Disclaimer: I do not own Subnautica. Unknown Worlds does.
Thanks to DevoutRelic for editing.
Chapter published 11/16/17.
Estimated Time to Death: 16 days, 17 hours, 37 minutes
Varien
Black fluid trickled from the machine. He watched patiently as it filled up a white cup. Varien didn't know what it did to the organic material it filtered from the sea to turn it into coffee and a mug, and he didn't want to know. All that mattered was that, in the span of a few short minutes, he had a cup of hot coffee ready to go.
He stared down into the dark fluid. Silvia liked her coffee black, he remembered painfully.
"Would you like cream?" the machine chirped in its metallic voice before he could spiral downward.
"Yes, please," he begged.
Something in it clicked. "Dispensing product." Milky cream spilled into his coffee. Once done, Varien grabbed the cup and stuck in a finger - one not sprouting a boil - and stirred the coffee. With shaking hands, he lifted the mug to his lips and drank deep. His knees trembled as the brew washed over his tongue and down his throat; after a month with nothing to drink but water, the coffee was heavenly even if it did taste kinda weird.
The odd taste was, honestly, probably him being deathly ill.
Once he drained the coffee he let out a long suffering sigh, massaged some of his especially hurting joints, and made his way over to the moonpool where his exosuit was docked. He tossed the mug into the ocean, climbed into his suit - it had both arms functional now - and ejected.
He didn't stay ejected for long, though. It was just a short trek across the shimmering ocean floor until he was under his Cyclops. Its underbelly opened up and he leaped straight into it. Suction cups latched onto his P.R.A.W.N. and hoisted him up. He pressed a button to open the hatch and, with great difficulty, climbed onto the top floor of his submarine.
Varien didn't pay much attention to the ship welcoming him aboard, and instead headed for the engine room. One by one he visited the empty slots, pulled one of the recently charged power cells from his suit's storage, and pushed them into the slots until they clicked into place.
With his Cyclops fully powered he headed to the bridge with heavy, plodding steps. Every step felt like lead blocks were hooked to his limbs, so by the time he got to the steering wheel he collapsed over it.
HOOOOOOOOOONK! the horn sounded.
He stared listlessly out the windshield, at the kelp forest far ahead of him. For a few long minutes all there was was the hooting of gasopods and chirping of fish, and the occasional stalker flickering in and out of the creepvine. Then there was something else; a crackle of light blue in the middle of the forest.
Out of the darkness swam not one, but three ampeels side to side. The one in the middle had their head down. All of them were silent. Volara, guided here by Teslara and Herzaron, if he had to guess.
The two ampeels flanking her swam away. Volara drifted until she was level with his Cyclops. He stared at her. She stared at some point below him. His guts felt like they were rotting.
Her prongs lit up. "What can I do?" she asked.
At least she wasn't apologizing. Regardless, a dozen ideas flitted through his head. Bring the dead back to life, travel back in time, he wanted to snap. Anything to rub it in and make her feel miserable. Instead he gave it more thought, forced down a coughing fit, and pulled his translator from his suit. "I still need to find the mod station so I can find this thermal plant. I'm thinking I could go look around the sandy dunes, maybe the area around the precursor gun. Guard me."
She nodded. "Okay," she muttered, swimming to the side of his Cyclops, out of sight.
Varien sighed, then began steering the wheel. He pushed forward, coughed a couple times, and began sliding out of the shallows. Everything was tense. He wanted to scream at her and throw things, but instead trembled silently. At least she had the decency to stay out of his sight.
The alien sea slid by beneath him. The kelp fronds bent around his Cyclops as he plowed through. The grassy plateaus passed underneath. The land reached a cliff and plummeted, giving way to the vast basin that held the mushroom forest. Bonesharks and jellyrays hunted and drifted beneath him. He passed by a singular giant stalk, towering more than halfway to the surface. Beautiful rays orbited the trunk like planets.
He just grunted at it and moved on.
