Chapter Text
Gale and Azariel’s dominion was a thing of living thought... the Weave stretched into both concept and form. Rivers of magic flowed in quiet, deliberate bends across an endless horizon of floating marble terraces. Stars pulsed like slow heartbeats. Every breath shimmered with threads of raw possibility.
The Realm of Ambition and Liberation.
Two domains moving in deliberate harmony. Where one god’s realm embodied unbound ambition, a ceaseless ascent toward what could be, the other flowed with the intoxicating freedom to cast off every chain. A paired dance in which ambition found purpose through liberation, and liberation gained direction through ambition.
Together, they guided mortals who prayed for release from their cages: physical, magical, or spiritual. Those who hungered were pushed to rise beyond their limits. They answered supplicants with omens, visions... even the spark of a new idea, or the sudden courage to defy their fate. They stabilized rebellions, kindled innovations, wove protections against tyrants both mortal and divine. It was an endless, exhausting stewardship over the hopes and hungers of countless lives.
Yet, today, right now, Azariel stood in a rare moment of stillness. He hovered at the edge of a brimming conduit, the air spiralling upward in a column of singing light. Silvery strands of Weave, his Weave, moved like a slow tide through a sky of pale violet.
Gale would have once called it beautiful. Gale would have once narrated it, breathless with scholarly awe, tracing patterns in the glow with his fingertips. Eyes shining with mortal wonder.
But that was centuries ago.
Azariel now watched Gale from across the terrace, the man's silver glow robed in constellations. Gale examined a tapestry of Weave which flowed and rippled from world to world. His posture was serene.
Perfect.
Still.
Too still.
The man who once laughed to steel himself from his doubts, who once sighed in exasperation at endless campfire chaos… now studied reality with the detachment of an equation.
If Azariel strained, he could hear the faint whispers of those chaotic nights. Of the adventures they had once gone on: the bickering, the warmth, the fear for the world and for each other.
Azariel closed his eyes.
He wanted to picture Gale. The dim glow of the fire reflecting warmth off of his figure as he cooked whatever scraps they could salvage. Azariel gently inhaled through his nostrils, an act he had not found the need to do in centuries. The smell of smoke and seared meat danced along the edges of his nostrils.
He could hear Karlach’s booming laughter, Astarion’s unhelpful commentary, Wyll and Lae’zel arguing over weapon maintenance while Shadowheart hid a smirk behind her wine.
Could you pass that garlic clove, Azariel...?
The voice was warped.
When Azariel glanced up at the man cooking, who was now looking his way... The image blurred, fogged as though a veil had dropped over his vision. Azariel strained for the image: a warm face, a crooked smile, a scholar’s curiosity dancing in mortal eyes. A shape he had memorized once with almost painful devotion.
But all he found in his mind was haze. An image of light and contours swam through his memories, along with a voice smoothed by divinity until it was barely human.
His chest tightened.
No...
He tried again, dragging the memory up by its roots. Gale... mortal Gale... He tried to remember the warmth of his breath, the exact brown of his eyes, the way his hair caught firelight...
But when he reached for those memories, they dissolved into divine abstraction, washed out by centuries of worship, power, and magic. Gale’s face became a cluster of symbols and patterns, weave-density, arcane signatures, permutations of identity.
Not a man.
Glancing around the fireplace, that fog didn't lift. He could not see the faces of any of his allies. There was nothing but more haze. Azariel’s breath hitched, sharp and quiet.
He was forgetting.
His fingers curled against the pale essence of his sanctuary, a ripple of wild, uncontrolled magic flashing under his skin. This couldn’t be happening. This shouldn’t be happening.
For two hundred years, he and Gale had worked and shaped the fates of mortals... he had always believed the tether between them remained human at its heart.
But if he could not recall Gale’s face… then what was left of that heart? Of their mortal souls?
Had Gale forgotten him, too?
He moved toward Gale, divine light pooling around his ankles, stirred by emotion he barely recognized.
“Gale,” he said, softly, because softness was one of the few things he still remembered how to give.
Gale didn’t turn. He didn’t need to.
"I sense that something troubles you." He stated. His voice was calm, smooth, like polished marble.
The sound was matter-of-fact. No true concern to be found. What would his concern even sound like...?
Azariel stopped a few steps behind him. His silence lingered for a little too long as he tried to find the words.
“I’ve been thinking,” he decided at last, “about… beginnings.”
“Beginnings?” Gale finally turned.
His expression was curious, but not puzzled. It was the curiosity of a scholar encountering an unexpected footnote.
“What of them?”
Azariel poked his fingernails into the tip of his thumb, one by one. He felt nothing. Habit without sensation.
“Do you remember,” he asked, “the first time we spoke?”
Gale’s brow furrowed faintly, an old mortal gesture, almost comforting.
“Of course. I remember every moment.”
But Azariel heard the lie in it. Not deliberate. Not malicious. Just… instinctive.
Automatic.
Memory without texture.
Azariel stepped beside him, leaning lightly against the railing of woven starlight.
“You were insufferable,” he said with a ghost of humor. “Full of theatrics. You lectured me about the Weave before even asking my name.”
Gale smiled. It was thin, distant, like remembering the idea of a smile rather than the feeling of one.
“Hm. That does sound like me.”
