I have been slowly recognizing that my blog is, well, a mess. So i want to organize it and introduce myself. Call me Em, or don't I can't tell you what to do. Most of my stuff has to do with my durgetash post-canon longfic (see links and such below the line), and when i'm not posting about my babies Cyril and Gortash (which is most of the time because they are swallowing me whole), it's usually about Baldur's Gate or other such endeavors.
I am always down to chat, so don't be afraid to reach out if you need someone to talk to who has OCD and can't let notifs go unread lmao. okee bye.
The Corpse Regards You, Lifelessly
and related stories
AO3 Link and Description:
The Corpse Regards You, Lifelessly by emfirebender
Fandom: Baldur's Gate (Video Games)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationship: The Dark Urge/Enver Gortash
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Evil Dark Urge, Enemies to Lovers to Enemies, Enemies to Lovers, Evil Ending, Toxic Relationship, Religious Fanaticism, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Power Play, Dom/sub Undertones, Dom Enver Gortash, Switch Dark Urge, Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Violence, Would everyone in the story dying be considered major character death?, durgetash brainrot, Torture, Emotional Manipulation, Bondage, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Explicit Sexual Content, Choking, Degradation, Gay Sex, Slow Burn, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane
Summary:
In which Durge retraces his steps from the domination of the Elder Brain back to his awakening on the Nautiloid, and faces the many sins he committed along the way. Fortunately, he has someone by his side who is more than happy to remind him.
Tumblr snippets, chapter summaries, and pics:
Opening scene video edit: As the World Caves In
Meet Cyril! Here's some pretty pictures of my baby. Might do like a little character blurb as some point.
Chapter 1: Immaterial Introduction
Chapter 2: Facing Fears - In which the Bhaalspawn faces his fear, and breaks its face.
Chapter 3: Binding Breath - In which the tyrant breathes his second first, and speaks his halved mind.
Chapter 4: Temple Turmoil - In which old allies show their courage, and older enemies show their weakness.
Chapter 5: Last Laugh - In which the men are bound by blood, and the women get the last laugh.
Chapter 6: Penance Paid - In which the truth is stolen, and penance is paid.
Chapter 7: Vile Vampire - In which two villains meet a third, and they play a game of catch.
Chapter 8: Run, Ravengard - In which our heroes make up for lost time.
Chapter 9: Soul Search - In which a search for a soul becomes soul searching.
Chapter 10: Pleading Prayers (smut!) - In which pleas become prayers, and prayers become worship.
Chapter 11: Deathly Darkness - In which broken hearts and promises are dragged into the shadows.
Chapter 12: Reversed Roles (smut!) - In which old fantasies are realized.
Chapter 13: Foul Flesh - In which the pair takes a walk down memory lane, and the tables turn.
Chapter 14: Miserable Memories - In which Cyril explores memories in an oubliette.
Chapter 15: Shadowy Soiree - In which Durgetash talks about... feelings??
When you're with Astarion at night, in his bedroll, in the hush beyond the campfire’s dying glow, the world folds itself shut around you like a cloak. There's no Gods there— no Absolute, no tadpole writhing behind the eye, no divine judgment cast from on high.
There's only him.
Him, and the careful wreck he makes of you.
It's a world of your own creation, stitched together from stolen blankets, moonlight, old blood, and the soft, scandalous shape of his mouth… A world where the grass beneath you becomes the finest silk sheets, where the night air turns sweet as plum wine, where every kiss feels like a confession dragged willingly from your throat.
His whispers aren't prayers, Gods, no.
But when he lowers his mouth to your pulse and murmurs, “There you are, darling,” it feels too much like absolution to be entirely mortal. His bed isn't a chapel, his kisses no holy rites, and yet you learn devotion beneath him all the same.
He says, “Hold still for me,” and you do, trembling beneath the velvet command of it, your hands fisting in the blanket as his lips trace the column of your throat. Not biting yet. Never without making you wait for it, yearn for it, crane your neck for it... Never without making you feel the terrible privilege of being wanted by something that has spent two centuries being starved.
Astarion doesn't worship easily. He doesn't kneel unless he means to make a performance of it, but when his body presses to yours, when his pale hair falls loose around his face and his eyes flicker crimson in the dark, hungry and beautiful and unbearably alive, you think perhaps this is the only kind of worship he still trusts. The kind made with hands.
With teeth.
With breath.
With choice.
And his body—
Marble made wicked. Moonlight given teeth. A palace so beautifully carved it feels almost cruel to touch him, dirty him, bleed on him. Your fingers move over pale skin and old scars, reading him like scripture written in wounds. White ridged marks whisper their history under your palms, and they tell you the story of- “Careful,” he murmurs. “Keep looking at me like that and I’ll start expecting offerings.”
You would give them. Your body, your blood, your breath, your soul.
Your condemned ruin of a corpse, if he so desired.
His voice slides through you like smoke, sweet and poisonous, curling behind your ribs until your thoughts feel less like yours and more like something he has coaxed from the dark. His thumb strokes over your pulse. His fangs graze your skin. Your breath catches.
“Astarion.”
He stills.
For all his hunger, he stills.
Beneath the velvet cruelty, beneath the performance and the facade, he's there: the man under the monster. The wound beneath the smile. The fear of wanting anything freely given. The fear of loss.
You touch his cheek.
“Yes,” you whisper.
Something in him breaks open.
Then he bites.
Pain blooms first, bright and clean. Pleasure follows, dark as wine. His hand tightens at your waist. Yours tangles in his hair. He drinks like a starving saint, like a sinner at last allowed communion. Then he kisses you, and you taste yourself on his tongue.
It should frighten you.
Beneath him, in the ruin of blankets and blood, you understand the only sacrament Astarion offers.
larian put jason isaacs in front of a microphone and let him do a sexy little baritone vocal fry and i’m supposed to be normal about gortash. yeah. whatever man
Pairing: Gale x female reader (non-Tav)
WC: 8,755
Summary: Finally, the two of you are off for the Spine of The World. You stop by Luskan to meet up with an old ally of Gale's, and the seriousness of the journey begins to settle in.
Tags: sex from behind, teacher/student, kissing in dangerous situations, companion cameo
NSFW
As always, edited by the illustrious @emfirebender. I love you oodles of noodles.
Reminder that you can read this same chapter over on ao3 as well, including all of my other stuff!
--
“Every journey begins the same way: with a door, and the decision to step through it.”
— Field Notes on Pilgrimage, Uncatalogued Leaf
The gates of Waterdeep fall behind you and rattle closed with a dull finality, stone swallowing the last warmth of the city and leaving you with the air of the road. It's sharp with wet earth, plant matter, and the brine that always seems to linger around the outskirts of the city. A donkey plods between you and Gale patiently, packs creaking as it settles into the rhythm of work and you match its pace without thinking, as if moving slower might make the journey seem less arduous.
Ahead, the High Road stretches North in an expanse that feels daunting, now that you've finally started out. You know that Gale has the route well mapped in both his notebook and his head, and getting lost isn't a fear that you have, at the very least. Instead, your worries are centered around the others that could potentially share the road with you.
Rumors of small goblin bands are the talk of Waterdeep, and the guards at the door were stern when they told you to be careful and not travel with your belongings visible. Gale had seemed unconcerned and that was enough to assuage most of your fears, but the potential still remains and simmers in your gut.
"The traveling is often harder than the planning," Gale says after the two of you have walked a few miles in relative silence, "but the journey itself is the reward." You hum your agreement halfheartedly, shifting your staff to your other hand and using it as a walking stick as the road begins to dip down at an angle.
"The 'journey' would be better if we had teleported." You keep your tone light, but you're already worried about the amount of walking that the two of you will have to do. When you think realistically, you know that Gale and yourself, as two relatively pampered wizards who have grown up secluded in libraries, are likely to face more difficulties traveling than the average pilgrim.
"I do agree, but I have some… history… with botched teleportations. This is safer." Gale laughs and shakes his head, the memory of whatever happened playing across his face before he turns back to you. "I wouldn't want to lose another assistant to an accident. Not one of such a serendipitous nature, at least."
"Professor," you chide, joining him with a soft giggle.
"Ah, you'll be enjoying it in no time. Especially when we camp out under the stars." You catch a wistful smile playing at the corners of his lips as he reminisces. "The last time I went on a trek like this was a few years ago, with a ragtag group of heroes. The food I was limited to cooking with was not something to miss, but sometimes I do pine for the company. The ease of it all."
"Ease? Surely it couldn't have been easy. You didn't even have a donkey." You're decently familiar with the story of the Gate and how your Professor was involved, but you've never heard the details behind it, nor have you ever heard him speak about his former traveling companions.
"Not the travel, no," he laughs, "but the comradery on the road is something to be admired. It's easy to fall into step with others when you're sharing the same burdens, be it travel or… otherwise." You note the pause in his words and don't pressure him on it, allowing him to speak at his own leisure. Clearly something about the experience still weighs on him, as his tone is darker when he continues, "Sometimes it pulls you further apart."
You take a step to the side and switch hands on your staff again, reaching out to take Gale's hand gently in your own. The two of you lock-step in tandem down the road in comfortable silence and reassurance, a gentle squeeze the only thing that needs to be passed between you. Behind you, led by a rope, the donkey huffs and traipses on, his hooves clopping softly on the worn cobbles of the road.
—
Crickets and fireflies have long since started announcing their presence by the time you and Gale stop to make camp for the night. You lean against the donkey and catch your breath, patting its flank with warm appreciation. It huffs air through its nose at you, ruffling your hair slightly. You've never really been around larger farm animals or work mules, but the weight of your packs on its back gives you a newly-discovered gratitude for them.
"Professor," you call out, stroking your hand through the donkey's short, black mane, "did the stable keeper tell you his name?" Gale stands from where he was digging through a satchel, momentary confusion written across his face before he looks from you to the donkey you're patting.
"Clover!" The donkey's ears twitch at the sound of his name. "And he's not ours, we're merely borrowing his services." Gale comes over and pats the donkey on his hindquarters before opening one of the packs hanging from the saddle-like stretch of leather over his back. "I was also able to procure one of the few self-erecting tents that the Academy has to offer!"
With a flourish, he tugs a bundled expanse of fabric free of the saddlebag and gives it one sharp shake. It unfurls in his hands with a heavy, satisfying weight; it's thick canvas, ruggedly stitched, and dyed a deep blue that drinks in the light. Silver embroidery runs through it in precise lines that catch when you tilt your head, less decorative than deliberate, as if the needlework is part of the spell. A golden tassel hangs from one corner, swaying gently with the breeze as he holds the whole thing out for you to inspect.
You lean over Clover’s warm and sturdy shoulder to get a closer look, fingers still absently smoothing the donkey’s coarse fur, and for all the careful, beautiful craftsmanship it still reads as… cloth. Ordinary. A traveling sheet to make a small pad out of, and certainly nothing that should become shelter with a single breath. You raise an eyebrow at Gale, frowning with a mix of confusion and disbelief.
When you lean back again, Gale gathers the fabric into his arms as though it weighs more than it has any right to, then heaves it outward with a grunt of effort. The bundle sails through the air and for one suspended heartbeat it looks like it might simply tumble into the grass until the magic seems to catch on the corner of it. The canvas snaps open with a clean, decisive whump, and the shape of it morphs into a tent large enough to fit the two of you comfortably. The tassel has become a golden flag at the peak, whipping in the wind like a battle standard, and the silver stitching along the seams glimmers faintly as the last of the spell settles into place.
"Magic never ceases to amaze, hm?" Gale turns back to you with that bright, boyish grin that always makes him look younger than he is, like he’s pleased with himself and a little offended you ever doubted him. "I only wish I had one of these the last time I traveled."
"What did you have?"
"Canvas and poles. We didn't even have a pack mule, just a strong tiefling." Gale gestures towards Clover in the same instant that he stamps a hoof and you giggle. "Yes, yes, Clover. You are much appreciated."
"He's not just a pack mule," you croon, hugging Clover around his neck and ruffling the short hair on top of his head, "he's a friend!" Gale laughs and motions for you to bring the rest of the supplies over. When you unload the saddlebags from Clover's back he snorts in appreciation, wandering over to a nearby tree and beginning to graze. A mage hand floats past you towards Clover, delicately tying his lead around the tree trunk.
Night soon settles in earnest over your small camp as you and Gale sit around a low burning fire, empty bowls beside you both. He had made a small pot of stew for an evening meal and it was filling enough, along with the hardtack that Taliesin had slipped into your bag before you left. You lean back on your hands, rolling your neck from side to side to stretch and gazing up at the stars. They're vibrant this far from the city lights and the moon, only a quarter crescent, makes them seem even brighter.
"You see that one there?" Gale interrupts your thoughts, pointing towards the North West. "The Shard of Selûne. Only visible during the Autumn months. Spectacular isn't it?" You nod, pulling your notebook out of your breast pocket and flipping to an empty page. He watches you for a moment as you quickly sketch the Shard before pointing to another, due North. "The Crown of The North. We know it by another name…" he drifts off, waiting for your answer.
"The Cold Crown?" you offer, tapping your pen against the page and willing the words to come to you. When he shakes his head you bite your lip in frustration.
"You know this, apprentice. It will come." Gale leans back on his hands as well, mirroring your pose and crossing his feet at the ankle. "The way for all to know true North during travels… The Brow Star, Algairtha, the-"
"Mystra's Star Circle!" you exclaim, slapping the open page of your notebook in excitement before bending over and drawing the shape in its relative position to the Shard. When you look up he's smiling at you, genuine affection in his eyes, and a blush starts to spread across your cheeks. "I've never been able to see it this clearly before."
"I expect you'll see it from the peaks of the Spine before we're through." The possibility excites you and you sit up onto your knees, peering below the circle of stars where the trees obscure the horizon.
"I wish we could see Auroth the Ice Snake from here, but I think it's behind the tree line for now."
Gale turns and looks in that direction before standing up, dusting the dirt from himself before offering a hand to you. "So let's get some altitude, you can see it in it's full glory before we reach the snowline of the North and you freeze standing out there alone all night."
You take his hand and let him pull you up, the movement easy enough to make you feel briefly weightless even before the spell touches you. It still surprises you, the ease with which he's able to move your body, almost like your weight is a detail that his mind chooses not to register. His palm is warm from the fire, calloused in places that don’t quite match the softness of his academic life, and when you stand close enough you can smell smoke caught in his hair and the clean linen beneath it.
Then Gale steps back, shoulders settling into that familiar posture of focus— the one he wears when he’s about to do something elegant and expects the world to obey. He murmurs an incantation that's too soft for you to catch the words of, fingers tracing a small shape in the air. The Weave answers him at once and you feel it before you see it, the same way that you felt with the disc by the Chionthar.
Your stomach flips as your boots lighten, the ground seeming to tug at you before letting go and releasing you into the air. The ascent isn’t violent, it’s almost gentle, as if the air itself has decided to hold you, caressing you as it draws you higher into itself. Gale is in front of you and as soon as your head passes the trees you scrabble for his sleeve, fear clawing into your throat for a brief moment.
He catches you without comment, arm sliding around your waist with calm certainty, anchoring you like it’s nothing at all. “Breathe,” he commands gently, close to your ear, and his voice seems to unlock your lungs. You force in a deep breath, struggling slightly against the wind in your face. Gradually the tightness in your chest loosens and you can breathe normally.
Up here, in the grasp of the cold air, your cloak flutters violently, tangling with Gale's with a snapping sound that reminds you of boat sails. Below, the fire is nothing but a small orange coin in the grass and the tent is a spot of blue. Clover lifts his head and brays once, offended and indignant, as if levitation is a personal insult to him. You can't hear the sound from your height, but you smile at the intent behind it.
Finally the levitation spell finishes its ascent and Gale tugs you closer, holding onto your waist in an attempt to ground you. The stars ahead and above are thick and sharp, bright enough to make you feel as though you're staring into something deep and endless. It's a vast expanse of void, twinkling stars the only decoration on an otherwise dark tapestry.
Mystra's Star Circle is clear now from this viewpoint, each point crisp as ink. The Shard of Selûne hangs like a sliver of broken glass. You tilt your head back and the sight makes your throat tighten with a sudden, almost childish thrill. The expanse of the sky is so much, so vacuous and open... So much bigger than you are. You fumble your notebook open, holding it tightly against yourself to shield it from the wind and scribble as quickly as you can, eyes flicking between the page and the stars.
Gale watches you with a soft curve to his mouth, amusement warming his eyes. Then his gaze shifts North, past the stars and down toward the dark line of land where the Spine rises like a behemoth in the dark. His arm at your waist tightens a fraction as he tenses before turning away from the view of the mountains. “There,” he murmurs, lifting a finger to trace the faint curve you couldn’t see from the ground. Auroth the Ice Snake arcs along the horizon in pale glitter, a ribbon of cold fire coiling just beyond the tree line. The sight makes your breath catch.
