Chapter 140: The Last Bell Broke in Its Mouth

Soft edges of the narrow slit tried to close around Jiang’s beak.

He drove the point between its soft edges and kicked from the carrier bell. Water escaped past his eyes. The Bellmaw’s mouth folded behind him, pressing the broken bronze deeper against his feet.

His head entered. His shoulders did not.

Jiang twisted until the working flipper lay flat along one side. The bound flipper could not match it. Cloth and damaged feathers snagged against the inner fold, holding him with his face in the outward stream and the rest of him inside the mouth.

A black tooth shifted above the carrier arch.

Stone struck stone. Tir and Elen were loosening the flooded weight before the Bellmaw could spit the bell back into Ninebell.

Jiang braced his good foot against a blunt plate. The backward claw found nothing, numb after the chain tore free. He pushed with the one leg that still answered.

Soft tissue stretched around his breast.

No human hand could have entered the slit. His beak made the first opening, and his rigid torso forced that opening to keep its shape. Water took the space along his flattened flippers and pulled him forward feather by feather.

His shoulder wrap caught.

Jiang jerked once. Pain opened beneath the binding. A loose end tore away and disappeared behind him, but the knot over the wound remained.

He came through the Bellmaw’s inner fold on his side.

Outside the mouth, the drowned hall had vanished into silt. One pale plate and the carrier chain were all he could see. The chain shook as Hest and Varn pulled from Ninebell. Each pull tightened the bronze against the Bellmaw’s mouth.

Jiang caught a link in his beak. ℯℯ𝑙.

Any fall from the arch would still take him with it.

An old spill groove opened along the wall beside the Bellmaw’s head. Its entrance rejected the green shutter sheet and every broken bell rib carried toward it. Water still moved through the groove in one clean line.

Jiang released the chain and kicked for that line.

Bellmaw flesh twisted around the jam.

Its mouth could not leave the bell, so the whole body turned around the jam. A soft outer fold struck Jiang and threw him against the wall. His failed flipper opened under the blow. The shoulder pain became bright enough to erase the green light.

He found the groove with his beak before his sight returned.

Stone scraped both sides of his breast. A human shoulder would have stopped at the first rib. Jiang’s body entered far enough for the falling arch to miss his back, but the current held his tail beside the trapped mouth.

He needed to tell both sides where he was.

Carrier chain ran across the groove entrance. Jiang caught it under his working toes and struck one link with his beak. He dragged the beak along the next link, making a scrape no hammer would copy, then kicked the chain twice.

Above, the chain pulled once and went slack.

Brinn answered with a second pull that stopped midway.

Below the arch, Tir’s damaged hand returned its uneven blow. Elen scraped green glass across stone after him.

Brinn, Tir, and Elen had answered his scrape. Each changed it.

Jiang kicked the chain away and drove himself deeper into the spill groove.

Below, Tir pulled one lower tooth while Elen freed the other.

Above, Brinn braced while Hest and Varn dragged the chain.

Crushed bronze rose inside the Bellmaw’s mouth until its broken crown struck the flooded arch. The chain loop tightened around the inner fold. Blunt plates cracked against the bell, but the predator could neither swallow it nor let it go.

Black stone dropped through the silt.

One slab struck the animal behind the mouth. A second drove the bell sideways through the pale ring. Bronze split along the rib Brinn had bent into the crown.

Inside the closing plates, the last carrier bell broke.

Water punched through the spill groove. Jiang lost the wall, the chain, and every direction except the current carrying his beak.

Behind him, the Bellmaw thrashed once. Its body hit the fallen arch hard enough to shake the groove around Jiang. The jammed mouth tried to open, pulled the chain tighter, and drove broken bronze through another row of plates.

More of the flooded arch came down.

A second thrash ended under stone.

Stillness held beneath the arch.

Only green water crossed Jiang’s sight; the System offered no message.

Jiang traveled through black water with his injured foot trailing and his working flipper scraping one wall. The groove rose where the carrier throat had fallen. Its stone ribs narrowed, opened, then narrowed again around a road built only for water.

His beak broke the surface beneath a cracked floor lip in Ninebell.

Pava saw him first.

She dropped the empty safety loop, shoved a folded hide under his breast, and pulled that instead of the injured flipper. Aylin caught the back edge. Together they slid him clear of the spill mouth as black water coughed broken green glass around his tail.

Jiang tried to stand.

His good foot took part of the weight. The numb leg folded without warning and rolled him onto the hide.

Pava put one hand over his back and kept it there. "I am deciding whether saving you would encourage this."

His answer rasped against the packing.

"Unfortunately, I understood that."

Rubble covered the old drain.

The human carrier throat ended in fallen stone from wall to wall. Hest and Varn held the last length of chain, but the links disappeared beneath rubble. No bell rose when they pulled. No mask could cross what remained.

Brinn knelt at the collapse.

She set her empty green mask against the stone and waited.

Tir answered through the flooded wall with his damaged-hand rhythm. Elen’s glass scrape followed from farther below.

Both of them were alive.

Brinn closed her eyes long enough for the next water pulse to pass. Then she struck the mask rim once, shifted it, and answered with a different note.

Tir replied. Elen scraped twice.

Sound, water, and a penguin could cross the spill groove. Brinn could not follow them through it.

At the feeding notch, the pressure released.

Elen’s forked glass bar sagged as the cracked edge settled around it. Brinn rose from the buried throat and caught the fork’s exposed branch. Valea took the other. Together they seated it beneath the existing lip before the stone could close crooked.

The glass only stopped one side from settling. The parents still had to make the reach.

Without Bellmaw suction twisting the chamber, the old beak-width reach remained open beside it.

The returning female noticed before any human spoke.

She approached two-moon silver and stopped with both feet beyond it. Her body stayed on her side of the barrier. Only her neck crossed the last safe reach toward the notch.

From the warmed stone, the unnamed male answered.

He shifted his outer foot. The leg trembled before taking his weight. His inner foot, the one carrying the chick, moved only after his breast had covered the distance between them.

Pava removed her hand from Jiang’s back and pushed the warming stone along the male’s chosen path. She never touched his feathers.

Fish scent made the chick call.

Its mother worked the crosswise tail into her beak. Her throat moved. Warm, softened flesh returned behind the point of her bill as her beak entered the opening beside the brace.

Brood feathers lifted enough for the chick’s head to appear. The male kept the small body on his feet and brought its open beak to hers.

Her first mouthful went wide and struck the male’s breast.

On her second reach, the chick found food.

It swallowed, called, and reached again. The female held her balance beyond two-moon silver while passing the rest through the same narrow opening. No adult crossed. The glass fork held one stone edge still and did nothing more.

When the last softened piece was gone, the female withdrew her beak but stayed facing the chick.

A low answer came from the male.

His outer leg folded.

He lowered his breast around the chick rather than falling away. The inner ankle gave next, leaving both feet flat beneath him while the small body disappeared inside the brood fold.

From beneath him, the chick called.

He did not rise.