Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He knows who he was. Barely. If only because when the old withered corpse told him his name it stuck like a burr in his confused, scattered mind. For a time after their meeting, he wanders the fugue plane alone, whispering the name back to himself as he tries to recollect more. He can only move slowly; his torn soul is as light as paper, and just as easily swayed by the currents of this deathly realm.

It’s not that his memories are out and out gone, he is no amnesiac without a past. More like he is in a state of shock, knowing they are there in what remains of his heart, but unable to properly reach for them. The pain of his death is, after all, the first memory that shrouds his mind when he tries. 

And in fact, he doesn’t even remember Raphael when the devil comes for him, not at first. But the memories come back soon enough as the creature recounts his sins, his… debts. A hammer in exchange for the promised crown—but the crown for a brief, transient taste of godhood. Inexpressible, hitherto unscaled heights. To all come crashing down into the flames of the Hells. 

He remembers enough to know he, absolutely, does not want what’s coming next. 

All too quickly, he is borne away to an open dungeon where the air boils and other prisoners scream in the distance; the scent of Infernal magic in the air informs his still cloudy mind that it's to somewhere in Avernus that he has been taken. Beneath Raphael's abode, presumably.

He's on a metal platform, one of several suspended with hideous machinery and chains. In the expanse there are no cells, few walls, no floors beyond two crumbling ledges in the distance; the whole works hang in open air, with a war-torn wasteland all around it. And most alarmingly, he is not alone here. Something large, hungry, and monstrous prowls the air beyond like a giant Scrying Eye, an aberration he'd only seen once before.

But Raphael materializes in front of him before he can inspect his surroundings more than that; he glares down at his prisoner now, brimming with hot fury as his lips part to show perfect fangs. His skin darkens red, wings unfurling, and it's as if his human form burns away in a flash of infernal fire. "Ah, and here we are again; the House of Hope. Perhaps not the coziest part of it. But it’ll do for now. So, allow me to give you a warm welcome to your new, permanent home." 

Devil form now on full display, he snaps his fingers. 

Spectral chains materialize and snap around the fragmentary soul, weighing him down just as he has begun to pick himself off the hard ground. They are heavy, and hot to the touch, but he doesn't have time to acclimate to the heat on his skin before he is hoisted up, sharp talons closed around his neck. Pulled in two directions he chokes, feebly struggling as he clings to the red hand.

"I had actually grown fond of you, you know," Raphael growls out; his clawed thumb gently strokes the soul’s throat. "Why, you were practically a man after my own heart, a man of ambition. Unfortunately, like all mortals your ambitions were bigger than your competence, and now you’ve lost the one thing you were good for."

The soul is unable to form a comprehensible reply, at first. Some remnant of his pride bristles. Accused of incompetence—but in his living memories, he succeeded, didn’t he? For just a moment, he’d succeeded. He’d been a god. And so he grits out through his clamped teeth, "At least… I … got my hands on it." Fingers prying at the claws making marks in his skin. "You… never… could."

"Oh, dear."

A dark sneer further distorts Raphael’s features as he clicks his tongue, and the soul’s sight blurs with red; a prickling starts over his skin where it makes contact with the devil’s hand, with the chains on his wrists and ankles. Then in an instant a flame erupts from all five points, making him thrash; it washes over his whole body, searing him to a crisp like a burning match. It splits his voice into a howl.

Whatever is happening is Raphael’s doing; he drops the soul to the platform to writhe. "Now, for how often you like to play with it, I'd thought you resistant to fire," he muses, chuckling cruelly. "But it seems I was mistaken."

Eyes boiling, his vision blackens. The fire licks him like a tongue, and it lingers especially over his chest, where a certain raw pain had never healed. It lasts for only a moment but he is sobbing for breath by the time it’s over, grasping at himself as the blossoming pain diminishes. The soul tries to regain his composure—and fails when he releases his arms and feels his bubbling skin peeling away from his palms. 

Though when his vision returns, dimmed, he looks relatively intact. …Though not unchanged.

Hellish eyes narrowing, Raphael begins to pace around him. The soul can barely move as he does, pinned in agony; the metal beneath him is still hot, as are his bindings, and even the other screams rising into the air feel like blades against his ears. 

"I spent over a thousand years in perfect patience," his tormentor hisses while he circles him. "Thousands of years waiting for you. Even if you were not noble enough to honor your debts, you could have done as I had. Bided your time and grown up your power. Watched for your opportunity, while you became a real force to be reckoned with." Then a petulant strike, a shoe connects with his ribs. "But no! You just couldn’t wait to have your revenge on the one who scorned you, could you? Couldn’t wait to get your hands bloody with Mystra’s divine entrails, and so you fell, like a fool. Patience is a skill you sorely lack, my dear Dekarios."

Silence, for a moment—silence from Raphael, at least, while a feminine wail rips over his head from elsewhere.

"...But I will teach it to you, I think." Now the devil lets out another laugh, low and void of mirth. "After all, you do like to learn, don’t you, my boy? Whereas I live to educate. And we have an eternity to drill this lesson into your head."

Raphael kneels in front of the soul. He grasps him, yanks him back upright. And he smiles, flickering, baring his fangs. Something tugs upon the soul’s consciousness as he gazes into that bedeviled face; a rage exudes from him, hotter and more terrible than even the bite of infernal flames.

"So, be a good little student.

"Be a good little mouse."

Chapter Text

Patience, Gale.

How many people have chided him so?

It’s impossible to keep track of time in Avernus, especially for a soul of the dead. Surely days pass, if not weeks; it’s as if the devil has cleared his schedule for the sole activity of punishing him for his transgression. (Perhaps this was simply energy he would have been putting into conquering the Hells with the Crown of Karsus.)

For a while it’s like Gale has lost his mind, and before he even had time to properly reassemble it, too. All he knows is agony, locked away underneath the House of Hope, subjected to one torture after another as Raphael vents upon the last remaining fragment of his soul. Countless and increasingly creative ways to make him suffer; his bones broken one by one, skin peeled off in strips like from an underripe fruit. His eyes plucked and squashed underfoot, his body scalded in oil or surrendered to an eternal flame—

Whenever there is not enough of him left to hurt, he’s taken elsewhere, to an airy room with a large running bath in the center. The first time it happened, in his mad animal instinct he thought the intention was to drown him, forgetting that he no longer needed to breathe, per se; he fought, thrashed, while a pair of imps held him under the water.

