#thankfully we don't also have paladin hubris to deal with because boy what a combo THAT would be
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kudzuoath · 1 year ago
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Weft and Warp
The Annals of Karsus are within reach. And Gale plans to seize all they have to offer.
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A single unwary footstep and all of them would have been burned to cinders. Only his quick thinking (naturally) and the willingness to listen from his companions saw them through. Well – Astarion’s disarming skills hadn’t hurt either. But Gale was the one to spot the traps first this time. He was well versed in the dangers of a magus’ tower, after all.
Even one in the incompetent (and by now quite cold) hands of a cad like Lorroakan.
And now. Now they were finally a room away from unlocking the door he needed.
It was a struggle to remain still as the aforementioned vampire disabled the pressure plate they’d arrived on. Something that was accompanied first by scoffs – then hissing invectives as it proved more challenging than it looked.
“Karlach, darling, if you continue to fidget, I’m going to poison you,” said Astarion.
“Nah, no you won’t,” she replied, smile in her voice. “I’m your favorite.”
“I have enough coin for the skeleton,” he muttered. “Try me.”
The jostling from behind him abruptly ceased, and he heard Karlach make a pleased giggle behind him suggesting that Temperance had probably hugged her.Their fiery friend still couldn’t help laughing each time someone so much as shook her hand.
Gale ignored them. Stock still, eyes riveted on the door ahead. His heart pounded, his head felt a little light. This book – this book – it would change everything. End his incarceration, his execution in perfect symmetry. If it held the answers he thought it did – everything was going to change. Everything.
He would make it so.
Goosebumps arose at the possibilities. A world unbound. A world where it was the gods themselves with their feet held to the fire. Not mortals. He could see it so clearly.
No more would children like Temperance be abandoned. No Karlach’s with their hearts stolen and replaced with fire. Or Shadowheart’s, lied to and manipulated. No vampire spawn who prayed to an empty sky for mercy. No one would need consign their soul to the hells just to save someone else.
No more wizards, picked up and cast aside at the first hint of boredom.
A world of perfect kindness and beauty. His world. His choices.
If, he thought. Damnable word.
There was a little clunk from below his feet, and a satisfied sigh from the vampire. Astarion stood and made an elaborate ‘after you’ gesture at them all. “Go on then, my dears. You’ve the run of this place.”
He’d hardly finished speaking before Gale was across the room and through the door. At one end, bathed in pale blue light, a leaver. He made a bee-line for it – only to be caught up short with a little ‘hurk’ as a hand snagged the back of his belt.
“Trap!” Temperance admonished.
His face burned. Out of the corner of one eye, he could see Astarion with that bloody smirk of his. “We hardly came all the way down here for roasted Gale. But if you’re so keen on walking into your doom…”
“No eating the wizard,” Temperance said dryly.
“Oh of course not,” he purred in response. “That’s your job, isn’t it? I wouldn’t dream of taking your place, darling.”
Temperance rolled her eyes, but turned to Gale rather than responding. He could physically feel the weight of her gaze. He gave her a sidelong glance. There was a line between her eyebrows, and a frown on her face. It was becoming familiar, this expression of concern. And didn’t it feel jarring to see next to his imaginings.
“You’re usually more careful than this,” she pointed out.
“You can’t blame me for being excited, I hope?” He leaned in, eyes overbright. “We’re so close to finding the answer to everything that plagues us, Temperance. One book! With my rather brilliant mind set to the information held within a solution is all but guaranteed.”
Life awaited. Life unbound.
“Just don’t completely lose your head,” she muttered.
“Of course not. I know what I’m doing.”
At some point his eyes had become stuck on the lever again. His mind back to spinning with possibilities. All of them tentatively featuring his paladin at his side. He found himself wondering if she even could have a second god. Was that what had her so unnerved? When he’d chastised Lorroakan, she’d stared at him as if he were a stranger.
But then there was her oath. Vengeance.
She would understand. He only needed to explain. Unlike Mystra, Temperance would listen to him.
