The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort,Chapter 722: After-Action Tea (End),Arkalphaze,JiwaiWave

Chapter 722: After-Action Tea (End)

"This won’t be the only place, will it?"

Her eyes widened a fraction. Surprise, not fear. A yes came to her mouth the way a breath does when a window opens. Then the real smile—rare, unarmored—appeared and stayed. "Okay."

He didn’t squeeze; he let her decide the pressure. She squeezed once, exactly enough.

The march felt like gliding through a throat that didn’t quite want them there but was willing to be polite if they were. Skeleton couriers took the forward crates, each pair moving like a joined machine, wooden rails squeakless under marsh cloth. Their spearheads were tied down with soft knots that said "we are not hunting," and even the knot tails looked modest. A Hypnoveil led with its mantle low, spreading boredom like a calm teacher. Ribbon Scout lined behind: Scurabon nose; six white-outlined soldiers; workers in paired drift; one nurse riding the cadence like a metronome wearing a shawl.

They moved under bone arches rubbed smooth by time. Resin shone in thin places where breath had polished it. The air smelled like wet stone, old leather, and a thread of mint because someone forgot to close a paper. In black pools mirror-flat as a thought, eel teeth waited like ornaments in a rich house; the veil glided the line past with a dignity that discouraged appetite.

At the rib-well, the ground fell away into a black silo lined with slick. Slime went first, laid a broad smear, and tested it with a deliberate weight. Workers anchored thread and made a soft "br-rk" sound, their version of "good." They went down like a slow necklace, bead by bead: skeleton, worker, worker, soldier, nurse. Nobody looked down too long. The only sounds were fabric whispers and small body clicks that belonged to living systems, not alerts.

Farther on, a bowstring beam cut across a gap. It was thin and mean, a narrow rib with a spiteful tilt. Thalatha went first, knees soft, shoulders quiet, counting primes under her breath—"two-three-five"—then taking a step on the breath between numbers, not on them. Mikhailis followed, refusing to be clever and stepping exactly when he decided, not when the beam wanted. The beam complained once, like a door that wished to slam but remembered its manners. They made it. Two ants ran a mirror token to a shadowed doorway. A sentry met them with a nose-tap, checked the token, then angled its feelers in a lazy "you may pass." Polite neighbors are the best kind of magic.

The slot—home, ridiculous and precise—faded behind them like a story you promise not to forget. Thalatha did not look back. Mikhailis did, once, a quick glance like a thank-you.

The staircase well appeared like a secret throat: a dark spiral around a pale core that climbed into shadow like a threat that had taken a vow of patience. Halfway up, something huge lay across a landing, wedged where the spiral tightened. The air got colder in that quiet way that meant "do not step on the wrong square."

Rodion’s lights dimmed to a respectful grey. <Stop. The landing is occupied.>

They froze. Even their breath sat down and folded its hands. The Scurabon at point squatted two millimeters without being told.

The thing stretched across the steps from wall to wall. Cathedral bones fused to tar-black sinew; the shoulder joints were like bell frames, braced into the stone. Inside the chest, lantern-maggots glowed faintly, little moons behind ribs. Light crawled over coil-runes carved into a forearm, script wound in a spiral that made the eyes obey even if the mind didn’t enjoy it. Its head wasn’t a head so much as a memory of one: a relief mask half-carved, eyes empty sockets that seemed tired rather than angry. A slow drip fell somewhere in its chest and sounded like time being lazy.

Thalatha looked down, then up, measuring the voids between ribs, the claw reach, the bite radius if the head turned quick. She did quick math: they couldn’t slide along the wall; the angle would pinch a shoulder and then a neck. "We can’t slip it?"

Mikhailis weighed angles. The math in his head wrote and erased itself three times. If I were that kind of idiot, I would say yes. I am not that kind of idiot today. "Maybe if it sleeps hard," he said. "Maybe once."

He held up two fingers; a worker placed a pebble on his palm. He flicked it upwards—one small, single, uninteresting impact against a rib where the sound would die fast. The pebble tapped, the sound didn’t echo, and the Warden... did nothing. A second later, he almost threw another. He didn’t. Do not teach a door to hear you.

<Faster to understand the neighborhood,> Rodion advised, and the console filled with a new panel that organized fear into sentences. He started with the blocker.

Mikhailis rubbed his jaw with two fingers and a thumb, the way you do when there’s a coin you’re not spending. "If we own it, the staircase listens to us." His eyes tracked the coil-runes. He recognized two shapes for "hold" and "bind" and a third that felt like "remember," though he wouldn’t stake a life on it.

