Flawed and polished.
Karois stood at the edge of the crater that had once been a city-state spanning over a hundred miles, though now a giant field of debris and ruin. His chest heaved in pain and clenched in misery at the sight of his civilization and peoples beaten so. Ildar had been the home world of the Empire, now it was a quickly dying world from which the 13 billion inhabitants would have no succor. Dirt and dust blew across the rubble to cake every surface with choking brown. Airways struggled to push the mass from the lungs, only to begin again as one tried to inhale the clogged air through clenched teeth.
Despite the difficulty, Karois barely noticed except to know that the miles high dust cloud would be making mask-less breathing a hazard for centuries. Sweeping his gaze along the curved rim, he saw a mute green in the far distance, a passing reminder of the sweeping green plains that once covered the lands. The green however would be gone in less than a season as the dust would pollute the atmosphere, any plant surviving the burial in the dust would be dead from lack of sunlight in a few weeks, the last hardy survivors to perish in the long dark winter to follow.
Deeper within the crater where the debris was able to rise above the brown fog, the stones of buildings flowed broken and cracked from the earth, like lost toys in a sandbox to eventually be dusted over. Sweeping his eyes further to the great capital building's remains, nothing could be discerned from the cloud other than the occasional flash of yellow-orange beams striking the already dead heart of civilization.
Though the government founders had envisioned the great warrens and dens as salvation in disaster, Karois could only see the already hundreds of meters thick layers of debris upon ruin. He could see it for a moment, the thousands of non-combatants and children in each hole, choking on their last as they were sealed in a unplanned tomb, though the mental image was immediately pushed away for a moment, his thoughts of his own family and children barely flickering past before being knocked down and squelched.
Feeling the air shift a moment before a large wave bowled him into the air to sail a thirty meters back beyond the ridge and into the swept up dirt and muck now rimming the edge, he felt before hearing the thrum of energy weapons in the distance striking Meloch, Edmil, Vehn, and all the plateau towns within vision. No doubt much the same was happening all over the world, and he could only hope his people would rally at the loss of the Ildar, center of the Prothean Empire, with a vengeance to match the atrocity.
His thoughts else where and his body suffering from a environment no longer conducive to supporting life, he could only flinch as a vision of hell began to part the clouds above. Massive protrusions cut the thickened soup that was the dirty sky, sixteen massive rods appearing to cut the storms away and clear the muck. Nearly immediately Karois took a gasp and began a hacking cough as he saw the rods were connected to a monstrous body taking up a large swath of his vision as it leisurely slowed to a stop above the ruined Prothean hub. Massive beams of light began to sweep the ruins, the beast above seeming to scan for survivors. Several times it stopped and held for a moment before a heated bolt of fire and plasma would be shot at the beam's target, his first belief that these were to take out the last survivors was confused as he could make out the shape of shambling forms taking to the streets in droves.
Hundreds of times it struck out until finally found Karois already all but hidden in the settling cloud. Seeing a blinding turquoise light seem to aim directly at his eyes, he could only clench them, unable to see the launched pods, but feeling a vibrating thump impact somewhere near. In a moment the beam left him, though the mercy as only slight as it allowed him to see the approaching hoard moving towards him. He could see a strange similarity to his species in the body and gait, but their groans and animalistic lope made any thought of yelling for aid die in his throat.
He tried to shift up, lift himself, but only moved a half-hand's length before his body simply refused to move, a spasm of pain radiating from his head and back forcing a cough of air like a popping balloon. Unfortunately, this was enough to attract the pack's attention. Karois began a mental litany to his creators to save his people, reaching the second to last passage only to stop as the aliens were close enough to evaluate. His PEOPLE! Turned, twisted in face and body, the creak of cybernetics and hum of biotics but no soul in the eyes. Unwilling to spend his last moments glaring at dead eyes, his last thoughts were to Nevada, goddess to merciful death, he spent his last thanking her for taking his children when they were beneath the city, sparing them the horrors of this degradation.
AN: Not a divergent story, these last moments, fears, and pains are what Jack is witnessing. I figure, no matter how apathetic and tough Jack is, she could only flail upon seeing the deaths of a entire civilization, especially if she felt they were her own. She got hit with the horrors of the invasion from a first person perspective, though the exact method as to how Karois' memories of the last days were imprinted into the beacon are for later. She'll be back next chapter.