“We won’t stay up long,” Gale says, voice light and warm. He glances at your notebook, at the frantic marks you’re making, and his expression softens into something tender. “You’ll have plenty of time to admire it when we’re higher in the mountains.” His hand shifts at your waist, a small, grounding pressure as it curves along the dip in your spine. “For now, I’d rather get you down before your fingers freeze, and keep you close while I still can.”
"'Get me down,' Professor? And here I was wading in such a romantic view." You tuck your notebook away back in your breast pocket and put your hand on his chest gently, tapping lightly with your finger as you murmur, "I've never been kissed while flying before… but I sure would like to be."
"That can be arranged, my lady." Gale leans in, tucking you close to his chest as his lips meet yours, warm even in the cold air. The first touch is measured, careful, as if he’s testing whether the wind will steal the desire for it from you, as if he’s mindful of how exposed you are up here with nothing but starlight to witness you. Then your mouth parts on a breath and his restraint fractures in the smallest and most satisfying way. He kisses you again, deeper, the edge of hunger threaded through the tenderness. The night presses in around you. The cold bites at your cheeks and the bridge of your nose, but his mouth is warmth and his hands are comfort.
One of Gale's hands stays firm at your waist, keeping you anchored against him as though the wind might slip you out of his arms. The other slides up to your jaw to tilt your face where he wants it, guiding you like he guides spells, like he guides students, like he’s decided you are something worth shaping to his mold.
You taste the smoke still clinging to him from the fire below, the faint sweetness of whatever tea he had coaxed into your bowl earlier, and the distinct, sharp tang of the Weave that always seems to live just under his skin. Your fingers curl into the front of his robe and pull in a not so gentle way, and he answers with a sound that would be a laugh if it weren’t so low and roughened with want. His kiss turns possessive, the way a man becomes when he’s been holding himself together all day, and you’ve just given him permission to stop pretending. He kisses you like he’s memorizing the exact shape of your mouth. When he finally breaks away, it’s only by a fraction, foreheads nearly touching, his breath fanning over your mouth in soft, steady puffs.
“Better?” he murmurs, voice quiet, warm with satisfaction.
You could tease him. You could say something clever.
Instead, you lift your chin and kiss him again, because the stars are too bright and the air is too thin and the world below is too far away for modesty to survive. Gale makes a small, helpless sound into your mouth and tightens his arm around you. He steals another kiss, then another, unhurried and thorough, and you feel the way he reins himself back in at the last possible moment, always returning to control, always returning to care. It’s almost sweet, the discipline of it. Almost... Because you can’t help wondering how much of him is tenderness, and how much is simply hunger wearing a gentleman’s hands.
He breaks the kiss slowly, reluctant to let the moment end, and then his hand at your waist firms with purpose. The stars tilt again as Gale guides you down, the ground rising to meet your boots with a gentle inevitability that makes your stomach flip. Clover brays again as if to scold you for leaving him behind and you laugh quietly, breath fogging white in the air. Gale’s fingers brush your cheek once before he presses another warm kiss to your forehead and turns away, ducking into the tent and allowing the flap to fall closed after him.
It's not a dismissal, but it gives you a sudden and striking view of a potential domestic life after all of this.
—
The days blur after that, stitched together with the same small rituals— Clover’s stubborn pace, the creak of saddle bag straps, the taste of road dust and stale canteen water. Through it all, Gale walks beside you with a patience that feels practiced, like he’s done this often enough to know exactly when your feet will start to ache and just how much silence you can stand before it turns sharp. You learn the rhythm of long-distance travel by the shapes of his decisions: when to stop, when to push, when to eat something warm before your hands shake.
At night the tent becomes its own little world, stark blue canvas breathing with the wind while the fire throws weak light against Gale’s profile, and you find yourself watching him when you should be sleeping, trying to map his face the way you mapped the stars. The letters from Lenore in your notebook stay tucked and flat, a secret that you keep pressed close to your body, and you tell yourself you’ll bring them up when the road is quieter, when the timing is right.
You'd give anything to keep this bubble of contentment that you've made for yourself.
By the time the air starts to taste faintly of salt, you’ve begun to understand why people speak of Luskan with a certain wariness, its reputation preceding even the sight of it. The road gets busier, but no kinder. The two of you go from sharing the road with the empty wind to passing one person, then three, then five a day. You pass wagons with tarred wheels holding men who don’t meet your eyes and see travelers who keep their hands close to their belts and their faces turned away. Aside from the persistent gulls, there are far fewer wildlife. The wind changes as you near the coast, carrying with it brine and fish rot and smoke from a thousand small fires. The soundscape shifts, too.
Over the sound of the nearby ocean swells you can hear men shouting, bells ringing, and the chatter of crowds. The distant groan of wood and rope echoes from the marina just across from The South Road and as you get closer to the city you're able to pick out sails with emblems that you recognize. Clover seems to sense the change in the air, ears flicking back as if the world ahead makes him uneasy.
Gale doesn't say anything, simply tightens the lead in his hand and keeps walking, gaze fixed forward with that same contained focus. You wonder what he’s already arranged that he hasn’t bothered to tell you. He's mentioned having a roof to stay under in Luskan, and a friend who may or may not have supplies and knowledge. You open your mouth to ask him a few times, always thinking better of it and continuing on in somewhat comfortable silence. You don't want to break his concentration.
The South Gates rise out of the encroaching darkness ahead of you, the sun just dipping below the massive stone arch and outlining them beautifully against the sky. The South Gate sits at the edge of the road like a mouth you’re expected to step into politely, guards posted with an air of boredom that doesn’t quite reach their eyes. Beyond, you spot glimpses of motion and shadow and the suggestion of masts and rigging, the whole place smelling of salt and old violence.
You look overhead at the stately arch of the South Gate as you pass under it, guards nodding at the two of you without bothering to check your bags. The sun finally disappears over the horizon and the dark takes hold. Gale leads you and Clover through the streets with confidence, his clear knowledge of the city a surprise. He finally stops where it looks like nothing at all of importance could possibly exist—besides stacked crates and a narrow side street that disappears into fog—and you feel it, sudden and unmistakable, the shift from travel to intention in his demeanor. This isn’t a spontaneous stop. This is an appointment.
Gale clears his throat and hands you Clover's reigns, opening his mouth to speak before a stately voice cuts him off.
"I saw you practically miles down the road, you know. Not exactly inconspicuous." A man dressed in black leathers spills out from the darkened mouth of an alleyway as if he’s been poured from it, pale against the soot-stained stone. He runs a hand through shock-white hair and fixes Gale with a sharp gaze. “I’ve been waiting for days,” he adds, and then pouts like it’s a joke only he’s enjoying.
"Well it's not my fault that you got here before the appointed meeting,” Gale replies at once, irritation already curling around the words. You can’t help looking back and forth between them. There’s a familiarity here, a rapport that comes too easily to be new, but the air is tense.
"Just long enough to establish some contacts, darling," the man responds, a certain sharpness to the pet name that makes it land with a cut. Gale huffs out an exasperated sigh and shakes his head before gesturing towards you.
"Ah, yes, introductions. This is my new apprentice," he starts, hesitating only slightly before saying your name, "and she's been extremely capable." The man finally looks at you, your eyes meeting, and you startle a little when you realize his eyes are red. "This is Astarion, a friend of mine from... the road."
Astarion’s gaze lingers, quick and assessing. Your hands. Your notebook. The way you hold Clover’s reins. Then his mouth curves. "Better than the last, I hope… But don't be so modest, Gale. You can boast, can't you?" Astarion motions to Gale and then puts a hand to his chest with a dramatic flourish. "Your Professor here helped me when I defended the city of Baldur's Gate from the Absolute. Surely you know about that?" You stifle a smile when you catch Gale rolling his eyes over Astarion's shoulder.
"It's been mentioned, yes. I don't recall your name from it, but it's a pleasure to meet you." He only looks slightly offended but shakes the hand that you offer anyway, his grip cool but strong. Astarion tuts when he turns back to Gale, tone testy.
"You could have mentioned my name, at least." He recovers quickly, motioning down the alleyway and beginning to walk, expecting you to follow. "Despite your disrespect, I carried out your request to a tee."
"Could I, perhaps, finally be let in on what that request was?" you grumble, frustration at being confused finally bubbling over. Luskan smells like salt and old smoke and something faintly rotten beneath it all, and the alleyway only concentrates it. You gather your robes in one fist and step over a puddle the color of bruised wine that threatens to creep over your boot.
"Keeping people in the dark again, hm?" Astarion mutters ahead of you, "How very you."
"One borne of necessity, I assure you," Gale answers, clipped.
“That’s what you said last time,” Astarion throws back without missing a step.
He stops at a tall wooden door tucked between leaning buildings, iron bands crusted with rust and sea salt, a slit of lamplight leaking from the seam. He folds his arms and frowns at Gale with theatrical disapproval before finally addressing you, as if you’re the reasonable party here. “I’ve secured an inn for the two of you for the evening,” he says. “Private room. Hot water if you don’t ask too many questions. More rations for the road.” His eyebrow lifts as he turns to Gale. “And nearly half the total price in gold. Your message was charmingly brief, for once. Care to elaborate, now that we're here in the shadows?”
Gale visibly relents, jaw flexing once. He lowers his voice as someone slips past at the far end of the alley, too quiet to be drunk and too uninterested to be completely innocent. “One night under a roof,” he says, measured. “Food. And enough gold to bribe my way into Mithril Hall.” His eyes flick to yours, meaningfully, the unspoken portion of the sentence pressing itself between you. Do not ask here. Not where he can hear. This is not for him. You nod, accepting that it’s more than enough for now.
Astarion watches Gale a moment longer, eyes half-lidded with that infuriating, knowing calm that Gale displays as well, and then clicks his tongue softly. “Mithril Hall,” he repeats, tasting the words. “That’s quite a long way to drag a donkey and a bright little apprentice for ‘capstone field research.’ It can't be just for the two bowls of stew I ordered, either.” The humor in his voice is light, almost lazy, but the look he gives you is anything but.
"Aren't you eating?" you ask, startling a little when both men laugh.
"Oh no, darling, I'll dine later. Besides, I've already sampled Gale's taste in assistants." The words click into place after a beat— not the meaning, but the implication. Your gaze drops and catches the white points of his teeth when he clicks them together twice, and your stomach gives a small, cold lurch.
Vampire.
“He’s fine,” Gale says smoothly, as if he’s correcting you in class. His hand pats your shoulder, a grounding pressure to settle you before you can show too much reaction. “He’s… housebroken. Astarion won't touch you without permission.”
Astarion sighs and rolls his eyes in exasperation. "You don't have to be cruel about it," he pouts.
"Right. Well, then." Gale clears his throat and motions to the door. His shoulders settle into a neutral line, the kind he uses when he wants to look unbothered and fails only in the slight stiffness of his jaw. “We appreciate your help,” he says, as close to gratitude as he gets when it costs him his pride. Astarion waves a hand as if dismissing the idea of gratitude entirely.
“Please,” he replies, voice bright and cheery again, “you’re paying for it.” Then he taps the door with two knuckles in a neat rhythm. It opens on a warm spill of lamplight and noise, the smell of stew and sweat and wet wool rolling out like a blanket. Gale moves first, slipping inside with control and scanning focus, already searching corners out of habit. The lamplight catches the brown line of his hair and then the noise swallows him whole.
You shift Clover’s reins in your grip and step forward after him but Astarion’s hand flicks out with unnatural speed, catching your sleeve just above the wrist. Not hard. Just enough to stop you. He doesn’t look at the crowd that Gale disappeared into but keeps his gaze on you, red eyes bright in the alley’s shadow, his mouth curved in the faintest approximation of humor. Up close, the amusement looks practiced. The seriousness underneath it does not.
“Listen,” he says quietly, voice low enough that it won’t carry past the doorway, “I’m not going to tell you to run. You won’t. You’ll convince yourself you have reasons, and he’ll help you find them.” His fingers loosen but don’t let go. A pause. Then, sharper, and more earnest he says, “So I’ll tell you something useful instead.”
"I-" His thumb taps once against your wrist to silence you, right where your pulse gives you away.
“He’s very good at making fear feel like devotion... Very good at making obedience feel like relief. If he tells you that something is necessary, believe him and then ask yourself why.”
Your breath catches. Through the open door of the inn you can see Gale peering around the crowd, trying to find the two of you. You start to say something, but Astarion continues before you can.
“He teaches with compliments. Sometimes that’s all the leash he needs. He's brilliant, but don't confuse brilliance for mercy." He releases your sleeve as if nothing happened, shaking the moment free with ease. Then his eyes slide past you toward the doorway, and his expression softens for a heartbeat. “He doesn’t mean to be cruel,” Astarion says, almost offhand. “He just thinks he’s entitled to the outcome.” He takes Clover's reins from you gently.
"Why should I listen to you?"
"You'll understand. Go on in, find your teacher… I'll rejoin the two of you soon. I need a moment." His eyes slip from yours to Clover and he smiles again, a genuine one. "Clover and I will find the stables and some oats." You watch as he turns away and leads Clover to the small alley beside the inn and you hear an iron gate unlatching, presumably for the stable yard.
Inside, the inn is cramped and busy in the way you've heard Luskan to be: bodies pressed close, laughter too loud, conversations clipped short whenever someone new passes. You find Gale in a corner booth and slide in beside him, leaning your shoulder on his head as a sudden wave of weariness hits your body. Sitting down in a proper seat makes you realize just how much stamina the road has taken from you. Your bones suddenly yearn for the soft bed you know is just upstairs.
"It'll pass once you get some food, I promise," Gale says quietly, his hand warm where it slides along your thigh comfortingly. "Where did Astarion get off to?" You open your mouth to answer and then spot him across the room, stifling a yawn as you point. Astarion slips through the crowd like he belongs, and the room parts for him like liquid. The inn-keep barely looks up when Astarion murmurs something low and coins clink softly. A key appears and the inn-keep nods, pointing toward the stairs and purchased privacy.
A moment later Astarion slides into the booth across from you and Gale, propping his chin up on one bored fist. The silence between the three of you stretches until Astarion finally breaks it, "I've got you two some bowls of stew on the way. And bread,” he says, eyes flicking to Gale with a faint curl of amusement. “If I remember your road cooking as well as I think I do, you'll be wanting some meat on your bones." He smiles, teeth white and strikingly sharp.
As if by magic, the stew arrives as soon as it's mentioned and the smells immediately makes your mouth water. The steam clings to your cheeks and you breathe it in, savoring what could be your last hot meal for a while. Astarion silently watches you with lazy interest, giving you and Gale the peace to eat comfortably. The stew is thick and peppery, the kind of food that sits heavy and warm in your stomach, and you feel your shoulders loosen a fraction as heat returns to your fingers. Outside the booth, the inn surges with laughter and footsteps and the scrape of chairs, and you find yourself watching the ordinary lives around you with a kind of distant envy.
Gale eats slower than you, his posture still too composed for an inn, but you can see the fatigue in him if you look closely enough. Astarion, by contrast, barely touches the table. He reclines, one boot hooked over the opposite knee and arm slung over the back of the booth, scanning the room with the air of someone who has lived long enough to find most danger repetitive. It's only now, when his head is turned away, that you notice a pair of pale circular scars on his neck.
“Soooo,” Astarion says at last, dragging the word out as if it pains him to participate in small talk, "Are we feeling civilized again, or are you still pretending this is all terribly romantic field work?” He tips his head toward Gale with a smile that’s too bright to be kind. “And Professor, you did write first. I’m still recovering from the shock.”
“It was efficient,” Gale answers, smooth and clipped, evading the bait. “You like efficiency.”
“I like results,” Astarion corrects, smiling wider. “Efficiency is what people say when they don't want further questions.” His gaze slides to you again, quick and ever-assessing. “And you,” he adds lightly, “are you enjoying your capstone adventure? Or have you discovered that ‘research’ is just a prettier word for ‘walking until you ache?'”
You swallow another bite, buying time as you turn over your words. “I’m enjoying it,” you say slowly, considering your words carefully. Gale had told you not to give too much away. “It’s… different than a library. Colder. Dirtier than I expected."
Astarion’s laugh is soft and sharp, like glass tapped with a fingernail. “Oh, good. A sense of humor. That will help in the North.” He leans forward, chin propped on one fist, and his eyes flicker with something something resembling compassion. “Mithril Hall, then. You really are serious.”
“It’s necessary,” Gale replies, his thigh pressing against yours under the table, a plea for your silence.
