#gale romance

[bladesingerlily]

On Mondays, we yeet new chapters into the void…

New chapter of Marginalia is up…

Gale takes custody of the great Blackstaff’s archive. All manner of secrets lie buried among its dust and dead archmages’ marginalia, but one indigo volume seems rather more interested in Gale than any book has a right to be.

While Elminster and the Blackstaffs whisper of restoring the Lady of Mysteries, Gale discovers another enchantment entirely. Her name is Aelin Morae, and she has no intention of letting an inscrutable book steal her wizard

We walked arm in arm through the market and down toward the harbour to watch the tide at sunset. She would take out her lyre and play music I had never heard before.

“Maztica,” she told me. Her father had travelled there as a young man.

What I remember, strangely, is that she never minded being slightly inconvenienced by joy.

When I muttered about conjuration and transmutation, she would only smile and say, “Tell me a story instead.”

I told her about my father, and Halruaan ruins, and markets in Calimport I had never seen.

“Don’t you want to see them?” she asked. “To go somewhere and do something extraordinary, rather than spend your whole life reading about it?”

“How is magic not extraordinary?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” She plucked a bright, discordant note from the lyre. “But you speak of wonders as though they improve by remaining safely on the page.”

“Pages are considerably less likely to contain things that can kill you.”

“Or surprises.” She laughed, reached for my hand, and pulled me toward the small stand where a dwarf brewmaster was selling Deep Ale. “Let’s get a warm drink. It’s getting cold.”

One evening in the third tenday of Elient, she found me long after midnight.

“So this is it?”

Still half asleep, I followed her gaze. “This is what?”

“The famous book.”

The candles had guttered almost to nothing. My cheek was pressed against three pages of notes covered in sigils and phrases I had copied from the Alkahestum whenever they appeared. There was ink upon my wrist, wax upon my sleeve, and, I later discovered to my lasting mortification, a rather conspicuous spot of drool threatening the margin of one of the pages.

“I thought as much,” Aelin murmured.

I had awoken to the sensation of someone carefully removing my quill before I stabbed myself with it.

“You’ve become dreadfully scholarly.”

“I have always been scholarly.”

“Mm. This is different.” She held up the page. “You’ve annotated your face.”

Only then did I realise that my cheek bore a perfect mirror image of several lines of Imaskari, Loross, and what appeared to be a fragment of Elvish.

Aelin looked from the page to the indigo book.

“Gale, is this about Mystryl?”

“What makes you think so?” I wiped the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand.

“That star within the circle. It was in a story. It said she gave up her godhood when Karsus cast his spell, and that she still wanders the world as a lady of will-o’-the-wisps, guiding those who are lost… “

“To abandon omniscience… limitless magic… immortality…”

“Gale…”

“She is not wholly lost,” I murmured.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. Just something from a dream.”

“Even asleep, you’re obtuse.” She smoothed an unruly lock of hair away from my forehead and gave a menacing glance towards the indigo tome sitting upon my desk.

“So. You’re the book that stole my wizard.”

“Your wizard?”

She planted a kiss upon my forehead. “My wizard.”

At the time, I thought she meant it playfully.

Chapter 5 is live… or to get the full Gale effect…he thinks he’s quite erudite, you know…start at the beginning.

PS…I’m looking for a beta reader if anyone is feeling skippy!

[bladesingerlily]

So, it’s Wednesday and we’re wipping or some such thing…

Tagged by @cep-stories @perpetualmaladaptivedaydream @optimisticgrey L thanks lovelies!

Lady Melissande Jalanvaloss enters the chat… (Jalanvaloss is canon..Melissande is not, for the pedantics in the crowd, meaning me… I’m the pedantic telling on myself )

Waterdeep 1476 DR ~

A great hulking doorman in ill-fitting livery asked my name, then directed me up the stairs to the third door on the left, a corner suite.

The suite’s broad windows overlooked the Honorable Knight, its immense stone form standing silent above the rooftops. Its shadow fell across the floor. My eyes naturally followed to the corner, where Lady Jalenvaloss poured goblets of wine from a cut crystal decanter.

She wore a gown of deep cornflower-blue silk, light enough for the season, its only ornament a subtle pattern in the weave that appeared and vanished as she moved.

