For the sake of preserving tone, I'm going to be putting this little blurb at the beginning of this chapter. So, as usual, I'd like to thank you all for reading and reviewing-it means a lot to me! This really is one of the prouder things that I've done-no matter the failings. So, if you see any mistakes that I'm making, definitely make sure to point it out so that way I can prevent the same mistakes in the future.
I'd like to thank Azzorath once again for helping proofread and look over my work with a critical eye.
Other than that, I don't believe there's anything else to mention this week! In the future, my release schedules might get a bit longer (hopefully no more than four days) but I'll try my best to keep up without degrading quality.
Anyways, enjoy the chapter (I hope)!
:: Chapter Twenty One :: The Demon ::
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Weary from what might have been ages,
Still calm with my mind at peace.
Would I prosper or fall, drain the past,
The lapse of the moment took it's turn.
I was foul and tainted, devoid of faith,
Wearing my death-mask at birth.
The hands of God, decrepit and thin,
Cold caress and then nothing.
Vows in ashes,
I pledge myself to no one
Seethed and spiteful,
I shudder at the call of my name.
If you bear with me,
You'll fear of me.
There is no forgiveness in these eyes
For any of you but one.
-Opeth-
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"Landing in five minutes," a voice came in over the intercom, causing Shepard and Frellock to stir from their thoughts—and in Frellock's case, his slumber—and glance over at each other momentarily.
"Ready?" Frellock asked Shepard, to which he nodded grimly. There wasn't much to be ready for—nearly everything had been taken care of for them. All he had to do was sit along for the ride and kill a couple of mercs once they arrived.
"We're going to get off the freighter and onto one of the Rhinos," Frellock explained for at least the third time since they had set off from the Citadel. "Then once we're in the Rhino, we set of for the Salu Karah encampment. They'll let us in because they're expecting a weapons shipment. Then, once we're in, we take down Javlus!" He ended with a wide grin on his face, despite Shepard's lack of response. Apparently, the man enjoyed talking to himself.
They spent the next few minutes in silence, Shepard sitting uncomfortably close to the beaming Frellock—who Shepard had very many doubts about. Despite his initial impression that there was more to the man than he had first thought, empirical evidence was proving that there really wasn't much he couldn't see from the moment he first met him. Frellock seemed to be a very simple man, more akin to a dumb mercenary than the enigmatic leader of a band of mercenaries. Anderson had chosen him, however, and Shepard trusted Anderson's judgement.
After all, Anderson had chosen Shepard as well.
As their freighter finally shifted into place, landing down on Erinle, Shepard stood up, relishing the opportunity to stretch his legs and his back, taking simple satisfaction from the few pops as his vertebrae snapped into place. With a roll of his head, he stepped through the door on the side of the cabin they were staying in, and opened the interior airlock door which would lead them to their transport vehicles.
As the exterior door, Shepard raised a hand to shield his eyes from the bright light streaming in and shining off the sandy ground, giving himself a few moments for his eyes to adjust. Taking a deep breath of the arid, hot air, he felt his throat dry out in moments under the watchful gaze of the large star which provided heat to this desert.
Frellock, however, merely jumped out of the airlock, spreading his arms wide as he soaked up the sunlight.
"Is it not beautiful?" Frellock said, glancing over at Shepard, who merely ignored him and continued plodding onwards, heading to where a couple of workers were busy unloading crates out of the cargo hold.
As Shepard approached them, one of the men stopped and lowered his box to the ground, silently pointing to the Rhino behind them—a cube shaped, tough looking vehicle which appeared extremely sparse. It was grey and had little in the way of either design or identification, only having a small orange stamp on the door to identify the company that was sending the shipment. Sliding the door open, Shepard stepped into the cramped vehicle, which only had seats for four people behind the large, bulletproof glass windows.
Frellock quickly slipped in beside him, closing the exterior door as he slid into the driver's seat.
"You don't want to drive?" Frellock asked as he gestured to the steering wheel.
"Nope," Shepard said simply. He never liked driving.
Frellock and Shepard leaned back in their hard chairs, waiting for the workers to finish loading the boxes filled with weapons into the cargo hold in the back of the Rhino. They had also stealthily thrown a small box into the back seat, as well—one that contained Shepard's standard shotgun, Frellock's assault rifle, and one sniper rifle. Shepard carried a pistol on his hip, buried beneath the loose-fitting brown cloak he wore to cover up his black suit of armor underneath, but having his shotgun back in his hands would give him a bit more confidence, if nothing else. In any case, he was never without his cloaking module or his trusty combat knife.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
"Damn, what do we do now?" Tali said to Garrus as she tried her best to worm her way into the darkest corner of the cargo hold as their fort of boxes was slowly being torn away by the workers. What would they do when they were revealed?"
