Mav slept for the first time in two days, and woke up in a larger World.
He felt it before he opened his eyes. The sea went on much further than before. There was new water on every side and new depths below the trench. Things were moving in them that he did not know.
[Your World has grown: 1,000 km2 (386 mi2).]
It was 10 times the size it had been. There would be far more to explore now, and far more to fear.
The points in his head had changed too. He had gone to sleep with 10. Now there were 15.
[A new Subject has been born.]
The line had appeared five times during the night.
From the door of his cabin, he could see them. In five of the cracks around the dome, a green shoot no longer than his finger had pushed out of an old root. They were the roots that Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven had left behind. Three and Four were dead. However, what they had left in the rock was not.
A root only grew when its home was safe, fed and at peace. Since the Churn, his base had never been all three. Last night, it finally was.
’Five new seaweeds. They’ll get hosts today, before I leave.’
He was still looking at them when the next message came.
[A new species has been granted: Reefkin.]
[Subjects: 25]
At the same moment, 10 new points lit up in his head. Mav sat up.
They were standing around the stone dome of the Heartstone.
There were 10 of them, and the tallest barely came up to his waist. They had smooth gray-blue skin, large dark eyes, and thin slits along their necks that opened and closed in the water. Each one had two arms, two legs and hands with four webbed fingers. They were amphibians.
They were pressed together in a tight group, and all 10 of them were staring at Six.
Six stared back. He was the size of a cart by now.
’Six. Don’t move. Don’t even think about it.’
One of them looked through the gap between two boulders and saw what was lying outside the wall. It made a thin, high sound. The whole group shrank back.
Mav could not blame them. He remembered the first time he had seen Seven. She was used to being near the Heartstone now, and the stone dome kept most of its hum from reaching her.
-----
He knew what they were.
The first species kept a new Awakened alive. The second one arrived at rank E, and it was always a species that could build. It was also always able to live on the World it was given. Mav had an ocean, so he had received builders with gills.
People said that the second species was the real gift. A World full of beasts was only a hunting ground. A World with builders could have walls, villages, and one day, cities.
A new species always started at rank F-, whatever the rank of its World. So they were rank F-, like his seaweeds on the first day, and their affinity was Neutral. They would obey him. But they did not trust him yet.
He had been here before. He knew what it cost to get this part wrong.
So he moved slowly. He took an armful of fish from the larder, laid them on a flat stone halfway between himself and the group, and sat down.
For a long time, nobody moved.
Then the smallest one stepped forward.
She was a head shorter than the others. She took a fish and ate it in three bites, without taking her eyes off him. Then, instead of going back, she walked past him to the ring of boulders. She pushed the nearest stone. She bent down and looked at the place where it met the next one.
She turned around and looked at Mav.
He had seen that look on his uncle’s face, every time someone at the foundry had done a job badly.
’...Well, it held through a storm.’
She was already pulling out a small stone that he had wedged into the gap. She turned it over and set it back the other way.
It fit much better.
Mav watched her for the rest of the morning. The other nine ate and stood where they were. She did not stand still for a moment. She walked the whole wall, looked into every den, and measured the dome with her arms. Then she touched three of the others on the shoulder, and those three followed her and began to reset his stones.
She was the smallest of them, and they obeyed her without a sound.
’That one is far smarter than the rest. She’s the one I need.’
He gave numbers to his seaweeds and his fish, because an army needed them. But this one was going to run his base, and he was not going to call her Thirteen.
’Sela. Your name is Sela.’
He reached for her point in his head, the way he reached for his seaweeds. Every Subject he owned had one, and the Reefkin were no different. He pictured the ring of boulders. Then he pictured a second ring around it, far larger, full of small houses.
Sela went very still. Then something came back to him that had never come from a seaweed. It was his own picture, corrected. One of his houses had turned around, and its door now faced away from the slope.
’Yes. Exactly like that. Build as much as you can while I’m gone.’
He called Six over, slowly. The other nine shrank back. Sela was shaking, but she stayed where she was. Mav pointed at the crab, at her, and at a boulder.
’Six. You work with her. Whatever she points at, you lift.’
Sela raised one small webbed hand, very carefully, and pointed.
