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Warning: This chapter contains spoilers for the action mission "The Raven." If you do not wish to view spoilers on this mission it is recommended that you do not read this chapter at this time.

Ravens

Thursday, November 2, 5:45 PM
The Raven's Knock, Kingsmouth, Maine

We head back up the stairs and down the hall. I ready my shotgun again as we go outside. The yard-turned-parking-lot is now completely in shadow, and clouds overhead are lit from below with the yellows and reds of sunset. Kaiyo hums a tune to herself—maybe the theme to some anime—while she pulls the door shut behind us. I step off the porch and cross the parking lot halfway when suddenly see something that stops me in my tracks. Kaiyo starts to skip past me, but I grab her arm, stopping her as well, and I point.

There, in the middle of the alley, is a large black raven. That alone would have been enough to scare me after Madame Rogêt's powerful warning, but even without it this raven is unnerving. It stands in front of us with its wings slightly outstretched, its glossy black eyes watching us, unblinking, unflinching. It gives a harsh croak—much deeper than the light cawing of crows I'm used to—then it steps toward us, wings flapping as if to shoo us away, as if trying to block our path.

My reaction to this unnatural bird is more instinct than conscious thought. As it comes closer, wings spread wide and sharp beak glistening, I hold my shotgun out in front of me and pull the trigger. The gun bucks. The fireball misses, slamming into the dirt in front of the raven and throwing up dust and pebbles. The raven falters though. It gives another low croak and then retreats, wings pumping and trailing feathers—hit, but not seriously injured.

Once it's gone, Kaiyo pulls her arm from my grip. "So, what was that about?" she asks, giving me a quizzical, and somewhat accusatory, look.

"It was a raven," I try to explain. "She warned us about them so…"

"So you decided to shoot at it?" She shakes her head. "Typical Templar. Come on, let's get back to the barricade and get you inside. I promise Dan and I will find you something more productive to kill tomorrow." She starts into the alleyway, giving the small crater left by my fireball a wide berth.

"But the prophesy…," I say, following. "Ms Rogêt said…"

"What she said could mean almost anything," Kaiyo says. "Oh, don't get me wrong: that vision was pretty awesome. Still, visions, dreams, and prophesies are really unpredictable powers and extremely difficult to interpret. Since Rogêt-san is new to her powers and has no control whatsoever, it'll be pretty hard to tell what any part of her vision means, and it's a pretty sure bet she won't be able to help you out with your dreams either." She looks back and frowns at me. "Sorry for dragging you out here so late. I really thought she had more experience with this sort of stuff. I didn't know she was just a con artist before."

I shrug. "It's alright," I say. "Let's just get back to the barricade." I try to act normal—or what passes for normal during the local zombie apocalypse—but Rogêt's words and warnings keep running through my mind. I catch myself looking to the sky, trying to see if I can spot that creepy raven again.

We head out onto the street. I check around the corners carefully, but Kaiyo strides out boldly. "There's nothing here," she assures me. "The zombies are having a party someplace to the north of here. I can hear 'em." I nod and head up the street with her, or at least I start to before I see what's on the sidewalk across the street from us.

There's a pair of ravens. One of them holds its wing awkwardly open, obviously injured. The other regards me accusingly with dead-black eyes. It croaks, then flaps its wings at me in a threat display like the first one did. Its companion croaks its own harsh rebuke.

This time I don't panic-fire at it. Instead I grab Kaiyo's sleeve and point. "Look, it's back again," I say.

She looks across the street. "Okay, well that is weird," she says and glares at the birds. "Go on you stupid ravens! Get out of here! You're creeping out my trigger-happy friend!" she shouts at them. She raises a hand and miniature lightning bolts arc between her fingertips. The ravens give a harsh alarm call and take to the sky, flying up the street and across Arkham Avenue, disappearing behind a large three-story house. "There, problem solved," Kaiyo declares, and she continues on.

I follow her. With the sun going down and that black fog all around the island it's getting dark fast. It's not dark enough for a flashlight yet, but the lack of visibility is still enough to make me distinctly uncomfortable. There are still slashes of orange sunlight cutting in between trees and houses, though. I notice one of them behind the house across Arkham Avenue, and then I see shapes pinwheeling in that sunlight. I feel a chill. The shapes are ravens, dozens and dozens of ravens, circling silently in the yard behind the house. While the boldness of the birds I faced earlier was unnatural, this is something else, something worse. Every instinct I have tells me I need to run and forget I ever saw those ravens circling, but I grit my teeth and stand my ground. If Rogêt is right, there's a malice behind the ravens here in Kingsmouth, and I may be the only thing between it and the survivors.

Just then, Kaiyo tugs on my sleeve, breaking my concentration. "Hey, what's up? You look like you've seen a ghost, only you didn't like it."

I point at the yard. "Ravens," is all I manage to say.

"Yeah, I know, what's with you and—" Then she turns and sees the birds circling for herself. "Oh…well, that's legitimately creepy." She waves to me. "Come on, let's check it out."

