Chaus Cobolorum's Musings

"So you did not merely participate in the Waterdavian underworld," Gale pressed, and the particular resonance had returned to his voice—the one it took on when genuine hurt was being channeled, with great effort and greater discipline, through intellectual observation. "You assumed complete authority over it. And you kept me—your husband, your partner, the man who shares your bed and your home and supposedly your entire existence—comprehensively ignorant of this particular ambition."

He drained a considerable portion of his glass and shook his head, the gesture sharp with a frustration that was also, she recognized, grief.

"I find myself in need of a question, Celeste, and I would appreciate a direct answer rather than whatever carefully constructed deflection you are preparing."

She nodded.

"Did you come here—to this life, to Waterdeep, to me—with the genuine intention of building something real? Or did you arrive already in possession of a plan? When Baldur's Gate could no longer contain your ambitions, did Waterdeep simply become the next available location? The next conquest?"

At that, she laughed genuinely. Then helplessly, before she could stop it. "You cannot possibly believe that."

"I no longer know what to believe, Celeste."

"No, Gale." Her voice softened entirely. "I came here because you asked me to. Because I wanted—and still want—a life beside you. To wake to you every morning, to hear you complain about my books in the kitchen despite the fact that they sit perfectly neatly next to your books, which somehow never offend you." The gentle tease did not land. She had not truly expected it to. "I want to make your first tea of the morning and kiss you as you leave for the Academy."

"So that you may do whatever your heart desires while I am conveniently occupied elsewhere."

She set the glass down on the side table with more force than she intended, her feet finding the floor.

"Gods, you are stubborn." She pressed her eyes closed briefly. "No, Gale. To keep you safe. Did you conveniently set aside the part of my confession where an assassin had been tasked with your death? I have never once asked what you did, how you conducted yourself, what enemies you accumulated during your time as a Chosen. I assume, as all Chosen do, you collected an impressive number of people who were decidedly unhappy with whatever verdict your goddess eventually rendered. You were in danger, and I removed the target from your back."

"Do not attempt to spin this into some grand act of selfless care! Do not reframe deception as protection!" Gale cut in, voice rising. "We both know—both of us—that this is precisely not what happened here. This was not about shielding me from burden. This was about control."

"This was coming for us because of things you did in your past," Celeste continued, unwavering, "things I have not once asked you to account for! Because I trust that you will tell me when and what I need to know!"

"As you told me," he clipped. "This is not how marriage works, Celeste."

"Then tell me how it works. Sunday luncheons with your family, who despises me for lacking a respectable name and still suspects me of marrying you for status? Dinner with the Blackstaff and Laeral Silverhand? Knowing influential people does not mean they respect you, Gale. Influence without teeth is merely proximity to power. I ensured—"

"Do not call this respect!"

"I do not. It is fear. Carefully curated, precisely placed, strategically deposited in the correct ears at the correct moments. I ensured your security. Your freedom to conduct your work and whatever pleases you without looking over your shoulder for the enemies your past accumulated. I did this—"

"You were abducted!"

For the first time since she had walked through the study door, Gale's voice rose. Not to a shout, but to something close. It was raw and uncontrolled and devastating in its honesty, all his careful scholarly architecture collapsing at once. "You were taken. Pulled from our home, from our doorstep. Transported to wherever they took you and hurt, Celeste—do not speak to me of security while the woman I love was dragged away and violated. Do not—"

He turned away, visibly struggling, his breath coming hard.

"Do not," he repeated, bitterly and quietly. "You do not get to call that security."

She glances about the room. Beyond the gentle crackling of the flames the tower is quiet. Quiet, but not still. His restlessness and rampant thoughts move through the windows and walls.

A robe pulled over her shoulders, Eliwyn pads down the hallway. The door of Gale’s study was shut to her almost as soon as they returned. He said he needed time to sort through everything, so that is what she gave him.

What sort of dizzying reel did his thoughts do as they danced to the echoes of Varitha’s revelation and Morena’s confirmation?

She will soon find out. The floorboards are illuminated by a slip of orange light. His inner sanctum stands open to her now. He is ready to talk.

Her footsteps tread across the room to the terrace, muffled by the rugs that lie haphazard across the parquet floor. Gale’s head turns ever so slightly as she comes next to him. Moonlight gilds his dark hair in silver. Tension releases from his shoulders for half a breath before he stiffens once more.

“Gale,” she whispers and when he turns, his face is drawn and pallid.

He told her once that he had to change his entire perspective on life in the course of a single day. When he accepted Mystra’s divinity he sacrificed a sliver of his mortal self and had to reconcile all the loss that came with it. His life has changed again, yet this alteration is so much more profound.

His past. His present. The core of who he is. None of it is as it was yesterday.

Eliwyn touches a hand to his cheek and he presses into it.

“Did you rest well?” he asks, covering her hand with his own. At her silent nod he smiles. It is a half smile, a weary smile.

Eliwyn leads him to the bench. The gem that sits beside her is picked up with gentle but steady hands. Her thumb trails over the cool, smooth surface. “Will you tell me what you have been thinking about these past hours?” she asks.

Gale sinks heavy next to her, his head hanging over his clenched hands. “My thoughts refuse to fall into order. Every time I think of what could be I am immediately brought low knowing that Mystra would never allow me…”

The goddess’s name on his lips sends a bristle through her. His devotion to Mystra and his reliance on her has defined his entire life. But she is no longer his keeper. It is time he realizes that.

Eliwyn catches his chin in her hand and lifts his eyes to hers. “You do not need Mystra. You have never needed Mystra. It is she who has always needed you. Did I not tell you by the river that you hold all the cards?”

Gale stares at her, incredulity growing ever wider upon his face as he understands the weight of her words.

“How long have you known?”

