Chapter Text
As infuriating as those insufferable little know-it-alls could be, there were advantages to having a wizard in one's life. The magic, obviously, went without saying, but the particular demands of wizardry meant that the field tended to self-select for specific personality traits Astarion couldn't help but notice over and over again. A certain adorable single-mindedness, for one. Wizards, famously unimpressive in the field of athletics, could only really hope to scale heights metaphorically or through magic, and those couldn’t be reached without some measure of obsession. Arrogance, both genuine and unintentional. Breaking the rules of reality through sheer academic skill required some measure of hubris to be able to perform in the first place. The results, it was often explained to him, hopefully compensated for the inevitable atrophy in charm and social skills.
“Truthfully,” Gale once remarked, as they stood outside the doors to one of the occasional functions they had the chance to actually attend together, “we'd rather just leave all that to the nearest bard.”
Astarion nodded along, until a thought occurred to him. “Hang on. Is that why you married me? I'm just the cheery little mascot to help ease your social situations?”
Gale's eyes widened with a silent panic. He visibly ran through possible responses, tossing out option after option, before he replied, “Mascot is such a strong word, my love.”
He laughed at the blush rising in his husband's cheeks and took him by the arm. “Your face!” he said. “Gods. You really can't go anywhere without me.”
But more than their useful little spells or admirable sense of ambition, Astarion had to admit there was a side of them he had grown to find even more useful as the decades went on: wizards did love a good, meticulous plan.
Astarion had never been much of a details person. Speeding past the drudgery to strike at the prize was much more amenable to him than the prospect of organising the drudgery necessary to achieve that strike in the first place. That was why he hired Sigrun. That was why it had practically become standard practice for him to run plans by Lobelia before making changes to the boutique’s diary. Gale often asked how he’d managed to even get his licence to practise law in the first place, and truthfully all he could say about it was a few hazy memories of sleepless nights and making good use of paralegals as soon as he could.
It really was just as well that the guild organised the funeral.
Leandra hadn't bothered him all that often in the days leading up to it. Astarion had already sorted what fees and paperwork he could before the body had even gone cold, and Gale had no doubt been planning most of the creative decisions for years before then. There wasn't much Leandra needed from Astarion, and whenever he did find himself asking if he could help with the planning it only took a look from any one of the others for her to shake her head and ask if he needed anything instead.
“All part of the benefits,” she'd insist through a smile he'd only watched grow older over the decades. “You take care of yourself, Uncle. We've got it sorted.”
The days lost all meaning until the funeral had come, and Astarion found her at his doorstep and heaved a sigh of relief that he hadn't planned it after all.
She scanned the little crowd behind him and consulted a small notebook in her palm, holding it afar and squinting in that particular way he had seen in her family members, before nodding and stepping inside. “Right, so. Everyone good to leave?”
The illusion fiddled with the fit of Astarion's old enchanted cloak on its larger frame. Gale had improvised it ages ago, right after the end of the whole business with the Illithids, a simple black hooded circle cloak with a version of Darkness cast on its wearer just strong enough to protect Astarion from the worst of the sun.
“I must say, it’s quite the experience, being invited to your own funeral,” it said. “I mean, I know my purpose, but I’ve also half a mind to stay home and let you all speak more freely.”
“Oh come off it, Gary,” Leandra said. “As if we’ve ever been shy to say anything to Uncle Gale’s face.”
She helped it on with its accompanying gaiter. “Besides,” she said. “That programming, Uncle’s personality? You’re owed a little treat. Might as well enjoy it while you can, eh?”
Astarion peered through the front window and past the line of press for the dray waiting to shuttle them to the House of Wonder. “Cutting it rather close to the start time, wouldn't you say? I thought wizards valued precision.”
She stole a glimpse at his sensible formalwear and tastefully coiffed hair.
“Uncle,” she said, “a dray? When we must arrive looking our best? You wound me.”
The sounds of the doors shutting, windows locking, all sources of fire definitely extinguished and taps slightly tightened.
She glanced down at her notebook and smiled. “We at Blackstaff Academy go above and beyond for the families of our educators.”
They arrived at the House of Wonder after little more than a few words and gestures and her signature white glow.
Karlach grinned up at the sight of the main altar room on the second floor without them all having to so much as cross the house threshold. “Ha! And past all the stairs, too!” she said. “Fucking wizards, man!”
Astarion shook his head in fond amusement.
Fucking wizards.
It shouldn't have been a surprise that Leandra had put in a level of care and attention to detail that he should've expected of any wizard, never mind one with such a long history with Gale. White roses and chrysanthemums dotted the sconces whilst forget-me-nots dripped over the sides of the pews like seaspray, leaving everything softly fragrant with the scent of the terrace garden that Gale so loved. The high vaulted ceilings faded away into the illusion of an open sky, blindingly blue with the last true sunlight of summer, adorned with an endless expanse of clouds. Petals fell gently from the illusory heavens, dissolving into starlight before they could actually reach those in the pews, and in the middle of it stood all the eternal flame of the circular altar, where the steady burn of the blue-white fires would part upon closer inspection to reveal the image of Mystra serenely looking down on it all, regardless of the angle.
Astarion approached the open coffin to find the shroud partly uncovered and Gale crowned in the flowers of wild celery, eyes closed as if simply taking a breath.
