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ACT I
The only thing keeping seven exhausted adventurers from a much deserved rest in the harrowing Underdark was no band of wicked cultists or goblin raiders, but an enormous boulder eating up most of the space in the only alcove they had managed to find.
“We could do without,” Wyll suggested, sizing up their would-be campsite, and the sheer cliffside at the edge of it, too close for comfort. “All we really need is room for our bedrolls and a fire, anyway.”
“We’d be on top of each other, practically,” Shadowheart said, her words clipped and weary. “I’d prefer not. I require relative peace for my evening prayers, and some of you reek of our last skirmish.”
“Your relative lack of wounds is not the accomplishment you think it is, is’tark . Would that we could all spectate from a favourable vantage, tossing healing spells when it so fancies us,” Lae’zel hissed, while everyone was curiously ducking their noses into their collars, or under their arms.
Gale saw Shadowheart’s eyes narrow, and decided to intervene before they were at each other’s throats again.
“Now, now, we are all very capable, and can surely put our heads together in moving a rock. It’s hardly the most difficult thing we’ve managed to date.” The wizard gestured a flourish of invitation toward their resident sorceress, a solution already on the tip of his tongue. “Might I offer an attempt of the sorcerous variety. I’m sure between myself and my fellow mage, we will have access in no time, and drain only half our energy for the better.”
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Toska agreed with renewed optimism. “It sounds like you already have something in mind.” Gale nodded, and turned at once to the offending boulder, tucking a small, pleased smile into his cheek where no one could see.
“Just so long as I don’t have to lift a finger,” Astarion huffed, and threw down his knapsack with everyone else to wait while quick work was made.
“If you contend with the weight of the thing, I can see it safely over the ledge,” Gale went on as Toska joined him, sizing up the rock. “I can guide it without having to pool all my focus into just lifting it, and we should be clear in no time.”
“You don’t think it would be easier to blast it into more manageable pieces?” Toska asked. “We won’t drain our reserves as much, I think. We could use our hands to throw the pieces over at that point.”
“We are using our hands.” Gale waggled his fingers and winked. “Think you can manage it?”
Toska’s gaze slid between him and the boulder. “Yes,” she finally said. “I can stabilise it while you manoeuvre.”
“Splendid!” They moved a few paces away so they weren’t on top of each other, the others a safe enough distance from the action. Gale watched as Toska summoned a schooling breath, the way she often did on the threshold of a spell. As if she were bending the four winds to her will, stilling the machinations of the sky. It wasn’t quite the same in the Underdark, but Gale wouldn’t be surprised if she had been able to summon a tempest to the depths all the same.
She cast a holding spell, the lightning-crackle of her incantation pulling Gale from his musings, and he watched her energy flood about the boulder. If this went right, as it surely would between the two of them, it would be like cupping his hands around hers, as gently as bidding an injured bird to fly again. Straight into the pitch black of the chasm below.
“You’re standing like you’re trying to lift it,” Gale noticed, a little amusement in his voice as he took in the wide stance of her legs, the rigid spread of her arms.
“That’s because I am,” Toska said matter-of-factly, effort in her voice.
“I’ll be doing the lifting, in a manner of speaking. And anyway, it’s completely unnecessary to draw upon the power of your muscles for this.”
“Can you just toss it already?” Toska said, a little more peppery than Gale entirely expected. Fair enough, they all wanted to camp down already. He spun a little riff on the same holding spell that would allow his movement, and reached out the same, netting up the rock in his magic. Lest he get lost in the easy bliss of his energy twined with Toska’s, he was swift to move the boulder in a careful, determined arc.
It floated easily for a moment, aloft between them, a veritable feat of sorcerous cooperation. Just as Gale was revelling in the near-accomplishment, suddenly the entirety of the boulder’s weight surged upon him. He dropped it with a ground-shaking thud, before simply contending with it could sap his reserves.
“You were supposed to follow me,” Gale exclaimed.
“You didn’t say which direction you were aiming,” Toska argued, shaking her hands out as if the boulder had been bearing down on her .
“The chasm is on our right, easy enough. Perhaps you’re too tired. I could probably manage this on my own, if you want to have a lie down with the others.”
“You’re not serious.”
“What’s there not to be serious about?” Gale asked, genuinely.
Toska didn’t answer, only shook her head, and fell into the spell again. This time her magic fluttered about the rock, like a weak heartbeat. Gale could tell just from the tension in her shoulders it wasn’t going to hold up very well beneath his own cast.
