05-30-2018, 01:32 PM
Shadow within shadow, the hooded and cloaked figure flitted across the thatched rooftops on the outskirts of Costa Del Sol, each padded footstep producing no more noise than a breath of wind. The night hung low over the Vasty Deep’s capital city. Swollen clouds obscured the pale light of the moon, entrenching every nook and cranny of the city in concealing gloom. Miles away, the broad underbelly of an encroaching storm rippled with skeins of lightning.
This far out from the city proper, the outskirts were little more than a disorganized sea of island bungalows, row after jumbled row of squat buildings with roofs of thatched straw and palm fronds, interspersed with the looming silhouettes and rolling, manicured lawns of the lesser plantation houses. The cloaked woman made swift progress toward her destination, occasionally vanishing when the gap between buildings proved too wide, only to reappear on the other side without breaking stride.
Gradually, the colonial clock towers and wide, brightly-lit avenues of Costa Del Sol’s party district came into view. As if in defiance of the looming storm, throngs of dancing islanders crowded in close as a procession of jugglers and acrobats, arrayed in the bright reds and yellows of circus folk, made their way down the road. Trying and failing to keep a low profile, city guards pressed through the gathered crowd and peered down from rooftops, searching for troublemakers.
Whirda Windstrom recognized her dilemma. Drawing her cowl tight around her face, she selected a perch in one of the many recesses of a soaring clock tower. An expertly carved statue of a gargoyle leered at her from across the avenue, occupying the recess, but Whirda could see there was room to spare for her hiding place.
A moment later, she rested a hand on the gnarled stone of the gargoyle’s head, content to wait. Ensconced in shadow, she knew any onlookers who happened to glance at the clock tower would not catch sight of her. Whirda had no way of knowing if the murder of Captain Deudermont and Tia Dalma had been noted by Costa Del Sol authorities, and while she knew the odds of anyone identifying her as the perpetrator of the crime were slim at best, she could afford to take no chances. The last thing she needed was to spend the duration of Dante’s Abyss in a cell in the sunken prison of Impel Down.
For the first few days, thinking back on the sturdy masts of Blackbeard’s ship slowly sinking beneath the horizon, Whirda had experienced profound grief. In the thrall of the contagion—the thrall of that other Whirda with whom she had grown so familiar—she had struck down her only friends in a merciless, unthinking rage. The contagion did not relent. In time, her grief subsided first into frequent pangs, then occasional twinges of regret. Now, Whirda felt nothing. For the first time since her ill-fated battle with Ahn’Thrix, she had been fully subsumed by the shade’s contagion.
Since arriving on the vast island, Whirda had made her camp in the thick jungles outside the city, venturing into Costa Del Sol only under cover of darkness. On the fifth day, she noted the newly erected white tents bearing the logo of Syntech, the organization she had come to learn was hosting Dante’s Abyss. In the back of her mind she questioned her resolve. For the first half of the journey from Tia Dalma’s island to the capital city, she had viewed Dante’s Abyss as the final bastion of her salvation. Now she was conflicted. Did she even desire salvation anymore?
“No.” The word emerged unbidden from between her lips, a quiet, rasping hiss.
“Then why?” Whirda asked, the lilting harmony of her voice returning.
“Why?” her sinister alter-ego mocked. “Why do you do anything? For power.”
That word—power—commanded a certain resonance in Whirda’s life now. The other Whirda, that part of her that had been broken and subdued by the vile contagion, wielded the nebulous notion of power as a litany against her self-doubt, a vague promise of some intangible reward for the callous betrayal of her principles. While she sensed the fallacy at the heart of the promise, these days she found herself, unable to resist the urges instilled in her by her vile plague. Slowly, the insidious contagion had wormed its way in, eroding her mental defenses and taking root in the inner depths of her mind.
Whirda Windstrom had become its slave.
For many long minutes, Whirda busied herself counting the number of guards present at the celebration. She noted the patrol routes, identifying weaknesses she could exploit, brief windows of time during which she could traverse the last few blocks to the Syntech tent unseen. Then, with a nod to affirm the accuracy of her calculations, she stepped out of the recess, patted the gargoyle’s head for good luck, and vanished once more.
