The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort-Chapter 806: Shield, Drag, Slam (1)

Chapter 806: Shield, Drag, Slam (1)
The Glassbone Warden would not fall quietly.
It dragged itself forward on one ruined leg, ichor pouring from the split in its neck. The dark fluid slid along the carved grooves in the stone, then was pulled inward, drawn toward the shallow depression in the center of the room.
Rhaen watched that, chest heaving.
The sword felt like a bar of lead in her hands. Her arms shook. Her lungs burned every time she pulled in air. Pain flared in her ribs with every breath, a hot, sharp reminder that she was moving because habit forced her to, not because her body still wanted to.
Crystals that had shaken loose from the Warden’s plates rolled and clicked across the floor, small cores glowing faintly as the spiral lines dragged them in. The whole room felt like it had started to breathe with the dying boss.
"You’re not allowed to get back in your hole," she rasped.
The Warden’s single glowing eye fixed on her. There was no hate in it, only a kind of cold focus. The heavy shield-limb braced against the stone as it tried to stand higher, to come at her again, to reach the center.
The small cores bumped against the depression’s edge, then dropped in.
The glow in the grooves brightened.
Rhaen’s throat dried.
If that thing settled back into its socket with fresh mana flowing into it, she was not going to like what came next.
Her fingers tightened around the hilt.
The Warden moved first.
It dragged its ruined leg forward with a grinding sound and slammed its shield-arm down.
The impact hit the floor like a hammer.
A shockwave ran through the stone and up into Rhaen’s legs. It was stronger than before, overlapping with the last tremor still fading. Her already-tired muscles misfired. One knee dipped.
She swore under her breath and shifted her weight, catching herself on the nearest crystal column. Chips rained down from above where the shock had nudged old cracks.
The Warden slammed the shield again.
The second shockwave hit before the first had fully faded. The two waves tangled in her bones, made her teeth clack together.
"Okay," she muttered, trying to steady her feet. "You got smarter. Not fair."
The third slam came half a heartbeat later.
This time, one of the thinner columns near the center of the room cracked from base to mid-height and toppled. It hit the ground with a crash that sent shards flying in every direction.
One jagged piece whistled past Rhaen’s ear and buried itself in the column behind her. She flinched, heart jumping, then forced herself to move.
Standing still here was signing her own death paper.
She pushed off the column and slipped sideways, keeping just outside the Warden’s direct path.
The creature dragged itself after her. Its injured leg scraped, and it let out another grinding roar.
Shield. Drag. Slam.
The pattern had changed. Before, it had been step, drag, step, slam. Now the slams were closer, stacked.
It wanted to break the room.
"No," she whispered. "I need the room more than you do."
She didn’t have the strength anymore for another long exchange of blows. Each swing of her sword pulled on muscles that already felt like frayed rope.
So she stopped trying to match it strike for strike.
When the shield-arm lifted, she moved in, not to hit the thick plates, but to cut at the wound she had already opened – the gap at the back of its neck where bone and crystal met. When the shield came down, she was already stepping back, using the column bases as partial cover.
Hit and run.
She did not try to be brave. She tried to be effective.
The Warden caught on fast.
It shifted its weight, started turning quicker to keep her in front of the shield. Its slams changed timing again – sometimes two in a row, sometimes a fake lift, then a sideways sweep with the clawed arm.
One of those caught her almost full on.
She saw the claw coming, tried to twist, but the shockwave from the last slam still buzzed in her legs. She moved too slow.
The hooked fingers raked along her thigh as she leapt back.
White heat exploded in her leg. Her foot hit the ground wrong. She stumbled, almost went down.
She hissed between her teeth and forced herself upright.
"Shallow," she told herself. "It’s shallow. It didn’t cut deep."
Her trousers were darkening fast, though.
Pain tried to climb up her body. She pushed it down and focused on the pattern again.
Shield. Drag. Slam.
The Warden was starting to reach for the center more often now, pulling itself sideways to angle closer to the depression. Each slam pushed it a little nearer.
If it collapsed into that hole, would the floor drink it back down and refill it? Would the glowing grooves pump mana into its chest and stand it up again?
She wasn’t going to wait to find out.
She needed a way to make sure it stayed down.
Her gaze flicked across the floor, searching.
Near the Warden’s uninjured side, a large chunk of crystal lay half-embedded in a crack from an earlier slam. It had good edges. It also made a small, higher step between the base of one column and the flatter floor.
A stepping stone.
The idea came together in her head faster than her body liked.
She swallowed, adjusted her grip on the sword, and limped toward it.
The Warden saw the movement and lunged.
It left the safe center line and hurled its weight toward her, shield-limb ploughing grooves into the floor, injured leg dragging.
The ground shook.
