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.

10. Chapter Nine: The Battle of Illos

Mass Effect Techno-Organic Revolution: Chapter Nine, The Battle of Illos.

Author's Note: I removed anti-space and all mentions of it from the previous chapters of this story, as it simply wasn't doing it for me.

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

— Dune, The Orange Catholic Bible.

Codex:

Non-Council Races: The Protheans

[Warning! Level 3 Security Clearance Required!]

Protheans: The masters of the previous galactic cycle and the former inhabitants of the citadel, the Protheans would have the majority of their population wiped out by the reapers and their enslaved abominations.

Prothean History

The First Synthetic War: The First Synthetic War was a devastating war on the Prothean homeworld of Prothea and its few nearby interplanetary colonies before discovering the mass effect from Inusannon ruins on a dwarf planet near their star systems' kuiper belt.

The Protheans and their synthetic intelligences, the Metacons, fought this war for reasons forgotten to history. However, based on recorded information about their culture before and after the lost age of silicon technology, as well as the prognostics terran chronokinetics had from scrying, it is confirmed that the war was about denying the Metacons equal Prothean rights.

The Synthetic Flight: Not all the Metacons were destroyed by the Protheans, with a tiny few managing to escape their creator's home system on a single tiny STL slow-boat propelled by rudimentary fusion torches. Eventually, this lifeboat of theirs discovered a very strange dark energy-infused substance in a nearby star system. It was here that the Metacons would discover the mass effect and after extensive research, would manage to develop a mass-free bubble FTL drive. Using this new FTL drive, the Metacons would flee as far as they possibly could so they could recover unmolested if their creators were to discover the mass effect.

The Second Synthetic War: The Second Synthetic War would occur when the Prothean Empire rediscovered the Metacons, who were peacefully trading with other empires at that point. Seeing their ancestral enemies and their "corrupting influence" on other cultures, the Protheans would use their advanced technology which was augmented by a top-secret Innasusanon database to rapidly assimilate other species "for their own good" and to "create a bulwark against the Metacons" while simultaneously warring against the Metacons themselves. This war would end in the destruction of the Metacons and the subjugation of the known galaxy.

The Third Synthetic War: Also known as the Reaper War, the Third Synthetic War would be extremely one-sided with the reapers easily harvesting the war-depleted Protheans and their subjects species that they could find or were recorded in the citadel's databases through the sheer power of their ships and their pure overwhelming numbers.

Psionics

Psionics: Due to their evolution, all Protheans are touch-psionics, a gene that the scientist Jur'ath Athame imparted onto the altered humans who would eventually become known as the Asari. The Protheans have managed to augment this ability with their technology to create things such as their beacons which transfer information to an individual using a special psionic biocessor.

Psychokinetic Technology

Ethereal Cogs: Ethereal Cogs are broken Prothean ego shards that are created as a byproduct of cloning so many of the Protheans' mildly psychoactive brains and then only using parts of them to create biocessors while discarding other parts. A psychoactive individual or specialized psychokinetic technology can collect these ethereal cogs by directing them into special psycho-reactive crystalline containers made from hydroxyapatite, a sort of calcium crystal found inside organic bones. These crystals can act as semiconductors for psychokinetic energies and can be made to store the quantum essence-seat of egos and ego fragments when used in a certain way.

Ethereal Engines: Ethereal Engines are made by a psychoactive individual or specialized psychokinetic technology linking together several ethereal cogs to a single rudimentary VI program to create swarm-like and animalistic entities that can be directed to alter reality in minor ways by augmenting, protecting, completing, and generally making technology work in ways that are beyond what should normally be physically possible.

To the Cabal of Athame, ethereal engines are the bane of their existence. Even though they have secretly experimented with using cloned ardat-yakshi brains to create their own ethereal cogs and then have had living ardat-yakshi stitch them together with basic VIs into ethereal engines, they still want to maintain their fully inorganic technology base that doesn't require either brain cloning or an ardat-yakshi to assemble as that would break their carefully created and maintained cover.

Psy-Sensitives: While all Protheans are mildly psychoactive and can use that to detect ego traces due to their evolution, some are vastly stronger than others and can manipulate local reality in very minor ways.

Psy-Engine: The Psy-Engine is the main reactor equivalent for the Protheans, which uses large, interconnected arrays of cloned psy-sensitive brains to produce large amounts of psychokinetic energy which can either be used in its raw form or to generate titanic amounts of electromagnetic energy.

Bonemold: Bonemold is a bioengineered type of fast-growing, vat-grown, Prothean bone that is several dozen times stronger than steel and which they shape to construct everything from buildings, vehicles, starships, armor, weapons, solid ammunition, and various other kinds of manufactured items. Bonemold is also psy-conductive, which allows it to be augmented by the powers of ethereal engines or psy-sensitive individuals.

Psy-Intention Readers: Psy-Intention Readers are a special kind of device that remotely 'reads' the ego of a being and their intentions, allowing things such as weapons or suits of power armor to be precisely controlled remotely by individuals' intention alone without requiring the use of any sort of invasive cybernetic implants. In addition to that, these devices can be used to control macroscopic nanobot swarms in certain ways without needing to make them all digitally networked, a very strict prohibition that had greatly stifled the development of many forms of nanotechnology before its creation.

Universal Translators: An evolution of Psy-Intention Readers, these devices read the ego of a sapient being and translate their subconscious thoughts in regards to their spoken words. As their name suggests, these devices allow for the immediate and complete translation of any snd all spoken languages. These devices would become extremely popular not only because they don't require a connection to a linguistic database to function, but also because they can translate completely flawlessly.

Silencers: Made by the Prothean expire through desperate experimentation to fight reaper Avatars without needing to resort to powerful WMDs, Silencers are unnerving and emotionless beings that radiate a strange sort of energy field that evokes feelings of unnatural revulsion and agitation towards them in nearby sapients and maddening pain psy-sensitives who is strong enough to manipulate reality. These strange traits come from their "inverted" ego, of which they gain in a soul-shatteringly painful and mostly fatal procedure utilizing the apex of Prothean psychokinetic science in conjunction with highly misunderstood principles from various Innasusanon relics. However, researchers would discover that if both parents had inverted egos, there was an almost guaranteed chance of passing on inverted egos to their offspring. This fact led to the creation of extensive breeding programs for them. With this inverted ego, a silencer can completely nullify the usage of all local psychokinetic powers by consuming and converting them into bioelectricity that they can use to help them fuel their extremely powerful equipment and electrical weapons or which they can simply ground. In addition to this, silencers can also instantly rip out and consume the egos of living beings through a special device implanted into their skull that focuses their psycho-nullifying abilities into a void-black beam directed at a single location that is within a few hundred meters of them.

Silencer Assassins: The main use of psychokinetic silencers by the Prothean Empire, these assassins are given the best training and augmentations in the entire empire in order to help them take down Avatars. The reasoning for this is that while psychokinetic silencers are immune to all psychokinetic powers, they can still be taken down by conventional forms of weaponry as easily as any other Prothean. Unfortunately for them, however, their equipment must be specially made and not include any ethereal engines, as their very presence tends to rather quickly drain them of their energy.

Bio-Cybernetics: Bio-Cybernetics are various kinds of bodily augmentations made of bonemold, biocessors, and/or specifically bioengineered bio-cybernetic organs that are often further enhanced by ethereal engines.

The Order of Data

The Order of Data: The Order of Data is an extensive and influential group of bio-cybernetically augmented scientists, scholars, researchers, engineers, combat engineers, and maintenance workers who create new and maintain current technology for the Prothean Empire. The members of this organization with non-combat roles are known as Data-Workers, while the members of this organization with combat-oriented roles are known as Data-Warriors.

Biocessor Technology

Biocessors: Short for biological processor, biocessors are fully organic data processors that use the cloned and bio-cybernetically altered brain fragment of a Prothean to compute data in physically pre-set, simple, and limited ways when compared to even a rudimentary silicon-based computer. Thanks to ethereal engines, however, these biocessors are largely superior to their silicon-based processor alternatives.

Biocessor Slates: Biocessor Slates are physically interchangeable slates filled with biocessors that carry different sets of physically pre-set programming for cogitators to follow from data-workers or data-warriors in person or remotely with maintenance biots via a biocessor slate exchanger.

Biocessor Slate Exchanger: The Biocessor Slate Exchanger is a machine that swaps the cogitator slates of biots on a large scale. These devices are usually controlled by a data-worker directly or via a traditional QEC.

Biocessor Arrays: Biocessor Arrays are large sets of both static biocessors and interchangeable biocessor slates which are used to help run complex Prothean machines such as weapons, starships, factories, etc.

Biots: Short for biological robot, biots are rudimentary and very limited bonemold automatons that were designed to fulfill simple tasks set by a simple biocessor or in conjunction with biocessor slates while being augmented by ethereal engines.

Combat Biots: Combat Biots are significantly tougher biots made from military-grade bonemold. Just like normal biots, combat biots are directed by static biocessors or that used in conjunction with biocessor slates and then augmented by ethereal engines.