"Check it out?" I repeat, following reluctantly, and only because I figure now would be a really bad time to split up.

"Yeah," says the dhampir girl. "Birds don't behave like this, but there are some enchantments or curses that can manipulate lower animals. If it's something powerful enough to enslave a whole flock of ravens, it could at least be a clue as to what brought the Fog here in the first place…and it could also be sorta dangerous to leave around for one of the survivors to run into."

I nod and tuck my shotgun away in favor of my AK-47. If I'm going up against an unknown supernatural evil, I want to do it using the weapon I'm most familiar and comfortable with—and the one most likely to keep me alive. I follow Kaiyo around the side of the house to the sunlit back yard, where the whole flock of ravens circles in eerie silence. Some fly clockwise, some counter-clockwise. In the center of the circle, the raven I injured is perched on a red seesaw set with two other ravens. Like their circling fellows, the ravens in the center regard us silently. Kaiyo and I stand there in the patch of sunlight, surveying the scene for a moment. I keep my weapon shouldered, but I see nothing. "Any idea what's causing them to behave like this?" I ask.

Kaiyo shakes her head. "Only I bet it isn't the seesaw. We'll need to get closer to be sure though."

"I don't know if we can get through," I say. The flock is circling pretty near the ground, six feet up at most, and while getting hit by a flying bird probably wouldn't cause any permanent damage to either of us it's still something I'd rather avoid, especially in the case of eerily enchanted birds. Still, if there's no other way… "It's your call," I say.

Kaiyo nods, waits for an opening, and then dashes into the circle. She's surprisingly fast, but the opening was not as large as she needed it to be. One bird almost hits her, but it smoothly pirouettes away at the last second before blending seamlessly into the circling flock once more. Seeing this, I step experimentally forward. Birds careen past on either side, inches away, but none of them hit me. Not so much as a feather brushes my coat as the ravens circle in awful silence. I take two more steps forward until I, like Kaiyo, am fully inside the uncanny circle, with silent black birds wheeling by all around us.

"Alright…now what?" I ask, eyeing the ravens surrounding us, then the three in the center who stare at us in silence.

"There's something here," Kaiyo says. "I can feel it. Can't you?"

I nod slowly. Now that she mentions it I do seem to feel a buzzing in the back of my brain. I try to determine where it's coming from, listening as if it were a real noise, but it seems to arise from all around us: from the circling ravens, and from the three at the seesaw. "I can feel the ravens," I say.

"It's not the ravens," says Kaiyo. "They're no more in control of their own actions right now than the zombies are. Something else is controlling them, and it's here, right here in this circle with us."

"I don't see anything," I say, sweeping my rifle across the inside of the circle. Red orange leaves crackle under my sneakers as I slowly cross the autumn-brown lawn. "The only thing in here with us is the seesaw—and those three birds."

"Let's take a closer look," says Kaiyo. One of her hands has closed around that razor-blade pendant of hers while the other hovers over her colorful elementalism focus. The fact that she is uneasy makes me very, very afraid, but I lock down on my terror and step forward with her, staying a pace behind to cover her with my assault rifle.

The ravens in the center regard us with empty eyes. They perch on the seesaw, completely still, unnaturally silent, until Kaiyo is within arm's reach of them. Then, in unison those three ravens and every raven in the circle gives a single resounding croak. At that signal, the three ravens in the center scatter and the whole flock does as well, with every raven flying to perch on the house, fence, or trees that surround the yard. All of them face inward, regarding us with silent menace.

"Hmmm…well, the good news is that I can now sense that it's definitely not the seesaw," Kaiyo says. Her red eyes dart nervously over the flock of ravens.

"I can sense that too," I say. The buzzing in my brain still lacks clear direction, but it now seems to be pointing only at the perching birds at the edges of the circle. "So what's the bad news?"

"That the controlling force seems to be something that's embedded itself into the ravens themselves," says Kaiyo. "And I think I know what it is…"

Before she can clarify, all the ravens around us suddenly start screeching at once. Then they take wing and dive straight for us, beaks and talons outstretched. I fire a short burst as they dive, but there's no way I can take down more than a handful of them.

"Duck!" Kaiyo says and tackles me, forcing me to the ground with unexpected strength. Then she rips her right hand down off the razor blade and opens it. Tendrils of blood shoot out from her palm and form a pulsating scarlet dome over us. Droplets spray out from the surface as beaks and talons glance off the blood shield. Soon blood is raining down everywhere inside and the shield is little more than a thin red bubble. I duck and cover my face with my arms in an effort to protect myself. In the back of my brain, the buzzing goes mad.

Then, suddenly, it's over. The rain of droplets and the harsh cries of the birds are gone. I grab Kaiyo's hand and help her to her feet. Her palm is still cut and she looks a little pale, but she gives me a reassuring smile. I seem to be unharmed as well, though I can see a tiny spot of blood in the lower corner of the left lens of my glasses. I know it'll drive me crazy till I have a chance to wash it off properly. I don't dare try here for fear of smudging them.

