noticed a single, rope-like strand extending into the deeper water beyond her vision.  She knew in that moment no simple entanglement hindered her progress, but something more sinister.  Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later, when the strand snapped taught and began reeling her in, dragging her further away from the surface.

Flailing and twisting, Whirda managed to wrap her hand around the thick strand of seaweed and reorient herself.  Cursing the absence of her weapon, she conjured a stream of daggers.  While the shadow from which she conjured the weapons was plentiful this far below the surface, the daggers moved sluggishly through the water.  They scraped against the strand, fraying its edges but doing little to free her from the bonds.

Whirda’s lungs ached to breathe.  As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw her veins darken and become black.  Too disoriented by the mysterious attack to quell the rage rising within her, she permitted the cold wave of umbral magic.  So infused, driven now by primal instinct, Whirda plucked at the leylines of shadow and enacted a pair of spells.  She vanished and reappeared some distance away, closer to the surface.  When she looked back down to where she had been trapped she saw that her shadow clone, having appeared seamlessly in her place, now struggled against the coiled strand of seaweed, the perfect bait.

The move by Whirda proved timely as a spear, hewn out of what looked to be pearlescent coral, emerged from the depths and skewered the clone.  The false Whirda broke apart, shredding into wisps of shadow and dissipating.

What emerged next had Whirda’s eyes bulging and her mouth skewing open involuntarily.  With one kick of her now-muscular legs she broke the surface, gasping and spluttering.

“Tia!  We are under atta--!” Whirda had time to scream before more seaweed ropes caught her ankles, pulling her back underwater.  A second spear arced past, narrowly missing her neck. 

The naga raiding party advanced, at least a score of the serpent-elf hybrids slithering through the water.  Bringing up the rear of the party, a chariot fashioned from the same pearlescent coral and pulled by two enormous seahorses held yet more naga, these ones armed with more spears.  They closed the distance to Whirda with frightening speed as she struggled futilely against the encumbering bonds, their hungry, snake-like eyes glowing yellow in the murky depths.

Whirda gave up her struggle, resigned to her fate, and faces the oncoming marauders.  The fire in her chest spread outward, her lungs demanding air.  From the darkness around her coalesced six umbral serpents.  The shadow creations wrapped around her arms, neck, and shoulders. 

The first naga approached.  The creature measured more than nine feet from the tip of its scaled head to the end of its enormous serpentine tail.  A wickedly sharp spine ran from the crown of its head down its humanoid back and its maw gaped wide, revealing two rows of yellowish fangs.  In its clawed hand, a curving coral scimitar glinted menacingly. 

Unafraid, Whirda twisted to orient herself to face her assailant.  The edges of her vision blurred from lack of oxygen and the coherence she needed to enact another shadowstep would not come.  Leering, her enemy brought the scimitar across in a deceptively quick slash toward her left side.  Two of Whirda’s umbral serpents darted out, one wrapping around the naga’s wrist and the other around its muscled forearm, halting the attack within inches of Whirda’s face.

A second impatient naga darted past the first.  Not content to strike the flailing woman with its curved blade, it instead used its momentum to attack, simply lowering its shoulder and crashing into Whirda’s midsection.  

A sharp fin gashed Whirda’s stomach and blasted the air from her lungs.  A third naga crowded in then, this one thrusting a trident toward her.  Surrounded and helpless, Whirda could only watch as her serpents impeded the attack.  Darkness encroached, and she knew in that moment she would die.

If she considered it an unsatisfactory end, the peaceful expression that came across her face in that moment gave no indication.  

All four of the combatants, and indeed the entire raiding party, froze as a deafening rumble rose from the depths.  Whirda felt the water rising beneath her, flipping her upside-down in the rush.  All the water around her was sucked in and lifted, until Whirda’s head broke the surface at the crest of a roaring wave.  She spluttered, trying to draw air into her lungs, but succeeded only in vomiting hot bile and descending into a fit of coughing.  From the corner of her eye she spotted Tia Dalma on the beach, the voodoo priestess’s hands raised high and the thunderous voice of Calypso booming an incantation.