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In a just world, in a kinder world, in a world where any of the gods actually gave a shred of a damn about any of them, Gale likes to think that they would have been granted a day or so of respite, when all is said and done. Or hells, if not a day, even an hour wouldn’t go amiss. One measly hour to collect themselves and bask in the glow of their victory.
But, well, they don’t live in that world.
And so it goes.
Lae’zel is gone within minutes of the brain’s fall, already beginning her next grand adventure before the dust has even quite settled from this one. And that, at least, is expected, because it’s Lae’zel, and frankly he’d have been shocked if she was willing to delay her next battle by so much as a minute.
Still. It’s awfully bittersweet, because he’s grown quite fond of that spitfire woman in their months traveling together, and he knows he’s going to miss her terribly.
The next to go is Astarion, and, well, that one hurts worse.
Gale’s as stunned as the rest of them—and he shouldn’t be, he really shouldn’t be, gods, if he’d given it even a few minutes of thought before they left for the day, he could have prepared for this. He should have prepared for this. But he didn’t, and as the dust and the soot begin to settle, as a few golden beams of sunlight begin to pierce through the gloom, Astarion looks down and sees the skin starting to burn and flake off the backs of his hands.
He’s sprinting away in a panic before any of them can so much as get a word in. Not that there’s anything they can say, really, or do, even as Gale’s fingers itch and his mind races through a hundred different spells, aching to help, aching to do something.
And then, behind him—
The deep fwoom of a fire blooming. A rush of heat through his robes, stark against the chill sea breeze. The sound of Karlach’s knee hitting the wood, and a sharp intake of breath. The churning twist and clanking of an infernal engine swiftly approaching its end.
And Gale’s heart, already aching, seems then to liquefy and pour straight down into his stomach.
Here’s the thing.
It’s hard to find adequate words to describe what the Weave actually means to a lifelong wizard.
And, by extension, what she means.
Sure, Gale can say that the Weave is like strands of force intricately woven into the very fabric of reality, because really, they don’t call it the Weave for nothing—and that would be true. He can say that manipulating the Weave is akin to what a particularly passionate bard might feel while plucking the strings of a lute: A limited number of strings, a limited number of fingers, and yet infinite possibilities within, possibilities that become music, expression, emotion, life. An apt analogy. He can say that the Weave is a part of him, but hells, it’s a part of everyone, when you really get down to it, isn’t it?
None of that really cuts to the heart of the matter.
Gale is six years old when he first feels it. Or at least that’s his earliest memory of it. There’s something thrumming all around him, within him, and he’s a child—he can’t help but tug and poke and prod, six years old and already with that insatiable longing to test every boundary he can find, if only to learn where it might lie.
In retrospect, he might only remember that moment so vividly because of what came after: Heat so intense it felt impossible, a rush of shivering excitement all the way down to his toes, and then that excitement flipping over into panic when he saw his mother’s curtains halfway consumed in flame.
Whoops.
Point being, even his earliest memories are steeped in the Weave. Steeped in the knowledge, bone deep, that he can use it, harness it, wear it as a second skin in a way that very few others can—possibly better than anyone can. He’s different, he’s destined for something greater, he’s special, and that sort of feeling is intoxicating for any child.
And for a wizard, well, that feeling never really loses its edge, does it?
At six, he sets his mother’s curtains on fire. At ten, he keeps getting his toys stuck on the ceiling. At twelve, he finally, finally casts a spell on purpose and exactly as he means to, summoning what will be his first—and to his knowledge at the time, only—lifelong friend. At sixteen, he enrolls in classes at Blackstaff, and it’s hardly a month into his studies before his itching need to prove himself manifests in an errant portal into Limbo, an extremely irritated Death Slaad, and half a year’s worth of writing lines as punishment.
And then, at seventeen…
At seventeen, he hears Mystra’s voice for the first time. Really hears her.
It feels like fate.
Of course she would choose him. Why wouldn’t she? The Weave is a part of everyone, yes, but it’s demonstrably more a part of Gale, even at so young an age. The Weave practically is him at this point, really, impossible to tell where the magic ends and where the man begins, if such a delineation even serves a purpose anymore. If such a delineation even exists anymore.
By twenty-three, he is Mystra’s chosen, already more attuned with the Weave than most wizards ever dare to dream, already vastly more powerful than some of the greatest mages to have ever had their names recorded in history books.
At twenty-three, Mystra loves him.
Remarkable, really, that it takes over a decade for him to bring all of that crashing down.
“So.”
Gale jolts, nearly spilling his drink across the bartop at the Last Light Inn—he saves it, but just barely—and he turns a half-hearted glare at his companion. His companion who is, of course, entirely remorseless, leaning against the bar and drumming his fingers on it. The term for the look on his face is shit-eating grin, but after long enough in Astarion’s company Gale’s starting to think blood-drinking grin might be in the running to replace it.
“Need I remind you,” Gale says, “that giving me a heart attack in such a crowded environment as this could have disastrous—”
“Yes, yes, you’re a walking bomb, we know, wizard.”
“It does bear repeating, given the severity of—”
“And speaking of walking bombs,” Astarion goes on as if Gale hadn’t spoken at all, sending a pointed look toward the opposite corner of the Inn. “This is quite the development, isn’t it?”
Gale doesn’t need to look to see who Astarion’s referring to. For one, there is quite literally only one walking bomb in their vicinity other than himself. And for another, he has been, to an almost embarrassing degree, painfully aware of where she’s been for the last several hours. Ever since the upgrade.
It takes considerable effort now to keep his eyes away.
“First a Netherese orb, and now an infernal engine bound to explode,” Astarion goes on. “What a pair the two of you make, hm?”
Gale tries, and very likely fails, to keep a blush from creeping into his face at the insinuation, because he knows their mutual impending doom is not the only thing to which Astarion is referring.
He determinedly does not look in her direction, and he lowers his voice, lest he draw her attention.
