Chapter 265: The Guildhall Opened a Door No Hunter Could Use

Green fire gathered inside the guildhall’s deeper weapons.

Sivra raised her broken name shard toward them. Below her hand, the lowest bridge stayed folded, black and blind.

"That was the last useless thing I had to try," she said.

Hest looked at the charging row. "I admire your sense of completion."

Beneath the bridge, a black rib bulged outward.

Something struck it from inside.

Every weapon along that side of the guildhall shivered. Their aim drifted away from Myrn, then returned when the wall held.

Behind the luminous glass, the broad shape Jiang had seen hit the rib again.

This time, the wall split.

A white root punched through trailing black scales, snapped weapon veins, and pieces of translucent guild marks. It had woven the stolen material across its bark in overlapping plates. Green light ran over that false skin and passed it by.

"It is wearing us," Sivra said.

Behind the torn wall, a slate-feathered glasskite beat six narrow pinions against a closing beast-bay door. The root had looped its rear leg. Each pull dragged the animal closer to the jagged opening.

Part of Jiang hoped the trapped animal was only a lure. The Armada had already used a hatchling, a season, and his own coat against anyone who stopped to care.

Fear offered a sensible route: let Myrn turn, keep the guildhall between them and the root, and survive long enough to regret the creature they left behind. Jiang hated how much that sounded like wisdom.

A glass-helmed hunter clung to the other side of the door and hacked at the white loop. The blade glanced from stolen scales without reaching the living-looking joint beneath them.

Across the guildhall’s side, deeper weapons finished charging.

One fired at Myrn.

She dropped before Sivra moved. Green fire crossed above the saddle and tore a burning groove through the silver road they had left.

Instead of fleeing into clear space, Myrn turned back toward the broken bay.

A lamp-bright cry came from the trapped glasskite. Myrn banked on her sound wing and dove toward it.

"She chose the worst available landing," Valea said.

Sivra caught the saddle instead of a rein. "She has a talent."

Myrn’s injured wing opened on its shorter beat. The added hairline in the split leaked red through its clear edge, but no command tack pulled it away from the turn.

Jiang shifted toward the sound side before her body rolled. Aylin moved her forearm through the rear grip. Hest planted the bent yoke across both knees, and Valea threaded one wrapped barb through its fork.

Separate choices met the same dive without becoming one command.

White roots dragged the glasskite halfway through the torn wall.

Its trapped leg bent against the wrong joint.

Myrn struck the bay lip with all four hooked feet. Black glass cracked under the rear pair. Her shell jaw closed around an exposed wall rib while momentum tried to peel her away.

Nobody had landed; they had merely stopped falling in the same place.

A plated branch swung across Myrn’s head.

Sivra met it with mothglass. Her blade cut one stolen scale free and skated along the white body beneath. No blood followed. The branch hit her shoulder and threw her across the saddle.

Aylin caught Sivra’s wrist with three fingers. Her numb pair curled too late, but a turn of high-root across her wrist caught the hunter’s weight against the rear grip.

"Do not thank me yet," Aylin said through her teeth.

Sivra pulled herself upright. "I was going to complain about the grip."

"You may do that after we have one."

The glasskite’s lamp throat dimmed.

Jiang could see the root loop. He could also see the gap beneath it: a rain gutter running along the bay’s lower rim, shallow enough for his breast and too narrow for a hunter’s boot.

He tapped the rim, then pointed his beak at the loop.

Aylin read the route and went pale with anger. "Your beak is already open."

Jiang wanted a safer answer for her. He wanted a body that could speak before it frightened her, hands that could cut the loop from the saddle, and enough strength to make the risk trivial.

He had a bleeding beak, a failed wing, and a belly made for one narrow wet place.

Jiang put one foot into the gutter.

"That was not a medical observation you were free to ignore."

Valea unwrapped the point of one barb. "I will cut if he exposes a seam. He does not bite the root."

Jiang clicked once at Aylin.

"I know," she said. "You did not ask everyone to decide for you."

She fed the main high-root line through a wall ring and put the loop beside his sound shoulder. Jiang ducked into it. Aylin tightened cloth to cloth, keeping the knot where his beak could reach.

Guildhall weapons fired again.

Myrn lurched as green light struck her sound wing. The dark membrane held, but heat rolled over Jiang’s back and curled the loose edges of his coat wrap.

He slid belly-first into the gutter.

Rainwater carried every impact through him. Myrn’s hooked foot strained on the cracked lip behind. The glasskite’s trapped leg kicked above. Between those changing pressures lay the root’s smooth repeated draw.

