Chapter Text
RHENIITE
You’re remiss you didn't find this ship back when the Ash Twin Project was backing you. This place is the worst to get through.
The rapids are rough, the wood creaks and groans, threatening to give out. Doors slam in your face if you forget to turn your flashlight off, stairs become slick as the water laps relentlessly against them. You can’t count on one hand how many times you’ve taken a step and ended up half submerged in murky river water.
You’ve found a few things. Burned out slide reels, old houses with busted picture frames, paintings in towers that spell out a little more of the story you’re intent on chasing. There’s something here, locked up and chained away. You want to know what and why.
The owners of this vast ship aren’t Nomaiian or Hearthian. The first building you stumbled into in the river lowlands had a photo of what looked to be a creature with feathers and horns, their two eyes bright white. It’s as if every species that occupies this solar system loses an eye. Or, if you’re correct and this species is even older than the Nomai, maybe you gain an eye per species.
You leave the slide reel but take the lantern with you, not feeling like having to spend another fifteen minutes searching for another one when you inevitably need it. While the entire ship has felt eerie, there’s nothing that tops the towers you’ve seen in both the lowlands and the isles. You’d spent a sizable amount of time studying the images in the first, but by the time you made it to the second, the feeling of someone watching you was so intense you grabbed the lantern and ran without looking back.
It took you a few loops to get used to Ember Twin, and even more to get used to Giant’s Deep, and more than that to get used to the dark, empty portions of the Attlerock. It stands to reason you need some time to not feel screaming every time something creaks. At least there’s no breathing, unlike Dark Bramble. Maybe if one of the other travelers were here…
No, you’re self-sufficient and don’t need someone to hold your hand just because you’re a little creeped out. If Riebeck can get in their ship and fly to Brittle Hollow, you can handle grabbing a lantern out of a creepy tower. There’s no anglerfish waiting for you, no falling volcanic rocks, no sand tower that comes out of nowhere. There’s no cyclones, no lack of gravity that means one hop is enough to send you into orbit. You’re fine. Everything is fine.
You push the raft back into the water and hit your thrusters. The water is rough, and it carries the raft far faster than you’d anticipated. You’re already not paying enough attention, and this change is enough to have you clipping the landing and slamming right down into the water.
There’s no up or down, but your hand is still gripping the raft and you use it to reorient yourself. It takes too long for you to pull yourself back up. By the time you’ve grappled your way back into the raft, you’re careening toward a large boulder sticking up out of the ground and there’s no chance of grabbing your flashlight fast enough to make a difference.
You hit the boulder at speed, and the raft splinters and cracks as you go flying. You hit the top of the boulder, slide over the top, and then crash down into the water below.
You’re still moving, your body getting thrust down the river at speeds you don’t think you could hit with your jetpack helping you. Your oxygen tank is depleting quickly, but you have no idea which way is up toward the surface and which will have you digging at the sandy riverbed. There’s no raft to help you figure it out this time.
You slam into another rock hard enough your quick descent is instantly stopped. Your hub screams, beeping and flashing vitals critical, the entirety of your silhouette a deep red. You push on the rock and suck in a breath as your ribs and head throb with the movement. You are very aware of the river smell getting ten-times easier to make out, and the taste of water sits on your tongue.
You manage to make it to the surface just as your helmet begins to fill. You take a startled breath in before ripping your helmet off so the water can drain. You hold your breath and shove it back on, but the crack in the faceplate makes the air leak out too fast. You can’t breathe. You can’t breathe.
You push yourself off the rock and your vision dims. Everything hurts. It feels eerily like the time you were staring at the Quantum Moon and slipped off the launch pad before getting your suit. That had been a crappy way to die. You still wonder how Slate felt watching it happen.
You manage to get a foothold as you flow down. You crawl your way up the sandy bank, going as far as you can before your body can’t go any further. Your oxygen tank hisses as it refills. Taking that as a good sign, you remove your helmet and let the waterfall come spilling out.
You roll over onto your back and take stock. A sharp stabbing just to the right of your eyes makes you dizzy, your vision blurring around the periphery. Your ribs scrape against each other as you inhale, and scrape again as you exhale. Your wrist might be broken, but you can’t tell without taking your glove off and getting a good look at it. Your lower back feels worse than when you clocked it on the Eye signal locator on the Attlerock. You blink, your vision blacking out. You reach your hand up to your head, and when you pull it away it’s covered in blood.
Not great. Not great at all. You lay still, trying to breathe without shuffling your ribs around until they puncture a lung. Eventually the Ash Twin Project will call you back, and you can try this all again.
Except, you realize, the Ash Twin Project won’t be calling you back. You are completely on your own. You push yourself up and immediately fall back down. Maybe you should’ve pressed Gabbro to come with you after all.
It’s too late to start pondering what-ifs. You have two options. Lay here and hope you feel better, or get up and try to get back to your ship. You have medicine in your first-aid kit. Something that would at least clear the fog and let you get far enough away from this ship that you could send out a distress signal.
You make up your mind. You spend a couple more minutes gathering yourself before you push yourself up to sitting. You groan, nauseous and one misplaced inhale away from throwing up all over yourself. You manage to make it to your feet, shoving your helmet back on with your not messed up hand. One, two, three steps. You’re never going to make it.
You’ve never had to deal with this before. You were always so sure it would be over at some point, taken care of by the loops looming ahead of you. You feel abandoned - by both the Nomai and the Ash Twin Project.
The Nomai didn’t get immortality, so neither do you.
You take the steps one at a time. You don’t cry often, and you’re surely not going to cry now, but the burn behind your eyes is persistent regardless. There’s lead on your back, pulling you down, down, down. You shake as you lower yourself to the stairs and close your eyes.