Cassandra must have been exhausted, for she fell into a deep sleep rather quickly. Looking at her, he felt a spike of guilt for causing her undue grief. Due to his negligence that night with Liz, the creature had escaped the blaze. He should have stayed to make sure all of the remains had been destroyed. Yet he fled terrified of what had happened.

Then last night if James had not gone after the cultists, it was conceivable that Cassandra would have gotten seriously hurt. The slight burn on her leg ate into his conscience. She could have even died, because of his lack of due diligence. No more he vowed. Whatever these things were from beyond, he would make sure to wipe them from this universe. Starting with that thing that birthed that monstrosity last night.

He had learned its name, though he dared not speak it aloud or even think about it. Even thinking around it, he could feel the disgusting nature of the name like it did not belong anywhere. When he had the power to deal with that entity, he could use its name to summon it to him. Till then he was best off not even thinking about it lest he draw its attention.

Standing up James spotted the book that the cultists had stolen from Arkham Asylum. Cassandra must have grabbed it when she escaped the blaze with James. Curious to see what they wanted with the book he flipped through it. Each page was filled with complete nonsense, with a few symbols here and there in a manner that felt like it was just put there for show. All told he felt that this was not in fact a magical tome at all, it was a fake created for some reason.

Before he put it down, James spotted a phrase hidden in between gibberish that tingled his gut. It began to prod him to speak it though James was hesitant on speaking a set of words that he had no idea meant and had some eldritch power associated with them. Still his gut was insistent that he spoke it and assured him no danger would come from the words.

Letting his gut guide him in speaking the words he began to intone them feeling eldritch energy start to build around him. “Hok adure ektas elimes diforu cannilu sytanis.”

Once the last syllable left James' mouth the energy burst out. For a second nothing happened then he heard a low tone like some kind of weird abyssal dial tone. Then space was ripped open by dozens of purplish tentacles who held open a hole into a strange realm. A larger tentacle with an oddly placed hat came through carrying a box and set it down. Once that was done, the tentacle held out it’s tentacle waiting for something.

His gut flashed him an image of his wallet, and James grabbed it. Luckily the bills inside hadn’t been burnt so he handed the tentacle a twenty and it wiggled back into the portal and then it closed seamlessly. For a second he wondered what a tentacle monster from the void would want with cash, then shook his head and looked at the box.

In appearance it looked to be an old wooden jewelry box on top of which was a golden plaque which had ‘To Mrs. Lavendry’ engraved on it. The box was also completely covered in slime that had a sweet fragrance to it. From the style he got the feeling that the box was old, maybe early nineteen hundred. The catch on it was slimy, and it took a few tries to get the box open.

When he finally managed to open it, he found that it contained four things. Thankfully the coating of slime did not penetrate into the box. He pulled out the first object which turned out to be an orb wrapped in cloth. At first he thought it was a glass orb, but by inspecting it, he found that it was in fact some kind of gemstone with a very slight green tint to it.

As he held it up to the light, he found he could see a series of hieroglyphs engraved on the inside of it. Clearly this was some sort of Egyptian artifact, other than that he couldn’t figure out anything from it. His gut didn’t seem to know anything either. If it was magical in nature, he couldn’t tell.

Setting it aside for now, he pulled the next item out of the box which was in fact an amulet. On it was just one symbol that his gut felt was for protection. Clearly it was similar to the choker he had made for Liz, only this was a far weaker version. Glancing at Cassandra, he felt this would be perfect for the Batgirl with a few modifications. Which he would do later after he finished checking out the box.

Reaching once more into the box he lifted out a revolver. It felt nasty, and had to be one of the most evil things he had ever touched. Something truly evil had wielded this gun in the past, corrupting it. Even now he could feel it attempting to compel James to commit horrible atrocities with the gun. 

This thing was similar to the cursed necklace he had destroyed, but instead of being part of a curse, an evil soul had taken residence within the gun. From his gut came a tendril that speared itself into the gun and the past of the gun filled James mind. He cried out in pain as the sensations of this foul thing tore it’s way into his mind.

From the very first murder of the gun to the last, he witnessed. A man who fell in love with delivering death to those unsuspecting. From killing a man in an outhouse to using it to assault a woman at night it was clear that the original owner of this gun was an immensely evil man. The last vision that James witnessed was of a terrified native american child crying as the man approached, but a gunshot rang out and the evil man fell over dead.

Deeply disturbed by the visions he had witnessed, he came back to find that his one hand was fighting his other to prevent the gun from being pointed towards Cassandra. Pissed James unleashed his gut upon the gun and several tendrils ripped a foul dark orb from the gun. It screamed as it was dragged to the gut where it was sicced upon by the creatures in his gut.

A few seconds later he burped and a microscopic ball of light escaped and faded away. His gut rumbled that it was a good meal. Even with the evil soul removed, the gun still felt disgusting to hold on too. At least it was no longer compelling James to use it. Opening the gun, he looked inside and found that it still contained four bullets. Each of them were marked with a symbol that his gut told him was meant to harm a creature from the void. However, the symbol needed the presence of evil to work properly.

