Chapter Text
The Underdark is hard on everyone. The feeling of crashing into it at the end of a frantic retreat from Crèche Y’llek doesn’t help. Their one hope of avoiding having to traverse this shadow curse definitively dashed, they tore their way back through the mountains and descended beneath the earth, to this dreamscape of purple and black. Sometimes as they walk, Izar loses all sense of scale, and she feels herself impossibly tiny next to the massive mushroom formations. She’s running out of energy to hide the dizzy spells, when she drifts as they walk, when she loses track of her thoughts, slips into vile fantasies, momentarily forgets herself.
They’ve all probably inhaled ten different kinds of spores in the last few days, and that can’t be helping, either.
So, loathe though she is to spend any more time here than necessary, she declares of a day of rest before they go to try and find this duergar settlement across the lake. The fact that nobody protests speaks for itself, she reckons.
Izar herself, of course, can’t turn off. After dinner, she quizzes Halsin about the shadow curse, but he has little to offer besides what he’s already said. Even so, it’s more than Izar, head throbbing, has to give. Sure, she’s proud and stubborn, but more than that, she wants this worm out of her brain, and if Halsin is the one best suited to making that happen…
“Maybe you should take charge from this point,” she says, rubbing her temples, not that it helps. “You know as much about this supposed path through the Underdark as any of us, and once we’re there…”
“I’m surprised you’d suggest it, seeing the chaos I left behind at the Grove,” Halsin says wryly.
“You’ve had half your mind on the shadow curse all these years,” she replies. “I’m sure it would feel very different now that you can finally pursue it directly.”
“I wish I had your faith in my abilities.” He shakes his head. “You have led the group well so far. It has been a tiring few days, but as you’ve wisely already suggested, some rest will leave us all feeling refreshed. Including you. Even if it’s in… somewhat unsettling surroundings.”
Izar huffs a weak laugh. “Well, let me know if you change your mind.”
He can see that he’s watching her with concern. She should try to hide the pain better, she knows, but she’s slept so badly these past few nights, she doesn’t have the energy. But instead of commenting on it, he says, “You haven’t told me much about yourself.”
Izar shrugs. “There isn’t much to say.”
“Ah.” She can see the flicker of disappointment— disapproval, even— behind his mild look. “Well, as you wish.”
“No, I mean that quite literally.” She shifts, bracing herself to explain yet again, to be misunderstood. Gods, she’s tired. “I have no memories before the nautiloid. I… someone attacked me, I think. I assume they meant for me to die, but then the illithids took me. That’s all only a guess, though.” Something in Halsin’s steady gaze spurs her to keep talking. “There’s a scar, here.” She turns so he can see it, the knot of tissue above her ear. There are scars everywhere, of course, but she often thinks about that one. Someone, after all, did something to her brain.
“You get headaches,” he says, and Izar remembers abruptly that he is a healer with quite literally centuries of experience. “I see you lose focus, sometimes.”
“I’ll just… forget where I am for a moment,” she says quietly. “It always passes.” She looks up at him, his expression of gentle concern. “You sure you don’t want to take over?”
A clang makes them both jump. Lae’zel, on tidying-up duty just on the other side of the fire, scowls as she bends to retrieve the pots she dropped. Then she immediately sets them down again with another clatter that sends a bolt of pain through Izar’s aching head and wheels around to face the two of them.
“You— the zaith’isk—” She’s glaring as if making an accusation, but Izar knows her well enough by now to hear that she’s actually trying to ask a question.
“I was like this already,” Izar says, but her pulse is quickening. She’s too tired, been too careless. This is not going to be the thing that makes their fragile trust slip from her grasp, it can’t be. “It isn’t that thing’s fault.”
But Lae’zel is advancing on her, eyes narrowed. “That is why you insisted upon going first.”
Izar shifts into a readier posture, instinctively wary. “Well… yes. I didn’t like how that doctor wouldn’t explain how it worked, or what it would do. My brain’s already ruined, better me than you. But it’s nothing new. I’m as capable as I was before we–”
Inches away now, Lae’zel jabs a furious finger at her. “Your headaches have worsened. And your nightmares. You have barely slept since.”
