Chapter 133: He Saw Life Moving Through Black Water

Jiang woke because the floor had become a river.

Brinn dragged the seal hide uphill with both hands while black water ran beneath it. His body came along wrapped in the middle, warm and useless, like cargo that had already bitten the porter.

"Stay asleep," she said. "You were easier."

Jiang lifted his head.

The beak packing had dried hard against the crack. His shoulder binding remained tight and showed no fresh red. Warmth sat deep enough in his breast for a full shiver to travel through him instead of dying halfway. 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

A fish tail rested beside his face.

He swallowed the little cavefish and discovered another already heavy in his stomach. Brinn had fed him when he surfaced between black stretches of exhausted sleep. She had also changed the cloth at his shoulder. The damp discarded strips lay beside the warm seam, stained rust-red rather than bright.

He still could not put weight on the bad foot. The failed flipper opened only far enough to ache, and the beak crack objected to swallowing. None of that stopped the cold from loosening its grip around his heart.

The System returned after food, warmth, and his own blood finally stopped.

[UNDERICE SIGHT I AVAILABLE]

Brinn did not see the line. She was tying Tir’s severed rope around her waist.

"No," Jiang rasped, shoving the hide away.

The sound remained a bird’s call. Brinn looked over anyway.

"That is what I told him." She tightened the knot with her teeth. "He found the argument unconvincing too."

The free carrier bell had begun to float in its cradle. Water covered the first sleeping shelf. Rolled blankets bobbed against the chains, and the pair of small boots had vanished beneath the black surface.

Brinn carried a second green-glass mask under one arm. The copper cup beneath it held air from the warm seam.

She meant to enter alone.

Jiang pushed out of the hide. The bad foot folded when he tried to stand, but water had reached his belly. Buoyancy took the weight the stone refused to forgive.

He paddled across the flooded floor.

His failed flipper dragged and pulled the first turn wide. His shoulder hurt under the new wrap. He still reached Brinn before she had finished fixing the mask.

"You can swim," she said.

Jiang struck the free bell with his beak, then pointed the beak toward the drowned throat.

"You can also make bad decisions faster than I can."

He pushed off her knee and crossed the room again. The return took more from him. His breast met the bell cradle harder than intended, and white spots jumped across his sight.

Brinn watched him recover. "One look. One crossing. If your body quits, I take you back before I take anyone else."

Jiang gave a low protest.

"Bite me afterward," Brinn said.

She placed a loop of safety rope around his breast, clear of the injured shoulder. The line ran separately from hers and ended at the bell cradle in a knot Jiang could reach with his beak. A choice to continue needed a choice to retreat.

Brinn lowered her mask.

They entered the upper throat together.

Green light lasted through the first arch. Beyond it, something had stirred old silt from the drowned stair. The water became black enough to erase Brinn’s coat while her hand still touched Jiang’s back.

He could feel her kick. He could hear the small scrape of glass against stone. He could see nothing ahead except the ache left by the green lamp.

Jiang reached for the new sense.

The darkness stayed dark.

Movement appeared inside it.

One living disturbance worked near the shutter, folding around the same point and jerking back. Another shifted weakly beyond the carrier bell, then became still before moving again. Farther outside the drowned hall, a broad shape traveled in a slow curve that no human body could make.

The ability named none of them.

It showed Jiang life without supplying an answer about what that life wanted.

He turned toward the nearest movement.

His beak struck iron.

Underice Sight had shown the trapped body and hidden the shutter between them. Pain shot through the crack. Warm blood loosened one corner of the packing.

Jiang backed away and touched Brinn’s wrist with his working flipper. He dragged her hand to the iron, then pushed it left along the shutter.

The living movement folded on the other side.

Brinn followed the metal by touch. Her fingers found a gap where the shutter had buckled inward. A strap floated through it.

She caught the strap and pulled.

Tir’s mask struck the gap from the far side. His face hung behind green glass. One eye opened when Brinn drove her knife hilt against the shutter.

The clean hook line had wrapped around his chest and passed beneath one arm. Its bronze pin remained caught in the bell-frame ring he had reached. When the shutter shifted, the line had pulled him against it. He had cut his safety rope to keep it from tightening around his throat.

He could not reach the line under his arm with his damaged hand.

Brinn’s knife could reach it.

She put her knife through the gap and cut the clean carrier rope.

The free hook sank away from Tir’s body.

His mask released a burst of old air. Brinn caught his shoulder before the current could drive him back into the bell frame.

Jiang turned toward the weaker movement.

It lay beyond the inverted carrier bell, separated by a gap beneath the shutter. The gap was too low for Brinn’s shoulders and too narrow for her mask. A human arm moved there once, then pressed flat against the floor.

Elen, Jiang guessed. The sense offered no name to confirm it.

Brinn looked from Tir to the gap. Her mask hid her face. Her hand did not leave his shoulder.

Jiang tugged the spare breath cup from beneath her arm.

It fought him toward the ceiling. Air trapped under the copper made the cup kick and roll whenever his beak slipped. He pinned its leather strap with his good foot, tucked the failed flipper, and pushed from behind with his breast.

The low gap accepted a penguin and rejected Brinn.

Jiang sent the cup through first.

The living hand found it. Fingers closed around the leather strap. The weak movement beyond the bell drew the mask against a hidden face and held it there.

Elen’s hand began moving again.

Relief made Jiang careless. He kicked toward her and the broken claw snagged a chain he could not see. The chain spun him sideways. His failed flipper struck stone, and the pain in his shoulder became hot enough to empty his lungs.

Brinn’s safety line tightened across his breast.

She hauled him backward while keeping Tir against the shutter with her other arm. Tir found his footing and added his damaged hand to Jiang’s rope.

Jiang cleared the chain. The movement beyond the bell stayed low and trapped, but it remained steady around the breath cup.

His new sight began to burn.

Each living motion left a pale smear that stayed after the body changed direction. Tir seemed to occupy several places at once. Brinn’s kicking legs crossed her own afterimages. The broad movement outside the hall became a curved wall that pressed against Jiang’s eyes.

He released the ability.

Black water returned, followed by pain behind both eyes.

[UNDERICE SIGHT I LOCKED: VISUAL STRAIN]

Even the nearby green light blurred when Brinn pulled them back through the first arch.

They reached the sleeping gallery with Tir between them. He tore off his mask and vomited water over the drowned boots’ empty place.

Brinn kept one hand around the back of his neck until he could breathe without folding.

"You cut my line," he said.

"You made me cut two."

"The first one was expensive."

Brinn pushed his face toward the warm air seam. "Try drowning more quietly."

Jiang lowered his beak onto the bell cradle. Ordinary sight showed him green smears and Brinn’s silver braid in several wrong places.

Beyond the shutter, Elen struck the carrier cup once.

Alive, still pinned, and still out of reach.

Then the broad movement outside the hall changed its curve.

It passed beneath the free carrier bell and turned toward the living knock without any hook in the water.