“Now, you're getting frustrated,” he warned, well-acquainted with the effect an unfocused mind had in the trajectory of magic. “Might I suggest a few cleansing breaths, and starting slowly this time, from the beginning.”
“I'm getting frustrated because you're being obnoxious!” Toska snapped, quite unexpectedly, her voice echoing across the dark.
For a moment, caught completely off-guard, Gale could only stare at her outraged face. “I'm obnoxious for guiding you through a multi-step spell we're trying to pull off in tandem,” he finally countered, a breath struggling out of him in the meantime.
“Who said I needed guidance?”
“Your manner begs guidance!”
“If I wanted help, I would ask for it before I ever set myself to begging .”
“Come, Toska, I didn’t mean-”
“Fucking SHUT UP! ” Karlach shoved up from her repose, glowing indignantly as she stalked toward them. Gale hissed when her shoulder clipped his sternum, and before he could prevent her from interfering in a situation he had a fine enough handle on, the tiefling had planted her feet and hauled the great big rock into her arms, without a lick of deliberate magic to the whole manoeuvre.
She cast the boulder into the chasm, and the whole rockside vibrated with its impact, wherever it had landed in the gloom. When it seemed that they weren’t going to be buried beneath a sea of rubble, Gale turned to find Toska stomping into the newly accessed cavern with scarcely a look over her shoulder, or a thanks for trying .
“Well, that’s that,” he announced as the others filtered past.
Despite feeling put-out about the whole thing, it was hardly worth spoiling the night over, and Gale set to their supper with a weightless conscience. By the time most of them had settled in and changed for the evening, he had skewers roasting and dripping sweet juices over the campfire. Their dinner had been well-earned.
He tried not to appear over eager as their resident sorceress moved toward him for the first time since the incident with the boulder, an hour or more ago. “Toska,” Gale chimed, “I hope you worked up an appetite.”
“Yeah,” she said curtly.
“I thought those mushrooms we picked up earlier might make a fabulous addition to a camp classic that, I’m sure, has worn on everyone’s palate.” He definitely wasn’t stalling as he prised two skewers free for her, holding them by the ends, so they didn’t drip on their sleeves. “You’d be surprised at the complex flavours one can infuse in a marinade with something so easily foraged.”
“That’s amazing, Gale. Tell me more about cooking with mushrooms, as if I’ve never touched a pan in my life.”
“Well, I didn’t use a pan-” Toska didn’t quite snatch the skewers from him, but she absconded abrasively all the same, taking her meal elsewhere. He didn’t realise until she disappeared into her tent that she had been facetious in the first place.
Gale huffed, testing the temperature of his pork with the tips of his fingers as the rest of his fellows shuffled into place around the fire. “Don’t you hate when a tantrum ruins a good meal,” he grumbled.
“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing,” Shadowheart murmured.
Gale hummed in appreciative agreement. Except when he glanced up, everyone was staring at him, and the feeling didn’t appear to be mutual.
“That’s a very queer look to pin on me, someone who cooked your supper after a long day out of the kindness of his heart,” he uttered, not feeling so confident as his words might betray.
“You don’t have any idea why Toska is upset, do you?”
“She’s upset because she lost her grip on the boulder, and I had something to say about it. A lapse in focus, no matter. It’s hardly worth grousing around about.”
“Oh boy,” Wyll murmured, eyes wide behind the rim of his goblet.
Shadowheart sighed. “She’s upset because you spoke to her like an idiot the entire time you made the attempt.”
“An idiot!” Gale puffed, defencive. “I respect Toska a great deal. I regarded her with the same deference I’d offer any mage.”
“That is not promising.”
“The cleric speaks truth, for once,” Lae’zel muttered in her no-nonsense way. “If a comrade regarded me the way you had, I’d have plunged my sword into his guts, and let his innards spool on the ground.”
Gale tried to imagine Toska with a sword, his viscera at the end of it. What did it say about him that it was more stirring than sobering?
“We heard the whole squabble,” Wyll put in, wincing sympathetically. “It was kind of drawn-out. Talking down to her among friends like that? I think you embarrassed her."
The queasy, molten hot dread churning in Gale’s chest, that he had been trying to ignore ever since Toska stormed off, seemed to surge on him at this new information. He didn’t know what to say, except that, “I would never, ever dream of wanting to embarrass her.”
“You do kinda have a tendency to wiz-splain,” Karlach said, a moment before she ripped into her skewer. Five confused heads swivelled toward her, but no elaboration came.
“Pardon?” Gale finally barked.