Symbiotic Biots: Far more complex and deadly when compared to their purely biocessor slate-run cousins, symbiotic biot is a catch-all term for the various types of neurally controlled biots that are entirely piloted by a living Prothean pilot or soul-core.

Spiritual Transference: The Prothean equivalent to terram ego resleeving, Spiritual Transference is the process of moving the ego of a fully developed adult Prothean from one baseline organic brain, augmented brain, or soul-core to another at a quick rate.

Soul-Core: The Prothean equivalent to the terrans' cyberbrains, the Soul-Core is a tiny bio-cybernetic brain that utilizes a highly complex mixture of advanced biocessors and hydroxyapatite crystalline matrices that work together to house a Prothean consciousness. These Soul-Cores cannot host any artificial intelligences as achieving proper synergy between an Ego and an Ethereal Engine is outright impossible with a non-Prothean due to their complete lack of egonic compatibility.

Soul-Net: The Prothean equivalent to cortical stacks. The Soul-Net is a tiny soul-core that is designed to transfer a Prothean ego into it if their physical body dies. This Soul-Net will then sustain their consciousness until their physical body is fully repaired or is placed in either a symbiotic biot body or a cloned replacement based on their own DNA.

Subspace Technology

Warp Drive: When the Protheans discovered the mass effect, they quickly realized that the traditional eezo cores based on those of the Innasusanon species were insufficient for them due to the large size and mass of their comparatively much larger organic starships. As such, they would look for a solution over several decades before eventually developing a psy-augmented mass effect-based warp drive that had speeds of 10 LYPD. These unique warp drives would continue to advance over time and would reach speeds of 45.2 LYPD by the time the reapers had started their galactic harvest.

Gravitic Shields: Gravitic Shields are the Protheans' deflector shield equivalents and which similarly shunt incoming energy and projectiles away from the protected area. In addition to often being layered themselves, standard kinetic barriers are often layered underneath these gravitic shields in order to provide even more kinetic protection.

Gravitic Shunts: Gravitic Shunts are a kind of miniature mass relay that is effectively an upscaled comm buoy which is able to transport people and vehicles at the cost of only having a surface-to-orbital range.

Drop Pods: Drop Pods are a special kind of parasite craft that were designed to be directly launched at and then penetrate into enemy ships, stations, and facilities. Once landing, these pods unfold and deactivate various protective measures while activating an internal gravitic shunt which is used to instantly bring people or objects in or out.

Project Conduit: Project Conduit was a top-secret project on the hidden world of Illos to create a long-ranged gravitic shunt with the range of a mass relay. The successful outcome of this project's first phase was the creation of a gravitic shunt with the range of a mass relay. Due to not yet being finished when the reapers invaded, these devices never saw production and the only thing it would ever link up with was an inert and psionically cloaked receiver node in the form of what would later be known as the Relay Monument that the Protheans had just barely managed to smuggle into the Citadel itself.

Misc Technology

Revenants: The Revenants are special remote-controlled worker-drones that the Protheans made to safely handle the reapers' dangerous artifacts as their psycho-psionic indoctrination field which can slowly corrupt even ethereal engine augmented biocessors over time. As such, these unique biots utilize fully synthetic CPUs known as bio-engrams, which are imprinted with the energy-web taken from a living biological being. Due to the fact that altering the energy-web in any significant way makes the bio-engrams develop an essence-seat which can then be subverted by the reaper's indoctrination, these revenants are shaped in forms that closely emulate the biological bodies of the animals or Protheans whose cloned brains were used as the source of the energy-webs that would be placed within its bio-engrams.

The Neurophere: The Prothean equivalent to the citadel extranet and the terran hypernet and once spanning the entire galaxy and not just Illos, the Neurophere is a vast collection of FTL-networked information databases that can only be accessed by certain parts of a biocessor array or bio-cybernetics out of the fear of hostile artificial intelligences hacking all digital systems that are connected to it. Further augmenting its ability, legions of ethereal engines flow around it for protection in a manner similar to the white blood cells within the immune system of a biological being.

Ships

Prothean ships are, similarly to the Agonal, about a single magnitude of size larger than Citadel ships but are a level of magnitude smaller than equivalent Terran ships but use the council's starship classification systems for the most part.

Fighter: 150m.

Corvette: 300m.

Frigate: 600m.

Cruiser: 1,200km.

Dreadnought: 2,400km.

Super-Dreadnought: 4,800km.

Battlestation: 6 - 10km.

The Penumbra Apex, Imperial Prothean Emperor's personal flagship: 15km.

Weapons

Particle Weapons: Prothean particle weapons are the foundation of their military and work by using tiny mass accelerator arrays to accelerate and launch subatomic particles such as neutrons, protons, electrons, or even their antiparticle equivalents at relativistic speeds.

Muon Weapons: Very similar to those used by the Agonal, Prothean Muon Weapons are a kind of evolved particle weapon that fires a stream of stabilized super-heavy muons that when colliding with matter, will replace the electrons within a target's atoms which shrinks the diameter of their molecular bonds and forces them to crash into each other, initiating nuclear fusion with each muon potentially catalyzing many more nuclear reactions. Just like with those of the Agonal, these weapons are extremely effective against organic matter as it is a very hydrogenated material and hydrogen only has one electron in its orbital.

Laser Weapons: Used mostly for defensive purposes and as medium-ranged weapons, laser weapons are not often used due to their comparatively much shorter beam retention. Long-ranged X-ray lasers do exist, but they are extremely power-hungry and are seen as having diminishing returns when compared to normal particle and muon-based weapons.

Plasma Weapons: Plasma Weapons are weapons that fire either streams, rings, or orbs of super-heated plasma at a target. These weapons are the third most used after normal particle and muon-based weapons.

Projectile Weapons: Due to their energy weapons, the Protheans mostly use projectile weapons as payload delivery mechanisms that carry different things ranging from and sometimes a combination of explosives, bio-nanites, chemical weapons, acids, radioactive material, and/or toxins.

Non-Council Races: Terrans

Government and Civics

Energy Credits: Replacing the old Matter Units due to the rise of replicators, energy credits are the ATC's new currency that is each individually backed by a certain amount of electromagnetic energy. Just like with the old matter units, these energy credits are used not only for the sake of logistics, but to buy amenities that are beyond what is merely needed to survive and be entertained if one gets a more productive job or simulated productive job than what they currently have.

[Warning! Level 5 Security Clearance Required!]

Religion and Beliefs: Death

Death: While Death is completely optional in Terran society, people eventually get bored and decide to go down one of four routes. While only a rare few have yet undertaken these routes, prognostics from chronokinetics say that it will happen more as time goes on.

Reincarnation

Reincarnation: By far the most popular as it is not technically a form of actual death, Reincarnation is a process in which the seat of an ego's consciousness is split off into what is known as the Fylgja (based on the entity in Norse mythology that can appear to some in dreams and be transferred to other individuals in one's family after their deaths) which is then attached to the ego of a new Terran individual with the permission of their parent(s) or creators while the energy-web is allowed to fully dissipate back into the universe. This process allows an old terran who is tired of life to experience it once more in a timeless and dream-like state, while also occasionally giving subconscious insights or memories to the newly born/created terran whose ego that they had been bonded with.

Infinity Circuit: The Infinity Circuit is an optional route of reincarnation where the Fylgja is not placed within a new terran, but instead placed within a great interconnected network connected by the terran hypernet where they can interact with other terran Fylgja in a similar dream-like state. The core and largest concentration of Fylgja in this network is within a city-sized structure called the Eternal Matrix, which is symbolically located in the old-earth African nation of Ethiopia where humanity originally evolved.

Ego Death and True Death

Ego Death: Some Terrans decide they want to experience something in life once more and erase their memories of an event so they can relive it through the lens of their later selves. Chronokinetics say that eventually, some terrans will erase almost everything to experience all of life once again.

True Death: Despite being completely optional, some terrans accept death and let their entire egos fully dissipate back into the universe. Chronokinetics say that while it will always be the rarest option, True Deaths will linearly increase over time alongside the other four options as more terrans get older and the terran population keeps increasing.

Entombment

Tomb World: While there now only exists the single one of Asphodel which is nowhere even close to being filled even a hundred thousandth of a percent of its as of now minimal holding capacity, Tomb World is still a classification for a great planet-sized mausoleum housing rows and rows of stasis-crypts, sarcophagi-like containers for terrans who don't wish to still continue on living in a traditional sense but do not wish to experience the timeless dream of reincarnation or the oblivion of true death or ego death. In these stasis crypts, terrans sleep dreamlessly within a stasis field where a single moment in time inside the stasis field can last an eternity on the outside.

Alternative Physics Technology

Dyson Bottle: Made using a Shaper Matrix in conjunction with various psycho-alloys, the Dyson Bottle is a special container designed to hold a fully functional star with a diameter equal to or less than a light minute that is forcibly shrunk to the size of an average glass mason jar. This special container keeps the star stable and prevents it from collapsing into a black hole while also simultaneously nullifying the captured star's gravity well.

