The shuttle launched Shepard across the small cargo area as the blast wave of the explosion slammed into its hind end, sending it slewing through space like a car on black ice. The lights flickered and then died, and for a moment, as she lay face first over Wrex and Sparky, she thought they hadn't made it. But then the small vehicle settled, the systems rebooted, and light returned. Legion lifted her off the wounded and sat her back down .
"Shepard-Captain, this unit recommends the use of a restraining device to avoid injuring yourself or others," the geth said. It stood, casually swaying with the turbulence, gripping a handle anchored to the roof.
Shepard nodded, still not quite able to find her voice, and did up her harness. So few inhabited the shuttle with her even though they were packed in like sardines. Half of the occupants were geth . . . their saviours. She stared at her hand, knowing it should be lifting to her radio, because although she'd been aboard the shuttle for nearly three minutes, she hadn't called the Normandy … hadn't insisted on finding out the fate of the other two teams.
You got arrogant and cocky, Janey, and it cost you a whole lot of good people. It may have cost you—
She pushed that nightmare aside and looked up to see Nihlus staring at her from across the tiny cargo bay filled with the wounded bodies of their people. The compassion in those eyes stabbed into her like a thousand white hot needles. She didn't deserve it and tore her gaze away, fixing it on the blood shining black against Kaidan's armour.
She'd gone in thinking she knew her enemy . . . that the enemy would never see her coming, never anticipate someone like her. A bitter cough of derisive laughter sliced through the shuttle noises and silence.
The silence slips along right under the noise. The truth under the noise. Listen to the truth under the noise.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she allowed the fear Sovereign had provoked to spread through her, feeling through it with clammy, shaking fingers to find the truth buried beneath. The Reapers did not invent, she knew that with the certainty born of fifty thousand years. They did not create or imagine. They were machines, limited by the constraints of their creation, as the geth were, but in different ways. They hadn't evolved any more than the geth evolved into the galaxy. Someone had built them, but who and why?
Sovereign said that Reaper motives didn't matter, but … Shepard suspected those motives would prove to mean everything.
Haven't you forgotten someone, Janey? It's not going to go away because you ignore it.
No. She let out a long breath and opened her eyes, even her distraction attempt failing to keep her heart from pulling back to the news she didn't want to hear. She looked up at Nihlus again, asking the question with her eyes. She couldn't do it. She just couldn't ask if she'd killed him.
A single nod answered her, and he reached up to his earpiece. "Normandy, Kryik here. Status?" His mandibles fluttered as he paused, mouth partially open. He sighed and closed it, head cocking a little as he listened. "The Captain is uninjured, Joker." He paused, brow plates descending into a frown. "Joker … ." A rumble rolled from deep in his throat. "Joker! Enough … yes, fine. Next time, I'll lead with that. What is the status of the ship and crew?"
Shepard closed her eyes, taking deep breaths, centering herself. It had been so long since she allowed herself to care about someone. Everyone left her in one form or another eventually. Well, except for Anderson. Some day even Martin would find his wings and soar away. As splendid as that day would be, it would also prove the rule. Everyone left.
"The geth pulled out Team Four," Nihlus said. "Tali'Zorah and Kal'Reegar have minor injuries. Rael'Zorah is seriously wounded and needs evac to the Normandy as soon as we get back." He paused, nodding to himself. "Normandy was able to dust off Team Two survivors. Vakarian, Williams, and Kirrahe are injured, but stable."
Shepard's eyes opened, latching onto his. His mandibles fluttered in a gentle smile as he nodded.
Garrus was okay. A relieved hiccup of sound escaped before she clamped her teeth down on it.
"ETA to Normandy is seven minutes," Nihlus continued. "Alenko, Wrex, the salarian Commander Rentola are injured." After a second, he nodded. "Roger, Normandy. Kryik out." He met and held Shepard's stare. "Garrus was injured, but he's not in danger."
She nodded, eyes dropping. "Thanks. I thought I'd … ." She cut that thought off as its dagger broke the skin. The night before he'd carried her to bed. No. She shook her head, and swiped at the sudden dampness in the corner of her eye. She looked up at Legion. "Geth casualties?"
"Runtimes in three prime and seven smaller platforms destroyed without sufficient time to upload to the server. All other runtimes uploaded before memory core loss," the geth reported.
A short sigh acknowledged its words. "Thank you, Legion. Without the geth, none of us would have escaped."
