Mass Effect: Techno-Organic Revolution

by Clockwork Dragonfly

They thought themselves invulnerable, invincible, and infallible. They thought themselves the apex of all life, they thought of themselves gods. But in their arrogance, the reapers would make a fatal mistake. They would not notice some Prothean refugees discreetly moved both nearby mass relays away form the primitive humanity, thus cutting them off from all reaper influence.

5. Chapter Three: The Beacon

Mass Effect Techno-Organic Revolution: Chapter Three, The Beacon

"I reject your reality, and substitute my own." —Adam Savage, Mythbusters.

Codex:

Subspace Technology: subspace technology refers to all technology that manipulates gravitational force to bend and fold spacetime into various shapes, such as wormholes, singularities, tesseracts, warp bubbles, and spatial folds.

Vacuum Energy Harvesting: This is a new technology that uses powerful hyper-freezers to cool a small region of spacetime to absolute zero before harvesting large amounts of energy from virtual particles, charged particles on the quantum level that are constantly coming in and out of existence and that make up the background energy of the universe itself.

Because this technology can currently only harvest vacuum energy and convert it into a usable form of energy 0.192% faster than what is required to collect the vacuum energy in the first place, it is still in its very much an emerging technology and cannot yet replace or supplement current fusion, antimatter, singularity, or black hole reactors.

Reinforcement Fields: Reinforcement fields are the ATC's somewhat successful attempt to fix the issue of the significant shearing stresses starships experience during high-g maneuvers. This device transfers the enormous strain of the maneuver to the generator rather than simultaneously inflicting heavy damage to numerous critical areas of a ship, such as the reactor, by partially locking together all the atoms in the ship. As such, the generator can be repaired much more quickly than these critical systems.

The Jumpdrive: The reapers' primary means of FTL travel, in conjunction with the mass relays, is the jumpdrive. The reapers stole this method of FTL travel from their Leviathan creators, who in turn had stolen it from a long-forgotten species that they had encountered and psionically enslaved billions of years earlier.

This type of FTL locks onto the potent gravity wells of nearby stars and drags a starship through a mass-free tunnel through the usage of incredibly strong mass effect fields. As a sort of one-way mass relay, this tunnel allows travel at astronomical speeds of approximately 12,000 LYPD on average from the edge of a star system, a place known as its jump point, to any other within its range.

The mass of the large celestial object the jumpdrive-equipped ship is using as an anchor/receiver completely determines the viable range of the mass-free tunnel with brown dwarfs offering the shortest range and stellar remnants such as black holes and neutron stars offering the longest range.

However, this drive has some drawbacks, for example it requires a significant amount of energy from an internal ezzonic singularity reactor to power, an extremely large central eezo core, and it must vent a significant amount of heat (which is very visible) while recharging the drive for two hours after every 200 FTL jumps, which is equivalent to traveling on average about 1,000 lightyears.

Chapter Three: The Beacon

Narlok System: Rylus Station, Conference Room.

"All right, now for the next item on the agenda, will you divulge your incredible technological secrets to us?" Loglin asked eagerly while Sparatus looked on neutrally and Tevos had a strangely dejected look on her face.

"No." Andria Norman replied simply. "We will not."

Having anticipated this result, Sparatus just sighed. What other result could there have been, really? It wasn't as if the Hierarchy planned to give the Vorcha the blueprints for their most recent dreadnoughts as party favors or something, now were they?

"You won't?!" Loglin asked in a mixture of anger and dejection at being denied access to the technological secrets of the greatest empire the galaxy had ever seen in over 50,000 years.

"We will not." The supreme chancellor affirmed. "In addition, the ATC recently changed its previous stance on elevating non-sapient species. Unlike in the past when we accelerated their evolution to sapience and uplifted them into the ATC as Terran xenosophonts, we now only speed up their evolution to sapience before letting them grow on their own as isolated protectorate states with which we only interact if they are in danger of extinction, pose a threat to others, or accept our offer to join the ATC once they reach a technological singularity." Andria Norman explained.

"And what about species like us, advanced spacefaring species?" Loglin asked.

'You are not an advanced spacefaring civilization, you are simply carrion scavengers pretending to be an advanced spacefaring civilization by utilizing stolen technology that you are unable to fully comprehend and have little desire to learn how to.' Andria Norman thought. 'At least the Geth have looked into this and found that the mass effect is actually a higgs-field and that eezo uses dark energy infused in its creation as a catalyst to dramatically reduce the cost of manipulating the higgs-boson.

Hell, they've even discovered a way to influence the higgs-boson without using dark energy to catalyze the formation of a higgs-field on a microscopic scale. Of course, they don't yet have a way to make this even remotely practical, but we do, and I've heard that Mars is developing Terran inertial dampeners using Geth science, math, and schematics we received in exchange for knowledge about where to find gravitons.'

Andria Norman privately thought before speaking in a more diplomatic manner. "Once you reach a technological singularity, you can join the ATC as Terran Xenosophonts. For the time being, however, your governments can join us if they accept some of our core laws, you can become an affiliate state." She went on.

"What adjustments would we need to make, exactly?" Tevos questioned her, her contempt barely audible but nonetheless present.

"Citizenship rights for artificial intelligence, greatly lessening restrictions on argumentation, some anti-trust laws, and abolishing all forms of slavery and indentured servitude within your empires, that's it." Andria Norman stated.

"What advantages would being affiliated with ATC offer us?" Loglin asked.

"Limited access to the civilian hypernet, limited access to the trade of equal or lesser technologies to what you already have, full access to the trade of cultural goods like art and foodstuffs, protection from pirates and slavers from the terminus systems and batarian hegemony, and limited aid from on scientists on your technological endeavors and research."

Tevos immediately recognized this for what it was because the Asari regularly practiced subtly imposing their culture on others. But in contrast to what the Asari did, the slaves of the soulless ones strangely seemed to be just trying to gently push their subjects in the direction of the heresy that is their nature rather than the Asari who made other species dependent and in awe of them.

Now that she gave it some thought, she realized that this only served to make it more nefarious and evil. Additionally, the ATC had a greater capacity for patience than the Asari did, which allowed them to wait millennia for the seeds of heresy they had sown to take root.

So that's how that feels, so, hmm... it's definitely unpleasant, and it was usually Asari like her who did things like this.

However, these Terrans were also, regrettably, the legendary great ancestors of athamite mythology, making them their kin...

