It was an overcast autumn day, and he re-secured his helmet to his suit to shield his face against the firm, cold wind that battered it. It was unnaturally cold and dark for the time of day and year; the colossal fires that lit the plains of the planet had finished burning, but great clouds of ash still lay suspended in the atmosphere, blocking most sunlight from reaching the ground. The ecosystem on this planet had been slowly garroted since its fall. Denied of the light it needed to fuel its food chain, it collapsed almost entirely.
Gravel and dead organic debris crunched underfoot as he walked along an old path that meandered through what had once been a small forest. It had been old; he had witnessed the planting of its first saplings here many years ago. Now it fell bare and dead, starved of the sun that it relied on for food. The remains of its branches still grasped skywards from the ground like skeletal hands, and it was quiet, devoid of any animal calls or voices. Breathing deeply from the air that once harboured fresh and damp scents, he smelt only the smoky scent of soot.
Before long, the path wound to a small circular clearing. Off to the sides of the clearing were decayed wooden benches that had once been fashioned from the first trees of the forest. In the middle of the clearing rested an old statue depicting a warrior from another era, with a pointed sword raised toward the grey sky. The statue had been hand-carved from black basalt: an extremely hard fine-grained rock formed from the rapid cooling of lava rich in magnesium and iron. "An act of gratitude for an unpayable debt", the people of this planet had told him as they dragged the rock from the once-molten coastline to this spot and carved it into likeness by hand. It had taken them months of constant toil to release the spirit from the stone but its result was something erected to honour against the ravages of time. At its base, worn but carved deeply, was his name.
He brought his hand to his helmet in grief, the recent rape of the planet poisoning all the good memories of his time spent here. There was a certain finality to the Reaper harvest, he grimly reflected; it cut all loose ends off altogether as if the sweeping tapestry that had once been woven across the galaxy were deemed insignificant and destroyed. This was the latest of a dozen worlds he revisited, searching for signs of advanced life amid the rubble that had once teemed. He found none, only mindless husks. The thought of that particular brand of isolation cleft him deeply, crippling him in many ways that were worse than being dead.
To further confound his suffering, he reminded himself of another fact: In the universe, things ran down on their own accord - this was the law of entropy. Tech wore out and needed to be replaced. He could only repair his ship and suit for so long until he needed to replace a part that couldn't be found. Then he would be stranded again, hopefully on a habitable planet, with nothing. He would again need to survive by himself for a time that felt as numerable as sand. The sheer desolation of that thought stretched out in front of him infinitely, a hell just as real as any imagined. He saw the continued trials he would have to face and could not bear the thought of shouldering them again.
The thought of that nihilistic oblivion was so overpowering that he took off his helmet, grabbed the relic from his back - the one silent companion constantly by his side for his entire life - and held it up to his own throat, ready to pull it across and end it all. While a single stroke away from an end, he gave the thought of suicide a very long and hard consideration, for, after all, he had all the time in the world. It would be easy and certainly less work, he contemplated. He would no longer be alone. There would be no more pain. The Reapers had rendered all his work meaningless regardless, and one more death would not tip the scales in any way. Yet the other voice within him told him that giving up after holding on for so long would be unforgivable blasphemy, that his life would then be truly meaningless. It was more spite than compassion that kept his trembling blade from slitting his own throat, and he hated himself for it. He hated one argument most of all because it was true, no matter which lens you looked at it: with each successive harvest, the Reaper horde grew more populous. The best time to have ever destroyed them was when they were first birthed into the cosmos. The second best time was always now.
He hated himself for his reasoning, and he pressed the blade against his throat harder in defiance. The suffering was not worth it, he scolded himself. No organic should live this long under circumstances this wretched. It was insane. He had witnessed enough. He didn't deserve this. He focused on that suffering, willing himself to take the final motions, but he couldn't allow himself to do it in the end. Angry at himself, he threw the blade on the ground, cursing it. Fuming, he stomped off, kicking debris around and scorning everything he saw.
A little while later, after he had collected himself, he picked up the relic and dusted off the ash that had fallen on it. Although he was sure it didn't care about his suffering, he felt that it didn't want to be alone either. Despite his knowledge of the horrors of his future, he would at least try to bear the burden. He placed the ancient sword back on his back and began a slow walk back to his parked vessel.
