>>5352620“Yeah.” You breathe, arm around her shoulder as you find yourself squaring your own. “I think it’s time…”
Turning to Francine with a twinkle in your eye, you add; “Though there’s one last theory I want to run by you.”
After your brief explanation, Francine pops over to her lab to get the item in question while you commission Dorian to once again render your home an impassable labyrinth, though with the caveat that her leaves two rooms untouched—one filled with eighteen Rooks to serve as teleport anchors for you and your team, and another to serve as a grim vault to store any biomass you’re able to salvage in the event of a fight.He just smiles, whispering something to Julia which prompts a devious glint to spark to life in her bright eyes. Rath sidles up to them, presumable to inquire as to what sort of horror show they plan to turn the Roost into this time…and while you’re not privy to the details, you know it’s something just awful given the dumbfounded expression Rath walks away with, leaving the pair to conspire in peace.
With the majority of your prep-work completed previously, it’s a trivial matter to assemble your nine-Daughter team and have them at the edge of No-Man’s Land in a few short minutes…and you’re faced with the sea of restless bodies that now roils before you, its undulating waves of cancerous flesh almost hypnotic in their grotesquerie.
Francine steps forward, the sphere of the Void Orrery unfolding in one outstretched hand while the fingers of the other unwind, weaving into the intricacies of the eldritch Relic as she puts your hypothesis to the test. The metallic orbs twitch and vibrate before suddenly melting into a flat surface that floats mere inches above the good doctor’s palm, and with a simple twitch of her strands it’s reformed into a wavy mirror image of the flesh-sea before you.
“It…it works!” She laughs, delighted. Another flicker of motion from a pair of golden threads, and the scene shrinks as a wider map of the area takes shape atop the disk of liquid mercury. “With this, we should be able to stay apprised of any fluctuations in the terrain, and perhaps with a little bit of tweaking…ah, there we are.”
Like when Francine first showed you the map of your solar system using this very Relic, countless pinpricks of light suddenly spring up to shine like beacons as they rove about the silver simulacrum. “Now, I’m uncertain if the Orrery can pick up Daughters that’re using advanced camouflaging techniques, but this should give us a better idea of who’s roving around in there.”
“Can it detect any areas of stability?” You ask, glancing out at the churning sea of restless dead. “We’re going to need solid anchor points if we’re to make any permanent progress.”
(Continued)
