Chapter Text
Gale looked around his new office, piled high with cardboard boxes and smelling strongly of dust and neglect, and felt his last scraps of optimism leak out of him.
This is it, then. This is where my career goes to die.
With a thump, he sat down on his new office chair—which squeaked loudly and then tilted over as one of its wheels popped out and skidded into a corner. He felt his shoulders slump. That seems appropriate, somehow.
“Well. You’ll need a new chair, of course,” Tara said briskly, looking around the office with thoughtful eyes. The tressym leapt onto the desk and sniffed it, dragging her paw through the grime on its surface. “And the place needs a good cleaning. But it’s quite a nice view. Pretty trees and even a pond in the distance.”
“Please don’t try to make me feel better about this, Tara,” Gale sighed, running a hand through his hair. I should have had it cut before I started here. Not that it truly matters, I suppose.
He glanced over at the chalkboard the previous occupant had mounted to the office wall. There were doodles on it, likely from a student, and a few words that might have been the beginnings of a shopping list. With a sigh, he walked over and wiped the markings clean with the eraser. The chalk clung to his fingers, and he brushed his hands together, raising a little cloud of shimmering white dust in the late afternoon light. The dust also floated up into his nose. He avoided sneezing. Barely.
Gods. A year ago Gale had been part of the University of Waterdeep’s storied wizardry department. Now he was in this decrepit little office at Baldur’s Gate University after ruining both his career and a fifteen-year relationship.
He wasn’t sure if he was here to start over, or to give up.
Start over, he told himself firmly. He’d spent the better part of last year lying in bed, staring at the walls and wondering how he’d managed to make such a wreckage of his life. He was not going to go back to wallowing, no matter how shabby his new office was. No matter how much it hurt to remember his old one.
As he looked around the office, wondering where he could possibly start with making it habitable, a buzz from his pocket distracted him. He briefly considered letting it go to voicemail, but he knew his mother would only call back. And he knew it was his mother; realistically, there was no one else who would be calling him. With a silent sigh, he flicked his thumb across the screen and lifted the device to his ear.
“Hello, Mother!” he said, forcing false cheer into his voice. “What can I do for you?”
“Just checking to see how you’re settling in, darling.” Morena Dekarios’s brisk voice crackled slightly over the line, fading out for a moment before popping back into audible range. Gale bit back a sigh. My office has bad reception as well. Terrific.
“You mentioned you would get your department keys today. How is it?”
“It’s splendid.” He immediately felt a stab of remorse; he hated lying to his mother. He tried to amend it with something closer to the truth. “Perhaps a bit bare at the moment. When I get my books onto their shelves it will look much better.”
He prayed she wouldn’t ask about his apartment. It was actually a nice little space, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to unpack anything besides his kitchen equipment; everything else still sat in boxes. It was a far cry from the beautifully decorated townhouse he’d left behind in Waterdeep.
A notification pinged on his phone—a calendar alert. Gale pulled the phone from his ear to look at it. New Faculty Reception, 4pm. Relief coursed through him at the ready-made excuse. He loved his mother, but he knew that his frame of mind at the moment would not be conducive to reassuring her that things were going well.
“Mother? I’m so sorry, but I just remembered something. I’m supposed to go to a new faculty event in ten minutes. Could I call you later?”
“Of course, darling,” she assured him. “Let me know if you need anything for your new place, won’t you? New curtains, a rug or two, maybe some custom bookshelves…”
Gale laughed. “Mother, I’m a tenured professor on the far side of forty. I can buy my own furniture, I assure you.”
“I know you can,” Morena said with a little laugh. “But can’t a mother spoil her only child every now and then, regardless of age?”
Gale smiled fondly. “I’ll let you know if anything catches my eye, I promise. Love you.”
“Love you too.” With a click, Morena disconnected the call.
Gale put the phone back into his pocket and drew a deep breath. “All right, Tara. Where should we start? With some dusting, I suppose.”
“Mr. Dekarios! What about the new faculty mixer? You told your mother you were going.” Tara gave him a reproachful look.
“Oh gods, Tara, please no. I don’t want to…”
“Don’t want to do what?” Tara interrupted impatiently. “Learn more about your new place of employment? Speak with the people who are going to be your colleagues? Make even a hint of an effort at meeting some new friends? You could use more friends, Mr. Dekarios. Your mother and I are quite agreed on that point.”
Gale gaped at her for a moment, then sighed. “If I don’t go, you’re going to tell my mother, aren’t you.”
Tara licked her side innocently.
“Gods, the two of you are a menace when you want to be,” Gale sighed. “Very well. I’ll go drink bad wine in a dingy room if it will make you happy.”
Tara looked up at him smugly. “It will. Now shoo. The dust will still be here tomorrow.”