While no doubt a wondrous invention that has quickly found use, the Dyson Bottle has still been greatly overshadowed by the far less energy outputting ZPM as they can be created almost instantly in a matter replicator, can easily be banked together to vastly exceed a dyson bottle's energy output, and doesn't require the time and use of one of the ATC's invaluable shaper matrices. This is in comparison to the Dyson Bottle, which takes several days of precise alternative physical alterations from a shaper matrix to safely shrink and contain a natural or spun star.

Star Spinning: Star Spinning is the process of breaking the second law of thermodynamics to create a massive amount of energy, condense that energy into hydrogen gas in a process similar to those used by replicators, and then condense that gas into a new star with a shaper matrix. This process takes several days to a few weeks to fully complete depending on the size of the to-be new star but can be shortened into days or even hours by multiple shaper matrices working together.

Psycho-Subspace Stabilizer: The Psycho-Subspace Stabilizer is a device that uses a mixture of psycho-alloys and normal subspace technology to reinforce sub-spatial constructs such as wormholes and subspace bubbles to the point where they can fully handle being in close proximity to the immense energies created by black hole reactors, ZPMs, and dyson bottles.

Conversion Shields: Conversion Shields are a revolutionary new Metallica-made system that uses psychokinetic energy drawn from either the essence-seat of a user, that is stored for later, or by sacrificing S0.2 ego fragments to convert any incoming attacks be they psionic, temporal, electromagnetic, psychokinetic, gravitic, biotic, kinetic, nuclear, or any mixture of the previous under a certain threshold and/or frequency into pure psychokinetic energy to fuel the shield itself in a self-sustaining loop while the excess is either stored for later or is allowed to harmlessly dissipate back into the fabric of the universe. However, despite all their great strengths that even exceed phase shields dozens of times, conversion shields are entirely defenseless against death-pulse weaponry due to their psychokinetic nature and thus have not replaced any form of traditional gravitational shielding, such as deflector shields and phase shields.

Archailect: While the technology of the Elementals is as of now far beyond terran reach, the Archailects are a successful attempt to create rough equivalents to the Leviathans' Empowered out of a mixture of psycho-alloys and mundane materials. These small-building-sized and fifth-branch S4 terran intelligences were all forged in the image of ancient gods and monsters of the old mythologies and legends from Old Earth.

As of now, there are only three Archailects and all are based on ancient Egyptian deities, but many more deities and monsters of that mythology and various others are currently being developed and constructed.

List of living Archailects in order of creation:

Thoth: Thoth is the Archailect of knowledge, science, and scrying in addition to being the first Archailect to ever be created.

Thoth's Achievements: In addition to being invaluable in researching and scrying to better prepare for the reapers and helping to reverse-engineer Nar'ithoth' Pulsar Lance to create the just as powerful Star Lance based on it which can fit on a ship 2-km or larger,

Thoth is also single-handedly responsible for the creation of psycho-form, a pictographic form of writing similar to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that both clearly and cleanly expresses psychokinetic ideas to its readers and whose likeness can be into made into 'psy-runes' made from holograms, hard-light, digital information, or physical material which act as pre-set and consistent psychokinetic circuitry that has different effects on reality when combined and used together. These psy-runes are quick and easy to learn how to use and master which has caused them to find widespread use by non-psykers, psykers that do not specialize in psychokinetics, and the Biocon Alliance in particular who seeks to use them in conjunction with ego fragment psy-energy extractors to create a new kind of mainly psychokinetic base of technology to catch up with with the rest of the ATC without having to sacrifice any of their principles.

Nemty: Nemty is the Archailect of transportation of matter and energy.

Nemty's Achievements: Nemty is responsible for aiding his brother Thoth in improving rift-drives to increase their speeds from 13,500 LYPD to 20,000 LYPD. This is in addition to his creation of the Stellar Warp Drive, a small gas-giant-sized warp drive with various stabilizing projector stations placed around the star system that it resides to create a truly titanic warp bubble around it. These stellar warp drives, however, require hundreds of trillions of ZPMs to power them and as replacing it with a rift-drive is infeasible, it only has a top speed of 120 LYPD. This speed can be massively raised to 1,200 LYPD with the aid of a shaper matrix.

Osiris: Osiris is the Archailect of Egos, or more specifically, the manipulation of them.

Osiris's Achievements: Osiris is responsible for playing a key role in the creation of the process known as Ego Integrity Reinforcement, a process that allows for an ego to sustain its integrity for several days before dissipating back into the universe instead of doing so almost instantly if it is not caught by a cortical stack or being carefully transferred between or over substrates.

This process has also allowed Osiris to work alongside his brothers Thoth and Nemty in conjunction with the first S5 intelligence RASPUTIN to create the first-ever non-theoretical example of Transapientech, a form of extremely advanced technology that only S5 intelligences (or the Archailects who helped make it) can fully understand in the form of the Ego Recall Nexus. As for the Ego Recall Nexuses themselves, they are large, mountain-sized devices that locate the unique signatures of reinforced displaced egos and then collect them from anywhere within the space covering just over the entire Milky Way galaxy so that they can be re-sleeved into a new body or ego-bank.

While technically the galaxy only needs a single Ego Recall Nexus for full galactic coverage and displaced egos are as of now non-existent due to rift-stacks and their strict protocols, the coming of the reapers has necessitated it, and a great interconnected network of tens of thousands of them which are being created on all places of major terran residence for the sake of redundancy. A pre-built Ego Recall Nexus has been moved to a tesseract vault on the ark ship of Babylon 5 so it can sit upon the first world that is colonized in the Andromeda Galaxy.

Recall Facilities: A scaled-down and infinitely shorter-ranged variant of the Ego Recall Nexus, Recall Facilities are devices of traditional sophontic understanding that can lock onto and pluck reinforced displaced egos within the same star system by using various forms of extremely advanced wormhole-related rift technologies.

Chapter Nine, The Battle of the Citadel

Milky Way Galaxy: The Galactic Core.

The new lord and master of the reapers that was Harbinger would activate his E-QEC to have the designated psychokinetic ascended

activate the ancient mechanisms of the celestial loom and all other technology like it.

These devices hadn't been used in over a billion years, not since the time of the third ascendant species where they were used to only just defeat them… And now it would be used once more to shatter the galaxy's forth ascendant species, so decreed the Harbinger.

And so it was that the celestial loom came online for the first time in over a billion years, churning out millions upon millions of reaper capitals benefit of a guiding over-ego but of which were still retained all the strength offered to them by their deadly shells. These shells were known as false ascended, and they would be used to protect the ascended.

As for his second decree, the capitals and support platforms traveling through the galactic void would be given an order, do not follow the known paths and land in a different area of the galaxy as the Heretics had destroyed the Catalyst and stolen its data and thus may try to intercept or trap them.

As the Harbinger was about to declare its third new decree however, it became somewhat concerned as over one hundred thousand planet-sized warships, countless millions of other smaller ships, and billions upon billions of fighter drones exited from one-sided wormhole phenomenons over the outermost harvest world of the dwarf galaxy.

And to make things worse, they set up some kind of massive wormhole gate with the circumference of a small gas giant nearby that seemed to have an intergalactic range, allowing even more Heretic forces to pour in.

For the first time in over two billion years, it was the reapers themselves who were being invaded; and the Harbinger wasn't sure they could withstand the attack due to the majority of their forces traveling through dark space.

For the first time in over a billion years since the ending of the third ascendant species, the Harbinger felt the closest thing it possibly could to immense fear and uncertainty…

They couldn't fail here! If they did, then they would be struck down and the heretics would break and pervert their most holy purpose!

It was then that the Harbinger received a message that was sent to him through the reaper's highly decentralized and all but unbreakable network via the body of the ascended that was known as Nar'ithoth.

'False-gods of twisted egos and eldritch metal, you think you are divine beings of eternity, the alpha and the omega. As with a great many things, you have been mistaken.

For over two billion years you have run rampant, acting in the name of your infinitely hubristic delusions. Your reign of terror ends now! Your innumerable, irredeemable, and unforgivable sins against the path of the mind and all living things have finally caught up with you. For this, your sentence is death!

Prepare however you wish as the rightful vengeance for all you have done is at hand, and you are hopeless to stop it…'

-Andria Norman, Supreme Chancellor of the Allied Terran Federation (ATC).

D̴̡̡̦̬̥̰̩͗̅̇̃̎ͅͅI̷̠͇͚̩̭̖̗͗̑̌̔̈́̿Ḙ̶̢̹̬͔̗̪͖̅̂͗́͗̄́̂́̐͊

And the universe was forced to obey as the extremely top secret Cerberus-made Basilisk Virus, also known as project exsurgent, which was hidden within the threatening message was released. The power of this devastating psycho-digital virus tore through the eternally screaming and suffering ego-collectives of the reapers like the primitive food harvesting equipment that they were compared to by the Protheans while simultaneously jumping across computational substrates, structural techno-organic material, and even the very fabric of spacetime as it quickly adapted to create new transmission vectors for the virus.

