[Note from the University: The sole copies of the following audio log transcripts are housed in the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections and are only accessible by approved university staff and historians. Public dissemination of these records has been discouraged by law under Public Order 119a.09 for the purposes of avoiding the cultivation of anarchic ideals.]
VOICE OVER
Can't remember the last time I dreamt. The exact date of which I dreamt, actually. I remember what I dreamed of that last time, if that matters. Anything before that… it's a blank. Like there was a point in time where life proceeded carelessly on, without my understanding. Very strange, to recall the dream but not the time when the dream took place. Why don't I dream anymore? There was no sole event that led to this. Just one day… the dreams stopped. Very much like the unknowable moment when children become adults. No defining event to mark the occasion. Anticlimactic, in that sense.
[A beat.]
VOICE OVER (cont'd.)
But my last dream. It was nothing prescient. Nothing about it shaped my course set in life. Yet it held with me year after year. I could never forget it. It was of a cabin in the woods. In a forest with leafless trees. Snow had settled on the ground in one unbroken sheet; flurries were still adrift in the air. The dead branches of the trees had been dusted with veins of white. The moon was out and the sky was blood red on the horizon, but the color of that sky darkened and purpled the closer one looked to the zenith. The woods reminded me of my youth—the sort of area I grew up in. But… back to the dream. No one else was in the dream. I could see everything as it took place from my perspective. My… imagined perspective.
[Another beat.]
VOICE OVER (cont'd.)
The forest was cold but I was not bothered. Don't know if I was correctly clothed or not. The dream always started with me outside, you see. I was moving towards this cabin, towards its door, almost as if I knew the place well. There was a surety of my actions. The woods were so quiet I could hear every crackle as my shoes drummed and scattered divots of snow in my wake. I had no hunger in my belly. No thirst in my throat. Just a vague tiredness about me. As though I was only seeking a bed to rest my head. Or merely a chair to rest my aching bones. I reached the door to the cabin—my cabin—and opened it. I found only blackness awaiting me. But there was no hesitation—I entered right away. I was calm. I was relieved. It was… home.
[Long pause.]
VOICE OVER (cont'd.)
I think about that dream every night. It was only until recently did I realize why it stayed with me all this time. For in the dream, not once was the pursuit of something driving my actions, for I knew I had everything I ever wanted. I was merely coming back home, returning to fix the place up, to have it settled in preparation for an arrival. A visitor, perhaps. But every time, I always woke before I could find out who that visitor was going to be. All I knew is that they were in that snow-filled forest just behind me and, at some point, we would find each other.
Terminal Threnody
In orbit over Eden Prime
It felt as if Roahn had breathed in thick metal shavings that cascaded and scraped against one another as they infested her lungs. Those shavings then seemed to ignite and glow fire-red, smoking the insides of her organs and filling her breath with a pale flame. At the same time, it also felt as if a hangerband of solid titanium was fastened around the widest part of her skull and a silver key was slowly cranking a mechanism, causing it to continually tighten, forcing pain to erupt in her head. White spots flared in her vision, which she rapidly blinked away. Her triple-heartbeat fluttered agonizingly in her chest, as if it was shying away from her enflamed lungs, fearful of also getting burned.
Tiny speckles of dust flickered golden amidst the wan light that furrowed up from below the walkway of the antechamber. Like glistening stars, they floated amicably through the dismal shafts—the only detectable movement that Roahn could discern in this place. The gleam from Eden Prime radiated upward, throwing crossed shadows upon the walls. The ceiling was outstretched towards wild space, open and inviting, yet cold and unforgiving.
One last, careful breath.
Roahn ignored the soft incandescence that the Monolith was ebbing just to her right—the demonic device was giving off a soft thrum and a warbling gleam of crimson that seemed to only have an effect within a three-meter radius. She stepped forward, hands empty at her sides, her eyes slowly blinking behind the translucent shield that fogged her features to everyone else, yet for the person that now stood before her, such a covering would undoubtedly be rendered immaterial to them.
Aleph also took a step forward, as if he was intent on mimicking the quarian's every action. Like Roahn, he also held no visible weapon, keeping himself in a state of vulnerability as he helped to close the gap until the two of them were scant meters away.
"I'm not looking at another copy, am I?" Roahn spoke, her voice quiet but the acoustics of the room projected the sound across every surface, the effect deep and uncanny. Hearing herself was almost frightening, to the point where it nearly gave the quarian pause. "It's just you and me. No decoys. No illusions."
The chromed helmet lightly shook back and forth, an eerie amber glow faintly warping off the curve of his covering. "The time for deceit ended long ago. I got what I wanted out of my facsimile. There would be no point in continuing to extend the usage of such an artifice."
Roahn did her best to keep her scowl tampered down. Don't believe a word he says, her inner voice warned. As if she needed convincing—this was the man who had obliterated millions seemingly without a single care, after all. Someone that sadistic was capable of anything.
"You've been waiting for me this whole time."
"Only you. There was no other possibility."
The quarian breathed from her nose. "All for what? To burn everything down while you reign over the ashes as its new emperor?"
Aleph seemed to wilt—there was a slight slump of his shoulders. Was he disappointed? "An emperor of a wasteland is not an emperor at all. To rule is not my destiny."
"Then what is?" Roahn growled.
The pristine helmet tilted, as though the answer was obvious. "To create."
There was quite the pregnant pause that seemed to manifest its own gravity between the two.
It was all Roahn could keep from snorting out loud. "You really think I'd believe that? After all this?"
"A masterpiece is not defined by broad strokes upon a canvas," Aleph clarified, disregarding the quarian's crass attitude. "It requires precision. Deftness. Even the smallest of marks can bring about the greatest of changes. It has taken me this long to craft a well of primordial and untapped energy. The energy arising from the sheer potential of future acts. Its birth, while imminent, needed precise manipulation in order for its shape to emerge."
Now this truly was crap, Roahn thought, even by Aleph's standards. A thousand different ways to curse the being sliced through her mind as though they had all arrived on the same high-speed shuttle. To callously consider the sheer loss of life—the people on the Citadel all dropping at once, all those men and women pointlessly dying on the fields of Rema, the prisoners who starved to death in the camps in the outer colonies—and parse them down into a metaphor about artistry nearly sent Roahn's blood pressure through the roof. It was one thing to stare at a mass murderer and stew in the presence of pure evil. It was another to intrinsically know that there was no remorse locked behind those sightless eyes.
She could only shake her head in disgust. "Perhaps you're not the one who understands. You're done, Aleph. It's over. Your forces have been destroyed, as has your Reaper. There's no one left to carry out your orders. No one to listen to your bullshit anymore. You have nothing."
Aleph merely spread his hands, unfazed. "Nothing?" He then gave an impish gesture towards the proto-Monolith that was merrily humming away. "I only had nothing at the very beginning. I have yet to be stripped of all that I have accomplished. The Tranquility originated from only an idea—I can still give that idea tangibility. After all, I still possess a token of my efforts, as you see before you."