“Sometimes I think you only bring me along to open doors and disable traps,” Astarion said with a put upon sigh. Followed by an encouraging clunk. “There.”
Gale was more careful the second time, but no more traps awaited. Only the lever. He was first to reach it, and when he pulled it the sound of unlocking doors made his heart sing. Made the crushing weight of impatience a little lighter. With every trap taken care of – or at least those relevant – he led the way back to Karsus’ vault. The roaring in his ears and the pounding of his heart drowning out anything the others might have been saying.
Inside at last, he found himself looking at walls of scrolls, and shelves of books. Each and every one of them humming with the Weave. Containing lattice-work spells. Some as delicate and complex as the finest lace, others brutal twists of magic akin to the ropes that might tether a ship to shore. Tapestries of power of the sort that made the ghost of a familiar hunger stir within him. Not the orb – but his own.
Gods, he hadn’t felt like this in years. On the brink of near-divine creation. Was there a single better feeling than those moments when thought and desire became action and creation? He went to the first shelf – ignoring the scrolls for now – and began to search systematically.
He was vaguely aware of Karlach speaking and Temperance responding. Of the other three each searching their own bookcase. Something that – even with his nerves twanging like a lute strung too tightly – made him smile.
This time he had more than his own hands. More than a feverish desperation to not be forgotten. (Though far below his conscious mind, that fear of being set aside lurked. An ugly, broken little thing that whispered as insidiously as Mizora.) This time he wanted more than the regard of his goddess. More than his own satisfaction.
(…Didn’t he?)
This would not be like the last time. He was Gale of Waterdeep. And soon enough he’d be more even than that.
“I think I found it,” said Temperance.
Gale naturally gravitated toward her so he was already beside her when she spoke. He turned, saw the book in her hands, and let out a sigh of relief. A locked tome, gilded edges, ancient parchment feathering from its uneven edges. Bound and then rebound many times, with an intricate tapestry of magic worked into the cover and the lock. Spells of preservation that kept it from crumbling to dust.
“The Annals of Karsus,” he breathed. Reverent. “The preamble to a civilization’s downfall, committed to parchment by the very hand that wrought its destruction.”
He managed to unstick his eyes from the book – the most important book of his life! – to look Temperance in the face. “If the crown we saw under moonrise towers was truly forged by Karsus himself – ! This book will confirm it. All we have to do – all I have to do – is turn the page.”
Gale held out his hands for it. Expecting Temperance to part with it as easily as she’d parted with those magical items miles and weeks behind them, out in the wilderness.
But his hands remained empty.
She was looking at him with a carefully blank expression. Her knuckles stood out white from her grip on the thing. And for the first time since Lorroakin’s death, Gale felt a tremor of unease. As if his spine were being meticulously taken apart and frozen vertebrae by vertebrae.
“I’m… not sure I want you delving into this,” she said quietly.
A pit opened in him. Hurt. Confusion. The tiniest flicker of anger. The gnawing teeth of anxiety, puncturing his lungs and suffocating him. Why had she come so far only to turn her back on him now?
“And since when have we sought to avoid trouble, eh?”
He rallied. She wouldn’t. That was the truth of the matter – wasn’t it? She wouldn’t have broken into the archives with him only to get cold feet at the last moment. Temperance was braver than that. And a good deal kinder, too.
“Come now, the knowledge lurking between those pages could help us greatly.” And when still she hesitated, he went on in a sharper tone. “Don’t be a hindrance after you’ve been such a great help.”
The paladin stared at him, still as a held breath save for her eyes moving across his face. Searching. Measuring. And then she offered him the book.
Some small part of him worried that if he waited a moment longer he’d lose his chance for good. So he opened it, then and there, scanning each page he turned with growing fervor. Ancient writings in cipher, for the most part. But diagrams – of the same crown he’d seen. Of the somatic components necessary for a spell of binding. The stones held by the chosen of the Dead Three.
He began to chatter about what he was reading. Unable to contain his glee. Because it was exactly what he needed. No – exactly what the world needed. He really could do this.
“ – If we can collect the crown’s setting, and the three Netherstones, and with the correct invocation of certain spells and gestures detailed in these notes… I think I could reforge it.”
