Chapter Text
Gale hurls another fireball across the chasm and bitterly wishes they'd taken the mountain pass route instead. Ever since their little party set foot in the Underdark they’ve been made very unwelcome indeed, and they still have miles to go.
An arrow lands in the dirt, inches from his foot. Gale throws up a belated ward, hands shaking.
'That was far too close, Gale!' Lae'zel scolds beside him, swinging her sword into the face of an unfortunate drider. Half of it falls over the rocky ledge and disappears, screaming. The other half drops at her feet, spider legs twitching. Gale swallows his nausea and prepares another spell.
'Is our dear wizard getting tired?' Astarion shoots Gale a cocky look, firing his arrow without even looking. It hits a drow archer through the eye at thirty paces.
'We have been at this for nearly an hour,' he snaps. 'I don't have an infinite amount of concentration!' His head is pounding, his fingers are numb, and if he doesn't consume a magical item soon then they'll have bigger problems than a security patrol.
‘I thought you were supposed to be good at magic.’ Three more arrows leave Astarion’s bow, finding targets across the cavern they’re currently surrounded in. Thunks and screams echo off the rocky ceiling. ‘Clearly, all that time moping in your tower has made you rusty.’
The driders seem to be multiplying in number, climbing along the walls towards them with blades gleaming. The best Gale can manage is a Ray of Frost, but it flies wide and spirals down into the darkness below. ‘I am perfectly capable of holding my own in a fight, thank you very much–‘
By the time he’s registered the whoosh of a blade behind him and wheeled around, Astarion’s arrow has already landed in the drider’s throat. Hot blood spatters Gale’s face before it collapses at his feet, gurgling.
‘Do you know something, Gale?’ Astarion says with sudden venom, ‘You wouldn’t last a day out here without us to wipe your arse – and your Orb. Honestly, it’s like trying to keep a hamster alive. I don’t know why we even keep you around.’
The words hit him like a physical blow. For a moment, they glare at each other as the battle rages around them.
‘You want to know why should you keep me around?’ Gale growls. ‘Stand back.’
He turns on the horde of driders, takes a deep breath, and bellows a Thunderwave that rips from his throat and tears the very air in two.
Gale of Waterdeep is an accomplished wizard, but his battle strategy is more from books than experience. As the driders are thrown into the abyss and the floor crumbles beneath him, he remembers an important paragraph from The Battle Mage’s Guide to Bamboozlement: “In prolonged combat, the wizard will do well to remain mobile. Not only does he risk becoming outnumbered, but too many Evocations and he will threaten the very ground he stands on.”
Gale has been rooted to the spot for an hour, throwing off fire and ice and sparks. It was only a matter of time before he doomed himself.
Astarion makes a grab for him, but his hand closes on empty air. ‘No!’ he screams, eyes wide in horror.
Then Gale is plummeting into darkness, cold wind whistling in his ears, the shouts of his friends echoing into nothingness.
As he falls to his death, Gale’s final thought is of Astarion. Curse that smug bastard for being right.
*
He opens his eyes to darkness.
Gale breathes in slowly, then coughs at the rock dust filling his lungs. He is sprawled on his front, cheek pressed against cold stone, and every inch of him aches. He reaches blindly for the flap of his tent, and finds only jagged rock. Oh yes, he fell, didn’t he? And probably hit his head.
'Hello?' he rasps. There is no answer.
He is on his own, then. No matter. With renewed purpose, Gale attempts to move into a kneeling position.
Pain explodes up his leg: a burning, grinding agony that robs the breath from him. He collapses again, clawing at the ground and praying it will pass. It doesn’t, but he forces himself to breathe deeply and try to think. Writhing about is not helping matters. With a hoarse whisper he casts Dancing Lights, and his blindness is no more.
In the flickering light, a tunnel stretches ahead of him, not quite tall enough to stand up in. The walls are festooned with moss and mushrooms, partially caved in from the rock fall. In the distance, there is the sound of running water. If he follows the tunnel, he may find a way back up.
