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One moment, they stood atop a cliff in the Underdark, fending off a pair of hook horrors.
The next, the ground beneath them gave way and sent them plummeting with a deafening crack.
Dirt and stone shattered in all directions, and before Gale could even react, the ground ravenously swallowed them whole. He landed hard, the breath knocked from his chest as falling dust and debris filled the air above him.
Crack.
Then darkness.
Consciousness returned in bits and pieces, like the scattered fragments of Gale's mind trying to right itself—a muted sound here, a flash of pain there, the scent of blood and ancient rot lingering over it all.
It took every ounce of willpower and strength the wizard had to force his eyes open, little good that it did. His human eyes weren't made for the Underdark, even when surrounded by bioluminescent mushrooms, but in this deep darkness, he might as well be blind.
The cave's cold breath wrapped around him, bitter and cruel, and the stones that had fallen with them pressed against his aching body from all sides. Gale wanted light, needed it, but the rubble pinned him fast, and he had no idea if he could reach his component pouch for the necessary spell material.
He tried shifting his arm toward his belt, fingers shaking, but the flare of agony along his elbow shut that idea down pretty quickly.
Perhaps it was time for a different tactic. "Hello?" he called out in a voice much raspier than anticipated. He coughed, dislodging a thick layer of dust that clung to his lips and beard and the inside of his throat. "Is—is anyone else there?"
The space around him felt smaller with every passing second—narrower, tighter, suffocating.
But then he heard it. The faint, high-pitched whine of an injured animal. The weak scrabbling sounds of claws on rock.
Gale's mind immediately began indexing every single creature he could think of in this cursed place that could possibly have ended up down here with him: locations, strengths, weaknesses, group dynamics, feeding habits, anything that might be of use–
Another sound came: a whimper, one that sliced through the dread with a familiarity born of countless interrupted nights. He knew that voice. "Astarion?"
The frenetic noises stopped, at least for the moment. "...Gale?"
"Yes, I'm here." Clenching his teeth against the pain, the wizard began to test the debris around him, trying to determine if he had any leeway to move. "Are you alright? Or as alright as one might be in these circumstances? Can you feel any heavy bleeding, or if anything's broken?"
"I… I can't see anything," Astarion rasped, his voice low and shaky.
Cursing, Gale sucked in his belly to make a little extra space beneath his prone body, thrilled to find that it left him just enough room to shift his other arm toward a familiar leather pouch. Thank Mystra that he'd enchanted it much in the same way as a Bag of Holding, a thing of convenience that allowed him to simply slide his hand inside and think of the component he needed. At least he wouldn't have to find the right ingredient by touch alone.
Feeling gritty phosphorus powder trickling through his fingers, Gale pulled it out, tugged at the Weave despite the pain shooting through his fingers, and muttered a hasty, "fiat lux."
Pop.
A transparent sphere with a soft purple glow snapped into existence only a finger's breadth from his face, leaving his eyes struggling to adjust to the sudden light.
The view once they did almost left him wishing that they hadn't.
The wizard found himself pinned under a heavy boulder, one only kept from flattening him thanks to nothing short of a miracle—namely the edge of a rocky protrusion in the crevasse's wall that kept the stone from settling firmly atop his body. A cautious wriggle of his left arm proved unwise; he might not be a healer, but even he knew that bones shouldn't grind like that.
But he was not the only one down here. "Can you see my light, Astarion?" he asked, squinting through the dust that still lazily swirled through the air.
No answer.
"Astarion!" Gale called out again, voice hoarse with urgency. "I need you to answer me, please. I don't know where you are."
Something shifted, sending pebbles clattering somewhere relatively close by. Thank the gods. "No. Maybe?"
Gale didn't like the way his voice sounded as it slithered through the rubble, breathless and agitated like a spooked animal on the verge of flight. But at least it gave him a better idea of where the vampire might be. He split the glowing sphere in two, sending the second out along a narrow gap in the debris, in the direction of Astarion's voice. "How about now?"
His reply came in something akin to a sob. “Yes.”
It took a little maneuvering of both his lights and his mostly immobilized form, but Gale finally managed to find an angle to lay eyes on his companion. Astarion sat several arms' lengths away, his eyes wide and unfocused, his pupils dilated, his body half-buried beneath a heap of jagged stone. The collapse had left him pinned, his outstretched leg trapped beneath a slab of rock, the weight of it heavy enough to make it impossible for him to move.
Astarin's body was still, but his hands were twitching and trembling at his sides, his knuckles white, as though he could force himself to break free if only he willed it hard enough.
"Hey," Gale called, trying to get the other man to concentrate on him rather than the predicament that they found themselves in. "Look at me. Can you see me now? I can see you."
