Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

She arrived home, clutching the baby boy. She fed him, and when she went to sleep at night she did so with her arms wrapped around the little foundling.

Come morning the baby cried again, and this time it attracted not predators, but other githzerai, neighbors who knew that Charybole had lost her infant the week before.

“This is a dangerous idea,” said Baryomis, her closest friend, after examining the infant. “You cannot bring a githyanki to live with us.”

“I could not leave it to be torn apart as my own baby was torn apart,” responded Charybole.

“Why not?” shot back Baryomis. “When Zat finds out, she will kill it anyway, or order it killed.”

“He has harmed no one,” said Charybole, “and I will not allow harm to come to him.”

“It is githyanki!” snapped Baryomis in frustration.

“He is helpless, and he needs me,” replied Charybole, holding the baby even closer to her.

It didn’t take long for word of the foundling to reach Zat. It seemed so unlikely for a githzerai to have anything to do with a githyanki, let alone adopt it, that she decided to see what was transpiring with her own eyes, so she made the pilgrimage out to the Witchlight Fens.

“Where is the aberration I have heard about?” she demanded, and while Charybole inspired friendship among those who knew her, Zat inspired awe and even fear among them, and those were strong emotions, more than strong enough to overcome loyalty to the young githzerai. Finally Zat got her answer, sought out and confronted Charybole, and commanded her to bring forth the foundling.

“What will you do with him?” demanded Charybole.

“It is my sacred task to protect the well-being of the githzerai,” answered Zat. “If the babe is what I believe it to be, I will kill it, of course.”

“If you do,” replied Charybole with no show of fear, “I will kill you.”

“Githzerai do not speak thus to me,” said Zat.

“No one speaks thus to me about my child,” shot back Charybole.

“It is not your child,” insisted Zat.

“He is now.”

Zat frowned. “Do you not understand? We cannot allow a githyanki to live.”

“This is an infant,” protested Charybole. “If I raise him, he will grow up to be githzerai.”

“It will grow up to be githyanki, and this I cannot permit. The githyanki are the enemies of our blood.”

“All I know about his blood is that it is red,” said Charybole. “And if you spill it, then I will spill yours.”

Zat stared at her. “You will not let me see it?”

“I will not.”

“Nor slay it if it is indeed githyanki?”

“Nor slay it.”

“You have made your decision,” said Zat. “Now I must make mine.” And she turned and began walking back through the series of portals to the Elemental Chaos and the genasi-ruled city of Threshold, where Zat held court.

Charybole saw the way the others looked at her and the infant, and she moved farther into the Witchlight Fens. She carved a spear for herself, and was never without it. She didn’t know how Zat planned to strike at her adopted child, but there was never any doubt in her mind that sooner or later, probably when she least expected it, Zat or her agents would strike.

Two months passed peacefully, then three, then four. Each day she carried the infant out into the fresh air, each day she fed and cleaned him, and each day they bonded more and more closely. She named him Malargoten after a cousin who’d died fighting a mind flayer, and she lavished all the love and attention upon him that would have gone to her own child had she lived.

And when she had kept the foundling for six months, and she no longer saw horrors and potential death in every shadow, she was visited by just the kind of horror she had once anticipated.

She was sitting on the ground with Malargoten beside her, who was learning to crawl, when she heard the unholy high-pitched screech. She reached out, placed a restraining hand on Malargoten, picked up her spear with her other hand, and looked for the source of the sound-and found it not twenty feet away from her. The source of the cry was a bebilith, a huge, spiderlike creature straight from the Abyss, or perhaps some deranged fiend’s nightmare, staring at the foundling with hate-filled red eyes. She knew instantly that it had come to do Zat’s bidding, for there was no other reason for it to leave its demon-haunted domain.

She was frightened, for a bebilith, taller than the surrounding trees, is a terrifying thing to behold, but she got to her feet and stood between the spider and Malargoten, spear in hand, ready to defend the infant to the death.

And it will be to your death, a voice inside her head seemed to say.

“There are worse things than death,” she replied with more conviction than she felt, and she planted her feet, ready to meet the bebilith’s charge.

But it didn’t charge. It seemed to know that she held a formidable weapon in her hand… and it was not there for her, but for the infant.

It began slowly circling to her left. She pivoted, always facing it. It moved to the right. She responded.

It charged directly at her, hissing and shrieking, only to stop just beyond the reach of her spear point. She glanced down to make sure Malargoten hadn’t crawled in any direction, and kept her spear at the ready.

The bebilith feinted twice more with pincerlike appendages, and she knew it was studying her, analyzing her responses with more brainpower than any spider should possess. She, too, feinted an attack, then realized she’d made a mistake, for she’d shown the bebilith she was unwilling to move even a few feet away from the infant.

The bebilith approached once more, stopped when it was perhaps seven feet distant, took a quick step to the left, and when she turned to keep her weapon pointed at it, it spat out a jet of sizzling fluid, part fire, part web, that just missed hitting Malargoten.

“What was that?” muttered Charybole.

You have heard of the ties that bind? said the voice in her head, a voice she knew belonged to Zat, though it sounded nothing like her. This is the glue that binds. Once it touches the githyanki, once it binds its hands together, binds it to the rock-hard surface of the ground, nothing will ever unbind it-and it will burn.

Charybole knew she couldn’t wait any longer, couldn’t chance that noxious fluid touching the baby, and with a scream she raced toward the bebilith, prepared to trade her life for his. She didn’t bother to feint, didn’t attempt to protect herself, didn’t waste a single motion or a single second. The bebilith hissed in fury and turned its full attention to her, its razor-sharp pincers reaching out to her, its obscene mouth dripping with vile-smelling venom.

She awoke as Malargoten lay against her shoulder, sleeping contentedly. She gently moved him a few inches away, sat up gingerly, and tried to remember what had happened.

The bebilith was sprawled on the ground three feet away, her wooden spear protruding from its eye, its hairy limbs curled in death, its massive body covered by the horrible liquid that passed for its blood.

She examined her arms, legs, torso, and found no wounds. She was sore, as if she’d been hurled to the ground in the bebilith’s death throes, but beyond that she seemed very little the worse for wear.

Suddenly she remembered the webbing, and turned to examine Malargoten, but he was free of it.

Of course, she thought with a sense of relief. You couldn’t have crawled over to me if you’d been hit with it.

She stood up, tested her limbs, and picked the infant up in her arms, holding him protectively, and turned her head toward distant Threshold.

“You have done your worst, Zat. My child and I are still alive, and your creature is dead. Let it end here.”