Before Garrus made it to the end of the third page, Shepard lost her battle against her most intractable enemy. Her eyelids surrendered first, but within moments, Garrus's voice faded into silence, sleep proving the victor.
Deep in the liminal twilight, the horrors from the beacon stretched, waking from a long day of careful and deliberate burial. Reaching out, they tangled themselves up in the history and terror that hitchhiked along with the cipher out of the Thorian's mind. Together, they created a mire that sucked Shepard down from nightmare to nightmare all night long.
A soft note of song, a wisp of honey-gold, drifted through, weaving a path that guided Shepard between images. Slowing the never-ending loop, the song allowed Shepard to recognize some of the flashes as memories.
"Would you understand?" the song asked, the rachni queen's eerie whisper echoing through the darkness. "Would you see what has been burned onto your soul?"
Setix 7.3, 89997 of Tapek Menru
Notes of pure colour, ripe with both taste and perfume, drifted through her dream, painting every barren landscape she visited in nostalgic, pastel hues of longing and regret. The song buoyed her up, carrying her over ruined city after ruined city, lying still, all their inhabitants long dead. Nothing left now. At least not on any ground upon which she once marched.
It's been so long since I heard a rachni sing. Thank you for this gift, although it seems a shame to waste it upon a dead empire. You sing beauty for a people shattered, worlds destroyed, many of them for nearly a century. The Prothean Empire sleeps within this room, singing queen. I and my family are all that remain.
Shepard jerked awake, every particle of her body screaming with the virulent, electric cepra-sting of blood tearing down the collapsed arteries, veins, and capillaries of a dead limb. Shaking her head, then her hands, she climbed out of her nest of blankets and walked to the window. Her fingers burrowed into her armpits, taking refuge against the predawn chill. The early sun had just begun to brush a million shades of vermillion, gold, and champagne over the tops of the clouds, promising a beautiful day. Perhaps, somewhere, a rachni still sang the sweet and melancholy arias of her kind in memory of what had been.
A beautiful day on a world so dead that it lay fifty cycles abandoned, the ground salted and scorched, even the monsters fleeing for kinder shores.
Why then did her heart sit dead and chill, a lump of rock and ice nestled tight against her spine? She glanced at the timekeeper next to her nest. Three hours before her wakeup. The Senarium wasn't due to leave on their mission for five setixs. And where had Merol gone? She liked to tease her mate that he loved his sleep even more than he loved her, but he'd risen before she. Reading his traces, she trailed her fingers over the table and door control, discovering no need to fear for his safety. No doubt, he'd proven as unsettled about their mission as she, and went for a walk. A scientist never wearied of exploration, or so he claimed.
She sighed, the tightness in her belly betraying her, sending silken threads of fear and rage . . . and sorrow shooting through her soul, binding it in shackles she could ill afford. Soldiers did grow weary. Oh, so very weary.
Sorrow. She paced across the small chamber to her meditation bowl, folding down to sit on her heels beside it. Sorrow, like a virus, infected everything. She plunged her hands into the water, scrubbing them. She possessed more than enough misery of her own, but that place . . . those ruins lamented as keenly as if they had been fashioned of pure suffering.
She chose to hide within its skeletal remains because such horrors had been visited upon its population that ghosts tread thickly through the ruins, screaming their pain and fury into the clouds. Even the monsters avoided it. The planet kept them safe while they waited, but it proved a hard world upon which to maintain one's equilibrium. So many layers of terror, despair, and hopelessness clung to every surface that not even gloves helped. If she didn't wash and meditate every couple of setixs, Merol proclaimed her impossible to live with and sent her to the bowl. Attit, the last living son of their mating cycle refused to set foot off their ship. She couldn't blame him. He didn't possess defenses forged during long cycles of coping with the horrific, psychic alluvium that the Reapers spewed over all they touched.
Courage of my antecessors, uphold me, strengthen me for the task ahead. My bones are old. The children from my first and median mating cycles are long dead, even my beautiful Giran gone ahead to light the way. Grant me your courage to face this last task, to plunge the spear into the heart of the monster . . . to help the young fight the battle that we have lost.
Nerves. Yes, nerves explained the cold creeping through her, weakening her to the fear. For nearly forty cycles, like an arrow released from a bow, her life had soared toward one goal, one target. Much hung in the balance. Opportunities for failure lurked out beyond the planned and anticipated. Success relied on her forgetting all that rode upon her actions, clearing her mind and heart to focus on the task.