"Don't worry," Garrus said calmly. "I see Shepard—he's getting into that big vehicle over there," he said, doing his best to gesture between the cracks of the boxes. Tali quickly scooted over, pushing Garrus out of the way as she did her best to put an eye to the crack.
"We have to get out—where are the workers?" she asked.
"They're outside, organizing the boxes," Garrus said. "Do you think we can slip out unnoticed?"
"Maybe," Tali said, pulling her shotgun from her hip and slowly making her way to the door of the cargo hold, making an attempt to be very quiet. Garrus looked at the shotgun in her hands, confused and somewhat concerned at what she was planning on doing.
Tali quickly dashed out of the cargo hold, running towards the doors that were still opened wide on the back of the vehicle that Shepard was in. Tali quickly jumped in, looking around to make sure there were no witnesses before she rapidly gestured for Garrus to do the same. Sighing, Garrus followed her path, though his larger frame and heavy armor made it considerably more difficult for him to make it unseen.
As he approached the back of the cargo hold, he was suddenly face to face with one of the tan-skinned workers, staring at Garrus with wide eyes, unblinking. Sighing, Garrus slipping a credit chit out of his pocket and handed it to the man as he stepped into the back of the cargo bay, putting a finger over his mouth, hoping that the man would stay silent. With a shrug, the worker closed the doors behind them, leaving them bathed in the darkness of the cargo hold.
"You're sure this is where Shepard is?" Tali asked, suddenly fearing that they had boarded the wrong vehicle—since there were another two nearly identical vehicles next to this one.
"I'm certain," Garrus said. "I saw him get in!"
"You better hope you're right," Tali said, slowly shaking her head.
After a few moments of silence in the dark, Tali pulled up her omni-tool and begin tapping on it, the soft orange glow providing some illumination.
"What are you doing?" Garrus asked after a few moments, unable to discern what she was trying to accomplish through the lines of code flicking through the screen.
"Hacking," she said simply, continuing to tap on her omni-tool as Garrus shrugged to himself. After a few moments, she quietly exclaimed in satisfaction, moving her wrist over so that Garrus could see the projected hologram more easily. Above her wrist hovered five different scenes—presumably of the landscape outside. There seemed to be a camera pointed in every direction—two of the screens showed vehicles identical to the one they were in, one showed the bleak desert in front of them, and the other showed a couple of workers milling about in front of the cargo hold of the freighter.
The final fifth screen showed an image of the front cabin of the vehicle, Shepard and the same red-haired man sitting in the two front chairs, idly leaning back as they presumably awaited clearance to leave. Tali noted this with a sigh of relief—at least Garrus' perception hadn't been off.
"Told you so," Garrus said, which elicited a shove from Tali.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
"Shall we push off?" Frellock said, leaning forward in his chair. With a silent nod, Frellock grasped onto the wheel at the front of the vehicle and began accelerating away, leaving the freighter behind.
From here, it was a straightforward path to the Salu Karah base—they received weapons shipments once every month, so it was unlikely they would be restricted. They would need to go by land, however—an airdrop would be too out of the ordinary for them to simply ignore.
Glancing back at the seats behind him, Shepard took solace in the twenty-pound rectangle which was sitting beside the weapons box. That little rectangle would prove to be useful when he blew Salu Karah's encampment sky high.
Frellock wasn't going to be able to take control of the band—what Anderson was thinking was beyond him. The man simply didn't show any of the steel that a cold, hardened mercenary should have had.
They continued to drive in silence, Shepard keeping his gaze set forward for the most part, observing the dingy shacks that they drove past as they travelled on the dirt road which had been worn down by the tracks of vehicles over time.
The whole colony looked as if it were in dire straits—most of the shacks were tinged red with rust, and often were torn or dented in multiple places. Even the mining shacks on Therum hadn't suffered this kind of mistreatment.
In between the tattered sheets of metal, the glassy eyes of colonists could occasionally be seen peeking out at the loud vehicle driving past their houses. A few children dashed about in the streets, dirty-clothed and malnourished, before running to the relative security of their homes as they felt the ground rumbling beneath them.
It wasn't the first time they had seen one these trucks passing by before—Shepard could tell by the way that some of the colonists stared longingly at the heavy metal truck, loading with valuables beyond their wildest dreams.
