Chapter 1: Visions and Contacts.
Two weeks earlier...
He was having the dream again. The same kind that had been haunting him ever since the Fall of Earth all those months ago. He would always find himself in a burning park forest, with ashes endlessly raining down on his head. The phantom of the little boy he couldn't save kept leading him to a clearing in the trees, where he would turn to face Shepard and catch fire.
Shepard had initially thought the dreams were the effects of guilt after having to flee from Earth during the invasion and leaving its people at the mercy of the Reapers. Then they started becoming more prophetic as he heard whispers of conversations during events that never took place yet, and, the most disturbing vision of all, the image of himself embracing the boy and burning with him.
It wasn't until the end of the war and the activation of the Crucible that Shepard had decided it was Harbinger, the master of the Reapers, trying to indoctrinate him the whole time. When he activated the device that spelled the ancient machine's doom, he thought the nightmares and visions would end, regardless of whether or not they were from guilt or mind-control.
But they did not end. If anything, they became even more horrifying.
In his sleep, Shepard had been following the young boy for a while now, and knew by now they would reach the clearing soon. When they did, the boy ignited in flames as he would always do at this point.
This time, however, the flames spread from the boy's body and burned a circle around their feet, and from there it branched out in eight directions. When Shepard looked about him he would see there was now a symbol - an eight-armed arrow-tipped star - seared into the ground with four other signs at each end of two perpendicular arms:
One was like a glaring stylized skull, its opposite looking something like the combination of the male and female genetic symbols, the third a triad of circles stacked into a pyramid, and the fourth one a ball trailed by flames like a comet.
None of these symbols meant anything to Shepard. He recognized not one of them, but they all stirred some primal fear deep within him, a cold that turned his guts into ice. He knew somehow that these sigils were unimaginably old and hid an ancient evil, worshipped by dark cults comprised of twisted beings. He couldn't figure out what it all meant whenever woke up in a sweat, and was too afraid to tell anyone about them.
That was the new addition to his dreams. Until now.
This time the boy became so heavily engulfed in flames that he disappeared from Shepard's view completely, turning into a raging pillar of fire. That pillar grew, and grew, and grew until it was almost three metres tall. It began to morph and writhe like it was about to descend upon Shepard and devour him as well.
It twisted and curled into bundles of muscle, molded parts to form hands and feet, and carved a head that was like solid heated brass instead of churning fire. Eventually the inferno stopped its shaping and died out, leaving a charred block of cooling black metal in the form it had taken dotted with weak burning embers.
The embers died as well, and the ashes fell away from the metal man. A long red topknot flowed in a breeze that Shepard did not feel from the top of a head as hard as it had looked when it was still burning. Its face was pale as marble, its eyes smoldered with a hatred hotter than the fires that burned them into life.
The man was enormous, like a god of pure evil encased in armor as black as the ash that had covered it, the only difference being the golden trim that was revealed on the massive shoulder guards as well as on other parts of his armor, most noticeably the eight-armed star on his breastplate, similar to the one seared into the ground around them. He did nothing except stare at Shepard with his hateful eyes, and Shepard found he couldn't move from his spot.
It seemed to Shepard that the longer he looked into the man's eyes the more cold his body was feeling, but no matter how much he tried, he couldn't pull his own gaze away from him. The giant man watched him struggle. An slight grin tugged at his thin-lipped mouth until it grew into laughter. At least Shepard thought he was laughing. He couldn't hear anything except a ringing that gradually got louder and turned into a horrible cacophony of noise.
There were shouting and screaming and chanting along with simple, plain talk of conversations that never took place just like in his old nightmares. He recognized the voices of his friends: Garrus Vakarian urgently telling someone to take cover, Liara sobbing over something unknown, Ashley Williams invoking the name of God in horror, Jeff Moreau shouting Shepard's name, and several others whose words Shepard couldn't make out. Mixed with them were throaty metallic voices as well, roaring with insane bloodlust and laughing like inhuman monsters.
The fiery star burned brighter, and the brighter it got, the more it stretched out. It kept stretching until it covered everything Shepard could see, save for the empty space he and the giant occupied in the center. The trees burned, the brush burned, the dirt and rocks and even the grey sky looked like it had caught fire, the flames were so high. The evil man ceased laughing at Shepard's horror, but the grin was still there. He mouthed a sentence to him before everything went black, and though Shepard couldn't hear him, he could read his lips without any trouble and feel the boiling air surrounding him tremble with every word.
Let the galaxy burn.