Six picked up the boulder and held it out to her.
She made a sound that he had not heard from her before. He was fairly sure that it was a laugh. Mav smiled too.
-----
The last message came a little before noon.
[The Nexus is now open to you.]
A light appeared beside the dome. It was tall and narrow, like a door, and as pale as the letters of his Status.
The Nexus was the place where every Awakened met. The academies were there. So was the gate that led back to Earth. Today was the day the academies took their students.
He had reached rank E in the last hour of the thirtieth day. He would be the last of his whole year, since the ranking was decided by the time each of them had needed to reach rank E. Some of his year had still not reached it. But after 30 days, no academy would take them, and their future was already decided.
The heirs of the Imperial Houses needed days. Cassian Pyrecrest had probably done it in three. The children of the noble houses took a week or two at most. The year before, the fastest of all had been a girl, Thalia Sunspire, the daughter of another Imperial House. She had needed four days, and her house had shown her face on Earth for months.
She was out there too. So were all the others from her year, and from every year before it. Each of them had a head start on him, and a World that had never stopped growing.
Mav knew why they were so fast. A rank did not tell the whole story. A fire drake at rank F- could already burn, and a seaweed at rank F- could do nothing but glow. A plant would never be as strong as a drake of the same rank. The heirs of the great houses had also been trained for this since they could walk. They arrived knowing how to feed a Heartstone, how to fight and what to build first, with a pack full of expensive resources. Mav had learned each of those things by almost dying.
’They had a head start of 18 years, and that’s fine. I know I’ll catch up once my seaweeds control rare species.’
He had a few things to do before he left.
He sent Seven up into the swarm, and she came back with five stunned needlefish. Mav laid each sprout against a fish. Five keys turned in five locks. Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen and Seventeen swam out of his hands, and their five roots stayed in the rock to grow again.
He had 12 needlefish now.
Then he gave his orders. He pictured each one, and held it, until he was sure that everyone understood them.
’Two. You train the new ones until they can hunt alone. Seven. You feed everyone. And every time a new seaweed grows in a crack, you bring it a stunned fish. I want this army to grow while I’m away.’
If the water grew warm and the current stopped, everyone was to go into the dens and stay there.
’I’ll be back tonight, I think. Nobody gets hurt while I’m away. That goes for the new ones too.’
The answer came back from 25 places at once. The 10 new ones were still shy, but the answer was steady, and it was warm.
He looked at what he was taking with him. He had his empty pack, his bent harpoon, and clothes that 30 days of water had turned to rags.
He also had two secrets. His talent could give him the skill of any beast his seaweeds took. And his potential had risen, which almost never happened.
’Nobody hears about either one. Not even Ronald, until I understand it myself.’
He thought of Ronald, and hoped that the big idiot had made it. He thought of Juno stabbing a potato. He thought of his uncle’s hand on his shoulder.
’I’m coming back. It took me 30 days, but I’m coming.’
Mav looked one last time at his World. It had tried to drown him, starve him and bury him, but it was now his. He looked at the crab, the eel, his 12 needlefish, and the small gray-blue shape that was already taking his wall apart. He was nervous about leaving them. He was also eager to see what was waiting on the other side.
There was one last thing to settle before he left.
No Awakened could take a Subject out of his World, except into the arenas of the Nexus or onto another World. It was a fixed rule of the Genesis, and it was why nobody walked through the Nexus with a wolf at his heels. However, One was not beside him. One was in him. To the Genesis, a host and its seaweed were a single creature, so where Mav went, One went.
One would not dry out in the air, either. A seaweed with a host no longer lived on the sea. It lived on its host.
That left one problem. A living Subject in the Nexus was supposed to be impossible, and impossible things got looked at very closely. Mav was not ashamed of One. But he did not want anyone to ask how it had come through. So he asked, and One answered. The two meters of seaweed slid under what was left of his shirt and wrapped itself twice around his chest, flat against his skin.
Then he stepped into the light.
There was air on the other side.
He had forgotten about air.
The first thing the Nexus ever saw of Maverick Silkborn was a boy in rags, on his hands and knees on a floor of white stone, coughing up half an ocean.