Nate heavily controlled his breathing as he peered from the corner over the door, which opened back and forth, not intending to fully close it all the way. The hallway lights were not enough to illuminate what was inside the room. No one else was in the room, not even a museum security guard patrolling the area.
He did not like this at all, not one bit. But there was something off with how the room down further messed with his feelings and judgment, like something wasn't part of the guided tour. Nate swore that he saw a wavy aura that could be visualized, but when he looked at the door again, it was the same repeated soft swings.
Looking back at the line, he could still clearly see that the tour group was moving at a sluggish pace, enough time for him to dash through the door to see what was up. And if he decided to only take a minute to look around, then he wouldn't have to be trespassing with hostility in that timeframe.
Nate tiptoed towards the door, careful not to let any noises escape between the soles of his rubber shoes and the marbled floor, and the door immediately stopped its rattling when he approached it. Upon being right next to the door, he carefully pressed his ear against the wall next to the door, trying to hear anything that might be unusual.
Nothing. Nothing he heard that was a bit strange except for the occasional air blowing in the vent above Nate, and the voices of the tour group distancing from him. He should probably hurry it up a bit more if he didn't want to get into trouble.
So, he grasped for the door handle and slightly pushed the door outwards. Peering through the cracks, there wasn't much that could be seen except for the pitch-black darkness, but after a few seconds, Nate's vision started to adjust, and he could now properly see that it was a rather medium-sized room, definitely bigger than the utility closet back in Honoway Mall next to the bathroom.
It was probably some sort of warehouse or large storage room for items that were currently not ready for the public view, as some boxes had scribbles of black marker labels attached to them. No shelves for these boxes to be inserted into, only the boxes themselves stacked on top of each other.
As for the items that were not inside any cardboard boxes, they were probably a bit too large and unnecessary to be wrapped up; they were on podiums or on the floor themselves. Some of them looked so ancient that seventy-five percent of the surface of their metal coverings was covered in dust piling over wedges inside like cotton in a mouth.
Primeval combat equipment and armor made up the bulk of the artifacts within the storage, with some blades looking so sharp they looked like they could cut through anything in the world.
Seeing enough of what he was currently seeing, Nate turned back, now satisfied with nothing eerie going on in Morkiss Museum, only for a blur of a silhouette to greet him with a kick to the chest, launching him back into the dark room.
"Oh no, you don't!" a voice called from the doorframe Nate had just come through.
The pain of the kick on his chest was flaring; it was like a baseball bat accidentally flew into his chest from a player accidentally loosening his grip. Nate's saliva escaped from the corner of his mouth as he used his knees to sit up properly.
The figure at the door had black, shriveled-up hair with only a few white strands poking out of his scalp. The clothes that he was wearing were not of top-notch quality and actually had holes that were poked through as though the guy was pierced by a flurry of swords. The gunky-looking shoes were a bit small for his size as he stepped more into view, finally showing his true identity.
"Nate Elfirm, you sicken me with that high school look with your clothes; every time I look at it, it makes me want to get my revenge more."
It was Pallnem, the homeless guy that he last saw at Vivid Forest when fighting the Trapsting Faden. Nate audibly gasped at who he was seeing, never expecting to see him in Morkiss Museum out of all places.
"Pallnem...!" the boy blurted out. "What the... Why are you here right now?!"
"It's because you go to that Standart High School; why else would I be beefing with you at all?" Pallnem roared as he pointed to Nate. "Since you are a student there, then it would be okay for me to let you die while you're here; it's kinda hard for anyone to find this place. Then, I'll make those friends of yours pay too. Especially that red-haired kid with the green long-sleeved shirt and the blonde girl with glasses. The whole class of yours will pay!"
Nate's eyes widened as the homeless man continued to ramble more and more about what he was going to do. He thought about the times when he passed by the man on the way to school, but he didn't think he would be this crazy. What really happened to him that caused his hatred to spike up? This lonely homeless guy couldn't have been that bitter over something before, could he?
"Why are you doing this?" he asked desperately. "Why would you target people at Standart High? What have they done to you at all?"
"Why?! Of course you wouldn't know; you weren't there during the time when Standart High betrayed me! There was no way you could understand how I felt?"
"What do you mean?" Nate desperately asked, wanting to know what he meant. "Just be chill, okay? We can just talk it out, please?"