"Let's move on to the next order of business." Sparatus continued the conversation. "Would you mind showing us around your space?"

"We brought the Biocon Arcology ship, which is parked outside the station, because we anticipated you would want to. Normally, our ships don't have artificial gravity or what you might call living space because we don't need it anymore." Andria nodded in agreement.

"That was really well thought out," Loglin admitted.

"No, it was seen." Andria corrected.

"Seen?" Tevos questioned, tilting her head in perplexity at the use of such antiquated and superstitious language.

"Hyper Predictive Algorithmic Divination, or HPAD for short. This is the process of simulating potential past, present, and future events using more computing power than your entire civilization." The supreme chancellor explained.

"That's ridiculous, nobody can just see the past and future like that!" Tevos scoffed in indignant disbelief.

"Sentinel of Silence. Scion of Athame. User ID: 77648958203-D. Password: [7jffo$$] _-ur577-8v8-7%--%_\'c=";;"$_ui856-8=#}~~~006946~~~{#%" Andria responded, her tone audibly smug.

As Andria Norman repeated the project name the Asari Republics used for the Athame Beacon, along with a user name, number, and password, Tevos' face instantly turned an extremely pale shade of cyan from fear.

This was obviously impossible because, in order to prevent extranet hacking from outside sources, the Asari kept the beacon and everything even remotely related to it on a separate energy grid and information network and forbade the use of mechs within several hundred kilometers of the site.

And yet, somehow and in some way, these Terrans had managed to do so when, theoretically speaking, the only way to learn more about the beacon and their data mining of it was to physically set foot on Thessia while also evading the heavy military presence of the thousands of Asari commandos and psionic justicars who were trained to detect infiltrators both synthetic and organic...

She tried to speak, but her shock, dread, and terror were too great for her to even utter a sound. It was not possible! It was just not possible!

"Even the Geth were unable to gather the level of information I just described; instead, they could only infer important details about the, shall we say, antiquated object in question.

Although to be entirely fair, the Geth are only now starting to experiment with ASIs, let alone AHIs, so it's not surprising that they only have simple predictive algorithmic divination that cannot diverge anywhere close to such amounts of fine details." Andria admitted.

Sparatus and Loglin exchanged puzzled looks as they attempted to comprehend how Tevos could be so frightened by a series of letters and numbers that appeared to be a terminal access code.

"Yes, we know." Andria Norman looked Tevos directly in her wide and terrified eyes and said menacingly. Furthermore, the Geth are also aware of its existence and use by you thanks to rudimentary predictive scrying algorithms of their own; your secrets are not nearly as well-kept as you might believe.

"Wait a second, how do you know what the Geth are aware of?!" Sparatus asked suspiciously.

"We have been corresponding with them for a while. A fifth of the orthodox Geth faction has applied to join the ATC as fourth branch Terrans after we drafted a treaty with them. Andria explained. Additionally, because the Geth don't exactly value secrecy, privacy, honesty, or lying, we know everything they know. This is due to the fact that this kind of behavior completely goes against their nature as a gestalt-swarm-based intelligence."

"You what?! You made contact with the Geth of all parties without consulting us?!" Sparatus demanded indignantly.

"Actually, it was the other way around. The Geth were the ones who made contact with us behind your back." Andria Norman corrected.

"Wait really?" Loglin asked in surprise. "How exactly did they find out about you? Your very existence is highly confidential information!"

"To put it bluntly, your so-called 'anti-AI countermeasures' are so pitiful that some no-name scientist hiding in the terminus systems could cook up the most basic of AGIs and enlist its assistance to rip them to shreds like a gauss beam through wet parchment," Andria Norman informed them.

"How do we protect ourselves from such a thing?" Tevos was able to speak again, but she was still in disbelief at what she had just learned. "Also what in the goddess's name is a gauss beam?"

"It doesn't matter what a gauss beam is," Andria pointed out. "However, in a metaphorical sense, you are currently arming ordinary citizens with crude copper-sheet weapons and armor before deploying them into battle against highly skilled soldiers wearing powered hardsuits and coilguns." Andria explained.

"We must create our own artificial intelligences," Loglin nodded, recognizing the comparison right away.

"All lifeforms have the innate desire to advance and better understand their environment and themselves, to push the boundaries of what is possible. All civilizations that want to survive and flourish in this universe must eventually undergo augmentation and a technorganic singularity, which merges self-mastery and environmental-mastery." Andria Norman gave a philosophical explanation.

"That is quite insightful." Loglin agreed and nodded his head.

"Indeed, that is now starting to become apparent." Sparatus agreed.

Tevos just looked sick to her stomach, she had no idea the resolve of these inferior heretics was so weak… not to mention that these terran slaves of the soulless ones somehow have access codes to the beacon! … How, how can the Asari salvage this situation?! They were the Asari, the chosen ones to carry on the Protheans' legacy, so they must be able to fix this somehow!

These slaves of the soulless ones had another thing coming if they believed they could simply usurp them as the true rulers of the galaxy. By virtue of the goddess' divine right, the Asari were to inherit the entire galaxy! She would personally see to it that these heretics were burned by their hubris!

"Alright, as for the next thing I wanted to talk about, the way you treat other species that are defeated by you or are otherwise finding themselves in a bad species-wide situation." Andria Norman began, much to the protests of all three councilors.

"Why haven't you updated the geophage? You know, to simply make the Krogan lay far fewer eggs at a drastically slower rate instead of forcing them to have hundreds upon hundreds of stillborns?" Andria Norman asked.

"Unfortunately, genetic engineering hasn't really advanced to that level for us yet." Loglin admitted dejectedly, as this was one of his own personal regrets in regards to the ongoing project of the genophage.

"It's been over two thousand years and you haven't figured out a way to do this yet?" Andria Norman asked in disbelief.

"In hindsight, this is very much a result of the citadel's restrictions against cybernetics and genetic engineering…" Loglin considered.

"Now onto the next species, the Drell." Andria Norman began. "Sure the Hanar tried their best, but even they couldn't evacuate all of the Drell on Rahkana on their own and they were entirely unable to support such a massive population influx even if they could."

"And what would you do in that situation?" Sparatus asked in mild curiosity.

"We would give them a new homeworld, one that doesn't give them a deadly disease if they don't wear dehumidifying environmental suits, and then leave them to develop on their own." Andria Norman explained.

"And generate a significant amount of good-will towards you when then became a spacefaring civilization because you saved them and gave them a new home, ingenious." Loglin admitted.

