Chapter 248: The Living Bell Rang With His Stolen Scent

No roar came from the living bell.

It drew one enormous breath.

Air crossed the amber shell of its chest, struck something hollow inside, and rang through Jiang’s bones. Six root-colored legs tightened around the branch. Its antlers lowered until their wet tips touched the clear river wall.

Jiang smelled himself on its breath.

Not blood. Not the sour wet coat he wore now. Clean breast oil, warm down, and the sheltered skin beneath an emperor’s jaw.

Jiang’s scent belonged to the feather in the crown.

Still, the animal charged him.

Antlers punched through the river wall. Clear living tissue split around both points, and the whole channel lurched toward open sky.

Jiang kicked backward through the current.

His sound wing caught water. His failed wing dragged, turning the escape into a roll. One antler passed beneath his breast while the other tore a strip of loose down from his side.

Another ringing call crossed the water.

Its call carried fear this time.

Up close, the animal looked grown rather than born. Bark ridges crossed its flanks. Moss filled the folds above each root foot, and river water moved through clear veins beneath the amber chest. Two dark eyes sat low beside the hollow shell, fixed on Jiang without the focus of a hunter.

Jiang was afraid it would break the river while trying to protect whatever it smelled.

One soft joint showed beneath the antler, within easy reach of his beak. He kept the point down and let the current take him farther from the hollow root instead.

"There is something behind it," Aylin shouted from above.

She had reached the red branch beside the hollow root. Through a curtain of white fibers, she saw a smaller amber shell wedged inside the wood. Root-colored feet pressed against the chamber. Each frightened breath made a thin note that died beneath the adult’s larger call.

A calf was trapped inside.

Between a parent and its young, the crown had put Jiang’s scent.

Over the brood root, the missing-heel diver knelt.

Their graft knee had opened to the dark skin beneath. White plates along the ribs were hardening at the edges, trapping each breath inside a smaller cage. The diver pushed the silver comb against the hollow wood and searched with the teeth.

One tooth found a seam.

Amber sap ran out.

Amber sap vanished into the broken heel socket.

White graft softened around the leg. Cracks closed from ankle to knee. New plates opened over the exposed skin, and Aylin could still follow blood beneath their thin surface.

Every swallow taken by the armor lowered the sap around the calf.

Its chamber began to collapse.

Aylin watched the exchange happen in pulses. Amber light climbed the diver’s leg while the root around the calf dimmed. Each repaired plate pulled another white fiber tight across the small shell.

The diver saw the calf. Their eyes crossed it whenever the chamber rang. No ignorance protected the act; the graft body was failing, and they had decided whose living root would pay.

Jiang tried to call through the water. The sound became bubbles and pain along his tongue.

Again, the adult struck.

This time the channel wall tore from antler to root joint. River water spilled through the opening and dragged Jiang toward the empty air below.

He caught the torn edge with his beak.

His straight leg found nothing. The sound foot scraped the membrane, slipped, and struck one of the adult’s roots. The animal recoiled as if Jiang had bitten the calf itself.

Its forelegs came down together.

Aylin jumped onto one antler.

Her weight turned the point away from Jiang. The living bell threw its head, and she lost the damaged knee at once. Both hands closed around a wet branch growing from the antler’s base.

"Your head is occupied," she told it through clenched teeth. "Use the other five ends."

The animal understood nothing except resistance.

It shook Aylin harder.

Valea reached Aylin from the upper branch and caught her coat. Hest set the old yoke across a fork behind them, braced one foot through its lower arm, and took Valea’s weight against his burned shoulder.

Below, Jiang’s beak began to slide.

Inside the collapsing root, the calf rang.

Farther back, another call answered.

At the edge of her black-moss hollow, the emperor female stood with the chick beneath her breast. Her note did not copy the living bell. It began low, changed when the chick moved, and ended only after the small body answered.

A parent locating its own young.

One breath of stillness caught the adult living bell.

Its hollow chest gave a broken double note. The antlers lifted from Jiang and turned toward the calf’s chamber.

No invitation existed in the female’s answer. She had reminded a frightened body what it was trying to find.

Her chick answered from beneath her breast.

Jiang heard the missing space where the dead male’s call would once have joined them. The female held that silence without borrowing another parent or another brood to fill it. Even here, with white roots opening behind her, she called only for the life that was hers.

White hooks opened along the moss behind her.

Bellwyrm saw them first.

