Everyone in the restaurant was screaming, especially Brahd - for he was experiencing what was undoubtedly the first observed case of a full currdling in about five centuries.

Brahd screamed in agony as little black specks surrounded his legs, slowly eating away at him atom by atom and replacing each bit with more little black specks. Slowly, but surely, Brahd was being consumed. Right now it was working through his feet.

"What do I do? The pain is unbearable!" he cried.

"Did you never take the cure for the Curr?" asked Sahdi through shivers of fear.

"Of course I did! My parents gave it to me when I was very young!"

"Gods fucking help us," said Omar. He held up his flaming arm. "And by gods, I don't mean gods at all, I mean me."

Everyone gasped and screamed as Omar swung down his arm, severing Brahd's infected feet and cauterizing the wounds immediately.

"What in the name of Theseosus is wrong with you?!" cried Brahd as he screamed in agony. "You just cut off my feet!"

"No shit, now shut the fuck up, stop complaining, and thank me for saving your ass!" said Omar. "Philh, get me the biggest fucking glass bowl you can motherfucking find! Hurry, our lives fucking depend on it!"

Philhip scrambled to get a large bowl and slammed it over the severed feet, which had almost been completely consumed by the Curr. Everyone sighed in relief as they watched the feet get slowly but surely consumed. Well, everyone except for Brahd, who was still wheezing in pain, both physical and psychological as he watched his own feet get consumed by Curr in disgust.

"This is some nightmare fuel right here," said Philhip as he popped a fried crab in his mouth with a smile and a crunch.

"No fucking kidding," said Omar. He looked at his flaming right arm with a sigh and a smile. "But a curator has to do what he has to do, and that-" he waved his flaming arm at the severed feet haphazardly, "-that medical abomination is also a precious historical artifact!"

"Where would something like that come from, though?" asked Sahdi inquisitively she brushed her long, straight hair out of the living wood covering her left eye. "And how do we contain it?"

"We contain it by isolating it and keeping as far away from it as possible," said Omar, taking a step torwards the glass containing Brahd's severed feet in order to take a closer look. "Yes, this shit is really fucked up plus three."

"What?" Philhip blinked.

"I said this shit is really fucked up." Omar pointed again to the upside-down glass bowl containing Brahd's feet.

"No, you said something else, too," said Sahdi.

"I certainly did four plus two equals not, thank you very five minus five much!"

It took more than a moment to convince Omar that he had, in fact, started speaking with simple equations peppered within his normal line of speaking. As soon as he got away from the Curr, it seemed to stop.

"You know, I've heard of this," said Sahdi. "They say it can be a sign of infection. Maybe we need to burn some of it off you, Omar."

"That's ridiculous, I'm a flame elemental! The most resistant to the Curr! I bet you I can kill it with fire!!" Omar swung his arm towards the glass, prepared to do some serious damage.

"Stop!!" everyone else yelled in unison.

"Fuck, sorry, I was just minus one joking."

Everybody groaned.

"That was a joke too! I'm not speaking in math anymore, at least I divided by zero think so!"

EverYbody groaned even more.

And then, someone shrieked so loudly and shrilly that everyone's eardrums were ringing like wine glasses knocking together against each other.

"There's more in the bathroom!"

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The shriek had been from Philhip. What had he seen?

"More what, you squealing dingus?" asked Brahd.

"More Curr! The bathroom is crawling with Curr!"

"Curr? Ugh, Philh, you absolute imbecile, I bet you grew from stupidity. I bet you that, in actuality, you were birthed from stupidity, and I don't mean to call your mother stupid, no, that's not what I mean at all, although surely she must have been. No, but really what I am talking about is that you, Philh, embody in a corporeal form a magical, wondrous idiocy that is unparalleled upon the rest of the fine material plane. That is to say, you are the word idiot personified. You are a fool, an imbecile, a dunce and a numbksull. You are like a piece of sentient mold that found its way to the pecking order of civilized society, but only barely, I mean look at your life. Who do you even think you are? You are Theseosusless, you are not wise, you are not wealthy, you are not significant, you live in a void and you die in one. That, Philh, is you. You are the bottom of the pit, you are the thrown away core, you are all that and less."

