Mela sinks. She moves her arms but they’re erratic; each motion in opposition the other so all she makes are bubbles and waves. Beneath her waits the grinning maw of a creature as black as Heric’s deepest dark; rows upon rows of jagged teeth lead into a pit that glows with an inner fire.

  I’m an idiot.

  I learned to swim in the aquatic segment the fifth tribe once crossed, but that was long ago. I reach out and kick, my feet out of step with one another, but I progress. I kick again. I fall into frantic rhythm as bubbles rise from Mela’s lips. She’s using too much air and energy in her panic and I’m so far from her.

  The creature waits.

  Its frilled fins and fronds lift from its neck, back, and sides while its tail swishes to keep its place. The water stretches below us all, so deep and dark that I cannot plumb its depth. It’s no matter. I reach out again and again to drag the water behind me and my aching body forward.

  My shoulder screams at me; already injured from the ropes it yells its protest loudly and I ignore it. Mela is almost sunk. Feet away from teeth that will gnash and gnaw and rend her into meat.

  I can’t shout. I can’t reach her. My lungs are agony with my exertions.

  I stretch out my hand towards her, tears lost in the water and I beg, beg the architects to take pity. To not add a name to my list. I feel every part of me in the water, every aching muscle, every strand of hair waving behind, every shuddering heartbeat as I watch her final moments.

  A spark.

  Something that wasn’t there a moment before. Something new, something hot and full and bright. I can feel the water beyond me, inches, then feet. My awareness shifts and I am without myself for a moment before I slam back into my own mind with a force of a mountain crashing.

  Still I reach. I call out with every fibre of my being. Agony and ecstasy weave my bones with my mind and the spark is something special.

  Mela stops.

  My hand is wrapped about her wrist and yet I am far. A manacle of silver light grips her and I feel the force of it inside my soul. I cannot comprehend what is happening as darkness creeps into the edge of my vision. My body cannot live without air and I am pushing myself beyond where the body of a Heightened, even one as hardened by time and trial as mine has become, can bear.

  But I feel her hand shackled to mine and with it I can move. I pull with all the might of my muscles and this new thing within me and she comes to me. She shoots through the water as though tugged by a rope and a team of Marked. So quickly she doesn’t understand that she is out of the water now. Up and away and I push at the end with all that I am and she lands, crashes, into the boat above.

  She won’t be another name. I won’t let it happen.

  My lungs shriek. My vision is almost gone and I fight the urge to take a breath beneath the waves. I stretch upwards. Reach and pull and kick until I surface and suck in a life-giving breath so deep. So full. My chest expands and expels and expands again as I swallow my fill and more.

  I laugh, grab at the edge of the boat. I meet her eyes and she stares at me with the fear of near death and the gratefulness of another moment living.

  Her eyes turn wide and she extends her hand, shouting something that I don’t hear as I take in another breath.

  She disappears.

  No.

  I disappear.

  I’m dragged beneath the surface. The water is darker, cloudier, and I realise with a start that its my blood. The creature has my leg clamped in its teeth and is dragging me down and deeper. My ears pop as we dive.

  Its face is contorted. It’s more than a beast should be able to express but its tiny eyes, white as the snow on the peaks above us, are piercing in the black of its hide.

  I bite down. Clenching my jaw against the pain of teeth in my flesh. I have no weapon with which to pierce it, I have no knowledge of how I reached Mela or how to access that power once more, so I don’t try. I curl my body until I am lying across the beast’s nose and grasp onto its neck frills.

  I tear them off. Handfuls over handfuls of its soft flesh I rip and tear and grasp more. I feel like my leg will be torn off in return as the creature thrashes against the pain I cause and I’m forced to hold on.

  My fingernails dig into its hide and I realise that my hands are strong and its flesh is weaker than I am. This isn’t the boss. This is just another creature wishing it were as strong as I am.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The beast learns.

  I gouge its body. The first fistful goes into my mouth and I chew on the salty brine of it and grin. I’m manic. I know that what I’m doing is absurd. But I dig my hands into its body again and again until I’ve stripped it down to bone.

  The beast tries to spit me out but I have the measure it it now. My leg is punctured in a hundred places, blood seeps from me and I will feel every point of it once this is over, but for now my heart thrums and I have found an outlet for the rage that’s burned in me for so long.

  The creature stills once I reach its spine and tear out a piece of it. It shivers into death as I rip out its beating heart. I look into its white eye as I bite into that dense flesh and swallow all that it is.

  Reality comes back to me. I haven’t taken a breath in too long and my body is desperate. I can’t savour the moment of my triumph as I reach for the surface with every little I have left.

  I make it to the surface only because of the hands that descend and pull me those last precious inches into my boat. I crash into the bottom of the boat and lie there, panting with the globes sparkling above me and the waves rocking me gently.

  “You’re bleeding.” Mela leans over me and fusses with the tattered leg of my trousers; my skin is exposed with deep gashes where the the beast’s teeth have punctured my flesh. “How is it not deeper?”