"Shepard-Captain believes in geth. She has agreed to aid geth in achieving coexistence with galactic civilization. Her organic platform must remain functional."
A grateful smile just touched the corners of her mouth. "You saved my people. You have my gratitude forever, Legion. You and the geth."
The geth came through where God failed me yet again. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
When the shuttle landed in the Normandy's cargo bay, Shepard helped move the injured to stretchers, leaving Wrex to the primes as they were the only ones who could move him without resorting to sticking antigrav generators on him.
"Captain Shepard?" Rentola asked, regaining consciousness as she pushed him into the elevator. "The others?"
She grasped the cold hand that reached up. "We got your non-combatants out. Kirrahe and two others are injured but stable. The rest died on the planet. I'm sorry." She eased him back onto the stretcher. "Rest easy. My people will take good care of you."
Garrus lay unconscious on one of the beds when she entered medbay, but she passed him by. She'd come back as soon as everyone was sorted. As captain, she needed to take care of her people before indulging herself.
She almost believed the excuse.
Back in the shuttle, hopping across to the geth ship, Shepard looked up at Legion. "Next stop, Rannoch? We'll have to meet up with the flotilla, but then we need to make a plan for dealing with Saren and Sovereign. I'm going to get Anderson there for sure, but I'm hoping he can convince Admiral Hackett to come along as well. Sovereign is not going to go down without a fight."
"Affirmative."
On the geth ship, they effected a quick exchange of geth units and dextro food supplies for Tali, Kal'Reegar and Rael'Zorah.
Shepard stood beside the shuttle as the VI fired up the thrusters and held out her hand to Legion. "Thank you, my friend. We'll see you at Rannoch tomorrow morning."
The geth stared at her hand for a moment before reaching out to take it. Its head flaps danced, but it said nothing as it shook once, then released her.
"We're pulling out, Tali," she called. A few metres away, Tali reassured the cargo bay full of quarian youth that they would be returned to their families in the morning in the heavens above their homeworld.
The ride back to the Normandy passed in near silence but for the wheezing rattle of Rael'Zorah's breathing and the odd beep from Tali's omnitool as she keyed information into it at a prodigious speed.
After a few minutes, Tali must have felt Shepard watching her and looked up. "I'm sending requisitions and relaying Father's orders back to the flotilla. We're going to land the first expeditionary survey team on the homeworld when we arrive tomorrow."
"Good." Shepard smiled and shook her head. "After what happened today, I know you couldn't be in any better hands. Legion will look out for you and your team."
Tali let her arm drop, her omnitool sliding down to hang over her thigh. "Two of the primes blocked the path behind us so we could escape. They didn't say anything, didn't act like it was anything special for two massive geth platforms containing thousands of runtimes to die saving a bunch of quarians." She turned to look into Shepard's face, those silver, reflective glints behind the mask blinking quickly. "But it was the most remarkable thing to have happened in three hundred cycles of quarian history."
Shepard nodded, unable to find any words to add to the perfection of that statement. Instead, she reached out and squeezed Tali's fingers. Feeling those slender digits trembling in hers, Shepard held on to them for the few moments it took for the shuttle to hop back to the Normandy.
Enraged krogan bellows set Shepard running the moment she stepped down off the shuttle, Wrex making himself plainly heard even through the deck plating. As she stood in the elevator, waiting as it crawled up to the crew deck, Shepard vowed to find a way to put in a flight of stairs. The cacophony ramped up to deafening as the elevator opened, Dr. Chakwas and Nihlus adding to the din.
"What the hell is going on in here?" she hollered as she burst through the medbay door. A very naked Wrex barrelled down the length of the cabin, stumbling right at the threshold, one massive arm flailing out to grab hold of her. Staggering, Shepard managed to avoid getting crushed and stay on her feet, but if the krogan thought she'd be able to hold him, she felt sure that reality asserted itself when the deck plating came up to smack him in the face.
"Urdnot Wrex is in no condition to leave this medbay," the doctor insisted, striding over to help wrestle her patient up off the floor.
"I'm regenerating just fine," he roared. "Let go of me and stop poking at me with your damned needles and knives." He staggered up onto his feet and tilted, slamming into the wall. Once propped up there, he looked down at Shepard. "I just need to eat. There's nothing broken that won't heal fine on its own."
