I stood in front of the altar, and the very air around me crackled with magic. It set my teeth on edge.
"Something's certainly there." Hawke said grimly.
"A summoning channel." I agreed. "Keyed only to me. Once I step in there, I'll be... somewhere else. In a realm where the divine and the mortal can interact in ways that Ao doesn't usually allow on the surface of Toril."
"How long will you be gone?" he asked me.
"To your perceptions, very likely no time at all." I reassured him. "To mine...? Well, there's only one way to find out."
"Good luck." he wished me with a firm handshake.
"Time was I'd have given my right arm for a chance to speak to Mystra again. The left one too. Maybe a kneecap." I joked nervously. "Now I'm about to do just that, and-" I trailed off with a chuckle. "During my months alone in Waterdeep struggling with the orb, prior to my abduction by our late illithid acquaintance, I'd composed a vast and comprehensive speech on the subject of my relationship with Mystra and how it ended. I even had footnotes and citations. And now here I am about to actually see her again, and events have rendered all of those rehearsed arguments entirely moot. I'm going to need to improvise here, and I haven't got the slightest idea of what I should say."
"I'm not sure I'm best qualified to offer you any advice here either." Hawke admitted embarassedly. "I've been in only two serious relationships in my life. I entirely screwed up the first, and the second has survived this long largely because Shadowheart has the patience of a saint."
"That's not the only reason it has, my friend." I chuckled. "I truly envy what you two are finding with each other, you know that?"
"Hopefully you'll find something similar again for yourself." Hawke agreed. "You screwed up, but you never had any malicious intent in the first place. And you've sincerely realized and admitted your mistake, are trying to make amends, and have legitimately become a better person for the effort. If that's still not enough for her, then..." He shrugged. "It'll still feel awful for you, but you won't be to blame."
"That's not even what I'm worried about the most right now." I demurred. "Well, they say even the longest journey must begin with a single step, so..." I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath, and then stepped into the planar conduit.
The reality of the mundane world fell away, and suddenly I was Elsewhere. I was standing on nothingness, surrounded by nothing but an empty void brilliantly lit by roiling curtains of dark purple and teal green light where the ground and horizon should have been. As if a moment of nautical twilight had been preserved in a still image, and then expanded to cover all the sea and shore.
The most beautiful woman I had ever known quietly materialized in a flash of light. Her long black hair fell unbound below her shoulders. Her eyes glowed with the brilliant silver fire of the Weave. Her simple dress was a glorious, glowing affair of solidifed magic.
"Mystra." I bowed to her.
"Gale of Waterdeep. You look well." Mystra said with a pleasant, diplomatic smile.
"I am so very glad for the opportunity to speak. We need your help." I replied briskly.
"My help?" Mystra raised an eyebrow archedly as her smile fell away as abrubtly as a sunbeam cut off by a passing cloud. "My help, for a task you have already had ample opportunity to complete and did not even attempt? You disobeyed my instructions, Gale. Why?"
"I didn't want to die." I admitted frankly. "And I wanted to kill all of my friends even less. Hawke believed we could find another way to defeat the Absolute, a better way. And I agreed with him."
"A 'better way'?" Mystra crossed her arms skeptically. "And did this 'better way' involve your seeking a greater understanding of the power of Karsus? By what right do you believe you are even entitled to such an understanding?"
"I don't even want the power of Karsus any longer!" I denied heatedly. "And if you've been watching me, then you already know that! I gave Karsus' notes and calculations to Elminster literally right before this meeting!"
"Your mouth says the right words and your hands execute fair-seeming actions, but I know your heart." Mystra's eyes narrowed. "Part of you lusts for it still."
"Part of me is very angry right now." I stated flatly after a short pause for thought. "To have so little trust in me even after I chose to give up chasing the Crown and turned over Karsus' notes to Elminster - that hurt." Blunt honestly had always worked out somehow for Hawke, so I figured I might as well try some. "But I'm not going to let my anger drive me to any foolish gestures of spite. Very few mortals ever entirely free themselves of unworthy thoughts, and those few that manage to are called 'saints'. Which I freely admit I'm not. But just because we're not perfect doesn't mean we can't be good. I remain committed to the preservation of your Weave just as I always have, and if I occasionally feel the stupid impulse to do otherwise then those are impulses I will gladly repress."