Astarion’s brows lift in delicate, exaggerated surprise. “Necessary,” he echoes. “That’s one of your favorites.” His smile returns just as easily, quick and wicked. “Well. I’ve done what you asked. Roof, food, and enough coin to grease the right palms.” Then he looks at both of you again in turn, the amusement turning gentler. "Do try not to die before we see each other again. The North doesn’t care how smart you both are.”
Gale nods, reaching across the table and shaking Astarion's hand with a firm grip. "Thank you again, Astarion. You'll hear from us when I'm able to get a message back so that you know how we fared," he offers, but Astarion is already shaking his head.
"I'll be moving on tomorrow evening. If you need to reach out again, you can leave a message with our dear Jenevelle. Work will take me in that area, and I expect I'll stop in for a visit." Gale is already nodding, a smile spreading across his face.
"In that case, we may just stop by. She's still in the East?"
Astarion nods and stands, stretching as he does before leaning back down and muttering, "Stay safe, hm? You and I didn't go through what we did for you to perish in the cold." He drops the room key onto the table with a gentle clink, raps his knuckles on the table once, and then he's gone, swallowed by the crowd before you can blink.
—
The bedroom is warm from the fires burning downstairs and the heat is slightly suffocating after the open dining room. You open a window immediately, taking a deep breath of the salty air. Gale comes to stand behind you, wrapping his arms around your middle and resting his chin on your shoulder gently.
"It's been ages since I was here," he says softly, "but the more things change, the more they stay the same." The silence stretches between you, comfortable and soft. You finally break it with the question that's been burning at you since Astarion slid out of the shadows.
"Are you sure we can we trust him?"
"With our lives." Gale's answer is quick and earnest enough to calm your misgivings and you sigh, leaning your head back against his shoulder and closing your eyes. His arms tighten around you briefly before he bends and presses a kiss to your temple.
"He seems the type to want in on whatever we find up there." Your body moves with Gale's quiet laughter before he turns away, unbuttoning the clasps on his robes as he talks.
"He is the type, absolutely. But he's also reliable, and can keep secrets. Perhaps with the exception of Jenevelle, since I mentioned we'd be stopping in."
"Another friend from the road?" you ask, turning and raising an eyebrow at him. Gale nods, motioning to remove your clothes.
"Get ready for bed, you need the rest." He waits until you roll your eyes, beginning to undo your own robes with quiet obedience. "Yes, another friend from the road. A great one. She's been through a lot, and still has the heart to help others." He pauses to pull his shirt over his head, tossing it unceremoniously on top of his robes before tugging at his belt. "She's the best of us, our little group."
"How little exactly?" You shrug out of your clothing and toss it onto the small pile of fabric Gale's created. When he nods approvingly you step forward, wrapping your arms around him and resting your chin on his chest.
"Six, for the most part." Gale's hand threads through your hair and you sigh comfortably, grateful for the quiet and private moment. "We had some others come and go but… Six." He stops, pressing a kiss to the top of your head and squeezing you briefly in his arms. "Another time, I'll tell you all of it. Just not now."
"Is it too hard?" you ask softly, allowing him to pull you towards the bed. He nods wordlessly and you let the matter drop, tugging the blankets down on the bed and sliding in. Gale slips in behind you, pulling the heavy comforter over your bodies and blocking out the cold air from the window. The planes of his chest press against you and you wriggle closer, humming contentedly when he wraps an arm around your middle.
"Thank you," he whispers into your hair. "For understanding. For not asking more about it."
"Always." You twist slightly, enough that you can lean back and kiss the underside of his jaw, his beard tickling your lips softly. His other arm comes to tuck around you, pulling you closer so that you're flush against him as his nose gently nudges your head to the other side. Gale hums softly with desire as he kisses a low line from your shoulder up to your ear, teeth scraping against your pulse point.
It's leisurely, almost lazy, but it sends a warm thrum of desire through you just the same.
When you part your lips with a sigh and move your head to give him access to the sensitive skin of your neck he shifts, one leg slipping between yours. The friction is minimal, just the soft cotton of your smallclothes and the fine linen of his against your skin, but it's enough to make you ache for more. His hands trace your sides, fingers digging into the soft flesh of your stomach and hips. He rolls his hips once, a slow, deliberate movement that has you pressing back against him. He's already half-hard, and you can feel him growing firmer with every passing second.
Gale hums in the back of his throat and continues to press soft kisses to your neck. "Is this alright? If I take you like this?" His voice is a low murmur, vibrating against your skin. You nod, but he still pulls back just enough to see your face, a questioning look in his eyes.
"Yes," you say, your own voice breathy. "It's perfect."
He kisses you properly then, a languid slide of tongue and teeth as he rocks against you again. His hands wander, tracing your curves with a reverence that still makes your chest feel tight. It's in the way he touches you, the way he moves, the quiet intensity in his eyes. You reach back to thread your fingers through his hair, the silken strands slipping through your grasp as he rocks against you with a slow, deep rhythm that leaves you breathless and wanting.
"Tell me," he murmurs against your lips, "what you want." He's hard and hot against you, a delicious friction that has you arching against him. His hand drifts down, toying with the waistband of your smallclothes, a question waiting for an answer.
You push back against him, a desperate plea for more. "Just you," you manage to gasp out. "Just want to feel you, Professor." He breaks the kiss with a groan at his title, moving to trace the curve of your neck with his lips. You move slowly, giving him more access to you as his hand pushes the fabric away to trace the curve of your hip, your thigh, the sensitive skin behind your knee.
Finally he moves your panties aside and pushes into you, slow and deep, and you gasp at the sudden, overwhelming sensation. He stills, letting you adjust, and you can feel the fine tremor of self control in the arms that hold you.
"You always feel so safe with me, don't you?" he whispers, lips brushing against the shell of your ear, sending goosebumps erupting down your arms. "Gods, you feel... perfect." He punctuates the word with a deep, rolling thrust that has you seeing stars. He moves with an unhurried grace, each movement deliberate and measured. He's in no rush, and the slow, torturous pace has you writhing against him, desperate for more.
"Gale," you breathe out, fingers twisting in the comforter on the bed as you rock back against him, the sound muted from under the thick cotton.
Your Professor reaches down and takes your wrist, guiding your hand between your legs. "Touch yourself for me, dearest." You obey instantly, fingers finding the sensitive bud of nerves as he sets a slow, languid pace. "That's it. Just like that."
Your other hand finds purchase on his forearm, nails digging into the skin as the pleasure builds, a slow, steady wave that threatens to pull you under. His name falls from your lips, a breathy litany as your fingers circle faster, matching the rhythm of his thrusts.
You feel him everywhere— in the warmth of his panting breaths against your neck, the steady thrum of his heartbeat against your back, the weight of his arm around your waist, the delicious stretch as he fills you completely. It's an intoxicating cocktail of sensation, a profound intimacy that goes beyond the physical. His praise is a low, steady murmur in your ear, words of encouragement and adoration that wash over you, each one fanning the flames of your escalating tension.
"You're taking me so well," he groans, his thrusts becoming a little harder, a little faster. "Gods, the way you're squeezing me..." His fingers flex against your hip, a sure sign of his own unraveling composure. He's usually so controlled, so measured, but with you, he lets go, and the raw, unrestrained passion that he reveals in these moments is your greatest reward.
The pressure builds, a tightening coil in the pit of your stomach. Your breath hitches, your body tensing as you teeter on the precipice. Gale senses it, his movements becoming more deliberate, each thrust a calculated push toward the edge.
"Let go for me," he urges, his voice a low, husky command that shatters the last of your restraint. "I've got you. You're safe."
That's all it takes. With a sharp cry you shatter, pleasure washing over you in a relentless wave. Your body convulses, your back arching as you ride the crest of your orgasm, your fingers still working furiously against your clit as you clench around him, milking him for all he's worth.
He follows you over the edge with a guttural groan, his hips stuttering as he buries himself deep inside of you, his release a hot flood that fills you completely. For a moment you're both still, your ragged breaths the only sound in the quiet room, bodies entwined in the tangle of sheets.
Slowly, carefully, he withdraws, and you mourn the loss of him instantly, a sudden emptiness that has you shivering despite the warmth you created together under the blanket. But then he's pulling you into his arms, arranging the blankets around you both with a gentleness that belies the intensity of your lovemaking. You nestle against him, your head pillowed on his chest, the steady, reassuring beat of his heart a soothing rhythm against your ear.
"Alright?" he asks, his fingers stroking lazy patterns on your back.
You nod, a contented sigh escaping your lips. "Mm. More than." It's an effort to say anything more, the weariness suddenly hitting your bones in the aftermath of your climax.
He chuckles, the sound a low rumble under your ear. "Good. Because I have no intention of letting you go anytime soon."
You press a soft kiss to the warm skin of his chest, tasting the salt of his sweat. "Don't," you murmur, your voice thick with sleep. "Don't ever let me go."
"Never," he promises, his arms tightening around you.
—
The next morning the two of you are off before the sun fully rises, saddlebags loaded on Clover and laden with extra supplies. The inn-keep was kind enough to wrap three loaves of stale bread in some cloth for you and included an extra canteen of water. The gesture didn't go unnoticed, and you made sure to leave an additional silver behind for him.
You leave through the North Gate this time and the area is noticeably better manned and tended to. Lanterns still burn along the inner wall, their light a dull gold against the grey of the morning, and the guards here look less like bored dock-thugs and more like men who expect trouble to come from the road.
A pair of wagons are being checked for contraband with brisk efficiency, a merchant muttering under his breath while a guard runs a spear haft along the seams of his crates. Someone sweeps the cobbles near the gatehouse, pushing yesterday’s grit into neat little lines. They nod sharply to you as you pass through the Gate, rattling it closed behind you.
The air is colder on this side, cleaner too, though the sea-salt still clings to everything like a film. Clover’s breath puffs white as he plods, packs shifting and creaking in familiar rhythm, and you keep your eyes forward as the city’s last warmth fades behind you. Beyond the gate the road opens up into a stretch of packed earth and frost-stiff grass, fields giving way to scrub and then to the beginnings of true wilderness. You glance back once, catching the silhouette of Luskan’s walls against the paling sky, and the sight makes your stomach tighten in a way you can’t quite name. Last night’s laughter and lamplight feel unreal already, a brief pocket of warmth that you already miss.
Ahead, the land starts to lift almost imperceptibly, the horizon sharpening into darker lines as the day brightens. The wind has teeth out here, sliding under your collar and down the back of your neck, and you pull your cloak tighter while Gale readjusts his robes, turning the collar up against his throat. He’s quieter now than he was in the inn, the intimacy of the night packed away with the blankets and bowls.
There’s a focus to him that makes you match his pace without thinking, and when you finally lift your gaze north you can see the beginnings of the mountains of it in the far distance. Not the full Spine yet, not the jagged teeth you’ll come to know too well, but a darker smudge against the early sky that looks like the world’s edge. Gale follows your gaze and his mouth softens into something that could be anticipation or worry.
“Keep close. The weather turns fast up there."
The next time you look up from your feet the mountains are practically looming over you in the distance, peaks seeming to touch the sky. The sight steals the air from your lungs in a way the road never did, and for a moment you just stand there, mouth slightly open, letting the scale of it settle into you. From here, the Spine looks like its name, jagged splinters of mountains forming the vertebrae of the world.
It's a jagged line of dark teeth against the sky, ridges catching the light while the valleys between them stay bruised with shadow. The wind changes too, as if it’s been poured down from those heights. Colder. Drier. Sharper, and carrying the faint mineral smell of stone and snow even from this far away.
Clover plods on without a care, stubborn and steady, but you can feel the way his pace slows a fraction as the land begins to rise. The road turns from packed earth to something rougher, scattered with gravel and patches of frost that crunch beneath your boots. Eventually Gale pulls up short, stopping you as he searches through one of the packs on Clover's back. You turn to watch him instead of the mountains for a moment and catch something in his expression that spread worry through your center. It's not fear, not resolution, not even discomfort.
It's more like recognition, as if he’s looking at an old chapter he swore he’d never reread.
You shake it off and return your gaze to the mountain line, looming ever closer with every hour that passes. Beside you, Clover takes the stationary moment to bend down, chewing on some of the stubborn grass that manages to grow through the cracks in the gravel.
“You’re staring,” he mutters after a moment, voice mild, and when you glance at him you find his eyes already on you. There’s warmth there, faint and familiar, but it’s threaded with a focus that makes your spine straighten without you meaning to. “They’re impressive,” he adds, and the understatement is almost funny until you realize it isn’t meant to be. He turns his gaze back to the peaks, following their line Northward. “We’ll make good time today. Before the weather decides we shouldn’t.”
He readjusts the packs and turns, motioning for you to follow once more.
Then the horizon darkens suddenly, as if the Spine drew breath.
“The mountains do not welcome. They only wait.”
— On Northern Roads and Final Things, Anonymous
Since I’ll be writing about tiefling characters a lot, I figured I would share some of my headcanons on how they work. I’ve always been a big biology nerd and speculative biology is one of my favorite parts of writing fantasy. I love writing nonhuman characters since I think it allows for exploration of a lot of different ways of being, and I like exploring the implications of what being a nonhuman person would be like as opposed to just having them being the same as a human in all but appearance. These headcanons are drawn from a combination of canon material that I’ve been able to get my hands on, ideas I’ve seen from the fandom, and my own ideas and interpretations.
Nutritional Needs
Because of their hybrid nature, tieflings have unique dietary needs. Their digestive systems are a sort of combination between that of a human and that of a fiend. Because of this, tieflings are quite carnivorous. While eating plants won’t harm them and can be beneficial in certain ways, it’s less satiating for them and they will eventually become malnourished and starve if they go too long without meat and other animal-based foods. In addition to that, they do require slightly different nutrients than other humanoids, such as needing more sulfur and iron.
Body Temperature
Due to their infernal heritage, tieflings often have a higher body temperature than a human would. It’s not a particularly big difference, usually something like 100-101F (37.8-38.3C) versus 97.5F (36.4C). This does render them a bit warm to the touch, which someone not experienced with tiefling physiology could mistake for a fever.
Fire Resistance
Likewise, tiefling’s heritage grants them partial resistance to heat and fire. This affects them in a variety of ways other than the obvious, such as being able to tolerate warm environments better and having preferences for hotter temperatures (such as with food and drink) than most other mortals would be able to handle. Burns on a tiefling tend to heal faster and better than on other species, which is helpful considering that they tend to lack an instinctual fear of fire.
Horns, Tails, and Claws
Tiefling horns, like sheep and goat horns, consist mainly of an outer layer of keratin covering living bone at the center. While they can’t feel much sensation on the outside, the bone core means that breaks can be extremely painful and can even cause life-threatening blood loss depending on the location. However, their horns are tougher than the horns of similar other species on the Material Plane, which makes them difficult to seriously damage under most circumstances. Also like goats, tieflings aren’t born with horns but with smaller horn buds. Their horns start really coming in after about a year and continue to grow until their late teens/early twenties. The spots around the base of their horns are a bit more tender than others and are a prime spot for head massages. While their horns don’t require much maintenance, regular cleaning is important and substances like seed oils or beeswax can be used to avoid dryness and flaking, or just to give them a nice polish.
Tiefling tails are long (around 4-5 feet), thick at the base, and fairly muscular. Some tieflings are born with prehensile tails, but most aren’t, although even the ones that aren’t prehensile are still quite flexible and able to coil around things, albeit without holding them. While they can’t exactly be used as a weapon, a hard smack with one is more than enough to sting. Being part of their spine, their tails are sensitive and severe injuries or breaks can cause serious pain or even long-lasting neurological damage. While individual body language varies, tiefling tails are very expressive and, depending on the person, will often subconsciously react to their owner’s mood. Some are even more expressive, using them to gesture like they do with their hands. Winding their tails around someone else’s (or the other limbs of someone who doesn’t have a tail) is considered intimate, whether it’s platonic or romantic, like a closer version of holding hands.
Like with animal claws, tieflings’ are self-sharpening with a quick at the center. They’re not strong or long enough to be an effective weapon in a fight, but they can still get sharp enough to leave painful—if fairly shallow—scratches. They can be safely filed or trimmed to some degree without hitting the quick, which many tieflings do for convenience, but like with their horns, tieflings are generally used enough to living with their claws to avoid any unintentional scratches.
Vocal Cords and Language
Tieflings typically have slightly different vocal cord structures than other humanoid species. This is mostly to aid them in pronouncing Infernal, but it also allows them a limited ability to roar, hiss, and purr, although it sounds much different to and more unearthly than with cats.
