Liara
A cool wind blew in from the east, carrying with it the smell of rain. Thunderclouds peppered a damaged horizon, sending muffled booms across the empty territories. Liara took a deep breath in and smelt the ashes.
Thessia no longer burned, no longer even smoldered. Green plants swayed in the breeze, their roots planted through the old foundations of buildings. Fossils of the Great War poked through the ground, overrun by moss and vines. Here, a terran siege tank, the Protectorate's emblem still barely visible on its side. There, a turian Jiris IFV, its days of hovering long forgotten as it moldered in the dirt.
Crunching underfoot, bones. Bones of asari and batarians. Terrans and turians. And yes, zerg. Plenty of zerg.
The rachni queen trilled softly as she looked over the emptiness of forgotten carnage. Her warriors trailed behind her singing songs of their own; a dirge for the long departed. Straight ahead from where they stood, through the trees and the ruin and the creep, a vast darkened silhouette loomed, many-tentacled yet stiff. The skies around it hummed with activity, dark specks obscuring chunks of the gray clouds hanging overhead. The last enemy of the last war. The god that had almost swallowed the galaxy.
The vast purple form of Abathur oozed up beside Liara, eyes burning with recognition. She could sense a wave of something altogether foreign coming from him. Nostalgia. And grief. She was so used to disgust and contempt.
"Bad place." As always, Abathur kept his speech far from poetic. "Hope of galaxy died here."
"The galaxy's hopes were rekindled here." Liara looked down from the Overmind's carcass and towards the mangled treeline. She reached out with her thoughts. Zerg lurked beneath the soil, above it, and in the trees. They watched their procession from a distance, waiting. Once, controlling all of them would have been beyond Liara's control or desire.
Now she felt the need. Now she possessed the means. The Zerg Exclusion Zone contained an army. She intended to recruit.
"Intend to walk down there?" Abathur quivered. Another new emotion for him. Fear. "Bad place. Resting place of god."
"Not my god." Liara looked down to the rachni queen, who stared back with unblinking eyes. "I will be relaying control through you. I will need another royal brood soon."
The queen trilled in agreement. The new leviathan already possessed a dedicated hatchery for her people, one that would expand over time. The zerg and rachni swarms would be united in this coming age. Two peoples thought extinct, coming together to defend the galaxy. Liara folded her arms and looked to the slope before her.
She took her first step. Then another.
Behind her, the silhouettes of her zerg and rachni stood out against the moon, lonely sentinels watching their queen enter the mouth of madness. Liara braced herself and began to march, alone, leaving the comfort of her army behind. The wind now carried a foul stench – that of a decomposing god. The ruined hull of a carrier gleamed gold as she passed it, only to fade just as quickly.
Wild zerg felt the vibrations of her feet as she passed over them, but did not stir. She reached out, felt for their minds and co-opted them as easily as a mother picked up her child. Her thoughts plucked them from the earth, and they shook the soil loose from their carapaces, silent as she trod onwards. The smaller breeds, the zerglings and drones, did not like to approach the Overmind. Its destroyed form periodically still sent out waves of psionic pain, an echo of its final moments. And there was something that made its home there, something large and ravenous. A worthy warrior for the Swarm Resurgent.
If it had a name, the zerg no longer knew it. It decorated itself in the armor of long dead templar, in the shells of tanks it had destroyed personally on the day the galaxy fought for Thessia. A nydus worm, perhaps, of a thresher maw strain. Bones of countless dead lay strewn about its lair inside the Overmind.
Liara pressed onward. Zerg rose from the soil and bound back for the hill, to the waiting arms of their new rachni overseers. It became more difficult to reach out, now, and more difficult to move. It was if the air thickened and became semi-solid. Like the gravity increased the closer Liara strode to the corpse. In the distance, she thought she caught the flash of an eye, large and luminous. But it was only the memory of a one-eyed hydralisk, tilting its head to watch her go past.
