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He knew she would come to him, eventually. So he waited.
Gale closed his eyes, embracing the moment, and cast out his expanded consciousness to the sad mortal realm below him, to where he could feel his worshippers dreaming, wishing, hoping, striving to be better.
His mind, so endlessly and perfectly elevated, floated to his shrine in the depths of Amn, where incense burned in a bowl of gold on a table before a kneeling worshiper; to the distant plains of Thay, where thin arms folded over thinner chests as the still-living slaves pondered what it would be like to live without the undead as their masters, and prayed without offerings, for they had none; to the tiniest corner of a simple bulletin board in Blackstaff, where his name hung on a commemoration plaque, and a would-be wizard dreamed of greatness.
It might have been a week; a year; a millennia: and then he opened his eyes and she was there, standing before him like a suppliant, finally in his realm. She looked much like she always did: dark brown hair, wide, almond eyes, and the wisps of the Weave danced and tangled at the edges of her being like stars.
“This is a strange choice,” Mystra said. That odd tone in her voice was, no doubt, a bit of wonder. She waved a slim hand at the lake that surrounded the plinth they stood on, the soaring pillars of crystal that ascended into the heavens. “But I suppose it does not surprise me that you have chosen to stand on a pedestal for all eternity.”
“And it does not surprise me that you have come, finally, to pay your respects,” he replied, a lick of smugness in his voice. “You could not resist me when I was young; and now I am a god. I have surpassed any expectation you had of my mortal being–no wonder you are here, to converse with me now.”
She arched an eyebrow, a slight smile on her lips. “Ah, yes, your ambition. Yes, that I saw when I chose you, your scratching, grasping attempts at more and more. This portfolio suits you.” Mystra shook her head, shimmers of light twinkling off of her hair. “I remember what it was like to be newly ascended, to have divinity and its power fall upon me. Back then, I would have appreciated advice from someone who went through the same thing.”
“Advice?” Gale threw his head back and laughed, enjoying how the sound echoed back from the soft waves lapping at the foot of the plinth. “I simply reach out with my mind to see my worshippers, feel their prayers empowering me. I do not need advice from you; we are equals–”
“–that we are not,” said Mystra sharply. “The Weave is me and I am the Weave; I have millions of worshippers; Ao has limited you to this plane until you have learned the merest speck of your powers–”
“–that will be soon,” he retorted. “I am a voracious learner, I always have been. But it is more than just my innate talent, it was how I indulged that curiosity, fed it, tamed it, and developed it that led me here, to the Celestial Planes. Why, even as a young man I learned, I experimented, I indulged that great muscle they call the mind, and it was not just my natural gifts that led me here but my dedication to the craft.”
Mystra had been silent, finally, watching him with wide eyes as he finished his speech and when he stopped, briefly, just in case she had another retort, she tilted her head to the side and said, “Equals, you say. Perhaps–in a few millennia.” She stepped closer to him, and for a brief moment Gale remembered how intoxicating it was to have been to be in the presence of divinity, to taste that power from her lips as she embraced him, as–
He shook his head at the memory, casting it to the depths where it spilled and splashed into the abyssal darkness of his mind. That was before he was a god. “So you want me still,” he said, smugly, his lips curving. “Your offer of help is so easily seen through. Such a simple ploy to stand in my presence again, to see the wonders I have created, how I am reshaping Elysium. I assure you, this is merely the prelude to a far grander vision.”
She still had that odd smile on her face. “You were once my Chosen, Gale. We will always be connected, despite your attempts to repudiate me, your plans to take my mantle. You won’t,” she added drily. “The Weave would never stand for it. I do not think Toril would stand for it either–”
“–there is much Toril will see of me, that you can be sure–”
“–I do not doubt it,” she said smoothly. “And I know you. As my Chosen, you were so desperate to please, and now nothing has changed, not really. You are so eager to show me how mighty you have become.”
He heard the mocking in her voice and a low knot of anger began to coil, burning hot in his core. Mystra was wrong, of course. She always had been, always had looked at him as something lesser, something she could control, or order, and then abandon when it no longer fit her needs. “You never respected me as a man,” he said. “I don’t need to prove anything to you as a god.”
“And yet you want to,” she told him. She was uncomfortably close to him, now, her head tilted to the side, her lips curving mysteriously. “Desperately.”
Perhaps he had misjudged her; she was always awkward, after all. Perhaps this was just her inelegant way of affirming him, of asking to be his consort. Gale considered her offer, studying her, from the wisps of the Weave that tangled in her hair to the glimmer of divinity that floated on her skin, and remembered the hunger he had once felt in her presence.
Quietly he acknowledged to himself: he still did.
“Tell me what you desire,” Mystra said, sultry, and it was enough, he was lost: the memory of the year where she had spurned him washed away by the decades where she had been his constant companion, friend, teacher, then lover.
He had not been touched… he tried to remember when. It was different, now that they were equals. When she placed her palms flat against her chest, the contact was electric, and it crackled into him, splitting him open: the echoes of power splashing large and thunderous. He could not help it, he leaned in, reaching for her hungrily to crush her closer to him, to taste that berry-bright of her lips.
But his hands moved through her like a mirage.
“Gale, Gale, Gale,” Mystra said, and the words fell out of her mouth like something rotten. “I will show you now what real power looks like, so you will once again have something to aspire to.”
Her fingers turned into claws at his chest, raking down his molten form, sharp sticky stabs of pain. Around them both the Weave surged in like the sea, a tsunami of potency of voices of worshippers, all calling her name: Mystra Mystra Mystra, and never his, not once his. It would never be his, whispered the laughing flickers of power that lapped around them.
The Weave was power and more than that, it was authority and connection, and everything he had severed himself away from: the quiet camaraderie of companions drinking in together silence; an arm tossed casually around a loved one; a shy smile, and a handwrapped gift. It was a lifeline to the entire world, millions of magic users asking and wanting and pleading–
–his mind could not expand to hold it all, and sometime, somehow, he found himself on his back as Mystra stood above him, staring down. She had pushed him, surely; he would not have fallen.
Her cold, cutting words sliced through the fog that still clouded his mind. “You will never be my equal.”
He lay there alone, long after she left, and he hungered, dreaming of what it would be like to seize her mantle of power. Or perhaps even Ao’s. Everything would be in his grasp.