Shepard looked from him to the doctor then back. "You got hit with enough firepower to leave a half metre hole straight through me. Maybe you should just let the Doc do her thing, indulge her a little." She leaned in close, lowering her voice to a near-whisper. "Can't hurt to have a handsome woman fawn over you a bit, can it?"
His huge eyes narrowed as he leaned forward until his face was pressed against her nose. "You mean, you think the Doc is after my hump?" He sounded drunk, probably thanks to all the blood draining from his brain to repair his enormous body.
"Who could resist? Seriously? Look at those battle wounds." Shepard reached up and placed her hand on the crest of his head plate. "If I wasn't spoken for, sir … you would be in serious trouble."
"Ha!" He straightened. "Fine, but she can look after me in my corner of the cargo bay. I'm not staying up here." He staggered out the door a couple of metres then stopped. "Kryik, quit staring, and give me a hand."
Nihlus brushed past Shepard, giving her a quick wink and a smile as he went by. "Why would I be staring at you, krogan?"
Wrex chuffed, a harsh cough of sound that echoed like an explosion around the galley. "You could only dream of having a quad like this."
Nihlus laughed. "I can't say I've got room for a quad, and the rest, well … let's just say it's a good thing what I've got stays tucked away. A jealous krogan is an ugly thing."
Shepard winced. "All right, you can just take that down to the cargo bay. Sweet baby Jesus, you two. None of us can un-hear that." She stepped out of the way as Rael'Zorah's stretcher came around the corner.
Dr. Chakwas sighed. "It's just as well we have the room, I suppose, but really, Shepard? Now I have a krogan battlemaster thinking I'm after his quad."
Shepard winced. "Everyone stop talking about Wrex's personal bits, please." She waited until they moved Rael to a bed then squeezed past to where Garrus slept on a cot against the wall. A large regen cage enclosed most of his chest while a smaller one worked on his upper arm and shoulder.
Leaning down, she stroked her fingertips over his fringe then crouched by his side. "I'm so sorry, Garrus. I should've been . . .."
Your god has abandoned you, Jane Shepard. It left you to the batarians, and it has left you to us.
Choking down a hoarse sob, she bent to touch her brow to his then shoved herself up and pushed through to the door. Once clear of the crowded medbay, she turned and bolted across the galley, slamming the door control to her quarters. Surrounded by dark and quiet, she stumbled over to her desk.
Your god has abandoned you, Jane Shepard. It left you to the batarians, and it has left you to us.
Another hiccoughing sob forced its way out of her throat, dropping her to her knees. Shoving the chair out of the way, she crawled underneath. Her back pressed into the corner, she drew her knees up to her chest and hugged her arms around them. She trembled, her entire body shivering with a chill that radiated not from the air around her, but from that dark place inside where the spiders hid. How long had they been there? Had they truly invaded that day on the Citadel? Something in the way Sovereign spoke of god having abandoned her to them said no. No, the spiders had made their home inside her far, far earlier.
Slipping beneath the surface again, tentative thoughts sifting like fingers trying to find a coin in the mud at the bottom of a dark pond, she searched for the hidden context under what Sovereign had said to her. Layers of whispers drifted through her head, stacked so that she could just about hear one before another drifted past. She wished she could talk to Tashac, certain that the prothean would understand. Then again, maybe not Tashac. Wise, god yes, the female had been wise, but she'd also been a soldier to the core. She'd never discovered her own voice of council, never been able to find true peace. Well, except for one place. For Tashac, peace existed in the form of a person.
The darkness has been watching you your whole life, Jane Shepard. It's waiting for you out there.
She pressed her eyes closed and rested her forehead on her knees.
"Shepard?" A faint knocking rattled the door on its hinges. "You in there?" The door swung open, a crack of light spreading across the floor. "Jane Shepard, are you in here?" Heavy footsteps crossed the pristine white of the tile floor, marring it with the man's shadow.
She didn't bother to look out. He'd find her. It wasn't like he didn't know where to look.
Sure enough, twenty seconds later, Anderson crouched down, one hand on the top of her desk, the other resting on his knee. "Hey, kid."
Nodding toward the floor next to her, she replied, "Hey." She laughed, but it came out dry and bitter, a desert wind making promises of plagues to come. "How far did they drag you this time?"
He shrugged, groaning a little as he lowered himself onto the floor, sitting cross-legged. "Not far. I was on leave on Arcturus." He sighed and wrapped his arms around his knees. "So, when are you going to get out of here? Three months is a long time for a perfectly sane person to spend in a place like this." He winced as a wail echoed down the hall as if to emphasize his point.
