94 - The Silver Key of Kadath Pt. 2 [Cherno]

This was a first; the Boon’s readout was long and complex enough that it was split into sections and even pages. Nonetheless, Krahe made sense of it, and blinking a few times to clear her sight, returned her focus to reality.

“It appears that I can both Skim and Dive, but the Boon claims that the functionality will improve significantly if I acquire a voidkey with the same capabilities.”

“That is most impressive, does it show the specific characteristics? Skim range and how many times you can do it in a row, for instance?” Firminus questioned, taken over by curiosity that bled into his voice. He twitchily seated a cigarette in his mouth, gesturing a nonexistent pen in the empty air with his free hand.

Krahe nodded in response.

“What are the normal parameters?” she asked.

“Three charges and a range of five meters, modified by your Control attribute, with a recharge time of seven seconds on average, I believe. When it comes to diving, a typical voidkey induces a three-to-one time dilation, gradually decaying to a negligible level as the user’s Hard Entropy reaches three-quarters. As I am aware, Hard Entropy er…”

He pulled from his cigarette and took it between his fingers, energetically gesturing with it, flicking the blood on his hand left and right. Its smoke was strange, translucent and tinged blue. As he shook it off, the remnants floated upward and disintegrated into nothing. Finally he continued, having found the word he was looking for: “Somehow destabilizes a dive, maybe adding drag or somesuch, I only have surface knowledge on how it actually functions. The average recovery time is three seconds after emerging from a dive, by the way. I will not ask specifics, knowing your wishes, but I am nonetheless curious whether the Liminal Coil facilitates an inferior version without a voidkey to support it.”

Taking a moment to consider, Krahe decided to at least share partial information: “The skim characteristics are somewhat inferior. The dive characteristics are... Different. A weaker base time dilation factor, but the Boon says nothing about rate decay due to entropy buildup.”

“Perhaps the Coil’s true purpose is to stabilize a dive for the whole duration? Please, consider letting me know how your dive characteristics change if you obtain a Gulf Voidkey - that is the proper term for them, though it is rarely used.”

Fidelia reappeared, having vanished from Krahe’s awareness at some point. She was now impeccably clean, and placed herself between Firminus and Krahe.

“Please, Firminus, cleanse yourself before the blood crusts up your knuckles… And put that thing out. Smoking in this place is blasphemy.”

He defiantly sucked down the rest of the cigarette, seemingly not burned by it when the flame reached his lips. Then, he turned on his heel and walked off into one of the doors by the Zavesh statue’s sides. Giving a disapproving sigh, Fidelia refocused on Krahe.

“If you would, please make an attempt to use your graft’s special features. A dive is known to be tricky to initiate, so do not worry if you cannot achieve it from the first. After this final functionality test, we shall administer the Vivianus Catalyst, which will place you into a healing sleep for several hours, allowing your body to rapidly bond with the graft and recover from the operation. Should you be curious - a formless graft-paste was used in your operation, and it is this paste that the Catalyst acts upon, transmuting it into your own tissue.”

She had fully expected to be asked to do this; in fact, she was surprised she was even given a choice, or even the illusion of one, depending on Fidelia’s true disposition. Without those special functions, the Liminal Coil was still an outstanding piece of engineering, but most of its identity as a relic came from those very features that Barzai warned about.

First, Astro Skimming. Krahe took a few moments to make her biosuit expand back out to its full size, mentally tugging at the idea of initiating a Skim the whole time. It came surprisingly easily; Krahe only needed to visualize the rough distance, move, and flip the mental switch. It was just like any other physical movement. The Skim occurred instantly, with her perception of the world coming to a split-second halt upon her arrival, just long enough to confirm where she was. She tried again, this time skimming sideways but turning herself to face the spot where she had started.

Being a movement impulse, and thus being slaved to a sub-aware level of consciousness, Krahe immediately made the mental note to work on getting to the point of being able to use skimming instinctively.

To Fidelia and Casus, Krahe’s skimming appeared as her vanishing in a burst of smoke and cinders, only to reappear a short distance away in a notably smaller outpouring of the same elemental remnants.

“That works with no apparent faults, now for diving…”

“You need not hurry, it could take a few minutes even if you do manage to initiate a dive right here,” Fidelia said.

It was finicky, requiring a compound thought-impulse. Time and again she had to make the attempt, each time feeling out where to go, building the mental command bit by bit. Physically diving into water, mentally diving into the neo-astral datascape, and activating active camouflage; these were the three vestiges that it took to formulate the correct mental trigger, to get that straining feeling to snap back like a rubber band.

Then, it hit, and she felt the Liminal Coil thrumming in her chest, resonating without any real sound. She felt herself submerge in a liquid-like, numbing warmth, flowing past her as if she were sinking into a sensory deprivation pool that had been heated slightly too high. Wisps of smoke and cinder, like purge remnants, swirled through her vision, and when she looked at her own hands, she saw what had become of her form, as if she had been wholly transformed into smoke and cinder, the cracks of her left arm’s surface still burning seethingly-bright orange from within all the smoke.

The world itself seemed to go out of sync as it slowed, becoming subtly unreal, the colours skewed as if a colour wheel had been turned and the saturation turned up. Sound became somewhat dulled, though still acutely audible, and she heard ephemeral, barely-present tonal ringing, registering only as background noise.