Suroc Temple, Tuchanka

Day 1, 0500

"Am I dead? I'm pretty sure I'm dead..."

"You're not dead, now shut up, you're making my brain hurt!"

The two krogan's mutterings made for a rude awakening for Kyra, as her eyes opened once more, and began to adjust to the gloom.

"Hello?" she called, unable to think of anything better to say.

"Holy crap, she's alive!" one of the two krogan exclaimed – through the half-light, she saw Malice Vaner's red and purple form scrambling over the rubble towards her. In the background, watching on concernedly, was Hei Yui, whose eye appeared to be bleeding.

With a groan, she checked her arms and legs – all intact – and then went for her rifle – missing. Damn. Her brain was replaying images of the weapon flying out of her hands and bouncing through the debris – whether the memories were real or fabricated didn't matter, the rifle was gone. She checked for her pistol – damn, that was gone too...

"Are you alright, human?" Vaner muttered, as he reached her. He looked remarkably unhurt, still clutching a Mattock rifle.

"I'm fine..." she mumbled, sitting up and scattering rubble as she did. "Nothing's broken, I don't think... I've lost my weapons, though."

"Hang on," Yui grunted. Kyra's stomach dropped as she spotted two blue-armoured bodies next to him. The nearest had a clearly broken neck – Yui reached over, plucked a pistol from the dead krogan's waist, and tossed it to Kyra. "Use that."

She caught it deftly, and turned it over in her hands – it was a rather battered but functional Predator pistol. It would do.

"What happened?" she asked, finally.

"Something tore through the mausoleum. I don't how many of the others made it out..."

They lapsed into silence, and Kyra took a look at their surroundings. It was a low corridor, almost pitch-black and littered by rubble and dust. To her left was a great pile of debris, to her right, the corridor stretched on into darkness.

"We should move," Kyra sighed. "No sense in just hanging around waiting to die..."

"Shame," Yui scowled – or at least, she thought he was scowling, with her limited vision. "Sitting here and rotting sounds good."

"What the hell's wrong with you?" Vaner interjected in frustration. "You've been moping ever since we got here. Pull yourself together!"

"Pull myself together?" the other krogan replied, angrily. "Vaner, this is our home. It's infested with husks, we're rotting in an old tomb, and there aren't enough soldiers left on the planet to keep our people safe – not after we sent them all to save the turians!"

The krogan was panting heavily as he finished, and Kyra's eyes were drawn to his own fierce bulbs. They were glaring through the darkness, despite the livid gash beneath the right one, which was trickling blood down the side of his face.

"Our people have been screwed for centuries," Vaner muttered, stepping over the rubble towards Yui. "But we've got a future now. Our children – we can have children! – should know we stood among the brave..."

After a moment's pause, Yui let out a reluctant sigh, leant to one side, and punched the second corpse hard in the leg. To Kyra's great surprise, the 'corpse' rolled over, moaning. Suroc Jarr's face stared up at her, as the big chief clutched his brow.

"Come on," Yui growled, impatiently. Every trace of the friendliness he had exhibited before the mission was gone – he was glaring at Jarr with a hateful expression... "We're moving. Get up."

"Are you ordering me about, clanless?" the Suroc leader snapped, angrily.

"I'm not clanless – and yes, I bloody well am ordering you. Get up and move, or we'll leave you to the husks."

Jarr snarled under his breath, but got up nonetheless, grabbing his rifle. Yui was already setting off up the corridor, and Kyra found herself and Vaner walking behind him, with Jarr pacing ahead of them, a little way back from Yui.

After a few minutes, the corridor widened into a respectable path, and the tunnel, which had forced the three krogan to stoop low as they ran, gave way to a broader corridor, with cleaner walls and a high-vaulted ceiling. More striking, to Kyra, were the rows upon rows of stone sarcophagi lining the side of the path. Each one, she knew, held a krogan corpse. Some were blank, mere stone oblongs – others sat before daubs, like the 'cave paintings' in the upper mausoleum. As she sprinted past, she caught mere glimpses, and could only guess that they illustrated the fallen krogan's life, or perhaps his death...

"Something up ahead!" Yui roared, from the head of the pack.

Sure enough, as she peered into the gloom, Kyra could make out another widening in the path, and the lance of Yui's flashlight delved into what seemed to be a large chamber beyond.

They picked up their pace, and within a minute or so, they were emerging into an even larger room than the one they had just passed through. The ceiling was a great domed affair, seemingly miles above them, and the chamber housed a crossroads of sorts, where four stone pathways like the one they were on converged, at a central, circular platform. Kyra's stomach dropped as she glanced to the side and saw, not the rows of eerie sarcophagi, but a sheer drop into what looked like never-ending darkness.

In the centre of the platform was a gargantuan pillar of steel, reaching all the way up to the vaulted ceiling. The metal structure seemed typically krogan, somehow. It didn't look pretty, made of red-brown steel, and several of the supports looked worn and rusted, but if this thing had lasted for thousands of years, like the temple, then it must have at least been well-built.

"What is this thing?" she called, eyeing up the great steel oddity in the centre – a square framework of steel bars, with a huge iron cylinder suspended inside by metal cable.

"It's a maw hammer," Suroc Jarr muttered back. "Now we're going to have some fun..."