The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort-Chapter 811: Where Light Thins (2)

Chapter 811: Where Light Thins (2)
No insignia.
The paper was a fragment of a map.
Her heart gave a small, sharp jump.
The lines were rough but clear: a circular chamber marked with a cross – likely the shaft’s top – then a spiral line with small marks at intervals. At the bottom, a rough sketch of branching tunnels, some crossed out, one circled.
Next to the circled tunnel, in cramped writing, someone had squeezed a note:
"Echo hall. No spellwork. Sound kills."
Rhaen swallowed.
"Good to know," she muttered.
She folded the map along the old creases and slid it carefully into her pack.
Under the map, at the bottom of the pouch, her fingers brushed something else.
A small, round device – like a compass, but with no North marked.
The face was a ring of tiny crystal shards that shifted and glowed faintly when she lifted it. A thin needle floated above them, tugged gently toward the open shaft.
When she twisted her wrist, the needle trembled, then pulled again toward the same direction.
Not a normal compass, then.
"Mana flow?" she guessed.
Whatever it was, it liked the shaft.
She watched it for a few breaths, noting the way the faint light in the shards brightened when she held it near the stone and dulled when she moved it closer to the crystal growths.
Useful.
She slipped the device into an easy-to-reach pocket on her belt.
Her own reflection stared back at her faintly from one of the clearer crystal sheets on the wall. A thin woman with blood on her coat and bandages showing at the edges, hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, eyes sharp despite the fatigue.
"You’re not just a knife," she told that reflection under her breath. "Not anymore."
Knives cut. They were pointed and used and put away. Knives did not have opinions about where they were pointed.
She had seen too many quiet deaths in the dark now to pretend she was only a tool.
She was the only person alive who knew about the leech pool, the moss-lurker, the erasing jellies, the Glassbone Warden’s shield pattern. The only person who had walked this exact path and was still moving.
If she brought this back to Kael, he would use it. He would use her. He always did.
If he tried to bury it...
Her fingers clenched briefly around the little map in her pack.
If he tried to bury this, she would make sure someone else dug it up.
The thought sat in her chest, small and solid and new.
"Witness," she said softly. The word felt strange on her tongue. "Fine. I can be that too."
She pushed herself back to her feet.
Her leg shook once, then steadied.
She rechecked the knot in her rope, tightened the bandage at her side with a sharp tug, and stepped back onto the spiral stairs.
Down.
The glow from below grew slowly brighter as she descended. Not bright like daylight, but enough to make the edges of the steps show clearer. The air grew cooler. She tasted a different kind of mana now – less like the wild current of the boss room, more like a slow seep from old stone.
Above her, something small and dark clung to the wall.
The Chimera scout had eight limbs, each tipped with hooked claws that dug into tiny flaws in the stone. Its carapace hugged close to its body, colour shifting to match the rock. From its place just below a crack, it watched the human descend.
Information flowed through its body into the web of thought behind its eyes.
Distance to last safe tile. Structural weaknesses in steps. Points where crystal growth had consumed more than half the stone.
The scout did not think in words.
Its awareness was a pattern, shared and reshaped by the larger minds at the hive’s center.
In the Broodmind Chamber far beneath Silvarion, the Queen’s presence pressed lightly against that pattern, tasting the shaft through the scout’s senses.
New route. Old bone. Narrow.
Other scouts clung further down, tucked into cracks, hanging from half-rotten beams, their feelers stretched into the weak mana currents that slid along the shaft walls.
They had moved ahead of the human after the boss fell, tracing lines, marking anchor points, staying just outside the bright flows of dungeon power.
It had worked well.
Until now.
The next time a scout reached for the mana around a crystal growth, the energy bit back.
It was a small change at first.
Where the currents had been smooth, they turned rough. Little eddies formed. The mana scraped along the scout’s sensory filaments like grit under a nail.
The scout recoiled.
