Disclaimer: I do not own Subnautica. Unknown Worlds does.
Thanks to DevoutRelic for editing.
Chapter published 8/10/17.
Estimated Time to Death: 34 days, 20 hours, 17 minutes
Varien
That night, he was besieged by nightmares.
He slept in the seat of his PRAWN, eyes twitching beneath their lids. His dreams were mostly nonsense, but the shifting and blurry images of fire and death and water and death were overlaid by a tense pressure, his hammering heart, a backdrop of fear.
Varien shifted and moaned, watching the Sunbeam explode from several perspectives, or a Reaper-sized bleeder eat him, or Silvia melt from the inside out. Once or twice he thought he woke up. His eyelids fluttered open and he blearily saw the beach, the massive alien gun, but then they shut again and he sunk back into the terror.
Then all at once, it stopped. The pack of stalkers chasing him vanished, the creepvines and water and even the ground vanished until Varien simply swam in endless blue water. His thoughts cleared up and he grew increasingly lucid.
Then something appeared in front of him. It clicked and warbled deafeningly as it came into focus, blurring the edges of his vision. It was brown, so dark as to be almost black, made of black smoke so diffuse he could see right through it. It seemed to be some kind of enormous head, with horns sprouting to the side. Four blue eyes as bright as the sun stared right at him, flooding the edges of his vision with rainbow colors.
Its voice boomed into his head, like a middle-aged woman, curious and strained and loud enough to shatter his eardrums had he not been dreaming.
"What... are... you?" she asked.
Then, with a strangled yell, Varien woke up in a cold sweat.
He felt like shit.
He'd scratched his itching skin until red marks appeared all over his arms, ribs, face and legs. His nose was stuffed but didn't run, his head buzzed, and every one of his joints, from his knees to his elbows to the vertebrae in his neck, ached fiercely. There was no doubt about it; he was sick.
Sick, and if his PDA was to be believed, dying.
Dying. The thought bounced around his head and brought tears to his eyes. Doom hung over him like a cloud, dense and choking and tight in his stomach. Even sitting still, he felt lead weights attached to his every muscle and joint, enfeebling him to the point he felt as though he were encased in stone.
Five weeks. He had five weeks to live. Five weeks of slowly worsening quality of life. Five weeks before the disease killed him. The disease that had the super-advanced alien race quarantine an entire planet.
It'd been useless. All his efforts had been in vain. Escaping the Aurora, putting out the fire, scrounging food and water, building a habitat, all of it was for nothing. He was dead. He'd been dead the moment he touched the water. He was still breathing and pumping blood but he was dead.
Varien glanced down at the floor of his PRAWN, where he'd dropped his survival knife. Dark thoughts flickered in his eyes.
Before he even knew it, he had it in his hands. The rising sun glinted off the metal blade. His hands shook as it sat in his palm, shook and shook until it fell back to the floor and he released a tense breath.
What was he going to do? What even could he do? Was there even any point in doing anything? Maybe he should just stay here, just sit in his exosuit until the end came. Stay and rot away. Let himself starve and dehydrate, because that'd surely be a quicker end.
A tear traced its way down his cheek.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair! He didn't deserve this. He should've found a way. He... he...
He wanted to follow Silvia as she helped build the phase gate. He wanted them to move into that house he'd picked out. He wanted to marry her in a lavish ceremony with all their friends. He wanted to have kids, wanted to grow old, wanted to finish that game he'd said he'd get started on but never did...
Something twisted in him. So far it'd eluded him. Throughout his survival efforts he'd teetered between hopeless and a desperate 'I have to try!'. But now something else grew in his gut. Something hot. He'd read it in some adventure novels, but now it came to him. A burning, boiling thought.
No, he thought. I'm not going to die.
He sat up straight, narrowed his eyes, and opened his PDA. He flicked to one of the data entries he'd gotten from his tour of the alien gun. "Disease research facility," he growled through a parched throat. "Eight hundred meters down, one kilometer southwest from here. Designed to study and synthesize vaccine for Carar bacterium." Carar, undoubtedly the same disease killing him. If it wasn't, then why would the gun have rejected him? He was infected with the thing these aliens wanted to cure, the thing that scared them enough to blow up ships that even tried to slingshot around the planet.
That meant he needed to find this facility.
