Chapter 155: The Penguin Took the Short Way Down

Jiang’s backward claw was saving his life by tearing his leg apart.

It held the saddle loop while the rest of him swung beneath Mottle. Each beat of her wounded wing pulled his weight through the claw and opened the new gap where her flight feather had torn free.

Blood whipped past him in red drops.

Ilex lay across the saddle rail, reaching until her bound knee stopped her. "Jiang!"

He could not climb. His failed flipper slapped leather without closing around it. The good foot found Mottle’s side, slipped from the moving feathers, and struck the bad leg hard enough to whiten his sight.

He wanted the saddle above him, the warm family behind the arch, and enough sense to let the hunters finish their own monster. Mottle’s blood kept crossing his face. Each drop made the selfish answer heavier.

Below them, the bellwyrm dived toward the nursery.

Warm egg chambers opened along the red cliff in stacked crescents. Chainwing families carried woven cradles onto the bridges while adult wyverns crowded the launch ledges. The false call in the wyrm’s teeth drove every frightened homebell to answer.

Mottle lost another body length.

Jiang looked up at the blood leaving her wing. Then he looked down at the broad scaled neck beneath the cloud.

He opened his claw.

Ilex’s hand closed on empty air.

Jiang fell with his feet behind him and his beak pointed down.

Water would have held his breast, given his flippers something to push, and turned the angle of his rigid body into speed he could steer. Air offered the speed and none of the kindness.

He tucked the failed flipper close. The other pressed against his side. Wind found every torn edge in his molt and tried to peel him open.

The bellwyrm rose beneath him.

Jiang struck behind its jaw.

The impact crushed breath from his chest. His loose shoulder binding snapped, and pain spread down the failed flipper. Overlapping scales threw him toward a black fin spine.

He caught a seam with the backward claw.

For once, the wrong-facing piece of his body had chosen an excellent career.

Jiang flattened his belly between two scale ridges. The fin swept over him, close enough to cut a line through his upper coat without reaching skin. He crawled toward the jaw using one webbed foot, the claw, and his beak against the scale edges.

Mottle and Slate crossed above.

The jaw-hook line ran from the infected bell to Ilex’s saddle, over Slate’s rear post, and back to Rill’s hands. Pulling it now would rip the bell against the jaw scale without freeing the black-green braid beneath it.

"He is on the neck," Ilex shouted.

"I noticed the penguin falling onto our hunt," Rill called back.

Two Chainwing riders dropped ahead of the bellwyrm. They rang loose copper over an empty cleft, trying to turn the predator away from the nursery. Its head moved toward them, then the infected call pulled it back.

The bell had taught the animal where to keep hunting.

Jiang reached the base of the jaw.

The black-green strand crossed three scales before entering the crushed bell. It sank into each overlap whenever the hook tightened. Rill could tear out the copper or leave the corruption behind, but not both.

Jiang pinned the strand with his good foot.

It twisted around his webbing.

Cold passed through the skin, carrying scraps of borrowed sound: Mottle’s contact rhythm, the emperor mother’s warning, Varn’s final order, and Jiang’s own longer beat. None belonged to the thing under his foot.

His throat had one useful change left, if useful meant possible.

Jiang opened his beak and found no first sound.

The nursery filled his view. One bridge had jammed with cradles and frightened wyverns. A small copper bell swung from the nearest bundle, answering every false call because the hands carrying it could not stop shaking.

He forced air through the torn place in his throat.

One low voice emerged. The second dragged behind it, thin and ragged. Jiang separated their beat anyway, shortened the end, and held it until blood ran beneath his tongue.

The copper copy kept the longer ending Jiang had used before.

Its black-green braid rose from the scale seams to complete the fixed sound.

He wedged his bleeding beak beneath the lifted braid.

The strand fought like a wet cord drawn tight. He lifted until the fracture at the beak tip widened, then trapped the braid against the backward claw that had carried him down.

"Pull," he tried to shout.

His torn throat gave him no voice.

Ilex saw the strand above his black back.

She yanked the jaw line across her saddle horn. Rill and Slate took the returning weight. Mottle folded her good wing and dropped beside the bellwyrm so the line pulled outward instead of up.

The crushed bell tore from the jaw.

Jiang kept the braid pinned.

Black-green fibers stretched between his foot and the broken copper. Rill’s hook carried the bell away. The fibers narrowed, cut into Jiang’s webbing, and finally snapped free of the jaw scales.

The bellwyrm roared without a stolen voice.

It twisted its long body and rolled.

Jiang lost the scale seam. The backward claw tore loose, and he fell through a cloud full of ringing chains.

Rill sent the infected bell toward the empty cleft. Riders below caught the hook line and swung the copper into a round opening cut through the cliff. White lightning moved inside the old storm furnace.

The bell struck the furnace wall.

Black-green water climbed out of the split crown. Lightning caught it before it found another piece of copper. The fibers burned from bell to hook, forcing each rider to release in turn. Nothing screamed with a human voice. No trapped soul came out.

The bellwyrm veered from the nursery after the ringing stopped. Its long body struck an empty bridge, broke half the links, and disappeared beneath the lower cloud with old bells still caught in its teeth.

Below the burning hook line, Jiang kept falling.

Mottle came under him upside down.

Ilex had opened the broad leather cradle where the homebell used to hang. Jiang hit it belly-first. The cradle stretched across his chest and threw him against Mottle’s warm breast feathers instead of letting him pass between her wings.

Ilex caught the loose buckle and closed it through one saddle ring.

Mottle beat her uninjured wing and rolled upright.

Her wounded wing folded around the missing feather. She could glide toward Ninebell, but each attempt to climb pulled fresh blood through the gap.

Slate moved above her. Rill dropped his hook chain through Mottle’s rear saddle ring, and the dark wyvern took part of her weight. No pair carried the other. They held one shared fall shallow enough to aim.

The bronze arch waited ahead, smaller than Mottle’s spread wings.

Valea stood inside it with her bent road knife. Kedra and Aylin hauled on the lower crossbar with the red strap Jiang had left in Ninebell. Hest drove his remaining iron bar under the opposite edge.

Mottle folded both wings.

Slate released the shared chain.

They crossed the threshold and crashed through Ninebell’s rain.

Mottle struck breast-first, protecting the wing gap. Ilex stayed in the saddle because Pava’s binding held. Jiang’s leather cradle tore open and rolled him across the street until the fallen hide stopped him.

The female emperor met him there.

She covered the chick with one side of her brood fold and pressed the other against Jiang’s soaked back. The male touched his beak to Jiang’s crown from where he lay. Their chick called from the warm pocket between them.

Jiang tried to answer.

Only air left his throat.

The System waited until he was alive on stone before intruding.

[EVOLUTION PATH DISCOVERED: STORMDIVE - LOCKED: MOLT INCOMPLETE | TWO-VOICE CALL I UNAVAILABLE: VOCAL INJURY]

No wing grew from his penguin body. His leg remained damaged, his flipper failed, his beak bled, and Mottle lay in the street with a hole in her flight feathers. The burned thread gave him no point and returned no strength.

Aylin reached the hide on her knees. Her hand stopped above his back until Jiang leaned into it.

Across the arch, the Red Aeries fell quiet.

A small bell rang from inside the nursery cliff.

It made the same hatch rhythm twice.

Then a second fixed rhythm answered from deeper in the stone.

Ilex raised her bruised face from Mottle’s saddle. "There are no bells inside the egg chambers."