I scratch the side of my throat and continue to inspect my new antihome. Directly above the statue, the center of the sky-wide dome is crowned with giant Cobalt. Even at this distance, the beauty of the blue crystal is undiminished. This Alldora-wide dome is left naked except for the bluish light bathing the swirling lines of blushing pink sandstone, exposing the innards of natural rock far above. It must be one of the rgest crystals there is although it's hard to judge due to distance and bright light. There are scores of decently-sized, mostly six-faceted, Cobalts and Ambers around Aleera and me but none, none of them come even close to the shining blue eye above.
How do they possibly charge it? Aleera must have noticed me saunter behind, and throw an occasional stare upwards so she accommodatingly answers the unvoiced question. Apparently, my face is an open manuscript for her. ''Hidden high up in the facade are two wide passageways.'' Aleera looks up for a moment, regarding the rge blue crystal with fondness, before the bright light makes her look sideways. ''They have sheets of polished silver inside them that channel the pale sunlight towards the rge Cobalt, in the hours past midday.'' For some reason, she looks at me with eyes full of compassion. ''Come along now, you will have plenty of time to absorb the sights.''
The effect on my eyes is annoying as I try to blink away the hazy afterimage.
Hmm...never doubt your neighbor. My head swings left to right as I soak in the hidden world around me. Goddess. The height of the dome may not be anything near to that of the facade, nonetheless, the long Winged that brought us here wouldn't have compined at the scale of these chromatic skies. A thick ring of highly polished bronze—several times thicker than the straight fat lines of the corridor—traces the base of the main dome and helps reflect the light of Great Chamber's many crystals. Most of them give away a delightful blue-colored hue but there is a decent amount of Ambers and even Viridians. Not to mention that bzing blue eye at sky-dome's apex.
We are deep inside the cliff but it does not feel like it.
Metallic sheen of reflected crystal light snaps my attention back toward the Second Daughter. Acrona's long hair is cd with amarium panels. Polished to a silvery shine, it rivals the splendor of even the rgest waterfalls that Nibbles showed us. Thousands of swords could be made from her ''hair.'' I've heard that the Academy would occasionally let some of the worshipers come and pray to Acrona at the bottom of the statue.
At the moment no one is praying, though. Smallish clusters of people are lost in this expanse. There must be over a hundred—if I count the space above the ground level. More. I almost didn't notice the guards, somehow the red-cloaked bastards know how to look like statues. I mostly ignore all the people in the Great Chamber since studying the yout of these dungeons takes precedence.
The floor is made of rge squares which combine to form a seemingly never ending horizontal pne with ripple-like patterns of mostly white and gray. While gging behind Aleera I notice a circle of pale red stone on the floor, dozens of strides wide, surrounded by much smaller ones, each of which with its own distinctive tint of green, red, and gray. All of the circles are framed in a square of inid night-bck stone making them stand out even more in this ocean of white-gray.
I look up again. Below the height of the unpainted main central dome is a total of nine, much smaller but still gargantuan, half-domes with golden mosaics depicting scaly, feathery, and downy familiars and animals with what seem to be artificial pnts. They create additional semicircur partly darkened spaces dotted with crystal-holding nooks and silver sconces everywhere around me. The farthest ones are nothing more than distant blue fireflies hugging the rock. Not all are shiny. Instead of gold, few of these half-domes have frescoes—on a far rger scale than the vaults of the corridor. I strain my eyes to see more. Again with that nice blue color interrupted with patches of pure white.
