Chapter 166 The Basin Cathedral

Mara peeled the drain grate off its hinges with one pull, revealing a tunnel that breathed cold air. Seven winding stairs led down into the dark, where dripping water kept patient time with a distant hymn.

Veska planted her spear on the first step, "Descent authorized, I shall lead and you shall follow."

"You will slip," Mara said, sniffing the draft, "it smells like rust, river water, a lot of nervous singers."

Isolde followed with her sleeves rolled to the elbow, a coil of gold thread looped around her wrist. Riven came last, tasting the stale song on the wind, the same hymn that hummed through the keystone.

"Nix and Yukine hold the street grate, Ysabel guards the exit," Isolde said, checking her needle case.

"She also guards it loudly," Riven said, ducking under a dripping pipe.

"Mind the third step," he added, "it’s wet in a personal way."

"Cathedrals are supposed to be dry," Isolde muttered, lifting her hem, "I find this a violation."

The tunnel opened into a drowned cathedral, ribbed arches rising out of black water that reached the pews. Candles floated on the surface in rows, each flame trembling in time with a pulse nobody could place.

’Candles, water, one very big bell... somebody built this place to sing at.’

At the altar, chained to the floor, crouched a vast machine shaped like a bell lying on its side. Pipes ran from its throat into the water, leaving one wide mouth gaping open toward the whole flooded nave.

"That is not a choir," Veska said quietly, lowering her spear a fraction.

Riven studied the chains bolted to the floor, "It’s a crusher... I met its little cousin in Crownfall."

Mara flexed her fingers, eyes bright, "Can I hit it, just once, as a greeting?"

"Not with your hands, it hits back twice as hard," he said, catching her wrist.

"I like when things hit back," she said, grinning with every one of her teeth.

"I shall record that as a risk," Veska said, writing nothing in her ledger.

The machine inhaled with a long rasp, pulling every candle flame slowly sideways toward its wide open mouth. Then it spoke a cultist’s name aloud, the word hitting the water like a falling wall of spray.

’It throws back whatever it hears as force... every name we say turns into a hammer.’

"Nobody speak," he whispered, flattening himself against a pillar, "it throws back everything it hears, even breathing if you breathe loud."

Mara stepped onto the nearest pew without a sound, a predator wading into a river of noise. The machine boomed her name across the nave, but she caught the blow in an open palm.

"Quiet Teeth," she murmured, jaw tight, "bank it."

The next blow screamed toward Veska, but Mara slid into its path and caught it against her ribs. Her shadow stretched across the water, dark fur bristling along her arms as each impact slowly sank deeper.

[ Quiet Teeth: banked 2 | Mara ]

"Two banked," she said, rolling her shoulders, "how many can you stand?"

Riven wiped spray from his eyes, "Four, maybe five... then you bite something."

"Gladly."

Riven crouched on top of a pew, watching the machine’s chest rise and fall, memorizing the rhythm. Every seventh breath the mouth drew a long pull, leaving the nave silent for a single beat.

"There," he said under his breath, "the inhale is the gap."

"Confirm the interval," Veska said, her spear crackling with a thin thread of lightning.

"Seven breaths, then the inhale, then you drive that spear down through the water and into its throat."

The machine hurled a third name across the nave, Mara banking it with a grunt, blood in her teeth. Riven counted aloud in a whisper, four, five, six, the candles all leaning toward the altar with every number.

"Hurry, I can only hold three—" she gasped, the pew cracking under her feet.

"Seven," he said, then a heartbeat later, "Now."

Veska drove the spear tip into the black water, Thunder Collateral unspooling down the shaft like a white snake. Lightning ran across the drowned floor in a branching web, then punched straight up into the machine’s throat pipes.

"Delivered on the interval," she reported, her spear still smoking in the water.

The machine seized with a shriek of tearing metal, its mouth locked around a name it could not finish. Plates split along their seams as the chains snapped, toppling the whole thing off the altar into the nave.

[ Thunder Collateral: 1 strike spent | Stored: 2 ]

"Nice shot, I think the machine felt that one in its soul."

"I rehearsed it in the washroom," Veska admitted, "the acoustics are excellent."

It crashed onto a figure in a scarlet cassock who crouched behind it, pinning her beneath the wreckage. Sarn went under with a muffled cry, one pale hand clawing at the surface before the water closed.

"She’s drowning," Riven said, already stepping off the pew, "somebody tie me to something."

"Procedure covers enemies too," Isolde said, looping her thread around his wrist, "keep the line tight."

"Remind me never to get on your bad side."

"You have been on it since Tuesday."

She dove before he could answer, the thin gold line paying out behind her into the candlelit dark. Riven braced his heels on the pew, hauling hand over hand as the thin line went taut below.

’She’s saving the woman who tried to turn the city into a hymn... that’s exactly who she is.’

Isolde surfaced with Sarn slung across her shoulder, gasping, her wet hair plastered flat against her forehead. They hauled the cultist onto the steps, where Isolde pressed two fingers to her throat, finding nothing.

"Sutureline," she whispered, golden light threading down into the cultist’s chest.

"Why would you save me?" Sarn rasped between coughs, staring up at her.

"You were drowning, that was the entire reason," Isolde said, tying off a stitch.

"I would have let you drown," she croaked, "for the song."

"That is why one of us is the doctor."

Light stitched each torn air sac closed, tiny gold knots tying off the damage one breath at a time. Sarn convulsed, coughing up water by the mouthful, her eyes flickering open on the vaulted ceiling of sung names.

"Lie still," Isolde ordered, pressing a flat palm to her sternum, "your lungs are very new."

"There’s a thread in my chest."

"It is the only thing keeping your chest in your chest."

Riven knelt beside her, the Unfinished Crown warm against his brow, reading the thread of regret in her chest. A boy with a missing front tooth sat swinging his legs on a bench inside her oldest memory, laughing.

"Avel," she whispered, tears mixing with the water on her face, "they took his name when I was nine."

A Bindery clerk leaned over the boy with a pen, striking a line through the name beside his. The ink dried into a stamp that read reassigned, the boy still laughing without ever once knowing why.

’A kid with a gap in his teeth... and the Bindery wrote him out like a typo.’

"I saw him," Riven said quietly, "he was laughing on a bench with a gap in his teeth."

She gripped his sleeve with a shaking hand, "You’re too late."

"The gambler already walked in," she said, smiling through the water.