Chapter Text
“Now, right foot further… further…” A hand comes to rest on your hip, and you feel a tap against your right ankle, guiding your movements. You glance down, distracted from your target, and your mentor lets out a soft chuckle, his free hand moving under your arm. Two fingers push up on your chin, realigning your head. Doing your best to follow his directions, your right foot shifts forward, inching awkwardly across the ground until you no longer feel his shoe against your calf.
“Should I aim for the head?”
“The head? ” He laughs, his fingers pulling away from your chin, his arm outstretching to be parallel with yours, showing you where to position your own. “No, Tempus , let’s keep it simple,” he teases, pointing a finger at the torso of a hay-stuffed target, elderly chainmail armor lazily draped over its shoulders. “Eyes on the torso. And, please, do refrain from igniting my tower in a fiery blaze. These shelves took far too long to fill.”
“I know, I know, I’ve got it,” you assure, earning a mewl of disbelief from a tabby Tressym resting a few feet away from the target, her tail and front paws hanging off of an empty space on the aforementioned bookshelves.
“Mr. Dekarios, are you sure this is the safest we can be?” Tara purrs, her right wing twitching, likely anxious that you were bound to do exactly as he asked you not to and burn the whole tower down.
“I trust them, Tara. After all, books can only get one so far. Hands-on practice is far more valuable!” He encourages, leaning down slightly, enough that you can hear his breathing beside your ear. “Now. Steady. Focus… and picture it. A small flame, harmless, really. Landing square on the torso, created from your very–”
“Ignis!” You shout, and Tara shoots up from where she was laying, bouncing away from the target and landing on a pile of books. Despite her reaction, there was no flame, though you swore you could’ve spotted a spark from your fingertip.
Gale lowers his arm, giving you a little more space, and he removes his hand from your hip, even taking a step back, perhaps a little too aware of the vicinity between your bodies. “Again. The pronunciation was exquisite, I must avow. Reach into your mind, no matter how far you must travel. Hear her whispers, channel the inferno within. Whether it be rage, passion, optimism – you must grasp the element, and feel the heat,” he explains, earning a small nod from you. Your eyes close, and you seek out the embers he spoke of.
Your mind wanders– it has to, if you truly want to tame the element, no part of your mind should be off limits. Though it travels to unexpected places. You most certainly find warmth, though it wasn’t the warmth you expected. It wasn’t a burn, yet it was a heat. One that hovered around your body, brought on by closeness to another, breathing figure. You could see books, and the moon, hanging high outside, the room coated with a gentle blue glow. It was strange, like you were inspecting a faded picture rather than experiencing a dream.
Hardening your focus, you grit your teeth. There was a purring, quiet, under the desk. Yes! You sat at the desk, seated on a small velvet stool, stationed next to a figure cloaked in purple. His arm, carefully positioned to allow you to gaze at and read along with the book he studied, brushed lightly against your shoulder. It couldn’t have been more than two weeks ago, during one of your late-night mentoring sessions, when he’d caught you sneaking around in the library, looking for something to keep your sleepless mind occupied.
Reminding yourself of the mission at hand, you search for inspiration, and find a lone lit candle towards the back of the desk, the glow encapsulating the two of you and casting light on the material you read. With a deep breath, you do your best to channel that candle. As small as it was, it seemed the most helpful component in finding the blaze Gale directed, and you exhaled.
“Ignis!”
Your eyes open, feeling a half-second surge of heat in your fingertips, and much to your surprise, a tiny flame shot out from your index finger, though it fell to the floor and sizzled out before it made it halfway to your target.
Still, it was enough to earn a chuckle and a series of short claps from your mentor, pleased with your performance even with as amateur as it was. “See, Tara? Hardly a threat to the books!”
The tressym’s wings stretch, and her body follows, leaning back on her haunches as she yawns. With a flick of her tail, she muses “Hardly a threat to anyone , for that matter! I’m quite sure a crocked kobold could muster up a drink stronger than that.”
“Oh, be patient, Tara. Everyone must start somewhere.” You spot Gale’s shadow waving his hand dismissively, before that shadow approaches yours, and you feel a hand on each of your shoulders. “I presume you found your root. Return, and study it. Learn it. Conform to it. Again.”