"Let's get back home," he snarled, latching his hands around the exosuit's controls. His fingers ached, as did his elbows, but he found the beacon below his base. With newfound fire he stomped off towards it, sinking beneath the waves and walking across the ocean floor to get there with a single-minded focus. In minutes he was back at his habitat and he climbed inside.
Varien stormed over to his fabricator and opened it. "Personal," he muttered, pressing through the buttons. "Equipment. Reinforced dive suit." He brought his PDA and read up on it. That was exactly what he needed. The reinforced dive suit would prevent any amount of water pressure from crushing him, completely prevent the Bends. It was cut-resistant, thermal resistant, the whole nine yards. With it he could swim anywhere with impunity, including to the disease research facility. Maybe he would've been able to take his PRAWN down there, but maybe not.
After all, eight-hundred meters sounded like it'd be in a cave of some sort.
To make the reinforced dive suit he needed a fair amount of synthetic fibers. Those could, in turn, be made with benzene and fiber mesh. Fiber mesh was easy. Benzene was... hard.
Varien had no idea how to make benzene. He'd tried before, with creepvine seeds. But their oil wasn't good. Maybe he needed some other plant? Varien headed out into the ocean to look.
But despite his efforts, despite ruffling through every plant in the shallows, none of them could be processed into benzene. He needed something else.
Think, think. It was hard with the pounding in his head, but he tried. Benzene, that was a type of oil, right? He was fairly certain of that. Oil was made by organic remains being compressed over a long time. So... he needed pressure. Lots of pressure. That left him with either the deep area with the floating blue orbs or the chasm with ghostly kelp and ampeels.
That settled it. He'd go to the chasm where Volara lived. Maybe he'd find a plant there that could help him.
Find a source of benzene, make the suit, find the alien research facility, get a cure. Once cured turn off the gun, build a ship, find Silvia, and leave. That was the plan.
With newfound strength, Varien swam to his exosuit and climbed into its titanic frame. He scratched his itching skin, then turned to where he remembered the canyon to be and headed off. In minutes he was trudging across the floor of the grassy plateau, craning his head back to look at a pod of reefbacks as they bellowed far above him. The local star shone through the water, forming shimmering sheets of light so far down.
Varien came up on a ridge of stone, which fell away to show him the mushroom forest. Smiling, he let himself plummet. Then he realized that was a bad idea so he made sure he didn't fall too fast by using the PRAWN's thrusters to slow his descent.
Once inside he continued to stomp forward, weaving between the mushroom caps and brushing the serene, if noisy, jellyrays aside. Schools of green hoopfish swam around him, so dense they were akin to a wall he had to storm through. Varien kept walking forward, slowly making his way into deeper and deeper waters. One-eighty meters. One-ninety. Two hundred. Two-ten. He passed under a stony arch and marveled at the blue grue clusters and purple tree leeches growing on the stone. He scanned them to see if they'd be any help in getting benzene, but no such luck.
Two hundred thirty meters down, he reached the end of the mushroom forest.
The rock trees gave way to a vast expanse of sandy dunes that sloped away beneath him, down into the darkness. If he squinted he could see the faintly glowing dots of fish living down there, and once or twice he thought he saw a black shape erupt from the sands and devour them.
This wasn't the chasm. That could mean only one thing; Varien had gotten lost.
With a long-suffering sigh that made his throat ache, he turned to his right and continued walking, making his way across the forest's perimeter while keeping an eye on sloping land to his left. At one point he thought he saw something down there, a colossal bowl of stone buried in the sand, but on closer inspection it wasn't the black canyon either.
Lucky for him though, the crevice wasn't far from the crater. It stuck out like a sore thumb, a gaping wound in the ocean floor. He left the mushroom forest and stomped across the white sand as it sloped down and down, forming cliffs of black stone before all at once spilling into the desolate region. Varien stopped himself at the edge and peered down, his PRAWN's lights cutting through the blackness like a knife. A dizzying drop loomed before him, so with a weak breath to steady himself, Varien jumped over the edge.
His breath went short and his lower body tingled as he descended into the darkness, using the exosuit's thrusters to feather the drop. Three hundred meters. Three-ten. Three-thirty.
At three hundred and fifty meters he slammed onto the black stone, kicking up a cloud of gray detritus. He'd arrived.
