Chapter Thirteen

A scream tore through Shepard's silent, dreamless slumber. High pitched, rattling with fury. In his daze, he could not place who it came from, though he could tell it was a woman. "Bastian!"

"By the Goddess!" cried another woman, shrill with horror. "It... it's eating him!"

"What the fuck is that thing?" shouted a man's voice.

"It looks like a big, mutated Husk!" said another.

"It's dead, is what it is!" declared a third man, his voice flanging.

With groans dripping from his lips, Shepard's eyes lifted. His body was gripped with searing pain, burning aches biting his limbs. Teeth clenched down, he made a fist with one hand, but the other would not respond. He found his body cocooned in oozing, rubbery black. He struggled, shifted his shoulders, wagged his legs, but the mystery substance only squirmed and covered up more of his body. He bent his neck down and saw that he was pinned against the icy wall of a cavern, pressed against rock, the bitter chill battling the pain of his injuries. Beneath him, a group of people in armor raised their weapons against a massive, bubbling, vaguely human creature.

His weary focus found a woman in blue armor at the vanguard, her rifle spraying a rapid succession of fire. "A-Ashley..." Shepard groaned, his throat dry and stripped, unable to produce more than a whisper.

A turian stepped next to her, firing from his gun wit one hand, summoning his omni-tool with another. His device sent a wrapping of white lightning around a serpentine limb, making it recoil in pain. With a gurgling shriek, the limb recovered and thwacked the turian across the cave.

"Garrus!" shouted Ashley, "damn it!" She fired a concussive round at the twisting limb and it fell, slapping onto the rocky ground. The main body writhed in anger, sending a barrage of limbs, arms with clenching nails, shooting from every crevice, grown out from its bubbling center.

"T'Soni!" bellowed a voice with a subtle reverberation. A man-shaped alien in red armor flared with green power, an asari in white by his side, glowing in blue. The two raised their arms, green energy ripping at the black flesh like an illuminated plague. The asari's blue power came next, her warp field joining the prothean's decay, the friction of energies bursting, leaving a weeping gash within the Homunculus.

The turian returned with two human men and a krogan, each with guns that expelled shaking slugs. The fire caused the black flesh to ripple, winding cries and growls resounding. "Watch out, it stretches!" he proclaimed.

The krogan marched, the rocks quaking in his steps, chasing the hands that crawled along the floor, stomping on the fingers and shooting the arms. With every pounding blast of his shotgun, he declared, "Let. Go. Of my. BATTLEMASTER!"

A turian woman sprinted next to Ashley, her wrist strapped with a bright orange blade, batting away creeping fingers from the human soldier while she fired at the main body. A crowd of stringy limbs wormed towards the turian, and she raised her omni-blade, a fire sparking against the tip, and she made a wide arcing stroke, spreading flames along every outreached hand. With a groggy howl, each limb coiled and scrunched like slugs against the sting of salt.

"Nice work, Lieutenant!" said Ashley, her voiced raised with hope. "So, you don't like fire, huh? Hey, Zaeed! You got incendiary grenades?"

"Hell yeah I do!" he answered.

"Hey, I can help with that, too!" cried James as he flicked on a flame symbol on his rifle. Grunt did likewise, laughing.

Ashley and Zaeed unstrapped grenades from their belts. They chucked them at the main body as one, the shells cracking open against its chest, wrapping it with blasts of red and orange. The heated ammunition of James and Grunt expanded the flames until the Homunculus was swallowed by fire. It roared and flailed about, its body shrinking. Its many arms curled into brittle charcoal until its fingers snapped off and turned to ash. It wriggled about, screams turned to meek, shivering whimpers.

Shepard could only watch as his fleshy prison turned to dust. Release from his prison, yet too weak to move, his body plummeted downward.

"Bastian!" cried Ashley.

"Shepard, no!" shouted Garrus and Grunt.

"Shepard!" yelped Liara and James.

"Commander!" said Javik as he flicked his wrist, a stream of his power flying to Shepard, cradling him in midair, carrying him as he drifted down to the cave's rocky surface.

"Bastian!" said Ashley again as she ran to Shepard, her palms against his head as he came to the ground, the green waves slowly departing. "Oh, Bastian!" she said as she cradled the back of his skull, her other hand on his chest. "Are you okay?"

"Oh no," said Nachthex as she approached, "look, his prosthetic hand is gone!"

"Damn it, there's a lot of blood," said Garrus. The turian looked towards where the Homunculus fell and found a twitching, squeaking little ball of black dust. He raised his talon-like foot and squished it.

"Signaling the Normandy for pickup now," said James, his voice shaking. "Just hang on for a little bit, okay, Loco?"

"Bas, stay with me," said Ashley, her body trembling. Shepard, with his consciousness drifting, vision clouded, felt her fingers shake in his hair, and saw the mist collecting in her wide, brown eyes. "Come on now, you can't leave me, you don't have my permission. Not after all we've been through."

Shepard's throat lumped with a hard swallow. "Ah... Ashley," he wheezed out.

"Bastian," she said, fighting the tears and forcing a smile. "Don't talk. Just breathe. You're going to be fine."

"I can already see the Normandy," said Garrus. "You're gonna be fine."

Shepard heard some of his comrades step outside the cave, shuffling through the snow, shouting into the icy air. Off in the distance, there was a faint whirring, the hum of drive cores. But all he saw was Ashley, puffs of hot air rolling from her lips as she choked on her tears, locks of her umber hair falling over her ear and brushing his bloodied face.

"Ashley," he said again, steady with greater focus.

"Damn it, Bas, can't you listen to me for once?"

His lip trembled as he took another swallow. His armor was cracked, limbs were limp, and body was outline with dust and blood, but he stared at her and smiled. "Ashley Williams, wi... will you marry me?"

"Oh my God," her voice shrunk, words trickled out in a wheezing laugh. "Yes, Bastian Shepard. Yes, I will marry you. But you have to live first."

"I... I will," he wheezed out as his body submitted to pain and weariness, the fog washing over his sight. He heard weeping, a little clapping, and the ship blowing snow in its wake before all his senses went null.