"Yes," Roahn's eyes narrowed as she tilted her head towards the proto-Monolith, "I probably should have known that you'd resort to an old trick. Promote the imitation but hide the genuine article. You gave Huston a fake Monolith to buy his loyalty, didn't you?"
"On the contrary, Roahn'Shepard, you never laid eyes on the true Monolith before today." Aleph then slowly walked to the intoning object, which buzzed quietly with its own private electronic chant. Delicately, he trailed an armored hand down its side, producing a high-pitched scraping noise. "What you saw on the Morningtide and the Normandy was merely a networking device. A child router that received the specific traffic from its parent. The node where the signal always originated from stands before you now." He tapped the Monolith, helmet pointed at Roahn all the while as if he expected to be bombarded by questions. "A holdover habit, you see. Never rely on one lynchpin to ensure the completion of your task—a ruler requires an arsenal, not a single sword."
Roahn's voice did not betray her wavering spirit. Electricity seemed to tug upon her nerves, chattering upon every vertebra. "Won't matter. You're not going to use it ever again. One chance to—"
"—surrender?" Aleph's tone inflected upward, knowing what this all meant. "I appreciate the determination, but we both know that this can only end one way. The demise of my forces notwithstanding, I have no inclination to give in. Why would I stop now, when the work remains unfinished? Could you imagine, Roahn'Shepard, walking away when we are so close to achieving an immortalization of our efforts? No—this is where our paths cross. This is our own culmination."
The sheer arrogance that radiated from the cyborg was enough for Roahn to clench a fist—the haptic feedback caused her omni-shield to sprout from her forearm, creating a hexagonal plate of vivid firelight brimming before her eyes.
He was never going to give in, she fatefully knew. Perhaps it had been foolish of her to even try, but the tiniest part of her hoped to avoid what was to come. Yet it would all be for naught—that tiny spark had been firmly stamped out by a mental heel.
"If you think that you're going to be remembered so fondly," she growled, her right hand slowly reaching towards her hip, "you're sorely mistaken."
"If only your decisiveness could be reflected in others."
The submachine gun found its way into Roahn's hand and was lifted out of its holster before Roahn could even fully surmise what she was doing. The weapon had a familiar weight that pulled her arm down, fighting against the natural direction her muscles had yanked her limb in. She felt that there should have been some buildup to this moment, like some amalgamation of all her past choices furrowing in to inhabit her body in some leaden act of finality.
But there was none of that. She felt light, uninhibited. Like a new medium of some crystalline fluid had been created just to have her occupy it. She was now in the fever dream that was adrenal and raw.
The weapon blazed with the fury of world-enders, kicking back comfortably in Roahn's palm. Radiation-scatter flared from the muzzle of the submachine gun as automatic bursts chugged from the bore. Aleph bent his knees, initiating a combat stance, but did not jump out of the way of the bullets. A transparent barrier that embraced him like a blanket chirped and flashed with each direct hit, producing liquid-like ripples splashing across the face.
To her worry, Roahn's HUD was showing that she had not even drained Aleph's shields by even a solid block. In the split second she had looked away, the cyborg had reached down to his armored hip, matte glove brushing against a pristine combat suit, and pushed aside part of his custom-made cloak to reveal the silver grip of a heavy pistol. Aleph whipped the handgun up—a fluid motion, no theatrics like twirling the gun upon a finger—and quickly fired a series of shots after taking less than half a second to aim.
Roahn had angled her omni-shield just in time—the heavy rounds smashed across the face of the shield, creating a cascading shockburst of electric sparks and sour smoke. The impact from each bullet—which Roahn recognized as explosive HV rounds—whipcracked through her prosthesis, the force nearly jolting her back a step. If she had brandished her shield on her other arm, her wrist would probably have shattered from the sheer power of the bullets.
She rolled and the ground erupted from where she had been standing as Aleph's bullets gouged the steel surface. The quarian entered into a kneeling position and gave a flick of her wrist. A tech burst surged from her palm, a glowing jellyfish draped in neon fire, and hit Aleph upon his arm. The cyborg whipped back, shaking his affected limb—white bolts were angrily wrapping around his arm where the burst had hit. But, to Roahn's dismay, Aleph's shields had only diminished by a quarter.
Her head was throbbing again. Everything was moving in slow-motion.
Roahn forced herself to take a breath. Fill your lungs. Just breathe. As though her father was whispering in her ear.
Eyes narrowing into needle-shapes, Roahn belted forward, as silent as a winter fox, firing as she went. Aleph remained where he was, aiming his pistol one-handed. Roahn used her shield to block half of the rounds he sent her way, while she ducked, flipped, and performed complex twirls to evade the other half.
She sent as many tech bursts in Aleph's direction as fast as her combat software could charge, but her foe just shrugged them off. She then sicced Chatika upon him—he merely dismantled the drone with a well-placed pistol shot. In desperation, she tried a series of combat hacks to try and override whatever open firmware ports Aleph might have forgotten to secure, but the automated firewalls he had constructed just kicked her out with every attempt before she could even establish a digital foothold.
An alarm started to go off in Roahn's helmet after she absorbed one last shot from Aleph—her omni-shield was in danger of shattering completely. Her tactical mind then issued her to seek cover. But where? There was nothing else on this platform that could break her line of sight to Aleph.
Except one thing.
Roahn bolted behind the Monolith and pressed her back to the device. She kept an eye on her motion-tracker, looking to ascertain which direction Aleph would try to surprise her from. But, the lone contact on her tac-map stayed where it was. She eyed the icon with trepidation, refusing to relax by even a micron after her omni-shield had been restored to full energy (a moment in which Aleph's own shields had regenerated completely as well).
This was not going to work, she realized. She was never going to beat Aleph with a gun. There would be no chance for her to conclude all of this from a distance. He was just too well-equipped, too well-protected. With a growing dread, Roahn had made peace with the fact that she would have to establish a relationship with the fatal danger that was more up close and personal than she would have liked. But what choice did she truly have?
On aching legs, Roahn disengaged away from the Monolith and turned to face Aleph, who was still standing in the same place where she had seen him last, not having bothered to utilize any cover of his own. Roahn's submachine gun was out and aimed squarely at the man within a taut fist. Aleph's pistol, however, was held with a limp hand, pointed towards the ground. Casual indifference, perhaps, or was it some sadistic chivalry?
Or could it be that he also understood what a victory would require of him?
They stood like that for a moment, so still they could have been figures in a painting. The quarian with her gun pointed towards the specter of the galaxy. The suited woman, clad in white, positioned in a trained posture, angling in the direction of a stalwart and imposing subjugator who bore the reflective helm of a chrome teardrop.
Then, in the next moment, the shield at Roahn's arm winked off in a series of hexagonal stutters. She then straightened and lowered her arm, the one that held the submachine gun. Staring at Aleph all the while, she whipped her arm to the side, the weapon leaving her hand as it broke out in a graceful arc, only to clatter to the ground a second later. Her hands empty, her fingers were now free to curl into tight fists. The quarian's chest trembled imperceptibly, but the steel in her eyes never softened.
