Ninety: Let There Be Light

With two jokers to spark the air, any road turns into a spring breeze and laughter runs like water.

But Lilith and her party weren’t sightseeing. In Lamter, their “stroll” fanned out like a tide, sweeping over half the city.

If Mio barely counted as half a clown, Nidhogg wasn’t one at all. The Black Dragon stood like a stormfront; it was mercy she didn’t drag the pressure down.

So silence fell, heavy as damp fog, as they left the North Market for the Selnosser Great Plain.

Lilith felt clingy and small. She hooked her tiny hand to Nidhogg’s sleeve, picking her way over jagged earth, cursing Lamter’s trash infrastructure and the elves’ quirky traditions.

Her slender tail slapped the dirt—pap, pap—like an angry metronome. The little flowerpot on her head caught the sulk and swished its green “arms” in time.

The Archbishop took it all in, eyes bright as frost. Curiosity climbed like ivy; even the strongest nature magi she’d met had never bred a blossom with this much mind.

They sold these in the market. Lamter’s tech felt like a forest that learned to think, far beyond what the Archbishop could imagine.

“Seems I’m far too out of date,” she muttered, age settling on her shoulders like dusk. Buying this plant felt right; it had too much to study.

“What did you say?” Mio tilted her head, voice like a bird hopping closer. She slowed and came to the Archbishop’s side, gaze upturned.

“Nothing. Nothing urgent.” The Archbishop shook her head and quickened, catching the Black Dragon at the front. She glanced at Mio. “How long till we reach the industrial district on the Selnosser Plain?”

“Almost there.” Mio tapped the ground. The soil, soft with a smear of mud, answered the elf’s touch like a sleeping beast stirring. “This dirt is criminally bad. Who thought building here was wise? Aren’t they afraid one Mari Sea swell will drown it all?”

“A third of the district sits in the Mari Sea.” Nidhogg’s voice cut clean, like cold rain. “If it floods, it just becomes seabed industry. Better, really. Aquatic plants yield more.”

Only when she was disputing and mocking Mio did Nidhogg speak so freely. Lilith felt her curiosity curl like smoke around their shared past.

She swore she’d pin Nidhogg down and make her spill everything. Jealousy pricked like thorns; the Black Dragon’s different tone with Mio made her possessiveness crackle.

“What’s an underwater industrial district like? I’ve never heard of anyone building in the sea.” Lilith tugged Nidhogg’s sleeve, her voice bright and hungry.

“Lady Poseidon never told you?” Nidhogg’s words flowed like a cool stream. “Her lab by the shore sits in the shallows. It’s far from Lamter, or I’d take you.”

“As for the sea district, I’ll show you land factories first. Lamter’s facilities are unlike anywhere else—like a grove that refused to be concrete.”

“Okay.” Lilith wanted attention more than smokestacks. When Nidhogg focused on her instead of Mio, relief sighed through her, warm as sunlight.

“When will we—” She started to ask, but the horizon cut her off with a silhouette: a massive tree.

It wasn’t tall, but it was thick as a mountain’s knee. From afar it looked like a sawn-off stump; up close it wore a crown of dense leaves, all green.

“That—could that be the factory?” Lilith’s voice wobbled. Before Nidhogg answered, the flowerpot on her head went wild.

Could it see? Lilith didn’t know. But joy thumped inside the pot, heavy as drumbeats. Her skull rang with it; her eyes swam in dizzy circles.

“That’s right. Your eyesight’s good.” The Black Dragon lifted the little blue flower from Lilith’s head. Warm familiarity fell away; the cold of her arms tightened like winter.

The flower went still, shivering like a reed in frost.

“Why is the factory a giant tree?” Lilith stared, her mind stuck on gray concrete and chimney-spires—old images like smoke that forgot this was another world.

“No. The factory isn’t that tree.” Nidhogg tugged her forward, each step a ripple through grass.

Lilith stopped dead, stunned.

Thick, colossal trees sprawled across the plain like rampant weeds. Their emerald crowns stitched together into a rolling green sea, a canopy with the hush of waves.

It felt less like the southeast corner of a city and more like a primeval forest that never heard the word “bulldozer.”

“It’s just—what’s the term—oh, a workshop.” Nidhogg turned back to explain, her voice calm as shade.