Tieflings are also born with an innate understanding of Infernal and are capable of understanding it as soon as they’re old enough to comprehend language. This also means that they tend to start talking fairly early, which can be startling for non-tiefling parents, although not for anyone who can speak Infernal. Baby tieflings usually learn to speak other languages, such as Common, at the same rate as non-tiefling children.
Bloodline Traits, Magic, and Extraplanar Instincts
Depending on which of the Hells a tiefling is connected to, they can have a variety of features and abilities. This can include things like the form their magic takes and how adept they are at tapping into it, like with Mephistopheles tieflings, or physical traits such as height and stature, like with Zariel tieflings.
Being descended from fiends, tieflings are born with a small portion of their metaphysical ancestors’ magical abilities, the specifics of which depend on their bloodline. For tiefling spellcasters, tapping into this inherent magic can feel very different than other forms of magic, especially for divine magic users.
Because they are planetouched, tieflings are prone to odd instincts and senses, such as sensing magic, an uncanny ability to understand fiendish practices, and occasional compulsions towards things like rules, order, or collecting things.
Oh, who just had a fart of bad mental health and brain fog? It is I! Well, let's not dwell on me and just get into some yummy fic recs.
Made of Memories by @alwaysmauria : Short, punchy, will make you feel like a brick is thrown at you in the best way possible. Made me cry-stamp of approval.
Southern Bhaalist by @emfirebender : Crack in the best way possible? It made me snort but also sit in awe at some scenes. It's so vivid and incredible.
Before The Dawn by @aerin67 : Suprise! Yeah, no surprise, Aerin is one of my favourite fic-writers and I encourage you to read EVERYTHING that she provides us with. Dadtash is a brainworm that possessed us and I'm so happy that it did because this is amazing.
Override & Underground by @saylofwaterdeep : Modern AU goodness, Gortash and Tavrin winning (I am blind to the tags), a car starting is actually hot? And featuring my baby Seara as the woman being obtuse about PC-usage.
Memento Amori by @asorceresswrites : Sorcy is one of my all time favourite fluff-writers but what she has put in this is like fucking drugs. The angst that's interwoven in this and the mystery is perfect and I am frothing at the mouth when she uploads.
Velvet Arcanum by @fireflyeyes : Another modern AU but make it 70's rock 'n roll. This is so intriguing and the first chapter made me screech. Oh, if there's a groupie around Astarion, it is I.
You Do Not Have To Be Good by @toomanyfamiliars : The Gock comes for us all in the end. It's fantastic. I am obsessed by Lethe, fantastic.
Father, are you watching? by @dynamicducks : Like I said before, Duck is fucking grounded for this. This was beautiful and angsty and I still think about it.
The Three Husbands of Clementine Alberall by @carnivaley : Did I keep the best for last? Yeah, I fucking did. This is AMAZING. I love LOVE how she writes. I'm obsessed with Clem, this story has me in a chokehold.
Pairing: Gale x female reader (non-Tav)
WC: 8,336
Summary: It's the final day before you and Gale leave for the Spine of the North, and things have begun to take a turn towards the unsettling... Until Gale visits your chambers to help you relax in the best way he knows how.
Tags: light dom/sub, male oral, riding, lots of plot
NSFW
special thanks and love once more and always to @emfirebender the most loveliest editor in the woooorld!!
we're getting into plot heavy territory but the smut will continue, don't worry!
--
“The diligent student learns quickly: doors open for signatures.”
— Notes on Institutional Magic, Anonymous
Morning comes, and with it, a piece of parchment pushed under your door. You sit up, bleary with sleep, and rub at your eyes until they're able to focus.
The parchment is not Academy-issue. It's not crisp, not stamped, and not letter-headed. It’s not the kind of paper you've grown accustomed to using lately. The fibers are thicker, almost handmade, and the edge has been torn roughly rather than cut.
You swing your feet to the floor, cold stone biting at your soles, and retrieve it with two fingers as if it might bite you. You still aren't sure of the capabilities of your peers, and the forethought for safety wins out over curiosity. You shake the paper lightly before holding it up, reading it slowly with eyes still blurred by sleep. There's no identifying marks on the page, just ink, cramped and slanted, the kind that looks like it was written too quickly to be pretty but too carefully to be illegible.
Apprentice—
I told you not to sign anything for him. You did it anyway.I am not scolding you. I am checking that you are still you.
Answer this to yourself before you answer anyone else:What is your name?What did you seek?What did it say to you when it took the request?
Ink is an anchor. Your hand remembers what your mind forgets.
Your stomach tightens. You glance at your bedside table where your notebook sits, fat and familiar, the black-hide cover worn shiny where your palm always lands. It feels heavier this morning, as if it spent the night swallowing something you didn’t mean to feed it. The leftover carcass of the knowledge from yesterday spills at the seams, crammed with papers that you hadn't yet catalogued.
And if he tells you you’re safe because you're “tracked”—understand what that means.Tracked means on file. On file means owned. Owned means disposable.
Your throat tightens at the last word but you swallow hard and press on, looking at the bottom of the page where a symbol has been etched. It's two triangles, one of them inverted from the other and joined with a circle. Darkened slightly in the angle of the left triangle is a capital L.
Do not ask for me by name.
Names are the first thing they take.
I will contact you when possible.
Your eyes skim the last lines again. 'Do not ask for me by name'. The symbol at the bottom of the page catches your attention again and when you look back, one of the lines has softened at the edge, as if someone breathed on the ink and it decided to obey.
You try to say the name anyway— just in your head, just to prove you can. It catches like a fish bone in your throat and slides away downstream, leaving only the impression of lilac and the shape of an avian nose. You can remember the warning. You can remember the ink.
You cannot remember the name.
Your heart kicks hard in your chest and you feel panic start to swell in your throat.
You sit very still, as Gale instructed you to, and force your breath into a slow rhythm. In. Out. In. Out. Your fingers curl around the paper until it creases. “What is your name,” you whisper to the room over the sound of the crackling page.
You reach for the notebook, more instinct than intention. When you drag it into your lap the black-hide cover feels almost warm, as if it has been waiting for you to pick it up from the cold bed-side table. The binding creaks softly when you open it and the smell of ink rises up, familiar enough to steady you for a moment.
The first page you land on is not completely blank. It shouldn’t be, because you remember flipping past your notes last night with the lazy, satisfied ache of afterglow still humming in your bones, but there it is anyway: a page that looks emptied, not unused. The faintest ghost of pressure remains, an impression in the paper where a pen once pressed hard, but the words themselves are gone. Your throat tightens and you breathe out shakily, turning the page.
The next page is your handwriting again— your cramped script, impatient arrows, and half-finished thought about confluence points… except the last line is wrong. The letters are shaped like yours, but the cadence isn’t. It reads like someone wearing your voice like a borrowed robe and says simply: Write it out. Under it, three tiny triangles are sketched with a line through them, and beside the leftmost one, a capital L so small you might have missed it if you weren’t already hunting for something out of the ordinary.
You swallow and force your grip to steady, because the letter told you what to do and you refuse to lose more of yourself, as Lenore warned in the library. You flip to a clean page, press the notebook flat against your thigh and dip your quill, watching the ink bead at the nib like black blood. “My name is—” you start, and the pause that follows is so sharp it hurts.
What is your name?
You know your name. You have known it longer than you have known Gale, than you have known the Academy, than you have known the taste of the Weave blooming sweet and floral at the back of your palate. And yet the name refuses to come forward cleanly, as if it has been made shy by being expected, a circus performer with stage fright. Panic claws at the back of your tongue. You press harder, like Lenore said, and the quill bites into the paper. Your name appears under the stroke of your hand, black as a bruise and real, and the relief is immediate.
You write it again beneath the first and then again, each repetition solidifying your resolve. Only then do you realize your hands are shaking. You breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth, and add the second question to the page because you cannot afford to skip steps: What did you seek? This answer is easier and comes faster to your hand as you ink the words: The Master Ley Registry. The truth. The discs. You write the words, anchoring them with ink.
Final question: What did it say to you when it took the request? Your stomach turns over as if you’ve swallowed something that suddenly wants out. You write the Advisor’s phrasing slowly, carefully: You follow. You borrow. Request heard. The memory of the interaction comes with it— the weightless obedience of the paper leaving your fingers, the cold velvet pressure behind your eyes, the missed-step feeling of that long blink. It's sharpened by the act of writing it, and your quill hovers over the page for a moment and you swear you can feel that same pressure now, faint and curious, almost as if something has leaned closer to listen.
The Tower creaks somewhere overhead, a settling sound that used to be comforting and no longer is, because it reminds you that buildings have bones too, and bones have memory. You glance back to Lenore’s letter, to the softened ink line and the little L hidden inside the sigil, and you understand with a chill that the warning wasn’t merely advice. It was a concerned hand reaching through a system that is already trying, and succeeding, at erasing its own fingerprints.
Your gaze drifts slowly to the gap beneath your door, to the strip of hallway visible in thin shadow, and you realize you can't remember hearing the parchment slide. No scrape. No whisper. No footsteps retreating. Blackstaff Tower groans and sighs when it breathes; it always announces itself or its patrons when they move. This particular delivery did not.
If Lenore is right and if tracked means filed… and filed means owned… then there will be a paper trail waiting for you with your name on it. You try not to think about how easily your signature had come yesterday, how warm the pen was in your hand when you stole it from Gale and just how satisfying it felt to write your name as if the act itself made you important, authorized, chosen.
You close the notebook with a decisive thud of the leather bound covers, as if you can trap your name inside it where the library can't reach, and tuck Lenore’s letter between the cover and the first page, pressing it into the seam where it sits flush with the pages. Then you dress quickly, hands still unsteady but practiced enough to fake calmness, pulling your robe into place and fastening it with more care than usual as if neatness can pass for safety.
The corridor outside your door smells like stone and old incense and other people. The scents calm you, ground you, remind you that this is somewhere that you belong and your name is-
Somewhere down the hall, a door opens and closes, and you freeze until you can place the sound as mundane and ordinary. Only then do you move, notebook held tight against your ribs like a shield, and head toward the part of the Tower that churns with morning bureaucracy.
At the bottom of the steps from the dormitory is the common area, a large stone room lined with comfortable and overstuffed chairs, walls of bookshelves and a crackling hearth. A large desk dominates the far end of the room towards the exit to the Tower at large, manned by a slender drow wizard. She leans on one hand, elbow resting on the massive desk that seems to shrink her frame. Her free hand idly flips through a large tome in front of her, a magical pen scratching alongside. When she looks up and sees you she waves and beckons you closer, a light smile curving her full lips.
You approach with a smile of your own, stretching up a little to rest your arms on the desk and nodding towards the book in front of her. She sits up a little straighter and repositions it with a look of self importance on her face, knowing that you're going to ask about what is obviously under her proud supervision.
"Has anyone come for me? Any messages?" You give her your name after a momentary and panicked pause in which you try to remember it and then follow up, "I'm Professor Gale's assistant."
"Ah, yes, I was wondering when you would emerge from that stack of reading he assigned to you. Honestly, sometimes I don't know how his assistants survive." She turns the pages backwards for a moment, the quill beside her perking up as it waits for instructions. "I don't think I have anything for you, I would have remembered something for you…" She pauses and looks up. "I don't mean to offend, only that your trip with the Professor is something of a rumor in the dormitory. I'm Llelia of House- of Blackstaff Academy." Llelia corrects herself so quickly that you almost don't notice the slip up in her introduction.
"I gathered," you laugh, easing her tension. When her shoulders relax you nod back to the book. "Nothing then? No one came by asking for me, or were allowed up to my chamber?" Already, she's shaking her head.
"Nothing! I'm sorry. No gentleman callers, either," Llelia adds, arching one eyebrow delicately. You feel the flush climbing up the column of your throat and you cough lightly, covering it with what you hope is a soft laugh.
"I wouldn't expect any. Not for me, at least." The look in her eye is enough to tell you that she doubts that very much, but you press on. "Please let me know if anyone comes looking. I'll be back at dusk."
"Dusk?" Her eyes widen slightly before narrowing again. "You know if you're not back before the lamps go out I have to report it, right?" You're already nodding, placating her with another smile.
"Yes, of course, Llelia. I've just got to do some last minute reading before the Professor and I leave for our trip tomorrow. Trust me, I don't want to be out reading any more than you want to write someone up." She tosses you a coy smile that isn't particularly reassuring. "Could I leave a message for Lenore, then? Just in case she comes by before I come back." Your tone is light, conversational, but your heart starts beating faster as soon as you speak her name. It drops when she frowns in confusion.
"Lenore? I don't know one… Are you sure she'll be in the Evoker dormitory?" When you nod your assertion her frown deepens, small creases appearing in her smooth ebony skin. "I'll ask around for you, I haven't been here as long as the others. I'll leave a message for you if I track anything down, okay?" Her smile is genuine and so is the one you return to her, tapping the desk in silent thanks and moving to the large, propped open doors of the dorms and exiting into the Academy proper.
—
On your way to the study rooms lining the lower level of the Academy you come abruptly face to face with one of the administrators, an Illusion magic wizard. He's tall and lithe, his skin a dark ebony and hair shock white. You vaguely remember him being at your panel interview when you applied to the Academy, but your paths never crossed again afterwards. He voted "yea" on your proposal and seemed welcoming enough, his smile easy and seemingly genuine.
"Oh! Professor Dekarios' assistant, right?" You nod and he smiles down at you, excitement evident in his eyes. "The two of you are leaving tomorrow, I recall. His letter for sabbatical was quite convincing, but light on details." He looks down his nose at you, squinting slightly, and you get the feeling that he's gently pressing you for more information.
"Just some field research for my capstone thesis on the use of Weave throughout Faerun." The lie comes easily to your lips, almost before you consider lying at all. Gale was adamant about the need for secrecy when it comes to the purpose of your field research, and the cover seems reasonable enough. Relief floods your stomach when the drow appears to accept your easy lie, and you tamp down the worry as best you can.
"I'm sure that will be fascinating to read. You bring pride to the Academy, you know." He casts his eyes down the hallway before returning them to your face as he leans in and says ardently, "We've been worried about Professor Dekarios lately, after what happened at the Gate. It is good to see him moving on. Two years is a long time for a human man to mourn, you know." You're briefly taken aback, surprised at the blunt mention of his service to the city far South of you.
"He's never spoken of it to me, and I've never wanted to ask." The Professor nods gravely, standing back to his full height and clearing his throat.
"Perhaps a tale for the road, then. I likely won't see you again before you depart so, allow me to leave you with this," he starts, putting a broad and gentle hand on your shoulder, "be safe, and ask questions. Forewarned is forearmed. The North can be unforgiving, and we've lost assistants to its icy grasp before. One was his assistant, now that I think back." You swallow hard.
"The Professor has assured me that he's taken every possible safety precaution for our trip, short of a hired guard." You give him a strained smile and adjust your bag on your shoulder, gripping your notebook tighter as you indicate your intent to move away. "Thank you for the well wishes and the warning, Professor…"
"Baenre. Do take care of yourself." He nods down at you and strides away down the hallway, leaving you alone with your gradually worsening thoughts.
As you walk to the study rooms you turn your thoughts over, palms slick around the spine of your notebook. Llelia hadn't been able to find Lenore in the records, or at least wasn't aware of her, and the difference between the two nags at you. Perhaps the other dorm assistants had more information, but for now you have to assume that they don't. “I haven’t been here as long as the others,” she’d said, and you cling to that. Somehow Lenore, or whoever is calling themselves Lenore, snuck into your bedroom without alerting any of the dorm assistants or book keepers and pushed the note under your door.
After years around magic and the Weave, knowing the kinds of things that the Arcane can do for you, the part that makes you the most uncomfortable is the human violation. Someone came close enough to you to leave a warning and left without being seen— someone who may be operating under a completely false alias that was given to you in person. The paper wasn’t passed in a dining hall, pinned to a board, or left in a cubby where anyone could plausibly have placed it. It slipped under your door, in the quiet hours, delivered without a scrape of sound, and it contained a symbol that now feels like a clue to nowhere.
Professor Baenre’s parting words don’t help, implying that the North is some mouth that simply sometimes closes on people, not a place with cause and effect. You scoff to yourself lightly as you walk, attempting to dismiss the idea of dying in the North as ridiculous. But something he said settles over your shoulders like a dark cloak.
'One was his assistant', he’d added, like it was an afterthought, and you can’t stop the phrase from snagging. Not one assistant— one of his. The casual way he’d offered it up, the gentle hand on your shoulder, the implication that this isn’t merely gossip makes the knowledge sit heavy in your stomach. You try to make your mind go elsewhere by focusing on the Professor's earlier line about mourning, about how two years is a long time for a human man to grieve, but that only opens a different trapdoor: the way Gale goes still when the Gate is mentioned, the way he keeps certain stories tight lipped and short. The Academy feels suddenly full of people holding pieces of his past, each one too polite or too afraid to put them together plainly in front of you.