His fingers brushed against Gale’s cheek, feather light almost in fear of waking him up.
“Hello, my love,” he said. “Look at you. Barely a tenday and already another party. You're more social already.”
Gale loved cloud watching. One of his favourite classroom activities was to herd the grumbling apprentices up The Rise to sit in the shade of The Lady Dreaming and be tasked with finding shapes in the abstract formations already in front of them, creating the most imaginative Minor Illusions they could with the clouds formed by the dramatic union of sea air hitting the shore. No reason to create from scratch, he used to say, when we could already work with what we had.
It was tempting to continue the fantasy, to follow in the spirit of the exercise and build based on what was in front of him. Gale had simply dozed off, gazing up at the sky. The shroud was the grass he had fallen asleep in, the mountain of white roses now the wild summer blooms he liked to gather for the breakfast table. He was fine, the new image would say. He was sleeping, and he could wake up any second now, muttering about dinner plans.
It would all be a lie, as Gale would be the first to tell him.
Never forget the base you build on, he often said, lest you start believing your illusions hold weight.
Astarion kissed him under the flowers of his crown, just as he did the day they’d married, right here before the fires of the altar.
It would be a fitting goodbye, all things considered.
“We’ll send you out right,” he said.
Gale laid still under the fall of the conjured petals, at peace under a bright blue sky.
The list he’d given Blackstaff was never particularly long. That was the thing about living to such a grand old age as a human: the invitations list tended to whittle down quite considerably the older one became. Gale had outlived many friends they’d made during their adventures, as well as a good deal of his family and several colleagues and students. The list the ghost had given him had a number of crossed-out names between the time Gale had written it and his illusion had looked it over. Astarion had half-expected it to just be perhaps some fraction of the birthday party, if that. Orders of magnitude more turnout than their sparsely-attended wedding, but a small group nonetheless, dwarfed by the scale of the House of Wonder as some sort of bittersweet reminder about the fleeting nature of life and connection.
He blamed the fog of grief that had surrounded him for forgetting that not only did wizards plan this funeral, but that Volo was, for whatever reason, part of the inner circle.
Slowly wizards of all sorts trickled in through the main entrance, some Astarion recognised, a good number he did not. There were faces he recalled from the decluttering sprees, voices he knew from the endless socialising of Guildsmeet, people who finally put a face to the name, crowds who finally populated the lecture halls where Gale had made his second home. Gale had talked about them all, the ways he tricked and cajoled them into reading the syllabus, the squabbles he observed as insults hurled back and forth about methodology and academic rigour, the stragglers who just needed a little help to understand the material in a way that finally made sense to them.
And before he knew it the temple was filled.
Friends and family, was the plan.
They’d never had any children, but then, they’d never really needed to.
The projection wasn’t alive. It had no need to join him at meals or breathe or even blink. But it looked quietly around at the gathering around them, hidden as it was by the hooded cloak and the face covering, and when it spoke its voice came out small. “Goodness,” it said. “Such a crowd.”
They had been to enough funerals over the decades that the familiarity of the ritual was almost grounding. Wizards, contrary to popular belief, had surprisingly short lifespans when one factored in the realities of life in the field, and an unsurprising number of them followed the path of the Mother of All Magic. Mystran ceremonies had a certain need for order and routine—magic, of course, but magic that could be trusted and relied upon. Any energy for creativity and brainpower on the part of the congregation could be diverted to actual study in normal life, and Astarion even in the depths of his grief knew the actions to take, the general order of the service, the things to say and words to recite. The structure was predictable, but then again, Astarion’s life was in freefall. The likes of Sune or Ilmater may have preached the virtues of full-bodied catharsis, but there was something to be said about the repetitive precision of a meditative near-trance.
Blessings were made, songs were sung, and they reached the Hymn to the Lady before he realised, Astarion warming with pride upon seeing that not only had Leandra and Bell organised the best singers in the clergy to handle it, but that they had picked them out based on their role in the harmony.
The Hymn to the Lady was nothing new: a plainsong dirge to close out the ceremony, punctuated with visions of dead mages and the occasional direct intervention by the goddess herself. Floating in the air and all the way up into the vaulted ceilings would be the legacy the deceased added to, the giants upon whose shoulders they stood. It was all about continuity, the honourable pursuit of knowledge, being welcomed home to the promise of eternal learning in Elysium. After Astarion’s rather unexpected reaction to choirs that same morning, he breathed a sigh of relief that he’d managed to hold it together for the entire service in his finely tailored wools and silks, his dark coloured glasses serving as little more than a fashion statement.
He had forgotten, yet again, that these were Gale’s students.
The measured harmonies of the ancient chant formed a whole landscape of sound around them, comforting in its steadiness and the echoes of repetition against the steady backdrop of a meditative drone. Visions appeared as additions to the illusions already around them, mages of old appearing out of the aether and into the daylight in serene anticipation for the newest to join their ranks. There were colleagues of Gale’s whom Astarion recognised, former students who had met a violent end or whom Gale simply had the fortune to outlive, tutors and scholars he’d remembered from Gale’s animated recreations of his childhood memories. Gale’s shortened list of invitees suddenly compensated for its losses, it seemed, and now in front of his body was the community waiting for him beyond the veil.