Far from a drowning pit, the bath had healing properties. He was restored to some immaterial sense of "full health" after only a minute or so of soaking in it. Not out of kindness, of course—Raphael simply wasn’t done playing yet.

Sometimes, the punishment is more subtle. He’s assaulted with visions, his most painful conjured memories replayed in cutting detail, or tableaus from the depths of Baator so unfit for mortal consumption that for an instant he is horribly relieved when he finds himself back in the House of Hope. He can’t sleep, and yet there are nightmares.

In between his screams, in the times before his voice goes hoarse he babbles, mindlessly begs for mercy. From Raphael, primarily. From Mystra, as if she could or would hear him. He even supplicates the lower fiends that assist with his torture— anyone that could possibly end his suffering. Not one answers, naturally, but it seems to entertain the devil.

"No one is coming to rescue you, mageling," he says to him at one point, grinning with sharpened fangs. "I’m all you have now. Your companions have moved on without you, your goddess spits on you… if your errant existence even blights her memory at all. This humble home of mine is all there is, for you, until the end of eternity."

In his slightly more lucid moments, he thinks that can’t be true; the thought is more painful than anything Raphael can do to him. This , this can’t be all there is, for him to languish here in obscurity. Just another tally in a single cambion’s scorecard over the mortal world. He who climbed so high, who touched the heavens, who tasted godhood—

He’s farther from Elysium than ever before. Dead. Disgraced. Employed as a devil’s plaything; an abject and objective failure. A part of him won’t stop railing at it, won’t stop howling and berating himself every time his soul is toyed with like a puppet. He loathes Raphael, but loathes himself more. 

"...Why…?" he warbled once out of bloodstained lips, after one session ended and another was soon to begin. He couldn’t see straight (he suspects his limited sight, whenever his eyes are intact at all, is a deliberate affliction.) But he could see Raphael in the periphery of his vision—he always can.

The devil’s hellish eyes flickered his way. "Hm?"

"Why keep me here?" he rasped. His words were fragile; they were the first he had spoken with any clarity in a while, and even then he was not sure he was consciously choosing them. "Why–why not be rid of me? Why not bind me to a soul coin, or turn me into a lemure, and be done with it?"

Laughter, cruel and quiet, above him. "Is that fear that I hear, or is it longing? " Raphael replied, his barbed tail swinging teasingly into Gale’s face. "Don’t fret. This is no kyton station to factory mold your flesh, to toss your soul into the shriver and call it a day. Be rest assured, I wouldn’t dream of ending our time together so inelegantly."

He felt Raphael’s fingers sift softly into his hair, claws just scraping his scalp, before the devil tightened his grip and gave his head a good yank. Then he growled into his ear, 

"Nor would I abolish your consciousness so quickly after what you’ve lost me, in your boundless arrogance."

When he was still alive, Gale had learned something about enduring pain; his limited memories of his past life told him as much. The orb had ravaged him night and day then, slowly feeding on the magic in his body until he felt hollow inside, twisting at his conscience with the looming consequences of failing to keep it in check. 

It’s not the same, not at all. But he clings to the concept as he’s tossed between moments of madness. 

He would try to be… patient.

After ages pass, there’s a time when Raphael finally leaves him, broken and twitching, on the floor of his  open cell. While he circles him his devil features—his tail and wings and horns—vanish, traded out for his human guise, the smiling nobleman with charm and malice in his dark eyes. 

That form was the one he introduced himself with. But it’s uncanny now, strange after being exposed to the more infernal one for so long.

"As much as it sustains me to watch you suffer, Dekarios, this is where I leave you, for now. I have more urgent business to conduct on the material plane," he says to his prisoner. He smirks when Gale starts to register the words, the soul blinking rapidly. "But before you celebrate—the fox will not be gone long, little mouse. I invite you to reflect on your lessons thus far. And know that if the loneliness becomes too unbearable for you, I will be all too happy to secure playmates for your pleasure."

Silent, sweat sizzling on his skin, Gale just watches Raphael depart in a flicker that smells of brimstone. Then he lays back down, curling in on himself protectively with what little strength remains. His head feels scattered and empty, but he does at least appreciate—hard as it is to believe—that he has been finally, finally left alone. 

Well, not completely alone. There are other souls imprisoned here, or at least he believes so—he can hear them sometimes, though not see them. And the Spectators always watch him when they drift close, the eternal guards and wardens of the chamber, ready to turn him to stone if he should somehow break his chains and escape.

But none of them are Raphael, and aside from the hideous fact that he would be back eventually, Gale finds himself uniquely grateful for that.

"I thought he’d never leave."

It doesn’t take very long for something to disturb his growing relief. When he raises his head, there is someone new in front of him. 

Gale jerks before he’s even had a proper look, his chains clanging and hissing. Though it’d be pretty ludicrous to mistake the figure for Raphael; she’s short in stature, a weary-faced dwarf dressed in the old, battered armor of a cleric. He detects a faint whisper of magic surrounding her, a shiver of hunger inside him . This is a projection, perhaps not unlike the kind he used to make back when he was able to channel the Weave.

Her tear-streaked eyes widen when he pulls back, and she holds out her hands. "It’s okay! I’m not a danger to you… or to anyone, really. I just wanted to say hello. Sometime when he’s not around." She smiles crookedly. "I’m a—I’m a friend! …Or, will be… hopefully. We're—roommates, anyway. I’m just there, on the opposite end"

She points behind her, where on a far platform there stood blurry reddish shapes Gale can’t quite make out. He regards her warily. She doesn’t look like a fiend… but there’s something about the quality of her voice, something familiar that sets him on edge.  "And you would be?" he asks, speech scratching and faint.

"Something you should be familiar with," she says with a sheepish laugh. "What I am, you had a bit too much of, I heard."

It sounds like a riddle; he used to be good at those, or was he? A word comes to his lips more easily than his own name. "Hubris?"

This gives her a second of pause, and the dwarf looks upon him with surprise. "Hope." Then her voice escalates into a screech as she writhes. "Oh but HUBRIS WORKS FINE TOO YOU IDIOT!"

A Spectator lingering at the edges of Gale’s vision swivels testily in their direction, and he hisses at the projection to be quiet as his heart pounds. He’s felt their teeth under his skin, felt their fear rays sear his mind. 

For her part, the dwarf looks mortified, crouching down as if to seem smaller, shivering as she waits with him for the aberration to pass them by. Which it eventually does, if slowly. When she speaks next, her voice is quieter. "I, I… It’s-it’s Hope. My name is Hope. The kind of thing a wizard has, when he has the key to his own fate in his hands."