Izar feels her cheeks heating, and hopes the glow of the fire hides it. She wants to stand, but she feels pinned between Lae’zel and Halsin. “You… I didn’t realise anyone had noticed…”
“Everyone notices, Iz,” Karlach calls out from her tent. Lovely, so Lae’zel has drawn everyone’s attention. “We can all hear you.”
“Oh, good.” Shadowheart ducks her head out of her own tent. Izar is now very sure she was sitting just inside the flap, listening all along. “Are we finally talking about this?”
“If you’ve had a problem, you were free to mention it at any time,” Izar snaps, rising to come nose-to-nose with Lae’zel, who stares her down steadily. Fury flickers at the edges of her vision. How dare they, how dare they— they’ve made her their leader, so they can damn well show her some respect, and if they won’t then perhaps they ought to see what she’s capable of—
“It’s not a problem,” Gale says, because of course he’s now here, too. But his voice returns her to herself. She won’t think too hard about that. “It’s a worry.”
“I have it under control,” Izar says immediately. Rage wars with panic and she feels strangely dizzy. If they leave her here, in the middle of the fucking Underdark… if it’s not even the urge that makes her lose their trust, but her fucking mangled brain– “It won’t impact my ability to fight or scout. I’ll be quieter when I walk around at night.”
“It’s not the walking, mate.” Karlach has fully emerged from her tent now, and stands by the fire with her arms crossed. The firelight casts such stark shadows, it’s hard to read her expression. “It’s the screaming.”
Panic wins. Too lightheaded to keep standing, Izar sinks down next to Halsin, who must once again see something in her face, because he very gently places a hand on the back of her neck and eases her forward until she’s doubled over, her head between her knees.
“Just breathe until it passes,” he says quietly.
She breathes. She considers conducting the rest of this conversation from the safety of this hunched-over position, where she can’t see anyone and doesn’t have to look at their faces. But if she has to be a mindless, violent wreck, she can’t be a coward, too. She sits up.
“I didn’t know,” she says. Her voice sounds basically steady at least, a pleasant surprise. “I’m… very sorry. I… how have you been putting up with that?”
An uncomfortable silence follows. Wyll speaks up to finally break it. “I guess all of us have some experience sharing sleeping arrangements with people who…”
“We’ve slept through worse,” Karlach supplies when he trails off. “Surprised at you, though, Gale.”
“I did go to boarding school,” Gale says. “A dormitory full of apprentice wizards! Best to learn to ignore all the sounds of spells going off in the night.”
The conversation is slipping into inanity, as it so often does. She’s immensely fond of everyone’s capacity for nonsense in the face of this nightmare, the way everyone sometimes reaches a silent accord to let a subject pass, to begin to tease and natter instead. Izar does not seem to be someone who laughs easily, but they make her laugh. Even so, she is usually the one who drags them back, when something really needs to be said. She should do it now, give them the chance to take the long-overdue reassessment of her fitness to lead them– to be part of their group at all.
She meets Gale’s eyes across the fire. He gives a small, reassuring smile. If anyone can understand the urge to over-explain, to justify, to reassure that your strengths outweigh your weaknesses…
Lae’zel and Wyll have started bickering about something, drawing away and clearing enough space for Gale to slip over and sit next to Izar. After a moment of palpable hesitation, he lays a hand on her knee.
“It’s to your credit, you know, how well you’ve borne up,” he says quietly. “But I do feel like something of a cad for not saying anything sooner. I’ve been rather caught up in my own problems– as have we all, I think. All rather content to not ask questions, if it means no one will ask any of us in turn. You deserve far better, after all you’ve done for me.”
Izar swallows and, finding it too hard to look at Gale, looks at the fire. “You’ve helped me more than you can know. Don’t worry about it.”
“Ah, well!” He squeezes her knee gently, then seems very happy to leave his hand resting there. “With as many worries as we have, what’s one more? And you– well, you are never far from my thoughts anyway.”
“Yes,” Izar agrees. “Literally.”
Gale laughs rather more than the joke deserves, rubbing absentmindedly at his chest as his chuckling trails off. “Ah, yes, well. Not quite what I meant. But I think you know that. I’ve seen some of your thoughts as well, after all. Though I have to ask. What you said about the zaith’isk. Was that the same logic that caused you to allow Volo to hack at you with– I believe it was an ice pick?”
