Disclaimer: I do not own Subnautica. Unknown Worlds does.
Thanks to DevoutRelic for editing.
Chapter published 12/27/17.
ESTIMATED TIME TO DEATH: 23 HOURS, 6 MINUTES
Varien
Weakened immune system. Pneumonia. Painful pus-filled boils. Constant exhaustion. Joint pains. Nausea. And now, on top of everything else, liver failure?!
A day to live. A day to live, and some hours until he was comatose. Or would that happen at all? Varien wasn't a doctor; he knew the liver was absolutely vital because it filtered toxins, but that was it. How did liver failure kill? Would he feel it creeping up on him until he didn't have the strength to carry on? Or would he just walk around and drop dead out of nowhere? The tension, the anxiety, was already mounting on him, like a sword above his neck hanging by a thread.
He gulped, fastened his helmet, and tightened his grip on the exosuit's controls. Bile rose in his throat and a cramp stabbed to the right of his stomach; was he feeling the symptoms already? No, no way. It was all in his head, right? Focus. He had to focus.
Get inside the facility. The voice told him that was all he had to worry about. Hallucinations and insanity aside, it was right. As long as Varien got inside, the lizards and warpers and patrolling dragon didn't matter.
But how was he going to get in?! The dragon never looked away long enough for him to just sneak past. Damn it, several times he swore it looked right at him, its toothy grin seemingly saying, 'Come on, just a little closer, give me an excuse.'
Varien looked around again. There had to be something he'd overlooked, right? Some way to sneak past the Sea Dragon. But he kept looking and looking, and the best he could come up with was skirting around the edges, jumping along the magmafalls, before sneaking past to the facility.
... well, it beat charging past the leviathan. He turned left and stepped forward. Varien dropped down into the lava lakes, his stomach leaping into his throat when he landed on the beach of shattered basalt. The jolt of landing made his heart lurch; for a moment he thought he was collapsing, his failing body dropping like a stringless puppet.
When he overcame that bout of panic, he glanced around and gulped. The scene was so much different from ground level; the magma churned and broiled with an incredibly fine detail of red and orange and black. The creatures swimming above seemed like demonic angels staring down at him. The Sea Dragon Leviathan, even with its back currently to him, seemed thrice the size it'd been from above. His throat clenched in tension, he jumped to the left and grappled to relative safety on a series of ledges, each spilling their molten rock into the cauldron. Varien's suit began tilting, so he walked around until he found flat, stable land.
He let out a shaky breath. So, he was one third of the way there. It was fine. He just had to do this two more times and -
RRRRRROOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRR!
Varien turned around and just about had a heart attack. He saw something like a star. But the twinkles of light were Sea Dragon tentacles, and the core of the star was a meteor of molten rock hurtling towards him. Screaming like a little girl, he slammed his feet down and his exosuit's thrusters came to life. Varien sailed up fast enough to prevent the meteor from smashing into the glass, but not fast enough to keep it from clipping the suit's legs.
"Oof!" The P.R.A.W.N. tipped forward, sending Varien spilling out of his seat and face first onto the glass dome, giving him an even closer look at the Sea Dragon Leviathan's pearly teeth.
The dragon raised its left flipper, warping Varien's perception of scale as the giant limb's size changed in his sight. Then, with his exosuit falling through the water, the dragon smashed the whale-sized limb into him and swatted Varien like a fly.
"AAAHHH!" He tumbled head over heels, pressed into one side after another of his suit as it careened through the boiling ocean. Then the motion turned simple but rugged and rough as the exosuit landed face down and skidded along the strip of basalt, carving deep grooves into the soft, heated rock. He frantically got back in the seat and stood the suit up, looking up at the Sea Dragon.
In return, it looked back down at him. It chuffed and made little snorting sounds, like it wanted to roar but didn't have its heart in it. It swam leisurely towards him, but that was still fast enough to make it fill his vision in seconds.
Varien glanced to the right. The plan that flashed through his mind wasn't words, but it mostly amounted to 'duck under the dragon and run for the facility'. But in the time it took him to come up with that plan, the leviathan dipped its head, opened its jaws, and scooped his exosuit into its mouth.
He screamed again as he was brought up and around, staring straight down the dragon's gullet. Its meaty tongue flapped about beneath his suit's legs. The rings of throat muscles contracted over and over, like it was trying to swallow him already. Its person-sized fangs, open just wide enough to hold his exosuit but not wide enough to swallow it, dug into the plasteel.
In a dim corner of his panicked mind, he noticed the dragon had no uvula.
Babbling in mindless terror, Varien's right hand found the suit's controls and his thumb pressed the button hard enough that the flesh turned white. The drill arm spun to life and he reached forward with it, digging into the dragon's cheeks. Unlike when he'd tried attacking its skin, the drill didn't break. Instead off-yellow spurts of blood filled the water and blinded him. The dragon keened in pain and flexed its tongue to push him out of its bloody mouth. Varien's breath came in shallow breaths as its two sulfuric left eyes stared straight at him.
Then its flipper blurred with motion and he was tumbling through the ocean again. He hit something hard and unyielding, flipping his suit up and over. By sheer luck he landed right side up, shaking in his seat, on one of the precursor cubes sticking up from the magma lake. Already the dragon was coming in fast. With a knee-jerk reaction, Varien activated the thrusters and rocketed up into the water. The dragon's jaws snapped, but he managed to pass above it in time. He released the thrusters as the leviathan's broad, striped back passed beneath him, and he shot his grapple into it.
Unlike the drill, which did absolutely nothing, the grapple hooked into the dragon's back and pulled him down onto it. He landed on the leviathan's thick hide with a grunt, and it grunted back.
"Whoa!" The dragon growled and shifted, swaying and swerving to dislodge him. Thankfully the grapple kept him firmly anchored, and Varien took the opportunity to look to the left. There was the facility, waiting patiently for him. Forget the dragon; he just needed to get in there! He jumped off, aiming to leap across the precursor cubes and reach the entrance... but his grapple pulled him back onto the wildly swimming dragon's back. Varien took his left thumb off the button to retract the grapple.
... he took his left thumb off the button.
... his thumb wasn't moving. His entire left hand had, in fact, locked up.
No, he begged. No, not now!
While Varien tried to get his damaged nerves working again, the dragon twisted, snarled, and flipped upside down fast enough to trap Varien against its underbelly with a paw. He screamed as the webbed limb closed around his suit, blocking the light from outside, and hurled him. The grapple snapped from the Sea Dragon's back with a tiny squirt of alien blood as he sailed through the water. Varien began sinking, straight into the pool of magma. He raised the grapple, aimed at the nearest wall, and let it fly. The anchor flew out and out... and fell short. It retracted to his suit, and he fell into the molten rock.
