Mav read the line three times.
‘…You could have said that before I drowned.’
The letters did not apologize.
They hung in the water a moment longer and then faded, leaving him alone in the green light with a chest full of his own World.
He stayed very still, too shocked to do anything else.
He was perhaps 15 meters under the surface.
The vest still held a last breath of air, just enough to stop the pack from dragging him deeper, and so he hung in the water like a badly made puppet.
Around him, long seaweeds rose out of the gloom below and swayed gently in the current.
The surface was a sheet of pale silver far above his head.
And he was not dead.
He examined that fact carefully, from several directions.
It seemed to hold.
Slowly, he raised a hand to the back of his neck.
His fingers found it at once.
A cool, smooth seaweed lay coiled against his nape, as wide as two fingers.
The rest of it trailed down between his shoulder blades.
He followed it upward, to the place where it met his skin, just below the skull.
It did not stop at the skin.
The end of the seaweed went in.
He could feel the small, raised edge where his flesh closed around it, like a gum around the root of a tooth.
Horror crawled up his spine.
‘No.
No, no.
Absolutely not.’
He got a grip on it and pulled.
White pain burst behind his eyes.
His whole body locked.
For an instant, the fire in his chest came roaring back, and he was drowning again, truly drowning, with water in his lungs and no air anywhere.
He let go.
The fire faded.
The coolness returned, slow and steady, as if nothing had happened.
Mav floated there, shaking.
‘Fine.
It stays.
For now.’
It was not a difficult calculation.
The thing in his neck was the only reason he was alive.
Whatever it was doing to him, the alternative was worse, and considerably shorter.
That did not mean he had to like it.
He needed to know more, and there was only one thing down here that might tell him.
Every child on Earth knew how the Status worked, in the same way they knew how breathing worked.
An Awakened could call it up with a thought.
It showed the state of his World, plainly, in words and numbers.
The Genesis never explained itself, but it kept excellent accounts.
Mav approved of that, at least.
He concentrated.
Nothing happened.
He tried again, feeling slightly foolish, and thought the word as clearly as he could.
Pale letters bloomed in the water.
[Maverick Silkborn]
[World: Submerged]
[Rank: F]
[Potential: E]
[Species: Seaweed]
[Subjects: 10]
[Talent: Host]
He read down the list without enthusiasm.
It was every bit as bad as it had been in the hall.
Seeing it written in his own private light did not improve it.
Below the list, there was more.
[Day 1]
[Rank E- Subjects: 0/10]
[Development: 0%]
[Heartstone: 0%]
Three bars, and all three were empty.
He knew these, too.
Everyone did.
They were the three things a World needed in order to rise in rank.
The first counted Subjects.
To reach rank E, a world needed 10 Subjects that had themselves reached at least rank E-.
The second was development: shelter, food, defenses, all the things that turned a wilderness into a place where something could live.
The third was the Heartstone, the core that sat at the center of every World, much like Earth’s own.
It had to be fed with energy.
Fill all three, and the world grew.
Fill all three, and the road home opened.
Then there was the line at the top.
Day 1.
It looked harmless.
It was not.
Rank E was the door back to Earth, but it was also a test.
The academies were the only places where a new Awakened could find teachers, resources and allies.
They took those who reached rank E within 30 days.
Not 31.
Anyone who arrived later was welcome to carry on alone, with no one to teach them and no one to stand behind them.
Alone was a bad thing to be.
Most loners died within a few months.
’30 days.
10 Subjects at rank E-.
A place to live.
A full Heartstone.’
He looked at the first bar again, and felt the weight of it.
0 out of 10.
And he currently had exactly 10 Subjects.
That meant every single one of them had to survive and grow.
He could not lose one.
Not to hunger, not to accident, not to whatever else lived in this water.
There was no margin at all.
Mav liked margins.
He had built his whole life on never spending the last coin.
And now his entire future depended on 10 seaweeds that could not move, could not fight, and could not…
He frowned.
‘Wait.’
Ten.
The list said 10 Subjects.
He looked down.
The glowing seaweed rose out of the dark below him, swaying, too tangled to count.
He looked at the list again.
Then, on an impulse, he fixed his attention on the line itself.
[Subjects: 10]
The line unfolded.
It became a column.
10 entries, one under another, each as short as the last.
[Seaweed.
Rank F-.
Host: none.]
[Seaweed.
Rank F-.
Host: none.]
[Seaweed.
Rank F-.
Host: none.]
He read down the column.
They were all the same.
Even the little minus sign after the rank was the same, and it was not encouraging.
9 times, the same line.
The tenth was different.
[Seaweed.
Rank F-.
Host: Maverick Silkborn.]
Mav looked at it for a long time, and felt his skin crawl.
The current moved.
The seaweeds swayed.
Against the back of his neck, something cool and patient pulsed once, in time with his heart.
‘Host.’
So that was what it meant.
He had spent the whole afternoon turning the word over.
The Genesis gave every Awakened the name of a talent, never its description.
Each of them had to discover the rest alone.
His was called Host.
He had thought it might mean that he sheltered things, or carried them.
Some harmless gift for a harmless species.
Something to do with hospitality.
It did not mean that.
It meant that his seaweed did not simply grow.
It took root.
In living things.
And of all the living things in this sea, it had started with the nearest one.
He thought of the needle sliding into the base of his skull.
He thought about how far a root could grow, and in which direction.
Far below, through the swaying green, he could just make out a deeper light.
The other nine were waiting down there.
Every Awakened in history had been given 10 creatures to rule.
He had been given 9.
The tenth had taken him.