Aleph raised his chin, a gesture of intrigue. He also tilted his wrist for a short moment, as if he was longingly considering the pistol he gripped, before he cast aside his weapon as well.
Roahn studied her own appearance in the reflection within Aleph's helmet. She kept on staring as her omni-sword ignited upon her wrist, casting a savage red-orange line to extrude along her arm. Within the domed speculum, it looked like the quarian was holding a beam of superheated metal, glowing so hot that its core was almost a pure white.
A new glow of the same deadly hue soon brimmed to life in the corner of Aleph's helmet, nearly washing out Roahn's image. The cyborg lifted an arm and the massive blade, nearly a meter long, traveling with the motion, trembled in its cosmic formation, a wordless salute. The two warriors then independently swept their own swords, both pointing downwards, to lock the first stance of their combat forms into place.
Hunched forward like a sprinter, arms behind her back, Roahn glared up at Aleph with a wildcat ferocity, her blade angled down and behind her in preparation for the launch—the stance that embodied the wind itself.
Upright and unmoving, Aleph considered Roahn with a respectful aura, his own weapon displayed to the side like he was a matador readying for a charging bull. A stance of metal, winter-cold and permanent.
Roahn had to put it all aside. All of it. Her maimed arm. Her father's death. Skye's corruption. Each and every wound, no matter how significant or insignificant they might be, had to vanish or else she would be lost.
Everything that would ever matter to her—to everyone—all depended on her being focused. No distractions. The entire plan hinged on her fears being buried too far down for them to resurface.
If they washed back up, it would all be undone. Aleph would kill her and this grim age would continue.
The opponents dared not move a muscle as they sized each other up. They already knew the layout of the arena, the obstacles present (or lack thereof), and each other's weaknesses. Aleph waited, his entire body still, not wanting to make the first move. But Roahn would deny him that—for she defiantly kept herself situated in her coiled position, feeling nothing but a chilling breath slither through her lungs.
Next to them, the Monolith began to develop an unnatural tremble. Spacetime seemed to stir around the object as a distinct unfocusing of detail began to emerge.
Aleph, finally having grown impatient, broke the stillness of the scene first. He stepped forward calmly, a bitter fire from his blade trailing in his wake, as he sought to meet his weapon with Roahn's. The quarian counted to three before she broke into a swift dash, as silent as a ghost, heart thundering in her chest. But before they could clash, the Monolith gave a dim pulse and a low rumble like a loudspeaker flaring to life blipped throughout the room. Fragments of orange energy then seemed to crack apart the interior of the ship, forming translucent panes like shattered pieces of a window. The panes then quickly sucked back towards the Monolith, forming a series of golden rings which then blasted out in all directions. Roahn grunted as the loops smashed against her, causing aurelian simmers to wisp from her body as though as she had just burst through a bramble of embered branches, but there was no pain from the repeated impacts.
What the hell is he doing?! Roahn thought, a momentary panic coursing through her as the ragged circles began to swirl around the two in sequence, forming an infinitely long tunnel that shrouded the superstructure's interior completely. Aleph was using the Monolith… again!
Yet even as the device managed to brim with an exotic power, Roahn's charge had not been interrupted. Nor had Aleph's slow assault. The two combatants had still been moving towards each other, even as the energy from the Monolith held them captive. And as soon as their swords met with a mighty sizzle, the amber glow died down, replaced by a surge of sunlight followed by an explosion of color.
Roahn's eyes opened wider.
A feeling of cold enveloped her feet around her ankles. A gurgling sound then came to her ears next. Water. The ground underfoot was soft and silty. Patchy rays of light punched through holes in an irregular cloud cover.
They now stood in a flooded atoll, with tall and broken limestone cliffs rising up dramatically on one side while an open ocean roared just behind her. Roahn had no time to admire the new scenery just yet, as she slashed at Aleph in earnest, sparks from their colliding weapons raining down like lava bombs all around them. They scuffled along a shoreless plain, their boots kicking up water in shredded white bursts of film, swords continuing to clash all the while, creating lightning flares to mingle with the same flashes that echoed off in the pristine distance of broiling waves underneath dark anvils of cumulonimbus clouds. To Roahn's left, she could peer down the irregular sandbar as far as the eye could see, where the green-tufted cliffs rose and shattered along the horizon, cradling the soft glinted steel of the very foreign-looking structure that peeked out like a heart surrounded by a pale tree of ribs.
Keelah, Roahn thought. It's Virmire.
Whatever wonderous questions that ran through her head that tried to scrape away a reason for this unforeseen circumstance, Roahn had to push it all down again, for Aleph was upon her.
The water hardly came higher to mid-calf and produced clear splashes between the warriors from how quickly they were moving. It barely rippled upon her that, when she first came here as a girl, she remembered standing up to her waist in this very sea. How she had grown. Roahn snarled to herself and launched herself to the side, evading a downward chop from the cyborg, whose sword carved into the surf and unleashed an explosive burst of steam. Aleph half-turned, slowed from the water. Smoke seemingly brimming from her insides, Roahn began a rain of red-streaked cuts aimed at peeling what was left of Aleph's spine from his body. Aleph deflected those blows effortlessly, and while he was doing that, he reached out and connected to the ground with a burst of biotics. A pillar of sand and water suddenly burst up to meet Roahn and the quarian spun away again, narrowly avoiding being skewered by the manifested spear, her visor now streaked with seawater.
Dizzy with anger, Roahn nearly rebounded from the evasion to jump back into the fray, but she calmed herself at the last minute. He wants you to get mad. Don't humor him.
Indeed, for Aleph seemed keen for Roahn to drive the pace of the fight. When he was left unanswered, he gave a tiny noise. Too soft to be a grunt, but it was certainly a sound of frustration. Roahn dared to hope that she was throwing this bosh'tet off guard, but burned that notion away, too.
His blade momentarily dipped into the ocean, a deliberate action this time, which caused steam to billow in a solid white column. Aleph stepped through the newly borne fog, his armor glistening and slippery. "Far less predictable than the last time," he said.
The quarian merely moved her blade upward, as if she was intent on carving the sky open. "Not quite what you expected?"
"No. Everything that I had hoped."
As soon as Aleph got into range, he drove a slash at Roahn's blade while he made to pivot on a heel. Roahn sidestepped that blow and leaped upon a nearby sand mound that broke from the water and simultaneously aimed a tech burst next to Aleph's submerged feet. The monstrosity gave a quick bark of surprise as he suddenly found himself electrocuted by several hundred volts, but the effect passed far too soon for it to completely debilitate him, and Aleph rapidly steadied himself on his feet, his helmet hiding a smoking glare in her direction.
She refused to be intimidated by him, but it was not easy. A smirk dared to float across her lips.
"Wouldn't want to disappoint you," she hissed sarcastically.
"That would be unfortunate, indeed."
He strode towards the sandbar to meet her and they became embroiled once more. In the shadow of the geth facility, as thunder rolled across the sea, with the air becoming saddled with the foam of the waves against sharpened rocks, the quarian and the machine both equally struck and parried. Their boots scuffed tattoos into the sand. Aleph's ripostes held dark power behind them to a degree that they almost threw Roahn off balance, her timing also affected. The wind howled around them yet invariably died, creating an aura of silence that allowed the minute grunts and huffs from the efforts of the warriors to break through the scathing clash of their swords, sparks dribbling down to melt the sand into pebbles of glass between them.
