Mav did not sleep on the last night too.
He could not be in two places, so he split what he had.
Seven, Two and Twelve stayed at the crack. Their only task was to keep the beast inside it. Everyone else went home with him.
He had 20% of the base to build and 15% of the Heartstone to fill, and he had until midnight of the next day.
’Six, the dens and the larder. Cut them into the rock, the way we planned. The rest of you, bring me everything that moves. I don’t care how small.’
They worked through the dark.
Six cut. Mav carried the broken rock away and set the last boulders with his own hands. They were boulders he could not have moved a week ago. The needlefish came up the slope again and again with stunned prey in their jaws. Mav pressed each one against the warm crystal and put his harpoon through it.
[Heartstone: 88%]
[Heartstone: 91%]
At dawn, Six set the last slab in place.
[Development: 100%]
Mav stopped, for one minute, and looked at what they had built.
It was not much, by the standards of Earth. But it was a base, it was his, and Mav was proud of it.
A ring of boulders stood around the base, each one sunk halfway into the seabed, with a single narrow gate. In the middle, the Heartstone was no longer sitting in the open. Six had raised a low dome of stone over it, as thick as Mav’s arm was long, with one opening just wide enough for a man. Nothing would roll onto it again.
Around the dome were the cracks in the rock. None of his seaweeds lived in them anymore. But every seaweed that had left to take a host had left its root behind, and 10 roots were still waiting in the rock. If the base stayed safe and fed, each of them would one day grow a new seaweed. Beyond them, cut straight down into the rock, were the dens for his hosts and two larders full of fish.
Against the inside of the wall, there was a cabin.
It was a crude thing. It had four walls of stacked stone, a roof of flat slabs, and a floor no larger than a bed. Mav had built it himself, badly, in the last hours of the night. He did not need a roof at the bottom of the sea. But for 30 days, he had slept tied to a rock, and he desperately wanted a home.
’It’s small, but it’s a real base.’
He had wanted that bar full for 30 days. Now it was, and he had no time to enjoy it.
[Subjects at rank E-: 9/10]
[Development: 100%]
[Heartstone: 94%]
’Two bars to finish. The stone needs prey, and prey is easy. Twelve needs one kill, and it’s the hardest kill in this sea.’
He left five needlefish to keep feeding the Heartstone, took Six with him, and went back down into the trench.
-----
Nothing had changed at the crack.
The beast lay inside, with its mouth facing out. Seven had tried all night to draw it into the open. It had not moved. It had learned what waited for it outside.
Mav tried everything else first. Seven flashed into the crack until she had nothing left. Six tore at the rock around it with both claws. It took them the whole day, and it changed nothing. By the time Mav gave up, the light from the surface was gone. He studied the opening for a long time.
It was a split in the cliff, taller than a man and about as wide as his shoulders. Seven was too thick for it. Six was too broad.
A small needlefish could pass. So could a lean young man.
’It has to be Twelve. And she can’t do it alone. Something has to hold that mouth open, or she’ll never reach anything soft.’
He had known since last night who that would be. He had only been hoping for a better idea, because this one terrified him.
He felt the others understand it, one after another. Seven’s cold river turned colder. Two darted in front of his face and stopped there.
’I know. I don’t like it either. But I said nobody would be spent, and I meant it. If someone goes into that hole, it’s me.’
He looked at the silver fish beside him.
’Twelve. You stay behind my shoulder. When I say now, you go for the eye. Not before.’
She moved to his shoulder.
He took his harpoon in both hands and swam into the crack.
It was like swimming into a throat, and every part of him wanted to turn back.
The walls scraped both his arms. Ahead of him, in the green glow of the seaweed in his neck, he saw the teeth. They were as long as his hand, and they filled the passage from one side to the other. Behind them, he could see one small, dead eye.
The beast saw him.
It lunged.
He had been waiting for it. He drove his harpoon forward with all his strength, straight up, into the roof of the open mouth. The blade went in. The shaft bent, and the lower end of it slammed against the bottom jaw.
The mouth could not close.
The beast threw itself from side to side. Mav held on to the shaft with both hands, inside its mouth, with teeth on every side of him. He reached for Six in his mind.
[You have borrowed a skill: Stone Shell.]
His skin turned gray and hard. The teeth scraped across him like knives across a rock.
He did not wait for it to end. At rank E, he could use two borrowed skills at the same time. He reached for the cold river.
[You have borrowed a skill: Discharge.]
He let it all go, into the roof of that mouth, through the metal in his hands.
The beast went stiff. Its jaws locked down on the bent shaft, and Stone Shell ran out at the same moment. One tooth went through his forearm. Another opened his thigh.
He had two seconds. Perhaps three.
’NOW!’
Twelve shot past his ear.
She was the smallest and the weakest Subject he owned. She had been born two weeks late. She had lost her root in the Churn, and missed her first two lobsters.
She did not miss this time.
Her needle jaws went into the dead eye, and she drove herself in after them, all the way, until only her tail showed.
The great body shook once.
Then it was still.
Mav hung in the open mouth, bleeding from his arm and his leg, and felt the wounds begin to close. He did not look at them. He was looking at the letters.
[A Subject has reached Rank E-.]
[Subjects at rank E-: 10/10]
-----
He pulled his harpoon out of the dead mouth and swam. He did not remember the climb.
It was deep night when he came out of the crack. He guessed that he had perhaps an hour left before midnight. He had 200 meters of cliff and a long slope between himself and the Heartstone.
’Everyone. Take anything that lives down here. Stun it and carry it. We go home now!’
They swam as he had never seen them swim. Seven went up the cliff with three white crabs in her jaws. Six ran along the seabed with a pale worm in each claw. Two and Twelve carried what they could.
The Heartstone was beating fast when he reached it. The needlefish had fed it all day.
[Heartstone: 97%]
He took the first crab from Seven, pressed it against the crystal, and drove his harpoon through it.
[Heartstone: 98%]
He took the second crab.
[Heartstone: 99%]
His hands were shaking. He took a worm from Six, and it slipped. He caught it against his chest, pushed it onto the stone, and struck.
The pale light inside the Heartstone flared so brightly that he had to shut his eyes.
When he opened them, there were letters everywhere.
[Subjects at rank E-: 10/10]
[Development: 100%]
[Heartstone: 100%]
[All conditions are met.]
[Your World has reached Rank E.]
The seabed moved under him.
This time, it was slow and deep, and it did not frighten his Subjects at all. He felt his World grow. He felt it in the points in his head, which were suddenly further apart. The sea was stretching. Far away, in every direction, there was new water where there had been nothing.
For any other Awakened, this was the moment his body changed. An Awakened rose with his World. When it reached rank E, so did he.
Mav felt no change at all. He had been rank E for two days. One had taken him there first.
He was laughing. He did not know when he had started. He had not felt this happy since he was 10 years old.
’It took 30 days, but I did it. We did it.’
He called up his Status, to see it written.
[Maverick Silkborn]
[World: Submerged]
[Rank: E]
He stopped laughing.
He read the fourth line. He read it again.
[Potential: D]
It had changed.
Potential was a ceiling, and almost nothing could raise it.
Since his second night in this sea, he had wanted to find one of the rare ways to raise it, and in 30 days, he had not found a single one.
Now it had happened by itself.
It had said E. He had read it a hundred times. Now it said D. A potential of D meant that his World would not stop at rank E after all. It could climb one rank higher.
He had not searched for this. He had not paid for it. He did not know what he had done to cause it, and that worried him.
Mav stared at the letter, in the green light, with all 10 of his Subjects around him.
’What did I do?’