CHAPTER 640: BLENDING WITH THE ELVES (END)

Mikhailis stepped out of the Archive-Tree’s crystalline dome, the living wood archway closing behind him with a breath-like sigh that fluttered the ends of his coat. A hush swallowed him the instant that crystalline glow disappeared. Out here, the corridor swam in twilight greens and bruised violets, every curve of bark bathed in the slow pulse of lantern-fungi. Some caps burned bright jade, others ember-orange, and together they mottled the tunnel like stained glass on wet stone. Far below, sap-flows thumped in steady percussion—distant drums for a procession that felt half funeral, half parade.

The Hollowguard took their first steps in perfect cadence. Their vine-etched pauldrons creaked—a subtle leathery groan that reminded him of old library door hinges. Two warriors led, long spears angled just enough to clear low-hanging roots. Two mirrored them at the rear. In that quartet, Thalatha walked last, head held high, braid swaying like a golden pendulum that never lost rhythm. The only thing sharper than her focus was the bone-white dagger she wore cross-drawn at her spine.

Mikhailis drifted somewhere between them, equal parts guest and cargo. Focus, Mik. Keep the brain busy; ignore the heartbeat trying to jump the fence. His gaze shifted to the translucent overlay projected on his glasses. Neon dots flared and faded over a ghost map of root corridors. Green dots—worker ants—fanned out like spilled pepper. Amber—soldier units—clustered around chokepoints. Red triangles blinked wherever Rodion tagged "unknown variables." Those triangles pulsed slightly faster tonight.

Update: swarm telemetry at 72 percent completion. Uplink to Silvarion Thalor remains non-functional. Interference source undetermined.

Rodion’s clipped voice crackled straight into Mikhailis’s earbone implant. Not loud enough for the guards to hear, but plenty loud for his nerves. "Yeah, no joke." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Static still hissed on every channel. Three nights of that hiss felt like sandpaper inside the skull.

Re-summarizing interference hypotheses. One: ley-line dampeners woven into canopy lattice. Two: cloaking fields from dormant Elder wards. Three: sabotage via external Blight tendrils. A fourth possibility remains: your personal luck index.

Ha-ha. He didn’t answer out loud; instead, he narrowed his eyes at a fresh cluster of red blips edging the map’s periphery. If these keep popping, we’ll run out of map before we run out of trouble.

Ahead, the corridor bent downward, roots forming a natural spiral stair. The air thickened with cold earth and old compost. Lantern-fungi thinned, so Thalatha gestured, and the forward guards snapped wrist-torches alight. Blue-white flames licked along living wood, illuminating carved glyphs every few paces—ward runes, but many looked scabbed over as if the tree itself tried to heal cracks.

Mikhailis brushed knuckles along one of those scars as he passed. The surface was smooth, but a warmth pulsed beneath, unnervingly close to his own heartbeat. Like the roots remember last week’s pain. He pulled his hand back quickly.

Their descent deepened: one spiral flight, then another. Each turn tightened the corridor until it felt like walking through the windpipe of a giant creature that refused to breathe. The hush down here was heavier—thicker than silence, seasoned with whispers of things that lived too long in the dark.

"My new room better have a bathtub," Mikhailis murmured, just loud enough for the nearest guard. The elf kept his stoic posture; only an extra blink betrayed he’d heard.

Four paces later, Rodion pinged again.

Ambient humidity at 94 percent. Mold spore count rising. Probability of fungal wardrobe at bedtime now over fifty.

"Lovely. I’ve always wanted to sprout mushrooms overnight."

He got no visible reaction, but he imagined Thalatha’s lips tightened half a millimeter. Hard to tell in this lighting.

Minutes stretched. Drips echoed—slow, methodical, never synchronized. The cadence set his teeth on edge. He tried humming under his breath, a half-remembered lullaby from palace nurseries. The melody wilted when lantern-fungi thinned to pinpricks, leaving more darkness than glow.

That darkness carried weight—weight of secrets, of root-wardens who’d traded daylight for duty. He respected them. He didn’t envy them.

Isolated and quiet—sure. But quiet can twist into lonely faster than spore-bread molds. A flicker of guilt flamed in his chest: Elowen always said he filled empty halls with too much talking. Maybe empty halls needed talking.