Rhaen’s ribs screamed as she pushed herself into a run. It wasn’t elegant. It was the kind of desperate, ugly sprint of someone who had already spent everything and was now borrowing from tomorrow.
She cut in front of the crystal chunk at a sharp angle.
The Warden’s clawed arm swept in low, faster than she wanted.
She had a choice: pull back and lose the angle, or push through and pay the price.
"You’re already full of holes," she told herself.
She dropped her shoulder and pushed forward.
The claw caught her along the side, just under the ribs this time. It felt like someone had driven a row of hot hooks across her flesh.
Her vision flashed white at the edges.
She staggered, boots sliding, almost missed the crystal chunk completely.
At the last instant, her leading foot hit the edge. She used it like a spring, forcing her body up and forward.
For one heartbeat she was higher than the Warden’s eye.
The split in its neck yawned below, a dark, pulsing line where her earlier blows had cracked crystal and torn whatever passed for sinew in that thing.
She brought the sword up.
Both hands. All the weight she still had. All the anger and stubbornness and grief that had carried her from the shaft to this room.
"Stay down," she said.
She drove the blade down into the gap.
For a moment the resistance was total.
Her arms shook. Her injured shoulder felt like it was tearing apart. Pain roared through her chest. Her legs wanted to fold.
She screamed, a raw sound dragged out of somewhere behind her teeth, and pushed harder.
Something gave.
The sword slid in, pinning bone and crystal to the stone beneath.
The Warden convulsed.
Its shield-arm slammed down, missing her only because its weight was already tipping. The clawed hand flailed, scratching deep gouges in the floor. A half-formed roar rattled in its chest and then cut off.
The cold light in its single eye flickered.
For one dizzy second, Rhaen looked directly into that dimming glow.
She did not see hate there.
She saw the last fading echo of function.
Then the light went out.
All at once, the weight under her sword collapsed.
The Warden’s body slumped sideways, dragging the blade with it. The force of it pulled her down. Her boots slipped on ichor-slick stone. She hit the ground hard and rolled away on instinct, just far enough that the shield-limb did not crush her legs when it crashed down.
The final impact shook the whole chamber.
Dust rained from the ceiling. Cracks spidered a little further along some of the columns, but none toppled this time.
Rhaen lay on her back for a few breaths, staring up at the dim, crystal-lit vault.
Her chest heaved. Every inhale hurt. Her side burned where the claw had opened her up. Her thigh throbbed in time with her heartbeat.
But she was alive.
"I win," she whispered to the empty air. "You ugly bastard."
No victory fanfare played. No system window appeared. The dungeon did not congratulate her.
It just changed.
At first, it was small.
The spiral grooves in the floor brightened.
The ichor and loose cores that had been seeping toward the center suddenly rushed faster, sliding along the carved lines like water pulled by a stronger current.
Rhaen rolled onto her side with a grimace and pushed herself up to one knee.
Her hands were slick with black fluid. It stained her bracers, her sword hilt, the front of her coat. She wiped them on what clean cloth she could find and then staggered to her feet.
The room hummed.
Mana, she realised. The flow she’d felt since she walked into this place had shifted. Before, it had been a spiral inward, patient and constant. Now it had become a short, sharp intake of breath.
"Don’t explode," she told the floor.
The grooves flared, bright enough that she had to squint.
Light raced along the carved lines toward the central depression, carrying the last fragments of the Warden’s scattered cores with it. When they reached the lip of the hollow, they dropped in and vanished.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the depression cracked.
A thin line split its edge. Then another. The sound was small but clear in the quiet room – like someone breaking old ice.
The circle sank.
Stone ground against stone as the depression dropped half a hand-span lower, then a full hand, then more. The grooves around it adjusted, some sliding with the motion like living veins.
Rhaen took two careful steps back, keeping one column at her shoulder, ready to dive behind it if something leapt out.
Nothing leapt.
The sunken circle settled with a soft, final thud, revealing not more smooth, crystal-etched stone, but the rougher outline of a man-made shaft.
The walls inside were old carved rock, cut in straight lines rather than grown like the columns.
Faded chisel marks lined the sides. Here and there, she could see the rusted remains of metal support brackets half-swallowed by newer crystal growth.
"Mines," she breathed. "Or something like it."
She squinted.
Near the upper rim, half-covered by thin sheets of clear mineral, was a ring of sigils. Not dungeon glyphs. These were straighter, more geometric. Some curled inward in a way that made her think of old border stones she had seen during campaigns in quieter places.
Not League script. Not any Concordat city she knew. Not Kharadorn runes either.
Some civilisation that had dug here before the dungeon took over. Or the bones of something older.
The grooves around the shaft dimmed again, settling into a faint, steady glow.
It felt like the moment after a locked door opened.
Rhaen let out a slow breath she hadn’t realised she was holding.
"Key turned,"