The fireball roared down from the sky and exploded directly on the crab's gemscale carapace.
Orange flame billowed outward in a great roaring dome, swallowing the riverbank whole. The trees along the water's edge curled and blackened in an instant. The very stones of the shore glowed red-hot beneath the heat. For three heartbeats, the Dread Crab vanished entirely behind a wall of fire.
When the flames cleared, it was still standing.
Its gem-encrusted shell glowed faintly, unmarked by the blast. The fire had not so much as scratched it.
But its legs were shaking.
The impact of the blast had rattled every bone inside that great armored body. The boulder to the skull had already dazed it. The fire-nettle venom and concentrated alcohol burning through its veins had turned its thoughts to mud. The fireball had been the final blow to its balance. It swayed on eight trembling legs, its great pincers drooping, bubbles frothing from the edges of its mouth.
Far above, in the Tide Pact contestant's booth, Kaelen's nephew—Soren's cousin, the one who had staked everything on the crab—slammed his fists on the console so hard the teacups rattled.
"Poison!" he shrieked. "That's cheating! They poisoned it! That's against the rules!"
The proctor standing outside his booth did not even look up.
"All naturally occurring flora and fauna of the arena realm may be utilized at the contestants' discretion," he said, flat as stone. "No rule against herbal compounds. And direct divine possession during active combat carries a seventy-five percent point deduction. Already applied."
The boy went white. He had seized direct control ten minutes earlier, when the crab had started snapping at thin air. He had had no choice. The stupid beast was too drunk to listen. But the point penalty was brutal. His score, which had been climbing toward second place, plummeted straight down the rankings.
"Get up," he snarled, pouring every scrap of divine will he had into the link. "Get up and run. Back to the sea. Now!"
The crab shuddered. Its eyes cleared for half a second. It turned, ponderous as a landslide, and began lumbering toward the shoreline, each step shaking the ground. It was slow now. Unsteady. But it was moving. And nothing on two legs was going to stop half a Fifth Rank monstrosity from reaching the water.
Borgul watched the great beast turn for the sea, and bared his teeth.
"Not on my watch," he rumbled. "That meat's not going anywhere."
He launched himself forward before anyone could stop him, stone scales clattering, and sank his jaws into the soft membrane of the crab's rearmost leg joint. The crab screeched—a high, shrill, bubbling sound—and tried to shake him off. Borgul held on like a tick, claws digging deep into the joint. He could not cut through the shell. He did not need to. He just needed to slow it down.
Lirael was already moving. Both hands outstretched, frost screaming off her fingertips. She did not waste her breath freezing the shell. She froze the ground beneath the crab's feet. Smooth, glossy black ice spread across the river mud in an instant. The crab's next step slipped. It staggered, one leg sliding out from under it, and roared in furious confusion.
Korg stood on the ridgeline above, hefting another boulder twice the size of the last one, and grinned.
"Keep it busy!" he yelled down. "I've got one more present for our dinner guest!"
Heaving with every muscle in his broad frame, he sent the boulder tumbling end over end down the slope. It struck the crab square on the back of the neck, right where the carapace met the softer flesh of its under-jaw.
The crab went rigid.
Its eyes rolled back in its head.
For a long, wobbly second, it swayed.
Then it turned. Not toward the sea. Toward the narrow, shadowed gully leading up into the coastal cliffs.
It was angry now. Drunk, dizzy, furious, and fixated on the apes on the ridge that kept throwing rocks at it. It forgot the sea. It forgot the battle. It forgot everything but the urge to crush the annoying little things that kept hitting it.
It charged.
Straight into the gully.
Straight toward the caves.
Lirael exhaled, slow and steady.
Perfect.
The cliffs honeycombed above the shore were riddled with natural limestone caves. The drakes had spent three nights widening the main cavern, propping up the ceiling with wooden support posts, laying thin lines of fire-slime charge along every pillar. It had been meant as a fallback, as a trap for any Covenant force that chased them too far east.
It would do for a crab.
The great beast thundered into the cavern mouth, its shell scraping the stone walls, and roared at the darkness.
Korg stood at the far end of the cavern, beating his chest and yelling insults.