“Good. You’re on time. I do enjoy being obeyed.”

I crossed the room, taking in the table laid for two, the view beyond the windows, and the books lying open upon a side table before offering her the flowers. “My lady.”

“Thank you, Gale. They are lovely. Well chosen.” She handed me the wine. “I do hope you’re hungry.”

“I was surprised by your sending. I had thought you were keen to see the improvements in the Tower.”

“Upon reflection, everything in Khelben’s tower of interest to me is here in this room.”

I laughed, though not, I suspected, as gracefully as I had intended, and drank deeply from the goblet while imagining any number of innocent interpretations of those words.

She crossed towards the table near the terrace with unhurried grace, pausing beside her chair until I pulled it out for her. “We have elk, hare, boar, and some partridge, I believe.”

“That is, well, quite the workaday supper.”

“I do enjoy well-prepared game, don’t you?”

She slipped into the chair as I stood behind it. As I leaned near her, the Weave stirred around me with the same close, blue-white thrum I had come to know when casting. For one disorienting heartbeat, I felt something like delight move through me. Then she settled into her chair, and the sensation vanished.

I cleared my throat. “I confess I am surprised you have taken a suite at an inn. Surely your tower would have been more convenient.”

She gave the tiniest of laugh. “Oh, I’m not terribly domestic, I’m afraid. My home could be more charitably called a lair than a tower, and I wanted to make a good first impression. As did you, I see.” She tore a leg from a partridge with her fingers. “Those robes are newly conjured, are they not?”

“They are. How could you tell?”

She tore another bite from the partridge, flicking her tongue over her lips. “Because I cast detect magic when you arrived.” She smiled over the rim of her goblet. “Had I chosen dispel magic instead, this night might have begun rather differently.”

I set my fork against the edge of my plate. For several heartbeats, I was speechless. “Why cast either upon an invited guest?”

“As I alluded to, I have a complicated relationship with Waterdeep’s mageocracy. As Elminster’s young protégé and Khelben’s newest Moonstar, there was always the possibility you had come here to kill me.”

The name touched rather too near several matters I had no intention of discussing. “Moonstar?” I frowned. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”

She regarded me for a long moment. “Well… this is rather awkward, isn’t it?”

“If not awkward, then certainly more interesting. An evening that nearly begins with my being stripped naked, followed by an accusation of murderous intent, promises to be memorable if nothing else.”

So you can click the lil book divided by MaxArtist on VGen if you’re so inclined and read the story..or not, that’s cool too…

Uno reverse tags if you have more to share for m peeps above plus, hmm… @missfortunetherogue @glitterandmoondustofficial @oursusanellen @tieflingsorcerer @gortashsrighthand @lilhumanoid @rdekarios

Let’s see ‘em..photos snippets. Whatever…

[bladesingerlily]

Twinning

Thanks for the tag @cep-stories @kt-catt! @lucretiouswept

Look…I’m gonna do a lil “subvert the trope” thing here…I do not love VP. I can’t think of a true to character situation in which Gale and Lily would wear the same outfit..unless some exceedingly generous DM gave them both robes of the archmage…so without further ado…here they are wearing the same red blanket..tee hee..

Art by EmySan

Everyone has probably done this by now, sooo..ignore me if you like but let’s see… @sanguinescoven @the-font-bandit @alstromeri-a @perpetualmaladaptivedaydream @wasted-sam @wasteful-sam because I never know which blog works @ele-millennial-weirdo @missfortunetherogue because Sasha and Astarion twinsies thrills me… @gortashsrighthand

[this-is-seer]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Snippet of the most recent chapter below:

~*~*~*~*~

Authority

“The only way to get the druid and the duke out alive – and with all parties’ limbs intact – is to do so with as little fanfare as possible. I will find a way to negotiate with her,” stated Dara.

“Negotiate with what?” pressed Lae’zel. “We barely have enough coin and supplies for ourselves!”

“And even if we did,” sneered Shadowheart, “how do you know it won’t end with a knife at each other’s throats? Is it not in the nature of Underelves to kill your own?”

An icy tension filled the air. Gale's blood simmered under his skin.

“Perhaps,” Dara replied flatly, “if we were in Menzoberranzan. But if she is indeed leading this war camp under the banner of anyone or anything other than Lolth, she must have cut her ties with the Underdark.”