"AH!" he screamed as the glowing goop rose up around his glass. Already the heat was scalding and he had to draw his feet up from the ground. But then he remembered that that was where the thrusters were, so Varien gritted his teeth and slammed both feet back onto the burning pedals before he could sink any lower.
It hurt like nothing before, and the effort of fighting through the pain to keep rocketing up and out of the molten rock had his every muscle twitching and shivering. But he lashed out with the grapple again and this time it thunked into solid stone. Varien let himself get pulled in -
The world flipped upside down. He yelped as the back of the P.R.A.W.N. shot forward, forcing him to arch his back as the seat shot forward. The world spun in wild circles, but the Sea Dragon was definitely part of it. It must've smacked him in the back. He shot forward and crash-landed where his grapple had anchored. Varien released the grapple and turned around, only to groan; the containment facility was on the other side of the magma lake. He was back where he'd started!
The dragon in front of him opened its mouth as if to laugh at his misfortune. But instead of laughter, pain came out. Instead of a single giant orb of molten rock, it peppered him with a steady spray of dozens of smaller meteors, each the size of his torso. Many of them missed and cratered the basalt around him, but far too many smashed into his exosuit in spite of his attempts to dodge.
Thunk!
Thump!
CRICK!
The glass dome cracked. Massive lightning bolts shot through it, impairing Varien's vision. He froze up in terror; what if the dragon was about to break it? The water shooting in would kill him instantly! He needed to get away! Varien turned to the left and shot his grapple forward to pull himself along the beach of sand and away from the dragon. But the dragon hadn't swum over to Varien.
It'd swum over to where Varien was going to be.
The Sea Dragon Leviathan roared and lowered its head to Varien's grapple, slicing the tether in half with a chomp. His eyes grew to the size of saucers as the dragon casually rendered his grapple arm useless.
The sea monster turned its head to look at him, then spat a meteor in his direction. Varien's response was to scream and leap up as fast as the thrusters could let him. The meteor passed below harmlessly, and he took a moment to try to breathe. But it wasn't working; his heart was louder than the dragon's roaring, his arms and legs shook like branches in a hurricane, and when he bent his wrists he couldn't even keep his hands from flapping like a bird.
Roaring in triumph, the Sea Dragon - when did it swim up to him?! - smacked him with the same strength that could shatter precursor structures. Once more he was sent flying, and when he stabilized he was forced to thruster away from the magma and onto a precursor cube.
Even standing on it, though, his suit listed to the left; was the foot there damaged? It had to have been. So -
Something shot at him from the side. In the split second he had to see it, Varien saw a football sized orb of cascading energy smash into his exosuit. Then the entire world was consumed with light. Burning, searing ribbons of light that flowed into a central point in his vision. After a second it vanished, and Varien floated before a warper. He wasn't in his exosuit so the water around him pushed inward like an elephant sitting on his chest; an elephant on fire, at that. With a metallic screech it raised its sickles, angled them towards him, and sliced.
With skill he didn't know he had, he twisted between the arcing claws and did the first thing he could think of. He balled a fist and punched the warper's stomach as hard as he could. Pain blossomed along the fingers on his left hand as he dully thumped the cyborg, but that was still enough to make it teleport away in a blinding display of energy.
Varien swiveled about in the water, desperate to find his suit. In moments he found it, in the Sea Dragon's jaws. A moment later there was a flash of electricity and a falling whine as the monster destroyed the exosuit. The bubble of air within rose up, undulating as the water pressure wrought havoc on it, before scattering into bubbles at the top of the cavern.
The dragon turned towards Varien's exposed, fleshy form, and swam.
Stammering weakly, he frantically summoned his seaglide from his dive suit's storage. It materialized in his hands and, in a heartbeat, he dove straight down. Not even a second later, the Sea Dragon's jaws snapped shut over where he'd just been.
He swerved left to avoid one flipper. He swerved right to avoid the other. He blinked; the pool of magma ahead of him was hideously bright. Varien strained his muscles to pull up and aim himself at the Primary Containment Facility.
Get to the facility, get to the facility, he repeated as a mantra even as the boiling ocean seared his skin through the heat resistant fibers of his suit. Get to the facility get to the facility get to the facility
Above him, the dragon bellowed. It swam forward past him as if trying to block him from the facility, its gargantuan tentacles swaying mere centimeters above his head. It found a gout of magma pouring from the ceiling, opened its mouth, and drank the molten rock like a faucet. Even as his seaglide carried him forward, Varien stared with mouth agape. He again found himself asking What the hell kind of planet is this?!
The dragon pulled away from its burning drink, turned its head to face him, and cracked open its jaws. A hailstorm of fireballs shot at Varien. He grunted, and steered his seaglide up. Then down. Up and left and right and backwards, anywhere he had to go to avoid the burning projectiles carving steam-filled paths through the ocean. The assault ended, and he looked up.
There was the entrance to the facility. He could see the force field shimmering as it kept out the water. He was so close!
But then, of course, the leviathan lowered its mighty head towards him and prowled forward like it wanted to headbutt him. He cried out and jerked himself to the right. The armored plate of its forehead vanished to be replaced by its two left eyes. He was so close he could make out the thin pupils gazing back at him. He was so close the water itself jostled with the dragon's movements, pushing him left and right.
Varien rammed his seaglide into one of the eyes.
RRRRROOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!
Halfway through the beast's anguished roar, sharp pain flashed in his ears. Then the world quieted down as his eardrums ruptured. The bottom dropped out from underneath him and the world spun with vertigo. Varien threw up into his suit, aimed downward so the putrid mass stuck to his chest rather than his glass visor. The dragon's sharp movements churned the water and tossed him clear of the monster.
It was like watching the world through soundproof glass. There was the Sea Dragon Leviathan, reeling, one eye slammed shut amidst a spray of its own bodily fluids. And there behind it was the facility.
The thought that flashed through his mind didn't quite say Now's my chance but it was close enough. He grabbed the seaglide and sailed forward as fast as he could. Varien ducked beneath the keening, wailing dragon and beelined for the entrance. It was so close, he was so close! Thirty meters. Twenty. Ten!
The dragon swerved, and one of its tentacles sliced through the water below him. The ripple of scalding water it released shot up into Varien and lifted him, just as he passed the force field.
Gravity reasserted himself, and his insides crawled up into his head as he fell right into his left foot with a dull thump. A supernova of white pain flashed up his left side; there was no audible snap, but he could feel the grinding of hard organs. His foot was broken.
Rroooaaaarrrrr!