Thalatha’s gaze stayed on the coil-script too. She memorized the stroke order without deciding to. "And if it bounces back mid-way?" She didn’t color the question with fear or doubt. It was a maintenance query: if the wheel breaks, where do we stand so our leg isn’t under it?

"Then we become red paste on polite steps," he said, not joking and not dramatic. "So we do not start there."

Rodion flipped to the next dossier like a book page turning itself.

Thalatha flicked her eyes to Mikhailis with a look that meant "we’ve trained for this." "We already beat a choir when we learned to breathe."

"Let’s not get cocky," he said. "The Choir enjoys comedy." And it punishes applause.

He made a face. "I will avoid. I already have a type."

"Ouch," Thalatha said, deadpan. The nurse nearest her flexed antennae like it had enjoyed the burn without understanding it.

A feed zoomed to one. Chain links dragged, teeth like small pickaxes clacked lightly; the tail was a piece of chain ending in a broken ring that tapped, tap, tap, almost a metronome. The Hound paused at a fork, sniffed left, sniffed right, then got confused when three different worker threads crossed the junction in a neat braid. It blinked its bone lids, shook its head, then trotted in a circle like it had lost a thought.

He tilted his head. "Teeth we can teach to sit." If you teach the tail first.

The feed showed one crouched in a trench, thin as scolded paper, hunched over a slab of bone text. It carefully traced each rune with the tip of its stylus, then blew a delicate puff to clear dust. A worker accidentally brushed the slab with a crumb of resin; the Wretch looked up, angry in the tiny way librarians get angry. The worker froze. Another worker arrived with a bit of cloth, polished the mark clean, and the Wretch settled, soothed at once by legible lines.

Thalatha followed the cursor. "Useful." She imagined the Wretch copying their scent-map into bone for future units. She imagined the comfort of seeing your route in a script that would not rot before your shift. She liked that comfort. She didn’t say it out loud.

Rodion compressed the list to a box labeled TACTICAL SUMMARY. The words stacked without drama.

The stair pulsed on the map with mean patience. The big thing didn’t move. It didn’t need to. Its job was sitting in the middle of your plan and asking, "How badly do you want it?"

Mikhailis let silence sit for one breath. For two. He let the weight of choosing land properly. He looked at Thalatha, not to ask permission, but to align their spines.

"If we own the Warden, the staircase listens to us," he said again, voice flat, like a reading you do without performance because performance would cheapen it.

"Risk," she answered, matching depth. They didn’t need adjectives.

"First we prove the leash works on something smaller," he said. He glanced at the safer dossiers, the friendlier teeth. "One trial. No heroics."

Rodion’s eye-lights thinned to a calculating line, the way his mood always wrote itself in LEDs.

Mikhailis’s focus tightened. The part of him that liked bad jokes and dramatic flourishes went quiet and stepped back. The part of him that cut problems into joints and carved along seams stepped forward and picked the tool. Make a clean start or don’t start.

"Let’s try the first trial on one of them," he said.

The feeds obeyed like the hive had been waiting to be told which window to open. The chosen box swelled, pushing the others gently aside. A lone Ossuary Hound prowled a safe rib, head low, the chain-tail tapping a lazy beat—tap—tap—tap—that made something in the air twitch. Somewhere far away, the Echo-Deacon’s attention pricked up like a cat that hears a spoon touch a plate in a different room. The Hound paused, sniffed, then resumed its path, following symmetry like a religion.

Off-screen, the Regent Necrolord’s crown-light brightened. It wasn’t a glare. It was a moon behind clouds, patiently making itself known. The edge of her mantle entered one feed for a breath, shadows flattening around it. A Hypnoveil’s lower hem drifted at the far left of the frame like a thought you pretended you didn’t have.

The stair didn’t move. The Warden kept its stone-face sleep. Above them, darkness leaned down like a teacher waiting to see if a child would raise their hand at the right time.

Mikhailis rolled his shoulders back once, just once, like he could hang a coat of calm on his bones and button it. Once. On purpose. Then we leave the room without breaking any of its furniture. He fixed his eyes on the Hound’s tail and counted the taps. He counted wrong on purpose. He didn’t want the beat to love him.

Thalatha stood beside him with the kind of stillness you earn. Her hand hovered near her belt, not on a weapon, but on a strap—a soldier’s unconscious check. "No heroics," she said.

"No heroics," he agreed. He let the words sit between them like a promise and a door.

Rodion dimmed the rest of the board until only the hound’s feed remained. The console’s edge lights shrank to a thin line; the hum underfoot felt like it leaned in to listen.