Shepard sighed slightly, looking at the impoverished people of the planet. Shepard found a small piece of pity in the back of his mind for the children swimming in the sand.
"Sad, isn't it?" Frellock said, jolting Shepard away from his thoughts.
"Yeah," Shepard said quietly, looking at a couple sitting at the side of a hovel, holding onto their son lovingly.
"Got any family?" Frellock said, noticing where his gaze was heading to. Glancing over at the red-haired man in surprise, he shook his head.
"Lost them a long time ago, Shepard?" Frellock said with a sigh.
Shepard paused for a moment. "How did you know?"
"I'm not as dumb as you think," he said with a chuckle. Shepard raised an eyebrow and looked out the side window.
"How about close friends? None of those, either?" Frellock asked.
"No," Shepard said. Despite the man's apparently perceptiveness, he still wasn't in the mood for talking.
"I've got a wife and two kids back on the Citadel—a daughter and a son. Gives me something to look forward to at the end of every mission," Frellock said absentmindedly. "It gives me something to fight for."
"What about it?" Shepard said dismissively.
"What do you fight for?"
Shepard bit his lip as he considered the question for himself.
What did he fight for? Was it galactic peace? To stop Saren? To stop criminals? Vengeance for what he lost? To stop what happened to him from ever happening again?
"I fight for peace," Shepard said, being purposefully vague. To fill the hole in his heart—to again find the blood of his fellow companions who were taken away from him.
"Then it is a valiant fight," Frellock said. "Stick to your guns, no matter what, Commander. Never give up hope—for when we give up hope, we will never win."
Shepard sighed, doing his best to push the man's words out of his head. After all, Frellock was just some silly, overtalkative man that Anderson had forced Shepard to take along for the ride.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
"Garrus…" Tali said, trailing off as she tapped on her omni-tool a few times. "Listen to this."
A voice projected into the small dark cargo hold of the vehicle.
"…Jaime, we can't do that!"
"What else are we supposed to do? What about Marie?"
"I don't know… there has to be another way!"
Jaime sighed audibly. "Look, just plant the mines—if we don't do this, Marie is going to… to die…"
"Didn't you talk to Rickard? Won't he give you the medicine?"
"He can't—it's too risky. He's being watched now, and they're sending him off—they know something up."
"But what are you even going to do with a truck full of guns?"
"We… we can sell them—I'm sure that someone will buy them."
"Who, Salu Karah? They'll string you up when they find out you took them!"
"Then we'll find someone else!" Jaime shouted indignantly. "We don't have a choice, Jason… we can't just let Marie die. Not after everything she did for us."
"I know, but…"
"But we're her only hope. Didn't you see what happened to Kevin?"
"I don't even want to think about it," Jason said regretfully.
"And that's what's going to happen to Marie if we don't get the damn medicine…"
"Fine, fine!" Jason shouted. "I'll do it—but I'm not responsible for the blood on your hands!"
"I never asked for you to be responsible," Jaime said sadly. "I only ask that you be there for Marie if I don't make it."
"Don't say that!" Jason shouted. "We're all going to get out of here!"
Jaime chuckled quietly. "I hope so… maybe if we sell the guns, we can get a shuttle and get the hell out of here. Maybe we can stow away onto one of those cargo ships that land every month."
"Maybe," Jason agreed hopefully.
There was a pause in the conversation for a minute as Tali and Garrus nervously looked at each other in the back of the cargo bay.
"You… you don't think," Tali began.
"I think we're the only vehicle on this god-forsaken planet," Garrus said, having seen the disparate images that Tali had hacked into from the exterior cameras.
"But… if they're going to attack us, shouldn't we warn—"
"They're all set, Jaime," the voice said again from Tali's omni-tool. "I'm getting the hell out of here—are you ready with Francis?"
"Affirmative," was Jaime's only response.
"Tali—we need to warn Shepard!"
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
"Shepard, do you see—" Frellock began to say, narrowing his eyes at a small grey colored box contrasting against the sandy surface of the road. The vehicle slowed to a stop as Frellock stopped in front of it, leaning forward in his chair to observe the package.
"Drive!" Shepard shouted, realizing the box for what it was. Frellock quickly took the hint, slamming his foot heavily into the pedal and turning the wheel as quickly as he could, but it was too late.