Before long he made it. To his distant right the darkness sloped away into the blood kelp chasm where Volara lived. To his left were vast dips and mounds of sand the sizes of a skyscraper, stretching away into the oily distance.
"Well, here we are," he muttered, turning the Cyclops to face Volara. She looked up at him with dim eyes. "Let's go along the edge of the mushrooms for a bit, see if we can find anything here." He glanced back into the dunes. "I don't like the looks of this."
She nodded again. Didn't zap her tusks. Nodded. "Alright."
He puttered his Cyclops around the perimeter of the mushroom forest, keeping an eye on the dunes to his right. It was hard to see anything in the darkness, but once or twice he saw sandsharks burst from the ground, or the flash of warpers teleporting in the distance. It was barren and empty, not a scrap of plantlife that he could see. Before long he came across something, though. A massive black structure at the base of a few dunes, curved like a massive letter C, surrounded by a halo of debris.
"There," he said, coming to a stop. He turned his ship to face the structure head on. "A wreck. Let's go explore."
Volara, barely in range to look at his translator, nodded. "Okay," she whispered.
And with that, he drove forward into the dunes. But not one second after he left the mushroom forest did his PDA chime in. "Caution," it warned. ", detecting several leviathan-class lifeforms in the region."
What?!
The PDA's voice, alarmingly, turned worried. "Are you certain whatever you're doing is worth it?"
He froze and the Cyclops came to a halt. Varien stared blankly out into the open ocean. "Leviathans?" he echoed.
Volara swam into view and looked at him with a worried tilt of her head. "Varien? What's wrong?"
"My - it senses - my PDA said there are leviathans in this area. Reaper Leviathans, plural, oh fuck." He hadn't seen a Reaper in nearly a month. Why? Why now, when he was half dead?
"Reaper... Leviathans? Leviathan like the skeleton in the Underworld?" she asked.
"Not like that one. A Reaper's the fish I was afraid of around the Aurora, it trashed my seamoth and nearly killed me after I fixed the reactor," he explained. "It's like, three times longer than you, bright red and white, and it has these claws around its head," he tried to describe, waving his hands wildly. Why was his heart beating so fast? H-He had an ampeel with him, right? Surely Volara's electricity could fend off a Reaper, right?
The ampeel in question turned, looking up and down and across the desolate waters. "I don't see anything like that... but don't worry, Varien." She looked back at him seriously. "If any show up, I won't let them get near you."
Thanks, he wanted to say for a moment. Instead he just said, "Good." Varien gripped the steering wheel again and drove forward. Volara swam out of the way as he moved forward, drifting above the wreckage.
From the way it was strewn about, Varien guessed it hadn't landed in the dunes to begin with; rather it landed at the border with the mushroom forest and slid all the way down. If it had, the currents buried the deep gouge it would've left in the sand. The only evidence of it sliding down were the pieces of metal forming a line right down to the main mass like a trail of breadcrumbs.
His hands gripped the wheel so hard his knuckles were white. His head swiveled back and forth, listening for any sign of a Reaper's roar, of its scything tail fin. There was nothing, but that wasn't much reassurance; he was close to three hundred meters below the surface and as such it was pitch black everywhere his sub's floodlights didn't fall. Volara's nightvision was a thousand times better than his and she wasn't saying anything about a Reaper, but could he trust her to tell him if she did?
No, no he could not.
With agonizing ease, he arrived on top of the wreck and descended, using his lower camera to guide him. Volara chased away the sand sharks and the warpers, then took up a position atop the 'C' of the ruins. Once he decided he was at a good height, he let go of the helm.
His left hand stayed rigid, as if holding an invisible wheel. Varien frowned, worked some feeling into his fingers, and flexed them into a fist. He grabbed his translator and set off. Panting with effort, he walked back to where his exosuit was docked and slid in. Close the hatch, press the button, and use the thrusters to feather the drop.