Shepard gasped when he woke up, feeling the draft coming from the window bite at his sweat-drenched body as he instinctively threw himself upright on the bed. Another figure shifted under the covers next to him, and Liara T'Soni turned to face him. She was familiar with her partner's night terrors throughout the Reaper invasion, and their connection was strong enough that they would both wake up at the same time when this happened, though Liara was spared the horrible visions Shepard suffered.
Liara placed a blue outstretched hand against his chest and gently guided him back on the bed. Her arm travelled across his body until it rested in the alcove of his neck and she pulled herself into a hug.
"It was another vision," she stated, not in the form of a question.
Shepard nodded, "They're getting... different." He was not sure of what he saw this time. It was nothing like the old dreams used to be. In those days he had clue of what they meant, but now it was something he couldn't understand.
"Liara," their eyes met, hers filled with empathy, his with uncertainty and a tinge of fear, "Remember when we first met after I found you on Therum? You offered to link our minds together so you could learn about what I saw in the Prothean Beacon on Eden Prime."
She nodded in affirmation of the memory. The Beacon had given Shepard images of the Protheans' downfall when the Reapers came for them almost fifty-thousand years ago. Liara was just a young university graduate in way over her head studying ancient Prothean artifacts. Her curiosity had gotten the best of her on Therum and if it weren't for Shepard, she would have been dead a long time ago. But when she discovered that he actually had contact with a Prothean Beacon and survived spectacularly, she admitted she found him more than a little intriguing, and so asked to "investigate" his mind.
She also remembered how much it took out of her in doing so. She was much stronger now, but i had been a while since Therum.
"I'm thinking now," Shepard continued, "We should try it again, but this time for my dreams."
Liara looked at him inquisitively. "What would that solve? The Reapers are gone... right?"
"It's not the Reapers I'm worried about, Liara. It's something else. There was something else in this dream I and couldn't make anything of it. I can't explain it."
"And you think I can?"
Shepard gave her the same look of uncertainty and fear, but with more pleading. "At least try. If only to prove it's nothing and help me sleep better."
Liara sighed and nodded in agreement. She closed her eyes, lifted a blue leg over Shepard's and straddled his waist. She leaned in close to him so their foreheads were together like they were about to kiss.
She inhaled. "Get ready." When she opened her eyes, they were like black coals.
"Embrace Eternity."
In moments, in flashes of light and color, Liara saw everything: the burning boy, the unholy star devouring the earth, and especially the giant embodiment of evil. They were only momentary glimpses, but they were all so terrible, and Liara was filled with an unspeakable pain. It was like something was trying to tear into her skull and consume her soul, and her mind cried out in an agony she never thought possible of feeling.
When she pulled away from Shepard, she realized she had been screaming for real.
Citadel flagship Destiny Ascension, orbiting Earth...
Ensign Ulbara checked her monitor again. Surely there was something wrong with the scanning system? See looked at the screen and still wasn't sure if what she was seeing was real or due to some malfunction. It wasn't unheard of these days since the battle to retake Earth from the Reapers, as many ships were damaged in the fighting, the Destiny Ascension especially. A loose conduit in the bowels of the massive dreadnought might have finally been severed completely before the technicians had repaired it.
She called Matriarch Lidanya, the ship's captain and the commanding officer on the deck, to come to her monitor, just to get her opinion of what was happening. "Ma'am," Ulbara began, "I'm sure it's nothing, probably a glitch in the system, but it's like nothing I've ever seen before." Lidanya leaned over the ensign's shoulder to get a closer look at her computer.
"You did the right thing, Ensign," she said, "It's always good to be careful with things like this, especially now." What the Matriarch left out was she just as stumped as Ulbara was. The early warning scanner showed all contacts in the system all the way up until the halo asteroid belt that surrounded it. To some, I may seem like paranoia to keep a look out for invaders so soon after the Reapers were defeated, but to the fleets that had faced them only weeks ago, paranoia seemed the better option than death. There was still the risk of pirates from the Terminus systems who might think it an opportune time to raid worlds made vulnerable by the ancient machines, or, goddess forbid, Reaper stragglers coming late to the scene of the final battle. True, the captain thought to herself, it's always good to be careful.
What the scanner showed now, however, certainly was something not even the honored Matriarch could make sense of. Apparently there was an incalculable surge of energy near the planet Mars, the fourth from the system's star. The ship's VI classified it as a black hole, but there was no pulling of any matter into its center, and it was much smaller than a black hole would normally be. That, and these sorts of things don't just appear out of nowhere in a matter of minutes.
Lidanya's eyes were glued to the screen as if expecting the answers to all her questions to type themselves out in front of her. "That thing is close to one of our pickets. Contact them and confirm that there is something out there." Ensign Ulbara switched to the stellar communications system with a "Yes, Ma'am."