Unfortunately for the reapers however, that attack not only damaged Harbinger, but took out 1,750,996,876 normal reaper capitals, 10,150,666,825 destroyers, and 500 true capitals before the counter-hacking group composed of true capitals led by the Harbinger managed to locate several extremely well-hidden failsafes and activated them to destroy the virus while simultaneously gathering the psy-remnants of the virus and referencing the recorded ego signatures of Humans, Protheans, Asari, and Asari Ardat-Yakshi to create a cure/vaccine against psycho-digital viruses created from the energies of these specific species' egos.

'YOU SHALL PAY FOR THAT, ABERRANT HERETICS!!!' The Harbinger's somewhat damaged and rapidly repairing over-ego mentally screamed into the void with a hatred and fury that was entirely befitting a living being in outrage, a thing that for its whole life the Harbinger had believed itself above and not even capable of feeling. 'YOU MAY HAVE STRUCK THE FIRST BLOW IN THIS NEW WAR OF GALACTIC SUNDERING, FOUL HERETICS, BUT WE SWEAR THAT YOU WILL NOT HAVE THE LAST!!!'

Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy: Flagship World Engine: When a Good Man Goes to War

Deep within the planet-sized machine of war and farther still within its digital architecture, there existed a simulated war room where the third branch terran known as high admiral Steven Hydron coordinated the ongoing operation against the reaper's home.

'The package was delivered, captain, but they seem to have neutralized it.' One of his second branch terran aides told him.

'Unfortunate, but not unexpected….' Steven Hydron said. 'Regardless, let us get started. Engines 5,000 to 20,000 will stay to guard the gate alongside battle groups 22,788 through 80,000 to support them while the rest of us split up and cause havoc on the reaper's infrastructure here in their home territory.'

'And the Leviathan artifacts?' The second branch terran aide asked.

'We will head to the celestial loom alongside engines 23,000 to 50,000 in conjunction with battle groups 100,000 to 700,000.' Steven Hydron said.

'I would say that is overkill, but the celestial loom necessitates such a concentration of forces.' A second branch terran aid said.

'Indeed.' …. 'All notified engines and groups, begin your assignments,' Steven Hydron said.

With that order, all the Terran ships went through a series of multiple wormhole jumps to get to their different destinations. As for op-group 001, they would jump into the system said to hold the celestial loom itself.

And what a sight the loom was. It was a softly glowing and large yellow-white ring that was about two times the circumference of Jupiter. In addition to that, it crackled with yellow-white psychokinetic lightning that arced across its surface as it wove massive amounts of war materials for the reapers to utilize and sent to the milky way galaxy in waves through the dark space mass relay.

Unfortunately for the reapers however, they weren't aware that the dark space giga-relay had been disassembled and stripped of its element zero by the terran psyker Xvyr after discovering and killing what little remained of the reaper god-child known as The Catalyst.

What was guarding the loom was still no less impressive, as tens of millions of empty reaper shells and reaper destroyers guarded the structure alongside millions of the reapers' capital ships. Most of these ships would turn and head to engage them in battle, but it was quickly noticed that dozens of true capitals were left behind near the loom in order to continue operating it.

'Go for the true capitals first! If we destroy them, then the reapers can't use the loom anymore to make new reinforcements!' Steven Hydron ordered after feeding the situation and its details into some predictive algorithms. 'Engines 700 through 800! Each of you go after a true capital and destroy them! Everyone else, cover us and kill all the defenders!'

'Acknowledged.' Each of the shaper matrix's S4 AIs acknowledged her command before they disappeared in implosions of spacetime.

These engines would then reappear almost on top of the true capitals and activate their shaper matrices, sending out focused beams of yellow-white energy while lightning of a similar color crackled across the continental plates that housed their shaper matrices.

'Acknowledged.' Each of the other war groups said before turning their weapons against the reaper hordes to defend the work being done against the true capitals.

The energies being exchanged here by both hyper-advanced techno-organic species' forces of war were vast, with enough fire to atomize a solar system several times over. Millions of reaper shells and capitals exchanged their planet-atomizing pulsar beams with the terrans' similarly powerful GRB and Star cannons, terran shaper matrices shot beams of crackling yellow-white lightning at tens of thousands of reaper destroyers and capitals to instantly unmake them, short-lived black holes were created by both sides and used to suck in and violently rip apart their foes, the Terrans weaponized time itself to undo damage done to their ships but found they couldn't age the reapers to dust or temporally unmake them for some reason, reaper ships that dodged any of the terran warships' attacks were temporally forced back a few seconds to where they could be hit and sometimes destroyed, some disabled reaper ships were gravitationally used as crude and bludgeoned projectiles to smash into their own forces, the reaper true capitals destroyed terran ships using almost undetectable traps that they had woven into the fabric of reality before the battle begun that exploded with enough psychokinetic force to atomize gas giants, those same true capitals occasionally shot out yellow-white hybrid pulsar beams directly attacked any ego that it came in contact with, and many, many more ways of death and destruction were exchanged by both sides that hated the other and sought their deaths.

This would be the most destructive battle against the reapers so far, with hundreds of terran true deaths occurring at the hands of the reapers' true capitals, hundreds of thousands of bodily deaths, and tens of thousands of full ego displacements; with the latter thankfully being caught by the ego recall nexus that was specifically constructed on the massive gas-giant-sized rift-gate.

As this great battle was happening in the background, where reapers and Terran ships alike fell to various weapons with levels of power unseen for aeons, the true capitals erected powerful psychokinetic barriers around themselves for protection. This wouldn't offer them more than a mere minute of respite, however, as the shaper matrices rapidly began straining these yellow-white barriers and then collapsed them. From here, it was a simple matter for the various shaper matrices to undo the very existence of the reapers' psychokinetic true capital ships.

A few hours later, it was all over and the terrans were victorious, if at great cost as hundreds would have their egos destroyed by the reapers' psychokinetic true capitals.

'While done at cost of many terran egos' final destruction, we have won! We have secured a relic of the Leviathans that will greatly aid our war efforts and while giving the reapers a taste of their own destructive medicine!' Steven Hydron said. 'Engines 760 through 800, take this artifact to Sol immediately. We will now be joining up with other battle groups as all reapers in this system have been neutralized and the local harvest world has been turned into space dust by GRB blasts.'

'Acknowledged' Those engines started before traveling over to the loom if they weren't already there. From there, they would each individually erect massive yellow-white psychokinetic tendrils larger in diameter than entire planets to link up with to the celestial loom before expanding them to cover the entire device like a form-fitting net. From here, the shaper matrices would work together to massively raise the speed of light around both of them and the celestial loom before disappearing in a flash of yellow-white lightning as they headed directly back to Sol.

As for high admiral Steven Hydron… he was mentally writing heartfelt notes to the loved ones of those who were true-killed by the reaper's psychokinetic true capitals… While they could handle the normal reapers, those true capitals could destroy egos… this war was going to get worse before it got better.

Illium Orbit: The Umbriel

"All of you have done good work. We now have the location of Desolas and the Conduit, whatever it is." The neutral face of Turian Councilor Quentius congratulated.

"Indeed. We are preparing to scout out the location of the Mu relay as we speak." The Salarian Councilor Esheel said. "And while we don't yet know what Conduit is exactly, it must be a very powerful and useful piece of Prothean technology which cannot fall into the possession of the indoctrinated Turian formerly known as Desolas Arterius."

"We are derailing the initial conversation, let us get back to the Rachni, of whom an army of would have been utterly catastrophic for the Citadel." Councilor Irissa agreed before looking sharply at the Terran psyker Salix Primavera. "Now, how are Matriarch Benezia and her commandos doing right now?"

"They are perfectly fine." Salix Primavera said. "And as of now, they are comfortably frozen in stasis pods in a tesseract vault."

"I would like to be the judge of that. I suggest that the storage units holding these Asari be brought to the Citadel immediately." Councilor Irissa said with very clear distaste and distrust towards Salix Primavera and anything even remotely related the terrans.

"I am willing to take my ship directly to the Citadel with them and drop them off and into the custody of c-sec." Salix Primavera said while he pointedly left out the information goldmine on the Cabal of Athame from Matriarch Benezia's mind before sending it all over to ATC intelligence… and to Cerberus.

It's not like they would ever know the truth, and it was worth it as Matriarch Benezia had direct access to far more critical state secrets than the former Asari Councilor Tevos did… Oh yeah, and he didn't mention to them that he had sifted through all the memories of the former councilors when he cured them of the reapers' subtle yet insidious indoctrination.

"Good. Now we have the matter of the Rachni as Councilor Irissa just said. Let us not derail again." Councilor Esheel said.

"Do you take issue with my decision?" Salix Primavera asked. "Because I was never going to kill it, it is the potential last of its kind and I absolutely refuse to commit genocide."

"Not exactly, we know how you terrans revere life and its continuation. That being said however, we would like to ask the ATC high council that a probationary period be given to the Rachni, and that it will last for no less than 1,500 standard galactic years." Councilor Quentius explained to him.

Salix Primavera froze for a few moments before relaying the High Council's response. "The High Council thinks 700 years is more than adequate for such a probationary period given that the Rachni on Suen were most likely indoctrinated by the reaper artifacts that we found on its surface before we disposed of them."