Gentle she may sound, but Gale winces at her comment. "Raphael told you about me, I’m guessing."

"Well, he was furious. Is. Furious." She shakes her head, her eyes squeezing shut and then opening again, gleaming with reproach. "Who… who do you think he took it out on before he found you? When he was still r-rooting around in the Fugue Plane looking for your pieces?"

Gale is too exhausted to muster up any more remorse, only pushing himself further upright with some difficulty, ignoring how it made his surroundings swim. No need to look like a wild creature any longer. "You have my apologies, then," he grunts. "For not delivering myself directly to his doorstep, after my humiliating and untimely end."

"For keeping that crown out of his hands, you deserve a medal," Hope hisses. Gale looks at her incredulously, and she adds in a more sheepish tone, "I only know what he's told me about it, which… isn't much. But I know it’s very bad when Raphael gets what he wants. Just like it’s bad when he doesn’t get what he wants." She takes a deep breath. "He’s just BAD."

The volume makes him flinch, but this time the Spectator is too far away to be bothered. …That aside, it’s the first kind thing anyone’s said to him in, well, he doesn’t know. However long he’s been down here. "...Thank you," he replies, strained. "Though I'm not sure a medal is… entirely appropriate for someone who attempted to usurp his goddess."

She looked at him, wide-eyed. "Oh, he wasn't exaggerating."

"Far from it; I had very lofty ambitions when I was alive." Gale leaned in closer, the pain of his defeat burning in his chest even as he smiles, as he steadies his voice from breaking. "Would rather not dwell on all that, though. The tricky thing about almost becoming a god is the… the ‘almost’ part."

She smiles at him, and it feels novel.

It could be a trick, he knows, and he wants to be wary. It reminds him of the Emperor—appearing to him as a beautiful creature, saying precisely what he wanted to hear until the time came for the mask to come off. But the Emperor had been exactly what he needed, for a time, and to Gale’s broken and burned heart she’s like an ambrosia. One of his sleeves has begun to smoke; he gingerly smothers it. "The name is Gale, by the way. Gale of—"

His voice trails off, his immaterial heart giving an uncomfortable thud. He can’t remember.

"... Of… of somewhere. Of here, now, I suppose." He shakes his head. "... Er, just Gale Dekarios."

"Yes! That’s what he called you," Hope returns enthusiastically, clasping her hands together. "You’re not as bad as some of the other debtors upstairs. You’re not all that mad, yet. Oh he’ll fix that, or he is, fixing that, he’s going to —but, but not yet. Maybe, maybe not ever."

He swallows. "What about you? I trust you’re not simply another debtor. You don’t strike me as particularly hellish, either."

"I’m no debtor," she confirms. "I don’t owe Raphael anything. Not that it matters, because he just takes and TAKES and TAKES MORE of what he wants—" She cuts herself off, takes a deep breath. "... I’m not here by choice, anyway, the same as you."

"I suppose it’s a coincidence, then, that this place is called the House of Hope, and your name is—well, Hope."

She looks at him sadly, her magic form shivering. "No. It’s not a coincidence."

But that’s the only thing the dwarf says about that, a silence that suggests she wouldn’t like being pressed on the particulars. Gale closes his eyes. Whatever the case, it doesn’t look like she’s in any position to help him, any more than he is in a position to help her. It’s disappointing, even given how low his expectations of his fate have fallen. 

Still, she stands by him. "Raphael mentioned you had friends. Would you tell me about them?"

His friends. He hasn’t thought about them in a long time; he fears that there are already names missing, gaps in his memory about even such recent events. His eyes open again, and he smiles ruefully. "I had traveling companions, at least. A motley bunch; some of them were far kinder than I deserved."

He tries to summon their names back to mind. Wyll, Karlach, Lae’zel, Shadowheart. Astarion. Halsin. Who else…

"Oh, and a cat. Ah—tressym."

"I always loved cats," Hope chirrups appreciatively. "I—I don’t like the cats down here, though."

Gale laughs weakly, tired head drooping. "I’m absolutely certain they don’t hold a candle to mine." But the good humor fades quickly. "...I’m afraid I didn’t part with all of them on the best of terms. My friends, I mean, not the tressym.

"Well..."

Hissing, scratching, scolding, then pleading when not even that makes it through to him. Anger—she didn’t believe in him. After all they’d been through, all he’d achieved, at this of all times when he wanted her support the most. A flick of his wrist saw her out, an arcane lock behind her for when she tried to come back in through the window. 

He had work to do. She would see.

"... The tressym, too."

Hope nods slowly, as if this was something with which she also had experience. "I haven’t seen any of my friends in a long, long time. I’m sure they gave me up for dead years ago. At least, I hope they did."

"But you’re not, I assume?" Gale interrupts. "Dead, that is."

That makes her laugh, perhaps a little harder than his observation warranted. "I don’t think so! I don’t want to be! … I’m not sure what would happen to me if I—" 

A shiver abruptly cuts off her increasingly melancholy voice, and the projection’s gaze turns from him to across the chasms of the dungeon. The Spectators are down there, now; even Gale can tell, at least from the fact that they aren’t in range of his vision here . They’re gathered together, the faint reptilian sounds they make just barely reaching him in the acoustics of the chamber.

This realization makes Hope squirm, wringing her hands together nervously. "I need to go."

Gale chokes. "Now? We’ve only just started talking."

Rapidly she nods. "Before I get caught, yes. It was good to meet you, especially after what you’ve done, but I—"

"–Wait, wait!" The effect on him is instantaneous, almost physical; a sucking dread that takes him by surprise, runs his throat dry. Though his muscles sharply protest, he moves as if he could possibly stop her from disappearing, coming just short of grabbing her intangible sleeve.

"I really, really can't–" It startles her; even were he capable of touching her, she moves out of his range anyway. 

She’s going to disappear. Leave him alone to wait for Raphael's return, like she had never been at all. "Don't leave me." Head spinning Gale inches forward again, as far his bindings will currently allow. "Please."

"I'm not leaving you, I'm right over there," With increasing agitation Hope points behind her again, to the blurry shapes she indicated to be her side of the dungeon. "We can talk later. I’ll try to. But right now I don't want to have my insides boiled and I KNOW you know what that’s like!"

