The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort-Chapter 803: Glass and Shadow (2)

Chapter 803: Glass and Shadow (2)
She pulled the cork from the first vial – the amber one – and sniffed.
Bitter herbs. A sharp, almost metallic tang. A hint of alcohol.
She dabbed a drop on her tongue.
The taste hit the back of her mouth like she remembered from old campaign days: harsh and earthy, with a dry bitterness that scraped its way down.
Recovery draught. For bruises, cuts, broken bones held together by will and a tight bandage.
She stoppered it again and picked up the second.
The pale liquid smelled cleaner. There was alcohol again, but under it, a cool, sharp scent like crushed mint ground with copper.
She touched that one to her tongue too.
The taste was cold and bright, then burned a little as it went down.
Mana tonic. The cheap, functional kind – more for clarity and stamina than for any big flashy spell.
Rhaen stared at them both for a long moment.
Then she sat down, carefully, with her back to the crystal trunk.
The moss tried to pull at her coat; she shifted until she found a patch that felt less greedy and settled there.
Her hands shook a little when she uncorked the recovery draught again. Not from fear. From the way her body was starting to run out of reserves.
"This is probably the part," she told the empty forest, "where some gods-forsaken priest would say this is a sign."
She brought the vial to her lips and drank.
The liquid was thicker than water and warmer. It slid down her throat like an unpleasant syrup, leaving bitter traces on her tongue. For a moment nothing happened.
Then heat began to bloom in her chest.
It spread outward in slow waves, into her ribs and shoulders, down her arms. The sharp edge of the pain in her side dulled, turning from a knife to a grip. Her fingers tingled and then steadied.
She could still feel every bruise, every torn muscle, but the screaming had lowered to a rough murmur.
She rolled her injured shoulder once, testing.
It hurt. But it stayed under control.
"Good enough," she muttered.
She chased it with the mana tonic before nerves could talk her out of it.
The second draught hit colder. For a moment she felt like she’d swallowed a mouthful of mint and snow. Then a clearer brightness ran up the back of her neck and bloomed behind her eyes.
The tired fog that had been thickening at the edges of her vision thinned. Colours sharpened a little. The distant hum of mana in the crystal trunks became easier to separate from the vague headache behind her eyes.
She did not feel strong. She did not feel whole.
She felt like someone dragged from twenty percent back up to a shaky seventy.
It would have to be enough.
She leaned her head back against the trunk and let herself close her eyes for just a few breaths.
In the dark behind her lids, other faces came.
Darec, laughing with his mouth full around a strip of dried meat.
Sera, humming tunelessly as she rewrapped bandages in the camp tent.
Thane, bent over a chalked circle, muttering at anyone who dared to step too close.
Marek, leaning against a wall with that small, sharp smile he used when something amused him more than he wanted to admit.
All of them gone now, somewhere below the first floor. In pieces. Or swallowed whole. Or simply... gone.
"You idiots," she said softly. Her throat tightened and made the words rough. "You bought me the time to get here. I won’t waste it."
No answer, of course.
They had never been the talkative kind about death in the first place.
Rhaen opened her eyes again before the weight behind them could turn to tears.
Later.
She corked the empty vials and put them back in the coffer beside the broken charm-coin. Then she slid the little box back under the moss at the base of the trunk.
"Thanks for the drink," she told the unknown delver. "If I make it out, I’ll raise a real one for you."
Her legs protested when she pushed herself back to her feet. The moss sucked at her boots, reluctant to let her go. She shook it off and rolled her shoulders again.
The ache was still there.
But her hands were steady.
She picked up her sword, tested its weight, and moved on.
The dungeon did not get kinder.
It did, however, become more honest.
The first warning came as she approached a shallow pool of mana-lit water gathered in a dip between four trunks. The liquid glowed faintly from within, lighting the underside of the columns with soft blue.
The moss around it rippled.
Not like wind. There was no wind down here.
Rhaen stopped at the very edge of the glow and watched.
The ripples came again, travelling outward from a point near the center of the pool. Small, almost delicate... until something darker moved under the moss itself.
Her lips flattened.
Swarm.
She did not step closer.
Instead, she backed up three careful paces onto ground she’d already tested, where the moss felt anchored and the stone firm.
Then she slipped a hand into one of the small pouches at her belt and pulled out a pinch of iron teeth.
Caltrops. Simple, ugly things. A soldier’s real friend.
She scattered them in a broad arc just beyond the point where the moss had rippled, listening to the faint, irregular tap as they fell and settled among the strands.
Only then did she take one more deliberate step forward, letting the glow touch the tips of her boots.
The moss shivered again.
Then, like boils bursting, several shapes pushed up through it.
