Chapter Five

"Is that all, Doctor?" Lance asked wearily. "I'm about to fall over here."

Gorma lowered the small hand held scanner. "Take a seat, Lieutenant," he said.

Keith was leaning against a wall and he stepped forward to help Lance to the hospital bed. He put a reassuring hand on his friend's shoulder and looked at the doctor.

"Well?" he prompted.

"I...I don't know. It's nothing my instruments can read. They say he's in normal working order aside from that low metabolic rate."

"Jesus, Lance. Where did you go that you could pick up an unknown bug?" Keith demanded, black eyes flashing. This whole situation was frustrating and he was afraid that Lance was not going to get better; that this would only get worse.

Lance swallowed hard. His throat felt dry. He looked at Keith, struggling to keep his eyes focused. He was exhausted and was afraid he would pass out at any moment.

"I went...down," he replied, licking his lips. "Dug around...read books..."

"Where?" Keith said, leaning down so they could be face to face. "You were reading in the archives?"

"No...tunnels," Lance answered. "I found rooms down there. I was reading some kind of spell..."

"A spell!" Keith turned to Gorma. "Doctor, I'm going to need a hoverchair. Lance and I are going to go on a trip."

"What if you get this same bug?" Gorma asked apprehensively.

"Then we'll know where he got it from," Keith said firmly.

"I want you to wear protective suits."

Keith opened his mouth to protest, but Lance cut him off.

"Just do it, Keith. I wouldn't wish this on anybody but Lotor."

"Fine."

"Shoot me up with something, Doc," Lance added. "Or else I'm not going to make it out the door with my eyes open."

Gorma glanced at Keith who only nodded his head. The doctor took out a hypospray and pressed it against Lance's arm. The younger man's eyes focused and his head became clearer. Keith still insisted he sit in the hoverchair, however. And then they rushed to the elevators and to the tunnels.

Allura's scan confirmed Nanny's story that there were rooms in the tunnels. The castle's blue prints went back three or four generations before her father, so those rooms were more than a hundred years old and have been untouched since they were closed off.

She walked through the tunnels with a knot of fear in her gut. There was a reason why those books were sealed off from the rest of the world and she was afraid of what she would find there. She steeled herself against reading any of the spells without Nanny around, afraid of unleashing something that could not be stopped. She continued walking until a sound made her stop in her tracks. Raising her flashlight slowly, she unholstered her blaster.

"Who's there?" she called out, cursing her voice for wavering.

"It's me."

"And me."

She lowered her blaster and shined her flashlight at them. A frown appeared on her face when she saw that Keith and Lance were both in biohazard gear, the gray suits made out of a plastic that was impermeable to all known hazmats. Oxygen packs were attached to the belt around the waist and the head was covered with a helmet. They looked like old fashioned astronauts. A second later, she registered that Lance was sitting in a hoverchair.

"What happened?" she asked, rushing to his side.

"Nobody knows," Lance replied easily, but even in the dim light, she saw the troubled look in his hazel eyes.

"We think the answer is down here," Keith said. "Go back up and get a suit on, Princess."

"Don't go anywhere," she said. "I'll be back quickly."

They stayed in place until her footsteps could no longer be heard. Then, Keith pushed Lance's chair forward towards the hole in the wall that Allura had seen.

"What do you think she was doing down here?" Lance asked.

"We'll find out later. Is this where you were?"

Lance nodded. He shined his flashlight into the room. The portable light he used was still in there. Keith went to turn it on, his head going this way and that as he looked about the small room.

"How did you find this place?" he asked.

"I was being nosey."

Keith looked at the book that Lance had left open on the ancient wooden table. His brow furrowed underneath the helmet.

"What is this?"

"Magic spells," Lance said, excitedly.

Keith looked up and Lance could feel the weight of his gaze. "You were messing with magic spells? Have you lost your mind??" he demanded.

"I thought we'd established that a long time ago," Lance said, trying to diffuse the situation.

No such luck.

"This is why Allura was down here. She somehow found out about this room..."

"...and she was coming to investigate. Thanks for waiting," Allura said, coming into the room in full gear. "So you found a spell book, Lance. Not a smart idea reading out of it. You are probably the cause of the appearance of those FBI Agents." She glanced at the page that was left open. She muttered a curse underneath the breath. "You did, you son of a..."

"Which FBI agents?" Lance interrupted.

"The illustrious Special Agents Mulder and Scully," Keith said.

"Oh my God," Lance breathed. "It can't be."

"It is," Allura said. She closed the book with a thump, releasing a cloud of dust as she did so. "I have to get this back to Nanny. We have to undo what you've done."

"I don't think I'll be needing any more stimulants from Gorma," Lance said.

Nanny and Allura tore down the corridors towards the Princess' private rooms. Lance and Keith were close behind, the book of spells in Lance's lap. They hadn't bothered taking off the hazmat suits, but there were three helmets scattered somewhere down the corridors.

Upon reaching Allura's chambers, Nanny hefted the book from Lance's lap and put it on the floor.

"What did you read?" she demanded. "Tell me!"

"Uh...time travel spells." He leaned down and flipped through the pages until he found it. He jabbed a finger on the yellowed page. "That one."

Nanny made a strange sign with her hands and removed a necklace from around her neck. She held the polished purple stone with a blood red center up as she read the spell.

"That prevents the spell from actually coming to be," Allura informed them in a whisper.

"Good," Keith grumbled. "We've had enough of that already."

"You foolish boy," Nanny said, her expression tired. ""They appeared in the center of the Sha'ma stones. There is a lot of Magic in those stones. The spell you read brought back your ancestors. The foremost in your mind. Sarudi...that means blood ties." She stared at the page.

"My great-great-great-great grandfather is always foremost in the my mind," Lance said. "He has led the most interesting life out of all of us..."

Nanny interrupted him and began to read aloud:

River neverending, down flowing
Blood ties never broken, forever growing
River neverending, never flowing back
Blood ties lack.

"Do you know what that means?" Allura asked, infinite sadness in her eyes.

"We can't send them back," Lance breathed. "And my blood ties will be gone...I'm going to cease to exist..."

The Voltron Legend, Mulder read, his lips moving silently.

His hazel eyes scanned the screen quickly, his photographic memory storing the information in a safe place. Scully was sitting next to him, her chin resting in her hands. They had started their research on their hosts and in the process ran into this legend as an addendum to Commander Keith Knight's personnel file. When she finished reading, Scully let out a derisive snort.

"Are they for real?"

"Looks pretty real to me. It would explain the robot Lion."

"Five mechanical Lions forming a giant robot that defeats evil. It sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon."

"Believe it, Scully. It was why our intrepid commander was sent here in the first place. As were Lieutenant Commander Henry Rice, Ensign Kyle Pidgeon, and..." Mulder stopped and his eyes widened.

"What?" Scully sat up and scanned the screen. Her own eyes widened when she read what Mulder must have seen.

"Lieutenant Commander Lance Mulder," she breathed. "Oh my God."

"Looks like I sowed my wild oats after all," her partner said in shock.