Gasping for breaths that never seemed to be enough, Varien spun around on his back and faced outside the exit. His heart hammered; would the Sea Dragon still pursue him?! If one had broken the disease research facility it could break this structure too, right?
But even if it could, the dragon didn't seem keen to. It looked towards him, snorted twice through its massive nostrils, and roared again. Then it whined like a kicked dog and swam away. It vanished to the left, hopefully into some nook where it'd spend a while nursing its lost eye.
He relaxed and leaned back to lay on the ground. At that moment the adrenaline faded, and the full pain came rushing in in all its hideous power. His left foot was broken. His eardrums were burst. Something like a fist kept punching into his abdomen. Every inch of his skin, but especially the boils, tingled with the heat he'd been subjected to. His lungs ached from the water pressure, making every breath a struggle. But he was alive. He'd made it past the Sea Dragon Leviathan. A weak breath turned into a weak laugh. A weak laugh turned into a chuckle. A chuckle almost turned into crazed laughter, but instead it turned into coughs.
Varien rolled over and fished out his PDA. He found his two first aid kits, stripped himself naked, and went to work. He inhaled the nanite sprays, and let them do their work. Soon his ears were better, and some of the pains throughout his body were numbed. He didn't dare hope they'd bought him any more time before his failing liver killed him. While the nanites did their thing, he found the bandages and wrapped them around his broken foot, covering them with paste and then another layer of bandages to form the best cast he could manage. After cleaning off the vomit he put his dive suit back on save for the helmet, stored away his seaglide, and looked around.
Behind him was the force field leading to the lava zone. Ahead of him was a green barrier blocking the way and, next to it, a single podium. He limped towards it, but even then dull pain kept shooting up his foot. Once he was close enough to the terminal it opened, showing it demanded a single blue tablet. Varien closed his eyes.
"Oh stars above, thank goodness I found it," he muttered, fishing out the blue tablet he'd found in the thermal plant. The alien terminal eagerly devoured it, and lowered the force field. Beyond it was a ramp of twisted metal, with rows of pillars forming a road. Varien made his way towards it, and nearly jumped out of his skin when the pillars lit up one by one, illuminating the area with sickly green light. "Whoa," he marveled, looking around.
The ramp led up to a huge antechamber, with a domed ceiling towering dozens of meters above him. In the center of the dome was a structure of metal, like a finger pointing down. He followed it to a pedestal in the center of the room, thrice his height, with dozens of ion cubes quietly crackling atop it. To his left and right were glass cases, each holding what appeared to be a precursor artifact of some kind. Three hallways to the left and three to the right. Behind him, a pair of ramps wrapped around the way he'd come and led to a single doorway along with an emerald hologram. In front of him was a long and squat force field barring the way forward.
First things first. Varien dragged himself forward to the artifacts in their casings, careful not to put weight on his bad foot, and scanned them. There was a surprising variety among them. A compact orb of blue and magenta. A yin and yang made from alien fibers. Even a bloodied sword. Reading through the data he got on them, most weren't that noteworthy. But apparently the compact orb was a solar system destroying doomsday bomb, which was not something he needed to know about.
At least it was broken.
Strangely enough, the artifacts were never the same black and green metal of the precursor walls around him. It made him wonder if the magnificently carved walls around him were the precursor version of spartan, dull government walls.
Wincing with every step, he dragged himself up the ramp to the green hologram and swiped his PDA over it. "Aliens found an indigenous leviathan, produced what they called Enzyme 42. Inhibits symptoms of the bacterial infection!" This was it. This had to be it! But... a leviathan? This Emperor was a leviathan? How many leviathans did this planet have?! "Specimen captured and contained, went to great lengths to provide for its needs, but health still deteriorated." He read on, and his eyebrows furrowed. "When quarantine was imposed all warpgates and force fields were sealed. At the time, attempts to develop Enzyme 42 into a vaccine were unsuccessful."
He put his PDA away and looked around, the awful tension, the sensation of an axe over his head, returning. Unsuccessful. Could Varien really have come all this way for nothing?
Varien walked down the ramps, wincing, and headed for the far left gateway. It led to a hallway that twisted up and around, which dead ended in an alien portal. He sighed, but nevertheless fished out one of the ion cubes he'd gotten from the thermal planted and fed it to the receptacle. The arch before him groaned like an old man waking up, hummed, and powered up.
Now that it was online, Varien seriously debated going inside. If the aliens were unsuccessful in making the vaccine was there anything he could do? Or maybe he could just finish it up? Or hey! Maybe that hologram was out of date, and the vaccine was complete, hiding out in the portals somewhere?
His stomach gurgled, and not from hunger. A jolt of pain made him wince; he really hoped there was a vaccine through the portal. Fearlessly - or perhaps just more scared of something else - he strode into the shimmering green portal.
It was cold, and wrapped around him like water. The rushing colors enveloped his world, rippling at the edges of his eyesight as they streamed from a central point in his vision. He couldn't feel any ground beneath his feet. All around him were hissing, quiet whispers.
Then the lights faded and he was spat out. Varien stumbled forward and nearly tripped before catching his balance. Once he righted himself, he looked around.
Gone was the metal of the precursors. Instead he was in a dark and dank cave. No longer was he a kilometer and a half beneath the waves, but only two hundred meters. Pink caps and lichens coated the walls. Marveling at it, Varien walked forward; where was he?
It didn't take long to find out, the path leading from the portal terminated in a force field to keep out the water. He peered out through it, glancing about, and breathed out in shock. He was in the mushroom forest, at the bottom of a narrow crevice. Judging by how dark it was, it was night.
"Teleporters brought in life from various biomes," he recited from the hologram. "Guess that's how." He turned and retraced his steps to the portal. Varien passed through, stumbled once he was back in the facility, and made his way back to the antechamber.
So that was one of the seven open doorways down. He headed to another corner path, only to find that led to a portal as well. In fact, all four of the corner paths did, and he made sure to light up each portal in turn and look through. One led to the bulb zone. Another to the boneshark infested craggy spires. And the last one led to a wall of flowing green that turned out to be a brinefall; he was back in the underground river! With his seaglide, he'd be able to access his Cyclops without much difficulty.
Varien grinned once he returned from the last portal. Sure his exosuit was gone, but things were looking up.
He headed to one of the three remaining paths. This one, rather than leading up to a portal, simply opened up into a rectangular chamber. Varien blinked at the sight; he'd been expecting alien machinery hanging from the ceiling, or containers full of tissue samples. Instead, what he found were eggs, dozens of them, behind glass containers. Rabbit ray eggs, sandshark eggs, stalker eggs, a spiked leathery thing that must've been a Sea Dragon egg, lava lizard eggs, crabsquid eggs, and to his horror, an ampeel egg.