Izar flushes. “Well, we were all getting fairly desperate. And if I ever knew he’s a famous fraud, I don’t remember it. I just reckoned, if there was any chance it could work, then we ought to try, and better me than–”
“Any of us, yes,” he finishes for her. He sounds amused, but his tone quickly turns solemn. “I know such things sound like mere platitudes, but please try to take it to heart when I say that you are worth so very much more than that. None of us wish to see you come to harm on our behalf. Myself least of all, I’d be so bold as to claim.”
Izar nods acceptance, only half believing him, but her eye watches the movement of his hand against his chest. Quiet again, she asks, “And how are you?”
He follows her gaze and abruptly stops the motion with a clench of his fist. He’s silent a moment, thinking, but can hardly settle on anything but honesty now. “In pain, much of the time. But one gets strangely used to it. But please, don’t worry– I am constantly monitoring my condition. I will know when it is time to… step away.”
“It won’t come to that,” she says, feeling more stubborn than confident. “Those members of the Society of Brilliance mentioned an arcane tower. We’ll go take a look. There might be something useful there.”
“I believe we have a drow and some duergar to see to,” Gale points out. “The fact that we seem to have happened upon another nest of Absolutists is— well, promising may not be the right word. But it suggests we may be nearing the path to Moonrise. There is no good reason to delay.”
“Your life is a very good reason, in my book,” Izar replies. “You’ve been too successful at making the case for your usefulness. We need you here, Gale.” A heartbeat of hesitation. “I need you here.”
He looks at her, and she wonders if he can see how deeply and entirely she means it. How his faith in her is sometimes the only thing that stands between her and reckless slaughter. How his voice anchors her to reality. How she can’t imagine going into battle without the sound of him casting spells at her back.
Apparently the situation is much, much worse than she realised.
It is also, strangely, a relief. She wouldn’t have guessed that a broken, vicious thing like herself would be able to fall in love with someone. It gives her a strange kind of hope for herself, even if it is also a terrible inconvenience she would rather do without.
He looks away first. “We needn’t decide now. I’m quite looking forward to this promised resting day. I hope you’ll spend some of it trying to get some sleep.”
“I’ll try,” Izar says. Gale looks satisfied, and stands, wincing a little as his knees pop.
“I’d rather stay and talk to you, but I’m quite overdue for a bit of sleep myself. Until the morning, Izar.”
“Goodnight, Gale.”
She watches him make his way back to his tent, bidding the others pleasant goodnights as he goes. Lae’zel has retreated to her nightly task of tending to her weapons and armour, and Karlach her own evening routine of starting to mend something or polish her axe and instead sacking out with the speed and abruptness of an exhausted puppy. Halsin, gods bless him, scooted away to give Gale and Izar more space, and is quietly whittling a little hunk of wood. Astarion is over at Wyll’s tent, teasing him about something, their quiet conversation punctuated now and again with Astarion’s laughter. Over Wyll’s shoulder, Astarion catches Izar’s gaze and arches a brow suggestively. She rolls her eyes in return.
The urge descends like a lightning shock, a punch to the gut. A knife to the brain. No one in their armour, no one but Lae’zel with a weapon to hand, it would be easy– so easy– after they dared to doubt her, after they looked at her with that horrid, cloying pity and imagined that they know her when they have only seen what she has chosen to show them, when they haven’t seen this, the thing she really is–
She swallows burning bile and clenches her fists until the bite of her nails into her palms brings her back to herself. Turning away, her eye falls on Shadowheart.
She’s sitting alone, which isn’t that unusual, though it’s strange that she hasn’t tucked herself away back in her tent to pray by now. And she looks distinctly uncomfortable, her arms folded tightly across her chest, the firelight casting sharp shadows from the furrow in her brow.
Speaking with Gale may have eased Izar’s heart, but her head is still throbbing. It’s more than late enough now to see if she’s finally exhausted herself enough to keep the dreams at bay and actually sleep. She doesn’t have to do this.
She stands up and takes a silent seat next to Shadowheart. Shadowheart glances over at her and tries to rally.
“You and Gale are getting cosy.” It’s a fairly good approximation of her usual teasing tone.
Izar shrugs. “Guess so. We were talking about being in pain.”
Shadowheart shoots her a dark sidelong look. “Yes, alright, fine. What about it?”
