The interior of the modified Pharos reached far deeper than its exterior suggested.
From outside, the black tower looked like a spear thrust straight into the clouds. Inside, it was like a bottomless shaft, its spiral passage descending through rock and crust into the ancient darkness deep within the planet, where human effort had yet to uncover everything.
An unidentifiable metal alloy lined the walls, faint light flowing across its surface. Every inch of the material carried some long-lost message.
The air here was unusually dry and still. Even footsteps were swallowed whole by the sound-absorbing walls.
In the spare hours between manufacturing an endless stream of war machines, Ferrus Manus spent many silent hours in these depths.
He brought no additional guards, nor did he allow anyone to record his whereabouts.
Alone, he passed through those deep, shadowy passages and stood before the ancient devices, dismantling them, analyzing them, trying to understand them.
He was deeply interested in the tower and the ancient, possibly extinct civilization behind it.
That departed race had left countless traces, scattered through the tower's framework, the patterns of the Energy Core, and the sequences of symbols on the control panels.
To Ferrus Manus, it was all like a great tome written in an unknown language, waiting for a patient reader.
What surprised Ferrus Manus most was that the unknown energy entity sustaining the Pharos seemed to possess intelligence and would attempt to communicate with him.
When he connected a mechanical probe to the Energy Core, faint ripples appeared in the otherwise steadily flowing energy fields.
At times, those ripples formed strange, almost symmetrical patterns, as though the energy were asking him questions.
He tried responding at different frequencies. Sometimes the energy entities contracted, as though sensing a reason for caution; at other times, they