The specks of flying zerg in the distance became winged shadows on the shattered earth. The soil and grass gave way to scaly creep. Liara stopped at this, her feet clicking against the corrupted ground. It was not fear or disgust that made her halt. Her heart sang with … comfort. Familiarity. And then shame. A drone fluttered its wings in curiosity at this strange creature that walked atop creep with such a heavy heart. Is this not your home? The air grew thick with memories, few of them Liara's own.
A trio of witches watched from a nearby hill. Technically her kin, she supposed. Their thoughts did not run hot and sharp as the other zergs' did, but instead cold and calculated. Like all zerg of this planet, their outlines blurred with a faint aqua, a sign of their biotic ability. When Liara reached out to these infested asari, she felt a lurch of surprise as they reached back with an uncomfortable familiarity.
The prodigal returns. The infested asari turned on their heels and made for Liara's leviathan. How long had they waited for her? For anyone with the power to subjugate them? Our commandos were unable to ever establish communication with them – Aethyta showed me the reports. Yet they yield so readily to my will.
Other infested specimens lingered nearby. Vorcha, limbs thick from repeated skirmishes, their talons and teeth long. Some bore old bullet scars from turian guns the day the Overmind died. The occasional viscerator, chortling at the tiny thing that so hesitantly claimed its mind. A thresher maw, slumbering, twitching at dreams of past slaughter. It awoke at Liara's passing, uncoiling in the dark beneath the earth. It bore a new tunnel to the east. Home. Home.
Where Liara trod, the zerg paused and gazed, and then began a journey past her, back to where she came. Slowly, the Overmind's corpse became leeched of its wild attendants, claimed by a higher power once again. Liara looked up to see the mutalisks wheeling – but no longer above the Overmind's rotting body. Hers. A halo of leathery wings.
One last hill. No trees remained around her any longer. Even years later, no non-zerg life could find a place here. No shells of buildings or tanks remained either. Everything fell silent, almost maddeningly so. Liara looked down on the corpse of the being that had made her what she was.
A gaping ruin where an eye once watched the world with naked hunger. Just staring at it made Liara's eyes hurt – her mind flashed with blue, gold, and then black.
Tassadar.
A whisper, carried beneath the wind. It came from everywhere and nowhere. It was a thought, it was a word muttered under her breath, it was a memory. At the edges of the Overmind's fatal wound, the flesh still bubbled faintly with some eldritch heat. However the protoss had slain a god, it did not fade from the world in a hurry. It did not appear to be easily repeated, either.
The mutalisks still flew overhead. Liara nodded and carried forward, borne for the hole left by Momentum. Had protoss ever visited the site? It seemed unlikely. The zerg still dwelt here in vast numbers, and nothing of their savior remained. Plenty of the Overmind remained. Doubtless there is a monument on Aiur somewhere.
The wound loomed over her like a gaping maw. The floor became fleshier, turning from hard carapace to the insides of some wounded beast. The air smelled foul, like some diseased animal corpse left out in the sun. The shadow of a dead god's mind fell over Liara, and she felt stifled, caged. The sheer enormity of the being before her … no wonder Daggoth spoke of It with such awe in its tone, even as he quivered his last.
Water dripped from the ceiling above, either condensation, blood, or some remnant of saliva. Darkness pressed in from all sides. It did not feel like boarding a leviathan, more like conducting an invasive autopsy, one greatly resented by the supposedly dead subject. The ground squished underfoot. The air began to smell of smoke.
The light behind her faded, the moon somehow abruptly shut off. Liara closed her eyes and opened them. It made no difference. No light remained. Inky blackness surrounded her, and the presence weighed down on her like a suffocating pillow on her face. Memory congealed around her, stained with heavy emotion.
"My greatest creation." The Overmind did not speak. This was only a memory, some kind of contingency formulated before Its manifestation. A faint light flickered, a candle flaring in an endless night. Liara sucked in a deep breath as it grew brighter. She realized what it was.
The galactic core. Zerus.
A world pocked by volcanoes, ringed by exploding stars. Larval creatures, beings that would one day become zerg, burrowed through the baked earth, their thoughts resonating with only the faintest of psionic resonances. The beginning, then. Liara could feel none of the ruthless intelligence of Abathur or Daggoth in these simple creatures. But she understood their potential. Much like the vorcha they would claim thousands of years later, they thrived in the harshest of conditions. They adapted.
