Thank you to Greenedra for the lovely reviews and ShadowValkyrie for the beta!

Baator

I was disappearing in plain sight

Heaven help me, I need to make it right

-No Light No Light, Florence + the Machine

Raistlin closed his eyes. Drew in a breath. It wasn't magic, not really. Not in the form of spells or incantations, at least. He focused inside his mind and, for the first time since killing Fistandantilus, stepped back behind the Wall.

Before, he hadn't had control over his own body. He had lost sight, hearing, touch, and had nothing to distract him. Now, everything was pulling his attention out of his own mind. The red glow of light behind his eyelids, the distant sounds of the camp, even the touch of the wind and the hanging tension of his robes. It was a struggle to push them away, and focus inwards.

The neural non-space behind the Wall was a mess. He had made no effort to sort through Fistandantilus' discarded memories and it felt as though a Cataclysm had hit it. Scattered fragments of thoughts frozen in Fistandantilus' final moments, structures of old spells and rituals. Black stone memories Raistlin forced himself to approach, trying to sort through.

Any order or sorting mechanism had been lost when Fistandantilus died, and the remains stretched out into impossible distance. A thousand years' worth of memories.

Raistlin reached into himself and turned himself into a foci. He had been in Zhaman once, and drew up his own memories.

They came, bright, dazzling, alive. He tasted damp, stale air. The lost, desolate ruins so close he could stretch out a hand to touch them. Sturm's voice rang out in his head, cold and cutting and laughable. Caramon's whining. Dalamar's warm voice, laughing low and sweet in his ear-

No. Raistlin pushed them away, froze them, turned them to glass around him. Still images, fragments of his own life. He reached out to Fistandantilus' memories, pulled them towards him. They reared up, flowed towards him like liquid darkness, a tidal wave of centuries. They pressed close against the mirrors of Raistlin's own memories, pressed close, hungry as a cold ocean around a campfire. If they broke through, they would drown him. Overwhelm him and leave him an empty and burnt out husk.

The mirrors shimmered, held. Fistandantilus' memories sloughed around them, slowly, steadily trying to find a way through. The memories flaring up, one after another, so close, trying to match themselves to the mirrors.

Raistlin pushed away Sturm, Caramon, Dalamar, focused on Skullcap. Parsed through the ruins and focused on the most intact parts of the fortress. Uncracked stonework, rooms in the dungeons still mostly whole. The memories blurred faster. Images of other dungeons, other walls-

There. Raistlin felt one slot in, so close as to be identical. He held the memories off, and drew that one towards him. It was old, worn. One from the Fistandantilus who had died in his mind, rather than the one rotting in the Abyss. It was badly faded, had been studied over and over by a Fistandantilus determined to find out what it had done wrong.

Raistlin was too far gone to breathe, or clench his hands. He held his mind together, pulled it up hard and solid as castle walls – and let the memory engulf him.

He was standing before the portal. His voice- Fistandantilus' voice, ringing out.

"From darkness to darkness, my voice echoes in the emptiness. From this world to the next, my voice cries with life. From darkness to darkness, I shout. Beneath my feet, all is made firm-"

The glow of the portal, the moving shadows from beyond the door. He could taste Fistandantilus' triumph, his cold, inhuman joy. Beside him, an old priest was weeping silently, but offering up his power to the lich, allowing him to work the gate open.

Suddenly, something went wrong. It wasn't anything clear, nothing that could be placed exactly, but simply a patina of wrongness that covered the entire moment. The magic tasted wrong, a sour tang to the air. A feeling like sand between his teeth-

Something was interfering with his spell!

The crack and hiss of some magical mechanism, the chatter of a gnomish voice. Fistandantilus was seconds away from snatching the luckless gnome up and crushing it – but then it was too late. The ritual unfinished, the magic disrupted. The backlash obliterated the cleric, burst through Zhaman and annihilated everything within miles of the fortress. Fistandantilus' body was blown to bones and tattered meat – but still it lived, forced out of the world and into another plane where it could survive, until-

Raistlin dragged himself out of the memory. Threw himself away and out beyond the Wall, letting the memories thrash and roar helplessly within. Even this far away, flashes burst up before Raistlin's eyes. The faces of the young mages that had come before him. Elf, human, dwarf, male, female, and everything in between. Each with their own dreams, each hungry and eager to take the Test. Each who would have passed, had the lich not snatched them up, as easily as an ogre snatches up a child, and devoured them.