When she reappeared on the cobblestone street below, Whirda broke into a quick stride. She had no time to pause and take in the spectacle of the procession of entertainers. Keeping against the outer wall of the clock tower so the guards above could not see her, she traveled briskly down the sidewalk, slipping nimbly between gyrating spectators and barking vendors, silently counting the passing seconds. Across the avenue, on top of a long, flat building, the top of a guard’s head came into view. Knowing that meant the guards above her were moving away, toward the other side of the clock tower’s roof, Whirda enacted another shadowstep to carry her, unseen, across the road.
On she went for several minutes down the impossibly long avenue, meticulously escaping the notice of the many guards. The sights, sounds, and smells of the party district might have enticed a lesser warrior into distraction and ruin, but Whirda remained focused and calm. She ducked beneath the outstretched arm of a vendor hawking a dripping kebab, deftly twisting to avoid a single droplet of grease. Slipping between two scantily clad, dancing women smeared in bright body paint, she looked up to see the Syntech tent ten yards ahead. Three bored looking employees in crisp uniforms, two women and a man, sat behind a long, white table and conversed idly.
When Whirda appeared from thin air in front of the table, three chairs rocked backward, spilling the surprised Syntech employees to the ground. Taking care to keep her cowl drawn tight, Whirda spoke.
“My apologies,” she said quietly, taking care not to allow the rattling hiss of her alter ego into her voice. “Is this where I volunteer for Dante’s Abyss?”
One of the women recovered first, hopping to her feet and brushing dust from her once-pristine uniform. “Uh, yes, it is,” she said slowly. “You are a Prime?” The other two Syntech employees rose to stand behind her, eyeing Whirda warily.
“I am.”
The girl coughed, more a nervous gesture than an irritation of the throat, Whirda sensed. “Uh, okay then. Well, all we need to do is film you telling us a little bit about yourself and showing off your moves.”
“Film me?” Whirda asked, genuinely confused. Behind the girl, the male employee scoffed and rolled his eyes. Whirda curled her toes to keep from lashing out, but she could not keep the other Whirda from lashing out. “Take care boy, or I’ll rip those eyes from your skull, that you might see yourself die from my perspective. I assure you, it is not a disappointing show.”
An involuntary squeak emerged from the man, but he regained his composure quickly. This was clearly not his first encounter with an irritable Prime. “I must remind you, miss,” he said, only a slight waver in his voice, “that violence against Syntech employees disqualifies you from participation in the event.”
Whirda ground her teeth but did not reply, merely fixing the man with an icy stare.
Attempting to reduce the tension of the situation, the second girl said, “Miss, we just need you to stand right here.” She gestured to a wide rectangle drawn on the floor of the tent in white chalk in front of a bizarre looking device. It reminded Whirda of the whirring and clicking technology from which her old friend Blues had been crafted.
Bemused and more than a little nostalgic, Whirda stepped into the outlined space.
“Now,” the second girl said with an uneasy smile, “can you tell us a little bit about yourself and where you come from?”
“I am Whirda Windstrom. I hail from Luskan, in the realm of Faerûn. It has been six years since I answered Omni’s call.” She lapsed into silence, unwilling to offer any more potentially incriminating information.
“All right then, Whirda Windstrom,” the first girl said. “Now, would you please demonstrate your abilities?”
“Here?” Whirda blurted. “That would be… unwise.”
“Trust me,” the man said, though he did not approach from his defensive position behind the table to Whirda’s right. “We’ve seen worse.”
Whirda felt a surge of vile energy welling up inside her. Like hot bile rising in her throat, she fought to keep it down. Let… me… out, the other Whirda said inside her head. Let me teach this one a lesson. Unable to resist the urges of her savage alter ego, Whirda relented. When she addressed the man, the rasping hiss had returned to her voice.
“Have you?” Whirda asked innocently?
The man, apparently hearing the shift in timbre, offered only a nervous nod.
“Come here.”
The man did not move. “I must remind you, miss,” he intoned dully, again reciting the rehearsed line, “that violence against Syntech employees disqualifies you from participation in the event.”
“I will not hurt you,” Whirda rasped. “You have my word.”