Once landed, he turned to where Volara was perched atop the metal skeleton of the wreck, and she looked back at him. "Coast is clear," she murmured. "You should be safe."
Varien's response was to exhale sharply through his nose.
Without further ado he started to explore. There was a data box scattered on the ground, but it was just for a shield generator. He had that blueprint already. Varien found an entrance to the wreck, parked his suit there, and got out into the chilly ocean.
Distantly, a sand shark growled. Bubbles of dissolved oxygen flickered around him menacingly. He shivered, made sure to pull out his dive reel, and hooked it outside. With that done, he swam inside.
The month spent in the ocean clearly hadn't done the wreck any favors. That became readily apparent once he turned his flashlight on. Alien barnacles clung to the corners and rugged seaweed grew from cracks in the ceiling. Boxes laid across the floor snd shelves had long ago spilled their contents. He made his way slowly but surely, eyes peeled for anything of use. More than once he had to stop to cut through a sealed door. The blazing light of his laser cutter was, in the gloom, so intense as to be blinding and cast eerie shadows along the metal tomb.
He wondered how many people had died in this section of the Aurora.
The silence was crushing. Varien's breaths were deafening, and the shadows claustrophobic. All too slowly, he made his way through. Soon the tunnels opened up into a larger bay, littered with shattered P.R.A.W.N. suits. Their arms cluttered the floor like twigs. He noticed that some of them were diamond-tipped drill arms; he didn't have the blueprint for that, so he held his scanner to them.
No modification station, though. At best there were plenty of bottles of disinfected water. Varien patrolled the entire wreckage, peering into vents and nooks and crannies with his flashlight, but nothing revealed itself. With two of his three hours of oxygen gone, he made his way out of the wreck.
Outside, it was still dark as ever, with Volara swimming circles above him and radiating her meager light. His Cyclops hung in the waters, cutting through the gloom. Varien unhooked the dive reel, hopped in the exosuit, and docked it back into the submarine.
Another dud. What a surprise.
Volara swam into view, head low. "I didn't see anything like you described. Did you find your tool?"
"No," he snapped. "Of course I didn't find it, just - " He brought his hands over his eyes and took a deep breath. "Fuck it. Let's just head over to the gun." With harsh movements, Varien grabbed the wheel and turned his Cyclops. It took a moment to fish out his PDA and find the coordinates of the energy pulse, but once he found them he turned it on. Right away a blue dot embedded itself in his vision.
Without waiting for Volara, he sped off.
Volara
What she wouldn't give for hands. That way she'd be able to claw open her own shell.
Why had she let her friends push her into this? Volara could barely even stand to look at him. It made her stomach churn, made her upper heart clench, and it made her shell tight and itchy.
... well, her shell was tight and itchy anyway, but she didn't want to think about that.
Varien piloted his massive Cyclops shell up and away from the wreckage, and she followed in his wake with her head swerving from side to side. She didn't know exactly what this 'Reaper Leviathan' looked like, but she felt she'd be able to identify it based on his description.
And if she saw one, she'd protect him from it. She was bound to; she had no right to refuse anything of anyone, least of all him. Volara would put her life on the line if it meant he could see his mission through. That much she owed, after she killed his consort and didn't even stop Ohmaron from attacking him. Some friend she was.
They left the sand dunes, first and foremost. Varien's metal shell ascended and she relaxed her swim bladder to match his pace, ignoring the nausea of rising so quickly through the water. The spires of the mushroom forest weren't far below, close enough it seemed their tips would scrape her underbelly. After seeing it so much, the wonders of the Above hardly warranted a second glance. Especially not when she swore there was so much filth in her she could vomit it up.
The mushroom forest passed, and they skirted past the edge of the floating chunks of underwater stone, dozens of bonesharks swimming about to their left. A few of them got rowdy, but Volara was there to send them away. It was the least she could do.