"They shut me in here in the dark, Anderson." She gestured up to the empty light socket. "They tell me that it's important for me to learn that there's nothing to be afraid of. They don't get it, Anderson. They don't know that it's alive, that it moves when you aren't looking." She glanced over at a deep pool of black gathered behind the door. "They don't know how many monsters can hide in it."
He jerked stiff, suddenly giving off a rage that made her pull back from him. "They do what?" He climbed to his feet then reached down, holding out a hand. "Come out of there, and get dressed." Shaking the hand at her when she didn't move instantly, he said, "Come on. I'm going to the administrator, and then I'm taking you the hell out of here."
Shepard eased out from under the desk and took his hand, letting him pull her up onto her feet. When she didn't move—they'd never let him take her—he strode over to her locker and pulled everything out, tossing it onto the bed. His every movement screamed fury, and she winced back from him. She'd never seen Anderson angry before.
At the door, he turned back. "If I take you to Earth, and we get a home … you'll have to stay with people while I'm away. You okay with that, kid?"
She nodded, pressing herself up against the wall.
"Nothing to be afraid of … ." he grumbled, turning away. "Goddamn idiots." He pushed her door wide, letting in the light from the hall, before striding out. "Get dressed."
"Shepard?"
She jumped, cracking her head against the underside of her desk. "Ow, goddamn it." She squinted against the sudden light of her lamp. "Nihlus? What's going on?" Lifting a hand to shade her eyes, she stared at the Spectre crouched next to her desk. "What are you doing in here?"
"I was looking for you. Someone said you were in here, but you didn't answer the door. I came in to make sure you're okay, and I find you hiding under a desk." He backed up a bit. "You all right?"
She nodded. "I needed to think. Did you hear what Sovereign said at the end, Nihlus?"
He sat down. "What part? That thing did a lot of talking."
She unfolded a little but tucked her hands into her armpits, not wanting him to see how badly they shook. "The part about god having abandoned me." When she looked up into his eyes, he stared back as if he could see past every mask she wore, all the way down into the center of her. The dark center where a terribly naive child lay out in the cold. A corpse with a heartbeat, that child prayed to a deaf God that the horrors being visited upon her amounted to nothing more than some terrible dream. Those unanswered prayers devolved into the screams of the damned as the dark unleashed its monsters upon her again.
The dark. It always came back to the dark.
"Shepard?" He pulled off his glove and held out his hand, lifting it to where she could see it. "Look."
She did, able to see his talons trembling.
He chuffed, sort of halfway between a snort and a chuckle. "Twenty cycles of walking into every sort of fight imaginable, and they still do that after days like today." Turning it over, he held it out to her. "Come on, maybe we'll cancel one another out."
After a moment, she slipped her hand into his, the palm warm and calloused, pushing back the chill seeping through her. He turned to lean against the desk, and slipped an arm around her, pulling her in against his side. "Okay, better. Now, talk to me about hiding under a desk in the dark. I might not be as observant or perceptive as Vakarian, but even I've figured out how much you hate the dark."
Suddenly, exhausted down into the very center of her, Shepard leaned into him, resting her head against his shoulder. She tried to explain what was going on a couple of times in different ways, but she couldn't even manage to figure out her own thought process. The truth danced tantalizingly close to her grasp only to dodge away when she tried to grab hold of it.
After opening and closing her mouth for the third time, she let out a long sigh. "I don't know, Nihlus. I thought Sovereign might have been saying something more than what it seemed on the surface. It laced something under the words, a whisper … something that just felt as though it reached a lot deeper."
The arm around her squeezed gently. "Shepard, stop worrying about making it sound sane, and just say it. I already know you're crazy."
She dug her elbow into his side. "Nice." Still, she took a deep breath and unleashed the crazy … the real crazy. It took a couple of seconds to chain the wild varren that even mentioning the memories unleashed in her guts. "The batarians staked me out in the center of their holding area. They blindfolded me and put a hood over my head, so I was in complete darkness most of the time." She squeezed his hand as the tremors got worse, her whole body trembling but distant and numb. The wall between her and the reality of those hours held, solid and rooted in age.
The long breath in squeezed out as a sigh past the fist gripping her throat. "Have you ever looked into a perfectly harmless patch of darkness and felt as though it had eyes? That something within the shadows was always there, watching and waiting?"
