As you pass it, you notice the entire rock circle around the spring is constructed in an unusual fashion. You've seen rocks cut by precision metal tools, by lasers, by plasma, by vibro-wire, and even stranger things. These rocks look painstakingly crafted and carefully chipped by some of the most primitive methods you've ever seen. The whole area around the spring is the same; there is little evidence of numenera use in an area about thirty feet around the spring, including the mosaicked door. The door itself is finely crafted, also by primitive methods. After a careful examination, you do not see any evidence of trapping, not mounted alarms, not rigged cypher-bombs, not even floor-tile triggers or tripwires. And the door is, oddly, unlocked. If you push it open, it swings freely (though it is heavy) revealing a curving set of shallow stone steps, very dimly illuminated by some light beyond the curve. If you're any judge of angles, it seems the curve of the steps would bring it back around to the spring, albeit beneath it.
--
Ohm, as you cross close to the spring, you feel an immediate lack, like the loss of a noise you'd been constantly hearing for so long you'd forgotten it was there. The sounds you hear are completely organic, the spring "water" falling into the river, your own breathing and heartbeat, your footsteps. You can no longer hear the whine and whump of the machine at all, even though you've only moved a short distance away from where you were hearing it clearly. The vague tingle you'd been aware of as sort of the machine's ever-present contact with the abhumans is also completely gone.
Around the other side of the spring, you see Father Seren opening the mosaicked door, revealing stairs curving downward.
--
Wisco, you consider what you know about Numenera, about Duncan, and about this place. The abhumans had been implanted with the rod as some kind of communication device, presumably over the others in their "batch." Yet all the abhumans are receiving the same orders from this place, so it has a connection with the central core. Someone with a will of their own might be able to control other abhumans, or access the core's orders.
Duncan, as you've found several cyphers that have fit your implants before, it's likely this one will integrate fairly easily. The side-effects could be different, however, as this has a more active "mind" behind it than a cobbled cypher.
--
As the silver of Echo's fingers flowed into the panel on the wall, colors began to crawl back towards her, flowing under her skin, until soft hues glow within her very flesh.
Antor, she doesn't seem unduly distressed at the moment, but her eyes turn completely liquid silver and you see them moving back and forth rapidly, like the eyes of one who is dreaming.
[sblock=Echo's answers]
What happens when one cycle ends, and another begins? What is the sequence of events associated with that?
You see a peculiar thing in your mind, a flat plane below you, as if you were floating over something unimaginably vast. As you watch, certain shapes take form. To the "west" a series of triangles. Somewhere vaguely north of center, a great rectangle. To the east, a vast circle with a slice missing... You realize what you're seeing a moment later - it's a map of the Beyond. The Black Riage to the west, the Great Slab to the north, and Clock of Kala and the Sheer to the east. Three circles appear in the Sheer, and from them a spread of red expands east and west through the Sheer, then in all directions once out of it, expanding and covering all smaller markings of settlements and roads, until one edge touches a symbol of an inverted triangle. Then all the red redirects in a single line towards this triangle, the light from the three circles going with them. When the light touches the inverted triangle, there is a flare of power.
Then the map resets itself and the sequence begins again. This time the inverted triangle and circles are in a different place. Again, the red covers all in its path until it touches the triangle. The light flares. Again a reset. Each time the triangle and circles are in a different place, and each time all markings on the map but the very largest are covered over until the triangle is found. There is one other things you notice, that the colors of landmarks shift, growing more faded with each cycle, though their outlines remain strong.
What would the consequences be if the cycle were prematurely brought to an end, without its normal resolution?
You ask this question, and the map blinks, showing the three circles appearing under the perfect and un-Sheered Clock of Kala. The red expands sluggishly, clear space appearing with agonizing slowness, and it is only a thin trickle of red that was able to find the inverted triangle. Very little light is able to come with it, and the flash is very weak. The light within the three circles pulses brightly, and the inverted triangle fades, darkens, fades, darkens, flickering oddly. You taste fresh green grass and bitter dust on your tongue, along with the iron of blood.
Is there a way by which the cycle can be terminated without it reaching the normal endpoint?
You see a clear picture, not a map, of a great uprushing spring in an underground chamber, a spring lit by a white light under the earth. Three beings surround it, gray-skinned with upstretched arms. Behind them is a crude lever, and at the spring's base are great slabs of metal crusted with a glittering, glowing dust. You see a ghostly image of someone pulling on that lever, muscles bulging, and the slabs moving to cut off the flow of the spring. The person pulling the lever is well-armed with many numenera devices, but they seem dark and dead. As the person strains, the three gray figures turn towards him in unison.
FEAR!
The emotion jolts you from your contact with the machine for the moment.[/sblock]
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