Chapter Text
Gale knew he must look mad, spending every precious moment of rest brewing potions as though they were about to face an army. But this was how he coped, a habit he had picked up during his last adventure. The same adventure that, somehow, seemed to be happening all over again.
Still, Gale tried not to dwell on it. It would not help anyone if he spiraled into the depths of his own mind, or fell apart in the middle of camp. So he kept brewing, pouring crimson healing potion into bottles. His hands trembled, the shock still moving through him, and more potion slipped over the rim than it should have. Red liquid spattered across the ground, making their campfire look embarrassingly like the scene of a crime.
Fortunately, he and their designated leader had gathered plenty of Rogue's Morsel along the way.
Gale glanced toward the farthest tent, where Shadowheart had set up camp. She looked exactly as he remembered, yet she might as well have been a stranger to him now. This was the Shadowheart from before, the disciple still bound to Shar's dark path, before the shadows had dispersed. Cold and aloof, her eyes ever watchful, her lips pressed shut. She had spoken very little during their scavenging from the shattered nautiloid, except to their leader.
Unlike in his memory, this time Shadowheart was not their leader. That role belonged to a white dragonborn named Tav, the very one she was speaking to at this moment. A stranger who was oddly familiar, though Gale was certain the man had never been part of their journey before. If they had crossed paths, it could only have been in passing, the way one might catch a fleeting glimpse of someone on a busy city street. And yet Tav's ruby-red eyes were far too striking to overlook. Gale was certain he would have remembered them. Unless, of course, his memory had been tampered with somewhere between his supposed death and this strange repeated life.
Gale had just returned to pour another bottle when someone sat down suddenly on the log beside him. He startled, nearly spilling the entire contents of the ladle.
There was not an ounce of apology on Astarion's face.
“Is this a wizard thing, or do you genuinely expect more bandits?”
“What do you mean?”
“This.” Astarion waved a hand over the neatly arranged healing potions in the box beside Gale. “Wizards are fragile, understandable, but this is a bit much, isn't it?”
Gale huffed. Astarion rarely bothered to mask his feelings around him, not even the first time they had met. Gale could still recall that unimpressed gaze after being dragged out of the portal, a wizard trapped in his own spell hardly inspiring confidence. Even in the rattled aftermath of discovering he was somehow still alive, Gale was fairly certain he had heard these exact words the second time around as well.
“We have seen a lot of traps, have we not? And those goblin corpses. Better to have too many potions than too few,” Gale said, then added casually, “And they are not all for me.”
He did not look to see how Astarion reacted. Winning the rogue's good graces would take time and more than a few friendly gestures. Instead, Gale wiped his hands on a rag and glanced into the pot. There was still a little potion left at the bottom, but no spare bottles.
“Would you kindly check if there are any more bottles in the supply sacks?” Gale asked.
Astarion looked as though he were about to refuse, but seemed to think better of it. He rose and began rummaging through the sacks and bags.
Then he stopped, staring into one of them. He looked up slowly, his face unreadable.
Gale was confused. Then the truth struck him. He had realized his mistake, but it was far too late.
“Why,” Astarion said, voice low and flat, “are you keeping blood?”
“Oh.” Gale cursed under his breath. He had forgotten he had slipped a flask of boar's blood into one of the sacks when no one was looking. An old habit. When stumbling across fresh game, he would carve meat for those who needed cooked food and set aside blood for their resident vampire spawn.
It was too soon to bring their secrets into the open. That was why Gale had not given it to Astarion directly. He simply had not found a way to offer it without exposing the vampire spawn in the process.
“Well,” Gale began, “it would be shortsighted to waste anything. Out here in the wilderness, with no steady supply or coin, anything could prove useful.”
“Is that why you keep picking up random trash in the crypt?” Astarion drawled. “Oh dear, I don't think wax and baubles will fetch us many coins.”
“You would not know that,” Gale mumbled, doing his best not to point out that Astarion too had been rummaging about, pocketing every bit of silverware and ancient trinkets he could find. Then again, they would need every single coin eventually, for scrolls, armor, anything that might give them an edge. The journey ahead would be longer and harder than anyone could imagine.
Astarion snorted. He pulled out a nearly empty wine bottle, sniffed it, then drained the rest in one go before handing it to Gale.
