Chapter Text
The sky above the mountain of Waterdeep did not care that the world had been saved a few months prior. It did not care that the Gale of Waterdeep had returned to his old haunt. Still, the sky hung brilliant and blue with the blistering heat of a Waterdhavian Summer.
He walked along the flagstones, all handsome linens of white and violet, loosely bunched at his elbows, and new boots – because the ones that stomped across the Chionthar had not survived – beat out the rhythm of a man who had spent, was spending, and would spend too much time in his own head.
To the grand City of Splendors, he was the brilliant Gale of Waterdeep who returned to them, a new pride of the city, Hero of the Sword Coast, and the Archmage who turned the Netherbrain to ash. The ballads that they sang of him were so quick to fly across The Gate, and even now, new ones were being drafted as clumsy bards rhymed Dekarios with prowess.
He was the Hero of The Sword Coast. The man who had walked into the jaws of the Absolute stared down a Netherbrain and lived to come home.
By all rights, he should have been overjoyed.
And he was, for a time.
For a moment, his crystal glass clinked with Astarion’s wine, and the elf’s sneer turned to a smile. When Karlach forced him to hook arms with her and try his best to keep down a whole flagon of ale. He’d watched with buzzing glee when Lae’zel clearly had too much, and Shadowheart had earnestly tucked her into bed. He may have even been happy as Wyll patted his back and tied his too-long hair back behind Elfsong.
Mystra had taken away his Karsite blight, his ribs and heart fully mortal and mundane. The worst of his troubles had dissipated into the Weave, a part of Mystra returned to her – just like he had always wanted.
But the absence of a storm did not automatically mean the presence of a sun.
He found himself to be a ghost in his own home, his heart quietly returning to the introverted boy who would recoil at the thought of strangers cheering at him in the streets, and patrons keen to sit at his table each night at The Singing Sword.
“—and so they had somehow managed to crush an entire carriage into the rafters of Auditorium Four, all because they wanted to try colouring the Weave pink,” Vajra Safahr said, voice as sharp as it was exhausted – a good trill to have as The Blackstaff.
She did not look at him as she walked, the heavy staff clicking a countermelody against the stone of the Academy’s brilliant courtyard.
“I left it there for three days,” she tutted sharply. “Told them they were not to progress to the next term until they figured out the calculations for a reversal. They will not make the same mistake again.”
Gale managed a small, polite smile.
“A very stern yet pedagogical approach, Blackstaff Safahr. I fear to think of how many students end up beginning their apprenticeships far too late if it is so common an occurrence in the Transmutation college.”
“Gale, please. We’ve bypassed the requirement for formal titles by several Coast-ending crises,” she replied, stopping at the edge of the courtyard’s fountain. The statue it cradled held the likeness of Khelben Arunsun. One of the greatest wizards of all time, reduced to a nursery for little streams of water, fresh moss, and the occasional Waterdhavian rock dove. She sighed heavily, tiredly.
“The academy needs someone who understands that magic isn’t just a set of large gestures and ink on fine paper. It is a choice to change the fabric of the world forever. Every spell changes fate and outcome, and we have too many young and unwise students who do not understand the gravitas of what is in their spellbooks.”
Ah.
“A sentiment I understand all too well,” Gale murmured, his thumb tracing the pulse of his left wrist. “The youthful tendency to see the Weave as a playground rather than a vast ocean. I should be honoured to have such a… sobering perspective.”
The Blackstaff of the academy hummed, regarding him quietly for a moment.
“Brooding is a terrible look on a saviour,” Vajra said.
Gale looked up from his wrist to the woman beside him. Vajra Safahr. An old friend and a new mercy who had sent him a chance at a fresh start in the form of a neatly packaged missive. The Blackstaff herself, moving with the assured bearing of someone who held the entire Weave of Waterdeep in the palm of her hand. Her robes were always a deep, midnight blue, arcane runes shifting and blinking like constellations across them.
“Brooding? Or deep intellectual contemplation of my current unyielding state?” he replied with a faint, characteristic smirk, though it did not quite reach his eyes. “A man returns from the brink of annihilation – does The Blackstaff expect him to skip through the courtyard?”
“I expect him not to look as though he is watching his own funeral,” Vajra countered sharply. She had the posture of a woman who had the weight of the world comfortably on her shoulders. “You achieved what few mortals could even comprehend, Gale of Waterdeep. You saved the Coast. You saved all of us.”
Vajra looked at him with a dry frown.
“I am attuned to the very Weave of this tower, old friend,” she said, her cadence smoothening to something less academic. “A man with a connection to the Weave like yours does not simply walk through the walls of Waterdeep without disturbing what I command here. And you,” she tilted her staff towards him, the hooked tip of the Blackstaff pointing at his nose. “Arrived mourning when there is no ghost for you to grieve but your own ambition.”
Gale sighed; the sharpness of Vajra had certainly honed over the years. He ran a hand through his hair while his other fingers lingered against his chest. The skin left only the faintest scar.
“Perhaps I am a bit of a ghost, Vajra,” he admitted softly, his voice dropping to match her earnest tone. “But what does a man do when he is defined by a countdown? I spent the last two years obsessing over a cataclysmic finishing line. But now… the clock has stopped. The world moves on. My companions find their next adventures, the ships of Waterdeep dock and moor, and I am left wondering what a wizard is supposed to do when he no longer has an apocalypse at his feet, or a bomb at his heart.”