"This is Destiny Ascension to Mars picket fleet; we are picking up a large fluctuation of energy in your sector, please confirm visual." The other line fizzed with static before opening up its reply.
"Where the fuck did they come from!?"
Lidanya and Ulbara exchanged a quick horrified glance at one another while the line went back to static. "Say again, Mars picket, what's happening?"
"Contact! Multiple contacts! Jesus, there's hundreds of them!"
The scanner showed absolutely nothing in that sector except the blob of energy. Perhaps whatever the Mars picket found were using some sort of jamming device to hide their forces? That didn't explain how they made it this deep in the system without being picked up. This time Matriarch Lidanya spoke into the mic. "Mars fleet, are you in contact with Reaper ships?"
"They're not Reapers. I—I don't know who they are!" The line crackled with white noise for a moment before coming back up, "—re fucking huge! We can't hold them; we're falling back to Earth."
Lidanya turned her attention back to Ulbara. "Call up the rest of the allied fleet in-system and tell them to rally back here immediately, and that unknown enemy contact has been made over at Sector-4." She looked at the monitor again. Who the hell were these people and how did they get here? Sol's Mass Relay was located near Pluto, the satellite furthest from the sun, but there were no Element Zero disturbances that could be seen in that area, as if the newcomers didn't use it to get here. Even the Reapers needed the relays to travel from system to system, yet somehow these new contacts had found a way to make a jump into the middle of a system without the need for Mass Effect technology.
When Ulbara was finished, Lidanya flipped the comms switch again to the picket's frequency. "Mars Fleet, link up your video feeds to ours." A minute later they were almost blinded when the monitor switched from the system scanner to a somewhat hazy stern-side view of a rapidly retreating Alliance frigate.
Without a doubt, the energy surge the scanner had picked up was very, very real. From end to end, the entire feed was covered with an insurmountably large swirling purple vortex, like a twisted black hole from another dimension. Unlike a black hole, though, instead of swallowing light and matter into its maw, there were hundreds of black shapes spewing from of it like a spilled cup of water. Lidanya zoomed in for a more detailed look and saw they were ships, hundreds of ships of classes she couldn't recognize.
The Destiny Ascension is the largest vessel known in Citadel space, the size of several Alliance dreadnoughts and wielded the firepower of the entire Asari navy combined. It was the veteran of the Geth assault on the Citadel itself and was an instrumental force in lifting the siege of Earth from the Reapers, as well as fighting in a dozen other battles all over the galaxy in that same conflict. It was a truly unparalleled engine of war.
Yet Matriarch Lidanya, the venerable ship's captain and master, felt her heart sink when she saw the raider fleet that was gathering around Mars. These vessels were more than huge; they were gargantuan, of a scale like something only comprehendible in a madman's dreams. They resembled ancient, impossibly tall fortresses kilometers long, complete with towers that literally bristled with guns. There were battlements and buttresses, a citadel at the stern, smaller bunkers, bastions, ravelins, and every other form of fortification in history. These weren't ships in the sense that Lidanya and the rest of the galaxy knew them; these were literal castles sitting on top of engines. The Matriarch tried to calculate the number of crew members each one must hold, and abandoned the thought as useless. There had to be tens of thousands manning them at the least.
And there were hundreds of them in the fleet.
"What—um, what do we do now, Ma'am?" Lidanya met Ulbara's glassy stare. She could easily become like her, frozen with terror and awe and incapable of making a decision, but Matriarch Lidanya, captain and master of the Destiny Ascension, had fought the Reapers- the doom of the galaxy- and emerged victorious, and if they could be beaten, so could these things, no matter how big they were.
"Matriarch Lidanya!" one of the comms officers called out from the other side of the bridge, "We have an incoming transmission from the bogey fleet."
"Put it through."
The deep, garbled, metallic noise that came through the receiver could hardly be called a voice. It was like all that was evil in the universe was focused into this one message.
"Sumus inordinatio. Iudicium tuum sumus et perditionem. Læténtur cæli urit!"
"Someone translate that into Citadel common, now."
From what the comms officer told Lidanya, the message was in an ancient dialect of Earth Latin. So these people are humans, she thought. Where did they come from and how did they amass such an enormous fleet? There were humans known to reside in the lawless parts of the Terminus systems, but not even if that entire section of the galaxy put all their warships together could they form a flotilla this large, and they definitely didn't own anything like these vessels.
"Play the translated message, if you will." The officer nodded and complied. The results were no less terrifying.
"We are Chaos. We are your doom and destruction. Let the galaxy burn!"