Gritting his teeth, Gale rolls over. His leg alights with fresh waves of pain, and for a moment he can only shut his eyes and shiver and try not to pass out. Breath hissing through his teeth, he sits up and tries to pry off his boot, but the flesh seems fused to the leather. In desperation, he Banishes the boot, sock and all, and what remains is a noticeably crooked left ankle. The flesh is deep purple and swollen: definitely broken. Gale rummages in his robes for a healing potion, then remembers he downed his last one earlier. He is also, he realises, nearly out of magic. The journey back up will not be nearly so swift as his descent.
To his relief, his quarterstaff landed not far away. He hops over on all fours (well, all threes, left foot in the air) and retrieves it, reassured by its sturdy weight in his hand. It will serve as an acceptable crutch. Even so, standing up makes his head spin.
‘I am not going to die down here,’ he mutters, taking a cautious hop forward. The very air makes his ankle throb. ‘I will get out. They will find me.’
If they’re even looking for him. He recalls Astarion’s jibe: I don’t know why we even keep you around. Perhaps they’re already miles away, impatient to reach Moonrise. Lae’zel was clear that they weren’t going to slow down for stragglers. He imagines them making camp without him, eating supper without him, having adventures without him, and his heart twists. Just what he deserves really, for failing them.
Gale is not accustomed to pain, nor persisting in spite of it. At every hop his knee threatens to buckle, and before long his arms are shaking from exertion. And yet, slowly, he progresses down the tunnel.
Another thought occurs to him: Shadowheart’s mysterious artefact is the only thing preventing them all from turning into Mind Flayers. If his friends aren’t coming, he’ll become just another monster roaming the darkness. At least Gale isn’t alone down here: he has a tadpole in his head to keep him company. The thought makes him chuckle sadly.
Something chuckles behind him.
Gale turns, and sees a creature standing on two legs, crouched to fit in the narrow space. The head of a vulture leers above an armoured carapace, and two thick arms end in wickedly sharp, bony hooks. He mutters a spell out of instinct before he thinks to swing the quarterstaff at the hook horror’s fleshy neck. It gasps and staggers, flailing its hooks at him. Gale swings the staff again, but misses its head and hits the rock wall instead.
The hook slices into his arm and lodges against bone.
He doesn’t hear his own scream over the creature’s roar, only its echo: terror and pain, magnified by the endless tunnel. Animal instinct takes over, and with newfound strength (and only one working arm) he cracks the staff against its skull. The hook horror falls with a thud that shakes the ground, still screeching. Gale brings the staff down again, again, again, until the screeching stops and the head is a pulpy mess and his hand is slick with its stinking blood. Then he falls to the ground and vomits: chunks of overcooked mushroom and hastily-chewed bread and the gritty sweetness of health potions.
Warmth trickles down his left arm and drips from his fingers to patter on the stone. He scrabbles for a handkerchief and presses it to the wound, but the fabric is quickly dark with blood.
He closes his eyes, the Dancing Lights flickering behind his eyelids. ‘Mystra. Please…’ He isn’t sure what he is asking for, he only knows that it’s for anything but this. Not to die alone – or to die at all, for that matter. To see his friends again. To be granted the knowledge of a healing spell, which he has before now failed to bother with. What a fool he is.
But Mystra had made her intentions clear to him. He was supposed to die. She had intended for him to reach Moonrise, but down here he is close enough to… close enough for his death to matter. Here, he is trapped in his mortal agony, without the Weave to protect him, and he can’t imagine why he had been so keen to die for his goddess. Not when she would leave him like this. If he deserves death, then at least he deserves a swift one.
The light, along with the last of his magic, dies. His world narrows to the breathing of the caverns, and the faint skittering of Underdark fauna.
Gale is on his own, without magic, deep in a cave system full of monsters. He has a Mind Flayer tadpole in his head, and an Orb in his chest ready to detonate if it isn’t fed soon. If none of those things spell his doom, then blood loss or infection will likely kill him anyway.
But he is Gale of Waterdeep, and isn’t going to sit here waiting for death to come to him.
As he pulls himself over the hook horror’s body, an old children’s song comes to mind. One finger, one thumb… ‘One arm, one leg, keep moving,’ he mutters to himself, clutching his staff tightly in bloody fingers. The next creature that tries its luck will have more than it bargained for.