For the briefest of moments, Shepard felt as if his body weighed a thousand pounds as the nose of the vehicle was fired into the air from the force of the blast, tossing the front of the Rhino backwards as the entire vehicle rolled over from end to end, before heavily thudding onto the ground, upside down with the nose end filled with shrapnel and debris.
Shepard opened his eyes, his lungs burning from the taste of the smoke and sand that was thrown into the air from the explosion, as well as from the intense wave of heat that blew past him and burned his skin. The entire front windshield had been shattered by the blast, rectangular pieces of glass thrown across the entire main cabin of the vehicle and covering Shepard in miniscule scrapes and cuts that made him feel as if his blood was simply pouring out of his skin.
With a grit of his teeth and a grunt, he detached himself from the belt tied around his hip and roughly dropped himself to the floor—or rather, the roof—as he grasped onto the shotgun which had been jolted around the entire cabin with one hand, and onto the heavy bomb with the other. With a glance at Frellock—who was similarly covered in miniscule scars, but his head lolled at an unnatural angle—he kicked open the side door of the Rhino, stepping out with a look of rage of his face that would have deterred any ordinary aggressor.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
The explosion had been no less painful for Garrus and Tali in the cargo bay. Unrestricted by safety belts of any kind, they had been violently tossed about the cabin, along with the heavy weapons crates which had struck Tali hard enough to shove the air out of her chest, before the entire vehicle finally came to a stop with Garrus situated underneath a pair of boxes as Tali tried to regain her breath from near the top of the pile.
"Damnit," Garrus said with strained breath from underneath the pile as he tried his best to push the heavy boxes off his chest. Tali, quickly noticing her partner's predicament, pushed the boxes off of him, lifting him to his knees as he ran a hand across his head.
"Are you ok?" Tali asked, looking at the turian's leg which was bent at a disturbingly wide angle.
"I'm fine," Garrus said through gritted teeth as he tried to lift himself up on his wounded leg, leaning heavily on the boxes to his side as he stood up.
"Shepard!" Tali suddenly shouted, almost dropping Garrus to the ground as she spun around and rapidly slid open the cargo bay door, which had been dented by the boxes being thrown around, but was easy enough to open with a little bit of effort. Dashing out of the vehicle, with no regard for her own safety or the possibility of bandits in the area, she sighed a pair of men walking closer in the distance, each armed with rifles. Despite being equipped, they held their rifles down at their sides with an air of incompetence that showed they likely hadn't used them before.
Then she sighted him—like a demon from hell, Shepard kicked the door on the side of the vehicle wide open, small pieces of glass flying out from inside the cabin and from Shepard's shoulders as he marched out of the vehicle, blood running down the side of his head and from so many small cuts across his face, hefting his shotgun easily in one hand while he carried a small case in the other.
Tali quickly glanced back at the two men who approached with assault rifles—was this Jaime and Francis? They were coming fast, and despite the demonic sight of Shepard stepping from the smoky ruins of the vehicle, they had not yet raised their weapons, instead choosing to stare at the soldier in horror.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
Shepard sighted his two targets in the distance—two men armed with rifles. Were they the ones behind the attack? Were they trying to help him?
It didn't matter. They could all die.
Shepard tossed his shotgun into the air, grabbing it by the trigger as he lowered it and aimed it at the first man, nothing other than the burning pain across his face and the impulsive anger in his mind moving his hands.
Unarmored. Poorly equipped. They would likely die with the first bullet.
"Stop!" came a shout from behind him—not Frellock's odd accent, but another one, with another voice behind it. A voice that nearly tripped Shepard and put a pause to his pull of the trigger.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
"Stop!" Tali shouted again, seeing that the two men approaching them had not yet even raised their weapons to attack. If they were indeed Jaime and Francis, they wouldn't attack them unless they needed to.
Shepard paused mid-stride, almost seeming to stumble over himself as he lowered his shotgun as the coldness Tali had seen in his features seemed to soften for a moment as he turned his head to look at Tali.
"What are you doing here?" Shepard said quietly, though loud enough for her to hear.
"To help you," Tali said simply.
The two men approached them, now lifting their rifles at Tali and Shepard, but even Tali could tell that they were very inexperienced.
"Don't move!" the first man shouted.
"We don't want to hurt you," the second man said—the man whose voice matched Jaime's.
"We only need your weapons," Francis said. "Hand them over and nobody else will get hurt."
Tali glanced at Shepard, who still held that strange grey box in his hand and the shotgun in the other. His hands had tightened on his shotgun, and every muscle in his body seemed to tense as he prepared to pounce.
