CHAPTER 656: THE UNDEAD BOSS (2)

"Rodion," Mikhailis said through a frozen grin, "one more helpful statistic and I’ll repurpose you as a footstool."

Thalatha bit her lip, grateful—just this once—for the AI’s tactless honesty. It kept her from falling back into mortification; anger was steadier ground than shame. She straightened her spine. The Hollowguard did not wilt because of a botched landing.

Before she could retort, a tremor rippled beneath their boots—faint, like the dungeon had cleared its throat. Mikhailis’s head snapped sideways, curls shifting. "Did anyone else feel that, or is my bladder staging a protest?"

Thalatha only had time to register that the tremor carried a rhythm—pulse, pause, pulse—before cobalt light raced beneath the tiles. The entire platform lit like evening lightning-bugs trapped in crystal.

A metallic click from Mikhailis’s belt pouch signaled a drone waking from standby. The sphere zipped free, rising on a column of pale light. It darted forward, beaming a tight spotlight that sliced the gloom and splashed across the chained lotus, painting sharp silver edges on every petal.

"Really?" Thalatha muttered, still fiddling with the tilt of her pauldron. "Now he’s got theatrical lighting."

"Always travel with ambience," Mikhailis replied, though his voice lacked its usual teasing lilt.

The beam arced upward, slow as sunrise, and scraped across the vaulted ceiling. Shadows bled away—and there it was.

Bone taller than a vineyard windmill. Runes carved like old scars along a spine thicker than her waist. Iron rings clung to ribs like broken armor, some glowing ember-red where Blight had fused metal to calcium. In its right fist, a slab of a greatsword hummed—a weapon forged for siege engines, not hands.

Each motion produced a concerto of groans: tendonless joints grinding, chains clanking, air shuddering through hollow cavities.

Mikhailis’s knees bent in reflex, goggled eyes huge behind cracking lenses. "Is that... a necro-colossus? Please tell me academic journals exaggerated their height."

Thalatha swallowed, throat rasping. "That, my prince, is our door prize." The quiver in her voice displeased her, so she forced the next words firm. "And if stories are true, each swing can cleave a barn in two."

The colossus tilted its skull as though curious, baleful turquoise flames flickering to life in pitch sockets. It leaned forward; vertebrae popped like splitting firewood.

Mikhailis puffed a breath. "Personally attacked by its dramatic timing."

Recommendation: Engage cautiously. Target displays high-density reinforcement at primary hinge zones, Rodion droned, optic widening to project a faint wireframe overlay.

Thalatha’s fingers found her bowstring almost automatically, yet when she tried to fit an arrow her knuckles jittered, refusing precise motion. The memory of being plastered against Mikhailis’s chest—of that icy flask—returned at exactly the wrong instant, buzzing through her nerves. Move, she commanded, but her knees locked.

The colossus stepped, and the hall vibrated like a struck drum. She flinched. Vision narrowed to a tunnel in which only bone and death filled the end.

Not again, she cursed—flashbacks of Blight beasts charging a forest outpost, the day her patrol fell. Back then she’d frozen, too, watched comrades bleed before finding her courage. It was happening again.

"Thalatha?" Mikhailis’s voice slipped under the roar, gentle yet urgent.

"I... can’t move." Humiliation replaced fear; she was a captain, and still her body betrayed her.

His expression flickered—worry, then decision. Something steely locked into place behind his playful eyes. With a single stride he placed himself between her and the advancing titan, raising goggles in one practiced motion.

She caught the set of his shoulders—no longer slouched scholar, but battlefield tactician. The switch startled her more than the monster. Mikhailis, the joking prince, ready to catch a sword for her? Her lungs burned with conflicting emotions.

He muttered so only she heard: "Right. Time for some impromptu heroics."

Mikhailis’s quip hung between them, flimsy as a moth wing compared with the titanic skeleton that loomed only strides away. But the joke did what he intended: jarred Thalatha’s mind off her spiraling embarrassment and back onto the battlefield.

The translucent barrier he’d triggered shimmered like heat-haze. It curved overhead, tracing a half-dome three paces wide, etched with glyphs that flickered whenever the necro-colossus’s boots hit the floor. Each impact popped runic sparks along the shield’s skin, tiny fireworks that stung the dark.

Thalatha stole a heartbeat to take stock. Her lungs still raced, but her ankles responded now. She flexed her knees, rolling weight onto the balls of her feet the way her instructors drilled: breathe, settle, draw. The bowstring kissed the curve of her cheek, a comforting pressure.

Mikhailis slid to her left, coat tails snapping. Though his grin stayed in place, sweat carved silver lines down his temple, pooling at the angle of his jaw. Beneath the goggles his eyes darted—wrist-mounted HUD scanning, predicting swing arcs, calculating chaos like a street-side abacus.

The colossus swept its greatsword in a backhand meant to cut them and half the dais apart. Air howled; loose shards skittered across the flagstones. The barrier flared cyan, held, but Mikhailis still staggered two steps from the force, boots scraping for purchase.

"Note to self," he wheezed, "barrier version two needs shock dampeners."

A quaver of laughter escaped Thalatha—part nerves, part genuine amusement that he could still critique his own spellwork mid-slaughter. The tiny release steadied her aim.