“Nothing, honestly. I just know you can relate.” Izar sits back a little. “Is it hurting you now? You looked unhappy.”
“Oh, I apologise for not being all smiles when we’re stranded in the Underdark, surrounded by toxic spores, and— oh, yes— still have tadpoles in our heads.” She looks away from Izar to glare into the fire. Then her shoulders slump slightly. “I… apologise. I’m tired, too. And I…”
Izar waits. For being a devoted acolyte of a goddess of secrecy, Shadowheart does like to talk, if you just give her an opening. Izar found it funny at first. She’s begun to suspect there’s rather more to it– something inside of her that is trying to force its way out, spilling forth in panicked confessions and endless idle gossip.
“A memory came to me, while we were talking just now,” she says. “A dormitory– at the cloister, I assume. Other acolytes crying out in their sleep. The– the feeling of waking up from a nightmare. I… maybe it was only that one time. But it’s not my only memory of that kind. I just don’t understand why Lady Shar only allows me to remember– remember being frightened. Being punished.”
Izar is quiet a moment or two, unsure what to say. She doesn’t know at all what to make of Shadowheart’s faith, or of her own creeping certainty that it is not, in fact, the source of solace that Shadowheart insists it is. She can barely situate herself on this plane, in her own body, her own mind. To go thinking about the gods feels far beyond her ability.
“That mushroom, the noblestalk,” she says at last. “I ate it. After you turned it down.”
Shadowheart turns to her, brows lifted in surprise. “Oh?”
Izar nods.
“Did it work?”
Another nod.
“What–”
“Something I’d rather not have seen.”
Shadowheart looks back to the fire. “Oh.”
Izar waits again, until Shadowheart speaks.
“I’d swear, sometimes, that I would be grateful for anything– any scrap of a memory, anything my Lady deigns to give me. Any way to know who I am. And then the memories come, and I…”
She trails off into silence.
“I understand, of course,” Izar says. Shadowheart looks to her, something frantic and desperate in her eyes, a need to be heard that Izar recognises all too well. To reach into your mind and find only a void– Izar knows perfectly well that, no matter how you might try to describe it, nobody ever quite understands. And Shadowheart is no Gale. She doesn’t try to explain or defend when she’s misunderstood, she just snaps up her walls and retreats. “And all I can say is that the more I work out, the more I’m certain that whoever I was, that isn’t who I want to be.”
Shadowheart’s expression melts into a glare. There it goes: the walls, the retreat. She draws herself up straight. “I’m sorry for that. But my memories were an offering of faith. Lady Shar wouldn’t have taken them if they weren’t important– if it didn’t matter. It isn’t the same.”
“I guess not.”
Shadowheart softens a little. “You really look terrible. You should go to bed.”
Izar stands. “Well, if it’s cleric’s orders.”
“It is,” Shadowheart says, standing, too. “And… it’s a good idea, you know. I’m as eager to press on as anyone, but I think we all could use a moment to collect ourselves.”
Izar nods her thanks and finally, finally retreats to her tent. Maybe she’ll be tired enough not to dream.
“Hey, Iz!”
Izar is pretty sure by now that she hates this nickname, but she can’t bring herself to tell Karlach to stop. She looks so pleased with herself whenever she comes up with a pet name, and Izar can’t begrudge her. She’s obviously someone who would hug to show affection if she could, so she’s got to find other ways. Someone likes her enough to call her a stupid name about it. She shouldn’t be so curmudgeonly.
“Yes, Karlach?”
Karlach squats down next to her. “Okay, listen, I haven’t wanted to say anything but since we’re all just sitting around today… can I please, please fix your hair?”
Izar runs a hand over the fuzz at the back of her head. Her hair’s long on top, which she wears in a tight, sleek queue, the rest is all shaved off, too precise and even to be anything but deliberate. It’s gotten rather fluffy since the nautiloid, though.
“Sure,” she says. “Why not.”
“Yes!” She pumps her fists happily. “Okay, I just have to go beg Gale’s razor off him, but he’ll definitely say yes if it’s for you.”
“Why do I sense an ulterior motive here?” Izar calls after Karlach, who just cackles as she scampers away.
Karlach returns a few moments later with Gale in tow. Izar arches a brow and sets her book aside.
