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Original Characters created by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman.

Tas, not being of quite sound mind at that moment, ran away. From what Caramon had said, he knew that at the coming of the dawn, Raistlin was re-born and chained to the wall so that the queen could rip his various organs out all over again. Novel torture and rather painful. Tas decided there and then to rescue the mage, and take him out of the Abyss with the travelling device.
The only problem was choosing his moment. Nobody would thank him for rescuing a Raistlin who would fall to pieces -literally- at the slightest provocation, least of all Raistlin himself.
No, he would have to wait until the following sunrise. Unfortunately Takhisis would turn up at sunrise too; being eager to resume her favourite past time, and when you were in the Abyss, time had a habit of passing very slowly indeed.
Still, Tas thought resolutely, that didn't mean he shouldn't try and help Raistlin. After all, Caramon would be very pleased with him.
Crouching behind a conveniently positioned rock, Tas spent a miserable day trying to work out how to use the device. He began to fiddle once more with it, trying to block out the sound of the archmages agony, but due to a natural enough urge to check that the dragon wasn't around yet, he failed to keep his mind entirely on the job at hand.
"Ooh er!" he squeaked in alarm as the device fell neatly into three pieces in his lap. "I'm sure that wasn't meant to happen."
Peering cautiously from behind his cover, Tas realised that night was almost upon him. Scuttling quietly over to where Raistlin was again laying prone and also in bits, Tas explained his problem.
"...And before I knew it, it came apart in my hands. I'm very sorry Raistlin, I really am."
The dismembered mage indicated with a feeble wave of a hand that he wanted to look at the device more closely. Tas obliged unwillingly partly because he still didn't entirely trust the mage, but mostly because there was an awful lot of blood and stuff on the ground for him to crawl through, before he could get any closer to be of any use.
"Shirak" Raistlin hissed between his teeth, and light there was; though feeble to the point of near uselessness.
In this modest illumination, Raistlin started to instruct the Kender on the approved method of reconstructing a time travelling device.

Come the dawn, Raistlin was in agony and Tas was in tears. Both cold and hungry, Tas had spent an exhausting night listening to the mages mutterings, punctuated by the occasional fit of tortured screaming. It had been a wearing time. The soft-hearted Kender had no reason to love this black robed wizard, particularly after witnessing the death by magic of his best friend, Gmish the gnome at the mages hands. He has seen the heroic struggle made during the night by Raistlin to fix the device, despite being in the most awful agony and plagued by wracking fits of coughing; and had managed somehow to impress Tas to the point where he considered Raistlin to be the equal of his twin Caramon, in both determination to get a good job done, and sheer guts.
Ah yes. Tas wished he hadn't thought of that. Most of the mages guts were decorating the landscape by now in a manner that made the Kender feel distinctly queasy. He looked down at the complete device in his hands to take his mind off the subject. "And you say this will work...for both of us?" he asked quietly.
Raistlin nodded, weary to the end of his endurance. Indicating the imminent arrival of another nightmare morning in the land of the Abyss, he whispered for the Kender to draw near. Tas crouched down to hear the final words of the mage.
"Tas. Go now. Leave me for an hour. Come back, come back as the sun rises, but not a moment before" He waved him away.
Tas was stunned. "Go?.. Of course I can't go you silly....er...that is to say...but I came to RESCUE you!" he wailed. "Why should I leave you?"
"Tas, don't you see? I am reborn with the day. I become whole with the dawn. These broken bones mend, wounds heal, life returns. Not a pleasant sight for a....doorknob of a Kender."
"Wow! That sounds really interesting!" Tas replied, enthralled. "Are you sure I can't stay and watch? Huh? Oh. I see...Well there's no need to get so worked up about it, Raistlin! I only said...I only..Raist....ERK!"
Raistlin murmured sibilant words of a magical inclination and pointed a finger at the little Kender. Tas found himself in the unusual position of being roughly thirty feet up in the air, flying backward at great speed. "Oh well, I'll be off then!" he shouted as he left, "but remember, I'll be back."
Raistlin considered this a mixed blessing, but hadn't the energy left to say so, besides, he had other things to think about now...