By the time you've reached the study rooms you've composed yourself. The corridor here is quieter, lined with doors marked in careful script, each one warded just enough to deter casual eavesdropping. You choose a room without thinking and let yourself in, closing the door behind you with a muffled click. The air inside smells faintly of chalk dust and old vellum, and the narrow windows let in a washed-out slice of morning light. You set your satchel down on the old table and sit down heavily, dragging your notebook across the table towards you and opening it to the dog-eared page.
You pull out your notes on the pilgrimage circuit and the Spine of the World as your first destination, and start copying them cleanly into a new section, making them neater and more organized. It's soothing to do this, the type of rote note taking that proceeds an exam, and something that you're exceedingly comfortable with. It gives your mind something to chase besides the worry in your gut. The rhythm of scholarship dulls even the sharpest edges of panic and for a while, it almost works.
Then you turn a page and in the corner of your notes you see the faint outline of the sigil from the letter, the two intersecting triangles with a darkened L, only now it looks like someone has scrubbed their thumb vigorously over the ink. You rub a hand over your eyes to clear what you hope is just blurring vision, but the sigil remains the same. You flip forward a few more pages and the worried feeling deepens further— you swear it had said "anchor required" in your neat, cramped handwriting, but it now reads "conduit required".
In a rush to be suddenly back in the perceived safety of your dorm room you scoop your papers and books into your satchel, crumpling some of the loose pages as you do. You sling the strap over your shoulder and gather your notebook into your arms, hurrying from the small and suddenly stifling study room and dashing down the halls until you reach the Evoker's tower.
The new dorm mother, a short dwarven woman, is just beginning to douse the sconces in the main common area. She greets you with a warm smile that fades when she notices how out of breath you are, and her eyes take on a hint of concern.
"How are ye, girl? Ye look like ye've seen a ghost!" She laughs lightly and you appreciate the attempt at levity as you smile back at her wanly. She notices and looks at you with sympathy, demeanor softening as she comes closer. "Swee'eart, how can I help ye? Is it finals?" You shake your head and sit in one of the overstuffed chairs she gestures at, thankful for the calming presence.
"I feel like I'm losing pieces of my memory," you start, running your hands over your face and slumping forward in your seat, "My notes are different than when I take them, and things keep appearing around me." You leave out the anomaly of Lenore, unable to voice the concerns that you're being haunted by someone who doesn't exist, or never did.
"Aye, ye've been to the depths of the Library, 'aven't ye?" She comes to sit across from you, perching on the edge of the table and swinging her feet lightly as she does. When you nod she reaches out and puts a hand on your knee, squeezing reassuringly. "It won't remove more than ye let it, girl."
"What do you mean?" She pulls back a little, her hand running along the frayed hem of her shirt as she thinks before speaking.
"When I was yer age, I lost some things to the Library too. Aye, those advisors took somethin' from me… I don't 'member what it was, but it was related to me studies. Pieces of it I kept, ye know?" Her fingers pull methodically at a loose thread as she speaks and you realize with a horrible suddenness that she's afraid. "I musta been your age, 'round that time. Hells, decades ago now." She huffs out a dry, humorless laugh. "Can't even 'member what I lost. Just that my Professor was right excited 'bout it. Makin' a name for 'imself, I reckon."
"Would he remember? Have you asked him?" She's already shaking her head before you finish your question.
"He passed years ago, rumor is. Earthquake from a ritual he did. Master Blackcloak 'asn't been seen in years since." Her expression turns a bit rueful for a moment before she continues. "He was a right dick, he was. Di'n have all his faculties intact. Obsessed with Outer Planes and new forms of magic."
"Do you think your research for him was in those topics? The things that the Library took?" You can't help your curiosity, even though you feel a mild pang of guilt for pressing her about it through her discomfort.
"Aye. I'm sure of it." She falls silent for a moment before her eyes meet yours and she forces a smile onto her face. "S'probably for the best, aye? No need knowin' those things as a dorm mother. What's your name, girl?" You provide it with no hesitation this time, and no blank spaces in your recollection. "Aye, a beautiful name for a beautiful girl. I'm Taliesen."
"Thank you, Taliesen. I… I think I needed to hear that from someone." The smile reaches her eyes this time and you feel a little of your earlier anxieties lift from your shoulders. She claps her hands onto her thighs with a sharp "well!" and stands, laying a warm hand on your shoulder again.
"You best be gettin' on to bed, aye?" You nod and stand, breathing out steadily. Her presence was a welcome one, and the prospect of heading up to your bedroom alone no longer seems as daunting. "Ye look tired— all of ye do, these days. I swear, the older I get, the younger ye all seem." Taliesen's laugh is warm and motherly, and exactly what you need after the odd occurrences you've been dealing with all day.
She sees you up the stairs with a wave and sturdy hug and the walk to your bedroom feels lighter than it has in days. Your mood improves even further when you unlock and shove open your heavy door only to be greeted with your favorite person.
Professor Gale Dekarios is sitting in your comfortable chair by the window, gaze fixed out at the city beyond and seemingly at peace. He has one leg crossed over the other and his chin is placed in his hand as he watches the world outside. His robes are parted around his knees and his book satchel coils at his feet like a dozing pet. He startles when you enter before relaxing again, chuckling at himself.
"There you are, my dear. Ah, and you look ravishing, as always." He stands and moves in front of you, his hands coming easily to your hips with a warm intimacy.
"How did you get in here?" you laugh, placing your hands gently on his warm chest and inhaling his scent for the first time all day. He's become a grounding presence for you, and just having him here, in the room you'd been afraid of, has a way of making you feel comfortable and safe.
"It wasn't easy. That dorm mother is quite discerning, and I haven't had to sneak into the opposite dormitory in quite some time." The light in his eyes is mischievous and you laugh, pressing closer to him and running a finger along the front of his robe.
"Go on then, tell me how you did it," you prompt. He shakes his head, a sheepish look crossing his face as he does.
"It was nothing particularly to brag about, I'm afraid. A scroll of Greater Invisibility and a cleverly tossed pen when I thought she'd noticed me was all I could think to do." Gale frowns good naturedly when you laugh again, eyebrows furrowing. "I'll have you know Taliesen is well regarded for catching unwanted evening visitors. I expect I'll have to leave through the window, this time."
"This time?"
"Ah," he stops you, holding up a finger, "we're not going down that particular route of conversation."
"As you wish, Professor," you acquiesce, just happy to be in his arms. His warmth is all you really needed, you realize, and the thought floods you with a sudden sense of belonging. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"
"I've been wanting to see you all day." His soft eyes move from your eyes to your lips as his tongue darts out to wet his own. "Sort of like the night before a wedding, isn't it?"
"In what way?" you ask, a teasing smile playing on your lips. He leans back slightly, eyes to the ceiling before leaning back in and moving one hand to the small of your back.
"We leave tomorrow for a great undertaking, you and I. Just me and my partner, traveling the world on the hint of knowledge, looking for the merest glimmer of history." His eyes are excited and animated, even as he tries to keep his voice from reaching the boundaries of your small room. "I feel like we would be remiss if we didn't treat this as something as grand as it is."
"And the grandiosity of our travel prospects made you sneak into the women's Evoker dorms?" You can't keep the teasing from your voice and his responding laugh is warm. "Not that I'm complaining, Professor." You tug at a crease in his robes with your thumb and forefinger.
"I didn't think you would." Gale leans in, pressing a warm and intimate kiss to each of your cheeks before pulling you into a hug and tucking your head under his chin. "Before we indulge in each other, though… I wanted to go over our morning plans." You barely suppress the huff of frustration.
"Go on, I suppose… But at least let us get comfortable, hm?" you ask. He places a soft kiss on your forehead and steps away, sitting back on the chair with a grunt and patting his legs. You roll your eyes and join him, settling in carefully on his lap and wrapping an arm around his shoulders, playing with the longer pieces of his hair gently.
"You know you’re addictive, don’t you?" Gale closes his eyes, leaning his head back and allowing you to run your slender fingers through his hair. "Whenever I'm without you, my body aches for you. It's like you're all I need." He enjoys it for a moment, one hand running up and down your thigh under your robes while the other winds itself around your waist.
"The plan, Professor?" You tug a small piece of his hair gently to hurry him along and laugh when he grumbles at you.
"Can't a man enjoy the weight of his assistant on his lap for a moment?" He pats your thigh again before clearing his throat, suddenly serious. "I'd like us to leave before first light. The Academy offered to see us off with a breakfast, but I've told them there's no need. Our trek to the Spine of the North is going to take several days and it's best to leave early."
"Do you have all of the maps we'll need?"
"If you have the one that I've drawn, then yes, we'll be well prepared. I managed to find some old writings about pilgrimage paths to the North that were used by the ancient travelers, and I have more faith in their records than ours." Gale pats your thigh with an open palm and gestures towards your satchel, abandoned by the door where you'd left it coming in. "Go get your notebook, let me see what you've found last minute today."
You obey quickly, scrambling off of his lap and picking up your satchel quickly from one side of the strap. The weight slides unevenly to one side and sends your notebook and assorted pages flying across the floor of your room in a flurry of paper. Gale suppresses a laugh and watches as you drop to your knees, scrambling after the pens rolling away towards your bed frame and sliding the pages together into a heap. The map that Gale drew is at the top of the stack, creased slightly from being shoved unceremoniously into your bag earlier.
Rather than sit in his lap again you opt to sit on the floor, crossing your legs and leaning against him as you sort through the papers and attempt to put them back into some semblance of an order. His hand comes to rest on the crown of your head, fingers carding through your soft hair as he watches over your shoulder. Finally you pull free one of your pages of summarized notes from this morning, and you notice with curiosity that the wording still states "anchor required". You hadn't been seeing things earlier.
"Good, good. Perfect." The tug of his fingers through your hair distracts you slightly and you tilt your head back, resting it on his knee and closing your eyes. You love when he's like this with you, closely intimate and comfortable. You startle a little from your own thoughts when he speaks next. "And you've noticed no changes in any of the notes you've taken?"
The question comes suddenly and your heart beat quickens, worried for a brief moment that he had read your mind previously. Before you can stop to think you're already shaking your head no, returning to ruffling and re-stacking the pages to cover your suddenly shaking hands.
"Anything odd at all?" Gale presses.
"I was sent a letter this morning," you finally respond, and verbalizing the oddity from this morning makes it feel more real. "It felt like a warning of sorts." His hand goes still in your hair and you feel his breathing falter for a moment. It’s so brief you could almost pretend you imagined it, except that you’re pressed close enough to him to feel the truth of it in his body before he can smooth it away.
“A letter,” Gale repeats, very evenly. His fingers resume their slow motion at your scalp, but the touch has changed— the tenderness is still there, but it’s more deliberate now, like he’s measuring you while he comforts you. “From whom?”
"It wasn't signed, or sealed. It just warned me about the trip ahead. About potentially being tracked, and not signing for things. About you." You keep your eyes focused on the papers in your hand as you speak. “There was a symbol. And a name I can’t-” you stop, startled by the way your tongue refuses to cooperate, by how the name slides away the moment you reach for it. Heat flares in your cheeks again, not arousal this time, but embarrassment that's been sharpened into fear. “I can’t remember it.”
Gale is quiet for a beat too long. When he speaks again, his voice is gentle. "My dear, you've had a long day and will have an even longer one tomorrow,” he murmurs, and the endearment lands like a hand at the back of your neck, steering you closer towards the calmness you had felt just a moment ago. "You’ve had an unsettling week, I'd say. You’ve been in the restricted stacks, you’ve been under more wards than most students encounter in a year, and you’re likely exhausted.” He pauses, thumb brushing the crown of your head in a small, soothing circle. “People in the dormitories hear rumors and get bored. They play at mystery. They like to frighten bright, beautiful young women and call it a joke.”
“It didn’t feel like a joke,” you say, and you hate how small your voice sounds against his calm. How juvenile.
“No,” he agrees easily, "but some people enjoy scaring apprentices before they leave for field work, and it seems that someone has deemed you an easy target." His fingers comb through your hair again, slow and steady. "Tell me exactly what it said, my dear. Maybe I can put some fears to rest, hm? Help you rest easier?"
You hesitate, then pick up another one of the sheets to pretend you’re sorting while you speak, allowing the movement to hide the tremor in your hands. "It said-" you clear your throat uncomfortably and start again. "It said that tracked means on file, and on file means owned, and owned means disposable." The words come out sharper than you expect, serrated with the memory of reading them in bed.
Gale’s hand stills again, just for a heartbeat. Then it resumes, and when he answers his tone is light, almost amused. "A dramatic little thing, isn’t it? Whoever wrote that has a flair for rhetoric." You nod, turning to press your cheek into the palm of his hand and sighing when he strokes your cheek with his thumb. "No one is tracking you, my dear."
"It also said," you add, the confession pulling itself out of you now that you’ve started, “that I’m not the first." You brace yourself for what he could possibly say next, but his warm touch grounds you.
Silence. Not empty, but weighted. You feel it in the way his knee shifts under you, in the way his ribs expand more with his next careful breath.
When he speaks he does it softly, like he’s attempting to placate an argument before it begins. “You are not the first person to apprentice under me,” he says. “No. That’s hardly scandal.” A beat, then the smallest exhale. “And it is precisely why I choose my apprentices carefully. Because the work I do attracts attention. Curiosity. Envy. Petty malice.”
“So you think it’s someone… trying to scare me away?" you ask.
“Yes,” Gale says at once, and his hand cups the back of your head, anchoring you there against him with a pressure that feels warmly possessive, "almost certainly. Or trying to get inside our work by making you doubt yourself. The easiest way to steal a discovery is to make the one holding it loosen their grip."
"I suppose that's true."
"You won't loosen your grip, will you?" Gale's hand stops on your hair and you finally turn to meet his gaze, smiling as soon as you see the genuine worry behind his eyes.
"No. Never, as long as I'm your apprentice."
"Good," Gale says and the relief in his voice is enough to shake the rest of the worries from your mind. “Then we do what scholars do. We document and we proceed. We don’t waste our time chasing shadows in dormitory hallways.” He leans forward slightly, enough that his breath brushes your temple. “And you don’t let anyone—anyone—put fear into your head.”
“I… kept the letter,” you admit, quieter, breaking your eye contact with him as you do. “In my notebook.”
"Good. Keep it there," he says, voice mild, almost dismissive sounding. “If it’s a prank, it will sour and die in the dark. If it’s not, we’ll address it when it becomes something more than just a cheap scare tactic.” His hand pauses, then resumes, gentle again, intimate again. “Now. Show me your notes. Let’s see what is real, and what can affect us tomorrow.” He gives your hair one last, affectionate tug, and you feel yourself exhale despite everything, because it’s what he does best— he makes the world feel manageable. He makes you want to hand him your fear along with your papers and let him file it away where you won’t have to look at it.
The two of you pour over your notes for several minutes, comparing paths and routes and charting out a course for the morning. It doesn't take long for you to solidify your plans for travel, as Gale seems to be well connected on the route leading to the North. He's already marked a couple of inns as potential "free stops" on the way, and there's only the slightest hint of pride in his voice when he mentions that several town magistrates owe him a favor.
Eventually his hand finds its way to the top of your head again and you turn to rest your cheek on his leg, enjoying the intimacy as it returns to the evening. You set your notes aside, running your hands along the planes of his legs until they come to the apex of his hips.
"You did promise me a pre-wedding night, Professor," you say quietly, smiling when his breath catches and his eyes move to your lips. It's so easy to make him respond to you and you'd be lying to yourself if you said it wasn't fun. A casual movement during class, eye contact and a flash of your leg is enough to have him begging to take you after the students leave… and it's no different when you're alone together.
"So I did." His voice has lowered to a hoarseness tinged with hunger that goes right to your core. He moves slowly, hands coming to rest on top of yours at his waist. Gale caresses your hands gently for a moment before parting his robes and adjusting himself in your chair in order to undo his belt. The jangling sound of the metal makes your mouth water expectantly and you watch the bulge of his cock start to harden.
"Already ready for me, then?" you ask lightly, one palm running along his length slowly. He groans softly, rocking his hips up to meet your hand and chasing the sensation when you pull away.
"Devious," he chides, a smile in his voice. "I do so love the sight of an apprentice on her knees." His hand runs through your hair again, only gently pressing you closer to his hardening cock. You lean further than he pushes anyway, running your lips along the fabric where it stretches over him. His eyes catch on yours and hold, gaze dark and intense.