Roahn gave a thrust toward her enemy, but Aleph leaned into the blow and deflected her blade with a rising parry. Instead of embedding into his gut, their swords were now locked inches from each other's throats, a golden hue seeping where the constructs of energy were scraping against one another.
"You fail to envision the larger picture, Roahn'Shepard."
"We've got time," the quarian growled through gritted teeth. "Enlighten me."
"If you kill me," Aleph said plainly, "you will only kill a man. In that man's absence, something far more powerful will emerge."
Enough of this crap! Roahn's head reverberated with her silent roar. She twisted her body and disengaged from the lock, filling the space where her chest had been with the red lightning of her blade that Aleph barely had enough time to block. Roahn send a furious chop that slid off of the cyborg's defensive matrix. The next almost cut into his kneecap. The third was about to spear straight into his collarbone that Aleph had no choice but to step back, throwing up a quick slash-block to knock Roahn's blade aside.
As Aleph leaped away to reform his strategy, the familiar shatterpanes of the disintegrating reality had returned. Roahn looked up at the quickly uncoupling sky and raised her blade to point savagely towards her tormentor.
"Stop this!" she cried, but her words were lost in the resulting torrent of energy that whisked around her. Virmire cracked in half and sent the oceans to be draining into bottomless chasms to extinguish the metallic core below. That sensation of something slamming through her body returned, her breath nearly being driven from her lungs.
And yet, Roahn never lost the sensation of her boots leaving solid ground. For when she took a step next, the entire illusion dissipated and she was suddenly thrust into an environment choked by humidity, heat, and a sky the color of toffee. She stepped out into the razor labyrinthian of an ancient city, the buildings surrounding her all made of the same bronze metal that incredibly retained their luster beneath the vines that attempted to choke out their inner light. The ground was coated with the same vines, nearly tripping her several times, and dead leaves. An iron taste filtered through her mask, embedding thickly into her tongue and she gagged, the sensation vivid.
Bones of dead trees rose throughout the wasteland of the ruined city of Ilos. Taut glints from the hazing sun speared through the gaps in the buildings in the shape of cat eyes. Distant towers of flame paled and deepened like the thudding beat of blood being spilled into the clouded heavens.
There was a hissing sound and Roahn leaped back, scantly evading a surge from a red blade. Aleph appeared from a dark corridor; his armor was illuminated a deep shade of ruby from his weapon. Roahn quickly jumped back onto the offensive and came at the cyborg, ferocious in her determination. He backed up until he found a ramp that led to an overlook of the city—the quarian pursued. Their swords were everywhere, creating an electric grid upon which nothing could penetrate.
Aleph reached the top of the stars and slashed a decorative lighting vane in half—he used a surge of biotics to hurl the now-severed piece of metal towards Roahn like a javelin. The quarian ducked and the spear passed over her head and hit the ground with the deep-throated bang very similar to a shotgun report.
Roahn straightened, wary of what attacks Aleph would try next. The sun was bouncing off the reflective panels of the buildings, creating a kaleidoscope of fractured firelight around them.
As Roahn continued to ascend the ramp, Aleph angled his sword down and gave a quick scrape upon a carpet of vines that lined the floor. Instantly, the decaying vegetation caught fire. The cyborg gave another swipe of his arm and a whole curtain of vines—nearly four stories high—ripped off the side of the closest spire and furled its way down.
Right towards Roahn.
But the quarian was in motion almost immediately. She bent into a crouch and raised her arm, exchanging her sword for her shield. The burning vegetation fell upon her like a deflating tent, sending out a spray of smoldering leaves and delicate ash flakes. But when the flames had hit Roahn's omni-shield they had sloughed off it like she had merely deployed an umbrella against a sudden cloudburst. She now rose from the ragged circle of paling embers, her eyes almost taking on a red coalglint within her visor. She then walked forward, crisping vines leaving black sootstreaks upon her shinguards.
"I've clawed my way out of hell to find you," she whispered, her sword flashing back upon her arm. "I've walked through walls of water, floated through cold nothingness, and charged through the deadliest of fires to be here. Look your destroyer in the eye, Aleph, and tell me who else you would imagine in my place."
The shadow considered for an unblinking moment.
"No one."
The air seemed to shudder and Roahn had now recognized the telltale signs of the illusion collapsing all around her. Another wave of energy peppered her skin, light lit up her face, and soon she was tumbling away again, the hot and exotic confines of Ilos all a memory behind her.
She felt a ledge approaching through the wormhole and instinctively leaped—her feet met a moonblanched powder and she skidded below a thin atmosphere liberally peppered with stars. Her temperature sensors dropped heavily and the beads of moisture that had accumulated upon her suit from the previous humid planet now froze into clear beads, causing a crackling sound to emit whenever she moved her body. Dust and weightless particulates pirouetted around her, surrounding the quarian in the skeleton of a drift.
Roahn turned in place, already feeling a chill nip at her flesh. She seemed attuned to the direction of where to look. She strode across sun-scarred rock, the clatter of stones muted through the poison atmosphere of the world, the long night dousing the desolation with thick tendrils of blackness.
Aleph was waiting for her at the far end of the low canyon. The ground and walls of the world had been impacted with shards of metal like they were the bones of some celestial ancient that had made this their final resting place. The rock around the pieces of metal had been rounded away, almost taking on a form similar to putty. Like the pieces of metal had been hot beyond belief when they had settled upon this planet, melting the rock in the process.
Behind Aleph, a rather intact portion of what remained of a ship's hull sat plaintively over the fray. Roahn could easily read out the word "Normandy" even at this distance. Just to the side of the cyborg, a monument stood as proudly and as importantly as the Monolith had in the form of an alloyed sweep of a ship launching away, punctuated as a golden mote in the midst of the monochrome gravesite.
"Sins of the father," Aleph mused amidst the wreckage of the SR-1. "How they resonate."
Mere mention of her father was enough for Roahn to forget herself. She just couldn't wait anymore. The quarian hurled herself at Aleph, her blade out and prepared to embark in bitter battle once more, her feet gliding over the unweathered and sharp sand, body adrift by the low gravity.
Aleph made a whirling parry before he jumped behind the monument. Before Roahn could do anything, Aleph swiped his sword parallel to the ground and a molten line blazed to life upon the bisected statue. A few golden drops—liquefied metal shavings—tumbled to the ground in slow-motion. Aleph then embarked into a ferocious kick as he lifted his boot and impacted it squarely upon the cleft monument, knocking the topmost portion clear of its base. Tumbling square towards its intended target.
The mutilated upper half then slammed into Roahn and drove her to the ground, nearly crushing her. Roahn screamed as she lay there, pinned and half-mad. Her shoulder was feeling swollen—nothing had broken, but it definitely seemed like she had cracked some bones.