A flock of rock doves fluttered loudly above their heads, brief darts in the sky to punctuate the silence.
Vajra’s expression softened a fraction and settled a sad-something in her eyes that Gale could not read.
Beneath the formidable mantle of The Blackstaff, she was still the girl he had known during their competitive schooling years. They were both young, brilliant, and utterly consumed by ambition. But while Vajra’s ambition had been a steady hearth that forged her into a leader, Gale’s had been an unchecked wildfire that nearly left his body to ash.
Vajra tapped the Blackstaff lightly against the cobblestones. “You find a new purpose.” She leant the heavy staff against the cool stone of the fountain, momentarily letting the fine artefact go. “Ambition doesn’t need to be a dangerous weapon, Gale. It can be a foundation.” She gestured to his whole body. “Did I invite you here out of pity?”
“No?” Gale answered, unsure.
“Only a little,” she replied, partly in jest, causing Gale to purse his lips and look away – Hero turned boy who fell for his peer’s needling.
“The Academy needs minds like yours, Gale. Not just your power, but your perspective. The students need to learn that magic is not just about the height of your reach, but the weight of your fall.”
Gale took a deep breath then, eyes trailing up at the towering spires, across the enchanted windows, familiar with almost every illusion that veiled the scale of the bastion of knowledge it held. An institution of unmatched prestige. He observed the two eager young faces that he saw darting between lecture halls, precious spellbooks clutched tight to their chests. They were so young, so untouched by the harsh realities beyond Waterdeep’s beautiful walls.
“And you think my measly evocations and spells will fill this sudden, vast emptiness in my schedule?” Gale asked, a touch of irony in his tone.
Vajra tutted.
“I think getting out of your tower and interacting with people who don’t worship the ground you walk on will do you some good, Dekarios,” she replied with a wry smile. She picked up the heavy Blackstaff once more, guiding him down a sun-dappled pergola that decorated and cooled the edges of the vast courtyard. “Besides. You won’t be the only veteran of the world’s madness roaming these halls. We have a rather… diverse faculty.”
“Oh? Do tell? Have you hired a retired red dragon to teach aerial tactics?”
“Closer than you think,” Vajra chuckled, although there was a distinct note of respect in her voice. “Our head of Arts and Music, a decade ago, made sure Tiamat stayed exactly where she belonged.” She nodded sternly. “A saviour of the realm herself. She handles our arts and music department, though do not say yes if she challenges you to a swordfight. You would do well to harden yourself against a sharp tongue and mind. She might be exactly the kind of grounding influence you need.”
Gale raised an eyebrow, his curiosity piqued despite himself. “A hero of the Tyranny of Dragons? Teaching music? That sounds like putting a warhorse out to a very quiet, very melodic pasture.”
Vajra let out a heavy, almost impressed puff of her cheeks.
“Do not let her hear you say that,” she warned, a genuine smirk on her lips. “She is firm, curt, and has absolutely no patience for pompous wizards who think they know everything because they have read a few extra grimoires. She settled here, found a rhythm in the tedious, day-to-day work of shaping minds. There’s a lesson in that for you, Gale.”
Gale looked out across the courtyard, watching the summer plants sway lazily in the low breeze.
A hero who had fought a god and chosen to settle in the quiet, repetitive rhythm of an academy. It sounded entirely foreign to him – he who had always chased the extraordinary, the divine, the world-shattering.
“Perhaps,” Gale murmured, scratching his beard as they approached the grand wooden doors of the faculty wing. “Though I suspect she and I might have very different definitions of harmony.”
They walked for some time longer, and Gale’s suspicion that Vajra’s invitation for tea had been a poorly veiled interview process had all but concluded. She had left him to think on it once Gale had momentarily run out of questions, and the doors behind Vajra closed heavily with a decisive thud. Gale was alone with the ghosts of his past once more.
He stood there, still, for a moment, staring at the polished wood. Vajra was so utterly in her element. So fiercely grounded in the present.
It stirred something complicated in his chest.
He remembered when they were much younger, his own beard patchy and his ambitions still innocent, long before he had tried to catch Mystra by her skirts and had pulled himself into the dark. He remembered the very last night they had truly spoken as peers, Vajra inviting him out ‘with the girls’ for an evening of revelry. He had declined that night, too eager to return to his tower, too consumed by the intoxicating whisper of the Weave. What would have become of him had he said yes that night?
Had he not lost his best years to an obsession, would it be his fingers wrapped around the magnificent Blackstaff right now? Would he be the one woven into the very fabric of the city’s wards, knowing every shifting body and ghost within the tower without so much as a thought?
He shook his head, a bitter smile touching his lips, mild acid pooling in his stomach. Speculation was the most dangerous school of magic there was.
Instead, Gale elected to turn and wander the halls of his old haunt. His boots clicked softly at a steady rhythm, a lonely meter that seemed to highlight just how detached he felt from this current chapter of his life. He considered his companions – the strange, beautiful souls he had been bound to. Wyll and Karlach were likely fighting side-by-side in the blood-soaked, forever-battlefield wastes of Avernus. Shadowheart was probably tending to her night orchids, her hands covered in rich soil as she gently pushed Scratch’s nose away from whatever she was focusing on, finding a quiet peace that he deeply envied. And Lae’zel… well, she was a red and silver comet streak across the sky, riding a red dragon through the Astral Sea, sword raised to a different tyrant queen.
They were all moving forward. They were all living and writing new verses. And here Gale was, thumbing through the chapters he had already written in ink.