The Cure - I

[PepsiWhirda]

They took opposite sides of the village's main street, Whirda pushing through the swinging doors of a dilapidated inn as Blues disappeared into a smaller, nondescript building. Their evaluation of a swift evacuation gained more credibility as she padded between tables covered in half-cleared plates and sticky, empty mugs. Still, both from above and within the village, there appeared to be no sign of the devastation Whirda expected. The Tarrasque, a colossal creature by Blues's estimation, would have left piles of kindling in place of buildings, rent cobblestone streets asunder, uprooted the forests of towering aspen and cedar. The village, while deserted, stood more or less intact.

Whirda ran one finger along the top of the bar. It came back black with dust. The odor of decay hung thick in the air, not the decay of corpses, but of food, spoiled in the lazy heat of the hinterlands. She realized her right hand was tight around the hilt of her dagger, her breathing shallow and anticipatory. Something else lurked in the abandoned inn, she knew, although she wasn't sure how.

Crouching low, she followed the bar to the end. Her dagger hissed from its sheath, swirling with opaque ash. On her left, an open doorway yawned in the gloom, the few, faint remaining rays of sunlight illuminated thousands of dancing dust motes. She moved with the cautious, ball-to-toe steps of a trained predator, stalking her unseen prey. She crept through the doorway, the dagger held cautiously in front of her.

The flash of movement to her right took Whirda completely by surprise. She stumbled back, weaving a trail of concealing ash in front of her. Gasping, she regained her balance.

The cat wound between her ankles and slunk off, glancing back reproachfully. Whirda’s laughter echoed off the walls of the store room. The walls were lined with shelves heaped tall with rotting vegetables. Flies buzzed through the air in swarms. The stench brought tears to her eyes. But when the veil of ash faded, all that was forgotten. Whirda stared at herself. Not her reflection, but a living, breathing, tangible, physical copy.

Whirda brought her hands to her face, felt her familiar features. The copy stared dully at a point somewhere over her right shoulder. “What are you?” she barked, reversing her grip on the pommel of the dagger and flipping it so the blade pointed down and behind her. She took a tentative step forward. The copy never blinked, never adjusted its gaze as she approached.

Whirda prodded the copy’s forehead with one finger. It rocked back on its heels, before settling back into place, as if frozen solid. Met with no resistance, Whirda leaned in to get a closer look. In the shade’s lair, Ahn’Thrix made copies of himself. She remembered with a shiver the cackling shade emerging from the darkness on both sides of her, electric blue eyes smoldering. When those copies were attacked, though….

On instinct, without hesitation, Whirda spun the dagger back around and plunged it into the copy’s throat, right in the center of the jagged scar left by the very dagger she now held. The copy exploded into ropes of swirling shadow. “Interesting,” Whirda murmured. She concentrated on the ripples of power all around her, focused their tenebrous might on reforming the destroyed clone.

The swirling shadow came together, coalesced into a single blob. Whirda’s features began to emerge, arms and legs stretching into existence, facial features warping and stretching until she could have been looking in a mirror. Pale blonde hair sprouted from the clone’s scalp; fingernails and teeth creaked into place; dusky skin lightened to match her pale complexion. In the span of a few seconds, Whirda had duplicated herself, created a perfect copy.

“Now,” she said, grinning, “let’s see what you’re capable of.”