The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort

Rodion's count strip ran like a thin river of blue at Mikhailis's feet. It was not bright, not a hero's spotlight—more like moon on wet slate. The pulse was even and polite: hold, hold, bite, slide, reset. Each beat climbed his body—ankles first, then knees, then shoulders—until his muscles remembered that agreement was stronger than fear. The chamber breathed its own lung-sound through bone vents, a slow wheeze that tried to pull minds off the rhythm. The strip gave them another spine to stand on, a second truth under their boots.

"Sky left. Ankles right," he said, voice low, edges smoothed like a whetstone that had seen years. He didn't shout. People leaned toward softness when the world was loud.

Hands flashed. The Sky pair took two steps wide and raised their bows, calm as kitchen work. The Ankles pair bent their knees, tips angling down for shins and insteps. Hypnoveils lifted mantles on the narrow breath between three and four, catching the room in its own reflection. Scurabons slid like the shadows of knives—no scrape, no flourish—tap at wrist, tap at knee, gone before pride could snap. Silk veils hung with the modesty of real curtains. Slime painted dull bands where spit wanted to live and die. The Crymber Twins breathed together—white chalk, then a warm tap—and the seam of each veil set with a small sugar crack. Clean. Final.

Across from them, the Juggernaut kept its stubborn seven-stroke pattern, like a bad song that thought it was a hymn: scissor low-to-high, chain sweep for ankles, second scissor, hook yank, stomp, reset. Under that, the summoning choir pushed its four-beat—one, two, three, birth—trying to fit its little metronome inside the big one. A child running beside long legs. On the wall, the elvish seam seemed to listen. Mikhailis felt it the way a person feels a bird watching from a branch—light, patient, judging.

Thalatha moved the front line with two fingers and no drama. A bracer came up half a finger. A rim re-kissed its neighbor. A spear haft dipped a thumb so the bite would find seam instead of skating on plate. Her face did not change. Bones obeyed. Three lives stayed where they belonged before anyone even knew they had been about to wander.

He watched her hands and forced himself to do the thing he always told others to do. No hero dive. Coach the rhythm. Let the line win.

"Huddle," he said, and his voice shifted into the small teacher tone that makes people tip their heads without thinking. The fighting didn't stop; it adjusted and listened while it moved.

"Three priorities," he said. "First—starve the choir. Sky, make the talkers shy. Ankles, trip the proud. Silk keeps thimble-bells ready for stray glyphs. Second—detune the floor. Slime, hair-wedges at the three seams that won't stop shivering. Frost chalks them. Ember sets them. Tangles, staple the hairlines so tiles don't flip. Third—hinge the boss. Hypnoveils, plant honest doubt in its shoulders. Scurabons, the right elbow is your house—tax it for every swing. Moth, blur the outer bind-runes on the antlers. Tangles, fight the last link of every chain, not the whole arm."

A bright heart rolled from a broken skull and chimed on stone. One lich's crown lifted by the thinnest hair. Not a blaze. A memory of hunger trying to stand up.

He didn't turn his head. He raised a hand like a stop sign for a skittish horse. "No names," he said. "Drift only. Librarians, not engines. One cycle before you invest any bright hearts."

The crown dimmed to its worklight again. Thalatha's eyes stayed on hands, not flames. She filed that in whatever ledger she kept, and her jaw eased an inch. She didn't say the thought out loud, but Mikhailis could almost read it on her face. He polices wrists, not light. He hoped she would keep that note.

Rodion drew a thin box of figures in Mikhailis's peripheral. <Suppression windows posted. Archer sky-time up eleven percent. Shield-rim re-knit predicted plus fifteen percent under current cadence.>

His mouth tilted. "Music to my ears." Literally, his thoughts added, dry.

Ugly work looked calm when everyone agreed. The Sky squad lifted on the lamp swell. Floating jaws dipped by reflex, like bullies ducking a thrown apple before they remembered they loved being hit. The second volley walked into the hitch and planted arrowheads in the hinges of rune-filled mandibles. Mothcloak brushed jaw-cuffs with one soft pinion—no drama, just a smear—and loose glyphs fluttered like real moths shaken from a winter coat. Silk's thimble-cones dropped with polite little pops and cupped each rune before air could teach it bad habits.