"Do I look like I want to explain this to you? It doesn't matter if I try to say these things more about myself; it only matters for me to see your death at the hands of the Museum! But I'm not a bad guy, cuz I don't wanna kill with my own hands, so I'll let something else take my revenge."
Pallnem's eyes were piercing through his soul; anger behind those orbs in his face continued to burn uncontrollably. In return, Nate was petrified by what his next response would be, realizing that he was more insane than the one day that he last saw him. Pallnem momentarily froze in his steps, then reached out for his back pockets, unveiling a small, shiny object.
It was green crystal from the theomin deposit. More specifically, the unrefined green theomin shard.
Nate pointed at the crystal. "H-hey, you don't know what that green crystal is capable of! It's dangerous and it could—"
"I know what these freakin' do, so don't try to tell me!" Pallnem retorted. "If I just hold it like this, then those monsters would come out from somewhere—I don't know what, but they're like dangerous animals. At first, I was like confused about what this thing does—I tried to sell it, but then this thing would glow and would make those creatures arrive, so talk about gnarly."
So, Pallnem was the one causing the mess left by the Fadens? He purposely let the unrefined theomin crystal summon the monsters to attack the innocent people in many different locations. Nate stood aghast at how someone could do something so awful in a city full of people like Standart—it was just wrong to begin with, no matter how someone looked at it.
But it all made sense now. Besides the theomin crystal in the possession of Colten Marnsip, the bounty hunter, Pallnem had to be nearby, of all the places Nate encountered the Fadens. The Lone Site of Vivid Forest, the Volanten River, Honoway Mall, Lilac Pond, and so on—Pallnem was there, trying to get these horrible creatures to rise.
The theomin crystal within the palm of Pallnem's hand glowed intensely, acting as a limited lamp to cover the whole area in its green illumination. It must be because of Nate's body being more adapted to sudden changes in his perception, because it wasn't overwhelmingly blinding like last time, causing him to physically knock himself back—only momentarily flashing him within a few seconds.
Nate looked back and then at his sides, the realization hitting him with full throttle for what was about to come.
"No, it can't—you're going to kill us all!"
Pallnem only replied with a booming cackle, making his face contort with the glee that a Faden monster would inevitably be summoned in the very room Nate was in. The boy was stunned by what he was seeing, the reaction of seeing a man engorging himself into true madness—making a creature that could devastate the Morkiss Museum and sweep up the innocent people along with it.
"I knew, with how Morkiss Museum has all kinds of dangerous stuff inside, so I thought it wouldn't be that hard for this little thingy to do its work, since it would definitely create a monster more dangerous than the other places I've been to. With you gone, up next is that damned Standart High! Everyone there would feel how I felt before, no matter the cost. I would summon my monsters with this green crystal thing, and then they would shred them up without anything holdin' them back."
Shocked by what he just heard, Nate got on his feet and went for the door. His friends, both fellow students and beloved teachers, would be seriously hurt or worse by what the homeless man would do when he arrives to Standart High. Such a thought like that made him reach out for a chance to stop that future from happening.
"No! Please, Pallnem, don't do this! My classmates and teachers are innocent, they didn't—"
Pallnem grabbed the knob and closed it before anything else would happen. The sound of a shut door immediately silenced the boy's pleading words, landing only in Nate's ears and no one else's. His heart rapidly beat like a drum as he rushed to the door and attempted to open it.
It was no luck at all; no matter how much he struggled with pulling or pushing, it was clear to him that Pallnem locked the door behind him, leaving him to a gruesome fate at the hands of whatever was going to appear at any second.
Feeling repulsed by the darkness all over him, Nate scrambled for his pockets to see if he had his phone to flip for flashlight mode, but remembered that it shattered when fighting against the Slimestuck Faden in Honoway Mall from before. He really should have packed up a flashlight for cases just like these, since he had always found himself getting trapped in cramped dark rooms with monsters hiding in them.
So, he instantly summoned his sword, Rupture, flashing a burst of green light from the formation of the sword, which in turn helped him adjust his eyes to the darkness even more.
Nate held his sword up high, intending to strike at a moment's notice. Not only using his vision to survey the area for any threats, but to also intesely hear any changes shuffling in the background to prove that there was something alive in the storage room.