They were the size of dogs, maybe, though their bodies were wrong for such a comparison – too long, too low. Leeches with stubby, muscular limbs, backs armoured in jagged crystal plates that caught the light from the pool and threw it in shards.
Their underside, Rhaen noted, was pale and soft.
They did not pause to study her.
The first three lunged.
They hit the caltrops almost at once.
There was a wet crunch as sharp iron spikes bit into the soft flesh of their bellies and the thin pads of their stubby feet. All three creatures spasmed, bodies arching, mouths opening into circles rimmed with tiny teeth.
Rhaen moved.
She stepped into their pain, not away from it, boots finding the gaps she’d seen between the caltrops when she scattered them.
Her sword moved in short, brutal arcs.
The first leech-creature reared, trying to twist away from the bite in its belly. She drove her blade sideways at the thick neck where soft flesh met crystal plate. Steel bit; dark, viscous fluid spilled in a hot spray.
She pivoted, letting the weight of the sword carry through into the second.
Its head was lower; she drove the point straight down through the open ring of its mouth, feeling the resistance as steel met the hard ring of teeth, then the softer meat beyond. It thrashed once and went slack.
The third managed to writhe free of one caltrop and threw itself toward her side.
Rhaen dropped her shoulder and twisted.
The thing’s mass brushed past her hip, close enough for the crystal on its back to scrape her coat. As it went by, she slashed down and back, cutting along the length of its underside.
The blade tore through soft tissue. Dark blood spilled in a line across the moss as it flopped away, already dying.
Something heavier moved at the pool’s edge.
A larger leech hauled itself up, this one with thicker crystal plates along its back and a strange, jagged growth near its head like a crown. It opened its mouth and hissed – a horrible, wet sound – then sprang.
It was fast.
Faster than the smaller ones.
Rhaen did not try to dodge fully.
There wasn’t room, and her ribs would not enjoy a full dive.
Instead she shifted just enough that the bulk of it missed her center. The impact still clipped her shoulder and spun her half around.
She let herself go with the motion, boots skidding among moss and iron.
The leech landed on the caltrops she had not yet kicked aside.
Several spikes punched into its underside at once.
It shrieked – a high, keening noise that made her teeth ache – and reared.
Rhaen used the moment.
She planted her back foot, found balance for half a heartbeat, and drove forward.
Her sword rose in a tight arc and came down hard at the joint where the leech’s head met its body, right behind the strange crystal crown.
The first hit bit, chipping crystal and cutting flesh, but did not go all the way through.
She pulled back and struck again, using both hands this time, ignoring the flare of protest from her injured arm.
The second blow split the plate.
The leech sagged, spasmed, then collapsed, its body still trying to curl around the iron spikes embedded in it.
Rhaen stood still for a moment, breathing hard, sword tip resting against the moss.
Her ribs ached again. The recovery draught had dulled the pain, not erased it.
But she was standing.
She took one careful step back, then another, until she was clear of the caltrop field.
One by one, she crouched and plucked the iron teeth from dead flesh and moss, wiping them clean on already-stained cloth before dropping them back into her pouch.
Waste nothing.
From the biggest leech’s neck wound, something faintly luminous glimmered.
She reached in and pulled out a small, irregular crystal – a minor core, pulsing softly.
"Ugly little bonus," she said, turning it once between blood-slick fingers.
She slid it into a separate pocket in her pack, where other small trophies already waited.
Then she moved on.
The next threat did not rush her.
It waited.
The tunnel narrowed and then widened again into a shallow bowl of moss and stone between three leaning trunks. The moss here looked even, too even. A soft, perfect carpet.
Rhaen stopped at the edge and watched the air.
No jelly constructs drifted near this place.
That was wrong.
Everywhere else, the jellies moved in lazy patterns, drawn to mana like flies to meat. Here, they gave the space a wide berth.
She frowned and looked around for a good loose shard.
A piece of fallen crystal lay half-buried near one trunk. She dug it out with the toe of her boot and tested its weight.
Then she took a spare length of rope from her pack, tied it firmly around the shard, and backed up to a safer distance.
"Let’s see what you are," she murmured.
She swung the shard by the rope, letting it build a little momentum, then flicked it out so it skimmed just above the moss.
On the third pass, the moss exploded.
It did not just stir. It erupted upward in a thick, wet sheet, revealing a wide, flat body underneath that had been pressed into the shallow hollow.
The thing beneath was all mouth and limbs.
Its body was frog-like in the vaguest sense – wide, low, damp – but its head split into a huge maw lined with inward-curving spikes instead of teeth. Two lidless eyes sat above, dull and pale.
It lunged, not at her, but at the moving shard.
Rhaen yanked the rope.
The shard jerked up and back.