"Of course," Tali said, watching Shepard out of the corner of her eyes to make sure he didn't simply attack them. "You need medicine for Marie, right?"
Both of their eyes widened as they regarded the quarian. "What?"
"Is Marie ill?" Tali said calmly, ignoring their surprised expressions. They were silent for a moment, before Jaime stepped forward, lowering his rifle slightly.
"Marie has Crocodile Flu," Jaime said, biting a lip.
"Crocodile flu?" Tali said, uncertain of what he meant.
"Don't know what it's really called," Francis said somewhat sheepishly. "But they start with headaches and coughs, and then their skin starts scaling over—that's why we call it crocodile flu. The only way to treat it is with medicine—but Salu Karah won't sell any of theirs."
"Why does Salu Karah have all the medicine?" Tali said, noting the way that the two men were lowering their rifles—and also Shepard's loosening grip on his shotgun.
"They control everything around here," Jaime said helplessly. "They sell us our food, our clothing, and they make us give them half of everything we can find or scavenge every month, otherwise they shoot us. They control every single space craft that comes in—so nobody can get out."
"Robbie tried to escape a few months ago," Francis said with a distant look in his eyes.
"Some Karah grunt found him and hung him on a flagpole," Jaime said. "They left him there to starve to death—and wouldn't let nobody else touch him, else they shot them."
"Why don't you fight back?" Tali said, amazed that nobody had tried to put down their cruel overlords.
"We can't," Jaime said helplessly. "These are the only weapons that we have," Jaime said as he shook his rifle in the air. "And if any Karah grunts find us talking together…"
"Kill 'em all," Francis finished ominously.
"Shepard is here to get rid of Salu Karah," Tali said, pointing over at Shepard, who hadn't said a word during their entire exchange. "Right… Shepard?" she said, almost pleadingly. That was what she suspected, based on their current relation with the mercenary band.
"We were going to kill Javlus, the leader of Salu Karah, and put Frellock in charge," he said in a monotone as he pointed a thumb back at the ruins of their vehicle. "Not happening now."
Jaime and Francis looked over each other briefly, fear in their eyes as they remembered they had just attacked the two people in front of them—and both of them had shotguns. The easy way that Shepard swung his shotgun on his hand told them that they wouldn't stand a chance if they tried to fight these two.
"Mighty sorry," Francis said quietly, as he turned his eyes down to the ground. "Didn't want to do it—just needed to get medicine for Marie."
"Come here," Tali said, gesturing to the back of the vehicle—where Garrus was standing, leaning heavily against the side of the truck. Jaime and Francis gave a slight start at seeing the man with a long rifle at his side, realizing that they never had any chance of succeeding with their pillage.
"You can take all of these," Tali said as she gestured at the battered weapons crates that filled most of the cargo hold. A couple of them had been split open, revealing a variety of weapons—assault rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, and a few handguns—all painted jet black. As the two men came around the corner, their eyes widened at how many weapons there were in the back of the vehicle.
"Dear god," Jaime said. "If we could sell even two of these…"
"Could pay for all of Marie's treatment!" Francis said with a toothless grin. The two men looked over at each other, wide smiles on their face as they looked at the expanse of weapons before them.
"You can take them all," Tali said. "They're no use to us, anyways."
The two men began rummaging through the boxes as Garrus tapped Tali on the shoulder.
"So… what exactly happened?" Garrus whispered to Tali, with a lopsided smirk on his face. Tali merely smiled back at him, glad that Shepard hadn't simply executed these two men on the spot.
She had finally done something right, at least. She had been given a chance to make the lives of these desolate colonists a little bit better, and she had been able to do that. A little bit of good would go a long way to balancing out the evils she had seen as of late.
Speaking of evils, how was Shepard doing? Would he be happy as well?
"Shepard?" Tali said, stepping around the corner of the vehicle and glancing both ways to see where the grim man had gone. She frowned slightly, as he was nowhere to be found.
"Shepard!" she called again, glancing inside of the ruined vehicle. All that was to be found was a lone pistol on the ground, and the same red-haired man hanging upside down from the ceiling, his neck caught on the seat and bent backwards awkwardly. With a grimace, she turned away from the sight and looked down the road—but he was nowhere to be seen.
Tali's eyes widened as she realized what must have happened—he must have went off by himself.
Damnit, what was wrong with him?
Tali ran around the vehicle, quickly grabbing Jaime's shoulder and shaking him, to his terror.
"Where is the Salu Karah encampment?" she said, speaking quickly.
