Chapter 239: Jiang Dove Into the Bellmother’s Blood

Blood inside the Bellmother did not feel like blood until Jiang opened his beak by mistake.

Warm metal flooded his tongue. He shut his mouth, drove his good foot downward, and felt the bite in his tongue begin leaking into the larger taste around him.

There was no clean water beneath the wakehound. The dark fluid carried grease from the white harness, torn threads of living tissue, and the sharp oil that had once taught the animal what to hunt.

Jiang’s own coat supplied the freshest trail.

In answer, the wakehound folded around it.

Its head vanished behind a pale shoulder. Six gills opened along its throat, drawing Jiang’s scent through the slits. Then the long body snapped straight and came at him without needing room to turn.

He threw himself beneath the old cradle rail.

Teeth closed above his back. Their wake rolled him against copper, and his injured shoulder struck first. For an instant his right wing would not move.

Current spoke through the rest of him.

Not in words. Not as a map.

Warm pressure pushed from the chamber wall and climbed over his face. Colder threads bled inward where the white barbs had opened the Bellmother. A smaller disturbance beat between them, uneven on one side, as the wakehound’s sound fin fought to make up for the folded one.

Direct-Current Sensitivity had once felt like a trick he could use. Here it was every hand in a crowded room shoving him at once.

Jiang chose the only shove that limped.

He twisted toward it as the teeth returned. The wakehound passed close enough for its broken collar to scrape his breast, but the jaws missed. Jiang glimpsed the copper release tongue beneath the animal before its body covered it again.

It was not attached to the white shell.

It belonged to the old red yoke beneath it.

Above the blood, Hest slid the saddle pin into the split ring and leaned back with both feet braced against the higher cradle.

Metal pulled tight across the wakehound’s throat.

"Now, Jiang?" he called.

Jiang had no air to waste answering. He struck the nearest rail with his beak.

His strike traveled through the chamber. Valea saw him point his sound wing toward the copper tongue.

"Not yet," she said. "The old catch is still under the plate."

Hest’s arms shook as the wakehound pulled. "Please explain that to the part trying to remove my shoulders."

Valea lay flat along the flooded lip. Her injured arm stayed pressed to her ribs while the other reached down with the narrow end of the pin they had used to lift the carrier. The white plate turned away from her touch.

Bellwyrm lowered its sound forelimb beside her.

Its claws entered the blood without hurry. They found the raised edge of the shell and closed.

Pressure from above reached the wakehound. Its body thrashed once, and the folded fin struck Jiang across the head like a wet hide.

Light broke into white smears.

He found the rail with his good foot. His rigid leg towed behind him while he climbed along the underside of the animal. Every movement rubbed his bare flank against warm metal. The Bellmother contracted before he reached the catch.

Living walls squeezed around him.

Dark blood rushed toward a narrow seam behind Jiang. It took his tail first. His damaged coat opened under the pull, and the current tried to feed him into a gap no wider than his skull.

He spread both wings.

His injured wing nearly folded. Jiang hooked its edge over the rail and held while his shoulder burned. The pressure flattened his breast. Somewhere above, the chick called.

Its mother answered at once.

Copper and living flesh carried the sound to him. He could not make out either voice in the blood, only the difference between two bodies that still expected an answer from each other.

He pulled free of the seam.

A pale head waited beyond it.

Its jaws caught the loose feathers at Jiang’s flank. They closed through the coat but missed skin, and the animal dragged him away from the release tongue. Warm blood streamed through the new gap. Jiang kicked at its snout. His sound foot struck one gill cover and made the creature bite harder.

He stopped fighting the pull.

His surrender surprised it for half a breath. Jiang let himself slide along its teeth, tucked his head beneath the broken collar, and shoved his beak between the old yoke and the white plate.

Rough rider metal stripped wet feathers from below his jaw.

Cold copper touched the base of his beak.

Jiang bit the tongue hard. Nothing released.

Old craft had shaped the catch to open while the Bellmother expanded. Jiang could feel the next pulse gathering in the wall, but so could the wakehound. Its gills closed. Its body bunched beneath him.

