Raven Tide

16: Wormpeak Depot (Chyani)

"Message sent," Raven Tide leaned back in the station's comms chair.

I sighed, but I was still insanely twitchy.

"I apprised them of our situation," Raven Tide continued. "And let them know we wouldn't be waiting around for backup. Told them we were prepping and commandeering a functional razkur jump ship and then heading straight for Sahai."

I couldn't sit and ended up pacing nonstop while Raven Tide transmitted the deep space encoded distress signal, and not solely because of soreness.

Wormpeak Depot was a ghost town. Everything creaked and echoed.

I didn't like it.

"Then this nightmare will be over..." I mumbled to myself, knowing Raven Tide's ears could hear my agitation.

"Sorta, kinda," Raven Tide led the way through the building's tall narrow corridors. "According to our scientists at the Institute, there's no compound in known existence that can stop a Graven but we can obscure large objects from detection and their method of travel can be repelled and deflected. Special barriers were put in orbit to keep the Graven and their underlings from accessing all the Nexus' homeworlds. They can't get in, but even if they did, they'd be met by an extremely unpleasant welcoming. Speaking of which..."

Raven Tide waved to a nearby hatchway leading into the massive crystalline spacecraft hangar lined with a dozen grey and pink spaceships.

"We should take a beat and activate the automated Graven defense systems," he pointed to a squat blue building just beyond the wide-open hangar door. "It's going to take me a while to get one of these old clunkers warmed up and ready. What do you say, care to do the honors?"

"Me?" I blinked at him. "All by myself?"

"If you can navigate Venom Heart's menus," he chuckled. "Razkur tech should be a breeze. They're nowhere near as cryptic as Zhaguai."

"Is it safe?"

"I scanned the facility thoroughly," he smiled and waved for me to follow with his ears angled back and curved low. "No life signs whatsoever and there's a breathable atmosphere."

"No evil space drones?" I hesitated but stepped forward.

"Nope," he shook his head. "C'mon, I'll walk ya."

I eyed Gar'mol's skull on the back of Raven Tide's belt. I had mixed feelings about the memento, but mostly the sight of it gave me comfort.

It was proof that not every aspect of this journey was beyond our control. Plus, nothing shines a light on the importance of living to the fullest, like the shadow of imminent death looming overhead.

The white Zhaguai escorted me through a muted network of serpentining hallways and into the inner sanctum of Wormpeak Depot's Defensive Operations.

Razkurs certainly had a very distinctive approach to architecture. I touched the walls. They were squishy.

"It's built this way to dampen sound," Raven Tide glanced back at me. "Hard sharp walls are great for echolocation. Naturally, this place abates it."

I nodded and made a mental note of the intersections.

What was all of this like for Raven Tide?

He'd been oddly quiet since we landed. How much psychological damage had I inflicted on this hunky young fella?

Zhaguai could live for centuries and he potentially had upward of a millennia in his future.

Would all of this be just another trivial pothole on the road ahead, or a sinkhole that would haunt him forever?