Instead, I kneel to retrieve my rifle, and that's when I see it, perched on the seesaw as if were just another raven—but it is no raven! It's a man-shaped figure wearing a black leather cowl that completely conceals his features. All that's visible beneath his robes are a pair of black-feathered hands, each of which holds a broad short sword with a perpendicular spike at the top, like the Uruk Hai swords from The Lord of the Rings—but these are real, and deadly.

I cry out a warning, but the black figure is already in motion. He springs from the seesaw with surprising agility, leaving it motionless in his wake. He slashes both swords at Kaiyo's head, but she leaps away at the last second. Still, she is not quite fast enough. One of the black blades gives her a gash on the side of her neck, but instead of bleeding the cut sends up curls of smoke. She cries out a curse in what I can only assume is Japanese and waves her bleeding right palm in front of her, between her and the figure. A tide of blood flows from the wound and forms a thin red barrier between her and the creature. It slashes into it with a single cut from its swords and the whole thing dissolves into smoke. It steps through, blades swinging. Kaiyo cries out and backflips away.

The thing advances on her again, but by this time I have my rifle. I flip the selector to full auto and spray anima bullets into the figure's chest. Black feathers rain down around it and it staggers, but it does not go down. Instead it turns to me, swords crossed and arms outstretched. "Look out!" Kaiyo shouts, and that's all the warning I get. A swarm of ravens fly out at me from somewhere in the figure's robes. I shield my head with my hands. Talons and sharp beaks jab and tear at me. I feel a few cuts on my fingers, and a couple painful impacts on the back of my head, but the thick army coat protects most of me, as does being so close to the ground. A second later I raise my head to see more than a dozen birds lying broken on the ground around me. The black figure is still standing. It twirls its swords and charges at me. I scramble to my feet, but it's moving too fast!

Suddenly a fireball hits it from the side, staggering it and singing one arm of its cowl. Kaiyo stands to one side, her arms stretched out, her white fangs fully bared in a snarl. She breathing heavily though and very pale. Blood from her cut palm drips into the dead grass and the cut on her neck is smoldering acrid gray smoke. I don't know how long she'll be able to stand, much less fight.

I see the figure in black taking aim at her with its crossed swords and outstretched arms. I know it's about to summon another flurry of suicidal crows, this time at Kaiyo. I can't let that happen, and I have to keep her alive. I flip the switch on my rifle to single-shot and fire into the figure. Feathers puff out from creature's chest as the anima round explodes inside it. I direct the wash of energy to Kaiyo, healing her wounds—or at least, so I hope. All I really know is that I've thrown off the black figure's concentration—and I have to keep him off balance long enough for Kaiyo to recover or we're both dead. I have no illusions about my chances of fighting this thing alone.

I keep firing. Round after round explodes inside the figure's chest—if it has a chest—and it staggers backward. It raises its arms to hit me again with a swarm of ravens, but I put a round through its injured arm, interrupting the spell temporarily. That, as it turns out, is all I need. As the figure struggles to raise its arms again, Kaiyo spreads hers wide and cries voicelessly to the sky. Out of nowhere a giant hammer with a square head as big around as my torso falls from the sky, trailing lightning. It slams into the figure and vanishes in an explosion of electric arcs and lightning bolts. I cry out and jump back, landing hard on my rear. When the smoke clears, there's no trace of the figure, though more than a dozen ravens are winging away to the northeast.

I manage to pick myself up of the ground. I've got some cuts on my fingers, but none of them look too deep. The pecks to the back of my head, while painful, don't appear to have done any real damage either, so I guess my only real loss is my dignity. I look over at Kaiyo and see her standing in the last rays of sunlight. The cuts to her neck and palm are gone and her skin has resumed its healthy, dark tan color. She grins at me. "Wow, you're really powerful!" she says.

"I'm powerful?" I ask in disbelief. "I don't even know what that was that you dropped on that thing. Where'd you get a hammer the size of a person, and how did you control it just now—and where is it?"

Kaiyo shrugs. "Aw, it was nothing. Let's just say Thor is a sweetie and he owes me some favors," she says modestly, though grinning widely enough that I can see the tips of her fangs.

"Thor?! " I repeat. "Thor the superhero, or Thor the Norse god from mythology? And you said he owes you favors?"

Kaiyo holds up a hand to stop the stream of questions, though she's still smiling. "It's not important right now," she says. "And anyway, it's not nearly as impressive as what you did. Those blades are powerfully cursed. There's no way I could have healed that cut on my own: at least not without a few hours to prepare the right spell—but you healed it in seconds with a simple energy leech spell. That takes a lot of raw potential."

"Oh…um, thanks," I say, not sure how to respond. I've never been good at taking a compliment, even a simple one, and to have the most powerful and dangerous person I know (who just called down a giant hammer from the sky, no less) tell me I'm stronger than they are…I'm not sure what to do with that knowledge. I'm not even sure I want to have it.