Above, Valea changed her grip on the plate.

"When the wall lifts," she told Hest.

"I know what a pulse feels like."

"Then stop pulling before it comes."

Hest looked at the animal hanging from his pin and did the harder thing. He gave it slack.

Without Hest’s resistance, the wakehound dropped.

Jiang went with it. His beak remained clamped around the copper tongue. The sudden weight tried to wrench his head backward, but Bellwyrm’s claws held the white shell in place.

For one ugly moment, the living animal and everything fastened to it pulled in different directions.

Then the Bellmother expanded.

Jiang felt warmth race outward from the wall. The copper rails shifted under his feet. He yanked the tongue sideways, using his neck instead of the wing that no longer trusted him.

Copper opened against his teeth.

"Pull it free now," Valea said.

Bellwyrm pinned the shell. Valea drove her lever beneath its lower edge. Hest hauled the split ring toward the dry cradle.

Old red metal came away first.

Its arms uncurled from scarred hollows along the wakehound’s chest. Metal slid out of flesh that had grown around it, leaving pale pits where missing limbs had once rooted. The creature convulsed hard enough to throw Jiang against its belly.

White shell did not follow cleanly.

Both barbs held inside the Bellmother.

One barb tore free with a clot of dark tissue wrapped around its points. The other pulled a strip from the chamber wall before Valea twisted the plate and changed its angle. It came out backward, ripping the puncture wider instead of planting itself deeper.

Blood surged from both wounds.

Around them, Bellmother flesh shuddered from the wound.

Dry sacs struck the ceiling. The higher cradle jumped in its fittings. Bellwyrm lost its burned forelimb against the wall and caught itself with the other, never releasing the shell.

Hest dragged ring, yoke, white plate, and both barbs onto the lip in one scraping mass.

No metal remained inside the Bellmother’s wounds.

That did not close them.

Dark fluid rose past Valea’s elbow. She turned the plate over before pushing it away from the cradle. Grease and blood covered most of its inner face, but an older mark had been cut into the red metal beneath.

Three hooked feathers surrounded an open bell mouth.

A matching mark curved around the brood cradle at her knees.

"Red Aeries," Valea said.

Hest stared from the old mark to the white casing laid over it. "They reached this place before the armada did."

"Or someone carried their work out."

Neither answer made the wakehound less dangerous.

Freed from the collar, it struck the bottom and turned with room it had not possessed a moment earlier. The folded fin trailed. The sound one opened wide enough to stir the whole chamber.

Jiang pushed for the surface.

His right wing failed halfway through the stroke.

Pale jaws reached him before air did.

Its snout drove beneath his feet and threw him away from the old cradle. Jiang rolled through white-lit blood. He expected teeth in his belly. Instead the animal circled, drawing his leaking oil through each of its six gill slits.

With the harness gone, the lesson inside its flesh remained.

It rushed him again.

Jiang caught the edge of the upper rail and swung behind it. Teeth struck copper. The impact rang through the Bellmother, a deep note without the collar crushing it flat.

Mid-turn, the wakehound froze.

Its folded fin trembled against its side. The other spread. Air or blood moved through its exposed throat, and the animal gave a call that began like the hunter’s broken scrape.

It did not end there.

Its note dropped beneath anything Jiang could hear. He felt it enter his breastbone and pass into the chamber wall. A second piece rose through the rail. The last broke where scar tissue pulled one side of the throat tight.

Above him, the female emperor answered from beside her dead mate.

At once, the wakehound turned toward her call.

It did not approach the cradle. It pressed its bare chest to the wall beneath it and gave the changed note again.

Something answered inside the Bellmother.

Not a voice. A hidden fold released beneath the old cradle, spilling a hard current across Jiang’s feet. The wall opened along a seam none of them had seen, revealing a narrow inner duct lined with moving cilia.

The wakehound faced the opening.

Then it looked back at Jiang, mouth widening around all its teeth.

Freedom had shown it a road.

It had not made Jiang a friend.