She could hear the crunch of Aleph's feet as he slowly walked toward her. The sideways writing of the word "Normandy" glazed in and out of focus from where she lay.
Don't let him toy with you!
Roahn now snarled defiantly, nearly approaching a rabid state. She twisted her arm and her wrist was suddenly able to move. She flexed her limb upward and the red-hot point cut through the metal statue like she had just carved into butter. In the next second, the pieces of the statue that held her had fallen away and she was free.
Her mind crackled with the approaching torrent of the cycling energy wave. This time, Roahn wholeheartedly embraced the sensation, a primal urge to flee now intruding into her deepest thoughts. She dove towards the locus of the disturbance and was soon whisked away once more. Enduring the gut-churning ride of falling endlessly through the looped sectors of the cosmos, Roahn felt a tug upon her lower body, righting herself in preparation for the inevitable landing.
Her boots hit a metal platform and she rolled, simultaneously evading a low cut that Aleph had already hurled in her direction. He was already here?! How?! The sinister automaton stumbled as he had overextended his blow while Roahn leapt to her feet, already moving to stab at his back but Aleph chopped her sword away contemptuously, almost as if he was irritated this had gone on for so long.
They now stood upon a series of interconnected hexagonal platforms, trapped within a series of organic tunnels that had been surfaced with a tight weaving of what looked like cilia in the lungs. Thick tubes pumped a fluid of some sort as they dangled from their moorings overhead, snaking about the ceilings to feed into a central chamber off in the distance. Clouds of what looked appeared to be polluted haze choked the darkened corners of the facility and shafts of artificial light were occasionally speared by blue bolts of static electricity that trickled between the piping.
White and blue flashes crashing hues of incandescence upon her, Roahn stood in the center of the platform, weapon crackling in its existence, fighting to remain calm as Aleph stalked her as he made a slow circuit, his stance predatory and patient.
"It can all end at a moment of your choosing, Roahn'Shepard," Aleph hissed, allowing himself to sound more bothered than usual. "I am not the only way out for you."
The quarian regarded Aleph with an impregnable calm that managed to surprise even herself. The groans that lingered throughout the Collector base were low and mechanical, accompanied by the electronic whining seeping through the ovular portals.
"Bargaining, are we?"
Aleph gave a derisive snort. "Hardly. Yet you seem to think I have bestowed myself the role of your captor." He lifted his sword into a balanced guard. "An incorrect assumption. I am your salvation."
He did not attack, but simply raised his free hand as if he was in service to some incorporeal overlord. Dark tendrils squirmed from his palm—two seconds later three hexagonal platforms, similar to the ones they were standing upon, rose from the catacomb-like structure underneath them. They tumbled over one another slowly while suspended in midair, trapped in the vice of the puppetmaster.
Aleph tilted his head in amusement. Then he hurled his arm forward and the huge platforms immediately plunged in the direction of the quarian.
"Oh shit," Roahn had time to say before she found the wherewithal to leap out of the way.
One of the pulpits smashed straight into the spot that Roahn had only occupied only seconds before and completely ripped the stationary platform out of its riggings to be hurled the fatal distance to the ground below. Aleph continued to send a volley of the hexagonal podiums her way, using them as battering rams, as hammers. The platforms crashed and crushed against one another, sending streams of ripped metal and tubing to spray sparks in the air. Through the hailstorm, Roahn jumped from platform to platform, each time narrowly avoiding being catapulted into the abyss as the ground below her tilted and pitched in her wake.
Inexorably, Roahn found herself face-to-face with the darkness once again. She reignited her sword, hoping to engage, but Aleph simply walked off the ledge of the suspended platform to gracefully fall down upon another that had been passing by underneath. His cloak momentarily spread like the wings of a bat, making him seem so much larger than he already was.
"We are monsters of our own creation," Aleph said, his voice loud enough to even whisper and it would still resonate. "But where you consider the distinction to be a description made out of contempt, I find the comparison to be judicious. For many people of vision had been called monsters before. Perhaps it's only fair that we play our parts to the letter."
To emphasize his point, the entire facility began to shake in deathly throes. Roahn's platform, suspended in the air, was unaffected, but she splayed her stance anyway as she watched the walls around her shake and rumble. Dozens of dust streams made beige stalactites from the ceiling and a thick groan echoed throughout the chamber.
And then, a metallic limb, thick as the width of two skycars, rose up and out from the gloom below and powerfully embedded itself into the wall. Another clawed hand did the same thing, except it grabbed onto the other side of the chamber.
The arms then lifted up a massive torso, which skeletally glimmered a blue-black sheen the color of a polluted ocean. It had an anthropoidal shape, its contours mimicking the chassis of what could have been an asari, human, perhaps even a quarian. But the sinister cutting grin that exuded from the machine's skull-like face had been twisted in the visage of the organic matter that pumped through the orange secretion tubes that looped and congregated near a circular core of churning plasma. All too human. Three searing eyes—two of them sharing a socket—blazed their own infantile hellfire upon the duo, a low throbbing bellow escaping what constituted as its mouth.
The proto-Reaper's roar nearly shook Roahn's platform out of the air. She wobbled, nearly falling down, but steadied herself. A shadow fell over her and Roahn looked up to see the proto-Reaper surging a titanic limb down upon her.
There was no time to think. She leapt off the platform—the proto-Reaper's arm cracked the dais in half just behind her. She landed with a thud upon the next floating terrace below her. A sharp pain shot through her ankle, blindingly hot for just a second. Damn it! She had landed wrong. Her ankle was not broken, fortunately, just sprained. Still, it was already throbbing something fierce. More than likely that she was sporting a terrific bruise just under her boot.
Aleph just so happened to be on the platform that she had jumped down to. He turned upon hearing the quarian alight on his level. With a resigned noise, he strode forward to meet the limping woman. But Roahn was still as mobile as ever and she blocked Aleph's welcoming strike with a two-handed parry—she had to hold upon her wrist for dear life as a slurry of sparks splashed against her helmet. For a brief second, the scraping light was so great that she had to close her eyes.
With an eerie noise of metal, the two wrenched apart and waited a beat before returning to the fray. The platform was now making an orbit around the proto-Reaper as the monstruous construct wailed and uselessly swiped at the distraction before it. There was no showmanship to the swordplay. Just brutal, chopping motions. Their weapons flashed. The occasional kick was traded. Aleph threw a punch here and there. Roahn skidded upon the ground at times, reflecting and making quick incisions with her blade as she executed a series of surgical strikes upon Aleph—none which landed past his sword.
The armored creature lunged forward, stabbing once, twice, but Roahn skirted away just in time and quickly rebounded into a wide arc in retaliation. There was a quick sound of metal sizzling. Aleph staggered back for a moment before looking down. A thin glowing line had been etched across his chest. The blade had not penetrated, but it had made contact.
Roahn was too tired to even break out a taunt. She was nearly gasping for air at this point. It felt as if she had just run a marathon and was on the cusp of finding out that she was only halfway done with the race.
And Aleph was behaving as though he had merely waltzed over the finish line.
This is what she had been afraid of, this whole time.
