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The books in his library were all covered in a thick layer of dust. He picked up a tome absent-mindedly, flipping through the thin pages. His eyes slid over the words, failing to glean any meaning from the written text. The dust motes hung in the air from where his gesture had disrupted them, lingering in the stillness of the room. Everything in this room was in stasis, a museum to the man he once was—or was it a mausoleum?
Gale had not left his tower for months. The home, which had once been his pride and joy, that he had furnished so lovingly with the foolish fantasy that it might ever be enough to tempt a goddess away from the heavens and down into his waiting arms, into blissful domesticity, was now merely a solitary prison, a cell wherein he rotted and waited only for the courage to finally end his suffering.
His thoughts often sank into this dark place, replaying the naïve optimism that brought about his downfall, causing Mystra to turn away from him. How many nights had he spent kneeling before her idol, weeping, begging, calling to her again and again in the desperate hope that he might hear her voice a single time more? He prayed for the chance to explain himself, to beseech her forgiveness, to tell her once more that he loved her. He cried out in despair to the impassive heavens, but her stony expression remained implacable.
In the end, the silence became his most familiar friend. He withdrew from his colleagues, his friends, even his own mother. He couldn’t bear to be seen in this state: such a fall from glory, these new miseries that were becoming all too familiar. His eyes grew haunted, dark with sleepless nights and unspoken sadness. His power was being leeched by the orb, which grew into a raw, aching maw in his chest. Beneath that hunger, the rest of his body grew weak, his muscles atrophying from disuse until he would grow tired merely taking the stairs of his tower. Tara would find him sitting in the middle of a flight of stairs, too exhausted to either ascend or descend. In these moments, she never spoke but merely sat beside him, purring gently beneath his touch until he finally gathered the strength to climb the rest of the way up to his chambers. He spent most of those days in bed.
Tara seemed determined to keep him alive, even when his apathy ran entirely counter to this goal. She would go out for days at a time, searching for magical artifacts to sate the orb. In his gloomier moments, Gale told himself that she didn’t care about him; she was just trying to protect others from him. After all, if the orb was left ignored for too long, it had enough force to easily level a city as large as Waterdeep, killing everyone who had ever been unfortunate enough to meet him and countless others. (Except for Mystra, of course. She would merely bear witness to yet another of his failures.)
In his gloomiest moments, he would think that he almost didn’t care if the entire city burned along with him—let the world burn, let the world know his pain. But he knew his conscience would never allow him to slaughter innocent lives in a vain attempt to externalize his own self-loathing. He was the sole recipient of all of his hatred, all of his anger. He couldn’t even muster a true resentment of Mystra for casting him aside.
Being loved by her, being her Chosen, had felt like the most beautiful dream. She had reached her divine hand out, touched him of all the people she could have had, and lifted him to dizzying, unknowable heights. His mistake had been in thinking that anything between a mortal and an immortal could truly last. He woke from the dream into a living nightmare, and fell from her pedestal, plummeting to the earth with a sickening thud back into reality. He still bore the scars of his failure like a dirty brand across his chest, a dark infection of his very soul—the heart he had once promised her, now scorned and sullied.
Gale blinked, pulling himself out of his unhappy reverie. He was alone, as usual. Tara had left on yet another expedition to find him an artifact. He had protested, as he did each time, but they both knew the truth: the magical artifacts were having less and less of an effect in satiating the orb. He could tell that Tara was getting drawn out, tired, slinking back into the tower at strange hours and sleeping too much. The truth was there before his very eyes, even if he didn’t want to admit it: nobody was coming to save him.
He had arranged his ‘contingency’ plan, so to speak. He would find the remotest place in Faerûn that he could, likely deep in the Underdark, far from the world he knew and loved, and simply wait for the end to overtake him. He felt a kind of sinking dread at the thought. Did he truly want to die? Of course not. He was terrified of death. He was so scared to die, to die alone, in the dark, in an unfamiliar place, and alone as always. But the alternative was worse: to risk hurting those he loved, whose only crime was caring for him and being close to him, to become a burden.
