The ascendancy of the tides

  "Why are we here on this convention-forsaken piece of rock?" I mumbled, kicking at the pebbles that covered this lonely outcrop.

  "Because this lonely rock is the closest we can get to the centre of this ocean without the UNS noticing," Darick replied

  "And why do we need to be here again?"

  "Because this is the largest naturally formed body of water in all of the Sol, underneath the ice is an ocean spanning the entirety of Titan." As he spoke his visor began to fog up.

  "Really, there's liquid water on this hunk of rock?"

  "It's not water, but it's an ocean nonetheless", Darick said, his eyes glinting as he surveyed the frozen wastes below us. He started to walk down the side of the outcropping, his boots crunching into the methane snow as he approached the edge of the outcrop.

  "Well, how can we get to it if it's under all this ice?" I asked, trailing behind him

  "That's where our ship comes in."

  " You want our ship to open fire on hundreds of meters of methane ice."

  ''Exactly," he said as he reached the end of the outcrop and placed a metallic cylinder.

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  "Now, we both need to run." he said calmly before slamming his fist into a button on his suit and sprinting away.

  "Wh-" I said before I looked up and saw the unmistakable glow of charging covenant cannons. I bolted in the same direction as Darick just in time as a massive laser slammed into the ice I was a mere 10 meters away from. I felt a pressure wave, and then what felt like my head exploding.

  I woke up in the centre of the outcropping, a sea of liquid methane swirling around us. "What happened?" I said, or at least I think I said. The ringing in my ears made it hard to tell.

  Regardless of whether I had actually said that, Darick replied, "It turns out that the methane right where we shot it decided to explode, it worked out quite well for us though, but the explosion did rupture your ear drums."

  "That explains the splitting headache"

  "Indeed, however no time to waste now ascension is near"

  " You never did tell me how you intend to ascend; with the others it mostly makes sense but with you-you brought no sacrifices or effigies, and you're not here to kill someone, so what are you planning?"

  "That's where you're wrong, I do have a sacrifice." He said as hundreds of ships warped in above us, their cannons glowing in a purple light.

  "What better way to become a god of the ocean than to kill one?" he said

  The ships fired

  The world exploded around me. Literally. I felt myself being ripped apart, but right before I died, time slowed for me. At the centre of the explosion stood Darick. I felt myself teeter on the edge of oblivion, right as the explosion imploded inwards on Darick. Leaving me bleeding out in the bottom of a crater that I couldn't see the edge of. At the centre of it stood Darick, but he was different; his skin had turned a dark shade of blue, and he was taller. In one hand he held a shield that looked to be carved from still liquid blood, in the other, a blade carved from what looked to be flowing water, and as I bled out, I felt the very blood in veins flow towards him as if it was answering that call of the tide.