The man rose and approached the plagued woman cautiously, pausing just outside the chalk boundary. His hands visibly trembled, but to his credit he stood fast and searched for Whirda’s eyes within the depths of her drawn cowl.
Whirda turned to stare into the lens of the strange device. “You ask me for a demonstration?” she said. “Then you shall have one.”
All around her, the air shimmered as she set the leylines of latent umbral magic to thrumming, drawing their collective power into her. The transformation into her umbral form came quicker this time, the veins in her arms and neck and the sclera of her eyes flooding with black.
The gathered energy surged, coursing over her like a wave. The greedy dagger sheathed on her hip leaked a cloud of opaque ash and an aura of utter darkness rose around her, coalescing into a swarm of wriggling serpents. Reaching up with both dusky hands, Whirda drew back her cowl. In that moment, her eyes were not the eyes of Whirda Windstrom but the eyes of the shade Ahn’Thrix, burning with an incandescent, electric blue energy like two smoldering coals set deep in her skull.
Staring into those wicked eyes, the man knew despair. His mouth creased open in a shrill scream as he backed away, stumbling over a fallen chair and landing hard on the cobblestones. He scrambled to his feet, turned, and sprinted from the tent.
The two remaining employees stared at Whirda with blank expressions, their jaws hanging open. Gradually, Whirda reverted to her normal form and turned to stare at the device that was ‘filming’ her once more. “Satisfied?” she asked, the rasping receding from her voice.
One of the Syntech employees managed a nod. “That… that will do,” she stammered. “Now, if you’ll just follow me.” Without turning to see if Whirda followed, she strode from the main room of the tent into a second, smaller room Whirda had not noticed. Following the girl inside, Whirda saw a metal pad on the floor. Three rings formed a bullseye in its center.
“When you step on the pad, you will be transported to Dante’s Abyss,” the girl said. She tried admirably to remain professional, but Whirda saw, with no small measure of satisfaction, that the girl had been shaken by her display. “Happy hunting.”
“Thank you,” Whirda said curtly. Needing to maintain the image of strength she had imparted to the Syntech employees, she did not hesitate in the face of the newest technological marvel she now faced.
Just as the first fat raindrops began pelting the roof of the tent, Whirda stepped onto the pad and vanished.
This far out from the city proper, the outskirts were little more than a disorganized sea of island bungalows, row after jumbled row of squat buildings with roofs of thatched straw and palm fronds, interspersed with the looming silhouettes and rolling, manicured lawns of the lesser plantation houses. The cloaked woman made swift progress toward her destination, occasionally vanishing when the gap between buildings proved too wide, only to reappear on the other side without breaking stride.
Gradually, the colonial clock towers and wide, brightly-lit avenues of Costa Del Sol’s party district came into view. As if in defiance of the looming storm, throngs of dancing islanders crowded in close as a procession of jugglers and acrobats, arrayed in the bright reds and yellows of circus folk, made their way down the road. Trying and failing to keep a low profile, city guards pressed through the gathered crowd and peered down from rooftops, searching for troublemakers.
Whirda Windstrom recognized her dilemma. Drawing her cowl tight around her face, she selected a perch in one of the many recesses of a soaring clock tower. An expertly carved statue of a gargoyle leered at her from across the avenue, occupying the recess, but Whirda could see there was room to spare for her hiding place.
A moment later, she rested a hand on the gnarled stone of the gargoyle’s head, content to wait. Ensconced in shadow, she knew any onlookers who happened to glance at the clock tower would not catch sight of her. Whirda had no way of knowing if the murder of Captain Deudermont and Tia Dalma had been noted by Costa Del Sol authorities, and while she knew the odds of anyone identifying her as the perpetrator of the crime were slim at best, she could afford to take no chances. The last thing she needed was to spend the duration of Dante’s Abyss in a cell in the sunken prison of Impel Down.
For the first few days, thinking back on the sturdy masts of Blackbeard’s ship slowly sinking beneath the horizon, Whirda had experienced profound grief. In the thrall of the contagion—the thrall of that other Whirda with whom she had grown so familiar—she had struck down her only friends in a merciless, unthinking rage. The contagion did not relent. In time, her grief subsided first into frequent pangs, then occasional twinges of regret. Now, Whirda felt nothing. For the first time since her ill-fated battle with Ahn’Thrix, she had been fully subsumed by the shade’s contagion.