She was not going to win. At no point had she ever been close to winning.
Even though she had been the fiercest, the most powerful foe that could possibly rise to Aleph's challenge, she could—not—match him.
The truth whispered in her ear like the devil on her shoulder. Even as lightning reformatted itself into a fearsome cage all around her—the interweaving lattice of sword strikes the two exchanged—she finally could see, after all this time, what she had been leading herself towards.
No, not just herself. Everyone.
She had damned them all.
Before the devil urged her to open herself up, to let it all end and have Aleph strike her down, the proto-Reaper chose for her. In the midst of their clash, the two had completely forgotten about the massive setpiece that had dominated the setting of the Collector base. A skeletal fist as big as a Mako tank smashed the corner of the platform and suddenly Roahn found herself flying next to Aleph. Her mind still sluggish with a mental fog choking her realization behind its shrouded screen, Roahn dimly reached out as she flew, momentarily adopting the same pose she had utilized when she had raced through the warzone at Messier 78 to reach her friends.
Lightning cracked the air apart again, but this time the familiar bombardment of energy against her form was there to greet her. The cavernous and stale interior of the Collector base was gone, replaced by the shifting sands and worn metal of the timeworn mystics, replete with the haloed sun as the poor ionosphere of Tuchanka was cooked by its rays.
And on and on it continued. No matter where the shifting realities led her, Aleph would always be there to greet her. Her ragged muscles would only meet the fury of tireless electrodrivers. Against a complex mimeo of peripheral processors, what chance did she have? The devil that was hitching a ride upon her told her that it was only a matter of time until she got sloppy. She tried to brush that pesky demon off as best as she could. She couldn't quit even if she wanted to.
The two of them kept switching up their tactics as the Monolith took them to the most breathtaking of locales. They fought upon the slopes of a pyramid on Tuchanka, their swords barely registering amongst the glints of golden sand that acted as the horizon, while thresher maws breached the surface around them and surrounded the krogan structures as if they were magnificent jewels and that the maws themselves were their guardians.
They fought in the bowls of a geth refining facility on Rannoch, steam leaking out from cracked piping, plasma arcs throwing blue monochrome shades around every corner. Automated arms that assembled new prototypes of the endless foot-soldiers spun and whirred in sequence around them, blazing with magnesium light, the constant movement of the assembly line throwing off the aim of the combatants.
They fought on the steps of the Reichstag in Berlin, snow trickling down around them as they snaked between the massive pillars that marked the entrance of the building, a mob of gray shapes blockaded at the bottom of the shallow steps near the street cheering Roahn on as she evaded or blocked Aleph's blows. The pillars of stone cracked from repeated strikes as their wild arcs slashed against the supports—some jagged shards sprayed over the quarian's head as she ducked a few of Aleph's powerful swings. One punch laid her out against the wall, however, and a massive crack now appeared in the corner of her helmet. Her jaw went numb and she almost vomited from the pain. Instinctively, she touched the affected area, feeling where the glass was now irregularly aligned around the spiderweb of white fractures.
Aleph moved in to make the kill, but Roahn squirmed out of the way, like all the times that had come before. She quickly initiated a dosage of medi-gel and a brief euphoria enraptured her. That quickly faded as soon as she perceived Aleph charging at her once again.
The biomechanical construct had almost broken from his usual stoic front. Whatever combat algorithms that integrated with the neural network of his damaged brain were now being ramped up to their fullest extent. With his one-handed style, Aleph ramped up the intensity of his attacks to three per second, hoping to destroy Roahn's defense. He now surged his blade across different angles, utilizing a broken rhythm of various chops, stabs, and slashes. He was not a hurricane comprised of annihilating energy but an onrushing comet, with all of his blows angled precisely towards the quarian at his mercy.
It was too much for Roahn—she was too exhausted and too battered to keep this up for much longer.
The backdrop of Berlin then peeled away in a sizzling furor of sparks and energy to unveil a death-shrouded ruin of a city illuminated by a steady beam protruding through a moonless sky. The spire of Big Ben made an elegant shadow against the blackness. Blown out apartment buildings made mazes out of the city blocks. The streets were cracked and collapsed in several places, the concrete having sunken to expose the breached piping that gurgled water into the sodden earth. Gargantuan Reapers roamed the horizon, spitting intermittent bursts of crimson lances from their undercarriage lenses.
Coming out of the singularity, Roahn's foot caught the lip of a cobbled curb and she went down hard, nearly cracking her helmet open upon the pavement. Her hands frantically scrambled upon the dirtied surface, her spine already aching with the imagined sensation of a sword being plowed into the middle of it.
But as she rolled on her back, she found Aleph standing in the blown-out threshold of what used to be a block of flats, well out of reach. Scraps of wood still lining the entryway, Aleph stood amidst the panes of broken glass and provided the quarian with just a tiny shake of his head.
A shake of disgust. Of disappointment.
The fucker. He was not taking this seriously!
Roahn got up and stepped toward him, but her sixth sense made her pause just in time for a caustic burst, hurled by a nearby banshee, to blitz by her head. Had she moved any closer she would have been struck by it. Once the explosion died down, Roahn looked towards the entrance to the building—it was empty.
"Damn it!" she shouted.
Ignoring the pain in her limbs, the pulsating in her mind, all the griefs and ailments that struggled to penetrate her deepest defenses, Roahn cut a path through the sudden tangle of Reaper forces that had seemingly arrived out of nowhere—husks, marauders, the occasional brute—and pushed into the building to get out of the warzone. She used her prosthesis as a shield as she burst through walls, plaster and drywall making silken shadows through the holes she was making. She slammed through the other side, back out into the labyrinth of shattered foundations, the sloped and flat plain of blackened glass like volcanic talus sludging its way to the rippled portal down below. Above it all, the Citadel, invisible behind the haze screen that seemed to glow white from the purity of the light that speared it.
But Aleph was nowhere to be found.
As she continued in her frantic quest to find him, Roahn noticed that time was exhibiting strange behavior all around her. Meaning that it was all screwed up. Groups of ground troops in her vicinity seemed to move at varying speeds compared to one another—some were moving as slowly as if they were walking underwater while others were sprinting at a velocity that defied the term "full tilt." An outline of static enveloped them all, though, almost as if they were mere holoprojections that were malfunctioning, the Monolith having finally reached its limits in this little Potemkin village that it had spun up just to break her sanity.
She raced through the battle, pushing aside men and woman who may or may have not been there, leaped over trenches, skidded underneath hovertanks, sliced through knots of husks, until she finally reached the clearing at the other side. The spiked rim that had risen around the Citadel beam glowed with a heavenly light, the cutting figure of Harbinger striding from behind it, already opening fire upon the legions that made to encroach upon the sinister backdoor.
And then, after she had turned on the spot time after time again, he was there. Striding across a cracked bed of lava that was reddish black like dried blood, Aleph strode into frame, his cloak dusted with the ashes of the dead.
"A fitting locale, isn't it?"
"You can't run anymore," Roahn said, full of false confidence. "I'll always find you. And this time, you will not touch one more person."
