The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort

Everything moved in one argument: battle line, boss husk, the tidy plinths and their harmless bells. The floor split like wet paper under a careful tear. Weight ran out from under boots. The ribs above shifted into a new sky, wrong and immediate. The Whiteways opened their hand and let them go.

He fell into a rain of bone and silk and angry dust.

Rodion reached him before the air could bite. The lotus chain in his palm snapped hard-light into a sling with a cruel grace.

<Hard-light sling deploying. Two warm bio-signatures prioritized. Vectoring on nearest command pair.> The words were calm, but the sling wasn't; it seized the world and redrew it with lines and angles that hurt to think about.

There was no time to ask who. In a blink the sling yanked upward and sideways, a ragged, decisive tug. Something soft and strong hit him; the swear fled his mouth without being formed. They struck an elastic Silk panel and bounced; the panel refused to let either of them go. It held, stubborn as politeness in a rude town.

Thalatha's pauldron ground into his chest—hard, expensive, impeccably maintained. His shoulder lodged beneath her collarbone in a way that would be romantic if most of their friends weren't skeletons. The dome flexed around them like a living lung. Bones clattered inside it—dice in a leather cup shaken by a god with a bad temper. Silk rails above screamed in long metallic vowels as new anchors bit into new ribs. Tangle lines hummed under loads that should have snapped the patient insects; they did not snap.

Her breath hit his ribs once, heavy as the panel found a new calm. The sound snapped something in him back into place. "Are you still alive?" he asked, the brightness wrung out of his voice and set aside.

"Professionally," she said, not wasting air on anything she couldn't spend. She counted one breath, then another, then told the truth. The word was dry and even. It steadied him more than a poem would have.

In the blink after, he noticed the particulars: the hard-light sling stitched not just across his torso but across hers as well. Rodion had split inertia between them, laying a bright lattice from his ribs to her leather, from her pauldron to his sternum, binding them into one absurd, effective unit. It would bruise later. It kept them both as one point now.

We are very stuck together, he thought, not without a flicker of amusement. At least the cologne is subtle today. The joke slunk back to its corner and kept quiet while the serious work continued.

Dust drifted in tired curtains. A broken lamp swung on a torn chain somewhere and thudded against bone with the slow regularity of a lazy metronome. The dome sighed and took up the room's breathing, inhale—not too far; exhale—don't give too much back. Beyond the silk, he heard the careful clatter of bones finding one another: a shield crawling its straps to kiss its mate's rim; a spear learning a new hand by touch.

He swallowed and tried to make his words fit the size of the air the sling allowed. "Um… are you… okay?"

Thalatha's eyes had settled into their usual soldier's calm—busy, not empty. "Working," she said. "Counting." She blinked once, the tiniest nod. "Breathing."

He tilted his head as much as the lattice permitted, a hesitant acknowledgment. The sling filaments thrummed under his sternum as Rodion redistributed the pull again; the tug ran through his ribs like a purr dragged over a comb.

He angled his jaw to speak toward the dot of cool light that only he saw. <Rotational inertia normalized,> Rodion noted, clipped. <Adhesion load at sixty-one percent. Recommend minimal conversation for thirty seconds.>

"Right," he murmured, barely moving his lips. "We'll whisper."

Thalatha's mouth didn't change, but the muscles along her neck eased a fraction. Approval? Or a ledger mark: He can still follow rules when the floor disappears.

He forced himself to inventory, the way he always did after impact. Lotus chain—present, warm. Vials—touched in sequence with his free hand, each cold pip a relief. Silk coil—half-looped, the other half snagged under his belt; recoverable. Knife—still flat along the spine. Dignity—misplaced but not urgent. Later, he told the small part of him that loved putting on a show. Live first. Perform later.

Below, the liches had become shepherds in a falling pasture. They corralled bone in to the dome's lowest curve, hands careful, crowns dull. A core rolled free; a skeletal hand trapped it against a shin like a father stopping a toy from rolling into the street. The Myco-Archivist clung to a rib with three fingertips and tapped its delicate tool once, approving, then twice, scolding, as if training dust to better manners.

The Juggernaut's husk hung askew on a jag of broken pattern—an empty scabbard still shaped like intention. The stag face had slackened into a tired, almost contrite geometry. From the hairline fracture Mikhailis had opened, a thread of green—faint as vein beneath wrist—trembled toward the elvish seam and vanished into stone as if thirsty.

His fingers itched. Don't reach. He obeyed himself.

Silk rails above screeched again, then settled with a whipcord twang as Tangles found new purchase. He felt the lattice around his chest ease and re-tighten as the load shifted.

"Your favorite," he said under his breath, because he had to say something or he would have to admit his heart was beating too fast.

"Mine too," Thalatha replied without irony. Her shoulder pressed into his, not harder, simply more deliberately, as if giving him a new wall to lean on.

Their panel drifted a palm's breadth, then steadied. Through gaps in the mesh he glimpsed the Sky pair suspended three spans away, already passing bows along a silk gutter, hand over hand, toward a safer angle. The Ankles team had tied themselves to the rails with their bowstrings—ugly knots that would earn lectures later—knuckles white, eyes still marking lanes with stubborn professionalism. Good. Ugly and alive beat beautiful and broken.