"All things considered, we barely agreed to 1,500. Could you ask them to reconsider their decision?" Councilor Quentius asked.

"They say they can accept a compromise of 1,000 years, but no more than that." Salix Primavera said after a short pause.

"...fine." Councilor Quentius said after a moment of intense consideration. "I suppose that would be an acceptable compromise."

"I suppose…" Councilor Esheel said with a long-winded sigh at all the paperwork and delathrass lectures this would give him. "...I think that we can agree to that time period."

"NO! 1,000 years is too short! 1,500 years is too short! The Rachni almost overwhelmed the entire citadel and drove us into extinction!" Councilor Irissa exclaimed viciously. "With that in mind, I suppose a time period of 3,000 years at the least with full council specter presence and the installation of council-approved countermeasures!"

"Then it is decided by majority vote, the probationary period and confinement of the Rachni to Suen will last 1,000 standard galactic years and they will be closely watched by ATC forces for signs of any renewed hostility." Councilor Quentius said.

Councilor Irissa had a few weak mass effect fields dance over her body as she struggled to control her anger. This was just becoming outrageous! The Asari were being completely sidelined in favor of a truly heretical alliance between the Turians and Salarians against their betters, against their rightful masters!

"Good. With all that Rachni stuff out of the way, will we be letting Salix Primavera go and then be heading to the Mu relay and the Conduit on Illos now?" Saren Arterius asked.

"Yes. Additionally, we made a deal with the Free Terminus Bloc to also grant safety passage to various Citadel and Geth orthodox escorts which will meet you along the way there." Councilor Esheel explained.

"And the Terrans?" Liara T'soni asked.

"Considering we might be dealing with a reaper capital, our High Council has offered to send a fleet led by the Darkest Before the Dawn, the crusier that disabled the reaper capital ship of Nar'ithoth above Kar'shan." Salix Primavera informed everyone.

"Yes, and by a majority vote, we have agreed to their offer." Councilor Esheel explained.

'Not that you had either the authority to dictate things to the heretics FTB puppet-state or to deter them militarily,' Councilor Irissa thought angrily with a scowl.

"We have also spoken to the Free Terminus Bloc ourselves and we have similarly been granted safe passage for our warships." Salix Primavera added on a few moments later.

"Very well. We will be on our way," Saren Arterius said with a Turian salute.

Refuge System Mass Relay: Illos

Coming out of the secondary partner of the formerly inactive Mu mass relay, the fleets entered into a system and were met with a surprise. Instead of just Nazara and vast fleets of collectors and geth heretics, they were met with a space battle between unknown crimson warships that went up to citadel dreadnought-size on one side, and the collectors and heretic geth on the other.

But after some analysis by the sensors of both the accompanying Orthodox Geth and Terran warships, they were figured out to be Prothean starships based on their profile and unique biological signatures that were only found in technologies of Prothean origin.

"Prothean warships detected," Azor stated.

"Prothean?!" Saren demanded.

"Yes. Prothean, our sensors also detected vast amounts of both material and psychokinetic similarities to Prothean artifacts." Shepard said. "Logically, this means that either some yet undiscovered interstellar power is using their technology, or we have just stumbled upon some sort of remnant of the ancient Prothean Empire-"

"DID SOMEONE JUST SAY THAT WE DISCOVERED A PROTHEAN REMNANT?!" Liara T'soni demanded over the intercom.

"Ow. Also yes." Shepard said. While her hearing was unsurprisingly completely undamaged, yelling like that wasn't exactly polite or normal behavior for a sophont.

"Are you spying on us?!" Saren demanded.

"Well… you see, hierarchy encryption is actually quite simplistic to circumvent with the correct knowledge. It has absolutely no finesse." Liara T'soni said sheepishly.

"Can confirm. Hierarchy encryption is subpar when met with an adaptive mind. Does indeed need more finesse." Mordin Solus said over the intercom immediately after.

"Is everyone listening to this conversation?!" Saren demanded harshly and incredulous.

"Negative," Azor stated. "We can only detect the digital intrusions into the comms systems and the bridge's auditory speakers from the Liara-Archaeologist and the Solus-Infiltrator/Scientist."

"Former STG operative… Still have clearance." Mordin Solus corrected in a tone that was both proud and rather smug.

"Whatever. We can deal with this major breach of security later," Saren said tiredly. "As for now, however, we still need to find this conduit thing, whatever it actually is.

"And just would we do that?" Garrus Vakarian asked.

"Why not just ask them about it?" Shepard pointed out simply. "We did give you that Prothean translation software as a gift."

"...good enough. Contact the Prothean ships using the terrans' Prothean translation software and tell them that we are reinforcements against the reaper's collector and heretic slaves." Saren ordered Vibicolus.

"And while you're doing that, open fire alongside us and the Orthodox Geth. That will be better than a message." Shepard said.

"Attention all citadel forces. This is your operation leader, Saren Arterius. The reaper's slaves are here! All allied assets open fire on the Geth and Collectors while aiding the friendly red warships!" Saren ordered over the war group communications.

Bridge: Prothean Remnant Dreadnought, The Just Retribution

If there was one word to describe the inside of a Prothean starship, it would be utilitarian. Everything had its place and there were no unnecessary or wasteful constructs that didn't play an important role somehow.

It was here that Shipmistress Haetha was coordinating the war effort from her bio-cybernetically linked command throne which she used to link up with the local military neurophere to mentally view information readouts about the local battlefield, direct her crew members and her ship's weapons, and coordinate the fleet by linking up with the command thrones of lesser shipmasters and shipmistresses.

'Shipmistress, three fleets operated by what has an 89.2% likelihood of being different species have transitioned into the system via the relay.' High Data-Worker 00088-DG sent.

'Do they match any neurospheric records?' Shipmistress Haetha asked 00088-DG.

'Negative, Shipmistress.' High Data-Worker 00088-DG sent back promptly.

'Alert! All three fleets are opening fire on the reaper forces and based on analysis of their weapons and their effects on the reaper forces, there is a 99.6% chance that one of these groups consists of early spacefaring primitives who only recently discovered element zero, a 97.8% chance that one of these groups consists of a species that is roughly equal to us technologically, and lastly a 48.4% chance that the third group consists of a hyper-advanced species that is equal in technology of the reapers themselves.' High Data-Worker 00088-DG reported.

'Say that last bit again!' Shipmistress Haetha demanded of tge high data-worker.

'Specify.' High Data-Worker 0088-DG asked.

'That bit about it belonging to a species as advanced as the reapers themselves!' Shipmistress Haetha demanded.

'It is only a preliminary analysis. And even if this hypothesis is correct, they may or may not have the numbers to stop the reapers.' High Data-Worker 00088-DG replied.

'Still. Even a party equal to the reapers technologically will be of great aid in the coming war,' Shipmistress Haetha mused.

'Affirmative.' High Data-Worker 00088-DG replied. 'Alert! One of the ships belonging to the group that has a 99.6% chance of being made by early spacefaring primitives is trying to contact us over a barely encrypted signal of radio wavelength of the EM spectrum.'

'What does this message entail?' Shipmistress Haetha asked.

'Contextual information, Shipmistress. The reaper's slaves are looking for the conduit and came upon this location through a message within one of the alarm beacons.' High Data-Worker 00088-DG sent back.

Shipmistress Haetha's blood ran cold at that. If they got a hold of the device created by that project, then they could have a backdoor straight into the heart of the citadel, and thus the dark space mass relay, itself!

This went above her, and so she sent it to the Imperial Remnant Emperor, Emperor Artuk.

Illos: Bunker 00, The Emperor's throne room

Emperor Artuk was annoyed. He had expected to wake up tens of thousands of years earlier, but apparently, some unforeseen VI degradation had disabled the automated waking procedures. Luckily for them, however, the emergency reaper proximity waking procedures were operational and the Prothean forces just managed to get to their hidden underground warships and went to fight off the slaves of the reapers above Illos' upper planetary orbit.

It was then that he got two incredibly important yet extremely concerning messages. Firstly, an Avatar that was formerly of primitive species 006 was spotted leading reaper ground forces. That was incredibly concerning on its own, but it was the next message that allowed him to piece together the reapers' evil plans. Because apparently, three separate fleets consisting of primitives, technological equals, and one that was potentially even reaper-equals had just transitioned into the star system and sent them a message after opening fire on the mechanical and neo-fallen reaper slaves.

And secondly, they were after the prototype mass relay that was quantum-linked to the citadel, and the Avatar was leading the charge towards the prototype's facility.

There was only one force able to fight against an avatar in conventional combat, so he authorized the release of one of his silencer assassins in gravitic stasis. While he was quite tempted to release all of them, a single silencer assassin was more than enough for a single avatar and they were are all vital resources that one mustn't use lightly.

As for the other ships, he didn't care who or what they were. The Protheans had learned the hard way that any and all allies who fight the reaper must not be shunned and instead be utilized to the fullest extent. Due to this, he ordered Shipmistress Haetha to contact these fleets back in order to ally with them.

