Chapter Text
High up on Gale’s list of pleasurable things were good books, good food and, of course, good company. At the present moment however, he had almost none of it. Caught by a nautiloid, dropped off in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but muck and dirt around him and with naught to eat but tubers the past days. Although there was that one time in Fainting Goat Tavern where… No. This was worse than anything that a gnome could do with half a glass of pickles and some lard.
Gale studiously avoids thinking of the orb in his chest and the dull ache it produces. By now he was an old hand at ignoring it.
Instead, he fixes his eyes up ahead where Leander, strumming her lute, warbles a song about a fishmonger to annoy her elder sister, Cordelia. Astarion follows close behind, interjecting with a new word when Leander’s vocabulary runs dry, starting her anew on an awful rhyme. Although Cordelia is frowning, Gale senses a quiet, serene sort of amusement emanating from her.
Good company… Oh what company he had. A pair of Ar-tel-quessir nobles and a vampire, alongside more miscellaneous characters. He bemusedly wonders what would happen if they were all to walk in a bar. Perhaps the punchline would kill them stone cold dead. A wizard and bard sisters, who could not be more different than one another.
The first time he met Cordelia fresh off a Netherese transportation rune, Gale was struck with her appearance and manner. Tall, ram-rod straight posture with a mien of distaste at her surroundings, the elf was exactly the type of woman a younger Gale would have looked to impressed. Alas, now he knew better. Especially as Cordelia seemed to be avoidant of his company. Not that she would show it. Oh no. The dear elf was too well-bred to let her distaste shine through and instead, with a few well-placed words, would gracefully excuse herself from any conversation longer than the polite minimum with him.
Perhaps… Surely not. She was a wizard, but just like him her powers had been reduced by that damned tadpole. Cordelia should not be able to sense the taint from the Netherese magic, not without knowing what she was looking for. But by how she manipulated the Weave, the elf must be a talented wizard. Who is to say that she has not come across any Netherese magic in her studies and therefore might recognise its hold on him? The eldest scion from a noble elven house must have had the best tutors and libraries made available to her, no doubt.
So much so Gale was lost in thought that he did not notice when Leander’s music had ceased, or when she lagged behind to walk beside him.
“If you frown any harder at her your face might freeze that way. And an elf could walk a long ways ahead before finding another one such as yours.”
Gale starts at her voice and rips his eyes from the figure of the elf in front. Leander is ambling lazily alongside him and despite her amused voice, her eyes are serious, fixed onto her sister. She continues:
“I wouldn’t take how she is acting too personally. I would be lying if I said she isn’t usually like this, but she is.” A brief pause. “She is slow to trust, especially humans. No offense, of course, since you can’t help the latter.”
Gale smiles at her, thankful for her attempts to soothe the relationship between him and Cordelia. Although it could not be helped, he does feel better for her words. He chooses to focus on the former of statements, the well-worn cloak of banter and flirting quickly falling into place.
“Ah, so you think I’m handsome? I’m glad to see your sense of taste is much more evolved than your taste in couplets,” he quips, fully turning his attention towards her.
Leander scrunches her face at his words, but after a second she lets out a loud ha of amusement.
“As you keep reminding us. I wasn’t the one admiring my clone in camp in plain view of everyone.” Gale tactfully decides not to remark on the fact that she spends 15 minutes each morning preening in a small, cracked handglass they’ve found. Leander sniffs, impetuously, and continues. “Perhaps Waterdhavians cannot appreciate the ingenuity of rhyming ‘horn’ with ‘morn’, and ‘rock’ with ‘cock’. It’s a well-known quessirian rhetoric device.”
At this Leander winks outrageously, aware of the absurdness of her statement, startling Gale into a laugh.
Two sisters as different as they could be. Still as tall as Cordelia, Leander couldn’t have been more different in both bearing and temperament. A bard by trade, Leander delighted in vexing friends and foes alike. Despite this, Gale found himself charmed by her infectious joie de vivre and willingness to entertain his theories, often offering much more improbable alternatives to whatever thesis he provided.
As Leander continues chattering, his mind goes back to the moment he met Leander, in the chaotic swirl of battle. As he, Cordelia and Shadowheart made their way forward and into a goblin scouting party things turned south rather too fast for his liking. Still thinking he was as powerful as before, a thought evidently mirrored by Cordelia, Gale tried to immolate the goblin attacking one of the humans left outside the gate.