Its limbs blurred at the edges.
The stone it clung to seemed, for a heartbeat, to ripple.
In the hive, several minds flared in sudden warning.
Pull.
The scout dragged itself away from the glowing vein and into a deeper crack. The blur faded. Its limbs came back into sharp focus.
The message went up the chain.
In the war tent, the picture hanging over the table flickered.
Rhaen’s form, halfway down the shaft, wavered. For a second the image stretched, her outline smearing into the stone. Then it snapped back into clarity, but the colours were slightly off. The crystal veins looked too bright, the shadows too deep.
"Rodion," Mikhailis said quietly. "Tell me that’s not my eyes."
The AI’s voice slid through his thoughts, cool and precise.
Mikhailis watched the projection blink again.
One moment Rhaen was there, hand on the wall, rope at her waist, moving slow.
The next, a patch of the wall went black for two heartbeats. When it came back, she had taken three more steps down.
"Glitch," Lira breathed behind him.
Her voice stayed calm, but he heard the tightness under it.
"Your spell is failing?" Cerys asked from the right side of the table.
Elowen’s gaze did not leave the projection.
"It is not a simple spell," she said. "And no. Not failing. Being pushed against."
Mikhailis frowned slightly.
So the dungeon is finally looking back properly,
he thought.
<Correct,> Rodion said. <Previous interactions classified the hive as low-level ambient interference. After the Warden’s death and our tagging of the room, Ashen River’s core appears to have re-prioritised its threat list.>
"So we moved from background noise to ’unwanted guest,’" Mikhailis murmured.
<You are now a visible tick on its skin instead of a piece of dust, yes.>
He snorted softly.
"That’s a very flattering image."
Another flicker rippled across the pane.
For a second, the view shifted sideways without moving, like looking at the shaft through water. Rhaen’s figure doubled, then rejoined.
Lira stepped a little closer to his shoulder.
"This is new," she said.
"New is one word," Serelith said, lounging in her usual seat with her chin on her hand. "Terrifying is another."
The amethyst of her eyes gleamed brighter each time the light on the pane warped. Excitement, not fear.
Cerys folded her arms.
"If your... system loses her completely down there, that is it," the knight said. "We cannot send anyone after her fast enough."
"We couldn’t even if the picture was perfect," Vyrelda added from the far corner. "She’s already half a day ahead of any sane rescue party."
Mikhailis let the argument murmur at the edges of his hearing.
His real attention was split between the flickering pane and the quiet pressure of the hive link in the back of his mind.
Show me the edges,
he thought.
The scouts in the shaft responded.
They shifted closer and then away from the crystal veins, testing where the mana flowed smooth and where it fought. In the shared sense-map, bright patches appeared where the dungeon’s currents now twisted harder.
It was like watching a river grow teeth.
<The core is increasing turbulence around structural junctions and our anchor points,> Rodion said. <It is not yet directly targeting the scouts with active attacks, but it is attempting to make their perceptions unreliable.>
"So it won’t let us be its CCTV anymore," Mikhailis said.
He rubbed his thumb along the rim of his cup.
On the pane, Rhaen reached the bottom of the visible section. The light from below painted her in a faint greenish tone.
For a heartbeat, the image went dark.
Not flickering. Not warped.
Just gone.
The tent held its breath.
Then the picture snapped back, showing the next stretch of stairs.
Elowen’s shoulders, which had gone rigid, eased by a fraction.
Mikhailis let out a slow breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding.
"We’re not blind yet," he said.
<Not yet,> Rodion agreed. <But if the current rate of adaptation continues, expect more frequent blackouts and reduced fidelity.>
"Like a bad anime stream," he muttered. "Everyone frozen with a stupid face."
Serelith’s lips curved.
"If she dies while frozen in an unflattering pose," the mage said softly, "I will haunt you, Mikhailis."
He gave her a sideways look.
"If she dies at all, you will have to get in line," he said.