Chapter 725: Collaring the Ossuary Hound (End)
Glowcap cistern band breathed up and down like the chest of a sleeping giant. A rope-ant line formed a living belay—bodies linked by instinct and practice. They moved as one organism, mapping each shift of the vertical shaft with patient feet. Every step was a question asked only on the exhale. Rodion’s blue ribbon sang that part, a simple melody that told them when the shaft was a throat and when it was a mouth. They danced to it without shame because it is polite to dance when a room offers you music.
The Bone Archive trench was a quiet argument with dust. The Archivist Wretch lifted its stylus as they approached, thin frame precise in its need to be exact. A worker brushed the slab with a careless leg and left a smear; the Wretch’s mood stiffened like a cat bristling. The worker froze. Another worker arrived with a cloth and polished the line in soft circles. The anger melted. The Wretch bent again and copied the coil-rune seam from the landing—curve, counter-curve, the small mean hook. Its hand shook, but the line did not. At the end, it paused, then gently inverted one clause—the tiniest turn of a tail, the difference between "wake on touch" and "wake on call." To eyes that did not read bone, it was nothing. To the floor, it was the difference between a light sleeper and a heavy one. Mikhailis did not hear the Warden snore deeper; he felt something in the air sink by a hair. That was enough.
The queen-to-be arrived on quick feet, drawn by work the way some children are drawn by bread. She stood small and bright, joints still carrying their early translucence, antennae sketching little patterns in the air as if writing music no one else could see. She watched the nurses rotate through a tight throat, counted in her own way, and then scratched a plan into resin dust: three-on, two-off, one hovering at the lip to trade places without leaving a gap. Simple, short, elegant. The nurse council clustered, read the lines, then looked up at the corridors and nodded as one. The Regent Necrolord inclined her head in public acknowledgment and did not steal the idea. Respect rose like steam you only notice when you stop talking. Workers bumped shoulders a little less. One nurse’s antennae stilled for the first time in an hour.
"Good house," Thalatha murmured, just for him. The words had weight. She had seen houses that broke under smaller decisions.
They swung briefly through the court like a breeze before a meeting. The Hypnoveil kept the room dull enough that pride couldn’t find a stage. The skeleton pairs waited with backs shown, blades reversed; you could feel the brood mothers watching that small courtesy like you watch someone cover their mouth before a cough—unnecessary if you are alone, correct if anyone else is breathing.
A nurse braver than most skittered up. Her antennae traced a cautious pattern: two curls and a line, the shape of concern carried for a group. She paused just close enough to be read without forcing. Her feelers twitched once toward the skeleton backs, then toward the brood mouth, then down. She did not have words the way people used them, but the question was there.
Thalatha stepped half a pace forward, enough that the nurse could read her without craning. She did not crouch; she did not tower. Her voice came out even, the way she spoke to jumpy recruits and proud elders and rooms that could break you if you insulted them.
"Too many dead ones near the brood?" Thalatha asked out loud, letting the hive hear the sentence as a shape, not a threat. Her palm floated open beside her chest, steady fingers, no angles. "We keep the backs of our skeletons showing at brood mouths. No blades forward there. We feed first before orders. And we don’t puppet the living. That’s law."
The nurse leaned in, tasting the answer like steam from a pot. Her antennae brushed Thalatha’s knuckle, a small respectful touch. A faint shiver ran through the ring of nurses nearby—relief that did not need to be celebrated to be real.
On Rodion’s panel, the respect bar held its green. Stable-positive. The small line did not jump, but it did not fall. Mikhailis noticed the way that tiny steadiness made his spine relax. Do not get greedy, he told himself. Take the quiet wins and don’t ask them to sing.
He watched Thalatha’s face from the corner of his eye. The soldier calm was all there, but under it he could see her pride answer the nurse’s trust. It showed at the mouth, half a millimeter. She did not smile; she allowed the room to.
They moved back to business.
They rehearsed without touching the Warden. The Hound padded the approach and flicked scent-noise across the stair in a neat, three-thread braid. Mint. Bone. Glowcap. It was like writing on the floor in perfumes—pleasant for the nose, confusing for a brain that worshiped symmetry.
The Hypnoveil breathed boredom in careful pulses. Even Mikhailis, who loved watching too much, felt his eyes refusing to stare. The landing became a page with nothing on it. It was a gift.
Plan A sat on the board simple and honest: squeeze by. Two by two, on the exhale only. Pebble in the palm, ready for the yawn point. No flourishes. No hero story later. The Hound would lead with its tail quiet and the cloth still choking the little metronome ring.
Plan B waited beside it like a cleaner knife in a drawer: own the landing. The Archivist’s soft-invert rune strip would live on the feeder stone; the Necrolord would add a three-pin counter-rot mark on the shoulder; the Hypnoveil would temper the first five breaths with a trance blanket. If the rhythm tried to fight back, they would back away, erase their footprints, and let Plan A walk ahead.
Rodion painted a thin red rule under both: <Clock rule: never attempt Plan B on thin photoperiod. If crystal stingy → abort.>
Thalatha turned from the board to the team, her tone the same as when she showed a recruit where not to die. "Exhale. No stepping on the pretty stones. Hold your breath if your feet forget to be polite." Her mouth flattened into something like humor. "If anyone tries a heroic pace, I will make you write letters of apology to every rib."
"I hate letters," Mikhailis said quietly, because he could not leave the line alone.
"I know," she answered without looking, which made it funnier. "Motivation."
He gave a straight-faced nod like the threat had been profound. She is kinder than she thinks, he thought, amused. She doesn’t use shame; she uses work.