Instead, I decide to shift my focus to the battlefield around us. The broken bodies of ravens litter the yard. A few of them are still alive, struggling to limp or fly away though they're obviously no longer capable of doing so. I don't think they're a threat anymore, but I can't stand to see them suffering. I bite my lip and shoulder my rifle taking careful aim. My fingers are still bloody and raw, but I don't want to profit from these kills—I just want to put the wounded birds out of their misery. I focus my mind on guiding the bullets to their targets and put down the birds with instantly lethal headshots. When all the birds are still, I look back to Kaiyo, who's watching me approvingly. "What, no comments on how I'm a typical Templar this time?" I ask, trying to lighten my somber mood. After all, we did just win.

"Well, maybe you are a typical Templar, but I think you did the right thing," Kaiyo says. "Those birds wouldn't have lasted the night and you made sure their death was quick, at least. It's the best we can do under the circumstances."

I look back at the place where I last saw the black figure that enslaved the ravens. There's no trace of it now, and where it stood there's now a steaming crater with sides edged in newly-formed glass. "At least they died free," I say.

"Free?" Kaiyo asks, stepping up beside me. "Oh, wait! I get it! You're not very experienced, so you think we actually killed the Revenant, don't you?"

"The what?"

"Revenant," Kaiyo explains. "It's a sort of undead with very powerful dark magic."

"Like a zombie?" There didn't seem to be any resemblance between the black thing that attacked us here and the zombies that shamble around town.

"Not really," she says. "It's more like an evil spirit, only it used to be human. It's sort of like a fragment of the soul of someone who did something very, very bad, and like a soul it's immortal."

"Well at least we destroyed the body," I say. "That ought to count for something." Humans have souls, and killing our bodies certainly counts for something!

"Not hardly," says Kaiyo. "A few ravens got away, and right now every raven in Kingsmouth is a body for the Revenant, one it can combine at will into a full-sized body like this one. And even if we killed every single raven in town, it would probably still get away. Revenants aren't really ghosts, so they can't exist in our world without bodies, but they can use any sort of carrion creature for a body: from ravens to rats, all the way down to worms!"

"So…it's still out there, and it's impossible to kill," I say, and hang my head. "Great. I guess we should just go back to the barricades and warn everybody to watch out for ravens." As if they don't already have enough to worry about, with the zombie apocalypse and all.

"I didn't say they were impossible to kill: just really, really difficult," Kaiyo clarifies. "As for going back, well, we could do that...or…"

"Or what?" I ask, looking up.

"Or we could go after it and take it out: Templar-style!" she says. "You've given us the key."

"I did?" I think back over what I've done. "By shooting at ravens?"

Kaiyo shakes her head. "No, silly! I already said if we killed them all, the Revenant would still get away. The key is Rogêt-san's prophesy!"

"I didn't give you that," I say, unwilling to take credit for something I didn't have any part in. "She gave it, and you were the one who took me to see her."

"Okay, fine, but you were still the first one who started taking it seriously—and in the right way," Kaiyo insists. "Remember what the prophesy told us to look for first? Ravens! You figured that out!"

"Actually, I think it was just a warning against ravens, not a list of things we should be looking for," I say.

"Whatever," says Kaiyo. "She clearly has some fairly hefty prophetic powers, as I looked it up in my book." She gestures to the huge leather tome peeking out of her anime-bunny backpack. "The visions that come with that kind of power are rarely purely descriptive. They're also proscriptive too." I give her a surprised look and she pauses, then says, somewhat sheepishly, "That means they don't just tell us what's going to happen, they also tell us what we should do about it. Sorry about the big words"

"I know what the words mean," I say. "I just…well I didn't expect them, coming from someone other than my English lit professors." My former English lit professors, I think ruefully, for I have no idea whether I'll ever be able to study under them again or even finish my degree. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised though," I say to Kaiyo, a little sheepish myself. "I should have expected it from the girl who's studied magic all her life and carries an encyclopedia around all the time."

"Oh, my book here is more than an encyclopedia! He's many things," says Kaiyo, pulling her backpack around so she can stroke the book's spine. She leans close and whispers to me, "I even have a whole section devoted to my favorite manga!"

I draw back a little, not sure whether to be amused or uncomfortable. "Um, I'm not sure how to respond to that," I say honestly.

"That's okay," she says, returning her backpack to its place with a smug grin. "You can just say it's awesome."

"I'm sure it is," I say, "but shouldn't we be figuring out the next part of the prophesy, so we can stop the Revenant before nightfall?" Already the rays of sunlight are beginning to fade from our backyard battlefield.

"Oh, right! You're not a dhampir! Sorry!" Kaiyo bows an apology and then bites her lower lip thoughtfully with one fang. "Okay, so the first thing in the prophesy was creepy ravens, right?"

"Right," I say.

"And next there was raven attacks, and we got those," says Kaiyo. "Check?" She moves her hand as if to mark an item off an imaginary list.

