A look of near-terror briefly comes over Ross's face, "So, ah, about that. The metal, that is. If my source is right, and it tends to be, that thing is a...a sort of cosmic devourer. It was sealed away on a dead world to contain it but rituals can pull it through to worlds where they're performed. If this is that, then our only hope of stopping it is cutting off the source and preventing it from bringing more of itself onto Earth."
Jennifer silently nods her head in thanks to the curator for healing, though she still holds her hand over wounds that are mostly healed. She looks very unnerved by Ross's description of Zaoth, even more so than his explanation of the liquid metal.
"How did it get here?" she asks aloud to anybody that might have the answer. "And does it have anything to do with the invisible nothing-person?"
After getting the cute thief to and from the bathroom safely, Median zip-ties her hands again, searches her again just in case, and then places her once again under the watchful eye of the curator.
In response to Jennifer she says
I have no idea about the first question, but the two invisible entities are afraid of it, and want us to banish it again... is that something that is possible?
Also, the metal bad thing seems to be weaker around Salim. Why is that? Could we use that somehow to drive it back to its own universe/dimension or whatever?
"I had my fair share of irresponsible portal use back before I came to Fever. How I ended up with Zaoth in my dome. Portals like that aren't always precise. Things get grabbed, dragged along for the ride. Nurai and I were poking around earlier, seems like there are some ways to close the rifts it's probably getting in through. Killing it's the quickest way. There's a ritual we could do, but it'll be expensive and long, hard, too on a whole building. Can't say I know Salim well enough to say why it does what it does."
Nurai considered Joseph's question, "Depends which 'all' is being considered."
Turning to the curator as she pocketed her wand, "In my previous dealings with ones similar looking, they seemed to be able to use magic circles to travel and liked a fight. Not sure that can extended to all of them, or if these ones are traveling through or making the rips instead. As Ross said, we've been trying to figure out the source of what's nibbling away at your museum and letting in some nasty leaks, hoping to stop it before they get bigger and... I was going to say more problems cropped up, but seems a bit late for that."
"Truth be told, I also have no clue why the metal would be 'weaker' around me! Unless it's weakened by the Plane of Dreams somehow?"
”Well if it is, that’s a handy coincidence. Wherever Z came from, that thing was close to. If the Dimension of Dreams is connected, well, not sure where that puts us but at least I’ve got an inside source.”
Zaoth rumbles in Ross’s head, There’s a noise like laughter, if laughter came from a staticky speaker bubbling through a tar pit full of the bones of unspeakable horrors. It was unpleasant to say the very least.
"If the metal is avoiding Salim, then it could be for one of several reasons. Effectively they boil down to two, however - either something he is carrying is causing the effect or something about his as a person is. I have no idea how to test either, however." The curator suggested with a considering look.
"My guess, however, is that the thing is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The museum is warded against normal entry from other places and I assure you no magic circles are within the wards. Most likely this thing has found a hole in reality to exploit, and slide through."
Glancing at the two figures, he paused. "That is...uncommon." The Curator coughed heavily, wiping at his mouth with a handkerchief before slipping it back into his pocket. "They are probably what is causing the rifts, at the least. They are travellers, of a sort, journeying. Through dimensions and time rather than space. They are...one being, two facets of the same creature, destruction and reconstruction as physical beings, but..." Jacob rubbed his eyes.
Uh, Curator? Are you okay? Coughing up blood is not a good sign. Maybe we should get you to a hospital.
He glanced over, weighing. "As with some of you I am not what most would consider normal. Technically, the curator of the museum is the one who is abnormal - the one filling the role simply gets the 'gifts'. When the place was built it was created with a Genius Loci Minoris. The idea was that the curator would have access to all the knowledge of the place. I can look at a person and see there history and intentions. But dumping that kind of knowledge into a human brain comes with a cost."
He nodded to the semi-real beings. "They are both ancient and utterly, completely inhuman in nature, thought and being. Trying to understand the incomprehensible did not go well."
That's... a really cool ability. We'll have to talk later. But, yeah, they are confusing. You're saying... THEY opened a rift and the other thing came through because there was an opening? ... Uh, maybe you shouldn't look at that thing though.
She reaches out mentally to the entities
Are you able to go back and seal the rift or hole that you entered through? Apparently it is causing many problems in our world.
Jacob considered for a moment. "Perhaps. They opened at least some of them, but I'm not sure they opened the first. Or perhaps they did, but something caused it? The Loci is struggling to decipher what it learned into something a human mind can understand, but I feel as though they're another symptom, not a cause."
Midian got a sense of...desire to fix what was happening from the creatures, and a desire to be whole.