Gale accepted it with a tentative nod, murmuring a prestidigitation cantrip to clean the bottle before pouring in the last precious drop of healing potion. He made a mental note to see that this very bottle found its way to Astarion in the morning.
He could feel Astarion's gaze still lingering on him, sharp and unblinking. It unsettled him more than he cared to admit. He had always been nervous around the vampire spawn, and he happened to be no master of deception. Every heartbeat carried the risk of saying too much. Better to retreat to his tent and put a wall of canvas between them.
But then Tav walked over, his eyes a vivid red in the campfire's glow. He was intimidatingly tall, with strong arms and a thick tail lined with wicked spikes. His crest rose in jagged ridges like a crown of thorns. Scales of pale white marbled with strange rifts, tinged faintly red where they smoothed into a more resilient texture. His jaw looked powerful enough to snap a body in two, and the sharp claws on his hands only deepened that impression. Despite his massive build, his steps were near-silent as he approached.
None of that, however, was what truly troubled Gale.
What concerned him was the dense aura of Shadow Weave that clung to Tav, surely the mark of a shadow magic sorcerer, and how quickly he had earned Shadowheart's trust. If Tav was another Sharran in disguise, they would have a hard time pulling Shadowheart back from the irreversible fate in the shadow-cursed lands.
The matter of his lost memory was another curiosity. As far as Gale knew, amnesia was not a typical symptom of ceremorphosis, even with Netherese magic at play.
“We will need someone to keep watch,” Tav said, his gaze shifting from the red-splattered mess around the campfire to Astarion. “Since we require little rest, it would be logical for the two of us to share the duty.”
“Actually, I am going to propose taking the whole night myself. After the abduction and surviving a nautiloid crash, I need time to let it all settle.”
Astarion spoke smoothly, every word wrapped in carefully crafted generosity and a too-perfect smile. It was all so transparent, if one knew where to look. Gale watched the scene unfold as he quietly closed the potion box.
“And I could not sleep anyway, out here among all this dirt and wilderness. So you rest. I will keep watch.”
Tav tilted his head. On a dragonborn, expressions were difficult to read, too much hidden behind scales and ridges. But Gale thought he caught the faint curve of a smile. Not mocking, not quite warm, but something in between. “If you are sure, I would love that. Thank you.”
“The pleasure is all mine–”
“But if tomorrow you cannot keep up, that is all yours.”
Tav said it with a lightness that passed for humor, but the gleam in his eyes was deliberate. Gale felt his shoulders stiffen. He was certain Astarion caught the edge beneath the words as well, though the rogue hid it behind an impeccable bow before retreating to his tent.
Then Tav's gaze slid to Gale. “You used up all the Rogue's Morsel?”
“Yes?” Gale straightened, cautious. There was no use for Rogue's Morsel beyond healing potions, was there?
Tav lowered himself onto the log, fingers flipping open the box Gale had just shut. “Were you trained in the School of Transmutation, or is that from past adventuring?”
“Evocation, actually. And yes, I have had experience before,” the exact same one, mostly.
“What do you need? I just finished reorganizing our supplies, and I would rather not repeat that.”
Tav chuckled. “I need a great deal. But first things first, can you brew an antidote?”
“Depends. Do you have Mugwort?”
“It is in my bag. I will give it to you tomorrow.” Tav set the bottle down, something in his eyes deepening along with his voice. “Can I also assume you can brew a higher grade of healing potion?”
The question felt like a challenge. Like being a student again, tested under a master's eye. “Yes. I can brew other potions, elixirs too. You name it.”
“Alchemy and magic. A man of many talents, aren't you?”
“Not to brag, but I did train under a druid before.” A particular archdruid, though Gale left that unsaid. He narrowed his eyes. “And I could say the same about you. Magic and knives? Not a common combination for a sorcerer.”
The fight in the crypt had been brutal the first time. This time too, but the tactics were sharper, more precise. Tav's keen eyes and commanding voice had driven them to act without hesitation. The result was overwhelming: they came out barely scratched, while the bandits lay burning or choking on thin knife wounds.
The sorcerer's magic was not to be taken lightly. Even weakened by the infection, it struck like a force of nature. And for those who managed to slip past his spells, there was always a knife waiting, ready to find a fatal point.