You inhale, and once more close your eyes, returning to the moonlit scene. The candle seemed dimmer, now, and you wonder if you’d somehow extracted the power from a memory. You’ve heard – well, read – about plenty of curious happenings related to the power and influence of the weave, but it was quite a different experience to feel those effects. You knew that you had focused quite closely on the candle, and yet it bore disappointing results. And now, that flame burned weaker.
It may be best to turn to other means of fuel. Your eyes scan the memory, contemplating the moon, before deciding it was far too tame, and far too distant to harness. The temperate coziness you felt in the moment pulses through you again, soothing your nerves, easing the racing of your heart. Warmth.
It doesn’t take you long to realize just where the heat originates from. Though neither of you were aware in that moment, or perhaps you merely glossed over the fact, you sat close; in order to read the contents of the book, you had to be near to him. And near, you were.
The time aided you, your fatigue stronger than your dignity, and allowed you to rest your head against his shoulder as you hardly managed to keep up with the lines of text, let alone truly process the material you were attempting to soak up. It was warm, despite the winter that hadn’t yet faded. He was warm. You’d been close with him before, though it was always fleeting. Accidentally bumping into him as you gathered materials around his study, or the second-long contact of your hands when you answered his fetch requests. Occasionally, when he guided your hand to some place in particular, over the ridges of a carved staff or the spines of books on his shelves. Even once, just once, that he’d allowed you to press your palm against his chest, his purple robe displaced just enough to expose the stain of the Netherese orb, which had produced an alarming heat from beneath his skin, and he’d felt inclined to share it with you.
But here, this memory, this occurrence, was hardly fleeting. He must have been willed by weary exhaustion just as well, because he didn’t shy away from the close contact. Instead, Gale rested his jaw against the top of your head, continuing to idly review the book he’d read countless times. You were sure that, if he had fewer things to concern himself with, he very well could have recited the lectures on dead gods from memory.
You hear a distant ‘ mrrow ’ of boredom and you recount your steps, regaining sight of your mission once more. You relax your body, only maintaining enough control to keep yourself standing, and your arm aimed. As you burn this sight, this time with him, and these feelings into your memory – should you ever need to recall the sight again, perhaps in future lessons, you want to be prepared – there is an airiness that wraps your body. Although you are planted firmly on a surface, both in the real world and in this vision, it feels as though you’ve been granted feather falling and have leapt from the balcony, becoming one with the breeze. And yet there is no chill, there is no bite from the rush of air, merely a dazing high.
His breathing is all you hear. Mellow and stable. You focus on the patterned flow, the delicate and inviting tepidity, the velvety brush of his clothes against your face.
“Love?”
Your eyes open, head swiveling around to face him, and he seems taken aback by your response. You aren’t sure you heard him right, and he isn’t sure you heard him right either, so he points behind you, head tilting slightly. Following his attention, you find that the target now displays a moderately-sized searing hole in the torso, near the right shoulder. You don’t recall announcing the spell, but it’s quite possible that you were too wrapped up in channeling the fire bolt to realize you’d casted it.
When your attention clings to the training dummy for too long, Gale steps into your peripherals, and you turn to face him once more. Again, he motions towards your successful delivery. “ Flames and Fatalities, volume one, chapter four.”
“Red for rage, orange for survival, white for hope, pink for love,” you recite, easily recalling the information provided in one of the spellbooks Gale had you study several times over.
“Precisely. Your flame – it contained a pink hue. Love,” he clarifies, and your gaze flicks over to the training dummy, and then back at Gale.
A familiar warmth brushes against your ankle, and you look down, finding a sassy winged creature at your feet. “At least someone in this tower seeks romantic companionship. Mr. Dekarios may very well have something to learn himself,” Tara purrs, and Gale releases a short sigh at her taunt, running a hand through his loose brown hair. “You used to be such a romantic. Though you seem much more of the hopeless kind these days.”