Padding his body to make sure he's back in shape, Joseph offers an option. "It sounds like closing portal are currently out of my wheelhouse, but if you need me, I'll be checking this floor for anything missed." The godling nods to everyone in the admin. room and leaves to check the door at the end of the hall.
Continuing to talk the the entities mentally Median asks
Can you fix it? Are you working on it? What else can I do to help?
The record office of the museum is what you might expect - dozens of shelves with files and boxes and several computers. One remains on standby. Despite the clutter the room is neat and seems well organized.
Median gets the impression that fixing and healing were happening, and also the same thing.
Out of curiosity, Joseph takes down the box and lid. Looking for label or identification.
The box contains ruined papers. Yellowed, crisped and in somecases crumbling to dust as soon as touched. In the midst of the document carnage is a single black stone, polished smooth and with unpleasant yellow lines that somehow radiate a sense of unpleastness. Joseph can sense simply by looking that touching this with bare flesh may be unwise - especially when it rolls across a sheet of paper and erodes it in two.
Joseph carefully put the lid back on the box and places the box back on the top shelf. The godling quickly returns to the curator's office next door and explains what he saw and his feelings about the item.
"What on earth is that?" the curator asked with clear curiosity. The two (?) beings moved away as soon as the box was brought into the office, clearly unhappy with it. "I can feel it eroding reality just by being here. It feels like-"
Jacob paused, looking confused as his nose began to bleed, then flickered. "Ah. Whoops."
"I...I can check it out." Ross sighs, "Zaoth's got some...followers, I guess, that came with him. Only these are in the material world." As he talks, inky writing appears in the air next to him, We are unseen, yet ever present. Zaoth's will is ours. Ross pinches the bridge of his nose, "Sorry. They usually do what I tell them. They can handle the box and the stone, I'll see what I know about it. What Zaoth knows about it, too. If anyone wants to give me some backup though, I don't know what the stone'll do."
Median moved away with the two beings who were using her mind to connect, wanting to know what is up with the weird reality-eroding item, but also wanting to stay close to the beings that were supposedly trying to fix things.
Feeling very vulnerable without a supernatural being possessing her, Jennifer wasn't feeling very confident that she could do much. Still, she armed herself with her clawed gauntlets and stood by.
Ross heads into the room with the box. The unseen forces at his side reach for the box, opening it with invisible fingers not quite comprehensible by mortal minds. He stares at the stone as invisible, immaterial tendrils reach for it and bring it towards Ross as he studies it.
"What is this thing?"
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Median gets the sensation of entropy - the inevitable feeling of rot and decay as time wears away the mortal form and changes the mortal soul changes and warps within the ever ticking motion of time whether you travel back or forwards through it, where only remaining stationary could possibly preserve the person you are in this heartbeat from becoming the person you will become in the next and would that even be living?
It is not a comfortable sensation. She gets a subtle hint around it - one of manufacture and artifice.
Ross' observation is limited. Even the unseen forces don't especially want to be unmade, and are cautious with the cardboard box. The stone itself is perfectly smooth, suggesting a casting of some kind or perhaps polishing if something can touch it, and the feeling even looking into is...strong.
Zaoth has more. It is some kind o negative energy. The small amounts spells use to harm people in spells simply remove the life from what the hit, causing wounds by killing skin, muscle and blood. It's perfectly possible to heal from, if not nice. This seems to be much strong, and having an effect on reality.
Makes one wonder what the hell the box is made of.
Median passes on her observations to the rest of the group, hoping that it will assist someone with an idea about how to stop/destroy/banish the thing.
The curator flickered again, this time vanishing for a noticeably longer period of time. "It seems that understanding what it doe-" flicker, flicker, "-impact on how it aff-" flicker, "-ch might make spea-" flicker "-lem."
"Okay! Let's get this fu<king nega-thing out of our dimension", Joseph decided. "Point me to a tare in the Veil and out it goes!"
Median grabs the curator and Ash and drags them out of the room, trying to keep them alive.
Median is able to get Ash out. The curator is more challenging, as he only shares your reality for a ever decreasing period of time, but gets the idea and follows Median out of the room in flickering fashion. The door closes through him, which he clearly finds surprising.
Ross finds Nurai and, after giving a rundown on the situation, asks her, ”So, mind helping us find a good dimensional rift to throw this rock into?”
Once the group’s assembled again Ross says, ”If we really want to find out what this thing is…well, Zaoth’s got ways of finding things. It’ll open my mind to all the possibilities of what the thing is and narrow them down to what it probably is. Only issue, this process is tiring as all hell. If we want answers though, I can get them.”
"Surely that can't be legal, asking otherworldly beings for information," the thief said. "Privacy laws and such, right?" Ash paused. "What? Just because I don't always follow laws about personal property doesn't mean I support all laws being broken."