“If she doesn’t want to dwell on the bad news, then I’m certainly not going to press the matter,” Gale says. “And you shouldn’t either. She deserves that much. And besides, I’m inclined to believe we’ll find some way to avoid… that turn of events, in the end. Stranger things have happened, haven’t they? Just yesterday even this much seemed impossible.”
“Mm, indeed it did,” Astarion nods, keeping his own voice low as well. “And now here we are. Our untouchable Karlach is touchable once more.”
Gale nods, silently, and tries to focus on his drink.
As if that hasn’t been at the forefront of his mind for hours now.
She has, of course, been an utter whirlwind of delight since getting that upgrade, bad news notwithstanding. She always is, but this has been something else entirely. A glorious sight to behold. A whole new level of that effusive joy that she carries with her everywhere she goes.
Dammon was the first to test the results of his handiwork. That gentle hand on her shoulder seemed liable to bring Karlach to tears before she surged forward and hugged him hard enough to lift him off his feet, both of them laughing all the while. The subsequent embrace from Wyll almost seemed as though it would never end at all, loathe as they both must have been to break it off, but then they did, and Karlach couldn’t quite seem to stand still after that. It seems she’s been to every corner of the Last Light Inn in the hours since—a hug here, a pat on the back there, an arm slung around a pair of shoulders elsewhere.
And Gale, for his part, has been gripping the last scraps of his willpower by his fingernails .
Yes, there’s been… something between them, he knows, for the past few weeks, something as nebulous and as shadowed as their surroundings of late. But—
But gods, he’s not about to presume. It was all too easy to flirt and dance around something like this when it was physically impossible to act on it. And now this is her moment, her day, and he absolutely refuses to pressure her in any way whatsoever. If she wants to leave this faltering thing between them in the past, if she wants to move on to bigger and better things after being denied what she wants—what she deserves —for so long…
He’ll be fine.
He can be fine.
“It makes you wonder,” Astarion adds, evidently oblivious to the thoughts rattling around in Gale’s skull, “what else she’ll want to do with all this newfound freedom.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So many… possibilities to explore, aren’t there?”
Oh, and he does not like that tone one bit.
Gale shoots him a worried look, but Astarion had chosen to pause there anyway, probably for effect, probably waiting for Gale to take the bait and look at him. A fiendish look has come over his face, far beyond the usual shit-eating grin—he even has the nerve to lick his lips, for gods’ sake—but miraculously, it’s only for a moment before he lets out a wistful sigh, and the look drops away. He sags against the bar, drumming his fingers against it again.
“Of course, she could probably still snap me in two,” Astarion admits with a shrug. “So best not.”
“Oi!”
And just like that, she’s right there, dealing a swift but affectionate punch into Astarion’s upper arm.
Judging by the look on his face, he hadn’t heard her approaching, either.
“You don’t gotta worry about that, mate. Only vamp I’m snapping in two starts with a C and ends with an -azador, yeah?” she says, grinning as she sets an emptied tankard of ale on the bartop. “I got a date with that prick the second we get into the city.”
The half-stunned look on Astarion’s face is… well, it’s certainly something, even if it only takes a second or two for him to shove it down behind all his usual bluster.
“Right,” Astarion says, rubbing absentmindedly at the spot where she’d punched him. “I’ll be holding you to that, my dear.”
“You damn well better!”
“Oh, my, and would you look at that,” Astarion says, making a show of peering across the Inn toward the general direction of the front door. “I do believe that devilish little tiefling child is picking pockets again. I’d better go give him a very stern talking to.”
“Yeah, yeah, show him how it’s really done, Fangs.”
“You wound me. It’s an art, darling. I’m afraid it can’t be taught,” Astarion sighs, but even still, he turns from the bar and slips away, leaving the two of them more-or-less alone without so much as a farewell.
Him and Karlach.
Alone.
“Hey, you.”
Gale expects the terror to just about bowl him over now, but funnily enough, it doesn’t. Nerves, yes, of course. But not fear.
He turns, catches that incredibly infectious smile on Karlach’s face, and something about it just… dissipates the anxiety quivering through his limbs, brings it down to a manageable hum. Whatever the future holds, she’s happy, and he’s more happy for her than he thinks he can put into words. Without much thought at all, he smiles back and extends one hand palm-up between them.
She hesitates for a moment, looking down at his hand.
Then, slowly, almost reverently, she places her own palm over his.
She’s impossibly warm, but… comfortingly so. Warm like the bubble of heat in front of a crackling fireplace. Gale places his other hand on top, cradling her one hand between both of his like it’s something precious—because it is, because she is—and he inclines his head as he gives her hand a businesslike shake.
“A bit belated,” he says, grinning wide enough that it likely undercuts the formality of the gesture, “but it’s a pleasure, Miss Cliffgate.”
She’s biting her bottom lip to hold back her own smile, her eyes burning bright in the dim ambiance of the Inn. And then she does something that’s split between a bow and a curtsy and that adorable little dance he sometimes catches her doing when she gets bored. A little of all three.
“The pleasure’s all mine,” she says, her voice low and mockingly serious. “Mister… Of Waterdeep.”
He can’t help it; he lets out a laugh that is likely very unattractive, practically a bark, nearly doubling over with it. She laughs right along with him, and then—
And then she’s kissing him.
She’s—
Oh.
The nerves don’t quite leave so much as they’re transformed into something else, something light and fluttering at the center of his chest.
It’s a gentle kiss, a careful press of her lips to his, like she’s worried she might hurt him otherwise—like she thinks he’s something precious, and isn’t that a novel thought? A delightful warmth seeps all through him, from the top of his head down to the tips of his toes, as he carefully matches her pace. She oh-so-slightly tugs his lower lip between hers as she pulls back, no teeth just yet, and it’s all he can do not to chase her down for more, to reel her back in and demand they keep kissing one another over and over and over again like a pair of teenagers. He manages to resist that urge, but only just.