The air between you thickens with that familiar tension— your breathing and his, the scrape of fabric, the soft jangle of metal as he shifts, until it feels like the room has narrowed to this singular spot. Your breathing is already coming hot and heavy and you can feel the warmth in your core pooling into a singular want. When you finally pull his cock free and squeeze it in your palm both of your groan in tandem, Gale shifting his hips again and leaning further back in your chair languidly.
"That's it," he murmurs, his voice roughened by devotion that snags at your ribs. Your own breathing feels embarrassingly fast and loud, yearning as you are for the taste of him, almost desperate— something that you’re sure your Professor has noticed, if his sudden chuckle is anything to go by. "Show me what you want." You oblige him happily, leaning in and kissing at the shaft of his cock, trailing your lips up before taking it into your mouth fully.
Gale's hand twists into your hair and you can feel him straining to hold himself back from thrusting into your soft lips. You wince slightly and moan when his fingers tug at your hair, the grip tightening when you lathe your tongue along the bottom of his shaft. Through your hand on his leg, you feel him gather himself, try to keep his voice measured, and fail as you drag another sound from him, and the failure is its own reward for you.
"Seven hells," he groans, the sound coming deep from his chest. "Always so perfect." You hum in response, the vibration of it causing him to buck up into your throat. You keep your eyes closed as you start to slowly bob your head, one hand coming to rest on the inside of his thigh and the other wrapped around the base of his cock. Your tongue swirls, a slow, deliberate exploration of every ridge and vein, tasting salt and the faint, clean scent of him. Your cheeks hollow with the pressure, and you can feel the thrum of his pulse against your tongue.
The only sounds are the wet, rhythmic noises you're making and the low, broken sounds he's trying desperately to swallow. The dormitory isn't particularly sound proof and neither one of you wants to risk being caught the night before you're set to leave. It isn't the first time you've had to be quiet with one another, but you usually had the assistance of silencing charms.
You pull back to breathe, a string of thickened spit and pre-cum connecting your lips to the flushed head of his cock. It pulses in your hand and you squeeze in response, smiling when Gale's hips jolt forward. You look up at him, your own pupils blown wide with desire, and watch the way his chest heaves. The sight sends a fresh wave of heat through you, a desperate, aching need to have him inside you, not just in your mouth.
"Up here," he urges, his voice strained with want. "Now."
You don't need to be told twice. You rise, knees a little unsteady, and straddle his lap in the chair. The worn wood of the armrests digs into your hands as you brace yourself with them. Your knees settle into the cushion on either side of his legs, parting your robe with ease. He reaches between you, not to guide himself, but to run his fingers through your slick folds. A choked moan escapes your lips at the contact, your head falling back as he circles your clit with perfect, maddening pressure.
"Already soaking for me and all you've done is suck my cock," he murmurs, a smug satisfaction in his tone that would annoy you if you weren't so desperate for more. He lines himself up, and the broad head of his cock nudges at your entrance. The anticipation is a coiled spring in your belly. You sink down, an inch at a time, letting your body adjust to the delicious stretch. Gale sighs as he accepts the weight of you, hands coming to rest against the swell of your ass. He fills you completely, and for a moment you just stay there, connected, breathing the same air, his gaze locked on yours.
You start with a slow grind, a circle of your hips that makes him gasp, his hands flying to your waist to hold on. You rise up until just the tip is inside you, then slam back down, taking him to the hilt. The force of it sends a jolt of pleasure through you, a gasp tearing from your throat. His hands guide your pace, encouraging you to go faster, harder. The room fills with the sounds of skin meeting skin, panting breaths and broken moans, both of you attempting to be as quiet as you can. You lean forward, bracing your hands on his shoulders, changing the angle, and the head of his cock hits that spot deep inside that makes you weak.
"I never thought I'd find another apprentice like this," he says, voice muffled as he presses his face to your chest, kissing and biting at the small amount of skin visible between the parts of your robe. "It's been so long… You're so perfect…" You wince when his teeth find your breast, one of his rough hands pulling it free from the fabric. Gale's facial hair scratches against the delicate skin of your chest and it only adds to the fire in your belly which soars even higher when he bites down gently on your hardened nipple.
You can feel the tension coiling in your core, tighter and tighter, a knot of pure sensation threatening to snap. His thumb finds your clit again, and that's all it takes. The world dissolves into a blinding, white-hot rush of pleasure. You bury your face in his neck to muffle yourself, your body convulsing around him as your orgasm crashes over you.
He follows you over the edge a moment later, his own release a deep, guttural groan as he buries himself deep inside you, hands gripping your hips tight enough to hurt. You feel his cock pulsing inside of you with each wave of his climax and you bare down on him with your hips, grinding against him until he hisses with overstimulation. Finally you collapse against him, boneless and spent, your face buried in the warm crook of his neck. His arms wrap around you, holding you close as you both come back to yourselves. The only sounds are your ragged breaths and the frantic beating of your hearts, gradually slowing in sync. You press a soft, lazy kiss to the sweat-dampened skin of his throat, utterly content.
For a long while you remain just like that, a tangle of limbs in the worn fabric of the chair, a satisfied weight against him. His hands trace lazy patterns on your back, the touch light as a moth's wing. The room has cooled, and a fine sheen of sweat on your skin begins to prickle in the air. The moon has risen high into the sky and the touch of midnight air makes you shiver a little. You shift slightly, the movement sticky and intimate, and a soft, satisfied sigh escapes you.
He chuckles, the sound a low rumble in his chest that vibrates through you. "Tired, my dear?"
You lift your head, propping your chin on his shoulder to look at him. His face is softened in the dim light, the usual sharp intelligence in his eyes replaced with a warm and lazy affection. "Worn out," you correct him, your voice husky. "In the best possible way. But I'm already worried about being tired tomorrow. We should get some rest." He shifts, and you feel him soften inside you, a final, tender pulse of connection before he gently lifts you off his lap, standing and rearranging his robes.
"You're right of course, as you often are… I should sneak my way back to the faculty tower, I suppose." He draws you into his arms again, pressing another kiss to your forehead. "You should get ready for bed as well." You stretch up onto your toes and kiss him properly before stepping away and watching as he slides the window open. A flash of pink light and he's gone, leaving a small ripple effect and the sound of a grunt as he heaves himself through the window. There's another flash of light, blue this time, and you know without looking that he's levitating himself down to terra firma.
You shake your head and unbutton your robe, allowing it to drop the floor along with your other layers of clothing. A sigh of contentment leaves you as you stretch down onto your bed, nude, and face the ceiling of your small room. You cross your arms over your stomach and look around the room, settling in for one last night in the space you've come to consider home. A smile slowly grows as you think about the potential future you're starting tomorrow. You stretch and curl into your bed, reaching an arm under your pillow.
And finding a piece of paper.
You sit upright, gripping the paper and pulling it in front of you, hastily conjuring an arcane orb of light as you do. In the corner of the paper is the same sigil as earlier and your heart drops into your stomach, skipping a beat.
He will tell you this power was your choice.
“Power always offers choice. Consent is how it keeps its hands clean.”
— On Devotion and Consumption, Uncatalogued Fragment
This is for all you slutty galemancers out there. A super intriguing and sexy story that I have the distinct pleasure of looking at before the rest of you hehe
What if the Temple of Bhaal was run like a megachurch?
I let my religious trauma go wild with this one. Potentially the best crack I've ever written. I even made a fully formatted church bulletin! Cackled on pretty much everything in here. Go check it out! No spoilers and for teen and up. Sneak peek under the cut.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/80884081
In a hidden temple deep beneath the city lies a thriving cult, dedicated to worshiping their God Bhaal, Lord of Murder. Supplicants from all walks of life gather once a tenday to observe a sacrifice conducted on His altar, often performed by His Scion themself, The Dark Urge. Candles spread an ancient glow across the expansive cavern, and spectators observe from the sidelines the services being held on the large stone dais below.
Today's sacrifice is a dwarven man, who is asleep and chained to the large stone altar. A member of the church, one of the higher ranking Death's Heads wearing a brown leather hood, slashes his palm and drips blood over the dwarf's chest. A muffled prayer is said over the offering, and the large skull icon carved into the cave lights up, red glow seeping into its hollowed eye sockets. Upon seeing the glow of the icon of Bhaal ignite, the crowd settles, and turns their attention to the chorus gathering around the altar.
Each chanter is clad in black, and a sacred glow surrounds them as they repeat a simple phrase in multiple languages, a recent addition to the service to accommodate a more diverse population of believers into participating in the full worship experience. "Bhaal awaits thee. Bhaal embraces thee. None escape the lash of Bhaal." After five repetitions, the leader of the chorus gestures to the congregation.
"May the Embrace of Bhaal be with you," he shouts.
"And also with you," the crowd responds.
Silence settles over the temple once more as the Reapers change formation and kneel facing Bhaal's icon. The congregation follows and the Reaper Chorus begins their next chant, blessing the sacrifice to come and pleading for its acceptance into Bhaal's realm. This chant is more melodic, and various strategically placed members of the church hold up signs with the lyrics so that everyone is able to follow along.
February with all of its romance and rair pairs and other sexy times stuff is over! Seems like a good time for another round of Gen Fic recs!
Gen Fic is fic where the main focus of the fic is something other than romance or sexual themes. These fics might contain a pairing, but something else is taking up the majority of the work.
You're not imagining things, we've run this theme before and will run it again! This is a recurring theme as a lot of people search for fics based on pairings first, so we want to highlight things that may slip through the cracks.
99 Times Zlorb Successfully Shapeshifted, and One Time It Didn't by emfirebender (1000, General)
Content Notes: None
Instead of a 10x100 format, this is a 100x10 format, with tiny snips of moments from Zlorb's experience during game events. (that's the shapeshifting Ox, btw)
Reccer says: 10 words isn't much to work with, but the author makes each one count. The moments are short, but poetic, funny, and thoughtful - and make you point excitedly, like the DiCapprio meme, when you recognize the game-thing being referenced from only a few (10, actually) words to go on.
Gale Dekarios and The Pussy Palace by GinaTeeth (3097, Teen)
Content Notes: None
Gale Dekarios, feeling a little down, slips into a place he thinks is a cat cafe. When he discovers a pole dancing class, he lets a little loose.
Reccer says: Gale gets out of his comfort zone in the best way. Jaheira is a boss.
17 Things That Made This Kobold's Day PERFECT (Number 12 Will Make You Cry) by dramatic_chipmunk (2613, General)
Content Notes: None
This fic is a fully-realized Buzzfeed article, written by Popper the Kobold, and realized with a HUGE amount of skin-work in AO3.
Reccer says: It's an absolute treasure chest of delightful treatos. The individual articles, the comments, the WORKING AD LINKS, it's just fun fun fun to pour over.
Fallow by Aqeldroma (1604, General)
Content Notes: None
When Shadowheart's companion leaves her unexpectedly, she mourns through gardening.
Reccer says: A bittersweet story of Shadowheart moving on after having lost everything. Again.
Lies of Omission by ACrowsRockCollection (7509, General)
Content Notes: None
Three vignettes about moments when Tara protected Gale
Reccer says: In addition to being a tender and intimate story about Tara's fierce loyalty to Gale, the writing quality is fantastic, and extremely effective in pulling emotions.
Promises by ACrowsRockCollection (3265, Mature)
Content Notes: None
Pairings: Orin & Friendship
Durge made an agreement with Withers to revive Orin. Jaheira and Gale promise to help her. Then the former chosen of Bhaal dies in the final battle. Jaheira and Gale keep their promise.
Reccer says: I wish we could help Orin in game, this is a peek of what the might be like.
Pals by Mistresses_Madwomen_Poets (3648, Teen)
Content Notes: Gortash canonically dies
Pairings: The Dark Urge & Enver Gortash
Everyone thinks that Durge and Gort are having a wild, torrid, passionate sexual affair. But the truth is, they’re just really good work pals.
Karlach convinces Astarion to have himself caricatured at the Lower City market.
Reccer says: A great little look at Astarion having a good time with Karlach with a sweet ending
Regret by AlwaysMauria (2628, Mature)
Content Notes: Mentions of Astarion's past sexual assault
A series of vignettes whereby Ascended Astarion considers if maybe he's made a huge mistake.
Reccer says: I cannot see Astarion actually being happy in that horrid mansion that was his prison for so long, joining the high society that were his tormentors... this is a great look at how Ascension might not be all he thought it would be, perhaps it is just new chains around his wrists.
The Loot and Luxury Club by aqeldroma (1303, General)
Content Notes: no
Pairings: Piddle & Klagga & Gribbo
Three goblins who love art and poetry create a club to celebrate the finer things in life.
Reccer says: A sweet and funny story with an interesting look at the ordinary life of goblins.
No Prattle by Gally (44875, Mature)
Content Notes: Ableism
What if, after Astarion was beaten by the Gur, it was his mother who found him, not Cazador? He lives, but comes away with injuries that will never fully heal, including a traumatic brain injury.
Reccer says: Author has a great Astarion voice, and we get to see Astarion be Astarion but from inside his head where the flaws, ugly thoughts, and incredible vulnerability lives. Also funny ASF.
A Singing Scam by Tavylia_Sin (1688, Mature)
Content Notes: Alcohol
Pairings: Olly & Rugan
Rugan and Olly find their coin purses on the lighter side, but MidWinter is a time for giving...so surely there are some more fortunate souls willing to part with their money somewhere in the city. The pair come up with the perfect plan, and head off with a few other Zhents to see what they can make of the night.
Reccer says: A funny story about another scam devised by our beloved Zhentarim gang
The Beat-A-Bot Comment Challenge March 1 - March 7
Authors on AO3 are plagued with bot and scam comments, from those trying to sell us things to those trying to insult us. WE CAN DO BETTER!
Don't you hate getting a new comment only to realize it's from a bot? There's tons of fics out there that have NO comments from real people. Let's change that!!
The bots leave tons of comments, you can do it too! Join Baldur's Writers III in a week-long comment challenge where the only thing you need to do is comment and kudos on fics that have received ZERO comments from real people!
EASY MODE: Comment on seven fics that have received 0 comments or only bot comments
HARD MODE: Do the above... and also score BINGO!
Don't know how to find fics with no comments?
Go to search like normal, and then before hitting sort, put "comment<1>" in the search within results box
Like this!
Want to talk more about the event or bg3 fic in general? Join us!
Welcoming writers and readers alike who wish to share stories around their favorite characters. | 388 members
Pairing: Gale x female reader (non-Tav)
WC: 7,672
Summary: You and Gale have a breakthrough in the research you're conducting into the discs you found by the Chionthar. Be careful, though, how much you read... The Library has a tendency of taking things away in equal measure.
Tags: light dom/sub, fingering, public areas, lots of plot
NSFW
before we begin another "i love you" and "thank you for making me coherent" to my beautiful editor (and author) @emfirebender, this isn't possible without you and the wonderful wiki for Forgotten Realms... and Gale on a microwave plate.
--
"The hunt for information is rarely completed without baring ones teeth."
An Intrepid Researcher's Notes
To the Headmaster of the Waterdeep Blackstaff Academy,
Care of Blackstaff Tower keeper Aylin Driss
I, Professor Gale Dekarios of Waterdeep, request a formal sabbatical from instructional duties in the professorial faculty of Blackstaff Academy. The opportunity for academic research into rites and rituals has presented itself, and this letter shall serve as notice that I will be considered as working in a strictly research position until further notice.
GD
—
To the Headmaster of the Waterdeep Blackstaff Academy,
Care of Blackstaff Tower keeper Aylin Driss
I, assistant to Professor Gale Dekarios of Waterdeep, do hereby tender my resignation from my teacher's assistant position at Blackstaff Academy. The opportunity for academic research has presented itself to my Professor, and as a dutiful assistant I have decided that my thesis shall be based upon the field research we are conducting together.
—
The letters lay on the desk, leaden with the weight of their words. One of the rejected drafts of Gale's letter lay in pieces in the trashcan, and another is folded neatly under his paper blotter, only the corner of it visible. Yet a third version has been slashed over with ink so viciously that rips have opened in the thick parchment.
They all seem too small to contain the life-changing decisions written in them. Gale's pen rests beside them, the nib still faintly damp with ink. He's pacing, a slow, controlled circuit of the small room, his hands clasped behind his back. Gale stops pacing long enough to pick up the torn one, stare at it and then flick his fingers. A cantrip takes it, paper crumbling in on itself, ink paling to nothing, and smoke curling towards the ceiling.
"That version," he says softly, "doesn't exist."
"Professor?"
