Chapter 228: The Tooth Took the First Feathers of His New Body

White metal reached Jiang’s new feathers before anyone on either side agreed how to move it.

Its upper point brushed his back. Heat ran along the black contour field without finding skin, while the lower blade pressed white light through the sparse hollow at his breast.

Jiang flattened until stone held his belly.

There was no room left to become smaller.

Beyond him, the diver pulled through the scar. Hest’s bar pushed from beneath. Bellwyrm leaned against living tissue, and Valea kept her blade away from a cut she could not take back.

Direct-current sensitivity stripped all of that down to pressure.

A narrow force withdrew beyond the tooth. Something blunt held the upper surface. A large body compressed water from below. Each source changed the gap, but none arrived with a face or intention.

Jiang waited for them to disagree.

Behind the diver, the black cord tightened.

White metal rotated toward his spine. He lowered his head, and the point passed over his crown close enough to heat the wet feathers there.

Hest shoved the bar upward.

Its bowed center rolled instead of lifting. The tooth rose on one side and dropped harder on the other, driving the lower blade into Jiang’s breast.

Jiang cried out into the flooded slit.

From the basin, the female answered. Her call stayed controlled until the chick broke through it. The smaller beat struck fast and wrong, made worse by the burned beak.

Jiang braced his sound foot along the wall.

The fish in his stomach shifted when he tensed. Nausea climbed into his throat, and hunger answered beneath it as if both feelings could occupy the same hollow without contradiction.

He could not afford to lose the meal here. He could not spare breath to protect it either.

Jiang swallowed against the burned tongue, held the fish down, and kept his foot planted while the blade pressed closer. The choice made his injured shoulder shake against the tunnel roof.

"Move," he told a piece of enemy metal.

Bubbles carried the argument nowhere.

Across the basin, Valea watched the lower hinge sink.

She cut the scar tissue beside it.

Her bent blade opened a dark crescent without touching the white edge. Warm blood folded into the basin and carried the smell of living stone. The Bellmother wall tightened around the wound, trying to close what Valea had just made.

White metal shifted sideways instead of upward.

Hest’s bowed bar slipped from the hinge.

He caught it against his shoulder before the iron could strike the emperor family. The old bow deepened beneath his weight.

"I cannot lift it cleanly," he said.

"Then stop lifting," Valea replied. "Give it somewhere worse to go."

Hest looked at Bellwyrm’s unburned forelimb braced below the hinge.

"Bellwyrm already occupies that place," Hest said.

Bellwyrm settled the argument for him.

It removed the sound forelimb.

Living tissue sprang back, jerking the white fragment toward the empty space. Before the diver could use that movement, Bellwyrm drove its burned forelimb into the opening.

White fire crossed old burns.

Bellwyrm recoiled through half the motion and chose to keep the limb there. Its jaw opened over the basin. No roar came, only air forced through crushed bells deep in its throat.

Mottle pulled the smallest juvenile behind a folded ridge with her claw. Ilex moved beside them rather than toward the fragment. Neither waited to learn whether Bellwyrm’s pain would become a strike.

Jiang’s female partner pushed the chick beneath her mate’s neck.

He could not stand. He lowered his head across the small back and held that much. Cloth under his side wound darkened farther, but his lowered beak shielded the chick from the basin.

Only then did the female move one body length toward the water.

Bellwyrm’s opening jaw sent the diver backward.

It released the fork with both hands and kicked backward. Black cord paid out through one white wrist ring, letting the tool remain caught while its handler escaped the first bite.

Bellwyrm snapped on empty water.

Even then, the diver did not flee.

It stopped beyond the scar lip, took the black cord in both hands, and pulled from a place the wounded animal could not reach.

Caught beneath the fragment, the retrieval fork turned.

Bellwyrm’s trapped forelimb held one side. Hest wedged the deepest bow of his iron against the other. Valea widened her dark crescent with a second cut that let blood move around the metal rather than hold it fast.

Valea could see the fork shaft between Bellwyrm’s limb and Hest’s iron. One downward cut might sever it. She raised her blade, followed the line, and found the white hinge directly beneath.

"If I miss, it closes," she said.

"If you hit, it may close," Hest answered.

The diver felt their pause through the fork and pulled harder.

Valea turned her blade into the living crescent instead. The cut hurt the Bellmother and kept the metal from clamping Jiang’s unseen body. It was the choice she could measure with her own hand.

For an instant, the tooth stopped choosing a direction.

Jiang felt the pressure gap.

It was not safety. Water simply ceased driving both white surfaces toward him at once.

Jiang committed before the pressure could change.