Now that he was actually in the area, not just hovering above it in a seamoth, Varien could see far more detail than before. The black rocks were mottled with white streaks of some strange mineral, like veins in flesh. From the rocks grew small ferns, dull gray with duller red jewels growing in them, swaying in the chilly currents as they eked out a living.
The massive kelps were taller than they'd first appeared. One sprouted from the stone next to Varien, towering so far above him he had to crane his neck back all the way to see its top. Looking up, he couldn't see any hint of the surface. Just an even darkness everywhere he looked. According to his PRAWN's thermometer, it was a frigid thirteen degrees.
Something bopped his PRAWN. He looked towards it; it was a fish. It looked like a skeleton that'd come to life, with glowing green eyes. On closer inspection the spinefish - as his PDA labeled it - had a pair of tendrils just like hoopfish. It must've been related, and adapted to look like it was dead. It bumped into his windshield, backed off, then bumped him again. Finally it turned and swam in another direction.
Varien turned to face the vine, or 'blood vine' as his PDA labeled it. Along the base were massive glowing red orbs, branching their parasitic tendrils across the spectral blue plant. Around the base, the blood kelp unraveled into white streaks that grew across the stone like fungus, and between the lines were mushrooms. On first glance he thought they were the acid mushrooms like in the shallows, but that wasn't right. Those were bright purple and red, but these were bleached white.
He walked closer and held his scanner to the towering vine, showering it in blazing light. He repeated the process for the 'deep shrooms'. He didn't read over their data entries right then, though. He wanted to explore.
Walking around the 'blood kelp' zone was like entering an even more alien world than he'd been in already. Ghostly weeds sprouted from the stone. Towering kelp reached for the surface like grasping claws. Strange fish swam about him, like color-drained biters - blighters - with milky white eyes and a sinister chuckle. The crimson red of the parasitic red orbs turned sickly green after what felt like a handful of steps away from them.
No light reached so far down. Wherever his PRAWN shone its headlights the world came into being, but everywhere else it was like the world abruptly ceased to exist, pierced by only a few spots of bioluminescence. Chunks of basalt, quartz, and even dull uraninite clung to the walls by the dozens as he explored, so awestruck that even the awful sickness faded into the back of his mind. So far down, with over three hundred meters of water bearing down on him, every step was nerve wracking. He knew his PRAWN was good for another six hundred meters down, but he still feared every step would make his exosuit fail and crumple under the pressure. Everything around him was equal parts amazing and terrifying.
As he explored, something flickered in the corner of his vision. He turned his head to look; it was a series of undulating white dots, crackling with blue electricity. An ampeel. Was it Volara? Maybe, but probably not. Supporting the idea that it wasn't her was a pair of smaller ampeels next to the larger one, maybe a third of its size.
All three ampeels were coming right for him.
His thoughts were sluggish under the haze of sickness, but he thought fast enough to summon forth his ampeel toy, dim his lights, and turn to face the trio of electric fish. "Hello!" he said, and his mini-eel translated.
All three of them recoiled. The larger one spoke first, his PDA translating it as an androgynous voice. "You can talk?! What sort of creature are you?" it asked.
Well, that confirmed it wasn't Volara. "Uh, it's uh, kind of hard to explain," he told the larger ampeel.
"Is it?" they asked, glancing a Varien with an acidic green eyeball. "Wait. You wouldn't be the creature Volara was training, are you?"
"Um, yes?" he stammered. "You know Volara? Wait, who are you?" And did they think Volara was training him like a dog?
"Herzaron," the ampeel said, the translator shifting to a handsomely masculine voice. He began to swim circles around Varien's exosuit, glancing down at him. The crackles of electricity were hair-raising from so close. Close enough that the eel could lash out with fang and lightning and he could do nothing about it. "Would you look at that. She actually trained you." He snapped his jaws behind Varien, and he nervously turned his suit around to face the megafauna. "And now you're here, in my territory."
"Um, sorry about that? I got lost." Territory. The data download mentioned something about being territorial, didn't it? Was he even going to live five weeks at all?
"Lost." Herzaron stopped and turned to face him head on, his head lowered to look Varien in the eye. "You got lost and just so happened to end up here, and not in the unclaimed lands."