"They came." Old ships, massive. They carried thousands of gallons of water, bore entire habitats on their backs. A psionic presence clouded the horizon, making the worms that would soon be zerg turn skyward for the first time in their history. The first of the worldships touched down on the volcanic surface. The first of the specimens were taken.
"He promised…" Something new, something angry and desperate. Liara could not see his face, but he walked like an asari, on two legs. Male though. Definitely male. And somehow familiar, although Liara could not place it. He stood in supplication before the Overmind as it formed at last, the larva's intelligence congealing into the ambitious entity that would bring the galaxy to its knees.
He spoke horrible truths about the presences now speckling the skies above Zerus. The words could no longer be understood, only the intent. Not enough of the Overmind remained to grant anything more. He spoke of some betrayal, and thus betraying in kind.
More importantly, he spoke of the future, and this Liara could understand. Worlds burning beneath robotic intelligences. Tendrils of invasive thought creeping in and reprogramming without any possibility of being noticed. The Reapers. The darkness deepened.
Something had to be done. These beings, these xel'naga (how this man spat the term!) were obsolete. They could no longer reproduce. Their knowledge and technology had to be repurposed, lest … and here the Overmind faltered. Liara only felt the hollow remnants of some alien hunger. The zerg had not been intended to fight the last war. Not by the ones who had created them at least.
And so, the zerg surpassed the expectations of their xel'naga overlords. The recollections ran red with a feast the zerg would never experience again. The galaxy opened up to them through the memories of their creators – but one thought interested the Overmind in particular. Protoss.
Purity of form. Purity of essence. The Reapers already possessed both. A union would be required to surpass them.
"Their intention all along." The xel'naga wanted this. But it was somehow … unacceptable. Extreme. The sensation of hunger crept in again.
The trickster entity fled after this, leaving behind only the barest of instructions and a handful of coordinates. Prepare for the end. Prepare for their coming. The zerg left for the stars, leaving Zerus a barren rock, devoid of life. They would travel for a long time, leaving devoured worlds in their wake. The coordinates led to only empty planets, and of the entity there was no sign. Of the Reapers there was no sign. Something has to be done. Something has to be done.
The Great War. So suddenly they would find themselves confronted, not with mindless beasts, but thinking men and women who could fight back. The terrans, belligerent and divided. The turians, martial and unyielding. The salarians, brilliant and vicious when cornered. The asari, beautiful in their potential, bearing the marks of a failed xel'naga experiment.
The protoss. The protoss at last.
"How it should have been."
Stars falling across Thessia, the fleets burning at the Overmind's touch. On distant Theros, Liara suddenly breathed, coming free from her chrysalis with a scream – a cry that would herald the death knell of the galaxy.
"We would have marched."
Liara's claws dripped with the blood of millions. The Cerebrates watched in awe as she took the best of all broods; the torrasques, the hunter killers, the new viscerators; and scoured the stars with them. Palaven gleamed beneath her steely gaze, the guns turned upward in desperate defiance. Its fall came hard, but the turians adapted easily to their new masters and fresh purpose.
The salarians, concocting vile viruses from deep within the jungles of Sur'kesh. Three broods slain by the attacks, but the Swarm only grew stronger for the adapting. No biological vectors would threaten them so, ever again.
That did not mean they would take the planet gently. Liara fell upon the egg clutches without mercy, cut the salarian's future off from under them. Unlike the turians, they had the sense to surrender. It did not take them long to embrace immortality, nor did it take much persuading to turn their efforts to producing new weapons of war. The Swarm swelled with broods borne of their curious minds.
The krogan and elcor, the vorcha and hanar – all fell to the Swarm. With every race that fell beneath the Overmind's dominion, the Reapers grew closer … yet the Overmind Itself continued to develop beyond them.
