On day 29, everything Mav owned went down into the trench.
He had not slept. He had spent the whole night on the cliff with Seven, killing lobsters one after another. Seven stunned them, and Mav finished every one of them himself. For once, he gave none of his kills away.
At dawn, the message came.
[A Subject has reached Rank E.]
[Seaweed. Rank E. Essence: 6/1600. Host: Maverick Silkborn.]
One had outgrown him once more, and he felt the change at once. He was rank E now, while his World was still rank F. The others of his year had only reached that rank when their Worlds did. For the first time in his life, Mav felt strong.
’One, Two and Seven at rank E. My three strongest are as strong as I can make them.’
He took Six this time. The ring of boulders around the Heartstone was finished, and the rest of the building could wait one day. He needed his claws.
The morning belonged to Twelve.
The method was simple, but it was slow. Seven stunned a lobster. Six pinned it on its back with both claws, so that the soft place under the tail was open. Then Twelve came in, small and silver, and drove her needle jaws into it.
She missed twice. On the third try, the point went in, and the lobster stopped moving.
50 points.
’Good. Again.’
Nobody else made a kill that morning. The six other needlefish chased the lobsters toward Seven and took nothing for themselves. Mav had explained it to them at dawn. Today, every point in this trench belonged to the smallest of them.
None of them had argued. Instead, he had felt loyalty from them, the same loyalty that Two had shown on the day he pushed Five home. It made Mav proud of them.
[A Subject has reached Rank F+.]
Twelve grew a little. Her jaws grew longer and harder. After that, she did not miss.
By the middle of the day, Mav opened her entry.
[Seaweed. Rank F+. Essence: 200/400. Host: Needlefish.]
She needed 200 more.
There were no lobsters left to give her. The few that had survived two days of hunting had hidden deep in the cliff, where even Six could not reach them.
It was time for the thing at the bottom.
-----
Mav stopped above the white mud, well out of reach, and looked at the small golden light.
He did not look for long, because he had learned his lesson the day before.
He had thought about that light all night, between two lobsters. The beast was rank E+, and its skill was the light in front of him. The light did not burn or shock. It pulled. It reached into anything that could see it and made it swim closer.
’It’s a lure. That’s its skill. It seems to only work on creatures that have eyes.’
Seven had no eyes.
That was the first half of his plan.
The second half was a thought he had been pushing away since dawn. He let himself look at it now.
If the beast under the mud was hurt badly enough, a seaweed could take it.
A rank E+ host. It would be stronger than Seven. It would be the strongest thing he could own until his World itself rose.
He wanted it. He wanted it the way he had wanted the crab, and the eel.
But he had no seaweed to give it. Every one of his 10 had a host now, and the rule had not changed. One seaweed, one host. The roots left in the rock would not sprout for days.
Twelve needed the Essence, too.
’I can’t have it. Even with a free seaweed, I couldn’t. If I take the beast alive, Twelve stays at rank F+, the first bar stops at 9 out of 10, and I miss the deadline by one Subject. Then no academy will take me, and for a commoner, that’s a death sentence.’
’I’ll find another beast later. But next time, I’ll always keep one seaweed without a host.’
He let it go, with regret.
’Everyone stays behind me, and looks at the cliff. Not at the light. Seven, Six. With me.’
-----
Seven went in first.
She crossed the white mud in one long rush, straight at the golden light. She could not see it. To her, there was only a huge, slow spark lying under the mud, and she knew exactly where its head was.
She released all of her lightning at once.
The trench turned white.
A flash like that had stopped Mav’s heart in the tunnel. The beast under the mud only shuddered. Then the mud exploded.
It came up all at once, black and enormous, with its mouth open. The jaws closed on the middle of Seven’s body.
Mav felt the teeth go in as if they had gone into his own side. For a moment, he was sure that he had lost her.
’Six! The light! Cut the light!’
The crab was already there. He had walked across the mud while the beast was looking the other way. He reached up with his new claw and closed it on the long stalk that held the golden lure.
His claw squeezed, and the stalk tore.
The golden light went out.
The beast opened its mouth and screamed. Mav did not hear it. He felt it in his bones. Seven tore herself out of its teeth and fled, trailing blood. Green thread was already running along the wounds in her side. They would need hours to close, but they had stopped bleeding.
’Now. Everyone!’
He could look at it now. There was nothing left to pull at him.
They hit it together.
Two led the needlefish in. They used Dart together, and they hit its small dead eyes and its gills like thrown knives. The crab caught a fin and would not let go. Mav swam straight at its head with his harpoon in his right hand, and reached for the cold river in his mind.
[You have borrowed a skill: Discharge.]
It was not a spark this time. He was rank E now, and he had been practicing every night. Blue light ran down his arm and along the bent shaft of the harpoon. He put his blade into the beast’s gill and let everything go.
The beast jerked. Its whole body bent like a bow.
Then its tail came around and hit him.
It was like being struck by a falling wall. He flew backward through the water, hit the cliff, and felt three of his ribs break.
He could not breathe, and remembered that he did not need to. He lay against the rock and felt something cool run down from the back of his neck into his chest.
The green thread reached his ribs and held them together. They would not be whole again for hours, and the mending hurt more than the breaking had.
’I’m going to need every skill I have.’
He pushed off the cliff and went back in.
-----
The fight lasted until the light from the surface was gone.
The beast was stronger than all of them. But there were 10 of them, and each time it hurt one, the green thread held the wound shut. It bit Six, and his shell held. It crushed Eleven against the mud, and she swam away. Seven flashed, waited, and flashed again. Mav put his harpoon into it five times.
It had no way to heal. It had a lure, and its lure was gone.
Slowly, it began to weaken.
Mav saw the moment it understood that it was losing. It stopped attacking. It turned its great black body and swam for the cliff, trailing a dozen clouds of blood.
’Don’t let it get away! Twelve, be ready!’
It did not try to get away. It went to the foot of the cliff, where a dark crack opened in the rock, and forced itself inside, backward, until only its mouth could be seen.
Then it stopped.
Seven threw herself at the crack and could not get in. The opening was too narrow for her. Six could not fit either. The beast lay inside its hole, with its teeth facing out, and every Subject that came near had to face that mouth.
It was hurt and bleeding, and it was weaker than it had ever been.
But it was also alive, and nobody could reach it. Mav wanted to scream with frustration.
Mav hung in the dark water, with his heart pounding, and looked at the bars.
[Subjects at rank E-: 9/10]
[Development: 80%]
[Heartstone: 85%]
The light from the surface had gone out.
He had one day left.