"It's twenty minutes that way!" he said, pointing a bit towards the right of the road ahead.
Without a word, Tali dashed away from the vehicle, running as quickly as her legs would take her towards what she hoped was the encampment, leaving Garrus standing idly by, initially trying to limp after her, but realizing it was an exercise in futility, standing in the middle of the road, leaning heavily on his long rifle.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
Shepard disengaged his cloaking module, believing that he was far enough away from the ruins of the Rhino that Tali or Garrus wouldn't be able to track him. Neither of them needed to be with him for what he planned on doing.
Shepard had no intention of going quietly—there was no point in that. He carried an assault rifle on his hip, two pistols clipped side by side on the other side of his hip, his trusty shotgun on the small of his back, and a sniper rifle across his shoulders. The weight felt crippling to his burdened shoulders, but he wasn't going to let something as simple as a little bit of pain stop him.
The Salu Karah encampment looked similar to a military prison—it was a large, rectangular shaped encampment with four tall towers at each corner, and a ten-foot high chain link fence closing off all the borders. Throughout the compound were a variety of scattered buildings of varying heights and sizes, though which one held Javlus was unknown to him.
It also didn't matter, since he was carrying a bomb under his left arm.
Shepard re-engaged his cloaking module, sliding down the hill he stood on as he approached the side of the encampment. Disabling his module, he flicked his knife out of its sheath and easily cut a hole through the chain link fence, the well-tempered steel of his blade easily splitting the metal. Shepard tossed the bomb down at the base of a nearby building, as the explosive would more likely than not take out most of the camp. Tapping on his omni-tool a few times, he set the bomb for a five minute timer, so that way he'd be able to get out of the way easily enough.
With a growl of frustration, his shook his head and kicked the inert bomb angrily. The crashed had apparently damaged the detonator mechanism inside of the grey box—it was useless to him now.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
Pavell meandered his way across the Salu Karah main encampment, as he often did at this time of the day. When the sun was high in the sky, he enjoyed taking little strolls across the main courtyard—simply revelling in the feel of the sun against his uncovered head.
He'd be heading out later tonight—Javlus was sending him along with another couple of the men to shake down some of the colonists for whatever they could cough up. They always seemed to scrounge together a couple of pennies from some unknown place—and they were already ready to pay.
Pavell laughed quietly to himself as he rested an arm on the familiar assault rifle which hung from his hip. He frowned slightly, as he realized that his rifle wasn't there. Odd, he was sure that he had put it on a few minutes ago!
Was he forgetting something? Or was his memory simply degrading already?
With a chuckle at his own forgetfulness, he found his assault rifle—with the barrel trained to the spot in between his eyes. A man wearing a suit of scarred black armor stood before him—where had he even come from?
"Where's Javlus?" the man said threateningly.
"Who are you?" Pavell said, trying to keep the terror out of his voice.
"Where's Javlus?" the man said again, shoving the barrel of the rifle roughly into his face.
"In that building, over there!" Pavell said hurriedly, pointing to one of the taller, cleaner looking buildings in the encampment.
"Many thanks," the man said, lowering the rifle and backing away from Pavell, letting him nurse his bruised forehead.
Then he lifted the rifle again and shot him in the throat.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
Shepard drifted through the Salu Karah's sandy courtyard as if he were in a trance—freely floating, barely conscious of his own actions and motions. As if he were a silent spectator to the ominous predator slowly lurking his way to Javlus' main quarters, carrying a rifle in his hands and strapped with enough weapon to arm six different men.
It was growing inside of him—the spirit of vengeance, of cruelty, of rage. It would not sleep until he could drink of the blood which he thirsted for daily. He needed death—he craved it. For his blade would not rest until the galaxy bled red.
Shepard had foolishly held back his impulses—he had foolishly told himself that he was a different man, a man capable of compassion and kindness and caring, but the demon that filled every crevice of his being knew better than that.
Shepard was a demon. A hellish fiend roughly shoved into the frame of mankind, created for the sole purpose of bringing those around him to their knees.
Through the red lens of rage, everything felt so clear to him.
On Akuze, as he stepped over the bloodied bodies of his dearest companions, the demon had taken hold of him. Grasped onto him like a parasite, feeding on his deepest desires and dreams, feeding on his hope, his happiness, and filling him with an emptiness that could not be quelled with anything but the blood of his victims.
And Shepard had foolishly tried to hide it—he had tried to resist! But now, the demon was free. And the demon would drink upon the fountains of blood—the mercenaries in this compound would only be the first. Then the rest of the planet—the whole star cluster would fall to the demon inside of him.
