Ninety-Six: Flower
“Has my luck been a bit too good lately?” Little White Dragon stood before a row of azure liquid pods, like moonlit lakes lined in glass. Her tail went still, hanging meekly behind her like a ribbon drawn tight by fear. “Should I check the balance on my lifespan? I keep feeling death brushing close, like cold fog on my neck.”
“It’s not that bad. You just found it fast, that’s all.” Nidhogg trailed behind Lilith, her voice low and steady like night rain. The Black Dragon stepped to a pod and reached for the clear wall, calm as a hand to a still pond.
Her fingers hadn’t touched the glass when a slender vine sprang out, quick as a snake through grass. It flicked up a brown wooden placard and blocked her hand, neat as a fan closing.
“Want me to see this?” The vine waggled the board like a cattail in wind. The Black Dragon caught the motion and noticed the carved letters, strokes like trails in sand. After the vine bobbed the sign up and down for a good while—Nidhogg decided to take that as a nod—she accepted it and read the words, one line at a time, steady as stepping stones.
“Experimental facility, fragile. Please do not touch.” She finished and handed the board back, her tone light as smoke. The vine whisked it away, waved a leafy hand like a dragonfly’s wing, then vanished into the green, slipping off like a fish into reeds. Little White Dragon searched the shadows with wide eyes and found nothing but the hush of leaves.
“The plants here move so freely,” Lilith breathed, wonder like starlight across water. “None of that heavy, lumbering feel I imagined.”
“Mm. Even that little flower.” Nidhogg nodded, her knowledge drifting like mist over moss. “High-tier magic plants seem to have spirit, but they don’t speak. That means they aren’t the highest on the mountain.”
“In truth, most of the highest don’t speak.” The Archbishop took the thread of words like a weaver taking up silk. The old elf stood beside Lilith, gaze on a colorless blossom floating in the pod, pale as dawn before the sun. “They use faster ways to express themselves, like lightning skipping words. For beings at that height, language becomes a burden, a iron bell tied to a bird.”
“Everything we humans make as ‘magic plants’ is an echo of divine craft,” he went on, voice like a slow river over stone. “Do you remember the Holy Mountain, the field of blue blossoms like a sky fallen to earth? Every flower there is a child of a god’s creation.”
“That reaches back to when Lamter was first founded.” His eyes turned inward, like old pines remembering rain. “Elves, new to this land, brought the city-building experience we’d gathered across other parts of Kuri. We sought the gods in mountains, plains, and sea, like fishermen casting nets into every water. Only the God of Mountains answered.”
“He wasn’t like the others, who fixate on raising temples like cliffs and building a faith like walls.” The Archbishop’s voice warmed, fire under kettle. “Instead, He first set down a great blue flower on the Holy Mountain, a bloom like a moon-tide. While we wondered what it was for—standing around it like deer at a salt lick—”
The giant flower spoke of the God’s true name and His deeds, words rolling like thunder across ridges. It told us He was glad that new life would settle in His domain, and that He had sent the great flower as His apostle, to help the elves raise Lamter like a city grown from loam.”
Little White Dragon only heard half. A sudden voice cut through the chamber like a cold blade through silk. Her heart jolted like a bird startled from a branch. Lilith sprang up, tension sparking like flint; the sigil on the back of her hand flashed, bright as a comet’s tail. In another breath, a blade would have sung out of the air, drawn from the Ancient Ark like thunder from a cloud, but someone caught the white lightning.
Nidhogg pressed down on Lilith’s hand, her whisper a calming wind through bamboo. “Easy. Not here. Check who’s speaking. Might be staff.”
“You’re right.” Lilith exhaled, gathering herself like a net pulled tight. Little White Dragon’s fright cooled like tea set down to steam; Lilith lowered her hand and scanned the room, eyes sharp as falcons, toward the voice.
A massive blue flower came into view, petals like waves in twilight. It was close to the potted one in Little White Dragon’s arms, yet nearer to what she’d seen on the Holy Mountain—the broad Echo Blossom fields, an ocean of blue that sang. It was arrestingly lovely, beauty like frost on glass; if it hadn’t just spoken, Lilith would have thought it a factory bestseller, a bloom elves would prize like jade.
But the words it chose felt less like a price tag and more like a nameplate—an employee of this living workshop, or an old spirit that’s watched centuries pass like seasons. It smelled of time, like cedar and dust.
“Who are you?” Little White Dragon stepped in front of the Archbishop, body a shield like a snow-white cliff. Lilith could count as half a mage, and she was the second strongest in close combat among them, yet they still kept both elf magi behind, like lanterns sheltered from wind. Little White Dragon sensed there’d be no fight, but battle instinct rose anyway, a tide under the skin. She locked eyes on the blue bloom and asked, voice taut as a bowstring.
“Just an old thing the era tossed aside. Don’t mind me.” The big flower sounded weary, petals drooping like rain-soaked flags. It shuffled from the corner to the center of the floor, then plopped down in front of Lilith, casual as a rock dropped in a stream.
“Don’t take me too seriously. I’m a nobody.” It sat on its coiled roots, which twined together like a colossal flowerpot anchoring it firm to the ground. “An old friend is leaving, that’s all. I came to see Him off, like a traveler walking to the gate.”
“An old friend…” Little White Dragon sifted recent events in Lamter, thoughts fluttering like sparrows. It wouldn’t be some ordinary elder—this flower didn’t feel ordinary at all. That left only one.
“Do you mean the funeral of the God of Mountains?” Her voice carried respect like incense smoke. “Then why are you here?”
“To prepare grave goods for Him, of course.” The flower’s tone went tart, like citrus over spring water. “What about you—why aren’t you preparing His rites? What are you doing here?”
It turned its gaze to the elf, blue as deep water. “Well? Majestic Court’s Archbishop.”
