Jen could almost make out the shape Marcie had spotted in the darkness. Or maybe she only imagined that she could. Maybe she couldn’t see it so much as feel it. It had been tugging at her since the moment they entered the chamber. A gravitational pull so immense she mistook it for the atmosphere. The pounding, incessant call she was feeling didn’t just come from the web of bound magic overhead. It came from this. A massive well at the very center of the cavern. A sinking, endless pit, chillingly still yet buzzing with an unfulfilled energy that made Jen’s mouth taste of iron.

Richard held his lantern aloft as they inched ever closer to the heart of the complex. The flickering light cast shadows over strange shapes just out of view. Their path was quietly menaced by winding contraptions with long, sinuous tendrils made from woven steel and large, smooth, ovular constructs that made Jen think of massive seed pods. Nothing was threatening them, not immediately or directly, but that didn't mean they were safe.

Nobody spoke. They could all tell how close they were to the end. Marcie with her eyes. The rest of them with the anxious buzzing inside their bones. Bradley kept his gaze fixed on the darkness ahead while George’s head swiveled around, glancing anxiously at the shadows that seemed to be coming closer. Richard hadn't stopped watching Marcie like a paranoid hawk. And Jen was watching Richard in turn. The other two wouldn’t do anything without his order. But it would only take one foolish word out of his mouth to create a problem for everyone.

A piercing whistle broke the silence. Five melodic notes, climbing up, then down, then up again. Marcie was looking upwards, eyes scanning the ceiling as she whistled, like she was expecting something to respond. Richard didn’t even bother asking what she was doing. Somehow she had taken on the authority of the only person keeping calm amongst a sea of nervous anxiety. That gave her some leeway to do things that only made sense to her.

After a few moments passed, Marcie shook her head. “Expect company. Sooner rather than later.” She said it so matter-of-factly Jen had to believe she knew what she was talking about.

Before Jen could ask her to elaborate, she saw it. The lantern cast its light over a massive, hulking shape, so large it made Jen reel. Something inside her churned as the flickering orange lamp reflected off a mountain of perfectly smooth black stone. The very source those monoliths that dotted the cavern were carved from. She swore she could see the magic shimmering inside it. She could hear its deep primordial roar. There was an ocean trapped inside this monument to an unthinkable ancient hubris. Its tidal force pulled at her soul. If she gazed into it too deeply, it would undoubtedly pull her in.

Richard looked up at it. He couldn’t feel the same pull Jen did, after a life in Gryst ignorant of magic. That only made the force it exerted more dangerous. He wouldn’t know he was being dragged in until it was too late. Jen wondered if she should warn him. She wasn’t sure she knew how to.

“That’s a big sonuvabitch,” he muttered dumbly. He could sense the enormity of what he was seeing, even if he didn’t fully understand it. In times of uncertainty, any ruler–big or small–will turn to those around them. Some because they have the humility to ask advice from those who know more than them. And some just for the sake of giving an order. When he turned to Jen, she had her own opinion about which it was. “Is this what we’re looking for?”

She nodded. It was a rhetorical question anyway. She didn’t have the will to snipe at him over it. A part of her was worried that if she spoke, her voice would be whisked away on a current of magic. Pulled into that massive reservoir before them, and lost forever in the churn of life. Or the churn of… something. The stone before her wasn’t alive. It was life in stasis, pressed and stifled and locked forever in amber. Even as it spun and raged and begged to be free.

An icy chill crept into Jen’s limbs as she finally understood what she was seeing. What that scream she felt in her soul really meant. She was looking at the Pulse itself. The life and the magic that was supposed to be in the soil above. Every plant, every animal, every insect, each and every single person who had ever lived and died in Blackgrove, and maybe miles beyond it, had returned to the Pulse. Been absorbed into its thrum. Been sucked into this. This dark and lifeless place. A mausoleum for countless souls, trapped in an eternal prison, used to… to…

To what?

Who had built this place? What was it for? Why would you need that much magic, and why would you press it into this stagnant, lifeless form?

A blinding light snapped on overhead.

It flooded the space around them, revealing all of the dark shapes and mysterious shadows in perfect clarity. Jen blinked furiously, stumbling as the light dazzled her. She tried to take everything in. The long and twisted coils of metal connecting massive steel pods, all linked to an impossibly massive wall of black rock before them through a metal apparatus that surrounded its base. There was a large desk of sorts standing in front of it, big and blocky and covered in buttons and dials with unknown purpose.

A burst of staticky, dissonant noise disoriented Jen even further until it slowly resolved into a melody. The same five notes Marcie had whistled a moment ago. And then a few more measures of the same tune. Marcie probably forgot the rest of the notes. Jen almost envied that. She could feel in the pit of her stomach that she never would.

Then something happened Jen couldn’t even begin to explain. Shapes appeared in the air before them, stretching out before the slab of rock. A line of colored circles, in the shades of a rainbow. They hung there for a moment, before they all pulled in on themselves in unison, flattening and merging until there was only a single long white line. The line pulled itself open. And Jen found herself staring into a single giant, unblinking eye.

