The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort

It hung back, massive torso heaving, uncertain primitives parsing what had just culled its kin. Rodion rose slowly, sword tips grazing stone. He activated the cloak's vent channels; a cool draft fluttered the hem. To the beast it must have looked like its opponent grew suddenly, cloak flaring like dark wings. The Maw bellowed—a guttural sound that rattled the very roots overhead—and charged.

Rodion sprinted straight toward it. Distance collapsed. At the last heartbeat he feinted left, then right, too quick for the Maw's limited ocular field. It overcorrected, plates screeching. In that half-second of imbalance Rodion dived under its gullet, rolled beneath the armored belly, and slashed in a single, ruthless arc at the softer skin near its rear tendons. The cut wasn't deep, but deep enough. Muscle severed, the Maw's rear leg buckled. Momentum hurled its own mass forward; it face-planted, tusks burying into the stone floor with a hideous crunch.

Rodion rose behind it, breathing steady. The final blade stroke fell clean across the exposed cervical joint. Silence swallowed the chamber like nightfall.

Monkey's primary window stabilized, switching between Scarab cams to show the aftermath: five iron leviathans strewn across the crossroads, resin nets glinting, caltrops sparkling like scattered stars. Steam curled off cooling armor, mixing with the faint mana glow that seeped from cracked rune vents along the walls.

Elowen sat frozen a heartbeat longer, then released a laugh of pure relief and wonder. It bubbled out light and bright, ringing off marble columns of the chamber. Monkey's lens swiveled to her and blinked an acknowledging LED "smile."

Mikhailis finally remembered the cookie and slowly finished the bite, eyes never leaving Rodion. Sweeter than he expected after that display. He brushed stray crumbs from his lap but missed a few. A Worker Ant skittered up, bowing low before flicking the crumbs off with its silken duster. Mikhailis inclined his head in amused thanks.

Rodion surveyed the carnage. The Scarabs descended, legs whirring. One by one they latched onto cooling hides, drilling small cores to extract coolant and harvesting intact plating samples. The sentinel's HUD logged materials: Ferric-carapace shards suitable for high-impact shields; joint fluid that might serve as hydraulic lubricant.

He sheathed both blades, rolled his shoulders once, and strode toward an arched doorway rimmed in faint silver. On the threshold, mana light spilled soft as dawn, and the distant sound of water trickling teased at his audio feed.

He entered a new chamber lit by gentle aquamarine. At its heart a mana fountain bubbled with serene glow, casting ripples of pale light across high walls. The floor here bore no dust, only smooth tiles reflecting like riverstone after rain. Scarabs fluttered down to the fountain's edge, docking their abdomens to charging pylons that sucked gentle arcs of energy into waiting coils. Their status lights shifted from amber to soft blue—recharged.

Rodion exhaled, though he had no lungs, and let his back slide down the nearest wall until he sat, knees bent, blades laid across his thighs. His visor dimmed to a lower luminance. External sensors kept vigil, but internal diagnostics winked: microfracture repairs queued; power cells at seventy-three percent; cognitive load moderate. Sufficient.

Miles above, the royal suite felt suddenly smaller, cozier. Monkey padded over, body humming contentedly. He presented a tray of almond rolls so warm they fogged the silver cover. Another cup of cocoa steamed, tiny marshmallows bobbing in thick foam.

The bronze butler set the tray on a cushioned ottoman between Mikhailis and Elowen. From a hip panel he dispensed three perfectly cube-shaped marshmallows into the drink—plop, plop, plop—each dissolving slowly.

A soft clatter announced a Worker Ant arriving at Elowen's side. It carried an acorn-cap bowl filled with fragrant oil and a delicate comb woven from vine fibers. With ritual care it began brushing Elowen's hair, untangling silver strands while humming in faint pheromone clicks. The queen stilled, letting her eyelids drift half-closed.

She watched Rodion on the screen, a silent sentinel bathed in fountain glow. "Do you think he dreams?" she murmured, barely louder than the purl of cocoa.

Mikhailis considered, gazing at the sentinel who looked almost monk-like in repose. After a moment he spoke, voice softer than usual mischief. "He processes. That's a kind of dreaming." Perhaps he dreams in numbers, in solved equations... or maybe in the voices he's chosen to protect.

