Greenedera: I hope the energy keeps going! Here we are- the final chapter and Dalamar's Big Damn Hero moment.
SongofFete: Thank you for your reviews! Hope you've kept reading this far.
Hopeless
Would you leave me
If I told you what I'd done?
No Light No Light, Florence + and the Machine
Raistlin snarled. It was breathless, airless. He had nothing to give it, just bloody, bared teeth and soundless screams. He could feel the heat of the goddess' breath on the back of his neck. She was close, but did not dare to come too near. She wanted him to lead her through. Even if it meant her death, she would throw herself through the Gate, mindless as gnomish clockwork, into Raistlin's waiting jaws.
He laughed. It came out a hacking death-rattle. Blood ran in a rivulet down his chin. The magic burnt through him, so hot his blood dried to scabs almost before it ran out. He looked up and smiled. She was reaching for him, longing to snatch him up and crush him between her fingers. But she was slow, too slow. The fire blazed inside him and he was half-tempted to stay, and burn her hand to ash when it tried to catch him. He laughed again like a rabid dog, and lurched forwards. Only a few more steps and he would be through. The Queen's hand would close on his robes, and he would drag her through with him. And then-
They would burn.
They would all burn.
Yes yes yes
And when they were dead, Raistlin would pick up the pieces and put the world back together. Put it back as it should have been.
He could almost taste it. Victory. A final, blazing victory. The blood of gods on his hands. Power burning through his veins. The River of Time his to command. To reform. Free from the meddling of mad liches and cruel puppet gods. The fire in his throat, burning through his body.
Yes yes yes
His eyes were blurred, everything but the Portal seemed slightly out of focus. But something seemed off. It took a massive wrench to turn his focus from the Portal to the uncertain figure halfway between it and him. Some last ditch attempt by the Queen to stop him? It wouldn't work. He wouldn't even slow before burning this doll-creature to ash-
Raistlin blinked, and the figure came into focus.
And he grinned. Yes yes yes.
Caramon was looking at him with that furious, broken look on his face. How had he gotten here? Who cared? Raistlin's mouth watered ravenously. Yes yes yes. The fire burned up his arms in hungry expectation. Think about his hand crushing your shoulder, holding you out in place before the army. Think of his sword at your throat. Think of his slavish, muttish devotion to Fistandantilus. Think of the gloating, mocking letters.
Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.
It would be delicious. And he had Crysania with him, to make it all the more delightful. "Come!" he laughed, his voice cracking through his carbonized throat. "Come here, my brother, my monstrous twin. Come and die too!"
Caramon's face was stiff with shock. Oh, had he really maintained the delusion that far? Raistlin laughed and laughed until he coughed up black blood. It steamed as it hit the ground. "Raistlin?"
"Oh, at last." Raistlin grinned. "I could almost let you live, for that. You can stay here, you and that filthy cleric. Fistandantilus is waiting for you, that undead thing. It took my body and devoured me flesh and bone, and you were so happy-"
"No," Caramon whispered.
"You loved it so much!" Raistlin threw out a hand, taking in the whole of the Abyss. "Stay! Be its beloved brother. The cleric could even lie with it, if there's enough flesh left on it for that."
Caramon shook his head, over and over. He was coming closer, a trembling hand on his sword.
"Get out of the way," Raistlin snickered, running his tongue over his canines. "Or do not. Stay. Burn." A giggle escaped his teeth. "Burn under my hands."
"You're insane," Caramon whispered.
Raistlin looked at him and oh, he'd think the Abyss had frozen over if he wasn't there himself. Caramon was right. For once in his miserable life, his mindless, deranged brother was right. Everything felt broken, the world fracturing around the edges. The fire ran under his skin and cracked it like overfired pottery, showing red lines through the gold. Par-Salian had thrown him into the Test to forge him. Instead, he'd swallowed the fire and it was now consuming him.
So be it. I never did any of it for myself. Maybe the world needs someone to burn. Clear it of dead wood and leave it – cleaner, better.
It occurred to him suddenly that he was saying all of this out loud.