"Over here, you overgrown seafood platter! Tired already? Come and get me!"
The crab charged.
Lirael gave the signal.
The charges went off.
There was no great explosion. No roar of flame. Just a sharp, precise series of cracks as the fire-slime charges ate through the wooden posts all at once. The support pillars splintered and gave way. Tons of solid limestone ceiling came crashing down in a great cloud of dust and rock.
The cavern entrance collapsed.
The back of the cavern collapsed.
And the Dread Crab, trapped in the middle, was buried up to its leg joints in fallen rock.
It shrieked. It thrashed. It snapped its great claws at the stone walls. But it could not turn around. It could not climb. The more it struggled, the deeper it sank into the loose rubble. Its great armored shell had kept it alive through the collapse. It had also wedged it tight.
It was trapped.
The three clan leaders gathered at the newly sealed cave mouth, listening to the enraged, muffled roars coming from inside, and nodded.
"Nice and secure," Korg said, satisfied. "Now we just wait for the sedative moss to kick in."
They had stuffed every crevice around the crab with sleeping moss, harvested from the deepest caves of the elven groves. Slow, steady, harmless to the meat. Strong enough to put down a Fifth Rank beast, given time.
Borgul leaned in, pressing an ear to the stone, and grunted.
"Still fighting. Won't be long, though. Drunk, concussed, and breathing sleeping fumes? It'll be out by sundown."
"Good," Lirael said, already turning toward the supply carts. "We start at first light. Claws go to the stone soup pots. Body meat steamed over seawater. Legs roasted. Shell gets broken down and turned into armor plating. Nothing goes to waste."
Korg smacked his lips.
"Wonder if it has roe," he said, thoughtful. "Fifth Rank crab roe. That'd be something."
"One thing at a time," Lirael said, but there was a faint smile on her face.
Up in the observation spire, the crab's owner had gone completely silent. He stared at the feed, at the sealed cave, at his plummeting score, and looked like he might be sick.
All of it. Every gemfish. Every siren bubble colony. Every crystal he'd spent breeding and feeding and forcing that evolution. All of it. Lost. To a bunch of tunnel rats with rocks and poison weeds.
Headmaster Corvin watched the feed number seventy-three, where the three clan leaders were already unloading cooking pots and spice sacks outside the collapsed cave, and shook his head.
"Remarkable," he said, quiet. "Fifth Rank beast. Taken down with herbal tonics and a cave-in. No divine intervention. No high-tier spells. Just… planning."
The examiner beside him snorted.
"Planning? They're not soldiers, sir. They're cooks. They just hunted a Fifth Rank monstrosity because they wanted crab for dinner."
Corvin smiled faintly.
"Maybe that's the secret," he said. "An army that fights for every meal? An army that knows exactly what it's fighting for? They don't break. They don't surrender. They don't give up just because the odds are bad. Because going hungry is worse than dying."
He glanced at the scoreboard.
Laia's score had jumped. Not just from the crab points. From the outposts they'd raided, the supplies they'd seized, the troops they'd eliminated. She was climbing. Fast.
Second place now. Barely behind Murong Xue.
And the final year hadn't even started yet.
Down by the cave mouth, the first cooking fires were already lit. The sun dipped low over the sea, painting the waves gold. Somewhere far to the north, horns blared—both Covenant and Tide Pact, converging on the sound of the battle. They would be there by morning. They would find the cave. They would find the crab. They would find the tunnel rats.
Lirael looked up from sharpening her carving knife, and glanced north.
"They'll be here at dawn," she said.
Borgul grunted, tossing another log on the cooking fire.
"Let 'em come," he said. "We'll eat first. Then we'll deal with them."
Korg laughed, loud and deep, and clapped him on the back.
"Damn right," he said. "Dinner first. War second."
The fire crackled. The sea wind carried the first faint, savory scent of cooking shellfish out over the cliffs.
Somewhere inside the cave, the crab's struggles grew weaker.
And far above, in a quiet observation booth, Laia took another bite of pastry, glanced at the screen, and blinked.
Wait, she thought. Did they actually catch the crab?
She swallowed, and reached for another tart.
Well. That was… more than she'd expected.
She just hoped they saved her a claw.