"Does anyone know of a nearby rift in the fabric of space/time?" Joseph questions realizing how totally weird that sounded. The godling has arms out to The Curator to offer to take the bad box from him.
Go for it, Ross, get us some answers... as long as it doesn't endanger anyone further.
Median smiles at Ash. She was hilarious. She doesn't take the manacles off though.
"-eva-" the curator replied. Jacob sighed, pulled out his phone, and tapped furiously. After a moment there was a ping for each of you. Several, but I'm not sure if hurling something that seems to be weakening the bonds between reality into a wound in reality is the wisest choice.
Ross shrugs when he sees the text, "I...I guess that's a good idea. Hadn't thought of that, truth be told."
"Any case, here goes."
Ross takes a seat somewhere, closing his eyes as he gives Zaoth control of every nook and cranny of his brain, forcing his own conciousness...somewhere. It's dark, darker than anything that mortal minds can understand. A sort of null-space between something and nothing, though decidedly closer to nothing. Sometimes, entities with eldritch knowledge or disembodied concepts lurked there, revelling in the sheer non-being of it all. Despite his searching, Ross can't find anything, and slowly drifts back to himself.
His eyes open again, and his body sags under the weight of briefly not being within himself. Ross' voice is shaky as he says, "Sorry folks. Couldn't find anything. Something's gotta be out there, though. I can try again in a bit if we're really stumped."
The curator flickered and faded. Although he didn't re-appear, a message did ping through. If the thing in the box is what is tearing reality apart, perhaps it holds a hint to it's repair? Or at least a way to stop the damage? If nothing else works, then use the Cup in the History of Fever exhibit. It has some unusual properties.
Beware, however, it may invoke a cost.
Median has no idea what the curator is hinting at, but she moves down to the History of Fever exhibit to retrieve the cup, pulling the still-manacled Ash along with her, and hoping that the entities were still able to use her mind to connect as she was moving around.
She looked around carefully as she moved, hoping to avoid the very slow drippy monster from earlier.
Ross follows along, his unseen forces cautiously cradling the box in their invisible tendrils, intangible yet entirely capable of manipulating the world around them.
Along the way he does his best to make conversation with Median, ”So, ah, weird day, huh? Tangled with anything like this before?”
Median wonders why Ross is carrying the evil thing around with him rather than running from it, but then she considers that someone has to sort it out, so maybe he's brave rather than insane.
... Like this? No. Usually I deal with things that are more concrete. I mean, I deal with strange creatures and unexplained events regularly, but they aren't strange as in impossible, more, uh, ... unacknowledged history. Like if you see a UFO and know the stories are true. Unpopular reality, but reality nevertheless.
This is more like... I mean, the horror section, right? Things that you can't understand and you can't fight, but still have to figure out a way to deal with so the world doesn't fly apart? Definitely not my genre. I don't even *like* scary movies... or roller coasters. Who actually enjoys being scared? I don't get that at all.
When they get to the cup, she goes ahead and just picks it up, trying to figure out how it can help.
She turns to Ash
Got any ideas? Make yourself useful.
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"I used to like being scared, for what it's worth. I, uh, I got too deep into it though, ended up with a ghost-demon thing playing jockey in my skull."
Zaoth burbles to the top of Ross's mind,
Ross does his best to ignore the psychically thundering voice in his head as he continues, "The strange is in me, always. Couldn't escape it even if I tried."
When they reach the cup Ross says, "You know, I didn't try my little magic trick on the cup. I could, if we really want to know how to use it. It'll just take me a minute, keep me worn out for even longer. If we can seal up those tears, though, it may not matter."
Um, okay... as long as your "trick" won't kill you, just wear you out. Probably worth some exhaustion to ... uh, save the world or whatever insane thing we are trying to do.
As the conversation continued the Fever History Exhibit came into view, without any additional distractions or encounters. The cup was in its display case, albeit off to one side.
Median opens the case if she can
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If she can't...
"Just break it. You have permission, right?"
The case itself is rigged with an alarm, but it should be possible to bypass with a few minutes work. Of course, a lot can happen in a museum slowly slipping between dimensions with a monster apparently made of liquid metal roaming the halls.
Ash looks over and comments, "Oh, that'll be easy. I can do it if you like."
Or, of course, there is Jennifer's smash and grab plan.
When Ash offers to help, Median says
Well, alright, but if you try to steal it, I will shoot you.
Median frees Ash's hands to take care of the case, keeping her sniper rifle trained on her the whole time.
Success or failure, she then zip ties her hands again (unless she tries to run with the cup, which would be unfortunate, but Median would shoot her with a readied action to do so).