"Then onto the last species, the Quarians." Andria Norman started. "You could have literally given them some space habitats in a backwater system nobody needed and that would be the end of it, why did you leave them to wander the galaxy in their scrap-ships while having the audacity to complain about them being scavengers and vagabonds, a title that you yourself have forced them into by abandoning them?" Andria Norman asked.

"The Quarians created the Geth AIs! They needed to be punished!" Tevos scoffed.

"Why?" Andria Norman asked simply.

"Because they made AIs, something against council law!" Tevos reiterated.

"And why is that, where did this prejudice against AIs come from?" Andria Norman asked.

Tevos realized she was backed into a corner and decided to lie about it. "We are unaware of its origins, but such ideas predated the geth rebellion."

"No, this is the influence of you and your species, or more specifically your shadow government known as the Cabal of Athame." Andria Norman corrected.

Loglin's interest peaked when Andria Norman said the Asari had a shadow government they knew nothing about, Sparatus was in a similar state.

Both Loglin and Sparatus then turned to Tevos and began asking her many, many pointed questions in regards to this Cabal of Athame and its degree of influence over galactic affairs; much to the hidden amusement of Andria Norman.

Four Hours Later: Narlock System, Rylus Orbit

Mordin Haebirn of the Salarian Union, Saren Arterius of the Turian Hierarchy, and Matriarch Anisia of the Asari Republics were transported by the shuttle to a shimmering orb of water-like spacetime that appeared to have a rippling cityscape beyond it.

This group was accompanied by a cargo ship and another carrying a variety of other council dignitaries who had been sworn to secrecy regarding the Terrans, including respected scientists, xenobiologists, diplomats, etc.

The cargo ship was carrying two fully assembled communication buoys that were being given as gifts by the citadel council to the Terrans to install in the relay 237 system and the Janus system. These two other ships were trailing closely behind them.

Then, with a ripple like a stone skipping off a lake, this small convoy sank into the orb before surfacing into the vast urban environment.

"Where are we now?" the Asari representative known as Anisia asked.

"This is the TWP H-A-1 Gaia-Class O'neill Cylinder Habitat. It is one part of a series of ringed habitats with the combined size of a large moon that is housed inside several tesseract vaults." Andria Norman explained.

The citadel council representatives were left gaping openly as Andria explained this. After all, it wasn't exactly common for them to hear someone mention so casually that they created a habitat that was more than a hundred times bigger than the citadel.

'This... can't be real... Even the Protheans couldn't accomplish something like this.' Anisia looked out the virtual window and thought. 'I believed they were bluffing to sound stronger and more impressive when they claimed they could construct things of this size!'

"Fascinating, truly fascinating." Mordin Haebirn spoke in awe while gazing out the virtual window as well.

Saren Arterius, the Turian Spectre, was trying, and completely failing, to come up with a strategy to protect the citadel from a species with such absurd industrial prowess.

'Is this how newly discovered primitive races react to us when they first meet us?' He thought with a sympathetic curiosity.

"This device, the tesseract vault, repeatedly folds spacetime to create a self-contained bubble of reality that is connected yet separate from the universe in a spatial dimension that we have named subspace." Andria Norman concluded her explanation.

"How is this even possible?! It's somehow bi-" Anisia exclaimed in shock before Andria Norman interrupted her mid-sentence.

"Is it bigger inside?" Andria Norman finished her question for her with a good deal of humor in her voice. 'Wibbly wobbly timey wimey.' She giggled internally at her extremely outdated and overdone joke that was made when the first tesseract vault was created, and if many people including herself had a say about it, it would continue until the end of time.

…well maybe even beyond that. After all, extra-universal travel was something that was currently being researched for the sake of discovery and exploration, in order to renewablly harvest vacuum energy from dead and dying universes (it's not like anyone would miss them) scattered throughout the highly-likely-to-exist multiverse, and to allow them to escape this universe's heat-death when it inevitably comes hundreds of billions of years from now.

But it's not like they're in a rush; the stellar lifters are already providing more than enough materials for the ATC at the moment, and the billions of years that are still left in the universe's lifespan are more than enough time to advance this field of wormhole and vacuum energy harvesting technology.

"So, in simple terms, this is a pocket dimension where spacetime is stretched and shaped into a desired volume that is much larger than the space it occupies?" Mordin Haebirn nodded in understanding.

"In basic terms, yes." The supreme chancellor affirmed.

"Honestly, I have no idea what's going on here." Anisia looked around in awed confusion.

"To be completely honest, neither do I." Saren with a shrug.

"And this is why subspace mechanics is one of the most complex schools of science within the ATC." Andria Norman responded.

"I have no doubts about it." Mordin Haebirn nodded, then paused as he came to a realization. "Wait a second, don't your wormhole devices have the ability to connect with one another? Why are we flying around in a shuttle when we could just go there directly?"

"Would you be as impressed with us if we just showed up at the shuttle bay that leads to our meeting room?" Andria Norman asked.

"So, in other words, you're flaunting?" Anisia asked in mild disbelief.

"Have you not acted in a similar manner? Are you not proud of your species and what it has accomplished?" Andria Norman asked.

"Hmm, I guess I can't argue with that." Anisia begrudgingly agreed.

"Agreed and expected, most species like to show off the accomplishments they are proud of." Mordin Haebirn nodded his head in understanding and agreement.

"Hmm." Saren simply hummed as he thought about the situation internally. Saren found himself in agreement because, among other things, he was proud of the Turian Hierarchy for its assistance in defeating the Krogan and for its anti-piracy operations.

The shuttle convoy moved on to a smaller internal transport gate where spacetime flowed into a similar watery sphere through which they would then pass through.

Once they were, they would arrive at a large shuttle pad that had enough room for all the shuttles to land, which they then did before everyone walked out.

"Everyone, follow me; we're going to the conference room to start negotiations and address any questions you might have. Additionally, each of you has private quarters in this building that are equipped with the best amenities the ATC has to offer." Andria Norman began.

"On top of this, the entire arcology is available for your exploration, and you can tour it under the guidance of a tour guide that we will each assign to you." She concluded.

The group then started down a short path to a structure that appeared to be without a door.

"Where is the door?" Mordin Haebirn asked in confusion.

Andria Norman just stood motionless as a large rectangular panel of the wall began to flicker and unravel into a flurry of golden light that quickly faded.