Gods, what a wonder that he’d been so braced for her to let him down—gently, of course, because she’d be far too kind for anything else, but a let down nonetheless.
Please. Why would Karlach Cliffgate, of all people, have even hinted at wanting something like this if it was anything less than what she really, truly wanted? Why would she approach this any differently than she does everything else? Headlong and fearless and endlessly passionate.
Fool that he is, ever expecting otherwise.
Her eyes shimmer like a pair of stars. She’s grinning like a lunatic. He has to imagine he’s doing exactly the same.
“We should…” she starts, then gives herself a second to catch her breath. “We should find somewhere a little more private, yeah? If you— If you want to, I mean.”
“If I want to?”
What a laughably unnecessary question.
As if there aren’t a dozen people or more in this very building who wouldn’t jump at the chance to give this utterly gorgeous, radiant woman whatever she wants. As if he isn’t stunned into a near dreamlike deliriousness to find that the privilege is his.
“That,” Gale says, “is an understatement if I’ve ever heard it. Nothing would give me greater pleasure, believe me.”
“Fuck yes. Maybe down by the shoreline? I don’t think anyone’s down there.”
“Wherever you’ll have me,” Gale says, and he’s still holding her hand in both of his. He turns it over, relishing in her warmth, and threads their fingers together. “It is my foremost desire to give you anything, everything you’ve been so callously denied for far too long. You’ve got all the magic of the Wizard of Waterdeep at your disposal. I can do more than woo you; I can wow you, if you’ll let me. I can take you into the Weave— not just surrounded by it, a part of it, taken to heights of pleasure that mere mortals seldom dream of. I can make it perfect for you. Really, truly perfect.”
She grins wider, lopsided and entirely too charming, tilting her head.
“Yeah?” she asks, quietly, her voice softer than he’s ever heard it. She brings her free hand up to the side of his neck, one thumb stroking along his jaw. She gulps—he sees it, close as they are—and she sounds just the slightest bit anxious with what she says next. “And, er… what if I told you I don’t care about all that? Hm? What if I said I just want you?”
Ah. Well.
That knocks him more than a bit off kilter.
A blush heats him from his ears down to his chest, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the heat of her skin against his. Or mostly nothing to do with it. He turns his face just a bit, just enough to have the excuse of breaking eye contact for a moment, and presses a chaste kiss into her palm.
“I… I think I’d have difficulty believing you,” he murmurs into her skin, because he doesn’t want to lie to her.
“Guess I better get to proving it, then.”
“You don’t— I—” Gale stops, willing his nerves to settle, facing her again. “I must warn you, Karlach, when it comes to matters of… of physicality, that is, without magic, I am sorely out of practice—”
“Oh, are you? Fancy that! Can’t imagine what that’s like, being out of practice.”
He blinks, surprised, and then he snorts. Right. The entire subject matter of the day, the only reason they’re able to do this now at all.
What a pair they make, indeed.
“I… suppose we’ll get back into the swing of things together, then, will we?”
“Fuck yeah, we will. Whaddaya say, magic man? You, me, and the beach out back?”
“Gods, Karlach, please. At least let me conjure you a bed.”
“Ha! Charmer,” she says, laughing as she pecks one more kiss against his lips before she’s tugging him by the hand, away from the bar and toward the exit. And of course he follows, eager and impossibly lucky to be carried off in the whirlwind that she is, his heart still fluttering with an unfamiliar weightlessness as they set off into the lantern-lit dark.
There’s an odd, dreamlike quality to the moment he stumbles to his knees in front of Karlach on the docks.
It’s some combination of factors, no doubt: The adrenaline that snapped like a bow string when the brain finally collapsed into the water, leaving his nervous system in the jittery confusion of fight-or-flight with nothing left to fight and nothing left to flee from. The soot lazily drifting down in rivulets all around them, a dark parody of celebration streamers. The golden light of the setting sun, so thick it seems as if one could reach out and touch it. The hesitant crescendo of voices in the far distance, the city slowly rousing as if out of a stupor.
It doesn’t feel quite real, but then again, perhaps that’s just him.
Perhaps that’s just an unwillingness to admit that the woman he loves is dying in front of him.
The wooden boards underneath her are blackening from the heat, smoke curling up around her knees, around her boots. Her face is a scowling rictus of pain, tears evaporating into steam before they can leave the corners of her eyes. Even without touching her, the heat is nigh unbearable. Gale’s hands are shaking when he reaches out, but he manages to carry out the somatic component of Ray of Frost anyway, tweaking it just a hair, bending it inward, so that the ice coats his own right hand and his wrist and his forearm all the way up to the elbow.
He places his hand against her cheek, and steam billows out at the point of contact.
Sod it. He does the same with his left hand, ice crystallizing inches-thick over his palm, and he presses that one directly on top of that white-hot light that’s searing out from behind her breastbone.
“Oh, that’s… that’s nice,” she says, but her voice is still taut with pain. Her eyes meet his, tears still beading against her lashes. A small, terribly sad smile comes over her face. “Engine held out just— ugh, just long enough. How… How’d I do, magic man?”
It’s difficult to find his voice, at first.
He gulps, watching the melting ice drip down from his blue-white hand and trail down her neck.
“You were a vision,” he says, brushing his thumb over her cheekbone, “but you don’t need me to tell you that. You always are.”
“Yeah,” she smirks, just a bit. “I’m pretty fuckin’ aces. I know. Nice to hear it, though.”
Gods, she shouldn’t be able to make him laugh, not right now, but she does. It’s a conscious effort to keep the laugh from dissolving into a series of very embarrassing sobs, but he manages.
“Oh, I’ll tell you over and over and over for the rest of our lives, if you’d like. I’ll get it added into every history book from here to Neverwinter. I’ll etch it into the celestial canvas itself, just you wait and see.”
“Charmer,” she says, her voice impossibly fond.
But then the smile falls away as the engine gives an awful clank and a burst of heat, and the pain is visible in the way it doubles her over, a horrible sound spilling from her lips that’s half a cry, half a whimper. He presses his hand more firmly into her chest, supporting her weight just a bit, Weave-forged ice hissing and screaming from the contact.
