“You just had to go and do something stupid, didn’t you?”

Marcie’s revolver was leveled at Richard’s chest.

The guns were drawn before Jen could process what was happening. George aimed his shotgun at Marcie. Bradley took aim at Jen. And Marcie’s second gun took aim at Bradley in turn. Only Richard kept his hand off his weapon. Wouldn’t be smart, going for his gun with Marcie ready to shoot him dead. Jen wasn’t armed in the first place. And she found herself in the exact situation she’d hoped her diplomatic experience could avoid. With the barrel of a rifle pointed at her heart, all of six feet away.

Jen didn’t have Marcie’s cool when it came to having guns pointed at her. It would only take an errant spasm in Bradley’s trigger finger to end her life. And then she’d get sucked into that howling void of stone before her. She was angry, furious even, but she couldn’t help shaking with fear. With nowhere else to turn, she cast a desperate eye towards Marcie. Do something. Please.

Marcie met her eye. Her brow furrowed as she considered Jen’s expression. The situation was getting out of hand quickly. She directed her gaze at Bradley. “Drawin’ on an unarmed woman make you feel like a man?”

“It’s called leverage,” Bradley spat. “We’re not stupid, you little hellspawn.”

“Boys, ladies, come now.” George was keeping his genial attitude. Unfortunately, he had reason to feel in control. “I don’t know what you’re so pissed off about, blue. The way I see it, I’m resolving this whole mess in a way that works for everybody.”

“Bullshit.” Marcie didn’t waver.

“Yeah, well, something tells me the big guy wouldn’t be too terribly pleased if y’all went and shot the fella he just struck a deal with right in front of him.” George turned to the impassive illusory eye, staring at him unblinking, and threw his arms wide open. “Isn’t that right, Marius my good man?”

“It would be inconvenient,” the eye recited in its level voice. It hadn’t reacted to the conversation before in the slightest. “I would prefer to process a living participant. Mana reuptake offers much less information than a direct capture.”

Jen felt her stomach drop. And even George’s arrogant confidence finally faltered. “Hey, hold on, now,” he said. “What d’you mean ‘process’? I think we’re havin’ a bit of a miscommunication..”

The eye stayed fixed on Richard. One of the metal pods surrounding them opened, and a long metal tube flew out of it. It launched itself straight at Richard, and then wrapped around itself to form a ring around his midsection. A strange floating metal device, held in midair by unfamiliar magic. It didn’t seem to be holding Richard in place, exactly. But he was afraid to touch it.

“Let’s just wait a second, now,” Richard said. He almost sounded too nervous to be mad. Almost. “What’s the big idea, Marius? You said we had an accord!”

“We do.” Even now Marius was impenetrably placid. “Please don’t move around too much. It will make things more difficult.”

The machine began to rotate in the air around Richard’s middle. It spun slowly at first, but quickly became faster and faster. A blue light began to glow along a series of vertical strips on the inside of the torus, faintly at first, then increasingly bright. They kept spinning and spinning until they were a blur, as though Richard were surrounded not by a metal contraption but by a solid ring of eerie blue light.

“Hey. Hey! What the hell–”

A blinding flash, glassy sickly green, filled the room. Jen could physically feel the light passing through her. It burned like a shot of stomach acid spit up into her mouth, but spread across her entire body For a moment she felt the still magic around her shift, dislodging as it rushed to fill a sudden void. It was tinged by an awful antiseptic pallor, like the chemicals in a surgeon’s theater had permeated into the mana itself. Her teeth ached like they were rotting and her skin became so clammy she thought it was sloughing off. She was overwhelmingly nauseous. If she opened her mouth she was going to throw up. But she couldn’t have opened it, even if she wanted to. Every muscle in her body was locked up, seizing and shuddering, too overwhelmed by horror and revulsion to respond.

It only lasted for an instant. Less than a second. Less than half that. It passed so quickly she could barely process what had happened to her, physically. But when it faded her body went into panic. She stood with shaky knees, queasy and aching, looking at the world through a thick, insulated window. Her limbs could move, but they were only taking vague suggestions about what to do.