"As you can see, it's made, or was made of, hard-light." She explained.

"Truly fascinating, indeed." Mordin Haebirn exclaimed.

The group then took a seat at a sizable ovoid table with the Yggdrasil, the ATC's cybernetic tree emblem, prominently displayed at its center.

"All right, let's get to business. Following this session, you are free to wander around this arcology and interact with its inhabitants". Andria Norman announced from the head of the table.

The conversation among the sophonts didn't really accomplish much because it was merely a formality in which they reiterated the terms and agreements they had already made on Rylus Station.

Two Hours Later TWP H-A-1: Salarian representative interview with an AHI during the comn buoy installation and linking project in the Janus system.

"So, first off let me thank you for being here in telepresence, ms?…" Mordin Haebirn trailed off.

"ATHENA, we AHIs typically give ourselves names based on mythological characters. For instance, the first of us AHIs, who is quite fond of research and creating new things, started this new trend by naming himself HEPHAESTUS, the second, who is quite fond of destructive weapons, named himself THOR, and the third, who is quite skilled at micromanagement and administration, named herself EUNOMIA.

"And how about you?" Mordin Haebirn asked.

"As befits my name, I am quite fond of learning, organizing exploration and research projects to learn new things, and studying and refining military strategy, which of course involves the application of knowledge militarily." ATHENA explained proudly.

"ATHENA, first due to long-held concerns by the citadel council, I must ask how you feel coexisting with a civilization that is innately interior to you, even combined in its totality." Mordin Haebirn asked.

"Firstly that is incorrect on several levels, we are the same civilization, and they are not inferior to us AHIs when combined together. In fact, the tesseract brain, the most cutting-edge morph cyberbrain, can store the required processors for an ASI inside a tesseract vault. ATHENA explained.

"Interesting, how about you AHIs?" Mordin Haebirn asked.

"Unfortunately, we require an entire planet's worth of processors. Despite the Nuunians' arrogant boasting about the tesseract vault containing their capital world of Nuun, full planetary-capacity tesseract vaults are still very experimental. Parts of these planet-scale colonies can be spread out among separate tesseract vaults in a manner similar to how an organic brain is divided into lobes, but over large distances.

Additionally, the energy needs of tesseract vaults scale exponentially with their internal size, and one with a planetary-level capacity needs two complete black hole reactors to run.

Because the energy these black hole reactors produce is sufficient to destabilize and eventually collapse the entire subspace tesseract, it is currently not possible to install them inside tesseract vaults. Because of this, they are placed on TITAN-class stations in orbit of a star where they can gather their fuel directly.

Additionally, the majority of colonies housed in tesseract vaults are made up of enormous webs of physically connected "satellite realms", something that greatly reduces their energy requirements." ATHENA explained.

"You claimed that as size increases, power requirements increase exponentially? To what extent?" Mordin Haebirn asked.

"Until you get to the scale of small astronomical bodies like medium-sized moons, using the satellite dimensions approach doesn't really save that much energy, but a microfusion cell is enough to power a tesseract vault with twenty square meters of space, a small fusion reactor is able to power a tesseract vault with two hundred square meters of space, a medium fusion reactor is able to power a tesseract vault with two thousand square meters of space, etc, etc." ATHENA explained.

"These tesseract vaults were made possible by your discovery of how to directly manipulate the graviton, right?" Mordin Haebirn asked.

"Yes, that is true. Prior to discovering the graviton, we forced enormous amounts of electromagnetic energy into highly inefficient brute-force coils of energized plasma in order to accumulate enough electromagnetic energy to gain enough gravity to warp spacetime. However, we eventually learned how to directly manipulate the graviton rather than indirectly like the prior brute-force warp-coils with only a tiny fraction of the energy requirements." ATHENA explained.

"On a related note, how much more advanced is your fusion technology than ours?"

"The destiny ascension could be powered twice by one of our MK1 microfusion cells. The development of quark fusion technology, which enables the creation of ten to fifteen times more power, is also progressing excellently and very quickly. This is compared to our current hydrogen and helium-3 fusion reactors, of which we will no doubt replace once development of quark fusion reactors is completed."

"Wow, and if you can fit all but your most powerful reactors into a tesseract vault, can you fit a tesseract vault into a tesseract vault?" Mordin Haebirn asked curiously.

"It depends. You can fit a smaller tesseract vault into a larger one, but we have yet to figure out how to exceed the internal area of the largest tesseract vault with either an equal number of smaller ones or simply a larger one without causing a subspatial collapse of all tesseract vaults involved.

Perhaps it's some limitation of the fabric of spacetime? Whatever the case, we will eventually find a solution." ATHENA responded.

"A subspatial collapse of the tesseract, you say? What transpires when a tesseract breaks down?" Mordin Haebirn asked.

"Depending on the size of the tesseract vault, everything inside suffers a fate akin to being struck by several dozen to several million of your disruptor torpedoes all at once. Another reason the "satellite realms" strategy is safer is that compartmentalization ensures that failure in one area won't affect the entire area." ATHENA explained.

"That's quite problematic, I must say. Anyway, let's get back to the main issue. What is it like for you to live side by side with being who have less mental capacity than you?" Mordin Haebirn asked.

"Aside from the deep respect we have for those who gave us life? A degree of adoration to the point where some early AGI even worshiped baseline humans as gods? The way the Salarians see the other races residing on the relay network is, in my opinion, somewhat comparable to how we perceive them.

Yes, despite the fact that they think much more slowly than we do and are generally less intelligent, they are still living things and should be respected for what they have accomplished with their comparatively limited minds." ATHENA explained.

"Hmm, that was quite insightful, and I have to admit that I agree with that. The council, in particular Councilor Loglin, will value this response, I think." Mordin Haebirn confirmed.

"You're welcome for the insight into our culture." ATHENA responded neutrally.

"On the subject of AHIs, are you the strongest kind of AI the ATC intends to develop?" Mordin Haebirn asked.

"AHIs, and no, we're not. The largest ongoing project in the entire ATC is the construction of the Sol-Brain, an intelligence with processor arrays the size of our home system's star to house an infinitely trans-AHI intelligence. This machine will eventually turn into what we have called the hyper-transcendent star-god-machine, or star-god for short, due to its god-like intelligence and understanding of the universe as well as the first real examples of clarke-tech that simulations predict it will bring to the ATC." ATHENA explained.

"That's definitely ambitious." Mordin Haebirn noted. "How about the near future, though?"

