The Blight

[PepsiWhirda]

Whirda came to consciousness much the same way she always did, except someplace different. The trip through the portal was timeless, weightless, a brief flash of light, color, and definition. Like someone cranked up the cosmic contrast knob to test its efficacy. Then her feet were back on solid ground.

In contrast with the appearance of the gate—girdled with jungle vines, emitting that fetid, vegetal smell Whirda knew only from childhood stories of the jungles of Chult—, she stood now in an open field of hardscrabble soil, patched here and there with scraggles of grass. At her back, surrounding the portal, which on this end showed none of the vines, wind-worn stone, or island palm trees of the ones she had seen from the fountain, was a copse of trees, something like poplar or aspen. Across the field, spaced about fifty meters apart, were similar groves, but no other portals were in sight.

Far to the north, the trees grew closer together, thickening into a vast forest that continued as far toward the horizon as Whirda could see. The air was alive with the sound of wildlife, the distant forest breathing with the wind like a great beast. Whirda smiled. It reminded her of time spent with her mother, soon after the move to Luskan. Of hunting goblinkin, kobolds, trolls, sometimes even the drow and duergar who ventured out of the Underdark under cover of night.

The rebel in her blood was near to boiling. She felt again, for the first time since her mother's death, that unique shudder of wander- and battlelust, that indomitable feeling that had seen her through so many battles, the collection of so many bounties, the successful completion of innumerable missions in the names of the pirate lords of Luskan. She made for the thickening trees. A place where she could avoid notice, and perhaps find prey. With any luck, the same vile creatures who occupied Faerûn could be found in this land. She could do with a good slaughter.

Whirda walked, kicking clods of dirt and spinning her blades playfully. For the first time in years, she felt something approximating happy. Perhaps this universe—this Omniverse—wasn't so bad after all.

Then, above the trees a few miles distant, smoke. Great plumes belched into the sky, sooty black, as of a filthy fire. Large, indicating a band of no small number. Whirda smiled. Adventure had found her once more.