Raistlin's own face briefly flickered in the periphery of his vision. Auburn-haired and blue-eyed as he had been. Stubborn and brave and determined. He wanted to scream – run, run, you young fool, get out of here and never come back, turn renegade, anything but continue with this madness-

Then something hit his face. The shock of pain forced him out of his own mind and Raistlin jumped, nearly stumbled out of his chair – and a fist drove into his stomach.

The world blinked in and out. The dim darkness of his tent blurred and flickered into Zhaman, Skullcap, Wayreth. He fell out of his chair and collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath.

A hand grabbed the collar of his robes, hauled him up. Raistlin blinked, the face of the knight swam before his eyes. "The general said no magic!"

What – oh, Caramon. The army. This miserable, monstrous time. Raistlin bared his teeth and the man dropped him, stormed back to his post beside the door, and glowered at him.

Raistlin sat up; his face was sore and swollen. He ran his tongue over his teeth, but they were all still there. His ribs hurt; bruised, probably. The entire trance must have lasted only a few seconds.

He ignored the knight, and focused on what he knew. There was a gnome in, most likely, Thorbardin; it had some kind of a magical device and activating it had disrupted Fistandantilus' spell. Therefore, it was vital to find this gnome and remove it or the device, however possible.

Which normally would have meant leaving the camp and sorting it out himself, but one look at the door and the knight's hand tightened on his sword. That was a no, then. Raistlin sat down on the bed and closed his eyes. Could he modify the spell to take the disruption into account? Unlikely, he simply wasn't familiar enough with the magics in question. Could he control it? Not too long, but simply long enough to open the portal and flee through it. This seemed more likely-

"They want you outside," The knight growled. "They're meeting with the dwarves and savages."

Raistlin didn't get up at once, glaring at the knight. The man started forward and Raistlin sighed and sat up. He wasn't going to be dragged out by the hair.

Caramon was waiting at the heart of the camp, Crysania with him. Raistlin spotted Tasslehoff skulking around the edges of the tents. Caramon glanced at Raistlin and nodded shortly, but didn't say anything. He crossed his arms and huffed. Raistlin gripped his staff, and blinked through the glare of the early morning light at the coming procession.

"Reghar Fireforge and party!" One of the knights called out, escorting the dwarves.

Caramon's eyes went wide, his breath stuttered. "But – what? How could-"

"I'm sure the party are very impressed by your spectacle," Raistlin said sourly.

Caramon pulled himself together and scowled at Raistlin. "Shut up."

"Did you forget when we are, fool?" Raistlin shifted, leant on his staff.

Caramon didn't answer, his mouth thinned. He stood as the dwarves approached, welcomed them cordially, with nothing stranger than a pale pallor. He jerked his head, and Raistlin sighed and followed them in.

He sat in the corner of the tent, and let Caramon and the dwarves talk. He could see shades of Flint in the old dwarf's face. Familiar, then not. He said nothing, drank nothing from the table. The dwarves glanced at him, from time to time, but did not address him.

They were leaving, preparing for a feast to seal the alliance, when Tasslehoff popped up. Raistlin was between the tents, trying to slip back to his own quarters and hopefully have a few minutes to himself, and the kender stepped out in front of him.

Raistlin started, one hand jerking up ready to cast, but Tasslehoff just started down at the ground, chewing his lip. "I – uh. I thought about what you said, in the cave and – I think I ought to go."

Raistlin paused, lowered his hand. "Go where?"

Tasslehoff shrugged. "I don't know, anywhere really. I mean, you said we were stuck here and so there's no point in staying, I guess? And Caramon and Crysania are being weird, and then there was Flint's grandpa and-" Tasslehoff broke off, rubbed his face and looked sadder than any kender had a right to be. "You can come too, if you want. I don't think you should stay here."

"I've tried to escape," Raistlin hissed. "Again and again. Do you think the gods will let me simply walk away?"

"I don't know." Tasslehoff glanced around. "I know Paladine, he can't just be going 'I know; I'm going to kill Raistlin and there's nothing anyone can do to stop me.'"

"Not only me," Raistlin said bitterly. "Everyone in this camp is doomed to die. If fate is allowed to play out-" Raistlin stopped, looked at Tasslehoff carefully. He couldn't leave the camp, but-

Tasslehoff's eyes were wide. "Everyone? Even Caramon and the knights and Flint's grandpa?"

"These are the Dwarfgate Wars," Raistlin continued, "which end with the destruction of Zhaman, and the annihilation of both forces in the ensuing destruction."

And he must be spending too much time around the kender, because Tasslehoff was looking at him with a sharp, would-be-cunning expression. "And we're going to stop it, right?"

