Ninety-Two: The Plant Factory
"They really just let me in." Lilith led the group through the factory gate, muttering, nerves fluttering like a sparrow in a gust.
The Little White Dragon followed Nidhogg’s instructions and introduced her identity and purpose to the guard—an elf with a staff, patrolling the forest’s rim like a lone reed. Heaven knows how he manages a factory this big.
An Astrologer inspecting a plant factory sounded like a fish swimming into a kiln, so she spun a lie about constellations shaping growth. She knew nothing; her lips snapped, and the lie skipped out like a stone across water.
To Lilith’s surprise, the gate opened like dew parting on grass. She stepped onto firm ground, far denser than the Sernos Plain, and the world felt unreal, like a dream under glass.
"He didn’t even check if the Astrologers’ Academy has that program?" the Little White Dragon grumbled to the Black Dragon, irritation fizzing like a kettle. "What if I made it up and I’m a spy from another factory?"
"Not unheard of. Lamter folk aren’t that hostile to spying," the Black Dragon replied, voice calm as shaded stone. "I don’t fully get it. Ask the actual local elf beside you."
Nidhogg wasn’t omniscient; he’d only visited Lamter a handful of times, passing like wind through leaves. When he couldn’t answer, the Black Dragon nudged the bystander who’d been watching like a melon-eater at a street show.
"Huh? How would I know? I’m not a follower of Mali." Mio looked up, blank as moonlight on a pond. "Their canon says trade knowledge belongs to every living thing on this land." She was Lamter-born, but a shut-in curled like a snail in its shell; relying on her might be worse than relying on Nidhogg.
As for the Archbishop, Lilith figured she and herself were equally at sea, like two boats drifting on the same fog. So the Little White Dragon dropped it and focused on the factory’s pulse.
"This is so different from what I imagined." Lilith tilted her head at the green ceiling of leaves, awe rising like mist at dawn.
The great tree they entered, Nidhogg said, was a workshop. Yet it wasn’t the clanking den she’d pictured. No people. No workers. Only quiet, like a lake before wind.
"Such a huge tree doesn’t need anyone to watch it?" In her mind, Lamter’s industry mimicked her old world—steam swapped for trunks, wires replaced by vines. The truth uncoiled like a serpent and proved otherwise.
"Of course not," Mio said, finally sounding like a local oak. She led them to the tree’s heart. Lamter folk had hollowed the trunk like carved jade, and inside, emerald pipes braided into a tangled river of flow.
Mio pointed upward. The Little White Dragon followed her finger and widened her eyes. Beneath the leaves hung a vast, half-transparent sphere, pale as a moon caught in branches. It held a viscous, translucent liquid—likely nutrients. A gray-brown chute spiraled from the sphere, coiling down to earth like a rooted vine, ending not far from Lilith’s boots.
"Is that… where they store the nutrient solution?" she asked, voice careful as placing a cup. Mio nodded, affirmation gentle as a nodding flower.
"Yes. Most places refill weekly, but this workshop’s huge and the container’s small; they’re likely topping it up daily," Mio explained, tone steady as rain. "The workers—the patrols outside—add fresh nutrient to the sphere, and plants do the rest. Trees are fierce with life; with a little feed, the forest pours gifts like a spring that won’t run dry."
"As for those pipes," she added, brow pinched like folded leaves, "they didn’t color-code them. I hope when something breaks, someone can tell rivers from rivers. These pipes, to be precise, are the workshop’s true arteries."
"Nutrition gets pumped through them into the soil beneath," Mio continued, words clean as water. "Leaves, under sunlight, synthesize their outputs, which flow into the central processing bay. After a series of reactions I don’t really grasp, new products stream out along the pipes, becoming feedstock for the next workshop—or finished goods sent to the warehouse."
"When the forest links itself by roots beneath the earth, the creatures above bind trees into a forest with pipes," Mio concluded, voice soft as dusk. "Lamter folk have learned to use the gift of their homeland. Even unguarded, the forest keeps giving like a kindly old tree."
"It sounds magical." Lilith’s eyes shone, curiosity blooming like a sudden flower. New things always hooked the Little White Dragon like a fish on bright bait. She remembered the blue blossom nestled in Nidhogg’s arms; the little one had bounced in its pot on first sight of the endless factory, nearly rattling Lilith’s skull like a drum. Yet inside the workshop it wilted, drooping like it hadn’t tasted sunlight in days.
"By the way, how was this little one made?" Lilith cradled the flower from the Black Dragon’s arms, hands gentle as cupped rain. Sharp-eyed, she found a tiny mark on its stem—a petal-thin sigil. On the inner wall of the tree, she spotted an identical mark etched like a twin leaf.
"She’s from this factory," the Little White Dragon said, delight bubbling like a spring. "But which workshop brought her to bloom?"