“You know, wiz-splaining.” Karlach gestured with her skewer, flinging hot flecks of grease. Astarion swiped the droplets from his cheek with a contemptuous look on his face. “Wizards think they know everything about magic just ‘cause they went to some fancy school for it, so they wind up blathering on about the Weave and arcane theory to perfectly capable spellcasters, and they don’t even realise they’re doing it. Call that wiz-splaining.”
What Karlach called blathering , Gale had a tendency to call enthusiasm . But it wasn’t that far off from things he had been accused of in less blatant terms, among those of his ilk. Still, of all people, he had expected (and hoped) Toska would recognize that enthusiasm for what it was.
“Well?” Realising Astarion had been uncharacteristically silent, Gale lobbed his gaze at the pale elf next, across the fire. “What are your thoughts on the matter?”
“Oh, I don’t care about any of this in the slightest,” Astarion replied cheerfully. “Excellent sear on this pork, though.”
“You don’t have any opinion whatsoever?”
“Fine. If you must know, you’re an unforgivable scoundrel. Go detonate that bomb in your chest about it.”
“Don’t fucking say that,” Karlach growled, punching Astarion in the arm. A yelp of pain leapt out of him, his supper nearly fumbled from his hands.
“But I am, clearly, an oblivious, obnoxious fool with no regard for my friend’s feelings,” Gale muttered.
“Sure, you could sit here turning that over,” Shadowheart said, “or you could do something productive and apologise. I agree that this really ought not go on any longer than it has, but I think the rest is up to you.”
Gale held her jade gaze for a moment, before he lost his nerve and flicked his eyes toward the skewer he was twirling between his fingers. All things considered, he had just about lost his appetite.
His flimsy courage would not allow him to do anything about the situation until the lot of them had retired to their own spaces, and even then, a great deal of warring with himself. Surely he could stay put, try to sleep, and even if Toska was still cross with him the next morning, their circumstances would require they speak on kind enough terms eventually. She might very well forget about this whole thing.
But that was probably how you treated someone you didn’t regard nearly as well as Gale regarded Toska.
Ducking under the parted flap of her tent was an entirely novel experience, especially with no idea how she would meet him inside. Usually she made her rounds, and sat with him in his space a while to talk, before she retired for bed. Tonight, of course, was different, though he had hoped every moment before he set foot here that it wouldn’t be.
Toska was bent over the ground with her bedroll cushioned behind her, a book in her lap. A novel, from the slight size of it.
“What are you reading?” Gale asked, which seemed monumentally easier at that moment than anything he was supposed to say. Toska looked up at him placidly. He tried not to think about the smiles she usually reserved for him.
“Just something Shadowheart lent me,” Toska said, already tucking the book beneath the pillow before Gale could catch the title in the low light of her candles. It was pathetic how his insides churned at a denial as small as this.
“What do you want?” she prompted, as brusque as she had been all evening.
Gale didn't know how he was supposed to apologise standing over her, so he handled himself to the ground, enduring the creaking complaint of his knees as some sort of penance. The fact he had not been invited or welcomed made it that much harder, but the least he could do was level with her, if looking down on her had been the misunderstanding in the first place.
“It's come to my attention that I've been behaving like an insufferable boor, and I've failed to appreciate your feelings and skill as a powerful sorcerer. I'm torn up about everything I said to you with the boulder and if I had any sense at all I would have let you perform your magic without mucking the whole thing up with my interference.”
As miserable as this prospect had seemed, Gale couldn't believe how shame fell out of him now, full and fast. Like he could vomit up the feeling of regret poisoning his organs if he tried hard enough, said enough.
“It was just…utterly tactless, deplorable, and not at all justified. I can't blame you for reacting the way you did. Couldn't blame you if you wanted nothing to do with me either.”
“Do you always flagellate yourself when you apologise?” Toska asked suddenly. The question had the effect of an arrow, striking Gale through the jugular. At least it had the effect of distracting from his guilt too, however momentarily.
“I don't know that I've ever described it that way, no,” he answered, hating the way defence crawled into his voice.
“Did she expect you to?”
“Who’s she ?”
Toska blinked. The indifference about her fluctuated, her gaze darting away, a tension in her brows.
“Mystra.”
Funny, that these errors could follow him through his whole life–apparently–and not once had that name crossed his thoughts, since the moment Toska left his side. It wasn't the first time Gale had noticed the absence, in the aftermath. One consuming presence bearing on his mind, traded for another. He wasn't sure what to make of it.
He wasn't sure what to say, either. That arrow wedged further, as she filled his thoughts again, at the climax of his folly. How he had begged and pleaded in excess, all those delusions of godly grandeur syphoned down to deity and supplicant.
