Crèche Y'llek
“I said up!”
The halflings drag themselves to their feet, though they’re beaten up and obviously terrified. Each of them has the mark of the Absolute on their clothes, and one of them mutters frantic prayers to a god that will not hear them.
“Move!”
The oldest one- a woman with short gray hair and sad brown eyes- stands defiantly, drawing herself up to her meager full height.
“I-I won’t go!”
She tries to run, but the tallest of the Gith takes aim with a crossbow and pierces her chest through and smiling as she slumps to the ground, dead more or less immediately.
“Who wants to join her?” he asks the others, who cower and shiver in terror.
“Alright then, move it! The kith’rak is waiting!”
Reluctantly, knowing they’re being marched to their deaths, they raise their arms and follow.
The huge doors slam shut, and Kisame finally realizes he’s been holding his breath this entire time.
“...Seems like they’re none too fond of the cultists, either,” Karlach mutters.
“Could be a good thing,” Kisame says, ridiculously optimistically.
“One way to find out, eh?”
“We might have a problem though,” Hidan says, kicking the door with frown.
As it turns out, he’s right.
The main doors to the monastery are sealed shut in a way that they couldn’t even break down, so they will need to find some other way around.
Preferably without drawing undue attention to themselves before they’re ready.
“Up here, maybe?” Karlach suggests, jerking her head toward some gnarled vines that help them hoist themselves upward.
She hoists herself upward, the vines holding fast despite her weight. The others follow right behind so they can try to find some other way in, finding themselves in a room full of strange, furless feline-like creatures milling about, yellow eyes staring at all of them the second they enter.
“What…?”
“Gremishkas,” Shadowheart warns. “Be careful- they really don’t like magic.”
“...I see.”
One of the creatures warily approaches Kisame, sniffing at his ankle and peering up at him with distrustful eyes.
Kisame holds his hands up in a gesture of peace, though it feels silly to do so with something that looks more or less like a cat.
“We aren’t gonna bother you,” he reassures the creature, as two more join in the inspection, and more swarm around Hidan to check him out as well. “We’re just passing through.”
The creatures examine them for what feels like forever until, at last, they evidently decide that these new arrivals won’t do any harm. With a collective swish of their skinny tails, they go back to their own business.
“There we go,” Hidan laughs nervously. “Nice kitties, or whatever you are-”
“They won’t hurt ya unless you fuck with ‘em,” Karlach assures him. “But gremishkas are skittish, so be careful.”
They step lightly, and eventually make it to the other side of the room as the catlike creatures go back to milling about, mewing and grooming each other.
“Good thing none of us deal with wild magic,” Shadowheart remarks. “The last thing we need is to have to deal with these little beasts.”
One of the gremishkas yawns, baring rows of wickedly sharp, needle-like teeth and accentuating that, in spite of their stature, these creatures are best left well alone.
They duck out of the room and leave them behind and start their way through the ruins.
The building is crumbling under the weight of time and whatever calamity had lead to this place being abandoned by its original inhabitants. They find some stairs that lead downward, though they're cracked and structurally unsound.
Kisame thinks he hears a voice shouting up ahead, though it seems fake somehow. Tinny. Fake.
Strange.
-Stand your ground! Keep them busy!
The voice sounds afraid, yet determined, even echoing through something obviously fake.
Lathander forgive me- we have to fire the lance!
“Hey, the fuck is this thing?” Hidan calls out from up ahead.
Catching up to him, they find the source of the voice.
The bust of a noble looking woman stares down at them, battered and worn with age. The voice is coming from it somehow, repeating the same things on an endless loop.
“Looks like there’s a magic mouth spell on it,” Shadowheart remarks, examining the bust with a fascinated look. “Whoever owned that voice, they must be long gone.”
Interesting- Kisame doesn’t think he’s seen anything like this in his own world.
“Well ain’t that some shit,” Hidan remarks, looking around just to be sure nobody is pulling a fast one on them. “Why would someone leave somethin’ like this anyway?”
“As a warning, I guess.”
Finally, after encountering a few more dead ends and a bit of frustration, they find a door that isn’t locked.