"Check," I say, holding up a cut knuckle. The bleeding's stopped and the cut wasn't very deep, but it still hurts.

"And after that there was—what—black feathers in the grass?"

I look around us, at the raven feathers that liter the dead grass in the back yard. "Major check," I say.

"Good! Then we're well on our way!" Kaiyo declares optimistically. "What's the next one?"

I think back to the prophesy, trying to remember the exact words Rogêt said. "Papers in the park," I say.

"Great!" She looks around the side of the house to Arkham Avenue, which is shrouded in long shadows. "Any idea where the park is?"

I dig out my map and study it. I spot a drawing of a swingset and what looks like a large round pool. "It looks like there's a park between King's Court and Angell Street," I say. "It should be just down the Avenue." I point to the northeast, the same direction the fleeing crows went.

"Great!" says Kaiyo, taking the lead. "We get there and find some newspapers, and then do something with roses in a pool, and we're done!" She cocked her head. "No idea how that's supposed to help us against a Revenant, but we won't know until we get there. Come on!" She hurries into the street and I have little choice but to follow.

We find no zombies on our way to the park. I wonder if perhaps the presence of the Revenant disturbs them as much as it does me. Certainly there seems to be no real basis for kinship between the two kinds of undead. I file the question away for later, letting myself be grateful now for clear streets. Dusk is fast approaching as the ominous fog blots out the last sunlight. Automatic streetlights flicker on, but their illumination is hardly enough to guard against a sudden ambush. Fortunately as the day wanes Kaiyo's confidence seems to grow. I remember Dan said she'd be stronger at night, and I hope that's the case. I'm not sure how well I'll be able to shoot at our black-hooded opponent once full darkness falls.

Fortunately, we reach the park well before then. Unfortunately, the Revenant is waiting for us, in the form of what must be every raven in town. There are well over a hundred of them, perching silently on trees, on metal fence posts, park benches, the swingset, and around the concrete rim of the circular pool at the center of the park. They all stand at attention in a circle, staring inward at a trio of crows hovering in a tight circle around the very center of the pool.

"Okay, this is bad," I say quietly.

"Yeah, I'm definitely filing it away under not good," says Kaiyo. "I guess the Revenant was looking forward to round two as well. We need to find that newspaper quickly."

"I'm still not sure how a newspaper is going to solve this," I say. Nevertheless, Rogêt did say the papers would be in the park, so we creep past the fence and begin searching. The Ravens ignore us, totally under the Revenant's thrall.

Suddenly Kaiyo makes a half-suppressed excited squeal and tugs on my sleeve. "Papers in the park!" she whispers, pointing toward the edge of the concrete pool. There in a pool of light cast by a streetlamp a body lays, mangled beyond recognition, and in its hands a few yellowed papers, like pages torn out of an old book. "That's got to be it! I'm sure of it!" she says.

"Think you can get it without getting the Revenant's attention?" I ask, waving my gun at all the stock-still ravens perched mere feet from the body.

"I think so," says Kaiyo. "Revenants can be extremely intelligent. It knows we're hunting it, and it believes this is a fight it can win—that and it enjoys the suffering it inflicts in fighting. It'll wait for one of us to challenge it, and I'm pretty sure I can avoid that."

I nod. "Okay, I'll cover you." I raise my rifle and watch the ravens carefully as Kaiyo tip-toes up to the body, snatches the yellowed pages out of its hand, and tip-toes back. None of the birds acknowledge her presence with so much as a blink.

A moment later, Kaiyo is back beside me and waves the papers triumphantly. "This is it, look!" She shows me the top page, which shows a five-pointed star in a circle, with a bunch of runes at the bottom of the page. "These are instructions from an old spellbook for binding and banishing malevolent spirits—like the Revenant!"

"Great!" I say. "What do we need?"

"Nothing I don't have, I think," says Kaiyo, looking over the rune-covered pages. "The most of the reagents are pretty standard things I've got here in my backpack or can find around the park. There's a few outdated ones, like dragon's blood, but I should be able to find a substitute easily enough. The only thing we're gonna need is a large circular area in which to perform the binding."

"Would the pool work? It's circular," I say.

Kaiyo nods. "Brilliant! Now all we need is for the Revenant to cooperate."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the binding will only work if the Revenant is in full bodily form—like when we fought it earlier—and if it stays within the binding circle for the entire ritual," says Kaiyo. She frowns. "That's gonna be the difficult part. It won't assume full bodily form unless it's going to fight someone, and in order to keep it that way they'd have to keep fighting it in the pool until the spell is complete."

I look at the cement pool. I can see the bottom in the light from the streetlamps, so it must not be very deep, which means that the fight Kaiyo's talking about is at least physically possible, if not exactly survivable. "So I guess the question is which one of us wants to go a few rounds with the Revenant." I take a deep breath to calm myself. I know what the answer has to be. "I'll do it," I say.

"You're sure?" Kaiyo says, looking concerned.

