“Mara, my love, we can stop this. Together. Let me in, and I will make you stop. It will be all right.”
He was using the tadpole to reach her.
She wanted to share her fear, to tell him that if she let him in, something else might come with him. She needed his help. She needed him. But she couldn't speak.
A startled sigh of abject relief escaped her as her knife hand pulled away from him. She felt his hopeful smile on her hand; she saw it in how his eyes softened. It lasted only a second.
Gripping the knife with her last two fingers, her right hand moved against her will. Her index and middle fingers curled into claws and tore through the fabric of his shirt, revealing the small pool of blood on his abdomen.
No sooner had it glistened than her mouth was on him, lapping, slurping and tonguing the wound, sucking as she moaned. It should have tasted foul, shouldn't it? Wasn't that what he'd told Astarion? The little shit had even licked an arrow they'd pulled from Gale's leg to verify; it made him sick. The incantation Elminster had given him must be responsible. She vaguely felt his mouth moving under her hand, the downward curl of his disgust no more than a ghost before the starkness of her pleasure.
“Mara, I know you're in there. Fight! Please, fight it! Fight it, and let me IN!”
When she lifted her head, her face was crimson from the tip of her nose to her chin. She licked her lips as she gazed down, her pupils blown wide, her eyelids heavy, drunk on the taste of him.
A look of intense determination flashed in his eyes as his mind bellowed, “I WILL save you!”
And she felt the surging might of his mental fortitude crash upon her like a tsunami. His mind assaulted hers with images.
She saw herself through his eyes.
She watched her hand pull him from a crackling magical void. Next, she smiled at him when he tripped and landed face-first in her breasts. Then, she laughed with him by a campfire, and told him more somberly of the darkness inside her. The next moment, she drew back the veil and restored Gale from the Fugue plane. Why did she look like she was made of light at that moment?
She told Withers how little she thought her life was worth. Then, she stumbled out of a space where the river invaded a ruin, coughing and getting scolded by Gale as she'd nearly drowned in retrieving a sword that only spoke to her.
Then she was offering to help Zevlor, stepping in front of a crossbow to save Arka from her own sorrow, and raking Khaga over the coals for threatening Arabella. She was helping Gale cook, and she was more beautiful than she'd ever seen herself. Then she was standing up for one pickpocket and being gentle with another, rescuing Mirkon from harpies, and listening to Alfira figure out her song. She was stopping Wyll from slaying Karlach as his patron ordered, and telling Gale that no, he couldn't kill Astarion even though he had killed her first.
And then they were channeling the weave together, and she imagined a kiss blossoming into fierce yet intentional love-making, an embrace of such tenderness that it took Gale's breath away, and finally, sinking into deep, restful sleep in each other's arms. From that moment, she didn't only see herself through his eyes, she saw his hope surrounding her, a shining purple aura of weave.
And more. She saw a thousand futures he'd imagined with her like the facets of a gem flashing behind her.
She saved Barcus from a soaring death. They slew a spider matriarch together. She opened a forbidden book. They argued.
Then she was splattered in blood head-to-toe. Alfira lay savaged on the ground. Mara's eyes were so wide with sorrow and regret that they almost looked wet. Gale shared what was in his heart at that moment with her. His conflict. Fear of her darkness battling his growing affection. He wanted to run, to hide, to scream, all equally as much as he wished to hold her and tell her everything would be all right. And even then, covered in an innocent woman's blood, still she radiated with his hope.
The futures did not disappear.
Rapid images of every good deed she'd done flashed before her eyes. From saving the gnomes at the Grymforge to rescuing the prisoners at Moonrise Towers. From slaying the Hag and saving Mayrina to preventing Isobel from being kidnapped. From finding Counselor Florrick in a burning building and returning a small treasure to a grieving man to using a distraction to rescue a poor sod from being thrown into a spider pit. From saving Halsin to sparing Minthara and rescuing her yet again. From taking Lae'zel to the crêche in defiance of the dream guardian to slapping Gale, violently kissing him, and then calling him a moron for even considering following Mystra's orders. From helping Halsin rescue Thaniel to nudging Shadowheart just enough that she chose to free the Nightsong on her own. From cradling his head in her arms to pulling him back from the precipice her shared darkness sought to drive him over. From telling a devil to kick rocks to releasing another bound by an unfair contract. From confessing that she didn't want to do this alone and holding his hand as she leaned on his shoulder to sharing her awareness of his illusion and her assurance that she still saw him. From vowing to make him laugh every day to saying with honest conviction that she was in love with him.
And she had meant it, into her blood and her bones. She loved him completely. Utterly. He was everything. Love was stronger than the thing inside her. Mara needed to tell him that it was. They would defeat this. Together.
But when she opened her mouth to speak, her words were not her own.
“Little wizard… always too big for his britches… thinks he's so much more than he is… wants my perfection to love him… even when he has NOTHING to offer her!”
Lies. It's lies. It's NOT my voice!
Rage usually filled her with heat, but not this time. The bloodlust had already boiled her like a lobster. Her fury came as a snow squall, but one that righted ships rather than capsizing them, that slew kraken rather than summoning them, one that froze the tumultuous sea into a deathbed upon which a weary traveler could simply walk.
Mara's right arm shook as she slowly, decisively, turned the blade on herself.
Its tip met her flesh in the same place she'd cut Gale.
“NO! This isn't what I wanted. Stop! Mara, please! Stay with me, please. I need you. My love, please, I need you! DON'T LEAVE ME!”
The agonizing panic in his thoughts and in his eyes rattled her. Her tears splashed onto her knife hand and she dropped the blade onto his chest. Her will spread back into her limbs. With a gasping sigh, she took her hand away from Gale's mouth. A tear streaked from one corner of his right eye, disappearing into his hairline at his temple.
If only it had ended there...
The Crit-Fail That Murdered the World
(Yes, I am still working on this story.)
pixelskylines
areudirty