Azariel held onto the moment, grasping, clawing for the details that no longer came. It was all jumbled now... Except for those memories where his emotions felt strongest.
He followed that thread.
"I hated you... for a time.”
The statement hung between them like a suspended blade.
Gale blinked. More old habits beginning to resurface. “…You did?”
Azariel nodded, looking down at the Weave-rivers far below. The god-plane wind whispered around them, tugging at their robes.
"I truly believed that you had everything I ever wanted..." The realm shuddered. Azariel’s pupils thinned, the world blurred, and the terrace dissolved into darkness. The memory swallowed them whole.
They were back at camp.
The firelight on Gale’s face as he knelt down, his hand stretched out to Azariel.
"Here. Place your hand over my heart. Let me show you."
Azariel hesitated for a moment. His mind was spinning with all the information Gale had just given him. A wizard prodigy, the way he described the weave bending around him...
It caused his own memories to come back in flashes. Azariel knew that feeling he described. Remembered how the weave moved with his blade as if it was music and he, the conductor.
It took everything he had not to react as more information surfaced. Azariel kept his face still as stone as he listened to Gale's story. Mystra revealed herself to him... became his teacher... his muse... his lover...
His lover.
All he could think about was controlling his own expression, trying to tame his own thrashing heart. He couldn't remember why he was reacting this way. Couldn't remember what was making him feel so ill. This was more than simply the shocked reaction of a cleric meeting one of their god's favored mortals.
Azariel needed to know, needed to see.
He stretched out his hand hesitantly. Fingers hovered over Gale’s sternum, barely touching, as though the slightest pressure might break something fragile inside him. The air hummed. The Weave pulsed. And the moment his fingertips grazed fabric, Gale exhaled sharply, as though the breath had been punched from him.
A soft violet glow flickered beneath Azariel’s hand. His tadpole connected to Gale's, and the memory surged forth.
The Weave erupted outward in a violent plume of amethyst light. Gale staggered, his hands shooting out blindly and gripping Azariel’s wrist in a desperate, trembling hold.
Gale doubled over, dragging Azariel’s hand with him until the palm was pressed flush to his chest. Fragments of Gale’s life poured through him, not words but impressions.
That book. The dark Weave leaping forth, tearing into Gale's chest. Hunger, devouring hunger, ripping through him. The cursed heart beating inside his ribs.
Azariel's mind flickered. A flash. A foreign memory. The Weave tearing his body apart.
Mystra’s cold, resentful eyes.
Azariel quickly pulled his hand away as if he had been burned. His eyes blazed wild with fear, breath unsteady. Had Gale seen it?
But Gale only straightened slowly, climbing to his feet. He was composed again, expression calm but stern. "This Netherese blight," he said, "this orb, for lack of a better word, is balled inside my chest. And it needs to be fed."
Azariel was only hearing bits of pieces of what Gale was saying at this point, the thump of his own heartbeat thrashing against his eardrums.
"...were it ever to fully destabilize, however..."
Azariel's breath was caught in his throat.
"You'll die?" Astarion cut in. The sudden interruption jolted Azariel. He’d forgotten, until that moment, that the whole camp was gathered around them, packed close in a tight circle, breathless as they waited to learn their companion’s fate… and how it might doom their own.
"Rather worse, actually. I will erupt. I don't know the exact magnitude of the eruption, but given my studies of Netherese magic, I'd say a fragment even as small as the one I carry..." Gale paused for just a moment, keeping his tone steady.
"It'd level a city the size of Waterdeep."
Before Azariel could catch himself, his thoughts tumbled from his lips. "I thought we were growing closer, Gale. You should have told me right away." Each syllable clung to his tongue, his throat tightening around each word with precision to ensure the sound was level.
"I know," Gale murmured. "All of this... it must feel like a betrayal. Say the word, and we'll part ways." There was a sense of conviction to his tone. Azariel believed that he would do just that if he was told. Yet, each word dragged out of him, like he needed to force them from his throat.
Azariel cast his eyes downward. He couldn't bear to look at Gale. It wasn't the withholding of information about the orb that was making Azariel feel this ill. Not even the prospect of blowing up an entire city, all of them along with it. No, it was something else.
His mind drifted back to their talks about magic around the fire. How Azariel had shared his love and devotion for Mystra... how Gale, in turn, did the same.
Azariel now felt mocked by it.
Yet the softness in Gale's eyes while Azariel shared in his interests, the longing in his tone while speaking about the endless possibilities the Weave had to offer. That is what clung to the back of Azariel's mind.
"I care too much about you to abandon you now, Gale." The bitterness in his voice escaped before he could catch it. "We travel on together."
"That is - a great relief." Gale exhaled. "Oh, a great relief indeed!"
Azariel was taken aback by the elation in Gale's tone, in the absolute weight that seemed to tumble from his shoulder and the odd surprise in his genuine thankfulness. "You truly are a soul that steels my own. From all my newly rallied heart, I thank you."
And Gale kept thanking him. He continued to ramble on, sounding almost nervous while he spoke. Gale's face tensed as he promised to fight, promised to make himself useful. His voice tumbled too fast, too earnest, like a man trying to convince the world he was worth saving.
Like he needed a reason to fight for his own life.
Eventually, the conversation drifted. Gale laughed and chatted with the group again, levity returning easily despite the doom in his chest.
A fresh wave of nausea washed over Azariel, worse than before.
