Zaknafein Do'Urden and Caesar Salazar Meet. And are immediate bros!

[pineapplesalmon]

When Caesar wasn't at work doing science, he was at home doing science. There were limits to how many of his ideas that he wanted to hand over to his workplace. Not only were there so many rules and procedures that simply got in the way, but he wanted to retain ownership of the more interesting ideas at his disposal. So that took them to the here and now.

Caesar wanted to play with viewing other universes, and he was pretty sure he wasn't going to get approval to do it from his boss. He also didn't want a corporation to take the technology and use it for financial gain. No, this was a purely scientific endeavor. It was important that it remained so. Mind you, he knew there was a risk of his company being angry enough to put him out of a job after he published the paper on this, but he'd be able to find another job easily, considering his skill set. They'd likely pay him even more.

Not that he wasn't paid well now--he was, judging by how his apartment was furnished fairly nicely. It was all mostly normal furniture, chosen for utility (how comfy, multipurpose) over design. It geared mostly towards the modern, but the couch was definitely a big green monstrosity of a thing with poofy seats, backs, and armrests.

Two bedrooms. One bedroom was his, and the other was being used as his lab. He'd at least covered the floor with a protective covering so that it wouldn't get ruined (too much). This was where he was now. Nice hardwoods and crown molding in a bedroom where a Murphy bed was up against the wall in case he had guests. (Mostly so he could sleep in this room instead.)

It was pretty high up, on the eighth floor of an apartment building overlooking a still somewhat busy street. It was Friday evening, and it meant Caesar could work out the bugs on his new toy all weekend instead of go out and be social like normal people. Which his therapist probably would have preferred, really. But Caesar was happy now. Maybe a little lonely, but he chatted with Rex regularly, and both visited at least a few times a year.

But that was an aside that Caesar was not even thinking about at the moment, and would probably be snippy with the narrator if he had any idea about her existence. Right now, he was focused on peering into other universes, mostly because he could, partially because he wanted to prove some of his theories, and a very slight, but more pressing than he would like, need to prove one of his coworkers wrong.

The system was fairly simple: a console hooked up to a server rack, both hooked up to the a metal doorway with various doohickeys on the inside of it to create and maintain the gateway to another world. I also had some more equipment in the front of the doorway to create a force field that would block anything trying to come through. It was all along one wall of the room, opposite the bed.

He was finally ready to switch it on. It was either going to work or cause their part of the universe to implode if he got his calculations wrong. Oh well, c'est la vie.

It was a simple boot sequence, all started by a big red button that Caesar had installed in the console because he found it funny. Everything hummed to life at once, and Caesar tried to keep a grin off his face. Each check and test passed one by one as the sequence went through all of them, and then the portal itself fired up, followed by the blue force field a second later.

Suddenly, Caesar was peering into darkness through the portal as it stabilized. He frowned a bit. It was theoretically working, but... It was pitch black. Nothing. No light at all.

And that's when his machine finally caused the power to dip for a moment, and the UPS for the force field failed, causing it to hum and fizzle out of existence. Caesar stared at the portal, dumbstruck.

"... That wasn't supposed to happen."

Comments

[hiding_honor_in_darkness]

When he'd agreed to be Matron Malice's sacrifice, he'd expected her to do it immediately. The reason why she'd chosen to wait eludes him. Surely they didn't mean to wait until after the battle? They'd hoped to regain Lolth's favor with his murder. During the first hours of his imprisonment in the chapel anteroom, he'd grown more and more sick as the turmoil of his own thoughts tortured him. Over the idea that she intended to make the boy watch. His son, his precious, powerful son. Powerful not only in his skill with the blade, but his persevering strength of heart as well. "How much longer will your heart survive, my son?" He murmured softly into the darkness, his heart aching in fear of what was to come. Not of his death. No, Zaknafein had accepted the fact of his inevitable end long ago. He fears for Drizzt, having to face this wretched world alone. Something must have happened. Malice would not have waited without due cause. Did they find Drizzt? Is he alive? Dammit all! It had been easy to make the decision when his death had been immanent. Now with all this time to think, could there be another way? Would he even survive and escape? Perhaps going out in the heat of battle would be preferable to his soul being handed over to the Demonweb Pits of the Abyss. Eventually, he can hear a commotion outside of the antechamber doors. Runners come to warn the guards that Matron Malice was on her way, and she was more than angry. The Second Boy had cursed her, and ran. Drizzt did what? Zaknafein couldn't help himself. It started softly, but soon he was laughing almost uncontrollably at the thoughts. He'd pushed his limits as far as he could go, but he never would have had the strength to pull off something like that. He composes himself a moment later, after the guards banged threateningly on the door. His path has been decided for him then. There was no way he'd leave Drizzt to the horrors of the Underdark alone. He banged back on the door, kicking it hard with a single, booted foot. The guards, in their cockiness, figured that without his weapons, the Weapon Master wasn't much a master of anything. They learned quickly enough how wrong they truly were. There's more to a battle than simply their weapons. Moving faster than either of them could have imagined, Zaknafein had managed to break one of their necks, then used his own sword to impale the other, the hilt still grasped in the his hand. Zak divests one of them of their sword belt and piwafwi, leaving the armor for lack of time. If Malice is coming, it's in his best interest to put as much space between them as possible. Trying to catch Zaknafein Do'Urden is like trying to reach out and take hold of a whirlwind. One is liable to find themselves caught up in the flurry of blades and scattered about the surrounding area. Without armor, he's in a far worse off position that Drizzt, but he runs off through the city with as much stealth as he can muster and right into the exiting caverns without so much as a breath of hesitation. His son could have gone in an endless array of directions, so the most he can do is start somewhere and hope for the best. He knows, perhaps better than most, how to track someone through the Underdark, but the task is made harder without the benefit of a starting point. He continues moving, unrelenting in those first hours out in the labyrinthine tunnels, as much in the hopes of catching some hint of his son's trail as it is to but distance between him and Menzoberranzan as he could. Then there was light. It appears so suddenly that he runs right into it without having the time to even think about stopping. Whatever it is, it's nothing like the quick flash of the light pellets he'd use against his foes. This is brighter, all encompassing and unrelenting. Zak skids to a halt, throwing one arm up over his eyes as he draws one of his swords, in a quick, almost unreadable motion. Fierce red eyes try to peer out around him, only to be forced closed again by the blinding, searing brightness of whatever magic had caught him. He's not ready to go down just yet though, trying to force his breathing calm so he can at least listen to the movements around him. "Well come on then, if you think you have caught me." He says in his native language. "Zaknafein is not so easily taken!"