The space where the reception was being held was nicer than Gale had expected, a cozy room in the student union with dark blue wallpaper and gray wingback chairs placed in pairs and triads around elegant dark wood coffee tables. The room was already half-full, and he half expected his arrival to chill the buzz of conversation—he’d silenced more than a few rooms he walked into back in Waterdeep—but to his relief, no one seemed to be paying him any mind.
The bartender poured him a glass of inexpensive red wine in a plastic cup and Gale accepted it without comment. As he turned away from the bar he looked around the room, wondering who he should talk to. His old mentor Elminster, the reason he had this job in the first place, was chatting with a human man with long red hair. Gale recognized him immediately: Lorroakan Athkatla, who had started his PhD at Waterdeep around the same time Gale finished. They had only overlapped for a bit, but Gale did not have fond memories of the man.
Perhaps I’ll say hello to Elminster later.
To hide his nerves about approaching a stranger for a chat, Gale reached for the phone in his pocket, pretending he’d just received a notification. His stomach fell when he saw that he did, in fact, have an alert on his lock screen: A recent news item about Mystra Ryll.
I need to turn that news alert off.
But he could no more stop himself from looking at it than he could stop himself from grimacing at the syrupy taste of the cheap wine.
It was a puff piece in the Waterdeep Weekly with the headline “Museum of Magical Antiquities taps Ryll as Head Curator.” Gale felt his breath leave his chest. He and Mystra had dreamed of going to that museum together, had imagined their future with Mystra as Head Curator and Gale as her right-hand man. Now she was there without him, and he hadn’t even known she’d gotten the job. Gods. Was he so far out of her grace that he didn’t even merit inclusion on an email announcing her new position?
The article began with a very flattering photo of Mystra giving a public lecture, gesturing with her laser pointer in hand, that familiar cool smile on her face. She was wearing a new suit, a trim gray skirt with matching blazer, and her hair and makeup were flawless. She did not look like someone who’d just been through a brutal breakup. Or, more specifically, she didn’t look anything like Gale, who was wearing a purple button-down shirt that was missing two buttons from its cuffs and last year’s pair of glasses.
“I will never understand why you wizardry experts are so fascinated with that woman.”
Startled, Gale looked up. A half-Drow woman in a sharply tailored blue blouse and black slacks was looking over at him, an amused expression on her face as she took in the photo on his screen. Carefully groomed white curls fell around her shoulders and a coppery mask of scales covered her forehead and cheekbones, marking her as the descendent of a draconic bloodline. Though her clothing was not flashy, there was an elegance and polish about her that briefly made Gale even more self-conscious about his fraying shirt.
Mortified, he tucked the phone away. “Well, she is one of the greatest minds of her generation,” he said a bit defensively.
“Hmm. Maybe. But the quality of her papers seems to depend heavily on her coauthors,” the woman said dryly. “Then again, what do I know, I’m in Sorcery.”
Gale chuckled. The disciplinary rivalry between Wizardry and Sorcery was long and storied. In Gale’s opinion, sorcerers ignored the theoretical fundamentals in favor of flashy new spells; sorcerers usually retorted that wizards only cared about studying magic, not actually doing it. “My goodness. Sorcerers read papers these days?” he said, trying a bit of light teasing in reply.
The woman smiled—a genuine smile, one that made the corners of her eyes crinkle. “It’s a recent development. I just learned to read over the summer.” She stuck her hand out. “Alys Towerfell.”
Ah. Here it comes. Gale took the hand and shook it. “Gale Dekarios.”
Alys’s brow wrinkled a bit as she tried to place the name. Gale held his breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But Alys’s potential moment of realization was interrupted by the arrival of a most unwelcome third party.
“Ah, there you are, Dekarios. I was wondering if you’d show up.”
With barely a glance over at Alys, Lorroakan planted himself in between the two of them, his expression predatory. He smiled at Gale with the air of a man who was looking at all of his fondest wishes come to life. “Must feel like quite the fall from grace,” he said with mock sympathy. “From the gleaming halls of Waterdeep to the shabby corridors of Baldur’s Gate University.”
“Oh come now, that’s hardly a generous way to talk about the institution that signs your paychecks, Lorroakan,” Gale said mildly, concealing his irritation. He’d said worse things about BGU to Tara over the past few days, of course, but hearing the words from Lorroakan’s mouth made him feel oddly indignant.
“It’s temporary, I assure you. My career is on the upswing. And yours… well, I suppose it’s not polite to talk about yours.” Lorroakan chuckled unpleasantly. “I look forward to seeing what you can come up with on your own now that Mystra’s discarded you. Not that I expect much but it will be fun to see you try.”
