The Rootbound Shambler lay in crumbling heaps across the chamber, still spasming where splintered roots t shattered stone. Sticky resin leaked from its joints like honey mixed with fireflies, pooling into glowing veins that pulsed between broken flagstones. A faint crackle—sap crystals cooling—was the only sound left. Even the air felt stunned, as though the dungeon itself were holding its breath.
Rodion stood exactly at the epicenter, motionless except for the slow furl of shredded cloak panels around his calves. Bits of pulverized bark slid from his pauldrons when he straightened. He examined the corpse as a jeweler might study a flawed gem, optics running through color-filters: thermal, spectral, mana-density. Each mode reflected off wizened bark in cold blues and violent reds.
Three Scarabs zipped in a looping cloverleaf around him, their tiny wings whining. One tagged a smoking root nub with an orange rune, marking it for disassembly. Another squirted sealant gel over a fissure that still wept toxic sap. The gel solidified into mirror-bright scales, trapping fus before they could rise.
High above, Monkey's lens whirred, broadcasting every angle back to the royal chamber. Its tulip housing spun in tiny incrents to track Rodion's slightest motion.
Mikhailis lounged amid pillows like a king in a pirate's nest, one leg crooked over the other. A sar of honeyfruit glaze glead on his knuckle. He licked it absent-mindedly, eyes never leaving the floating screen. Flawless choreography… but he's going to pretend it was "statistical necessity."
"So," he drawled, tipping a half-eaten twist in the air, "are we going to talk about that flip? Or pretend he didn't pull a full aerial flourish before stabbing the heart?"
Elowen lay beside him in tangled sheets that still slled faintly of lavender rinse. Instead of her court poise, she wore an expression of warm amusent, chin propped on folded arms. "He did it for cara effect," she teased, but her eyes sparkled with open pride.
Mikhailis barked a short laugh. "See, confirmation! He is learning showmanship. Next upgrade he'll demand a cape of roses."
Elowen's shoulders shook with a silent giggle. She brushed silver-blonde strands from her cheek, leaving a small sar of ink where her fingers had earlier caught a leaky quill.
Monkey dropped altitude, zooming tight on the arena floor. Between root husks, a faint rhythm thrumd—thump … thump …—barely visible as ripples in the pooled resin. Motes of dust vibrated in sympathetic cadence.
Rodion's helm tilted a single degree. Optics shrank to narrow slits as he magnified the anomaly.
Elowen's fingers fluttered, stopping just shy of the hologram. "Could that pulse still be active?"
Rodion signaled a Recon Scarab. It extended a hair-thin antenna and stabbed it into a glowing rivulet. A palm-sized holopanel unfolded in midair, waveform graphs dancing in uneven peaks.
Mikhailis sat up straighter, crumbs scattering off his lap. "That's not a decay spike," he murmured. "That's a—"
"Heartbeat," Elowen finished, voice hushed.
Sothing down there is dream-walking. The thought glimred in Mikhailis's mind like a shard of broken mirror.
Rodion's finger hovered over his vambrace. A geotric console projected, tiny glyph keys blinking. He waited—one second, two—until Elowen's gaze flitted to Mikhailis. He t her eyes. Gone was the usual mischief; instead she saw cool iron certainty. He nodded once.
She inhaled, shoulders rising, then let the breath slip out in a slow ribbon. "Go."
The words glowed across the feed, stamped in perfect blocks of light.
Rodion pivoted. Monkey's display bifurcated: left pane sward with fast-scroll diagnostics—CORE TEMP STABLE; ARMOR INTEGRITY 86%; EMOTIONAL OVERRIDE LOCK: ACTIVE. On the right, the chamber panned in sweeping cinema: jagged floors, moss-drenched pillars, and at the far side, a yawning shaft that plunged into ink-black.
The elevator rune had long since died. Only charred glyph grooves remained. Chunks of the lift platform lay like shattered teeth down the hole, jutting at random angles.
Rodion knelt at the edge. A case ejected from his belt with a pneumatic hiss. Four pitons snapped open, magnet coils whining as they prid. One after another—k-chunk, k-chunk, k-chunk, k-chunk—he drove them into the wall in a near-perfect diamond. Soft blue pulses spread outward where steel t stone, knitting into a faint lattice.
Mikhailis whistled low. "Still asures the spacing by eye. Show-off."
Elowen's lips curled. "Precision is its own praise."