The abyss curved away, and the land in front bent up to the surface where the water met Varien's not-water. Volara took a moment to stare up in shock; the land jutted up and out of the water! She didn't know it could do that, but now that it was right there, she felt like an idiot for not thinking of it earlier. The stone was brackish gray; not the soothing dark of her home, or the blinding brightness where Varien lived, but a mottled gray between the two, utterly devoid of even the barest scrap of plantlife.
The Cyclops housing her human charge swerved right, plowing bloodily through a school of red chompers. Far to the right was another kelp forest, but Varien headed past it, with her following to his right. Eventually she couldn't handle the bloated, swelling sensation within her; despite visiting the Above so often she couldn't quite handle rising so fast. So she threw up, retching and shuddering at the horrible feeling of her insides twisting inside out. Privately, Volara was amazed her stomach's contents weren't pitch black.
She put it out of her mind and raced to catch back up with Varien. The two of them passed a bridge of land, the border between a second mushroom forest and the bulb zone.
Volara thought she heard something behind her, coming from the direction of the land-spike, but when she turned to face it there was nothing. Just her nerves, right?
Her human veered off to the right, sinking into what looked like the entry to a canyon. In the distance, the light of summoners popping in and out of existence sparkled with gentle menace. The light grew dimmer and Varien's control of the shell grew unsure and jerky. Volara saw it before him; another shell of unnaturally smooth metal, leaning up against the stony shelf. She swam forward into his view and jutted her head down.
"That way," she said.
Varien sang something behind her, but she didn't turn to look at his translator. Instead she got out of his way and let him descend, taking up a guard at the moving bits on top of the Cyclops. He leveled out at a shelf of stone near the wreckage, then went still. For a moment his purple shell was silent. Then its bottom opened up and out dropped his walking shell. Volara cringed at the sight of Varien covered in hideous green blisters. She'd seen it happen so many times before, and it always ended the same. Part of her felt that was her fault, too.
He got out and swam inside, and Volara took up guard near the wreck's entrance, waiting patiently as he rummaged about. A school of the Above's red chompers swam by and tried to get in, so she fried them and ate them. They were chewier than the regular, white chompers of her home.
When he swam out, huffing and puffing, she gave him space to get back in his Prawn. She didn't need to ask if he'd found anything. His miserable frown was all the reply she needed.
Without a word Varien entered his Cyclops. He steered it right and sped off, Volara keeping pace. The land here was sparse and lumpy, jolting up and down like the waves on the surface. Approaching them was a massive rise that stood above the others, reaching for the not-water but not reaching it. A smaller spire of stone stuck up from its side, leaking something hot and black into the water.
The water was lukewarm. The area was deathly silent and uninviting, only the churning of the Cyclops's tail end to break the quiet. Even the summoners had stopped flickering in the distance.
It took a while, during which Varien stopped to eat. But together they swam up the mountain, reaching the desolate peak. Before them the land sloped back down, sometimes flattening out to form irregular steps. She and Varien both saw it at the same time. Another wreckage, smaller than the last but surrounded by more than twice the debris. This one looked less like an arch and more like a cube, spiky and frayed. Varien began to descend -
She heard something. A low rumble that echoed through the water.
Hurriedly she swam in front of Varien. "Stop, stop stop stop!" she crackled. He did, narrowing his eyebrows at her. "I hear something."
Silently, the two of them listened. The roar came again, and Varien's eyes widened. He looked at her, then past her to his right. He stumbled back from his wheel and fell on his back. "Volara, it's - Reaper - oh stars above I need to - " His breaths came faster and faster. Filled with grim determination, she turned around to see this fabled 'Reaper Leviathan'.
Her stomach flipped. It was so much worse than Varien had described.
Its face was whiter than anything she'd ever seen, with a wide mouth filled with so many fangs she wondered how they all fit in. Atop and below its head were colossal crests, the color of Varien's red blood. Four black, lidless eyes glared hatefully at the open water. Most obvious were the four things sticking out of its face, two on either side, deep red and capped with inward facing talons as black as sin. From Volara's angle she could see the rest of its body too, a coil of muscle and sinew flexing beneath white scales, lined with crimson fins and markings.