Her fingers danced across the blissfully blank silence of the water.
So many cycles of running. She allowed the memories of pitch battles, narrow escapes, and dying friends to wash through her and into the bowl. On the last day of her war, of the Senarium's war, she didn't need the weight of an entire galaxy of dead hanging from her soul. To succeed, she needed to be more clever, quicker, tougher, and more focused than she had ever been.
She smiled. "That's saying something for a female my age."
Would you leave Giran behind as well? Just place her in the shard and walk away?
No, not Giran, eldest of her mating with Merol. Never Giran, so brave and proud, fighting to the last where so many succumbed, her spirit the brightest light in the heavens.
The door opened, and she smiled without opening her eyes. "You too?"
The familiar, solid presence of her mate knelt on the opposite side of the bowl, his fingers splashing softly in the water as he washed his hands. "Went for a walk," he said, then let out a long breath. "I had orchestrated a plan to rejoin you under the blankets, stirring you from your sleep with soft words and softer touches." He sighed, but she could hear his smile bleeding through. "However, I'm sure meditation will prove more advantageous to mission success."
She smiled and flicked water at him. "Then hush and meditate." Instead, his hands closed around hers, and she opened her eyes. "This isn't meditation."
He nodded, golden eyes staring into hers. "We fly into the talons and jaws of the enemy in a few setixs. It would be very selfish for me to want to spend them in the arms of the mother of my last children."
She met his gaze, allowing gratitude for many cycles of love and companionship to warm her regard. Meditation would prove more useful to their mission than passion. A settled, focused mind could be the difference between those being the last moments they spend alone together or living out the cycles remaining to them. A soft, understanding smile touched her lips, and she squeezed his fingers. For a moment, the soldier waged war with the mate of forty cycles, the mate winning. Regardless of preparation or skill, the cold fact remained that those moments could well be their last together. One did not get the gift of clinging to long-held, pretty illusions when fighting Reapers.
"Yes, it would," she answered at last, "but seeing as we are the last two living souls on this planet, I believe a little selfishness will escape reproach." She stood, pulling Merol up, and led him to the nest of blankets in the corner.
Setix 19.5, 89997 of Tapek Menru
".2 setix to the relay." Shepard spun her chair around in the small cockpit and pulled out a panel on the console next to her. She scanned the technology wired into it for the hundredth time. Each of the previous four missions, she'd checked it compulsively. Each time, it operated perfectly, tricking the relays into identifying their tiny frigate as a Reaper destroyer. Still, her innate distrust of anything spawned from those nightmares expected it to betray them any moment.
"It is still perfectly integrated, scrubbed, and calibrated," Merol said, letting out a long-suffering sigh that trilled in a most delicious way across her shoulders and down her spine. His fingers stroked down the back of her neck, his touch calming her nerves as it always did.
She pressed into it for a moment, then straightened. "Very well. I will attempt to stop worrying." She turned to the jump computer and keyed in the transit mass and destination. "We're ready for relay intersect."
"A single Reaper is entering scanning range, not yet moving to intercept, but it is headed for the relay. A straggler?" Merol reached over and gripped her shoulder inside the pauldron of her armour. "It is time, haksaya kubenar. Time to make sure that four people aren't sitting in our position at the end of the next cycle. The last four citizens of a shattered empire."
She reached up and pressed her hand over his. "For Giran."
"For our beautiful girl, and for them all," he agreed, pulling back.
"Approaching the relay. Locked on." Shepard opened a channel to engineering. "We are preparing to jump. Secure your safety harnesses. I do not know what we will face on the other side of the relay."
"Understood, Commander," Attit replied, his deep voice a comfort. "Dampening fields are active and functioning at full capacity. Emission sinks performing at optimal."
"Very good." Shepard checked and rechecked the jump information as they closed in on the relay, aware that she used the activity to mask her uncertainty. Uncertainty . . . she'd lived her cycles bonded to it closer than any mate. It lay beside her in bed as a child, waiting and watching for her parents to return to the bunker. It coached her through her training and thrust her to the highest rank and honours the Prothean Empire bestowed. It toweled the sweat from her neck while she brought all six of her children into the universe, and it held her hand as she buried five. Now, it warned her to be wary. Very, very wary.