"Of course." Raistlin smiled. "However, I cannot leave the camp."

"I can do it!" Tasslehoff stepped closer, Raistlin stepped back; he did not need to lose anything else. "What do I need to do?"

"There is a gnome in Thorbardin," Raistlin said carefully. "They are building a device. The device may look harmless, but it will cause the destruction. I need you to remove the gnome, or the device, or both, to a safe place, before Caramon's army can reach Zhaman. Can you do that?"

"Of course!" Tasslehoff nodded. "I like gnomes. Did I tell you about Mount Nevermind? They have the most incredible-"

The sound of heavy boots and mail close by made Raistlin turn in alarm. He made a short, sharp motion, and Tasslehoff's voice cut out, his mouth moving uselessly. It was a small spell, but just casting felt wonderful. "We cannot speak too long, or we may be overhead."

He dropped the spell. Tasslehoff rubbed his throat, his mouth. "Wow," he said softly. "That was – um."

"Go," Raistlin said. "The gnome in Thorbardin. Take them away, as far as you can."

"I will," Tasslehoff said solemnly. "As far as I can."

It was good that Tasslehoff had gone, even though some weak, exhausted part of Raistlin mourned the loss of the one person who believed he was who he said he was. The knights surrounding him were dedicated, sworn to Caramon, and eager to catch him at some real or imaginary misdeed. They were also blind, stumbling and inept, and easily overlooked clues the sharp-eyed kender would inevitably have noticed and commented on.

Such as the peculiar taste and scent of the magic Raistlin cast as he lay facing the wall of his tent. Not all spells gave light, and not all needed to be announced in a booming voice. Some could be cast and completed in the softest of whispers, for the magic had no ears, and heard perfectly well all the same.

He counted his breaths in the darkness, ears pricked. Outside, the banquet raged on, so loud he nearly missed the stumble and clump of iron boots outside. Raistlin sat up, squinted through the darkness. The knight standing inside his tent was nodding at his post, frustrated by the late hour and on missing out on the festivities.

Raistlin slipped a hand under his pillow and drew out a handful of sand. A few whispers and the sand tossed through the air, and the knight slumped against the tent post, sloping the fabric alarmingly.

Raistlin slid his legs out of the bed, and found his staff. He had slept in his robes and only bothered to throw his cloak over his shoulders. The robes he had long-ago stolen from Fistandantilus' chambers were tattered and worn to the point where appearance would hardly count for anything.

"Enter." It was a struggle to get his voice above the whisper he used these days. Too much chance of being overheard.

Had he been worried about his appearance, the sight of the dwarves entering the tent would have put paid to that. They were dressed in worn, stinking leather and dirty, rusted iron. They scrutinized the knight suspiciously, and it was only when he snorted, dull and deep, that they relaxed and turned back to Raistlin.

It was easy to alarm them. Raistlin had seen dark dwarves before, and they had lived in paranoid horror of magic. Raistlin wondered what they would do if he sent the magic flame dancing over their heads. Run out screaming in terror, he shouldn't wonder.

Which would defeat the very point of this evening, but would have felt rather good; Raistlin sighed regretfully.

"You sent message?" The dwarf grunted finally.

"I did," Raistlin slid easily into Dwarven. He had a good grasp of the language even before devouring Fistandantilus, and now he spoke it smoothly and with barely the hint of an accent. The dwarf's bushy eyebrows rose. "And I speak Dwarven, so we may converse in your language. I would prefer that, in fact, so that there can be no chance of misunderstanding."

"Well and good." The dwarf crossed his arms. "I am Argat, thane of my clan. I receive your message. We are interested. But we must know more."

"Meaning, 'what's in it for us." Raistlin smirked.

The dwarf narrowed his eyes. "Meaning we needs to know who we dealing with." He growled. "You have two names, mage. Army marches under your name, but keep you a prisoner. Tells you are powerful, but not powerful enough to leave. What cans you offer us, mage?"

"I do not leave because the army follows my wishes," Raistlin said with an ease he certainly didn't feel. "And as for the guard – you can see how much of a threat they are here." He waved a hand at the knight.

The dwarf snorted, but didn't argue. Raistlin flicked a hand, and let the little cantrip loose. The dark dwarf blinked and squinted through the soft glow in the corner. "And as to what I can offer you-" Raistlin pointed idly at the chest.

Raistlin watched impassively as the dwarves pawed ravenously through his stash of treasures from the Sentinel Peaks. Somewhere inside him, it hurt. It was meant to be him. It should have been him and Dalamar, gasping and exclaiming over a completely unexpected windfall and laughing in delight at all they could do with such riches.