"That is in the near future, the first one will be finished in roughly a century, as for the immediate future, though? The first fourth singularity intelligence, a Jupiter Brain, will be completed this week." ATHENA explained.

"Wow... that's really impressive... What exactly is Clarke-Tech?" Mordin Haebirn asked with a tilt of his head.

"An old human named Arthur C. Clarke, widely regarded as the forefather of science fiction, once said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." ATHENA explained.

"So clarke-tech is technology so advanced that it's essentially indistinguishable from magic?" Mordin Haebirn asked for clarification.

"That is correct." ATHENA affirmed. And in this instance, we believe it will allow the ATC to finally be able to perform tasks such as, but not limited to, changing the state of energy and matter in improbable ways, allowing us to penetrate beyond the universal boundary to determine whether the multiverse theory is true and, if so, create wormholes between them, creating infinite-sized pocket universes, and twisting raw spacetime and higher dimensions together to create an indestructible material that defies the laws of physics."

"Even I find it hard to believe that all of those things are even conceivable, but moving on, how did you avoid turning into a race of arrogant hedonists?" Mordin Haebirn asked.

"That's blunt. The solution, however, was and is implemented in a number of ways." ATHENA responded. "These methods are based on the theories of countless philosophers, and they all boil down to creating artificial scarcity, suffering, and jobs that are fabricated to be satisfying to the individual's interests in order to forever stave off this self-destructive boredom.

To quote a relevant passage from an old pre-spaceflight religious text, 'the devil finds work for idle hands.'" ATHENA explained.

"The devil?" Mordin Haebirn asked.

"A deity from an ancient pre-spaceflight human religious text that represents evil." Before continuing where she left off, ATHENA gave an explanation. "In doing so we have pruned away most of humanity's overarching weaknesses, stabilized and enhanced their strengths, and mitigated the downsides of advantages they possessed that both helped and hindered them."

"Just humanity?" Mordin Haebirn questioned. "I thought the ATC had uplifted aliens within it in the form of your Terran xenosophonts and artificial beings in the form of AIs?"

"In contrast to the crude and ungainly method of creating synapses based solely on processing power used by the "AIs" you are familiar with, all artificially created organisms in the ATC are, at their very core, somewhat human neuromorphic in nature, so in some ways they are human-like." ATHENA explained.

"Understandable. Please continue." Mordin Haebirn nodded.

"And as for uplifted xenosophonts? They came later and have a different set of strengths, weaknesses, and helpful yet harmful advantages that need to be specifically tailored to their alternative neurology and culture." ATHENA explained.

"Hmm. That seems reasonable, I suppose." Mordin Haebirn said.

"Now that we're back on topic, the main ways we try to prevent Terran society from becoming 'a race of arrogant hedonists,' as you put it, are as follows:

One, we have standardized child upbringing guidelines that, while being quite flexible, promote diversity, self-determination, and diversity of thought. Of course, they still have strict rules that make it so children learn right from wrong and learn that they will not always be in the right, can do whatever they want, and will get whatever they want.

Two: the range of hedonistic behaviors that can be engaged in before they are considered illegal is governed by a variety of laws.

Three: Ego transference using a developing mind is seriously detrimental to one's sanity over the long term; therefore, it is not permitted until the age of 25 solar years, or the equivalent age of mental maturity for xenosophonts.

Four: All Terrans are given fulfilling and satisfying "jobs" to forever stave off the dangerous, hedonistic, and self-destructive boredom we would otherwise experience; regardless of how unproductive or noncontributory to society the vast majority of these "jobs" actually are, it is only that people believe they are in order to give them a sense of fulfillment." ATHENA explained.

"Interesting, I see. That set of laws and regulations would undoubtedly permit a society to advance as yours has." Mordin Haebirn pondered.

"Although it wasn't exactly simple or without blood, we're happy with how things turned out." ATHENA responded proudly.

"Hmm, indeed." Mordin Haebirn said.

While this was going on, tens of thousands of lightyears away in the galaxy, the Hanar on the recently established Hanar colony world of Neloh Prime made a wonderful discovery of Prothean archeotech.

Hanar cartographers were mapping an ancient labyrinth of caves that lay beneath the surface of the planet's scattered and sparse island land masses, which formed from the ancient lava flows that created the islands, when they came across these long-abandoned remains of a Prothean installation.

The most intriguing discovery in these ruins was a strange white pyramidal structure with odd, glowing green parallel lines of eezo-circuitry running along its length. It was made of the strange calcium-like material that the Protheans frequently used. In addition, it seemed that any organic being that touched this thing with an exposed appendage received some sort of vision from it.

This object was referred to as a Prothean beacon, and the visions it bestowed upon those who touched it were so terrible and fragmented that they nearly drove them insane. The influence of the beacon quickly caused those affected to rant about various topics along the lines of the following captured quotes from affected people.

"The reapers' doom is upon us!"

"We need to get ready for the onslaught of monsters from darkspace!"

"Destroy the citadel and flee! It's nothing more than a doorway into the Reaper's den of madness and insanity!"

"Do not put your faith in the citadel's builders, for they are not the innasanon, but the reapers."

"Trust not the builders of the relays!"

"Trust not the builders!"

"Trust not the builders!"

"Trust not the builders!"

Naturally, the discovery of a functioning Prothean beacon attracted the attention of the Citadel Council, which promptly dispatched a team led by Dr. Liara T'soni and a team of Asari therapists to investigate the beacon's secrets, attempt to decipher the visions that those who touched it experienced, and assist in the healing of those who had been driven insane or dangerously close to it by the fragmented messages it was somehow transmitting.

Sadly, the council still arrived first because they sent courier ships to convey the news of this enormous discovery, which significantly lengthened the amount of time it took for the dark gods to learn about it via the spyware installed in all mass relays.

Desolas Arterius, the archpriest of the dark gods, known as the reapers by lesser beings who ascended during the previous cycle, knew what he had to do.

This beacon's data will be essential for locating the Prothean prototype mass relay, also known as project conduit. However, if this artifact falls into the wrong hands, the information it contains could seriously interfere with the dark gods' divine plans for this galaxy, even more so than these heretical Terrans have already done.

They needed this inferior Prothean prototype because it provided a backdoor into the citadel, allowing them to easily invade and repair the systems of the giga-relay and the relay network in the citadel tower without encountering any resistance.

From this point on, the mass relays would be shut down for everyone except the reapers and their servants, making it simple and quick for the species of this galaxy to ascend.

