Chapter 230: The Armada Stole a Feather from the Abyssal Emperor

Hest struck warm basin stone before the echo of his bar did.

He rolled onto one shoulder and came up holding the broken half across both palms. Its end showed a bright, twisted wound. The missing hook had gone through the living scar with the white fragment and Jiang’s feather.

Beyond the new fold of flesh, the black cord kept moving.

It drew through a narrow armada-facing slit high on the basin wall. Each pull made the sealed scar pucker and sent a white pulse beneath the surface. Warm water recoiled from it as if the basin itself remembered being burned.

Jiang watched from inside four bodies’ warmth.

His whole feather was still visible beyond the translucent edge of the scar. Black vane, pale shaft, a drop of his blood at the root. A retrieval fork held it against the broken tooth while Hest’s hooked iron scraped beside it.

Jiang wanted the feather back with a hunger that had nothing to do with food. It remained close enough to bite.

Jiang shifted his sound foot beneath him.

His female partner felt the movement. She did not pin him or call him back. She lifted her breast from the torn strip along his flank and let the cold explain what leaving would cost.

Air reached wet underfeathers.

The pain was immediate and mean. Jiang’s body tightened around the chick, whose crown remained tucked beneath his throat. Across its tail, the wounded male attempted to rise and failed before his breast cleared the stone.

His reopened wound had soaked through Vei’s bandage. One more effort would put the chick behind a body that could no longer stay upright.

Beyond the slit, the diver pulled again.

Direct-current sensitivity caught only the nearby water moving around Jiang’s skin. A narrow draw ran toward the slit. Beneath it came a broader return surge, curving off the fragment and back toward the warm lip where the emperor family rested.

No intention traveled with it. No warning named the thing that would strike.

Jiang saw the hooked iron a heartbeat later.

It came around the scar edge sideways, dragged by the white fragment. Its broken hook had become a crooked blade, and the tip crossed the water at chick height.

Hest drove his remaining half under it.

Iron met iron with a crack that threw both of his hands apart. Hooked metal jumped over his brace and continued toward the family.

Mottle caught the smallest juvenile by the hide at its shoulders and hauled it behind a ridge. Ilex threw the warmed fold over both of them before the returning water could strip heat from their bodies.

Bellwyrm chose the metal.

Its jaw closed around Hest’s hooked end rather than the white fragment. Metal tore through one old mouth split. White heat traveled down the wet hook and opened a fresh burn along the animal’s lower jaw.

Bellwyrm’s throat made a crushed, furious sound, but it held anyway.

Sensing resistance, the diver stopped pulling before the hook could drag Bellwyrm into the slit. For a breath, fragment, fork, cord, and wounded animal remained joined by strain.

Valea moved along the wall with her bent blade low.

"The line is clear," Hest said from the water. "Cut it."

"The tooth is not."

"I am becoming less particular."

Valea pointed with her chin. White metal still lay against living tissue. If she severed the pull now, the fork would fall back into the contracting scar with its burning hinge open. Red Aeries had already failed to digest one piece of armada metal. Leaving a larger one in the wound would preserve the road they had just paid to close.

"Let it clear," she said.

Hest looked at the diver beyond the slit. "It will clear with our iron and his feather."

"I know what leaving costs."

Her gaze did not go to Jiang when she said it.

Bellwyrm’s jaw began to tremble.

White fire spread farther along its lower mouth. It released the hook by choice, flinging its head away before pain could make the decision for it. Blood and pale steam clouded the water.

Freed from the animal, the hooked iron swung again.

Jiang could follow the cord now. That slit was barely wide enough for his new body, and the water beyond it opened toward the diver. If he pushed off while the fragment remained close, his good wing might carry him to the fork.

His straight leg would trail. Wet feathers would open. None of that made the attempt impossible.

Behind his breast, the chick coughed through its burned beak.

Its wounded guardian attempted to cover it and collapsed onto one side. His head struck the warm lip. He stayed conscious, but the wing nearest the chick no longer lifted.

Jiang’s female partner stepped toward her mate.

That movement uncovered Jiang completely.

Cold entered the torn coat and found the Wake Scar. His first breath stopped halfway. On the second, his shoulder shook hard enough to disturb the water around his feet.