In addition to the circus of eggs he could recognize, there was a single one he did not recognize, resting in its case next to a dim hologram. The egg was taller than Varien, and looked to be coated in plates of sandy armor. Along one side, however, were sky blue nodes laced together like a zipper. After downloading the data next to him, titled 'Sea Emperor Research Data', he had to conclude that it was an Emperor egg.
"Size categories have been adjust upwards to accommodate this species?" he read off his PDA, raising an eyebrow. That big? Bigger than the Sea Dragon? "Feeds off microorganisms, so like a whale. Produces eggs but infertile, manufactures Enzyme 42 in the stomach and periodically releases it. Its presence in the - " He cut off and read it over to make sure he'd seen that right. "The enzyme's presence in the ecosystem today?! Today, explains how life survived the outbreak. The mechanism by which it is delivered remains to be seen. So somehow, Enzyme 42 is getting into the world above. Emperor was 600 years old at the time of capture, wow." He read the last sentence. "While a healthy emperor specimen may have held some potential as a cure, it is unlikely any specimen survived the quarantine."
Varien thought back to the hallucinations that'd been plaguing him since he returned to the lava zone. "Unlikely to survive, huh? I don't know about that..." He'd heard about some people who went the full yard with brain implants being able to speak to each other telepathically. Could it be this Sea Emperor had evolved that naturally? But then that meant it was intelligent! Just ampeels being intelligent was unlikely enough, but two thinking species on the same planet?
He put it out of his head and left the room. There were still two more places to look at before heading to the force field, and the menacing growls of his gut weren't getting quieter.
On the other side of the room, opposite from the egg repository, was a room filled to bursting with pipes, with glass on the walls showing miniature aquariums. The pipes were nothing to scoff at, either. They were thick, glass things filling up most of the airspace, winding in and around, coiling to a lower floor, rushing with cool water. A hologram confirmed they were pumping oxygen rich water in, and oxygen poor water out.
In and out from where, though?
The strange thing was the peepers riding in the tubes, shooting in and out of wherever they led. Come to think of it, hadn't he and Volara found peepers going in and out of pipes a while ago?
According to his scanner, the ones going in had seeds in their bellies and symptoms of the Carar. Those going out had empty stomachs and their symptoms were relieved. So, wherever they were going, it was making them better. He thought about laser-cutting the high-pressure water pipes open and plunging in to find this relief-source himself, but then he decided that was a stupid idea and moved on.
Varien climbed the ramps to the first hologram he'd downloaded in this facility, feeling something like water sloshed about in his bowels. Past the hologram was a path to the left and right, but they both looped back around to the same place. He walked in and gasped, a hand flying to his mouth.
The chamber was long and dimly lit. There was a large cube of green tinted glass with tools like spider arms hanging from its ceiling. Inside was something dead. He walked up to the side and placed a hand on the side of the glass, looking in.
The dead creature reminded him of a Sea Dragon, with its front half with two arms, and the lower half with propulsion tentacles. But its skin was dark brown, its arms ended in turtle-like paddles rather than claws, and there were no lines of orange nodes. At most there were teal nodes on the tips of its tentacles. The head was weird too, with nubs out the sides, mandibles around the front, and a jagged, flat mouth. Above the mouth were two short antennae with green nodes at the end. The head was frightfully similar to what he saw in his hallucinations. It was curled over, eyes closed. It couldn't have been much bigger than Varien himself, and his heart went out to it.
A quick scan confirmed it was a Sea Emperor Leviathan, but a child. The precursors had forcefully removed it from its egg - glancing around he saw another egg like he'd seen in the egg chamber, torn and cut apart, in a tank - and died in the process. The aliens had taken samples from its digestive track.
It wasn't hard to piece together what happened. They precursors found the Sea Emperor could make Enzyme 42, but it was in poor health and its enzyme quality was poor. So they took an egg, and tore out the fetus to see if that'd work.
He doubted it had.
A chill ran down his spine and his stomach flipped independently of the Carar's symptoms. Varien eagerly made his way out of the child's grave, down the ramp, and to the terminal controlling the force field. It opened up, and demanded a blue arti - what?!
"A blue artifact?!" he shouted. "I only had one!" His hands came up to his face as the world began to spin with despair. No no no, he'd only found a single blue artifact and he'd used it to get in. How was he going to get another? There was no way! If he had a fabricator maybe he could but the closest fabricator was in his Cyclops and seagliding all the way there and back in the short time he had left was impossible he was going to die he'd come so close but it hadn't...
His racing thoughts trailed off as an idea came to him. Maybe he couldn't go back through the lava zone, but what if he used the portal? It'd dump him out in the underground river's ghostly forest, he could seaglide to his Cyclops, make the blue artifact there, and bring the sub back to the gateway.
Right away he could see a big problem with that plan: river prowlers. In his Cyclops, they considered him a leviathan and steered clear. But with just the seaglide? They'd ravage him. He whined tightly in his throat even as he knew he had no choice but to brave the portal and hope he could evade the prowlers; there wasn't any other way to get a blue tablet, and nothing he'd found so far was a cure. He was running out of places to look.
Varien retraced his steps to the ghost forest's portal and stepped through. Once on the other side he walked through the cave, ducking below the roots plunging through the ceiling and sidestepping the pools of corrosive brine. He reached the water, braced himself, and plunged through with seaglide in hand.
No wonder he hadn't seen the portal coming down; it was hidden behind a brinefall. Varien mentally marked the location and sped through, hugging the walls of the chamber. He made sure to stay up to avoid the blood crawlers down below, but he couldn't help glancing to the left where packs of river prowlers hunted the open waters. His heart felt like it was going to burst, and every time one turned in his direction his stomach tried clawing out of his throat. Every subtle current of water reminded him of the doom hanging over his head. The bitterly cold waters, icy enough to numb his extremities, didn't help things either.
He heard something else, too. Far off bestial hisses and screams, like the wailing souls of the damned.
But he was careful enough, and soon he was at the vertical drop unmolested. He plunged down and from there it was a short trip to the cove tree. From there, a short trip through the chilling sea to the drop leading to the lava zone. The waters around him warmed as he descended the step-like crevice, the heat making his fingers and toes tingle uncomfortably.
And there! In the distance, resting in the gloom, was his Cyclops's dark blue form. Varien's heart soared as he approached, and when he finally opened the bottom hatch and pulled himself into his submarine tears of relief streamed down his cheeks.
"Welcome aboard, Captain," its voice droned. "All systems online."