Sitting at his desk, he pulled out the notebook. There were already countless drafts of letters in these pages, some unfinished, some scribbled out, and other sheets torn out altogether. He felt a lump form in his throat as he dipped his quill in the ink pot, tears already stinging at the corner of his eyes as he began, once again, to try to say goodbye.
Dear Tara,
If you are reading this letter, I am already gone. As we have discussed, I will travel far, far away from Waterdeep to a place where I can meet my end alone. I will do everything I can to ensure that no one but me pays for my mistakes.
Tara, words will never suffice to thank you for every act of care you have shown me these past years. I am eternally humbled by your love and friendship, which have meant everything to me. I never said this anywhere near enough, but I love you.
Please take care of my mother, Tara. I know she will likely blame herself for problems that I have brought wholly upon myself, and though you have already done so much, I ask only that you keep an eye on her in the way that you have with me.
May Mystra forgive me. I pray that my soul will find rest in her open hands at last.
Gale sat alone in the Underdark. The journey to this place had felt like a pilgrimage, and now he was at his final destination, in the lonely depths of the subterranean realm. He had found a place far from all civilization, where there was nothing but the luminescent glow of strange mushrooms for company. The air was cool and clammy around him, and he couldn’t help thinking that it already felt like a tomb here, the cavernous earth like a freshly dug grave awaiting only a body. He shivered slightly and waved his hand through a familiar series of gestures, illuminating the air above him in an illusion of twinkling faerie fire, an iridescent swirl of turquoise and violet lights.
The lights swam through the haze of his tears. He knew this moment was coming, but the slender mirage of beauty did little to alleviate the grief, the abject fear. Now, in utter solitude, he sobbed with helpless abandon—messy, hiccuping cries that tore out of his throat and disappeared into the darkness that was creeping ever closer. He wept for the boy he had once been, so bright and ambitious, and for the future that he had gambled away on the slimmest possibility of divine love. He wept in the silence of his goddess, the tendrils of his magic that he could feel slipping away even now, like ink dissipating into water. And, most of all, he wept like a child who simply missed his mother and his best friend.
He was sobbing so hard that when he heard the distant echo of Tara’s voice, he thought at first it was only the memory of her coming to him in his final moments. But as her frantic meows grew closer, he turned his bleary eyes upwards, straining to see through the darkness until he finally saw, in the darkness, a small winged figure approaching—
She flew into his arms, colliding against his body, the way she had when he had first summoned her when she was just a kitten. He laughed tearfully, still stunned, hugging her tightly. “Tara! How did you find me? You really shouldn’t be here-”
She cut him off abruptly. “I came as soon as I found the note. Really, Mr. Dekarios, you think I would forget about your little plan of going into the Underdark?”
“I hope you’re not here to stop me, Tara. I’m sorry, but my mind is quite made up. I know it’s difficult, but I really think it’s for the best. The orb is... deteriorating. You know it as well as I do. The magical artifacts were never a permanent solution.”
The tressym was silent for a long moment, and when she finally looked up, her eyes were shiny with tears. When she finally spoke, Gale could hear her heart breaking with each word. “I understand. But we’ve been together through so much; I couldn’t let you do this alone.”
He was speechless, looking down at her, trying to process what she had said. “You— Tara, I can’t allow you to do this. It’s unthinkable.”
She shook her head firmly, and he knew she would brook no disagreement on this matter. “You have made your choice, and I have made mine.” Then, her voice grew softer: “Gale... Please. I could not bear to know you faced such a thing by yourself.”
At last, he relented, holding her tight against his chest as he summoned a magical dagger. The orb glowed greedily, ready to consume all of him at last. He held the tip of the blade against his sternum, where it bit deep into the skin, and whispered, “I love you, Tara.”
Her voice echoed back in a soft murmur. “I’m so proud of you, my little love.”
Tears streamed down his face as he pressed the dagger deep into his chest, and everything suddenly erupted into a burning blaze of fiery light. He grimaced in sheer agony as he felt his very self being obliterated by the orb. Before it all disappeared into pure white, the last sensation he felt was Tara’s soft fur against his fingertips, her small body purring to the end.