The entries flooding into the database confirmed for Encke that the storms had made it to more places than just Earth.

They were even appearing outside of the Sol System.

Perhaps the creature was simply trying to find a living place to actually center on. Perhaps it did consume everything it came across. Perhaps it didn't matter, ultimately, considering either way it had gotten Earth itself in its crosshairs.

Encke had to do more work to determine what they could do without trying to rely on external sources at all. They had managed for millennia without cooperating with this kind of universal planetary-consuming evil. Of course, that millennia thought had given Encke a clue on what might be a good place to start. If this was truly as ancient of a threat as the murals in the prison implied, perhaps the answers laid in the ancient.

It was as good of a start as anything else.

It hadn't missed Encke's notice when he had visited his world recently that the storms were in Encke's skies, too. It was different, though, than it had felt on Earth. Lightning had already been in his skies. The way his world powered itself lended itself to the skies already looking alarming to those who didn't understand. To Encke, it was comforting, in a way. Lightning didn't scare him as much as it should.

Caedus had encouraged him to find shelter. Encke didn't instinctually know why that would be necessary.

What did actually alarm him was the difference in some streaks compared to what he was used to. What caught his attention was the cloudiness of the skies above when it was already out of the season for ice clouds to be relevant. What was curious was the purple cast it left on the ground. What was interesting was the way the lightning did intermingle with the storms already present in the skies.

This didn't necessarily shift across multiple visits, but what did shift was what Encke was able to observe. It wasn't just that some colouration was different. Some concentrations were different, too. Some buildings seemed more centered to it than others.

Overall, it didn't seem to be impacting his home comet as much as others implied it was impacting theirs. To some degree, Encke was willing to chalk that up to the fact that Encke’s Comet was built for this. However, in their drive to find something else, they didn't want to believe that was everything to it. Just because they were willing to buy that Encke’s Comet was just better at this didn't mean they wanted it to be the case.

He had no interest in being stuck on square one when he was trying to find a solution to something with no obvious answers.

It was on his fourth visit where he went considerably outside of the main city that he noticed a concentration of the unexpected lightning repeatedly striking in the same area. They stayed back, watching as strike after strike came down from the sky and appeared to land in the same zone. It was enough of a fascination that Encke disregarded any concept of safety to get themself as close as they could get.

What he saw was wedged into some rocks in an alley between village housing. A rod a couple of feet long made of a purplish … metal? of some sort he didn't recognize–he was fairly sure he'd need Teegan's chemist husbands to understand it better–stood, sparking with a latent charge probably caused by the electricity itself. When the lightning struck again, Encke jumped back in some instinctual self-preservation he did still have. It didn't cause him to vacate, though, as Encke stayed to watch as the metal sparked again before it disappeared again between the rocks.

Fascinating.

Perhaps this, besides for being built for it, explained how their world seemed so unbothered. It likely explained it better, if anything. It explained it in a way they could actually take back to Earth.

Once Encke found one incidence, it was easy to find the repeats of it. Not only were there these rods and other similar objects in the villages and in the mountain, there were also some scattered through the capitol he was so familiar with. Some of them even seemed connected near the Conduit itself. It was one of these that caught his attention the most, and Encke squatted down, reaching out to touch it.

The circle wasn't as solid as he expected it to be. It bent back as he pressed on it, staying in the new shape he pressed it into. “s**t,” did he ******** break the damn thing? Was it fragile or something? Hadn't felt it– but he was pleasantly surprised to find that, once again, a lightning strike hit this particular object, dispersing in the same way.

Curious.

Perhaps it was unwise, but Encke yanked the not-a-rod up fully, twisting it around his forearm. It stung, a bit, but a little spark had stopped feeling awful to him years ago. (They were, after all, built for this in a way it felt like few others were. Or perhaps they were simply deafened to the feelings at this point.) Squaring his body up, Encke closed his eyes. Best to not blind himself if it did end up landing where he suspected it would.

The next strike did hit their arm. Encke bit down on the inside of their lip as the sparks temporarily flared before disappearing. On a second strike, Encke kept their eyes open, watching what happened after that initial strike. The sparks channeled down a wire the object was connected to before falling into a similarly metallic plate.

… Huh.

Their lips quirked upward.

This they could do something with.