Raven Tide

🟨Content warning: There is mention of self-harm is present in this chapter.

Fire filled the sky.

The muffled squall of Chyani cursing rang out from the cloaked hovering transport ship as I guided it out of the hangar and moved it stealthily into an innocuous safe clearing.

“She’ll resent me forever for this, but at least she’ll be alive and free to eventually forget me.”

The large stationary cannons rotated on their towers and took aim at the fiery serpent descending through the atmosphere. They were fully charged and ready to fire as soon as the abomination came in range.

The weapons wouldn’t do any critical damage but that was irrelevant. I only needed them for luring the Graven to the surface. If Chyani left now, I risked the beast seeing the wake of her ship and following.

I hated deceiving Chyani.

All the ships were ready to go the second we arrived and it took less than a minute to initiate the auto-pilot. If my final long-range scan hadn’t detected the Graven I would have gladly joined her in jumping back to Sahei.

I had so many new songs I hoped to share with my brother.

But Chyani’s best shot at survival required waiting for the Graven to trip the sensors and then launching her ahead alone into the hands of Jahaa members better equipped to protect her.

The sound of fists slamming on the hatchway door reverberated from the cloaked transport.

“Man,” I shook my head, chuckling. “She didn’t waste any time. Good thing I melted all the door handles and dialed up the security lockouts on all control systems.”

It sucked that our decoy failed, but on the upside, Venom Heart was likely intact.

At least I didn’t fuck up everything.

I had a feeling it was never the ships that the Graven was tracking. After all, it positioned Gar’mol in our path beyond an entire jump point.

More likely, the Graven cast out a wide net of faithful chumps from the start, in the hopes of snagging us in any direction that we ran.

“I don’t know what you want with Chyani,” I flashed my fangs and stomped over to a cache of razkur weapons I collected from the Defense Ops armory. “But you will never come near her.”

I claimed a retractable slayer-resistant force shield and a spear tipped and embedded with tech specialized for penetrating the corrupted.

“See me!” I roared in fury at the burning sky. “Fight me and together we will face death!”

The Graven shrieked as it breached the artificial atmosphere barrier then it was drowned out by a cacophony of cannon fire when the automated turrets let loose on their target.

The Graven screeched and spat streams of fire at the towers.

A thin film of blue force shielding flickered and deflected the flames.

The shields would eventually fail but the bombardment of the plasma artillery was plenty to attract the Graven into the central courtyard and away from the empty quarry where I was hiding Chyani.

Yes, come this way. Look only at me.

The Graven dispensed with its space-traversing serpent shape and returned to its gangly terrestrial wolfen formation but it kept the long swishing reptilian tail.

It ignored the hailstorm of plasma fire and stalked toward me.

TTTUAAATTHHHHAAAAA!!!!!

The Graven rattled the ground with a tumultuous bellow that I assumed translated to ‘I’m going to kill you!’

The Graven was bigger than it was on Silosa Outpost. Lanky, emaciated, expanded to the size of the ceratosaurus that attacked Gar’mol, and composed of pure red churning magma.

“The hunt ends today!” I crouched with my blue force shield raised and pointed my spear, clacking the shaft twice on the crackling edge.

The Graven dug its claws into the dirt and injected the ground with thick rivulets of lava. Then it released a burst of fiery crescent rings like sun flares scorching everything around it.

We’ve come to understand that the Graven, the primordial entities orchestrating and dispersing their insidious contagion, come in many different varieties of elements. Fungus, metal, water, crystals, you name it. I unfortunately got paired with fire and I had no idea how to get near it without winding up crispy.

Where do I even stab it? Those red lights on its face might be eyes.

At least the razkur weapons were heat resistant and I made sure I spread out a bunch of backups across the courtyard.

Turret plasma pelted into the Graven’s backside, inciting it to thrash its tail and leap forward.

Perfect!

I hit the pulsing remote launch button on my gauntlet.

As I hoped, the creature’s deafening outburst overshadowed the rumble of Chyani’s ship as it took off and departed the atmosphere.

The graven opened its vacuous canine mouth and whipped its slick black tongue my way.

I did not fear it. It was mortal, and fallible, and Chyani was safe beyond its grasp.

My path was pure, I knew what had to be done, and I was prepared to reap the consequences.

I lunged and swiped at the Graven’s tongue then rolled away when a heatwave flared from its skin.