She opened the channel to Peduk. "Report, Second Commander. Weapons systems?"
"The ship's core is primed and ready for detonation should our defenses not prove sufficient," the soldier, the last surviving member of Shepard's unit, said. She sounded nervous. On their approach to the Citadel, Shepard reminded herself to make sure Peduk took time to meditate. "Plasma rifles charged and ready once we land, Commander."
"Thank you. Attaining relay acceleration in six, five, four, three, two, one."
"Courage of our antecessors, uphold us," Merol whispered, his voice trembling, but to such a small degree that Shepard knew only she would recognize it. "Strengthen us for the task ahead. We cannot fail, or all those who have sacrificed so much will call their blood poorly spent."
Shepard drew in a deep breath, her chest aching, so great was the love she felt as her mate set his courage into the flood. Her Merol might be a scientist rather than a soldier, but his heart rivaled those of even the great commanders. No, it bested them, for at the core of Harrap, Maldok, and Javik, passion had long ago turned to dust, leaving nothing but death and vengeance behind. That Merol could be the last and care so much . . . it both warmed her and illuminated how many pieces of her own soul the war had carved away.
She reached for the stealth controls. "Are we registering any Reaper signatures on the scanners?" Shepard checked the dampeners to find them functioning perfectly, just as Attit reported. If the scanners read clear, she could activate the stealth, and all any Reapers would detect was an empty ship, floating through space.
"Scanners are clear. The vanguard must be docked with the Citadel." Merol reported. He leaned back in his seat and smiled at her. "Now to drift with the wreckage."
Her answering smile felt tight, more like baring her teeth, and she pulsed the thrusters a little to turn the bow toward the Citadel. Keeping the rhythm sporadic, she imitated the death throes of a wreck very much like those floating throughout the nebula. Victims of a last, great battle fought more than a quarter century before.
So many brave souls dead, their courage and strength reduced to a jest, a cold, heartless joke. Her heart cried out for vengeance, but the exquisite pain strengthened her resolve, sending molten metal flowing through her veins to ignite the fire at her core. What had felt like a lump of frozen rock that morning, roared awake, beating hard and steady. Her people would find justice, even if only through the many generations to come.
Pieces of a massive ship appeared in the ports, a ship all too familiar in its lines. Shepard jumped up and leaned over the console, straining to get closer, to see it more clearly through the nebular dust. "The Terror," she whispered. The fury turned rabid. Eight cycles she'd served the greatest fleet commander in the prothean navy as his second-in-command of The Terror, the largest and most powerful dreadnaught in the navy. Dozens of battles against every sort of Reaper from oculus to capital ship, The Terror never met with defeat. So many friends . . ..
They died twenty-five cycles ago in a battle that you already knew resulted in their deaths.
Still, rage ate at her, burning up all reason and caution. She sat, her hands hovering over the controls, shaking with the desire to throw off the cowardly ruse and fly into the jaws of death fighting. Was it not better to meet her antecessors charging the enemy, fierce and proud, rather than slinking about like a common thief? She was Commander Tashac Jacar, the highest ranking officer remaining alive if the rumours of Javik's demise proved true.
"Senarium log, Chief Scientist Merol Niral, on this 89997th day of the long defeat."
Her mate's voice eased back the fire consuming Shepard. Slowly, like fog settling to the ground, her hands drifted from the controls to rest in her lap.
"Where once we numbered over one hundred and fifty, the Senarium now consists of four. Our massive lab facilities reduced to one small ship. Betrayal and sacrifice have cost us everything, but of the five great keys to dark space, only one—the Conduit—remains to be captured and hidden. It is the greatest of the five, allowing the Citadel to be locked now that the Reapers have retreated back to the void. If our mission meets with success, the Vanguard will be unable to usher in the next extinction. Perhaps it will give the young races a chance to defeat the monsters. All we can do is hope."
Shepard closed her eyes as she listened to her mate speak to the computer, the lilting music of his voice . . . the true hope in his words . . . calming and recentering her. How extraordinary that at the culmination of a century of warfare, he should welcome the end with hope, that most rare and precious of things.
"I grew up on stories of the Citadel," Merol continued. "The shining beacon at the heart of our great empire. In those halcyon days, I dreamed of walking amidst the gardens and fountains admiring the beauty." He sighed, the dry, disappointed bitterness clenching a fist around her heart.
