CHAPTER 676: THE RIVER YOU STILL CARRY (5)

The room listened with them. The murals held their breath.

Mikhailis exhaled sharply. He let desire fall out with it. "Alright. Treasure’s for later. We move."

He turned from the gate, and the Whiteways changed their face again. The passage ahead tightened, ribs closer, bone-spike vents along both walls like rows of teeth ready to chew ankles. The breathing here had a hiss in it, a little trick of air that wanted to trip minds.

He lifted two fingers. The Tanglebeetles clicked once and scuttled forward, careful feet, deliberate steps. They knew where to put weight and where not. The first vent spat a cluster of shards when a pad depressed; the beetle’s line snapped out and hooked the spray, drawing it into an arc that missed the front shield by a whisker. The thread sang on the return; the shards pattered into a cone Silk had already dropped. Frost kissed. Ember tapped. The cone went to amber stone with a tidy crk.

"Slow and polite," Mikhailis said. "Let the hallway show off, not you."

Silk Guards spread along the lanes and unspooled webbing in vertical veils, catching the thinner sprays that tried to get clever. The threads shimmered only when the lamps swelled. Between swells, they were nearly invisible. Skeleton tower shields angled to fill gaps, edges touching like old friends. The first few shards that got through hit gelled rims and stuck with a sulky hiss.

"Watch the cadence," he called softly. "Vents are jealous of each other. They fire on the neighbor’s miss."

Adjust distribution: archers to rear guard, ants to mid-lane interception, double layer shield wall front.

"Copy."

Rodion’s cadence ticked through the ranks—three heartbeats hold, one heartbeat step. Not marching. Flowing. When a vent spit, a Silk veil dipped to drink it. When a veil sagged, a Crymber breath made it crisp again. The floor itself tried a trick, slanting a half finger right then leveling. Slimeweave rolled once and painted thin gel tracks in a ladder—boots found them without looking.

Mikhailis moved like a thread-puller at a loom, tugging a here, tapping a there. He kept his voice small and his gestures smaller. No lectures. No hero speeches. Just tasks, he reminded himself. Make the next minute behave.

A cluster of elite Blightspawn spilled from a niche like knives poured from a box. They were long and jointed wrong, extra elbows where no kind limb should bend. The first skittered high along the wall, trying to race above shields and drop on archers.

"Veil high," he said, already lifting a hand.

Silk flicked a drape upward as though hanging a curtain in a wind. The creature hit the web and stuck, six legs beating a fast insult. Two arrows found the ribs that didn’t exist in a straight line, more by rhythm than by sight. The thing jerked once and hung.

Another came low, slipping between two spikes, mouth full of needles.

"Wrists, then knees," he said.

A Scurabon slid under the reaching limbs and tapped, tap, at the small joints. It wasn’t a cut so much as a suggestion. The monster listened to the suggestion and fell apart with offended grace. Mikhailis felt a foolish pride for the correctness of the angle.

"Don’t get greedy," he said, more to himself than the unit. "Little bites."

Two Resin Hounds pushed into view, flanks crawling with a wet sheen. They spat ropes of acid that arced prettily before trying to teach someone a final lesson.

"Cover," he said. "Curtains down. Gel now."

Slimeweave edged forward and painted the floor in thin bars. The ropes hit the gel and dulled, turning from vicious to sulky. Silk dropped hoods over the Hounds’ heads, like throwing blankets on bad dogs. Crymber Frost breathed a clean white line across the silk. Crymber Ember tapped along that same line with two careful fingers. The hoods hardened to amber bells. The Hounds went still, teeth frozen mid-snarl.

A Shardstorm Wight slid into view behind them, sternum glittering with orbiting plates. It spread its arms and flung two small swarms toward the shield line.

"Cones high," Mikhailis called. "Catch and calm."

Three cones blossomed mid-air. They fell and caught the newborns as they were assembling. Frost kissed. Ember tapped. The sound they made inside those bells was a brittle tinkling, angry and delicate at the same time.

Archers lofted. Not at the Wight’s face—at the shoulder, where the orbit’s control lived. Two strikes unthreaded the rhythm; the plates wobbled, then fell like lazy rain.

The liches moved only when there was no bite left, crowns dimmed to worklight. They lifted clean hearts with neat fingers. The Myco-Archivist took each offering under its gills and tasted. One tap for yes. A scolding click for no. Sour ones went into jars with a brisk shake of silk. Good ones rolled to Mikhailis’s palm and then out again to the liches, who invested them without puffing their crowns like greedy birds.

He watched as a handful of new skeletons rose from compliant drift: three shield, two spear, one archer. Each took its place without ceremony. The line thickened. The sound of their formation changed—less clatter, more hum.

