Chasm

Shimmering webs of metal and flesh thread the walls of a circular chasm. The platform on which you stand appears to be constructed from metal, but the material, a lace of glistening threads, molds around your footsteps like no metal you know. Indeed, a sense life--a consciousness, perhaps--inhabits this chasm, pervading every fiber of tissue and wire, including the console that rises from one edge of a floating platform.

At the "center" of the chasm, suspended by supports connected to the chasm walls, pulses what can only be the Heart of the Dark Core. With each throb of its glistening domes, a metallic beat echoes throughout the The walls undulate. The "ground" beneath your feet quivers.

In addition to the initial consciousness, you sense another presence, an all-too-familiar one, far more weaker than the first but powerful in its own right. Unlike the first presence, the sense of this one ebbs and flows, sometimes disappearing within the first one altogether, as if it struggles to keep from drowning.