CHAPTER 648: CLAWS IN THE DARK BELOW (3)

"A summoning," he whispered, voice trembling with horrified fascination. "But reversed. Not to bind, but to be bound by it." He traced one line, feeling the unpleasant suction of mana gripping his fingertip. Smart—let the caster sacrifice their own will to anchor something worse. He shuddered.

Rodion limped closer, optic shutter flicking as he scanned. A cascade of small gear clicks echoed softly.

Conclusion: rune architecture suggests self-subjugation to external corruption. Translation: someone fed themselves to the Blight on purpose.

Mikhailis’s jaw set. "Lucky us—we’re following in their footsteps."

He flicked open a vial of neutralizing sand, sprinkling a thin trail across the warped glyph. The powder fizzed, forming microscopic seal beads that would dull the rune’s pull. Not a cure, but a plaster over an open wound.

Thalatha knelt opposite, eyes half-lidded in concentration. She touched two fingers to the bowl of teeth. "Each offering taken willingly," she murmured, voice husky with revulsion. "They offered their screams to grow this horror." She let the teeth clatter back, shaking her hand as though flinging away heat.

A thunderous slam reverberated behind them—spectral vines finally giving out under relentless claws. Echoes chased each other through the cathedral interior. A chorus of shrieks answered, swelling like a funeral organ gearing up. The first shapes lurched into the entrance archway: plague-hungry silhouettes, backlit by flickering witch-light.

"No time," Mikhailis hissed. He stuffed the empty vial into a pocket, sparing one heartbeat to study Thalatha’s face. Her jaw was clenched hard enough that a muscle fluttered along her cheek, but determination burned bright in her irises. He motioned toward the far end, where two heavy doors of petrified bark hung crooked on rusted vine-hinges.

They sprinted—Rodion in a hobbling glide, Thalatha favoring her leg. An arrow hissed past, nicking Mikhailis’s sleeve and embedding in a pillar. He launched a psycho-gel grenade behind him; it burst with an emerald flare. The pursuing revenants stumbled through the cloud, momentarily lost in conflicting scent commands.

At the doors, they found only one hinge still holding. The other creaked dangerously when Mikhailis pushed. Beyond, a hallway sloped sharply down into still deeper dark.

Thalatha shot a silk-tether arrow into the hinge bracket. She anchored the line to a pillar root, then snipped it with her blade. The heavy leaf-timber crashed inward, creating a clumsy barricade. "That’ll slow them," she said, breath ragged.

Rodion extended a micro-laser and etched two quick sigils on the fallen door. Temporary ward embedded: seventy-three second delay if they gnaw straight through. Slightly longer if they remain stupid.

Mikhailis allowed himself a single relieved exhale. "Best seventy-three seconds of my life. Move."

They plunged down the slanted corridor, fungus lights receding behind. The floor here was slick with condensation, each step a risk. Roots overhead drooped low, some splitting open to drip sap in bruised colors. It spattered on their cloaks, steaming faintly.

Despite the hurry, Mikhailis’s mind whirled. Reverse binding, teeth offerings, rune scars. Someone built a symbiotic prison—and climbed inside. He thought of the flower-heart beating in the previous chamber, pumping corruption through the veins of a magnificent corpse. Not resurrecting the dead—rebuilding them as instruments.

Three turns later they stumbled into a cramped alcove, enough space to breathe. Thalatha pressed her back to the wall, eyes closed, mouthing a steadying verse. Mikhailis checked Rodion’s plating—a fresh crack had spread, but the core pulse remained steady.

He swept his glowshard left and right. Fresh scratches gouged the rock—parallel grooves, deep, like claws testing for softness. The scratches trailed forward into a black arch smelling of damp stone and wilted flowers.

"Still no detour on the ant map," he muttered. Green blips clustered ahead, pulsing as worker ants mapped each nook. Amber blips—his tiny soldier escort—held positions at crossways behind them, ready to stall pursuit. He hoped.

"Forward then," Thalatha said. She adjusted the wrap around her shoulder, wincing. Her hand shook for a breath before she flexed fingers and steadied them.

They crept onward. Twitches of fungus light highlighted reliefs carved so shallowly they were nearly invisible—stories of birth, growth, decay. In each panel, the final frame showed vines swallowing whatever they depicted: a child, a city, a sun. The message felt pointed.

A sudden metallic tap rang a few paces ahead. Rodion froze mid-step, optics zooming.