Splitflow gave Jiang no name for the thing. Contact told him where the repetitions ended.

The white loop was not one branch. Stolen black plates had been tied over three thinner roots, forcing them to pull together. A clear mark shard sat across the knot like a hard knuckle.

Jiang reached it without opening his beak.

He planted both feet against the gutter and drove his shoulder under the shard.

His failed wing screamed. The mark lifted a finger’s width.

Light beneath it revealed a soft white seam.

Jiang slapped the gutter twice.

Valea’s bare barb came down beside his head.

The point entered the seam. She cut outward, away from the glasskite’s leg, while Jiang kept the stolen shard raised with his shoulder.

White sap burst across his face. The root convulsed while Hest jammed the yoke under its loosened plates. Sivra drove her blade through the gap he opened. Aylin held Jiang’s withdrawal line in the crook of her elbow and braced her good palm against Myrn’s neck.

Above them, the glasskite twisted rather than waiting to be rescued. Its free rear claw tore through one thin root. Its beak crushed another.

Valea severed the third.

The glasskite came loose.

It struck Jiang with a rain of slate feathers, climbed over Myrn’s folded wing, and vanished through the broken bay without looking back.

No grateful cry followed. The lamp in its throat brightened once inside the hall and moved away under its own power.

The plated root recoiled.

Without the stolen shard covering its seam, green veins along the guildhall walls turned toward it. A weapon inside the beast bay fired at close range.

White bark exploded from the lower rib.

The remaining root withdrew through the floor, leaving a hole that poured black water into the bay.

Jiang backed along the gutter. His shoulder failed halfway out.

Aylin pulled when his line changed, steady and short. Hest caught his coat from above without lifting the injured wing. Jiang reached Myrn’s neck with sap in his eyes and blood running from his beak.

The glass-helmed hunter drove a blade into the bay door’s lower hinge.

Instead of attacking the strangers, the hunter levered the emergency lip open.

"Bring the mount in," a woman’s voice called through the helmet. "Weapons will not hold their aim."

Sivra lifted her name shard.

The helmet turned toward it. "That opens nothing."

"We noticed," Hest said.

Myrn chose the opening before anyone could argue. She released the wall rib, hauled her sound wing through the gap, and hooked her front feet over the bay floor.

Her injured side struck last.

The wing folded beneath her, and Myrn dropped to one hooked knee. Sivra slid beside the shoulder without touching the thorn. Jiang remained on the saddle until the mount had chosen where to put her jaw.

Only then did he climb down.

Mothglass blades surrounded them.

No one offered welcome. Hunters closed around the wounded mount, the unknown humans, and the blood-covered penguin while the guildhall shook beneath their boots.

Heat from the weapon strike still smoked along Myrn’s sound wing. The beast bay smelled of scorched rain, white sap, and the mineral bite of broken glass. Myrn lowered her shell jaw to the floor but kept all four feet under her, ready to throw herself back into open air if the ring tightened.

Sivra stayed where Myrn could see her hands. Aylin stood on Jiang’s injured side. Hest lowered the yoke without dropping it, and Valea wrapped the bare barb point before any hunter could mistake restraint for surrender.

Around them, the surrounding blades did not lower.

The glass-helmed woman pointed her blade at Sivra. "Your mark is gone."

"Myrn is not," Sivra answered.

Before the hunter could reply, black water reached her boots.

Below the wounded bay, the hole left by the root widened across the floor. Living glass drew back from it in overlapping folds, exposing a low oval mouth beneath the beast stalls.

Water rushed through the opening. Broken black scales spun in the current. Farther inside, something white scraped stolen mothglass against the dark.

Cold breathed from the passage and flattened Jiang’s wet breast feathers. It was not sea cold or Bellmother rain. The water smelled old, trapped beneath living glass for longer than the beast bay above it had been wounded.

Jiang could not see a floor. The retreating root gave him no pressure at this distance. Entering would mean giving up Myrn’s broad back, Aylin’s visible line, and enough room to turn his damaged body around.

He was afraid of the door before anyone looked at him.

One hunter dropped to a knee and tried to enter. The opening caught both shoulders.

Another pushed a long blade into the flooded passage. Its point touched nothing.

Aylin stepped beside Jiang before any hand could reach for him.

"Look at the passage," she said. "Then ask him."

The glass-helmed woman did not apologize for having looked at Jiang first. Instead, she shifted her blade away from his throat and toward the white scrape disappearing below.

The guildhall opened the oval mouth wider.

It was still too small for an adult hunter.

It was wide enough for one emperor penguin.