"I cannot trust the preservation of the Weave to the purported integrity of a mortal. Any mortal." Mystra's voice was iron - as iron as a sword stabbing me through the heart, which is what it felt like at the moment. "Particularly not the one who almost destroyed it once before."
"I never-!" I protested desperately, only to fall silent as she loomed over me menacingly.
"The fragment that you unleashed was never of my creation. It was a newborn fragment of what was intended to be the Karsite Weave. A corrupted, stillborn fragment of what Karsus' mad ambition would have had consume my Weave - consume me - and replace it all with something forged in his image. A menace wrought by Karsus' hand in his one fleeting moment of would-be divinity, and abandoned as incomplete upon his death - until you loosed it again into the world."
My heart almost stopped at the full realization of what I'd done when I'd unleashed the Orb. "I-I didn't know!" I stammered. "I truly did not! I would never have even contemplated such an action if I'd had!"
"You should have known!" Mystra almost shouted. "The merest glance at that thing should have told you that such a corrupted abomination could never have been mine! The Orb is a cancer upon reality, an insatiable void that would consume all magic in existence and still never be sated. But you were so arrogant, so cocksure, so hasty in your lust for further glory that you ripped open the fabric of the Weave without a moment's consideration! Even now that accursed thing 'slumbers' only because I allow it to feed upon the true Weave in measured amounts, deliberately sacrificing parts of my own existence every day simply to preserve you for a little longer. Every breath you have taken since the moment of your folly has been a gift from me, and yet you would still ask for more?"
"But why didn't you tell any of me this?" I begged. "All those months I languished in Waterdeep, not knowing why you were so enraged with me? How could I begin to make amends for an offense when I was never told how I had truly offended?" A horrible suspicion began to dawn upon me. "If the threat of the Absolute had not come along and presented you with an actual use for the orb, would you ever have spoken to me again? Would your forgiveness ever have been offered at all if you didn't have this task to be done - if you hadn't needed a new promise to motivate me? Or would I simply have never heard from you at all until my time inevitably ran out and I faced your judgement in Dweomerheart after the orb finished entirely unraveling and killing me?"
"Why do you even ask that question, when the important question is why did you ever unleash unearth the Karsite Weave fragment in the first place? Why could you not just remain content with what you had already had?" Mystra's voice pleaded. "I had blessed you beyond all other mages in your generation - as I have only blessed a very few mages in the history of our world - and yet that was not enough?"
"You did bless me beyond most others." I agreed calmly. "And I never truly felt worthy of any of it. I didn't want to hurt you. I just wanted to do something that would impress you. That would... prove myself to you. Something besides merely working the magic that was already a gift from you anyway, and that you could always surpass my greatest efforts at with a twitch of your fingers. Something that none of your other Chosen, or candidates for Chosen, had ever managed." I lowered my head, downcast. "And yes, I failed at that. Epically."
"You did." Mystra agreed. "But I gave you yet another chance. I gave you the opportunity to sacrifice yourself to save all of existence from the Absolute, with eternal paradise as your promised reward. And yet it seems that that was not enough for you either."