Aleph stilled a beat, his helmet becoming incandescent from a distant fire reflecting upon it. "Your mistake is thinking that this has all been personal." He swept his arm to the side, readying his stance. "I want you to know, it wasn't. Not for a moment."
Roahn's response was to stamp her feet into the ground, nothing but an iron glare diffusing past her cracked visor. "Your mistake was making this personal for me."
"Perhaps," Aleph said after a thoughtful pause. He then shrugged. "Ah, Commander. But you must admit, what better individual to shape the galaxy, than one who holds no stake?"
"Maybe it's the ones who do hold a stake that deserve a say," Roahn growled. "That's what we've been showing you. Day after day. Paid for by our flesh and blood. You think we're not worthy for this galaxy? We'll keep proving you wrong."
Aleph's next words were almost gentle. "At the cost of your life."
Explosions brimmed behind the quarian, casting the color orange upon her stained white trappings. Her eyes hardened and a portion of her mind turned to ice, a sincere weariness taking the edge off the pain that still tore upon her body.
"Wouldn't be the first time I've 'died'," she said with a wavering bravado. "It doesn't matter, though, does it? You made sure I had no choice. A good person does not cling to revenge so dearly." She raised her chin defiantly. "I'm not that person."
Aleph nodded. "Far more," he merely said.
Roahn shrugged off the compliment. "The way out is simple though, isn't it? I kill you—the nightmare ends. The war… this place… these memories… all of it. Everything that you have conjured with your own hand will be destroyed."
"A fair conclusion, except for one point," Aleph murmured.
He then let the silence ring for a few seconds, while the screams of the dying and the eruptions of combusting tanks and bodies rippled throughout the sloped plain while the glass-like ground crunched underneath their feet. Then, shocking Roahn beyond belief, he issued a string of wry chuckles that sounded like a battle cruiser was being rent apart by some giant manifestation. The quarian looked back and forth, a fearful notion seeping into her pores as the machination before her laughed.
His peals dying down, Aleph fixated his helmet upon her. "You never once made the connection? Lifetimes of war, infected by the memories of the past, waiting for the right person to bear their weight. We came all this way together, travelling though epochs that never belonged to us, experiencing the ancestral scars from ordeals coded into DNA… and somehow, you think this was all possible by my hand?"
The smoked twilight hid the veil of astonishment that came upon the quarian. Realities once more becoming undone. Prejudices unfounded. For this moment would be one of the many that defined Roahn'Shepard. For not even all of her preparation, all of her prowess, could disguise the truth.
Who was really using the Monolith, if not Aleph?
There was no other conclusion. For Roahn held more power than she thought possible.
Coldly silent, with the speed that would be considered blinding even for a synthetic, Roahn moved. Her tool ignited and she hurled something with her arm. Aleph staggered back a step as a submission net, brimming with a scarlet color, ensnared around his body. He grunted as he tried to break free, the quarian momentarily having left his mind as his unexpected captivity required his full attention.
Roahn lifted her right arm—an omni-bow appeared over her wrist. Five automatic bots twinged from the rotating discus in the center of the device after Roahn tapped her finger upon it as many times. Thin shards of electricity crackled upon Aleph's armor, blackening the polished metal. Her foe roared—the first sound of anger she had heard him ever make. But he swerved his body, managing to evade the last auto-tracking bolt by diminishing the distance between each other. With a sound of wrenching steel, Aleph flexed his arms and the submission net fell apart like scorched fabric.
But the quarian was leaping into action again before Aleph could close the distance completely. She splayed her legs and bent down to touch the ground—a sentry turret quickly sprang up between the two and was already plugging away at the cyborg. As Aleph used his omni-blade to flare away the ionizing bolts until the galvanized particles faded into radioactive dust, Roahn reached for a homing grenade, but he saw the device incoming and batted the explosive away with the flat end of his weapon.
Roahn still had more grenades left upon her belt. She lifted two more—arc grenades, this time—and hurled them towards Aleph, one after the other. He sliced one in half, separating the detonator from the trigger, but was too slow on the last one. A shockwave of electro-destabilizing energy smashed against the armored denizen, momentarily forcing him to his knees as the sparking electricity crisped at his collar.
Now charging toward Aleph, Roahn flicked on an electric slash charge and routed it to her sword. She swung when she was still several meters out, but a massive battering ram of electrical power rapidly billowed from the strike, an unstoppable overload of chain-lightning, that ran headlong into Aleph and bowled him over so that he was now lying on his back in a daze.
Aleph now was the one to snarl, angered at his own carelessness. He heard a roar and lifted his head up in time to perceive a howling Roahn leap into the air, sword positioned in a backhand manner, seeking to drive the stake clean through what was left of his heart.
But, recovering with astonishing speed, Aleph rolled out of the way. Roahn's sword hit nothing but the charred ground, sending up a quick spray of obsidian sand.
Panicked, Roahn tried to reengage again. Don't let him recover! But it was too late—Aleph had already engaged a repair matrix and a Foucault current surged over his armor, reinforcing it with the metal-repelling attributes.
His gleaming helmet, untarnished and pure, seemed to wink at her. Roahn stutter-stepped before she moved in to make another concentrated attack.
Half a second too slow.
Aleph stepped out of the way of Roahn's incoming blow before he whirled to the side, his cloak spreading out like the wings of a raven, and hurled a fearsome punch towards the quarian. Roahn screamed as she felt her right arm shatter—greenstick fractures immediately morphed into violent breaks—and the limb went limp entirely, becoming a void of white-hot pain.
Seizing his chance, Aleph pressed the attack. His blade repeatedly flashed. Blow after blow. Roahn had to swim through the agonized fog to get her sword up to block him. But with each strike, she could feel her strength wane. Fearsome tears were splattered across the interior of her cracked visor. Her heart felt that it was beating inside her throat.
The Battle of London continued to rage impassively around them, ignorant to the plight of the stricken quarian. She tried to make a counterattack, but she was too slow, too weak. Aleph batted the offending weapon aside and made a terrible thrust. Roahn moved her head out of the way just in time, but the humming blade seared right next to her neck and speared the corner of her sehni. Her eyes flew open as she felt the fabric enveloping her helmet immediately lose its tautness. Scraps of seared white cloth, edges glowing orange and yellow, fell before her to settle into the dust at her feet.
You… you—!
As her heart seemed to increase in mass, Roahn's eyes floated to an opening in Aleph's flank. He was this close. There was no time to think. With an enraged shout, her prosthetic arm shot out, trembling sword tip closing in upon the wide open gap in Aleph's side—
Only for his hand to close upon her wrist, stopping her blade in place. The razor tip scraped against his armor, emitting a faint wisp of smoke. Roahn looked up with dread, noting that the calm demeanor Aleph typically exuded was back in control. Or had he ever truly ceded control at all? Had his whole rage act been nothing but a ruse?
