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The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort-Chapter 457: The Return and Repair (1)
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Rodion staggered through the stone iris of the hidden tunnel, shoulders listing like a storm-battered ship. Sparks dripped from a fist-sized gash near his collar joint, each one sizzling as it struck the mossy floorboards. The once-smooth cloak hung in blackened ribbons behind him, every thread stiff with dried mirror-dust and half-melted rune wax. Servos whined at the wrong pitch, hiccupping whenever he shifted weight, and his HUD stained the edge of his sight with duplicate red icons that kept trying to overlap — as if even the warning systems were dizzy.
He looks like somebody fed him through a dragon's laundry mangle, Mikhailis thought, pressing thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. The underground lab's violet lanterns cast Rodion's silhouette against rows of alembics and rune coils, turning each jagged edge into an accusation.
The first wave of response arrived before Rodion finished his second shaky step. Chimera Workers — about thirty of them — poured from ventilation shafts, from the crack beneath the distiller door, even from an open drawer of copper fittings. Each ant carried a different tool: micro-welders that glowed sea-green, silk bandage rolls thin as hair, thimbles of alchemical epoxy balanced on their heads like ceremonial hats. They chirped at one another, forming neat triage rings around the damaged limbs. Two climbed his thigh plates and immediately began clipping dangling wires, muttering high-pitched diagnostics that sounded suspiciously like scolding.
Rodion paused, optics flickering through a cascade of blue glyphs. <Status: Autonomous repair routines suspended. External assistance acknowledged.>
Across the chamber, Mikhailis's boot tapped a metronome of pure irritation. He'd been pacing so long that thin scorch marks outlined each impatient footfall. The moment Rodion cleared the threshold he stopped dead, arms folding so tightly the silk robe creaked at the seams.
A sigh escaped him — long enough to fog the nearest crystal jar. "Great. Another entry for 'Things That Tried to Kill My AI This Week.'"
He strode forward, boots clacking on the rune-engraved walkway, silk sleeves flaring like offended wings. As he approached, a Worker Ant offered a respectful bow and tried to hand him a heated solder pick. He accepted it with absent grace, eyes glued to the ruin of Rodion's chestplate.
"Look at you. What did I say about not cosplaying a tragic anime hero every time you go out?" The words snapped through the laboratory air like a fresh banner in a storm.
Rodion's stabilizers slipped on spilled flux resin; he caught himself with a stutter-step that rattled every fractured plate. The HUD inside his optics flashed a kaleidoscope of warnings, then blanked, then returned upside-down. He tilted his head left; the HUD righted itself with a guilty blink.
Tiny hands tugged at his leg pistons. The Worker squad had deployed a rolled-leaf stretcher underfoot, chirping insistently for him to kneel. Rodion ignored them only long enough to shuffle into better light.
Mikhailis circled once, robe hem chasing impatiently. "Mobility?" A finger jabbed at a cracked knee actuator.
<Operational at 83 percent. Compensating torque within tolerance.>
He pressed a palm flat over the chest seam where inner pistons glinted like exposed ribs. "Core stability?!"
<Maintained. Thermal spikes nominal.>
He rapped knuckles against the scorched elbow joint; a metallic twang answered. "Servo harmony?!"
<Synchronization offset seventeen microseconds.>
Mikhailis inhaled like a kettle about to whistle. "Seventeen… You're skating on spider silk here, you lunatic."
He cupped Rodion's chin, surprised by how warm the alloy felt — like a kettle left too close to the forge. Tilting the headplate, he inspected hairline fractures radiating from one optical lens. A blackened shard crumbled off and pinged to the floor. "And … Fluffiness Integrity?"
<Sixty-one percent. Marked as yellow priority.>
Mikhailis's shoulders sagged. "Un-be-liev-able. You blew thirty-nine percent of your adorable factor in one outing."
Rodion stood docile, cloak tatters settling around his calves like wilted petals. <Recommendation: Prioritize functional over aesthetic repairs to decrease downtime.>
"Oh hush." Mikhailis seized a bundle of gauze from a Worker who squeaked in protest. He rubbed at a smear of soot along the thoracic plate, muttering while he worked. "You pushed too hard again. I told you: just because you can slow-motion dash like some overfunded game protagonist doesn't mean you should."