“Meaning what?” asked Karlach.

“Meaning she is a surface drow. Like me. No warring house to defend. No agendas to carry out. And, therefore,” – her tone sharpened – “no reason for us to indulge in our nature.”

The wizard smirked. Well done, Dara.

[bladesingerlily]

So, I did a thing…

Art and divider by MaxArtist on VGen

Many things in point of fact, but this is a particular thing that I’ve been promising forever… @cep-stories @dr4gonwriter @babydinosaur930

Gale’s memoir is done. It will absolutely make you cry…Chapter every day this week. And then one per week through the end of the prequel.

One cool autumn night, just after my seventh birthday, my father came into my room.

He held a finger to his lips as he woke me.

“Shh,” he whispered. “Would you like to go on a little adventure?”

I screwed up my face and tried to focus through sleep-blurred eyes, then nodded.

My father scooped me from the bed and wrapped me in his cloak before my feet touched the floor. I slid my arms down the sleeves as it swallowed me completely, the hem dragging over the boards. Father gathered the excess length in one hand so I would not trip.

“Quietly now,” he murmured, “grab your boots, but we’ll put them on at the threshold. Your mother is a delicate sleeper when the bed has gone cold. She’ll wake at the sound of buckles, and I have no wish to explain myself before dawn.”

I padded after him, imagining myself a cunning thief in the night.

At the doorstep, I sat on the cold stone and fumbled my feet into my boots while Father fastened the buckles for me. I slung the hem of his cloak over one shoulder in the style of a debonair swashbuckler, and he gave a half chuckle.

Then he crouched with his back to me. “Up you go,” he whispered.

I climbed on, arms around his neck, and he rose with a soft grunt that made me feel very gallant and very pleased with myself.

We set off through the sleeping North Ward.

As we passed the baker, I heard the scrape of an oven-rake and the low shift of coals being stirred awake. Then came the florist on the corner, dark-windowed and fragrant even with its shutters closed, where my father had more than once purchased my mother’s forgiveness stem by extravagant stem.

From my perch, the city passed in fragments: moonlit doors, iron gates, garden walls, sleeping villas. We turned out of the familiar lanes near Delzorin Street and into the broader hush of Waterdeep below the mountain. Father knew the way without hurry. Now and then his hand came up to steady my clasped fingers where they rested against his chest.

“Still awake?” he asked once.I nodded against his shoulder.

“Good,” he said. “It would be a crime to carry an unconscious apprentice all this way. Very poor form on your first expedition.”

He set me down at the foot of the mountain, and together we climbed the last stretch to a small ledge that looked down over the harbor and west toward the sea. There, he unpacked the contraband. My father reached into his coat and produced a folded blanket, the one Mother laid across her knees while reading by the fire, a little brass astrolabe wrapped in soft cloth, and two sandwiches.

I stared at him.

He held one out to me.

“Wouldn’t do to starve on your first adventure, would it?” he said.

I accepted it with both hands. It was cheese and ham with apple and grainy mustard, all cut thickly enough that I understood at once he had made them himself and not troubled Mother’s neater knife.

He spread the blanket over the stone and sat beside me, close enough that his shoulder touched mine. Below us, Waterdeep lay half-dreaming: the harbor lamps trembling in the dark water, the ships at anchor shifting faintly against their chains, the city roofs silvered here and there beneath Selûne’s light.

We ate sandwiches and drank cider from a corked bottle while my father worked the astrolabe in his hands, turning its little rings until they caught the moonlight.

Read the rest on AO3..or don’t…that’s cool, too. But, I’m telling you, it’s really good. If you’re feeling charitable, maybe give me a reblog..since Tumblr has decided a cartoon of a nine year old and a cat is mature content…pardon…a nine year old wizard and his Tressym.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[bladesingerlily]

Lemme show you how it’s done fancy boy!

[bladesingerlily]

Yes you will baby doll! Yes. You. Will.

[bladesingerlily]

So…WIPs all around?

(Sorry for the Blues Brother’s joke….not really, though.)