Setting down the gun after he removed the bullets he moved on to the last article from the box. It was a small notebook, that upon opening it found it was in fact a journal. It told the story of Matthew Lavendry, an english archeologist who traveled to Egypt. During his stay there he found a series of hidden temples from one of which he acquired the orb which he said was related to the Goddess Heqt.

But things went wrong for him when he opened a tomb deep in the desert. A horrific entity began to chase him. He sought eldritch magic to defeat the creature, but he could only stall it. Terrified, he fled with his family to Gotham, hoping the ocean would keep the monster at bay. It was futile as the creature came to him one day somehow split into two. He used a gun he had acquired to shoot these creatures.

To his horror, the creature dissipated revealing the corpses of his wife and child. He attempted to take his own life, but the entity refused to let him take his own life, vowing that he would suffer for the rest of his life. Understandably the police sent him to Gotham Asylum given his mad claims.

As part of the mans Eldritch studies he found a means of storing things within another dimension with a creature of the void. This thing was neutral as long as you paid it in whatever currency you had. To access this treasure trove, you needed a specific phrase like a specific box in a vault. He had written the nonsensical book to hide this passphrase, so his brother could eventually access this hidden journal. The last page is a letter to his brother hoping that he could eventually kill the entity.

Given that the man was likely long dead, and the fact that James got this journal indicated that the brother had either never gotten the book with the passphrase or had believed his brother mad. Either way James tore the page with the phrase from the old book and burned it to prevent any knowledge of the eldritch magic to fall into the wrong hands.

He also carefully burned away the box just to make sure the cosmic slime didn’t affect this universe in some twisted way. He still didn’t feel completely back to normal, but he had enough energy to burn away the box. It still stinged his hands a little. Then he turned his attention back to the orb. He would have to ask either Zatanna or Jason about it the next time he met them.

The gun was purchased from an associate of Jonah Hex who had gotten it from him. Tragically this resulted in the death of his wife and child, which haunted Matthew through his time at Arkham. This resulted in him slowly losing his mind, and he began to see the Entity everywhere and everyone. 

Obviously dealing with these things resulted in hits to one's sanity. Something he didn’t want Cassandra to suffer from. So he took the amulet, and using his power amplified the protection on it. Once that was finished to his satisfaction, James took a piece of paper and left a short message for her when she awoke. He let her know that he had a great time with her and gave her his contact number. He also wrote that the amulet he was leaving her would help protect her mind from the effects of seeing monsters like last night.

He checked the dryer and found his clothes cleaned. Looking at them, he found they were a bit charred, but he was able to repair them without too much effort. His clothes had at least protected his phone and wallet from the intense blaze. Checking the phone, he found a message from Liz early this morning. She was asking if he wanted to come over to her place for a meal this afternoon.

He sent a reply that he would and checked the time seeing that he would need to leave. He dressed and gave Cassandra a kiss on the forehead then left her apartment. Her place was in a fairly nice place in Gotham and a short bus ride later, he was headed to Liz’s place. Now that he knew Gordon’s house was near her’s he took a longer path so as to not risk running into Barbara again.

Knocking on the door he was met with Liz who said “Hey James wel… what happened to you?”

“Just got a little burned. I will be alright.”

“A little? Just make sure you put something on for that. Wouldn’t want that face of yours to scar.” Liz said. “Well come inside, I want you to meet some people. Rather meet someone formally.”

James nodded and followed her into her place. In the living room were two other woman, one he recognized as Diedre Vance, Liz’s mother. She was wearing a nice yellow dress in contrast to her dominatrix outfit he saw last time. The other woman had glasses and had her black hair tied into a ponytail and was wearing a shirt and pants. James guessed this must be Nina Damfino.

Liz spoke and said “I know the two of you already met, but this is my mother, and this is her fiance Nina Damfino.”

“It’s a pleasure to see you again Miss Vance, congratulations on your engagement. I am James Mistfield, a friend to Liz.” James held out his hand for Nina.

She took his hand and smiled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you as well. I was out of town for work, so it was a surprise to find Diedre had gotten back in touch with Elizabeth. I feared the two of them would never make amends. I hear you had something to do with that.”

“That has more to do with Liz than myself.” James said.

Liz blushed and said “I’ve ordered pizza from my favorite place, why don’t you have a slice James?”

During the meal, the four of them talked for a while. They poked fun at James for his burns. It turns out Nina was an established artist who was now showing off her artwork around the world. She had proposed to Diedre a few months ago and they were planning to have the wedding in the fall and invited the both of them to the wedding.

Soon the couples said their goodbyes leaving James and Liz to talk alone. Liz said “Thank you James. For a long time I held a hatred for my mother, but that was just me not coming to terms with what happened. I thought she had abandoned my father, when in actuality it was his own actions that drove her away.”

“Liz, you really don’t have to thank me. You are my friend, and I just wanted to see you happy.”

She laughed and said “So what have you been up to besides getting too much sun?”