A flick of movement pinged on his HUD—amber dot 21-B scurried near ceiling level, then froze. Another dot, 22-A, hovered and blinked red.

Alert: motion cluster detected. Trajectory intersects corridor ahead.

Mikhailis stiffened. "Where—?" He forgot to whisper.

Before he could finish, the left wall opened into a tiny alcove where lantern-fungi had died off. The gloom there looked thicker, like smoke trapped behind glass. Red triangles swarmed his overlay. His pulse hitched.

Thalatha’s voice sliced the hush. "Evade."

She didn’t shout. She commanded.

In a single breath, the forward guards split left and right, pulling Mikhailis with them. Thalatha surged past, cloak snapping. Up above, living shutters slammed over the fungi lamps, suffocating most of the light. The corridor plunged into murky dusk, only the blue-white of wrist-torches flickering.

That was when shapes slid from the alcoves.

Gaunt figures, shoulders narrowing to pinpoints, hips skeletal and wrong. Arms hung low with finger-bones stretched too long, sheathed in lichen and ragged leaves. Hollow sockets replaced eyes; within them faint root fibers twitched like sleeping worms. They didn’t step—they drifted, as though wind pushed them. And they were utterly silent. Even the sap-drums overhead muted for that heartbeat.

This shouldn’t exist, Mikhailis thought, stomach folding.

"This is exactly why I didn’t want a remote room in the gloomy archives!" His words shook, half whisper, half plea.

Thalatha’s answer never wavered. "Fight or flight," she said, drawing her curved dagger from its spine sheath. Silver edge bright in torchlight.

He did a quick mental calculus. Five tunnels to his quarters, each lined with unknown alcoves, unknown shadows. Fleeing meant dragging these things behind him into a blind warren. Fighting meant maybe ending it here—if they could. Fight it is, his mind decided before his courage cleared the invoice.

The first shadow swelled—its torso ballooning like a bellows dragged too far, ribs groaning apart as if someone were tuning a macabre instrument. In the instant before it pounced, Thalatha abandoned bow and quiver in a single, fluid shrug. The bowstring barely kissed the floor before she was moving, legs a blur beneath her cloak.

The corridor flashed with silver. Her dagger traced a looping figure-eight that caught the lunging wraith at three points: first across the back of each fungal knee, severing tendons that looked more like twisted ivy than flesh; second in a diagonal slash that parted its throat—if the hollow stalk it used for breathing counted as such; third in a blur-fast jab that winked off its wrist joint, disarming it of bone-shard claws before it even hit the root-boards. The creature collapsed, mouth still opening and closing in a noiseless scream, sap-black ichor dripping where blood should have been. The entire maneuver took the time of one heartbeat.

A second monster waddled into view, dragging one useless leg, arms extended like someone reaching for a lost dream. Its fingers were knuckled roots, each tip oozing amber.

"Out of the way!" a rear guard barked. He stepped back to gain momentum—only to clip a slick patch of lichen. Panic flared in his eyes.

Mikhailis reacted without thinking. He pivoted on the ball of his left foot, swung his right leg in a low, sweeping kick—the same prison-yard takedown Cerys drilled into him for dealing with drunk brawlers. His boot hammered the creature’s knobby kneecap. A crunch like brittle pottery echoed, and the monster folded sideways, slamming its skull against the corridor wall.

"Sorry!" he hissed at the guard—and maybe the creature—every syllable shaking. "Force of habit. Cell-block etiquette; long story."

He barely finished before a skin-crawling hiss whispered behind him. Rodion rolled out of shadow on thick treads, plates rotating and locking until the construct loomed nearly two heads taller than a man. In torch-flicker light the armor’s matte surface glimmered like ceramic shell, seams glowing faint turquoise where magical circuits met tech pistons. The transition from compact scout form to hulking guardian took seconds, yet somehow felt elegant—like origami folding out of thin air.

Another undead surged at Mikhailis, its head twisted halfway around so the mouth gaped over its own shoulder. He tried to backpedal but vines snagged his ankles.

Rodion cut him off, stepping between with calm inevitability. Anterior plates flared like overlapping shields. The creature’s swipe crashed harmlessly against the alloy-root composite, sparks spraying. Rodion didn’t budge.