But when he finally tore his eyes from the page to look up at his companions, he did not see what he wanted. Karlach was giving him a sidelong glance, eyes narrow, frown pulling at the corners of her mouth. Astarion seemed oddly calculating – approving, even. And his paladin still looked completely blank.
“Wouldn’t that make things worse?” she said at last. “We should be trying to destroy the thing, not make it more powerful.”
“Do not mistake the actions of its wearer – no, rather those controlling its wearer at present – as the nature of the crown itself. It is a tool, not some great evil. No matter the hands that guide it.” Nuance she should understand, given her upbringing amongst the desperate and the starving. “If we could restore it to its former glory, it would no longer be a mere leash and collar, used to subjugate friend or foe. It would be something greater. Something divine.”
“And yet when Karsus tried to use it, he destroyed his entire civilization!” she hissed, ask cracking to reveal – anger? Sadness? He couldn’t tell.
“Correlation, not causation. It was what he did with it, not that he created it! Say what you will of the Absolute and the plot of our nemesis’ but for all the horrors they’ve wrought our civilization remains standing. I don’t intend to make the mistakes of its maker, Temperance, I know better. And under my guidance the crown could be used for such good.”
“He has a point,” said Astarion. “If we have access to this power, why not use it? Unlike our tadpoles, this one won't even turn us into enslaved tentacled abominations! It’s a win from all directions.”
“Exactly!” he said, somewhat surprised at himself.
“Wizards,” Karlach sighed. And did not further elaborate.
“Just imagine it,” he said, stepping past their friends. Close enough to set one hand on her arm. “The power of the gods in mortal hands at last. We’d be free of doctrine and dogma, confined only by the limits of our imaginations.”
He watched her swallow. The way her gaze drifted to first the book, then where he was touching her. That mask she wore dropped when she looked up again. Her eyes were too bright – even considering that she was a tiefling – and her brow was knit. Hesitance. Something he almost never saw in her.
Perhaps he’d taken the wrong track. Her magic came from faith, from the will of the gods -- and the phylactery. Would she even be allowed to follow him without breaking her Oath? Would she dare to risk it?
I would be a better vessel for her faith, he thought.
But then – oh, then she took his hand and laced their fingers together.
“You’re starting to worry me,” she said quietly. “But I trust you.”
A sigh poured out of him like the tide. Not exactly what he’d wanted her to say. He had hoped to court her enthusiasm, her curiosity. But that she did not turn away… that was enough. For now.
“We must discuss this further,” he said, squeezing her hand, hoping to banish her fears. Of course a simple touch did no such thing. “But quietly. Privately.”
Karlach lifted her eyebrows at both of them. “Oooh, private conversations. Tough luck, Astarion. Isn’t your tent next to Gale’s?”
“Ugh,” said the vampire.
Gale pointedly ignored them, focus remaining on Temperance. “Find me later, and I will show you something truly divine. I will show you what this crown could mean for both of us.”
And then she would stand with him. Wouldn’t she?
Doubt crept in.
“I’ll hold you to that, Gale.”
“Trust me just a little further, love, I swear to you that I shall prove worthy of it.”
Another long pause as she looked at him. “Tonight.”
And that was that.
Leaving was even easier than it ought to have been. All it took was a trip through a portal, Astarion breaking them out of a locked office, and then they were the four of them back in Sorcerous Sundries. It was a bit jarring to see the projection of a dead man. And somewhat concerning how none of the patrons made any comment on their bloodied and battered appearances. But then, it was a magic shop. And Lorroakan had something of a reputation.
Then they stepped out into the sun.
And there was Elminster. Waiting like a red robed omen.
A chill filled Gale’s lungs. He hated that his first instinctive reaction to seeing his friend was suspicion, now. They had both always been hers – Mystra’s. Only now it seemed he was no longer. And that divide between them might be wide enough for him to fall into.
To his left, he felt Temperance bristle. He felt her light touch at his back. And it shored up his reserves of courage.
He knew what he was doing.
And he could handle this.
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