A mane of fire corkscrewed out around its head as the beat ran after me, snapping at my heels. Occasionally, if I slowed too much the swirling spikes would fold forward and converge to unleash a beam of torrid light in whatever direction it was looking.

“Fuck, that’s hot!” I bounded over a stockpile of derelict mining equipment and up across a dragline excavator.

The Graven struck the base of the crane with the end of its tail then coiled around the metal to cut off the tall tower and leave me tumbling in freefall.

I kicked off the truss and parkoured onto lower ground and then along a suspended cable to cut off the Graven’s left arm.

It hissed but displayed no pain. Then it started pummeling the ground with its head and rattling off droplets of molten lava.

Little fires broke out across the barren courtyard then expanded and connected into a ring of fire around me and the Graven.

Other bonfires lit up as well, the largest patched igniting beneath the turret towers to steadily consume them until there was nothing left but ashes.

The Graven grinned at me with its smoldering black fangs when I landed and blocked its fire beam with my shield. Its arm was growing back and I was running out of places to run to for cover.

I roared and charged, retracting my shield around my fist while piercing my spear into its gaping mouth.

The Graven snapped its mouth shut but couldn’t shake me loose. Then I hopped up on the pole shaft and opened my force shield on maximum, using the electric edge to cut through the top half of its mouth.

I sprang away when the support gave out then darted across the courtyard for another hidden replacement spear.

The Graven howled through the gap above its ghoulish lower jaw and then bowed its head to spew up a rapidly expanding puddle of hot orange and black slag. The top of its jaw reformed in less than a minute.

Quickly, while it’s busy! I needed to make my kill!

The Graven hadn’t yet summoned its personal guardians but I didn’t see the point in waiting for the monster’s last line of defense to show up and make my life more difficult.

I climbed up the front lip of a loader to avoid the floor of lava and swooped down, aiming the tip of my spear for the junction at the base of the Graven’s spine.

I made contact and clung to the pole while the beast threshed below.

Was this really going to work?

Careful, Raven Tide! This thing’s got tricks hidden under tricks!

I sank my wrist blades down and did my best to hack away into its massive neck. The heat radiating off its back scalded my fist and made the top layer of my scales peel and curl off backward.

Tiny fiery arches began flickering across the Graven’s shoulders.

Another burst!

I leaped away but got caught in the shockwave and was hurled upside down into the side of a dozer.

“Ugg..” I righted myself and tugged up on my own indention molded into the machine’s metal.

Pieces of my spear were scattered all over the ground.

Before I had time to shake out my long quills, the Graven’s long back tongue zipped between my legs.

“Shit!” I climbed up the dozer and vaulted from the roof onto a stack of piping and drills.

I didn’t have a grimy relic lodged in my chest but I wasn’t about to stand around and find out if that mattered.

The Graven’s tongue popped the chains tethering the surplus parts and left me scrambling for a secure footing. Before the last pole clanged loose I jumped and grabbed a titanium hook dangling from a crane.

The Graven snapped its hideous black maw several feet below my legs, it was like looking down into a hot barbed tunnel leading into the abyss.

I pulled myself up one-handed then pumped my legs back and forth, and I threw myself just before its spiky mane converged and fired up.

My landing was bad. I hit my side on a bucket wheel and broke a few ribs in the process but I made my final touchdown next to a mobile laser cutter.

“That’ll do!” I reared up, revving the power core then discharged a surge of pure incandescent violence at the Graven’s face.

The creature hissed and jerked as I drove it backward. It didn’t like the light hitting its eyes.

“Finally, something you hate!”

The power core gauge inevitably dwindled toward zero. But there was plenty of charge to let me maneuver toward another stash of razkur weapons before I switched out the depleted cutter for a double-glaive spear.

No longer blinded, the Graven swiped at me but I blocked it and chopped off several of its boney fingers. The digits grew back but the beast refrained from tackling me down.

“Show me what you got!” I spun my spear and then aimed one tip at my target. Polearms have always been my personal favorite.

Like clockwork, the Graven’s mane folded to the center and fired but this time I chose to absorb the blast with my shield and stepped in with a few critical jabs

The ambient heat seared my arms and face as I got closer. However, I heeded my mother’s instructions for facing a Graven.

Don’t get greedy. Take your time. It wants you to get impatient.

I bounced back and let the creature reel from my stabs then I sliced off the nozzle of a prearranged CO2 canister.

White fog erupted and surrounded the Graven, tamping out its largest brilliant plumes. In the chaos, I sprinted around and slashed six more capsules hidden around the courtyard.

