The first thing he saw was an unnaturally blue sky.

Reiden blinked up at the blue expanse. He thought about moving but the ground felt wrapped around him like a weighted blanket. A warm hand brushed back his hair gently. He caught the hand in his own and held it to his face, letting her perfume drift off her skin into his nostrils. His limbs moved sluggishly as he tried to twist around and finally catch sight of the woman's face. A flash of a smile was all he saw before someone grabbed his chest by the shirt and jerked him from her lap.

The world suddenly melted. Bold sky so blue it made his eyes ache swallowed up everything and spun him around like a child's toy before dropping him back down on the floor of the room he was trapped in.

"Not there," Desden gasped beside him. "Not that one."

"What—what did you do?" Reiden said. He gazed around the room again. Like the sky, everything seemed unnaturally saturated. Dim brown looked like rich soil and dirty dust particles shimmered gold as they remained frozen in the air.

"Told you we were going to try triggering something. We're in your head, Brother." Desden leaned against the wall, his limbs shaking from exertion. "Can't hold this spell for long. Too much...too much magic, too much focus. Need to use a rune disc for the complete version."

"My head?" Reiden blinked against the painfully bright colors. "But if I lost my memories then how is there anything here? Who was that woman?"

"There shouldn't be a woman." Desden breathed deeply before finally standing straight. "This one, this room, is your most recent memory. Brighter places, brighter memories."

"But I smelled...I thought I felt. Did I know her? I had to have, right? It looked just like all the glimpses I get." Reiden rubbed his fingers together, and for a moment almost recaptured the feel of her skin.

Desden snatched his hand. His eyes narrowed, but something dark and flinty failed to be hidden behind his gaze. "Glimpses?"

A wizard, Reiden reminded himself as the sensation of skin against his hand evaporated. Oh, gates, he had a wizard inside his head. "Just sometimes I think I remember things. Little things, like a smell or a woman's voice."

"But not me."

"I don't know! They don't stick and then my head starts hurting... Maybe? It's not always a woman's voice." Reiden paused. He knew he'd heard a boy's voice at least once. He touched his temple in preparation for the oncoming headache but it didn't arrive.

"The pain's the healers' spell. It's pushing back down your memories."

"It's not hurting now."

Desden gave him a wicked smile. "Because we're triggering things from the inside this time. Focus, brother. Tested the spell on others, but it's not perfect."

"Wait, tested? You mean you went into people's heads and—"

"It doesn't matter what I did!" Desden shouted. The sound should have echoed across the almost empty room but instead, it lingered by him like a sour note cut short. "Only thing that matters is fixing you. Focus, brother. Make a connection between this memory and older ones."

Reiden's heart banged against his chest. Or was it just a memory of it banging? His head didn't make any sense. He spun around the room, grasping for any connection to his past. I know I heard voices here. What did they say?

Reiden walked slowly over to the bed. He leaned against the headboard and tried to remember...tried to remember...

His body lurched forward. The room folded in, pressing him down where he was supposed to go before snapping back in place.

Reiden's hands were back above his head, tied tight—but no. The rope felt watery and weak like he could pull his hands through it if he really wanted to.

"Good!" Desden gasped, clinging to the reformed walls. "Something's triggering. Think."

"I had a dream here," Reiden said, forming each word slowly. "Or part of a dream. More like flashes."

"Go on," Desden insisted. His voice quivered as his hands clenched and unclenched.

"There was a boy's voice. We were talking and—"

The room melted and Reiden's thoughts caught fire. The walls swirled around them in a vortex, shifting between grays and colors before smoothing out into a dank alleyway.

He didn't know where he was. He didn't know who he was. The only thing that seemed certain and solid was that magic thrummed against his fingertips and that the eager, smiling boy in front of him was his brother.

"So we're going to blow it up, right, Brother?" the younger version of Desden asked eagerly.

Reiden's mouth former words that felt more and more familiar. "You need to stop it with the blowing things up. There are other spells..."

Desden sulked and Dormaeus ruffled his little brother's hair in response. He was a good kid. If only they could find a life that would let him stay that way. "Keep watch for me."

