Song of the Swans Chapter 30

Paradox Rogues

In which our hero Intrepid Fusion Eclipse, in search of his missing family, lands on a strange and forbidding planet....

Red had mentioned loading safe destinations into this Unverse Manipulator, and Intrepid had not a clue what any of them could be.  Or where. Traversing Unverse, he could see the light of an Exit Rift opening in his path.  He mentally set his jaw and prepared himself for landing.  He was about to find out.

The rift approached…

The rift passed…

Intrepid hit a floor of dirt shoulder-first and was immediately achy.  Apparently Unverse Manipulators didn’t do soft landings.

Intrepid blinked several times, trying to get his vision back, before realizing the place he was in was just dark, and musky, and smelling like decay.  His hands sunk into mud when he tried pushing himself up.  When he got to his feet, he quickly wiped his hands on his armor.

He was in some sort of underground network, from the looks of it.  Minimal illumination came from flickering torchlights at T-sections.  The floor, walls, and ceiling were hewn out of dirt, with pale, pasty feeling moss and fungus growing on the walls.  Intrepid turned on his heel, trying to figure out which way was out.  The Unverse Manipulator offered no clues, so he would have to walk.  Was he in some sort of catacombs?

Someone coughed in the distance.

*Or* dungeons? Intrepid thought.

*It would help to have a map of this place*, Intrepid thought to himself.  He began walking to the nearest torchlit intersection, and felt barely any warmth from the flame.  There were only nondescript dirt walls between where he landed and there.  Looking down both directions, there were no doors to be seen and the paths curved in opposite directions.

He stopped when he heard footsteps and the dancing of personal torchlights approaching around the right side path.  Intrepid ducked back into the hallway, to be safe, and pressed himself against the wall.  Even if this was one of *Red*’s “safe locations,” Intrepid was doubtful it even was, as it had not yet proven itself to be friendly to *him*.

The footsteps grew closer and Intrepid detected they were many in number. When they passed him, Intrepid held his breath and counted a group of six.  The three in the front held torches and looked like knights out of a fantasy book, clanking about in black armor, dark metal boots, and shiny chain mail, with swords and daggers at their hips.  And the three in the back were Paradox Space Marauders?

Amazingly all of them, especially the Paradox, passed without noticing him. His heart thudded noisily in his ears. There was no reason they *hadn’t* seen him, unless their tech wasn’t turned on….

Intrepid switched out his Bat Lord helmet for Cyclone’s Space Marauder Rank 3 helmet, which he still had for some reason.  Putting it on, the device immediately complained of low power.  Looking about, Intrepid could see several lifeforms separated fairly evenly behind the left passage.  There were more heat signatures, people, physically above him on an upper floor, and that was all the range the helmet wanted to display.  He was definitely underground.

Intrepid noted the positions of the nearest moving patrols like the one that had passed him, then turned off the helmet's HUD to conserve power, and darted off on the left path towards the evenly spaced lifeforms.  As expected, he rounded a bend and found himself facing a cavern lined with metal barred cells.  Some were empty, but most were occupied with ragged
looking minifigures.  There were few torches in this room, only with the passive assists of Cyclone’s helmet could Intrepid see them at all.

He stepped forwards, his boots squelching in the mud.  No one perked up.  Intrepid breathed heavily and recoiled, the stench was worse here.  He doubted any of these prisoners –*people*, had showered in days.  Or weeks.  Or months.

He had almost cleared the last row of cells, when something caught his eye.  Hanging over the top bars of the last cell on the left was a shield.  There was something on it, invisible in the dark, but Intrepid had a flashlight.  It took several noisy jiggles before it finally projected a steady beam of light. Intrepid gasped when he saw the shield’s crest.

There was nothing else in his universe identified by a yellow delta with a banner, except the badge of the Talmid Letter Company, now the Talmid Family Crest.

*If this is here*, Intrepid wondered, *who else could be here?*

Intrepid aimed the flashlight past the Talmidian shield and past the bars of the cell to shine on the opposing dirt wall from which a vest and other clothes hung.  The flashlight also lit up the silhouette of a scrawny man seated on the cell’s one bench, in the middle of the floor, faced away from Intrepid.

The man wore a ratty sleeveless tunic on his torso, and plain pants covered his legs.  His bare arms were pale in the flashlight glow.  He had dark hair, thin and disheveled.  His face, Intrepid could not see, until after several moments the man shifted in the light.

And Killian Talmid turned around. He squinted in the face of the flashlight, and Intrepid quickly angled it downwards out of his uncle’s eyes, but aimed up enough to illuminate Killian’s face in the edge glow.  Intrepid’s heart stopped at his uncle’s face.  Sweat glistened on his forehead and his dark eyes were watered. The moisture on his face did nothing to clean the dirt caked on his cheeks, in his hair, in his beard, if anything it made it stickier. When Killian opened his mouth, it was to cough.