“Karlach—”
“I’m— I’m sorry,” she grits out, holding her breath between every few words. It’s a tactic he’s quite familiar with, the only way to cope when every breath feels liable to kill. “I— I really wanted to come with you, you know. To Waterdeep. I’m sorry I can’t.”
“Gods, don’t apologize for that,” Gale says, crying unabashedly now. “I don’t— Karlach.”
“I really am sorry though. Engine’s cooked. This is… It’s—”
“Come to Avernus with me,” he’s saying before he can come to his senses. “We’ll figure something out to get you permanently fixed up, I swear it, but first we have to get you—”
“Gale—”
“Please,” Gale says. “I know it’s horribly selfish of me. I know you would rather die in the world you love than keep living in the world you hate, I know, but damn it all, I only just found you! I’m not ready to say goodbye yet.”
There’s uncertainty in her eyes, disbelief—but not flat refusal. Not yet.
Gale channels a bit more into the cantrips keeping his hands as cold as they are, knowing he can’t delay what’s happening but trying desperately to bring her even a modicum of relief in whatever scant time they have left.
“Please, my love,” he says, and he’s shaking worse than he was a moment ago, nerves alighting everywhere, his mind running a mile a minute. He knows that one wrong word here could be the end. One wrong move, one instance of him putting his foot in his mouth, and she’ll be gone. “Let me bring you to Avernus and buy us some time. Let me help you fix this. It won’t be like before, you’ll have me right at your side, and I swear by all the gods above that if Zariel dares to come anywhere near you, I will send so many Magic Missiles directly up her arse that she’ll be tasting Weave for weeks.”
“Woof, there’s a sign you’ve been hanging around me too much,” she grits out, quirking the tiniest smile, but it’s gone half a second later. “Gale… I can’t. I can’t let you do that. You sweet, sweet man, you don’t deserve Avernus.”
“I—”
“No, damn it. I mean it. You’re supposed to go home, to Waterdeep, with your tower, and your library, and your books, and…”
“Yes, all of that is waiting for me in Waterdeep. But… But what if,” he says, bringing both hands up to her face now, cradling her. Under his thumbs, ice crystals bloom against her cheeks and disappear into steam in the same instant. “What if I said I don’t care about all that? What if I said I just want you?”
She stares at him for a moment, all open shock, and then:
“Oh, you arsehole. That’s not fucking fair.”
“No, it’s not,” Gale admits, offering a sad smile. Beneath the surface, where she can’t see, he’s already drawing on whatever bits of Weave he’s got left to use, whatever hasn’t been drained dry from the fight, wondering if he can cobble together a portal under these conditions. “No, I’ll readily admit that it’s not fair. None of this is. The world doesn’t seem to care much for fairness, does it? Not unless we make it ourselves, but… well, we’ve proven quite adept at wrangling some fairness out of the world lately, haven’t we?”
He watches her gulp, then nod, shakily, her face still cradled between his hands.
“What do you say? Will you come to Avernus with me?”
“Yeah,” she breathes, sounding like she’s lost the strength to say much else. “Yeah, alright.”
Gods, the relief alone nearly makes him lose focus. He risks a single kiss to her forehead, quickly, a mere brush of lips before the heat roiling under her skin can cause any lasting damage beyond a sting—although, granted, if he hadn’t been gulping down fire resistance elixirs like they’re water these days, even that much might’ve been unwise.
No matter. It’s time to move.
The spell is… well, it’ll get the job done, but not without feeling like it’s scraping his insides raw in the process, as he learns rather quickly. A bit more powerful than he should have attempted, to be sure, and that’s to say nothing of the fact that he probably could have simply hopped them through a couple of Dimension Doors and a waypoint until they reached the Devil’s Fee, at which point they could have used the already fully crafted portal into the House of Hope and called it a day.
But he can’t risk it. He can’t risk straining that infernal engine any more than it’s already been strained. He absolutely cannot risk this all having been for naught.
One moment they’re kneeling on the docks, soaked in that too-thick golden sunlight, and the next—
The next, they’ve landed in a field of brimstone.
Karlach goes still except for her breathing, eyes closed, and Gale watches as the white light under her breastbone pulses and fades to a muted orange-red. Her skin is uncomfortably warm against his hands, but not burning, not quite, even though the frost coating his own skin instantly dissipated with the beginning threads of the teleportation spell.
Somewhere in the distance, he can hear the screech of a devil, or a demon, or an imp. Hard to tell which until he sees it.
“My love. Are you—?”
“Yeah,” she nods, and finally she opens her eyes, looking warily over his shoulder at their surroundings. There’s fear there, anger and disgust and resignation, too, but mostly fear. “Yeah. Engine’s stable.”
Gale pulls her into an embrace before he’s even made the conscious decision to do so, his arms thrown about her shoulders, and he presses a firm kiss to the first spot he can—which happens to be her cheek—before he’s burying his face in her hair. She returns it, her grip desperately tight around his ribs, her hands splayed across his back, her nose pressed into his neck. She is, as always, an all-encompassing cocoon of warmth.
“Thank you,” he whispers to her. “Thank you. Gods. Thank you. I’m sorry. I love you.”
They stay there for a good long moment, during which it seems that she’s every bit as reluctant to let go as he is.
But then there’s another screech—no, screeches this time, plural, as the residents of Avernus begin to take notice of their new neighbors. Karlach shifts, pulling back just enough to look over his shoulder again, and she mutters, “Gods damn it.”
“Imps?”
“Fucking imps.”
She rocks back on her heels, her eyes meeting his for the first time since they landed here, and she stares at him for just a moment before she surges forward and presses a kiss to his lips. It’s so quick that he hardly has time to reciprocate, but he’s glad for it all the same, especially when she pulls back and he sees that it’s brought a hesitant smile to her face, golden eyes glistening.
