4 Lamter
A toppled giant tree swayed through a broad tunnel hollowed in the mountains, thin threads of sun spilling onto the carriage’s emerald roof like dew on leaves. It looked like a withered log furred with moss and mushrooms coming to rest, and a mellow birdsong rose from the front, a clear sign the whole train had reached its stop.
Nidhogg helped Lilith shoulder the luggage for four, while the Little White Dragon snagged Abaddon and Litt one in each hand like scooped hatchlings. Two dragons led two children off the magic carriage and onto the platform north of Morris, the air tasting faintly of iron rails and green sap.
Lilith’s first move after stepping down was to draw a deep breath, letting it fill her chest like a cool tide.
Lamter’s air smelled good, but not the warm, sunlit life she’d imagined; as a city by the sea, its wind carried salt like spray on lips. The Little White Dragon had been a northerner in his previous life; even reborn, he’d barely gone south, his farthest trip a neighboring island’s northern coast, gray with gulls.
Maybe the southern air was always like this—wet as a soaked cloak and salted through, a stuffy heat that hung around like a steaming basket.
Thankfully Lamter’s temperature stayed even, so summer clothes didn’t feel oppressive, and the Little Dragon could spend a pinch of Star Energy to become a half-walking air conditioner, a cool breeze in scales. No one in the group felt any discomfort, their steps light as if walking under shade.
Only Litt clung tighter to Lilith, small hands damp like leaves after rain. The little fragment had lain buried inside Morris for thousands of years; sunlight and generous warmth outside still felt strong as noon glare. Lilith simply lifted him up, letting Litt bury his head in her shoulder like a nesting fledgling, then quietly cooled that patch of air until it felt like dawn mist.
“Is this Lamter?” Lilith stood on the platform, chin tipped up, eyes sweeping like swallows over the scenes around them.
Behind her, the fallen tree let out a crisp birdsong, and only then did she notice a thick vine coiled around the carriage’s front like a living cable. After the birdsong, the vine slowly embraced the brown body, pale green magic flowed down into the wheels, and—ka-chunk, ka-chunk—the tree rolled itself away from the station like a log on a river.
“Ah.” The Little White Dragon watched the train drift off, gaze chasing it until it shrank into a black speck, a fly on the horizon.
“So that’s how it works,” Lilith murmured, voice low as a breeze. “It’s so different from what I pictured.”
“What did you picture?” Nidhogg asked, curious, the Black Dragon girl standing beside her with a satchel and Lilith’s small things dangling like fruit. Abaddon trailed behind, eyes shining like stars, a curious baby drinking in every corner of Lamter.
“I thought there’d be a furnace inside burning magic,” Lilith said, choosing words she could grasp, “but turns out the whole carriage is the furnace.”
“Not just a furnace—the carriage can generate magic by itself,” Nidhogg explained, her tone calm as night water. “Elves store magic on it only to make it run faster; as long as there’s sunlight, the carriage moves, and that’s plant magic’s greatest edge. Elven magic is nature’s gift, so they can set a clump of green leaves next to anything that needs power, and it hums to life like a garden after rain. That’s why only a hundred years ago did someone propose a complete plant-magic theory; before Medivh, no one had systematized elven magic, even though Kuri had already been rebuilt three times.”
“Kuri rebuilt?” Lilith caught the word like a fish flashing under the surface. “Has Kuri been destroyed many times?”
“Yeah, a few times, each a huge accident,” Nidhogg said with a nod, a shadow of memory crossing like cloud. Lilith thought she would continue, but the Black Dragon slipped the topic aside like a door closing. “I’ll tell you later—that history is long. Compared to those stale war tales—please, the word ‘war’ faded with the War God when the Gaul Empire fell, centuries ago—let’s talk Lamter. Let’s talk elves’ trees, flowers, and mountains.”
“Mm, the mountains are indeed pretty,” Lilith said, interest in the Gaul Empire’s fall stirring like embers, but Nidhogg’s silence cooled it, and she let her curiosity rest.
Why is Gaul’s story always so bleak? The thought came like a gray bird and flew off again.
Lilith shook her head, tossing stray thoughts away like petals in the wind, and looked toward the mountains beside the train, their lines clean as ink wash.
Only by standing inside Lamter did she feel how the city was cradled by peaks, a bowl of stone and color.
Around Lamter, everything was vivid. Directly ahead stood a golden mountain, bright as coin, and Lilith remembered passing through its belly like a tunnel through honeyed stone. Nidhogg told her it was Mali Mountain, the place where the trade god Mali was believed to have dwelt, a shrine of wealth and pathways. The sea opposite was called the Mari Sea, and between that mountain and that water rose two great markets like twin hearts—Lamter’s economic pulse.
To the east stretched a sweep of lush green peaks, the range Nidhogg had lectured on most inside the carriage: the Selnos Mountains, Kuri’s most important spine. Those emerald mountains were the origin of nearly eighty percent of modern Kuri’s productive plant strains, and they held the highest peaks of magical research, laboratories like groves lit by sun.
Lilith was drawn to that range; as a learner herself, a mountain full of magic and botanical secrets felt like a library of leaves calling her name.
But Nidhogg told her you needed an invitation from Lamter’s city lord or one of the elder professors up there to visit, a key like engraved wood. New in town and without connections, Lilith could only tuck away the wish like a folded note and turn her gaze to the other side.
To the white mountain.
“Holy Mountain,” Nidhogg said at the right time, voice soft as prayer. “Lamter’s nominal political center—the ancestral temple and the city lord’s manor sit on that sacred peak. It’s said to be the true body of the God of Mountains, whose name is long lost, and Lamter treats it as spotless purity. Only those deemed truly great by Lamter earn a long sleep on the Holy Mountain, like stars set in snow.”
“So,” she asked, eyes glinting like river light, “wanna go up and take a look?”