To his surprise, he finds a flicker of fear on her face when he looks closer, even being that the face belonged to a projection. He forces down the impulse to beg further, at the sight, squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. "... Yes, I… alright, go then."

"Thank you. Oh!" She’d begun to turn away, but now she whirls back to him one last time. "Do me a huge favor? Pleasepleaseplease don’t mention to Raphael that we talked. He’d get vvvery weird about it."

An obvious request, with an obvious reasoning behind it. It does occur to Gale, of course, that invoking Raphael’s rage against one of his other prisoners might lengthen the time of his own reprieve, just as he suspects his torment has lessened Hope’s. But he pushes such a mercenary thought away, smiling weakly and with little mirth. "What’s a favor between friends?"

"It’s everything." Though she is solemn and serious at first, Hope breaks into another grin, bearing an excitement despite their circumstances that he envies. "Like I said. It was very nice to meet you, Gale. I—I hope Raphael doesn’t take away any more of you, I would be sad to see it go." 

That disturbingly cheery comment is the last thing she says before the projection vanishes, and with it the tingle of magic that it left in the air. For all he’s already experienced, Gale feels shockingly emptier in its absence. He can’t even see far enough across to see if Hope made it back to her body in time, though he can still make out the blurry shape of both Spectators there, sniffing around something.

He takes a shuddering breath, an unnecessary one but a reflex all the same as he suppresses panic. He lets his head hang back, weariness taking over his body.

Strange, though, he thinks; "take away any more of him". What else is there left to take?

Chapter Text

"Your concern for me is touching, but I assure you I’ve heard enough censure from Wyll and Halsin over what happened today."

Never did the darkness of the Shadowlands look more oppressive than now, in the bubble of Moonrise’s pixie-dust lanterns. Like this den of vicious cultists was, paradoxically, the only safe haven from a cruel world pressing in. Gale had been watching the dark water while he stood by the currently-empty docks, taking advantage of the stillness in the tower during what constituted "nighttime" to find a moment alone.

Avoiding the "conversation" he was going to have to have with Tara.

That was where she found him, his larger-than-life tiefling companion with a new lease on touching everything and everyone now that she could. She announced herself by nudging his elbow as she stood beside him by the wall. "I’m not looking to lecture you, Gale. But we’re surrounded by shadows and we’re all just a little bit worried that you’re scarfing them down."

"It was only the one… one serving of Shadow Weave. I’m hardly taking darkness into me like a banquet," he said back with an irritable swallow.

"Right, well, it only took a few seconds for that Harper to get turned into a shadow zombie if you’ll remember, so…"

It was something he felt the need to protest, though the truth was it wasn’t just the criticism that weighed on his mind now. It was the approval, too. Astarion purring about how he was glad to see Gale would "do anything" for power, Shadowheart’s lukewarm appraisal that it was the only option they had. And that wasn’t the worst of it…

"I am at no risk of being turned into one of those cursed creatures. Not from doing this, at any rate." At her dubious look, he sputtered, "I grant you it must look like an extreme measure, but we are under extreme circumstances. There’s a lot riding on our shoulders. And not to sound arrogant, but there is a lot riding on mine, in particular."

There was a troubled wrinkle to her brow; he was sure he didn't need to explain again what his future held. The charge that lingered in the back of his mind, even as he stepped further away from the goddess who issued it. 

Eventually Karlach just clapped his shoulder. "Do what you’ve gotta do, Gale, but remember you’ve got me around. Next time you get peckish for magic, trust ol’ Karlach here to handle some of these bad guys instead of eating up something that might not agree with you."

"... You do have a way with words, Karlach," he said dryly. "I will keep that in mind."

It must not have sounded very sincere of him, because she didn’t look at ease. "You should probably get some rest, too, yeah?"

"You should. I’ll… need some time. Rest doesn’t come easy with so much on my mind," he murmured.

Karlach left only reluctantly, and Gale let out a long sigh, folding his arms in front of his chest.

It was strange. When they killed that toll collector, Gale had felt the Shadow Weave in her body the way he’d felt the Weave in the artifacts he once consumed. It had only taken him a moment to absorb it, by the same means in fact. But the sensation that coursed through him when he did was… different from then. The magic was malodorous, twisted and unholy in nature.

So why did it feel so good, entering his body?

Gale’s head breaks the water with a silent gasp when he’s suddenly released. 

He’s been restored by the ripples in the fountain, but there is no relief in the sensation. Only dread as the dream fades, his throat constricting and ushering a terrible shudder into his lungs. He shakes his head, coughs, slicks wet curls of hair out of his eyes. 

As for his surroundings, he’s only had a few moments each time to take them in, before he’s taken away (and the better part of his vision, with him.) It’s a forebodingly elegant retreat, decorated in hellish reds, dark marble, and gold trimming. Red steps border the bath he kneels in, as do hundreds of candles that he has never seen burned out. It’s some sort of bedroom, clearly not usually employed for use by prisoners; it has to be in the main body of the House of Hope. 

Yet, here he is.

Seconds pass, and he isn't moved. Odd. He’s usually whisked away once the water has done its work, brought back to the dungeon for his immaterial body to be destroyed anew, or for him to lie in a stupor waiting for it to be. Even with this new dose of healing, his body is still sore from the last session, guts settling, finger joints twinging, and back aching. (Raphael claimed their latest little game to be a local kozakuran harvest ritual; for harvesting organs, perhaps, Gale had thought incredulously at the time.)

While he waits with sickening anticipation, he splashes more water over his face and runs it through his hair. Blood stains his robes still despite their soak, but then, he suspects no amount of washing will clean them.

He has no idea how long he’s been in Hell now. None at all. Each time he has a moment free, he tries to remind himself of details of his mortal life, names and faces and sweeter memories he most dreads losing in this eternal Hell. For whatever good it does, anyway.

A voice at his back interrupts his melancholy. "Gale! …Psst, hey! Turn around or at least TURN YOUR HEAD OFF YOUR SHOULDERS."

Startled, Gale swivels around as demanded, but it isn't one of the fiends that he sees. In fact, the two infernal beings that brought him here seemed to have vanished completely, replaced by one figure. Though he disturbs the bath with a splash, water whirling, the projection standing behind him causes not even a ripple, clothes left dry and parched. 

"Ah. H… hello, Hope," he manages to croak out, with a throat that is no longer sore.

Since their initial meeting, they've spoken every now and then. Not in person—though Gale has been trying to listen for her, knowing now that they occupy the same dungeon, and will sometimes hear her unintelligible screams—but through her most talented use of projection. Though they've not said much to each other, for fear of Hope being caught speaking with him, they've been lovely visits. For the most part.