“Well, Tara, I don’t possess an acropolis of free time, I fear. Romantic pursuits do not fit into my schedule,” Gale attempts to defend, though Tara merely tilts her chin up and turns her head away from him, tail stiffening with antipathy. When you look up from the feline-like familiar, you find Gale eyeing you, splitting his sight away the moment your eyes meet, rendering you incapable of registering whatever strange emotion you thought you caught a glimpse of in his eyes.
You don’t like the taste of the unforeseen tightness in the air, so you clear your throat, looking around the study. “Hells, I forgot to tend to the garden yesterday. Does that sum up my lesson for now?” You ask, looking back at Gale. He stares at the mannequin for a few moments more, and for a second, you fear that you’d damaged it too much, but then he releases a gentle laugh, dipping his head.
“Indeed. You performed marvelously. Go on, I’ve got artifacts to busy myself with. If you’re not back by the time I finish, I’ll put together a meal.” Gale motions for the main doors, and steps past you, approaching a mid-sized woven basket containing a staff, an enchanted dagger, and a pair of leather gloves glowing with a faint orange hue. You watch him, and he pauses as he lifts the basket, glancing at you from over his shoulder, his smile aged, though it held a certain pride in the catenary of his lips. “May I ask?”
Confused, you narrow your eyes. “Ask what?”
“Where did you find your flame?”
Allowing yourself a moment to think, you make sure to keep your eyes on him, and then you provide a nonchalant shrug. “I thought of my parents.”
Gale is still, his reaction a delayed one, before he widens his smile in a quick chuckle. “Charming. Hold onto that. It’s a solid base.”
You nod, and then finally turn around as Gale resumes moving the basket from the floor to his desk. You grab an empty basket of your own on the way out, disappearing and leaving him to his artifacts.
Stepping outside grants you an opportunity to taste the last flavors of the fading winter, only feeling the quick spikes of a chill every few minutes, and even then, it’s only thanks to the setting sun. You still wear a purple velvet shawl, as per the request – well, demand – of Gale. He insisted many moons ago that you shouldn’t ever risk getting sick when you can take measures to avoid such a fate, and you’d decided it was much simpler to go along with it than to argue your safety. That plan was cemented when he purchased you a finely tailored purple shawl, the edges of the hood and cloak lined with lynx fur, dyed a dark pink to complement the thick purple velvet that made up the majority of the shawl. A gift that nothing short of surprised you, even had you fooled into believing you’d been dreaming when he presented it to you. Why he was so particularly fearful of the cold, you weren’t sure, but you deeply appreciated the gift, and even if you did enjoy winter’s nip, the shawl was both gorgeous and comfortable, and you’d be insane to leave it behind.
Gale was also particularly sensitive to cold weather, from what you could tell, which likely had a role in his passionate bias against the chilliness of post-snow air. Frankly, you were fine with the occasional runny nose in exchange for a chance to wander down a snow-dusted forest trail, and you didn’t mind a shiver here and there while you caught free-falling flakes that Waterdeep was ever so rarely granted.
The garden, however, was much like Gale – hardly a fan of the cold. Gale did not have a green thumb, but he still shared similarities with the plants you tended. Those plants that, currently, were dead and buried. While you’d managed to convince him to try his hand at herbalism and gardening, he had more of Bhaal’s touch with the sprouts than the ‘magic’ touch he so often joked about. It was amusing, and a little pitiful; the exasperated sigh and the troubled frown that followed your breaking of the news, that his poorly packed and overwatered plants had passed. He was dramatic, and managed to find the humor in the situation, though vowed to let you handle anything to do with seedlings and crops from that point onwards.
It was unfortunate, as you appreciated his entertaining company (even if it came mostly in the form of griping, displeased that he had to get so up close and personal with dirt and worms) around the garden beds, but it allowed for moments like these. Truth be told, you had no intention of gardening. You would have to wait another twelve dawns until any useful plants would be back in season, so planting anything this late in winter would be a waste of both time and resources.