"You won't." Caramon drew his sword. "I have seen the future, Raistlin." The tip wavered, pathetic, struggling to point in Raistlin's direction.
"And I am that one who is mad?" Raistlin sneered, lurched forward, he couldn't wait any longer. Takhisis was coming closer, and he would not fail now, not when he was so close.
"I saw it – what was left of it." Caramon stepped closer. He was stained with grey dust, and even in this place, he reeked of death. "You tear it all to pieces. You kill everything and claw back in time and kill them too. Over and over, until there's nothing left. Until nothing exists or ever existed."
Raistlin stared. Stared at his twin's trembling face, his eyes bloodshot and tearstained. Something hideous and cold clenched in his stomach, draining the fire from his blood.
"You've got to make him stop!" Tasslehoff rushed up, slipped in the pool of blood and slid to a halt hard up against the podium to the Portal. He tried to get up, and a weak, un-kender-like whimper broke free. His arm was in a makeshift sling, his sleeve torn and the skin underneath puffy and inflamed, the bones fragmented and buckled over. "Please-" His eyes were wide and feverish. "Make him stop."
"Tas, you're hurt." Tanis leaned down. "You need to-"
"You have to get him to stop!" The kender repeated, looking desperately at Dalamar. "You're the only one he'll listen to. I tried! I really tried but he didn't want to listen anymore and he killed Gnimsh and then Caramon broke my arm-"
"Fistandantilus-" Dalamar started.
"No!" Tasslehoff wailed. "Everyone kept calling him that and it was awful. Even Caramon was doing it and all we wanted to do was to go home but it all went wrong and if I see Fizban again I'm going to want an explanation-"
Dalamar's mouth went numb. The world made a slow, hideous revolution. "He- he isn't-"
"We were going to fix everything! Raistlin was going to kill some old undead mage before it could eat him and we were going to save Sturm and I was going to spend time with Flint!"
Oh Gods…
Dalamar couldn't breathe.
"I just wanted to go home!" Tasslehoff started crying.
The world stretched out barren, endless. Burnt black. Ash blew over the landscape in oily streaks, the sky cracked with brilliant lightning. Pillars of light striking ground and burning and burning and burning, half obscuring the shattered bones of giants and Gods that he had torn apart and scattered across the world in his triumph.
And, unnoticed, in the midst of his battle, the world had died around him.
But he would resolve it. He would go back and change things. He would change the River of Time until it ran clean until it -
No.
No, don't make me see.
Raistlin screamed, turned back, digging his hands into the River. Turn it into new tributaries, chart new courses-
It boiled under the fire, steamed and ran dry. Raistlin was digging in sand that turned to ash that turned into fragmented pieces of bones. He dug deeper, reached back, trying to find some new possibility, some hope to turn to new worlds, new life. Something that was worth living, worth having, not-
No.
No – not that. Not that. No.
He knelt there. Among the ravaged land. The world was dead around him. Everything that had been made had been un-made. By his hands. He had indeed destroyed the Gods and, with that, exterminated everything they had ever created.
Somewhere, far away, he saw Astinus handing his crumbling book to Tasslehoff, before Gilean too fell to dust under Raistlin's maddened onslaught. That desperate, deranged urge to hurt. To make everything suffer just as much as he was suffering-
"No!" Raistlin screamed, the word tore from his throat and hung there, a burning ball of fire. No, no, no no no no no no – don't make me you can't make me I don't want to see-
Gods, Dark Nuitari. Why hadn't he run? What had possessed him to stay in that blasted Tower? Was it some last mad wish to revenge himself on Raistlin?
He should have spirited Dalamar out of that horror. He should have stayed and let Dalamar kill him. He should have-
And he had done none of those things. Because the moment he had stepped from the Portal, the fire within him had snatched up Dalamar, through the very curse that Fistandantilus had placed on him, and burnt him too. Devoured his life to feed Raistlin's magic, his fury.
Dalamar had died right in front of him.
And Raistlin had killed him.
He screamed again, and stumbled back, away from Caramon. Bodies littered the landscape around him. A grey world, of blasted rocks and the stumps of trees. Bodies, curled up and desiccating, without even the worms to eat them. Dalamar, Tasslehoff, that poor gnome, the little gully dwarf Bupu, her hand still clutching the emerald he had given to protect her. Dead. All dead. Torn up and burnt to ashes by his hands.