The Graven wailed and huffed until its volcanic skin combusted into a vivid eruption and propelled me into a pile of cables.

I was up in an instant, swinging my double-glaived spear and oblivious that some of my long quills had caught on fire.

The Graven was staggered from the blast and I took my chance to dive under its four long legs and cleaved into its belly up the middle.

Greasy black organs splattered across the dirt. The graven howled and scooped up its intestines, crushing them to its abdomen, and then baked them into a paste to seal the lesion.

Damn, that was fast!

Then the wolfen-beast flung back its head and swelled its body.

Oh shit! Looks like I pissed it off!

A gust of hot yellow light pulsed across the courtyard and knocked me into a forklift.

“Fuck!” The outside of my left thigh was torn open.

The Graven laughed and sauntered toward me.

I yanked up on the twisted metal around me and hobbled away.

Move! Move! Move!

I spotted a half-melted chunk of grating and took a moment to press my gash into the white-hot edge and cauterize the flesh.

The Graven persisted in chasing, knocking down everything in its path to catch me.

“No, you don’t!” I scrambled away, weaving and bobbing through the equipment smashed in the Graven’s blast radius.

Then it howled again and I panicked to find cover.

KPHLAM!

Another blistering shockwave cracked against my backside and sent me flying. This time flipping me into the sharp end of a broken pipe.

Gravity righted my body and dumped me face down with my shoulder stuck on a red vertical pipe.

I hacked through the metal and flopped free with a section of pipe still wedged inside of me.

The Graven loomed over, with me on my knees and my spear clasped firmly in one hand.

I winced around the courtyard, still woozy and off balance from the jostle.

Why didn’t any of the Guardians show up?

Oh, yeah, Gar’mol’s dead. I guess that solves the mystery of where those freaks come from.

Well... if I live to tell anyone...

Everything hurt and the Graven knew it.

It also knew that even if I killed it, it still had a strong chance of winning.

Opening my veins didn’t guarantee rejection. My willpower needed to be impenetrable. Or I risked becoming a Corrupted Slayer.

I clenched my spear and growled as the beast drew closer.

It was now or never!

I pounced and twirled then plunged my spear into its chest as deep as the tip of my glaive would allow it.

The Graven shrieked and slumped, and then WHOMP.

It smacked me aside with its thick lizard tail.

I wheezed and fumbled to crawl away. The scales on my back instantly blistered and I struggled to rise to my feet.

“Not done yet,” I coughed.

The Graven withdrew my spear from its chest and melted it into a puddle.

I was on all fours coughing up green blood and helpless to stop the stream of lava trickling in around me.

“This isn’t over,” I wrenched the pipe section out my shoulder with a heavy groan then extended my wrist blades and lurched up onto one knee.

The Graven’s tongue slithered out again.

I growled at my options. Self-destruction was futile, my only course of action was to keep fighting no matter the outcome.

I stood up and roared in its ugly hot face then, out of nowhere, the back half of a razkur transport ship fell on its head.

“What the...?” My eyes went to the sky. The modular front end of a razkur ship zipped around in the air then toppled a crane mast and dropped it on the Graven.

“No!” I grit my fangs and flared my mandibles.

I leapt over the circle of lava below while dodging a series of falling cables.

The little front end of the razkur ship landed nearby.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” I limped quickly to the now visible cockpit door.

The door swung and Chyani stomped out and punched me.

I rubbed my lower mandible with a snarl. On any other day, the smack wouldn’t have phased me but at the moment, the majority of my neverending were exposed and scalded.

“What were you thinking!?” Chyani stabbed her finger in my chest. Then she snatched my hand and led me back to the ship. “Let’s go!”

BLAM!!!

The little ship exploded.

“Chyani down!” I dragged her away from the fire and the Graven’s tail lashing out from the wreckage.

“Why are you trying to get yourself killed?!” Chyani sniped at me while we hid behind the wheels of an excavator.

“Not trying,” I hissed. “It’s part of the process to kill it.”

“What are you talking about?!” Chyani thumped her fist on my chest.

“Stop it,” I held her arms away from my raw scales. “It’s how you kill a Graven! You slay it and it automatically infects you. Then you dump your blood and that thing dies for good.”

“That’s insane!” Chyani pulled her hand loose.

“Chyani,” I shoved my face to hers and leveled my voice. “This is how it must be done. I didn’t want you to witness the process.”

