Hours passed in which he moved around in nothing but ash and dust. His own footsteps echoed in his ears as his breath stumbled. The air was so dry that it hurt to breathe in.

Unperturbed, Tara led him on through this desolate wasteland. A sigh almost caught in Gale's throat. He could hardly think properly.

The hole in his chest stirred with every step, yearned for more. For everything.

His steps trembled. Beads of sweat shimmered on his forehead, he sweated as if the sun was shining down on him.

The ash that stuck to his pale skin burned like the kiss of fire, but at the same time it cooled him like a salty wave of the sea.

It felt like little shreds of magic seeping into his body. They fed the emptiness inside him and silenced the hunger.

Everything about this place was strange and yet it fascinated him. A story lurked after every step. His mind chased wildly from thought to thought, fabricating a possible explanation for what must have happened.

He still couldn't ignore the obvious. A powerful fire must have razed everything to the ground. So powerful that he himself could not have created such an inferno.

"When will we get there?", Gale tore his gaze away from the ruins of a mighty tree whose trunk had been burnt to black coal. "Do you even know where we're going?"

Small embers still flickered between the branches.

She did not answer. Unusual, because normally she had some interest in interacting with him, either to express her opinion or to tell him off as if she were his mother.

"Tara?", Gale stared into the veil of smoke.

Light was swallowed up by the swathes. His gaze tried to find her outline, he listened for the beating of small wings.

But there was nothing.

The beat of his heart changed. He could feel it hammering against the bones of his chest.

"Tara!", she would have called him dramatic if she could have heard the tremble in his voice.

How often had he relied on her perception?

Her support?

Just the thought that she was always nearby whenever he needed company calmed his pounding heart. But now she was gone and worse still, he didn't know where.

The world of ash and dust had swallowed her.

Violet light lit up from between his fingers. Stars of silver rose in it, disintegrated and formed anew.

The arcane arts had once been reserved only for the peoples who had been closely interwoven with the Weave. Then Mystra had sealed it off from all through the veil. She had thus separated magic and earth from each other forever.

As a result of her actions, less nature-loving creatures were also able to utilise magic. As a human man, Gale had been blessed with the kind of power that only the purest bloodlines of the elves had once possessed.

But all this talent was of no use to him. Words dripped from his lips like water, spoken in a long forgotten language of a long faded people. He could feel the power of his magic, opened his heart to it and let it flow through his veins like blood.

And yet it did not help. Unlike so many times before, Tara did not respond to the incantation. She stayed away from him. So far away that he felt truly lonely for the first time in years.

"Tara...", he used his voice again.

But what could it help if even his magic, the most powerful, best and most flawless thing about him, couldn't call her back to his side?

At that moment, he was just a man. And he hated the feeling of not being enough. Neither for his high lady nor for the faithful companion he had known at his side since he was ten years old.

"Tara!", Gale didn't recognise himself as he stumbled on through the soot.

The clouds of smoke and heat irritated his lungs with every breath. He had never been to Avernus, hell, and yet he believed that this place was dangerously close to the original.

Sweat stuck to his skin. Ash discoloured his dark brown hair to a dreary grey. The world blurred before his irritated eyes as something suddenly awoke in the shadows.

He stopped, alert.

Without thinking about it, he reached for the staff that hung across his back. He was not good at physical martial arts. If he were to be attacked from an ambush, he would be at a massive disadvantage.

And not only that, he was also not good at healing. This was withheld from the clerics, especially those who chose Mystra as their patron saint.

A tingling sensation spread across the back of his neck. Nevertheless, he could not help but walk towards the dark in the midst of the swathes.

Holding his breath, he listened, but all he could hear was the crackling of dying flames. Sometimes he thought the fire was screaming. At other times it went out quietly and gently like the song of a lullaby.

Glistening golden light enveloped him and formed an armour out of the fabric. It would not save him from death by blade, but it would be able to absorb the first blow.

An outline suddenly awoke among the soot and ash. Gale listened up. Everything was dead silent. Ghosts usually roamed a battlefield like this. But he could sense nothing of such creatures either.

The outline grew sharper with every step. His companion's name was on the tip of his tongue again when he suddenly paused.

In front of him, far more than several hundred feet high, a tower of barren stone rose into the dark sky. Deep grooves ran through the natural grain, some of them so deep that he could put his entire hand into them.

Despite the unbridled heat, the tower's façade was cold to the touch. A stream of magic flowed through it. And even if Gale didn't want to admit it, he had to realise that this stream was so powerful that he could feel his endless hunger shrinking at the mere thought.