Monkey's lens swiveled toward the screen, then back to Elowen. <Dream simulation subroutine: currently dormant. Would you like to enable nighttime logging?> His tone held that polite neutrality but a hint of eagerness, as though the thought of logging Rodion's rest intrigued him.

Elowen giggled, cheeks warming against her teacup. "Let him rest first."

_____

The corridor began to slope downward, and the air changed—less like damp cave breath, more like the hush before an organ's first note. Rodion's boots left faint ripples of silver light on the dark floor as he advanced. Ahead, wide doors yawned apart with no creak, stone slabs gliding on unseen hinges. Beyond them sprawled a sunken amphitheater carved straight from the bedrock, its tiers descending in perfect rings to a yawning pit.

Steepled around the rim rose crystal towers—dozens of them, each as tall as two men. Their faces caught stray motes of mana and refracted them into slow-moving rainbows that crawled over the seating like sleepy specters. From deep inside the towers came a fragile drone, a half-formed chord seeking its key. The sound slid in and out of hearing, as though someone were warming up a choir of glass throats.

Suspended directly over the center of the pit hung the boss: a gargantuan mass of fleshy coils wrapped in tarnished metal braces. Six chains, glowing like molten gold, anchored it to pylons embedded in the surrounding walkway. The creature's eyes—three on one side of the head, one on the other—were closed, lids twitching with dream currents. Every exhale puffed out a cloud of pale vapor that sparkled, then vanished.

High in the royal chamber, Monkey's lens zoomed and a text banner scrolled across the projection:

[Choral Devourer. Emits mana-pitch attacks. Weak to silence effects. Immune to bladed weapons until phase 2.]

Mikhailis tapped his lower lip, gaze darting between data readouts. "Those crystals will sing," he said. "We need to dampen the resonance or they'll turn the room into a tuning fork."

Rodion opened a private sub-channel. <Deploying acoustic dampening protocol. Scarab squads, cardinal spread.>

Four Scarabs peeled away like sparks from a grindstone, each gripping a palm-sized device shaped like a bronze seashell. They zipped to north, south, east, and west pylons, magnetizing themselves to the stone. Tiny legs drilled anchor bolts; runes blossomed along the shells, dim at first, then glowing a dull red.

Elowen laced her fingers, the thermal blanket rising with her breath. "The frequency balancing looks off," she murmured. "He might need a fifth point at zenith."

As if hearing the thought, a fifth Scarab hovered above the Devourer and anchored its payload to a cracked stalactite.

Below, the chains trembled. Faint hums flew into the chamber's upper arcs, chasing each other like invisible bats. The Devourer's largest eye shot open—pupil a pin of white light. One chain snapped taut. Then a second shivered.

Without warning, the sound hit. Not a roar, not a screech—something worse: layered voices, each singing a slightly different note, forming a chord so imperfect it carved at the ears. Crystal towers amplified the cacophony. At the high tiers of the amphitheater, leftover panes of crystal shattered outward into glitter.

Rodion blurred sideways, cloak snapping in the pressure wave. A targeting arc flashed across his visor: sonic cone radius. He darted through falling shards that pinged off his pauldrons like hail. Every footfall sounded muffled as if thick wool buffered his soles, the dampeners doing their work but not fully saturated yet.

He reached the nearest chain. Dual spears deployed from his wrists with a hiss of pneumatics. Sparks erupted as steel bit into glowing links. The first chain groaned, filaments of mana unraveling in sizzling threads. Rodion twisted the spear like a wrench; a link ruptured and evaporated in a cloud of amber embers.

A second chain now. Rodion switched position—slide, leap, roll—dodging an expanding ring of sound that cracked the floor where it touched. He jammed both blades in a scissor cut, severed another link. The Devourer jerked and wailed. The choir's discordant chord wobbled, then ballooned louder, angry at the loss of harmony.

Upstairs, Elowen pressed fingertips to her ears though only an echo reached the suite. "That screech—it's tracking his footfall delay," she breathed.

Mikhailis's jaw clenched. It's using echo-location patterns—each step is a drum for its next pitch. "Rodion, vary stride timing," he said to the air, knowing Monkey would relay. "Break your own rhythm!"