"Well. He could have given me a soft landing." Tas sulked; rubbing his behind with a thorn scratched hand. "Like the time he whooshed me into a duck pond. That was fun.... Mind you," he added to himself as he trotted along, "looking around this place, I don't suppose there are any duck ponds, let alone any ducks...that I'd want to meet anyway - OW!"
Tas looked down to see what had so rudely hit him on the knee and came face to beak with a small, fluffy, golden coloured sabre toothed duck. "Oh.. This is getting ridiculous!" he complained wading through roughly fifty or so creatures of similar appearance and temperament. Into his field of vision loomed a large and murky pool of water...the said duck pond, Tas assumed.
It had things in it. Large, horrible, toothy things. "OK, Raistlin, I'm sorry. I apologise. Those thorn bushes were terrific. Really"
The ducks disappeared as if by magic, which he supposed it was really. He glanced at the sky and noticed the coming of dawn. "Oh bother, I'm going to be late!" Tas hurried along, or rather the floor hurried along whilst he stayed still, until the wall came into view. He was right. Raistlin was made whole again, but he was also chained to the wall with some very solid looking manacles.
"You stupid Kender," Raistlin hissed at him. "I told you not to be late."
"I'm sorry, Raistlin," Tas looked downcast. "I got attacked by some very ferocious ducks and...."
"Never mind that now. Unpick these locks. The queen will be here any minute." Raistlin rattled his chains impatiently.
"I'll try." Tas said doubtfully as he eyed the locks. "I hope they aren't trapped like the ones in Silvanesti, and the one in...."
"Stop wittering and get on with it!"
Tasslehoff took out the lock picking tools that are a Kenders birthright and started to probe the left manacle. "Keep still will you? I'm trying my best."
"The Queen is coming. I can sense her." Raistlin said, a note of dread creeping into his voice.
"Think of something else, like that time Caramon got caught in the wolf snare with the rabbit.."
"Don't talk about rabbits!" Raistlin said, but he tried not to think about anything else.
Again, it was too late. A herd of stampeding rabbits, GIANT rabbits hurtled into existence, bearing rapidly down on them. Tas got the left handcuff free and started on the right.
"Hurry! They're coming for us!" Raistlin screamed.
"Who is? The Queen?" Tas risked a look behind him and stared. "Oh Raistlin, they're only bunnies." He said calmly, and continued to work at the lock. Sure enough as the rabbits approached the wall, they turned into tiny bunniettes and ferociously nibbled the grass at Raistlin's feet. Raistlin became hysterical.
"Get them off me! Get them off me! ARGHH!" He thrashed his arm about in a fit of abject terror. Tas looked at him thoughtfully.
"That’s it...He's finally flipped." He decided, freeing the wizards arm and dragging him away from the wall. Tas assisted the trembling man across to a clump of rocks and considerately wished up a rather nice baroque armchair with scrolled arms and over stuffed leather upholstery for Raistlin to sit in. Tas also wished away the rabbits, not without regret. Still, he thought to himself, it might be a handy thing to know about, Raistlin's problem with rabbits.
By now, things had become rather more pressing. "I wish I could keep Her away just as easily." He muttered frisking himself for the time travelling device.
It wasn't there.
"What do you mean, you've lost it! Of all the stupid..." Raistlin suffered another attack of helpless coughing. Meanwhile Tas darted back to the wall, and snatched up the device, which, he recalled he had been forced to put down, whilst he picked the locks.
Turning round once more, Tasslehoff Burrfoot came nose to snout with Takhisis, Queen of darkness.
"Oh!..er..Hello your majesty. Nice to see you again..Umm... I think... that is to say... you're looking well an... and everything" he petered out and stood in a nervous heap before the five headed dragon.
For her part, Takhisis wasn't terrible surprised to see the Kender back in her kingdom. She observed him absently with one of her heads whilst using two more to scout round for ant reinforcements that the Kender might have thought to have brought with him. The last two heads were fixed in some amazement upon Raistlin Majere, Archmage and would-be -God, who was currently running a fever and burbling something about rabbits.
"What kind of trick is this?" she hissed curiously down to Tas. For once in his life, Tas didn't know what to say.
Seeing that she wasn't going to get anywhere with the Kender, the Queen turned her attention to the mage. Tas scampered along behind as she neared Raistlin, and toyed anxiously with the device.
Takhisis fixed her attention on Raistlin. She didn't trust him at all, but he certainly made for interesting company, especially now. She lowered her heads to hear his whispered words.
"All those teeth... those eyes...burning into my soul... NO!" he wailed. Queen Takhisis sat back in satisfaction. She was rather pleased that she had had this affect on him. He had been resisting her power for far too long. She drew near once more.
"Yesssssss, Mage.... At lassssst you fall before me.... Sssssss.."
"NO! Get away! Leave me alone! Ohhhh the ears... those twitching snuffling noses....!"
Ears? Noses? NOSES!!!!!! Takhisis turned two of her heads to regard the other three. Certainly she had never considered her ears to be one of her most ferocious characteristics, and to her certain knowledge, she had not twitched her nose at anyone for several thousand years.
Meanwhile, under her distinctly stationary noses, Tasslehoff jumped up onto Raistlins' lap, and activated the device.
Now... did you twist it to the left or to the right, he mused. He was fairly certain that Raistlin had said right. Tas twisted it firmly to the right.
They disappeared.