With his sword in his hand, Nate went up to a large horizontal clay box completely covered with ancient symbols that represent complex hieroglyphic phrases, each etched into a few inches of the clay covering. Going closer, his interest spiked at such an interesting container being in a random storage room.
Using the green glow to see the tag attached to the clay container box, he saw that it had only two words in handwriting: Theum Xeron.
"Theum Xeron? Is that supposed to be a name? Wait, don't tell me, this is actually a coffin!"
His spoken observations were set aside when a muffled rumble was heard inside the clay coffin, making Nate step back with fear and caution about something that was in there.
Was it really possible that the Faden Pallnem summoned using the unrefined green crystal was inside the coffin named Theum Xeron? Nate didn't have to ponder that for a while because that answer appeared right in front of him as the clay coffin instantly rose up in the air. It stood rigid in the middle of the room as dreary lines of cloth escaped through the holes it made from the inside, and at the bottom of the clay coffin were two densely twisted cloths of the same type acting as legs, but it appeared too tall to fit inside the small room they were in.
The monster looked like it attempted to stand up, but its efforts were hindered by the many boxes around it and the low ceiling, preventing it from reaching its mysterious true height.
What certain detail that mattered most to Nate was its skin—green ooze bleeding outside its bandages and the final reveal of its face was corpse-like. No nose or eyelids that signaled anything ordinary, and the ashy-gray skin that made up its whole outer skin—these were only the clear indications that it was a Faden that he was dealing with.
A Faden that somehow used the body of Theum Xeron inside the clay coffin to move around, with straps of clothes flying in every direction.
The Theum Xeron Faden... or Theum Xeron for simplicity's sake, was now alive—facing off against the minuscule Nate Elfirm.
At first, he was unsure how he should handle the whole situation. It was like being trapped again in the bathroom with that other Faden, but this time it was different. Not only was Theum Xeron still in its sarcophagus floating in the air, but there were also the tentacle-like ancient bandages that were floating in the air in all directions. The thick cloths crumpled up together, acting like its legs were probably the longest limbs, as it curled up in many different places in loops within the shelves and boxes.
However, unlike the situations before, Nate gained a minor understanding of the capabilities of Rupture, and there was also the current trump card with First Stage that he could play if things got really bad, so he should save that for later.
Then the Faden momentarily shook its body before launching the attacks of its bandages towards Nate. They were like missiles fired from a bazooka, as fast as a speeding bullet, the limbs acting as projectiles so they could pierce through Nate's body.
At the last second, Nate swore he could feel them aiming towards his heart, and without a second to spare, he physically dodged the incoming volley of cloth as the hairs in the back of his neck went up.
He breathed heavily from having to move at such a fast pace.
"Uuuuuhh.... huuufff... I gotta get rid of this thing before I can get out."
It was precedent that he should focus on neutralizing the Faden before going out to find Pallnem, before he executed his plan. If Nate only focused on escaping and leaving Theum Xeron behind, then it was only believable to say that the monster would end up escaping from the storage room, attacking the people in Morkiss Museum indiscriminately. He couldn't allow that to happen at all, even if it wasted him precious time going to Standart High.
Regarding his worries, Nate decided to attack the Faden before it could have a firm grasp over its environment. After a few more dodges from individual strikes from Theum Xeron's cloth pierce attacks, he bolted around the monster, itching for an opening to strike.
It wasn't easy having to constantly keep an eye on the Faden while dodging the cloth erected from its many holes within the clay coffin, and it was smart enough to leave some limbs lying flat on the ground until Theum Xeron lifted them at a lightning-fast pace to catch Nate off guard.
Nate attempted to dodge the other cloth strands from reaching him while using Rupture to slash away any rogue limbs that got past his speed into ribbons.
The fight in turn between the boy and monster left the whole storage room a mess. Shelves were knocked over onto the floor, and the boxes that were stacked up were blown away by the Faden's intense attacks. Artifacts and objects of all ages were in shattered pieces, unable for anyone to discern which went where. In a way, Nate felt his heart sink for his family, knowing that they deeply attuned themselves to the things in the museum.
"There's no time for me to worry about the broken things here; instead, I have to focus on cutting away the cloth and the legs themselves that support the monster! The only reason I stood a chance against it was that the room was not tall enough for it to stand and use its full versatility!" Nate shouted.
"Nate, are you in this room? Mom and Dad were worried about you not being with the tour group, so I volunteered to search for you. The last time I saw you was in the hallway outside—you better not be causing any trouble because I don't want our whole family to be banned here—What the heck?!"