I nod. "There's no other way," I say. "There's no time for you to teach me everything I'd need to know to perform the binding and banishment spell. You're the only one who can do that, which leaves me to fight the Revenant." I square my shoulders. "Are you ready?"

Kaiyo nods silently, clutching the papers in her hand.

"Then let's get this over with," I say. I shoulder my weapon and march forward, eyes fixed on the three ravens circling in the center of the pool. Like the ravens on the seesaw earlier, that's the point the Revenant wants us to reach in order to challenge it—and that's the point where I want to keep it during our fight. I watch Kaiyo take up position by the pool's edge, opening up her backpack to retrieve various vials and pouches. Then I step through the ring of silent ravens and into the pool. The water is cold and it fills my sneakers and soaks through my jeans and socks instantly. It's only about a foot deep, but it's still enough that splashing loudly through it slows me down. The bottom, though even, is also slick with pond scum and covered in what must be a couple hundred dollars in loose change. I'm going to have to be very careful just crossing this pool, much less fighting an undead monstrosity in it. I pause, praying earnestly for strength and divine protection. Then I cross the last few yards to the center of the pool.

The three ravens scatter, then all of them take wing. They come diving straight for me. I leap aside, or try to. My foot slips on the wet coins at the bottom of the fountain and I fall sideways into the water. I flail my arms, trying desperately to get back up, coughing and choking on rancid water. I can hear the buzzing at the back of my brain. The Revenant is here!

I splash up to the surface, managing somehow to maintain my grip on my rifle. I remember how the Revenant attacked Kaiyo from behind and I turn quickly, raising my rifle. I can't see! My glasses are completely covered in water, and all my clothes are soaked. In desperation, I throw them off. Everything is blurry now, but I can make out the shapes well enough. The Revenant is there, perching on the surface of the water. It springs at me, blades outstretched. I reach up and pull the trigger on my grenade launcher, firing at point-blank range. The blue ball of light explodes right in front of me, but it doesn't hurt me. The Revenant is another matter. It screeches, pulling against wires of blue light trying to drag it down. I use the opportunity to splash away through the water. I fire quick bursts into the creature as I do so. It flinches, feathers flying from its torso, then it begins spinning its swords in its hands, slicing through the blue threads holding it in place, dissolving them into smoke. I try to slow it down with a long burst on full-auto, but it is already free and the shots merely cause it to stagger. Then it leaps to one side dodging my shots, and raises its arms with swords crossed. I know what's coming, but I don't have time to stop it or get out of the way.

The Revenant summons a swarm of ravens that fly straight at me. I fire full-auto into them, felling maybe a dozen birds while the rest scatter, only to attack me from all sides. Two hit my right leg, talons tearing through the fabric. A third slams into the left side of my face. I fall down, dazed. The water brings me back to my senses. I struggle out of it. I can feel the stagnant water burning in the cuts to my leg and the other one I can feel on my cheek.

The Revenant spins its swords and advances on me. I fire into it, single explosive shots, using the energy to heal myself. I can feel the cuts tingling, closing, but the Revenant is getting closer. My shots are only slowing him down. Out of the corner of my eye I see Kaiyo running around the circle, frantically placing reagents at the points of an improvised five-cornered star. She's on the third point, only halfway through. Somehow I have to keep this thing fighting me—and I have to stay alive!

It's on top of me then, black swords swinging. I duck under the first swing and block the second with the body of my rifle. It catches the rifle with the perpendicular point of its blade and tears it out of my grip, sending it splashing into the pool. Then it catches me in the right arm with a vicious backswing that sends me spinning away. I scream at the pain. The buzzing in my mind goes mad. I feel like the bees are on fire. My arm feels like it was cut to the bone by that blow! The cursed blade didn't leave a mark on my coat, but I know my skin underneath must be a different story. Gray smoke curls out from under my sleeve. I search for my rifle, but I can't find it in the shimmering waters—and without it I have no way to heal myself.

The Revenant flourishes its black blades and moves toward me, evidently in no hurry to finish me off. Kaiyo looks at me, her hand on her pendant, ready to assist, but I shake my head. Her spell is the only hope we have of defeating this thing. She moves on to the fourth point, and I know I have to keep this battle going a little longer.

I unzip my coat and go for one of my pistols with my left hand, my only good hand at this point. Unfortunately, I'm right handed, so it's not very good. I fire at the Revenant, focusing on trying to sap its strength. It doesn't slow or speed up a bit, contemptuously keeping the same pace through the steady hail of anima bullets. I try to back away, but my feet bump into the edge of the pool. I can't go any further, or this will all be for nothing.