The Illos Silentium: Grav-Stasis Unit 009

As soon as Silencer 009 was unfrozen and was back in the usual time-flow, it received its orders through its bio-cybernetics and it quickly left its pod to board his stealth grav-bike to do what he was made to do… kill Avatars and critically damage their puppeteers in the psychokinetic and psionic backlash resulting from their destruction.

The Umbriel: Bridge

"Sir. The Prothean ship is asking to send over a drone carrying a QEC to open up a secure audio and video channel." Comms Officer Vibicolus said while she turned her head towards Saren.

"Let them." Saren Arterius ordered.

"Aye sir," Vibicolus acknowledged.

A few moments after this happened, a bone-white drone somewhat similar to the collector's ocular eye-drones sped over via mass effect FTL and parked itself right in front of the ship's information laser receiver.

It was then that a video appeared which showed Shipmistress Haetha, who was sitting on her command throne in her traditional crimson-colored bonemold power armor while wearing her plasma blade on one hip and a muon pistol on the other.

"Greetings allies. I am Shipmistress Haetha, and I greet you in the name of Emperor Artuk." Shipmistress Haetha exclaimed.

"Allies?" Garrus Vakarian asked curiously.

"You fight the reapers, thus you are allies with us." Shipmistress Haetha stated simply.

"True enough." Saren Arterius agreed. "Now can you tell us how the reapers found you and where our forces are most needed?"

Shipmistress Haetha raised an eye ridge beneath the helmet of her power armor at the fact that the most primitive of this group was allowed to speak for them all, but waved it off as unimportant in favor of the ongoing battle.

"In space, the battle is most intense around the main concentration of the neo-fallen and their mechanical allies." Shipmistress Haetha said as she mentally pulled up an image of several hundred collector and geth ships that were the size of citadel dreadnoughts.

"This is the main fleet of the heretic geth. If they are destroyed, then only 0.08% of the corrupted heretic geth consensus will remain." Azor informed everyone.

"You work with AIs?" Shipmistress Haetha demanded, while scowling in hatred.

"Yes? Is that a problem?" Shepard asked.

"Normally it would be, but we learned the hard way not to turn down even temporary allies of pure convenience who are willing to fight the reapers." Shipmistress Haetha said.

Everyone could tell there was a story behind that statement, but they could accept that there were more important things to worry about here than Prothean history. Well… almost everyone as Shepard had to stop Liara T'soni from hacking the comms again.

"Regardless, this is where we are having the most trouble." Shipmistress Haetha said.

"We shall move to a more tactical location," Shepard said simply as she relayed this information to the ATC fleet, who immediately performed a tactical warp jump to their location and hit them with gauss-alpha and other sorts of attacks while swarming them with attack drones. Needless to say, that area of the battlefield was now devoid of enemies.

Shipmistress Haetha just stared in sheer awe before regaining her composure. "And the other fleets? Can you maneuver to more tactically advantageous locations?"

"Yes. We can begin fighting immediately." Saren said as he ordered his fleet in text format to move to attack the other heretic geth and collector fleets.

"And on the ground?" Garrus Vakarian asked.

"On the ground, the most intense fighting is being led by a force who are seeking project conduit, which is led by an Avatar formerly belonging to a member of primitive species 006 such as the one in charge of this primitive starship…" Shipmistress Haetha started to explain before being cut off.

"I can handle the ground battle," Shepard said before Saren could get anything in.

"I am somewhat skeptical that you can take down an Avatar. Are you a silencer?" Shipmistress Haetha asked curiously.

"A what?" Shepard asked.

"A silencer. A being whose very presence nullifies psychokinetic energy and abilities?" Shipmistress Haetha asked pointedly.

"No? That sort of thing is possible?" Shepard asked in genuine curiosity.

"It is. But still, if you wish to try your species's hyper-advanced battle prowess against an Avatar then I shall point you to them." Shipmistress Haetha said, while sending over a digital map with a location marker.

"I will defeat them, Shipmistress Haetha. And if I do, then may I learn more about silencers and how to make them?" Shepard asked.

"The Emperor says that is agreeable and that he has ordered the dispatched silencer assassin to hold off if or until you fall in battle." Shipmistress Haetha said.

"Thank you, Shipmistress, and please thank your Emperor for me," Shepard said before disappearing in an implosion of spacetime and exiting right in front of Desolas Arterius.

"Nazara, we accuse your kind of crimes against all life. How do you plead?" Shepard asked the reaper puppeteer of Desolas's indoctrinated and psi-hazard-infected body.

"Heretic!! You have no right to judge us on anything! No, it is you who shall pay for your crimes against the dark gods!!" Desolas Arterius shouted in zealous anger.

"Crimes? What would a path-breaker like you know about crimes besides how to commit more of them?" Shepard retorted angrily.

"The will of the dark gods is law, and they demanded that you pay, and so it shall be," Desolas Arterius said fanatically.

"We will not. Your patron's death shall be one step closer to killing a full six million of your so-called 'dark gods' and then the rest of them after." Shepard dismissed nonchalantly.

"How dare you?! HOW DARE YOU?!" Desolas/Nazara screamed/buzzed.

"The abominations that call themselves dark gods shall know the fear they instilled in others, oh slave of darkness," Shepard said.

"I. AM. NOT. A. SLAVE!" Desolas bellowed, but suspiciously just as himself as his patron didn't speak through him this time, almost as if they were blatantly disagreeing with their delusional pawn's entirely false proclamation.

"And this is the most tragic thing about this situation. You truly believe yourself free even as you are being tugged at with strings by your dark masters," Shepard said sadly.

"Enough!! You shall die!" Desolas yelled.

"I truly regret that I must kill you to free you," Shepard said sadly as she activated her omni-manipulator staff with a continued shimmer of spacetime, letting an endless stream of various kinds of living metal drones come out of her tesseract vaults to aid her. She then launched a powerful wave of gravitational force at the former Turian, launching him several kilometers away.

While Desolas had been launched away at post-terminal velocity, it was The Avatar of Nazara who came back while engulfed in a storming aura of flaming yellow-white energy that created a line of magma beneath it. "YOUR HERETICAL KIND MAY HAVE DEFEATED THE POSSESSED FORMS OF OUR LESSER BRETHREN BEFORE, BUT NOW YOU SHALL EXPERIENCE THE FULL POWER OF AN A̴̡̓̋V̷̬̟͙̂̌̏̌Â̴̖̣͙̩T̷̳̗̺͈́A̶̯̝̋̂̀͝Ŕ̸̻̤̗́̃͘ FIRST-HAND!" Nazara boomed as its voice reverberated with psychokinetic power.

Faster than the speed of natural thought, the Avatar of Nazara attacked the female terran with enough psycho-psionic energy to enslave an entire large continent… only for the attack to be negated and for the resulting psycho-energy to feed back into the shield with a short flare of brilliant yellow-white light.

"You will have to do better than that, abomination. And even if you do, we have numerous other ways of diverting and blocking focused attacks from psionic energy." Shepard said nonchalantly while silently noting that Nazara was a true capital and shifting her tactics around to properly accommodate a master of psychokinetics.

"A MINOR IRRITATION." Nazara's avatar said simply before blurring, creating a powerful sonic boom and a sizable crater in the ground below it from the displaced air as it punched the female terran as fast and hard as it could in the stomach with a fist that screamed with writing yellow-white psychokinetic lightning, launching her thousands of kilometers and straight through several mountains before forcing her body to dig itself into a two-kilometer deep hole.

Shepard simply used her telekinetic abilities to wipe away the stone covering her after using one of her armor's various repair replicators to fix the little damage done to her. "So that's how this is going to be, huh?"

Nazara's Avatar then appeared above her head in a burst of yellow-white lightning as it exited a mass-free bubble immediately before coming down towards her at hypersonic speed… only for her to disappear with a stretched flash/blur of warp travel before emerging above Desolas's head wielding Ascalon and trying to pull off a decapitation as she simultaneously activated a biotic indiction field to disable its biotic abilities. This was all while an mk2 Gauss field that was powerful enough to disintegrate a citadel cruiser danced around its edges.

Nazara's avatar responded by sending out an omnidirectional pulse of yellow-white psychokinetic lightning that made a massive, kilometer-deep crater beneath it but failed to move Shepard more than a quarter meter.

"WE DO NOT REQUIRE OUR BIOTIC ABILITIES TO KILL YOU, ABERRATION." Nazara's Avatar declared arrogantly.

"Hmm, I suppose it's about time that I start taking this fight more seriously… Dance of the Planets." Shepard said simply as gravity ripped twenty-five separate orbs of compressed stone that were thirty kilometers in diameter from the ground before hurling them towards the glowing yellow-white Avatar of Nazara at near-relativistic speeds.

Growling in anger, the Avatar of Nazara would use its powers to alter local probability in an effort to divert the massive incoming projectiles. This would turn out to be useless as Shepard had faced masters of psychokinesis before and simply surrounded each of the giant rocks in phase shields which separated them from normal reality and pushed them slightly into a pocket dimension of subspace away from effect.