  “Tough constitution.” I bluff, not understanding either. The creature had teeth that should by all rights have taken my limb off whole and kept it as a snack.

  “How’d you do that? It was you, right?” She rubs her wrist where my power had grasped her and looks at me with a new suspicion. I can’t blame her.

  “I don’t know. Wait.” I push myself upright until I can see over the edge of the boat towards the centre of the room. We’ve drifted closer during my battle. The boss is sitting still in its boat but now its cowled head stares at us. “Have you still got your knife?”

  “No. I lost it when my boat sank.”

  “Blazing sun. Fine. Stay behind me. I think it’s going to do something.”

  We enter a standoff; our boat floats, paddle lost the water some distance away, and the boss watches us drift closer, inch by inch. Mela clutches at the back of my shirt and pulls in closer.

  “I don’t see a weapon.”

  “They don’t usually have one. They’re still beasts, even if the architects have made them to appear almost human.”

  Our voices stir it. The boss raises a hand, wrapped in its cloak to obscure its skin. It points. But not at us, it points past us and to the side. Our eyes snap across and we see Jeary’s boat, forgotten in the melee. She’s being pulled. The current wraps about her hull and she’s floated, faster, and faster towards the centre and all we can do is watch in horror as she screams.

  I put my hand out and try; the power I’d felt should be coursing through me now. My power battling that of the boss and pulling Jeary towards us. I can’t find it. I can’t find that heart, that spark, that light at the core of myself from whence my power emanated. It’s like I’m stuck once more in the dark and my eye speaks not to me.

  “No. I’m not letting it happen. I won’t!” I knock Mela’s hand aside, ignoring her gasp of confusion, and toss myself back into the cold waters. I don’t swim towards Jeary; I swim towards the boss.

  “Pik! You’re a fool, Pik. Get back in the boat, what do you think you’re doing?”

  I can’t answer. My muscles are too tired for my exertion, my lungs aching from held breath, and my mind clouded with fear. I’m not this. I don’t rush in. I can’t be that person. I’m not strong enough to save anyone, not even myself.

  Then why am I in the water? Why is it parting before my strokes? Why am I gaining on Jeary. Why does my hand touch the smooth wood of the boss’s boat before hers crashes into the other side?

  It lashed out towards Jeary’s boat first. It splinters but doesn’t break. I take it all in at the moment of my arrival and I burst upwards. My weight rocks the boss’s boat but I scramble aboard before it can turn and knock me away.

  “Face me!” I shout into its hood. “Leave her and face me you monster.”

  It breaks my rib as it acknowledges me. Its hand never leaves its sleeve as it slams into my side, its head doesn’t turn.

  I spit up something bitter but I don’t go down. Not this time. I’m on it now. I’m strong and it is as small as I am. I’m on its back. It doesn’t feel right beneath its coverings, harder in places, softer in others, and with lumps and protrusions no human would have.

  I don’t think. There isn’t time for thought when I am beating it with every ounce of strength I have and then some more besides. This method worked with the leviathan beneath the water, it will work on the boss because we have nothing else.

  It roars with a torturous whine; the sound rides around the room, rattling the dangling lights and making me shake, the bass and treble mixing in an awful cacophony. Its body is giving out beneath my fists, my teeth, my elbows, and feet. It twists its arms and almost gains purchase but its fingers skitter off my skin and it finds no succor.

  “Look at me you shade spawned monster!” My blood is hot. I grab the leading edge of its cowl and yank back to expose the creature’s face to the light.

  I want to vomit. Its skin is as pale as death; mottled and bruised like a corpse with puckered red lips and eyes that are white and sightless. But its face is stolen. The beast wears Fren’s face.

  Once more time slows. I raise my hand, ready to break this creature’s monstrous visage, but its lips move, its throat thrums, and it speaks. It speaks with the voice of Luckil and I know rage beyond reason.

  “Don’t hurt me, Pik.”

  I tear out its throat first. My fingers are like iron tipped with knives. Its eyes are next. I burst the left and gouge the right. They spray viscous liquid onto my tongue and I swallow it, tasting the glorious salty mess and revel in my revenge.

  I tear it and rip it and shred it until all that remains is a bloody pool in the floating hulk of its boat filled with hunks of meat that is sometimes fish and sometimes meat. Through it all I cry. I shout. I stuff chunks of it into my mouth and I chew it because I cannot stop myself and I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

  “Pik?” Mela’s voice is softer than I deserve. The creature’s blood drips from my chin and I sob as I look at her. But not into her eyes, I can’t do that. I don’t deserve it. I’m a monster too. She can see that so why is she speaking to me so calmly after everything. After I failed. Again.

  There’s another name to be added to my list. Jeary. I will speak of her in heaven if I even deserve to reach there after my deeds.

  “It’s done, Pik. We can leave.”