CHAPTER 639: BLENDING WITH THE ELVES (2)

Beneath the Archive-Tree’s crystalline canopy, the air tasted of cool resin and faint citrus—a smell that always reminded Mikhailis of freshly split cedar back in the palace workshops. Shafts of late-afternoon light pierced gaps in the leaves overhead, scattering coins of brightness that drifted across the polished root-floor whenever a breeze stirred. High above, song-beetles chimed in uneven patterns, improvising a lazy counterpoint to the deeper heartbeat of the tree.

The raised platform at the center felt like the bridge of a living ship. Veins of pale gold ran through its surface, pulsing in gentle waves that matched the cadence of Mikhailis’s own pulse. At his gesture a swirl of living filaments rose like fountain spray, weaving into a three-dimensional map. It looked almost fragile, as though a careless breath could blow the whole construct away, yet every line carried the weight of roots and tunnels too ancient for any tool to cut.

He reached out, index finger hovering until the interface recognized him. A knot of crimson near the top left quadrant brightened, expanding into a jagged sphere riddled with branching fractures.

"These are the Blight-Core Vents," Lorian said, stepping close enough that the glow painted soft emerald across his cheekbones. The spore-lanterns sewn into his cloak brightened in sympathy, tiny bulbs rising and falling with his words like curious fish. He used two fingers to mark three heated points. "Northern fissure. Here, here, and here. You’ll deploy the arrays, bind them to the ley pulse, then seal the rift with Root-Wards carved from heartwood."

Mikhailis angled his head, pushing round glasses higher on his nose. "Deploy, bind, seal, and come back in one piece." He enlarged the central vent until it filled half the projection. The interior cavity resembled a melted honeycomb—hollow pockets and twisting ducts in every direction, each throbbing in poisonous red. "Looks like a dragon’s sinus cavity. Does it sneeze fire, too?"

Lorian puffed a short breath that might have been a laugh or disbelief. "If it did we would have smelled ash long before now."

Statistical models suggest a forty-seven percent fatality rate, Rodion announced, his digital voice cool and unbearably calm. Margin of error plus or minus six, influenced by variables such as unstable geology, mana spikes, and your tendency to improvise. However, we have skewed worse odds before.

Always the optimist, Mikhailis thought, hiding a grin behind a thoughtful hum. He rotated the vent again. The glow reflected in his lenses, turning his irises bright jade.

A soft clack of armored boots cut through the map’s gentle hum. Thalatha strode up the small ramp, her silhouette framed by the prismatic canopy. Hollowbone pauldron plates overlapped like petals, each line etched with runic vines that shimmered when she moved. In one gloved hand she cradled a translucent pod. It pulsed with golden life, casting rippling circles across the plank-floor.

"Seed of Binding," she declared, voice low but certain. She did not raise the pod for effect; she simply held it steady, as though it were a sleeping creature. "Plant it in the heart of the Blight after the arrays take hold. Should your pact remain intact, it will push ward-roots through corrupted strata in under an hour."

Mikhailis accepted the pod carefully. Heat radiated through his gloves, gentle yet insistent, like a small sun begging to hatch. Within, faint tendrils twitched, as if the seed dreamed of soil. "Pretty gift," he murmured, turning it so light scattered across the map. "Let’s hope it doesn’t explode. I only packed one spare coat."

"Don’t drop it," Thalatha replied, one eyebrow tilting upward. Amusement flickered quick as lightning in her green-gold eyes and was gone.

He patted an inner coat pocket, gauging space. "It deserves first-class seating." With surprising tenderness he tucked the pod into a padded lining normally reserved for fragile vials. The compartment sealed with a hiss of ant-silk fastening.

From his belt-pouch he drew a thumb-length glass cylinder. Inside a viscous orange fluid rolled, bubbles catching on the thin walls like sparks. He offered it between finger and thumb. "Pheromone concentrate. Distilled from my Queen and micro-filtered six times. Add it to your ward stakes and my ants will treat them like beacon towers. Should keep the swarm organized, maybe even polite."