"We could send them," he says, the words a low murmur. "We could send them now, and be gone before the tide turns. There's a ship to Calimport leaving at dusk." The world beyond the window pane is dark, small points of light flickering from the gas lamps that line the streets below. He lets the silence stretch, weighing his words before he speaks again. "This is the sort of discovery that one finds in the history books. It's a once-in-a-Plane opportunity to document the discovery of something that was buried."
"You won't hear me disagreeing with you, Professor, but wouldn't it be smarter of us to wait out the end of the term? We could do more research, and I could finish more of my training. I would be of more use to you in the field, I could protect-"
"You couldn't protect me." Gale turns and leans against the window, crossing his arms across his chest and resting one ankle over the other. His eyes are dark and intense, and you can see the hunger in them, the same hunger that's been burning in yours since the night of the ritual. It's a hunger for more than just the power and knowledge. It's a hunger for a life beyond the stone walls of the Academy, a life that you know he led once before, in defense of the Gate.
"No, I couldn't," you admit freely, heat rising to your cheeks in a flash of insecurity. "But I could try. I could learn to protect you. That would be my devotion to you."
"You would learn to protect me, or you would learn to protect yourself?" The question is gentle, but there's a challenge in it. He wants to know if you understand what you're getting into, if you understand the risks, if you're ready for a life that's not mapped out in syllabi and reading lists.
"What's the difference?" you interject, tone low and earnest. "I want this, to be with you. I want to see what's out there, beyond the Chionthar, beyond the Sword Coast. I want to see what we can become, together." You hesitate a moment before charging forward. "To see what I can become."
Gale runs a hand through his hair, his eyes lingering on the silver disc on the fireplace mantle. The small grey streak in his hair catches the fire light, moving with the soft motion of his sigh. You're about to plead your case again when he speaks softly, "I know what dangers are out in Faerun. I have faced them. I do not want to lead you into that darkness, especially knowing where we may go, not like the last-."
"You won't be leading me," you interject, your voice a steady, confident counterpoint to the doubt in his. "We'll be walking into it together. And what's the alternative? Staying here, in this city, with its rules and its expectations? With you as my professor and me as nothing more than your assistant? I'm not the same person I was a week ago, Gale. And neither are you." You stand, your robe whispering against the floorboards, and walk over to him. You take his hands in yours, lacing your fingers together.
The Weave flares to life between you, a sweet, floral scent blooming thick at the back of your palette. You close your eyes for a moment, reveling in the newfound streams of power that course from you to him and back again. The bud of Weave blossoms and opens, streams of pink and purple energy appearing and dissolving just as quickly. The power you share is changed since the rite, more potent and tangible, readily wielded and commanded at a breath.
"I know," he says, his voice a soft, resigned sigh. "Gods help me, I know." He leans in, pressing a soft, gentle kiss to your forehead and then reaches over and picks up the letters from the desk, rereading them quickly. "But we wait until the end of the term. You will have your certification and I will have my affairs in order. We leave with our heads held high, not like fugitives in the night. This could very well be the rest of our lives."
"The research or the relationship, Professor?" you ask, watching as Gale starts slightly, gaze moving from the letters to your face as his expression softens.
"Both, my dear." His free hand comes to frame your face gently, his thumb stroking the swell of your cheek. You lean into his touch, smiling and twisting to press a kiss to his wrist. He's right, of course. This is about more than just a whim, more than a magical artifact. It's research you're building together, rite by rite and spell by spell.
—
The following weeks feel like they drag by, classes passing as slow as molasses and the other students giving you sidelong looks and whispering to each other throughout the halls when you pass. Word of your impending departure has spread throughout the academy, and you find yourself fielding questions left and right from your peers.
One day, another teacher's assistant sits next to you in the dining hall, setting her dinner tray down with a clatter and shrugging a heavy bag of books onto the table with a groan. You acknowledge her with a smile and close your notebook, surreptitiously hiding the notes that you'd been doodling over— a mixture of flattering anatomical studies of Professor Gale, and detailed diagrams of the disc.
"I don't know how you've done it," she starts, stirring her stew as she talks with one hand and liberally salting it with the other. "Somehow you've managed to get the one professor that everyone loves to look at and convinced him to leave the academy!" When you laugh lightly in response she leans forward, eyes widening. "Tell me it isn't true. Or is it? Just give me something, the whole academy is wondering what the two of you found!"
"Well…" You shift a little in your seat and lean forward, meeting her eyes. "Professor Gale thinks that we've made the discovery of a lifetime. I'm going to write my capstone on what we've found." You try to reign in your excitement slightly; Gale had told you previously not to give away too many details about your research endeavors, hinting that it could be dangerous for the truth to "get away from the two of you" with academy gossip.
"What is it?" Her eyes are rapt with attention, overly salted stew forgotten. You gesture to it with a smirk and she dutifully stirs it again before bringing a spoonful to her mouth. Around her mouthful she manages to ask, "Is it dangerous?"
"I don't… think so." You pause, frowning. Gale had mentioned that there was some danger involved with the travel, but he had neglected to say if there would be any associated with the disc itself. "I'm sure everything is perfectly safe. Besides, he's capable of protecting the both of us if he needs, and I'm more capable than I look." She laughs with you, a clear and sonorous sound.
"I'd hope so, if his efforts at the Gate weren't overstated." Her eyes narrow conspiratorially again. "Were they? Is he really that powerful?" You're already nodding before the question has fully left her lips.
"Absolutely. I've seen it first hand." You sop up the rest of your stew with buttered bread and pop it into your mouth, gathering your books to leave. "It was nice to chat, but I've got to meet the professor for some last minute research at the Grand Library." She wishes you well with a wave and a wink, pulling out a book of her own and starting to read as you walk away, pen levitating forward to take notes.
It's not the first time you've answered similar questions, but it is the first time that someone asked if it would be dangerous.
—
Inside, the Grand Library makes a liar of the exterior.
The tower might look three stories from the street, but inside it seems to unfold into levels that stack like thoughts. The stacks are spiraling, branching, folding back on themselves. Shelves rise in cathedral-tall ribs, curving into arches that are almost devotional in the weight of knowledge they carry. The stone is black here too, but polished, veined with threads of quiet green light that pulse as if the building is breathing. It feels alive in the unsettling way that old magic can.
Books float back and forth across the expanse of the library, enchanted to find their way back to the proper shelves when necessary, their pages rustling softly as they move. Some tomes are chained, some caged behind latticed wards, some floating a finger’s width above their shelves as if the idea of contact with anything as crude as wood is insulting to the information within. Scroll cases nest in honeycombed alcoves, each stamped with a seal that changes when you look directly at it. Quills scratch on their own at narrow desks, copying, cataloging, correcting, an obligation of librarians made trivial by arcana.
The soundscape of the library is as much of a paradox as the building itself. It's hushed by enchantments laid on the stone, but never silent, not completely— the humming of the wards under the foundation make sure of that. They're a constant presence, but soothingly so. There's only the soft sound of pages turning by themselves and of enchanted ladders gliding along rails. Every now and again you can hear a book cough in indignation when someone opens it without asking.
Light filters from magically enchanted orbs, a soft yellow glow that's reminiscent of a springtime sun, motes of dust dancing in the glow when they get too close to one. They light the tables in accordance with your passing, casting their shine on the intricate knots and runes emblazoned on each in dizzying spirals that change when you look at them. The entire hall thrums with energy that you feel more attuned to since your experience at the Chionthar.
The librarians, if you can call them that, scurry dutifully around the library like minor summons. Not ghosts, not quite. Animated cloaks that carry stacks of books without visible bodies, small brass crab-like automatons that scuttle along the baseboards with labels in their pincers, and a hovering cluster of ink-stained glasses that pause in front of you, lenses narrowing as they assess your intentions and finally allow you to pass.
Deeper in the library, where the air grows colder and sharper on your skin, the Weave feels denser, like breathing through wet velvet. It's there that Gale told you to meet him, and it's there that you sense a presence that you've never felt until now.
The advisors.
Green-tinged figures that don't ever quite commit to being people, even in your peripheral vision, facsimiles of past orderlies of the library that are bound here as memory and intellect given form. They drift between the stacks, hollow voids that leave your hair standing on end and an uneasy feeling in your gut. One of them passes near a restricted alcove before it turns to you, head swiveling without body movement and gaze landing on you with a tangible weight.
"You ssseek?" it asks, the voice seeming to come from somewhere inside your own mind. You start slightly, jumping a little before regaining your faculties.
"I'm looking for Professor Dekarios. Could you point me in his direction?" The advisor seems to shimmer in acknowledgement for a moment before drifting away. As it leaves, you hear a whispered "South" in the recesses of your awareness. You shake your head sharply, dispelling the odd feeling and following the arrow along the stacks in the indicated direction.
On the way, you pass a half empty bookshelf with a disclaimer written on a sign placed delicately on it that reads, "ALL INCOMING TOMES TO BE COPIED AND THE ORIGINAL KEPT BY THE LIBRARY." It's not a request, you note with interest, but a tradition with teeth. The library holds its knowledge close to its breast and dispenses only copies back into the world.
Finally, at the end of the empty shelf, you spot the robed outline of who you assume to be your professor. You move forward and call to him, shuffling your satchel onto the other shoulder and grunting under the weight slightly. The sound prompts him to turn and you jump a little when you realize that it isn't Gale at all, but a researcher who works at the academy, an evocation wizard.
"Oh, I'm sorry," you say with a laugh, stopping short of bumping into them. "I thought you were-"
"Professor Dekarios," the wizard finishes for you. She adjusts her glasses on her long, avian nose, looking down at you and squinting behind the thick lenses. "Yes… I had heard he had taken another apprentice after the last one flamed out so spectacularly." The smell clinging to her robes reaches you, a comforting scent of lilac and an incense that you can't place. She tilts her head, looking you up and down as if appraising you.
"I'm sorry?" you prompt, confusion crossing your face briefly before you rearrange your features into what you hope resembles professional curiosity. You have the sudden urge to pull your satchel in front of yourself, and something about her gaze leaves you feeling exposed. "He had another apprentice before me?" The wizard tuts out a sound of displeasure, frowning in the direction of the restricted section where you presume Gale is.
"Shame that no one told you. He uses up apprentices faster than parchment." She clicks her tongue in disapproval before continuing. "It's a dangerous thing that you're wrapped up in. If he selected you, I assume you're capable in your own right, at the very least. I hope you've chosen a specialty already." Her gaze softens, almost seeming close to pity. "Reach out if you need help getting out of this. Leave a message with the Evoker's dormitories and ask for Lenore… and don't sign anything for him."
"I-"
"No, no arguments. Just nod that you've heard me." You nod, eyes moving beyond Lenore and scanning the stacks for any sign of Gale. "Right. Good. I should go… The longer I stay in the restricted section, the more I lose." She turns to leave, sliding lithely between you and the tall bookshelves. Before she disappears from sight, she hisses quietly, "and tell no one that you've met me."
"Why?" you ask, but the space that she occupied is already empty. As the smell of her perfume fades, a small voice in the back of your mind whispers,
"Stop reading if you feel yourself forgetting."
You shake your head quickly, dispelling the odd conversation and moving further into the library, renewed in your search for Gale, and more than a little disquieted.
—
"I don't like it back here," you mutter as you slide yourself into the study booth across from him, practically throwing your satchel on the table. It had only taken moments to find him after your conversation with Lenore, but the oppressive silence of the library is beginning to grate on your nerves.
"Nor do I, but the only ones who venture here anymore are the advisors and they stay well enough way if they can help it. It's too dangerous for anyone else." Gale doesn't look up from the tome he has open in front of him, sliding a piece of paper across the table towards you in the same motion that he turns a page. "I think I've managed to find some information on the disc that we haven't seen before." Your curiosity piqued, you turn the paper towards yourself and scan his neat, cramped handwriting.
-Disc was utilized as a map (projecting the stars? Perhaps upon a canvas? A tent?)
-Through attunement the drow priestesses could lead their flock
-Did the elves with them understand that the disc was the map? (Did they need to? Did they know that the disc existed?)
-How many discs of this type exist? 4 in existence, one for the cardinal directions
"So you've found that they would have been used as a projector?" you ask, pushing the paper back towards the middle of the table and lifting the flap of your satchel, drawing out a notebook and pen.
"More than that, I've found that there are only four in total." Gale finally looks up and the excitement in his eyes makes your heart jump. "If we operate under the assumption that the disc that we found was placed there for a reason and superimpose a map over it…" He leans forward to demonstrate, tugging another loose piece of paper between you.
Gale quickly sketches a map of Faerûn, tapping a spot near the crudely drawn Chionthar river, where you located the first disc. You take a moment to orient yourself with the map, upside down for you, and nod along with him as he starts to explain his reasoning.
"This one, on the Chionthar… it's far to the West compared to the rest of Faerûn, wouldn't you say? If we consider that the discs were used for the purposes of pilgrimage across the world, and that there is one disc for each cardinal direction, I think we can extrapolate that this disc was meant to represent the Western portion." Gale pauses for a moment, waiting until your eyes meet his again and there's another beat of silence before he prompts, "Do you agree?"
"You're asking me?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. Gale breathes out quickly and gathers himself, leaning closer to you and dropping his voice.
"You're my partner, dear. I am asking you for your opinion as a learned scholar who I need to depend on to make decisions with me." He watches you expectantly for another moment in silence. Your thoughts jumble in your head, half formed theses and questions drowned out by one single word: partner. Even though it was a confirmed thing weeks prior, it still leaves you stunned when he says it. "Darling?" He asks after your continued silence.
"Of course, right. I'm sorry, I suppose I figured I would be following your lead." You flush lightly, cheeks warming as his eyes soften. "I'm still your assistant, after all."
"Of course, but you are also on this journey with me, however far it may take me. You are, aren't you?" Gale reaches across, warm hand squeezing your own briefly where it rests on the table. You flip your hand in his and squeeze back, smiling.
"Wherever it might take you, professor." You look back at the map, laughing lightly when you have to reorient yourself on his map. "If I'm interpreting your poor cartography and artistic skills correctly, I would think that it may take you further North first, perhaps to the Spine of The World?" You pick up a pen with the hand that isn't holding Gale's, marking a small series of mountains and a star where the Spine would be.
Gale nods approvingly, his thumb smoothing idly over the top of your hand. "And South?" he asks, labeling the map where you indicated sloppily with his left hand, unwilling to let go of yours. "If we suppose that they're placed as close as possible to the ley line activity…"
"The Black Jungles?" You move your pen to the general location on the map, tapping it gently. "But I can't envision the Seldarine going to a location like that. Maybe the Bay of Dancing Dolphins, instead?"
"Following the ley lines would bring us in that direction, yes." Gale trails off for a moment, tapping his lower lip with his pen. "In the East… That could be either the Southern Sunrise Mountains, near Pyrados or…"
"Lake Mulsantir, at the base?" you finish, sketching another quick star in the location you mentioned. He's already nodding, squeezing your hand gently before pulling away, leaving your hand feeling cold.
"I think this is a good start, my dear. I feel the most confident with our placement for the Spine of The World. I have some friends in Luskan and Neverwinter that we could stay with. I'll have to send them a message before we depart to secure housing but…" He trails off slowly, looking up at you with a slight flush on his cheeks. "Have I ever told you how ravishing your intellect is?"
"Often, but I never grow tired of it." You smile at him, tugging some of the leftover parchment towards yourself and readying a pen for your own notes.
"Just radiant when you're thinking of the possibilities ahead of us." His voice is warm and you look up to meet his gaze, feeling a flush growing across your cheeks as he continues. "I knew from the day they placed you in my classes that you had something extraordinary in you… and how lucky am I, to get to be the man that draws that out?"
"Gale," you admonish quietly, leaning forward to peer down the line of books for potential eavesdroppers.
"Fine! Fine, my dearest. I'll save the sweet talking for the road, hm?" He laughs and opens a book in front of him, flicking the pages quietly to a bookmarked section. A moment later, however, he sits up sharply, a look of revelation on his face. "I need the Ley Registry.”
You blink, being addled by arousal. “The Master Registry?”
Gale nods once. “The original. Not the copies. The one behind the wards.”
Your stomach sinks in a small, sharp way, arousal forgotten. The sign you passed—ALL INCOMING TOMES TO BE COPIED AND THE ORIGINAL KEPT BY THE LIBRARY—flashes in your mind and you hesitate.
“That’s sealed,” you say, “that’s sealed even to faculty.”
“That’s sealed against me,” Gale corrects quietly. “Not to the Academy or apprentices. To me.” He taps the table once, and then points down the stacks, precise. “You can request it under thesis clearance. They’ll approve you faster, right away, because they can track you.”
"Track me? Do we want that?" you ask, already sliding out of the study booth and fixing the draping of your robes. Such a tall request will require a good presentation.