For he would never satiate his thirst.
And he would save those that Shepard had held dearest to him for last, as a cruel joke on the ruined soul of the man who tried to resist. The bitter blood of the turian, the biotic's warm blood, the soldier's hateful blood…
And the quarian's warm, sweet, sickly intoxicating blood.
He had been so close on that day that the quarian and Shepard had met in their room—when he had subtly convinced Shepard that she would cherish a knife above all else. It was not Shepard that ran the foul game, but the demon in his mind.
A single flick of Shepard's wrist would bring his adoration to it's knees.
But Shepard had held strong—holding fast to his will, crumbling within him. His own stubborn refusal of the past sealed his own fate—Shepard was losing his own conscience, his own control, the will to carry on.
A perfect victim for the demon to inhabit.
The demon stepped forward, uncaring of the consequences. He didn't care whether anybody heard of his loud arrival, or if anybody saw the pools of blood he left behind him. It would bring more victims to his table, more victims to bring to their knees.
The demon fired his rifle into the air, a cruel smile forming on his dry lips as he licked them in anticipation of the grand feast he was about to plunge himself into.
He kicked open the front door of the building that the last man had so willingly given up to him, revealing a pair of turians idly standing by, leaning on table on opposite ends of the room. Before they could even lift the rifles off their hips, the demon raised his rifle and gunned both of the men down, filling them with holes and spilling their precious blue blood across the floor as the life left their eyes. But the demon did not stop.
He stepped down the stairs to his right, revelling in the hurried shouts and screams coming from the floors below him, as he descended deeper into the basement—deeper into his own mad celebration.
A trio of men ran forward to stop him, their brilliant white armor shining for a few moments until his rifle fired almost of it's own accord, riddling their shining armor with bullet holes and staining the white with red as they each fell to the ground, blood pouring from their wounded chests. But the demon did not stop.
As he stood in the middle of the room, more men continued to pour in, trying to stop him. First two humans, then another three turians, and a batarian—each of them desperately trying to stop the hellish fiend, dried blood covering his face, wearing broken and battered armor with scrapes and scars that couldn't even begin to match the ones upon his face.
And each of them fell, one by one. As the demon's rifle refused to fire, he cast it to the ground, a useless tool of destruction, and lifted his twin pistols off his hip, smiling cruelly as he watched the meager weapons slicing through the skin of the mercenaries as if it were paper. Tossing those to the side as well, he stepped over the corpses piled atop the stairway, blood flowing down the stairs like a grand waterfall as the splash of his footsteps filled the desolate silence.
A batarian in a thick suit of white armor stood stiffly at the far side of the room, waiting for the demon to arrive, but unprepared for what he met. With his rifle trained at the stairway, he unloaded his bullets into the demon's chest, and grunted with satisfaction as he watched the demon's shield's flare bright blue as they shattered, the bullets punching through the thin armor, but the demon merely smiled his cruel smile, unfeeling of the pain in this mortal vessel.
In a smooth movement, the long rifle lifted off his back and he swung it to face the batarian without even bothering to look down the sights. Before the batarian could comprehend the evil that he looked in the eyes, a searing hole was burned through the middle of his forehead.
"Shepard!" a turian shouted angrily, stepping out of the adjacent room with a large shotgun in his hands.
Perhaps if he had been fighting Shepard, he would have had a chance.
Tossing his rifle to the side, the demon lifted his shotgun off his back—the same shotgun which Shepard had so cherished in life—and pointed it at the turian, firing a shot, and then another, and a third, watching as the man's shields and armor absorbed the harsh recoil of the bullets in his hands. All the while, the turian continued to fire at the demon, trying to stop the bleeding, broken, tattered beast in front of him. A scatter of bullets sliced through his stomach, splitting wide a wound that the medi-gel wouldn't seal, and another slid through his leg as the turian rapidly backed up in panic. But the demon didn't feel pain.
The demon unloaded a final shot into the turian's forehead, splitting his rocky skull open wide as the innards of his head spilled over the room. With a wide grin, the demon stepped atop the skull of his victim, revelling in the crunch of bone and cartilage.
But the demon wasn't finished yet—there was a whole planet filled with futile lives only waiting to be extinguished. Before him stood a vast vault, filled to the brim with massive tube shaped explosives—a massive storage of nuclear warheads. He could detonate them all, bringing the entire planet to it's knees under a hail of acrid smoke and death.