The path through the remains of the forest slowly grew into plain, and his boots crunched over dead, dry stalks that once carpeted the landscape with green. As he walked onwards without purpose or direction, his thoughts mulled over what had become of the Protheans. They had been an outstandingly intense people that ruled a single unified empire that stretched nearly from arm to arm. Fierce expansionists, they believed deeply in the right conferred by their perceived dominance. Those they met were posed with a choice: assimilate into their empire or be crushed. Relatively unchallenged, their hubris had proved to be their downfall; The first attack by the Reapers opened the Citadel - the seemingly untouchable central seat of their entire empire - immediately incapacitating their government and providing access to their census data and star charts. Despite his warnings and the critical errors that proved eventually fatal, they had fought hard. Their worlds have been numerous, their fleets large, their armaments devastating. They threw it all at the Reapers in a bid for time to research Reaper tech, hoping to unlock the secrets of the relays. Relay technology could have given them a massive edge: control Reaper transportation, and you can control the Reapers. Despite their incredible physical prowess and truly horrifying powers of indoctrination, the Reapers themselves still relied on the network to travel, still at the mercy of their support. It would have proved a significant turning point had they understood their operation before it was too late.
Their plan at the beginning had been simple: win at all costs. When the war progressed against them, and they saw no remaining winning battlefield strategies, they solemnly looked to legacy strategies instead. Before the harvest, primitive species that the Protheans viewed as most promising to assume the mantle of responsibility were observed and studied. Of the lot of primitives that they catalogued, three species were thought to one day ascend: The salarians - short-lived warm-blooded amphibians with hyperactive metabolisms, possessing keen observation skills and razor-sharp wits. The Turians - longer-lived bipedal avian raptors with a highly militaristic and disciplined culture that made them excel at war and large-scale organization. Lastly, the apple of the Prothean eye, the asari - a mono-gendered race with millennium-long lifespans, natural biotic aptitude, able to reproduce with a partner of any gender or species. Natural diplomats, they were clear favourites of the Protheans. Wishing to one day succeed where they had not, the Protheans uplifted the asari to jump-start their advancement. They ceased all observation to deter the Reapers from suspecting that the primitive species harboured potential when the harvest began.
They were not the only primitive species with potential, however. There were dozens of others all scattered throughout the galaxy fighting for dominance in their respective worlds. Out of all of them, despite their initial perceived mediocrity, one, in particular, had caught his eye. The species were not as well organized as the turians but were just as fast, strong and agile. Slower in wit than the salarians, but very resourceful in a pinch. No latent biotic potential like the asari, but possessed a great degree of genetic diversity. They were bipedal mammals just like him, which by itself was not highly exceptional, but it was their running that had captivated him. Running had been a cornerstone of his own species once upon a time. Seeing their seemingly inoffensive but inexhaustible forms run down their quarry for length after length, day after day until it collapsed from exhaustion, had struck a secret chord in him. They possessed a prenatural strength of will, and were persistent and driven - so much so that he wondered about this species often and what they would one day achieve.
He wondered about what he could have accomplished had he had the full power and resources of the Protheans to uplift them, to replicate what they had gifted to the asari. He knew the risks - species on an accelerated technological path that outpaced their cultural development often doomed themselves as they lacked the moral framework to keep their technology in check. Despite his imaginings of the could be's, it was impossible; The Protheans were gone, and he was but one man with deteriorating supplies. A thought then occurred to him, so simple and effective that he wondered why he hadn't thought of it before: Once a species was spacefaring, the probability that they erased themselves out of existence dropped as they spread and colonized new worlds. There was a Prothean observation post on a red planet next to their homeworld. He would drop a data cache there. If they were fated to rise out of the mud and achieve space flight, they would one day discover his cache and propel themselves to the stars, his data serving as a slight push at the end of the space race to cross the finish line into the stars.
A new purpose blossomed in his heart, and he eagerly returned to his craft, setting a course first for Eletania. There was a Prothean cache there with latent observations about this species. He would check the latest monitor.
He booted up his small craft, ignoring the flashing warnings about required repairs and modules that were malfunctioning. He had done all he could with what he had. It would just need to hold on for a few more jumps.