Raistlin stopped. The fire bled out of him, turned the ground around him black and charred. He was horribly, suffocatingly cold. Cold as a snowdrift, as the sort of grey, rotten ice that only existed in places with no summer. He stared off, into the distance.
The Portal was there, closer even than he'd expected it. And he could see through it. He could see-
Raistlin stopped, and looked up at Caramon. His twin – no. That man was looking at him with a mixture of revolting pity and disgust. So be it. He was beyond feeling anything now. He could sense Takhisis' triumph, her laughter, low and hungry in the back of his mind.
He had lost.
He had lost so completely, there would be no coming back. He had lost before he had even started. A sickening, repellent game where the only good option had been to slit his throat right at the beginning to keep from playing. Every victory, every sacrifice was poisoned from the start. Every triumph was soured and just dragged him further down. He'd fought on, in the hope that there would be hope, in the end. That there would be an end. That he would walk out into the light and find something there worth the pain and misery.
And there was nothing. Nothing but darkness and more darkness and the deaths of everyone and everything he cared for. The only way out was to end it now, before it all became eternally, impossibly worse.
"Raistlin-" Caramon started.
Raistlin closed his eyes and threw down his staff. "Take it." He waited until Caramon had picked it up, gingerly. "Now get out."
"But-"
"The Portal will close behind you." Raistlin didn't open his eyes. "Begone."
"I-" Caramon wavered, and Raistlin felt sick, revolted to his core. A shadow of the old fire came back, and he opened his eyes, looking up at the man.
"Begone." His voice was a harsh hiss. "I was never your brother. I see that now. Go and leave me alone."
Caramon's mouth moved, but he said nothing. He shouldered Crysania and the staff, and started toward the Portal. Raistlin stared after him, through it, ravenously, one last time. He could see Dalamar, a blur of black robes and stubborn, burning eyes. Ready to stop him, to end this threat he could see but Raistlin had been blind to. Bloody and beaten and furious and alive and so beautiful.
I should have come back, and let you kill me. Raistlin shuddered. He could feel the Dark Queen's hungry breath as she came close. He screwed his eyes shut, and crossed his arms in front of his face. He knew what was coming. He didn't want to see it.
Raistlin was right there.
Not more than twenty feet, and another world away.
Gods, Dalamar had never thought he would ever see him again.
Raistlin's eyes met his, desperate and helpless and pleading. Then they closed, and he covered his face.
"No," Dalamar breathed.
The darkness engulfed him, the teeth closed on him. Takhisis' claws and fangs and mocking, triumphant laughter. Dalamar stared, not even aware of the pain in his arm anymore, feeling lightning run through him. Liquid light, cold fire. He got up, legs trembling.
Caramon staggered through the Portal. Crysania was hanging over his shoulder – her face was torn to ribbons, her eyes gone. Dalamar's felt his lips draw into a smile, tasted the storm growing behind his teeth. "Stay with her, Tanis." Caramon's voice was dull, flat. "I must- I have to-" He turned to the Portal, the staff clenched in his hands. Beyond it, Takhisis' heads turned to them, teeth red with Raistlin's blood.
Dalamar stared back at her, half-blinded with blood loss. Some distant part of him was suggesting running through the Portal, but he shoved it away. He stared at Caramon, tasting the magic that worked around him. The bright, blinding light lit the Portal like a falling star, and the Portal froze like ice before it.
Caramon dropped the staff. It went dead and clattered to the ground, rolling away among the wreckage of the laboratory. Dalamar stared at him but it was as though he wasn't actually there. Everything was turning to shadows around him, under the sheer force of what he had to do. The plans that were falling together in his hands, for the first time in two years.
"Damn you," Caramon breathed. He drew his sword. "For you! Nothing but for you! Kill all of us and save you-"
"Yes," Dalamar murmured, barely noticing the sword. Gods, he'd been such a fool-
"I should kill you," Caramon roared, and lunged at him.
