A crash sounded somewhere in the distance. Dampened by numerous walls, fields, and exhibits, nonetheless, it was very loud and went on for a long time. A very long time. Hakulek winced – that sounded expensive and, knowing his master’s taste – probably irreplaceable.

He hurried on for a few more steps before a subroutine alerted him to the fact that the crash was still going on, his probability matrix determined that this was increasingly unlikely and alerted his audio analytics system which applied a sonic filter. It wasn’t a crash anymore; it was a roar.

Outlook not so good.

It appeared the greenskins that he’d inadvertently released from the Battle of Solomon Pass exhibit, were still trying to kill the human warrior. Given the time and energy, the master had spent rebuilding that one, the chaos it was causing was quite frankly rude. The roaring stopped only to be replaced by gunfire. Pops, bangs, and cracks echoed through the halls.

Urgh, this was going to take an age to clean up. At least he’d escaped the time loop; that had been fortunate. His internal chronometer had recorded 57 sequences; it had only been the intervention of the apparently unkillable human that had set things off in a different direction. Still, his job done, it would be helpful if the fleshy creature could have the good grace to perish.

Most likely.

This part of Anakurak the Timeless’ museum was rarely visited, the artefacts within stood on plinths, the dust of eons held in stasis fields. One or two flickered, nanosecond failures that Hakulek noted, sending pulsed commands to the nearby canoptek spiders to investigate and repair. The flickering gave the chamber a strange aspect, odd shadows climbed the walls for moments and then vanished. It was disconcerting, so Hakulek dialled back his visual processing until the refresh frequency fell below the rhythm of the sporadic strobe. Better. 

He pulled up the catalogue, and it filled his vision with a static laced blur. Evidently the catalogue was corrupted, tagged with a low-priority repair order issued six millennia ago. A long list of reprioritisation orders flowed out behind it. He dismissed it with a wave and stalked off into the maze of exhibits, glaring at the descriptions that leapt into his vision as he glanced at each ancient object. Now, where was it?

Concentrate and ask again.

Though small by museum standards the hall was still more than ten kilometres wide and nearly twice as long. The curation left a lot to be desired, there appeared to be little correlation between age, size, type, or even the originator species and the methodical search was taking rather too long. In quieter times Hakulek could’ve deployed a portion of the Chronomancer’s considerable resources to a grid search however these were not quiet times. 

The sounds of battle, while still distant, were getting louder, 7.32% louder per hour, his chronometer and audio processes agreed. He had attempted to send constructs into the, ahem, war zone to quell the uprising but they had all gone silent almost immediately. The last wraith had only had time to transmit a 2.3 second burst of visual data before it went offline. A jumbled mess of green bodies, crude checkered armour, teeth, and finally an extraordinarily large axe. It was less than encouraging. 

Without a doubt.

Hakulek abandoned his algorithmic search in favour of a more random approach, reasoning that if the exhibits were arranged with no particular order then order was irrelevant. He carved a zigzagging pattern across the hall, taking left and right turns on a whim. He idly constructed a randomiser subroutine then discarded it when it revealed a predictable pattern. He chose paths based on the oldest pieces, then the largest, then the brightest, then reversed the sequence. He was so caught up in his game that he nearly missed it. A cluster of objects from lost civilisations on Terra, the same world the irritating humans stupid species hailed from. He slowed, pulling up the descriptions: The holy hand-grenade of Antioch, the staff of Ra, four candles. He was close. He must be.

Outlook good.

An alert subroutine broke his concentration. He’d muted the notifications on the ongoing battle as they were getting distracting. That may have been an error. Released, the prissy little program filled his vision with a map of the hall showing a considerable mass of green skinned aliens bearing down on his position. It simultaneously increased the volume of his audio receptors and he was almost bowled over by the sound. He increased his pace to a level his master would consider most uncouth and almost ran through the displays. He pulled more titles as he ran: An old oak table, no. A jewel encrusted shell, no. A crude painting, The Fallen Madonna with… No. Where was it? 

Yes.

He nearly collided with it as he hurtled around a corner. A simple globe of a dark material, almost obsidian in aspect. He reached out, deactivated the stasis field and grasped it, metal digits scoring shallow lines in the surface. A bellow made him turn, clutching his prize. An enormous greenskin raised its cleaver ready to strike, a roar began but was suddenly turned into a scream, then a gurgle, as a chain blade sawed its head off from behind. The corpse fell, revealing the human, white power armour awash with gore. Hakulek dropped the Terran Orb of Prognostication and it rolled away. As it settled an answer to the unasked question drifted to its inky surface. 

Ask again later.