Without warning, the cyborg pitched his head forward, connecting his globular dome with Roahn's visor in a brutal headbutt. There was a sickening crack, but the glass held. Only just—a cavalcade of white ice cracks now spread completely across the storm cloud gray face. Roahn's head, however, rebounded against the back of her helmet, giving her a concussion. Aleph released his grip on the quarian and she stumbled back with a soft cry—
—And her back met something solid. Impossible, given that they had been fighting in a completely open field, with no obstacles in sight. Yet, something was preventing her body from going any further.
Her legs unwilling to support her any longer, she slid down. As she met the floor, there was a distinct blast of white and the shatterplain of London was abruptly sucked away. Now, she was back on the deck of Terminal Threnody, sitting upon the suspended platform bridged between the hemispherical windows, trapped between the light of the stars above and the light of Eden Prime below. And the object she was now propped up by was nothing other than the Monolith, a low vibration transferring deep into her bones as she continued to sit against it.
Roahn shivered as she lay in a sagging position, her body now seeming unnaturally cold. Her right arm was now numb, her feet twitching uncontrollably, and her head feeling like it was swelling like a balloon. She couldn't even think of getting back up. Of fighting again. Everything hurt… so, so much.
Her vision blurred and her eyelids began to drop, the notion of embracing the approaching blackness sounding more and more pleasant with every second. But Roahn managed to snap her eyes open at the last second before they fully closed with a gasp, eliciting a slew of coughs as her lungs pressed up against broken ribs.
Aleph stood over her, the phantasm that he was, with his sword still ignited and humming with its savage intent. But, the room around them had changed slightly. It was now completely rimmed by a ribbon of light. A ribbon made up of screens. Thousands of them. A complete loop of several different feeds that wrapped around the chamber, creating a thick tongue of color to band all over the platform. No two screens were showing the same thing—but they showed the same subject: people. Upon every display was a person. All of them were looking straight forward, as if cameras had all been shoved into every one of their faces.
Sweeping an arm to address the screens, Aleph let his movements become stretched out, as if he was savoring the moment. "Change cannot be solely carried out in secret. What we are, what we represent, is deserving of an audience. To witness the final exchange—the coming of the metamorphosis."
Struggling to breathe, Roahn attempted to rise, but her body still refused to obey. Her eyes helplessly scanned the wreath of panels before her, looking upon the wealth of people that were witnesses to her failure. How they were about to see her fail. Had they been watching the whole time? Or was this yet another one of Aleph's illusions?
There were civilians upon the screens, staring solemnly into their omni-tools, aghast at the upcoming sight.
There were soldiers up there too, both helmeted and uncovered, wondering if Roahn's broken effort was what their sacrifices had led to.
And in the digital reef, Roahn could pick out faces she recognized: Joker, mouth agape, hands clenched upon the armrests of his craft.
Pry'cor, the wounded raloi, clutching her shattered leg as she looked upon the sight in astonishment.
Sagan, perfunctorily still, observing the danger his creator was in but knowing he was powerless to stop it.
Kasumi, a wrenching look upon her face, wondering if she was about to see another dear friend die before her eyes.
And finally, Korridon, who looked into the invisible lens that broadcast his face with a numb look, bullets whizzing by his head even though he ignored them all. A hand came into view, as though he wanted to punch through time and space and grab Roahn's wrist so that he could whisk her away. They could hide out on a sunny planet somewhere, maybe have the ocean nearby. A place filled with greenery and the cries of birds.
The glow of Aleph's blade now angling so close that Roahn could feel its warmth, she could only hold that place in mind. She smiled, lost in her private paradise.
For the countless amounts of people watching her now, she wondered what would happen to them all after she had gone. What would happen to Korr. Would they see her as she was, screaming her call into the void for no one to listen, or would they echo that call in kind?
Aleph tipped his sword up to Roahn's quivering neck. His helmet skewed the reflection of the weapon into a curved arc of plasma that seemed to bisect his head. In that moment, he understood everything perfectly. He understood her.
"There is no other way?" he asked her in a whisper, a question that was meant for her. Only her. In that instant, Roahn knew he was pleading for her own life.
He knew the true cost, all along. The penalty paid for by the death of so many larger-than-life figures. The deaths of heroes. Her father. Garrus. And even Tali, years before. Had they all been needless? This whole time, could this have been so simply avoided?
Yet as she struggled to peer through the cataclysm of cracks in her visor, there was no hesitation in the conclusion that she reached, borne from a lifetime of cultivated rage and focused wrath.
She shook her head, the effort feeling like it was about to snap her neck.
"No," she said. "There isn't."
Then she reached behind her back, where she kept her hidden pistol. Her arm snapped up, and with no hesitation, faster than she could even register the unconscious thought to take a breath, she pulled the trigger.
The shot sparked off into nothingness.
Roahn heard a sickening thump, followed by a sizzling sound. The pistol dropped from her titanium fingers, as though the electrodrivers in the construction had suddenly reversed their polarity.
A curled wisp of smoke extended before her eyes. A spreading numbness now rolled through her limbs, chaining up her spine, towards her head. She looked down and saw Aleph's sword embedded halfway into her stomach, the weapon's owner crouched in a punishing lunge, having ducked her frantic shot at the last possible moment. There was a fiery pain in her back and she dimly came to a horrible realization.
She had been run completely through.
Roahn was close enough to hear the faint synthesized breaths that pushed through Aleph's vocabulator, but even though he was inches away from her head, the noise was dropping away like she was falling down a deep, dark hole. Falling forever. Fading into that abyss. She watched with uncoupling eyes as her blood spurted around the omni-sword, bursting from the gash to seep into the fabric that wrapped around her body, to spread upon the cold metal ground in a burning lake.
The impaled quarian simply watched herself spill open, the softness of her belly exposed and glistening, her insides splattered across the Monolith behind her.
She tried to inhale, but something was blocking her from doing so. There was an uncomfortable hitch in her lungs, an obstacle she could not surpass. The blackness bled into her eyes and she felt herself slip comfortably away, relieved to find that there was no more pain. It had all seeped out of her, like she no longer had the capacity to recognize agony.
She just… wanted to fall asleep.
As the world tilted and diminished before her, Roahn could barely hear out a cry of "Roahn, no!" It sounded like Korridon. She wanted to call out to him, to tell him that it would be all right, but the words would never come.
Her left arm dropped to her side, her knuckles clanging upon the floor, fingers slowly turning for them to lightly brush the Monolith. The enveloping darkness became blasted away by the light in an instant. Burning her from the inside out. Turning her skin to ashes, all rising towards the sparking pinprick that grew bolder with every elongated second.
Something cold poured into her lungs, but she was still falling.
She would never hurt anymore.
And in the next moment, she felt nothing at all.
A/N: For those of you who skimmed this chapter all the way to the bottom, let me give you the rundown: Rob's going to hell.
Playlist:
Final Duel Pt. I (Virmire/Ilos)
"The Island"
Mac Quayle
The Last of Us: Part II (Original Video Game Soundtrack)
Final Duel Pt. II (Alchera/Collector Base)
"Fog Battle"
Junkie XL
300: Rise of an Empire (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Final Duel Pt. III (Montage/London/Terminal Threnody)
"Shriek and Ori"
Gareth Coker
Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Original Video Game Soundtrack)