They watched the stately rotation of the great mechanism. They were like flies on a waterwheel, and just as ignorant of its function.
Yeva said, "It seems like a god's orrery. But it doesn't track the motions of any stars or heavenly bodies I'm familiar with."
"An orrery? What's that?" Anusha asked.
"It is... an apparatus that shows the positions and motions of objects in the night sky, usually through clever wheelwork, though I've seen versions, that move through magical or psionic impetus. But this one... This orrery dwarfs all others I've witnessed or heard tell of. And by the random way the arms of this mechanism rotate, I almost suspect they do not correspond to heavenly shapes at all."
"Mmm," responded Anusha. She'd never spent much time studying the points of light in the night sky, other than to remark from time to time on the beauty of Sehlne's Tears.
"Look at that," Anusha said, pointing. One of the orbs, this one bluish red, wobbled violently. As she watched, her mouth falling open in surprise, three stone arms sprouted from the orb's elaborate harness. The new-birthed stone spans reached outward like plant seedlings nuzzling up from the soil, but far more quickly. As the stone lengths unfurled, a "fruit" swelled and ripened at the end of each, fiery red at first, but cooling even as growth ceased.
Newly minted globes began to rotate around the larger sphere, each on its own connecting arm. One seemed mottled quartz, the other two dull copper.
"What's that?" said Yeva.
Wormlike glyphs crawled across the newborn orbs, then faded to invisibility.
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.