The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort-Chapter 805: Glass and Shadow (End)

Chapter 805: Glass and Shadow (End)
If something big tried to pivot there, it would slide.
Lastly, she walked back to the entrance and carved several extra marks into the trunks there, deeper than before.
If she had to run, her future self might thank her for the clearer signs.
She stood there for a moment, hand resting against the cool crystal, and shut her eyes.
"Let my mistakes be small," she murmured in Kharadorn dialect. "Let my blades be quick."
No thunder answered. No booming divine voice promised victory.
Good.
She always distrusted anything that offered certainty.
Rhaen picked up her sword properly again, checked the straps of her bracers, and stepped over the first etched groove.
The air changed.
It was subtle at first – a pressure against her skin, a faint tightening in her ears like when riding down a high mountain path into a valley.
Then the shallow depression in the center of the room stirred.
Stone ground against stone as something beneath it shifted.
Rhaen slowed, but she did not stop.
The depression bulged.
Cracks spidered outward.
With a slow, grinding motion, something pulled itself up from the floor.
It came in pieces at first – a hand, or something like a hand, clawed and huge, dragging a bulk behind it. A shoulder studded with jutting crystal plates. A hunched back rising, shaking shards and dust free.
The head emerged last.
It was almost a skull, if skulls were stretched and half-coated in glass. One side shone with a thick layer of transparent crystal, veined with pale light. The other was more bare bone, the socket where an eye should be filled with a slow, cold glow.
The creature – the Warden, her mind named it – planted one massive limb forward and pushed itself fully out of its resting hollow.
Its body was a rough mix of stone, sinew, and crystal plates. One arm had grown around a mass of fused crystal into a heavy shield-limb that dragged a little as it moved. The other ended in three hooked claws, thick and vicious.
It fixed that one glowing eye on her.
Something in its stare felt colder than the air.
"Right," Rhaen said softly. "You’re ugly enough to be important."
The Glassbone Warden let out a low, grinding roar.
Then it charged.
It did not start slow.
One heartbeat it was crouched in the center. The next it had hurled itself forward, the heavy shield-arm leading, claws raking at the stone for balance.
Rhaen did not try to meet it head-on.
She had seen siege rams in motion. She knew better than to stand in front of one.
She angled her steps, moving toward the line where she’d strung her rope, keeping the distance just right so that its rush would carry it where she wanted.
The floor shook under its weight.
The Warden’s shield-limb scraped stone, sparking where crystal touched crystal.
At the last instant before it would have ploughed through her, she stepped aside.
The Warden’s leading leg hit the rope.
It was a small thing. A thin line. But momentum did not care about dignity.
Its foot tangled.
The Warden stumbled.
Its next step came down hard among the hidden caltrops.
There was a sharp, sick crunch as several iron spikes drove into the softer tissue between stone and plate.
The creature roared, this time in pain.
Its bulk lurched as its leg buckled.
Rhaen was already moving.
She stepped in on the injured side, sword coming up in a tight arc aimed at the back of the thick knee joint.
The blade met crystal first, chipping and sparking, then bit into something softer beneath.
Dark, slow blood oozed out.
Not enough.
She retreated a half-step, staying just out of reach of the flailing claw-arm.
The Warden tried to turn.
It was slow at it.
Its weight and the heavy shield-limb worked against fine adjustments.
Good.
She made it spin, then.
She moved to its side, baiting it with small feints, making it pivot to keep her in front.
Each time it turned, its injured leg dragged.
Each drag widened the damage.
It slammed its shield-arm down once in fury.
The shock ran through the stone like a short, brutal wave.
She felt it coming a fraction of a heartbeat too late.
The tremor hit her feet and stole balance.
She stumbled, one knee hitting the ground.
The Warden’s clawed arm swung toward her, fast for such a big thing.
Rhaen rolled toward the nearest column, ignoring her ribs’ scream.
The claws bit into the stone where she had been, carving deep grooves and sending shards flying.
She came up on one knee with the column between her and the monster.
The Warden snarled and slammed its shield-arm sideways, trying to smash the column down onto her.
She threw herself the other way.
The shield smashed into the crystal trunk with a boom that rattled her teeth.
Cracks spidered through the column.
Shards fell, some bouncing off the Warden’s own plates.
A chunk the size of a barrel broke free and crashed onto its back.
The creature staggered.
Rhaen filed that away.
The columns were not just cover.
They were weapons, if she was quick enough and cruel enough.
"Come on then," she panted. "Hit yourself some more."