She understood. She had shared those same dreams, clinging to a paradise only to arrive and find nothing left but a corpse.
"We shall have to leave the rediscovery of the great station's splendour to the young races," Merol continued. She heard his chair squeak as he stood, then his hand closed over hers.
"Come and sit with me, mother of my last children," he said, his voice soft.
Shepard opened her eyes. "I must watch the . . .."
He gripped her other hand and pulled her up out of her seat. "We are moving a few paces, not leaving the ship. The scanners are visible from there."
"You realize this is insubordination?" she demanded, trying to maintain an edge to her tone.
He sat on the stairs leading out of the cockpit, easing her down to sit between his legs, leaning her back against his torso. "Better." He brushed the peak of his brow along the edge of her kepala. "I still retain a perfect memory of the first time I saw you. The project coordinator escorted you into the lab and work just stopped. Three experiments perished in flames that day because my people . . . I . . . could not look away from the exquisite storm that had blown into our presence."
She smiled, recalling her first sight of the charismatic, young head scientist. "When she noticed your eyes upon me, the coordinator leaned over and warned me to be wary of my virtue where you were concerned." A soft chuckle followed the memory.
Merol slid his arms around her. "I am grateful that you have always known your own mind. You are the steel that keeps me standing, haksaya kubenar."
"As you are the heart that warms and stirs my blood, cikabeknai." Shepard leaned back into him, slipping into a light meditation as she watched the hulks of her shattered empire float past. If that day brought their end, she would face it with strength and gratitude, the other half—the truer half—of her soul no more than an arm's length away.
Setix 21.2, 89997 of Tapek Menru
The Citadel loomed over and around them, the entire station dark and still from that distance. Shepard and Merol moved back to their seats, an eerie silence settling over them. Like the shade of a dead giant, the shadow of one of the wards crept over them, blocking the pale light of the sun. Its arms reached out, pulling them into its chill embrace, welcoming them to the end of everything.
Superstitious awe and terror skittered over Shepard's skin like insects, tiny jaws biting every time something appeared to move. And everything appeared to move as light shifted and debris passed in ever shifting layers that cast menacing shadows, each shadow promising to contain unmentionable horrors.
Forcing herself to ignore the irrational fear gnawing away at her courage, Shepard recited a short, silent prayer for strength. Fortunately, the concentration needed to navigate the hazards grew in direct proportion to the macabre atmosphere as they drifted toward the presidium ring and into the superstructure. Between guiding her ship and her prayer, she wrestled her fear back, binding it in chains formed of iron will.
On each and every mission, horror accompanied them, flying along at their wing and peering over their shoulders. Thus reason claimed it foolish to allow room for fear. Their last mission would prove no better or worse than the ones that came before.
Early in their research, the Senarium discovered that four greater relays existed in addition to the Citadel, each in a different quadrant of the galaxy, each frequency-locked to a key that opened it to dark space. Over the past five cycles, Shepard's team had hunted down and stolen the four keys from their relays, hiding them throughout the galaxy. Once they secreted away the keys, the remaining members of the Senarium went into hiding, awaiting the great exodus once the Reapers completed the extinction.
Now the Conduit called them on, its singular energy signature leading them through the skin of the station to follow its arteries and veins to its heart. Once they reached that black and terrible organ, they would stab it with a blade so great and deep that it reached fifty thousand cycles into the future to shatter the next extinction even before it began.
"Reading the Conduit one hundred thirty metres on a heading of 44.85.2," Merol reported, his voice sounding remarkably unshaken.
"I will not be able to finesse the ship through that opening in the bulkhead," Shepard said, glancing at her screens, then standing to look out the ports at their surroundings. "I will land, and the four of us will continue on foot."
As she concentrated on setting the frigate down in the narrow space, Merol called Attit and Peduk to outfit themselves.
After signing off, he remained in his seat, muttering over the scanners for several moments before he turned to her and said, "Tashac, I am reading an energy source ahead. It is of a scale beyond anything in my experience." Merol's words carried with them a gravity that she trusted without question.
"We shall take every possible precaution," she said, setting the computer to keep the ship ready for immediate departure then encoding the locks on the ramp to new passwords. She harboured no desire to return to the ship with the Conduit only to discover monsters overrunning their only means of escape. It did not take decades of betrayal at the hands of indoctrinated agents to teach one extraordinary prudence.