Since arriving on the vast island, Whirda had made her camp in the thick jungles outside the city, venturing into Costa Del Sol only under cover of darkness. On the fifth day, she noted the newly erected white tents bearing the logo of Syntech, the organization she had come to learn was hosting Dante’s Abyss. In the back of her mind she questioned her resolve. For the first half of the journey from Tia Dalma’s island to the capital city, she had viewed Dante’s Abyss as the final bastion of her salvation. Now she was conflicted. Did she even desire salvation anymore?
“No.” The word emerged unbidden from between her lips, a quiet, rasping hiss.
“Then why?” Whirda asked, the lilting harmony of her voice returning.
“Why?” her sinister alter-ego mocked. “Why do you do anything? For power.”
That word—power—commanded a certain resonance in Whirda’s life now. The other Whirda, that part of her that had been broken and subdued by the vile contagion, wielded the nebulous notion of power as a litany against her self-doubt, a vague promise of some intangible reward for the callous betrayal of her principles. While she sensed the fallacy at the heart of the promise, these days she found herself, unable to resist the urges instilled in her by her vile plague. Slowly, the insidious contagion had wormed its way in, eroding her mental defenses and taking root in the inner depths of her mind.
Whirda Windstrom had become its slave.
For many long minutes, Whirda busied herself counting the number of guards present at the celebration. She noted the patrol routes, identifying weaknesses she could exploit, brief windows of time during which she could traverse the last few blocks to the Syntech tent unseen. Then, with a nod to affirm the accuracy of her calculations, she stepped out of the recess, patted the gargoyle’s head for good luck, and vanished once more.
When she reappeared on the cobblestone street below, Whirda broke into a quick stride. She had no time to pause and take in the spectacle of the procession of entertainers. Keeping against the outer wall of the clock tower so the guards above could not see her, she traveled briskly down the sidewalk, slipping nimbly between gyrating spectators and barking vendors, silently counting the passing seconds. Across the avenue, on top of a long, flat building, the top of a guard’s head came into view. Knowing that meant the guards above her were moving away, toward the other side of the clock tower’s roof, Whirda enacted another shadowstep to carry her, unseen, across the road.
On she went for several minutes down the impossibly long avenue, meticulously escaping the notice of the many guards. The sights, sounds, and smells of the party district might have enticed a lesser warrior into distraction and ruin, but Whirda remained focused and calm. She ducked beneath the outstretched arm of a vendor hawking a dripping kebab, deftly twisting to avoid a single droplet of grease. Slipping between two scantily clad, dancing women smeared in bright body paint, she looked up to see the Syntech tent ten yards ahead. Three bored looking employees in crisp uniforms, two women and a man, sat behind a long, white table and conversed idly.
When Whirda appeared from thin air in front of the table, three chairs rocked backward, spilling the surprised Syntech employees to the ground. Taking care to keep her cowl drawn tight, Whirda spoke.
“My apologies,” she said quietly, taking care not to allow the rattling hiss of her alter ego into her voice. “Is this where I volunteer for Dante’s Abyss?”
One of the women recovered first, hopping to her feet and brushing dust from her once-pristine uniform. “Uh, yes, it is,” she said slowly. “You are a Prime?” The other two Syntech employees rose to stand behind her, eyeing Whirda warily.
“I am.”
The girl coughed, more a nervous gesture than an irritation of the throat, Whirda sensed. “Uh, okay then. Well, all we need to do is film you telling us a little bit about yourself and showing off your moves.”
“Film me?” Whirda asked, genuinely confused. Behind the girl, the male employee scoffed and rolled his eyes. Whirda curled her toes to keep from lashing out, but she could not keep the other Whirda from lashing out. “Take care boy, or I’ll rip those eyes from your skull, that you might see yourself die from my perspective. I assure you, it is not a disappointing show.”
An involuntary squeak emerged from the man, but he regained his composure quickly. This was clearly not his first encounter with an irritable Prime. “I must remind you, miss,” he said, only a slight waver in his voice, “that violence against Syntech employees disqualifies you from participation in the event.”