They set out toward the stair throat. Prime-step cadence, gentle and odd. Sleeve-speech only: small finger circles for "watch the ring," two taps for "exhale now," a palm tilt for "halt on the half-breath." The ribs were cool when their hands brushed them. The stone felt like bone that had learned patience.
They crossed each lip on the exhale and waited through the inhales like polite guests who knew the host still had to clean a bit. At one pinch point, the nurse council unconsciously formed a human habit—letting the old pass first—and then corrected it by their own culture, allowing the juveniles to slip through ahead. Mikhailis saw it and filed it in the drawer called things that make houses last.
Halfway to the landing, the air on the right wavered. A smooth glow swelled in glass, the lure of a Lantern Lurker. Insect bodies stepped out of the dim, carrying jar-lights like priests who really wanted to be actors. The lure wanted eyes. The legs clicked like keys being sorted by an impatient clerk.
Rodion’s crisp line cut across the edge of the panel. <Lantern Lurkers. No eye contact.>
Workers flowed around them with resin smear already ready between forelegs. Quick swipes over visor slits. A delicate pass along jar glass. The light dulled to a polite household glow, not a stage. The Lurkers paused—no gaze, no audience—and drifted back as if the show had been canceled for rain.
Mikhailis did not hide his smile. We bring our own curtain and close it in their face. Good.
The Hound, newly leashed, kept performing small courtesies that no one had asked for. It traced three more safe arcs along the stair approach—quiet lines at odd angles that might be useful if someone was wounded later and needed a path that held a stretcher’s corners. The chain ring under the cloth stayed meek. Its sockets stayed steady. If a dog made of ribs could look proud-without-asking, this one did.
Thalatha glanced at the feeds, then at the Warden. The lanterns inside that huge chest had their own slow dim, like a book left open but not being read. "We could go now," she said, half to herself.
"We could," Mikhailis agreed. He watched the crooked bar at the bottom of the panel. The anti-pattern blink kept trying to be tidy and failing on purpose. "The Hound’s data wants one more cycle. The lane will hold a litter then. It’s cleaner."
She accepted it with a small tilt of the head. Waiting strained things in her; he could feel the pull across her shoulders like thread drawn too tight. She breathed once, matching the stair, and the pull softened. The acceptance was not dramatic. It was mature.
Waiting tasted sharp, like the metal tang when you bite your lip by accident. Mikhailis felt the itch too. He folded it into humor. "Buy us a story," he murmured toward Rodion, lips barely parting.
<Story: air above contains a trace of roots and wet stone. Pattern not undead. Probability of water or plants on the next floor: 0.62.>
He blinked, then laughed soundlessly. "Living air?"
Thalatha’s gaze slid to him and away again, like a sparrow checking a window. She nodded once, almost smiling. "If there’s water up there," she said, voice softer, "we can rest without bribing the floor."
He watched the thought land deeper in her eyes. She was factoring more than thirst—ways to wash gear for once, chances to cool tempers, maybe even a place to send a message upward if the rock would carry it. She didn’t speak the plan; she let it sit. He respected that.
They finished the cycle. On the exhale, the Hound took the inner spiral and came down sure-footed. At the veil, it folded into a curl and rested its skull on its paws. The cloth on its tail ring drooped slightly to one side. It looked absurdly domestic for a thing made of chain and bone.
It lifted its head and nosed the blind arc under the Warden’s elbow. It tapped the yawn point once with a careful claw. It looked up at Mikhailis with the authority of a good teacher asking a lazy student to repeat the important part.
He nodded at a skeleton dog like it was the most normal thing in the world. "I know," he said under his breath. "I’ll remember."
"Good," Thalatha said, plain, approving the exchange without commenting on the foolishness of it. "One chain down."
He raised his eyes to the Warden—the bell frame blocking the climb. He didn’t grin at it. His face smoothed the way it did when he settled a plan on his bones. "Next, we test the landing."
Inside the Warden’s ribs, two lantern-maggots dimmed together, as if the sleeper had felt a gaze and decided it didn’t care. The light drew inward like breath saved for later. The stair inhaled, exhaled. Stone lungs, polite when respected.
Rodion adjusted nothing flashy. He let the crooked bar breathe. The green dots did not blink faster to excite them; they remained patient and exact. The orange X’s kept their nag shape. Mikhailis had learned to love being nagged by things that wanted him alive.
Do not get poetic now, he warned himself, knowing his worst habits. Pick the pebble. Trust the clause. Walk on the sigh.
Thalatha checked the team with a slow sweep of her eyes. She did not change her posture, but everyone adjusted anyway. Hypnoveil nudged its mantle a finger-width higher. The Regent Necrolord allowed her crown-light a sliver more brightness—the minimum pride required by her office. The nurse council tucked juveniles into safe eddies without discussion. The skeleton pair tightened their strap knots with practiced tenderness.
"No heroics," Thalatha said one more time, level and unarguable.
"No heroics," Mikhailis echoed, and this time it left his mouth as a promise that did not fight his nature. It felt like a promise he wanted to keep.
The veil’s hem lifted like a breath. The Hound’s cloth did not flutter. They waited for the stair to exhale, and when it did, they moved as one. Two by two. Pebble ready. No one stepped on the pretty stones. No one tried to be first. They went forward the way a good city wakes—quiet, coordinated, sure.
Above them, between ribs, the lanterns inside the Warden dimmed again, the way tired eyes flicker closed when no one asks for a story. The light held sleep like a grudge.
The dungeon hummed. They listened.