“I have agreed on condition that I can supervise, to make sure no reckless use is made of a rather expensive and, in the circumstances, possibly impossible-to-replace razor.”
“And you gotta keep that beard looking tidy,” Karlach agrees with mock solemnity. “Izar will never kiss you if you start looking scruffy.”
Gale bristles, flustered. “That’s hardly… do you want my razor or not?”
“Okay, okay.” Karlach holds up her hands in surrender. “I’m just trying to help things along. You’d think you were the one who couldn’t touch anyone.”
“I have my own impediments, in case you’ve forgotten,” Gale says dryly, settling himself onto his customary rickety stool outside Izar’s tent. Izar, deciding to leave this chat between them, sits in the other one, and Karlach gets to work behind her. After just a few minutes, the razor itself starts to grow unpleasantly hot from Karlach’s hands. Karlach pulls back, distressed, and Gale, not even looking up from his book, flicks his hand and a sheen of ice appears on the razor. It melts quickly, but it’s enough to cool the metal.
“I should learn some magic,” Karlach sighs. “It’s so useful.”
“Tieflings generally have some innate ability, don’t they?” Gale asks.
“Yeah, but once I’m really in a fight, I get too worked up to use it. Not like you,” she adds, giving Izar a little nudge. “You and Lae’zel, you’re both so– focused.”
“That’s one word for it,” Izar agrees flatly. “I’d tell you about my training if I could.”
But she suspects that even if she could remember, she would have no answer for Karlach’s implicit question. The hunter’s skills that she vaguely recalled upon waking, and has been honing for these past tendays, don’t explain the icy focus that descends upon her in a fight, the instinct for killing. Karlach of all people might actually understand– she’s said herself she has an uncanny knack for killing demons– but after last night, Izar is already feeling rather too exposed. Another time. Maybe.
“I’ll just have to stick with what I’ve got. Tilt your head? Little more? There we go… you keep your things so nice, Gale. I mean, when you aren’t eating them. Why’d you even have this with you?”
“A gentleman must always be prepared!” Gale declares.
“With a full shaving kit?” Karlach laughs.
Izar gets there before Karlach does. Karlach’s got her head at an odd angle, but she can lift her eyes and meet Gale’s gaze. He quickly looks away, and she knows she has guessed right. She ought to spare him– but Karlach blunders into the answer before she can.
“Hang on,” Karlach says. “You really were all kitted out when you got picked up, weren’t you. Why?”
“Yes, well.” Gale looks for a moment like he’ll try to keep reading– or, more likely, pretending to read– to avoid elaborating, but he sets the book aside with a sigh. “I had reached the end of my available resources in Waterdeep. It was becoming too difficult and too dangerous for Tara to continue acquiring what I needed to keep the orb at bay, and so I had resolved to begin making my way to the Underdark. I did intend to seek help along the way,” he adds quickly. “Consult with some archmages of my acquaintance, if they were willing to see me. Continue to attempt to acquire items as I went. I’d hardly have packed a razor if my only intent was to die!”
Despite his hearty tone, the comment lands flatly, Karlach and Izar just looking at him. He clears his throat.
“The fact remains,” he says, “that I certainly would not still be alive if not for all of your assistance. I hope I have sufficiently expressed my gratitude.”
“Don’t worry about it, mate,” Karlach says. “I’m just glad we could help keep you going.”
“We’ll do the same for you, never fear,” Gale says, with somewhat more sincere brightness than he managed about himself. “Dammon will be in Baldur’s Gate by now.”
“Should be getting close,” Karlach agrees happily. “Hey, since I’ve already got this… mind if I use it on myself, too?”
Gale sighs. “I suspected that might be your ultimate aim. Yes, go ahead. I suppose it’s too late to stop you.”
“Thanks, soldier,” Karlach says to Izar with a wink.
“Thank you, too,” she replies, rubbing a hand over the fresh bristles at the back of her neck. It’s a nice feeling. She sees why she might have kept her hair this way. She can’t help it: she looks to Gale.
“Very nice,” he says immediately. “You… have a very nicely shaped head.”
Karlach chokes, then swears, having nicked herself. She calls out to Shadowheart, who comes trudging over with a sigh, while Gale buries his face back into his book and Izar covers her smile with her hand.