The protoss and terrans. One desperate alliance between the Koprulu races as everything beyond them was consumed. Liara stared down upon Aiur, at the broken remnants of their once Golden Armada … but her thoughts turned outward, away from the jungles below. To the darkness of space.
"We would have held."
The Reapers, here at last. The war would be terrible. They would not hesitate where Tassadar had. Where zerg trod, worlds would have burned. Their numbers were not limitless, but still defied expectation. Yet they would have met them, with scourge and mutalisk, with leviathan and devourer. Liara would have leapt upon a Reaper destroyer, her limbs puncturing the hull and carrying her upward, a biotic pulse readied for the eye…
"But it was not to be."
The visions faded. Something cool and gentle lifted the caul from Liara's eyes, leaving her gaping in the dark. A protoss voice, deep yet understanding. Just the fading dream of a dead god.
"Perhaps it was not for the best. But I would make the decision again, all the same."
Tassadar. Liara could see him now, burning at the helm of Momentum, Adrien Victus standing behind him, arms folded behind his back. Metal tore from the ship, and the turian found himself sucked out, feeling nary a hint of regret. He would be immortalized for his sacrifice. And Tassadar…
She could not stare into a sun, even as a zerg. Tassadar burned and chilled in cycles, the Void and Khala coiling through him like electricity. The Overmind reached out with its biotics to slow the descent and recoiled, burned as it touched the infused vessel. Such pain – a foreign sensation. Liara knew what came next.
She fell to her knees, clutching her head. The vessel ripped through flesh and organs with a perverse ease, superheating the wound it left behind it. The cannons of turian dreadnoughts could not compare to this. This was not mere blunt force or heat, but a killing blade wrapped in the heart of a blazing star. All hopes died in an instant. The galaxy, doomed. The zerg, condemned to mindlessness. The shockwave spread out, out, ripples reaching the furthest edges of known space…
Beyond, doubtless the Reapers laughed at this. The two greatest weapons against them, killing each other. "The galaxy needed to submit."
Liara shook her head, the heat rising inside her. No. No, I don't think so. She felt a burning gaze upon her. She looked up. Tassadar at the helm. Staring directly at her.
"There is still hope." She forced the words out, feeling a chill of trepidation down her spine. Her stomach churned. Yet the words needed to be said. "Still a chance. Your victory would have perverted us all."
"You are stronger for the change."
Was she? Stronger in certain senses, naturally. The latent psionics of her asari heritage were now fully activated, and her biotics amplified considerably. But she was bereft of allies that were not zerg. And deep within her, she felt it. A hunger. A need to grow, adapt, and conquer. Suppressed, of course. Years of isolation granted a great measure of control over that instinct. But never fully dead. Tassadar watched her without any apparent emotion.
That was the zerg's curse. The ravenous desire to consume, adapt, and grow. Perhaps they could have overcome the Reapers if they had been victorious, but waging war on all corners of the galaxy … there never was really any other outcome. If we had allied with them, fought side by side…
"Anathema." Such thoughts were not zerg. Unwelcome. Diplomacy was for those in positions of weakness. The galaxy would be made zerg, and stronger for it. They were the ones the Reapers hated most, Sovereign's actions confirmed it. No one else prompted such fury from that beast.
"Necessary. If the reborn swarm acted as it did before…" They no longer had the numbers. And while Liara was no historian, archaeologists by necessity were familiar with the past and the dangers of not heeding its prior lessons. The zerg tried to storm the galaxy and they failed. Before them, the rachni. Tassadar inclined his head at this. Is he a memory? A shadow? Or the Overmind's manifestation? Regardless of what it was, this specter of Tassadar agreed with her assessment.
"Your actions have brought nothing."
Also true. She had been in no state to procure allies until recent months; she had been deeply ashamed of what she was, and she lacked the power to control vast numbers of zerg. How much of this still held true? How much of this am I willing to embrace?
"I well understand the difficulty in bringing two ideologies together in union." Tassadar stepping forward, a hand reaching out for Liara's face. He held it, as gently as her mother did. "The asari are accustomed to their diplomacy, their biology adapted to it as no others are." His grip tightened slightly. "The zerg are born only to conquer, and struggle when their instincts are suppressed. How confusing it must be."
