Chapter 7 - Aria Takes Thessia (and Sur'Kesh)
Aria T'Loak.
I am the Death God. I will make this plain for you: do you want to rule Thessia and Sur'Kesh, starting exactly two weeks from now?
I will tell you the same thing I told the Admirals: spare me your moral outrage. Thessia and Sur'Kesh will die by my hands, and nothing you can say will stop me.
But it won't be the end.
I am offering you a chance to be the President of the Protectorates of Thessia and Sur'Kesh. Once the massacre is complete, you will be permitted to recolonize the worlds. We will allow you to do whatever you wish, subject to the overriding laws and taxation obligations of the Quarian Empire.
I only want one answer from you: are you in, or out?
...
I'm in, you fucking Devil. I'll make sure my people survive you.
-votsr-
Aria stared at Thessia.
She had to turn off the vid feeds. It was nothing but bodies for miles and miles. She knew they would never remove the stench from the soil of Thessia. Seeing BILLIONS of sapients snuffed out in an instant had shaken her to her core. She wouldn't be the same way ever again.
She was no longer a mercenary ruling an abandoned space station. She was the inheritor of her people, and she was going to act like it.
The worst part about it - the thing that made her want to claw her eyes out with rage - was that she had to obey the Death God. If she didn't, everyone would die. She HATED how the Death God could order anyone to do anything they wanted at all times. And she was enraged by the fact that she was now the ruler of the "Protectorates of Thessia and Sur'Kesh."
Still...she had to bear it. As the Death God said, it wasn't the end.
As soon as they were settled, they would immediately build city-sized memorials to the dead on both planets. Relatives from across the galaxy were going to give eulogies. They WOULD recover from this.
She, like everyone else, strongly suspected that the Death God was a quarian, but could not prove it. For better or worse, the galaxy belonged to the Migrant Fl-the Quarian Empire now. She hated it and everything the Death God had done, but she did not live centuries without learning how to compartmentalize pain and loss.
She would lead her people into the future, under the rule of the quarians.
-votsr-
Yup, Aria, you gotta take it. The galaxy belongs to the Quarian Empire now. Deal with it.
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