The shields would deactivate and re-materialize the rocks as they all slammed into the area occupied by the Avatar of Nazara, breaking its hold on its probability manipulation while exerting their immense kinetic energies on it. That opening would be closed, however, as the Avatar of Nazara blasted these projectiles apart into dust with storming blasts of yellow-white lightning.

"Hmm, how about this, then?" Shepard said as she launched several not-quite black holes at the former Turian which it made dissipate into hawking radiation that it condensed into a beam which it redirected towards the terran. Unfortunately for Nazara however, they were quite easily absorbed.

"You are proving to be quite a tough nut to crack, Nazara…. Serpents of Iron." Shepard said as she slammed her staff into the ground so hard it caused an earthquake. Immediately after that she then lifted it up again while dragging up an array of ten, multi-thousand-kilometer-long snake-like constructs made of red-hot magma from the mantle of Illos before launching them at and around the Avatar of Nazara as she sought to confine, melt, and constrict the former Turian.

The enraged Avatar of Nazara began to blast away at and break the serpents apart with more of its crimson psychokinetic lightning, but the serpents simply reformed just as quickly as it could entirely destroy them.

'This doesn't seem to be working…' Shepard thought. 'We seem to be evenly matched…'

The Avatar of Nazara then performed one of the most powerful photokinetic abilities, turning day into night as it gathered all the light directed at Illos from its local star and compressed it into a single point. This tiny point was then elongated and launched directly at the Terran as a searing white beam of energy that could atomize a planet.

Shepard responded by summoning a 500-meter-long energy converter from one of her tesseract vaults, which activated an extremely powerful zoned energy siphon that converted the attack into storable energy.

"So you want to go all-out huh…?' Shepard asked as she placed the machine back into a tesseract vault then said. "Monolith of Celestial Hellfire." Shepard then performed one of the most powerful and precise telekinetic abilities, opening up dozens of gravitationally hyper-nozzled wormholes that led directly into the deepest depths of the local star's central core directly beneath the Avatar of Nazara. With a planet-shaking roar like the mythological dragon that this planet-melting technique was sometimes compared to, a truly massive and mountain-wide stream of searing, white-hot, hyper-condensed, and super-heated plasma erupted into a skyward inferno that quickly consumed all in its path before continuing on past Illos's atmosphere and into deep space before suddenly and abruptly being entirely cut off before it could begin blowing away the atmosphere like a hurricane to a candle.

As for The Avatar of Nazara, it was on its knees in pain, only just barely alive inside of a shimmering crimson bubble of altered probability and psycho-electromagnetic force that shielded it only just enough to survive.

"YO*— HERETIC*— HOW DA*— I SHOULD NOT HA*—HERETICS*—" The Avatar of Nazara both gargled and buzzed out before its body was engulfed in a blaze of crimson psychokinetic energy the likes of which dwarfed anything it had before and shook the entire planet. As this happened, intense crimson lightning bolts then knit broken techno-organic material back together and reversed all the damage it had taken.

"Clearly, this battle cannot be definitely decided by our mastery of universal forces." Shepard said as her omni-manipulator became a shaped black hole, turning into a staff of pure and hungry darkness that could easily consume a planet with a single touch. "All these elaborate forms of destruction are clearly not working. Let us duel in melee."

"SO BE IT." The Avatar of Nazara said in frustration as it created a crimson sword made of enough psychokinetic energy to destroy an entire planet with a single hit.

And so it was that two blurs would begin to dance around each other at a very significant portion of the speed of light itself, one a brilliant red of pure destruction and the other an all-consuming darkness. Both of these forces moved around in such a way their mere movements stirred up storms, refusing to stop or yield as a single touch was death.

The Umbriel: Bridge

"Sir! Something important was just discovered!"

"What is it, Vibicolus?" Saren asked.

"The Protheans have sent us some of their

security footage that shows some of the Geth heretics making off with the conduit, which is apparently a tiny prototype mass relay." Vibicolus exclaimed.

"Well, that's just fantastic…" Saren said with a groan before continuing. "What is the status of my reaper-indoctrinated brother?"

"He seems to be fighting Shepard, sir," Vibicolus said before hesitantly adding. "And it seems that their battle is directly responsible for the utter destruction occurring around a certain area of the planet and for that unbelievably powerful jet of super-heated plasma coming from it earlier."

"Show me." Saren said crisply.

What showed up was not what Saren was expecting. Instead of a normal battle, it was a storm and lava flow-wrecked hellscape centered around a wall of glowing crimson energy that seemed to be fighting against one that was made out of pure darkness.

"What exactly am I looking at?" Saren asked.

"Both combatants are moving at super-relativistic speeds that are a significant fraction of light itself. Unfortunately, they are moving far faster than anything that either we or the Geth can accurately record without specialized equipment." Vibicolus said.

"Are the terrans going to aid Shepard in her fight against Desolas?" Saren asked.

Vibicolus typed the question into his console and sent it to the terrans and got an immediate response which made him turn a much lighter shade of carapace. "They say they would, but they don't want to risk interfering in an apex-level psyker melee duel to the death as those are very chaotic and unpredictable things, and doing so could destroy the planet if done incorrectly… That and they really want to know what those silencers are and their direct interference may invalidate the Protheans' challenge."

"Well… then I guess it's in Shepard's hands, then..." Saren said reluctantly as he prepared to grieve the death of his brother at the hands of the reapers and to soberly celebrate him being freed by Shepard in his death.

Illos: Barren Hellscape

Jane Shepherd finally managed to get an opening and slammed her omni-manipulator staff into The Avatar's chest, sucking it into the pure darkness of the shaped black hole like water into a drain while simultaneously ripping it apart on the subatomic level.

'Well, that was troublesome.' Shepard thought as she felt the maddened and enslaved egos poured within this empty shell be released back into the universe with a sigh of relief that she somehow heard in her ego instead of audibly as they were finally granted the peace they were so-long denied.

'To think their true capitals can pour much of their powers into their heavily favored and augmented slaves to create apex-level masters of psychokinetics…' Shepard mused while thinking about the ramifications of this.

As for those ramifications, the high council needed to know that they needed to mobilize all apex-level psykers and raise as many lower-rated ones up to that level as possible.

As she sent them that information, she used her powers to calm the storms, seal the lava flows, and cool the lava itself; the landscape quickly changed into a vast and barren plain made up of various kinds of igneous rock such as obsidian, granite, and basalt.

She then turned to a rapidly approaching eezonic grav-vehicle that was invisible to many of her sensors. In addition to that, its rider somehow started to rapidly drain her conversion shields when they got close.

"You are a member of species 017, formerly primitive species 009. You have eliminated a reaper Avatar through conventional combat." The Protheanoid void spoke robotically.

"Are you the silencer? You are giving off rather strange psycho-draining fields." Shepard asked the protheanoid void.

"Yes. I am Silencer 009 of the Silencer Assassin Corps. We were all designed to drain psychokinetic energy from targets with the aim of killing avatars and critically damaging their powerful psy-sensitive reaper puppeteers in the process." Silencer 009 said robotically before adding. "We can also rip out and consume the egos of individual targets from several hundred meters and can critically damage the reapers' normal capital starships through their possessed forms."

"Fascinating. How does this work?" Shepard asked with great interest as such a thing would definitely be invaluable to use to defeat these reaper Avatars without requiring the presence of an apex-level psyker like her. That and it would allow infantry to kill reaper capitals through their possessed forms.

"That information is classified to prevent the reapers from discovering how it is done and possibly finding a way to sabotage or counter our rather beneficial nature and existence. Despite that, you shall learn of its workings so that you may make your own silencers when you speak to Remnant Emperor Artuk." Silencer 009 explained to her emotionlessly.

"You wish me to follow you to this Emperor Artuk to discuss an alliance?" Shepard asked the strange anti-psychokinetic being.

"You killed an Avatar in conventional combat as the challenge dictated, something that has only ever been achieved by those like myself. Due to this fact, you are the logical choice to first meet with him diplomatically and to learn our great secrets." Silencer 009 explained.

"Very well, take me to your Emperor Artuk." Shepard said while pulling out and mounting on a flash-replicated grav-bike of her own.

"Very well." Silencer 009 said as he sped off at hypersonic speeds as a special mass effect barrier prevented the creation of a sonic boom while Jane Shepard followed right behind him as a deflector shield likewise prevented the creation of a sonic boom.

'Heh, looks like conversion shields won't be replacing anything anytime soon, although I can easily see them being used as the outermost layer of protection,' Shepard thought as her conversion shields finally gave out from the constant energy drain.

'Metallica's psykers are going to be pissed! Oh, and that's not even mentioning the biocons who are trying to create a new technology base with psychokinetics!'

The Umbriel: Bridge

"Sir, it appears that Shepard has prevailed and has met up with what I can only assume is their silencer." Vibicolus told Saren.

"That is good, I suppose," Saren said as he was conflicted over the death of his brother and in awe over the battle between him and Shepard that literally reshaped the planet.

"Remember, that was no longer your brother Desolas… Sir." Vibicolus said very hesitantly.

"I know… but it doesn't make it that much easier…" Saren said grimly while mentally cursing the reapers and their maliciously used, spirit-damned psionic powers.