Thalatha accepted the vial, rolling it slowly so the bubbles chased one another. "How strong is mostly polite?"

"On a good day they’ll salute before biting." He winked. "Luckily, they think you smell like royalty."

For a heartbeat she said nothing; then a faint smile curved her lips, barely there. She slipped the vial into a slot on her vambrace that closed around it like flower petals at dusk.

Lorian’s spore-lanterns bobbed brighter. "Cooperation," he said, as though the word itself were a candle he guarded from wind. He extended one long arm toward the spiral map. "With these arrays and the seed we may halt the Blight’s lattice before midsummer."

"Ambitious," Sevrin remarked from a shadowed booth near the rim of the platform. He had arrived unnoticed, glass-root cane held loosely in one hand. The fractured bark polished to mirror-shine reflected scattered shards of the golden hologram. "Some say hope is a vine: climb it too fast and the branch snaps."

"And some say caution is rot," Lorian countered, but there was little heat in his tone. He had field-tired eyes, not debate-sharp ones.

Mikhailis’s gaze flicked between them, noting micro-expressions. Sevrin’s shoulders angled away ever so slightly—as if ready to sidestep unforeseen fallout—while Lorian’s stance leaned in, committing weight to each phrase. Two halves of one root, he thought. Both know the tree must live. They argue only about the pruning.

"So," he said brightly, clapping once to shoo tension, "who wants a crash course in array placement?" He tapped the map and three glyph markers appeared, spinning like coins. "These stations anchor to ley nodes. I’ll need clear ground twelve paces in diameter, plus a dampening ring to stop blow-back."

A scribe in slate-gray robe raised a timid hand. "Blight creepers lace every vent rim with toxin vines. Cleared yesterday, they return by dawn. Twelve paces may be... optimistic."

"Then we make flamethrowers," Mikhailis said with mock cheer.

Thalatha’s brow furrowed. "Flame near unstable vents is unwise."

He snapped his fingers. "Lightning, then. Very localized. I have a capacitor coil in my kit that—"

Rodion’s dry tone slid into his ear. Capacitor coil is rated for laboratory humidity, not subterranean spore storms. Probability of operator electrocution: thirty-one percent. I recommend a shovel.

Spoil-sport.

"Alright," Mikhailis amended aloud, "lightning after we set a grounding mesh." He looked at Thalatha. "I’m teasing. We’ll cut vines, not cook them."

While technicians took notes, Lorian tapped a rhythm on the table rim, humming a minor scale. The spores on his sleeves echoed each note, flaring violet on high pitches, blue on low. The tune lacked formal structure, more like absent-minded thinking given melody. Yet gradually the entire archive adopted the pulse: scribes swapped quills in time; a young courier swayed unconsciously while reading a scroll.

Mikhailis felt the rhythm settling in his chest. Music really is their second language. Without planning, he found himself humming along, grasping for vowel shapes he barely knew.

"Mmngha—kaelah... so?"

The words landed crooked, consonants clipped. The effect was like mis-striking a chime. Silence followed—one heartbeat, two. Then laughter rolled through the hall, bright and unrestrained. Even the droning beetles high in the canopy chirped a note that sounded suspiciously like a giggle.

A parchment-runner lost grip on her scroll, clutching her belly as mirth shook her shoulders. Two scribes leaned into each other, quills forgotten, eyes streaming. Lorian covered his face, shoulders bobbing in voiceless laugh. His spores flashed turquoise, then rosy pink, like confetti tossed into wind.

Thalatha’s lips pressed tight, but amusement warmed her eyes. "If that was Spore-Tongue," she managed, "I fear you just swore at someone’s grandmother."

Mikhailis’s ears burned. He bowed theatrically. "My apologies to the matriarchs. I try, they cry."

He looked up to see Sevrin smiling. It was a small smile, brittle at the edges, but it was there. And with that crack in the veneer, the room’s mood brightened a shade.

Failing a career in song, Rodion advised, recommend alternate path: survive mission, then experiment with vocal lessons. Perhaps in a soundproof chamber.