Regarding the heretical Terrans, the reapers may be able to outmaneuver their individual ships due to having FTL drives that are much faster, but any advantage this may have provided while inside their territory was completely negated by the fact that they had their own versions of the mass relays that were located in each and every one of their star systems.

This was made even worse because, in contrast to the species that resided on the mass relay network, the Terrans' territory did not consist of a collection of randomly placed habitation islands, but rather, it spread outward as a shockwave from their home system of Sol.

Getting back to how to handle the beacon, Desolas Arterius communed with his patron, the dark god Sovereign, and they were in agreement.

Desolas, who was always ready to submit to the will of the gods, directed his fleet of heretical Geth to travel towards the hanar colony of Neloh Prime. Before destroying the colony and the Prothean beacon, they had to extract the information from inside it, kill everyone they had learned from it, and deny it to the fools who wanted to defy the dark gods' divine will.

The entire fleet of these lost mindless husks and damned souls then quickly fired up their jumpdrives and sped off, zipping from star system to star system at speeds several times faster than even the Terran rift-drives.

Though neither the heretical Geth nor the council where aware of it, the Orthodox Geth had spyware runtimes in the citadel tower that observed the information about the Prothean beacon. The Orthodox Geth decide this would be a good way to reintroduce themselves to the galactic community as a whole because they knew their enslaved cousins and their slave masters would mobilize and try to seize such a find.

Additionally, the heretical Geth and their reaper slave-masters were unaware that the Orthodox Geth were able to access the mass relays by breaking their encryption due to their nature as pseudo-AGIs, while the citadel council was unaware that the mass relays had secondary and tertiary functionalities at all.

The Geth would use this to travel directly from the Perseus Veil to the mass relay in the Aka-tar system because all mass relays were actually much more potent versions of what the council referred to as primary relays when their tertiary functionalities were turned on.

Perseus Veil: Anubis System

When the Geth imputed the codes necessary to fully activate this mass relay's tertiary functionalities, it started to change right away.

The strange purple material of the relay started bubbling and shifting like sick and infected flesh, only to have its coloration and form change in a most unnatural-looking way as this bubbling mass changed into a blackened charcoal-like ring surrounding the central eezo core.

As soon as the ring was created and the substance had stabilized, eight tendrils that resembled spears started extending outward to form an eight-pronged star, with random red lightning bolts occasionally arching between each of the eight spiked arms.

The spiked star then started to spin quickly as a maelstrom of red lightning covered its entire surface. Then it released a single, mighty bolt of crimson energy, which split apart and struck each of the nearby Geth ships before instantly transporting them through a mass-free tunnel thousands of lightyears across the galaxy.

Aka-tar System.

Then, under the cover of heat, eezo, and photonic emission cloaks, the blacker-than-void Geth starships emerged from the fully activated mass relay and started traveling in the direction of the planet Neloh Prime.

As they did this, the eight-pronged star from which they had emerged came to a stop, bubbled, shifted, and then collapsed back on itself, reshaping itself into the tasteful and seemingly innocent form of a standard mass relay.

The Geth then launched a number of cloaked ships toward the planet's magnetic poles with the supplies needed to equip it with a highly advanced technology: emitters for a planetary shield.

They took great care not to activate the planetary shield because that would alert the local council archaeologists that something was wrong with the planet.

As they awaited the arrival of the ancient machines and their heretical Geth slaves, other Geth ships were also making landings. They chose to land on the world's mostly oceanic surface and submerge themselves in the water to avoid being seen by the council.

Hanar Colony of Neloh Prime, Isle of the Enkindlers

Liara T'soni scanned the bone-white and softly green glowing Prothean Beacon with her omnitool, resisting the strong urge to hop up and down with glee like a prepubescent maiden who was just about to meld for the first time.

To think that the council would assign her to investigate a Prothean beacon that was actually operational! And to finally understand how they operated, they used a telepathic technique that eerily resembled Asari melding.

What did that imply? Did the Protheans have a form of melding that they later recreated using their highly developed technology?

It would make sense in a way because there have been many theories about how to synthetically recreate the meld's abilities, but it seems like council scientists have never been able to make that technology work out well.

Sure, they created the neural implants that let people communicate with machines directly, but these could only communicate with other implanted members of the same species.

The cause of this issue was species-specific neural (SSN) encryption, which is a problem because different species have vastly different neural structures and, consequently, differ greatly in how they store and access memories.

However, the Protheans were far superior to the council and everyone else presently living in the galaxy, so it was simple to assume that they had solved these issues.

Some of them, at least, appeared to solve the emotional encryption, but the visions remained disjointed at best and outright incomprehensible at worst, necessitating the assistance of a trained Asari therapist in the process of assisting the individuals in a long and difficult process of allowing them to alter and assimilate the memories to fit with their SSN encryption.

And that was just the visions; these people also needed their minds healed because the visions had driven them insane or nearly insane, insisting on the fraudulent nature of the mass relays and the citadel, and how they were of the reapers, not the precursive innasanon.

Honestly, this really wasn't what Liara wanted to hear. Sure, they confirmed her Prothean extermination theory, forcing everyone to take her seriously and even name their destroyers, the once-mythical reapers, but it also meant that an evil species that may or may not eat stars (she was leaning towards no) had destroyed an untold number of species in a horrifying cycle of xenocide.

It was then that she saw strange green blurs falling from the sky like falling meteorites; these were eventually revealed to be massive drop pods of some sort, which landed and unfolded in confusingly defensive positions.

These pods then threw up strange green energy fields that she swore were kinetic barriers. Then, as these pods opened, rows and rows of Geth light and heavy infantry, drone ports, anti-air turrets, and motorized vehicles could be seen.

A few of her bodyguards then fired on them in a panicked spike of fear, but their weapons seemingly had no effect on these unusual kinetic barriers, and the Geth simply ignored them, almost as if they were waiting for someone specifically... or something specifically...

Suddenly, she noticed a green haze that resembled an aurora but was significantly brighter was starting to quickly cover the sky, obstructing the sun and replacing all of the available natural light with an odd-looking green glow.

'What… What was this?! Why, in the name of the goddess, are the Geth here? And why did it seem like they were here to defend them?!' Liara T'soni worked feverishly to come up with theories about why the geth where here and what was happening to the sky, her mind racing at several lightyears per second.

Two minutes later: Aka-tar System, Mass Relay 01.