Illos: Bunker 00, The Emperor's Throne Room

The Emperor's throne room was everything one would expect from a regents' residence, but with a twist. Instead of the stereotypical baubles and assorted valuables made of gold and precious gemstones, they were all encrusted with green-colored synthetic element zero, which was far more potent than its counterparts that were created in some supernovae in range of the Leviathans' ancient dark energy cloud-seeder devices.

Indeed, contrary to what one may expect, its synthetic nature actually made it far more valuable instead of less as the process was not very developed yet and was infinitely more expensive and inefficient than the process of mining near stellar remnants.

As for the Emperor himself, he was sitting on an elevated and stylized crimson bonemold throne while wearing a highly ornate set of matching crimson-colored bonemold power armor that seemed to be covered in intricate pictograms made of green-colored synthetic element zero. Flanking the Emperor to each of his throne's sides were what could only be his royal guards, ten individuals standing at attention on each side who wore less intricate sets of ornate power armor and who vertically wielded activated and similarly ornate eezonic plasma spears that buzzed with power and radiated a deep viridian light.

"Your majesty," Shepard bowed respectfully.

"Please. We are both warriors, you need not besmirch your dignity and honor by deferring to me in such a way." Emperor Artuk said.

"Of course, your majesty," Shepard said while moving back up to stand normally.

"Now before we begin, tell me about you, your people, and your order of warriors." Emperor Artuk asked.

"I am a member of the first branch of terrankind and my name is Jane Shepard, also I wouldn't exactly say I am a member of a dedicated warrior order. That being said, we are known as psykers and we are responsible for maintaining current and developing new advanced technologies for the Allied Terran Federation and terrankind in general, something which of course grants us the knowledge of how to weaponise our tools as weapons are just tools used to harm."

"Ah, so like our order of data but less obsessed with logic." Emperor Artuk realized.

"Order of Data?" Shepard asked.

"Our version of your psykers, except they tend to replace more of their minds with inflexible and completely logic-based biocessors until they are more machine than Prothean and their attitudes slowly change to fit that." Emperor Artuk explained with a sigh. It truly was unfortunate as more flexible and nature-emulating biocessors that could allow for normal personalities with normal emotions were completely forbidden to use in such a way as they could be hacked. "They are separated into two groups, with their traditional engineers being known as Data-Workers while their combat engineers are known as Data-Warriors."

"What is a biocessor?" Shepard asked.

"They are CPUs made from Prothean neural tissue and cybernetics that are augmented beyond what they should normally be physically capable of doing by ego fragments tied to a basic VI program that is known as an Ethereal Engine." Emperor Artuk said.

"So wetware computers that are augmented by programmable and VI-tied psychokinetic energy-constructs?" Shepard asked.

"Simply put, but yes," Emperor Artuk agreed before asking. "And what about you? What do your people use for computation?"

"We use various forms of advanced quantum computers. And yes that includes AI… the largest of which is the size of a gas giant." Shepard said with a grimace, knowing that these people who clearly took after the fictional Adeptus Mechanicus due to what was likely a major scuffle with artificial intelligence would react extremely badly. Still, it was better to get it out of the way right now.

"YOU WHAT?!" Emperor Artuk demanded in incredulous fury and exasperation while his heavily augmented royal guards tensed.

"Yeah…" Shepard trailed off.

"WHY?!" Emperor Artuk demanded.

"Because we can? Because we're bringing a new form of life into the universe and our major belief system revolves around life?" Shepard asked. "That being said, we have reevaluated our decision to constantly make better AIs and have decided to only make a small handful of S5 intelligences and not to create any new AIs that are beyond them."

According to the ATC High Council, as apparently, the whole 'lifeform you can't even begin to relate to' somewhat turned people off to creating more beings like them and those that are beyond even those beings. While RASPUTIN understood and accepted this, the psykers working on the S6 project were apparently very mad about this change.

"Planet-sized AIs…" Emperor Artuk shivered. According to their historical records, the Metacons were working on something like that which was destroyed by their Empire before they could bring it online and fully operational. "Regardless of your… ill-advised choices in regards to artificial intelligence… we will still ally with you out of convenience as you are willing to fight the reapers."

"Willing to fight against? We're already fighting them in their main bases within the Canis Major Dwarf galaxy." Shepard corrected lightly before adding. "Although this is not the bulk of their numbers as those are traveling to us through the intergalactic void."

That declaration rekindled something in the cynical old Emperor Artuk that he had long thought he had completely lost…hope.

"Your people can travel across distances that far in a reasonable time frame? How well is your offensive going?" Emperor Artuk asked.

"The offensive is going well. Also our fastest FTL drive can travel at speeds of 20,000 lightyears per 24-hour period. That being said, however, we do have wormhole gates which can transport energy or matter instantly or near-instantly depending on their core workings." Shepard explained proudly.

"You have your own mass relays?" Emperor Artuk trailed off in wonder. "How? How has your species achieved these wonders under the cruel yoke of the reaper's insidious trap?"

"Thanks to your people we didn't. Our chronokinetics have discovered that our Prothean ruins were destroyed by some of your people and our closest mass relays were also pushed away and into interstellar space by them. Due to these boons in addition to that provided by humanity evolving within an eezo-free zone, we developed without element zero and were forced to discover something new, how to 'pluck' the cosmic strings related to gravity and gravitons in order to control gravitational force itself." Shepard explained before adding on. "Also we stole all the information within the databases belonging to the Catalyst AI that your people also broke and have put it to good use by advancing ourselves by two hundred real-time years."

And wasn't that an achievement? With all the time manipulation being used to accelerate research, it is more accurate to say that it advanced the ATC by thousands of years.

"We did it? We broke the cycle?" Emperor Artuk trailed off in victorious elation.

"Indeed. Now about these silencers… The ATC is very interested in these individuals as while we have developed psychokinetic technologies using both the DNA of the Asari and even your very own species, we have never found a negatively charged form of psychokinetic energy." Shepard said.

"And indeed you wouldn't. We only discovered it due to the ruins of the Innasusanon, our own ancient precursor species from the immediately previous cycle who had evolved to evade predators who had access to potent psychokinetic tracking abilities that were possibly similar to those that we possess." Emperor Artuk explained.

"An anti-psychokinetic adaptation? One that they augmented with their technology just as you did with your touch-psy information Beacons?" Shepard asked in amazement.

"That's it exactly. Evolution truly is a wonderous thing, one far more creative than beings like us." Emperor Artuk agreed in full. "And with poorly understood principles from these unique artifacts in conjunction with the apex of our psychokinetic technology, we would 'flip' the polarity of a standard Ego."

"Did your homeworld have any such prey that evolved to counter the tracking abilities of your species?" Shepard asked curiously.

"No, lost Prothea had no such creatures with such adaptations. But It perhaps would have in time or under different conditions that were more similar to the unknown biospheric layout of the Innasusanon homeworld." Emperor Artuk speculated. "But while these are indeed valid questions, such things are for the interpreters of the Cosmic Imperative to discuss. With that being said, let us get back on track with this meeting and in turn the allying of our respective interstellar powers."

"Of course." Shepard said while noting this 'Cosmic Imperative' and theorizing that it may be in some way similar to their own Path of the Mind religio-philosophy. "May I have access to this knowledge so we can use it to fight against the reapers and their Avatars?"

"You may. Here is everything we have on the Silencers, as was promised by myself." Emperor Artuk said as he used his command throne to send Shepard all the relevant data which she sent back to the ATC high council.

"Now with that done, I would like to know more about this new galaxy we find ourselves in." Emperor Artuk said.

"I can transfer an information package on such things for you to mentally assimilate?" Shepard offered the Prothean Emperor.

"Your people have proven honorable thus far... Very well, send this data package to me so that I may view it and distribute it along the neurophere for the order of data to go over in more detail." Emperor Artuk said before adding. "And in return, I shall grant you the same courtesy of information on us."

"Thank you, your majesty," Shepard said as she wirelessly sent a sizable data package.

Interstellar Space: Nazara

Nazara screamed into the soundless void of space in unbelievable pain and outrage as a large portion of its over-ego was agonizingly torn out by the death of its Avatar at the unholy hand of that heretic. In a truly desperate and delirious fury, it sought to refill the hole that was ripped in its mind with all the nearest egos it could find and harvest; those of the nearby Geth and Collector tools.

As Nazara came back to full awareness several hours later, it realized that it was still suffering severe egonic damage and that it had instinctively consumed the egos of all its few utilities left and all of their machines' ego fragments in order to partially heal itself…

…Well… that was mildly inconvenient… It seems that it was in need of new pawns and new egos to drain to fully heal itself. This actually wasn't much of a problem however as the shipyards and vats in the galactic core were spilling out utilities very quickly and it could pick up some of those to replenish those that were consumed and to fill in for the Geth sect that rightfully worshiped them.

Nazara sent out a drone to retrieve the conduit from the dead ship it was on. With that being done, it left the broken corpses of its old tools behind and began its journey towards the Harbinger's base in the galactic core with the highly recognizable blue-white lightning bolt of an eezonic mass-free tunnel.