Thalatha walked the flank like a seamstress checking hems. She pressed a palm to a shield and nudged it half a hand higher. She set a spear butt into the right groove in the stone so the point would land where it should in six steps, not five. She did not bark. She placed.

"Good," she said to no one. Or to everyone.

Mikhailis felt something sensible and soft in his chest and refused to name it. He would name it later, in safety. For now, he made another small fix: a bow’s nock retied with a twist so it wouldn’t bite the string; a quiver strap tightened to stop a rattle that would announce a bad moment to a listening vent.

They moved again. The vents sulked and spat, but less. The Silk curtains took insult after insult and gave back patience. The Crymber breaths made the room’s temperature a tool instead of a problem. The Tanglebeetles yo-yoed three more sharp things out of rude trajectories with neat, almost cheerful humming.

A last lean Blightspawn ran up the ceiling on feet that didn’t care about gravity. Mothcloak slid out of shadow, brushed its pinion across the creature’s eye clusters, and smeared what counted as focus. The next step it took argued with the floor. It lost the argument. A spear helped it accept the decision.

The liches harvested again, and again they were stingy. New bone rose. The number changed in Mikhailis’s head like a bead sliding on a string.

Adjust distribution complete. Formation integrity: high. Rear guard cohesion improved.

He let the compliment land and pass. Don’t preen, he told himself. Not the time.

The hallway widened into a landing where three ribs crossed, then narrowed again like a throat that wanted to clear itself. He paused the line there to check for stupid surprises. He found only the regular ones: a floor tile that wanted to tilt, a whisper in the vent that wanted to echo a step into a stumble.

"Mark those," he said, and Silk left a thread that only they would smell later. He tapped the stone twice with two fingers, the way he always did when he was promising a place he would not forget it.

They moved on.

Makeshift army’s looking less makeshift by the hour. Pride tickled the back of his throat. He swallowed it; there was more ahead.

_____

The descent began almost without them noticing. The floor did not tilt like a hill; it sagged like a tired breath. Boots slid half a thumb-length on every step. No one fell, but everyone felt the pull.

Ley-drain conduits ran along both walls. They looked like veins under pale skin, humming as if bees lived inside the stone. The hum deepened with each pace, moving from ears to ribs, from ribs to teeth. The light lost color too, blue first, then green, until only a bruise-purple remained.

Thalatha lifted her chin to listen with her throat. "Hear that?"

"It’s the sound a stomach makes when it wants to eat us," Mikhailis said, soft. And we are already on the tongue.

The conduits flashed once, a slow pulse traveling the length of the wall toward the dark. Rodion’s projection pinched itself down to a discreet band along the floor, like a painted line only Mikhailis could see.

Structural and ley readings match Boss-Class Node parameters. Size, capacity, resonance: high threat. Additional note: psychological pressure expected. Do not confuse environmental bass for your own heartbeat.

"Second boss room," he muttered. "We’re way off the exit path now."

Thalatha didn’t answer. She shifted her shield hand a fraction, like a person touching a doorframe before they enter a room that might remember them.

The corridor spilled into a circular chamber so sudden it felt like someone had cut the hallway open with a knife. Four rib-arches rose and met in the middle where a cyst of Blight tissue pulsed like a slow blink. The pulse and the wall hum argued about rhythm and then, unhelpfully, agreed.

The floor held a ritual mandala in bone and stone. It wasn’t drawn. It had grown. Rings nested inside rings, spokes like knuckles, tilting shadows that tricked eyes into stepping wrong if you stared too long. In the exact center sat a fused dais, low and patient, the color of old teeth.

Mikhailis’s skin prickled. "Don’t look at the pattern too long," he said. "It wants to teach you a dance you don’t like."

The dais cracked with a noise like a book spine breaking.

It rose. A body unfolded from within, taller than any knight. Four arms. Two took cleaver-blades longer than a man’s height. The other two held bone-chains coiled at the wrists like leashed serpents. Armor made of ribplates locked over a barrel chest. The face wore a stag-skull mask. Ley threads dangled from the antlers, drifting like fishing lines hunting for a bite.

Durability: extreme. Melee threat: multi-zone. Command aura: boosts allied undead. Additional observation: eye slits decorative; primary perception likely distributed through mask filaments.

"Great," Mikhailis said. "A boss who’s also a motivational speaker."

The Juggernaut stepped down from the dais, each footfall ringing the mandala like a bell you only hear inside the bones. The air thickened a finger more. Even the lamps seemed to stoop.

Mikhailis did not waste time. "Shield wall front, stagger wedges! Spears behind, archers to outer ring! Scurabons, Twins, Hypnoveils—flank in push-disrupt cycles!"