His handsome head dipped a little. "I don't think anyone who has seen and done what we have can honestly admit otherwise." A frown lowered the white sweeps of his famila notas over his eyes as he squeezed her hand. "This is what you were worried about asking me?" Another sigh whistled through his nose. "Shepard, we know what's out there, and we know that evil rarely shows itself. The monsters are real, and they hide in plain sight, waiting to come at you from behind. That's not crazy. That's reality."
She curled in against him. Of all the people to understand, she never expected Nihlus. Maybe she should have after what he told her about his mother. Maybe she should have. "Nihlus, the darkness found me when I was sixteen. It crawled into that hood and inside me. I thought the batarians put it there, but now … ." Shepard squeezed her eyes closed, walling up the faint colours and scents that leaked through before they could turn into anything substantial. "I think Sovereign was telling me that the Reapers have always been the ones behind it."
He rested his cheek against the top of her head, his mandible moving ever-so-slightly back and forth through her hair. "We need to talk to the rachni queen. We both know we got more information from that beacon. Maybe there will be something in there to help us figure out what the hell to do about Saren and his Reaper."
Shepard nodded. "I know. They will find a way to get one of the keys eventually. They will carve a wide, ugly swath through the galaxy trying to find one. I'm going to have Anderson grab Hackett and meet us at Rannoch tomorrow. We need to set a trap, and it has to be a good one. That thing might be an arrogant hunk of organic metal paste crap, but damn, it's a hell of a lot more clever than I gave it credit for. It'll see through just about anything we come up with."
Nihlus pulled away and shoved himself up onto his feet, groaning like an old man the whole time. "Spirits, I'm getting to be too old for days like today." He held out his hand to help her up.
"I've always been too old for days like today." She elbowed him. "Besides, you can't be much more than what? Seventy?" One large hand planted between her shoulder blades and gave her a shove, sending her stumbling into the bed. "What? Too young?" She chuckled, affection warming her through. Before Therum, she would never have guessed they'd ever recover let alone find somewhere so much better.
He smiled, but wistfully. "I suppose I'm an old man compared to you."
She shoved him that time, not doing much more than making him sway a little. "Please, you act way younger and more stupid than I do, although I have you on the crazy." Nodding toward the door, she led the way. "Come on, let's go see what the rachni queen can do to help us sort this mess."
"I've been a Spectre twenty cycles," he said as they crossed the mess, heading for the elevator. "I was solid. Solid as hell. Every mission tougher than the one before. I set a plan, and although even at my most bloodthirsty I never came close to being as ruthless as Saren, I got the job done. People in the way moved aside or were mowed down." He shook his head, mandibles dropped. "What has happened to me since Eden Prime?"
Shepard palmed the elevator control. "I don't know, but maybe you just came to a place where what happened with Saren forced you into a hard reset." Leaning against the wall as the lift ground its way up to them, she shrugged, remembering their battle of wills on Eden Prime. "I did think you'd be a much harder fight. I admit that I take charge, bulldoze over or around people, but yeah, I thought you'd fight me a lot harder for control."
He stepped past her as the door opened. "Hard reset. Hmm." He cocked his head a little to one side, his mandibles sweeping slowly out and back in. "Maybe. I suppose, this is about the time in a torin's life he stops to consider how he wants to live the next third of his life." He leaned his shoulder against the back wall. "I always felt like a big part of the picture just wasn't there. I didn't know what part it was, so just tried to ignore it. Well, and fixated on someone I could turn into perfection inside my head. Someone who'd never disappoint because she was always out of reach."
Shepard's head shake barely registered as movement. "Whatever made you decide to open your perfect lie to the harsh glare of reality?" She punched the control to emphasize the word lie, a trickle of bitterness weaving through her words. Building someone into an effigy of perfection only to let them burn for the sin of being a disappointment could hardly be considered fair. It wasn't her fault he possessed an exceptional imagination. "Surely, you had to know that I'd never live up to that woman."
He stepped right up to the door, placing her behind him. "Who said I meant you? Spirits, Shepard, your ego."
Shepard straightened, keen-edged and bright. "Oh wait! I get it. Now all the injuries make sense. It's Dr. Chakwas, isn't it? Damn, she is one seriously popular lady."