Rodion secured the cable, a glimring strand woven with runes that rippled down its length like moving writing. He grasped it, shifted his weight back to test tension.
Ti slowed for half a beat. The only sounds were Dusky wings of Scarabs circling and the distant creak of settling roots.
Then he stepped into nothing.
Cloak flared, snapping like a banner before hugging his fra tight. The cable sang under his gauntleted grip. He dropped—not a panicked plunge, but a asured slide. Micro-vents in his soles spat thin jets, balancing drag. Sparks of ley energy crackled along the cable, licking at tal fingers. Rodion's HUD flooded with data: friction coefficients, heat bloom, field surge fifteen ters below.
He twisted his torso, trailing a hand against the wall. Moss sared under glowing knuckles, cooling the gauntlet. Tiny spores ignited like green sparks in his slipstream.
Halfway down, he squeezed the line, bleeding speed. The shaft widened here; broken masonry jutted like ribs from the wall, dripping stalactite resin. Scarabs zood ahead, mapping with quick laser blips. Their outlines painted neon pathways on Monkey's right-hand pane, auto-stitching a 3-D blueprint that expanded floor by floor.
Up in the royal suite, Mikhailis tracked the blueprint, finger hovering mid-air. That constriction—two ters wide. If sothing charges there it bottlenecks. His mind already overlaying defense scenarios.
A cold tremor rippled down the cable. Rodion's visor flickered static. In his audio sensors, a crackle rose—fuzzy, clipped notes strung together. An old song, half-rembered, half-corrupted. Brass fanfares slurred atop war-drums, loops stuttered, slowed, reversed.
Rodion's voice erged steady, yet faintly edged with curiosity.
He reached to his belt again. Five palm-size discs popped free. With a flick, he flung them outward. The Ghost Beacons spiraled, then winked invisible. Each emitted a decoy pulse mimicking Scarab heat signatures, scattering false breadcrumbs through the shaft.
In the suite, Elowen hugged a silk pillow to her chest. "He's throwing scents for sothing we haven't even seen."
Mikhailis forced a smile. "Better his breadcrumbs than ours."
Rodion's optics realigned. The song glitched once more, then softened, apparently fooled by the decoys. The cable ride continued.
Below, the shaft's walls glistened, but the moisture pattern was off—water beaded in segnted rows, pulsing in ti with the hidden heart. Rodion noted it, flagged structural anomalies. Around him, dormant glyphs sputtered awake, then fizzled, their power siphoned centuries ago.
Ten ters from the bottom, his sensors flared red—surge spike. Rodion triggered magnetic repulsors in his boots, braking hard. Dust cones billowed as he touched down lightly.
The floor felt soft… too soft. A carpet of decomposed root matter swallowed his tal soles, squishing like rotten fruit. He crouched and pressed gloved fingers into the mulch. Moist, warm, thrumming with faint mana. He lifted his hand; strands of sticky mycelium stretched between fingers before snapping.
Scarabs zipped to low hover, quieting wings to ghost hums. Their thorax vents switched to passive filtration mode—tiny charcoal mbranes sliding into place.
Monkey's feed refreshed. The map revealed a long corridor branching into darkness, veins of faint light drooling from broken sconces. Every so often, a leyline node winked like a pulse on an old machine.
Rodion took a silent breath—habit, not need—then stepped forward.
The old dungeon groaned, tal plates underfoot shifting. Far above, in the comfort of scented sheets and buttery lamplight, Elowen reached blindly for Mikhailis's hand. He twined their fingers, squeezed once.
Whatever is dreaming down there, he thought, it just woke up to the wrong knight.
Then ca the distortion.
Rodion slowed, servos idling to a near-silent purr while data scrolled across his visor in thin white ribbons. The shaft's stale air rippled with static. Sowhere in the dark, an invisible amplifier jittered to life.
The first notes drifted down like dust: low brass, proud once, now warped by centuries of echo. A kettle drum followed—beat stuttering, then catching itself, as if an unseen conductor kept dropping his baton. Flutes slid in, dissonant, the lody pulling apart at its seams. It was almost music, almost mory, and sohow lonelier for it.
Rodion's optics brightened.
Up in the suite, Mikhailis felt goose-bumps prickle down his arms. That song belongs on a battlefield, not a tomb. "Is it… trying to rember who built it?" His voice wobbled between awe and unease.
Elowen leaned closer to the hovering image, silver-blonde hair spilling over her shoulder. "Or who destroyed it," she said, the words soft as cotton yet sharp enough to cut.
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