Talyesin's Tales

Previously on Squirrelman - Sins of the Past:

Having called upon the Seelie Court's Wild Hunt to deal with the UnSeelie Seeming on the outskirts of Downtown that was blocking the entrance to Subterra, Squirrelman, the remaining members of the Crimefighters' League, Doc Sterling and Doc Steele made their way to the subterranean realm of the arch-villain, Lord Hades...



Starring

Matt Mattheson ......... as Squirrelman
Kimmy Sinclair ................ as Ragdoll
Rick Duncan ........................... as Ace
Lisa Dumont ................... as Physique
Anna Kimble ................. as Darklight
Stephanie Cooke ............. as Blue Jay
Jay Allen ........................ as Red Bolt
Mike Washington ............. as Dragon
Trevor Andrews ............... as Phenom
Jessica Wagner .............. as Rapunzel
Katie McCormick ............ as Superia
Wayne Masters ... as Midnight Avenger
Steven Rand ............... as Showdown
Kyle Drake ........... as Troubleshooter
Cricket ............................... as herself
Max Mattheson ....... as Captain Hero
Missy Mattheson ........ as Squirrelgrrl

with

Reed 'Doc' Sterling

and

Augustus Octavian 'Doc' Steele


Shades, the inhabitants of Subterra, are creatures capable of absorbing light. I've seen photos of dead ones, taken in the sixties when they tried to invade New York, and again in the seventies when they tried to invade Action City - humanoid, thin to the point of skeletal, pasty white skin, no lower jaw - just a hole where a mouth would normally be, between their flat slit nostrils and their necks - big huge pale eyes, no hair, four fingers. Sexless, or at least the photos I saw had no distinguishing sexual characteristics.

In action, they're fierce, almost frenzied. You really can't see them because they absorb the light and look like living shadows - featureless humanoid forms of pure darkness. Topside they were a bit limited to night attacks because the sunlight actually overloaded their ability to absorb light, got them sort of drunk.

They jump me and Steele and Ragdoll first, pushing us back, swarming past us to get at the others.

"Katie!" I yell, and, like we'd discussed, Superia flares bright yellow-white light, bright enough to leave spots on my retinas even with my eyes closed and my goggles on.

The Shades let out little high-pitched shrieks, then stumble around, trying to throw punches at us, but they're so drunk on the light that they're not exactly connecting. We get them - about two dozen or so - turned around in circles and collected in a corner. Steele grabs one and pulls it away from the others - it's odd seeing his hands go into the darkness surrounding the Shade and pull on what I assume is the thing's throat, pushing it by the scruff of the neck away from Superia's glow, until it's sober enough to start resisting again.

I follow Steele. He's hissing something, a language that's all sibilants and long vowels. The Shade doesn't seem willing to talk, so Steele slaps it a couple of times, and it starts giving him the answers.

"They'll lead us to Subterra," Steele says to me.

"Right," I say.

We line up the Shades, keeping them separate from each other, between us. The cavern's pretty thin at this point, and we're forced to walk single file again. Reed and Troubleshooter hand out their little bracelets that glow softly, so everyone can see where they're going and keep an eye on the Shades. Superia stays in the middle of the group so she can flare up if the Shades get any ideas, leaving Phenom at the end of the line. The two Docs and I take up the lead again, following the Shade that Steele interrogated.

As we travel, Steele and Reed talk quietly about the language Steele spoke to the Shade, a "linguistic descendant" of Ancient Atlantean - don't ask me how they know that - and how Steele learned to speak it, through some meditative technique that let him relive his memories in extraordinary detail, over and over again, examining his capture, the words Hades had used, their most likely meanings, the Shades' responses, their most likely meanings. I'm busy keeping my eye on the route ahead, the Shade who I'm expecting to doublecross us at any moment, and everyone behind us to catch all the details, but it sounds like Reed's fascinated by the whole thing. Steele just sounds sort of amused at Reed's boyish enthusiasm for an almost dead language, here, hundreds if not thousands of feet under the ground, a hundred thousand of tons of rock above us, a lost civilization ahead of us somewhere.