He held up his hands in surrender. What could he say to make this giant fish back off? "I did, it was an honest mistake. I've never actually been down here before."
The ampeel stared at him for a good long while, the children-fish swimming silently by his side. "Hmm. Makes sense. But then what brings you down now? What are you looking for?"
"Just some kind of plant," he said. "Or oil."
Herzaron tilted his head. "And not to hunt my food, right?"
Was that what this was about?
"No, no no no!" he babbled, shaking his head frantically. "I've got plenty of food with me back home."
The ampeel's face didn't change, but the translator's voice lightened up dramatically. "Oh! Sorry about that, then."
"I-It's fine," he stammered. "So, you know Volara?"
He 'nodded'. "I do, she's a family friend. We met two seasons go." He tilted his head to the two smaller ampeels. "These are two of my fries, Chargaron and Posara. Say hello, you two."
"Hi!" one said.
"Hello," the other replied, hiding meekly behind her - he assumed - father.
Herzaron rounded on her. "Posara, come out. What's he going to do, hurt you?" he scoffed. He turned back to him. "Sorry, she's shy. Also, I never got your name." He blinked. "You do have a name, right?"
He rolled his eyes. "I'm Varien, nice to meet you."
"Likewise. Terribly sorry about the hostility..." Herzaron said, trailing off. "So what do you need these plants for? You're not some despicable plant-eating prey, are you?"
"What? No no, I eat fish." Maybe best to leave out the 'omnivore' part. And oh stars above, how to explain this without giving the whole 'technology' speech again? "So I recently got some bad news, and uh." One of the two ampeel fries, Chargaron, came closer. "Uh..." The smaller ampeel - still larger than a stalker - nudged around his PRAWN, nibbling the left arm. "Stop that!" he protested.
The fry backed off and spat a clear ball of water out. "Bleh! He tastes like rocks."
Herzaron shook his head. "Chargaron, leave the talking thing alone."
Posara spoke up, sounding like a little girl in his head. "You know Miss Volara?" she asked.
"Um, yes, I do," he repeated. "Do you know where she is?"
"She," Herzaron injected. ", came back from the Above not long ago, went to her territory to hunt. So what kind of plant do you need?"
He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, wincing as the soreness in his spine flared up. "Well that's the problem. I'm looking for something, but I don't even know what it is. I'll know it if I see it, but..."
"But you haven't seen it yet," he finished. "So let me get this straight. You're here, looking for something, but not for food."
"I have plenty of food with me right now," Varien said.
Herzaron and his children stared at him for a moment longer. Then he gave the ampeel equivalent of a nod, zapping the tusk-like prongs on his head. "Alright, welcome to my territory, Varien." He looked over at one of the ampeel children. "Posara, could you go find Volara? Tell her I want to speak with her?"
Posara glanced at Varien, then back at her father. "Um, uh, sure dad!" She turned tail and swam away, swaying her body and beating her tail fin against the water until the tiny glowing eel vanished into the blackness.
He glanced up at the remaining two ampeels. "So... um, do you mind if I...?" he asked, pointing awkwardly to a cluster of deep shrooms.
"No no, go ahead," Herzaron said.
"Thanks." He stomped his exosuit over to one and, carefully, reached out with its left arm. Eyes narrowed in focus, he worked the PRAWN's buttons to open its fingers, move it over the mushroom, and close them down. The mechanical claws clamped hard on the mushroom, tearing into its flaky white flesh and releasing a light shimmer of fluid from within.
He noticed that both Herzaron and Chargaron swam a little further when he did that.
He pulled the arm up, tearing the mushroom up from its roots. It jostled back and forth as he lifted it. He carefully moved his suit's arm over the back, opened the storage, and dumped the mushroom inside. Varien repeated the process for a few more of the deep shrooms until he had five of them, then stepped closer to one of the blood vines.
"What are these?" he wondered, poking one of the red parasites with an arm. It squished lightly.
The fry Chargaron swam into his view, laughing. "You mean you don't know?! It's just oil! The bone-fish eat it all the time."
"Oil?" he asked hopefully. "You mean it's not a parasite growing on these vines?"
"No, it's not," Herzaron added. "The vines make it. Eventually hardens and falls off, carrying their seeds."