Instead, you aimed to explore a small forest trail that you’d just recently discovered, not far from the tower you stayed at. To say you lived there felt like too strong, too certain, of a term. It was the only place you slept, and nearly all of your time was spent there, but you knew it wasn’t home . It was Gale’s home, and you were a mere guest. A sixteen-month-and-counting guest, but a guest nonetheless. You worked, your apprenticeship laboursome and sometimes really quite demanding, and Gale repaid your loyalty and assistance by giving you a place to stay. You’d just never planned to stay so long .
In all honesty, you expected it to be a very temporary arrangement. You suspected Gale felt the same way. But circumstances changed, and so did minds, and you didn’t see yourself leaving anytime soon. It helped that you got along quite well with your boss-slash-roommate, despite the differences in personality and age. You were comfortable with the way things were, and Gale had just recently begun to sprout ideas of passing his own spell-casting knowledge on to you, with today’s lesson being a prime example. When you weren’t helping out around his home, or running errands for him, or tending to the garden, you were most usually subjected to reading long passages from books that were once very far above your understanding.
If Gale was a master of anything, it was surely knowledge. You’d found it odd, at first. Spending all of his days wasting away in his tower, just reading , rotting into a hermit, you’d assumed. But you’d soon gained an appreciation for his boundless mind, and felt almost honored that he’d decided you worthy of learning from him. Being a wizard’s apprentice had never been in the plans, not even as a fleeting hypothetical, and yet you found yourself in that exact scenario – and enjoying it nonetheless!
Glancing down at the small woven basket hanging from your arm, you frowned, lost in thought. Gale taught you a lot, and he still had plenty left to teach, but by no means did that translate over to you really knowing the man you shared a house with. He taught from books and scrolls, and on a few spare good days from his own vast experience. Even with all of the lectures he gave, you found that any details about him that weren’t related to magic, or your lessons, were all quite lacking. What you did know about his personal life was almost purely from observation.
Well, a few times when Tara had made a passing comment about some personal detail and surely was later scolded for it, but those were few and far between. If anyone were to blame for your curiosity, it was most certainly the man himself. He loved preaching the importance of curiosity, exploration (despite rarely leaving the confines of his study), and seeking knowledge, and you’d be a rather poor apprentice to disregard such lessons. Or, arguably worse, cherry pick when you applied those lessons to real world scenarios.
Most recently, your nose for curiosity had picked up on the notably pungent scent of Gale’s behavior. It was unusual, slightly withdrawn, perhaps a little panicked if you truly squinted between the lines. Gale was predictable, for the most part – it was one of his traits that had earned him your trust in the first place. Though as of recent, he’d been rather strange . And not the typical Gale kind of strange – an unsettling, uncharacteristic strange. One that you knew better than to ask questions about, but one that certainly sprouted confusion.
You neared the edge of the forest, giving the pale trees a smile as if to promise your peace. Pausing just before the tree line, you peered into the woods, interested as to what you might discover. You proceeded, following a very faint trail into the woods. You had a pretty solid confidence in your navigational skills – otherwise you most definitely would’ve gotten completely trapped in the maze of a city that was Waterdeep every time you ran any sort of errand – so you weren’t particularly concerned with getting lost.
Allowing your thoughts to return to Gale, you reminded yourself that you weren’t really lying to him. You definitely weren’t going to the garden, but you still planned on harvesting plants. You’d known him for almost a year and a half, and you knew the gist of what he’d been through, what with his mentorship from Mystra herself – which was so cool, and he was way too casual about it – and his strange appetite thanks to the Netherese orb that had become one with him. All that aside, however, you didn’t know many details about his past. For as chatty and sarcastic as he was, you couldn’t shake the feeling he had a good number of secrets he withheld from you, and big ones at that.
Of course, Gale was entitled to his privacy, and you didn’t want to intrude or push his boundaries, but it was impossible to ignore the signs of unease. His constantly drifted mind, his long breaks between lessons, his increasingly frequent requests. Or the way that he’d direct you to read a passage from some folktale or other, only to remain silent for several moments after you finish, gazing longingly past his balcony. He’d been consuming more artifacts than usual recently, and gained a sudden eagerness to push real world practice into your schedules. Not that you minded the inflow of new information, but it didn’t seem to come from a place of excitement. Instead, you figured anxiety; judging based off of the common rapid bouncing of his leg, the messy-and-messier spread of his books and trinkets – especially when compared to how well-kept the place always was whenever you’d started working under him – or his new tendency to forget what he had and hadn’t asked of you, or which lessons he’d already covered, or hell, where he had last placed his staff.
