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At the barren land on the edge of the world, a single city stands. The people there must’ve been brave, or crazy perhaps, to live there, where the ground would crumble into the black nothing, and maddened monsters would shriek from the abyss they were caged in. They were crazy, in fact, to create the ringing bells in their watchtowers to repel the vicious creatures. They were certainly brave too, though, to stay in such a place and protect what they had from the nothing that lived at the edge.
Ringing slammed through the walls of the land-side tower, sending Bellamy tumbling from his hammock in a bleary panic. The bells never called for anything good, not in Threnody. Even in his short time as a bell-watcher, he could recognize the echoing warning from the sky-side towers as the void sea began to churn. The tower vibrated again as its own bells rang in response. Bellamy scrambled up the stairs to the watch point, cymbale slung loosely over his back as he stumbled past Nola at her carillon - she was already up, she was already playing, the snarling, the shrieking, the somber call of the bells - he leaned over the guardrails, squinting at the edge of the city.
The nothing, in its black liquid form, had begun its death crawl again.
A swat at his arm. He startled, glancing over to Nola, who shot through her signs quickly.
West-sky tower spotted first, rung in from Cymbaline. Slow movement, no shots fired. Stay on signal, watch for warnings. She looked up from her keys briefly at that, an exasperated look on her face as he continued to stare. A jerk of her head over to the telescope unglued him from his spot - why was he still standing there, they were coming, they were coming, and nothing would be left - and he rushed for the telescope.
West-sky tower had called it in, which meant an approach straight from the black sky. It was always worse from the sky’s side, the east and west towers playing in harmony to ward off the nothing. It was relentless, the nothing, mindlessly consuming whatever stood in its path. The vibrations of the bells would always - had always - destabilized them enough to send them back to the sky. The ground-side tower could only provide slight assistance; the distance from the sky lessened the impact of their bells. It was a shame - Nola was really too good a bell-watcher to be stuck with Bellamy in the ground-side tower.
A flash from the west-sky tower, and its accompanying musical message. Slow approach from the sky. Stay on guard. Bellamy peered through his telescope. Slow might not even be enough to describe it; the nothing had stopped almost dead in its tracks, pulsing in place. It couldn’t be something the bells were doing - it’d never stopped before, staring with unseen, hungry eyes - they could only shake the nothing down, play until the vibrations dissolved it. It should have been the bells, they were playing enough to send it back- and if it wasn’t the bells, it could only mean the nothing was waiting- why would it wait, it's never shown thought or mercy, and if it can wait, then why would it-
And before he could blink, the west-sky tower was shot straight through the middle, the nothing exploding in the air behind it. The tower crumbled in its wake, raining down debris and the black shreds of the void that used itself as a weapon.
There should’ve been silence, he thinks, as the tower falls with a horrible, discordant crash. That’s what the dead deserve.
The bells keep ringing, though the sound is horribly empty without the tune of the west-sky bell-watchers. There’s no way the watchers could’ve survived the fall, even if they’d managed to survive the blast. The nothing surges in the absence of sound, the weaker projectiles that the towers can usually dissolve with a call of the bells flying forward.
They don’t disappear this time.
Bellamy catches the first aimless blast with his cymbale, skidding backwards across the tower, and smacking roughly against the back railing. The crash the nothing makes when it hits ia enough to dissolve it, but his hands are numb from the force it hit with. The ground-side tower shakes with the bombardment, dust raining down on the city below. His telescope is gone now. It seems ridiculous for the telescope to be the breaking point - it wasn’t anything special, it wasn’t even his, really, he’s only been watching for a short while - but it was the last way to call for the towers. Only the bells remain now.
Waving. He turned to Nola, who hesitated, a single hand raised, the other frozen above her keyboard. Faintly, he’s stunned. She never stops playing, never stops moving, not during the first attack she’d been through, when he’d still lived in the city, or for the countless after, she was dependable, she was strong, and she’d never stop unless-
The Great Bell. Her hand was shaking, only slightly. No surviving without west-sky tower. Something is wrong. We cannot help now.
Two pairs of trembling hands now, though it was nice to think it was only from the impact of the nothing on his cymbale. What a brave pair they made, two terrified bell-watchers looking at their approaching end. The bell will bring down ground-side tower. Too damaged to survive the ringing.
A nod of her head. A silence in the air, the unanswered call of the east-sky tower in the distance. Nola shifted, standing, grabbing his hands, and tugging him gently over to the carillon.
What was there left to panic about now?
It was over the moment the void sky had first turned itself in thought; they just hadn’t realized it yet.
Bellamy sat next to Nola. The carillon wasn’t built for two. But the west-sky tower also wasn’t supposed to fall. Cymbaline and Campana weren’t supposed to be broken in the rubble. The monsters were never supposed to get this far. The Great Threnody Bell was never supposed to ring. So it was alright, he supposed, that he would sit next to Nola as she played a final, chilling call, the east-sky tower falling into tune beside them. They understood.
The Threnody Bell was raised. It was dropped. And at the edge of the world, Bellamy closed his eyes as everything began to shake.