Chapter 27: Primordial Ark
Satan agreed to Lilith’s request. She flicked her wrist, and dishes and notes vanished like foam on a tide, as the demon city lord rose and led her up to the Grand Library’s topmost tier.
“We don’t keep forges in Bosaklie,” Satan said, her voice cool as a locked vault. “The Eternal City keeps knowledge; our steel is a watchdog to keep thieves from it. The place where our founders forged their war-gear is dust on the wind.”
“But we’ve got something close,” she added to the Little White Dragon, eyes glinting like live coals. “The Library’s upper tier was built for the most secret lore; the marrow of Bosaklie’s brass concentrates here like heat in a furnace. Forging your artifact won’t be a problem.”
“Why let us into something this secret?” The doubt rose first, sharp as frost in Lilith’s chest. She and Nidhogg hadn’t done that much for Bosaklie. They’d dragged the runaway Princess Abaddon back to the Eternal City, sure, and cleared a Wraith from the city’s roots. Aside from that, they were just tourists, swallows passing over a tower.
“Because knowledge.” Satan stopped at a sealed door, turning sideways like a drawn blade to face Lilith. In the demon leader’s eyes, hunger burned like a brazier in night. “Legendary Sword. A relic that slays a dragon’s remnant soul. What appears when you mix them—we’ve never even heard a whisper.”
“Do you know the worst pain for a Bosaklie?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s being told there’s a sky-splitting secret right here, and being barred like a beggar from the door.”
“No demon could endure that itch under the skin,” Satan said with a wry smile, the edge sheathing into humor. “If I let a secret that big pass me by, my mailbox would be choked with impeachment letters by dawn like pigeons on a sill.”
Relief loosened in Lilith like a knot in wet rope. “Alright.” She trusted Satan wouldn’t throw her to wolves. Besides, Nidhogg stood behind her like a cliff; if a storm rose, the Black Dragon would break it.
“Let’s go in.” Satan knocked. A brass plate slid up like a sunrise, revealing the lock within. She slipped her forefinger in. The brass core pivoted half a turn with a neat click, and the door sighed open.
A low rumble of gears rolled out like thunder in a cave, pushing wide the dust-sealed gate. Lilith peeked through the lifted brass like a cautious cat and took in the room’s bones.
A furnace sat in the room’s heart, so massive it swallowed the eye like an eclipse, leaving nothing else to see.
The brass furnace glowed cherry-red, and heat licked the doorway like a desert wind even where the Little White Dragon stood.
Three pipes, each near Lilith’s girth, clamped onto the furnace like metal serpents. They shone red with heat and exhaled white steam in steady bursts like surfacing whales.
The floor was a pane of clear glass. Through it, the Little White Dragon saw gnashing gears below and pipes between them shuttling molten iron, like lava pulsing through veins.
Cold surged first, with the clean bite of winter. She released frost magic, the Little White Dragon turned into a walking condenser; hot vapor met chill and blossomed into white fog around her like breath on a mirror.
She didn’t ask about the room’s strangeness. Instead, she laid two longswords on the center floor, drew the Golden Dragon’s remnant soul from her sleeve like night producing a star, then pulled a dagger, ready to seal it with her own blood.
“No need for your blood.” Satan stepped to her side and handed over a vial of golden liquid, thick as sunlight. “I had someone fetch a bottle from Bosaklie’s deepest layer. The royal line has its own passage; it’s quick.”
Lilith nodded. The Little White Dragon took the Demon King’s gift of dragon’s blood and poured it over the blade like dawn spilling across steel.
The black Star Canvas shuddered and opened, unfurling into a true night curtain that wrapped the Little White Dragon and the two weapons like a tide of velvet.
Within that liquid night, she watched the blood and the Golden Dragon’s remnant soul merge, turning into a nugget of gold that seeped into Elemental Ark’s blade like metal rain into earth.
The pale-pink sword grew unreal, blending with the night under Lilith’s feet like ink in water. It drank the Star Canvas’s indigo into its prismatic body and took on an indelible streak of blazing pink.
Certainty rang in her like a bell. Lilith stepped forward and gripped Elemental Ark’s hilt.
The star-river wrapping the small dragon folded tight the instant she touched the blade, like a sky snapping shut. The weapon trembled in her hands. Something poured into both blades like a tide, drawing them toward one point until they fused into one.
“Should I give you a new name?” The Little White Dragon raised the still-forming blade, as she had raised Elemental Ark in the Grand Mausoleum’s deepest vault, as she had lifted the Ancient Ark over Morris, as she had first hoisted the Shattered Ark in a cave of the Dragon Territory.
A hush of awe filled her, soft as falling snow. She suddenly realized how far she had walked through storms and starlight.
As if in answer, the firmament drew into one. Pink wrapped the riotous black like rose dawn around midnight. The other half of the blade—normally appearing only when charged—flashed into being, and her weapon became a great pair of shears.
Lilith saw a line of script burn across its side like frost writing on glass.
She held the shears before her, studying the words as she had studied the Shattered Ark’s first inscriptions, like reading a star map.
“The physical apex of your journey, bearing the power to tear gods apart.” Lilith read it with a light laugh, like wind through chimes.
She slid the reborn blade back into the sword-mark on the back of her right hand, and the black shroud peeled away like smoke. The Little White Dragon stepped back into the sightline of Nidhogg and Satan.
“Need me to write a report? I think I picked up a lot,” Lilith said, voice easy as a ripple.
The answer never came. The floor bucked under her like an earthquake, and in an instant an abyssal maw lunged up from beneath her feet like a shark from black water.
No one had time to react. In the space of a heartbeat, the Little White Dragon’s figure was snuffed from the room like a candle in wind.