Here he was on his knees for forgiveness again.
“I'm sorry,” Toska blurted, moving closer as her legs folded beneath her. “It's absolutely none of my business.”
“No, it's alright,” Gale said, though at the moment he struggled to remember what had possessed him to be honest with her about everything else, in the first place. Only that it had been gratifying in the end; when he had placed the truth of his hubris in her hands, to crush or cradle as she pleased, she had been gentle with it. Somehow it was hard to believe he would be afforded the same kindness, now.
“I suppose, when one has savoured and spent the good graces of a goddess,” he considered, his gaze roaming as he really searched within himself, “one might be predisposed to facing situations like this with, er, perhaps, overly dramatic, uncomfortable displays of remorse. Which can be rather a burden, despite the desired effect of expressing remorse.”
“Gods like grovelling,” Toska said, and left it at that. Gale nodded, though he had the express dissatisfaction of knowing as much as they liked it, it didn’t always work.
“Can you try apologising to me , instead?” she asked. Gale figured the least he could do was take her up on that, instead of wallowing in the sensation of being riddled with arrows.
“I hurt you, because my words came off implying inexperience,” Gale tried–and somehow, it wasn’t a feat just to breathe. With his shins numb, he shifted his legs beneath him, almost absently. “Which wasn’t my intention, but as it was hurtful all the same, I’m sorry. I’ll try not to do it again.”
Ease broke through the tension in her face, like the sun splitting the clouds. “I really appreciate that. And let me be clear, I didn’t think for a second you intended to hurt me.”
“It was oblivious zeal, nothing more. Though I understand how that might have come off as wiz-splaining.”
“Wiz-splaining?” Toska repeated dubiously.
Gale shook his head. “Nevermind. The fact is I could express my zeal, and my appreciation better. I relish every chance to work side-by-side with you. I love…”
The word that was not the word Gale meant to say flourished in the erratic tumble of his thoughts, while Toska’s blue tide eyes bored into him, unhelpfully. Damn half-elves and their luminous irises.
“...To do magic with you,” he uttered, fists clenching on his thighs.
“I, also, love to do magic with you,” Toska said, walking back through his words with a slight pause, a self-conscious smile filling her lips. Gods help him. Any one would do, so long as they answered.
“ And sharing your zeal. You’re passionate about magic in a way that makes me cherish my gift like never before. Sometimes I don’t have to say anything, and you’ll wax poetic for ages before you catch yourself. It’s inspiring, really. And very endearing.”
Even the dim wasn’t quite dim enough to keep Gale from wanting to hide behind his hands, the way heat licked up his face. The way she did this to him, how could he ever look down on her? How could she even think it? Of course, that line of reasoning probably rendered his apology moot; he veered away from it.
Instead, lost for words, Gale wondered if she still held this in her thoughts–the night of the tiefling party, when their troubles were further away, and hope especially high. The kiss that bloomed from her mind and seeped into his, strung along the Weave. Or had she rid it from her conscious musings with the mutual understanding that, in his state, he could not satisfy her?
Gale’s id seemed to rage against his caution. Surely a kiss wouldn’t send them all to kingdom come. In the dark, in the quiet, his heart fit to bursting. There was no poetic waxing that would sate his delight in her.
Toska’s head dipped forward, an inclination, and Gale thought Maybe, just this once … His breath scattered out of him, and he didn’t think he had an excuse for how his voice had escaped him.
Then, a tug in his chest set his teeth to clenching, if only just. The sweeping mark peeking from his collar pulsed dully, smearing Toska’s edges in purple light–as if in grim reminder. Save room for the murderously unstable Orb of pure, unadulterated magical energy. It was enough.
“Should probably tuck in for the night,” Gale whispered. He wondered if he imagined the look of disappointment crossing Toska’s face, or if his thoughts were just swimming in self-importance. “It’s been a trying day, no thanks to me.”
“Hardly our most trying,” Toska said good-naturedly. She reached forward and patted his hand once, unlingering. “Goodnight, Gale.”
He saw himself out, leaving her to her rest. Just shy of Toska’s tent, Gale stared across the crystal-limmed expanse of their little camp, the blue bioluminescence conquered only by the fading orange embers of the fire, and not for long. He stood there until the warm light slipped away, and he followed it with a sigh.
That uncanny hunger gripped him again in a painful burst. Doubling over, he clutched his chest, vying for quiet, hoping only that he might sleep through the night.
Between his heart and the Orb, he wasn’t sure which demanded more of him.