Chapter Twenty-Two: Galaxy
Nidhogg’s black chains slithered like ink serpents, born from Lilith’s treasure won back in the Dragon Territory. The Little White Dragon had reclaimed the long blade that’d stayed at her side for years from that whelp, while Nidhogg took a power from a wandering dragon—to command those pitch-black chains.
He didn’t use the chains often. They were sturdy enough, good for a quick bind or a sudden strike, a stopgap spear thrown from shadow. For some reason, Nidhogg could hone them razor-sharp; for a Black Dragon who was terrible at Death Magic, the chains were a rare ranged answer, a moonlit arrow in his quiver.
But his flesh was already overbuilt, like a fortress under storm. If that failed, he still had Word Spirit Magic, thunder in his throat. Most days, the chains stayed sleeping. The few times they woke weren’t for enemies; on silent nights they’d remind the poor Little White Dragon what Nidhogg’s strength felt like, a tide pulling her under.
So Lilith flinched when the Black Dragon cracked two chains like whips, black rivers unfurling. The memories were souring year by year; she had no wish to taste being bound and bled again, a lamb trussed on a butcher’s table.
She was a woman with tentacles, and still lost to chains on the bed—ridiculous and infuriating, a winter thorn in her heart. The more she thought, the hotter she burned; she wished for flesh-to-machine ascension, to trade every Taint-touched tendril behind her for steel, so their roughhousing wouldn’t leave her crushed under his storm.
Yet right now, will meant little. That lump of night overhead didn’t look organic; even whether it had substance was a debate, mist or stone. In such sky, Nidhogg’s chains were perfect, iron threads through cloud. The Little White Dragon and the Black Dragon had mapped this power in detail; as their test subject, Lilith knew it well. The link was conceptual, a thought-hook. Whatever that black Star Canvas drifting above actually was, Nidhogg could link it with a chain—then yank the whole curtain down.
Lilith wasn’t about to wait like a duck on a pond. Light as a feather, she sprang up and landed on the chain that tied her to the black night above. Her weight was a petal; it barely tugged Nidhogg’s grip. She drove the resonance of the Void Command Seat, and shot along the chain like a white comet. In a handful of quick strides, she reached the night veil and lifted her long sword for a clean arc.
The Elemental Ark finally met a bone it couldn’t bite through. The dim blade flared the instant it touched the Star Canvas, bright as dawn—charged, the Elemental Ark could part even a Black Dragon’s scales. But the night knitted to that silver hilt was tar-thick; the blade sank and couldn’t move an inch, a fish trapped in pitch.
Luckily, the Elemental Ark wasn’t just a sword. Or rather, not only a sword. In its charged state, a second blade ghosted into the air, a clear crescent. The weapon became a great pair of shears, sharp as frost; it snipped the night veil, opening a slit, a narrow gate Lilith could slip through.
“Nidhogg!” the Little White Dragon shouted, her voice a bell in fog.
“Already on it,” the Black Dragon answered, thunder low. As her cry left her lips, he hauled on the chains and tore the night outward, pulling the curtain to the sides like storm hands.
Lilith seized the moment, a hawk stooping. She slid through the gap, quick and clean.
The night tried to close as she entered, a black mouth swallowing her whole. It gulped down the little dragon, leaving only a slim white tail and a tiny butt hanging outside, like a last leaf in wind.
Good thing her cloak held. Whatever this Star Canvas-like substance was—likely harmful, because the Holy Cloak flared—a white light sprang across her scales like moon on snow. In that brief glow, she found a window to push deeper, a swimmer cutting between waves.
She lunged forward. Before the holy light faded and midnight drowned her again, her fingers locked on the silver hilt, cold as river steel.
The night cocooning her vanished.
The tar-thick liquid was gone, like rain sucked from a street. The hilt in her hand hummed like an overclocked vacuum, a hungry reed, drawing every shard of night into its belly.
“Uwaaah!” With the wrap of darkness gone, Lilith panicked for a heartbeat, wings flaring. She fluttered her tiny wings like a moth in lanternlight, whooshed, and buzzed back to Nidhogg’s side.
“Whew, scared me to death. I thought I was going to fall.” She wiped sweat from her brow, heat and embarrassment mixing. In the fright, she’d forgotten she could fly, no shred of dragon composure left—just a girl in a squall.
“Idiot,” Nidhogg said, knuckles tapping her head like hail.
“Ow.” The little dragon clutched her head, eyes wet, lips puffed. “So mean.”
“Enough,” Nidhogg murmured, and rubbed her white fur, turning silk into thistle. Lilith shook herself like a drenched puppy until her coat lay smooth again, winter cream.
“Alright, show me the haul,” he said, chin pointing at the silver hilt in her hand.
“Oh, it’s a new sword. Look.” The Little White Dragon lifted the hilt and gave it a playful sway, a fishhook taunting the stream. She stepped to an open patch beside him, set both hands on the hilt—
And swung forward, clean as a scythe through reeds.
The vanished black night poured out of the hilt like ink from a pen, all that darkness stored in its spine. With her swing, the ink spilled and fanned.
The night gathered, igniting as black flame, a quiet fire that burned without wind, hovering in the air like a crow feather.
“Wow, this thing beats the Elemental Ark by miles.” Fickle as spring, she stowed the pink-white blade back into her sigils, and studied the black longsword with hungry eyes, a collector in twilight.
“This feels like that black Star Canvas above. In my hand, it holds a fixed shape, a solid tide. It won’t drift into that floating-sky mode.” She stroked the black blade, a palm over midnight steel, and found a tiny red dot, a berry in snow.
She touched it and felt a familiar breath, a pulse she knew from home fires.
“I think I know what it is.” Lilith raised the black longsword and turned her face to the Black Dragon, eyes bright as stars.
“It’s a Star Canvas—another Star Canvas. Another firmament that records a dragon’s life.”
