Qisan: (pronounced kih-san) Male after undergoing the rite of passage. Plural: Qisax
Qadin: (pronounced kah-din) Female after undergoing the rite of passage (female version)
Sikah: A ritual dagger made from the tooth of a thresher maw awarded to young krogan after the rite of passage. In ancient krogan society, the daggers were used in duels over matters of honour. Great warriors collected the blades of those they'd slain, wearing them slotted into a bandolier made of thresher hide.
1809 CE - Tuchanka, The Hollows.
Wrex tilted his head to stare his brood brother, Wreav, in the eye. "Jarrod? He's alive?" He reached up, running his fingers over his head plate, searching for his scars. No deep furrows dug through the heavy casing. He scowled, confusion digging under his plates and into his flesh like giant sand ticks. A minute before, he'd been making sure Shepard could only make one decision: the right one, to destroy the Reapers. Now he stood upon ground left more than three hundreds cycles in the past?
Was Tuchanka a dream? He didn't often dream, and even less often about the day he killed Jarrod. He'd lived a long life, and had a lot further to go. Too far to harbour regrets about things he couldn't change. Perhaps the Crucible had been the dream, but no, he prided himself on his lack of fanciful imagination even more than his lack of regrets. He couldn't have invented everything crowded into his memory. Besides, what dream spanned three hundred cycles in chronological order?
Wreav laughed, the sound so mocking that Wrex's trigger finger twitched, that animosity still fresh and bitter. "Keep acting insane, and Jarrod will put you out of our misery, brother."
One of Wrex's oldest friends stepped forward and clapped a massive hand down on the battlemaster's shoulder. "Dead krogan can't call a crush, Wrex," Urdnot Barl said, his bright amber eyes narrowed in concern. "You hit your head? You're acting like a pyjak on ryncol."
A crooked smile bared Wrex's teeth, Aralakh's sweltering heat anchoring him in the present, the ground solid and dusty beneath his boots. "I'm fine." He turned to face his krantt, making sure to keep Wreav where he could see him. However he'd arrived, it was a chance to change the outcome of that day and Jarrod's treachery.
Drawing himself up tall, he said, "The crush is a trap. Stay near the entrance, and when Jarrod's men attack, retreat off sacred ground before you pull your weapons. We won't be the ones to break our most sacred laws." He waited until each warrior agreed before he grinned, wide and threatening. "If Jarrod wants to kill me, he can do it out here."
"Jarrod would never break tradition that way," Wreav insisted. Sending little rockslides tumbling down the stairs as he stomped through the rubble, the warrior strode over to slam his chest into Wrex's. "You would insult your father's name?"
"I would piss on his corpse but not on sacred ground." Wrex looked to each of the seven warriors waiting for him, a krantt he'd cherished once, each ugly face trusted … a brother. He glanced at Wreav. Except for his actual brother. Wreav had brought him word of the crush, and Wrex had always suspected his brother of conspiring with Jarrod. Even though the pair weren't father and son, they held similar enough beliefs to be kin, neither intelligent enough to imagine possibilities other than fighting until the krogan fell into extinction, their flame extinguished forever.
Speaking of intelligence … . Wrex drew in a long breath. He knew a trap waited for him at the bottom of those stairs, but how did he keep his quad out of Jarrod's vice? Looking over the area, he searched for somewhere to mount a good, solid defense. When the fighting started, he could count on seven warriors at his back. Wreav would either throw in with Jarrod or hide and wait to see who won, the second being the more likely. Wrex's krantt was a different matter entirely, he trusted each of them to his last breath. In that other life, they'd died defending him.
Forty metres up the road, the crumbling remains of an old temple stuck out of the ground like a jaw full of broken teeth. That would do. The gate forced Jarrod's warriors to slow and come through two at a time, negating the advantage of their numbers. Once only Jarrod stood, Wrex would face him on open ground, one to one.
Plan decided, his eyes locked back on Wreav. "You trust Jarrod? Fine, take point." Gesturing toward the entrance, he waited for Wreav to take the lead, disappearing through the door.
Turning to his krantt, he stabbed a finger toward the gap that had once been a grand set of gates. "We'll pull back to the ruins. Move fast. We don't want to give Jarrod's men time to shoot us in the back." When they acknowledged his orders, Wrex sucked in a deep breath and grinned, his hearts pounding out the rhythm of a glorious battle that ended in victory and honour rather than the disgrace of the past.
Wrex stepped through the door, the cool air of the Hollows sending a chill down his spine after the shimmering heat of Tuchanka's wasteland. As he descended the stairs to the floor of the sacred burial site, Wrex looked up, taking note of how many krogan Jarrod had brought to witness his 'victory' over his heretical son. The first time or other time—whichever—Wrex walked down those steps, he'd sensed the trap, but he'd been the youngest krogan to lead his own clan, elevated thanks to his skill and daring in battle. In other words, he'd been an arrogant ass.