A vision of him lifted slowly out from the coffin, as alert and alive as if simply waking from a dream. Gale, less frail now, less drained of colour, gently brushed away the flowers that had clung onto his pristine robes, smiled sheepishly, and floated up to join those who had gone before, a venerable old mage in his own right now, taking his place to welcome others into the fray.
Something uncoiled in Astarion that he had no idea he’d even kept tense. His thoughts flew to the terrace he’d scarcely visited since his husband spoke his last words and stilled in his arms. Gale had been ready, for much longer than Astarion was even beginning to process it. He was happy at the end of it all. They had said their goodbyes laughing.
He was at peace now, if there was any justice out there. After everything they’d gone through, surely he was happy.
If ivver thoo gave owther hosen or shoon,
Ivvery neet an’ all (ivvery neet an’ all)
Clap thee doon an’ put ’em on
An’ Lady tak up thy soul
Leandra glanced around at the crowd around her and took a breath. Astarion could only begin to process that her hands were forming a somatic gesture when a new vision appeared against the endless blue sky.
A silent scene this time as the choir of clerics continued to sing. A patch of clouds above glowed and changed in outline to form the image of Leandra as a child, newly enrolled into Blackstaff, thick auburn curls in the neat halo braid she had worn at the time in an effort to look more scholarly. Her younger self scribbled drawings into the margins of her notes when a middle-aged Gale called on her, causing her to startle and her vision’s mouth to clearly yelp out the word Dad in surprise and embarrass them both.
She laughed at the memory, and added another scene of him holding up a book on Moonshae Illuskan to ask if terms had perhaps been added with her generation, as he was always keen to learn new slang.
Another image soon joined hers, courtesy of Belladonna. Gale on his flute, playing happily along as Bell improvised on a hurdy gurdy and urged him to join in.
Tav chimed in with a scene of her own, of Gale opening the front door to see her and Withers arrive in the days before the wedding, hugging her with no hesitation and insisting she come meet his mother.
In the same way as the pews had slowly filled with mages, so too did the conjured sky begin to fill with memories. One student struggled with somatic spell gestures, having a limb difference that had caused his fingers to develop at unique angles and his arms to shorten to the point where his hands started at nearly his shoulders. Gale had looked into the archives and found texts by mages with similar bodies, helping him to develop a system that had worked for him. Another young apprentice had always seemed to struggle with conjuring faces until Gale had her drawing portraits upside-down to better train her eye. There was a Guildsmeet memory of Gale Flying both him and Astarion up into the air to dance, a banquet scene of Gale in newly tailored robes waxing poetic about the food, salons where he found himself in yet another heated scholarly debate, encouraging speeches in the privacy of his office where he always had tea and tissues at the ready.
He had saved a student’s burning village. He had encouraged another to write a book. He introduced one apprentice to another, leading them to marry in the years hence. Some fraction of his legacy played out in the tableau all around them, an ocean of memory to celebrate the one resting gently in the centre of it all, much like the flowers that piled all around the tower’s front door.
Did he know how many lives he had touched, Astarion wondered. Was he looking down from Elysium, taking it all in?
The projection stilled beside him, quiet in the steady rhythms of the dirge, gazing up at this unending expanse of love.
From the start it had made sure to emphasise its unreality, pointing out its lack of sentience and true feeling, its influence from the decades of memory and knowledge that Gale had embedded into its core. The ghost had peeled back the layers of illusion around itself to show Astarion that it was little more than the product of decades of sheer dedication, a wish from both sides of the veil between life and death to keep some part of Gale’s essence alive. It was a shadow of Gale, a fading echo of his memory.
But its breath still caught in its throat, as its eyes shone with tears.
There was one last kiss before the shroud went back on.
The scent of solid polished oak mixed with the sweet lingering oils of rose and seawater, the note of tilia throughout it all.
The threads of their lives were never measured out equally. Astarion’s by definition couldn’t end with Gale’s.
But it was a good life, in the end.
However much of it they could share.
Astarion never did notice who closed the coffin for good or who draped it in the colours of Blackstaff Academy. His mind never retained the knowledge of when the hearse opened its doors, nor the volume of the soft thud when coffin soon made contact with floor.
But he would remember, long after he would’ve expected to have forgotten, that this would be the last he would see his face: under an adorned blue sky, at the altar where they had vowed love, laughter, and a lifetime of friendship and care.
He did his part to help carry the coffin out.
He had told Leandra, during planning. They had entered the temple to start a new life together. He could not allow Gale to leave it without him.
And so their marriage ended where it had begun: with great love, one in the embrace of the other.
The procession route was just the right length to decompress from a funeral. Whatever weeping and rending of clothes needed to be done could be dealt with on the nearly hour-long walk to the Hall of Sages, helped along by the convoy carriage that Leandra had hired out for the more aged of the mourners, who comprised a fair bit of the service.
Astarion had worn a more comfortable pair of boots for the walk, the sort of thing that in past years he might have worn on a quest but these days he would bring out for one of the Trousseau days he’d have to spend largely on his feet consulting with new clients. Leandra had tried to cajole him into joining her and some of the others on the carriage, but he shook his head as he helped her board and reasoned that his seat would be better suited to someone whose knees actually couldn’t take the strain.
Leandra peered around at the reporters camped outside the temple. “You sure, Uncle?” she said. “The carriage has Private Sanctum.”