It shoved the mother and chick deeper beneath the root lip, then caught the nearest hook against its burned forelimb. White points entered scarred flesh. Bellwyrm bit the graft below the barbs and pulled until the root tore free.

Its forelimb collapsed afterward.

Even so, Bellwyrm dragged itself across the hollow entrance before the next hook arrived.

"Hest, the hooks are moving," Valea said.

He had already seen.

Hest released the yoke from the upper fork. Aylin’s full weight came into Valea’s grip. Valea swore once, planted her injured arm against bark, and did not let go.

Hest threw the yoke downhill.

One red arm caught across the white hooks. Bellwyrm rolled away while Hest pulled the graft aside with both hands. Mother and chick passed behind his legs by their own call, without waiting for permission.

No one had enough body left for both fronts.

Aylin looked toward the crown.

Only a reach separated Aylin from the diver.

Their bare hand held the comb steady. Jiang’s whole feather stood between the silver teeth. One reach from Aylin could close around the shaft.

Amber wood cracked below it.

Amber wood split around the calf.

A small living bell fell out with its root feet tangled in white fibers. River water caught the amber shell and carried it toward the tear where Jiang still hung.

Aylin wanted the feather.

She wanted it with an anger that had survived Cairnspire, the severed line, and the sight of Jiang bleeding beneath another person’s machine.

The calf passed under her hand.

She let the feather go.

Aylin released the antler, dropped to the torn channel, and drove both forearms beneath the calf’s chest. Its amber shell rang against her bones. The current folded her over it and took them toward Jiang.

"Open your beak," she shouted.

"That advice is usually worse."

"Bite the white root."

Jiang changed his grip.

He released the membrane, fell with the water, and caught the white fibers trailing from the calf’s rear foot. The graft stretched between his beak and the broken chamber.

For an instant, he held a calf, Aylin, and part of a river above open sky.

Then Hest’s yoke dropped beside them.

Valea had recovered it from the hooks. She drove one wrapped barb through a yoke eye and into red living wood while Hest locked the other arm across the torn channel.

Aylin struck the yoke with her shoulder.

The calf landed across both red arms.

Jiang swung beneath it, still biting the white root. His sound foot found the lower yoke arm. Aylin caught his coat at the sound shoulder and hauled him onto the branch beside the calf.

Six root feet carried the adult toward them.

Relief did not make it gentle.

It shoved Aylin away with one antler, rang hard enough to hurt Jiang’s ears, and hooked the calf’s amber shell between two lower branches. Root feet untangled one at a time.

The calf kicked Jiang in the beak before climbing onto its parent.

"Gratitude appears consistent in this forest," he said.

Aylin lay on her back, breathing through the pain in her shoulder. "You attract difficult children."

"I blame the parents."

The adult’s antlers lowered again.

Jiang wisely stopped talking.

It smelled his wet coat, then the calf, then the oil-dark brood root. Confusion rang through its chest. The animal stepped between Jiang and its young, backed toward a red bridge, and left without accepting either human or penguin.

Behind it, Bellwyrm gave a raw changing growl from the moss hollow.

Alive, but hurt much worse.

Valea wrenched her barb free of the yoke eye and wrapped it with the second. Hest recovered the old red fitting. Neither pursued the living bells.

Already, the crown was moving.

Amber sap shone beneath the diver’s new graft plates. The repaired leg now held three steps before shaking. White roots streamed behind the comb and entered the next high bridge.

Hest touched the sap left on the broken chamber, smelled it, and wiped his fingers on dead bark.

"It flows uphill after them."

Valea watched the next bridge drink. "Then we know where the throat will open."

The bridge had three natural forks. Only the middle one brightened when amber sap reached it, and the moving crown was already forcing that fork lower. Hest held the yoke beneath the bend while Valea tested each wrapped barb against the two outer arms.

Neither weapon could stop a living bridge by strength. Together, they could make the crown enter where the branch was weakest.

She laid both wrapped barbs across the yoke.

Neither of them needed to name the trap yet.

Jiang turned his beak toward the brood root.

The diver had gone. The crown had gone. Nothing white remained in the hollow except torn fibers too small to pull.

Despite the empty hollow, the root rang again.

A new line darkened beneath its red bark. Blue-black cilia opened along the chamber and shivered with the oil pattern of Jiang’s missing feather.

From its parent’s back, the calf answered.

Its call carried Jiang’s stolen scent.