“Love you,” she says, rolling one shoulder so she can better reach her axe. “Now let’s go show these fucks not to mess with us, yeah?”
It’s quite a while before they find a few minutes of respite and stumble into a bit of ramshackle shelter, which is… probably the long abandoned home of some archdevil or another, he supposes. Who knows.
In any case, given the lack of sun or stars beyond the sulphuric clouds churning perpetually above them, he has no idea how long it’s been, but it has to have been several hours at the very least, and now the two of them are a bloodied, burnt, soot-blackened mess. There’s a nasty bruise blooming along the right side of his ribs, an ache not just in his knees anymore but all through his legs, and quite a few singed hairs in his beard. He has burned through no less than fifteen of the spell scrolls he’d had tucked away in his bag—literally burned through them, in some cases—and there’s an achy, sucking chasm in the space where his own reserve of magic usually resides.
(The orb, as always, pulses angrily in time with his heart. But that much he can ignore, at least. He’s had a wealth of practice in doing so.)
Karlach must be nearly as worn out as he is. It stands to reason that she must be, what with the hours and hours of—let’s be honest now—carrying the lion’s share of their fights, slicing through imps and devils like a hot knife through butter.
The thing is, though, she doesn’t look worn out. Not entirely. Hells, she looks utterly resplendent, actually, literally glowing in the aftermath of all that adrenaline, still panting a bit from exertion as they step over the threshold into their newfound lodgings. There’s an exhausted but undeniably pleased smile on her face as she peels off the top half of her armor and tosses it to the floor. The soft glow from her engine is visible in the shining musculature of her newly bared arms, pulsing a soft blue-white beneath her skin, little bits of smoke puffing out from the ports along her shoulder.
He can hardly take his eyes off of her. Not that that’s anything new.
“Well, soldier,” she breathes, taking in the dark foyer, the shadowed corners, the soot and dust coating the floor. “That’s a couple hundred imps down, about a million to go. Whaddaya think? Still glad you came here with me?”
It’s said like she’s only teasing, but he knows she isn’t. He knows the insecurity that’s lurking under that question, and he knows she needs an answer.
So he gives her an answer.
… Of sorts.
She makes the most beautiful sound when her back hits the wall, a startled little ooh that dissolves into a quiet, pleased hum against his lips. That hum deepens into a moan when he leans against her, hot unbroken contact from their chests down to their knees, his hands cradling her face, fingers threading back into her hair.
And if there was any coherent thought left in his mind, well, that moan just about punts it out of him entirely.
He makes no pretense about pinning her, exactly—those firebrand hands wriggling into his robes could shove him off just as easily as breathing, of course—but gods, he needs to be closer, and he tries, deepening the kiss and pressing in and all but melding them together into one being. She reciprocates as eagerly as ever, opening her mouth against his, letting him catalogue every ridge and point of her teeth with his tongue, and returning the treatment in kind, of course. It’s a delightful game of push and pull that he thinks he’d be happy to play with her forever, for the rest of their lives, until the very world crumbles to pieces around them.
But then his leg ends up slotted in between hers, his knee bumping against the wall behind her, and he realizes with a delirious jolt of arousal that that’s only possible because she’s let her own legs fall open around him.
He breaks from the kiss, just long enough to breathe the word bedroom as a soft question against her skin, and then he’s peppering more kisses and soft little bites along the underside of her jaw and down the column of her throat. He makes sure to bestow a bit of a firmer bite to the skin at the dip of her collarbone, exactly where he’s learned she loves it most, before he works his way back up again.
“Yeah, there’s— oh, fuck, Gale, that’s— yeah, there’s gotta be a bedroom around here somewhere—”
“Mm. Leave it to me.”
Sure, the reserves of his magic are quite depleted, but he doesn’t call himself an archmage for nothing, does he?
It’s easy to keep kissing mindlessly along her throat while he scrapes a bit of energy up from the dregs of whatever’s left behind, tugging on a few errant strands so that he can probe outward in a superficial, hurried search—no enemies lurking in the shadows, no magic here other than the usual background hum of Weave, and poking for the vague three-dimensional shapes around them shows a few tables and chairs in the next room over, and what might be an altar and some pews and some skeletons in the room beside that, a sort of gruesomeness that’s rather typical for the hells but certainly best avoided for now, and then—
“There we are,” he whispers into the space just below her ear, and he opens a Dimension Door behind her back.
“What— oh, hells, you—!”
Karlach’s voice dissolves into laughter as she tumbles backward, gravity taking a ninety-degree turn as they fall through and she drops back-first against a mattress.
“You madman!”
Gale, perched over her on his hands and knees, grins and takes a quick look at their surroundings—or at least the bed, which he’s pleased to find is shockingly clean, given the locale. No bones or viscera strewn about. Nary a bloodstain or any other suspicious fluids to be found, or at the very least none that he can see by the faint orange glow coming in from the room’s only window.
And the faint glow coming from the inferno of a woman beneath him, of course.
“Not bad?”
“Not bad at all,” Karlach says, her hands running up and down his sides, laughter still lighting up her face. “It’s kind of hot when you show off like that, y’know.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, madam, but I did nothing of the sort.”
“Right, yeah. Is that why we didn’t just walk here?”
“Walk here? And wait to get my mouth on you?” Gale asks, illustrating his point by dropping down to plant a fervent kiss to her lips. Just for a moment, because she’s got a great many other places that need kissing, and sooner rather than later. “I’m just a man, Karlach. Have some mercy on me.”
She doesn’t bother continuing the banter, shimmying herself out of her undershirt and bra in one coordinated movement and tossing them off the bed, and she doesn’t even give him a moment to admire the view before she’s yanking his robes up and over his head, too.
He has to sit up for that, since she’s about to get the robes caught in the strap of his carrying bag, and then they’ll have to spend even more time detangling that, and that just will not do. He shrugs off the bag and drops it on the floor, then pulls the robes up and off, tossing them… somewhere. He doesn’t look where. And then his undershirt, too, while he’s at it.