Lae’zel takes the lead, and they aren't even ten feet into the monastery before they're met with four guards who look equally surprised and pissed off.
“We are not expecting any visitors,” the gith nearest to them snaps, aiming a crossbow square at Kisame. “Let alone any istik !”
“They are with me,” Lae’zel snaps, stepping forward.
The guards look at each other briefly, silently convening with each other.
“What? Well- state your business, then!”
‘We seek the Ghustil. It is an urgent matter.”
Hidan looks like he has something colorful to add, but has at least enough brains in his head to Shut the fuck up for once.
Lae’zel abruptly swaps to her native tongue, and she and the main guard talk for a few minutes, growing increasingly frantic and their voices dropping low as if Shadowheart, Hidan or Kisame could understand them.
Eventually, the guard frowns, and lets out a soft “kaincha,” before jerking her head in the general direction of the crèche proper.
“On your way, then.”
“And stay out of the kith’rak’s way,” another, taller man says, with an amused smirk. “She’s been in a rancid mood since the inquisitor showed up.”
Kisame doesn’t know what they mean by an inquisitor, but whatever it is, he’s sure he can handle it.
They step in, and as they enter, Lae’zel looks disappointed, or perhaps confused.
“Something up?” he asks her.
“...This crèche is a sloppy one,” she remarks.
“Seems tighter than a patriar's purse to me,” Shadowheart retorts, gesturing toward all of the Githyanki wandering about, all armed to the teeth, all on edge, none of them to be fucked with.
“We should have at the very least been disarmed,” Lae’zel answers. “Or more likely imprisoned and interrogated about our motives.”
“Maybe they’re just spooked,” Hidan offers. “Everyone looks like they got a massive stick up their asses- this whole cult thing probably has them freaked out.”
“If an inquisitor is paying this crèche a visit, the situation must be dire indeed,” Lae’zel answers. “We should speak to him, after we deal with our other issue.”
She words it carefully, so that the others don’t find out why it is they’re here and react poorly.
“Are you sure he’d want to listen to anything we had to say?” Shadowheart remarks, looking nervous.
“Once I am able to explain what we have found to him, we will have his interest.”
Lae’zel seems so sure of herself that Kisame almost believes it. But he doesn’t have quite as much faith in her people as she does, it would seem.
Shadowheart cringes, holding her hand close to her chest and gritting her teeth to keep silent.
“You,” she snaps at a few adolescent gith standing around and whispering to each other nervously. “Where is the ghustil ?”
Both of them shrink back, and the boy points them in the right direction while muttering something in Gith.
Lae’zel doesn’t reply, taking off immediately in that direction.
They follow without saying much of anything, hoping against hope that somehow this will be the end of their misadventure.
Of course, they can't be that lucky.
"I tell you what, if Ko'kuu doesn't get his shit together the kith'rak is gonna have his head on a pike."
"Don't be so loud, he might hear you."
"Oh, let 'em. He's a varsh. I don't give a shit what he thinks."
"Come on," Lae'zel hisses. "We cannot linger."
Kisame holds out his hand to tell her to hold on.
He follows the voices, and she follows as well, despite her visible annoyance.
The two keeping watch don't pay them any mind as they enter a large, unbearably humid room that he figures must be a nursery.
At the far end of the room, he sees a single egg, with a man who must be Ko'kuu standing on a high ledge looking over it, muttering things in Gith that sound almost desperate.
He climbs up a stone shelf and approaches him, curiosity getting the better of him.
“Is it normal for a place like this to only have one egg?” Kisame asks.
“It is strange,” Lae’zel answers, looking annoyed at the delay, but also curious. “Crèche K'liir’s hatchery harbored three dozen eggs, more or less- though I have heard of crèches that harbored up to a hundred.”
Interesting.
She doesn’t seem to want to follow him, but does so anyway as he climbs the rocky path that leads to the man standing on the ledge.
“So if you don’t mind me asking, who lays the eggs?”
“ Shu'kyani,” Lae’zel explains. “Githyanki chosen specially by Vlaakith to bear young. She is the one who decides when eggs are laid, and how many they must bear."
Sounds awfully controlling, but Kisame knows full well that Lae’zel will not like him questioning her queen.