His sound foot drove first. The tail pressed flat along the low wall. He opened the uninjured wing only as far as stone allowed and kept the damaged one locked over the shoulder.

His head entered the slit.

White heat closed behind his eyes. The upper point scraped the new coat from crown to neck, bending feathers backward without tearing them free.

Jiang drove again before the gap closed.

One shoulder crossed. The other met the lower hinge.

He could not rotate inside the stone. His straight leg prevented the hip from following the angle his chest had taken, and the bad shoulder could not fold far enough to reduce his width.

Pressure shifted across the water beyond him.

Hest had shifted the bar.

Jiang knew only that the blunt interruption moved from below the upper tooth to the outer side. A new gap opened along his injured shoulder and vanished along his flank.

Jiang chose the opening near his shoulder.

Pain tore through the joint as he pressed into the opening. His sound wing folded across his back. The injured wing compressed between breast and wall until old damage seemed to grind.

From deeper water, the diver hauled the cord.

Hest’s bar bent around the upper tooth with a sound Valea felt through both hands. Iron that had once been bowed became a hooked shape around white metal.

Bellwyrm’s burned forelimb slipped deeper.

The fragment rolled across Hest’s iron.

Its lower hinge raked Jiang’s flank below the injured shoulder.

New contour feathers caught first. Several flattened, then pulled against their roots. Jiang tried to stop, but the tooth moved under the diver’s pull while his own body drove forward.

One full feather tore free first.

Others followed in a black strip.

Cold water entered the disturbed underfeathers and touched skin.

For a month, Jiang had watched that coat grow while food stopped meaning anything. Aylin had tested every section before letting him enter water. Losing the first strip felt less like damage than betrayal by a body he had only just learned to trust.

He almost surrendered the gap to save what remained.

The chick’s call struck from the basin. His injured wing shook, his stomach cramped around its single fish, and he drove into the tooth before fear could turn him backward.

Jiang’s body convulsed. His sound foot slipped free of the wall. The straight leg dragged forward and struck the lower blade with its ankle.

His whole body began sliding backward.

Above the scar lip, the chick called.

Its broken beat did not tell Jiang where to place his foot. It gave him a reason to keep looking for stone.

His good toes found the cut Valea had made in living tissue.

Warm blood crossed them. Jiang pushed against the wound, hated himself for the pain that must cause the Bellmother, and moved his breast past the hinge.

Hest’s remaining bar deformed farther.

Valea seized its end before the hooked iron could close around Jiang’s trailing leg. Together they turned the bar enough to keep one side of the fragment away from his hip.

Bellwyrm tore its burned forelimb out.

Fresh white damage opened across the old burns. The animal withdrew from the basin, struck no person, and lowered its wounded limb against warm scar tissue.

Without its weight, the diver gained the tooth.

Fork and fragment jerked outward together. Jiang’s new feathers tore once more, but his hips cleared the hinge before the metal followed.

His straight leg came last.

His ankle struck white metal. The foot folded badly, caught, and slid free when Valea released her cut tissue around it rather than grab the living bird.

Jiang entered Red Aeries water sideways.

Open space should have made swimming easy. His hip had other ideas. The good wing pushed, the injured one failed to match it, and he rolled beneath the scar lip with cold pouring through the new flank gap.

Jiang tried to climb the warm lip.

His straight leg found no purchase. Jiang’s beak struck warm stone and slipped. A second attempt carried him lower.

Through moving water he saw the family only as broken shapes: the female’s white breast at the edge, the injured male flattened over the chick, and the chick’s dark crown forcing up beneath his neck.

Jiang wanted the sight badly enough to waste another stroke.

The open wing drove. His damaged shoulder answered too late, turning the attempt into another roll. Cold spread beneath the torn flank strip while the basin floor moved farther from his sound foot.

Above him, the female checked the chick beneath her mate’s neck. The injured male answered with a breath and kept his head down over the small body.

She left them only after that answer.

His female partner entered the basin breast first. Joined feet pushed from the shallow ridge, and one flank screened Jiang from the tooth while she closed her beak around the feathers at his nape.

She did not pull him into the family.

She stopped him from sinking.

Valea reached for the caught bar. Hest warned her away as the diver hauled again.

Cut scar tissue released the fragment with the retrieval fork still beneath it. Most of Jiang’s torn feathers drifted into the basin.

One whole black feather remained pinched inside the white hinge.

The white-armored diver noticed the feather.

Its masked face turned toward Jiang’s new body, then back to the caught sample. Both hands shortened the black cord.

Held above the water by the female, Jiang watched the enemy begin hauling away the first whole feather his Abyssal body had lost.