Oh, and that’s lovely, the blissful relief that comes with the shedding of those layers. He’s going to have to find some lighter outfits to wear in this climate—but later, that’s a thought for later. Much later, when he isn’t preoccupied with this, with her, with the most gorgeous woman in all the heavens and the hells and anywhere in between, naked from the waist up and laid out beneath him like a painting.
It’s nothing short of incredible, he thinks, that he almost didn’t get to have this.
Nothing short of incredible that he does.
“I am, by the way,” he says, dropping down onto an elbow so he can kiss her lips, and then her cheek, and then the hinge of her jaw. He presses his right hand into the near iron-hot plane of her obliques, dragging his palm up over her ribs until his thumb just grazes the underside of her breast, only teasing at first, brushing back and forth over her skin. With a kiss to the center of her throat—which she has oh so generously tipped her head back to bare for him—he goes on, “I am very glad that you allowed me to come here with you.”
She lets out a punched-out breath, shuddering underneath him.
“I truly am,” he says, hovering his lips over her throat. He sweeps his thumb higher, so very nearly where she wants it, but not quite yet. “Now, will you allow me the privilege of doing all I can to prove it to you?”
“Yes. Gods, yes. Please—”
Her voice stutters away when he finally gives her what she wants, when he returns to sucking kisses into her neck and pulling her skin gently between his teeth, just enough to tingle, not quite enough to bruise—but more importantly, when he slides his hand up and drags a thumb over her nipple. Her response is immediate: a sharp inhale as she arches into the touch, lifting her back off the mattress.
Now, this is only the third time they’ve done this, but Gale Dekarios is nothing if not a fast learner. She is so beautifully receptive to even the softest of touches—perhaps especially the softest of touches—and whether that’s from the long years of deprivation or some innate quality she’d have had regardless, he can’t know. At least not until he repeats the experiment in another ten years. Which he very much hopes he’ll have the opportunity to do.
For now, he’s perfectly content without the why. Far be it from him to question a good thing, anyway.
Sweeping his thumb back in the opposite direction gives much the same result, as does rolling that nipple between his thumb and forefinger, kneading gently with the rest of his fingers and the heel of his hand. Her breath comes in and out in quick gasps, her thighs twitching against his hips like she can’t quite figure out what to do with them, and he’s grinning when he dips down to kiss the glowing skin over her breastbone.
Hm, now that’s better. No more scorching pain. They’re back to that familiar, comfortable warmth, the lovely bubble of heat around a fireplace.
He trails more kisses across her chest, lavishing affection on his way to bring that nipple into his mouth, and when he does—when he drags it lightly between his teeth—she lets out a helpless whine from somewhere in the back of her throat.
He could swear it’s like that whine vibrates straight through him.
Beautiful, he wants to say, but the last thing he wants to do is take his mouth off of her, so he hums his pleasure instead, swirling and flicking with his tongue. He weaves his newly freed right arm under her arched back, hugging her impossibly closer, his chest flush against her stomach, and he drops his left elbow against the mattress so he can reach up with his left hand to give her other nipple the same treatment as the first.
“Gods— Gale—”
He hums again, still unwilling to part with her for long enough to utter a word. Her hips cant upward, searching for any friction she can get—and she lets out a frustrated whine when she realizes that there’s none to be found, not yet, not at this angle. There’s a hand on his upper arm and then on his back, and she squeezes, nails digging pinpricks into his skin. It’s a curious sort of not-quite-pain that edges over into pleasure, mingling with pride, knowing she’s only let go of that vigilant self-control because of what he’s doing to her.
He has wondered, more than once—in the privacy of his own tent, of course, when he was free to take himself in hand and follow the fantasy as far as he wished—if he could bring her to her peak from these soft little touches alone.
Hm. An experiment for another day, perhaps.
Especially because at that moment, her thighs tense against his waist, vice-tight, and the thought of those thighs doing the same thing when thrown over his shoulders is enough to drive him mad.
He gives her nipple one last parting kiss and a flick of his tongue, and then he pulls his arm out from under her, crawling backward and trailing more kisses down her stomach. She helpfully lifts her hips up for him as he unlaces her trousers and pulls them off as one with her underwear, kissing at the newly exposed skin as he goes, first her hip and then her inner thigh and then the inside of her knee and then her calf. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do, after all, to worship every inch of her, to treat her like the goddess she is.
And then, the instant she’s finally freed of any scrap of clothing whatsoever, he prostrates himself, hooking his arms under each of her thighs and splaying his palms wide over her hips.
Gods, but she’s gorgeous. She’s as eager as he is, glistening and swollen and absolutely stunning just a mere few inches from his face. The musculature of her thighs twitches impatiently in his arms. She could, of course, easily break his hold and roll her hips up to meet him, but she doesn’t, restraining herself to only the smallest of movements, ceding control over to him—with what seems to be herculean effort on her part. He kneads soothing circles into her hips with his thumbs, pressing her down against the mattress so that she knows where he wants her, and he bestows a chaste kiss to the crease of her inner thigh.
She huffs, a sound midway between a laugh and petulant frustration.
“It’s a couple inches to the left, y’know.”
“Is it,” Gale says, grinning wide, and he presses a kiss to the opposite thigh.
“Urgh! Godsdamned tease.”
“Well, by all means, my love, if you’ve got more instruction, don’t hold back. Far be it from me to refuse a learning opportunity.”
She shakes with a breathy laugh. “Oh, hells, I knew you were gonna be trouble, didn’t I? But you’re a right godsdamned menace. You— oh, there, you— fuck, that’s — ”
It’s intoxicating, the way she loses the ability to string words together when he tightens his grip on her thighs and finally pulls the tip of his tongue up through the length of her, just nearly to the sweet spot before he comes back down. Intoxicating, the little half-sentences stuttering their way out of her, the broken quality to her voice.