“...That’s interesting.” he says instead.
“It is an asexual process,” Lae’zel explains. “A superior process, as well- hideous, to imagine not being able to partake in the pleasures of sex without the looming threat of bearing children.”
Kisame snorts, finding the disgust with which she utters the word children hilarious.
He only allows himself that brief moment of levity though, because his curiosity has brought him to the one Lae’zel called the varsh- which sounds something like a caretaker.
The man senses his approach, and is not in a good mood.
“Tell Kith’rak Therezzyn my stance has not changed,” he snaps, though his voice wavers the slightest bit. “The egg still needs more time, so more time it will get!”
“Woah, hold on,” Kisame says, getting him to whirl around in surprise. “I’ve got nothing to do with any kith’rak or whatever.”
“An istik in the hatchery? What is this world coming to…”
He scratches at his head of sparse white hair and sighs.
“What’s the big deal about a single egg?” Kisame asks, looking over his shoulder at the single egg sitting in a pool of something that smells rank.
“All of the others in this clutch have already hatched. All except this one. This one is…taking its time.”
“Seems like you’re going to a lot of trouble for a single egg that might be a dud.”
“Most would not give the egg a fair chance,” the varsh says, and Kisame doesn’t think he’s ever heard someone sound so earnest. “But I shall. There could be greatness in that shell, we just need to give it the opportunity…”
Kisame nods, sensing the defeat in the man’s voice- the voice of one who has been fighting a losing battle for a very long time.
Maybe it’s his silence, or his obvious curiosity, that gets the man to open up a bit more.
“I was the last of my clutch to hatch. I would have been drowned in the hatchery pool, had my own varsh not intervened. This egg deserves that same opportunity…”
“What happens if it doesn’t hatch soon?”
“...it will be destroyed. And everyone here will move on as though it never existed.”
Brutal, but it’s in line with everything else that he’s learned about this culture so far.
(Almost feels like home…)
“What if one of us took it?”
“What?”
The varsh squints at him, cocking his head as if to be sure he’d heard him right.
“What would you know about Githyanki child rearing?” he demands.
“Me? Not a whole lot.”
He gestures to Lae’zel, who has so far maintained a stoic silence.
“She does, though. You think someone from Crèche K'liir would be able to show me the ropes?”
It’s a mad idea, and the quizzical expression Lae’zel gives him in response just confirms the fact.
“Crèche K'liir…?”
Ko’kuu lights up at that- that must be a prestigious place to grow up, but she had never said so.
“Of course, if she’s not up to it, maybe we can find another crèche. One that’s maybe more forgiving.”
Both Lae’zel and Ko’kuu snort at that, like the idea is ridiculous. But the levity doesn’t last for long, because the grave expression on his wizened face returns in an instant.
“I suppose I don’t have much choice,” he says. “Therezzyn’s patience is already thin, especially with everything else going on.”
He gestures toward the egg.
“Do what you must. But do not let her know what you’ve done.”
That sounds like a plan- absconding with this egg would probably get them in trouble regardless of whether they simply planned to destroy it.
"Got it."
They wade through the viscous, acidic fluid and climb their way down to where the egg is resting- about the size of a small child, which he supposes makes sense.
The shell of the egg is tough and leathery- much like a snake’s egg. It’s just barely translucent enough that he can see the shape of a child stirring faintly within it.
How bizarre. But fascinating.
Lae’zel has the barest hint of a smile on her face as she looks the egg over as well.
The egg is late to hatch, true. But as far as either of them can tell, the child within it is perfectly healthy, just taking its time just as the varsh had said.
Not unlike human babies, he supposes.
The egg is heavier than he thought it’d be when he picks it up, stowing it carefully in his pack (which up until now had been more or less empty.)
It’ll be a pain to explain to the others why he has suddenly acquired an unborn Githyanki child to look after, but he’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.
Ko’kuu looks worried, but realizes he has no other choice so he bites his tongue.
No doubt he’ll just tell the kith’rak that he destroyed the egg, and all will go on as normal.
"Now then, we should really see that ghustil, eh?"
"You are right. Let's go."