One quest at a time, he conceded, amusement flooding back. He stretched a hand toward the projection again. "Let’s mark safe approach tunnels."

A team of cartographers stepped forward, vines around their wrists twitching as they synced minds to the projection. Light-lines forked rapidly: blue for stable passages, orange for flooded chambers, red for Blight-choked choke-points. Mikhailis watched their work—every branch annotated in neat sigils—then over-layered his own numeric tags. Where elven path-runes moved like calligraphed wind, his markers snapped into geometric boxes, sterile and efficient.

At first the contrast seemed jarring. But one apprentice gasped softly when the two systems blended, creating multi-layered nodes that clicked together like puzzle pieces. "It’s... beautiful," she whispered.

Lorian nodded. "Two tongues in one hymn."

Mikhailis felt a pulse of pride. Not vanity, but the rush of seeing collaboration grow roots. He caught Thalatha watching him, expression thoughtful. He offered a small shrug, as if to say Happy accidents are still victories. She returned the faintest nod.

Half an hour melted away in edits and revisions. At intervals Sevrin inserted probing questions—"What if nodes shift under Blight pressure?"—and Mikhailis fielded them with calm logic laced with occasional jokes. The scribes kept pace, sheets of living bark curling data onto themselves and rolling into tubes for runners.

Between technical chatter, Mikhailis noticed tiny slice-of-life details: the way a scribe patted the glowing spine of her writing board whenever she paused, like soothing a pet; how two apprentice mappers shared chalk, fingers brushing longer than strictly necessary. Every gesture spoke of a community holding itself together with ritual and fellowship even as rot gnawed at its borders.

Thalatha inspected the Seed of Binding again. Up close she let her steel façade slip, just a little. "Will it hurt?" she asked quietly.

"Planting it?" Mikhailis tilted his head. "The tree, or me?"

"Both."

He tapped the pod with a finger. "Roots tend to find their own space. Might sting if you’re part of that space." His gaze flicked to her braid, noticing a tiny chip in one armor scale. He wondered what blade had done that. "I’ll anchor it quick. Less time for pain to argue."

Her shoulders softened. "Quick is good."

They stood there for a moment longer, the murmur of activity a warm tide around them. Neither moved to fill the silence; it felt companionable, not awkward.

Then a loud snap rang across the platform—one of the young technicians had overloaded a light-filament. Sparks flared. Gasps came from nearby scribes. The crystal canopy above chimed as if scolding. Thalatha spun instantly, body sliding between the arc of sparks and the nearest apprentice. The shardlets hissed against her hollowbone plate and guttered out harmlessly.

Mikhailis stepped forward, palms up. "Everybody intact?" he called.

The technician’s face flushed crimson. "I-I mis-synced the focus glyph. I’m sorry."

"Good lesson," Mikhailis assured, kneeling to examine the filament. He heard Rodion hum diagnosis, reporting minor damage, no structural threat. With a flick of his wrist he reset the binder clamp, then activated a small ant-drone from his belt. The bronze beetle scuttled to sweep up glass fragments.

Watching the drone, several scribes leaned in, curiosity overriding shock. One whispered, "It moves like a real beetle, but its eyes glow."

Mikhailis grinned. "Prototype. Don’t feed it sugar; it’ll follow you home."

Thalatha straightened, giving the apprentice a reassuring pat on the shoulder. When she looked back to Mikhailis her eyes held new respect—protection was her reflex, but so was kindness afterward.

The moment ended as quickly as it came. Lorian resumed humming, softer now, and the map shimmered with final edits. A clear path to each vent blinked in tandem, ready for the journey written in roots and code.

Mikhailis exhaled slowly, rolling shoulders. The day’s weariness tugged, but excitement thrummed louder. We might actually pull this off.

He glanced around at the gathered elves—scribes hunched over glowing parchments, ward-smiths comparing rune crystals, young acolytes chasing stray spores with reed nets. Despite cultural gaps, worry, prophecy, they were laughing together.

For the first time the archive felt less like a vault of secrets and more like the center of a shared heartbeat.

The room laughed.