Tav shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe I am actually an arcane trickster.”
“You are a sorcerer. I can tell.” Gale kept his tone flat, though the bitterness slipped through.
The fact that sorcerers had no need to study to wield magic had always gnawed at him. That much he could endure. What stung more was how easily some of them could surpass years of discipline and hard study with little more than innate talent.
Tav smirked. “Still sulking that I managed to slip past your guard?”
Gale was. Because it was rare, painfully rare, for anyone to breach the fortress of his mind, even in a moment of unusual weakness. But that was not the only reason, and he refused to dwell on something so petty. He turned to face the dragonborn directly. “Infected or not, it is very impolite to slip into another's mind without consent.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“After demanding I explain what you should not have seen in the first place?”
“Every infected I have met tuned the tadpole to me. To us.” Tav's voice was steady, but there was a weight in it. “A flicker, seeing through each other's eyes. Brief, but always there. But you? Nothing. No glimpse. Just words about being aboard the nautiloid and infected. You cannot fault me for being cautious.”
Gale studied him, measuring his tone. “You think I am lying?”
“I think you are hiding something.”
“Aren't we all?” Gale exhaled, letting the question settle between them.
“Maybe not.” The corner of Tav's mouth twitched, too slight to be called a smile. “I have lost my memories.”
“And for that, you have my sympathy,” Gale said, and meant it. While he carried too many memories along with feelings he would rather not examine, Tav had nothing but violent instincts and a constant headache. “Still not a reason to trespass in another's mind. If this journey lasts, perhaps we will find trust. All will be revealed in time.”
“You do not seem very worried about an unwelcome guest in our heads,” Tav observed.
“There is more than one way to die in this world. A tadpole is simply the most present and pressing.” Gale shot him a sidelong glance. “You are very calm about our situation too. Even insisting on stopping to make camp like this.”
Tav only smiled, offering no denial.
They sat in silence before the campfire after that. Gale lost himself in the flicker of orange flame and the scent of burning wood. It felt like only yesterday he had stared into a similar fire, pondering abstract possibilities that had once seemed impossibly distant. Now the flames seemed to stare back, their glow catching in his eyes and leaving him more lost than before.
His hands did not stop shaking. The strange phantom pain coiled around his right wrist, the same one Tav had gripped and pulled.
The second time he had been dragged from a rune portal had brought no relief, only madness: an explosion of pain so overwhelming it hollowed him out to numbness. Then came the light and air of the Material Plane, striking hard and sudden, leaving him reeling. It was like being ripped from an unending storm of agony only to be thrown into another kind of chaos altogether.
He should have been dead. His next destination should have been the Fugue Plane, condemned to wander nowhere for eternity. But even that fate had been torn from him.
Now he was here, unsure if this was a second chance or a wicked limbo with no end. Either way, all things must come to an end, at least for tonight. It should end with rest, whether peaceful or not.
Gale cleared his throat. “I will go to bed now.”
“Good night,” Tav said, his red eyes unblinking.
Gale nodded, then stood and made his way to his tent.
Inside, it was still bare of the comforts he preferred. No shelves of books, no glassware for alchemical work. Only an old bedroll, an inkpot with a quill, and the two or three pitiful books he had scavenged from the crypt.
He changed and settled into the bedroll. It was too thin, the ground pressing unkindly against his back, and the lingering ache in his limbs made every shift more noticeable. Not comfortable, but familiar.
Exhausted from the strange occurrences and the fighting, Gale drifted into sleep almost at once.
Yet some restless part of his mind must have followed him, because the endless circling of thoughts on life and death bled into his dreams.
After an immeasurable stretch of black, no time, no place, the darkness began to retreat before a sudden flicker of light, sharp as a warning before thunder. Pain followed, splitting from his chest like a lightning strike, consuming him entirely. Then silence. Utter, suffocating silence.
The light returned, rising from the horizon, but it was wrong. It was red, and the ground beneath was wet and sticky. A blood moon hung in the sky, casting its insidious glow over a world strewn with corpses and rivers of blood.
Gale jolted awake, chest heaving, sweat running down his temples as though he had been fleeing for his life.
And somehow, the first thing to rise in his mind was not the horror of the nightmare, but the dragonborn's ruby-red eyes, gleaming like twin blood moons.