After about an hour or so, I call for a rest. It'll do us no good to wind up in Subterra, too tired to confront Lord Hades and his Shade army. I don't really want to bring us into a full-on fight with this guy, but I'm suspecting that's what it's going to be, and I want us rested. Darklight's able to whip us up some food and something to drink. I set Dragon and Troubleshooter on watch ahead and behind us, and Red Bolt and Max to watching the Shades we've captured.

"How long do you want to rest?" Steele asks me while we eat.

"Three, four hours? Give us a chance to catch some sleep, I figure. Who knows how long we're going to be down here."

"Sounds like a plan," he says to me. "You've never been in the military?"

"No, why?"

"You've an instinctive understanding of squad tactics, then."

"I just know my team. They'll go without sleep if we need to, but better to get a little rest, particularly since we don't know what we're going into here. The last few days have been pretty fucking awful for our morale, you know?

"So they have." He pauses, finishes his meal, washes it down with the floating ball of water. "And what of that?" he asks.

"What of what?"

"Everything going on, up there. What do you propose to do about it?"

"Right now, things are a little out of control up there. Anything we do to try and make it better will probably only make it worse."

"So you'll do nothing?"

"I'll wait and see. Either people will come to their senses, or else they won't. They'll try to repeal the Samaritan Act, a law that's stood the test of time, and worse events than these, for nearly sixty years now. And crimefighters will go into hiding, doing the job for no thanks and no glory and open scorn and whatever, or else stop doing the job entirely, and then all the powered criminals we've been trying to keep behind bars will really start putting the screws to the public, and the ACPD and their pet metas will be run ragged, and then, oh suddenly, surprise, gosh, it'll be 'Please help us, Crimefighters' League, no one else can stop the Rampaging Lunatics or the Space Invaders or the Beasts from Beyond.' And we will, and it'll be okay for a little while, until the next crisis, and the next and the next."

"But you're not bitter."

"I'm not. Not really. Sometimes it pisses me off. Right now it's pissing me off. Which is why it's a good thing I'm down here, instead of in a press conference, where someone will ask me something stupid and I'll say something that'll be taken out of context and blown out of proportion."

"The press does tend to do that."

"Yeah. I'm starting to understand why The Seven operated in secrecy."

"Oh, I wouldn't call it secrecy. Our exploits were chronicled, some more than others, to be sure. I myself kept a journal with a notion to publish it one day, but that never materialized. Too many wars to fight, lost civilizations to discover. And later, spiritual retreats to master myself, body, mind, and spirit. No, we didn't operate in secret... but we didn't make a big deal out of what we were doing, either. We weren't in it for the glory. We were in it for... personal satisfaction, I suppose. Knowing you'd done everything in your power to make the world better, safer. Even if no one ever knew about it... especially if no one ever knew about it. We didn't do it for them. We did it for us."

Ace comes over.

"When we heading out, son?"

"Three, four hours." I pitch my voice so everyone can hear me. "Get some rest. We're going to need it. Everyone takes an hour on watch - Phenom, Troub, Red, Max, you'll get spelled in an hour, that okay?"

"Sure."

"No problem."

"Yep."

"Okay, Dad."

"Back along the tunnel there, that big boulder? That's the little crimefighters' room, okay?" I say, pointing back the way we came.

"I was just about to ask," Dragon says, heading back there.

We rest. Nothing happens. I'm starting to get jumpy about that. The Shades don't try to escape, they just stay sitting there, still and silent as statues made of shadow. Which is pretty creepy, and doesn't do anything to soothe anyone's nerves.

"What time is it?" someone asks.

"Midnight," Midnight Avenger says, his powers kicking in. He goes as dark as one of the Shades, except for his eyes glowing behind his goggles, and the silver crescent moon clasp he wears to hold his cloak on. He hovers up about five, six feet.

The Shades freak. I mean, go absolutely bugfuck, down on their knees, faces against the rock, shrieking, hissing in their language. Superia flares up bright to get them under control, but that doesn't do anything except slow down their bugfuckness, making their worship - there's no other word for it - of Midnight Avenger sloppier.

"Doc, what are they saying?" I ask Steele.

"Something about... the Lord of Darkness? Something like that. I'm not getting it all... they seem to think he's some sort of Death-god."