He invoked his spell and … nothing.
The strength behind the spell was simply not there. For one terrifying second he thought that Mystra had truly abandoned him. But a quick glance besides him proved that everyone suffered from the same malady. Cordelia’s cone of cold had failed too, the gestures for it shimmering into existence, then dissipating. Shadowheart’s outstretched hands likewise did not manage to conjure up flames.
Their eyes met and the same sentiment was reflected in them. Somehow the tadpole had sapped them of their power. An insult almost too grave to bear for him. From archwizard, to wizard and now to a novice. A little voice inside him reminded him that perhaps this was Mystra’s continued punishment, another slight to show her displeasure and add to his punishment. A fitting insult for a man who thought to understand the Weave better than its mistress could.
But before he could entertain such maudlin thoughts, the battle had begun and they were left all but bare-arsed in front of a goblin raid party. The poor sods outside the gate were quickly overrun, with an arrow lodging in the back of the woman. The tiefling and the other human could only help so much by raining down arrows and spells onto the goblins. Descending into the fray it would have been suicide, as they were quickly finding out.
In the commotion, Gale, not paying attention to his surroundings, had tripped on a rock that was jutting out. A single misstep and he went down, right in the path of a goblin bruiser. A quick glance showed that Shadowheart was busy raising her shield to defend one of the humans, while Cordelia had taken to whacking the worg with her staff. No shield or cantrip came to mind, his mana exhausted for the moment. A harlequin's death for him it seemed. Kidnapped by Illythids, implanted with a tadpole then tripping on the bare ground to be skewered by a stinking goblin.
The goblin raised his blade. Gale closed his eyes and only hoped that his death protocol was still in place and Cordelia would be intrigued enough to bring him back to life. The blade came down and a sharp word shouted from somewhere behind him forced Gale to open his eyes.
“I’ve seen spoons sharper than you!” said a voice, the power in the word unmistakable, like nails racking down a blackboard. The goblin dropped his blade surprised, before a githyanki tackled him to the ground.
The same voice continued but this time towards him, accompanied by a touch on his shoulder. “Hey diddle diddle / The wizard and the fiddle, / The goblin went down and the man went up / The wizard laughed to see such a riddle.”
Energy fizzed into his veins giving him the energy to spring up. Turning around, Gale faced his rescuer: the elf he had seen lying dead in the nautiloid was alive. Flanked closely by yet another elf (did the nautiloid stop to pick up every elf in the land?), his rescuer briefly smiled at him before joining in the fray, shouting at Cordelia to hit that damned goblin harder.
And so, Gale was introduced to who he now knew as Leander, Astarion and Lae’zel. Later on, the other human from the battle had introduced himself as Wyll, another passenger of the Nautiloid, to his non-existent surprise.
Since then, he had found a number of facts about the bard. Her relationship with her sister had been evident from the way they hugged tearfully amidst the goblin corpses. Had he not experienced her Healing Word, the fact that she was a bard would have been discovered the moment he realised she could not sit quiet. She was the polar opposite to her sister. Whereas Cordelia could not stand to be around him, Leander always seemed to favour him in camp, seeking out his opinion on this and that and asking him to conjure familiars. She would tease him into sharing some of his poetry or interrogate him about Waterdeep and its taverns.
A hand waves in front of his face causes him to blink.
“Copper for your thoughts?” Leander asks.
Once again Gale is pulled from his thoughts, but this time some embarrassment accompanies it.
“I beg your pardon,” he winces. What a cad he was, getting lost in his mind and ignoring the chattering elf. Thankfully Leander didn’t appear too insulted at this. “It seems I have a lot on my mind today,” he lies, not about to tell her he was thinking about her.
Leander bobs her head sympathetically at this and continues speaking as if he did not just hear a single word she said.
“I was only saying it is nice to hear someone appreciating my songs. Even if that someone is a Waterdhavian,” she teases. Her cheerful voice turns strained as she continues. “Ever since this damned tadpole started slurping on my brain it feels like my songs have been nothing but drivel.”
