The canopy of the Silicate Forest didn’t rustle in the wind, because inside the hollow expanse of Gaia, there was no meteorological weather. Instead, it chimed.
Titus’s broad black glass shell dropped toward the lower terraces. Then, air currents displaced by the fourteen-ton terrapin set thousands of suspended crystal-clear filaments into ringing back-and-forth swing. It was a clear, glass-pure shaking that rang through the soles of Arthur’s magnetic boots. A choir of sound notes ranging from deep underground bass to frequencies so piercingly high that only Grimm’s notched left ear twitched in response.
Before them stretched an alien geode expanse of staggering proportions.
Columns of semi-clear pressure-sparking alpha-quartz, each thirty to fifty meters thick and rising hundreds of meters into the concave sky, supported vaulted ceilings of deep amethyst and smoky tourmaline. Veins of liquid aether coursed through the stone like glowing cyan tiny blood vessels, pulsing with a slow, living rhythm. Between the crystal-clear pillars, suspended by nearby zero-gravity nodes, floated massive spheres of pure water and liquid mana, hovering like giant, waving soap bubbles reflecting the amber light of the distant core.
Titus banked slightly, his fore-flippers trailing through the warm, dense air. Then it brought his belly shell to rest upon a wide plateau of hardened dark rock. The impact was soft, muffled by a thick mat of living-glow lichen that carpeted the stone in a pale sea-green glow.
