The entrance looked exactly like the rain-wet surroundings, a circle of ancient stones covered in moss and sickly glowing lichen. Raistlin bent down over the place, his keen eyes picking out the subtle electric threads of magical energy that leaped almost imperceptibly between the stones.

"This is the place, Dalamar. Come here, I am far too weakened to open the doorway myself."

It was obvious that speaking these words pained him, that admitting his inability to handle the spell alone caused him more suffering even than the agony in his chest. He dissolved into a coughing fit as his apprentice came forward to take his shoulder, keeping him from falling to his knees in the mud. Bright blood stained Raistlin's thin lips, and Dalamar gently wiped it away with a cloth, reverence and mercy and a tenderness that he had not known until these last few days plain on his face. He couldn't quite explain the change that had come over him, nor did he care to. But when night fell and the travellers stopped to rest, Dalamar always stood guard over his master, watching the mage's gaunt face as he slept, worried always that the last and most-respected person left alive in his life would die and abandon him.

"Shalafi, should you not rest a while before attempting to enter the gate with me?"

Raistlin shook his head, still coughing.

"C-cannot...risk...w-waiting..."

"Yes, master. I understand." Dalamar helped Raistlin to straighten up, then moved into the center of the ring of stones. It was an intricate spell he was about to perform, and a single misstep could be the destruction of the two men.

He reached into his voluminous pockets, pulling out the components he required while Raistlin watched on with weary approval. Dalamar trusted to his skill, born as it was of years of training at the oftentimes ruthless hand of his master. Within moments a soft shimmer passed through the glade and away over the bushes. The night held its breath, and even the crickets stilled their chorus.

"Softly now..." Raistlin breathed, leaning heavily on his staff. His eyes were lit with a strange fire, a look of eagerness on his tired face. Dalamar raised his hands, scattering a handful of precious Silverthorne berries taken with great pain from the other realm long ago. A touch of something to reach out to the place they wished to go, the elements exciting themselves into a glowing frenzy. Anyone standing near would have thought it strange to see two men in black robes leaning over a ring of moldy stones in the wavering moonlight. But there was no one left to see. No eyes to behold the spectacle, the final effort of a dying mage and his faithful servant to save themselves from the end.

The end.

The end had come on the wings of a plague that turned flesh green with rot and caused hair to fall out in clumps. Dalamar had been spared only through some fluke, some aberration within his genetic line that caused an immunity to the virus that carried the horrible sickness.

Raistlin's glorious inner power kept him alive when all others fell. Dalamar had watched with his own eyes as Raistlin tended to his dying brother, his sister-in-law, their children. It had been an odd sight. Raistlin, the lines of bitterness and fatigue softening around his eyes as he sponged the pus from Caramon's sores, helped Tika to sit up and drink soup. As he bathed them, thoroughly and respectfully, and held Tika in his thin arms that final awful night when Caramon died and she could not stop wailing, wailing, wailing until she joined her beloved husband in death. Raistlin showed himself to be in possession of an inner strength that defied reason, an iron core of compassion and gentleness and willpower that had only ever been used in the pursuit of magic before. How Tika clung to him in the end, her tears flowing like the rainwater down the windowpane outside, her head against his chest as she told him how grateful she was, how wrong she had been to treat him with disdain before, how much Caramon had loved him! And Raistlin - strong, bitter, angry, powerful Raistlin - told her that the world beyond death was more beautiful than she could possibly imagine and she must not be afraid.

"Will Caramon be there, Raist?"

"My...my brother belongs there. If anyone deserves such a resting place, it is he."

Dalamar didn't know what to say. He was terribly uncomfortable with human emotions, especially those dealing with death. He'd gone outside to dig another grave for the woman in Raistlin's arms. As far as he was concerned tales of the afterlife were rot, as much rot as Tika would be in a month. When the body died, that was that. But let her have her illusions, if it made the prospect of the long dark bearable.

A soft sizzling sound, like water thrown into a hot pan, signaled the completion of the spell. Dalamar, roused from his sad recollections, carefully stepped from the circle and picked up the bags again. Leaning on his staff, Raistlin moved forward to join him at the edge of the ever-widening crack of light in the earth.

"Do you know what we will find in this place, master?"

"I know only that the Abyssal plane is the only path to the realm we seek. We must be cautious...it is a place wherein I have made a great many acquaintances over the long years whom I have no wish to encounter."

Dalamar hid a small smile at the understatement. The torments Raistlin had endured in the place they were about to pass through were the stuff of legend. But unlike most legends, they were actually true.

A moment passed, a long moment that weighed heavy in the silence as both men watched the gate opening beneath them. When it had widened enough to allow him to pass, Dalamar took the lead. Raistlin followed closely, his weariness making him stumble slightly at the edge of the portal. It felt strange, the sliding between realities. Like slipping into a very cold bath when your body was overheated. The transition took no time at all, yet still managed to feel like an eternity. They emerged, panting and winded, into a featureless gray landscape with dead trees reaching up to meet the dead sky.

"Are you all right, Shalafi?"

Raistlin said nothing, his eyes scanning the horizon. This was the part he'd dreaded, the leaving behind a land of relative safety for an uncertain plane of misery. Were demons susceptible to plague?

"Master, we should move. Unless you are in need of rest."

"I will manage, Dalamar. Please do not trouble yourself." But as he attempted to take another step, his knees gave out and he fell to the ground, striking his head against a stone and gashing it open.

"Master!" Dalamar was beside him in a moment, worry plain in his eyes. With effort, Raistlin climbed to his feet again, wiping the blood from his golden face with a shaking hand.

"I am well, curse you! Give me room to breath!"

He was more venomous than he really meant to be, the pain in his chest becoming worse with every passing moment. Dalamar said nothing in response to the caustic reprimand. He walked a step behind in silence for a time, watching the drab horizon for any sign of change. The ground felt hot, the air stiflingly stale and miserable.

Footstep after footstep, no sound but their labored breathing, the sweat running into their eyes, the crunch of fine gray sand beneath them. The Abyss was huge, huge beyond comprehension. Even Raistlin, for all his wandering and dark exploration, had never seen it all. This place that they were in now was not one he knew, and the uncertainty distracted him. Past experiences here loomed uncomfortably large in his mind, but he brushed the horrors aside as though they were the gossamer shreds of a nightmare chased away by morning. Now was not the time for giving in to fear. Now was the time for courage, and the last push.