"Oh I've missed hearing that." He stumbled his way up the ladder to the bridge. After he'd evacuated his shelter onto the Cyclops, Varien had placed the fabricator to the left of the helm, not far from the holographic display of the Cyclops's condition. He found his storage compartments one room back and stole the resources he needed to, along with a single ion cube, make a blue artifact. He fed them to the fabricator and, while its lasers were busy constructing the alien tablet, he grabbed the steering wheel and turned the engine on.
Time to bring the Cyclops back to the portal.
The trip back was eerily quiet. There were nothing but ghost rays to cut through the white noise of his fabricator working. Varien pessimistically wondered how many more detours he'd need to take before he finally found the cure, if there was one at all.
Were there microbes in the precursor facilities? If he died there, would he remain perfectly preserved until the next people to be shot down came and found him?
How far along were Volara's symptoms? Was she breaking out into green cysts yet, or was she still on the flu symptoms?
Before he knew it he was back at the portal, just in time for his fabricator to be done. He nabbed the artifact and limped his way back to the Primary Containment Facility, mindful of his broken leg while irately muttering, "Back and forth, back and forth, it's all I fucking do."
Through the caves, into the portal, down the ramps, and to the terminal. It opened up, selfishly demanding its colored tablet. Varien pulled it out and, rather than wait for the magnets to pull it from his grasp, slammed it onto the terminal and pulled his hands back. The force field vanished. On the other side was a tunnel, leading to a large, empty chamber.
Empty except for, as he found when he entered, a pool of water in the middle.
He looked around. Everything was dim and quiet. There were no terminals or the like. The only way forward was into the pool of water. He had a feeling the Emperor, or its remains, would be there. So he put his helmet back on, checked his air tanks, and plunged into the water. Bubbles rushed around him. Varien turned about in the water to look around.
He was in an aquarium, but instead of glass the walls were precursor metal. They were far away, too, and from the top he'd entered from something like a balcony hung down. Maybe calling it a balcony was too much; it was just a flat square of metal, suspended by wires from all four corners.
Varien let himself sink until his flippers touched the ground. The water was surprisingly warm. Not blistering like in the lava lakes, but gentle and soothing, like a hot bath.
BOOM!
He wheeled around at the massive slam, and a whimper died in his throat.
All doubts that the Sea Emperor Leviathan was alive evaporated.
An enormous paddle arm had reached up and rested against one of the corners of the balcony, tilting it with a screech of metal. As Varien watched, open mouthed, the Emperor's head rose up with four blinking, sky-blue eyes. Its other paddle followed and rested on another corner of the metal, evening it out.
It was big, too. Disgustingly big. Bigger than a Reaper. Bigger than a Sea Dragon, by a wide margin. Its arms were the size of a Cyclops. Varien could stand at the bottom of an eye, reach up, and not reach its top. From the side of its head, a pair of gargantuan blades stuck out to the sides, a far cry from the nubs of the dissected fetus. Its mandibles wrapped all the way to the front of its mouth, sharp as razors. It clicked and warbled as it pulled itself up to see him.
The edges of his vision distorted. But this time there was no black figure in his vision, or deafening slam. Then the same motherly voice came to him, echoing inside his head. "Ah, there you are," she said.
His words stuck inside his throat. What could he say? Should he say anything? It felt like any words he could come up with would be some kind of transgression.
The Sea Emperor looked down, and shook her head. "Oh... poor thing, so far along. Come, come down. I will help, as best as I am able." Her arms pulled off and she turned away before diving in slow motion. Varien watched in awe as her head, her armored back, and her long tentacles all slid by, giving him a glimpse of her true size. When the last of the tendrils, tipped with azure nodes, slid away he grabbed his seaglide and made to follow after the Emperor.
"Whoa," he whispered when the full aquarium came into view.
It was enormous. The walls and ceiling were all precursor metal, but the ground was soft sand forming mounds and ravines and, if he looked closely, caves beneath the ground. Two pillars, spotted with green lights, stood up from the center. Fish of all kinds swam around him. Pale bladderfish, chirping peepers, rabbit rays, even things that shouldn't mingle with them like the crabsnake caves' oculus, or the deep-sea spinefish. Stalkers and bonesharks by the dozens swam around, startling him, but they all seemed... placated. Gentle, even.
All manner of plants grew from the ocean floor. There were dockleaves, brain coral, membrains, cradles. In some spots purple and orange lichen coated the ground, as if he were in the dark, grand reef. One of the walls had two recesses into it. On the other side was an inactive portal covered in sand. From it a ramp led down to a strange metal structure grown into the ground. The Sea Emperor swam slow, leisurely laps around the chamber, and he frowned. The aquarium was beyond massive to him, but to her it must've been like being trapped inside a single room.
For a thousand years.
His gut twisted at that thought. It was so wrong for something so majestic to be trapped like this.
"What... is this place?" he wondered dumbly, though he already had a good idea.
"My prison. My home," she responded, circling behind him. "The ones you know as 'precursors' came to this world and brought me here," she explained. "They were scared, they were desperate, and sought only to take and take, rather than risk asking and be turned down." As she made another loop, the Emperor gestured with a paddle to the device at the base of the portal's ramp.
Wordlessly, he obeyed and directed his seaglide there. He eyed the bonesharks and stalkers around him warily, but they didn't even look at him. It was like they couldn't see him. As he traveled he noticed a glob of something dull orange, floating about in the middle. Peepers pecked at it one at a time, sometimes swimming through it to coat themselves before speeding off. The puzzle pieces connected themselves; the peepers came down here with the seeds, and deposited them to keep the Emperor alive. In return she gave them Enzyme 42 to carry to the surface and mitigate the Carar. Did that mean most of the planet was dead, with only a small surviving pocket of life?
When she died, what happened to the survivors?
Varien arrived at the device. From so close, he could see it was an incubator of some kind. Five Sea Emperor Leviathan eggs had been stuck into the outsides, and a quick scan confirmed there were tubes running in and out of the eggs. The eggs were still good, resting in a kind of natural stasis, waiting for the right conditions. Just like the eggs in the cove tree.
"They brought your eggs," he muttered.
THUD! He whirled around to see the Sea Emperor had come to a rest in the middle of the aquarium, resting her body on the ground with her tentacles extended in all directions. Her paddle arms pressed onto a pair of stony pillars.
"It is perhaps the cruelest irony of fate I have yet witnessed," she mourned. "Had they left my eggs where they were, they would have hatched naturally, and the strangers from the sky would have gotten what they wanted. But they could not have known, and so they brought them here, where such a thing will not happen." Pained laughter echoed inside his head. "And I, in my foolishness, could not tell them."
"What? But how? I mean, you're speaking English to me, couldn't you speak their language to them?"
