Ignoring him, Elara pulled down on the band with all her might. The ancient structure gave a groan, but with all the vines and vegetation woven through the rings and into the joints, it barely moved.

Elara gave them an annoyed look. “Well? Smolder, help a girl out!”

He shook his head, the hairs on his arm standing straight. The crystal in the middle made him uneasy. “I’m not sure—”

“Come on—the sooner we help her, the sooner we can leave.” Ana went over to the same ring as Elara and reached up to help her pull it down.

The contraption gave another loud groan, vines popping apart, leaves sighing off, and with a hitch, the ring broke free and glided down into a trough in the floor, the other side of the ring rising like a seesaw. The first ring knocked against the second and began to spin it, and the third, until all seven of the spherical bands moved around the crystal in a rotation that rattled Robb’s chest.

He took another step back.

Ana jumped out of the way before a swirling ring caught her behind the legs.

The rings began to move faster and faster, trapping Robb and Ana and Elara inside.

A gnarled, terrible knot of panic began to fester in his stomach.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he shouted over the noise of the contraption. “Didn’t you say it could explode?”

But if Elara heard him, she didn’t reply.

In the center of astrolabe, the crystal, buried under a thousand years of vegetation and dirt and dust, began to glow a beautiful starlit white. The light fed across the rings, igniting the words on the bands, and traveled across the floor under their feet, awakening designs that, to Robb, looked like constellations. Beside him, Ana stared up at the machine in wide-eyed wonder. Didn’t she sense something was wrong? It couldn’t be just him. He rubbed his arm, smoothing down the raised hairs, trying to calm himself down.

You’re just spooked. It’s nothing. It’s not going to explode—

The crystal shot out a series of lights into the words on the rings, and through the other side the words projected stars and planets and entire constellations. The air became thick with a map, clouds of holographic galactic storms and sweeps of astral gases. Nothing looked familiar, but he recognized it from the tapestries in the Spire.

It was a map of the Solani home kingdom.

“Ak ven’na nat Elara.”

Robb jumped at the voice.

It came from everywhere at once, rebounding through the ancient hull. He reached for the Solgard shield he stashed in his waistband and froze.

The blue image of a Solani swirled to life in the midst of the projection, glitching in and out like a weak video signal. Although the tech was ancient, the image was much crisper than the hologram used for the Iron Council. The Solani was tall and thin, with long hair and obsidian armor that reminded him a little of the Solgard in the Spire, carved with swirling filigree. When she spoke, her tone was soft and sweet.