Chapter 642: The Dead Company (2)
With a guttural cry—half battle shout, half oh-for-the-love-of-roots—Mikhailis drove the ward-staff forward. The polished haft was heavier than it looked; bark-metal layers made the thing hum in his palms like a struck tuning fork. Its glyphs burst vivid violet at the moment of impact.
The head met the corpse’s sternum with a hollow WHUMP. For a heartbeat nothing happened, then brittle ribs splintered outward like dry kindling. A blossom of brown-grey spores exploded, floating around the torch-light in slow-motion spirals. They looked innocuous—almost beautiful—until the acrid, mushroom-rot tang punched into his sinuses.
Mikhailis gagged behind clenched teeth. Do not inhale. Do not inhale. He ripped the staff free, choking on the taste of old coffin wood. The creature’s frame buckled. Ligament-roots failed, and it toppled sideways, tumbling through the spore cloud like a sack of wet sticks.
Now only the ragged rasp of his breathing and Thalatha’s dagger clicking into its sheath filled the suddenly vast corridor. Dripping sap ticked in a distant crevice: slow...slow...slow, like a metronome reminding them the song of danger hadn’t ended, merely changed tempo. Rodion’s servos hissed into a low-power idle, an almost domestic sigh compared to the chaos seconds ago.
The brief calm let Mikhailis notice new details: thin spider-threads of silk still vibrated between wall and floor where Rodion’s net had ruptured; the aroma of scorched fungus clung to his coat; violet ward pulses faded gradually, leaving smoky after-images behind his eyelids. Somewhere farther off a root-warden bell chimed—a single note, sharp, accusatory.
He exhaled but his shoulders stayed tense. The HUD overlay flickered: no red triangles in immediate radius, only the drifting amber of soldier ants cleaning up spore fragments. He waited for Rodion’s confirmation anyway.
<Area clear. Threat likelihood inside fifty-meter radius now statistically insignificant.>
Statistically insignificant. Funny choice. Statistically, he should have been asleep two hours ago.
A shriek somewhere down-tunnel broke his thought. It wasn’t loud—more like a hawk’s distant cry—but every guard flinched. One Hollowguard pivoted, spear haft rattling.
The sound dissolved into air. Mikhailis wetted his cracked lips. "It’s like the roots themselves are whistling," he whispered. No one contradicted him.
The thing he’d downed gave a final shudder. He braced, ready for a last lunge, but the husk only twitched once—reflex, not malice—and sagged. Spore motes drifted upward like lazy snowflakes. He stepped back to avoid inhaling, boots squelching in mashed moss.
First, he ducked left—instinct, not plan—just as a rotted hand clawed past where his ear had been. The sudden motion made his side ache; somewhere in the scuffle he’d caught a stray elbow or talon. New bruise for the collection, he noted.