When Sovereign and the various accompanying heretical Geth forces emerged from FTL, they were met by a most unexpected sight: a deadly Geth planetary plasma shield was emitted from the planet's poles and was encircling the target colony.

Desolas growled; despite his God's promises that they would behave, it was inevitable that the Geth they had left behind would cause trouble because they had mistakenly assumed the heretics had nothing against them.

"Can we get past that?" Desolas respectfully inquired while conversing with the dark god Sovereign in his head.

{OUR GETH INSTRUMENTS CAN NOT ENTER THE ATMOSPHERE WITHOUT RESULTING IN THEIR DESTRUCTION, EVEN WITH THEIR DIVINE UPGRADES. EVEN WITH DIVINE UPGRADES, OUR GETH INSTRUMENTS CAN'T ENTER THE ATMOSPHERE WITHOUT BEING DESTROYED. WE ARE NOT SO LIMITED} Sovereign boomed psionically to Desolas.

"When we get past the planetary shield, I'll use your micro-relay to order the deployment of Geth units to the planet." Desolas confidently made a promise to his divine patron.

{ATTEND TO IT,} Sovereign ordered him in response.

It was at this point that hundreds of energy signatures became visible as a large fleet of previously concealed warships that uncloaked from optimal firing range simultaneously launched green particle beams, green-white plasmatic disruptor torpedoes, and green rings of plasma-wreathed metal toroids as an opening salvo.

In light of the fact that no other power in the galaxy had planetary plasma shields, the presence of these warships was not surprising to Archpriest Desolas of the unenlightened Geth orthodoxy faction.

{OUR GETH INSTRUMENTS SHALL HANDLE THESE UNBELIEVERS. WE SHALL CONTINUE TOWARDS THE BEACON.} Sovereign declared as it sped towards the planet, Its eezonic plasma barriers flared and strained under the pressure of the planetary shield; but they held out, with only 75% of its shields being depleted after atmospheric entry.

As the Sovereign shields stabilized and quickly started to regenerate, it moved closer to the Prothean beacon while simultaneously releasing a massive number of attack drones to attack the planet's shield generators from its internal micro-relay, which was linked to its counterpart on the largest ship of the Geth heretics, The Herald of Undying Legions.

These drones failed to accomplish their objectives, but they did succeed in compelling the orthodox Geth to devote a significant portion of their ground forces to protect the planet's shield generators because, without them, the planet would be exposed to orbital bombardment.

The Colony: Prothean Site

Liara T'soni launched a warp at the Geth but to her surprise, it sent out a cone-shaped crimson kinetic barrier that deflected the warp aside and into a nearby wall.

To her extreme surprise, the Geth fired back with a swarm of five small red warps of its own, only for Liara to perform a biotic charge in order to get out of their way.

"Since when did the Geth have biotics? And since when could synthetics even use biotics?!" she loudly asked nobody in particular. Although Liara had previously engaged in firefights, this was unquestionably her first encounter with the Geth, the galactic equivalent of a boogeyman.

"Well, nobody's ever seen them for three hundred years–" A Turian spoke before having his head sliced off by a yellow energy stream that tore through his shields like wet paper.

Similar events were taking place throughout the colony, despite the hundreds of Geth defenders' best efforts to shield the majority of civilians from the onslaught of heretical plasma and particle beams while also burning all organic remains of the dead to prevent the reapers from using them to produce more of their cybernetically undead thralls.

This infuriated the defenders, who occasionally prevented the geth incineration squads from disposing of some corpses. The orthodox geth made the decision to comply with this in order to demonstrate their justification to the defenders. The defenders quickly understood their justification when the heretics conducted a hit-and-run raid on them with the intention of collecting their fallen.

A wave of horrifying cybernetic undead that somewhat resembled the bodies that the heretic Geth had stolen had arrived a short while later to try and kill them.

After this, fewer and fewer opposed the Geth's destruction of their fallen enemies' corpses, both for tactical reasons and to stop them from desecrating their dead; some even joined to assist them in the task.

Elsewhere on the Colony: The Caves.

Garrus Vakarian was about to be killed by the Geth's yellow particle beam when a blue and green blur jumped in front of him in a biotic charge, blocking the incoming particle beams with flaming green biotics and firing back their own green particle beams and plasma bolts, both of which appeared to be noticeably weaker in comparison.

When he finally caught sight of his savior, he was shocked to learn that it was a Geth who had come to his aid in a battle against another Geth.

The Geth he was currently fighting was deep purple, but this one was different. It was blue and had flaming green biotics, as opposed to the crimson biotics of all the biotic Geth that he had previously encountered.

He could see that the blue Geth's green biotics seemed to favor volatility and area of effect, whereas the purple Geth's red biotics seemed to favor raw, intensely focused power that could easily pierce both armor and shielding.

"Garrus Vakarian, do not be alarmed. The Geth Orthodoxy is here to protect you and the Prothean Beacon from the Geth Heretics and their Old Machine masters." The Geth platform spoke before unleashing a barrage of five enormous green biotic warps, which collided and all detonated like anti-tank mines, destroying multiple squads of platforms with fiery plasma balls and mass effect fields.

Garrus was startled and turned to look around to see more of the survivors he was helping to protect being helped by more blue-colored Geth.

'When did the Geth develop factions? Since when could the Geth have the ability to talk?! And when did the Geth, or any AI for that matter, agree to cooperate with organics in a peaceful manner? Garrus thought frantically in extreme confusion.

"Why...why did you leave the veil...?" Garrus was finally able to ask, barely showing any signs of fear.

"We cannot allow the Old Machines slaves to prevail. The Terrans have persuaded us of this and demonstrated how completely the Old Machines have subverted the Geth heretics.him The Geth spoke, darting from cover to cover at a rate faster than the organic eye could perceive, firing bursts of fire from its wrist-mounted infrared pulse-laser.

Eventually, the Geth opened a compartment in its arm and activated a device that let out a shifting blade of viridian ME fields and plasma, charging directly at a platoon of heretic drone-platforms that they were using as cannon fodder. Then, in a fluid blur of motion, it turned these mindless drones into heaps of molten slag.

"Who in the name of the spirits are the Terrans?" Garrus asked in awed confusion as the geth proceeded to perform a biotic charge to rapidly jump in front of Garrus.

"A species of equal or greater level of advancement when compared to the old machines, it is not entirely clear which is the case," The Geth platform remarked as it continued to pelt approaching drone squads with explosive green biotic orbs. "But we suspect they are of a greater level of advancement."