It was big, too. She'd accepted that the reefbacks were bigger than her, but they were prey. This... thing. It was a predator. It was bigger than her three times over and the sheer impossibility of what she was seeing made chilling fingers numb her head. Was this how Varien felt, face to face with predators many times his size?
As she watched, it roared, flexing its four mandibles back and opening its jaws wide. The horrible, deep echoes of its bellow washed over her, bouncing around her earholes. Volara's prongs stuttered something meaningless.
The echoing roar faded. The Reaper's undulating body flexed and it turned to face her. Volara's eyed widened, and she turned back to Varien. "Hide!"
The Reaper Leviathan roared again. Volara turned to face it, and in that short amount of time it'd halved the distance between them. She yelped and surrounded herself in an electric barrier just in time for the Reaper to arrive. But it hadn't been charging her.
SMASH! The Reaper face-planted into the side of the Cyclops, denting the metal. Its four mandibles struck out with awful screeching groans as they tore effortlessly through the purple shell. The entire vehicle listed to the side and slammed against the mountain.
"What?! No! Get away!" she shouted, charging at the Reaper as it gnawed with its teeth. Volara coiled up then thrust her mouth at the side of its neck, biting deep and discharging at the same time.
The titanic predator roared, rattling Volara's insides against her shell, as she drew blood and electrified the wound. The Reaper drew away from the Cyclops, coiled its massive, powerful body, and launched away.
One of its various fins struck her in her underbelly, launching her away from the Reaper. Volara doubled over as white hot pain streaked through her vision, blood dribbling from the narrow gash in her shell that had, by no small miracle, missed every one of her prongs. She retched and threw up, her vision blurring. Oh gods, she didn't think she'd ever been hurt so much. Volara was - she couldn't -
She focused. Volara had to kill this thing. Varien was counting on her. Where had it gone? She wheeled about in the water, bleeding from her underbelly as her cracked shell rubbed against itself horribly.
It didn't take her long to find the Reaper. It'd looped back around and was over the wreck, charging in for another round. But this time, its gaping cavern of a mouth was aimed right at her.
Her gills gave a panicked ripple, and she activated her barrier again. The horrible, talon-tipped mandibles flexed outward and prepared to stab into her, so Volara darted underneath the Reaper and charged straight up below it. She opened her jaws and desperately bit down on its bottom crest, electrifying it. The monstrous creature roared again, shimmying back and forth as it struggled to lose her, but she was latched onto its head so it couldn't do anything. Terrible mandibles flexed and waved in the corner of her vision until the Reaper twisted and spun in the water, sending her flying with its unholy strength.
Volara tumbled about in the water until she came to a stop and righted herself, searching for the Reaper Levia -
Teeth.
She screamed and flexed back as the Leviathan roared in her face. A moment later Volara realized it wasn't as close as she feared, rather the Reaper was just that big. The predator faced her, the coiling loops of its body dancing about her vision. Its four mandibles moved and came together, locking the talons with a click. It continued to charge, and it slammed the interlocking claws into her underbelly. Volara yelped as it barreled into her, roaring in her face as it pushed her down, down into the mountain.
SLAM!
With a shout she released enough electricity to crack through the water. The Reaper bellowed and veered off, letting Volara moan weakly and assess her situation. Ow. The top of her body hurt, since she'd been slammed into the ground upside down. Her upper prongs ached. She floated and looked around; apparently she hadn't just hit the ground, but also one of the pieces of metal wreckage. Ow.
Volara whimpered, green blood oozing from her cracked body. Hot and viscous pain rippled through her, knotting inside her stomach to eat away at her insides. She... she didn't think she could do this.