Across from me, I see Kaiyo frantically arranging the reagents for the spell at the fifth point. I know she only needs a few more seconds. I desperately hope that whatever this spell does, it's instant. I point my pistol at the Revenant's head and squeeze off shots as fast as I can. Bullet after bullet slams home, raining black feathers into the pool, but still the Revenant does not slow down. Then it reaches me. It swings a sword at my good arm. It's slower, weaker, but so am I and with a blade like that, it doesn't matter. The black sword rakes down my arm and knocks the pistol from my hand. I scream. It feels like my left arm is on fire from my elbow to my wrist, and from all the smoke pouring out of the sleeve, it looks like it may well be. I feel myself falling backwards, out of the pool, but I know that if I do the Revenant will come after me. The spell will fail. I will die, and it will all be for nothing. The black thing will be free to kill Kaiyo next, then stalk and kill the others at will.

I decide that if I'm going to die, my death will count for something. I force myself to fall forward instead, into the Revenant. It staggers under my weight, then pushes me aside. As I tumble away it swings both swords at my midsection, and I have no way to defend myself. I feel the cursed metal rip through me. I see smoke billowing up from my open coat. I fall into the water and hit my head on the concrete edge of the pool. I know that's bad, but somehow, I don't feel it. Somehow, I know that's worse. All I can hear is the mad buzzing in my brain, which seems loud enough now to shatter my skull. If that's what it's going to do, I wish it would get it over with.

My head lulls to one side, no longer under my ability to control. I can still see, though, through the clouds of acrid smoke pouring from my body. I see Kaiyo standing up by the fifth point, screaming something. I can't hear anything but the buzzing, though, and the loss of my glasses makes it hard to see. But it looks like her fangs are bared in a snarl and her fingernails seem to have become claws: talons several inches long. The Revenant turns to engage her, moving more slowly than usual, but then the dhampir girl shouts one final command to the heavens and a five pointed star-outlined one in white, appears on the surface of the water. The Revenant is trapped in the center. It shrieks. The white pattern touches his cloak, then grows up the leather like a live thing. Behind it, the leather cracks, dissolves. Feathers burst out, followed by ravens fleeing for their lives. The Revenant itself remains in place, twisting, writing, until it's nothing but a tormented shadow clutching cursed black blades. Finally those too dissolve and the black shadow implodes, sending a shockwave across the water and through the deserted park.

The next thing I know, Kaiyo is kneeling next to me. Her face isn't distorted by rage anymore, but by concern. She cradles my head in her hands, turning my face toward hers. I know she must be shouting at me, but I can barely hear her above the buzzing. "Chris! Chris, please say something!"

"D-did we get the…R-revenant?" I manage to say. Speaking is slow and painful. I know it shouldn't be.

"Yes! You did it, Chris!" Kaiyo says, tears streaming down her cheeks. "You kept it busy long enough for the spell to do its job. Now the Revenant is gone and the ravens are free. The curse on your wounds is fading too. I'll be able to heal you in a few minutes. You just have to hold on…please!"

I manage to look down. My coat and shirt have been pulled open, exposing my abdomen. Blood flows down and swirls out in great clouds from a pair of cuts to my torso, one just below my ribcage, the other just above. More red swirls out of my left hand sleeve, joined by a rivulet from my right. "That's…a lot of blood…," I say, somewhat impressed that I'm able to say or think anything at this point.

"Yes…well, I'm a blood mage, so once the curse fully loses its power I should be able to use it…" Kaiyo's voice trails off into sobs. Then she says, "I'm sorry, Chris! So, so sorry!"

I don't need to ask what she's apologizing for. I don't know much about anatomy, but I know that there's not that much blood in a human body to start with, and mine is already staining the water over more than a quarter of the pool, spreading quickly like a great crimson blossom. If Kaiyo has to wait a few more minutes to treat my wounds, she'll be a few minutes too late. "I'm…not gonna make it," I say. It's a statement, not a question.

She shakes her head, biting down on her lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

"Red blossoms in the pool," I manage, though my speech is beginning to slur. My lips and tongue feel fat, and every part of me feels a deathly chill, even though I seem to be sweating profusely. "It's…the last part…of the prophesy…"

"No!" Kaiyo slams her fist into the concrete hard enough to crack it, though she seems uninjured by the contact. "It didn't say anything about you dying! What about the prophesy she gave to you? What about the rising darkness! The choices!"

"I guess you'll…have to…sort it out…without me…" I say. Each word is a struggle, and I decide not to say anything more. I simply smile at her. She's crying, but she's safe now. The whole town is safe, at least from the Revenant. It was the least I could do. The only thing, it seems, that I could do…and it's not half bad for a simple English lit major.

With that thought, my eyes drift closed. Sensation fades away to nothing. I am left alone with the buzzing…

Author's Note: The end! Just kidding! I promise never to end a story like that. A chapter, on the other hand...hehehe!

