TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Cronos Cube (novel excerpt) by Thekla Kraußeneck Translated from German by Sarah Gwillym-Margianto

Chapter 9

Zack stood in the middle of a hall with such dimensions that he did not take it for a hall at first sight, but rather got the impression that he was standing in the middle of a city square at night. He glanced around in disbelief: perhaps something had gone drastically wrong with the login and he hadn’t ended up in Cronos, but had fallen asleep and was in the middle of a dream. He could make out dark walls in the distance that were slightly convex due to the hall’s round perimeter; to reach them he would have to walk for several minutes in any direction. The floor was made of wooden slats and the ceiling embodied an eerie darkness. It was only at second glance that he noticed it comprised of a complex creaking and rotating framework of cogs made from black iron and russet bronze, ranging from cogs as small as saucers to some as large as cathedrals. Somewhere up in the middle of them all, a hole gaped through the wall that was large enough to allow a plane to pass through. Behind it Zack could just make out a blue sky peeping through a canopy of wreath-like interwoven leaves and branches. He felt so small and overwhelmed by the sheer dimension of it all – a bit like a dwarf in a deserted mine. 139