“I’ll let them have this one,” he shrugged. “No point in wasting this outfit, darling.”
Her little exhale of amusement was so much like her father’s, which in turn made it so much like Gale’s. The wrinkles in her smile only served to soften the rich brown of her skin, and she adjusted her glasses to see him better. “Well, I tried,” she said, “but just for good measure—”
The familiar cloak of Gale’s Filtered Perception enveloped him in a soft shimmer before dissolving into invisibility. The line of press pests already visibly moved with confused murmurs and shifts as it took effect.
“You really did think of everything,” he said.
The unspoken promise hung between them, as it always did when Astarion would take in the scale of the effort she had put into the funeral.
Leandra shrugged in return. “All part of the benefits.”
She was lying and they both knew it, but he wouldn’t have expected anything less.
One of the things he had needed to adjust to upon arriving at Waterdeep was the city’s particular relationship with death. Granted, there was the odd murder cult just as he would expect of any self-respecting metropolis, but that wasn’t what had made this city stand out. No, Waterdeep had taken aside a ward-sized area of trees and greenery for the public’s convenience and leisure and decided to have it perform double duty as the city’s cemetery. There was no clearing out of the trees, no major overhauls of the landscape to make it known that this was a vast and sprawling network of graves and portals to various areas of grave overflow. In fact, Morena was only too eager to tell him that it was always a burial site, and that the recreation emerged organically as the living found ways to share space with those who had passed on. The City of the Dead had, over time, become a playground, a meeting place for shy new couples, a duelling ground, and much more. Astarion had, oddly enough, begun taking the few minutes’ walk from the boutique to eat his lovingly packed lunches under the shade of the trees, often joined by Morena or Tara who were all too eager for the break from the cobblestones and grime of city scenery. Where he was used to a strict separation of the living and the dead in Baldur’s Gate, Waterdeep sent a message of its own: it would take more than dying to be finally free of the community.
And that was an odd comfort in itself.
Funeral processions of all sorts, coming in from the various places of worship nearby, often passed by the boutique, to the point where the sight of them was worth little more than a passing glance and a quick prayer for minimal traffic disruption. A quiet understanding tended to pass between the bereaved and the unaffected, that sooner or later just about everyone would move to The City, and that their loved ones needed some time to adjust to the change of address. They would reunite, in some form or other, once the deceased settled into their new home and bore witness to generations of children playing among the grave markers, friends enjoying the autumn leaves, lovers on peaceful strolls. But before the healing, before the ground settled and the grass grew full over the graves, there would be grief, and it was only fair.
Astarion took comfort in the brief moments of accidental eye contact that led to panicked glances elsewhere, refuge in the indifference as life continued around them. Businesses continued taking in deliveries, street sellers called out for customers, adventurers carried on with whatever errands occupied their interest. There was little need to stop, Waterdeep seemed to say, when the deceased would continue being a part of life in the city.
The walk had given him the time and space to talk to others in the procession. Xan, who was beside himself when his mothers informed him of the loss, apologised profusely for only being able to briefly Astral Project into the birthday party. A recent raid had affected the creche library and transport had become rather limited as a result.
“Well, if anyone would understand you needing to spend more time in a library, darling, one could do worse than Gale.”
“I will say, he did enjoy hearing about my latest Faerûnian translation project,” the handsome youth said, casting his mind back on some fond memory. “A treatise on the artefacts left during the generation of hard light illusion, examining the architectures in existing spellcasting that cause patterns to repeat unnaturally and break immersion.”
The bark of laughter that came out of him had taken them both by surprise. “One of Gale’s!” Astarion said. “Gods, as if his ego needed the boost.”
Tav and Halsin kept an eye on him as most of the others had opted to ride in the carriage and the ghost volunteered to help the more elderly board and alight. Tav forced nothing from him, choosing to walk in a silence he was more than welcome to break, as ahead went the hearse carrying the latest to die whilst behind rode those merely awaiting their turn. Halsin said nothing as Astarion’s eyes chose instead to focus on the city continuing to exist around them, taking the occasional break helping strangers with the occasional heavy box or dropped toy.
A small crowd of wizards walked the procession, many simply young enough to make the little journey, a good number from a longer-lived race and looking nearly as old as their first day in Gale’s classes. Astarion’s own little unit closest to the hearse made up perhaps the oldest of those who could make the walk.
With one notable exception.
He struggled enough finding ways to hold his own in conversation when Elminster made the rare visit. He and Morena tended to excuse themselves to sit in the safety of the dining room in case the call came around for more wine or cheese, watching with quiet mutters about how sometimes Gale forgave too easily to survive by himself. He might have put it all in the past after the business with the orb, but he also made the mistake of telling the full story to a mother and a spouse who committed the offences against him to memory.
They kept it civil, as much as they could. Sometimes Astarion would attempt to actually smile without threatening violence.
Not that they had reason to talk anymore, now that Gale was gone.
It was an unwelcome bitterness in his throat to watch this relic, well over a millennium old with a few more centuries to spare, walk the streets with the ease and stamina of an adventurer in their prime.
Time had taken so many people Gale had loved more deeply, who loved him just as hard in return.
And in all that time, Elminster hadn’t aged a day.
“I assure you, Astarion,” came the voice suddenly beside him, “it is not the blessing that it may appear.”
