The next day was exhausting for Coyrifan, for it was naught but an endless game of shark and fry in defense against Zeriva. She wished only to play, seeming not to recognize the delicate spear's edge of peril between the tribes that she had sharpened anew, blindly convinced that her father Chief Abenfor had victory held in guarantee until the time came that he chose to take it.

Meanwhile, Chief Ferrifan and a number of his men were busy honing actual spears, as well as testing their hunting sharks to be certain they would obey when the first blood of their enemies was let and flavored the water. They would be well-rehearsed into an even greater level of deadly competence than they already were long before Abenfor's planned day of attack.

That gave Coyrifan plenty of time to work out the best way to steal back the Medelapura, which his father still wore proudly about his thick neck. Preferably, it’d be done with as few witnesses as possible. Perhaps he could convince the chief that a series of father-son hunting trips might be just the thing to train their own senses to a higher degree.

It was on this thought that Coy ended the day by wearily curling into his personal hollow—the place so obvious that it was the last place Zeriva would expect him to hide. He drowsed for a bit, and when she did not come looking for him, he fell into a deep sleep.

He dreamed, swimming spiritless laps about the inland circle of fresh water through Imyra’s eyes. Oh, how disenchanted she was with that increasingly confined space! Every nook and cranny had already been thoroughly explored, every strange new fish and creature already tasted. She’d even sampled a few feathered animals who ventured too far out into the shallows. She had never felt unsafe in those waters, but there was nowhere that she could hide for the sake of privacy from the eyes that constantly kept watch on her, friendly as they were. The reeds and rushes might have sheltered her well enough, but they grew in water so shallow the best she could do was extend her neck and tuck her head in amongst them.

This she did, only to keen and rear backwards in a somersault over her own body moments later as Coyrifan was rudely shaken awake in the nighttime dark of his hollow.

His panic subsided immediately when he recognized Zeriva’s face with his dim night vision, instead focusing his efforts on calming Imyra and assuring her all was well.

“Coyrifan, listen to me!” The girl shook him again. “The chief, he moves now!”

That fully arrested his attention, shaking off any trace of sleep that remained. “Abenfor is coming?”

“No.” Her face was unusually sober. “Ferrifan is rallying his men as we speak. He is going to attack my home.”

For once, Coy did not bother trying to shield Imyra from the fear and anger he felt, stirring it together with his grim determination as a source of strength. She responded with terror at first, but once she sensed his purpose, she became restless instead, circling the pond as a manling might pace.

There was no longer time to come up with a cunning plan. There was only time to act. Coyrifan took up Erin’s moonstone necklace, holding the oddly-shaped crystal at eye level. He frowned at it, then looked to Zeriva, whose bewildered face was just beyond. “Whatever happens, you must get home and warn Abenfor.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I am going to do something very, very foolish.” With a smile that rivaled his customary irreverence, he invited her to exit the dwelling first with an emphatic flourish of his arm. “But first, we must get you past my father.”

As the two young merlings swam through the beaded curtain and into the cold night, Coyrifan gave the signal to Imyra. He watched through her eyes as she sped for the shore where the manling watchers sat on their barrels in a golden sphere of lantern light. She drew in as much water as she possibly could, then aimed and forced the liquid up into her head. Her spike left its sheath with unerring accuracy, driving through with such force that it instantly shattered the barrel beneath one of the manlings. He crashed to the ground in a pile of splintered wood, the other three leaping up expecting another attack from some unknown assailant. When Imyra flailed about for their attention, they spoke amongst each other for a few moments, then one of them ran for the griffins who slept a short distance away. “Koben will be at the southern shore within the hour,” one of them called to Imyra.

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In the distant black water at the top of the coral mountain, Coyrifan could just make out the silhouettes of many men, likely every one in the tribe aside from himself. Again, the women had gathered, this time to see them off on the very battle they had all so dreaded. The shapes of several dozen sharks seemed to hover in perfect, eerie stillness above the warriors. Coy recognized the lean, ultra-predacious outline of Vasadax’s northern lash, and feared for the life of his friend.