Desden rolled his eyes "Yeah, yeah, don't do any of the fun stuff."

Dormaeus's smile turned into a grimace. "Just stay here and get ready to hide the bags I throw down from the ship."

Reiden blinked violently. Burning-bright images of spells, locations, and plans flashed by in quick succession. Understanding followed them while the world around him slowed. Dormaeus—himself?—sunk back into place as he stepped away from the alley and began sneaking toward the merchant's ship. A wealthy merchant's ship. Surely he could get away with enough to leave him with a small sum even after he paid back his Blackguard dues, the price for the tickets, the cost of hiding Des and him and...

The world melted again. Something—magic!—shot through his hands as everything around him rebuilt itself into the image of the dock next to the ship. A red orb just like Desden's, just like his brother's, hovered above his hand. He tried to strengthen it even more, but it was no use. He wasn't like the mages who'd spent half their childhoods training and increasing their ability to draw on their natural magic essence. His own magic just wasn't strong enough for what he needed.

A familiar ache emerged, tingling the tips of his fingers and offering all the power he needed and more. No more weakness... No more struggle...

Dormaeus hesitated a moment longer. Just...one more time. He could still quit before it sunk too deep. It wasn't like he'd started hearing voices yet or anything.

Reiden felt his magic being pushed to the limit. His arm burned, a sign his body was begging him to back off. Black spots collected over his vision, blotting out the slowly-brightening colors of everything else. Reiden's heart palpitated. He tried to wrench his hand away but the memory wrapped him around that spot, forcing him to watch and feel everything play out.

The ghostly feeling of Desden's hand, the real Desden, not the memory, clamped onto his arm and whispered into his ear. "Don't fight it, brother! Let it show you who you are..."

Reiden watched from inside Dormaeus in horror as the wizard gave into the temptation. He stopped trying to push past the limits of his inner personal magic and instead used it to grasp toward something more sinister. The first touch felt like he'd reached into thick, cold sludge and clasped a corpse's hand. A spike of pain drove itself into the center of his soul.

After that, Dormaeus felt wonderful.

The memory flung them forward. Dormaeus landed on the deck of the ship right at the point where his plan started to fall apart. He should have felt panicked at the sight of the two mages on the other side of the deck, but who had room for fear when such power shot through your veins?

He slung the sack from his final run up onto his shoulders. Unmarked essantium clinked against each other, the sound muffled by the expensive fabrics he'd grabbed on a whim.

The two mages' staffs lit up, green for the man and purple for the woman. Dormaeus smirked at them. He reached out his hand and let the black magic surge through his veins. Sparks of his natural red shot off the darkness like embers of coals as he reared back and blasted at them both.

The woman blocked the spell. The man spoke. "Dormaeus Carrow! By the authority of the Abreylian Ministry of Magic, you're hereby under arrest for the use of black magic, theft, endangerment of the public—"

Dormaeus rolled his eyes. He twisted his magic into a small essence flare and shot it through with concentrated darkness, concentrated power. The spell slipped from his fingertips with ease, cracking against the woman's ward and pushing her back.

"Let's add resisting arrest to that list of crimes," the man growled.

"I love a good resistance." The woman smirked before they both attacked in truth.

Magic crashed against wards, spells flew from Dormaeus's fingers easier than he'd ever done anything in his life. Black magic sung in his veins, pushing him to draw more, cast faster, sink deeper into this feeling as the spells he chose became more and more destructive. He levitated a crate off of the deck and flung it toward the two mages. Just before the woman's purple glow could blast it out of the way, Dormaeus blasted it himself and sent bits of flaming debris down on them.

It still wasn't enough.

They started beating him back, forcing him to throw up ward after ward instead of attacking. Dormaeus looked over his shoulder at the quickly approaching side of the ship and for a moment, the reckless certainty that he'd felt wavered. They almost had him cornered.

The wavering grew to a shudder at the sight of his little brother's head peeking over the side. "What the gates are you doing here?" Dormaeus shouted over the sound of the blasts.

Desden leaned forward and grabbed him by the sleeve, sending his latest blast wild. "Off the boat!"

"I'm trying—"

"Now!" Desden yelled.