Chyani glared at me but she stopped yelling. Then she crawled over to the excavator’s back wheel and unearthed a half-buried single-edged glaive from the dirt.

“Then do it!” She shoved the polearm into my hand.

I accepted the weapon with both hands.

The Graven flailed and broke free from under the rubble.

Ignoring my aching skin, I rose to my feet and thrust the pointed end of my glaive at the Graven.

The beast growled at Chyani but I prodded its chin with my blade, making it clear that its objective could not be achieved unless it went through me first.

It chomped at my spear and swept its tail across the courtyard, kicking ash and metal debris into the air.

I dodged when the Graven swatted and kept it moving to turn its head away from Chyani.

Then the beast swooped at me and tried to tackle me down but I spun and cleaved off its long red fingers.

“Split the tail in half!” Chyani called out from behind. “Up the middle from the tip.”

“What?”

The Graven’s fingers regenerated as the beats jumped at me, forcing me to slide under its legs.

“Cut along the flow!” Chyani persisted, refusing to take cover behind the excavator. “Follow the lines when they constrict!”

“What are you talking about?” I rolled in the dirt evading the Graven’s front legs.

“Don’t you see it?” Chyani pointed.

“See what?” I hopped up and raked my glaive along the Graven’s side. “That thing is made of pure magma. What are you talking about?”

Chyani went quiet momentarily, then her eyes dilated on the Graven, as if suddenly comprehending a weakness that I could never fathom.

“Get back behind the excavator!” I yelled out in exasperation.

“No, Raven Tide, do exactly what I say,” Chyani stood her ground. Her tone was eerily tranquil. “We will fight this thing to the end.”

The conviction in her eyes told me to listen carefully.

Very well... I thrummed with a smile.

We, and it, will go down together.

I ran behind the Graven and bisected its tail from the narrow tip all the way up the middle.

The beast screeched and the two flapping halves extinguished and didn’t heal!

“Stab the left piece in the center, gently,” Chyani instructed. “Poke it and move to the other side.”

I complied and the Graven went wild as more of its boiling red skin started to smother out from the location where my glaive pricked it.

“Holy shit!” I gawked at Chyani in confoundment. “How did she...?”

“Can you stab it just under its right shoulder blade?”

“Yes!” I vaulted up a twisted hunk of metal.

“Good,” Chyani cheered. “As deep as you can, really get in there!”

It felt like a strange dance.

She’d command me where to strike, the angle, and the timing. I moved on her behalf and to my amazement it was working!

Together we were tearing the Graven apart, piece by piece. Even the tiny nicks I thought were barely making contact elicited devastating results.

It wasn’t until the last chunk wriggled to a halt and the Graven’s blood didn’t rise up to infect me that I finally understood the reason why the abomination dispatched its minions on our trail, hunted Chyani, and feared her more than anything.

It was also why she could navigate Venom Heart’s encrypted systems, walk into and out of a heavily armed Iddril compound, and activate the razkur defense systems with negligible effort.

She was like my mother after her encounter with the little grub quietly eating green flowers.

Except Chyani’s passive gift wasn’t languages, it was deciphering puzzles and dismantling them!

Up until now, no weapon or compound had been discovered or created that was capable of inflicting permanent damage to the Graven but Chyani saw their weakness. And just like the one-on-one transference produced in slaying a Graven, Chayni could disassemble their evil in a similar but opposite ritual.

“You did it,” I turned to Chyani, gasping for breath.

The remains of the Graven jiggled and began to melt around our feet.

“When’s the part when you kill yourself?” Chyani stared at me.

“I don’t think I have to,” I was still in shock over what had just happened.

The little embers worming in the Graven liquefying lumps sizzled out and then withered away into dust.

Then all at once, the smoldering courtyard was bathed in bright white light from above.

“What’s happening?” Chyani ran to me with her arms up to shield her eyes.

A team of heavily armored yautja belayed from the sky and converged around us.

“Drop your weapon,” their Alpha ordered. “Kneel and put your hands up.”

Chyani and I obeyed.

Two white armored Enforcers stomped for Chayni.

“I slayed a Graven!” I shouted.

The specially trained unit paused momentarily.

“The human is a cipher, like my mother,” I stated loud and clear. “She instructed me on how to execute it safely, without infection. The Graven was dead. Permanently.”

The Alpha did not respond but ordered his subordinates to cuff us and secure us into custody.