Captain Resquilatron picked up the smoking, now-lusterless grey pyramids off the floor. He handed them off to Squareface who packed them away despondently, Circleface squeezing his shoulder reassuringly as they mourned the loss of his extremely high-calibre esoteric ordnance explosives he carried around regularly for some reason.
The Captain marched onwards down the tunnel, holding the thing-detector in an outstretched hand, like some kind of sonar scanner. If said sonar scanner looked like a banana taped to a brick.
He was focused on the blinking lights and sounds coming from it, tuning out the fervent discussion between Squareface and Circleface behind him regarding the philosophical implications of an infinite universe and the illusion of choice.
"Ain't no me but me, ya hear me?", he grunted, interrupting Squareface's tirade about how infinity inherently inflates all meaning to absolute zero.
"Yeah, that's not how that works, Captain", Squareface said hesitantly. The Captain fixed a glare at Squareface, who hurried to continue, "but we never know for sure, right Circleface?"
Squareface nudged Circleface with his shoulder who nodded frantically and shrugged his shoulders exaggeratedly as if to say anything could happen.
"Yeah, whatever Squareface. Look alive, we're coming up to the end of the tunnel."
Not moments after the Captain spoke, their torches reached past the seemingly infinite darkness, illuminating a similar opening to the one they had originally come from. The Captain stopped at the threshold, holding up a fist as he stared intently at the thing-detector. Circleface peeked over his shoulder, nodding sagely while Squareface gave his equivalent of an eye-roll.
After a few moments of the thing-detector's incomprehensible signaling, the Captain's shoulders sagged and spoke almost mournfully.
"Never thought I'd say this, but I wish Trianglechest were here"
Circleface put a hand to his chest and staggered incredulously while Squareface just sighed and mumbled under his breath.
"Even after I just saved all of us and stabilised the time-stream which is pretty heavy by the way but no, never any appreciation for me"
Circleface pat him on his shoulder and shook a fist in a vain attempt to cheer him up. The Captain, meanwhile, was muttering under his own breath running through what seemed like several calculations before turning to speak to his overly-dramatic crew members.
"Alright", he groused out. "If you really wanna prove yourselves then listen closely, this is what we need to do"
Circleface straightened his back and stood to attention, saluting with both hands while Squareface merely lifted his dejected head very slightly as though holding up the weight of the world on his weary neck.
The Captain shone his light into the opening, illuminating what lay at the centre. It was a small, white droplet suspended at the peak of a stalagmite at around head height.
Circleface cocked his head curiously at the object while the Captain and Squareface beheld it with more caution.
The stalagmite was a twisting, abhorrent mass of that black crystal, refracting reality itself to impose its strange physicality onto the material plane. The droplet seemed almost tame in comparison. It glowed, though faintly enough that it would have been hard to notice without the light of the torch.
But that impression was completely overturned at its first pulse. It wasn't pulse of light, or sound, or anything that could be easily described.
It was as if the weight of its very existence was pulsing outwards, distorting the space around it like a black hole's event horizon. More importantly, with every pulse, the stalagmite beneath it warped and writhed, bubbling upwards and outwards.
"That, my useless crewmembers, is the source of everything around us", the Captain spoke grimly.
The pulses were at odd intervals, impossible to predict, as though chaos was woven into its very nature. At the very least, it did not seem malevolent, these mutations more like a by-product of its presence rather than an intent to cause harm.
"So", Squareface gulped. "What are we going to do?"
The Captain turned slowly, a malicious grin spreading on his face. Squareface drooped, somehow sagging even lower than he was before while Circleface grew even more excited.
"Of course, we're going to steal it!", the Captain cackled as Circleface gave a double thumbs up.
"Right, of course! Makes absolute sense that we're going to steal a reality altering, time twisting object of unknown nature that could kill us all in three seconds", Squareface's scathingly sarcastic voice cut through the Captain's mirthless laugh.
The Captain nodded with a look of appreciation.
"Now you're getting it", he smacked Squareface on the shoulder, making him stagger to the side and wince. "We'll make a pirate of you yet"
Circleface copied the Captain, smacking him with all his might, and the battered figure of Squareface could only muster a groan in response.
"Heh", the Captain scoffed as he returned the thing detector to his pocket, an unusually grave expression on his face.
"Good news and bad news boys, which do you wanna hear first?", Captain Resquilatron asked grimly, the stalagmite still twitching unnaturally with every pulse of the droplet.
"Good? There's good news?", Squareface groaned hopefully, still cradling his battered shoulder tenderly. "You mean we might live?"
"Now, now don't get ahead of yourself, Squareface", the Captain grinned before turning serious. "Good news is that we have exactly what we need to safely extract and seal away that anomalous object".
As if protesting that statement, it let out a particularly powerful pulse, the walls of the tunnel around them groaning as it moved and writhed. The three figures grabbed onto the walls as the ground shook violently for a few seconds, waiting for it to pass with bated breath. Eventually, it died down and Squareface asked tentatively.
"What's the bad news?"
"The bad news", the Captain replied grimly. "Is that it will all be up to Circleface"
The offending crew member jerked away from the sparkling looking patterns on the walls that defied description and gibbered and raved maddeningly at the edge of comprehension, and hid his hands behind his back innocently as though proclaiming he had not touched anything.
"Yeah just kill me now Captain. I'm dead serious this time", Squareface spoke resolutely, adding after a seconds thought. "Hopefully not serious for long".
Circleface stood there confused, scratching at his helmet goofily and for once, the Captain seemed to genuinely consider his words.