He does it again, and again, and again, gently teasing her while he keeps rubbing mindless circles into her hips with his thumbs. On the fifth or sixth or seventh pass—who knows, not like he’s in the right frame of mind at the moment to do something as tedious as count—he swirls his tongue in a tight circle around her clit, just enough for a bit of sensation, nothing like the firm pressure he knows she wants just yet, and in response she lets out a low moan, reaching down to thread her fingers into his hair.
“That’s— that’s it,” she breathes, her nails dragging along his scalp. “That— you— oh, gods—”
When he curls his tongue around that spot and gives her a firm suck, she loses the ability to form words entirely. Her breath leaves her in a single, shaking exhale. There’s a soft thump up above, either her free hand hitting the mattress or her throwing her head back, he’s not sure. Her fingers tighten in his hair, tugging, and gods, that’s a positively blissful sensation, a sharp pang of want that ricochets from the crown of his head straight down into his already aching erection.
It’s tempting to unwind an arm from around one of her thighs and reach down, even if all he’ll accomplish is a bit of mindless rutting.
Tempting, but he resists, occupying his hands with her instead. With his left, he reaches up and around her thigh, pressing his thumb into the spot just above where he’s currently savoring the taste of her, and he pushes, dragging her skin up so that all of her is that much more exposed for him to toy with to his heart’s content.
With his right, he pats blindly, reaching up along her hip and then her waist, stretching, and—
Ah. Damn. If he were thinking straight, he’d have known from the start he wouldn’t have been able to reach.
Well, no matter. That’s what he’s got magic for.
A simple flick of his wrist, and a Mage Hand materializes to do the job for him. His right hand returns to gripping her thigh, and the extra one caresses up her stomach and over the center of her chest, pressing firmly down when it reaches there as if to say lie back, love, before it moves to the side and picks up where Gale left off, teasing that nipple and gently tweaking it.
Two things happen at once, then: A low, needy moan reaches his ears, and she pulses, twitching deliciously against his lips and around his tongue.
Distantly, he remembers that he wanted to tease her a bit longer, but—
She really is intoxicating. And he is just a man. How can he resist?
He tightens his hold, keeping her legs as firmly apart as he possibly can, letting the Mage Hand do its thing up above while he coaxes more and more of those twitches from her down below. Another swirling circle with his tongue pulls a new whine from her. A flick with a firmly tensed tongue then drops that whine down an octave, her grip tightening in his hair nearly to the point of genuine pain.
Hm. Flicks it is, then.
Again and again and again. He’s helpless to do anything but keep repeating that same movement, drunk on the sounds it keeps pulling from her, mindless and dazed from the blissful tingle of her fist in his hair. Again her thighs tense, and it takes a great deal of effort to keep holding them apart, but he holds firm, relentless in the movement of his tongue, bringing her up and up and—
She crests over that peak with a shout and a spasm, her thighs snapping from his grip with almost comical ease and compressing against his ears. He keeps going regardless, teasing her further, delighting in the rising desperate crescendo of her cries until finally, after her voice breaks like a wave on a cliffside, she reaches her limit and uses the hand still in his hair to shove him back.
“You— fucking— hells, you’re…”
“Mm,” he hums, resting his cheek against her inner thigh while he catches his breath. And dissipates the Mage Hand. And licks his lips.
And kisses her thigh again, because it’s still right there.
“You—” she says, tilting up onto her elbows to look down at him. “Did you—? You did all that with your godsdamned trousers still on?”
“Hm? Oh,” he blinks, then shrugs the shoulder that’s not under her leg. “Well, I’m sure you can appreciate that I had far more pressing concerns at the time.”
She laughs, reaching for his face and coaxing him up to crawl over her again until they’re chest-to-chest, and she captures him in a hungry kiss, tonguing at his lower lip and dragging her teeth over it, undoubtedly tasting herself on his lips and his tongue.
“You damn well better be taking them off now,” she says, eyes glinting in the low light as she pulls away, her hand cradling his jaw, nails scratching through his beard. “It’s my turn.”
“Your wish is my command, my love,” Gale says, turning to kiss her palm, “but you should know, it was truly my pleasure.”
“What, so you’re saying you don’t want anything in return?”
“I’m saying that whether I receive anything in return is irrelevant. Watching you come apart like that is a gift. You must know that the sight of it alone would satiate me for a lifetime.”
“Aw, that’s sweet,” Karlach says, tapping a finger to his nose. “Now, do you want me to ride you til you see fuckin’ stars, or not?”
Gods. His breath leaves him all at once, his spine going molten.
His cock throbs within the confines of his trousers.
“Karlach… Should I ever refuse such an offer, I have been replaced with a shapechanger, and your best course of action will be to attack first and ask questions later.”
“Mm. Good to know,” she purrs, wrapping her fingers around the back of his neck and pulling him into another bruising kiss. It’s several seconds of her tongue dancing around his before she breaks away, leaving another love bite on his lower lip as the kiss ends. “Now quit sweet talking and take your godsdamned pants off, will you?”
Later, after they’ve spent an indulgent amount of time simply lying together in a tangled, panting heap, when the gorgeous heat radiating off of her lulls him into a stupor and Gale lets his leaden eyelids begin to close, he’s brought back to awareness by Karlach’s fingers gently trailing over his chest.
He opens his eyes. She’s got her head pillowed on his arm, so their height difference is reversed, and the orb’s blackened mark has been brought nearly up to her eye level.
“It lights up a bit, y’know,” she says, her voice low, as if she wants it clear that these words are for him alone, as if there’s anyone around to eavesdrop. She lightly traces the outermost line of the mark with her pointer finger, up across his collarbone and over his throat, her eyes distant. “I think it’s, like, when your heart starts beating too fast. Mine’s the same way.”
“That does make sense,” he says, his voice as low as hers. “It’s hard to know without carving me open to actually have a peek, of course, but… I believe anatomically, the orb is quite literally in my heart. Or if not physically, if the Karsite Weave can’t exist in the same physical sense that flesh and blood do—which, in the interest of accuracy, I suppose it can’t—then at least metaphysically, it’s linked to my heart. That’s why I advised against any, er… excitement, prior to Elminster stabilizing it.”