"The Khala is heat and life. The denial of an end through a racial gestalt. The Void is cold and death. An acceptance of the end. Where the High Templar linger on, the Nerazim fade entirely." Tassadar removed his hand, staring behind Liara through the ruin of Momentum. "In its union, a reaction. Life, joyous and fleeting. Death, somber and eternal. I had to recognize both. Join both. In doing so, I became … everything."
Was he real? It was impossible to tell. Liara stared up at the Overmind's slayer, the one who died but fled both the Void and the Khala at his passing. He looked down at her.
"What will you become, I wonder?"
When Liara blinked, Tassadar vanished. The ship vanished. The memories no longer lingered. She kneeled in the center of a long dead god, the moonlight shining on her back. The thick presence could no longer be felt. She stood unsteadily, but growing in surety. Deeper within the corpse, something roared. The ground shook.
Bones splintered underfoot as a hulking figure strode out from caverns dug through and below the Overmind. Its edges flickered with blue, the gift of Thessia coursing through it. Its limbs shone with worn armor taken as trophies from past victims. Its talons gleamed in the dull light.
Here was a beast that knew death only as an inconvenience. Liara reached out for it, only to be rebuffed. Its rage knew no end. And it only ever knew one master.
The torrasque charged, head bowed. Liara crouched and waited, the beast picking up speed. At the last moment, Liara let the biotics flow through her and send her surging to its side. The beast stormed past with a flash of its blades, suddenly skidding as it tried to stop itself careening into a rotting wall.
The torrasque came to a halt just before smashing through what was left of the Overmind's skull. It snorted and turned, its eyes glowing orange with malevolent intent. Liara met its gaze and did not turn away, making it snort again.
What will you be, I wonder? Her blood yearned to dominate, to grind this creature beneath her heel and make it submit. Yet gentler memories bubbled to the surface. Her mother, dressed in yellow, holding her hand through the gardens…
The torrasque charged again, all bellowing fury. Liara stepped forward, keeping her pace slow and deliberate. She raised an outstretched hand, keeping her wings folded. The beast's blades flashed – and held, inches from her face.
Tendrils of turquoise rose from the torrasque's Kaiser blades, a product of both biotics and Cherenkov radiation. Liara watched it without expression, keeping her thoughts calm. I am their queen. Their mother. These are my subjects. My children.
The torrasque raged as it held in place, its own biotics coursing in response to Liara's. To no avail. Each pulse shifted it maybe a one-hundredth of an inch, sending waves of exhaustion in response. Battle it understood. It even understood what it was to die, although before it always came back. But this resistance, resistance without bloodshed…?
Liara smiled at the beast that had served her predecessor so faithfully. One of its back legs wobbled. With a crash, it came down, its other legs following soon after. Its head remained upright, its blades still raised. They trembled once. Twice. Liara took a step forward, violet fingers reaching out.
She touched the sides of the Kaiser blades as lightly as she could, sending a spasm through the torrasque. Its head finally lowered. The blades came clattering down in supplication. It remembered this dominion, although before it came hard and unyielding. Yet this is no less total. You are mine, as dictated by the one before me. The one around us. Her hand came to rest on the beast's head. It closed its eyes, the rage cooling at Liara's touch.
This one will be needed. It had once terrorized the lines of the Overmind's enemies as they converged on Its location. She would have need of that terror, although bound for a very different foe. She clambered atop the torrasque, releasing her hold upon it. It rose from its knees obediently.
They strode from the Overmind's body together, mind linked by common purpose. The mutalisks still wheeled overhead, making not a sound. Far in the distance, she could feel Abathur and the rachni queen staring back at her.
Beyond them, thunderclouds, dark and pregnant with rain. And beyond that…
A hungry emptiness. Stars flickered as she watched. One of the Overmind's tendrils twitched.
The harvest would soon begin. The Swarm screamed its defiance into the sky.
Next Chapter: Zeratul
A/N: Out of pre-written chapters.