The two deputies were unnerved, too. They weren’t feeling the same thing Jen was, she could tell just by looking at them, but they were feeling something and it wasn’t pleasant. Only Marcie seemed unaffected, but when Jen slowly turned her head to look at her, she swore she could see the reflection of that sickly green playing across her scales. Lingering. Just for a moment. Until a shimmering orange flashed across them, like the dancing light from a firepit, and any magic that might have snagged in her was brushed away.

Jen turned her gaze to where Richard bad been standing. Her eyes went wide. Where he had stood there was nothing, no man, not even his clothes or his weapons or his tobacco. All that was left was a shimmering, coiling spiral of light, every color at once and yet no color at all, thrumming and vibrating gently. The Pulse itself, life and will and magic, freed from its vessel and fixed in place. Pinned like a butterfly in the pages of a book.

You weren't supposed to see it like this. Richard’s life should have faded into the air without a vessel to hold it. But the stale magic in this place had fixed to it, condensed it almost into tangibility, and the device still spinning and whirling in place was holding it stable. Maintaining it as it was, impossible, beautiful, and bone-chillingly, gutturally wrong. Jen stared at it transfixed, viscerally and instinctively refusing to comprehend what it was but equally unable to reject it. Nothing she could do would give justice to the terror strangling her throat.

The torus began to travel. Up and down, up and down, across the coil of light, over and again. Bright blue beams fired from within the machine cut harsh, geometric strips into the spiral, chipping away at it piece by piece, gouging and mining the pure essence of what had once been a man, until nothing was left except the sensation of that diseased green.

When its work was done the ring hovered around a thin, wispy trail of magic. Blackgrove’s Sheriff had left nothing but a faint memory, quickly absorbed into the great mountain of black rock. And the ring too returned to that central monument, where it settled into a slot above the strange desk full of buttons and knobs.

The grand eye of Marius blinked. Closing in on itself and becoming a thin line floating in the air. “Well,” it said, its monotone, recitatory voice colder than ever. “That should suffice. What does a leader want? I think it’s a good enough starting point for my next course of action.”

“Wh… what the hell did you do?” George asked. He was trembling, terrified. He’d long ago taken his gun off Marcie. And Bradley had stopped aiming at Jen. Both of them had turned their weapons toward the strange device. But neither had the will to fire. They were more likely to shoot Richard than the machine. So they were left standing dumbly before the illusory line floating in space, clutching guns that weren’t going to do anyone any good.

“Hell did it look like?” Marcie’s revolvers were aimed up at the illusion. But she wasn’t going to bother trying to shoot it. Her eyes were darting all around the area, trying to identify anything that could be a weak point in this labyrinthine machine. “It broke him down. Turned him into some kinda soul-sludge and sucked him up. That was the deal he made, wasn’t it?”

“It is the accord.” The eye opened again to look at Marcie. Its pupil had been replaced by a small green dot within a circle, and as it spoke the dot grew, jumping out a fraction of an inch towards the edge every few moments. “He offered his data. From observation, he seemed to expect a different outcome. But his logic was sound, so I chose to accept him into my archives regardless of his objections. Do not fret. He will be well-preserved.”

“Wh–what does that mean?” George said, clutching his weapon so tightly his knuckles had gone white. “He–he didn’t want to be preserved. The Sheriff’s supposed to be here with the people. Put him back.” Jen suddenly wasn’t sure if George was shaking with fear or anger. “Put him back!”

Marius made a harsh, jagged sound like the scraping of metal played on a string. The eye stared at George, and rotated about fifteen degrees clockwise. Like it was tilting its head in confusion. "That is a misinformed request. There is no putting him back. Not even I can instantiate flesh. And the experiment logs were sealed for a reason."

“You’re not makin’ any sense,” George said through gritted teeth. “He was right there. He was right there! You–you sucked him up. Just put him back.”

“No such protocol exists.” The eye looked away from George. It was no longer interested in him. "It seems there is some confusion. But subject IACOB RICHARD–” it said his name like a foreign object, lodged unexpectedly into its sentence– “has been logged and registered into the databank. I am processing his spectrum as we speak.” The pupil grew by several centimeters after sitting still for the last minute. “If it would help to alleviate your concerns, I can simulate his consciousness once my analysis is complete. But I would ask your patience. A newly emulated mind takes some years to adjust, and I can only increase the subjective timescale by a factor of four. I do not believe the screaming or the bargaining phases would offer you much reassurance."