In the corner of his eye, Nate could see someone standing in the opened doorway, their eyes cupped with their hands to see what was going on through the darkness of the storage room.
It was his sister, Nallie, who unlocked the door after Pallnem closed it behind him, now startled by what he was seeing, with the whole mess on the floor and the Faden floating in the middle of the air.
She looked at Nate with intense worry and fear as she gazed upon the sword her brother was wielding. "Nate, what are you doing with that sword?! And what is with the mummy over there?! I don't like this in one bit at all!"
Now a helpless bystander in the midst, Nate then launched an aggressive flurry of attacks that covered every opening on him by spinning around with such acceleration directly straight towards Theom Xeron, instead of circling it. When the Faden tried to use its long cloth to shoot at him, he used his sword to split the ribbons into pieces.
When he finally reached under the floating Faden, he used his strength to slice off the legs of the Faden, causing it to drop down to the ground, kissing the floor on impact.
Theum Xeron attempted to use its final cloth pieces to make its last stand, but Nate stabbed the sword into the implied heart of the rotten mummy. He used both of his hands to plunge the sword deeper as the mummy roared from being stabbed to death.
After a few seconds, smoke came out of its hollowed eyes and desecrated mouth as Nate closed his eyes from the impact of the explosion that came out of it.
He landed on the metal shelves with his arm in pain from the explosion.
When Nate went up and got to the place where Theom Xeron dissipated, only the shattered clay coffin remained and the rolled-up cloth it used to attack. The body itself seemed to disappear after somehow possessing the corpse.
He turned to see Nallie, facedown from being impacted by the explosion as dust began to collect all over her. With a cough of worry, Nate retracted his sword and went to the aid of his prone sister. Trying to see any signs that indicated she was fine.
A huge wave of relief enveloped him as Nate heard her groan and softly open her eyes, her arm reaching over to clear up the dust around her nose.
"Nate... did I just faint out of nowhere?"
"Don't worry, I got you. We're safe now from the monster," he reassured her.
Nallie had her head lifted up as she stood on her two feet, trying to process the ruined room around her.
"What...? What monsters are you talking about?"
Nate turned slowly at what she just said, like his sister was crazy from the moment she said those words.
"H-huh?" he uttered. "Nallie, what did you say?"
"I said I don't know what you're talking about with monsters in the building at all. All I wanted was for you to stop snooping around the places that are obviously off-limits, and go back to the tour group before into trouble!"
The sudden shift of the conversation was similar to the event with the other members of Quad Four after they were exposed to the shining green light of the solid theomin crystal deposit back in the dense green of Vivid Forest. After fading into unconsciousness from the deposit exploding right in their faces, he woke up to learn that all of his friends did not remember what happened before—not one piece of knowledge was left in their minds about the whole incident.
The same thing that was happening to Nallie made Nate freeze at the realization. There was something weird about how the other members of Quad Four suddenly lost their memories.
However, Nate remembered Pallnem and his plan to eradicate the whole school by sicking his collected Fadens on them. Time was ticking, and he should get there before the plan truly got in motion.
Nate firmly held his sister's shoulders, forcing the two of them to stare into each other's eyes. He covered his cough with the sleeve of his shirt.
"Never mind about the monsters, Nallie. Tell Mom and Dad that I'm going to leave early since I just remembered I have a gardening club meeting I have to attend, and say sorry to them for me, alright?"
"Hold on! Stop!" Nallie grabbed her brother's shirt as he went for the exit. "You're going to leave early when the tour just got started. And also, I don't remember you being in the gardening club to begin with."
"I'm sorry—it seems confusing, but I have to go..."
Nate let go and went into the hallway and out into the exit door next to the waiting room. His heart continued to pound from the adrenaline pumped into his bloodstream.
He had to immediately go over to Standart High before Pallnem went there with the Fadens that he had to collect from the Morkiss Museum that Nate guessed was his plan. The way the homeless man phrased his sentence meant that he had some sort of limited control over making these Fadens do his bidding.
If Pallnem was here with the theomin crystal to gather monsters from the storage rooms of the museum, there was a high chance that some of the Fadens would break off unknowingly from the trip to the school and attack other people nearby. If that was the case, Nate was probably the only one who had the power to stop them.