By killing Jarrod on sacred ground, a place where violence was forbidden, he'd lost the respect of his clan. Losing his krantt in his father's betrayal left no witnesses to speak to Jarrod's treachery. Wreav crawled out of whatever hole he'd hidden in, the treacherous bastard claiming he didn't know what happened. He hadn't accused Wrex, but he hadn't spoken out against Jarrod either.
Betrayed and disgusted by his people's insistence on clinging to their violent, self-destructive past, Wrex left and stayed away for over three hundred cycles.
He rolled his shoulders back and lowered his head between them. When Jarrod called for a crush the first time, Wrex had believed himself capable of changing his father's mind. He didn't make the same mistakes twice. Any of them.
"Wrex!" the warlord called from across the chamber. "I thought you weren't coming." Jarrod shook his head and stepped forward. "Maybe there's a krogan hiding inside that armour after all."
Wrex stopped at the base of the stairs, his krantt spread up the flight in two lines. He stared for a long moment, trying to remember if there had ever been a time when he felt anything for his father but contempt and rage. Nothing came to mind. One of the great injustices of the genophage lie in its failure to eliminate the undesirable specimens from the breeding pool. His father had sired enough offspring to believe it made him worthy of great things … made him more than a sperm donor. Wrex knew better.
"I'm all krogan," Wrex replied, trying to slide a heavy layer of menace under the words. As he stared at his father with his new, older eyes, the only feeling he discovered was pity. Jarrod was a small, terrified qisan clinging to the past because he lacked the imagination and courage to face the unknown and take the risks necessary to create a better future.
Wrex took a long breath. "Why did you summon me?" he demanded, despite knowing.
"You would destroy everything the krogan are." Jarrod closed three steps, his voice gaining volume and passion with every word. "Everything that makes us strong. Krogan were created to fight, to conquer and kill, not sit around mewling about peace or cooing over pups like qadin!" He looked to his supporters, raising his arms as they roared and chanted his name.
"You would leave behind a galaxy cleansed of our kind," Wrex responded, keeping his voice low and even. Losing his temper would gain him no ground with Jarrod, but exact a heavy price in dignity, which would resonate long past those fleeting moments. "Who will you wage war against? The turians? The salarians? The council itself?"
Jarrod laughed, harsh and bitter. "All of them. The galaxy would know the might of the krogan, and fear it as they once did." Once again, he looked to his audience to cheer him on, their roar of agreement deafening as it echoed off the vaulted cement.
"Who will transport your mighty army to battle?" Wrex closed one step, drawing himself up. Physically, he dwarfed his father, even with decades left to grow and fill out. "Rented transports?" He laughed, low and dangerous. "Will you smuggle them in one at a time on commercial transports or in crates?"
Jarrod bristled and stormed over to face Wrex down. "Show some respect, whelp." He slammed a shoulder into Wrex's chest. "I would see the krogan feared throughout the galaxy."
Wrex just shook his head. "If you managed to transport your army to battle, your first campaign would end in a rout. Turians defend even their colonies too well for the size of army you could rally." He scoffed, a guttural grunt of disgust erupting from his chest. "Your warriors would all die and then the hierarchy would send its fleet to destroy the rest of us, down to the last pup." Studying Jarrod's eyes, Wrex tried to judge how close his father tipped toward summoning the attack. He needed to time his final defiance for maximum effect. Jarrod would give up the advantage of high ground reluctantly. Only blind rage would pull him out into the open.
"The turians and salarians believe us beaten," Jarrod called out, backing away from Wrex just enough to play to his audience. "We must show them that the krogan remain undefeated, that even the genophage cannot break our spirit."
Wrex laughed, low and deep, letting the pity he felt for Jarrod's shortsightedness bleed through it. "And when you can't get your warriors to battle?" Wrex looked up, posing the question to Jarrod's supporters rather than the warlord. "Who do you attack then? The other clans?"
"Warring between clans is our way!" Jarrod shouted, his temper starting to crack. "Your plan robs the krogan of their hearts, asking them to ignore the call of their spirits. You would have us bow before the cowardly pyjaks who rewarded our sacrifice with betrayal."
"I would have the krogan people survive." Wrex continued to address Jarrod's qisax, turning his back to the warlord's blustering. "When you have destroyed the other clans, then who will you fight? Who will you teach the glory of battle when only a handful of pups are hatched each cycle? What will become of our qadix?" With each question, Wrex shouted out louder, but with less anger and more heart.
