Before anything else, Mav checked his Status.
[Subjects: 10]
Still 10.
He had half expected 9 and a fish.
He opened the column and ran down it until he found the line that had changed.
[Seaweed.
Rank F-.
Essence: 2/100.
Host: Needlefish.]
He read it twice.
The Genesis did not see a fish.
It saw one of his seaweed, which happened to have acquired fins.
One Subject, of his own species, counted exactly as before.
As far as the bookkeeping was concerned, his seaweed could now swim.
‘All right.
What else can you do?’
He had been handed a tool with no instructions.
His uncle had a rule for that.
When you were given a machine nobody had explained, you did not ask what it could do.
You found out what made it stop.
So Mav spent the sixth day trying to make it stop.
He began with distance.
He sent the fish out past his wall, past the edge of his base, out into the open water where the light gave way to the dark.
He felt it go.
The point in his head stretched thinner and thinner, like a thread being drawn out, and at the far end of it, the small quick heart kept beating.
It never broke.
When he called, the fish came back.
Then he gave it the order he had been saving.
‘Hunt.’
The fish hesitated.
It was the first time it had.
Then it turned, dropped toward the seabed, and hung motionless above a crack in the rock.
Mav felt its attention narrow.
It struck.
When it rose again, something small and glassy was twitching in its needle jaws.
A shrimp.
It swallowed it whole.
Something warm trickled down the thread and into him.
He opened the entry.
[Seaweed.
Rank F-.
Essence: 5/100.
Host: Needlefish.]
Mav looked at the number for a long moment, and felt a thrill of excitement.
Three points.
From one shrimp, in less than a minute.
It had taken him three days of walls and drills to earn two.
Kill.
Train.
Live well.
His seaweed could not kill.
But this was no longer just his seaweed.
The next question was the important one.
He had eight seaweeds left in the rock.
If each of them could take a fish, he had a hunting pack.
If they could not, he had one lucky accident.
He went to the nearest seaweed, the quick one by the wall, and laid his hand on it.
‘Come.’
It did not want to.
He felt that plainly.
It was not defiance.
It was closer to the feeling of standing at the edge of a high roof.
This thing had held on to the same crack of rock for its entire existence, and he was asking it to let go.
He did not push.
He was not sure why.
He only kept his hand where it was, and waited, and meant it.
The root came loose.
The seaweed wrapped itself around his forearm, from the wrist to the elbow, and held on.
It was cool and light, and he could feel it there in two ways at once, on his skin and in his head.
It was oddly like carrying something that trusted him.
He decided not to think about that either.
The swarm came at noon.
It was smaller than the day before, and more nervous.
Mav sent his fish into it like a dog into sheep, cut a single needlefish out of the crowd without harming it, and drove it down against the wall, where he was waiting.
He caught it with both hands.
It was strong for its size and perfectly healthy, and it wanted very much to leave.
‘Now.’
The seaweed on his arm struck.
It coiled around the fish, and its tip went searching for the place behind the gills.
It could not get in.
He felt it try.
It was like trying to push a nail into steel.
The fish thrashed, and every twist of its body threw the seaweed off.
For three long seconds, the two of them fought in his hands.
Then the fish tore free and was gone.
The seaweed hung limp from his wrist.
Its glow had dimmed to almost nothing.
He felt its exhaustion as if it were his own, a hollow, wrung-out ache.
Under it lay something he might have called shame, in a creature that had a face.
‘No.
That one was my fault.
Rest.’
He let it rest for an hour, coiled against his arm, before he tried again.
This time, he changed one thing.
He sent his fish into the swarm a second time, and gave it a different order.
‘Bite.’
Needle jaws snapped shut on a tail.
The fish it had struck jerked away, trailing a thread of red, and began to sink.
It was slower now.
It was frightened.
It was hurt.
Mav caught it easily.
‘Now.’
The seaweed struck, and the tip went in.
There it was.
The key, and the lock.
Two hearts, then one.
The fish stiffened in his hands and went still, and the seaweed let go of his arm and wrapped itself around its new body, coil after coil.
When he opened his hands, a second needlefish swam out of them.
It turned, and came back, and took its place beside the first.
They both looked at him, and Mav felt a grin spread across his face.
He made one more test before the light failed.
He took a third seaweed from the rock, carried it over to his first fish, and told it to take hold.
It would not.
It touched the silver side, then pulled back at once, the way a hand pulls back from a seat that is already taken.
He asked again.
It refused again.
There was no room in there for two.
That was enough for one day.
Mav sat down against the Heartstone, with a seaweed around his arm and two fish circling his head, and set out what he knew.
He did it the way he did everything, as a list.
The prey had to be weak.
Wounded, or worn out, or simply beaten.
A healthy creature could throw the seaweed off.
The seaweed had to touch it.
It could not move by itself.
Someone had to carry it there.
And it was one seaweed to one host.
No more.
Three rules.
Simple ones.
There was a fourth question, and he knew what it was.
What happened to a seaweed when its host died?
He had a strong suspicion.
He also had exactly 10 Subjects and a use for every one of them.
He was not going to spend one to find out.
He checked the count a last time.
[Subjects: 10]
One in him.
Two in fish.
One on his arm.
Six in the rock.
And he could feel every one of them, the still ones and the moving ones, as clearly as he could feel his own hands.
10 points of himself, scattered through the water.
It should have felt crowded.
It did not.
Somewhere, right now, the other 34 were learning their own Worlds.
Cassian Pyrecrest had drakes.
Dorian Ashgrove had hounds.
Even Ronald had boars.
They had all been given hunters.
Mav had been given a weed.
But it was a weed that could wear a hunter.
For the first time, Mav felt that he had a real chance.
There was only one problem left.
His fish could kill shrimp, and a shrimp was worth three points.
Each seaweed needed 700 points to reach rank E-.
For that, he needed bigger prey, and bigger prey would have to be hurt before it could be taken.
He looked at the knife in his hand.
He looked at the coil of cord.
He looked at the pack, and at the two long metal stays that held its frame straight.
Kill.
Train.
Live well.
His seaweed could not kill.
But the things it wore could.
All he needed now was a way to hurt them first.