The mammoth’s trunk lifted. It moved not like a recording, but like a creature remembering how to be heavy. It touched her helmet. Where its light-trunks made contact, the data-stream changed color. Gold bled to red. Then to something her instruments had no name for.
The sphere began to hum. The mammoth took one step forward, then dissolved into a billion points of light. Those lights did not fade. They rose, like fireflies, and passed through the obsidian walls. zoolux eternum
But something was wrong.