She doesn't seem very cheerful at the moment, brow pinched with anxiety. But "cheerful" would not be the descriptor he used for anyone here, least of all the two of them. "The boudoir is as inviting as inviting can be, but not even rats get to keep to themselves here. Make like a rat and scurry out!"

"...I wasn’t intending to stay on purpose, refreshing as the change of scenery is." Gale stands, shakes his hands while water sloshes from his filthy robes. "I seem to have been—abandoned?"

Here he has found himself in the bizarre position of hoping that he will be dragged back to the dungeon any second, that he will leave this healing room behind soon enough. A change in the status quo is extremely unlikely to end well for him. He has no such luck, though.  

"Raphael’s been summoned to Mephistar. Right now. No warning. …He probably won’t be, but I’m hoping he gets killed while he’s there!" Somewhat ghoulishly, Hope gives a little delighted squeal at the idea, her fists shaking with tension. But she sobers quickly, returning to the urgent tone of before. "But-but-but you shouldn’t stay here while he’s gone. Not here."

Gale can see well enough at this particular moment, yet when he searches his surroundings for the threat that has Hope so agitated, he can’t see it from here. Still, he has no reason to believe her a liar. "You don’t think I should just stay put in these healing waters for a while? Wait for Raphael to fetch me and lock me in a burning box for the evening?"

She shakes her head rapidly, gaze flitting up the steps behind him. "Nonononono, I don’t think that. It’s morning! I think. Gods–" Hope freezes in the middle of her admonishment, her image flickering and a low growl rising from beyond the projection. One of the wardens, no doubt. And with a whimper, Hope only gives a brief look at him, muttering, "I have to go—" before vanishing from view. 

Now Gale is alone again, left in mounting dread and confusion. How he wishes she could stay longer every time.

Hope's insistence aside, he could stay here, cowering in this dubiously safe place. If indeed something unpleasant lurks in this room, it may find him soon enough. Raphael or one of his fiends definitely would, given enough time. On the other hand, he could step outside the room, as instructed, and in doing so face the unknowns in the rest of the House of Hope. He'd only ever been ferried between this room and the dungeons; discounting one time when he was alive and Raphael (still courting him for a contract) showed off a beautifully prepared dining room, the rest of the house was a mystery.

He used to enjoy mysteries. 

With a few last twists to wring water from his sleeves, Gale carefully creeps out of the bath and approaches the yawning doorway. There is no door—rather, a force curtain has been erected to keep others out. Figures pass beyond, though they do not look like fiends.

If he steps out of the room and regrets it, then the curtain would prevent his return. Gale touches his fingertips to the magical field, a faint buzz moving through his skin at the contact, weighing his equally fraught options.

Then he hears the beating of wings somewhere behind him and, suffering Hope’s infectious panic, he stumbles the rest of the way through.

It does not hurt him, though his body gives a shiver as he passes through the magic. And now he stands in a beautiful corridor, bedecked with statues of infernal beings and with ordinary comforts, like cushioned chairs, he was not meant to touch. It is well kept and gilded, and feels too spotless for the likes of him.  

Glancing behind himself towards the force curtain, he just barely catches a dark shape with big, leathery wings flying up and out of view, landing behind an elegant balustrade in the distance. It might well have been watching him the entire time. He gives a small, relieved shudder. 

And then jumps when he feels a hand tugging on his sleeve. A little gnome in plain, unadorned clothes looks up at him, her eyes filled with longing and little else. Gale quickly pulls out of her grip as she speaks, "You left… why did you leave? I wanted to watch a little longer."

Somehow he doubts she is a friendly ally like Hope. "Were you guarding the door?" 

"I, I get to watch," she says conspiratorially, giving him a sickly smile. A smile that drips as soon as it arrives, transforming into a look of yearning. "Never interfere. Never participate. Never… touch…" 

He’s acutely aware of how her fingers extend towards him, even as he takes a step away from her, though she retreats quickly enough. "I. I see. That must be of some entertainment to someone," he sputters. 

"Entertainment… entertainment…"

Though she isn’t, as he feared, overtly hostile—only swaying back and forth in a numb daze, pained with perverse longing—Gale senses that the poor gnome does not have the wits left to be an ally either. He’s prepared to leave her be and get his bearings, but he nearly stumbles over a mop as it sweeps quickly around him, almost out of nowhere.

"Excuse me," says another voice, then. Another soul, one in servants’ livery with the mop in their hands and large, wet eyes that stare through him. "Please stop tracking blood on the floor."

Gale looks down at himself, at his robes which drip diluted pink droplets on the ground, and then immediately has to dodge when the other soul starts mopping once more around his feet. "I—I apologize," is all he manages to say.

They persist in cleaning around him, glassy eyes downcast, lip wobbling. "There's still so much left," the poor soul whispers, though not to him, perhaps. "There's still so much left to do… why do I still owe so much?..."

He's stopped dripping by the time he disentangles himself from their mop, and the voyeur that greeted him has returned to peering into the boudoir through the glow of the force curtain. 

Of course, he’d understood from the first word. These were the ones Hope more than once referred to as the "debtors"; fellow victims of Raphael who had lost their minds completely, working off their dues with their endless suffering. Gale feels a muted horror as he puts distance between himself and them, listens to their mindless whimpers. This could very well be him one day. A part of him wonders if it would not be better than he is now.

He stumbles down the hallway, and he catches a few more of them as he goes. Humanoids, indiscriminate of race. Some dressed in ratty clothes, mumbling and laughing to themselves; others in the humble garb of servants, obediently tending to chores, sparing him a glance or two when he came close. The air is thick with their misery, no less so than the dungeon beneath them. 

They are tired, hopeless, some unwashed. They blot the beautiful decor. Less lucky (luckier?) souls simply move across the borders of the house like coin through a patriar’s vault, formless, personless, always on the periphery of his vision.

"I miss my mummy and daddy," whispers a voice in his ear.

With a full shudder, beginning to panic, Gale seeks out a corner relatively free of them. He settles down all the way on the opposite side of the hall, pressed against a window that looks out over Avernus, when he hears Hope again. "Over here!"

Still in the middle of regaining his composure, he needs a moment to approach the projection. He knows quite keenly that the time Hope can spend talking to him is short, but his head is full of snaps and misfires. She's squirming with impatience by the time he's before her. 