Astarion regretted the choice not to wear some sort of veil, or at least dip into the hat collection. He settled for the consolation from the darkened glasses.
“I don't recall saying anything.”
Elminster had that way about him, that sad little smile that was supposed to project deep melancholic wisdom. “No,” he said, “but that is a look I have seen at many a gathering such as this.”
“You attend these gatherings?”
He continued walking. “I do my best.”
Astarion rolled his eyes. “I’m surprised you’d even have the time. Isn’t there a dungeon for you to refill with little treasures?”
“I have no choice over when the Lady requires me to fulfil some greater purpose.”
“Greater than the funeral of the man who thought you the closest thing he had to a father?”
Something passed across his face, from beneath that insufferable eternal facade of the harmless and whimsical old man. “That is, I'm afraid, rather up to Mystra to determine.”
“Well,” Astarion said. “How utterly magnanimous for her to allow this little visit.”
“Astarion,” he said, “I truly did care for Gale.”
And as much as he tried to hold onto that anger, Astarion could hardly call that statement a lie.
He sighed. “I know.”
“As did Mystra.”
That, however, was more difficult to agree with.
“Oh, I'm sure,” he said. “In her own, godly way.”
“Precisely,” Elminster tried to smile. “In her own, godly way.”
It was a serious moment. It really was. But he couldn’t help himself. “The same way she cares for you?”
The smile dropped. “And how goes your friendship with the Morninglord, Astarion?” he said. “Or Withers, for that matter. Was there not a quote somewhere about how you speak with gods? Yes, Horkle’s, was it? Or perhaps The Mocking Minstrel?”
Astarion shut up, ignoring the rising heat up his neck and towards his face.
Gods. For an expert on stealth he really was just shit at knowing when to use silence to his advantage.
The stiffness in Elminster’s shoulders dissipated as quickly as it built. The quick snap of frustration corrected back to wise sympathy in the way only those truly wizened by age could learn to do. He spoke softly, looking ahead at the hearse before them.
“The gods, try as they might, simply cannot narrow in for too long on the individual components that make up the greater picture,” he said. “They may try to correct an errant thread, or gently guide one to create a pleasing pattern, but their gaze will always rest most comfortably on the scale on which they live, just as those of us down below cannot begin to see where we fit in the tapestry of life.”
“And what of Chosen?” Astarion said. “What happens to someone part loom, part weaver?”
“Gale knew life as one of us,” he said. “He had his reasons for not rejoining.”
“He would’ve stayed young,” Astarion said. “He could’ve been alive today—healthy, powerful, not a care in the world.”
“Perhaps,” Elminster said. “However, you do assume that he would have spent that time with you.”
It was an old discussion, one he and Gale had discussed at length over heated words and a good volume of tears, but the reminder of it struck him like a blow.
“Does it sound like the man you loved to trade the chance to spend the last few years of Morena’s and Tara’s lives with them for the chance to keep his youth?” Elminster said. “Ambitious and reckless Gale of Waterdeep may have been: vain and perhaps a tad superior, at times, but I would not count among his faults the quality of being quite so easily bought.”
The devotion had become something Astarion both loved and despised about Gale as the years went on. He had once reassured Tav and Karlach he would still consider them his dearest friends if either of them had chosen to go the way of the Illithid. He never did listen to Astarion about leaving Tara be and actually getting some sleep when her body slowly shut down. Despite all his growth it was hard to prevent the old resentments bubbling up from his old life, the bitterness that helped him survive two centuries of his own little hell. Why help, why love, why bother with this depth of attachment when it wasn’t any guarantee it could stay?
Some fleeting sorrow would cross Gale’s face at that, and he would tell Astarion that if he was lucky, Astarion would come to learn the purpose.
“Being Chosen is as much duty as it is blessing,” Elminster said. “It is knowledge that Gale knew more intimately than most.”
“And he chose us,” Astarion said. “Over everything.”
“You seem surprised.”
He adjusted his gait for a dent in the cobblestones. The hearse moved smoothly along.
“Sometimes I think we were this close to him choosing the Crown after all. Godhood.” He sneered. “Glory.”
Elminster nodded. No need for gentle civility now that there was no longer a Gale to connect them. “You were. And yet he did not. As tempting as it may have been, he chose you. He chose those who loved him in all his fragile humanity. I fault him not for fighting to remain the person you all loved.”
He regarded the hearse again. He looked down at the cobblestones, more worn and uneven the farther away they came from the Sea Ward, catching less light as the sun curved further west.
He searched instinctively for the shadow that had walked beside his for nigh on seventy years, and he ached to be reminded that there would not be one.
“Can’t you bring him back?” he said, and gods, he instantly regretted just how childish it was to finally say it out loud.
Elminster’s gaze softened. He must’ve had this conversation countless times.
“Leaving aside that old age prevents such an attempt,” Elminster said, “the spirit must be free and willing. Would Gale agree to return?”
He wanted to believe it. He wanted to believe some version of Gale right out of his twee little romance books who would see the outstretched hand and gladly take it, emerging from the void restored and whole, sparkling with some magically restored youth and vitality, ready to come back as often as he was summoned.
It was not the Gale he had lived with in reality, the one who said goodbye smiling, who died at peace, surrounded by those who loved him best.
He was so tired by the end.