"No," Tasslehoff wailed, staggering forwards.
"She's dying!" Tanis' voice cut through, and Caramon stopped. Dalamar looked at him – rather too late for that – but he was talking about Crysania, not Kitiara. "We need to get her out of here-"
Caramon looked between them. Dalamar raised his crossbow. It was built for undead, but three feet of metal were three feet of metal. "Stay away." He needed time. He needed to think-
For a moment, they were all frozen in place. Caramon with his sword drawn, a heartbeat from springing at Dalamar's throat. The little kender, about to jump at Caramon to stop him. Tanis, hovering, lost between Crysania and Kitiara, hands empty and useless. And Dalamar. Dalamar as living ice and frozen lightning, his bones cracking with the sheer force of what he needed to do.
Which was when Rannoch burst into the room backwards, held in Lord's Soth gauntleted hand. Everyone jumped. Dalamar blinked, not entirely sure if he was seeing this, or if his mind had finally thrown the last shoe and he had started hallucinating. Rannoch pulled free and rushed backwards, through Caramon and into a bookcase.
"Get me the healing potions," Dalamar said vaguely, hand clenching on the crossbow.
"You try my patience, Dark elf." The Death Knight turned burning eyes on him, his armour was scratched from where Rannoch had tried to slow him down, a plate pulled free and hanging empty. "You know what I am here for."
Tanis' mouth opened, he stepped forward, standing between him and Kitiara. Dalamar struggled to swallow around his dry throat. Soth's eyes fixed on Kitiara's body, cold and hungry and oh gods Dalamar knew that look, didn't he? He bared his teeth, wavered as white-hot rage flashed through him like thunder.
"Release her to me, Tanis Half-Elven," Soth said, cold as a knife. "Your love binds her to this plane. Give her up."
"What'll you do to her?" Tanis wavered, and Dalamar stared. What was he doing?
"Tanis-" Tasslehoff took two steps forwards, clutching a little knife in his good hand. "He's going to take her."
"She is mine." The Death Knight clenched a mailed fist. "She was always meant to be mine. Like I myself, she was meant to rule, destined to conquer! But she was stronger than I was. She could throw aside love that threatened to chain her down. But for a twist of fate, she would have ruled all of Ansalon!"
Dalamar shifted, managed to brace the crossbow on the overturned table. Tanis was starting to doubt, again. Again and again, and maybe Dalamar should tell him water was not for drinking and watch him doubt himself to death.
"And there she was! Penned up in Sanction like a caged beast, making plans for a war she could not hope to win. Better that she should die fighting than let her life burn out like a guttered candle!"
Was this how undead saw the world? Dalamar wondered. Was this how Fistandantilus saw the world? Nothing but candles for them to blow out for their own amusement? It would explain a lot. His stomach twisted.
"You have life, Half-Elven. You have much to live for. There are those among the living who depend upon you. I know, because all that you have was once mine. I cast it away, choosing to live in darkness instead of light. Will you follow me? Will you throw all you have aside for one who chose, long ago, to walk the paths of night?"
And Tanis was backing away. Closed his eyes, turned out of the Death Knight's path. He would let Soth take her. Let it happen, in front of him. Willingly, openly, with arms wide to welcome the eternal torture of one he claimed to love. The little kender cried out. Soth took a step towards Kitiara's fallen body-
"Get out, or I fire." Dalamar's voice came out so loud he almost made himself jump, almost sent the blessed, enchanted bolt through Soth's body.
The Death Knight turned. "You seek death so eagerly?"
"You can feel the magic of this, Soth," Dalamar snarled. His head span, lightheaded and impossible. "I built it to kill the Shalafi. What do you think it will do to you? Do you think your magic will defend you? Get out of my Tower."
"You would do this for her?" But he was backing away, slowly.
"And you!" Dalamar jerked his head at Tanis, and Caramon. "Out! All of you out! I have one bolt and now I have to decide who I shoot first!"
Tasslehoff wavered for a moment, knife upraised in his small hand where he must have been about to make one last, desperate stand against Lord Soth. Dalamar's lips curved, not quite a smile. "Out. You too kender. Keep whatever you've taken and leave."