Really? It was a long shot, but he reached out with his suit's right arm and pushed it at one of the oil globs. The claw sunk in like the oil was made of syrup, and when Varien withdrew it the egg-shaped node of red oil came with it. It left a small crater in the kelp filled with crimson veins, and the goo itself immediately began to slide off his suit's arm. Before it could drip off he opened the storage hatch and dropped the blood oil in there.
Alright, time to see if any of that was good for anything. Varien shut the storage hatch, drained the water, and turned around in his seat. He opened the PRAWN's compartment from inside.
The mushrooms were in bad shape, already shriveling up and flaking apart, but the acid in them was apparently good for making hydrochloric acid. He'd just need to add salt, which was everywhere. The massive chunk of ruby oil, however, was far more interesting. According to his scanner, it was just what he needed. Enough oil, and he could make benzene. The reinforced dive suit, and the freedom of mobility it'd provide, was closer than he thought!
People to speak with, oil to make his suit... this chasm wasn't so bad.
With a few quiet moans as his head throbbed, Varien collected more blood oil from the ethereal vine. The oily goop kept trying to slide out of his exosuit's grasp, and more than once he had to 'catch' it with the other, but before long he'd filled his storage up with the glowing crimson slime while Chargaron and Herzaron watched.
"Alright," he said at last. "That should be enough." He turned to face Herzaron. "Thank you for letting me take this stuff."
The ampeel 'shrugged'. "There's plenty for the bone-fish to eat, and I only really ever use it when I have company over. Speaking of which!" He turned to his child, who was busy chasing a 'blighter'. "Chargaron! Leave the unknown alone, let's go find your mother."
The smaller ampeel undulated the middle of his body down. "Daaaad! Can't I watch the strange talking fish some more?"
"You weren't watching him all this time." He swam to the fry's side. "Now come along."
"Fine," Chargaron huffed.
"Well," Herzaron said, glancing back at Varien. "If that'll be all, I think you should get going."
Rude. But Varien bit his tongue and nodded. "Probably. I still have to process all this stuff. Thanks again." He turned around and started stomping for a cliff. He heard the two ampeels crackling a while longer, but soon they faded into the distance.
Only then did Varien finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Getting up out of the chasm was a chore. The cliffs were tall and numerous, and controlling his fall while using the thrusters was impossible. More than once he overshot a cliff and fell back down on the other side. It certainly didn't help that the alien disease kept wracking him with nausea, joint pain, and itchiness. But slowly but surely, he did make his way out of the black gorge and began stomping back to his habitat.
In a few hours he was back in the shallows, parked by his simple shelter. He popped out of the PRAWN and opened up its storage from outside.
Varien frowned. The blood oil had melted together, filling the container with a soupy red slop filled with tiny seeds and a half-dozen deep shrooms. How we he supposed to scoop out that out?! He wracked his brain, trying to think through the fog surrounding his thoughts, for a solution.
...
...
... bottles!
He made a few bottles of water from bladderfish, drank them - he was especially thirsty with his sore throat - and used those to begin transferring the blood oil from his habitat to inside. Unfortunately he didn't really have anywhere to put the blood oil, so he just dumped it under his fabricator in a semi-solid pile of goo. That still left a handful of slime-covered deep-shrooms, but those could hang out in the storage compartment for the time being.
As it turned out, he needed all of the blood oil he'd harvested to make enough benzene for a reinforced suit. He'd also needed to go harvest more quartz for the glass bottles, but that wasn't a big concern. He fed the fabricator his materials, and in a few minutes he had two bottles of benzene ready to go.
... though the benzene inside was a bizarre shade of red. Wasn't it supposed to be clear?
Oh well. Before making a bed, he'd been using two rolls of fiber mesh as a bed. Now, he cannibalized them for the synthetic fibers. His fabricator mixed them together with the benzene to produce massive rolls of tough, flexible yellow mesh, and then those went together to form a reinforced dive suit.
He stripped out of his regular suit and put it on, zipping it up over his body. It was perfect! Dark gray with orange veins and a faint scaly texture. It even came with gloves and a helmet.
Varien flexed his arms, bent his knees. He liked this. He liked this a lot! The suit was cool and comforting on his itching skin, as though the inside was coated with a soothing gel. It wasn't too tight, but nor was it too lax.