Gale can fully understand the sentiment and just as he is about to share his theories on what it might be causing it, something stops him. He can feel the bitterness emitting from that statement. The sentiment is out of place in someone as bright as Leander. Gale has noticed that whenever the topic of tadpoles comes up, Leander’s body tenses and she makes her excuses to leave the conversation.
“Ah, but what lovely drivel this is,” he says, trying to distract her from the parasite. “Should you decide to charge us plebs in the camp for playing, I would surely have a few silvers to spare, to hear the most exquisite of ditties this side of Faerün.”
Gale hopes that that the thought of him scraping together some silvers he does not have would appeal to Leander’s more mercenary senses. To his disappointment, his words have the opposite effect to what he wanted. Leander smiles sadly at him.
“I had the power to make a hundred people weep with a ballad or torch a frenzy of passion with only a pluck of lyre.” Her voice falls into a melancholy tone. Even after spending so much time together, Gale is still surprised at how any change of her tone seems to strike at the very core of his. “I once made those present at one of Cordelia’s birthday parties dance until the dawn rose and then compelled them to dance again until night fell the following day. Their shoes were all but worn through…”
As Leander trails off, the tadpole seems to respond to her distress and chooses to connect their minds. For a moment Gale steels himself against the intrusion until he realises that it is not his thoughts that are offered for perusal.
Flashes of taverns, of touches and kisses and laughter make his way into his mind. The same touches are then given form through a song, a vibration which twists the very fabric of the consciousness. The sweet kiss of a crush transforms into a quick allegro. A tavern brawl is a chord strummed in anger. A tender embrace is the lull in a melody. A humming fills his senses, and intrigued, Gale tries to follow the vision. Was Leander as talented as to transform somatic feelings into Weave magic and then back again? More memories flash, quick moments which turn more and more intimate. Hands splayed on a strong back, fisted into dark hair and wrapped around a slender thigh. Lust twists in his stomach.
The bard curses under her breath and shakes her head to clear the vision but does not look embarrassed at what she unwillingly shared. However, she does raise an eyebrow at Gale's rooting around her memories. Mortified at his behaviour, Gale tries to avert his face but her eyes hold him captive.
“Ah, how annoying these things are,” Leander murmurs. “I guess you saw how my music works?” Gale’s face burns but he nods nevertheless. “I miss the luxuries of traveling in cities. I miss the experiences that it brings, and how my songs are shaped by it. I miss...”
The moment is suddenly intimate. Leander’s words trail off, her voice dying in her throat. When did their heads get so close together? Gale can feel Leander’s breath wash over his face and she likewise. He wonders whether her eyes have always been this colour, the dark of the skies and of the depthless sea. His eyes dart down to her lips, where a pink tongue emerges and quickly flicks on her bottom lip, leaving it shiny and wet.
Suddenly, Gale wonders what would happen if he were to dart his head down and capture her mouth. Would she let him? A glance upwards proves that she is just as enchanted in the moment, her eyes fixed on his lips likewise, the tips of her pointed ears a delicate red. She would let him. Gale was sure of it. But he would not let himself do it. Not with a curse hanging over his head and the memory of Mystra still bleeding a jagged edge in his consciousness.
With regret Gale straightens up and looks straight ahead. Whatever spell was between them breaks. Gale misses the flash of disappointment on Leander’s face and her face mottling, turning into an embarrassed shade of puce, her hands reaching up to fan her face. He clears his throat and steers the conversation back into its earlier waters. But Gale cannot discard the conversation completely. He does not have it in him to bury what she has shared with him.
“Perhaps tonight will bring new experiences for you, bard. Who knows what visitors we might perhaps stumble upon in our dreams?” There. A safe enough thing to say. Night brings counsel or so they say.
Gale gathers his courage to look at the elf beside him. For a second Leander looks surprised and something flashes behind her eyes. But then she laughs, the sound crystal bright and throws her arm around his shoulders, leaning onto him, the lute thudding on her body.
Surprised, Gale lets himself indulge in this touch and reciprocates Leander’s gesture leaning into her too, like two friends making their way home from a tavern. Yes. He could almost believe this was a night in Waterdeep, the tadpoles and Illithids just something from a book left open in his desk.