Elminster walked along, pace unchanged. “I knew Gale when Morena carried him in the womb. I knew Morena when she was an illiterate child struggling to carry a small stack of books,” he said. “I have seen this world through ages you could not conceive, and will be here long after the passing of your next few reincarnations. The work will still not be done, and Mystra will require my help to do it.”
He considered his next few words when the procession came across a small group of children, quickly shooed from the street by an exasperated old shopkeeper.
“I have a descendant somewhere,” Elminster said. “Simon, I think. A sorcerer. I never did meet him in person, nor did I know the existence of my other descendant, Amarune, until our paths happened to cross. Simon will die in time, that much I know. Amarune, as a fellow Chosen, may yet live, so long as she retains Mystra’s blessing. There are more, and there will be more. I have only ever learnt the names of a few.”
The children dispersed reluctantly, helped along by a hooded mourner only too happy to distract them with dancing lights as they complained about stupid old processions always ruining their fun.
Elminster looked at them with something almost like regret.
“I may save worlds and dine with gods,” he said, “but I will never walk the path that Gale chose.”
“He was stubborn,” Astarion admitted.
“Even the waves of fate break upon the shores of will,” he said. “Gale, for all he played at meekness and humility, grew to become a moon unto himself.”
The nature of cobbled streets meant that steadiness was never guaranteed. Even the most agile of Waterdeep’s dancers occasionally fell victim to the tyranny of the oddly placed stone that threw them off balance, and Astarion was hardly among their ranks.
He was already prematurely lamenting the dirt on his good clothes when the hooded mourner caught him before any real damage was done. “Sorry,” he said. “Honestly. Where do my taxes even go?”
They chuckled as they helped him back up. “The Sea Ward, probably,” they—he, probably, judging by the voice—said. “When it’s not the North.”
The two shared an amused little groan at the state of things in the way only Waterdhavians really could.
“My condolences, Astarion,” they said, under the shadow of the long hood. If Astarion didn’t know any better he’d have sworn the mourner was using it to conceal some sort of light spell. “Gale made you happy. He would have you smile again, someday.”
Astarion dusted himself off. “Thank you. I like to think he would.”
The mourner was already on their way back to where they walked behind Astarion, nearer to the other former apprentices and long-lived colleagues.
Astarion brushed it off. Probably a mite awkward to have to walk alongside the bereaved spouse for longer than the quick little words of comfort.
He turned back to the conversation. “Elminster?” he said.
”Yes?”
“Are…” he frowned, and tried again. “Are you actually here?”
“No,” Elminster shook his head. “Though that was never for lack of trying.” A thought occurred to him, as if he’d just remembered something he’d been meaning to bring up. “That illusion Gale developed, the projection he sent to care for you.”
Astarion readjusted the clothes that had shifted slightly from the fall. “What of it?”
Elminster considered his words.
“Gale was never the entirety of your world, nor you his,” he said. “A planet may lose its moon and yet find itself changed, yet whole.”
Not the most opaque he had ever been, but it would do. Astarion nodded slowly.
Elminster continued. “The heavens will turn regardless of feeling, of poetry, of symmetry. Even in the most remote corners where light should fail to breach and oblivion must surely reign in darkness, there lie worlds upon worlds, orbiting undiscovered stars, bathed in a distant light.”
He indicated the mourners around them, the people on the street, the wider world. “Time will claim its due, and constellations may lose their stars, but not one celestial body has ever stood without a greater context,” he said. “By law of nature, not a one of them ever can.”
Astarion had sat through enough visits and encounters to know this was likely something to do with friendship or love or community, some sort of lesson about life, but at present, he was in no condition to unravel any of it. There was little room he had for thinking beyond finishing the funeral and getting through the day. Planets and stars could turn without his having to consider them right now.
“You know,” he said, “now that, erm, Morena’s gone, and Gale’s gone with her, I do feel I now have the freedom to say: I never did like your riddles.”
“I thought I said no statue.”
Leandra had looped her arm around his to show him the newly cleaned and prepared Hall of Sages, no longer as cramped and dusty as its reputation used to suggest. The floors had gained new stone tiles over the decades, the walls a much needed but suitably austere refinishing. Leandra had made sure Gale's tomb, situated on the western half of the hall, caught the light of the descending sun. His feet, Astarion realised, would face the sea, and some part of him, in spirit, would always be able to watch the sunset.
And looking down at it all, at the head of the wide tomb, was a statue that Astarion distinctly remembered turning down.
Leandra preened at the craftsmanship. A magnificent marble statue stood at the head of the tomb, a life-sized carving of Gale so detailed it practically stepped out of the stone. He was eager, eyes bright and wrinkling in the corners, finger pointed up as if an interesting thought had just occurred to him. The entire body shifted slightly, robes and hair and even a page from the book he held up caught in the illusion of movement as he readied to speak. Not Gale the prodigy, not Gale the declining old sage, but somewhere in between, somewhere in the middle and yet far from the end, his usual leather bag of texts at his feet, brimming with far too many books than was appropriate for a single day.
Astarion would always have at least this shadow of him, here where he lay.
“It was my own personal commission, if it helps,” Leandra said. “Had some upstart sculptor prodigy craft it sometime before his ninetieth, just in case.”
“You didn't need to.”