"Dalamar-" Tanis hesitated. "Kitiara-"
Dalamar lifted the crossbow, one-handed. It was ivory and steel and he knew how heavy it was, and he didn't even notice, hoisted it as easily as his dagger. "Could rot on a dungheap and that would still be a kinder fate than the one you were about to let happen, filth." Dalamar gritted his teeth; he could almost taste the electricity grounding between them. "I will not see another devoured by your kind, Soth."
He staggered out of the laboratory, following the sorry troop of dead and dying. Rannoch arrived, fleshless arms filled with healing potions and hovering awkwardly as Dalamar leant on the walkway, following Soth with the crossbow. "See the living ones out." Dalamar growled. "The Death Knight can manage it himself."
He waited until the door closed, and fell over.
The crossbow fell from his nerveless fingers. His muscles were spasming from the effort of holding it up, and his hand shook helplessly as he groped for a bottle. He drew the top off with his teeth and downed it. The magic rushed through him and the world started to settle a little more around him. Two more and his left arm was starting to feel as though it might belong to him again. He lifted it, tried to move it. It twitched, jerked sluggishly, it was incandescently painful. Nuitari damn it, he needed two hands.
He might have fallen unconscious at some point. Woke numb and stiff, still lying on the landing with Rannoch waiting beside him. The Dead One had dropped a cloak over him. "Thank you," Dalamar muttered absently, then got up. His spellbooks. That spell. Where had he left that spell?
The Dead One followed him down the steps, Dalamar paused and turned. "There is a dead body in the laboratory," he said calmly. "Please remove it and dump it outside the city limits. Her dragon should find it." Rannoch bowed, and vanished.
Dalamar pushed open the door to his quarters and snatched up his spellbook. His good hand was shaking as he fumbled through the pages. That spell, that spell – there. The words of magic wavered in front of his eyes. He struggled to take them in but – he couldn't focus. He let his eyes settle for a moment then he was trying to read them too fast and left them with no time to settle in his mind.
Dalamar stopped, took a deep breath. Closed his eyes and pushed away that terrible, burning image of Raistlin falling under the Dark Queen's claws. Raistlin. Raistlin. It was him. He was alive. The brilliant, desperate, beautiful bastard had been alive, all this time. Trapped inside Fistandantilus' mind, and fighting for a chance to get out. Was the lich dead – or simply trapped again? Dalamar found he didn't care at all. If Raistlin was still in there, still fighting-
He had to get him out.
Dalamar had lived so long without hope; suddenly having it was like – like the weight of the world had been lifted off him. As though he could fly with a thought, and the idea of stealing Raistlin from under the Dark Queen's claws was laughably easy.
He opened his eyes, and his mind. The words ran into his head, burned in deep, his mouth moved through them. Line after line. It settled in, ran through his blood, breathed in his magic and came to life, waiting, close and ready.
It took everything Dalamar had not to just get up and run straight back to the laboratory. He closed his eyes again, breathed. Opened his eyes and slipped through the magic down to the kitchen. He ate half a loaf of bread without even tasting it, and felt his mind start to flow down lines that made sense.
He needed to get through the Portal. He didn't have the time or inclination to force a cleric to help him; but Crysania had been in no state to assist with the closing, so clearly there was now another way in. If Dalamar could just discover how to unlock it-
Not to mention how he was going to keep from being torn to pieces and devoured on the far side. He had the spell, but would it be enough to hide him in that alien world? Then he would have to find Raistlin...
He drank a cup of water, suddenly realised how thirsty he was, and drank two more. Got up. He needed to go. He needed to move. He didn't know how time passed in that other world, but he doubted it would be kind. Every moment he waited here…
No. Stop. Shut up. Focus. This, now, right here. If he did this badly it would just take longer – if he even succeeded at all instead of dying. How could he find out what he needed? How could he test his spell, how could-
Dalamar stopped. He got up, and his legs felt stronger and more stable under him. He knew where he needed to go. He knew what he had to do. Everything was clear, crystalline and perfect. For the first time in two years, Dalamar stood straight, and smiled.