Attit and Peduk awaited she and Merol at the ramp, both presenting crisp salutes. She returned them, then accepted her arms from Attit's hands. He trusted no one else to care for her weapons and armour—not even her—taking pride in ensuring that his commander went into battle with the best equipment possible.
"Thank you, Attit." She hung her smaller side arm from her waist and shouldered her rifle.
He held out her helmet. "Commander, sensors read no enemy ground units in the area, just Caretakers."
"Very good," Shepard replied. "I will position myself on point. Merol, Peduk following. Attit, be sure that we are not overwhelmed from behind. We shall move as ghosts amongst the shadows. Do not open fire upon the enemy unless they attack. This place is a massive tomb overrun by Reaper ground units. Our best hope lies in escaping detection."
"As you say, Commander," her son replied.
She studied his strong, sure countenance, feeling the poignant combination of pride and regret that only a parent experiences upon realizing that their offspring has grown to eclipse them. The moment his stature allowed him to hold a rifle, her son left behind what small portion of childhood remained to a babe born into the last cycles of the war, embracing the martial life with passion and dedication. On the day he began his eleventh cycle, Attit ceased calling her mother, that relationship still present, but overshadowed by commander and soldier, his love for her demonstrated in unflinching loyalty and outstanding performance of his duties.
Shepard shook her head, a curt nod accompanying her switch flipping from Tashac Jacar to Commander Jacar. "For the empire."
"For the empire," the others replied, stepping aside and standing at attention, saluting as she passed.
The ramp lowered, revealing a scene unlike anything Shepard had ever witnessed, every glimpse reaching a new level of horror that battered at her calm. The long, narrow space teemed with Caretakers, the little green insectile beings crawling over and amidst thousands . . . no, tens of thousands of bodies. Some of the creatures removed large items of clothing like helmets and armour, while others dragged bodies to cylindrical containers slotted along the walls. Once sealed inside the cylinders, the bodies disintegrated into a gray effluvium that flowed along pipes that followed the walls along their intended path.
Shepard shuddered and pushed on. Whatever use the Caretakers or Reapers had for the melted down bodies, the probability of it impacting their mission remained small. Standing around staring, however, could prove catastrophic.
"Move out," she commanded, keeping her voice hushed despite her helmet's speaker being turned off.
"They're all Rivaran," Peduk whispered. Her musical, lilting voice came through reedy and thin, fabric worn threadbare.
Shepard glanced at the soldier, the last member of the squad assigned to her five cycles earlier, and nodded toward the path ahead. "Calm yourself, and focus on the mission."
"Why are they just pulling out the Rivarans?" the soldier continued. Peduk couched her rifle in the angle of her shoulder, the barrel sweeping a wide arc as she spun, starting at every sound.
Shepard ignored her, picking her way around the bodies, As Peduk pointed out, the Caretakers only pulled the pale, translucent-skinned bodies of Rivarans out of the massive number piled there. The Rivaran corpses had not decayed nearly as much as the others, sprawled mostly on top of the pile, their large, pink eyes unclouded, their gills firm. It seemed strange to her that the peaceful, scholarly race should not have been amongst the first harvested. Or perhaps, their distaste for fighting pushed them down the list as they presented so little threat to the Reapers' plans. They certainly had not presented a challenge when the empire conquered and subjugated their world.
She moved on. Dead was dead, and every species capable of spaceflight in the galaxy had been extinguished. Did it matter in what order they met their demise? Twenty metres ahead, the room ended in a large set of doors that remained open over a metre simply because of the amount of detritus caught up between them.
"A scrap of good fortune," Merol said.
"The enemy would not have missed that door opening," Attit agreed.
"We just have to climb over the dead to pass through," Peduk said, whining in a manner that Shepard had not witnessed from her since her days as a cadet.
Although always a little more flighty and easily spooked than most, Peduk never failed to comport herself with honour and strength in the performance of her duties. Shepard studied the soldier, looking for even the smallest anomaly. Nothing sent up any alarms. Perhaps Peduk had merely reached the end of her tolerance for the long cycles of fighting and seclusion. She and Attit displayed no attraction for one another, and as she did not have a blood position in the family, Shepard knew that Peduk faced a far more lonely path than the rest of them. Still, the soldier had always remained solid under fire, a true prothean.