The Ankles pair wrote a low script of gravity along the floor. Two arrows slid and bit shin and instep. A neat parade step forgot itself. Limp became a stumble. A spear from second rank leaned—not stabbed, leaned—and guided the fall into a dull square Slime had painted exactly three beats earlier. The next Wight tried to step over pride and put its foot on humility. Gel had already told that stone the truth.

Hypnoveils breathed honest pictures on the three-to-four handoff. They showed each summoner its own last miss, right when the hand reached for the next perfect note. Newborn troops arrived shoulder-wrong, hip-late; that expensive first second—the one that breaks lines—belonged to them instead. Thalatha did another seamstress tour: "Wrists quiet," she said. "Knees soft." Tap. Lift. Set. A wobble closed like a stitched hem. Small acts saved actual lives. He let that be the sermon.

The floor wanted to sing in the old key. They changed the key. Slime moved like a careful dentist and slid hair-thin wedges into three seams that would not stop shivering. Frost traced each wedge white as chalk on slate. Ember tapped twice—habit—and set the promise into bone. The tiles still opened, but they would not fully flower now. The mandala did not like that. Mikhailis could hear its annoyance in his teeth.

Tanglebeetles hummed a soft, steady note. Blue lines flashed and stitched five-finger staples across hairlines. Chains that tried to skim hit those threads and were yo-yo'd back a degree off their dream angle. No loud victory there. One polite tug. A small hum. Thread back home. That hum settled under Rodion's strip like a second metronome, private and sure.

The room pushed back the way angry cities do—by trying to make everyone rush. The choir tried twice to tuck its four-beat under the seven-stroke. Rodion's numbers ticked up the side of Mikhailis's sight like a quiet scoreboard: slippage +2%, +4%, +6%. <Node listens to its own correctness. Emotional state: embarrassed. Maintain pressure.>

Two Bone Hounds got clever and crawled on their bellies, ribs scraping stone, trying to slide under Silk's kindness. Silk let them dream one full breath—merciful, Mikhailis thought—and then stiffened the hem with a prim snap. Hoods locked. The dogs thrashed and learned what rope burn felt like without ever touching rope. Far back, a Skullcaster inhaled for a Big Important Vowel. A Hypnoveil lifted and returned its last cracked note at the exact ugly second. The jaw coughed surprise. Sky marked one heartbeat faster and put an arrow where the vowel had been planning to live. Silk capped the crumbs. Polite. Final.

They hinged the Juggernaut without showmanship. Mikhailis lifted two fingers. The Sky squad lofted a dummy volley high above the mask—nothing meant to kill, only to make hair think it had been touched. The antler filaments flinched right, together, like a cat feeling static. A Hypnoveil lifted the last miss on the boss's left-hand side. Mothcloak smeared one thin bind-rune until it remembered rain instead of flame. "Door," he called, and the wedge answered like it had been waiting all morning to hear that word. First rank pinned and kept its manners. Second rank punished and then backed out, like craftsmen wiping a blade and setting it down. Slime flicked a coin of gel under the lead foot and stole one honest heartbeat of ankle truth. The Juggernaut's four arms stopped being a choir and turned into four people arguing over a steering wheel.

Rodion flashed green at Mikhailis's ankle. <Window achieved. Do nothing fancy.>

He almost grinned at the line. My specialty, he lied to himself, and then bit the inside of his cheek because this was not the second for wit.

On the third hinge, the stag mask ticked. The spear pegging the hook gave one more unkind inch. A bind-rune blurred under Moth's touch. A hairline crack ran from brow to cheek like a lacquer bowl deciding it had been treasured long enough. For a single breath, the mask could not lie about what it was. Inside, something green glinted—living wood bound with braided warden script.

Mikhailis's breath stumbled in his chest, then remembered its job. Not a corpse engine. A stolen promise. Hope flared like a bad idea and then sat down and folded its hands.

Thalatha's voice stayed the same size. "What is it?"

"Not a monster," he said, dropping his tone so low the stone would need to lean in to hear it. "A warden heart. Stolen. Pressed into bone logic."

Rodion did not bother with comfort. <Corollary: If destroyed improperly, limiter fails. Containment behind elvish seam may dump into node.>

"So if we kill it wrong," he said, "we break the brake."

<Yes.>

Thalatha's jaw set the way a door sets in a new frame. Then, slowly, it eased. She didn't waste the anger. She folded it and put it where it could buy something later. "We still have to win."