CHAPTER 660: POLLEN, SAP, AND SHARD DUST (1)

The dust fell like slow snow, each mote turning in the amber light as if it had its own small mind. It stuck to sweat, to leather, to the tiny scrapes on knuckles. The air tasted like hot iron and old mushrooms. White runes that had flared like lightning settled into a soft, steady glow along the tiles—like coals deciding to live, not burn. Silk domes sagged under captured debris: broken ribs, dull shards the color of old teeth, a chunk of sword edge that still sizzled faintly and filled the room with a bitter tang.

Mikhailis stood very still and counted his ribs with a careful breath. They answered with dull complaints, a chorus of bruised voices under his coat. A clean cut on his brow ticked warm down his temple, slow, annoying. He wiped it with the back of a glove and felt the sticky drag. His fingers buzzed with leftover mana like he had pressed them too long against a singing crystal. His knees had that hollow feeling—used, but not gone.

Thalatha stayed a step off his shoulder. Her bandage had seeped through again. The fabric stuck to her skin in a dark star around the wound, edges curling from damp and heat. Her forearm tremors had calmed, but he saw the tiny shake in her bow hand when she lowered it, the way tendons quivered after a long pull. The set of her jaw said more than her voice: she had put pain in a box and put both feet on the lid. Her breath was tight, controlled the way a soldier hides pain from herself first. Her braid had loosened; stray gold strands clung to her cheek, glittering with dust.

Rodion rested half-buried in bone rubble, like a stubborn beetle stuck in sand. One shield arm was gone, torn clean at the hinge—bare joint, snapped lines, a smear of silvery lubricant like cheap wine. Only a single manipulator extended, twitching like a tired finger tapping a tabletop. His optic, somehow, stayed steady. It tracked them and the door and the lotus with calm little pulses, as if making a list of which danger deserved the next comment.

Mikhailis exhaled. "Okay." The word felt small, but it gave his hands a job. He stepped to Rodion and tapped the chassis twice, sharp. "Salvage."

The construct’s vents opened with little sighs, as if relieved to be useful. The back plate unfolded, hinges purring. A gray field-bag slid out on a cradle of jointed arms, straps unfurling to fit his hips as if it knew his measure already. The bag wasn’t leather or cloth, not exactly. Lattices rippled across its skin—tesser layers knitting and unknotting—like a spiderweb learning to breathe. It settled into a compact shape that looked too small to hold anything important.

Micro-vac ports along Rodion’s side clicked open. Thin collector arms darted out, precise and hungry, their little claws bright with silk. A cursor halo projected from the optic and skimmed the ruin like a child circling toys to claim: this, and this, and not that.

The arms began their work. Rune-shards pinged into silk vials with crisp little notes. Necrotic resin beads—oily, dark, smelling faintly of vinegar and rot—dropped into glass cells lined with neutral powder, where they stopped smoking and sat like obedient seeds. Sap-crystal slivers chimed as they slid into foam racks, light bending inside them in tiny rainbows. Strips of vine-sinew, still flexing like a fresh catch, spooled into amber tubes that sealed with a sigh. Intact phalanges clacked softly, a faint bone rattle that made the hair on Mikhailis’s arms lift even though he knew they were only parts. Bone-plating segments, smooth and curved, stacked against each other like plates at a noble’s table. A length of lotus chain link, still warm, went into a padded sleeve that closed itself shut as if guarding a secret. Sealed spore sacs rolled into boxes that snapped closed with tiny teeth.

The hologram above the bag scrolled numbers and tags: count, size, purity. Quality markers blinked green, yellow, one red that Rodion immediately shunted to an isolated cell with a curt beep. Mikhailis adjusted the bag’s strap; it settled against his hip with a friendly weight.

Thalatha’s head tilted, eyes hard. "What in Seven Trees are you doing, Prince?"

"Research." Mikhailis didn’t look up. His hands moved on habit, not hurry. He tightened a buckle, shifted the cradle, then pointed at a cluster of shard dust glittering near his boot. The arm obeyed, whisking it into a vial with a pop. "If useless, commercial. Worst case, we sell bone-china to nobles who deserve it. Best case, antibiotics and ant-safe ward binders."

