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It was strange to be told that the world was ending, and Dumuzi wasn't sure how to react to it.

There was a part of him that wanted to react with frustration. And he had a lot of reasons he thought! A point of come on, he just turned forty, what do you mean he had to deal with this now? A point of when did lightning storms become so dangerous, because while he did understand the electrocution thing, he didn't often think of them sprouting everywhere and actually electrocuting people to death. The point of what is this snake actually doing, is it just electrocuting people to death? Was it big enough to actually just straight up eat the world? Was this monster more of the Godzilla variety or was it more like an actual world-ending snake in the sense that a lot of mythology or whatever had?

It was all a lot, honestly, and thinking about all of it gave Dumuzi a bit of a headache. Richtersveld said that the others were hopefully dealing with it–she herself was too busy taking care of patients who were panicking about the storms for a variety of reasons to do too much to actually help. The updates he saw in his ring computer or whatever the Mauvian who helped him actually called it weren't giving him hope that it was getting fixed, though. It was mostly just people finding pieces to a puzzle that still felt like it was missing a piece somewhere, and Zotsholo was never all that good with puzzles. That was the job of other people. Like Richtersveld.

Or Nemyi, but they didn't have magic and couldn't add to a database. Nor could they actually go find answers. It read like a lot of people were finding things on their homeworld or wonder or whatever that gave them further hints that this was actually universe wide. Storms throughout the cosmos or something dramatic like that. He guessed he could drag Nemyi to his wonder. Maybe they would have more luck than him in finding a solution to this.

That was a thought, actually, and Dumuzi hung onto that when he approached Nemyi out of his powerful Pluto pants-

“Hey, Nem, you wanna go to my wonder with me?”

“... I've been asking you for months, and now you say yes now that you think I can help you fix the storms?”

Zotsholo didn't have a good answer to that, honestly, but he would let it go because Nemyi did say yes. That was a start. The next step was figuring out what to do with the fact he was able to drag them with him. Was there really much he could find that wasn't just…

“You weren't wrong that this place is trippy,” noted Nemyi, laughing, when they arrived. Dumuzi was looking at the sky, already used to how weird this place was. It looked like a painting from … Richtersveld had called it surrealist times. He was pretty sure he had figured out why. There were some memories of observing the shifts in and out of a … time stream here. Felt like a lot more headache and brain required than he had a lot of the time.

Dumuzi ran a hand over his hair. “Okay, but do you know what's wrong with it?” It was definitely still … electric in the sky here. He jumped when he watched a stray lightning bolt hit a building that was all frozen in the air already.

Nemyi was watching, too, but didn't react with any kind of fear. Dumuzi was and wasn't surprised by the fact they seemed like they were finding it fascinating or … whatever it meant when they made that “Ooh” noise under their breath and waited for another one. For Nemyi, that could mean a lot of things-

“I mean, the lightning seems really attracted to your various objects hanging out in the air.” Nemyi shrugged. “That could just be the fact that several of them are high up, though. Higher objects attract lightning.”

Dumuzi's brows knit. “Well, yeah. That's why they have weather vanes, right?” Nemyi looked mildly amused, so that was probably the wrong word. Wait. He knew the right word. He just needed a second or two. “Lightning rods. Grounding … rods. Are they all rods?”

“In name, yeah.” Nemyi wandered ahead of Dumuzi, looking a bit closer at the landscape of many random things. Dumuzi, easily, followed. This time, when another bolt hit nearby, he didn't jump. He just stared in the direction it landed, looking for any kind of damage.

Well, it didn't look like it had done anything significant to whatever that was it just hit. Dumuzi squinted. Honestly, he wasn't sure if he could detect what had been damaged, considering he couldn't actually, well, identify what that was. Probably some weird science object that Nemyi would know. “Hey, Nem-”

Wait, where had they gone?

“Zot!” They weren't on Earth so Dumuzi would forgive the nickname. There wasn't any point in telling them to call him something else so the Negaverse didn't find him here. Wait. Was Nemyi still saying something else?

His mind put together a bit late that they were warning him. “Be careful! You don't want to stand next to things you're taller than,” eventually processed, but it went in one ear and out the other when he felt a spark touch his body. That hurt. It felt like a boa constrictor but made of electricity with the way it wrapped and snaked around his body.

He guessed that made sense, seeing as that thing was supposed to be a snake and all-

“Zot!”

Dumuzi shook himself out of it to take a look at his sibling, who had walked up to him to inspect his body. “Are you alright?”

“Uh, yeah, it just felt kinda weird. The bolts kinda went all the way around,” Nemyi was dragging him to a more open area that wasn't surrounded by taller objects. That was probably smart. “It hurt a bit but it's not like I'm dead, Nem.”

Nemyi didn't care about that part. They were inspecting Dumuzi’s body for any … shockwaves? Was that the word? After effects? “I mean,” Nemyi shrugged, pulling back, “you look fine. Did you find out anything else?”

Dumuzi ran a hand over his hair once again. “Not really. I just found out lightning kinda hurts.” Which he already knew, honestly. That wasn't new information. “I like the fact that the lightning is here too.”

When he was about to be questioned on his word choice, he was fairly sure, Dumuzi clarified, “Not that I'm happy about it! Just means that this is a bigger problem, whatever this Herald is.” He glanced to Nemyi. “Are you getting anything?”

“Well, I've taken some notes.” So they had. “I'll need some time to study them, and I'm not sure if this is the best place to do so. How often can you come back here?”

“It's usually once every three weeksish or whatever, but it seems like in our database people have been reporting going more often. So probably whenever.”

“Mind if I go home and study these observations?” Nemyi glanced behind themselves when another lightning bolt hit close by. Dumuzi rubbed at his arms where the prior bolt had hit him. “If we can come back pretty often, I don't necessarily want to be in a place where we are at risk of being electrocuted.”

… That was fair. Probably.

“Alright. Let's get out of here, then.”