"Will you fight each other over the females? And how many of them will be killed as you do?" Wrex let that question hang in the air for a long moment, before turning on Jarrod, lunging into his father's face. "Until today, I believed that it was the genophage that reduced us to animals, snarling and fighting over scraps." A hearty chuff of derision followed his words. "But the genophage isn't what destroyed the krogan. The krogan have always been their own worst enemy."
Jarrod's rage had reached a full boil, his entire body trembling with shackled violence and madness in equal quantities. A low growl rolled in the warlord's throat as he pushed into Wrex. "You're no krogan nor any son of mine! Before these witnesses, I name you a traitor to the krogan people."
Laughing deep and full, Wrex turned his back on Jarrod again, his throaty roar echoing back as he challenged them all. "When there are no males left to fight, will you become rapers and murderers of qadix in order to prove your strength? Where does it end?" He spun around to shove his face into his father's, spilling more than three hundred cycles of bile and hatred into his stare. "You would leave the krogan as nothing more than a memory blowing in the sand of a dead planet."
Stepping back, Wrex braced his neck and shoulders, then lunged at Jarrod, slamming his crest down into the smaller krogan's, dropping Jarrod to his knees. "You're not even worth the piss it would take to drown you." He heard his krantt retreating up the stairs and backed away from the stunned warlord, following. Time to move.
A crushing sorrow wrapped both of his hearts in razor wire fists, insisting he try to reach the rest. "I know what Jarrod planned," he shouted up to the roaring onlookers. "His madness would drag him so low as to kill in this sacred place. He has asked you to follow him into dishonour by killing those who offer you no threat. Is that what you want to turn the krogan into?" He stared down at Jarrod for another second, disgust outweighing hatred or pity. The warlord amounted to no more than a boil on the backside of the entire race, a boil Wrex intended to lance. "Pathetic."
Even though he knew it risked taking a shotgun blast or knife to the back, he turned around and walked up the stairs, his head high, his shoulders back and broad, his entire being broadcasting how big a mistake it would be to attack him.
Aralakh beat down on his head, merciless and invigorating as he exited the Hollows. Tuchanka did not coddle the weak, nor did it reward the strong. Tuchanka punished everything upon its surface equally, playing no favourites and taking no sides as it killed. Nowhere in the galaxy had ever made him feel quite so alive, and he roared with the fierce, savage joy of it. He didn't know how or why, but the Crucible had sent him home, his youth renewed, his krantt strong and vicious at his side, the future of his people placed in his hands.
Once free of the Hollows, Wrex broke into a lumbering run, sliding down the heap of rubble, his hearts thumping heavy and quick, war drums pounding at the inside of his plates. Ahead of him, his krantt ran, hollering banter back and forth, their blood running as molten as his own, their spirits light with the promise of battle. Blood and bone, it filled his belly with fire to see them alive and filled with youth and strength and all the stupid bravado their thick heads could hold. They reached the ruins, clambering into positions to cover the entrance, and none too soon.
The first shotgun blast hit Wrex in the middle of his back, throwing him forward. Scrambling, armoured claws scrabbling at the ruined street, he managed to stay on his feet and moving forward. The second round clipped his shields, spinning him around. Using the momentum, he pulled his assault rifle, spraying Jarrod's men with automatic fire, the distance too great for his shotgun. The ember burning deep in his heart ignited, pouring fire into his veins and he laughed, a deep sound as bone-chillingly gleeful as it was ferocious and filled to the brim with life.
His pursuers slowed as his rounds began punching holes through their armour and flesh. When they registered the meat grinder awaiting them, caution began to outweigh Jarrod's orders. Still. a few of the old guard pushed to the fore, their rage at the insult to their leader blinding them while the others dropped back. Wrex grinned, a cold gash of bloodlust opening across his face as he focused on them. He knew them all, storied heroes of the rebellions, some even of the rachni war. They'd stand against him the longest, their voices the loudest in Jarrod's choir. They needed to die first.
Reaching the ruins, Wrex stood a metre inside the door. He wouldn't take cover. He wouldn't hide from the battle. Both his krantt and Jarrod's would see him face death full on, eyes wide and filled with the reckless joy of battle. If he fell, they would tell stories of how he faced his end.
But he wouldn't fall. Not that day. His blood sang with that truth. That day he'd stand victorious above his father's corpse, and his true battle would begin.
Jarrod crashed through the doors of the Hollows, his bellows ripe with fury and dripping blood rage like nectar, the smell and taste of it sweet as Wrex breathed it in, filling his lungs with his father's hatred. The bodies of Jarrod's krantt and followers littered the road, slowing the warlord's charge even as they fed his rage.
