Ninety-Nine
“Lamter’s age has shifted,” Tara said, voice like wind combing a field. “The God of Mountains knew He no longer fit this Lamter, so He chose to leave. Only you, rooted in yesterday’s soil, still pin hope on an old god.”
“Now Lamter belongs to systemized magical plants, to magic-cars humming like iron rivers, to great mana-driven sails that bite the wind, and to Mali with endless cargo.”
“Fields once blessed for plows turned into towering tree-factories, bark to beam and leaf to gear. Streets where families lived bloomed into rows of shops, sprouting like mushrooms after rain. A once-cautious people step past the ridgeline and walk the world.”
“They cut a broad pass through Mali Mountain, a clean wound in rock, and linked it to outside magic-car rails. Mud tracks became shining paths. The Holy Day of Wealth arrives each year like a sunrise on gold, and strangers are welcomed as bringers of luck. Lamter’s eyes look farther than the valley now. Yet the God of Mountains can’t fill their new hunger. Time cast Him aside—just as it cast me.”
A soft sadness weighed its tone, like mist collecting on petals. A thin breath whooshed from the tiny vents between its stamens. It sighed, a gust through hollow reed. “Neither of us can leave this plain. We’re bound to those few peaks. The only difference is, even forgotten, I still endure like a root under frost. He will pass first, like snow melting from stone.”
“When a god can’t keep pace with Lamter, the people chase another. Mali fits them perfectly. Wealth and trade are His banner; His wind fills their sails. Under His sign, shops rise one after another, like stakes driven into fresh earth. Gold coin, bright as sun-scales, replaced wooden and stone tokens. A new way of life remade the city and led her into a new dawn.”
“Like these little flowers.” Tara turned to a pot of tiny blue blossoms. The small blooms bounced like sparrows and waved their twiggy arms when the giant flower faced them. “I hardly guided their makers. I only showed up and said: plants can have minds. Intelligent plants can be pets. Outsiders love that market.”
“For profit’s high tide, they moved with a speed I didn’t expect and made their first bloom. I remember it. A quiet little thing, calm as a pond at dusk. Compared with later batches, it wasn’t so noisy. Yet its talent matched this one’s. It sensed the world like a deer twitching an ear and answered sound. The makers found me, giddy as children seeing snow. They yelled they’d strike it rich. They did. That little flower sold for twenty times its cost.”
“First success drew deeper water. The factory kept pushing into pet-grade magical plants. By now they’ve made, what, a dozen generations? Maybe twenty. All in less than five years.”
“See? For old-school magic, that’s a blink in a storm. For Lamter now, it’s enough to raise a forest.” Tara slid a vine into a small socket with a wet click. The vast wooden wall beside them split open like a trunk revealing heartwood. The growth tank holding the floating blue blossom drifted aside. More tanks surfaced from the wall, each cradling a different flower, colors like a reef of coral.
“Wow!” Lilith’s mouth rounded like a plum. Awe bubbled up before words. “So many—are these all the pets this factory makes?”
“These are the breeds this factory developed,” Tara said, leading them into a corridor wrapped by tanks on both sides, a glass canyon of petals and light. “From that very first little flower, to a new line that shifts petal color with emotion.”
The giant bloom stopped at a pure white flower standing at the corridor’s end, snow-pale against green. It looked back toward the first blue one by the door, memory like a distant bell. “I thought they’d need decades just to walk half the road. The classical mages who made enduring magical plants took three generations—almost six hundred years. Lamter did in five what used to take centuries. Give them a few more. They’ll make plants that speak, and they’ll put them on the market.”
Thoughtfulness warmed Lilith’s face before she moved. The Little White Dragon felt little stir; her gaze glazed like still water. To her, the blooms in those tanks looked much the same. Even the biggest gap—the first blue and the newest white—was just a change of paint. Nothing else leapt out.
Yet she grasped the awe behind Tara’s words—the sudden surge of craft, like spring flood.
She rummaged for the term, a spark in fog. Tech explosion, right?
“I thought the ‘Industrial Revolution’ line was a joke. Turns out they really pulled it off,” the Little White Dragon muttered. Lilith suspected the blue flower the Archbishop bought at market had been Tara’s plant, and this giant blossom had lured them here to preach one simple sermon in a hundred pretty sentences.
“My lord, the times have changed. Stop clinging to your God of Mountains.”
The Little White Dragon snorted a laugh. Tara’s stare fell like a mountain’s shadow, slow and heavy. Startled, Lilith clapped a hand over her mouth and ducked behind Nidhogg’s back like a fawn into brush.
“But Mali can’t bless every soul in Lamter,” the Archbishop said, feeling pricked like thorn before she stepped forward. “Not everyone here is a merchant. Some still need the God of Mountains. If He leaves, what of the shelters at the Holy Mountain’s foot for those who can’t work? What of the orphanages for children who lost their parents?”
“The God of Mountains can’t fix all of Lamter’s knots. Neither can Mali. No god can,” Tara said, turning. The great blue flower faced the Archbishop. Two eyes seemed to bloom on its pale-yellow stamen, and their gaze held deep as a well, fixed on the elf.
“The age rests in human hands. In the end, Lamter’s troubles must be solved by Lamter.”