“Wait. You’re Lorroakan Athkatla?” Alys asked from behind him, her tone calm but pointed. “Goodness. I assumed they’d put you on leave after that retraction in the Journal of Wizarding Studies.”
Lorroakan’s entire body went stock still as the color drained from his face. “I am appealing that retraction,” he said indignantly, spinning around to glare at Alys.
“I can’t imagine why. It’s clear the paper was deeply flawed. Surely it would be better to admit your mistake.” Alys sipped her wine, her expression cool and unruffled.
“My graduate student flubbed a perfectly simple task, ruining months of work. It’s no reflection on… gods, why am I even explaining this to a sorcerer?” he sneered, taking in the coppery scales around Alys’s eyes. “Enjoy the mixer. I have actual work to do.”
And with that he stormed off, his red hair flowing behind him as he sped from the room.
Gale let out a relieved breath. “You actually got rid of him. Thank you. I’d buy you a drink if they weren’t free.”
Too late, he realized that buy you a drink had a flirtatious meaning as well. Not that his new colleague wasn’t attractive—she was, objectively, a stunning woman—but that had not been his intent. He was in no shape to be flirting with anyone, not while he was living in a pile of cardboard boxes and didn’t even have a proper office chair to sit on.
Alys met his eyes, her expression serious. “I’m sorry for what I said about your coauthor,” she said frankly. “I didn’t realize—well. It was impolitic of me and I apologize.”
“She is, more accurately, my ex-coauthor,” Gale said, trying to conceal the mix of emotions swirling through him. “No offense taken, I assure you.” He tried to fumble for something resembling a normal conversation. “Are you starting here this semester as well? Or are you an old hand who showed up to greet the newcomers?”
“The former,” she said, smiling slightly. “I just came here from Sword Coast State. Lovely place but a bit remote. I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to move back to a city. Tell me, what are you working on?”
“Netherese magic,” he said a bit uncomfortably. His most well-known papers were actually on other topics, ones Mystra had chosen, but his interest in all things Netherese was the one thing he knew was his and his alone. Mystra had made that quite clear.
“Oh, that’s vastly understudied.” Wonder of wonders, he thought he heard a note of genuine appreciation in Alys’s voice—and he felt the welcome spark of curiosity within himself in answer.
“You’ve an interest in magical history, I take it,” he said with a smile. “What’s your work on?”
Her eyes lit. “Magical constructs. I’ve developed several new techniques for repairing magical items without compromising the existing Weave within them. I’m actually hoping to extend those techniques to older and more complicated artifacts. I spent most of the past week getting my laboratory set up for the first months of work.”
Gale bit back a grimace. He’d spent most of the past week feeling sorry for himself and pretending he’d unpack tomorrow. Next to Alys Towerfell, he was beginning to feel like a bit of a laggard.
“Gale, my boy!”
Elminster was waving at him from across the room, his face slightly flushed with the wine, his expression merry. “Come here, there’s someone you have to meet.”
Gale turned to Alys a bit sheepishly. “Well. It seems I am being summoned. That’s my department chair,” he added by way of explanation.
“Say no more.” She nodded to him with a small smile. “It’s been very nice talking to you, Gale.”
As Gale crossed the room, he chanced a glance over his shoulder. Alys was still standing in front of the bar, turning her plastic glass in her hands, looking around the room as if hoping for something she knew she wouldn’t find.
With a faint rush of surprise, Gale realized that for all her polish, Alys Towerfell was just as nervous here as he was.
Alys limited herself to one and a half glasses of wine at the faculty mixer. She managed to have a handful of perfectly polite conversations while there, and even collected a few promises of coffee or catching up later in the semester.
All of that would have felt like a perfectly acceptable outcome for a faculty event if not for the fact that she had made an utter ass out of herself in front of Gale Dekarios.
Halfway through her walk home she took a moment to search for the name as she stood at a stoplight, waiting for her turn to cross a busy street. She’d had a sinking feeling about why his name had sounded familiar even before Lorroakan had interrupted them, and the search results confirmed it. Gale Dekarios was that collaborator, the graduate student Mystra Ryll had begun dating when he was completing his doctorate under Ryll’s supervision. He also happened to be the coauthor on the only Ryll papers Alys thought were worth a damn.
Maybe he’ll take what I said as a compliment, she thought ruefully as she climbed the stairs to her new apartment. He didn’t seem to take offense, anyway. Decent of him.
Frowning, she dug into her purse for her keys, only half focused on the task of unlocking her door. If Gale was here at BGU and no longer living the well-funded life of a tenured professor at Waterdeep, that probably meant he’d broken up with Ryll. She allowed herself an idle little daydream about asking him on a date before setting it firmly to the side. Brilliant men with beards had always been her type, but if Gale was looking at photos of his ex on his phone during quiet moments, she doubted he was interested in being pounced on by the first colleague who noticed that he was attractive.