Big smoochies for those who continue to tag me even when I’m being a petulant overwrought pseudo-intellectual @tociminna @tynithia @optimisticgrey @ele-millennial-weirdo @cep-stories @kt-catt @lilhumanoid @cinder-rellish181 @judasiskariot @sanguinescoven @thesanguinesonnet @rdekarios @asorceresswrites @spillingteanotpermitted @arlynx @glitterandmoondustofficial @dynamicducks

Here…have a little Gale being….Gale

From Marginalia at the Edge of the Divine

Samark approached with a striking woman upon his arm. She was tall and slender, dressed in silver-grey silk that caught the afternoon light like water, with dark hair swept back from a face of arresting, almost ageless beauty. Her gaze moved over the thinning crowd with the calm assurance of someone accustomed to finding herself welcome wherever she chose to appear.

Samark inclined his head to my mother, then looked askance at Lionel.

“I see our star apprentice is as enterprising as ever.”

Lionel’s grin diminished by a fraction.

Samark allowed the silence to linger before turning to me.

“Gale, I should like you to meet Lady Jalanvaloss.”

She acknowledged me with the slightest inclination of her head.

“Well fought.”

“My lady.”

Her eyes lingered on me for a thoughtful moment.

“You seemed to enjoy yourself.”

“Dancing around an arrogantly mediocre duellist is enjoyable enough upon its own merits. A little spite merely lends it sweetness.”

“Come now. The Maeringulds have always produced exceptional duellists.” Her mouth curved. “Though I think I should like to hear about the spite.”

“Maeringuld has been cultivating my dislike since the day we met. I felt it courteous to reward such perseverance.”

“And here I had taken you for magnanimous.”

“Only after victory, my lady. Never before it.”

She regarded me for another moment, thoughtful rather than appraising.

“I confess, however, that it was not the outcome I found most interesting.”

“No?”

“You chose illusion.”

“I did.”

“Most young wizards, presented with a public audience, discover an unexpected enthusiasm for evocation. Perhaps a little abjuration, if they wish to appear sensible.”

“Illusory magic is infinite.” I found myself smiling. “Beautiful, even. A fireball is ordinary destruction. It has no sentience or majesty.”

A laugh escaped her, warm and genuine.

“Majesty? Are you always so confident?”

“I suppose I am. Illusion is the closest wizardry comes to art.”

“Only the closest?”

“Anyone can destroy something, my lady. It requires remarkably little imagination. Convincing another mind to see what is not there, or to overlook what is, strikes me as infinitely more elegant.”

“Elegant,” she repeated, as though testing the word. “Yes. That is precisely it.”

Samark cleared his throat with theatrical delicacy.

“Lady Jalanvaloss was remarking only moments ago that it has been rather too long since she last visited Blackstaff Tower.”

“I confess I should like to see what has changed,” she said.

“Then I can think of no better guide than Gale. He has lately made something approaching sense of Master Khelben’s archives, which is no inconsiderable achievement. If anyone knows the Tower’s hidden corners, it is he.”

“Would you object to indulging the curiosity of an old scholar, Master Dekarios?”

“Object? My lady, I suspect you have just rescued me from a rather tedious evening of accepting congratulations.”

I kissed my mother’s cheek and arranged to meet Lionel later for my portion of the winnings before offering Lady Jalanvaloss my arm.

“Tell me, Master Dekarios,” she said as we crossed the lawn. “Which is the greater spell: the one that alters the world, or the one that alters how the world is understood?”

“That is a question for a longer walk than this one, I think.” I glanced toward the Tower. “What has kept you away all these years?”

“Would you be surprised to learn that I once fought Khelben to a draw?”

I looked at her. “A draw is hardly a defeat.”

“No,” she said. “But would you call it a victory, had it been yours?”

The answer rose to my lips and found itself unexpectedly without employment.

“Khelben was a very poor loser.”

Uno reverse to all…plus @archduchessgortash @cursed-nyxan @perpetualmaladaptivedaydream @friendscallmecyn @alliskit @thechandraraj @gortashsrighthand and anyone who feels like taking a crack at something.

Because a level of assholish-ness has infected the fandom…the header is made with a stock images and template from Canva, fonts from Adobe fonts, edge squiggles from Apple Creator Studio, all edited in layers in Adobe (Photoshop/Lightroom etc…) and it took me hours.