Surface irregularity found. Possible pressure plate. I advise—

Too late. The plate depressed under Mikhailis’s boot with a soft thunk. A fusillade of darts hissed from hidden slits. Thalatha lunged, shouldering him aside. Three darts sliced past his cheek, embedding in the opposite wall with a sizzling hiss. One nicked her thigh guard, but the armor held.

"Thanks," he breathed, heart hammering.

She offered a wry half-smile. "Don’t mention it. Ever. Move those clever feet."

They skirted the corridor edge, Rodion scanning for more traps. All the while, the distant door pounded—undead fists gaining rhythm. The seventy-three seconds would soon expire.

At last they emerged into a wider alcove drenched in faint emerald glow. More columns here, but these were silent—no eyes carved, no teeth offerings. Just smooth bark-stone, slick with tears of sap. In the center, almost tranquil, sat an oblong lump of blackened vine fused with the wall. Each slow pulse sent a ripple through surrounding roots, like a stone tossed into thick syrup. Tiny runes—warped cousins of the Binding Seal—snaked along its surface.

"That’s it," Mikhailis whispered, throat dry.

He approached, every sense on high alert. The flower-heart beat slower than his pulse but heavier, each thud vibrating his boots. He raised a sterilized vial, unscrewed the silver cap, and clicked a scalpel out of its sheath. A gentle slice—sap oozed like sludge. The vial’s mouth quivered, absorbing a single black droplet that writhed as if alive.

The plant responded instantly: its petals twitched and flexed, flinging spore clouds. The toxic mist hit his lungs like smoke. Vision blurred.

"MOVE!" he rasped.

Thalatha hauled him backward while Rodion fired a compressed burst of air, clearing a corridor of breathable space. They stumbled through the doorway they’d entered, slamming a rune-barbed slip-knot into the jamb. The knot cinched tight, overlapping sigils sealing the door. Seconds later, bone claws hammered the interior, but the runes glowed orange, holding—for the moment.

Undead surged from adjoining arches, drawn by the ruckus. Their eyes glimmered with that sick blue flame. The trio pivoted, retreating into the only unexplored tunnel: a downward curving throat of living root reeking of stagnant water and charred sap.

Rodion clicked softly.

_____

The next chamber swallowed them like a cavernous throat, its ceiling lost in gloom so dense even Rodion’s beam faded into murk. Pillars of warped root curled overhead in skeletal ribs, each surface alive with faces—some serene, some contorted in silent screams. Their bark-eyes glimmered opalescent as the newcomers stepped inside, lids fluttering open in slow, predatory sequence. Mouths—mere gouges of darker grain—warped into mock smiles, and a low, almost childlike humming drifted from somewhere between the timber and the dark.

Rodion’s core vented a sharp burst of steam, optics narrowing to a defensive slit.

Environmental analysis: empathic illusions at forty-seven percent probability. Also forty-seven percent probability of literal predatory plant faces. Recommend not testing which.

Mikhailis tried a shaky grin, though sweat already beaded at his temples. Grandfather said curiosity killed the cat. He forgot to mention it occasionally nails eccentric scientists to walls. He forced his gaze away from the twitching visages, anchoring on Thalatha as she rummaged in her satchel.

She produced a lantern wrought of thin jade ribs and worm-silk panes. When she thumbed its catch, a muted green flame bloomed inside. The gentle glow spread like morning fog across the roots, coaxing most of the hungry eyes half-shut. The humming dropped to a sulky murmur.

"Stay near the light." Her voice carried the steady calm of a field officer masking pain. Even so, her wounded leg shook beneath armor, and every other step left a smear of fresh blood on the slick floor.

"Near the light," Mikhailis echoed, then drew a chalk stub to mark the archway behind them with his insect-sigil—a beetle silhouette swallowing a rune. The chalk hissed and smoked on contact; the portal sealed itself with a quiet shudder. That buys us maybe ten breaths. He pocketed the stub and turned, scanning the chamber’s vast belly.

At its heart, like a tumor, waited the twisted plant. Bark contorted into plates that overlapped like rusted armor; viscous threads of black sap sagged between knots, plopping onto the floor in lazy globs. From that foul trunk jutted a single flower-heart, petals of bruised crimson peeling back to reveal a thumping core dull as dried blood. Each pulse stirred the ambient mana, dimming lantern light and sending a prickling shock up Mikhailis’s marked palm.

"That’s it,"