"I know it’s a long shot, but he might not be as angry if you come back to the dungeons yourself," she was saying. She’s begun to babble again, words slipping free before she can catch them, as is her wont. "You just slipped through the cracks! That’s all! Technically, it’s Strich and Memdos’ fault. —It probably won’t matter, good and bad Gales get put in the wizard boiler, that’s what they do— but, but, but, it won’t make it worse."

Sometimes he wants to scream at her to stop talking quite so much . Gale only looks around, spreading his arms at the hallways around him. "Sounds like a sensible idea. Where is the dungeon, from here?"

Hope does not even hesitate, pointing a hand out towards the curves of the gold-trimmed walls. "Allll the way left to the other side, there’s a big hatch that will take you there." 

Easy enough. He nods. "Alright. Once I’ve had a proper look around the premises, I’ll head that way."

"No! No! What? No! Wait, what?"

He lowers his voice, leaning in. "Hope, listen to me. This is the first time I’ve been free to explore this place since I’ve been brought here, and it was by complete happenstance. I may not get a chance like this again. Not for a while, at least."

Just like that, no longer does Hope appear worried. She looks excited, rather, shaking out her palms. "A chance? For what?" 

He blinks at her. "Escape."

"Escape? Gale! Gale! Precious Gale!" Hope shouts out, throwing up her hands. "There is no way to escape Hell. Why do you think all ye who enter here abandon Hope?"

With a wince he pauses and leans back, away from potentially more shouting in his ear. "I haven't abandoned you."

"Well, you would! Ohhh, you should!" Her eyes light up, but with a distant rattle and a growl her voice calms, grows quiet and tremulous as she shudders with pain. "I would love it if you escaped, but you are in itty bitty, bitty, bitty pieces, Gale. And those itty bittybittybitty pieces belong to Raphael! Contractually."

Gale opens his mouth. 

Hope is faster. "I’m sorry—I have to go."

With that the projection vanishes, and he is on his own again. His heart pangs like it’s been shredded with claws, but he doesn’t have time to wallow in his own despair—he’d have plenty of that once he’s been returned to his place below the house.

His "place". Gale’s lip twists.

During his days as an adventurer, he’d gotten significant gains from searching drawers and shelves. There are elegant drawers and wardrobes in the mansion, laid out as if Raphael expected his numerous prisoners to make use of them. Gale starts to rifle through them, whatever ones he can get open.

While he does that, his chest heavy with anxiety that never leaves him be, he tries to ignore the other souls around him. Tries harder to ignore one, a haggard young woman, who paws at his leg like a dog and sobs between whines and barks. She blessedly leaves him be soon enough, after realizing that he’s not going to—what? give her head a pat?

There are scraps of notes, and plenty of ink quills, but not much of interest in the first several drawers. The wardrobes, despite their grand appearance, hold mostly old rags and dusty vests. Gale isn't even sure what he's looking for; he has no right to be frustrated when he doesn’t find it.

Out of the corner of his eye, there's a man in the frayed robes of an Ilmater priest praying in front of a statue of Raphael. Expressing thanks, from the sound of it. He tries to ignore that too. 

Gods, but how did Raphael stand all this noise? The screaming, the moaning, barking, the mindless laughter…

He’s examining a desk of drawers when he perceives one of them sticks out crookedly just a hair from the others, like it doesn't quite fit. There is nothing inside it save for a disused handkerchief, but when he tries to push it the full way inside he finds resistance all the same. He wiggles it, frowning as he inspects closer.

No dice; he suspects that there might be a blockage, rather than a mechanical defect. Lingering curiosity growing stronger, Gale pulls the drawer all the way out and leaves it carefully on the marbled floor, then grunts as he gets on his knees to examine for himself. 

A little notebook lies there inside the slot.

"What in the hells?" he breathes as he reaches in; the thing was wedged in deep, probably by souls like himself that tried to push the drawer back in place, but it pops free with just a little tugging on his part. 

Just a small black notebook, covered in dark stains and the pages near falling out, smelling of the hells and an old despair. Flipping it open, he can see it’s been used. It doesn’t look like Raphael’s handwriting; not that he’d seen it for himself, mind, but the words, written in common, are such chicken scratch that he can’t believe they belong to a cultured devil like his tormentor.

Rather it looks, a bit unsettlingly, like the writing of a child.

Scanning quickly through the entries, there’s nothing that jumps out at him. This journal’s author was seemingly a servant in the House of Hope, performing menial tasks and bearing the abuse of the house’s residents. The entries list their duties, their fraught encounters, their dreams of escaping hellish slavery and living elsewhere. The whole book is full of it even to the margins, every last inch of space employed to document this poor unfortunate’s every last thought and grudge. The first page even delineates that this is the fourth journal of who-knew how many.

Hundreds of experiences almost lost to time, kept hidden for potentially years and years in this madhouse. Gale swallows a lump in his throat as he flips through the near illegible scrawl.

His own family, his own friends. His life. He’s beginning to forget it.

Gale knows this because when Hope speaks with him down below, she brings the topic back to his friends every now and again. To his life before, to the people he’s saved by his actions, perhaps to make up for all the times Raphael waxes lyrical about what a liar and failure he is. The last few times she asked him about it were especially difficult. 

Lying on the floor of his cell like a wretch, screwing up his face trying to think of them all, mouthing their names. Lae’zel, Astarion, Shadowheart—what were the other ones again? He knew their faces though they blurred at the specific details; he could hear their kind voices in his head though he could attribute no particular words to them. His fear gripped his heart, he sucked in air through his teeth. Wyll, yes. Karlach… now what about any of the others? Were there even others?

Her hands clasped, Hope could see him struggling. She watched him for just a moment before she burst out, "Your CAT, Gale!" She swung back and forth with glee, "Kind and fierce and claws as sharp as Dumathoin’s pickaxe!"

Yes. Her name has already escaped him, but the memory of her returned with some prodding. "Not a cat, actually. A tressym," he murmured. "A beautiful tortoiseshell breed; she looked after me practically like a second mother–"

He’d broken off, startled, looking pale and sick. "Oh, oh gods," he whispered, climbing to his knees. "...My mother…"

"It’s good that you had a mother," Hope was saying wistfully. "My sister and I were orphans. Just had a cruel master to read us bedtime stories at night. Which he didn’t. But that’s not why he was cruel."

