Chapter 240: The System Offered Him the Bellmother’s Blood

The wakehound chose between Jiang and the open duct with its teeth already spread.

Jiang had no good wing stroke left. Blood crowded his ears. He hung beneath the old rail while the animal tasted fresh oil through the water and remembered what white metal had taught it to do.

Behind the hunter, cilia bent into the duct like pale grass in wind.

They all pointed inward.

The wakehound lunged at Jiang.

He released the rail before its jaws closed. Current took him sideways, not toward the surface, and the teeth clipped the rigid leg he could not pull clear. Pain traveled up to his hip in a bright sheet.

Jiang struck the animal’s exposed throat with his good foot.

Its changing call broke into the blood.

The duct answered by opening wider.

Pressure rolled out of the Bellmother’s wall and caught the wakehound broadside. For once, the animal stopped following Jiang. Its sound fin spread into the push while the folded one dragged uselessly against its scars.

It faced the moving cilia.

Not because it trusted him. The old brood road had answered its own voice, and its body knew a current the harness had never allowed it to take.

Jiang reached for the rail again. His injured wing folded before the edge touched copper.

Pale jaws snapped beside his face.

Then the wakehound turned away.

It entered the duct on its own stroke, body flattening beneath the low rim. The damaged fin caught once. It tore free with a twist that left a ribbon of pale blood among the Bellmother’s darker fluid.

The animal never looked back for permission.

Its tail vanished beyond the cilia.

"Jiang, reach up!" Valea shouted.

Valea lay at the flooded lip with her sound arm down to the shoulder. Her fingers opened above him, well short of his beak.

He kicked upward. The good foot found only blood.

Without warning, Bellmother pressure reversed.

Current no longer poured into the duct. It dragged the whole chamber toward it. The discarded white plate moved first, skidding across the lip until Hest drove the saddle pin through its split ring.

"If that goes back inside," Valea said, "I will kill you before the animal gets another chance."

"Excellent. Then hold this plate."

Hest gave her the pin and dropped onto his stomach. His reliable hand closed around Jiang’s beak just behind the cut.

It was a terrible place to hold a penguin.

Jiang loved him for it anyway.

Hest hauled until Jiang’s breast struck the rim. Valea caught his sound wing. Bellwyrm shoved its long head beneath his belly and rolled him onto the higher rail.

Air entered Jiang as a cough. Bellmother blood left his mouth in a warm spray.

His partner’s warning rose from the family cradle.

The chamber was folding around her.

Both wounds left by the white barbs poured into the lower well. Dry fibers beneath the dead male had gone dark. The chick stood over one of his feet, pushing its small breast against a leg that would never warm it again.

Jiang planted both feet. His straight leg gave him height without balance, and his injured wing could no longer correct the fall.

Bellwyrm caught him a second time.

"I am beginning to take that personally," Jiang told it.

The long creature breathed Bellmother blood across his back. It was not an apology.

Valea looked into the open duct. "The cilia changed direction. When the wall closes, they will carry everything still in this chamber with them."

"Do you mean everything?" Hest asked.

The dead male’s carrier shifted beneath his mate.

"Everything wet enough to move."

No one suggested leaving the body.

Hest shouldered one carrier handle with his reliable arm. Valea took the other despite the blood running from her forearm. Bellwyrm slid its sound forelimb under the center rail.

The female would not move.

She stood over mate and chick with her beak aimed at every hand.

Jiang approached on his belly. The posture spared his useless leg and kept him below her throat. It also left him staring into the male’s open eye.

"I don’t know where it goes," he said.

She understood no human sentence. His low call gave her the piece that mattered: danger behind, open road ahead.

The chick answered first.

Its mother lowered her beak to the male’s forehead. She smelled him for a long time while the carrier sank through wet fibers.

Then she stepped to the front rail.

Permission came as a shove against Jiang’s shoulder. He slid beneath the carrier beside Bellwyrm. Hest and Valea lifted. Jiang planted his sound foot and drove with his neck, taking almost no weight through the wing that had failed him.

