The Fallen World

Kronos - Part 4

     It was a vast dome, a hemisphere. Mainly blue in appearance but with patches of brown and green here and there and covered by great swirling masses of white that formed intricate spirals, great sweeping arcs and eddying waves, reminding the breathless questers of milk being stirred into blue coffee. The great patches of blue that covered the bulk of the dome were the shade of the purest, most perfect sapphire, fading darker to violet and indigo near the edges where the dome curved away from them. The very edge itself had the very slightest hint of fuzziness, as if it wasn’t quite in focus, where the indigo faded gently into the velvet blackness of the starry sky. The patches of green and brown spoiled its appearance a little, although most of those areas were hidden beneath the swirling white, but even they had a beauty of their own and soon Thomas found himself admiring the various shades of earthy tan and clay yellow, and even the occasional rare tint of brick red and metallic grey.

     They all stood transfixed by the sight for several minutes, none of them able to tear their eyes away from the awesome spectacle. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” whispered Lirenna, tears appearing at the corners of her eyes. “What is it?”

     “I’ve got no idea,” replied Shaun, equally awestruck. “I’ll bet it’s a complete sphere, though, with its bottom half hidden below the curve of the horizon.”

     “It would have to be huge to appear that big from such a distance,” protested Jerry, however. “Maybe a mile across.”

     “Yeah,” agreed the soldier. “What do you think, Tom?”

     “I’ve got no idea what it is either,” replied the wizard. “However, it seems likely that this room, and probably this whole complex, was designed for the sole purpose of observing it, probably using these lenses in some way. It must be pretty important if they wanted to keep a continuous watch on it, working in shifts to do it.” He turned his attention to the nearest lens and began cleaning some of the dust from it.

     “Can we get to it, do you think?” asked Lirenna eagerly. “If we found a way out of this place, could we walk over to it?”

     “I wouldn’t want to try walking across that landscape,” replied Matthew, indicating the jumbled boulders, jagged peaks and wide crevasses that waited for them outside. “You’d be lucky to get ten feet without breaking an ankle, or worse.”

     “Is it my imagination,” asked Diana, “or is it turning slowly?”

     They all stared at the vast, mysterious dome, and after a few moments they agreed that it was indeed turning, although very, very slowly so as to be barely noticeable. It was turning about its vertical axis, like a child’s spinning top, although on a colossal scale, as if it was a toy that belonged to the children of the Gods Themselves. What was more, the dome’s angle of illumination was turning as well, as though the yellow sun was orbiting it at exactly the same speed so as to keep the same side lit. No, that’s ridiculous, thought Shaun in outrage. The suns don’t move like that! Why, it would almost be more logical to imagine that both the dome and the yellow sun were standing still, and that we were moving around the dome, like the moons around Tharia. He shook his head in bafflement and decided to leave the solving of puzzles like that to those whose minds were better suited to it.

     Thomas, meanwhile, had managed to clean most of the dust from the lens and was looking through it. “I was wrong,” he admitted after a moment. “These aren’t for observing that dome, whatever it is. They’re some kind of scrying devices, like crystal balls. Look.”

     Diana, who was standing closest to him, bent to look through it and saw the same thing he’d seen; a wide expanse of forest seen from about half a mile up. As she watched, though, she saw something the wizard had missed. “The viewpoint of the observer is changing,” she said. “Dropping slowly down towards the horizon.”