Only half listening, Gale covered his face with his hands, taking a shuddering breath that became a sob. All this time… did his mother even know what happened to him? Did she know what he’d done, or tried to do? Was she wallowing in shame, with a son that never visited, never wrote, never even sent her a sending—a son that in the end went and got himself killed with his own foolishness? Was she still alright?

"Morena is her name. I can’t believe I forgot about her," he whispered. 

"I can," said Hope. "Just wait till you’ve forgotten your first kiss, your favorite food. Then you’ll be really wretched."

Gale looks down at the journal in his hands, and then he starts rifling through the beautiful rosewood desk he found it wedged inside. Like many of them, he finds an inkwell and pen ready for use; he quickly uncorks the ink and lays the journal flat on the desk. Then he dips the quill pen and gets to work.

Unfortunately, he’d have to write over the notes of its last master—there are no blank pages left, so zealously had it been used—but the previous entries are faded enough that his own fresher notes stick out crisply enough to read. He is fairly sure that the last owner is beyond caring anyway.

Among the things he writes, first and foremost are the names of his loved ones. Brief details he can still remember about them, what happened to them before he died. His mother, his tressym—what is her name? Forget it, time is short—his companions united in tadpoles, the journey they went on together. The places he’s visited.

Mystra, as well. He wants to put her name to page but the thought of her terrifies him, makes his mind blank. He scratches her out when he tries. Perhaps, though, that will be alright; he’s certain Raphael won’t let him forget her any time soon.

But it isn't just his memory of his loved ones he struggles to hold on to; all of his knowledge as a former archmage has been slipping away, piece by piece. Some of it had already been lost by the time he first arrived in the House of Hope, spells and artifacts and histories he had spent his life studying that now lay beyond his reach. There surely isn’t time to cover it all, but he makes the briefest of notes, anything he can think of. 

His favorite food, too. His first kiss. Why not?

Gale doesn’t stop to look up when he hears Hope’s voice, strained and sing-song, behind him. "You might want to come back. Soon. Make haste, before you’re made into a paste!"

He doesn’t stop writing, he doesn’t have the time. "Not yet."

"Oh! You found… What are you doing?" he can see her presence out of the corner of his eye, her projected form glowing with faint light.

"I just… need… to get down all the important bits." He pauses at her surprise, though, slowing in his writing to spare her just a faint look. "Did you know who wrote this? I assume it wasn’t you."

She laughed weakly, giving a careless half-shrug that suggested quite a bit of caring. "That’s—something from a long time ago, it doesn’t matter right now. But what does it have to do with your plans to escape?"

"If I want to escape this plane, I need to keep my wits," Gale says slowly, moving on to a record of whatever spells he could cast that he can still remember, uneasy over the vast blanks he was drawing as he tried to list his numerous relatives. "Perhaps I can do that if I’m not simply relying on my own brain to remember things."

"Clever!" Hope claps her hands together, though her smile looks incredibly artificial. "But not too clever by half because Raphael doesn’t allow personal effects in the cells. Not anymore."

There are plenty of times, really, when he wishes she would stop talking. "That’s why I need to write it out now. It’s not coming with me."

While he is writing, a foreboding feeling has begun twisting his gut. He isn’t sure why, but he’s growing the sense that he might not have a lot more time to get his thoughts down. He swallows, and turns his attention away from Hope entirely while he writes. There’s so much more to put down, but there’s one part that does seem crucial, much as it pains him to dredge it back up.

The crown. The orb. His folly, his greatest failure, and his greatest pride. You were almost a god once.

After he’s put down a brief—painfully brief, for the events it signified—account of exactly how he ended up here in the Hells, Gale quickly reads back through the rest of his work. When he gets to his notes on his friends again, he almost chokes from the swelling of emotion in his throat. 

There’s a glimmer here, as well. Karlach went to Avernus with Wyll, he almost forgot that. If they’re still here somewhere, Gale wonders if they could see him again. 

He shuts and presses the journal to his breast, as if afraid he’s going to destroy the glimmer by dwelling too hard on it. He glances at Hope, who watches him with infinitely weary, yet curious eyes. "You won’t tell Raphael about this?"

"Raphael doesn’t ask me much of anything," she replies blankly.

"That’s not exactly a yes, but I suppose you’ve given me no reason to doubt you." With that, he kneels again; the journal’s initial hiding place would probably be the safest one for now. He wedges it back inside, careful not to tear out any of the pages, and stuffs the drawer in after. The inkwell he puts away haphazardly after that.

When he straightens back up, it’s not quite the same fit. The drawer veers to a different angle, but it shouldn’t raise any alarm bells. Gale lets out a breath, muttering to himself, "...And now I’ll come back."

But Hope doesn’t reply this time. She’s gone. And the foreboding that had begun in his stomach grows ever stronger as he turns his head about, looking for her and finding the dwarf vanished without a trace. 

It shouldn’t be so alarming on its own—she had a habit to behave that way, after all—but even the other debtors seem to have scattered, Gale only catching a glimpse of one running down a set of nearby steps and out of sight.

"Such a shame," someone says, almost in his ear. Guttural, slow, creeping into his consciousness like the new presence at his back. "The best education any wizard could hope for, and no wisdom to wield it with."

Gale has seconds before the world shifts around, a hand over his throat as he’s faced with Raphael’s snarling face. He kicks against the floor and gasps; for a second he’s seeing double, like a mirror image that merges together and then splits again, two Raphaels, then four, and then…  "I–" Somehow he has the presence of mind to speak, to quickly stammer out, "I wasn’t trying to escape–" 

"Oh, I am aware." Raphael throws him unceremoniously to the floor. 

Unfortunately for Hope it seems that he has returned from Mephistar intact, though perhaps not unscathed; getting to his feet, Gale catches signs of scorch marks on his clothes, the faintest tears at his doublet. Whatever occurred there when he went away, it was evidently not a pleasure visit.

It doesn’t make his furious expression any less terrifying. "But I like there to be order in my house," he continues in a dangerous, low voice. "Everything in its proper place. That includes my guests, like yourself. The thought of you running loose through my things unsupervised makes my skin crawl. It must be remedied."

Gale flinches when Raphael raises his hand, but it isn’t to strike him. He snaps his fingers and two creatures appear beside him, two young devils in the clothing of Raphael’s other servants. Gale just barely recognizes them; they are the fiends that had transported him into the boudoir. Sometimes they assisted Raphael with him if he needed another hand or two.

Cambions, like their master—though Raphael sometimes seems to be in a class of his own compared to his brethren.

