Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

Gamlin and Farrik struggled up over the edge with their packs and shouted in dismay when they saw the corridor blocked. I showed them the staircase up, and told them it was our way out. They were so relieved they didn’t even ask how I knew. Then I told them what I needed to do: recover the skull, take it to a priest, and give it the last rites.

They thought I was joking. Gamlin actually guffawed. Then they realized I was serious.

Gamlin said there wasn’t time. Farrik said the dead dwarf was no clan of his. When I said the skull had belonged to an Ironstar and that it was our duty, he slid a look at Gamlin. Both rolled their eyes.

They turned toward the staircase, as if there was nothing more to say.

Fine, I told them. They could go on ahead, but I was going back for the skull. I’d catch up to them later, and collect my share then.

I see by your look you can guess what came next. I never did see either of them again. Not during that long, painful climb back up the stairs to the surface, nor back at the town we’d set out from. I waited there for tendays, but they never came.

Maybe someday, I’ll see them again, but if I don’t, it doesn’t really matter. That’s what Moradin’s trying to teach me in this life, you see-to choose my shield brothers more carefully. Or something like that.

Well now. Would you look at that? My glass is dry again. Could you

…?

No?

That’s all right. My tale is done.

I know what you’re thinking. You’ll be wondering, about now, why I would tell you all about a fortune in rock gourds that’s just lying there for the taking. Short answer: it doesn’t matter anymore. Gamlin and Farrik will likely try to go back to recover them-assuming they haven’t tried already, which might explain what happened to them. Without Rook’s help it will be impossible. With each step I took up those stairs toward the surface, Araumycos followed. By the time I reached the top, the staircase was plugged solid. Anyone who finds it now will set off puffballs every step of the way.

A revenant isn’t bothered by any of that, of course. And Rook, of course, has some way of making Araumycos die back. Wherever it has, that’s where you’ll find her. If you promise to bring whichever of her bones are there to a dwarf priest, and see that they’re given the last rites-or maybe it’s whichever of his bones; I never did get the chance to ask-Rook will likely guide you to wherever it is you need to go.

All I ask is that, if you do find Rook, you put in a good word for me. Tell her I laid her skull to rest, and had a priest say the proper words over the pyre. Ask her, on my behalf, if she’d mind fetching me a rock gourd or two from that cache, in return for me sending her way someone else who’ll help.

What’s that? The name Rook? Oh, it’s just a name I gave her. Those curved, black fingers of hers, with their claws, reminded me of a rook’s toes. I don’t know what her real name is-was. I’ll bet she doesn’t know, either. That’s the way revenants are, you see. A little vague on the details of their past lives. Kind of like me.

I see you getting to your feet. You’re going? So soon? No more questions?

Ah. I see. You think I spun this tale just to cadge a pint or two of the good stuff.

Not so, my good elf. Not so. Every word I’ve just told you is true.

I wasn’t tugging your beard-not that you have one. What I just told you is the truth. If you want a guide who knows every pace of Araumycos, find Rook’s bones. Help her, and she’ll help you-and maybe me, too, in the bargain.

Just remember one thing. Don’t let her appearance fool you. Regardless of what she looks like, she’s a dwarf.

Just like me.

Charybole was twenty-two years, three months, and six days old when she heard the screams.

She had been grieving, not just recently but for most of her life. A githzerai, her father had been killed by the githyanki when she was seven years old. Her mother had died beneath the awesome gaze of a cyclopean beholder two years later, her body literally melted before the glare of its single eye. Somehow she had survived to adulthood, living in the southern fringes of the Nentir Vale. In the fullness of time she had produced a daughter, a tiny thing on which she lavished all of the pent-up love and attention for which she had never found a recipient.

When her daughter was still an unnamed infant in her arms, she laid her down on the ground, just for a moment, while she filled a gourd full of water with which to bathe her from a nearby stream. She heard the screams a moment later, but arrived too late. An immature, but still heavily armored bulette, that half-snake, half-monster lizard that dwells and travels in the underground, had sensed the infant’s presence and broken through the surface, where it was tearing the child to shreds. She threw herself on the creature fearlessly, but its heavy armor protected it, and after a moment there were no more shrieks from the child. When the bulette finished its grisly feast it turned its attention to the githzerai female who was flailing away at its back and head, and realizing her child was past saving, Charybole backed away. The bulette stared coldly at her for a moment, as if deciding whether she was worth the effort, decided she wasn’t, and disappeared back down its subterranean burrow.

Charybole left the few remains of her child where they were, thereby guaranteeing that some scavenger or other would chance upon them and develop a taste for githzerai flesh. It made no difference to her. Every single thing she had cared about was dead, and she hoped to join them soon, to see if the next life held more joy and promise than this one did.

Yet the same instinct that makes even a prey animal sell its life as dearly as possible kept her alive, made her go through the motions of living, of eating, of sleeping, so that she could live and eat and sleep through another purposeless day. This continued, day in and day out, week in and month out – until the day she heard the wails and discovered a new purpose in life.

It was certainly not one she had anticipated, nor was it one she had prepared for. Had anyone mentioned what she was about to do a year ago, she would have thought they were crazy. But a year ago she had not seen a bulette rip her infant daughter limb from limb.

The cries came from a baby. Curious but cautious, she gingerly approached the source of the sound, and found a baby lying in the grass. At first it looked like a githzerai infant, but then she saw the yellow tint to its skin, and knew it was githyanki. She looked around for its mother, but there was no one to be seen.

They were near a stream, and she wandered over to it to see if the mother was washing herself in the cool, rapidly flowing water. No one was there… but then she saw a single blood-soaked sandal, and she knew what had happened. It was a warm day. The mother had set her baby down in the tall grasses for just a moment while she went to the stream to rinse the sweat from her body. Clearly she had not seen an approaching crocodile as the beast glided toward her beneath the surface, possibly had not known that the local streams were filled with them, and one bite would have been all it would have taken. Most of the local crocs were fourteen to eighteen feet in length, weighing well over a ton, and she’d have been dead, probably bitten in half, before she knew what hit her.

Charybole’s reconstruction of the tragedy was interrupted by increased screaming from the child. She walked over and looked down at it. She had just lost her own baby to a bulette. She knew if she left this one here for more than a few minutes, it would suffer the same fate-or worse, for hideous as it was, the bulette was far from the top of the food chain. It wasn’t its fault that it was born of the githyanki. It needed care, and love, and shelter, and she had all three to give. Finally she picked it up and walked off with it, all but daring any of the creatures of the Witchlight Fens to try to take it from her.