>>5175725You stand there a moment, contemplating how best to interact with the oversized fragment as you pace around the yawning pit. Dispelling the (rather intrusive) notion of taking a page out of Rath’s book and just smacking the thing, you instead adopt a far more scientific approach, keeping the Silver Key clutched in your right hand.
“Amara, Francine? Could you two give me a surface-level analysis before I go in with a Jackling?” You request, with the younger of your allies immediately lunging forward to the lip of the pit, dropping to all fours with her ear to the flesh-covered ground.
“The floor is humming! Kinda like it’s regrowing over and over again!” Your ward declares enthusiastically, prompting an arched eyebrow from Francine. The good doctor’s interest piqued, the fingers of her left hand start to fray, her arm unfurling up to her elbow into a willowing bundle of golden thread. Amara jumps back as the strands lance forward, stabbing into the rim of the fragment’s resting place as Francine closes her eyes.
“…I must admit that our little one’s analysis is rather apt.” She declares after a moment, her brow furrowed. “The surrounding terrain appears to be undergoing a constant state of regeneration…but it’s odd. The successor cells are perfect. No decay, none of the variance to be expected from typical cell growth. A perfect loop, localized to roughly a meter out from the fragment’s surface.”
“Then how were we able to dig it out?” November asks, the towering cyborg’s chrome facade reflecting the fragment’s own stygian surface.
“If I were to hazard a guess?” Francine sighs as her threads weave back together into an arm, its golden sheen supplanted by the doctor’s own skin tone. “Because it’s *letting* us examine it.”
Implications and hypotheses aside, your fingers curl tight around the orb at your side as you feel your hive get to work. A familiar pressure builds between your shoulder blades until a fresh swarmling squeezes its way out of your hive—a fist-sized wasp with a crimson shell, built for reconnaissance. The Scarlet Jackling hovers above the massive fragment as you dig in your heels, the ground underfoot curling into a spiral with you at its nexus…a protective field, to give caution it’s due.
Your chitinous creation flits closer to the fragment as Amara whispers a protective field around you, your skin humming with a Skintalker’s boon as your scout lowers itself gently, carefully, onto the thing’s jet-black surface.
And at that, the pit comes alive.
(Continued)