Astarion's lips parted, but the words that came out were barely more than a whisper. "I… I can't… I can't breathe…"
He couldn't see any damage to the vampire's chest, but that didn't mean that nothing was wrong. Still, he had a hunch that the lack of air stemmed more from Astarion's mental state than anything physical.
The vampire's voice quivered with the unmistakable panic of a man reliving his darkest moments—such as the suffocating terror of being trapped in a tomb for a year, left to rot, unable to move, to escape. It'd been a true struggle to wrangle the tale out of him at the time, no matter how blasé Astarion had tried to appear. Gale had a suspicion that the reality of it had been a thousand times worse than the vampire had ever let on.
Gods, did he ever want to slaughter that bastard Cazador.
Gale schooled his voice to something more gentle and soothing. "You don't need to breathe, remember? You only have to do it if you want to, but you won't die without it." The last thing either of them needed was for Astarion to lose his sense of self down here. "Just stay calm and keep looking at me. You're not alone down here."
But Astarion wasn't listening. His eyes were darting, fixated on the stone pressing in from all directions, and his breath came in shallow bursts. Gale could almost see the terror of his memories weighing in upon him. The tomb. The endless dark. The feeling of being crushed by rock, unable to move, unable to breathe, trapped like an insect in amber.
"No," Astarion rasped, his voice low and shaky. "No, no, no... Not again. Not again…"
He tried to push against the stone with his uninjured leg, but his foot slipped on the hard stone beneath them. His chest heaved, and the tremor in his body deepened.
Oh, how Gale ached to reach out and offer the man some comfort. "Easy, Astarion," he said, reaching for him with his good arm, but the distance was too great.
The distance was too great.
Gale cursed under his breath, several things hitting him all at once.
One, he should be able to cast Dimension Door to return to the scene of the fight, albeit on more solid ground; he can visualize the area quite well, and he doubted that they'd fallen more than a couple hundred feet.
Two, he could bring a willing creature with him to safety, and Astarion certainly seemed willing.
But three. Three was the clincher. That willing creature had to be within five feet of him, and Astarion certainly was not.
Gale could feel a pulse of alarm creeping into his own chest, right alongside the usual ache of the Netherese orb, but he shoved it down. He had to remain composed for Astarion's sake.
"Alright, I need you to listen to me," the wizard said, his voice calm but lined with a touch of resolve. "I do have a spell that could teleport me out of here. I could get to safety and fetch some of the others to help dig you out."
He saw Astarion's eyes flicker, and he could hear the vampire's breath stutter. His lips parted, and for a moment, Gale thought he might scream, might lash out, might even beg.
"But even if I could, and I could, I won't." Gale took a deep breath, trying to steady himself as much for Astarion's sake as his own. "I won't do it. I'm not leaving you alone down here, alright?"
Ruby eyes flickered to him, disbelief and something else—something raw—flashing in the vampire's gaze. "Why?" he asked, his voice quivering. "Why would you stay?"
"Because for reasons that even I can't fathom, I've come to care about you." Gale didn't hesitate. It was the truth, as simple as that. "And you don't deserve to be stuck down here by yourself. We survived the cave-in, so barring any other catastrophes, we'll probably be fine with waiting here a little while longer."
Astarion's lips parted, but no words came. He trembled harder. Gale could only imagine that his reaction stemmed from the vulnerability of having one of his worst fears exposed, and worse still, having someone choose to stay.
Gale's voice remained soft as he continued. "I'm not leaving you in this darkness. Not now, not ever. Whatever happens, we'll face it together."
Astarion swallowed hard and gave the slightest of nods. His breath was still shaky, but it was no longer the frantic, panicked gasps of someone on the edge of breaking. It was slower, more measured. "You—" he started, voice strained and cracking, "you'll stay." His wide eyes slowly began to soften, just a little, as if the weight of Gale's words and presence were slowly drawing him back from the precipice of madness.
"That's what I said, darling." The vampire's usual term of endearment fell from Gale's lips in a way that felt ridiculous, but the tension of this whole situation was desperately in need of a break. His pride could survive a minor brush with levity.
It was enough. The trembling of Astarion's body seemed to ease even more, and while he didn't (or couldn't) laugh, Gale knew him well enough to hear a touch of fondness in his voice as he quietly muttered, "Don't quit your day job, Wizard."
The purple light hovering near Astarion drifted closer, almost as if to caress his pale, dirt-streaked cheek. "I promise I shan't."
The seconds stretched long as they remained trapped together in the dim, suffocating gloom. The fear might still linger, the walls might still press in, but Gale stayed as Astarion's lifeline, giving him the freedom he needed to breathe.
And that, until the time when their merry band of companions finally descended into the sinkhole to help exhume them from their temporary tomb, was enough.