“So it’s always done that, then? The lighting up when your heart goes faster?”
“I think so.”
“Does it hurt?”
Gale frowns. “Does yours? When your engine glows brighter?”
“Not here,” she says, and finally, her eyes raise to meet his. “But yours ain’t an infernal engine, is it?”
Ah. She’s not letting him dance around the question, then. He nods his acquiescence, and he places his hand over hers, running his thumb over the back of her knuckles. Then he lifts that hand, kisses it, and places it back over the mark.
“It hurts a bit,” he quietly admits. “Nothing like the hunger, before it was stabilized. That was— well, it’s probably best not to dwell on that. But now, on occasion, it’s… it’s like the magic reaches outward, and more often than not it ends up grating between my shoulder blades. Like… like a heartburn of the spinal cord. Unpleasant, to be sure, but certainly nothing unbearable.”
She hums in thought, and then she turns her hand around so she can lace their fingers together. “But once you give that crown back, it’ll be gone for good, huh?”
“That was the agreement, and if there’s one thing gods are well known for, it’s keeping their word to the letter.”
“And you’re still gonna do it, yeah? Give her the crown?”
“That’s the plan.”
She levels him with an even look, plainly disbelieving. “That right?”
“Of course.”
“Of course. So no doubts at all, then?”
He hesitates, his words getting caught halfway up his throat.
Gods damn it all, she’s right. Of course she is. And she doesn’t deserve empty platitudes, misguided attempts to assuage any lingering fears she may have. She deserves his honesty. She deserves nothing less.
“I… I still have some doubts, I’ll admit,” he says, and he gulps down the nervousness at speaking those doubts aloud and plows on. “I think I’d be a fool not to. There are rewards and risks, of course, and the rewards are quite obvious. That kind of power… in the hands of someone like you or me, in the hands of a mortal, someone who cares, it could do so much good. Likely more than we can even comprehend just yet. It could solve conflicts, ease pains, put an end to suffering the world over.”
It could fix an infernal engine, he thinks but doesn’t say.
Fixing her heart, letting her spend the rest of her life walking on Faerunian soil again, it would be child’s play with that kind of power.
Gently, Karlach asks, “And the risks?”
He takes a steadying breath, then another, and he says, “I have spent a great deal of my life striving to be something different than I was, something special. Something… greater. Hells, that’s what got me in this predicament in the first place, isn’t it? When I tell you that I was convinced, down to the core of my being, that I couldn’t bear to live out my days as simply Gale Dekarios and nothing more, you must know I truly meant it. Even now, a part of me still rebels at the idea of letting that notion go.”
Again, he lifts her hand to kiss it, then returns it to nestle between them, orange-white infernal heat radiating against the back of his palm and the faint violet of the orb reflecting off the back of hers.
“So, the risk… is that harnessing the power of that crown would very likely put an end to Gale Dekarios, and it would allow someone else, someone different, to take his place. I’m still not sure how I feel about that, to be honest, but I certainly know you’d be displeased.”
“Oh, d’you think so?”
“You’ve made it quite clear, actually,” Gale says, smiling softly at her. “And I’m not sure I can ever adequately convey how grateful I am for it.”
“Yeah, you’re pretty fuckin’ aces, too,” she says, grinning back, and it draws a startled laugh out of him. “You don’t have to thank me for pointing it out, you know.”
“I’m still going to.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says, fondly rolling her eyes. “So. The crown. It’s in the Chionthar now.”
“It is.”
“So you go, say, tomorrow morning, after we get some sleep—”
“Tomorrow?” Gale balks, blinking wide eyes. “We only just got here!”
“Yeah, and there’s probably all kinds of scavengers digging around the wreckage of the Gate right fucking now,” she says. “You really wanna risk somebody else scooping that thing up before you can get to it?”
He deflates a bit. “And what, I just leave you here?”
“Well, I can’t go topside just yet without painting the walls with my guts, so… yeah, you leave me here. C’mon, magic man. You think I can’t hold my own while you go on a little errand?”
“It’s far from a little errand, Karlach. It could take the better part of a day, more than that maybe, and… and I promised you that you wouldn’t be alone anymore.”
She actually laughs at that, letting go of his hand so she can reach up to cradle his face, pulling him in for a kiss. He has no complaints on that front, of course, humming into her lips, and she pulls away and says, “You sweet, sweet idiot. I was alone down in this shithole for ten years. I can handle a day or two if I know I’m gonna see this cute face again at the end of it.”
He sighs, still frowning at her. “I would still much prefer that we get your engine fixed first.”
“Tough luck, soldier,” she shrugs. “Yours we got a quick fix for. Mine’s gonna be a hell of a lot more work, and it’s gonna take a hell of a lot longer to figure out where to even fuckin’ start. It’s gonna be a right pain in the ass, trust me on that.”
“Oh, I’m sure. But it’s one that I would readily sign up for again in a heartbeat.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says, and she doesn’t meet his eyes. Before he can double down on it, she moves, shimmying closer so that she can snake one arm underneath his waist and drape the other over his ribs, a tangled horizontal hug, and she presses her forehead to the center of his chest, right over the mark. She lets out a slow, dragged-out exhale, sagging comfortably against him. “So we’ll take it one chest bomb at a time, then, yeah? Together.”
Gale drops a kiss into her hair, right between the horns, and he leaves his face there, breathing in the scent of iron and sweat and the lingering bits of that one soap she always used back at the Elfsong. His eyes fall shut again, the heat of her soaking in bone-deep, and his mind’s eye drifts lazily through half-formed imaginings of all the adventures to come. One chest bomb at a time, and then the rest of their lives, if she’ll have him.
But he’s getting ahead of himself. For now, there’s this.
Together. He quite likes the sound of that.