"That wasn't about me!" I denied heatedly. "If I'd been the only one who'd have died then I'd have done it without even a protest! But are the lives of so many innocent people a matter of indifference to you, so long as you are kept safe from any potential danger posed by the Crown?" Gale's voice raised to a shout. "All of my friends? Jaheira and all her Harpers? Isobel and Aylin - gods, the original Mystryl was the progeny of Selune and Shar so in a distant sense we're talking about your own family there! Was I so wrong to care about them, and about everyone else who would have been caught within the blast radius if I'd detonated the Orb under Moonrise?" My jaw set firmly and my voice grew harsher as he continued. "And although I didn't know it at the time, according to what Orpheus told us later destroying the elder brain underneath Moonrise Towers would have meant the inevitable ceremorphosis of every infected person on the Sword Coast and beyond. Our tadpoles are only kept paused so long as the elder brain remains alive - it's death-shock would trigger an immediate transformation. Without us using the Netherstones to command the elder brain to safely deactivate all of its tadpoles before it died, killing the elder brain would unleash newborn illithids all over the Sword Coast and beyond. And that illithid plague would have bid fair to consume most of the continent before it was finally burnt out. And you would have known all this!"
"I did know." Mystra admitted without hesitation. "But compared to the risk posed by not taking the earliest and most certain opportunity to defeat the Absolute, even that large a death toll would be relatively minimal. Your hope of controlling the elder brain via the Netherstones is a vain and most unlikely gamble, and if you delay much longer and the elder brain finishes its final evolution then you doom not merely Toril but an unknowable number of other spheres. You would gamble uncounted billions of souls in order to try and spare several millions of lives who would still die anyway when your gamble failed. I will not enable such foolish and short-sighted sentiment. The threat of the Absolute must be destroyed expeditiously - this I command!"
"And by 'expeditiously' you mean-?" I trailed off knowingly.
"With Orpheus' full power to shield you, you can approach to within a near distance of the elder brain without losing your free will. Abandon your quest for the other two Netherstones. Strike off the Prince of the Comet's chains today. Go directly to the elder brain pool underneath the Upper City. And when the elder brain confronts you, detonate the orb." Mystra commanded. "The Crown and Orb will both be destroyed by the explosion, as will the elder brain. All of existence will be safe from the threat of the Absolute. And the Weave will also be safe from you."
"At the cost of all my friends and allies, every innocent life in Baldur's Gate, and a goodly chunk of Torilian souls forever snuffed from the cycle of creation by illithids." I shook my head. "As well as the fate of multiple entire planes, given that the very racial destiny of the githyanki is currently at a crux point and your plan also writes off Orpheus - and with him the last chance to ever end the tyranny of Vlaakith's dynasty. Unless there is truly no other possible way, the cost is just too high."
"The risk is too high!" Mystra evaded my implicit question.
"At least two other deities believe we've still got good odds. Why don't you?" I challenged her.
"Jergal does not so believe." Mystra denied flatly. "He is ultimately indifferent to your success or failure - he aids you solely because Helm insists that he do so, as a gesture of atonement for Jergal's lapse in judgment for raising the Dead Three to divinity in the first place. And Selune is being far more foolishly optimistic in this matter than I will risk being."
I closed my eyes and tried to process the sheer amount of anguish I was feeling. Anguish... and disappointment. My glorious, shining goddess, who I'd loved with all my heart, who I thought had loved me - I barely even recognized her now in this cold, logical stranger. Was this the sort of ruthless calculation that the office of divinity demanded of people? Did she feel sorrow in her heart at the bloody price of her schemes and was simply too proud to let me see any of it? Or was she truly as cosmically indifferent as she appeared? Had she truly grown so far beyond mortality that she couldn't even remember it?
If I'd had any lingering doubts about Hawke's advice, this would have settled them for all time. I shuddered inwardly at the thought of having ever wanted to divinely ascend, and to have ever risked becoming as detached from the reality of life and love as this. I sorrowed at the thought that any reconnection between me and Mystra was now a vain and impossible hope - that it always had been. That indeed it may have never been, and that what I'd thought was love had in fact been a mere dalliance for her. Or the even worse possibility that it had been love for her, in the only manner in which she was still capable of feeling it - a horribly incomplete and non-mortal manner, and one that I could never truly condone or be fulfilled by.
I really did not look forward to a lifetime of being a practitioner of a Weave whose goddess I would always be emotionally estranged from and was at present feeling just a tad bitter towards, but that did not change the facts. Regardless of my disastrous ex-relationship status I was still Gale Dekarios. Still an archmage. Still a man who wanted to do the right thing. And still a man with a job to do.