Another echoing roar cut through the water. She glanced up; there was the Reaper, bleeding through the bite she'd left on its chin. From so far away its glowing red marks were pestilent green. It circled through the water and charged Varien's Cyclops. There was nothing in the world that could've stopped the monstrous carnivore; it crashed into Varien's shell, gnawing and slashing with its teeth and claws to leave grooves and tears in the metal. Its rippling body kept pumping, pushing the Cyclops down and into the rocks hard enough to leave a deep indent in the ground.
No, she thought. She couldn't give up. She had to protect Varien. Her hearts pounded hard, and she charged straight up into the Reaper's underbelly with her jaws wide open. The vast tracks of its flesh loomed closer, taking up her entire world as it ravaged the metal shell. With a soft whumph Volara crashed into its underbelly and bit down hard.
Blood flooded her mouth, tangy and delicious. The Leviathan's white flesh was bitter and foul, but she still reached in and tore out chunks.
The creature's roar shook the world. The good news was it abandoned trying to destroy the Cyclops. The bad news was that it jostled its body hard enough to throw her off and tear out a dozen of her fangs in the process, each with their own sharp stabs of pain. Head reeling, Volara glanced at the Cyclops. It laid still and silent against the mountain; Varien made no attempt to get away from the Reaper Leviathan.
She hoped he was alright in there.
Varien
"Fuck fuck fuck!" he shouted, choking on both phlegm and smoke. The fire extinguisher burned in his hands and the brilliant flames he was trying to put out burned his eyes. "FUCK!"
Volara
She and the Reaper circled each other, its gargantuan body scything through the water. Despite the trickle of its blood, it didn't behave injured at all. It chomped its mouth menacingly, and her prongs flickered weakly as stabs of pain shot through her body's length. Once she was between it and Varien, it flexed its tendrils and, with another bellowing cry, charged forward. Volara narrowed her eyes as it came close, trying to think of what to - it'd already reached her!
With a shriek that lit up the waters she shot straight up, narrowly escaping being skewered on the black talons. The Reaper roared as her electricity passed through it, but it didn't stop for an instant and circled back around to face her. The Reaper chased her relentlessly. Volara dodged and ducked, swam in circles and loops and spirals, but the Leviathan was always hot on her tail fin.
Her hearts pounded deafeningly. Think think think, what was she going to do?!
She swerved hard to the right, and while the Reaper had trouble turning so sharply it wasn't long before it was upon her again, the razor claws sprouting from its head close enough to touch, leaving occasional cuts and punctures in her tail fin.
Alright, so the Reaper was bigger, stronger, and faster than her. Dumber too; it hadn't tried to cut her off once, instead just chasing her mindlessly. Come on, there had to be something she could do with that information...
On a whim, she tried something. Volara wrenched her upper body up and backwards, turning around and upside down. She flipped over and charged at a spot just above the Reaper's head. It opened its mouth and snapped its teeth with terrible force, but she was nowhere near its jaws. Once above its head Volara turned back around, opened her mouth, and bit down hard right behind its crimson sail of a crest.
It roared and shook its head back and forth nearly hard enough to dislodge her, but Volara dug her fangs deeper, then lit up the darkness with her prongs. The Reaper screamed and thrashed back and forth, its muscles quivering beneath her as she pumped as much of her power into it as she could. Finally she couldn't sustain the onslaught and relented, but after a moment she kept electrocuting it. Volara'd never channeled so much electricity before. Her head spun and hummed, her body ached and contorted as she struggled to keep her jaws locked in the monster's flesh.
The Reaper Leviathan bucked and circled and swayed, trying to rear up and scrape her off, but she wasn't going to let go. Volara stopped focusing on her mouth or her prongs, instead racing desperate die die, come on how much does it take to kill this thing?! through her thoughts as she clung to the creature like a nova of light and pain.
Then finally, mercifully, the Reaper began succumbing to the lightning pulsing through its brain. It slowed its struggles, the roars quieted down, and the twitching muscles all around her jaws twitched less and less. But Volara didn't relent for a second. Even when it fell prey to the paralyzing power of her kind, she continued to fry it until she was absolutely certain it was dead. Only then did she let go of it.