"Peduk, if you cannot gain control of your emotions, go back aboard the ship. I will not allow you to endanger the future because you are unable to face the realities of the present." Shepard gripped the cowl of Peduk's armour with one hand, giving her a single, hard shake. "Your empire and the future of your galaxy requires you to control your emotions. Comport yourself accordingly, soldier."
Displaying enough control and grace to flush at being chastised like a raw recruit, Peduk nodded sharply as she replied, "Yes, Commander."
Shepard turned away, leaving it to Attit to ensure that Peduk did as commanded. Clambering over the rotting bodies and other refuse, the commander climbed through the space between the two doors. On the other side, she discovered a second sight unknown to her experience. A massive chamber pierced the heart of the Citadel, hidden within the great station's tower. She could not guess at how high it soared nor how far down it plunged, for a strangely shaped black wall bisected the space, blocking both from view. Pipes and tubes, all carrying the grey slurry, crawled along the walls of the chamber like a nest of snakes, eventually feeding into the wall in the center.
The black of that wall drew her in, hypnotising her with its gravity; a singularity greedily pulling everything, even light into its embrace. Merol touched her arm, breaking the darkness's grip on her and enabling her to tear her eyes away.
By the spirits of the antecessors, how had she let herself be distracted like that? Surely, her training and discipline should be able to resist the indoctrinating allure of Reaper technology long enough to complete her mission. She shook out her hands, rolled her shoulders, and turned back toward the Conduit, the snakes from the walls slipping under her skin, whispering for her to just give in and look back.
She beat back the terror that tried to bludgeon her heart, reducing it to something very like the gray paste. She needed to get out of there, to complete the mission and retreat back to where the universe, although barren and morose, made sense.
Sticking to the outer wall of the chamber, Shepard moved forward, still seeing no sign of any of the Reapers' soulless minions. A hundred cycles of terrible experimentation resulted in an endless array of abominations and horrors, each worse than those that came before, but where were they? Perhaps with the Reapers returned to dark space, the bodies had finally fallen, never to stir again. If so, she prayed that finally being allowed the dignity of death would grant their souls peace.
The wall moved. Shepard froze, all four eyes flicking toward the movement. A harsh klaxon buzz of sound built around them until the entire chamber shook with it. The sound, as familiar and chill as her nightmares, burrowed into her, its tentacles trying to latch onto her soul and rip it from her body.
Not a wall, a Reaper. One so large it could only be the Vanguard. Shepard's heart stopped. Over the decades she had come face to face with many different Reaper units, even taking down several destroyers using ground based missiles installations. But the Vanguard . . . even the name provoked an abhorrence deep enough to strip the heart from her . . . if she were not prothean. If she were not Commander Tashac Jacar, honoured with the duty to save the coming empires. All of them.
For a moment that lasted all the ages of the universe, Shepard stared up at the monster, unable to comprehend exactly what she saw, her mind racing, trying to fit the pieces together. It hung inside the Citadel's superstructure, massive cables and conduits leading into its body like umbilical cords waiting to be cut. Comprehension dawned. A womb. They stood inside a womb, the Reaper before them twitching in its dreams like her children had once dreamed inside her.
That thought prompted a wave of nausea as her understanding deepened. The gray material . . . the bodies . . . all those people being turned into the monstrosity about to be unleashed, to wait through the long millennia for the correct time to start a brand new extinction. What horror for the bookish Rivaran who loved poetry and music and art above all else to be turned into death incarnate.
"We're witnessing the birth of a god," Peduk whispered, her voice high and shrill with a superstitious panic Shepard understood all too well.
Tapek Menru - Literal translation: The long defeat. The calendar was started from the date the Citadel was captured by the Reapers but not officially named until 10000 Tapek Menru. On the ten thousandth day of the war, Prothean leaders declared it a stalling action designed to buy scientists time to find a way for the Prothean Empire to both survive the war and send aid forward into the next extinction.
Cepra - A large insect (8-10 cm in length) native to the world upon which the Prothean people originated. It's sting was so painful and venomous, death by cepra-sting was a form of execution reserved for traitors.
Setix - Prothean unit of time equivalent to referencing an hour. A day is comprised of 36 setixs broken into six sub-units.
Haksaya kubenar - A term of endearment, literally translates as my strong, true heart.
Cikabeknai - The reciprocal term of endearment for the above. Literally translates to brave love.
Kepala - The ridges of carapace that cover the top of a Prothean's head.