"I have never been so insulted in all my lives..."
"You? How do you think I felt? 'Your old Dads looking a bit peaky,' indeed! I should have turned him into an oyster."
"Well you could have done," Tas agreed. "But I don't think we would have gotten very far with an oyster driving us." He sucked noisily on his straw, slurping up the last dregs of his banana milkshake. "Maybe if he were only half an oyster...but then again, which half?"
While Tasslehoff mused over this particular vision, Raistlin scratched. He had been scratching for the last three days, and was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he should not wear man made fibres. Or jeans. Jeans had been a bad move. Finally he had settled for a rather nice pair of cotton slacks, a black shirt, a long black trench coat and real leather shoes.
And a pair of Raybans.
Tas was currently decked out in button up 501's (what ever they were) after an unfortunate introduction to zips; a T- shirt with "Forbidden Planet" printed on it and a pair of junior Reeboks. All in all they looked fairly normal, considering. I mean, an hourglass eyed mage with long silver hair, and a four-foot pointed eared Kender with a waist-length topknot and festooned with pouches were almost normal in London.
At least they did right up to the minute that some cutpurse tried to relieve Raistlin of his wallet, (Real leather with silver logo) after that, things got a little out of hand.
Magic was, well, rather a novelty to the people of this world, apparently. More to the point, the way it worked was rather a novelty to Raistlin and Tasslehoff too.
Oh- it worked all right. A simple conversion spell had turned the would-be -thief into a dog rather nicely, a rather shaggy and appealing dog, 'twas true. Not quite what Raistlin had in mind, but a dog nonetheless.
No! The problem was with something that the mage called "the knock on effect". One person became one dog, and then they became four dogs. One of the waitresses spontaneously transformed into a parrot, which was rather fitting. The people from three tables down turned into orangutangs and promptly started picking imaginary fleas off each the men next door, who had, for some curious reason become two sea- lions; one three toed sloth and a stuffed porcupine..
"I think it's time we made ourselves scarce, and retired elsewhere." Tas suggested tactfully as they gazed about themselves in some astonishment. "To the sort of elsewhere that is a long way from this where, preferably." He peered up at the mage as they left Macdonald's. "By the way.. A stuffed porcupine?"
"Well I thought it would make a change from oysters.."
"Hmmm.. Well, I'll tell you one thing," Tas added as he held the door open for an exiting giraffe, "I'll never eat shellfish again."

When they arrived home, Tasslehoff immediately switched on the TV to watch his current fave prog (as he insisted on calling it) "Star Trek". He had empathic affection for Mr. Spock, after all, anyone with pointed ears on this weird planet was a "cool dude", even if he did sound like Raistlin in one of his moods. Funnily enough Raistlin liked him too. Tas could not decide if it was the familiarity of the ears or the logical turn of mind.
Raistlin went up to his study and sat reading the works of /Shakespeare by the light of a standard lamp behind him ... or was it?
Well, it certainly looked was long and thin and had a nice red shade with tassels on it, but looking closer, you would see that it did not have a base, was not plugged in anywhere, and the bulb was actually a crystal held by a dragons claw. It was in fact, the staff of Magius, masquerading as a standard lamp. Raistlin was a little puzzled as to how it had got there as it was supposed to be in his locked study back on Krynn, nonetheless it was there, and Raistlin was glad to have something familiar in this strange world.
Raistlin sipped on his herb tea and downed another handful of vitamin pills. He was particularly fond of the orange flavoured ones. It certainly beat rummaging around the forest at night for various herbs for his drinks and potions.
On the other hand, it wasn't quite the same trying to create flaming balls of fire with the assistance of an earl grey tea bag, a couple of iron tablets and a Dunhill lighter. It lacked ... feeling somehow.
Raistlin sighed and undressed for bed. He changed into a pair of black silk pyjamas, and a black satin kimono. Tasslehoff had suggested that his wardrobe was getting a little monotonous, but it was the mage was used to... black I mean, not silk. He blinked in the light and rubbed his eyes. He could go to the opticians tomorrow and get the coloured contact lenses he had ordered. They did not have black so he had settled for a nice shade of brown. He pulled back the duvet, (black cover, of course) and slid between the black silk sheets. Perhaps he would buy a red duvet cover. He wasn't decided yet.