"Great," I say. It gives me an idea. To Steele, I say, "Can you tell Midnight Avenger what to say?"

"Say what exactly?"

"Something like, Behold I am your Death-god, now lead me to your city and you will be spared from my terrible wrath?"

"Do you think that's necessary? They already are leading us to Subterra."

"Yeah, but I'm thinking the fear of the Death-god will keep them from trying anything stupid once we actually get there."

"I see. Excellent point."

Steele goes to Midnight Avenger, starts whispering to him. Wayne repeats what he's being told to say.

The Shades jump up and start trying to push past us to lead us to the underground city. Steele, through the Midnight Death-god Avenger, gets them back in line, which they do, bowing, averting their eyes, whatever, every time Wayne so much as glances in their direction.

"There's only one problem with this plan," Midnight Avenger, floating along beside me, says quietly, so the Shades can't overhear, in case any of them actually speak English.

"What's that?"

"I've only got powers until One A.M."

"Yeah, thought about that. At Five to One, you make an announcement about disguising yourself as a human again, so that the Shades in the city can be tested."

"Tested for what?"

"Doesn't matter. Whatever they come up with in their own imaginations will be tens times as bad as anything we can come up with."

"Gotcha."

At Ten to One, Wayne goes and has a quiet talk with Steele, who tells him what to say and how to say it. Five to One, Wayne makes a little speech to the Shades in Subterranean. They all bow and put their faces to the floor, then, when the Death-god of Darkness has transformed back into plain ol' Midnight Avenger, they crawl forward to touch the hem of his cloak and kiss his boots. Wayne looks disgusted; the rest of us are amused. Steele translates, telling us the Shades are thanking the Death-god for sparing them, swearing undying loyalty, all that jazz.

We keep moving. It's a couple hours more before Steele gets impatient and flat out asks them how much further.

Not far at all, as it turns out. The Shades lead us into an enormous cavern - and in it, an entire city.

The buildings are either built to look like stalagmites and stalactites, or else they really are huge natural stalagmites and stalactites and the Shades have carved them out and turned them into homes. At the centre of the cavern is a huge stalagmite that reaches up and joins a huge stalactite - and that's pretty much when I realize we can sort of see. It's not completely dark down here, there's some kind of glowing moss on the ceiling of the cave, giving off a pale, greenish-white light.

The Shades leads us down a path and into the city. The Shades in the city start out curious, turn hostile, and then kneel down and worship us as our Shades, Midnight Avenger's faithful, explain who he is and what he's doing there. Our Shades keep us moving, push back their own people to make a path for us, right to the steps leading into the central stone pillar. Steele translates to us that this is Lord Hades' palace.

Every last one of us is on edge. No one's saying anything, but everyone's eyes are checking every movement, every corner, up down left right. I can hear Ragdoll cracking her knuckles one after the other, Ace shuffling two decks, each one-handed, Troubleshooter loosening the catches on the pouches of his belt. Reed catches my eye as we walk in and gives me that boyish grin of his. Steele just looks grim.

We're led to the main audience chamber. The Shades guarding the door tell us - Steele translating - that the Lord is sleeping, not to be disturbed. Our Shades tell them a god is in their presence, to test them, to judge them, so step aside. The guard-Shades don't seem too keen on the idea, but our Shades get pretty persuasive. It's not every day you become one of the chosen followers of a Death-god, I guess.

The guard-Shades open the audience chamber's doors, big metal slabs covered with bas-relief carvings of abstract forms that hurt my brain trying to figure out what they are. We're allowed into the main audience chamber. It's huge, and in the very far distance, dimly lit by more of the glowing moss, is a throne.

There's a man sitting on the throne, dressed in black robes with white trim, clutching a sceptre to him, a black helm like you'd see in a movie about ancient Greece covering his head, obscuring his face. Lord Hades.

"Smythe!" Steele yells out so suddenly, so loud in the audience chamber, that we all jump. The word echoes back to us.

"Smythe!" he yells again as we walk toward the figure on the throne. "Wake up!"

Lord Hades doesn't move.

At all.

"Oh Jesus," I hear Blue Jay say behind me, maybe the first time I've ever heard Steph swear.

When we get closer, we see why.

Lord Hades is dead.