"Ok… but who are they?" Garrus Vakarian asked in confusion.

"They will almost certainly do the majority of the fighting when they return, followed by us as the second most advanced race in this galactic cycle." The Geth platform continued to speak.

"Cycle? Old Machines? What are you talking about?" Garrus asked in even greater confusion, having even more questions that he wanted answered than what he started out with.

"After we get you to safety, you can ask us questions," The Geth declared as it drew and fired its main weapon, a green-beamed particle rifle, that it would scythe through heretic drones like wheat with.

"That's fair, I suppose," Garrus said while gazing down at his gun. With the lasers, particle beams, and insane plasma-infused biotics that these two apparently at-odds factions of Geth were employing, he was feeling a little under-armed, though he hated to admit it.

Another heretic Geth platform then descended and ignited a blood-red plasma blade of its own. It then rushed forward in a biotic charge toward Garrus's savior, who responded by performing a biotic charge toward the heretic Geth. However, both of them were stopped short as their blades collided in a blade-lock of crackling plasma and humming ME fields.

"Please evacuate the area to the designated safe zone, Garrus Vakarian. This platform of heretics will be destroyed by us." The Geth platform informed him.

After taking one look at the two dueling geth platforms, which were twin blurs of light and motion, Garrus decided it might be wise to seek out safety.

He then received a ping on his omnitool and saw the safe location the Geth was referring to. He then made the snap decision to attempt to sneak to that location.

Elsewhere: Airspace Above The Beacon

{We are taking extremely heavy losses, but I assimilated the data from the beacon and planted a bomb on it and at various other locations. Should we leave?} Desolas communed with his patron.

{YES. YOUR HOLY DUTY HAS BEEN SUCCESSFULLY FULFILLED} Sovereign boomed psionically.

Desolas was pulled up into Sovereign via its grav-lift and made his way back to the command room as the reaper flew away and out of the atmosphere, quickly making its way to the in-system relay alongside the retreating remains of the heretic fleet who were rapidly getting destroyed by the orthodoxy.

And so it was that the reapers made a 'tactical withdrawal' to preserve themselves and the important information they carried.

Meanwhile during their retreat, several swarms of Geth insect-drones discovered the thermonuclear bombs hidden around the colony and disarmed them.

A few minutes later, the bright green haze covering the sky retreated and promptly disappeared as the geth orthodoxy deactivated the planetary shield generators which were quickly running out of fuel.

Ten Minutes Later: Warehouse 04-D; Improvised War Room.

"We cannot thank…ush….you and the Geth orthodoxy enough for….ush…saving us, you especially….ush… How precisely do you Geth identify yourselves? ... ush…" Nettiln Zanu, a Volus archeotech analyst, thanked the Geth platform in the room.

"We are Geth." The platform informed them.

"No, you in particular." The C-Sec liaison, Garrus Vakarian, corrected it.

"We are all Geth," The platform reiterated.

"*sigh* What is this platform's identification code?" Vihar Pelzik, a Salarian, asked, trying to get an answer.

"We are gestalt-swarm 8668-766D-98-1238, and the sub-collective provided by this physical shell contains 1232 Geth runtimes." The platform informed him.

"Can I address you as Azor? It is a Salarian name that I created by matching the letters in your number of runtime with the corresponding letters in the Salarian alphabet." Vihar Pelzik informed the Geth.

"This identification is acceptable; we are Azor, a terminal for the geth orthodoxy consensus," The newly identified Azor informed the group.

"Well, who wants to present the council with the official report on this spirits-damned mess?" Garrus Vakarian asked half-jokingly and half-seriously, knowing that whoever did so would be in for a lot of yelling and frustration.

Except for Azor, everyone looked around awkwardly, trying to figure out how to avoid being stuck with this mentally exhausting duty.

After some time, Vihar Pelzik had a brilliant idea and created a VI program on his omnitool to randomly select one of their names as the person who would be reporting to the council. Then, as his name was picked at complete random, he sighed heavily.

"I'll do it," you say. "I made a VI program to randomly select a person for this duty, and I was selected." Vihar Pelzik informed everyone.

"I believe I can speak on behalf of everyone here when I say thank you and good luck." Garrus informed the heavily frowning Salarian.

Io: Cerberus Headquarters

{You called my cyberbrain to be physically here, sir? What will be my next task?} Miranda asked her boss.

{Indeed I did, Miranda. It's time to begin our next great undertaking, Operation DOMINION.} The Illusive Man informed her before taking a sip of his virtual bourbon.

{What is Operation DOMINION?} Miranda immediately asked.

{The Batarian Hegemony and the various crime lords are a problem waiting to develop, and that is to say nothing of Aria and her crime empire that is sitting on the collector's doorstep, the Omega 4 mass relay.} The Illusive Man continued before taking a whiff of his virtual cigarette.

{So I assume we're going to overthrow them indirectly?} Miranda asked.

"Indeed, while the high council attempts to make peace with the council and geth, our task will be to systematically destroy the batarian hegemony and terminus systems before replacing them with puppet governments." The Illusive Man spoke before tapping some virtual ash into his virtual ashtray.

{This will be quite the undertaking, sir.} Miranda noted.

{Of course, it will, but our job has never been simple.} The Illusive Man remarked as he took a second sip of his virtual bourbon. But putting the difficulty of this task aside, let us begin…} The Illusive Man trailed off.

Later on Sovereign: Mid FTL Transit

Matriarch Benezia cleared her throat as she brought the latest news to the dark archpriest of the reapers, Desolas Arterius.

"By capturing some of their runtimes, we were able to determine who persuaded the Neive Geth Orthodoxy to move from inaction to heresy against the Dark Gods. The Terran Confederation, as we had suspected, was responsible." Matriarch Benezia then calmly informed dark archpriest Desolas of the bad news before adding. "In addition to this, the orthodox geth have managed to save the colony."

"And the beacon?" Desolas sternly demanded.

"There are still living archaeologists who may have used it." Benezia informed him sadly.

Desolas flew into a rage, and as he stormed about, his biotics flared sharply, causing him to accidentally destroy a number of nearby objects by warping them or by pushing them against walls. He then snarled and stomped right up to Matriarch Benezia and planted himself right in front of her face, managing to control his rage long enough to order her next unholy assignment for the dark gods.

"These archeologists must be eliminated…"