CHAPTER 665: HANDS THAT PUSH BACK (2)

"Hypnoveils, right—Mirror Honest!"

The two mantled ones lifted their frills. Colors moved across them, but not lurid, not fake. They showed small, true echoes: Thalatha’s last clean arrow; the exact look on Mikhailis’s face when he set the lotus chain and refused to flinch; Rodion’s broken shield arm catching the blow anyway. The whisper-spores in the right lane reached out their soft, sticky fingers to touch a mind and slid off. Truth bored them. They wanted weakness. They starved.

Mikhailis hovered behind his tea like a child in a theater, whispering to himself like he could not help it. Hydrate your enthusiasm, he reminded himself in his head, and then felt a small bump against his glove as a spare cup slid into his hand without him looking. He blinked down. Rodion had rolled it over with perfect servant timing.

Hydrate your enthusiasm.

Mikhailis took a sip, burned his tongue, tried not to make a face, failed, and kept grinning anyway. Worth it.

They moved forward together.

Tanglebeetles came up to a dark oval in the floor and cross-stitched a lid of gray thread over the pit, neat like grandmothers fixing a torn pocket. Mothcloak vanished against a rib and reappeared in a ripple, brushing one soft wing over a carved tooth-rune so its hard edges blurred; the rune lost interest in lifting. Aeriform Striders stood high on their long legs and let their plumes vibrate in time with the corridor’s breath. The tiniest change in tone told Rodion what the vents would do before the vents knew it themselves. Slimeweave oozed low and polite along a slick patch, drank up the green shine of acid, and came away clear, leaving the floor matte and safe.

It looked like a dance. It was not. It was a unit doing what each part knew best while trusting the others. No elbows. No panic. No one trying to do everyone else’s job. Thalatha watched and felt something she had not felt inside a dungeon since she was very young: ease while surrounded. She did not waste it. She rolled her cup between both hands, let the heat live there for a count of three, and let her shoulders drop the last centimeter.

The Whiteways did not like that feeling. They never liked to be ignored. The corridor ahead puckered in a line, small mouths opening in the root. They spit a fine green mist that hung in the air like bad perfume and then slid down to the stone where it touched and made the surface smoke.

"Aeriforms," Mikhailis said, already stepping to the side to make space. "Read the cadence."

The Striders lifted their soft plumes higher and sang a whisper line. It wasn’t a song with notes; it was more like a pressure map you could hear. Up and down, up and down. One-and—two—three—exhale. Four—five—six—rest. The sound took the air’s pulse and made it simple. Rodion traced the beat on the floor with a small bouncing dot of light. Even a child could have moved on that beat. Even soldiers who had not slept.

Thalatha drew in a breath on the exhale, out on the rest, and her body remembered old drill yard rhythms. Step on five. Pause on six. It felt like marching in rain when she was twelve and too angry to feel cold.

Mikhailis lifted one hand, palm up like a coach at a street game, eyes bright despite the grime. "Crymber, frost, then ember. Slimeweave, be ready."

The two Twins stepped forward as if they had practiced this corridor their whole lives. The pale one inhaled—no lungs, but a motion that looked like a breath anyway—and breathed a neat kiss of ice onto the vent mouth. Frost spidered outward in a delicate lace. Tiny crystals formed so fast they made a sound like sand poured over glass.

The ember Twin tapped the center with two fingers. Heat walked down that touch. The ice didn’t melt; it snapped. The white crust broke into chalky flakes and slumped inside the valve like a cork. Steam coughed from the edges and died.

Slimeweave rolled in low, like an oil tide that had changed its mind and become a cleaner. A thin smear of neutral gel painted the run-off. The gel looked almost not there, but when the mist slid over it, the acid turned lazy and dull, like a snake too cold to strike.

Thalatha watched everything with a soldier’s eyes. She didn’t just see "success." She counted pace and timing. She read the plumes on the Aeriforms to map the vent’s cycle. One-and—two—three—exhale. Four—five—six—rest. She moved on the "rest" without thinking; her body loved a beat it could trust.