She moved again, keeping just ahead of its turning radius, watching for the telltale stiffening of its shoulder that signalled another slam.
Each time it missed her by inches, she adjusted.
Once, she deliberately held her position until she saw its weight shift.
At the last possible moment, she ducked under the arc of the shield.
The Warden’s own momentum carried the limb into another column she’d already watched crack under previous blows.
This time, the trunk split almost in two.
The top half crashed down onto the Warden’s shoulder and back, shattering into a rain of sharp fragments.
Some bounced harmlessly off its thicker plates.
Others found seams.
Dark fluid seeped from new cuts.
It roared again, more in rage than pain, and swung blind at the dust and shards.
Rhaen used the chaos.
She darted in, thrusting her sword into the narrow gaps between plates where flesh showed – quick, precise stabs to tendons at the back of the injured leg, to the joint of the shield-arm, to the underside of its ribs when it reared too high.
She never stayed in one place long enough for the claws to close on her.
Her arms burned with the effort.
Her breath rasped in her throat.
But each hit slowed it.
The Warden changed tactics.
It stopped charging blindly.
Instead, it hunkered down a little, using the shield-limb more as a brace and less as a ram.
It shuffled toward her in shorter bursts, then suddenly slammed its shield into the ground.
The shock came faster this time.
Rhaen managed to keep her feet by bracing one hand against a column.
The next time, she was ready, knees bent, weight low, riding the tremor like she would a horse stumbling.
"It’s learning," she muttered.
So was she.
She noticed a pattern.
Step. Drag of the injured leg. Step. Slam.
"Step, drag, step, slam," she whispered, syncing her breathing to the rhythm.
If she counted, she could move in the gaps.
The room narrowed in her world to that rhythm.
Step, drag – she darted in to stab at the back of its leg.
Step, slam – she pulled away, putting a column or a drop in the floor between her and the impact.
Her traps waited.
She led it slowly, patiently, around the circle toward the groove she had slicked with oil.
The Warden roared again, crystal plates grinding.
Sweat stung her eyes.
Her hands ached.
The potions kept her going, but the edges of their magic were starting to fray.
She felt small tremors in her arms now, a sign of approaching exhaustion.
"Come on," she whispered, half to herself, half to the beast. "A little more."
She let her steps slow.
She let her feints come a fraction later.
She gave it the illusion that it was finally catching up.
It lunged.
She retreated along the line of the oiled groove, letting her boots slide just enough to sell the stumble.
It took the bait.
The Glassbone Warden hurled itself after her, putting weight on its injured leg as it stepped onto the slick patch.
The stone under its foot betrayed it.
The oil made the groove treacherous.
Its leg slid sideways.
At the same time, its other leg hit the rope she had reset nearby.
The combination was ugly.
The Warden’s massive bulk tilted forward faster than it could correct.
For a moment it hung there, half-suspended.
Then gravity won.
It crashed down.
The shield-arm slammed into the stone with a force that sent cracks racing outward. The impact shook the whole chamber. Dust fell from the ceiling.
The creature’s head dipped, neck exposed.
Rhaen did not think.
Thinking would waste time she did not have.
She ran.
Her boots pounded over the vibrating floor.
She sprang up onto the fallen shield-limb, using it like a ramp, and fought for balance as her feet slipped on cracked crystal.
Her lungs burned.
Her fingers clenched tighter around the hilt.
She reached the top of the shield and threw herself forward, bringing the sword up in both hands.
The gap between skull and neck flashed in her sight – a thin line where the crystal coating was lighter and the bone beneath closer to the surface.
She aimed for it and drove the blade down with all the strength left in her arms, shoulders, and anger.
The sword bit.
For a heartbeat it felt like trying to cut through a door.
Then something gave.
The blade sank halfway down.
The Warden convulsed.
Its shield-arm jerked; she nearly lost her footing.
The clawed arm flailed, scraping at the floor, then at the air.
She gritted her teeth, planted her boots wider, and dragged the sword out in a harsh, sawing motion.
Dark ichor gushed from the wound, hot and thick, splattering her hands and forearms.
She jumped down before the thrashing could throw her.
The Warden tried to rise.
Its movements were slower now, jerky.
It planted the good leg, tried to push itself up. Its head sagged to one side, the glow in its eye flickering.
Rhaen staggered back, chest heaving.
Her arms felt like they were carved from stone and set on fire.
But she was still upright.
She circled, keeping out of reach of the limping swipes, watching for another opening.
Small crystal cores began to shake loose from the creature’s plates as it struggled.
They tumbled to the floor and rolled toward the grooves, faintly luminous.