He heard the edge in his own voice and let it stay. If I can’t fix what’s above, maybe I can at least fund the people who can. The thought sat heavy and honest in his chest. He didn’t like it, but it made him move faster.

Her mouth flattened. He could read the distaste—desecration?—and the practicality wrestling in her jaw. She looked toward the ossuary niches behind the broken wall, the neat names carved in silverleaf, and shook her head once.

"No names from the shelves," she said. "Respect the fallen. Study the Blight, not the honored dead."

He glanced up and met her eyes. Dust framed the green-gold there like a sunset cloud. "Agreed." He lifted the bag a little, the way one shows empty hands before touching a shrine. "Blight-touch only. Nothing with a name."

That eased something around her eyes. Her shoulders dropped a finger-width. She moved closer without comment, watching the collector arms with a professional interest, the way a captain watches recruits to see if their feet will learn.

Rodion’s remaining manipulator floated a small case toward Mikhailis, careful as if it held an egg. Inside, a cobalt horn fungus cap lay like a tiny trumpet. The cap pulsed faint teal, breath-light. Rodion vented a thread of sweet-sap from a small port and atomized both into a thin mist that smelled like mint snapped between fingers and the faint sugar of cut grass.

Ad hoc tincture prepared: cobalt horn extract plus sweet-sap carrier. Psychoactive suppression at safe threshold.

"Show-off," Mikhailis murmured, but the corner of his mouth twitched. He uncorked a glass dropper and met Thalatha’s look. "Peppermint sting first," he warned softly, "fewer hallucinations later."

She sat on the dais step with soldier grace, even now. The movement pulled her cloak aside; the bandage stuck to the wound with a wet sound. She didn’t flinch. "Do it." The word came steady, no drama.

He swabbed the edges of her wound with a careful touch. The mint burn made her hiss through her teeth, a flash of white there, but she did not pull away. He rewrapped her shoulder with a fresh strip ripped clean from his inner coat lining, hands moving quick and gentle. He tucked one edge under the other with a neat fold, the way a tailor hides a seam. He cut the knot with a sliver of sap-glass and pressed his palm to the wrap for a count of three, letting the warmth set the tack.

"Again?" he asked, nodding at the ribs beneath her cuirass.

She shook her head, a short motion. "Later." After a breath, softer: "Thank you."

He nodded. He did not make a joke. The moment didn’t need one. The wall-lamps fluttered. The outer gates still boomed with those distant, steady fists, like a giant knocking from the wrong side of the world—patient, organized, the kind of patience that gets through stone.

They had minutes. Maybe a handful. It felt like a lot and not enough at the same time.

Rodion’s pod zipped one last circuit of the chamber and docked into the bag with a soft click. The lattice rippled, shivered, and compacted again. For a heartbeat it looked like nothing more than a traveler’s satchel carried by a young scholar who had taken a wrong turn into a nightmare.

Mikhailis rolled his sore shoulder and crossed to the pedestal. The lotus vessel sat quiet and mean, petals interlocked, each vein faintly lit from within by the bound seed’s dull pulse. The chain sang very softly, like a harp string someone refused to pluck just to make a point. He set his palm on the vessel’s rim, just long enough to feel the tremor inside. Hungry little liar. He lifted his hand before it could sing back.

The chamber breathed. The hush had teeth, but they were not biting them yet. Dust continued to fall in lazy spirals; somewhere a splinter settled with a delicate tick.

Rodion’s optic brightened. The wall beside them lit with a faint time bar, dotted with tiny icons that marched backward like ants. The AI’s tone went into that particular polite mode he used when scolding.

Disclosure: passive micro-sampling has been continuous since initial hostile contact.

Thalatha’s head snapped toward him. "Since the first fight?"

Affirmative. Pollen traces. Sap aerosols. Shard dust. Your captain insisted on bleeding; I insisted on learning.

Mikhailis bit back a laugh and wince at once. He says it like I scheduled the stabbing. He raised both hands in surrender, eyes raised to the broken roof as if confessing to an unamused god. "Because we bled," he said. "Data is armor we can wear later."