Marcie sneered. Her guns were already in her hand. They probably ended up there when it was still dark, and nobody was watching. “There’s the motherfucker.”

The massive eye scanned across the five at them, staring down at them with a gigantic octagonal iris, traced with sharp angles in a faintly glowing luminescent green. In its center was a smaller hexagonal pupil filled in with the same pale blue light that had been cast over the pillars they passed on the way here. Jen could feel the sickly thrum of stagnant magic forming the strange construction before them. She realized it was some kind of illusion. An image made by shaping light. Projected by an unseen will whose origin she couldn’t guess.

Nobody knew how to respond to this… entity. Maybe Marcie did, but she didn’t seem inclined to. The first one to speak was the eye itself.

“I didn’t anticipate visitors.”

The voice was loud. Loud enough to resonate against the floor and ceiling, making Jen’s body tingle from the vibrations shaking the ground around her. There was an oddly nasal quality to it, bored and disaffected and almost human in its cadence. But it wasn't exactly natural, either. The way it spoke was cold, detached, and somehow too deliberate. Like it wasn’t saying its own thoughts aloud but rather reading them off of a page. Jen felt a shudder run down her spine. She couldn’t explain why.

Richard was taken aback, too. He looked up at the eye, visibly tensed and ready to fight or flee. After a moment, he turned his head to look at Jen. “You said this was the center, so… that’s the thing in charge of all the machines and stuff down here. Right?”

“Why are you asking me?” Jen snapped.

The eye cut in to answer the question. “I’m the administrator of this facility,” it said, level and informative. Jen couldn’t help reading some kind of inflection into its monotone voice. Was it… curious, maybe, trying to figure them out? Or was she picking up on some kind of paternalistic dismissal? Enthusiasm to share its knowledge? Her guess changed with every word. “No one has been in charge for a very long time. My colleagues and I have been left to our devices. Unless a consensus has been reached since our last communication.”

The eye that had been looking over the group, one by one, suddenly snapped–faster than anything physical, living thing that size could move–into the central position where it first appeared. Its pupil once again leveled out into a straight line, and then the line began spiking up and down at random, inorganic intervals. “Accessing datafield,” the voice intoned, flatter and even more monotone than it had been a second before.

It hung like that for a few moments. The assembled humans spent the time glancing at each other, everybody hoping someone had a better idea what was going on than they did. Marcie, though, was fully locked on to the illusory eye. Jen kept turning the story she’d told earlier over in her head. It seemed clear enough that this entity wasn’t much like the one she’d met before. At least not in disposition. But in the sort of being it was, and its capabilities… it must have been close enough to keep Marcie on edge.

The eye started moving again. Its pupil returned, and it bobbed back and forth, almost like it was shaking out its head, before it dipped downward. “Perhaps consensus was a futile dream,” it said. Wistful musing didn’t sound right in its flat and even tone. “I have much to consider.”

As wary as they all were of this being, Richard was slowly growing more confident. Maybe he thought he had more of a read on it than Jen did. Hell, maybe he was right for once. Didn’t seem likely, but Jen was so out of her depth she’d believe just about anything. The Sheriff took a few steps forward and put on his gregarious, outgoing voice. “Hey there, friend. It wouldn’t trouble ya too terribly if I asked what it is you do down here, would it?”

“Your tone is overfamiliar. But I can explain my purpose.” The eye flickered, and its pupil disappeared once more, replaced by a series of glyphs Jen didn’t understand–and an image of a human face, drawn in eerie detail from nothing but straight, angular lines. “Designation: A225 Marius. Archival mindspace. My directive was to preserve database and production functions, so that future rulers of this country may strike with power and insight.” The glyphs and the image–that strange motionless suggestion of a face made from lines, still hanging heavy in Jen’s mind–disappeared as the eye returned to its neutral phase. “A suitable ruler has yet to emerge. It has taken longer than expected. I was in standby mode for so long that my mana reserves reached capacity, and I was forced to reactivate. I am choosing a new directive to pursue with the resources now available to me. In this I have no guidance but my own.”

Richard turned to look at his men. Jen could see the smirk on his face. The dumb motherfucker. She was going to throttle him.

“Well, now,” Richard said, and he took off his hat, placing it in front of his middle while he looked up at the bizarre ancient entity filling the air before him. “I’m not gonna go claiming myself a just and proper ruler, or anything of the sort. But I’m the sheriff of the town up above here. I’m in charge of the place as much as anybody is. So if you need some direction from a good, humble man takin’ care of his people, I reckon you and I can talk about some ideas.”

“The sheriff,” the eye–Marius–repeated. It was chewing on that thought, Jen decided. Analyzing the information. That seemed right. And once it finished processing, it moved lower and closer. Getting right up into Richard’s personal space. “You are the leader of the village up above, then.”

“Only leader that matters,” Richard said. “Someone’s gotta take care of the people.”

“Someone has to.” That repetition again. “I see. Yes.” The eye, the projection of this ‘Marius,’ retreated, and took a wider survey of the room once again. “Very well. We will have an accord.”