Though the fiends are initially startled to have been summoned, realization strikes as they take in the sight before them. They grow pale, both faces creased with fear. Perhaps they, like Gale, had assumed they would have more time than they were ultimately given to put things back "in order". They start to speak in tense, insistent tones; what they are saying he isn’t sure, as it is in Infernal, but he can guess at the pleading. The excuses.

He can’t help but be a little curious, himself. That they left him in the boudoir—was it a mercy on their part? Something crueller, given Hope’s reaction to finding him there? Or was it just laziness?

Either way, Raphael growls out a reply in Infernal that shuts them both up immediately. 

"Time to return you to your cage, little mouse," he says to Gale with a careless flick of his index finger. "We’ll scrub whatever your grimy thieving hands have touched and teach you to wander when the master is away. I may even show a modicum of mercy, given that this… little slip was not entirely your doing."

Despite current circumstances, Gale finds himself nodding obediently; the only thought in his head right now is the drawer with his lifeline inside. He can’t help but pray that the book will be safe in it. It clearly went untouched for a long time before he found it, but if any "scrubbing" over the furniture became too diligent, the game would probably be up.

The sharper tone in Raphael’s next words catches his attention more firmly.

"But as for you two. " His eyes flicker back in the direction of the fiends, both of whom freeze with fear. He has a grimace of displeasure on his face, like even the sight of them puts a bad taste on his tongue. "This slip of yours was truly unacceptable." A snap of his fingers. "So I’m afraid you’ve been demoted."

While Gale watches with horror, the two cambions begin to hop about and scream. They start shrieking, babbling as their flesh sloughs off their writhing forms, limbs becoming waxy and soft, jello-like; their wings melt, their legs collapse under them to let their bodies splat against the marble floor. They quiver, pink flesh reshaping into mounds, cries turning into moans as their throats become soft. 

Their round eyes roll in his direction piteously, alive and wide and glazed. A portal opens up and swallows the two whole in a flash of black light, while Gale stuffs his hand over his mouth to prevent from vomiting.

"It continues to astonish me that my most competent servant is a mortal like Korilla," Raphael says to him, as casually as though he’d simply smacked a spider with a rolled up broadsheet. "But these fiends who shirk their duties while I am gone? They’re replaceable."

And with that, the portal that swallowed the two lemures closing underneath them, Raphael strides forward and takes Gale tightly by the shoulder. With a snap of his fingers, the upper floors of the House of Hope seem to almost melt away, replaced by the bleak surroundings of the dungeon with which he had become so familiar.

A bit of pressure in the devil’s grip is all it takes for Gale to kneel, and he hisses as the chains which bind him here flicker back to life; proper infernal chains now, crackling and sparking as they settle. 

With a hum of pleasure, Raphael leaves him there and, in a flap of his wings, he is across the dungeon. For once Gale has his vision back from the fountain, can see Hope pinned on the other side. Can hear their voices clear enough despite the distance.

Raphael’s wings fan as he approaches his dwarven guest like an old friend. "Hope, you poor, neglected soul, I can tell you’ve been active in my absence." He tuts. "Perhaps I’ve been spending too much time with our resident wizard; I haven’t given you your due."

While he cannot see Hope’s expression from where he sits, he still hears her. Hears the crazed tremble in her voice, talking right through the devil’s oily false reassurances. "I don’t want my due."

"Nonsense. Now," says Raphael. "I’m currently disciplining Dekarios at the moment, but! I think that Haarlep–"

"–No. No. No. No. No—"

"–Would be more than happy to see to your needs, my dear."

"–No, no, no, NO—!"

Gale squeezes his eyes shut; Hope’s voice reaches a screech before she’s gone, transported out of the dungeon. He doesn’t know who Haarlep is, but her cries make him sick to his stomach. And as the echoes vanish in his ears, rage boils in his blood that he can do nothing but sit there, immobilized.

"Perhaps I deserve some measure of your torments. My soul is yours by right," he says when Raphael has returned to him, his voice hoarse. "But that, that wasn’t necessary."

Though calmer than he had been just previously, Raphael’s eyes narrow. "A curious thing to say." He leers in close to Gale, his claws grazing his skin. "I was already beginning to suspect it—but now I think it safe to wager, by your most delicious despair, that you’ve already become acquainted with the lady of the house. I might have expected that she would take the opportunity to pounce, once my back was turned."

Well, now, it didn’t take long for him to betray Hope’s confidence, did it? Gale grit his teeth, keeping quiet to that probing, piercing gaze.

Rather than anger, though, Raphael only chuckles. "Oh, but you needn’t worry. It’s practically impossible for you to sink any further in my estimation." He taps his chin. "Besides which, I did think to introduce the two of you one day. You would be… so beneficial for each other."

"She isn’t one of your debtors as near as I can tell. Why keep her here?"

He sneers. "She’s a bit of a fixture in the House of Hope. Like a lamp. Or better yet, a piggybank. An artifact, to be observed, studied, and then shattered when it is convenient." He smiles. "You’ll get to know her, and to loathe her, in time.

"Still, that’s not your concern, is it?" the devil leans in, and his smile transforms into a hateful sneer. "Remember, Dekarios. You are nothing more than one of my possessions. A chew toy, to be perfectly precise."

Layers of metal jutting from the platform underneath them start to lift, like closing petals of a flower, enclosing the two of them inside. Hope is, for the moment, forgotten; like clockwork Gale feels the sharp stings of fear in his forsaken lungs, his breaths an unnecessary habit but coming faster and shorter as even the callous light of Avernus dwindles. This, too, is a familiar beginning of their sessions—though not a typical one.

The brightest light in the growing darkness comes from Raphael’s devilish eyes. "And unfortunately for you, today I absolutely crave to cut my teeth on your flesh," he hisses.

As he’s torn to shreds again, as he’s crushed and peeled and pierced again, again of again, again, Gale’s mind snaps and shakes. Remember the journal, he tells himself, praying when he does that he doesn’t say it out loud where the devil would hear. Well, as if he could stop screaming enough to speak. Not everything will be lost.

If he’s going to spend an eternity here, then surely he will get another chance to visit the rest of the house—to find the notebook again. He’ll write more in it. He’ll reread what he’s already written over and over again, those names and faces of his loved ones—as many times as it takes to help him remember. He won’t let himself become just another mad empty-headed debtor, he won’t. He can’t.

If only because he likes to think—to hope—that those same names and faces wouldn’t want him to.