21. Search

Anger swelled in Lilith like a boiling kettle; pain drifted off like mist. She wanted to smash the heavy stone wall with one punch, like thunder cracking a cliff.

The Little White Dragon jabbed a finger at the wall and cursed, words rasping like sand till her mouth dried. She grabbed her bottle and gulped, a waterfall down a gorge.

Frustration spiked like a thorn under skin. She choked and braced against cold stone, coughing gravel. The itch in her throat and the wound’s sting splintered her mood like cracked ice.

Defeat settled like dusk. She hugged her legs and crouched in the corner, head tucked between her knees, sobbing soft as rain under eaves.

After a brief shower of tears, she stood and wiped her eyes like clearing dew from leaves. She wasn’t a child anymore; purpose mattered like a blade asking for a whetstone.

She hadn’t forgotten why she came—she sought fragments of the Legendary Sword. Before fighting the stone man, it clearly knew the Sword’s nest; it felt like the sword’s guardian, a statue on watch.

So she only needed to search nearby, like sifting gravel for gold, to find something bound to the Legendary Sword.

At that thought, urgency beat in her ribs like drums. She searched the room, the space too wide for a slender young dragon, like a hall built for giants.

It could hold a stone man that big; there was only the door she’d entered. If no secret path hid here, what she wanted lay within, like a pearl in a shell.

She released the little butterfly. The dusky-blue sprite circled her like moonlight in a whirl, making her wonder if she should take it out for more flights.

With the butterfly’s help, her search skimmed like wind over reeds. Soon she found a strange bulge in the stone, a knot rising in the wall.

She pressed it; nothing shifted, silence tight as a locked lid. She lifted the bandage on her head, wetted a piece of gauze, and wiped the bulging stone, like a key made of rain.

Maybe diluted blood could open locks; the thought flickered like dawn loosening night. She decided to test it, heartbeat tapping like a woodpecker.

The brick hesitated, then opened a mouth in the wall, obedient as a trained hound. She leaned in; darkness pooled like ink, swallowing light.

She withdrew, then slid through the gap with the Astrolabe in hand, a pale flame of focus guiding her like a lantern.

Below, the space was far smaller than she’d imagined—barely room for a grown man to turn in place, tight as a jar’s throat.

Her build was slight; she moved like a fish in a narrow stream. She raised the Astrolabe and examined the cramped walls, star-silver glinting like frost.

The chamber held only a transparent box veiled in dust, a glass lake under ash. She tapped it with her staff, a pebble ringing on crystal.

Dust flurried off like startled moths, revealing its cargo—a pure white flame still roaring, a winter sun trapped in glass.

Even through the box, she felt sacred power press like daylight through snow, pure enough to sting.

Relief bubbled like warm tea. She hadn’t cracked the box open. Weakened as she was, that flame would scorch her clean, burning her and the Taint to nothing, a broom through cobwebs.

How ironic, she thought—the White Holy Maiden once feared the cleansing of a pure flame, like a priestess afraid of dawn.

“Snow,” she murmured. She tapped the air with the Astrolabe; a tiny cloud drifted above the box like a puff of milk, snowflakes falling sparse and slow.

She wiped the settled snow clean from the surface, and on the bottom face she found a small line carved, thin as starlight etched on stone.

“Let it glimpse the Star Canvas?” Lilith stumbled through the tiny script, syllables snagging like thorns. Her Ancient dead-tongue was poor; reading felt like wading mud.

“I don’t even know what that means. How do I glimpse the Star Canvas while stuck in Morris?” Confusion fogged her face like steam.

She wrapped the box in several layers of cloth, a cocoon of rough linen. Seeing no leaks, she fastened it behind her waist, tied like a lantern to a belt.

The box was too big to fit her satchel; the annoyance pricked like a pebble in a shoe. “Hope it doesn’t slip. If it lights my clothes, that’s a mess,” she muttered.

Her glance flicked to the box at her back like a wary cat eyeing a brazier. Unease ran like ants.

“All right, down first,” she said, voice tired as rain. She chose to leave the waterlogged room; her whole body ached like bruised fruit.

Instead of crawling out through the drains and letting this flame and the eyes in the sky glare at each other, she wanted Annie’s inn and a bed, like a harbor after storm.

How long had she been walking? The question drifted like a leaf.

She hadn’t counted her time in Udis. Her pocket watch had broken when the stone man’s gravity flipped, hands running backward like a river in reverse. Who in Morris could fix that?

She stepped out of the water-soaked room, a sodden shadow slipping through stone. She passed the hacked corpses she’d left scattered, bodies like broken dolls on a cold floor.

She climbed over the coins she’d piled by the door—now all slid down in a glittering drift, mounded under the frame like dune-sand. She stepped through without crawling.

She reached the stair she’d spiraled down earlier. It had twisted into a V shape, bent like a bow; no wonder her descent felt normal back then.

She tied a rope to the Shattered Ark’s hilt again, drove the blade into the stair, and climbed, a spider on a silver thread.

She raised starlight, a trembling flame, and walked upward, steps tapping like raindrops on slate.

She poked her head out of the keep’s secret passage, palms pressed to stone like reeds to banks, and wriggled out into the cold night.

She felt her way back to the window she had rammed open, fingertips grazing walls like a blind cat’s whiskers. She peered down, weighing a quiet descent.

She’d made enough noise climbing earlier. Her white dragon wings were too glaring, banners in moonlight. Even with Morris lit by streetlamps, blocks away would’ve seen her.

“Forget it. Just jump,” she said. Her constellation resonance was still on; she didn’t want to spread her wings. Opening them hurt like pins; she hated that sting.

The Little White Dragon stood at the sill, loosened her body like a leaf cutting loose, and leapt, a petal falling through night.

“Too bad there’s no haystack below. And no eagle drifting above.” Lilith muttered, a grin thin as a knife. “Whatever. I’m not doing an assassination.”

“So you flew up there, got yourself into this mess, and came back?” Annie’s eyes widened like lanterns, fixing on the drenched Little White Dragon, all feathers and gloom.

“Yeah. At least I got something,” Lilith said, calm as a pond. She stood at the counter, ignoring water dripping from her sweater, beads pattering the floor like drizzle. “Is my room still there?”

“It is. You sure you don’t want a change of clothes? My place can dry them,” Annie said, eyes tugged by the wet fabric, a waterfall still running.

“Forget it. I didn’t bring a spare.” Lilith took out her key and headed for her room, yearning for sleep like night longing for stars.