When Killian stopped coughing, it was to ask in an awfully tired sounding voice, “Art thou here to take me up to thy kangaroo court again? Sentence me to more punishment? Or hath thou finally considered my dire need for a bath?”

“What the brick did you just say?” Intrepid exclaimed in dismay.

Killian flexed his jaw, sighed, and started to turn around again. “It can’t be.” Intrepid heard him mutter.  “Just another Rogue guard confounded by the beauty of olde speech-“

“It’s me Aiden, your nephew!” Intrepid screamed.  “What are you doing here Uncle Killian?!”

“Thou shalt address me by Sir Talmi- what?” Killian turned back around again, wincing as he twisted his spine too quickly.  When he opened his eyes again, they were still squinting. “Let me see your face.”

Intrepid aimed the flashlight at his face, and then remembered to pull off his helmet.  He held the light in front of his chest and tilted it up.  “It’s me.” he said.  “I haven’t seen you in-”

“Four years.” Killian finished.  “Thanksgiving day, 2010.  You’re looking older than I remember.  I didn’t think I’d see you again so late… so soon… here, of all places.”  He coughed again and wiped the moisture out of his eyes, smearing dirt from his arms across his face.  He didn’t seem to notice or care.  “You’re not with the Rogues, are you?”

“Rogues?” Intrepid repeated.

“Paradox Rogues.” Killian clarified.  “They’re working with thedude, and Vladek, and Barney...”

“Paradox Rogues from the *Faction War*?” Intrepid asked again.

“Not so loud,” Killian hissed.  “The guards may come back any second.”  He looked about furtively, uselessly in the dark.  Intrepid put Cyclone’s helmet back on and glanced around.  The helmet didn’t detect a patrol, *yet*.

“I don’t need to know how you got here then,” Killian continued, “but you need to leave.  However you came here, for whatever reason you must go.   Now.”

“Not without you, buddy,” Intrepid declared.  He studied the bars.  They were a solid type and sturdy, it would take a sharp sword to cut them, or a shot with his drill to blow out the lock.  “We’re going to leave this place, you and me,”
Intrepid said, finding his replacement Drill of Blasting.  He aimed it at the lock.  “You’ve been gone too long from your family.”  He pulled the trigger and nothing happened.

*What?* Intrepid pulled the trigger again, but the drill refused to fire.  He equipped his Elite Cleaver instead and began sawing its serrated edge against the lock’s edge.  It was cutting, slowly but surely…

“You can get me ou
of this cell,” Killian said, “but I can’t leave Militiregnum.”

“Why?" Intrepid exclaimed.  “I’ve come all this way– by accident – *not* to just leave you here.  There’s so much you need to know, so much you can do to help - so much you could have done…”

He finished sawing the lock and swung the door open, and with his help his uncle rose to his feet.  Looking down, Intrepid saw they were bandaged, quite poorly.  Intrepid tried accessing his backpack to get some clothes for Killian, but to his dismay his mind drew a blank.

“We’re far from a Nexus.” Killian said.  “We have to make do without imagination benefits here, not to mention the technology curse.”

“Why did you come here, Uncle Killian?” Intrepid sighed, letting Killian put his arm around his
shoulders – he walked him out of the cell.  “Going on a crusade?  Fulfilling a boyhood dream?”

“Have you heard of the Knights of the Olde Speech?” Killian said.  “We were a mercenary organization,”

“Based out of industrial Nimbus Station,” Intrepid guessed.

“55 unemployment road, to be exact.”

“That’s next door to Leek Works.” Intrepid said.

“We got this job from the deposed king here, his majesty King Matthias Moracol-“ Killian stopped suddenly.  “Guards.” he whispered.

Intrepid swung his Bat Lord staff off his back, and gave his cleaver to Killian.

“We’ll smash if we fight them.” Killian said.  “You can’t rebuild here, and I can’t burden you with protecting me.  It’s time for you to go.”  He slung his arm off Intrepid and pushed him away.

“I have an Unverse Manipulator.” Intrepid protested, grabbing Killian’s hand.  “I got here with it.”

“I hath not the faintest idea what an Unwhat Manipulator is, but pray you can leave here with it too.” Killian knocked Intrepid’s hand off him again, and handed him the sword.  Intrepid could hear stomps of another patrol approaching behind him. “Now run!”

So Intrepid ran.  He grabbed the Unverse Manipulator from his
belt and willed it to work.  It felt cold and dead, but a moment later it lit up and Intrepid sighed in relief.  *Get me out of this place, he willed it,* only for a picture to appear in his head of the universal symbol for “low battery.”

He tried to find his Imagination spark, but reaching inside himself was like digging in quicksand, or reaching inside a laundry basket full of heavy clothes.  He couldn’t stand to leave Uncle Killian to be re-imprisoned.  But he and Killian both agreed he couldn’t leave *himself* to be imprisoned either.

*I’ll come back*. Intrepid thought determinedly. *I’ll come back after.  I.  Leave*!

An unverse rift opened in front of Intrepid and he fell in.

**TO BE CONTINUED**