She shook her mighty head. "I tried. My pod and I all tried, so often, to speak to them. But whatever the cause was, they could not hear. But that is no excuse, small one. I could have thought of something!" The Emperor raised an arm and slammed it back into the ground. "I could have written in the walls, or blinked prime numbers with my eyes. But not one of these things occurred to me, and they paid the price." She looked up at the ceiling. "They were counting on me. They came to me, trusted me to be their salvation! They bent over backwards to design this place for my needs. And in their time of need..." She lowered her head and closed her eyes. "I failed them. I failed this world." She opened her eyes and extended her head at him. "I failed you." The Sea Emperor looked around the chambers, then rumbled a low, sad chirp. "I deserve this."
He opened his mouth automatically. "Don't say -
" - it is true!" she snapped. "So many people are dead, so many worlds wiped clean, never again to experience the cycles of play and rest, and I could have saved them but I did not. But perhaps... you and my children can still save what is left."
"The eggs," he said. "The data says that a young, healthy Sea Emperor's enzymes would work, right? But how do I hatch them?"
A sigh of water exhaled from her mouth, and she lifted a paddle to gesture at the incubator. "Closer to it, small one."
He obeyed, and jumped when an ion cube receptacle popped open. "Ah! Okay, ion cube." He still had some, but he was running low. Hopefully he wouldn't need many more. His left hand had gone numb again, so he painstakingly used his right to pull a cube from his suit and drop it into the incubator. It ate the cube, hummed, and activated.
A podium in its center, which he hadn't noticed before, lit up and displayed a hologram into the water. There were charts and alien words he could never understand, but in the center was the unmistakable form of a Sea Emperor egg. Next to the podium was a short slot.
"The harmonies of this place are not right for them," the Sea Emperor continued. "When they would not hatch, they took my child and tore him free. He gave his life for their noble cause, to show them what must be done. They searched and searched for what was needed, but could not do so before disaster struck. I give to you freely, friend, what they so badly wanted to know."
Her antennae waved about, and a gentle hum filled the water. Then... "New blueprint acquired!" his PDA announced. He looked at it and tapped through it; it had a new blueprint for 'hatching enzymes'.
"One more thing." She lifted off and swam a short distance, resting next to the portal's ramp with one arm higher than the other. Varien twisted round to look up at her; the Sea Emperor's neck was more pronounced from this angle and it made her seem sickly. "What I produce is useless to you, with as far along as you are, but what my children make will save you. It is not enough for you to simply leave them to this prison; they must swim free of this place, and cleanse the world beyond, lest you be doomed again every time you left here. I implored the strangers to give my children this freedom, but fell on deaf ears."
She roared and startled him. The Emperor raised her head and opened her cavernous mouth, sucking in water. Half a breath later she lowered her head to the sand covering the portal and breathed out a jet of water, bubbling white, to clear away the sediment. She brought a massive tendril over and brushed off the remains, revealing the silent power receptacle for the portal.
Wordlessly he nodded and seaglided over there. He powered the arch, lighting it up with shimmering emerald ripples. He glanced up at the Emperor, then his heart fell.
Judging by what he'd seen in the dissection room, the portal was large enough for a baby Emperor. But no way was it large enough for her.
If she noticed this, or cared, she gave no clue. Instead she swam away and back to her resting place in the middle of the room, looking at her eggs solemnly. "I have given all I can," she explained. "The plants you need to find can be found, one of each, in the portals you opened above. The one exception is the clear sack. They are rare these days, but some yet survive here." She unfurled a tentacle and he followed it to where it was pointing. "Hurry, small one. You do not have very long."
He nodded and looked up at her. "Thank you," he whispered. "I'll do my best." Her only response was to keep looking at the eggs, so Varien grabbed his seaglide and sped off to where she'd gestured.
Get the hatching liquid, hatch the Emperor eggs. The Emperor babies would cure him. After so long, there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
He found a precursor cable running into a ravine in the ground, so he followed it there and found a few plants clustered around a cave entrance. The gabe's feather plants common in Volara's home, a few corals and barnacles, and a new plant he'd never seen before. It looked like a jellyfish that had taken root. His PDA labeled it a Sea Crown, and it was one of the things he needed for the hatching liquid. He didn't know how much he needed, so he sliced the entire thing free and stored it in his suit. Better he have excess than not enough.
There were four more plants he needed. A sample from the mushroom forest's fungi, the spherical bulb bushes, one of those freaky glowing eye stalks, and lastly, a ghost weed like the kind that often grew around bloodvines. The Sea Emperor had said he could find one of each through the four portals up above.
So... mushroom forest, bulb zone, crag field, and then the underground river where his Cyclops was waiting with its fabricator. He could manage that, in that order.
He surfaced from the aquarium and, after some floundering with the metal walls, pulled himself up and out. Every step felt like there was a lead weight attached, to say nothing of the joint pain, but Varien trudged back from where he'd come and, like a torpedo, sought out the first portal.
On the other end he groaned, and doubled over, clutching his stomach in pain. His breaths came through clenched teeth and, when the sudden bout of pain ended and he could stand, he could've sworn his stomach seemed a little... bloated. And were those bruises spreading along his arms? They looked like spider webs.
The sample from the mushroom forests was easy. Varien seaglided up out of the portal's ravine, found one of the literal thousands of mushrooms, and sliced off a head-sized chunk for his suit. Just as quick he retreated back into the deep; bonesharks lived there, after all.
He reappeared in the Primary Containment Facility and shivered. He swore, he could feel the Emperor's telepathic eyes on him. Varien made for the next portal, the one for the bulb zone, and stepped through. Once on the other end he trudged as quickly as he could through the dry path, and froze at the barrier keeping out the water.
It was still night out there. But even with the darkness he could see the glowing bulb bushes resting on the ground. Tiny herbivores pecked at them. But the real problem was the crackling of electric lights all around; ampeels.
Ampeels that spoke a different language than Volara, so he couldn't talk to them.
He breathed out weakly. Ampeels could kill Reaper Leviathans and he could barely walk. How in the world was he going to get out, get a bulb sample, and get back in without one of them deciding he looked tasty?
Varien didn't dare sit, lest he not have the strength to stand again. So, he brought his PDA out where he was and examined what was in his suit. Ion cube, no. Laser cutter, no. Stasis rifle! Maybe? It had slowed Ohmaron down some, it could buy him time. And time was all he needed. He tabbed the glass of his data assistant, and the stasis rifle materialized in his arms.
He spent a few tense minutes coming up with how he wanted to do this, all while he felt the sword over his head coming closer. Shooting at the ampeels was no good since they could dodge. He could shoot himself though, and the IFF would keep him from being frozen.