"The Raven" is one of my favorite missions in The Secret World. In my opinion, it's an excellent example of the "tension and release" cycle that's so important in good horror (look it up on Extra Credits if you're curious). It was the only mission that had me jumping out of my chair with fright the first time I played it (several have had me jumping out of my chair in frustration, like *cough-cough* "That'll Leave a Mark"—but that's another story!). The mission begins with the player being given a simple task "search for ravens." Upon finding the first raven (located where the first raven was found in the story, but acting like a normal bird), the bird flies away and the task changes to a timed mission to "follow the raven." This leads the player to two more ravens who, again fly off and you are tasked to track down. The player finds them in a back yard surrounded by lots of unnaturally-circling ravens, which immediately caused me to question, "What's going on here?" The game provides no answer however, and it is a timed task, so the player will try to ignore the uncanny feeling of unease and go ahead and reach that last group of ravens by the seesaws. At which point, all the ravens fly off. The player has about enough time to wonder, "Well, huh, what am I supposed to do now?" Before the Revenant spawns directly behind them (no matter which direction you turn, it will be behind you) and blasts them with a fairly powerful (for that stage of the game) column AoE attack, before going to town on them with its blades. It's attacks are not all that powerful and it doesn't take to long before the Revenant despawns and combat ends, but it is certainly enough to give players a good scare. At least, it gave me a good scare, and I now feel a little tingle of dread whenever I see circling crows in the game. There are other places where players can run into revenants on Solomon Island, but I don't think they match the fright of the first encounter.

Having said all that, I did change some things about the mission. First of all, there's nothing odd about the ravens' behavior except their formation of circles (both flying and, at the end, perching), but I wanted to make it clear from the outset that there was something sinister going on with these ravens in Kingsmouth. Second, the game has the player track the revenant through three flying-circle sequences like the first one, following him through the woods and back into town before trapping him in the pool, and picking up a revenant feather each time to use as a reagent in the final spell (which merely forces the revenant to spawn in the pool and stay there until the player either kills it or gets far enough away from the pool to cause it to despawn). I cut these cycles out as redundant in the story. For similar reasons, I cut out the zombie encounters a player would normally have on their way from the backyard to the park. I also added three ravens to the center of the pool in the last battle, to serve as a trigger point for the Revenant's spawn and to show continuity with the first attack. For dramatic reasons, I also decided to force Kaiyo to complete all five points of the star before binding the Revenant, rather than the three the player must puzzle out.

Finally, of course, the last battle with the Revenant is not very likely to kill a player character of appropriate level. Honestly having the Revenant kill Chris didn't occur to me until halfway through the battle, when she seemed to be losing pretty badly and getting her out alive was looking like a pretty hefty challenge. To be honest, I've been planning on killing Chris for several chapters now in order to further develop her character (not contradictory, I swear!). This just gave me a good, meaningful, and hopefully believable way for her to die. Her symptoms, at the end, are as faithful as I could be to someone suffering from fatal blood loss.

Concerning other matters...Ravens and crows are different species. Ravens are larger and have typically deeper calls. Since ravens are generally found in the countryside, most people are more used to seeing crows. In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the Uruk Hai—Saruman's orcs—carry special scimitars with straight, flat blades with a perpendicular point. The Revenant's swords look like miniature versions of these. I'm not sure if the resemblance is deliberate, but it was the only thing that occurred to my mind and I figured Chris would be the same (she may know guns, but not swords). The Revenant's attacks are cursed in game, but the only effect this has on players is for them to take moderate damage over time. In the story I decided to make it more dramatic. Also, in order to avoid Chris having to face yet another wardrobe change, I decided to allow the swords to strike through clothing (which would, incidently, make them impossible to stop with armor...fitting for a disease-based monster).

Kaiyo's combination of moves in the first fight can actually be dangerous, and I don't recommend it. Angelic Aegis is a strong barrier, as mentioned before, and can be cast without building up magic counters, but when you do so you take off a chunk of your own health and incur Blood Sacrifice—a substantial damage-over-time effect on yourself. If the enemy can't get through your barrier, that's no problem, but if they can then the damage-over-time from Blood Sacrifice can conspire with the damage from their attacks to put you in a bad situation (I've almost gotten poor Kaiyo's in-game doppelganger killed a couple times like this). If you can't kill off the enemy quickly, I find the only good solution is to spam Blood Shield (her second move) until either the Blood Sacrifice counter runs out or until you can cast Angelic Aegis again from magic resources rather than your own health. What I would recommend instead is to start by spamming Blood Shield before the fight, then you can cast Angelic Aegis at the beginning for free, giving you a nice barrier to protect you while you go on the offensive. Incidentally, yes, that finishing move she does is an actual elementalism skill called "Thor's Hammer"...and it is awesome!

Regarding Chris' relative power, I think the game's pretty consistent as portraying the player as someone with great untapped potential, essentially limited mostly by their unfamiliarity with their magic. I'm trying to keep that story in mind as I write Chris' adventures.

On a completely unrelated note, Kaiyo needs a name for her book. I am accepting suggestions.

And now, for a confession from the previous chapter. Madame Rogêt's prophesy was modified. Specifically, I added the lines about black feathers in the grass, pages in the park, and red blossoms in the pool. I did this so that the characters would have some clues to follow, and also so that I could sneak in some foreshadowing. Also the exact words were Pages in the park, but I'm okay with Chris' slight misremembering.