Rodion broke into an unpredictable shuffle—two quick steps, one long slide, then a hop that landed off-beat. The next sound wave missed him by a hair, cracking a pedestal instead.

The crystals answered the creature's call. Their hum spiked, and from each tower sprang translucent silhouettes—phantom Rodions, exact down to frayed cloak hems. They stepped out of crystal faces like actors through stage curtains. Each copy raised identical blades, the sound of metal unsheathing perfectly timed to Rodion's old cadence.

Mikhailis's eyes widened. "They're using his recorded strikes," he realized. "The dungeon remembers his every move."

Five echoes dashed in unison, feet striking the stone with the precise tempo Rodion had used seconds earlier. The real sentinel halted his assault, letting blades retract. Instead of attacking, he began to walk backwards in deliberate asymmetry: right heel first, left toe, pause, half-turn— movements no training program would ever teach. He even let an elbow dangle, cloak caught awkward.

The echoes attempted to mirror but stalled. Their algorithms couldn't reconcile the contradictory posture. Two flickered like bad projector slides, limbs glitching. One collapsed back into shards of light.

Rodion's visor flashed opportunity apertures. He re-ignited his spears, but not to cut chains. He drove both poles into the stone dais, channeling power into the dampener network. The bronze shells on the pylons flared from dull red to searing white. A soft bubble of silence pulsed outward, stripping harmonics from the air like wet plaster ripping off old paint. The remaining echoes dissolved, losing their sonic anchor.

Elowen exhaled a soft "Yes," and her shoulders dropped.

Now the Devourer hung by only two damaged chains, thrashing, voice sizzling into quiet as the dampeners smothered resonance. Its throat—a mass of vibrating membranes—twitched helplessly. Rodion clasped both spears together, forming one long pike. He drew breath for timing even though he didn't need air. One pulse…two… On the crest of the third heartbeat he leapt, cresting in a perfect arc above the writhing mass.

Spears seared through soft throat tissue, erupting out the other side in a spray of iridescent sap. A thunderous pop shook the pit—like a wine barrel smashing from inside. All light from the creature's eyes extinguished. The final two chains went slack, whiplashing the walls when they snapped free. The Devourer collapsed like a deflating organ, flesh and metal folding inward.

Sound stopped. Absolute hush. The mana-charged dust hung mid-air, glinting like snow in torchlight.

Rodion landed on one knee, pike snapping back into twin bracers. Scarabs converged. They latched onto the cooling corpse and drilled through congealed sinew, retrieving a core the size of a child's skull. It pulsed between violet and blue, casting gentle strobes over Rodion's armor as if congratulating him.

Mikhailis stood, stretching arms overhead until vertebrae popped. "He's still going," he said, voice trailing awe. "Nearly midnight, and he hasn't slowed." If anything, he's learning faster. The dungeon throws new tricks; he writes new equations.

Monkey's servos whirred softly. From a back compartment he produced a neatly folded thermal blanket sewn from plush silver thread. He padded forward, eyes flicking between Elowen's drowsy posture and the visible gooseflesh on her arms.

With gentle precision he draped the blanket over her shoulders. The fabric released a sigh of warmth, edges glowing faintly as heating runes activated. Elowen's lashes fluttered; she offered the little butler a grateful smile and patted his bronze cheekplate.

She turned back to the projection. In the quiet aftermath, the amphitheater's battered tiers looked almost peaceful, lit only by the faint throb of the stolen core. Rodion stood in that light like a knight before a campfire, head slightly bowed as he logged final diagnostics.

Elowen's voice came out a whisper. "Let him clear one more room," she breathed. "I want to see how the stars look from the dungeon's heart."

Mikhailis lowered himself beside her again, resting his back against a mound of pillows. His hand found hers beneath the blanket, fingers intertwining. He didn't need to challenge her wish; he felt the same tug—curiosity, pride, maybe a hint of shared loneliness that only watching distant battles could soothe.

He glanced at Monkey, whose lens irised wider, capturing them both in quiet tableau. Mikhailis offered a small, wry smile. "Cue the next act, maestro," he said softly.

Monkey chirped, antennae-like sensors flicking. The feed zoomed out just enough to frame Rodion striding toward a narrow passage glimmering with starlight motes drifting up from unknown depths.

The stars would wait. But Rodion wouldn't.

And neither would they.