She pivoted, loosed one more arrow. The shaft flashed starlight then buried in the ruined wrist joint she’d hit moments earlier. Bone splintered; three finger segments clattered off like tossed dice. The skeleton hindered its sword grip, blade wobbling.

Trajectory optimal. Wrist function down to forty-one percent, Rodion announced, hovering behind them like a dour lamp post.

Mikhailis popped the cap from another vial—this one fizzed orange—and pitched it underhand. Glass shattered beneath the giant’s heel. Foaming acid chewed at tarsals, releasing a hiss that smelled of burnt almond and vinegar.

The colossus jerked, momentum faltering. Its ruined hand overcompensated, sword edge biting the floor instead of their heads. Slate cracked; sparks spat; the shock rattled the monster’s entire frame.

For half a breath everything slowed. Dust hung in glowing motes. Thalatha could hear her own pulse again. This is working.

But victory never came easy. A secondary rune flared on the skeleton’s sternum—one they hadn’t noticed. Crimson lines spidered across ribcage, knitting fractures faster than acid could eat them. The broken wrist bones re-sharpened, fusing into a grotesque hook.

Rodion’s optic flared amber. Warning: necrotic regeneration sub-routine detected. Estimate forty seconds to full recovery if not interrupted.

"Faster, then." Mikhailis flipped a small switch on his goggles; twin focusing lenses spun into place, dialing his pupils into needle points. "I’m going to paint targets—cover me."

Thalatha nodded, already raising another shaft. She felt warmth bloom behind her sternum—courage, or maybe the glow of the barrier seeped that far in. Either way, her voice steadied. "Paint away, Your Highness."

He skated forward, barrier dissolving as he quit its radius. The necro-colossus lunged, free arm clawing. Thalatha tracked the swing, released—arrow one deflected by ulna-bone, arrow two punched under the armpit gap. The colossus reeled, not from pain—she doubted it felt—but from disrupted leverage. That half-second was all Mikhailis needed.

He slid beneath the creature’s guard like a ballroom dancer ducking a partner’s arm. Chalk flared from his glove as he slapped two quick sigils onto the femur socket. Violet ink sizzled into bone, each mark blooming into a geometric brand.

"Rodion, sync!" he barked.

Commencing resonant overcharge in three... two...

Mikhailis sprinted back, coat whipping up dust. The moment his heel crossed the circle of dormant runes engraved in the floor, Rodion fired a pencil-thin beam of blue energy. It lanced past Mikhailis, struck the sigils, and detonated them from within.

A crack like splitting timber roared through the vault. The femur joint shattered completely, leg tilting outward at an impossible angle. The colossus toppled sideways, gouging trenches as it fell. Debris avalanched; loose chains rattled like angry snakes.

The crash sent a quake through Thalatha’s bones, but she stayed upright, heart soaring. "We’re doing it—!"

The shout cut short as the monster, impossibly, heaved itself back onto one knee, sword serving as crutch. That crimson healing light surged, knitting marrow, forcing shards back together. Its skull snapped toward them, jaw unhinging in a wordless roar that blasted rancid air.

Thalatha’s confidence stuttered. "We need to run or we—"

Mikhailis raised a calming hand, expression shifting to something she had only seen when he spoke to Queen Elowen—serious, grounded, ancient. The flicker of mischief tucked itself away behind glacier-cool resolve.

"It’s fine," he said, coat settling around his ankles like a magician’s cloak before the reveal. Static crackled along every embroidered thread. The faint sigils stitched in silver lit one by one, forming constellations. "Time for me to get slightly serious."

Rodion backed a pace, optic widening. Energy draw exceeding prior safe channels. Prince, I must object—

"Duly noted." Mikhailis spread both palms to the fractured tiles.

Thalatha felt the air shift—pressure dropping, the way sky feels before a storm. Strands of her hair lifted in invisible breeze. The floor’s latticework of cobalt veins brightened, chasing outward from Mikhailis’s boots like ripples in glass.

Under the colossus, the rune circle flared white. The giant paused mid-rise, confused by the glow blooming beneath its ribs.

Mikhailis’s goggles mirrored that light, twin moons blazing. "Newton’s third law, big guy," he murmured, voice echoing as if two people spoke in unison—one human, one something else. "You press on the world; it presses back."

He lifted his right hand—palm up, fingers splayed. The rune circle answered, lines rotating like gear teeth. Blue lightning tore up through the tiles, coiling his arm in cascading glyphs.

The necro-colossus raised its sword, but whatever energy Mikhailis summoned had already stolen momentum from the creature’s limbs. Dust curled upward in lazy spirals. Every loose chain on the dais rattled, but none fell; instead they hovered, suspended in vibrating stasis.

Thalatha’s jaw loosened. She’d seen high magisters channel ley-pulses, seen Elowen herself weave sunlight through steel, but never had raw arcana felt this personal. It radiated from him in waves warm as sunlight, yet sharp as frost.

Rodion’s voice dropped to a hush. Mana amplification at 184%. Prince, stabilizers!

Mikhailis barely heard. He closed his fist. The lightning snapped downward—not striking the colossus, but the very floor beneath it. Light spidered through every fault line they’d cracked moments earlier, igniting buried glyphs that had likely slept untouched for centuries. The slabs under the monster bucked like a rearing horse.

And the entire floor began to glow.