The gate guards mistook the thing for a zombie at first, though it moved with too much fluidity for a mindless undead. It stopped at the front gate and spoke in a loud rasp to the guards.
“I am a colleague of the mage Rylas Duskryn and am here to see his daughter, Aunrae. I shall do House Duskryn no harm. Let me in.”
The goblin was met with laughter and a hail of crossbow bolts. A few hobgoblin slaves also ventured out with spears and battle axes. After taking many bolts and blows, the goblin was crushed into a bloody pulp. The hobgoblins laughed and rooted around the entrails for the silver pipe but it couldn’t be found. About an hour later, a male drow staggered up to the gate. He smoked a pipe of silver and oak. All his drow house insignia and identifiers had been removed. His belly had been opened and looked like it had been roped shut with strips of leather. He also croaked,
“I am a colleague of the mage Rylas Duskryn and am here to see his daughter, Aunrae. I shall do House Duskryn no harm. Let me in.”
Another shower of crossbow bolts descended on the drow. He didn’t bother to move. He staggered closer to the gate as more and more bolts pierced him. A house mage blasted him with a bolt of lightning and his body shattered. Guards sifted through the smoking bits of the staggering drow but found nothing of consequence. The pipe was missing.
Another hour later, a mind flayer halted up to the gates of House Duskryn. It’s tentacles were a drooping mass of bloody flesh and exposed bone. Its left hand had been sheared off at the wrist and the right arm held the oak stem of the silver pipe in a bloody rent in its side. Smoke wafted from the tear as the creature limped toward the front gate. Several drow guards and a handful of hobgoblin slaves met the tentacled abomination with weapons drawn. They shifted with unease as the thing stowed the pipe and held aloft a fist sized stone. A mouth appeared on the stone and spoke:
“I am a colleague of the mage Rylas Duskryn and am here to see his daughter, Aunrae. My patience is almost at an end, let me in.”
A messenger was sent to fetch the House mage, Rylas. A tall male drow guard began arguing with his fellows and loaded his crossbow. The hobgoblins began to back away but were met with a lash from one of the other male guards. The tall drow aimed at the illithid, which stared at him with pale, dead eyes. The other guards were yelling at him to desist and the hobgoblins got another taste of the lash. The bolt loosed and struck the mind flayer at the base if its throat. It staggered back a step and seemed to shake. Its tentacles twitched and jerked. It gurgled out a roar of frustration and threw the rock to the ground. There was a flash of green and purple fire. The drow and hobgoblins shrieked in unison as their flesh desiccated before their eyes. Their veins burned and exploded with the purple-green fire. In seconds they were a melded heap of quivering, melted flesh.
Just outside the courtyard, the mage Rylas was racing to the front gate, surrounded by guards and a number of apprentices. He stopped to slap his chief apprentice. “Why wasn’t I told of this immediately?”
Malayne, one of the house matriarchs and a priestesses of Lloth, was already waiting in the courtyard. She hefted a heavy, black steel mace with faintly glowing silver flanges. In her left hand was a wide bladed dagger. She looked with equal parts fury and disdain at the torn illithid outside the Duskryn gates. The creature itself was fiddling with the bolt lodged in its throat. It labored to draw breath. There was an odd sucking sound from the thing and it started to emit rasping, garbled noises. Whatever animated the mangled body was attempting speech. It adjusted the crossbow bolt in its throat and used its left stump to seal the rip in its ribcage. Malayne started the incantation of a spell.
The mind flayer labored through a wet, noisy inhalation and spoke.
“Ssssshtop, drow. I know where a deep dragon livvveessssssshhhh. A mile below. I will burn away itssssh ssssshoul… “
The torn and perforated shape heaved in another breath.
“… and fill it withssss my own. It would be a sssssssshort dig to your compound but the inconveniencsssssse would infuriate me.”
Rylas was standing behind Malayne, whispering urgently to her. Malayne’s face was a stony visage of hate and fury, even more so than most drow priestesses. She had earned the nickname “The Gargoyle” because her twisted face rarely changed. She enjoyed the moniker, but her mace met the face of anyone bold or careless enough to let her hear it.
She turned to listen to the mage and thrust a finger at his chest.
“Very well, but THAT THING DOESN’T STEP INSIDE THE GATE!” she screamed at him.
“Of course, dread lady.” He bowed deeply.
Malayne kicked the smoking heap of melted bodies inside the gate and stormed out of the courtyard. She muttered to Rylas’ apprentice, “Bring the little bitch.”
Minutes later, Aunrae found herself crossing the courtyard with her half-sister and friend, Zanitra. Zanitra was 15, Aunrae 13. Malayne watched from the pillars at the edge of the courtyard, cursing to herself. Aunrae looked back at the hard eyes and the glowering face of The Gargoyle. Aunrae did not like Malayne, having tasted her stony knuckles on more than one occasion. Aunrae wondered if she was all stone, and where a blade could best pierce her.
The illithid waited for them outside the gate. They had seen mind flayers before in the bazaar, wandering around with their slack jawed slaves and bodyguards. They were thin, rubbery, and disgusting things that smelled of mold but carried themselves with pride and power. Commoners made way for them and Aunrae never saw a mind flayer taste the lash of a drow noble house. Just about everyone else in Menzoberranzan did.
This one was hacked and bloody, if what flowed through their disgusting bodies could be called blood. Zanitra stopped and didn’t want to get closer but Aunrae somehow knew she had to meet this creature. Her father beckoned her closer.
He was quietly speaking with the creature. It didn’t answer much but nodded and gestured. She could hear the thing rasping for another breath as she got closer. Aunrae took the final step and rested her hands on the bars of the front gate. She watched it produce the pipe of silver and oak. The thing set the stem back in the slash across its ribcage and struggled through another inhalation. It looked down at her and pulled the crossbow bolt from its throat. A curl of sweet smelling pipe smoke wafted from the wound as it bent down to look at Aunrae. She was it expecting it to suck her brains out, since that’s what illithids did she had learned. She clung tighter to the bars to keep herself from running away. The creature stunk of its own fluids but the sweet tobacco made it bearable. Its dead eyes studied her intently. There was a gust of cold air and a choir of hollow whispers in the air. The Archmage Rylas looked down at his daughter then to the illithid. The creature cocked its head and rasped unintelligibly. Aunrae hadn’t figured out yet what the cold and the voices meant. They followed her and spoke to her. Aunrae once heard a house priestess whisper to another that she might be touched by Lloth herself. Perhaps this thing was here to tell her what it all meant.
It blew out another plume of tobacco smoke and patted Aunrae once on the head. It let out the last of its breath in a hoarse chuckle and nodded to the necromancer, Rylas. The pipe it smoked disappeared in a dull, purple flash and the creature crumpled in a lifeless heap. Rylas muttered through a spell and disintegrated the motionless corpse. The two drow, father and daughter, walked in silence across the courtyard back to the Duskryn estate. She didn’t understand any of it.
“What was that, father?”
“That, young one, was your mother.”
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