Philosopher's Stone
It had taken some time to get the compass configured with the navicomputer on the Mud Duck. Using that in tandem with Braze's charm linked with Jasper's, their route into the Firefist Galaxy was charted. Now they grew close to their destination, blazing the trail into the unknown sector threading a delicate needle. With three black holes present in the cluster, one mistake was all but certain to lead to catastrophe. The course stayed firm, and the Mud Duck continued on its way without delay. No mass shadows, no malfunctions...
The lack of any sort of issue made Phyla anxious. She was all but anticipating disaster, glancing between the viewport and the navicomputer over and over again as though something would change. It never did. Her crystalline core shuttered.
"We're nearly in the system," Phyla stated. "That... means we'll be passing between the black holes soon."
Phyla's mind wandered back to the data in the compass...
"This place is cold," she noted. "I can already feel a dark presence. That... must be that experiment from the log in the compass..."
Kalrath's own flesh and blood turned into an unstable monster. It was unnerving, the idea that a guardian could do that to their child. Rip their soul from their body and turn them into some sort of entity made of evil. It was the sort of thing you'd find in a holoflick, one particularly rooted in horror. It was a powerful presence... and Jasper may be here with it. All alone.
"Do you think we'll have to fight it?" the Shard asked her sibling in a muttered voice.