“Stay out of sight until I call you,” he warned Zeriva. “I doubt Ferrifan will let you pass otherwise.”

She nodded, and Coyrifan went forward.

Vasadax and several others called out a welcome to him as he came near. Greeting them with a nod and a wave, he went on toward his father. “Why did you not wake me?” he asked of Chief Ferrifan. “Am I not also one of your men, ready and willing to fight for the Mivusa tribe?”

Clasping his spear between both hands and raising it, Ferrifan saluted his son, his long blond braid and the crystalline Medelapira both jumping at the sharp movement and then slowly drifting back down to rest against his chest. His spear was twice as long and heavy as those that the others carried. It was much the same with his teeth, the pointed white triangles sharp as those of a shark as he smiled in a way that was not quite as welcoming as Coyrifan had hoped. “It is merely that I could not condone your participation in the killing of Chief Abenfor. Why spoil the affections of your soon-to-be warbride, when their love is so rarely given willingly?”

“Is it really so necessary to kill him?” Coyrifan glanced at the other men who were still clearly hesitant, their doubtful gazes compelling the chief’s son to try and offer some sort of aid. No one could act openly against Chief Ferrifan, only try to change his mind. Even the latter was mostly an honor reserved for his son alone.

“It is,” the chief said.

Coyrifan was about to speak again when his father turned to look down the far descent of the mountain. Not a word was heard from the chief as a deep rumble shook the waters, the sound of the earth itself groaning in pain.

No. Not the earth.

It was Meeoa.

With an agonized shudder that sent a physical wave through the water that jolted the gathering of merlings, the diseased heartbeast began to lift herself from her trench, a thick layer of silt sifting between the arms of the coral growths upon her back and pouring down her sides in cloudy drizzles. Her front fins strained beneath her, heaving her large body fully out of the packed crust of the deep groove that her weight and the movements of her breath had slowly carved beneath her. Once she had freed herself, she drifted slowly upward, her fins and tail fluttering faintly and out of sync, as if she’d forgotten how to use them. Her eyes had always been a drab gray, but there was a heaviness in them that Coyrifan had never seen before. A deadness.

“I have to kill him now,” Ferrifan said, “for we will certainly die before Crylis brings the Flood.” His yellow eyes fixed on his son with a candor so poignant that, for a moment, Coyrifan did not recognize him. “When that soon-coming day arrives, the Mivusas will no longer have a guardian to protect them.”

Coyrifan’s innards lurched at the chief’s unspoken accusation. Though they did not speak, he sensed the terrible realizations of the other merlings, who had all believed the lie that Imyra had been stolen away. The tribe would be defenseless against anyone with superior numbers, or a guardian heartbeast of their own. The Howliths could keep out enemies with ease, but could not protect the Mivusas from starvation. They would have to leave the safety of the ring to hunt or forage eventually, and then...

“We leave,” the chief said, not an insignificant amount of disgust in his tone. He turned and began to lead the way down the other side of the mountain toward Meeoa.

Coyrifan began to follow, wracking his mind for words to say. That was when Zeriva darted out of the darkness, shooting past the crowd of warriors and catching Chief Ferrifan by his braid, pulling it with all of her strength. She managed to throw him off balance for a few moments, but after blindly snatching about with his massive hand, he clamped it down upon her arm, jerking her down to face him. There was murder in his eyes.

A moment later, Coyrifan was there, holding the manling girl’s strangely-shaped moonstone in one hand and pulling taut against its chain the moonstone that was his father’s most treasured possession—the Medelapura—with the other.

Chief Ferrifan looked down at it, then at his son, teeth bared in a warning whose violence could not be mistaken.

Coyrifan met his father’s eyes, sadness, shame, and utter certainty in his golden gaze as he whispered one word:

“Awaken.”