She scoffed, laughing at some joke he hadn't heard. “Uncle,” she said. “Please.”
Astarion's heart clenched at the familiar wrinkle on the statue's brow, the slight puff in the chest as its nonexistent lungs readied for another lecture. The sculptor likely used Leandra’s illusions as reference, and Gale had taught her well. Even the liberty of carving heart-shaped pupils only really served the purpose of capturing the light in his eyes. It was the spit of him, down to the lines in the corners of his mouth.
He shook his head. Fucking wizards.
“It looks better than he did in life,” he said.
From behind him Bell snorted, setting down a portion of the grave goods. “It's what he would've wanted.”
The ghost, following in her wake, paused to take it in. “She's right,” it said. “If I’m to be remembered, it may as well be in the best possible light.”
Leandra exhaled in amusement. “He offered to sculpt him younger and naked, in the style of an ancient stele.”
“He would’ve been correct,” it said. “I was a handsome devil, in my prime.”
“A modest one, too, looks like.”
The projection laid a hand on her shoulder and gave it a fond, gentle squeeze. “It’s wonderful, Leandra,” it said. “He would’ve been very proud.”
The wizards of Blackstaff and The Order sometimes spread the rumour that the tombs of those buried in the Hall of Sages were filled with rare spellbooks and treasures beyond compare. After all, it only made sense that a wizard be buried with their most precious valuables, but in truth it was all a ruse, set up by those with power to catch graverobbers in the act. Why keep their most precious texts with them, when libraries existed for the sole purpose of preserving their wealth of information and successors had much more use for the tools they could no longer use? In reality, grave goods here were hardly anything worth robbing. Lae’zel set down the most frequently used quarterstaff for his drills, a plain wooden thing that had nonetheless done the job. Wyll laid down a blank book that Gale had never gotten around to filling out, Xan an inkwell and quill as if now Gale finally had the time. There was a simple clay pot, for plants he might yet grow in the afterlife; a new flute in a fine leather case; a container of high quality tea leaves he had boasted about acquiring through clandestine means; a set of charcoals atop a small bundle of smooth, thick papers.
Shadowheart laid down a goblet and an unopened bottle of Sembian wine. Tav added a fine kitchen knife, for whatever feasts he would delight in cooking.
Astarion frowned as he set down the bottle of perfumed oil. The tomb chamber was much wider than it appeared at first glance, now that he was reaching in to add to it. The statue was slightly off centre, as if to make room for something else.
Leandra picked up on the confusion.
“He left plans with Blackstaff when he got word he was approved for the Hall of Sages,” she said. “There’s room for you, if ever you find need. Not to say you won’t find something you’d prefer by the time it’s your turn, but Uncle Gale made it clear in his wishes: the offer will stand.”
He glanced at the side left untouched.
His half, if he so chose.
“Thank you,” he said, to no one in particular.
A small rumbling came from nearby, high-pitched and only growing louder. Something like frantic clicks on the tiled floors skittered towards them.
Halsin intercepted it before it could do any damage.
“A pup!” he cried, holding aloft a squirming, wild creature half starved and covered in barely scabbed wounds. “Now, how did you get in here, little one?”
Leandra groaned. “She’s back, is she?” she said. “I’ve been trying to catch her since we started work on the tomb. The food from the City workers must’ve attracted her. I’ll bring her to the shelter, don’t worry.”
He held her gently in his arms, stroking at her wide, flat forehead and avoiding the tears in her ears as Shadowheart cast the calmest healing spell she could. The pup trembled at the sight of them gathered around her, growling as low as she could. Her brown paws were still too large for her chiefly black little body. The little button-sized brown patches above her wide eyes knit together in concern. She whimpered.
Halsin tilted his head to listen closer. “She says they named her Fangs,” he said. “Her masters dumped her litter in the sewers. She fought off strays and lived on scraps until she found this place.”
Shadowheart scowled. “To leave her to such a fate. She looks barely old enough to walk.”
“Leandra and Belladonna have rehomed dogs before,” Halsin said. “Come. Let’s finish the tomb sealing. I shall assist in getting this little one somewhere safe.”
She looked around with those huge brown eyes.
Something inside Astarion stirred, and he reached out.
She whined, unsure, sniffing before she gave him a tentative lick.
“Can…” he said, before he could really understand what he was doing, “can I do it?”
They all turned to him.
“Astarion,” Tav said, “with things the way they are, would you really be in the best position to take in an injured dog?”
“I don’t—” He stroked her, gently, and she leaned into his touch. “It’s getting cold. She shouldn’t be sleeping here.”
The licks came on rapidly and those big brown eyes lit up bright.
Belladonna laid one hand on his. “She’ll be needing care, dear. Food, bathing, water.”
“What a coincidence,” he said. “As do I.”
The little group shared concerned looks, until Halsin spoke up.
“She says you smell safe.”
And that, somehow, settled it.
He handed the pup over to a concerned ghost, and headed back towards the waiting hearse.
There were precious few leaves left on the Dekarios family tree by the time it came to bury Morena. The year that Tara had died, Morena was still grieving the loss of her older brother Bojan a couple of months prior, and by the time she had begun to accept that Tara had gone, word came from Neverwinter that her younger brother Heron had passed, leaving her the lone sibling.