"Listen," he said, finding the small teacher's voice again, the one that made people lean in to hear a lesson instead of a command. "We finish this like we began. No big heroics. We are not hammers."

Thalatha's chin dipped. Go on.

He let his hand speak to the nearest captains, fingers sketching a clear grammar. Even in nets and slings, the signs moved through the air like a current. "No kill-rush," he said, words level. "We cradle the limiter first. Then we take the head."

From other panels, palms opened; two fingers raised; a bow tilted twice. Agreement rolled through the broken room like a fish's spine flexing.

Bright hearts had pooled in a shallow stone cup near the crack. Their glow looked louder now that the chamber had dimmed. One crown quivered toward them, the old habit flaring like a hiccup, then stilled at Mikhailis's raised fingers.

"Invest only for archer velocity and rim re-knit," he said, tone as flat as a ledger. "No glamour. No swelling crowns. One-cycle delay holds."

A lich's hand—delicate as a pianist's—settled briefly over its own crown, smoothing unruly light. The Myco-Archivist made that dry double tok of approval and, with petty neatness, nudged a sour core away as if moving a rude guest toward the door.

"Order with mercy," Thalatha breathed, so soft the dome almost stole it. The words sat between them like a small, clean tool.

He allowed himself a single heartbeat of pleased warmth, then put it down. "Moth," he called, eyes tracking a flicker of shadow, "outer glyphs. One stroke only. Make them remember rain." A wingtip brushed a seam far away; a glyph un-tensed, as if sighing. "Sky—keep jaws shy, not dead." Two arrows rose and fell like a metronome correcting a bar-band. A Skullcaster snapped its mouth shut and learned, too late, that silence can be a trap; Silk popped thimble-bells over the two runes that tried to skitter away. "Scurabons—right elbow taxes continue." Tap. Tap. Pride paid its toll. "Tangles—last links only." Blue string flashed; chains lied to shoulders again.

Rodion hung more numbers in his vision, neat as a bookkeeper. <Birth tempo minus eighteen percent. Cleaver concurrency reduced by one arm per cycle. Filament over-correction up twenty-two percent. Favors us.>

"Embarrassment is a powerful spell," he whispered, and felt the line of Thalatha's trapezius ease into an almost-laugh against his collarbone.

He opened his left hand. The lotus chain draped across his palm and warmed—contract authority stretching its limbs. He did not yank; he asked.

Permission, not theft, he reminded himself. Stamp, not pry.

The crack pulsed in answer: a tiny pressure, as if a caged bird had put its beak to wire and breathed.

"Crymber," he said—request, not order. "Cradle. Frost first. Then Ember. Gentle."

Frost breathed a ring so light it made the air taste like clean stone. A feather-thin white formed along the fracture—present without being loud. Ember followed with two knuckle-taps that sent warmth through the white the way tea sends warmth down a winter throat. The white did not melt; it settled deeper. "Slime—anchors. Pins only." Matte beads of gel seated at the crack's corners like rivets in old wood. "Silk—breathing cloak. Flex, don't freeze." A veil sank and synchronised with the room's inhale-exhale, traveling with it like a companion.

"Hold him," he told the scattered wedge captains, and the scattered shapes answered, shields leveling from nets, rims setting into new, impossible geometry. The wall remembered itself without a floor.

A Hypnoveil lifted one more honest picture: the chain that had kissed a rim and found no mouth. The Juggernaut's logic corrected by habit into a gap that wasn't there. Mikhailis touched the lotus seal to the crack like a librarian stamping a ledger at closing.

What had held did not explode. It exhaled.

Warden script loosened from bone, a long braid undone by patient fingers. Green threads slid free of the stag skull and ran toward the elvish river-line he'd traced in dust and hope. The mask's grim set softened into something like apology. The rib harness folded in on itself with the sound of a book spine finally giving up on being open.

The room's bass dropped a register. It didn't vanish; it stopped pretending to be larger than lungs. From the wall, in the small quiet that followed, came the plucked ghost of a harp string under blankets.

I didn't imagine that, he told himself, and chose belief, because small hope deserved protection.

The tidy work returned. Liches tagged clean and sour. Only needed bones rose. No names were touched. He slid the seal-marked splinter into the pocket he reserved for debts to keep. Rodion's cold politeness ticked on. <Signatures captured. Warden-thread returning to seam. Node tone stabilized at minus one octave.>

Thalatha stood close enough for their shoulders to think about leaning. She still watched hands. "The elder necromancer I trusted," she murmured, "would have liked this."

"I'll try to deserve that," he said again, and meant it.

The Whiteways decided to have an opinion. Rumble. Tilt. A long, offended creak. The floor stopped being a floor.

"Shields roof!"

"Inside!"

Silk, Slime, Tangles, Crymber—all the quiet tools of a tidy life—did their loud work. The room tore anyway. The sling seized them. The net held.

He found his voice again in the place where jokes go to sit quietly and listen. "Are you still alive?"

"Professionally."

Only then did he truly feel how Rodion had stitched the sling across both their bodies, sharing hurt so it did not become harm. We are very stuck together, he thought, and his bad humor flicked its tail. At least the cologne's subtle.

He swallowed once, careful not to bump her chin with his chest, and tried again, making his words the same size as the oxygen they could borrow.

"Um… are you… okay?"