They moved the whole family toward the duct.

The opening had not been made for human shoulders. Hest entered sideways. Valea passed the split harness plate ahead of her and kept both barbs turned from the cilia. Bellwyrm flattened its burned jaw against its chest.

Jiang crossed under the carrier.

Connected fluid pressed along his bare flank, letting him feel the pulse gather again. One flow curled past his beak. Another pulled at the dead male’s wet feathers. A harder current waited deeper in the duct.

None came labeled safe.

He watched the cilia.

Their tips lay flat before the stronger push and lifted in its wake. Jiang moved when they lifted.

"Push with the next lift!" Jiang shouted.

Hest heard the word. Valea saw Jiang’s body. Bellwyrm felt the carrier rise. The four of them forced the cradle over the duct’s inner ridge before the next pressure wave struck.

Fluid slammed past their backs.

Jiang’s tail hit the wall. His remaining oil washed out in a silver-black cloud. The wake scar across his breast turned so cold that the Bellmother’s warmth could not reach it.

For a few breaths, the world became weight and noise.

Then the carrier settled.

They had entered a hollow between two moving walls. Its floor rose above the heart fluid in a curve of old red tissue, and a brood saddle grew from the center rather than being bolted there. Weathered copper circled its base. The mark of hooked feathers and an open bell mouth had been pressed into the living rim long ago.

Beyond it, two roads divided.

The lower one carried the wakehound’s pale blood into a deep current. Its damaged changing call faded with every pulse.

The upper road breathed cold air.

Bellwyrm raised its head toward that air. Hest followed. Valea stopped after one step because the carrier did not move with them.

The female had planted both feet on the living brood saddle.

She inspected its fibers, the dry hollow beneath its rim, and the way the Bellmother’s folds closed above it without crushing the center. Only after testing the place did she pull the male from the carrier.

Jiang moved forward to help.

Her beak met his breast.

Not hard. It did not need to be.

He stopped outside the saddle.

She lowered her mate into the hollow herself. The chick tried to climb after him. Its mother caught it by the nape, set it beside her, and pressed her throat to the male’s one last time.

Her call began in the note he had given her while alive.

The chick entered too high. She changed to meet it. Their two voices crossed, separated, and found each other again above the still body.

No third note belonged in that space.

Jiang kept his silence.

When the call ended, the female took one feather from the dead male’s breast. She tucked it beneath the chick’s wing, then turned toward the cold-air road.

The chick resisted until the Bellmother began closing the brood hollow.

Its mother called once. The small body left its father’s side and followed her.

Jiang was last to pass the saddle. He saw living tissue fold over the male without touching his face. The Bellmother sealed the hollow in darkness, leaving the old mark visible on its rim.

That was all they could know of her choice. ℯℯ𝑙.

Not burial. Not surrender. A place she had tested and accepted when no road could carry every member of her family forward.

Cold air struck Jiang’s wet coat beyond the upper passage.

He collapsed beside the removed harness. Hest still carried the red yoke and white plate together. Valea had wrapped both extracted barbs so their points could not catch flesh. Bellwyrm lay across the narrow entrance, jaw shaking, while the female drew the chick into her breast feathers.

The wakehound had taken the lower road. Nothing in its fading call promised it would stay gone.

White barbs still marked the roads behind them.

Somewhere beyond the Bellmother, an armada diver still carried Jiang’s whole feather.

No victory had returned either one.

Jiang breathed until his right wing stopped trembling. Bellmother blood continued to seep through the open path in his flank coat. It should have cooled after leaving the heart chamber.

Instead, warmth pulsed against his skin in time with the living walls.

The System returned only after he was out.

[Living Catalyst Detected: Bellmother Blood]

[Assimilation will take from living tissue still joined to its source.]

[Accept / Refuse]

Jiang looked back at the wall that had just taken the dead into its keeping.

He did not choose.