They said goodbye to her brothers. They outlived the eldest of Gale’s Dekarios cousins. They said goodbye to her, as well. The funerals had started to become a routine that never lost its novelty. The general steps stayed the same, the rituals comforting in their predictability and closure, but each parting had taken something new from them, just when they thought there was nowhere new to ache.
In some dark and sad way, they had been well rehearsed when it was time to do their part for Morena. The talks with the clerics, the paperwork, the mourners to contact, the bathing and anointing—it was all a dance they hated knowing the steps to. Gale, the man who had dedicated his life to endlessly rehearsing the precise words and gestures needed for spellcasting, never stumbled in the time it took to place the grave goods, never faltered when time came to give up a lock of his hair. Astarion had allowed himself a rush of pride to see that his husband had never so much as mispronounced a word in the burial song as they watched the raft carry her shrouded figure out to sea and the clerics sent its burning remains through a portal out to a distant part of the ocean, to sink to the sea floor in peace.
It almost disturbed Astarion, how the routine of it took hold when it was his turn to be chief mourner.
The coffin was hardly anything to place into the tomb. The grave goods shook slightly as the coffin’s supports detached themselves and the covering slid on with great effort to finally seal it all. It was almost unreal, how normal it all felt, how long it took to sink in that the coffin being lowered was Gale’s, how the tomb no longer laid empty.
The hands that used to be relied on to stab and slash his way through his problems shook as he cut off his lock of hair. He waved it off as a minor graze when the knife slipped and nicked a part of his ear, blushing when Shadowheart healed him regardless.
The hair went to the foot of the sculpture, the libation of various sweet and fragrant liquids to the small base upon which it stood. Rivulets of honey and perfumed oil peeked through the barely mixed wine and milk, unable to fully incorporate. It felt significant somehow, in a way he was woefully unequipped to understand.
Belladonna squeezed his hand as workers affixed the plaque and Leandra began the process of magically securing the tomb. “You’re up.”
He nodded, through the sudden lump in his throat.
Astarion could carry a tune well enough, but a singer he was not. His voice came out shaking, suddenly much too loud and resonant in the fine stone walls of the Hall of Sages.
It was a small section of an ancient song, in a language he didn’t speak, but he had helped Gale with the practice of it, and heard and practised it enough times that the meaning shone through all the same.
Past are his woes, he has won through his perils,
He lives in plenty, no pleasure he lacks;
He squeezed Bell’s hand in return, as his voice found its footing.
Nor horses nor goods nor gold of the mead-hall;
Gods. Not now. Not now, when he most needed calm.
All of the wealth of earls upon earth
Belongs to my lord, he lacks but thee
It was over just as he’d realised that it had begun. The last echoes of the verse reverberated around him like a reminder, the meaning of the words learnt through dry rote now twisting around his heart in the terrible silence that followed.
It was over. It was goodbye. It was a plea to stop worrying about the fate of those in the great beyond.
Sunset fell in its full glory upon the statue, leaving it glowing with the illusion of life. There was a false warmth in its golden light, a beautiful sparkle in its eyes as the sky reddened and the autumn breeze swept in.
It was all precious little consolation, as Astarion laid a hand on the tomb, taking in the finality of the cold stone and its smooth planes that served to house a body that had long grown cold and now at last began to break down. Containers, really, all of them, now that Gale’s soul was far beyond where Astarion could hope to reach. Beneath the ritual, beneath the tributes and words of comfort, the truth of it all finally laid itself bare in this fine hall with its ornate tombs and magnificent statues, growing cold in the setting of the sun: Gale had finally gone somewhere that he could not follow.
He would not later be proud to recall the numbness of the realisation, the way he walked out of the Hall as if it was just another lunch in the City before heading back to the boutique. There would someday be conversations over wine explaining the scar on his ear and there would be laughing, with some embarrassment, at the memory of the tremor in his voice as he sang. But there were also memories he would keep secret, to comfort him whenever the darkness descended or he found himself staring at the ceiling, desperately unable to trance.
He stepped out damned near stumbling, thrown off kilter like some pathetic little children’s toy. The sun cast long shadows upon the stairs as the depth of the loss once again made itself known deep in the wounds just beginning to heal. He despaired for a moment at the sight of the lone shadow stretched out before him, before it was soon joined by those of the people who would not let him complete the rituals alone. Tav took his arm to help him down. Leandra ushered out those who made it into the Hall out towards those who stood vigil outside, with Bell, Wyll, and Lae'zel directing those who wished to see the tomb into orderly lines. Beside him the ghost held the pup, who happily accepted pats from Shadowheart and Xan.
He was never the whole of Gale’s world, nor Gale his. The small township’s worth of people gathered there was a window into all the lives they had touched in the life they had built together.
Gale had him promise once, as they sat on the rooftop to watch the full moon, that there would be life after him. He saw through Astarion's deflections and nervous jokes and insisted, in all his stubborn humanity, that Astarion go on after Gale could not. No pining, no wasting away, no isolation. Astarion had laughed it off then, dismissing it all as incredibly maudlin this early into their life together, but Gale knew. Somehow, in all his social ineptitude and utter lack of tact, he knew, and he died knowing that his husband would at least try.
He had promised he could face what was coming, if it meant a lifetime of this love.
Together the small group walked out to face the larger crowd of mourners, and despite his best efforts, Astarion felt less alone.