Well, what better way to get someone to open up and relax than with a hand-picked bouquet and some herbal tea?
Even if he didn’t spill his guts to you, he certainly needed a pick-me-up. Sure, you already did a lot for him, but he did a lot for you, too. Maybe even more than he realized. He deserved a treat.
– – –
“Though it may be bold of me to say, I estimate they’ll be a fine caster someday.”
“Bold indeed, Mr. Dekarios. Awfully bold. They quite nearly began trembling at the idea of a mere fire bolt!” The small beast chirped back, seated firmly atop his desk, pawing at a small fuzzy ball that swung from a thin string, easily entertained by the simple contraption.
“Even I stumbled; all beginners do. Time is all they need. ‘Time heals all wounds’, is that not how the scriptures read?” He asked, sticking his tongue out and running the tip of a long harpy feather over it.
As he dipped that same tip in a vial half-filled with a thick, clear liquid, Tara quickly outstretched a wing, the end of it not-so-accidentally hitting her companion in the face. The startle nearly caused him to knock over the bottle of magic ink, his torso leaning forward as he just barely managed to steady it with both hands, and he glared at his familiar out of the corner of his eye. She merely stretched out her other wing, feigning obliviousness before eventually looking back at him. “You are still the same fool who summoned me all those years ago. You are a prodigy, Mr. Dekarios! You were half their age then; to compare your ‘stumbles’ to the incompetence of a commoner such as them is exhaustively inconceivable.”
“Tara, I implore you to exercise patience. They are a fine apprentice, and they certainly have the potential for brilliance. Am I not a competent mentor?” He asked, raising an eyebrow, intending the question to be at least somewhat thought-provoking, but the only reaction he received was Tara turning her head away and murmuring something too quiet for Gale to hear. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, he knew her well enough to predict it was something snarky, and he didn’t bother investigating. He dipped the large quill again, unable to recall if he’d already wet the tool, and the liquid dripped off of the tip, shimmering in the glint of the fading sun as it rejoined the rest contained in the bottle. “Why is it that you repudiate all of their attempts to bond with you? Surely you don’t think them ill-mannered?”
“ ‘Ill-mannered’ , he says,” she mocks, her tail flicking in irritation. “It is not their civilities that I have quarrels with. It is the expectations I deplore.”
“Expectations?” Gale repeats, his palm flattening against his desk, pressing out the sides of a contorted scroll, the tip of the feather hovering over the yellowed paper.
After solving her own deliberation, the tressym turns around, her wings folding against her sides, her tail curling around her paws. “Have you no fear that your confidence is misplaced? Mr. Dekarios, do you not worry that they may fall short in your plans for them? That they are not up to the task you have decided to burden them with?”
Gale’s irritated gaze softens, his hand relaxing, coming to join his other hand in resting on the desk. The clear liquid on the quill drips onto the parchment, becoming a black dot in an instant, the weave-infused iridescent ink soaking seamlessly into the paper. “I fear nobody could ever truly be capable. But my options are limited, and my few select choices are each disheartening in their own cruel ways.”
“Evidently, you have already made up your mind. Why is it that you allow them to remain oblivious? You know better than anyone how dire the circumstances are.” Tara’s paws slide forward, her belly laying flat on the desk, and she plants her head atop of her mitts.
Gale moves his hand, letting the paper curl up without the weight, to gently scratch Tara’s head, her pitying purr drawing a sigh from his own chest. “I am but a ticking time bomb. Hardly much of a man these days,” he chuckles dryly, looking around the dust-riddled mess that he still called a study. It would be nothing short of anarchy if it weren’t for his apprentice, and he’s seen it in far worse shape, but it doesn’t quite shake the quiet guilt that rocks in his stomach at just how far he’s fallen. Gale is usually quick to excuse his carelessness as an incurable consequence of his age, but he’s well-aware that his energy is not merely being lost alongside his youth.