And the demon smiled.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
Tali dashed into the Salu Karah compound, not even bothering to look around to make sure that no agressors were present. Five bodies already lied on the ground outside, each drowning in their own blood, leading to the equally bloody entrance of a nearby building.
"Damnit," Tali said to herself. Every single man lying on the ground was well armed—each one of them could have easily hurt Shepard.
She could only hope that he was still alive.
She ran through the open door of a building, ignoring the bloody fingerprints on the doorframe, and ignoring the dead bodies of two turians lying on the ground. Pushing it all out of her mind, she dashed down the stairs, determined to find Shepard, until she came to a stop at the massive pool of blood on the floor below.
At least seven different corpses littered the floor here—each one horribly disfigured and mutilated from the bullets that had punched through their skin. The entire floor was coated with sticky blood—some red, some blue, all mixing together in a terrible tableau of death. With a grimace, Tali lifted her shotgun off her back and stepped through the blood, trying her best to ignore the squelching sounds it made.
She ran downstairs, gripping tightly onto her shotgun for support as she sighed another victim—a heavily armored batarian with a single hole through his forehead. More foreboding was the trail of blood from the bottom of the stairs leading into the next room—a trail that wasn't there before.
Stepping into the next room, terrified of seeing Shepard's possibly shattered and broken body lying on the floor, she bit her lip and avoided the impulse to vomit as she saw a turian's face squeezed onto the ground, pieces of his skull and his brain spread across the floor. Looking away from the gruesome sight, Tali saw something even worse—Shepard's shotgun, lying on the ground.
"Keelah," Tali said breathlessly, almost dropping her own shotgun as her hands shook. She turned to look in the next room, her shotgun ready in case she encountered the men who took Shepard's life.
"Shepard!" she shouted, as she caught sight of the man who she was searching for—coated from head to toe in blood, and dripping far too quickly for it to be somebody else's blood.
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡
"Shepard!" came the call, jolting the demon from his vicious reveries of destruction and torment. He turned around, catching sight of the quarian who Shepard so cared for.
The demon merely stood still, tightly holding his knife in his right hand as he watched the quarian, blood splashed up her legs, as she stepped forwards, quickly at first, but then more slowly as she saw the demon's black eyes.
"Shepard," the quarian said, firmly but uncertainly.
The demon smiled a toothy grin at the quarian. The sole witness to his own plans of madness.
"You're just in time," the demon said in a voice that visibly put a damper to the quarian's step and seemed to make the blood drain from her face. "The show is just about to begin."
The demon turned around, tapping on a terminal at the back side of the wall.
Five minutes until detonation, an artificial voice said over the intercom.
Five minutes until two hundred tons of nuclear explosives were detonated.
"Shepard!" the quarian said more urgently, the terror in her voice feeding the demon's sadistic desire for suffering. He turned to face her—the terror-stricken quarian looking at Shepard with those baleful, horrible eyes.
Dead, horrible eyes.
Eyes that Shepard had killed.
The demon growled unconsciously, gritting his teeth as he clenched onto the knife at his side more tightly.
"Shepard," Tali said, as she dropped her shotgun on the ground beside her.
Shepard.
Tali took a step forward, slowly at first, as she looked into the demon's eyes.
Shepard.
She was close now—close enough to reach out and touch the demon—no, not the demon.
Shepard.
"No!" the demon suddenly shouted, anger and rage manifesting itself in the cruelest insult possible as he lifted his left hand abruptly, gripping the quarian's throat as he lifted her off the ground, the final sacrifice before this entire facility crumbled to the ground.
With an inhuman strength, he slowly clenched his fist tighter as the demon looked into the quarian's eyes, drowning, dying, being swallowed up by the demon's hatred and rage.
Tali's eyes, brimming with shining, sparkling innocence.
"No!" Shepard shouted, his own eyes suddenly filling with terror as he desperately tried to unclench his hand from Tali's throat—unable to tear his gaze away from Tali's beautiful, innocent eyes as the life was slowly strangled from them.
"Shepard…" Tali said quietly, barely able to squeeze breath through her lips.
Shepard shut his eyes tightly, unable to control his own motions any longer. He couldn't bear to look her in the eyes as he stole the life from her.
And he swung his right hand, the cruel knife flashing out in front of Tali as Shepard's wrist was suddenly split open, his tendons splitting as his fingers suddenly loosened, dropping Tali to the floor in a gasping heap, tears unconsciously flowing from her eyes.
And Shepard fell backwards, his sight filled with inky blackness.