So, leapfrog. Place a stasis field on himself, move to its edge, and place a new one on himself. Perfect. He edged himself right to the edge of the water barrier, aimed the stasis rifle at his chest, and held down the trigger. The prongs on its end spun and glowed blue, collecting motes of light before the trigger released on its own and he fired point black into himself. A humming sphere erupted from the point of impact, blossoming until it was nearly as wide across as an ampeel was long. Varien walked out into the waters, gingerly approached the edge of the stasis bubble - don't focus on the ampeels don't focus on them looking at you don't focus on the ampeels - and fired another bubble at himself. He swam to its edge as well, inching closer and closer to the nearest bulb bush he could see.
Move, charge, fire. Move, charge, fire. Move, charge, fire. That was enough to bring him, panting in exhaustion, to the bulb bush. With the latest freezing field around him he lashed out with his thermoblade, tearing chunks of the bulb bush off like moss and storing it. He made his way back, ampeels swimming about outside his field, crackling wildly in what was no doubt confusion. Move, charge, fire. Move, charge fire.
Move, charge - no, it just clicked. The battery had run out!
Varien gasped and, barely thinking, swapped the rifle for his seaglide and booked it. He burst out of the stasis bubble, and a pair of ampeels jerked in surprise. The zapping prongs were so loud, and the air so charged with energy it made his skin prickle. Any second he feared their jaws would close on his outstretched legs, but it never came and he landed back inside the dry tunnel unharmed. Varien took a minute - he could afford himself only that much - and headed back to the precursor facility.
Sea crown, done. Mushrooms, done. Bulb bush, done. All that was left was the eye stalk and the ghost weed.
The next portal he entered brought him to the crag field. He'd never ventured there, only ever seen it from a distance and balked at the number of bone sharks. But when he trudged through the tunnel and up to the barrier keeping the oceans from intruding, he didn't see a single one outside. With his flashlight he peered through the brackish waters, looking for an eye stalk, but could see nothing. He'd just have to explore.
But first, he swapped out the seaglide's waning battery for the laser cutter's fresh, unused one. He did not want to risk the seaglide running out of power like the stasis rifle had. In fact, he also swapped the rifle's dead battery for his repair tool's live one. Then there was nothing left to stall and he plunged out, instantly fearing that bonesharks had hidden in the darkness, waiting to snap him up. But nothing came.
Nervously, he flipped on the seaglide's blue light to illuminate his surroundings. He hated the very idea of giving off any light to draw things to him, but he hated the idea of running into rocks even more. He scanned the area around the portal in a spiral, starting close to its home spire and slowly drifting out. The crags stuck out from the ground like the fingers of a buried giant, concealing nodes of quartz and hardy tigerplants between them. A pod of reefbacks, bellowed far above, shining their bioluminescent undersides down at him. Varien searched diligently, but he found nothing but metal scrap from the Aurora and assorted mineral wealth. All the credits they could buy him were worthless; all he cared about was finding an eye stalk.
... there! A glimmer of yellow out of the corner of his vision. He turned the seaglide around hard enough to nearly whiplash himself, bringing the yellow glimmer into view. Sure enough, it was a cluster of eye stalks growing from the rocky terrain. He half expected to see - or at least hear - a pack of bonesharks guarding them. But he saw and heard nothing. Just the moaning of reefbacks.
Varien made his way over to the eye stalks and hummed. They were an odd plant, to be sure. They grew up like an antler, and the tips all had oddly colored nodes that resembled eyes. He saw-bladed one in half with his knife and stuck it into his storage. He turned around, ready to go back to the portal, when something caught his eye. Something bright blue and -
Colors swam into the corners of his vision and his thoughts filled with cotton.
"It is your highest priority to swim closer to that beautiful creature," his PDA insisted, its feminine voice seductive and warped.
It is my highest priority to swim closer to that beautiful creature, he thought dumbly. What was it called? He felt like he'd seen one before...
"Swim closer now."
I will swim closer now. He did just that.
"It's so pretty."
It's so pretty. But then why was looking at its beautiful, shimmering wings calling up the memory of pain and blood?
No, that was nonsense. It was so pretty. It was safe.
"Do not resist."
I will not resist, he thought, his thoughts a touch faster than before. What was this creature before? He'd definitely... definitely seen one. It was close enough that he could make out the mesmer's closed shell and -
The thought shot through his hazy thoughts like a lightning bolt, accompanied by chilling panic.
MESMER!
His first thought was to wrench his eyes closed, but it was like helium balloons had been tied to his eyelids. His arms and legs stuttered in the water, halting his forward motion. The fear was already melting away into the shimmering, world-engulfing colors that streamed from its wings.
"It is friendly and will not hurt."
It is friendly and will not... no, it will! he struggled to think, swimming in place. He had to... had to get away. Had to... the cure. Volara. The Emperor. Carar.
"Go closer..."
With a herculean effort, Varien wrenched his head to the side until the mesmer was in peripherals. The cotton filling up his head drained, making it easier to look further away until the horrible, hideous creature was entirely out of sight. He slammed his eyes shut and aimed his seaglide straight up. Varien swam up and up with it until he was certain he was safe. Only then did he open his eyes and retrace his steps to the portal.
Soon, he found himself back in the facility, moving leaden limbs to the fourth and final portal. Every step was a struggle, every movement threatened to upturn his mantra of 'Move Varien, move!' Every step felt like that was it, that was the end of his willpower, that he'd dug as deep as he could but there was nothing left. And yet somehow there was always more, and he kept moving forward like in a dream until he was at the portal, in the tunnel, and outside in the underground river.
Thank goodness, the ghost weed was easy to find. One grew right below his Cyclops's resting place. It was a pale frond rising into the water, surrounded by spiraling green and red ones. He got a sample from each front, and boarded his Cyclops. Varien hauled himself, screaming, up the ladder and over to his fabricator. He fed it glass, and every one of his samples. He found a seat and sat, watching the blue lights going to work with agonizing sloth; couldn't they work any faster?! This was serious!
The glass base formed. The glass tube formed. The white, sludgy liquid inside formed. The stopper formed. It was done!
As quick as he could manage he sprung from his seat, tossed the hatching enzymes into his dive suit, all but tumbled down the Cyclops's ladder, and stumbled back into the portal. Green lights engulfed him as he was transported into the facility.
The energy around him faded and the portal spat him out on his hands and knees. They wobbled, and Varien collapsed, swollen stomach pressing against the ground.
No, no no no, his thoughts slurred, like he was drunk. I'm so close!
Painfully, he crawled over to the nearest wall and pushed his back against it. Caked in sweat, he pushed himself up until he could stand again, but even then he had to keep a hand on the wall as he made his way back to the aquarium. The pool of water was beauty to behold, and he gratefully plunged in headfirst to let the water take the weight off his limbs. He sunk straight to the balcony's floor, groaning.