And it would probably take him some time to work through the end of such a long and complicated relationship. Alys’s frown deepened. The fact that Mystra Ryll had begun a love affair with her graduate student was one of the biggest reasons Alys did not think much of her. Yes, they had both been adults and a long-term relationship had been the result, but Alys intensely disapproved of a professor sleeping with someone whose career they could destroy with one lukewarm letter of reference. It didn’t escape her notice that Gale, not Mystra, was the one who had uprooted his entire life following their apparent breakup.
Finally, she found her keys and pushed open the door to her apartment, sweeping an approving eye over it as she hung her purse on the hook she’d installed. It was everything she’d been hoping for when she began her search—clean and modern, with plenty of light and an open, airy layout. She’d decorated it in shades of blue and sage and cream and it felt wonderfully pristine in that way places only did when you had just moved into them. She vowed she’d try her best to keep it that way. More than anything Alys Towerfell liked order in her life, liked seeing visual proof that she had things under control.
“You’re going to have to learn to tolerate a bit of mess someday,” her old mentor had said to her once—half teasing, but not entirely.
That thought reminded her that she had not talked to Halsin since her move. With a regretful wince, she pulled out her phone and sent him a quick text message.
AT: I’m finally getting settled! Would love to catch up before the semester starts.
She never knew when Halsin would return one of her missives. He was, to put it mildly, not a particular fan of technology; text messages and emails often went quite a while with no reply. But luck was on her side tonight, because he had apparently already had his phone in hand when she wrote. Seconds after she pressed send , her phone began ringing with a video call.
“Alys? Is that you?”
The screen showed an image of Halsin’s broad chest, clad in a Sword Coast State t-shirt that was soaked through with sweat. Alys smothered a laugh. “You have to point the phone at your face, Halsin—there you go.” She gave him a little wave. “It’s great to see you! How are things?”
“Much the same as ever.” Halsin’s handsome face beamed out at her from the screen as he wiped sweat from his brow; she’d clearly found him while he was out hiking. Not for the first time, Alys wondered if Halsin had ever read his FaerûnProfs.com reviews, specifically the ones that were just lines and lines of fire emoji. “I’m looking forward to meeting the new students. Although I am missing my favorite sorcerer. Is the city everything you hoped for, or are you longing for the quiet and balance of the woods yet?”
“I think it’s a good move,” Alys admitted. “My new colleagues probably aren’t as delightful as you are, but my laboratory is wonderful. I can’t wait to get started, Halsin. There’s a breakthrough around the corner, I just know it.”
“I have no doubt,” he said warmly. “Any plans for fun outside the laboratory?”
“The laboratory is fun,” Alys protested, shaking her head with a laugh. She’d been having some version of this argument with Halsin ever since he was assigned to her as a faculty mentor at Sword Coast State. He was in Druidic Studies, not Sorcery, which had initially disappointed her, but she’d quickly learned to appreciate a perspective from someone outside her field—and the advice of someone who approached life very differently than she did. Even if she would never quite forgive him for talking her into camping that one weekend.
“I’m thinking of getting a cat,” she added, partly because the thought had crossed her mind, and partly to assure him that she wasn’t going to sleep on the floor of her lab again.
“Ah! A splendid idea. Send pictures if you do adopt.” He raised an eyebrow. “And friends? Dates? Any plans in those directions?”
“I only just got here,” Alys deflected. “I’m sure once I settle in, I’ll start meeting more people.”
Halsin looked as if he had thoughts on that, but suddenly, he frowned. “Oh dear. I’m afraid my battery may be…”
Halsin’s image abruptly winked out of existence. Alys smiled down at the screen. How very him, to forget to plug in his much-resented device.
For just a moment, Alys wondered if she should call her mother as well. Cerise Towerfell would, if nothing else, appreciate the decorating work Alys had done. But she knew the direction that conversation would take: to a discussion of Alys’s salary, her equipment, and how she was wasting her true potential working as a professor rather than joining her mother and uncles and cousins in the industrial labs at Towerfell Constructs.
Alys had tried, more than once, to explain that she liked teaching and preferred to research what she wanted without having to think about profit margins. So far it had failed to stick. Probably because Cerise Towerfell loved thinking about profit margins.
She could call her father, she supposed—Beldan Ilarr was practically allergic to giving life advice. But based on prior data, they’d have a brief, unsatisfying conversation before he said “oops, have to go, love you” and hung up, and Alys was in no mood for the slightly empty feeling that always lingered afterwards.
Another day, she decided. Tonight, she’d run a hot bath, make a cup of tea, take a moment to relax before classes started.
And try to forget how handsome Gale Dekarios had looked when he smiled at her.