Nearby current tightened toward the slit.

Jiang felt where the next pull would return before he saw the cord draw taut. Hooked iron would sweep lower this time. It could pass beneath Hest’s broken brace and through the bodies on the lip.

He hated turning away from his feather, but refused to buy it with the chick’s body.

One step put his sound foot on the warmed hide beside the chick. Jiang lowered his belly across it, using his own weight to keep the return surge from lifting cloth and small body together. His straight leg dragged over the injured male’s back without force; he pulled it aside with his beak and tucked the useless foot against his own tail.

His partner covered her mate’s open side. Jiang covered the chick.

Neither had enough body left for both tasks alone.

"Hest," Jiang called. His sound meant nothing to an ordinary emperor throat, but the direction of his beak did. Hest saw the hooked iron descending toward Jiang’s back.

He abandoned the fragment.

His broken bar went between Jiang and the hook. Hest did not try to hold against the pull. He angled the iron so the hook struck, climbed, and passed above the emperor bodies instead of through them.

Metal raked the new feathers along Jiang’s crown.

Pain screamed through the torn flank under his weight. He kept his belly down while the current lifted the edges of the hide. Beneath him, the chick’s rapid breath warmed a small patch of breast feathers.

The hooked piece cleared his back.

At the slit, the white-armored diver entered far enough to seize the retrieval fork with one hand. Its other hand stayed inside a ring on the black cord. Its faceless mask turned toward Bellwyrm’s bleeding mouth, Valea’s blade, and Jiang sheltering the chick. It chose retreat.

Joined feet kicked against the outer wall. Behind them, the diver pulled the fork backward with the white fragment balanced along its shaft. Hest’s hook scraped through last, taking a strip of warm scar tissue with it.

Valea waited until no white edge remained inside the wound. Then she lunged.

Her bent blade entered the slit behind the diver. The first cut struck black cord and skidded. A white wrist turned in the distance, trying to draw the line beyond her reach.

Valea caught the cord against living stone with her free forearm.

The material burned through her sleeve. She smelled it before she felt the skin beneath begin to blister. Instead of withdrawing, she shortened her grip and sawed the bent edge across the same place.

Black fibers opened one by one.

Hest reached her as the last core stretched. He wrapped his broken bar behind her waist, anchoring her without touching the blade or taking the choice from her. Valea cut through.

Once severed, the end snapped into Red Aeries and opened a bloody line across her cheek. Outside, the diver pitched backward with the release. Its shoulder struck the far wall, and the white fragment nearly slipped from the fork.

Nearly was not enough.

One armored hand closed over the fragment. The other caught Jiang’s feather before it could drift free.

Bellwyrm lunged from the basin lip.

Pain shortened the motion. Its burned jaw closed behind the diver’s joined feet, tearing away one white heel plate but missing flesh. Already kicking through open water, the diver put the slit between itself and a second bite.

Mottle stayed over the smallest juvenile. Ilex kept pressure against Bellwyrm’s bleeding mouth rather than joining a chase she could not win. Hest pulled Valea away from the hot cut end while she resisted long enough to make certain no cord remained anchored in the scar.

Red Aeries had kept its living bodies.

That survival price lay everywhere Jiang looked.

Hest’s final bar existed in two useless pieces. Bellwyrm lowered a newly burned jaw into warm water and could not close its mouth. Valea’s forearm blistered beneath a cut sleeve. The emperor male had gone still except for the shallow movement beneath the female’s breast.

Jiang remained over the chick, shaking from cold that had crossed his new coat on its first day in water.

Behind him, Cairnspire was no longer a direction water could reach.

Beyond him, the diver swam away with a piece of his body.

No System notice explained what an enemy could learn from an Abyssal feather. No new sense followed it into the dark. Jiang saw only what his eyes allowed: white armor growing smaller between folds of red tissue, one damaged foot shedding a pale plate, and a black feather held carefully out of the current.

Far outside reach, the diver brought the feather to its chest.

A narrow seam opened between two armor plates. One hand placed Jiang’s blood-dark root inside, folded the vane until black disappeared beneath white, and pressed the plates shut.

White armor sealed around the first stolen piece of the Abyssal Emperor.