The artifacts he consumes have only ever satiated a part of the orb’s appetite. Never quite satisfied – a commonly reoccurring trait of those Gale finds himself engaging with – the sortilege feeds off of him as well. The incantations he recites and the thaumaturgy he practices only grows stronger – more powerful than Gale could have ever predicted or wished for – while his body withers away as though his very anatomy is actively being shredded, and relentlessly so, to make room for spells that he now dreads casting.
It doesn’t help that his learned reliance was only ripped away from him when he truly needed assistance. When the man who once considered himself the smartest in all of Faerûn was clueless about his own condition, the only person who could possibly have the answers disappeared .
Now, Gale was left to clean up the pieces. He understands this is his own doing – that he was, and still is, a fool. Once blinded by greed, a greed that led him to being blinded by love, a love that led him to being blinded by desperation, a desperation that led to him being trapped by fear. A fear that now has settled, more or less. Present as ever, but no longer unfamiliar, no longer a new addition to Gale’s emotions.
His hand returns to the paper, and Tara steadies her sights on the bottom of the quill, watching as it twirls, imprinting promises and bittersweet apologies onto the scroll. Words he couldn’t possibly utter aloud, but words that couldn’t be more genuine. The recipient deserves more than a written explanation and cursive laments, and he’s aware of the injustice he’s manufacturing, but he is a terribly faded man who is cursed by a deficiency in time and yet finds himself with so much left to do. He decides it is better a raven on her doorstep than his ghost, lacking any explanation.
Each day, he wakes to find his chest a little warmer, his hands a little shakier, his hair a little thinner. And each day feels like his last. He is entirely helpless to the foe that resides inside of him, of all places. Incapable of defending against something that has already breached his castle walls, and even more useless as it has latched under his skin, reducing him to nothing more than a habitat. He hosts an aberration that has grown far, far too large for its enclosure, and who threatens to rupture its cage with every breath that he dares to draw.
He’s held out for long enough. He’s lived longer than he ever imagined possible, but he knows his limits. The truth stings in places untouched by the Netherese’s reaches; his forced composure starts an ache in his face, but he knows better. With a sharp inhale, Gale rolls up the paper, setting down the large brown feather as he retrieves a thin, fraying string, tightly wrapping the letter up. He even finishes it off with a neat bow, a force of habit, and he sets it aside, leaning back in his chair.
The moon is just barely visible now, approaching the stars and creeping over the mild coverage of the stone railings on his balcony, and the wizard watches the white giant rise. Some unburied, deep sense of longing reflects in his eyes, where the moon also resides, though she is much smaller and much dimmer. There’s movement on the desk, but Gale’s eyes aren’t yet drawn away from the beauty of the night. Then there’s a weight in his lap, and a purring against his stomach, and he lowers his hand to rest on Tara’s back, gently stroking, enjoying the silent tranquility.
‘ Mystra’s moon’ he used to call it. He’d tell her he could see her in the shadowed curves, but he isn’t sure if he ever really did. Maybe in a dream, long lost to him now. The moon that watched over him tonight was certainly not Mystra’s. It was bright, encasing the room in a beautiful blue, and the gaze it returned was a soft one. Free of judgment, free of stress, free of difficulty.
“I reckon I’ll be up there soon,” he exhales, feeling his familiar curl up in his lap. “Ruling my own section of sky. Perhaps I’ll even have purpose. I can’t help but wonder what it’s like.”
“Peaceful, I suspect. An eternity of peace, at that. What a prospect.”
“You’ll join me some day?”
The feline purrs out a quiet chuckle, her tail curling around her body so the tip rests on her nose, bundled perfectly atop his thighs. “Of course. I can only go so long without a self-warming bed.”
Gale smiles, his hand falling still on her back, though his thumb continues to run up and down her fur. “Give them a chance, will you? They can’t do it without guidance.”
“I’ll take care of them,” Tara reassures, her tone much softer now than when she spoke of his apprentice earlier. “Do wait for me up there. I’ll be by your side before long, Mr. Dekarios.”
“I set out tomorrow night. I’ll inform them of what they need to know.”