"With all due respect, my lady, I don't think it's your place to decide." I confronted her. "Nor is it Jergal's, or Selune's, or even Ao's. I believe that the proper role of the divine is to inspire and guide and help, not to demand. Because ultimately it has to be our decision. Us mortals. Us people down there on the spot, the ones who actually have to fight the battles and bear the wounds - and pay the costs. Isobel once told Shadowheart that the gods must allow mortals their choices, for good or for ill, and I believe she got that one direct from the source. So I will not detonate this orb so long as I can credibly believe we still have a viable alternative." I swallowed in a dry throat and frantically worked my tongue to try and get enough saliva to moisten my mouth with so that I could keep talking. "I remain committed to our party's current course of action, and I humbly ask you for even just a little more help in that regard. Because wouldn't it be better if we could destroy the threat of the Absolute and the Crown without such a heavy blood price?"
"... no." Mystra decided after a long, weighty pause. "You are correct in that I cannot compel your decision. But that restriction does not require me to encourage what I see only as folly. Still, if by some miracle you do manage to defeat the Absolute without detonating the Orb then you must separate the Crown of Karsus from the elder brain and bring it and all three Netherstones to me." She paused and then continued more awkwardly. "With the Crown and the Netherstones, I will be able to safely defuse the threat of the Orb without requiring your death. This is the only further mercy I can offer you."
I exhaled heavily. "Then I suppose that will have to be enough." I shook my head. "If we all come out of this alive, I'll still remain committed to magic and its rightful use and preservation. But I cannot imagine my being a very devout worshipper of yourself in the future."
"I believe we have said all that can be said." Mystra replied diplomatically. "Go, Gale. The hour of your confrontation with the Absolute draws inevitably near, and we have little time to waste." I turned to leave, and her voice caught behind me with a slight hitch. "And... good luck."
"Fare thee well." were the only words I could find in return, and with them I returned to Toril.
Author's Note: I had originally planned to do the convo with Mystra offstage but then I realized it's important enough that we needed a camera POV - and as Gale is alone in that scene, we needed an interlude. Fortunately it's been a while since the last one, so we had a nice spacing.
My thoughts on Mystra in BG3 are less than kind. I mean, she has a couple of valid points - all of which I made sure to include in this conversation - but I still think she was being way too harsh, and for exactly the reason I had Gale eventually figure out here. She's simply too far removed from mortality and has forgotten about how Gale legitimately could not have known about some of this, or about how mortals actually feel pain when you hurt their feelings like that. Mystra's relationship with him was simply not on a healthy power dynamic ever and would never have worked in the long run, and we see why.
Anything else beyond that - notably, whether or not she legitimately regrets the cost of the Hard Woman Making Hard Choices she's doing, or if she's indifferent to it - remains unknown, because Gale doesn't know it, therefore I don't have to tell the readers about it when writing from his POV. Which conveniently gets the author off the hook for having to answer the question at all. You can choose to believe yourself exactly what degree of regret Mystra might or might not be feeling over her utilarian approach. The only thing canon and I are committing to is that she did indeed order him to blow the orb as soon as possible, despite knowing the collateral.
About half of Mystra's dialogue is taken straight from the game, the other half is yet another voyage of the USS Make Shit Up. However, as I'm having Gale come into that conversation nontrivially different from how he does in canon, of course the convo goes in other directions as well. And in the game Mystra does not order Gale to 'ditch your plans and just go blow the damn thing up right now', that's all me. However, it's logical that she would order that done if the narrative were freed from the necessity of following game quest logic, and so she does.
In-game, Mystra cures Gale of the Orb no muss no fuss if he chooses the 'bring her the Crown' ending. This implies that she could have done that at any time, which makes Mystra really look horrible in hindsight. So I chose to go with the fudge 'she needs Karsus' demigod-artifact to safely defuse Karsus' other demigod-artifact without a kaboom' so as to actually get her off the hook there.
