Titulum Peccati

by Ehanu Rehu

The universe is a big place. Thousands of light-years still awaiting exploration, keeping secrets unknown to the rest of Council space. The Reapers were proof of that, as much as the Council is loathe to admit it. But there are yet secrets that even the Reapers, or their masters, the Leviathans know about. Even the apex races can be surprised. UNDER HIATUS

1. The Watchers

Welcome to my new fic. I was gonna wait until after "Molten Warrior" was finished, but I'm too impatient for that at this point. This will be the grandest Halo/Mass Effect X-over you have all seen. At least, I hope so.

Ladies and gentlemen, I now present "Titulum Peccati."

IWHBYD

The Reapers are not as invincible as thought. They are weak, having perfected their illusion of dominance, born of absolute arrogance millennia ago. They believe themselves to be flawless. Therein lies their doom.

As weak as they are, there has yet to be a species that can challenge them.

The Reapers created the Mass Relay Network, seeking to guide all of the galaxy's evolution to the point of optimal harvest. The system was perfect, giving rise to space-faring civilizations centuries, even millennia, before they would have discovered such technology. Then, at the height of the cycle, the Reapers moved en masse, relentlessly harvesting every advanced species. Only the primitive, beast-like races were spared to give rise to the next cycle.

Every cycle saw their heroes, the unstoppable war machine, the brilliant scientist. Every cycle saw progress on the weapon-of-many-names, each cycle further than the last. But they all fell the same. Hope was rekindled with the next cycle, but on a false foundation as the Reapers had erased as much as they could of the species of that cycle.

For the longest time, it seemed the galaxy was destined for this eternal loop. The Reapers were seemingly the ultimate authority on the evolutionary paths of all species in the galaxy. None could stand against them.

But there were factors that not even the Reapers could have foreseen. Factors that were never part of their equation.

Factors that could very easily kill a Reaper.

We are the Leviathan, only one of such factors. In our travels through the galaxy, we saw many things, learned many secrets, and watched silently. Being the masters of the Reapers, we had also made the mistake of believing the Reapers nigh-unstoppable. The only force capable of tearing them down, we believed, was our own ranks.

Those mysterious factors were to become a major boon in the upcoming struggle against the Reapers. The day of reckoning was fast approaching for them, and the salvation of all lesser species was right behind that day.

This is one of those stories, not the only story of the Reapers' reckoning, but not the least significant either.

This story is of the Titulum Peccati. The Monument of Sin.