Anusha said, "Writing of some kind?" She turned her gaze from the echoing spectacle to Yeva.
The woman's yellowish skin was noticeably paler. She gave a sharp nod. "I saw it. The glyphs were of a script that seemed familiar, but they faded before I could read them. But I think-"
A screech ripped through the chamber, jerking their attention toward the ceiling.
Three unsupported shapes materialized from the gulf of darkness enshrouding the air overhead. Anusha immediately saw the newcomers were not birds-they were too squat and lacked wings.
As the objects grew closer, they reminded Anusha of fish. They undulated through the air as if swimming. One's coloration was mottled quartz, and the other two were dull brown… like copper.
Anusha said, "What-"
"Aboleths," whispered Yeva "but not close kin of those I'm familiar with. And these fly." She said the last as an accusation.
Anusha said, "They have the same color as-" Yeva put a finger to her lips and shook her head. She whispered, "We might live if we remain beneath their notice."
Anusha considered reminding the woman they were intangible. They were probably invisible to the approaching creatures. Probably. Of course, she didn't know what abilities an aboleth possessed. Uncertainty made her hold back.
The things spiraled down with languid grace. Their descent stopped when the aboleths reached the newly formed orbs, each choosing the one that most closely matched its own hue.
Gorge tried to rise in her nonexistent throat as she studied the hovering monsters.
A fine haze of mucus hung in the air around their soft, gelatinous skins. They looked half primeval fish, half enormous slugs, with four muscular tentacles sprouting from where pelvic and pectoral fins would have protruded from real fish. Instead of having tail fins, their bodies tapered to slimy, sluglike conclusions.
The two coppery monsters had three eyes that blinked from beneath bony ridges, one below another. The mottled quartz creature had five eyes scattered randomly across its blunt head.
In near unison, the aboleths extruded tooth-studded tongues from lipless, tri-slit mouths. The tongues coiled and rasped across their chosen orbs, bestowing brutal kisses.
Having paid their gruesome respects, the creatures shot upward, moving five or six times as fast as they'd descended and with far greater stability.
When the aboleths were no more than dots high above, Anusha whispered, "What just happened?"
Yeva shook her head, her face slack with worry.
"Up is the way we need to go too. We should follow the aboleths," continued Anusha.
"Follow how?" Yeva gestured at the titanic orrery that dangled unsuspended. Then her face softened. "Ah. We are not bound to the world or its laws, lacking the flesh of our making. I should have learned that when we passed through the wall."
Anusha grinned. "That's right! I haven't tried this before, but I'm sure I can pull it off. You can too, if you concentrate hard enough!"
"So long as you focus on both of us rising upward, it may be possible. Otherwise, you'll leave me behind and I'll gutter out. I don't believe I have an independent existence outside your attention, Anusha." "Oh, I don't know about that," said Anusha. "You know things I don't, so I'm sure you're not a figment of my imagination"
"I didn't say you are imagining me. Just that my consciousness only persists while yours does. You are my anchor."
"Well, we can see if that's true later," Anusha said, shaking her head to clear it of Yeva's implications.
Anusha raised one hand and imagined she held a rope, a rope that ascended to the limit of her sight, but one firmly attached to a support. A length of elven cord dangled down. She gave a few experimental yanks. It seemed solid enough.
She lifted her other hand from the sphere's side, and the faux rope held her. Yeva watched her a moment longer, then reached out and grabbed the rope herself.
Anusha looked up and imagined the rope being winched upward, slowly but surely.
"Here we go," she said, even as their feet lifted away from the great black sphere.
They rose higher. The sphere they'd emerged from was revealed as a colossal obsidian globe whose circumference Anusha couldn't even begin to guess. It was easily as large as a castle.
Anusha and Yeva rose higher in the dim light. From the increasing vantage, it was easy to see that all the stone spans and spheres were one vast mechanism-a mechanism infused with magic enough to grow new components.
As they watched, four new arms sprouted from yet another orb.
"Look, at the edges,*Yeva said.
Anusha glanced away from the newest growth to see what Yeva indicated. Three gargantuan metallic hoops circumscribed the entire assembly of large and small spheres. The rings seemed forged of brass or perhaps gold.
Each hoop rotated in place, their edges barely avoiding the four walls that encapsulated the entire incredible device. Or perhaps it wasn't that the hoops rotated, but instead that the glyphs scribed upon them squirmed round and round. The idea made Anusha slightly sick.
She returned her attention to the four newest arms. Each disgorged a globe. One was pale green, another coal black. The last two were a mixture of dark blue and red. Each flashed with a unique line of symbols-
The imagined rope in her hand thinned, and they stopped rising.
"Better concentrate," Yeva said.
Anusha gave a quick nod and envisioned the rope in her hand anew. She strained to feel its solidity and uncompromised connection to the ceiling she hoped was somewhere above.
Their ascent resumed.
"Sorry," Anusha said. "I was thinking-last time we saw the orrery expand, aboleths were drawn to investigate." "I had the same thought."
Their steady rise finally pierced the indefinite gloom to reveal a flat ceiling. It was apparently composed of the same stone as the distant walls. It also hosted patches of glowing mold. A circular hole pierced the ceiling's center. Brighter illumination streamed through the hole.
"I'm going to take us through," Anusha whispered, pointing at the opening. Yeva nodded.
As they approached, Yeva pointed to a nearby patch of "mold." ft wasn't mold-it was a patch of irregular ice.
The same kind of glowing ice she and Yeva had escaped from!
Yeva said, "Apparently the Eldest's memories have condensed out of the ether in more than one place in this putrid city."
"Oh gods," breathed Anusha. They had come close enough that she saw a shape frozen in the ice. A little boy looked back at her with wide, blue eyes.
Then they passed through the opening into a new space damp with a fetid, oily stink.
Aboleths pressed around the hole, leering at them with too many red eyes and reaching tentacles. Anusha swallowed a cry of alarm. Her arm jerked as the imagined rope snapped them another twenty feet upward in only a moment. Her head spun, and she lost her bearings. She kicked her legs, unconsciously looking for purchase, but she did not let go of Yeva or her imagined lifeline.
Nothing immediately attacked. Anusha got control of her breathing. They dangled thirty or so feet below a sl ick ceiling of rough stone. She turned and stared at the tableau below, trying to make sense of the scene. Aboleths clustered around the hole from which they'd emerged. The creatures huddled in discrete rows radiating away from the circular gap. The rows contained differing numbers of aboleths, one line had just three, another at least twenty.
Most of the aboleths had bluish backsides the color of darkened bruises, with reddish underbellies. Some claimed distinct colorations from their brethren, and of these, some were noticeably smaller than average, others larger.
All possessed too many red eyes, and all voiced a screeching, chantlike rumble that wove through the air like a swarm of blood-seeking insects. She hadn't heard the sound from below. Had they just started? None of the creatures seemed to be looking up at her or Yeva dangling above them.