Whirda ground her teeth but did not reply, merely fixing the man with an icy stare.
Attempting to reduce the tension of the situation, the second girl said, “Miss, we just need you to stand right here.” She gestured to a wide rectangle drawn on the floor of the tent in white chalk in front of a bizarre looking device. It reminded Whirda of the whirring and clicking technology from which her old friend Blues had been crafted.
Bemused and more than a little nostalgic, Whirda stepped into the outlined space.
“Now,” the second girl said with an uneasy smile, “can you tell us a little bit about yourself and where you come from?”
“I am Whirda Windstrom. I hail from Luskan, in the realm of Faerûn. It has been six years since I answered Omni’s call.” She lapsed into silence, unwilling to offer any more potentially incriminating information.
“All right then, Whirda Windstrom,” the first girl said. “Now, would you please demonstrate your abilities?”
“Here?” Whirda blurted. “That would be… unwise.”
“Trust me,” the man said, though he did not approach from his defensive position behind the table to Whirda’s right. “We’ve seen worse.”
Whirda felt a surge of vile energy welling up inside her. Like hot bile rising in her throat, she fought to keep it down. Let… me… out, the other Whirda said inside her head. Let me teach this one a lesson. Unable to resist the urges of her savage alter ego, Whirda relented. When she addressed the man, the rasping hiss had returned to her voice.
“Have you?” Whirda asked innocently?
The man, apparently hearing the shift in timbre, offered only a nervous nod.
“Come here.”
The man did not move. “I must remind you, miss,” he intoned dully, again reciting the rehearsed line, “that violence against Syntech employees disqualifies you from participation in the event.”
“I will not hurt you,” Whirda rasped. “You have my word.”
The man rose and approached the plagued woman cautiously, pausing just outside the chalk boundary. His hands visibly trembled, but to his credit he stood fast and searched for Whirda’s eyes within the depths of her drawn cowl.
Whirda turned to stare into the lens of the strange device. “You ask me for a demonstration?” she said. “Then you shall have one.”
All around her, the air shimmered as she set the leylines of latent umbral magic to thrumming, drawing their collective power into her. The transformation into her umbral form came quicker this time, the veins in her arms and neck and the sclera of her eyes flooding with black.
The gathered energy surged, coursing over her like a wave. The greedy dagger sheathed on her hip leaked a cloud of opaque ash and an aura of utter darkness rose around her, coalescing into a swarm of wriggling serpents. Reaching up with both dusky hands, Whirda drew back her cowl. In that moment, her eyes were not the eyes of Whirda Windstrom but the eyes of the shade Ahn’Thrix, burning with an incandescent, electric blue energy like two smoldering coals set deep in her skull.
Staring into those wicked eyes, the man knew despair. His mouth creased open in a shrill scream as he backed away, stumbling over a fallen chair and landing hard on the cobblestones. He scrambled to his feet, turned, and sprinted from the tent.
The two remaining employees stared at Whirda with blank expressions, their jaws hanging open. Gradually, Whirda reverted to her normal form and turned to stare at the device that was ‘filming’ her once more. “Satisfied?” she asked, the rasping receding from her voice.
One of the Syntech employees managed a nod. “That… that will do,” she stammered. “Now, if you’ll just follow me.” Without turning to see if Whirda followed, she strode from the main room of the tent into a second, smaller room Whirda had not noticed. Following the girl inside, Whirda saw a metal pad on the floor. Three rings formed a bullseye in its center.
“When you step on the pad, you will be transported to Dante’s Abyss,” the girl said. She tried admirably to remain professional, but Whirda saw, with no small measure of satisfaction, that the girl had been shaken by her display. “Happy hunting.”
“Thank you,” Whirda said curtly. Needing to maintain the image of strength she had imparted to the Syntech employees, she did not hesitate in the face of the newest technological marvel she now faced.
Just as the first fat raindrops began pelting the roof of the tent, Whirda stepped onto the pad and vanished.
![[Image: drink-pepsi-cola.jpg]](https://lph5i1b6c053kq7us26bdk75-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/drink-pepsi-cola.jpg)