“This is feeling very ominous to me,” Gale mutters as he shakes some blood off of his staff. Izar, who is poking through the remains of the duergar Greymon’s supplies, looks up from a crate of wine bottles.
“You’ll have to narrow that down a bit.”
“This cult has penetrated quite deeply into the Underdark– as far as Menzoberrazan, it seems. I can understand why a man like Nere might be tempted to a religion where he could have a bit of power, but I keep thinking of that Nightwarden, Minthara.” He wanders over and peers into the crate Izar has just pried open. “I can’t help but wonder how far they’ve gotten above ground. Elturgard? The survivors of Elturel are surely ripe to be recruited by a cult– one imagines they’re feeling rather let down by Torm and Lathander at present. You’d hardly need a tadpole. And while seizing Ravengard is a coup, it feels rather more like a final piece than a first step when it comes to Baldur’s Gate. It seems plain they want to establish a presence as widely but covertly as possible, before… what?” He shakes his head with a frustrated sound. “That is what I can’t work out.”
“If the Absolute is a god, or wants to be, she surely wants what any god does: followers. Power.”
“Mm. Very true. And yet…” His gaze drifts back towards Nere, lifeless and headless on the ground. Wyll, Halsin, and Karlach have gone to escort the deep gnomes back across the river, and show the head to the myconids, while Shadowheart and Lae’zel have struck up a reluctant alliance to search this place, now that it’s empty of duergar.
Gale moves confidently through any space, but Izar can’t help but find it incongruous every time, the sight of him in places like this, picking his way through a stone floor littered with bodies, churning pools of lava just beyond. They’re both sweating from the molten rivers surrounding them, but once the others were gone, he admitted that the heat felt rather nice for his joints after the chill of the rest of the Underdark. The man can incinerate a crowd with a single word, but he isn’t– well, Izar. He never seems quite at home within the scenes of death and destruction where she feels most at ease. He has power—immense, captivating power— and yet, it has not driven his soul towards destruction. Or maybe Izar just wants that to be true.
He squats down next to Nere and picks up that broken lantern of his. There had been a brief debate about whether it was worth taking along anyway, but they’d ended up just leaving it for now. “This shadow curse of Halsin’s has something to do with it all. It must do.”
“Purely from a practical perspective… it seems rather inconvenient to have your seat of power hidden inside an impassable curse.” She stands and wanders over, but doesn’t quite join Gale at Nere’s side. Her hands still tingle with the joyful feeling of cutting off the drow’s head. “Good as long as you’re pulling strings behind the scenes, but as you say, they have Ravengard now. They must be planning their big debut soon, by some means or another.”
“All that to say, we might be running out of time to discover what our place in all of this was meant to be. And may yet still be.” Gale pushes himself up to his fee with a grunt, lantern still in hand. “I more or less have faith in our mysterious protector, but I’m not at all convinced that even she entirely understands the power she’s wielding. Which means we can’t be sure how long it will last.”
Izar nods, frowning. “If everyone’s been ordered to Moonrise Towers, someone must have given that order. One of these Chosen, I’d wager. Or all of them. I just wonder whether they’re actually giving orders, or if the Absolute has just set up a group of powerful puppets.”
“I can guarantee that whatever their god has promised them, they have far less power than they think.” He hands Izar the lantern. “Let’s hold onto that. I might yet be able to do something with it.”
“Carrying your things for you, am I?”
“Now, I distinctly recall being called upon to fetch a book for you off of a high shelf back in that tower,” he says, waggling a finger. “I think it’s more than fair that you return the favour.”
The awareness settles upon her like a heavy cloak: they are, perhaps for the first time, actually alone. She feels oddly dizzy with it… or maybe just actually dizzy. Gods damn it. She slowly sits, like Halsin told her to, until the blackness fades from the edges of her vision. Only then is she aware of Gale kneeling at her side, a gentle, steading hand on her shoulder. They surely won’t be alone much longer.
She lays her hand on top of his.
“I’m fine.”
He turns his hand over to give hers a squeeze. “You always are, aren’t you.”
Lae’zel and Shadowheart’s approaching bickering rings off of the high ceilings and stone, heralding their arrival several moments before they appear. Gale helps Izar back to her feet. She lets the touch linger, her hand clasped in his.