They slipped through. The floor changed texture under their boots—from slick to dry, from dangerous to obedient. Felt good.

"Switch! Switch!" Mikhailis called, his voice too happy for a place full of skulls. "New vent, same song."

He sounded like a boy at a festival game finally holding the mallet. Thalatha almost told him to hush, then stopped herself. The echo of his joy did something useful to the air between the team. It felt lighter.

The second mouth popped open two strides ahead, green mist already blooming. The pale Twin was moving before Mikhailis finished "switch." Frost kissed. Ember snapped. Gel smoothed. Rodion’s light-dot bounced on the floor in time with their feet. Easy.

On the third mouth, frost crawled slower across the rim. The fungus lining the valve was darker here, thicker. The pale Twin adjusted—longer breath, wider spread. The ember Twin counted two heartbeats, then touched. The crack sound came late but came. Thalatha lifted her boot over a trickle of acid and felt the gel seize it like a hand.

She glanced sideways. Mikhailis caught her look and waggled his eyebrows. Look at them, he thought, full of a pride he didn’t have the right words for. Look how good they are when they get to be themselves.

They passed the last mouth. Thalatha did not check behind. She had learned that trick the hard way—look back and you lose the beat your front foot needs. Instead she lifted her eyes to the bend ahead.

Memory moss lay there like bruised velvet, dark and soft and somehow wet without liquid. If you did not know better you could call it beautiful. She knew better. The moment her boot approached the edge, a small itch started in her ears. A voice wanted to organize there. The same old voice.

It offered her the fire first. It always did. The scream that had been a man she knew. The beam falling across a doorway that would not be opened again. The map on the table burning and curling like a dead leaf. The sound her own throat made when she pulled air with no result. It wanted to pour those moments into now and make them new.

"Honest echoes," Mikhailis said softly, not looking at her, like he knew better than to stare when someone fought something inside their own head.

The Hypnoveils lifted their mantles and let truth slide out in quiet light. Not loud. Not scolding. They showed a thin thread of images, today-colored. Thalatha stepping into line when her knees wanted to stall. The arrow that bit the giant’s joint and turned the weight of a monster. Her hand pressed to her bracer, saying I witness with her whole chest. The curve of her mouth when she said thank you to Rodion. The small honest things moss didn’t know what to do with.

The whisper in her ear fought. It tried to throw sparks. A single breath trembled in her throat, but her foot came down anyway. The moss dulled under her boot the way a rumor dies when nobody repeats it. She smiled with only one side of her mouth. The next step was easier than the first because she decided it would be.

"Good," Mikhailis said, but not to her, not exactly. It sounded like he was talking to the corridor, to let it know it didn’t get to keep her.

The next trap hid its teeth. The stones looked calm. Flat. Thalatha had seen calm stones take ankles before, so she kept her weight on the balls of her feet, ready to dart. As the first Scurabon crossed, a tooth-rune lifted behind it with a gentle, polite click. Then the next. Then the next. The sound was like a zipper behind cloth. The corridor had a sense of humor; it wanted to close them up like a bag.

"Tangles," Mikhailis said. "X-web now."

The Tanglebeetles got to work. Spools whispered. Lines arced left to right, then right to left. The pattern was simple, but there was grace in how fast they found the anchor points—rib to rib, root to root. The X-web grabbed the rising teeth across their tops and told them "not yet."

Scurabons stopped flicking their sickles like show-offs and went practical. Tap—tap—tap—each hinge pin. A tiny ping for each. Thalatha liked that sound. Clean work. No drama.

Mothcloak slid backward as if the air were a curtain it could go behind. It reappeared at the edge of a tooth that was trying very hard to be mean and brushed a wing over the glyph face. The rune’s edges blurred. It looked like a hunter waking up from a nap and forgetting what it wanted to do. It yawned. It laid back down. She imagined the smell of its wings—paper, dust, something like old books—and smiled for real this time without anyone needing to see it.

Rodion’s tone stayed calm, patient, almost bored.

If we could refrain from hemorrhaging on the floor, my cleaning subroutines would appreciate it.

"Noted,"