Volara slid off the Reaper, lightheaded. She didn't have the strength to muster even a spark, her entire body hurt inside and out, and it seemed no matter how hard she pumped her gills she could never pass enough water over them.
Looking around, she noticed that she'd ended up all the way on the other side of the wreckage's gulf from Varien. The Cyclops he piloted was where she remembered, laying against the mountain, but even from so far she could make out Varien swimming around its outside, repairing the damage.
Well, that wasn't acceptable. What if the red chompers found him? She... she needed to get over to him. Slowly and agonizingly, Volara beat her tail fin against the water and swam over.
He looked over at her, helmet over his head and repair tool in his shaking hands, as she approached. He sang something short and curious, but the translator wasn't with him. Volara tried to reply, but managed little more than a few sparks from her prongs. Under his helmet Varien's eyes narrowed and he chittered something out. The human pointed to the ground and gestured her to sink. She did, gratefully tightening her swim bladder until she came to a rest on the smooth stone.
Varien swam towards her, muttered something in a low voice, and set down near her head. With a flash of blue light something emerged from his suit's magical storage; some kind of red and white box - green so far down - like he'd used to heal her after a crabsnake bit her. He opened it and pulled some things out and approached her.
He went to work plugging her bleeding wounds, placing a sticky white thing over the cracks in her shell, and dripping a stinging cold fluid into her cuts. She didn't say anything, lest her prongs hurt him like she'd hurt - she didn't say anything. Not that she had the strength to. Volara tried to think back to a time when she'd run out of electricity, but simply couldn't think of anything. Was this what it was like to be helpless?
The Reaper Leviathan had hurt her more than she'd thought; Varien needed several of those kits before he was gone. He bandaged her back, her tail fin, her underbelly, even a crack along her snout that led into her nasal arch. During it all he kept muttering quietly to himself; she could only imagine what unflattering things were going through his head.
Varien swam up, then came down in his Prawn with the translator sitting at his feet. "You killed it?" he asked. His voice was a touch softer than before, but that only made her stomach clench harder. He shouldn't forgive her. Not even after she fought a Reaper.
"I did," she croaked, her electricity coming weakly. "Are you alright? It attacked your shell a lot."
The human rubbed his arms and winced. "I'll live. I need to check the wreck, will you be alright?"
With a flex of her swim bladder she drifted up, marginally. "I'll live," she whispered.
He nodded grimly. Varien left without further word. She turned and watched him stomp up to the small box of tortured metal, right up until he stepped out of her line of sight. Volara turned and looked into the distance, where the Reaper's gargantuan corpse slowly drifted to the ocean floor, its trails of blood attracting swarms of red chompers.
She... she did it. It dawned on her that she actually did it. Slowly she began to send stuttering arcs across her tail fin, laughing hysterically. She did it! Of course she did, was that any surprise? She was a shocker! Not even these so-called 'leviathan class' predators were a match for their power and intellect. She laughed and laughed until something deep inside of her ached and she stopped.
Ow.
Then Varien screamed.
Hurriedly she swam over to where she'd last seen him, every inch of her body protesting the movement. She found the empty Prawn suit standing by a square entrance into the wreckage. "Varien?" she managed to ask. Not that he could see her. "Varien what's wrong?!" Her gut flipped. Did red chompers swim inside and eat him?! Stupid stupid stupid, this was exactly what she'd been afraid of, she should've been guarding the entrance, she should've -
Then he appeared in the doorway, clutching at it with his gloved hands. Inside the mask he stared at her, wide eyed but alive and unharmed. "I found it!" he shouted with more energy than he'd had in days. "I found it!"
She lowered the front of her body until her head was level with him. "Found it? Found what?"
"The modification station! I finally found it!"
Her jaw dropped. "You found it," she echoed. "Then that means..."
For the first time in days, she saw him smile and it was like she could fight a thousand Reapers. "That means it's time to find the Precursor thermal plant."
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