Chapter Text
Gale decided that this was unacceptable. He stood up.
“This is unacceptable,” he said.
The Gale on the ground opened his eyes. He looked so tired. Gods, did Gale look this old?
“Pardon, what?” the other Gale said.
“I don't think this is a tenable solution,” said Gale. “I don't believe this is good. A good idea. In the least. I think this is a poor approach to the matter at hand. I think we should explore alternatives.”
“I don't believe there are alternatives,” the other Gale said. He had closed his eyes again and was rubbing his forehead. “The requirements are very specific.”
“Well, then perhaps we should forgo completing this trial,” Gale said, throwing his hands up.
“I think that would disappoint your companion, Shadowheart,” the other Gale pointed out.
Gale hesitated. He sincerely did not want to disappoint Shadowheart. Everyone else at camp had come together and decided they were going to be supportive of this troubling Gauntlet endeavor. It was deeply important to her. Gale sympathized. He more than anyone could understand the driving need to prove oneself to a goddess.
But still, by Ahghairon’s wand of blasting, there were limits.
“I'm sure if we put our heads together we can come up with a creative, alternative solution,” Gale said.
The other Gale sat up. He was frowning. He did not look like someone ready to come up with a creative, alternative solution. He still had that extremely distressing hole in his chest.
“I think, perhaps, you may be lending more gravity to this act than it deserves,” he said in a gentle tone that was also distressing and just a little grating. “I am a conjured being woven of shadow.”
“Tara is a conjured being,” Gale pointed out.
The other Gale frowned deeply. “Do not bring Tara into this.”
Gale threw out his arms. “I am just pointing out that awareness emergence is a recorded phenomenon and that I think you would pass a Tua’ring Challenge.”
The other Gale made a deeply frustrated sound and rubbed his temples.
“I don't think this avenue of thought will serve us,” he said. “I don't see any other path forward.”
“That feels like giving up the ghost without even researching the haunt,” Gale said, sitting down in front of him. “We haven't spent five minutes trying to come up with something.”
He started trying to come up with something.
“Here's an idea,” Gale said, voicing the first impulse that came to mind. “The condition for completing this trial is that I kill you? There's the spell Feign Death–which simulates a deathlike state. What if I cast it on you?”
The other Gale stared at him.
“It technically fulfills the requirement of the trial,” Gale said, a touch defensively. “And what's the harm in trying? It's just a third level spell. The worst that could happen is it doesn't work.”
The other Gale was still staring at him.
“Would you kindly stop looking at me like I'm Halaster?” Gale said, a little testily. “I think it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion.”
“No,” the other Gale said. “I’m not…”
He cut himself off. He covered his face with his hands. Ah, dear. Gale really should mind his tone more. This other Gale seemed like he'd been having a rather rough go of it.
“Are you all right?” Gale asked.
“I just feel,” said the other Gale. “As if someone is having a very elaborate joke at my expense.”
Karlach and the others were double timing it along the path, back up to the trial chamber. Shadowheart had chased not-Gale down into the shadows–she’d still had some magic that let her climb walls like a spider. She also had a spell that let her detect undead.
(They were pretty sure that not-Gale was a vampire. Apparently turning into mist was something vampires did.)
She followed the not-Gale-vampire through the shadows to a pile of rubble. Then he’d disappeared. Then Astarion and Karlach had caught up with her. Astarion had climbed down the wall cause he was good at climbing. Karlach had just decided to jump on account of she didn't want them to be alone with the not-Gale-vampire.
(He'd seemed more sad than dangerous, but sad people could be dangerous.)
And it looked like he had kidnapped Gale because Astarion had sniffed the rubble and said it was covered in Gale's blood.
So now they knew why the Feather Fall had stopped working all the sudden. And now they were all hurrying as fast as they could back up to the trial chamber because Shadowheart figured that's where not-Gale would bring Gale.
“He's probably doing a lot of talking,” Karlach figured as she ran, talking between pants. “If Gale went evil I figure he'd talk a lot before doing anything bad?”
“Yes,” Shadowheart agreed. She didn't say anything else because she was running in platemail.
“I am never doing any bloody thing for any god ever again,” Astarion hissed. He was ahead of both of them and barely containing the urge to dash even further ahead.
He was the first to get up from the rocky path to the paved temple area. And he was the first to start climbing the stairs up towards the trial rooms. And he was the first to spot a Gale coming down the stairs.
Astarion had his bow drawn and one of his special arrows pointed at the Gale lickety-split-quick. Karlach started pulling her axe free.
“It's me!” the Gale shouted, raising his hands. “It's me. I'm willing to answer any questions about recent events in our lives, but also I have more pertinent proof.”
He held up one of his hands even higher. By the light coming off of his ring Karlach could see that he was holding a dark and gleaming jewel.
Shadowheart gasped. She dropped her shield to rest position, slung her mace, and ran up the last steps towards him. Gale handed her the umbral gem.
“That's the last one,” she breathed, staring at it. Holding it in both hands. Then she looked up at Gale.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You're very welcome,” Gale said in a nice but kind of sad way which really matched how Karlach felt about this entire Shadow Justicar thing that Shads was doing.
Astarion had unslung his bow. He stormed up the steps, drawing his rapier. When he reached them he whacked Gale on the arm with the flat of the blade.
“Ouch!” Gale exclaimed, rubbing his arm and looking indignantly at Astarion.
“What the hells were you thinking?” Astarion whisper-yelled at him. It was how he talked when he wanted to yell but was too sneaky and cautious to do it loudly.
“Pardon, what was I thinking?” Gale asked indignantly. “Are you asking ‘what was I thinking?’ when I had the temerity to be knocked unconscious by rubble?”