Bradley practically growled under his breath, a low, irritable vocalization that abandoned words in favor of malice. “So you killed him,” he said bluntly. “That’s what you’re telling us. Right, devil girl?” He looked at Marcie, eyes narrowed in focus. But he kept his gun aimed at the eye.

“Jen’s the magic expert,” Marcie answered. She was tightly wound, ready to spring at the first sign of something real to shoot. “But it sounds like that’s the short of it.”

Marcie nodded dumbly. It was all too much for her. “He’s gone,” she affirmed. That much, she knew was true. Everything Richard had been was in that sickly swirl of magic. And it was part of the machine now.

“Then I guess the situation’s cut and dry.” George held the sight of his rifle up to his eye, and took aim at the center of the illusory eye. He had to know it was fruitless. “This bastard murdered the Sheriff. We gotta show it some justice. That’s all there is to it.”

“That how you’re taking this?” Marcie said dryly. “Whatever. So long as it gets that gun pointed somewhere useful.” Her guns were still raised towards the eye, but Jen could see her eyes flitting around, trying to decide on other targets.

“You are upset.” Marius blinked, and the eye was replaced by a floating set of concentric circles. A target. The center circle was still slowly filling, bit by bit. “It seems humans enjoy ‘aiming for the bull’s eye,’ as I understand the data. If that will help calm your nerves, I will permit it. But please know that your distress comes from a place of emotion. It is not rational."

“Tch.” Bradley lowered his rifle. “Devil girl, how do we–”

BOOM

A spray of pellets flew through the illusory target. They passed through harmlessly, of course. Every set of eyes–Marius not included–glared at George. He was still holding down the trigger on his smoking shotgun.

“Don’t play along!” Bradley snapped at him.

“Sorry,” George said. “Sorry. I weren’t thinking straight.”

“Like hell you weren’t,” Bradley scoffed. “Devil girl! How the hell do we kill this thing?”

“I’ll let you know,” Marcie muttered. “Ain’t like the last one I met. That desk full of shit is my best guess. But that can’t be the heart of it.”

The heart of it. Jen looked up at the mountain of black stone again. It couldn’t be the heart of Marius. He had to be some kind of automaton consciousness, projecting out from a whirring hub of machinery somewhere nearby. That was what it felt like, didn’t it? But at the same time…

“Please refrain from any excess violence on the premises.” Marius’s deadpan voice cut through Jen’s thoughts. “You will be removed if I deem it necessary.” The circle in the center of the target made one last leap, and then it was filled in completely. “Analysis concluded.” This time the target blinked, and opened back up into Marius’s eye. “I suppose I can see the logic in IACOB’s intentions.” Again the name almost sounded like it came from another voice entirely. “Very well. This is an attainable goal.”

One of the strange pea-pod devices surrounding the black rock began to buzz and vibrate. By the time Jen figured out which it was, Marcie had already spun around and aimed her revolver at it.

“What the hell is it doing now?” Bradley barked. He was clutching his rifle, staring at the other pods, waiting for one of them to start moving too. Jen was glad to see him thinking ahead, at least. Better to keep an eye on the threats Marcie couldn’t cover alone.

“He’s givin’ your boss what he wants,” Marcie said.  There was a sneering irony in her voice. Death hadn’t softened her contempt for Richard. “Weren’t you listening?”

Giving the Sheriff what he wants. That was what Marius said. But what did he mean by that? What did Richard want?

Jen realized as soon as she asked the question. And she thought about what it would mean for Marius to pursue it in turn.

She backed up and pressed herself against Marcie. Her hand rose to the crystal around her neck, a finger pressed to it, ready to draw the magic out whenever she saw a chance to use it. Her mind raced, thinking about what she could possibly do to help Marcie stop this machine. The room was full of magic. But she couldn’t manipulate any of it. How was she supposed to do anything in a lifeless pit like this?

The pod stopped shaking and the front slid open.