He laughed. "Maybe once, but there's no way I'm fighting Wrex for her." He stepped out as soon as it opened, heading for the back corner of the cargo bay where the queen had made herself a nest of sorts behind a barrier of crates. Stopping as they reached the back end of the shuttle, he looked over at her. "Some things are worth taking a shot at. Maybe they'll disappoint, but maybe they'll turn out so much better than you hope."
She hesitated for a second as the bitterness rose up to choke her. Not having the slightest clue what to do with herself under his scrutiny, she pushed on. "Nihlus, I really am sorry if I'm never more than you hoped. But it's just not fair—"
Nihlus caught her elbow, vice-like talons squeezing hard enough to hurt. "Shepard, you already are." Their eyes locked for a moment, then he shrugged and jutted his chin toward the crate wall. "Come on, let's see what that beacon stuck in our heads."
Setix 26.2, 4521 of Kirash Par
Tashac walked out onto the balcony, her eyes drawn up to the stars the moment she stepped out the door. Ribbons of light danced amidst the indigo and obsidian, calling out to her … beckoning her back into their embrace. Bright and clear, each crystalline jewel sang with the promise of a new civilization, a hope for the future of her beloved galaxy. She closed her eyes, trying to draw their light into her, focusing it into a laser to burn away the darkness at the heart of her.
Soon now. Soon I'll return to you for the last time.
"I believe I have dedicated an adequate amount of time to hanging upside down inside the drive core tonight," Merol called. She opened her eyes to watch her mate as he stepped out of the large shed across from the house. He wiped his hands on a rag, then threw it over his shoulder. "Our wings should be ready to unfurl and carry us back into the heavens in two days."
"Excellent." She leaned against the railing. "I have ensured the remainder of our affairs will keep until we return." She glanced up at the mountain side, unable to see the evidence of her work in the darkness.
Every five cycles, they left the isolation and peace of their mountain home and returned to Ilos, slipping amongst the sleeping stars. The relays burned like candles at a funeral, the sight of them rekindling the melancholy that shrouded the core of her spirit. Through that void of light and peace, a terrible darkness moved, silent and swift, hunting from star to star. Her eyes closed once more, blocking out that soulless gaze.
"Even now?" Merol asked, his arms slipping around her from behind.
She laced her fingers with his, pulling his arms tighter around her. "Always, my heart. Always." Turning within his embrace, she wrapped her arms around him, burrowing in against his solid warmth. "I looked into that thing, and it looked into me." A shudder rolled through her, travelling down into the mountain beneath her feet, even the stone trembling at the memory of staring into that abyss.
The memory of that presence invading her soul formed the reason behind their return trips to Ilos. It whispered through her dreams and out of the shadows, promising to discover a way to recover the Conduit, something she couldn't allow.
Somehow we missed you, the silent voice called out. But we see you now. We are a part of you now.
"I admit that I am weary, haksaya kubenar," Merol whispered. "I shall not mourn this being our last return to that silent, sleeping grave. Time to let this good, clean ground cradle us into our ancient days then embrace us at last."
The sound of singing drifted on the cool breeze, dragging her from the darkness, Merol becoming solid and warm within the circle of her arms once more. The blue natives—asari—sang in their village below, the night marking one of the celebrations on their calendar.
"Shall the mysterious monks of the mountain grace their festival tonight?" she asked. "I would welcome a merry fire and some of their hot, spiced wine." Although they needed to remain cloaked and veiled amidst the beautiful primitives, Tashac enjoyed their company.
"Several kilos of those preserved fruits that caught the matriarch's fancy still adorn our parlour shelf," Merol replied, chuckling. "Such a gift is certain to earn us platters teeming with roast jikuru and those tubers from the south slope."
Being such a long-lived species, generosity formed an important pillar of asari culture, gift-giving the tradition of welcome and thanks. Tashac appreciated such simple lenity after the exigent selfishness and hoarding that blemished the empire's twilight.
She chuckled. "Always with you, desire distills down to your belly, light of my soul." Pulling away, she brushed her brow along the ridge of his kepala. "Come, let the monks of the mountain partake of the celebration of Athame's light. It seems only fitting, Athame and her disciples being protheans, after all." She glanced up at the brightest star in the sky named for the asari's goddess.
Out beyond that star, deep beneath the surface of Ilos's long-dead corpse, she and Merol would marry fifteen cycles of planning and craft to ensure that the monsters never returned to rain their evil upon the galaxy's barely born children. One last defiant strike on behalf of the dead to preserve the living.