“Aren't you an ‘unprecedented magical talent?’” Astarion said, throwing his hands up, a rapier in one of them. “That wasn't very ‘unprecedented magical talent’ of you, was it? Why didn't you ‘unprecedented magical talent’ at the rubble?”
Gale scowled at him, but it was a normal sort of a scowl you got when fancy lads squabbled with each other. They squabbled a bit.
They got moving pretty soon after that–heading back to camp. They were all done for sure for the day. Everyone needed a long rest.
Shadowheart was in the lead. She was holding the umbral gem tightly. She kept glancing down at it. She was kind of pale and really tight around the mouth and eyes.
Astarion took point, walking beside her. Karlach could see he was talking to her. He didn't have his ‘I’m about to be an asshole’ tells and he wasn't doing the ‘I'm going to be dramatic and a little absurd so that I don't have to completely acknowledge how scared I was that you were hurt’ like he did with Gale. Astarion was doing his: ‘I'm about to be startlingly serious and sincere so that you understand what I'm about to say is very important.’
When he'd been coming down from having a freak out after killing his own shadow he'd talked about how pissed he was that Shadowheart put the trial on hard mode without asking anyone. He said that once they were out of the trial he was going to have a conversation with her about making decisions that put the rest of the party in danger. This was probably him doing that.
Good. That was an important conversation. Karlach hoped it went well. She thought it would. Shadowheart could admit when she was wrong, about tactics at least, and she’d been real shook by the wolf.
Karlach fell back to walk beside Gale.
“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”
Gale had been checking something in his pack (Which he had again! Real Gale confirmed.) and he startled when she spoke. Closed the pack.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I'm well, thank you. Intact and myself, you have my word.”
“I know you're you now,” Karlach told him. “I mean, I didn't clock the other guy at the time, but when I look back it was pretty obvious he wasn't you.”
“Was it?” Gale asked curiously.
“Yeah,” said Karlach. “He didn't talk enough.”
Gale laughed so loudly that Astarion turned around and glared at them because you weren't supposed to laugh loudly in an active dungeon. Karlach and Gale both waved apologetically at him. They quieted down. Astarion went back to his conversation with Shadowheart.
“I just wanted to check in,” Karlach said to Gale. “When I took down my shadow it was rough.”
She was a winner and she was going to have nightmares.
“Ah. Yes,” Gale said. “I appreciate that. I admit, it was somewhat difficult.”
He fiddled with the clasp of his pack.
“You spoke to him, I believe?” Gale said. “When he was pretending to be me?”
“Yeah,” Karlach said.
“What was your impression of him?”
Karlach thought back to the conversation on the path.
“He sounded a lot like you,” she said. “But he talked less. Probably because he was trying not to let on he wasn't you? He asked about Astarion. I figure he clocked the other vampire? But it wasn't like ‘scoping out the competition’ talk. It was more like…’how’s he doing?’ talk.”
“I see,” Gale said.
“He kind of seemed like just a guy,” Karlach said. “Which is why I didn't think he was an evil shadow.”
“I think that was a reasonable conclusion,” Gale said, which made Karlach feel better. She'd been feeling bad about mixing Gale up with his shadow.
“He seemed kind of sad,” Karlach added. She wasn't sure where she'd gotten that feeling, but it was there.
Gale nodded slowly. He made a thinky-frowny expression. He rubbed his chest.
“I would like to ask your help with something,” Gale said. “With presenting an idea to the group.”
“Sure,” said Karlach. She liked being helpful.
“There is a situation that seems as if it might be alarming on the surface,” Gale said. “But is honestly, I feel, very similar to many of the surprising complications we have discovered about our various pasts.”
“Yeah?” said Karlach.
“After all we’ve accepted Shadowheart’s religion and my condition and Astarion's vampirism,” Gale said, gesturing to himself and the others. “The revelation of Wyll’s patron barely merited conversation before he was accepted back into the fold. For gods sake, we have Minthara at camp right now.”
“Yeah,” said Karlach. That was true.
“I don't want to bring it up immediately,” Gale said, glancing forward at Astarion and Shadowheart. “I think feelings are still running high and we are all somewhat predisposed to be alarmed by duplicates and shadows at the moment. But after we have eaten and rested and have the space of a day between us and this I don't see any reason why anyone would have any serious objections.”
Okay, now Karlach was really curious about what this was leading up to.
“Objections to what?” she asked.
Gale glanced forward at Astarion and Shadowheart, who had paused by a pillar and were talking really intently. Shadowheart was staring down at the umbral gem and saying something. Astarion was listening with his arms crossed. Gale took a step back to put himself behind another pillar, out of their direct sight. He opened his travel pack.
It was full of mist.
There were scrolls and potions and stuff, but between it all was a gray, curling haze. Like the tiniest, thickest cloudbank ever. A storm in a bottle. A fog in a backpack.
“Oh shit,” Karlach whispered.
As soon as she said that the mist disappeared, sinking down between the scrolls. Karlach almost thought she'd imagined it, it was so quickly gone.
“Oh hey, no,” she whispered. “It's okay.”
“Apologies for disturbing you,” Gale said into his bag. “I was discussing with Karlach how to broach the topic we discussed.”
After a pause Karlach started to be able to see just a little mist at the edges of a few of the scrolls.
“But we got the gem?” Karlach said. “How did you…?”
“I ‘unprecedented magical talent’ed at it,” Gale said smugly.
“Cool,” said Karlach.
The mist was rising again, like it was dawn and the scrolls in the bag were the littlest mountain range in the world. It looked so neat, like Gale had a chunk of weather in his bag. Karlach reached in and poked at the edge of it. Maybe that was rude, but it was so nice that he wasn't dead and he looked tiny like this and kind of cute.
The mist was chilly to touch. After a moment a little bit of it rose up and curled around her finger.
“Hey there,” Karlach said.