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“Fascinating. Any resonance from your Key, Darling?” Asks perhaps the most daring among you. Francine’s eyes shimmer with curiosity, their glint darkened by the massive Fragment reflected in her astute gaze. The orb in question is held taut at your hip, sandwiched between the supple leather of your dress and the dense chitin of your armor. It hums, a subtle vibration that reaches into your bones as you peer down into the pit. The Relic at your side is a speck, little more than a mote compared to the thing that Merkabah died to protect. It’s a fragment of some unknowable whole, a shard that forced a being akin to a god to move reality around you, having rendered you a constant at the heart of a roiling chaos.
“It is.” You admit as you take a step back, with your family collectively taking one with you. “Obviously nothing like what happened with Jackie’s vorpal knife, but *something’s* happening there.”
“Let’s keep it ambiguous for now if it’s all the same to you, cap’n.” November rumbles from her speakers, folding her arms with a clank of metal. “Don’t want you to go getting isekai’ed off somewhere.”
“Again.” Francine adds, lip curling as she peers into the excavation expectantly…before getting tugged back by Amara and her band of clones.
“Is that another one of the Fragment-thingys?” Nerada asks through three dozen mouths, the ten-year-old’s control over the legion of corpses Merkabah raised expanding by the minute. Just a preteen spread thin among a platoon of the walking dead, rapidly becoming acclimated to puppeteering the shells of the distantly departed…
…well when you put it that way, Paloma’s team of Phantasmal Conduits can’t arrive soon enough.
Glancing over to the gaping wound in the Fleshscape only a few meters away, you focus back to the matter at hand. You’re nowhere near ready to reveal this massive Fragment to the world at large…while Merkabah’s defensive field kept perceptions at bay, you have to wonder just how quickly the Skinternet will catch up to what’s happened here. If you don’t want this news to get out then you’ll need to act quickly to…
…what, exactly?
You consider reaching out to Orwell again for her advice, but as the desire to get a hold of the situation grows, so does the twisting, roiling knot in your gut.
You don’t like keeping secrets. Not before, and certainly not after…
…after the last time you got dragged somewhere you wish you hadn’t.
>>Re-bury the Fragment until after the Conduit team wraps things up, then decide from there.
>>You have a spoke of Escher’s Gear, so teleport it to the Dragon’s Roost before this situation gets out of hand.
>>You need to figure out if this thing has any side-effects before interacting with it…you trust the Silver Key will keep you safe, so it’s time to test the Fragment’s properties.
>>Write-In
YOU ARE IN CONTROL
