Kevin Stein - Brothers Majere

"But maybe Raist is down there. He's alone. He needs me."

Caramon put a foot on the stair. Then, deciding that – like bad-tasting medicine – it was best to drink it quickly and get it over with, the warrior ran full speed down the staircase.

"• Reaching the bottom, he stepped off and instantly red beams flared around him. One glanced off his arm, searing his flesh painfully. Caramon rolled on the ground and ducked into a nearby building, shutting the door behind him. Looking out a window, he could see three creatures, aiming red-glowing wands at him.

The creatures were bent and twisted, their bodies covered with fur. Their heads looked like the skulls of dead cats, teeth gleaming in a rictus grin. One of the demons, wearing a harness of some strange, glossy material with a silver medallion in the middle, shouted something in a strange language, pointing at the building where Caramon was hiding.

The demon's voice, rough and hissing, reminded Caramon of a cat that could talk like a human. Moving slowly and as quietly as he could, the big man crept up the stairs.

Down below, he heard the door crash and saw a bolt of crimson flare in the room, scoring the back wall and setting furniture aflame.

Footsteps, claws scraping against the floor, padded through the room, searching. Then they began to ascend the stairs. A head appeared in Caramon's view. It saw him the same time he saw it.

"Das – " it began to shout the alarm.

Caramon's sword bit into its neck, the keen metal driving so far into the flesh that the blade plunged through the demon into the wall. The warrior yanked his blade free and pounded up the stairs that led to the third floor.

The hallway exploded with red light, shattering chairs and tables, sending splinters flying through the air. Cara-mon kept running. Another demon, growling in anger at missing its target, dashed up the stairs in pursuit.

Caramon waited in ambush at the head of the stairs, drew his throwing dagger, and tossed. The knife struck the demon point-blank in the chest.

Reaching up, irritated, the demon plucked it out of its black pelt.

"Huh? I guess that's why Bast said to use the sword," Caramon muttered.

He saw the wand aiming at him and threw himself to the floor. Red light burned through the room, over his head. Looking about wildly, the fighter discovered a portal in the ceiling, just low enough for him to reach. He pushed the wood-slatted cover off with his bastard sword, throwing the blade through it to land on the roof. Leaping up, he grabbed the edges of the portal and started to pull himself up.

Powerful hands grabbed hold of his ankles and jerked him to the floor. The demon's paws smashed down onto his ears, stunning him. The creature extended its claws and cut down under the warrior's armor, digging forward, dragging dirty talons through his flesh.

The pain brought Caramon to his senses, and he kicked up with his legs, knocking the demon over. Leaping after it, he tried to pin it to the floor. The demon slipped out of his hold, and Caramon scrambled backward.

His sword was high above him, and he cursed himself for his carelessness. Then he put his hand on something on the floor and, thinking he recognized it by its feel, he closed his fingers over it.

The demon reached for its wand, snarling in dismay when its clawed fingers closed on air.

'This what you lost?" Caramon said, holding up the weapon.

The demon leaped for it. The warrior brought his knee up straight at its stomach. The creature doubled over and Caramon clasped both arms around the demon in a bear hug, muscles straining against its dark fur, crushing until he felt bones snap beneath his grip. The body went limp. Dropping the corpse to the floor, the warrior leaned against the wall, gasping for breath. After a short time, he moved back up to the hole in the ceiling, lifting himself easily through the portal and onto the empty rooftop. Picking up his blade, he crawled to the edge and stared down to see if the other demon had returned with -

A powerful fist slammed across the side of his head, nearly sending him reeling over the edge of the roof. The demon, apparently uninjured, bared its fangs, biting deep into the human's shoulder.

Caramon stifled his cry of pain for fear of alerting any others of its kind, and brought the hilt of his sword up into the demon's chin, knocking it backward. The warrior slashed the bastard sword across in a horizontal arc, cleaving the head from furred shoulders.

White and silver spots danced before Caramon's vision. His legs weakened and gave out under his weight, forcing him to sit down roughly on the smooth stone.

Stretching himself out on the roof, closing his eyes to the image of the Great Eye, he swallowed, breathing hard. "And there's an army of these things!" he said with a groan.

In his room in Barnstoke Hall, Raistlin removed several black bags from his pack – flat pouches heavily lined with fur and other soft materials. He opened one of them to reveal an array of bottles and tubes, capped with cork and stoppered with rubber blocks, containing a variety of colored liquids and crystals and powders. Unfolding a brass frame used to store chemicals while working, he took the containers out from their holding straps and placed them into their proper locations – solids in front, liquids at the back.

Another pouch produced a shallow mixing dish with matching pestle and a glass bottle of clear liquid with a wick jutting from the top. From another he drew a melting pan and stand, and a smaller pan with a handle covered in wound leather. A third contained holding stands, tiny metal chains, and various silvered tools.

The mage erected the apparatus on top of the table. Reaching into his voluminous robes, he pulled out a hollow gold tube, as long as one of his gold fingers, unadorned by symbol or rune, and placed it next to the pan.

Raistlin sat in a chair, placing his hands on his knees, fists clenched in concentration. He began to search through his memories for the proper potion – an elixir that would suit his purpose. Ingredients began to filter through his mind as he allowed the discipline of alchemy to take control of his consciousness, his knowledge of the world and familiarity with the art drawing out an answer.

A pinch of white powder as the base, another of black to equalize, blood from all parties, the symbols of sympathetic magic, dust taken at great risk to spirit and body, clear crystals to bend, green to expand, red to destroy, heat to forge, a cylinder of gold to cool.

"And alcohol," Raistlin concluded, coming out of his near-trance.

He stood and set to work, putting the bottles he was not going to use back into their holding straps, closing the pouch and setting it aside for safety. With a long fin-gernail, he drew a measured amount of rough, white powder, most of which had clung together into small clumps, from a bottle and tapped it out onto the melting pan.

Fie lit the wick on the squat clear bottle, summoning up a dancing yellow flame. Taking a dark bottle from the rack, Raistlin carefully removed the rubber stopper, revealing a small spoon pushed into the bottom. Removing an amount equal to the white powder, he mixed them together with a wooden rod – a thin stick no wider than a leaf of grass – and spread the now gray mixture into a thin ring with an open center.

Throwing the stick far across the room with a flick of his wrist, the mage wiped a small bead of sweat that had formed on his brow. He tried to keep his thoughts and purpose straight, clear and free from influence, but-looking at the materials before him – he caught his breath, hands trembling. His eyes closed tight for a moment.

His will held. He opened his eyes.

The mage removed three more bottles from the rack, each containing crystal shards of varying sizes and shapes – one was clear, another green, and the third red. He removed a piece of the clear crystal and placed it on the shallow dish, crushing it against the metal with the marble hammer. He wiped the debris from the tool on his sleeve. Doing the same with the other crystals, he began to measure the amounts he thought he would need with the edge of his little finger – a bit of red gone, add a little more green, too much clear, then, not enough.