He tugged the cloak edge up to eye level, examining charred holes. "This was limited edition," he lamented, voice thin with theatrical sorrow.
<Observation: Emotional overreaction detected. Recommend recalibration of expectations regarding operational risk.>
"Listen here, you metallic diva," Mikhailis snapped, though affection softened the sting. "You're lucky your head's still attached."
A Worker Ant the size of his hand waddled over, dragging a silica basket brimming with shimmering nanothreads. The insect's antennae twitched, prideful. Mikhailis accepted the basket, rubbing a thumb over the iridescent skeins. "Bless you, tiny surgeon." He looked at Rodion. "Maintenance bay. Now."
Rodion obeyed, one step at a time. Each stride groaned; internal gears sparked, peppering the floor with blue pinpricks. Mikhailis clicked a toggle on a rune console. A maintenance dais slid from the floor with a hiss of displaced air. When Rodion stepped onto it, magnetic clamps rose and snapped around his ankles, locking him in place.
"There. Now you can't prance around and make my life harder."
<Objection: Terminology "prance" is derogatory. Preferred designation: Tactical repositioning.>
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Mikhailis snorted loudly as he rummaged through his toolkits. He picked up a fine repair brush and a pair of tweezers with an overly theatrical flourish. "Tactical repositioning, my ass. You were moonwalking across reality glitches out there."
Rodion's frame lurched once as the clamps cinched tighter, gyros recalibrating to a lock-down posture. Tiny arcs leapt from the split chest seam and fizzled against the dais—like blue moths meeting an invisible lantern—before the stabilizer field finally quenched the last of the stray charge. The lab's air smelled of scorched copper, jasmine incense, and the faint chalky bite of mirror-dust; a perfume Mikhailis now associated with near-death victories.
He set the silica basket on a rolling tray and pushed it close to Rodion's flank. The nanothreads inside caught the lamplight, refracting slender rainbows onto the metal. Each strand vibrated, alive with tiny pulses of stored mana that chimed like wind bells only the Workers could hear. The ants responded in chorus—click-click, chirp, hiss—then organized into new squads with military precision.
One squad scampered up Rodion's right leg to his waist, where a long gouge exposed bundle after bundle of neural ribbons. The ribbons were hair-thin, almost too delicate for human eyes, but the Workers stitched them as naturally as spiders spinning evening dew. Another squad clambered onto the shoulder, armed with pebble-size plates of fresh graphene composite they carried like roofers balancing shingles. A final team rolled a bead of epoxy the size of a cherry in a bark sled, its surface glittering with suspended starlight shards.
Mikhailis flipped open a brass toolkit. Instruments—scalpels of liquid silver, quill solder pens, rune engravers—nested inside like well-ordered birds in a jewel box. He chose the pens first, testing the nib against a scrap of tin, watching the ink glow violet. Satisfied, he leaned in.
Keep your strokes short, he reminded himself. Heat too long and you warp the sub-plates.
He set the pen's rune into the torn shoulder seam and whispered the activation phrase. Ink flowed, seeping into fissures, knitting broken Bryl-steel to Bryl-steel in slow ripples. Each stitched rune stabilized with a gentle tick—the sound of metal remembering how to be whole.
"See? Easy," he muttered, mostly for his own nerves.
Rodion's optics tracked him, steady and unblinking. <Revision: Probability of catastrophic failure reduced by 8.9 %.>
"Keep the praise coming," Mikhailis answered dryly, dabbing sweat from his brow. "My ego feeds on single-digit increments."
He shifted to the chest wound. Under the outer plate, the inner chassis looked like a collapsed cathedral of wires and faintly glowing runes: delicate archways buckled; conduits spilled numinous fluid that sizzled on contact with air; a single gemstone capacitor pulsed angrily red where it should have hummed calm blue.
"Core capacitor breach," he whispered to no one. "I hate core capacitor breaches."
Rodion's voice remained calm, but there was a faint distortion—like worry hidden under layers of formal code. <Capacitor output presently derated to forty-two percent. Leakage within sustainable limits for nine minutes twenty-one seconds before forced shutdown.>
Nine minutes. Mikhailis's pulse stuttered. He reached for the spectral silk the chubby Worker still held in tiny mandibles. "Fine thread,"
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