*
Later that night, Gale’s dreams are much more pleasant than they have ever been. Instead of a meadow and too clever apparition, a much more intimate dream takes place. A dream he has often imagined. Mystra finally returned to him, allowing him to come back to the Weave, an errant lover let back in a familiar bed. Warm arms slip around him, and soft lips press cool kisses on his neck, following the curve of his jaw. A nose nuzzles into his beard. He smiles as lips press to his, a plush mouth opening and licking into his smiling mouth.
Desire pools low in his belly and stiffens his cock, making him press closer to this dream, seeking a soft heat. But the dream is wrong. It is not the soft curves of Mystra that press into him, nor the sweet smell of rose water that permeates his consciousness. His arms are wrapped around a much leaner frame and what he can smell is an earthy moss...?
Gale opens his eyes.
The body is still here intertwined with his, too solid to be mere imagination. The darkness makes it almost impossible to see who, what, is here and so he starts thrashing, calling to his hands the simplest cantrip he can muster.
A hissed curse in the dark, in a much too familiar voice, suddenly stops his struggling and hands grab at his arm just about as he is about to conjure a flame.
“Shit, do you want to set the tent on fire?”
A familiar voice.
“Leander?” Gale ventures out, feeling hands slip from his forearm. His voice is rough, thick with sleep and desire. His cock is still hard, pulse thudding in his ears and adrenaline still coursing through his veins. “What… are you doing?”
“What do you mean what am I doing? I waited for you for hours and thought you’d fallen asleep!” The wizard tries to clear the haze of sleep and remember what the bard is talking about. At his confused face Leander continues to whisper. “Today (well, yesterday now) when you almost kissed me… you said to wait for what the night would bring. Isn’t this what you meant?”
Oh, sweet Selûne in the sky. Gale had not imagined that their moment would have had a lasting impact. Back in camp, Leander was her usual self, flitting around and joking, smiling brightly at him whenever he happened to look upon her.
No. He was lying to himself. Gale could see perfectly well how a young elf (for although she was 30 years older than him, the brightness of youth still clung onto her) desperate for some connection, after a close brush with death, would interpret his words.
It had been so easy to flirt and banter with Leander. Gale liked witty people, and her willingness to flatter him had appeased his ego. He hadn’t realised how much he had missed being the centre of someone’s attention, to be sought out for his company until the bard had given him this gift again. Courtship would have not crossed her mind, not when he proved to be receptive to her advances. Why spend time courting when slipping in his tent would have achieved the same goal, much more faster and efficiently.
His face must have betrayed his realisation. A muttered curse in elven and Leander slams her hands onto the bedroll. “I had thought all the flirting for the past few days. Earlier today… I thought you wanted to finish what you started.” Her previously confident voice is replaced by a vulnerable whisper. “When you kept flirting with me I thought you liked me too but were too shy to approach. Corellon’s balls what a fool I’ve been.”
Gale tries to gather enough wits to open his mouth and say something. But Leander will not let him speak. As he opens his mouth, she plods on ahead, while her hands try to untangle her legs from his sleeping bag.
“I am very sorry Master Gale,” she says, as her voice takes on the cadence of her sister. Her usually lax speech crisps up, a frostiness that was not there before entering her words. “Please accept my apologies and trust me when I say this will not repeat itself.”
Had Gale not been still flummoxed he would have teased her for how much she sounds like the noble she pretends she is not. But for all his knowledge he cannot find anything to say to clear up this mare. Worse even, is the fact that although he can’t see her, Gale can feel her embarrassment. Leander is facing away from him, hiding her face, his silence causing her to tense up. One of the sheets he sleeps on has tangled around her ankle and her hands seem to shake too hard to untangle herself.
If he was a good man he would let her walk away, end whatever this was before it began. Perhaps even offer a quip to dissolve the tension. But a better man he is not. He is tired. Tired of being cold and alone, tired of the doom hanging over him, tired of this whole nightmare. Her confession echoes in his ear (I thought you liked me too), sweet words whispered to a dead man walking in the dead of night.
Although blind in the dark, Gale reaches out until he can feel a tense back. He trails his hand up until he can slide it down her arm and reach her hands.
They are shaking. And ever so cold. He gently untangles them from the twisted sheets.
“Stay. Please.”