Gale’s mouth quirks, not quite into a smile. “I’d wager you’re already tracked,” he says. “You’re my apprentice… and I’m not known for pursuing safe magic.”
The way he says it, light, almost teasing, makes your heart stutter. Affection surges, inconvenient and hot, and you hate how easily he can pull it from you with a few simple words. You shake your head and smile down at him, willing the urge to lean in and kiss him away.
“I suppose that’s true…” You glance down the stacks, toward where the air turns colder and the wards hum lower. “I just ask one of the advisors, then? The Registry would be in the restricted alcoves, I would imagine…" Gale nods, pushing a piece of parchment towards you that reads,
REQUEST FOR RESEARCH MATERIALS
I, the undersigned, do hereby request the Library's permission to review the following tome(s):
-The Master Ley Registry of The Ley Lines of Faerun, According To Nezram The World-Walker
A line at the bottom of the page denotes where your signature should go, already marked with an X. You lean down to the table and pluck Gale's pen out of his hand, smiling as he huffs in indignation, and sign your name quickly.
"So I'll just… go find an advisor then," you say, your cool tone masking the nerves underneath. The advisors unsettle you in a way that you can't articulate. Something about the way that their gaze seems to look through you leaves you feeling exposed. Taking a deep breath, you step out into the aisle between the stacks, the light from the enchanted orbs thinning as though it resents following you deeper. The air cools, turning sharp on your skin. There's a hum to the wards here that sets you on edge and you can feel the resonance in your teeth.
Finally, after what feels like a long trek into the stacks, an advisor drifts near—green-tinged, half-formed, refusing the courtesy of full personhood—and you lift your chin the way you’ve seen Gale do when he wants to make the world remember his name. “I seek the Ley Registry,” you say, voice steadier than you feel. The advisor cocks its head in an eerily bird-like manner and the request slip floats out of your hands towards it, paper lifting from your fingers with a weightless obedience and disappearing into the inky folds of shadow that gives it form, disappearing entirely.
"You follow. You borrow. Request heard," it breathes into the recesses of your mind, and for a heartbeat it feels like a fingertip pressing the inside of your skull, testing for softness. You nod, trying to keep your chin head and head held high, as if you weren't close to running in the other direction.
You blink and the act is wrong, too long, too empty, almost like stepping over a missing stair in the dark. You glance down at your hand, recalling that you had been holding the request form only a moment ago, and the ink flashes in your mind’s eye, your name written there, except for an instant it feels unfamiliar, as if the letters belong to someone adjacent to you, someone you could have been. As if it wasn't your signature at all, really.
A shake of your head dispels the thoughts and you resurface to find the advisor standing before you once more. A large tome is in front of it, hovering on what might have once been called hands. The advisor pushes it towards you, gesturing for you to take it.
"You borrow. You read. You leave. It stays."
"Thank you." You take the tome and marvel at the weight of it; a thick leather spine holds treated parchment that feels dense and sturdy, old. A chain wraps around the tome, locked at the front with a glowing arcane seal. A movement from the advisor and the seal dissipates, allowing the chain to slink from the top of the book and retract. With that, the advisor gives you what appears to be a curt nod and floats away in the other direction, job apparently done.
—
You carry the Registry back to the study booth in much the same way Gale carries his tressym Tara; careful, reverent, and just a little afraid that it might bite. The weight of it drags at your forearms, the heavy spine pressing into your palms with the unpleasant crispness of dried and peeling leather. Gale looks up the moment you approach, and for a heartbeat you see the tension in his face ease into something like relief and then tighten again.
“You were gone for ages,” he murmurs, and his voice is too soft for your ears after what you just experienced. Too intimate. His gaze finds the book and then flicks back to you. “Are you—”
“Fine,” you lie automatically, and hate yourself for how easy it is. You set the tome down between you, and the wood gives a small, complaining creak under the weight. "I don't like it back here." The sentiment from earlier feels even more convincing now and you repress a shudder when you remember the lapse in time that you experienced earlier. "I feel like I forgot something."
Gale’s hand stills in the process of opening the tome, fingers frozen on the old leather. He doesn’t reach for you. He doesn’t soothe. He goes very, very still, not unlike a man who’s heard the floorboard creak in the dark and is pretending that he hasn’t. “Don’t repeat that to anyone,” he says at last. “Not as a joke. Not as a complaint. Not as anything.”
"Why? Will everyone think I've gone mad?" you ask, rubbing your hands vigorously over your arms where they've gone cold and wrapping your robe around yourself a little tighter.
"Worse, they'll think you're telling the truth." Gale clears his throat and opens the tome, conversation clearly over. His fingers brush the leather, and you feel the Weave react, subtle and immediate, as if the Registry recognizes a familiar kind of hunger. Gale exhales sharply through his nose and smiles, the thrill of discovery evident on his face. He moves slowly as he turns the pages, almost as though he's afraid the the Library will revoke the permission it gave.
Almost absentmindedly his hand lifts and traces a small, precise shape in the air, accompanied by an incantation under his breath. "Silentium," he mouths. The space around your booth tightens. Not silence exactly, but privacy. A thin, violet-tinged membrane that muffles sound and softens the edges of the world beyond the table shimmers into existence. The floating books continue their quiet drifting and the distant quills still scratch, but inside the bubble it’s just you, Gale, and the weight of what you’ve signed your name to.
"I don't think anyone else is-"
"This isn't the type of thing I want anyone overhearing, even if you can't see them," he interrupts gently. His eyes flick to yours, then back to the Registry, as if he can’t afford to look at you too long while this is open in front of him. “This is not a tome meant for casual ears… and we can never be too cautious."
You watch silently for a few moments as he thumbs his way through the book, evidently looking for something specific. Finally, his finger lands on a diagram of Faerûn overlaid with long, sweeping arcs—ley lines like veins, converging at points that seem to throb with significance even on the paper.
“Here,” he says. He slides the book toward you so you can see. “The confluences. The places where the lines knot tight enough to hold… ritual infrastructure. Just like the spot where we found the disc at the Chionthar. It's all connected, it has to be."
"We should be able to locate the other discs by finding the confluence locations, then, yes?" you ask, leaning closer and examining the book. The inked arcs shimmer faintly, not enchanted, but heavy with the kind of meaning that makes your vision blur around it and your mind bend over the implications. Your eyes skim the margins instead. There's cramped words beside each of the confluence points and the handwriting takes a moment for you to decipher. It's similar to Gale's, but not quite. Older. Sharper. You notice the same phrase peppered throughout the tight corners near confluence points.
Anchor required.
Gale’s finger taps the margin once. A single, restrained motion, almost like he’s stopping himself from tapping again, and again, and again. The movements remind you of the culmination of a research project nearing its peak.
“This is what they didn’t want me to touch,” he murmurs.
“What does it mean?” you ask, and your voice comes out smaller than you intended. “Anchor required for what?”
"I don't know." His answer comes too quickly to be convincing. You swallow your frustration. You swallow your curiosity. You swallow the faint, hot indignation that you’re still being managed, even now—managed by the man who kissed your forehead like a vow and called you partner like a promise.
"Alright, tell me what we do know, then." You tear your eyes away from the page and the break is a relief on your mind. His eyes soften and he nods once, outwardly grateful for your discipline. He turns the tome to another page that he had passed earlier, with concentric webbed circles spreading outward from the center and placed over a sketched map of the world. They're routes marked with dates and symbols, a lattice of pilgrimage lines that cross the world like a net.
Four points are marked with the same emblem: a simple circle bisected by a line, like a disc cut by horizon.
West. North. East. South.
Your breath catches and you look up sharply to see Gale's face, lit by excitement and the soft flush of revelation. You didn't expect your theories to be proven so quickly, and the discovery almost feels too good to be true. No researcher has it this easy, right?
“There,” Gale says, his voice is quieter now, "you see it. They didn’t wander. They followed a pattern. A circuit. It was a true pilgrimage of power, not just a wandering group of elves seeking community like we posited to begin with. Check your notes, compare it to what we've found. I'll read on."
You grab your notebook, flipping past the crude doodles of Gale and feeling some heat flush to your cheeks as you catch a particularly detailed sketch. The mundane nature of your notes brings you back quickly enough, and some time passes in relative and comfortable silence between the two of you— the most comfortable its been since you entered the Library to begin with.
Gale turns a page with careful patience and the parchment whispers. The wards under the table hum gently, almost soothingly, now. Your pen scratches occasionally on your notes and then pauses, hovering as your attention slips. Not to the words in front of you or the implications of your study, but to him, as it always does. To the way his mouth moves when he reads under his breath. To the faint line of tension at his jaw. To the steady, disciplined focus he maintains.
The professor's gaze lifts without him moving his head, a practiced thing, the sort of awareness that a teacher gets for when a student isn't paying attention in the lecture hall. His eyes flick to your notebook, just the edge of it, the corner where you flipped past that particular sketch, then return to your face.
“Still drawing me like you intend to summon me,” he murmurs.
Heat flashes up the column of your throat and into your face. “I just- I was reading my notes.”
"Mm," he hums in response, the suggestion of a smile playing around his lips.
You try and fail to recover your dignity by pretending to read as the Weave between you shifts, as subtly as breathing, almost as if it’s amused by your feeble attempt at composure. Gale’s hand returns to the table, fingers long and elegant, and resting much too close to yours. Not touching. Just close enough to make your skin remember the heat from his.
You manage to return your attention to your notes for long enough to finish scanning an entire page twice over, only digesting half of the information. After another few moments of tense silence, Gale clears his throat.
"Do you want me not to? Is this too public?" he asks quietly, seriously.
"No." His fingers finally, finally brush yours in response to your admission, and the touch is electric, sliding his fingertips along the side of your hand as if he’s learning the shape of you. He learns you like he learns runes, tracing until the shape is second nature under his hands. Gale’s thumb presses to your pulse, right where your wrist is its most honest, pulse jumping at his touch. He feels it jump beneath his skin, and something in his expression softens, then sharpens again, like a passing thought becoming a sudden appetite.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs. The option is placed in your lap like a book. Proper. Available.
You don’t pick it up.
Instead, you lean forward across the table, close enough that the scent of ink and old parchment gives way to him instead, warmth and clean linen, and the faint metallic tang of spellwork on his skin. Your mouth hovers near his for just a heartbeat and you see the restraint in him starting to break. His lashes lower as his gaze moves from your eyes to your lips, his own parting in expectation.
And then you kiss him.
Soft at first. Testing. The two of you have never done more than shake hands in a public space, and this is far from the safest locale in which to do so.
It doesn’t last. Not with him.
Gale inhales against your mouth like he’s been starving politely for weeks. His hand move swiftly to cup the back of your neck, fingers spreading into your hair with a slow and possessive certainty. He deepens the kiss, controlling even in his hunger, guiding, steering, teaching you the same way he teaches magic: by making your body understand before your mind can catch up.
Your fingers curl into his sleeve and your thighs press together under the table in a desperate attempt to contain yourself, or press friction on your most sensitive area. The edge of the booth digs into your knees. You almost laugh at the absurdity of it, getting kissed into ruin in the belly of the Academy’s most terrifying library… except the laugh doesn’t come. Only a quiet, broken breath.
Gale’s mouth leaves yours just long enough for him to speak into the space between you.
“Not a fling,” he reminds you, voice roughened. “Not a whim.” With another furtive look around the stacks, Gale stands from his side of the booth and slides onto your bench, pressing you against the wall as he does so. The bulge of his cock is only just barely visible through the thick fabric of his robes.
You nod, eyes half-lidded. “I know.” His thumb strokes the corner of your mouth, and you part your lips for him, just barely. You lift your chin towards him in silent assent, sighing when his palm cups your cheek gently.
Gale watches you for a beat, measuring, reading, searching for any sign of dissent, and then his hand slides down from your face, under the edge of your robe, following the line of your spine with an intimacy that makes your stomach clench. He doesn’t rush. He doesn’t paw at you like other men would.
When his fingers reach your waist, he pauses, pressure firm. Your thighs tremble on the wooden bench and your breathing is already faster in anticipation.
“Still,” he breathes. "Be still."
Your body tries to surge toward him and you force it to obey, to sit still and wait for him to touch you. The obedience is its own kind of pleasure—sharp, dizzying, carnal in a way that makes you want more. Gale’s eyes hold yours as you struggle inwardly. Approval flickers there, quick as a spark and then his hand slips lower, between you and the bench, finding you where you’re already warm, already aching, already undone by a kiss that shouldn’t have been enough to make you this aroused.
You bite your lip so hard it hurts, watching the amusement in his eyes as the pad of his index finger circles your clit through your underwear.
Gale leans in, his mouth near your ear now, but he doesn’t kiss you there, doesn’t give you that softness. “Tell me to stop,” he repeats, quieter.
You shake your head once, frantic and small, desperate and needy.
His fingers press against you, slow and certain, and your entire body jolts as if the Weave itself has been plucked like the string of a lyre. Your eyes squeeze shut. You force them open again, because he told you to be still, because you want to show him you can do this, that you can hold yourself together the way he does. Gale’s expression changes when you manage it. Not much. But you see it.
Pride.
"Good girl," he croons, "that's it. Good." The word good makes you want to cry. Makes you want to laugh. Makes you want to fall apart on the table with your notebook open to the anatomical studies like a scandal. You don’t. You breathe. You keep your mouth shut. You let him touch you with the same discipline he uses to turn pages, heavy with his knowledge of your body.
Your mind becomes a blur of sensation and devotion: the pressure of his fingers, the heat pooling low in your core, the way your whole body feels like a spell being coaxed into existence by a master. Gale watches you with amusement, his fingers practiced and delicate as he draws you to the edge.
And then, quietly, like a man offering mercy, he leans across and kisses your temple and the tenderness nearly breaks you.
Your hand reaches for something to anchor yourself—your notebook, the edge of the table, his sleeve, and you find his wrist instead. You hold on, nails pressing lightly into his forearm and eyes on his, watching his face as his fingers pump in and out of you in a measured rhythm. Gale’s mouth returns to yours, swallowing the soft sound you can’t quite contain as he keeps his pace steady, slow, deliberate and cruelly consistent. His thumb circles your clit as his fingers tap against the spot inside of you that makes your breath fracture.
“Look at me,” he whispers, breaking the kiss and pressing his forehead to yours, his eyes insistent and bright with arousal.
When you cum, it’s silent except for the soft and desperate hitching of your breath and the faint brush of your robe against the bench as you try to keep yourself from making any sound at all. Your eyes water slightly and your cheeks burn. Your whole body feels like it’s been tuned to a higher pitch, vibrating with the aftershock of silent release. Gale doesn’t pull away immediately, working you through your climax before pressing his palm against your cunt gently, lovingly.
Gale leans close and kisses you once more, softer now. Then, at last, he withdraws his hand from you and presses his fingers briefly to his own lips, an absent, private gesture that immediately spreads a warmth through you again. He watches you with amusement as you put yourself back together, breathing heavily and shaking slightly as you come down.
"Still with me?" You nod, unwilling to trust your voice. "Good. We've got work to finish. Hopefully you can focus more, now, hm?" His tone is teasing and light, but you can't help the wave of embarrassment from flooding over you.
"Yes, Professor," you manage to get out as he tosses you a wink and returns to his side of the booth.
—
Time passes in stasis in Library; the light from the orbs never changes, and the voices of other patrons never reach you.
Gale doesn’t look up, but you feel the moment his spine tightens.
“Do you remember,” he asks softly, eyes still on the Registry, “what you told me that other assistant said in the dining hall?”
“I do,” you say carefully.
He turns a page and the sound is too loud inside the privacy bubble.
“She asked if it was dangerous,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And you told her it was safe.”
"I did." You glance down at your notes from that morning, at your own handwriting, and for a terrible second you can't recall writing them at all, almost like a trapdoor has opened in your own memory. "Gale," you prompt, panic entering your voice as you look at him with trepidation. He finally looks at you fully and in his eyes you see the shape of the road ahead— to the four corners of the world together, yes, but also the cost coiled beneath them.
"We leave soon. North first. The Spine. We will follow their path exactly.”
“Soon? But the Academy?” you ask. His expression doesn’t change, but something tightens behind it. Calculation. Preparation. The carefully honed administrative knife he keeps sheathed in language.
“The Academy will believe whatever version I give them,” he says softly, finally. Gale reaches across the table and lays his hand on yours, warm and anchoring. "You are mine, and I would destroy the world before I let anyone harm you." It's ownership disguised as comfort, but it soothes you nonetheless. “Stay close,” he murmurs, and you're afraid of how much you want to.
"Echoes of an apprentice can often be found within the Master."
Archmage Gromph Baenre