But the pain was dulled and worn out, a shadow of itself. It would not be him. Would never be him. The gemstones would find a short home in the dark dwarves' pockets, then – depending on Tasslehoff's success – would either be melted to glass on the Plains of Dust, or be lost when the dwarves were almost inevitably butchered by one side or another. No one claimed dark dwarves were intelligent, or loyal.

"You have plan?"

Raistlin tried not to flinch. Fistandantilus had met with the Dewar outside, under the trees, and had welcomed them with spirits and meat. But this dwarf was the same, and his words were the same. The same path, perfectly tread. His own defeated feet slotting perfectly into the footprints Fistandantilus had laid for him.

"Duncan will meet our army on the plains in front of Pax Tharkas, intending to defeat us there or, if unable to do so, at least inflict heavy casualties," Raistlin said flatly. "If we are winning, and we will be winning, he will withdraw his forces back into the fortress, close the gates and operate the mechanism that drops thousands of tons of rocks down to block those gates."

"With the stores of food and weapons he has cached there, he can wait until we either give up and retreat, or until his own reinforcements arrive from Thorbardin to pen us up in the valley." He stopped, looking at the dark dwarf, who was nervously flipping a knife between his fingers. Raistlin snatched it out of the air and slammed it, point down, between the dwarf's middle and ring fingers. "Am I correct?"

"Magic." The dwarf shuddered.

"Whatever you think it to be. Am I correct?"

Then it was so pitifully easy. Nothing but a bit of bargaining and the Dewar was entirely ready to fall in line. He'd copied the note out word for word from the one image he had been able to scrape together from Fistandantilus' memories and no doubt it would work, as it had worked before.

"But I want something else to give to Duncan," the Dewar said suddenly, unexpectedly. Raistlin stopped, frowned. This was not in his memories. "Not just scroll. Something impressive."

"What does your kind consider 'impressive'?" Raistlin murmured, trying to drag some recollection from his borrowed memories. Had this even happened before? Or had his actions finally thrown something out of joint in the gods' perfectly designed plan? "A few dozen hacked-up bodies—"

The dwarf grinned, showing cracked, yellowed teeth. "The head of your general."

With those words – the head of your general – Fistandantilus' memories finally coughed up the matching image. The lich had forgotten it. It had considered the detail utterly unimportant. Raistlin gritted his teeth and some scrap of himself – some old, tired fragment that still dreamed of rabbit shadow puppets – begged no. Yes, he had thought of getting rid of Caramon himself, but it had not been real. It would not have lasted. When he reformed time, Caramon would have been brought back to life, safe, unharmed and most importantly, far from Raistlin.

But those dreams were dust in his hands, as dead as the young boys who had once sat in the darkened bedroom and laughed in whispers. Now, his twin thought him a monster, and was willing and eager to kill him. Even somewhere deep inside him, where Caramon could not hide the truth, even there, he hated Raistlin. Hated him for leaving, for making his own way, for becoming his own person.

That man had as much to do with the Caramon of his childhood as Raistlin had to do with Fistandantilus. If Caramon called the dead lich brother, then let him die as Fistandantilus' general had died. Maybe he too had once called the undead brother, and Fistandantilus had forgotten even ordering his death.

Raistlin wouldn't. The words touched his lips like poison, and maybe poison would have been better. "Agreed."

Caramon came to his tent before dawn. The knight was still snoring and Caramon elbowed him in the chink between arm and breastplate, waking him with a snort. "Go get some sleep," Caramon growled.

Raistlin looked up, scowling through wayward strands of hair. It was at least an hour before the sun would be up, and he had spent most of the night sleepless and wretched with the dwarf's words ringing in his ears. Caramon waited, crossing his arms – and did Raistlin really forgo sleep to chew himself to his wit's end over this idiot? He got up stiffly. "I will join you outside," he snapped.

Caramon did not move. Raistlin hesitated, waited, hands on his robes to wash and change. "Are you going to leave?"

"I won't have you hiding anything in your robes."

"Why, would you like to search me, dear brother?" Raistlin snarled. "Is this your new sick perversion? I always thought you were jealous of Dalamar, but never imagined it would go this far-"

Caramon went white, and turned on his heel. Well, that worked. Raistlin splashed his face with cold water and stripped, washing quickly and shaving the patchy stubble. He was probably going to regret saying that, but at least he got a fragment of privacy, for once.

Caramon was mounted and readied. "We ride to Pax Tharkas," he said flatly. "It's your army, Fistandantilus; you had better be seen at the front of it."