Alright, so he had the reinforced dive suit. He could swim anywhere on the planet with no fear of the pressure, ascend however fast he wanted without getting sick. He had everything he needed to go to the alien disease research facility -
His thoughts crashed to a halt.
... he had everything he needed except for one thing. He didn't know where it was. For all he knew it was in a cavern, a cavern with an entrance on the other side of the planet.
"Fuck," he said simply.
Volara
She sighed, swimming laps around her territory. A green-blaster skuttled about the stone beneath her, screaming and eating a few bone-fish, but she wasn't in the mood to chase it off.
Varien was gone. She'd heard some massive blast tear through the water not long ago, that must've been him leaving. She hoped that wherever he was, whatever strange place his godlike kind called home, he was happy there with his consort. As for her, going back to her old life seemed so... empty, now. She'd gotten a taste of the world Above, of what could be if she could harness natural laws. In the wake of that, doing patrol rounds and talking to her friends about how they were raising their fries just seemed so shallow.
But it was a moot point. Like Varien had said, it took generations upon generations to progress their ability to manipulate technology. She'd never see anything as fantastical ever again. At most she could go back to the Above and explore it, but the most exciting part of her life was behind her. Sure, part of her selfishly hoped Varien would come back to dazzle her, but his kind didn't live well underwater. He'd made that clear.
She sighed again. Volara wanted to kill something. That green-blaster was looking awfully irritating now...
But before she could, she spotted another shocker swimming out of the darkness to her. She turned her head towards them to look. They were small; a fry. As they grew closer, she made out the swirls and beautiful arcing patterns across their shell. That was Posara, one of Herzaron and Teslara's fries. With a flick of her tail fin she swam over to her. "Posara, what are you doing here?" she asked, tilting her head curiously as the fry came to a halt.
The little fry looked down and away. "Um, Miss Volara? Dad said he wanted to speak to you, he's over in our territory by the cracked ground."
She zapped her mouth prongs. "Right, I know where that is. Let's go."
The two of them began swimming. Volara had to stay slow so Posara could keep up with her, especially since the still-growing fry kept stopping to chomp up some bone-fish, giggling bashfully whenever she successfully zapped multiple prey at a time. Not that she minded; sure the fish were in her territory, but Posara was the fry of a friend and needed the food.
Before long they found Herzaron swimming in place, Chargaron practicing stunts between the fronds of nearby vines. Volara swam over to him. "You wanted to see me?" she asked worriedly. He'd seen a summoner in his territory a while ago. Had it come back? Had the Green Weakness set its sights on his family?
"It's about your little creature friend," he said. "He got lost and ended up here."
She blinked.
Volara tried to think over what he'd said.
"Herzaron..." she began warily, lowering the front of her body to stare up at him. ", when exactly was this?"
He glanced at her just as warily, pausing to nuzzle his daughter when she swam underneath him. "He just left, why?"
After a moment's confusion burning heat flashed in her mind. She stretched her body rigid, swirling about angrily. "That little - stupid liar!" she shouted, prongs crackling and filling the water with bursts of energy. Her hearts pounded furiously, blood rushing in her earholes. "He said he was - we had this giant goodbye - I went to the Above to tell him goodbye and it's horrible up there! And he even - what about that bang then?! Did he just make that up to make me think he was gone? I should go and eat him," Volara ranted. "Little stupid can't even swim - !"
Herzaron's tail fin swatted her snout. She recoiled and, startled, swam away from him. "Is... something wrong?" he asked worriedly.
She sighed, calming her crackles. "Varien told me earlier today he was leaving, forever, with the rest of his people. I brought him a farewell gift and everything. And he didn't leave?! Oh!" Volara chomped the water angrily. "I could just blast him!"
"Blasting?" Chargaron injected, stopping his stunts to join them. "I like blasting things!" the fry chirped excitedly.
Herzaron swam forward and nudged the fry behind him. "Not now," he chided before turning back to Volara. "He lied to you?"
"Apparently," she groused, relaxing her swim bladder to float above him. "Thank you for telling me, Herzaron. I need to go give him a piece of my mind."
"Swift currents!" he called out. His fries echoed him a moment later.
"Same," she returned, still sore and already swimming up and out of Herzaron's territory.
Time to teach that human some manners.
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