A rune disc caught the light. Dormaeus paled in anger and realization. "You did it again?"

Des shot him a wicked grin. He filled the disc with magic and flung it onto the deck before tugged Dormaeus over the side of the ship. The sound of the other rune discs Desden had placed exploding on the opposite side of the ship hit his ears just before the water did.

Dormaeus faded with his extinguished spells, leaving Reiden behind to feel the cold water. The saturated colors began flickering to gray as he crawled back onto the shore, coughing up the water he could no longer feel. The bag on his back slumped to the side, letting bits of broken essantium spill out.

A piece of fabric caught his eye. Reiden plucked it from the bag the same way Dormaeus had all those years ago. A small handkerchief, already trimmed with delicate lace, rested in his hand. The too-sharp colors around him faded while the yellow sun embroidered into the handkerchief only grew brighter.

"This was a gift," Reiden murmured. "I gave it to...to..."

The spell collapsed before the name could surface. Reiden jolted awake back into the room he'd been trapped in with his wrists still tied above his head. The dim, dull colors reassured him that this was the real world.

Desden collapsed to the ground beside him. His shoulders shuddered as he gasped for breath and held his shaking hands to his chest. "Too long...held it too long." After a few moments, he managed to pull himself up and untie Reiden's hands. "Something, something has to have triggered. Right, Brother?" he asked, his voice cracking at the end.

Reiden sat up and stared at the wizard. Years seemed to drop off Desden's face, making him look like a shadow of the memory he'd seen. His eyes begged Reiden to remember that fire-starting young boy from his lost memories. Emotion stirred awake in Reiden's breast. If not the same protective feeling he'd felt before Dormaeus—himself?—attacked the ship then at least its cousin. For the first time, Reiden reached out and touched Desden's head. His fingers dug into the messy brown hair but stopped short of ruffling it the way Dormaeus had. "I remember what we did but I can't tell if that's because I'm actually remembering or if I'm just remembering us reliving it. I'm sorry, Des."

The last part slipped out like an old instinct slipping into place. Desden grasped onto his hand like a viper and trapped it between his own. "Yes! I'm your Des. You're my Dormaeus. We're the Carrow brothers. Carrow wizards now."

Desden's last phrase made the emotion he'd felt shrink back in. The cold, deathly feeling of that first brush with the power of hellgates. The way he'd watched trapped from the inside as Dormaeus had embraced it the way a man might embrace a lover, losing himself almost completely. Reiden shuddered, his skin prickling with cold worse than it had when he'd remembered hitting the water. No, he didn't want to be a wizard. What he really wanted was the woman he'd given that handkerchief to.

"Who was that girl in the beginning?" Reiden asked.

Desden's jaw tightened with his grip. "That's what you're worried about? Still? Not me. Not your magic. Just Laryssa."

Laryssa. The name felt like a forgotten mantra and the only thing that came as close to feeling as right was the scent on her handkerchief. How had he gotten it back?

"Laryssa," he whispered, smiling at the way it felt on his lips. Did the woman feel the same? "Who is she? Can we find her?" he asked while rising from his bed with a new sense of purpose.

Something churned behind Desden's face but Reiden hadn't remembered enough about him to name it. "We're going to fix you, Brother. Then she'll make sense."

Reiden swallowed at that. Would finding Laryssa mean becoming a wizard? His hand slipped back to the handkerchief in his pocket. Could he live with being the nightmare he'd heard stories of?

Desden placed a hand on his shoulder. "Time to get working. Spell's not done yet. I need you on my side now."

Doubt spun around him worse than the memories had. He nodded in acquiescence anyway. "Carrow brothers it is."

****************************

Author's Note: Back to Reiden! (or is it Dormaeus now?) Sorry for the delay, everyone, but I think it's safe to say that my buffer is officially dead. I'm going to try to keep up with my schedule but I'm in the second half of my school semester and things are only going to get busier. Thank you for your patience! And in case you were wondering, yes, that was a Tyrinn and Sandrina cameo on the ship (betcha Tyrinn got chewed out for not noticing those rune discs). So what does everyone think Reiden's going to do? Hehehe...