He left the grey planet and headed for the nearest mass relay. How ironic, he thought to himself; every space-faring race used the relays as a lifeline - to expand and give life to desolate and barren planets. In the end, the relays provided a passage for the Reapers to their location and destruction.
"Initializing mass relay jump in t-minus 5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1.." the VI chimed.
The relay enveloped the small craft in a blue maelstrom of dark energy, and the dark of space turned bright as he jumped thousands of light-years instantaneously. He emerged in the Hercules system and spotted Eletania on the long-range scanner. It was a beautiful world: a bright, lush green meadow world covered with plant life. Unfortunately, its atmosphere was filled with micro-organisms that made breathing without a helmet impossible.
Landing and exiting the small craft, it was hard for him to ignore the sense of serene calm. The vegetation was tall, the sunlight was just right, and the winds were gentle. For a moment, it was hard to imagine those entire planets in the far distance had been burning not too long ago.
A waypoint on his personal multi-tool directed him to a plain littered with rocks and dirt. The defined path led him down into a shallow valley with the Prothean data bank placed in a small clearing. Data banks sometimes took the appearance of large ceremonial constructs complete with a dais and hovering metallic sphere. Despite their outlandish appearance, they were made to survive thousands of years of weathering. This would ensure that it would survive long enough to be understood by future life forms. Though potentially dangerous to certain races, they transmitted information to the mind directly to erase the need for physical interfaces, as would be the case for such long-lasting constructs.
He approached the giant metallic sphere that hovered over the dias and inserted the requisite key to activate it. As his fingers slid the key into its block, its memory slithered into his head. The chrome ball exploded in a brilliant flash of white light, momentarily blinding him.
Slowly your senses return as you wake from a deep sleep. You are alone in the forest, though you are not far from the caves you share with the others in your tribe. There is a pain and a small lump in the back of your skull, as if a chip of flint has been forced under the surface of the skin.
Leaning on your bone-tipped spear for support, you rise to your feet. A sound draws your attention upwards, where a strange creature hovers high above you. It is unlike the birds you hunt by the lake's edge – it has no head and no wings yet somehow it flies. It is a beast of shining silver; hanging motionless in the sky like a cloud. You sense it is watching you, studying you.
Raising a hairy fist, you shake your spear at it in anger and the creature rises up quickly until it disappears from view. With a satisfied grunt you make your way back to your caves and the rest of the tribe.
You fall into the familiar patterns of life – the hunt for food, the struggle to claim and keep a mate, the battles against the other tribes that would claim your territory. Days roll into nights and back into days. Each time you rise from sleep there is the sensation that you are not alone; that some "other" is with you sharing all you see, hear and feel. At these times your hand goes to the strange lump at the back of your skull and you remember the silver creature from the sky.
The air grows colder, winter falls. You must range farther for food, clutching the furs tight against you to ward off the chill. It is on one of these long hunts that the strange bird returns. You hear it before you see it, its call a deafening roar as it descends from above, swooping down on you. A single great eye opens on the underbelly, a glowing red orb. You try to run, but a finger of red light extends from the eye and engulfs you, and all goes black again.
His consciousness returned to him with the key still in hand, rushing all back at once. He blinked to clear his head, making sense of the memory as the disorientation slowly wore. It was a member of the species he sought, living for a short time. The fact that they were still using stone-age technology slightly disheartened his earlier enthusiasm, but it was expected. It would take a while before they were space-faring.
He headed back to his ship. The warnings of his craft whined once more as he rode the mass relay to visit the system that held the species' home planet. The single star system had several planets orbiting, with only one in the correct distance band to liquid water, thus bearing life. The colours of the planets amused him - one was yellow from noxious fumes, one was deep blue from gas, one was barren and grey like a rock, one laden with beautiful rings, another red as rust. Out of all these, one stood apart: a vibrant marble of cloud wisps and ice, blue water that covered most of the world, and dense green carpeting. He took an image on the planet for posterity, wondering if he would see it change one day.
He set a course for the Prothean observation post, and his onboard assistant guided him to the base. Once there, he uploaded the data he had and whispered a short prayer to the universe for its speedy discovery and protection from corruption. Prothean data stores were robust, but it was hard to expect data this dense to remain unfragmented after thousands of years. Satisfied with his work, he returned to his craft and headed for the spinning blue marble.