Raistlin said nothing, eyeing his nervous, shifting horse. He hated that animal. In fact, he hated all horses. In fact-

He snarled to himself and mounted. It was too early for this. "So eager to die," he muttered to himself. "Do you want to give the dwarves a chance to put an arrow through your eye?"

Caramon's lip curled. "As I said, it's your army." He rode off, leaving Raistlin gritting his teeth and with no choice but to follow.

And he was right, damn it. The very first thing Raistlin heard from the walls of Pax Tharkas was "You sharpshooters—a bag of gold to the one whose arrow lodges in the wizard's ribs!"

Part of Raistlin wanted to turn right around and leave. The other part wanted to dismount, and walk right up to the gates to see if that was even possible – or if the gods would lay a hand over him and he'd watch the arrows just bounce off. He sat and watched in irritation as Caramon and the dwarf bandied insults, and the dwarves sent a volley of arrows towards them.

Caramon and the others were turning, about to bolt. Raistlin watched the arrows coming and spaced them – yes, they would miss him. He shook his head wearily and raised a hand. The magic warmed his cold, exhausted body, lifted his spirits as the arrows trailed to ash around him. The magic. A fragment of home. The only one he had left.

He turned as Caramon and the others stopped, staring up in astonishment, and rode hard back to the camp. They could fight this war, and win it, as they inevitably would. Fistandantilus might have joined in, but he wouldn't. Let the gods find a way to stack the deck in their favour; he would not do it for them.

Caramon was looking for him. Raistlin tried to dredge up some emotion to that, but nothing came but dull resignation and an absent hope the Dewar would find Caramon before Caramon found him. He didn't feel much like being screamed at and hit. The army was too distracted and too drunk to notice when he slipped away, following Crysania to Pax Tharkas.

He had no direct goal in going there; save a vague hope Caramon would be too busy there to bother him. The walls of Pax Tharkas. Would it be better, if all of this was happening in places he had never seen? The dwarves' stonework was too familiar, too unchanged even after three hundred years.

Riding past the walls, looking up at the great gate where the stones had once rained down and crushed the traitor Eben and the Green Gemstone man. Flashes of his own memories, and even those that had been fearful then were laughable now. Death, was that all he had been scared of? That and Dalamar finding out the truth about Fistandantilus? Because the elf was clearly far more intelligent than Raistlin and could see the doom about to crash down on the both of them-

His horse snorted suddenly, shying at a pile of bodies on the ground. Raistlin reined it in. The place was full of corpses, bodies strewn around like dead leaves, but these drew his eye. A full platoon, armed with pikes. But these were too small to be dwarves, their weapons and armour too battered to have belonged to either army.

Raistlin dismounted, tethered his horse to a dead tree, and walked closer, curiously. He tried to remember if he had ever read of anything like this, tried to place this moment within Fistandantilus' memories.

But nothing came up, and when he reached the dead, he could see why. Gully dwarves, a little platoon of gully dwarves, kitted out with second-rate equipment and sent to die. And the stupid, stubbornly loyal creatures had fought to the last, down to tooth and nail, if the handful of casualties around them were any indication.

Raistlin sat back on his haunches, ignoring the smell of the Aghar, not improved by lying in the sun most of the morning. Of course no one had noticed. Of course this had never found its way into the record. A heroic last stand, bravely standing against overwhelming odds and fighting to the very end, without even one breaking rank to flee. Such a sacrifice would have been heralded in a thousand songs, been honoured by a statue in every tunnel in Thorbardin.

But these were gully dwarves, and had been so utterly forgotten, Raistlin had never so much as found a footnote. Fistandantilus had barely seemed to notice that gully dwarves existed at all, had ploughed through and destroyed them without even noticing they were there. Without even honouring them with that recognition.

No more than Fistandantilus had paid Raistlin any attention, after stealing his body. Or the gods had thought much about the innocents in Istar when they made their giant flaming statement.

Raistlin looked up at the walls of Thorbardin and tasted fire. Oh, they thought themselves so high and mighty, looking down and brushing away the least of their own without even noticing them. But they too were fooled, because the gods looked down on them, and paid them no more heed than they did the gully dwarves. And they would be as dead as the gully dwarves, if the gods had their way and the destruction of Zhaman sent them all to the Abyss.

Raistlin stood up stiffly, rage blazing inside him. And at the last, there was him. Because this had to end somewhere and if he was to be the one to tear down the gods and leave them lying dead as these dwarves in the dust – well, that would be something. The world would turn full circle and perhaps the survivors would think again before playing with mortals.

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