Thura dropped the heavy, heat-treated chain onto Drelka’s chest. The links rattled against the overseer’s ribs, a dull percussion against the forced chime of her crystal windpipe. Drelka’s eyes, glazed and bloodshot, tracked the movement with a flicker of terror, but her body remained unresponsive, a marionette with severed strings. The tremors were growing more frequent, the city groaning around them. Morvath’s estate still hummed with that low, shuddering pitch, an overture of collapse. “The worms won’t wait for you to recover,” Thura signed, her hands moving with brisk, almost impatient precision. Drelka, though she couldn’t see the signs with her head tilted awkwardly, seemed to grasp the implication. A low, wounded sound, like wind through broken shards, escaped her. Thura knelt, her movements economical, ignoring the slick warmth of Drelka’s blood. She secured the first cuff around Drelka’s wrist, the treated iron biting into the flesh just above the elbow. The metal was cool against Drelka’s fevered skin. The overseer made a choked, gargling noise, a fresh trickle of crimson blooming around the nascent glass pipes of her larynx. Thura examined the wound with the clinical detachment of a metalsmith checking a faulty rivet. The new pipes were still fragile, the material porous. They would need the constant, intense heat of the vents to vitrify into clean timbre. Thura’s work was far from over. She worked quickly, binding Drelka’s ankles and wrists with thick lengths of chain, crisscrossing them across the overseer’s torso. Each loop was tested, pulled taut, ensuring no thrashing could dislodge the delicate, blooming glass within Drelka’s neck. Once secured, Drelka was less a person and more a packaged instrument, ready for transport. Her breathing, though still a strained, reedy sound, was now more consistent, the glass flutes vibrating with a low, continuous hum. Jorik, who had been huddled against the grimy wall of the alley, clutching his head, pushed himself up. His face was pale, his stare fixed on the gutter stones. “The song… it’s wrong, Thura. It’s tearing at the stone itself.” His voice was a raw whisper, barely audible over the deep rumbling that thrummed up through the ground. “I can hear them, moving under the city. A thousand grinding teeth.” Thura felt the tremors through the ground, a constant heave that set the glazed structures shivering. She could almost taste the fear in the air, a metallic tang that mingled with the acrid scent of sulfur. She knew Jorik was not exaggerating. His ears, unlike hers, were tuned to the earth’s discordant symphony. He was her living barometer, her divining rod for the earth’s agony. “We’re going to fix it,” Thura said, her voice flat, devoid of comfort. She didn't believe in empty promises. She believed in leverage, in the precise application of force, in the engineering of sound. “But first, we need to get her down to the vents. The air up here isn’t thick enough to sustain the tone.” She slung the remaining length of chain over her shoulder, securing the free end to the binds around Drelka’s chest. The overseer was a dead weight, a gruesome, unwilling cargo. “Jorik, help me.” With a grunt, Thura began to drag Drelka through the alley, the chains scraping against the coarse obsidian pavers. Jorik, still wincing and pressing his hands to his ears, stumbled alongside her, offering what little strength he had. The descent was slow, arduous. They passed through abandoned marketplaces, their stalls overturned, goods scattered like spilled entrails. The air grew thicker, hotter, pressing in on them as they moved deeper into the city’s underbelly. The path narrowed, eventually becoming a winding tunnel, carved crudely into the black rock. The walls here were slick with condensation, the air humid and heavy with the scent of hot minerals and ozone. The distant roar of the caldera grew louder, a hungry, guttural sound that vibrated in Thura’s bones. This was the way to the Caldera Vents, the lowest point of Khol-Zhan, where the city’s waste was incinerated and where the earth’s raw power was most potent. They emerged into a vast subterranean chamber, a natural amphitheater of towering, jagged basalt pillars and shimmering, vitrified walls. Steam hissed from countless fissures in the rock, twisting into ethereal plumes that danced in the dim, ruddy light. Geysers erupted sporadically, spitting superheated water and gas high into the vaulted ceiling, their violent exhalations echoing with a deep, percussive detonation. The floor shuddered constantly here. This was where the Glass-Throated Crane had once sung, its melody riding the thermal currents, calming the earth. Thura dragged Drelka further into the thermal chamber, ignoring the burning in her muscles, the strain in her shoulders. She scanned the landscape of rock and steam, searching for the perfect location. She needed a geyser that erupted with consistent force, one whose thermal output was high enough to sustain Drelka’s new glass lungs. She found it at last, a particularly active vent tucked between two massive volcanic pillars, its steam a continuous, roaring plume. With Jorik’s shaky assistance, Thura maneuvered Drelka into position, directly over the vent. The heat was immediate, intense, making the air shimmer. Drelka’s skin, already flushed with fever, began to blister. Thura uncoiled the remaining chain, wrapping it around Drelka’s torso, then around the base of the stone columns, pulling the overseer’s body taut over the geyser’s maw. Drelka’s form bowed under the tension, her back arching, her mouth opening in a silent scream as the superheated air began to rush into her exposed glass intake. The sound was an agonizing, high-pitched wail, a nascent bellow that filled the hollow, joining the earth’s raw symphony. The glass pipes within Drelka’s throat began to glow, a faint, internal luminescence that pulsed with the forced exhalations. The high-pitched wail deepened, growing in volume and acoustic carry. It wasn’t a human sound anymore; it was the cry of an instrument, a bellows of agony, tuned by the earth’s own furnace. Thura felt the vibrations through the stone beneath her boots, a more directed, controlled note now, though still far from stable. It was a start. Jorik stumbled onto the rock platform, his hands clamped over his ears, his body trembling. He fell to his knees, his face contorted in agony. “It’s not enough, Thura!” he shrieked, his voice thin and desperate against the roaring geyser and Drelka’s terrible song. “The pitch… it’s incomplete! It’s making them angrier! I can feel them! They’re coming!” Thura looked at her brother, then back at Drelka, whose glass throat vibrated with a continuous, torturous moan. The chamber groaned around them, the air thick with airborne grit and ash. Thura felt a new, violent tremor, one that shook the hollow to its foundations. Behind the translucent vitrified walls that formed the far side of the chamber, a colossal, segmented shadow rippled into view. It was massive, undulating with slow, ponderous power. Its colossal head, a blunt, armored wedge, pressed against the semi-transparent rock, its hidden maw opening and closing in a rhythmic, hungry pulse that made the entire chamber shudder. The Tectonic Maw-Worms were here, drawn by the incomplete, agonizing song, converging on their position, and they were not alone.

The Bellows of Drelka