The lift creaks to an ominous hault, and for a few long moments, it seems like the doors simply won’t open. Karlach and Lae’zel step forward, readying themselves to pull, when with a shudder, they clang apart on their own.
And from the dim chamber beyond, someone calls out.
“Ah, hello!”
“What the fuck,” Karlach yelps, immediately hefting her axe. Izar’s hunter’s mark is already glowing at her fingertips as she scans the darkness for whatever is lurking in the shadowy stone chamber. It feels distinctly colder in here than it did in Grymforge, though it’s hard to say if that’s the shadow-curse already taking hold, or just no longer being surrounded by lava and flame.
“Who’s there?” Izar demands as her companions array themselves around her, ready to fight as soon as they step out of the lift.
“A humble traveller!” the voice replies, sounding a little nearer now. Izar lifts her hand to take aim, the magic tingling on her fingertips, as a figure emerges from the shadows. An old man– a very old man.
Into the collective pause of surprise, Gale says, baffled, “Elminster?”
It’s enough to persuade the rest to lower their weapons, and Gale hurries forward to speak with the smiling old gentleman, Izar following just a step behind. She can’t help but tease Gale for his impatience, and they surrender to Elminster’s not-very-subtle suggestions that they really ought to offer him some food.
“This room feels safe enough,” Halsin says. “And once we step into the curse, we may not have the leisure to rest for some time. Perhaps it is best to make camp here before we press on, to ensure we are as ready as we can be.”
Izar nods her agreement, and they make a quick camp, loath to unpack too entirely when they’ll only be on their way in the morning. But a roof over their heads means there’s no need for tents, just bedrolls and a fire, where Elminster reclines most comfortably, and makes his way through the majority of their cheese. Izar finds herself matching Gale’s impatience: there’s no way he was simply passing through a deadly curse, so what has he actually come to say?
She decides she preferred not knowing.
That’s the problem, isn’t it. Like deciding to eat the noblestalk. Turning the strange, wrinkled mushroom over and over in her hands, almost sick with the mix of anticipation and dread. Wanting and fearing and just needing the agony of uncertainty to end– only to discover that knowing is far worse.
After speaking briefly to Gale, facing his implacable certainty that he must follow Mystra’s command, she has to turn away. Like a coward, she circles the room a few times, taking comfort in seeing that every time she passes, someone is talking with Gale: Halsin, quietly; Lae’zel, fervently; Karlach, clearly trying to make him laugh. She watches Shadowheart begin to approach and then think better of it, ducking away to speak to Astarion instead, both of them darting frequent glances towards his tent as they confer. Elminster, of course, is long gone.
Izar completes her latest loop, trotting up the stairs to the landing where they’ve encamped to find Gale, at last, alone. She starts moving towards him before she even has to persuade herself to do it. She comes to a stop before his tent and just looks at him, and he looks back, strangely calm.
“I don’t know that there is anything more to say about the matter,” Gale says at last. “And to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to. There is nothing we can do now, let’s wait to argue until we find this Heart.”
Izar breathes in through her nose, trying to push down a sudden surge of fury. “Fine. But you have to promise me something.”
“Must I?” Gale asks. He’s reaching for his usual good humour, and almost gets there. “Very well. You must know by now that you can ask anything of me.”
“Almost anything,” Izar corrects, and takes some satisfaction in Gale’s wince. “Promise me that you won’t just charge ahead. That we’ll seriously consider our odds before you do anything rash.”
“I…” Gale hesitates. Izar realises all at once that he isn’t really calm: he’s dazed. It’s a feeling she knows much too well, the sensation of being borne along by pure instinct, your body and even your words proceeding along without your mind, which is mired in some deep fog of confusion and despair. “Yes, of course. We’ve made it this far by working together, after all. You know I trust your judgement.”
He’s lying.
They’ve been a team this far. A pair. The cool heads, the quick and practical minds. But this choice they can’t, won’t, make together. And what right does Izar have to demand it? A month of camaraderie? And attraction they’ve neither acted on nor named? For his trust to be the anchor that tethers her to her sanity is not a burden he ever asked for. To act in accord, to lead as a united pair, is a promise he never made. She can’t compete with a goddess.
“Thank you,” she says. She almost touches his arm, but as ever, stops herself short. “Let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
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