"Okay..." Philhip rolled his eyes. "Anyway, there's tons of fucking Curr in the bathroom, asshole."

"That's not Curr, that's black mold."

"Come in here, come look at this fucking bathroom, and you tell it's, that, that it's fucking black mold."

----------------------------------------

Philhip and Brahd sat at a table with sour faces. Philhip was now missing the lower half of his left leg, and Brahd was missing a hand. Both of these missing appendages were placed under large, glass containers.

"Alright, nobody try going to the bathroom right now," said Omar. "As much as I love burning people's limbs off, and trust me, I do, we're fresh out of glass containers, and that means that we don't have any more room to store anything else that I have to cut off if it gets infected with Curr! Okay?"

Everyone nodded begrudgingly.

"Now, what are our next steps? Well, my next step is going to be to stress the fuck out about all this, honestly. I am so stressed that it's crazy. Considering that, um, Brahd, do you have any vodka?"

"Yes, I have some in the back, but-"

"Great, I'll take a quadruple vodka seltzer, hold the seltzer."

"You didn't let me finish," said Brahd. "I do have some, but, like all our alcohol except the draft beer, it's far in the back of the building, I'm sorry to say. You know, right by the bathroom?"

"Oh my gods... Fuck my life," said Omar. "Fine, get me four easy to chug beers with the highest alcohol content you can muster, please."

Brahd struggled to prepare the beers with his single claw-hand as Omar cleared his throat and waited impatiently.

Once the beer was ready, Omar glared at Brahd. "You don't have to act so pitiful. I've never had two hands, and I manage just fine. More than fine, considering my awesome system and elemental powers."

Brahd hung his head and sighed. "My system's pretty cool too, you know."

"Yea, fucking whatever," said Omar with a roll of his eyes. He grabbed the first beer, and then he chugged it all in one go. Sahdi opened her mouth to say something, but Omar simply shook his head and grabbed the second beer, which he also chugged to completion. Before even taking a moment to breath in, Omar moved to the third beer and did the same. Then, while still chugging the third beer, Omar picked up the fourth beer with his foot and tipped it over and down into his gullet. Soon, all four glasses set there empty on the bar, and he sighed with a smile.

"Holy shit," said everyone in unison.

"Now that I have your atten-SHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURP." Omar shook his head and recovered for a moment from the massive belch. "Now that I have your attention, I was saying, I need to direct your attention somewhere."

"Where?" everyone asked in unison.

"Over there!" Omar pointed his flaming arm to the wide windows outside, where Kahli could be seen hovering alongside the strange, large robot in mid-air.

"Yes, what about those two freaks?" asked Philhip.

"I think that she has something to do with this. That's my apprentice you know, and she recently went to see some archives at Old Snow Mountain. It would make a fuck ton of sense for it to have been her fault somehow, if you ask me, considering the fact that snow and ice is known to preserve things for a long time, if the right conditions are met, much unlike the awesomeness of fire that just totally destroys everything."

"Are you saying that she brought the Curr back with her?" asked Sahdi.

"Well, I'm not saying it for certain," said Omar. "Really, it's a theory. It's an educated guess. An inference based on the fact that the Currdling was, what, five centuries ago, give or take? And she went to see artifacts specifically from the time period when the Currdling was at its zenith, people. I mean, I need you to seriously understand for a minute that this is a genuine threat. She went in there to look at frozen dead people, some of whom still had pus and shit all over them! It is very reasonable, and in fact it makes perfect sense, to think that she somehow got back out of that icy place with some terrible Curr infectant without even noticing it. You do all realize that Curr particulate can be so small that it isn't perceptible to the tauman eye, right? This is the only possible explanation."

"Well then, what do we do?" asked Brahd.

"The only thing we can do: go out there and attack the shit out of her and that stupid robot she's hanging out with."

"But Omar, isn't she your apprentice? I thought you liked her," said Sahdi.

"Of course she's my apprentice," Omar raised his flaming arm. "And every apprentice of mine by design deserves to get their shit kicked in. Let's go out there and fuck them up."