His vision shimmered, and the Emperor's voice returned. "Small one, you are hurt! Stay still. I will ask one of the locals to aid you."
The locals? What did she mean by that?
He didn't need to wonder long; a stalker swam up to him. Varien stammered weakly as it approached, but instead of snapping its jaws and killing him, it gently wrapped its front flippers around him as best it could and swam off with him, down to where the Sea Emperor was waiting, and deposited him next to the incubator.
The stalker let go and swam off. He rolled over onto his stomach, summoned the enzymes, and held them into the water for her to see. "Got it!" he wheezed.
She nodded, but said nothing.
He half swam, half crawled along the incubator to its control panel, where a groove in the floor had slid aside for the enzymes. He uncorked the bottle, and dumped the sludgy milk inside.
A beat passed.
... crack!
Varien glanced up at the source of the noise. Both he and the Sea Emperor stared at one of the eggs as its zipper-like blue nodes came undone, and tiny little paddle arms came out. A babyish head came next, just like the dissected fetus he'd seen up above. It chirped and clicked and warbled, tearing itself free and dancing in the water.
... crack!
... crack!
... crack!
...
... crack!
One by one, all the Sea Emperor eggs hatched. One had trouble, but they too pulled themselves out. Varien watched, hysterical laughs escaping him now and then, as the fries played about in the water. Once or twice they burped, releasing something orange into the water. One by one they headed over to their mother, nuzzling and rubbing her and playing along her comparatively giant horns and hanging from her mandibles.
For his part, Varien seaglided to the sticky stuff they burped. One orb hovered before him, slightly larger than his hand. The globule hung in the water, its insides squirming about. That was it. This was Enzyme 42. He took a deep breath and removed both his helmet and oxygen mask. Then Varien plunged his face into the enzyme ball and drank.
It had the gut-wrenching flavor and chunky texture of vomit, but he chugged it like cocoa. He drank and drank until his lungs demanded air and he pulled back, affixing his helmet back on. Already he could feel the enzyme settling in his stomach and soaking up into his blood, cold and icy like mint. Something in his body tingled and he grunted, pulling his limbs in as an antiseptic burn started in his core and spread to every inch of his body. He squeezed his eyes and clenched his teeth as the cleansing fire swept through his tissues, before subsiding and leaving behind it a refreshing cleanliness.
He tore his left glove off; the pustules still remained. But he didn't despair yet, and instead brought his scanner to bear and showered himself in light.
The spectroscope's menu lit up a pure green 'Normal', and his PDA elaborated. "Performing self scan. All bacterium matching Carar exhibit zero life signs and will be swept up by immune system without issue. Detecting rapid tissue damage reversal. White blood cell count increasing. Estimated time to full recovery: twenty-three days and fourteen hours."
Varien gasped, looking at the heavenly 'Normal'. He alternated between crying laughs and laughing sobs. His heart sung. His thoughts lifted. The sun shone for him again. Tears blurred his vision as he put the glove back on. He was cured. He was cured!
He looked up at where the Sea Emperor was still playing with her children. One of the baby emperors looked his way, squawked, and swam towards him. The others followed suit and surrounded him, nuzzling him and playfully batting him with their paddle arms and tickling him with their antennae. Varien laughed, rubbing their heads to which they responded by nuzzling into his palms. He cried, overwhelmed with feeling as the baby emperors played around him. He could easily believe they were thanking him for hatching them.
One by one they broke away, heading for the portal and burping more enzymes along the way. Varien made sure to store as many as he could in his suit; he needed to get them to Volara, after all. After putting enough away he turned around to look at the Sea Emperor and opened his mouth, ready to thank her. But then her right arm trembled, and collapsed. She bent over with a quiet roar, head hanging, like a disgraced mother.
"At long last," she rumbled into his thoughts. "My young are free, and will play in the shallows above. Thank you, friend Varien," she said, using his name for the first time. "As for me, I have lived so long. I have allowed so much pain. It is fitting that this be my end..."
"W-Wait, what?" he stammered, swimming higher. "What do you mean? There has to be a way. What if you just touch the portal a little? Or - "
She shook her head, but so slowly he had to wonder if even that was a struggle. "This is how it must be, how it should be. I have held on so long, holding out hope you would come. I can let go, now. Do not worry about me; we will meet again, friend Varien. Perhaps I will be an ocean current, caressing you on a clear day. Or a grub, scuttling between grains of sand." His throat tightened, and his words died before they even reached his tongue. He couldn't tell her. How could he tell this ancient, wonderful being that she was wrong, that she was going to be destroyed forever?
He swam closer to her head, where her two left eyes could see him. "No... it's not right! It wasn't your fault, it wasn't! You should go back up with them, or at least not die here!"
"This is where I doomed them all," she mourned. "Where my lack of inspiration destroyed my pod and friends. Go, Varien. Be with the people who care for you."
Varien narrowed his eyes and swallowed. "No, no it's not right." He made up his mind and swam closer; Volara still had a long time left. "I'm staying here," he insisted. "At least until the end. You shouldn't die alone," he promised, swimming closer and rubbing his hands over the flexible armor beneath one of her eyes. "I'll tell everyone. I'll tell everyone in space of how much you helped me, of how you saved me. You saved everyone! Your name, and... and..." he trailed off.
The Sea Emperor's telepathy was quieter, was pained. The eye before him blinked slowly. "Hah... such a kind heart... if you truly must then tell them. Kr-ttr-vx... is what my friends called me... please... do not lie and make me out to be better than I was..."
She didn't say more, instead staying up in the water, struggling to pass enough water over her gills. Varien stared into her massive eye, inside which the tiny white pupil stared back. Slowly, the Emperor's other arm went limp too, and he followed her as she collapsed to the ocean floor, tentacles still. She continued to take weak breaths of water, her other three eyes slamming shut. Slowly but surely, the last one's eyelid closed, but Varien stayed, whispering promises to her that it'd be okay, that he'd be here until the end. That he'd be the last thing she saw.
The eye shut, and a minute later she stopped taking breaths. Varien didn't leave, and kept stroking her armor. Brain death took a while to set in. He wondered if she was still inside, a prisoner within her body. He resolved to stay with her even then, patting her and whispering kindnesses, that he wouldn't lie, that whatever she thought the truth was that she was a hero. Three minutes passed. Six minutes passed. He waited ten more to be sure that she was gone. Only then did he kick off and swim a fair distance away.
The stalkers and bonesharks had retreated to the far ends of the aquarium. Schools of fish still swarmed. Kr-ttr-vx's body was an ugly scar on the land. With a gulp, Varien turned away from it and looked up.
And swam for his home.
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