Twenty metres from the temple ruins, Jarrod stopped and threw his shotgun aside. Pulling his sikah, the warlord raised his arms over his head and roared out a challenge. Grinning, already able to feel Jarrod's blood flowing over his hands, Wrex passed Barl his guns. Unarmed except for his own sikah, he strode out to answer the challenge, blade raised, the polished tooth black and vicious as it reflected Aralakh's deadly rays.
Father and son circled one another, Jarrod clearing the field as he flung and kicked the bodies of his men aside. Wrex merely stepped around them, letting the warlord exhaust himself. Instead, he weighed his moment, watching and waiting for Jarrod to provide him with an opening.
In the end, Jarrod's rage chose Wrex's moment for him. The warlord charged, his blade low and angled to slide into Wrex's armour through the hip joint. Wrex spun into the charge. Grabbing Jarrod's knife arm, he carried on past, wrenching his father's shoulder clear out of its socket. The spin finished with Wrex facing Jarrod's back, the warlord's useless arm pinned between them. Wrex punched his blade through the shoulder seam of his father's armour, and ripped down, nearly severing the limb from his body.
"You are a disgrace to the krogan!" Wrex said, the words coming out in a thick, guttural roar. He shoved his father away from him, his blade still sunk into Jarrod's arm, turning the warlord and yanking the blade free in the same movement. "I won't let you destroy our people." Both hands wrapped around the hilt of his sikah, Wrex lunged, plunging the blade deep through Jarrod's armour and into his fore-heart, the serrated inside edge of the knife letting out a chattering, metallic shriek as it sliced through the metal and ceramic plating.
Heaving himself backwards, Wrex yanked the blade free, then plunged it in again, just slightly right of the first wound. When Jarrod collapsed, his last breath gurgling out through his armour, bubbles of blood a brilliant orange in the sunlight, Wrex tore the sikah from his father's hand, Holding both blades aloft, he let out a roar that felt as though it originated three hundreds cycles in the past … a roar of validation and righteous vengeance for centuries of lost wandering and wasted potential.
"I am Urdnot Wrex," he screamed out over the wastelands. "Aralakh's heat burns in my blood, the wind-driven sand scours me clean, and by the right of challenge and of victory, I am chief of clan Urdnot."
Hearing footsteps approaching him from behind, Wrex spun to face the few who hadn't rushed to the attack. When he spotted Wreav among them, a century\ies old, chill fury slithered through the heady warmth of victory. One side of his mouth twitched back, more of a rictus than a smile, and he bared his teeth.
"Brother." Long, rolling strides closed the distance between them. Pushing into Wreav's space, Wrex held his sikah up before his brother's eyes and watched the blood roll down the blade, thickening as it cooled. "You betrayed me," he said simply, then wiped the blade on Wreav's armour. "Then you cowered in the shadow of better warriors … better krogan, and waited to see who won."
"Wrex—" Wreav said, drawing himself up at the insult.
Wrex cut him off with a swipe of his blade, a careful slice that opened the thick hide of Wreav's throat but didn't sink deep enough to kill. "You are exiled, brother. Go walk the sands until you can find transport off Tuchanka. Never return."
Wrex looked to the rest of Jarrod's warriors. "If you would lift Urdnot into a leader among clans, you can stay, but if you betray me or the clan, I will kill you. Urdnot will face challenges enough from outside, I won't tolerate varren ripping it apart from within." He turned toward the Urdnot camp. "Barl, Donx with me. The rest of you take the bodies into the Hollows and lay them to rest." As much as he didn't care about the traitors, his gut told him that to start mending the giant hole he'd just carved through his clan, he needed to show respect to the fallen, even Jarrod.
The few times he'd allowed himself to imagine how he would have felt if his history had played out differently, he'd envisioned feeling a great deal more … something. Victorious, perhaps … or as if justice had been served. The great hero of his people striding away from the field of battle, blood and viscera dripping from his armour, the people cheering. Well, perhaps not the last. After more than six hundred cycles, Wrex prided himself on self-knowledge above all, and imagination was not his strongest attribute.
Still, having avoided the disaster of his other past, he felt little other than a drive to get the work started. He adjusted his armour, finding a portion of it growing snug. Indeed, he needed to get the work started … right after a visit to the female camp. He grinned as his much younger body moved over the sand, free of the aches and pains brought on by three hundred and seventy cycles of hard living. Yes, he'd hunt and take an offering to the chief of the female camp, and once his blood slowed, he'd begin.
The shotgun blast spun him around as it impacted his shields on his left side, but he didn't even get a chance to confirm that it was Wreav who took the shot before his krantt opened fire, seven shotguns tearing his brood brother into pieces.
Wrex retraced his steps, looming over his brother as Wreav gasped his last. "Leave this bastard for the varren," he ordered, holding his brother's stare. He cleared his throat, spitting a wad of dusty phlegm onto the corpse. "He doesn't deserve burial."