“That does not matter right now. All that you need to be concerned about is what you will do with this.” Eliwyn places the gem in his hands. It’s amethyst glow washes over his cradled palm. “All your life you have been chasing after your destiny. You thought you had found it as a Chosen, by following in the footsteps of Elminster. You sought it in divinity, in Mystra’s wake. But your destiny has never lain in the shadow of others. How could it? You shine too brilliantly to be cast in someone else’s shade.”

She wraps her fingers over his, the gem shining between the cracks. “This is your destiny, Gale,” she whispers. “This is the greatness Elminster spoke of when you were a child. This is what you were always meant to achieve. If this future is what you want, you need only reach out and grab hold of it. No one can stop you. Not even Mystra.”

Long moments pass as he stares down at the key to his future nestled between their hands. The light of it pulses like a heartbeat pounding in anticipation. Her own heart meets that same rhythm.

“You know, I am rather surprised by you,” Gale finally says. “I was sure you would tell me no, that you would try to talk me off this precipice. Yet from where I stand it sounds an awful lot like you’re urging me on.”

Eliwyn huffs a small laugh. “Gale Dekarios, when have I ever tried to keep you from your destiny?”

“I…that is to say…well, I suppose you never have. Despite what Mystra said.” The edge of those words burn with acrimony.

The gem slips away from under her palm as he sets it aside. His eyes lock on to hers. “The last time I was faced with my supposed destiny I cast you aside. A wise man learns from his mistakes, and I think I am indeed wiser now than I was then. If I do this, will you be by my side? You say that Mystra cannot stop me, and perhaps you are right. But you could. If you will not or cannot take this leap with me then say so now and we shall put all of this to rest. I can live without this power, but I see now I cannot live without you. My feet will not leave this edge unless your hand is in mine.”

Eliwyn stifles her sigh.

There is no doubt he will be brilliant. He will be a force to be reckoned with, and he’ll need to be given what he must face. When all is said and done, he shall wield his power with shrewdness and honor.

But what about her? She is just a little person, after all. An ordinary person. Is she equal to the task he is asking her to undertake?

She will have to be. The world needs him. The gods need him. He cannot forsake his destiny.

Wthout any further hesitation, and knowing full well the dangers and struggles that lie ahead, Eliwyn entwines her fingers into his. She leans close so that her lips brush her whispered words just beside his ear.

“I am ready to jump with you.”

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"Yes. They were well hidden, excellent at obscuring their presence, and despite their precautions I found them at the market and dealt with them when you passed through Aka Way. They put up a reasonable fight in the alley, but I could not interrogate them. Broad daylight, very little time, too many eyes... So I killed them, searched them, and found—" She paused and drank again, and the weight of what came next settled visibly over her. "He had Manshoon's emblem in his pocket."

Gale's face froze as his mind began, with the terrible efficiency she had always admired and occasionally feared, to assemble the implications.

"I recognized the insignia but didn't understand why it mattered. I pocketed it and the seven silver the man had on him, moved the body deeper into the alley, and then my plan fell apart entirely: shouting, windows opening, someone calling out. I changed my appearance, more by instinct than anythind else, to flee in the opposite direction. And that is when Halaster found me."

"You killed your first person in Waterdeep and encountered Halaster Blackcloak," Gale summarized, his voice stripped entirely flat, "during my first week at the Academy."

Celeste chuckled, despite everything. "I did. Before I quite understood what was happening, a door opened, a hand reached for my shoulder, and I was dragged inside. The door closed the moment I landed on my ass, and Halaster laughed at me. Called me an idiot for meddling in a Chosen's affairs."

She grinned briefly at the memory. It had been an extraordinary day, unbelievable to the point of comedy, but extraordinary nonetheless.

"He also lectured me extensively on Waterdavian business acumen and suggested I needed considerably better disguises if I intended to go against the Zhentarim. He proposed working with them instead of against them, and offered me a contact he trusted."

Gale laughed briefly and clearly involuntarily, the sound escaping before he could reclaim it. "And did you? Trust a contact provided by the Mad Mage?"

"I did not. I took the beholder jerky he gave me for Tara, accepted his instruction to say nothing of it to you, and left." She paused, gulping and searching his eyes. "I cannot tell you precisely why I agreed to it. There had never been lies between us before that moment. But some part in me agreed, and I have spent a considerable amount of time since then understanding what that part was."

The room fell quiet. The fire crackled. Celeste pulled one knee closer to her chest, arm wrapped loosely around it.

"I got drawn into it. The secrecy. Navigating a part of Waterdeep that opened itself to me in ways I had not anticipated. Scheming. Listening. Meeting the right people, opening the right doors at precisely the correct moment. Offering a favor here, settling a debt in someone else's name there."

"And yet you did not think you could trust me with any of it." The genuine feeling of disappointment in his voice nearly brought her to tears. Nearly.

"I could have." She admitted without deflection. "But I chose not to. Because I never wanted any of it to touch you. The Urge, what I had done in Baldur's Gate or who I had been and what I was becoming. I did not want those things to exist in the same space as you."

"You considered me incapable of standing beside you in that reality," he huffed, and the scholarly elaboration was entirely gone from his voice now, reduced to something skeletal and honest and far more painful for it. "You determined I was too fragile. Too decent. Too fundamentally removed from the darkness that constitutes your reality to be permitted to witness it."

Her head came up sharply, eyes finding his. His jaw was set again, his posture outwardly composed in the way she had learned, over years of loving him, to recognize as its own kind of fury.

"The exact opposite. You are a good man, Gale. You are my husband. You have always been worthy. Capable and powerful—"

Nothing. No visible reaction. Not even the flicker of acknowledgment she had hoped for.

"I made the conscious choice not to include you," she continued, her voice steadier than she felt. "To keep this from you. I did not want anything I have been or done to touch you."