Author's Note: Another chapter down, going to see if I can write another by next week, later! Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 18: Ferros Part 2

The creature was tall and thin, to the point that it was a small wonder that it was able to stand at all, crude approximations of organs such as lungs and a heart dangled inside of a otherwise empty chest cavity beating mystery fluids and expanding and contracting presumably inhaling oxygen of some kind, it's head was a rough, bulbous uneven and featureless surface. When it walked around the cell it didn't turn around, merely kept moving forwards and backwards as if it could see what it was doing no matter the direction it faced, the chain around it's waist kept it from going far, even as it's vault like cell door was opened to the sight of a Spectre with a Salarian scientist on one side and a Asari scientist on the other.

"What am I looking at lizard?" Saren demanded and would broke no argument.

"We call it a Creeper. Spawned by the Thorian." The Salarian closed the cell as he led Saren over to a holo screen. "It's a species of Fungus, an extremophile with unique non-differential cells capable of universal exosymbiosis." The Salarian spat out a lot of scientific terms but little actual information.

"I have an actual, literal, universal translator and I did not understand a word you just said." Suspecting he was being screwed with Saren prepared to make an example of the Salarian, luckily science was a universal language across multiple fields.

"A fungus, or something like a mushroom." Liara felt like she was stating the obvious but given what Saren had just said she felt that the Salarian's life might depend on the obvious. "Apparently one that is capable of not only surviving any environment, but actually thriving."

"Thrives in most environments." Saren clicked his gun by way of a warning to remain quiet unless spoken to.

"But a universal Exosymbiote? That's impossible." Liara stated shaking her head in the negative.

"What does that mean?" Saren asked narrowing a glare at both scientists.

"Can show you if you lower your weapon." The Scientist was allowed access to a holo-console and began typing in keys.

"A exosymbiotic relationship refers to when one cell consumes another cell and then, rather than digesting it, the two form a mutually beneficial relationship." Liara explained hand to her fore head as if the implications were giving her a headache.

"Is it rare?" Saren asked narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

"It's extremely common." Liara countered bluntly. "Every cell in our body is a exosymbiote composed of several smaller cells housed in a bigger one. Our entire body is composed of several different kinds of cells that originally evolved to function separately but then came together to form a complex multi-cellular life form. But a cell that's compatible with every other cell in the galaxy?"

"Have problems with Dextro based life. Caution is recommended." The Salarian stated as the Holo screen projected an image of the same scientist they were currently talking to, and his samples.

"Dr. Arakane here, demonstrating Thorian regenerative and cloning capabilities. Injecting Thorian sample with Varren blood sample." The Salarian stuck his arms into rubber gloves/tubes that were attached to the inside of a see through aluminum box and picked up his samples using them, a ball of some kind of fungus piled onto itself, and a needle of blood. Quickly the sample rippled and transformed into a heart, no liquid inside of it but still beating. "As can see, sample perfectly resembles Varren heart, if green." The screen switched over to a microscopic image of several cells eating each other. "Thorian cell breaks down the outer cell wall, consumes the cell's organelles and nucleus inside, establishes symbiotic relationship, uses genetic information to recreate organism in question." The screen flashed back to the still beating heart of a Varren yet to be born. "Adding raw biological matter." The Heart was dropped into a pile of literal crap, something like roots were released into the dung in question that rapidly began to absorb the raw sewage into itself as it sunk down into the muck. Veins and arteries grew out from the heart, a coating resembling scaly skin formed over the organ, which as it began absorbing more and more raw material grew further and further expanding and gradually taking shape until it formed a four legged, green tinted fish like creature, a Varren. "Sample lasts for several weeks." Another video played, of the same green tinted Varren as before, before it suddenly exploded spreading raw green biological matter all over the cell. "Believe the Thorian uses this as a method to expand the territory that it can cover. Similar to some parasitic species of fungus with small insects."

"What... other things have you been using this for?" Saren knew Salarian's all too well, knew the train of thought that led to the Krogan rebellions, and a million other headaches he has to deal with in the run of a week. The Salarian held up one finger and began bringing up another video file.

"Would never experiment on Sapient organisms. That said..." A video played as a brave Salarian was making a show taste testing the local cuisine, IE some fruits and vegetables. He was missing an arm, and burns could be seen on his face and going down his neck underneath his clothes, clearly he had been someone accustomed to taking risks. Biting into the fruit he made a show of taste testing it, before he reached up and grabbed his throat like he was choking. The Salarian fell to his knees, others moved to help him but instead backed away slowly, burnt flesh cracked open and new flesh took it's place. The Salarian screamed as something made its way out of the sleeve where his arm used to be, a new arm, identical to the other one if not for the tint of green.

"By the Goddess." Liara looked at the seemingly miraculous phenomena that was happening before her.

"The Void am I looking at!?" Saren demanded as he aimed with his gun again. "The Thorian." The Salarian stated as he attempted to push the gun away from his head, and failed. "That's what the Protheans seemed to call it. We think."

"Can you figure out the hell that they knew?" Saren asked looking at Liara and demanded.

"I can try." Liara stated as she began working her omni-tool.

"We think the Thorian has infected the local plantlife, or perhaps the plants evolved from the Thorian itself." The Salarian explained as he continued through the files. "At first Thorian spores were like a miracle, individuals taken as hosts had numerous injuries healed as if by a miracle, symptoms of old age reversed themselves. Oldest Colonist on site is 41!" Last time Saren checked Salarian's don't make it past forty. And given the fact that this miraculous material hasn't made it across the galaxy yet...

"The Other boot dropped not long after did it?" Saren asked looking at the Salarian suspiciously.

"Headaches started within weeks, the colonists reported hearing voices, making demands for a water line to be set up to an underground chamber, fertiliser plant to be built." A map of the underground. "Chamber has been identified as the location of the largest fungal mass on the planet."

"Let me get this straight: the giant, symbiotic miracle mushroom issued telepathic orders to the colony to water and feed it?" Saren asked looking increasingly more horrified as he uttered each word. "Its sapient?"

"Aye. And we believed peaceful and benevolent. None of the infected are given orders that endanger their own lives or to act violently, only to funnel resources to the fungal mass." The Salarian let out a sigh at that. "And then the Geth came and it all went wrong." Security footage this time.

"Three days after the Geth landed, slaughtering our own crews in the process I might add, they came back from the tunnels alongside the Turian that was leading them. They started trying to bomb it's way down to the Thorian, trying to kill it." Security footage played. Of the numerous champions the Thorian could have summoned to its defence it somehow chose Nude green Asari as the best bet to deal with the Geth, and it somehow proved a sound decision.

"Can the Thorian recreate synthetic materials as well?" Saren asked as he noted something about the green Asari.

"No. Trust me I'm as surprised as you are." The Salarian replied staring at the screen in fascination.

"What exactly are you two perverts so interested in?" Liara asked in an accusatory tone of voice.

"If this Salarian's assertions are correct none of those creatures tearing apart the Geth with Raw biotics are using implants or amps." Saren explained indicating the screen with his finger.

Liara watched as a group of Green Asari used a singularity to gather together a bundle of Geth, paired that with a rapidly vibrating biotic warp turning the ball of Geth into molten metals that was growing bigger as more Geth were sucked inside, and then the ball of molten metal was chucked down the hallway and exploded into more Geth.

"So in other words..." Liara paled with the realisation.

"Not necessarily. It could be a simple matter of there being so many of them working together." The Salarian pointed out as he prepared new footage.

"But if it does have something to do with the Thorian, taking it has just become a priority." Saren turned around and glared at the Exogeni execs that were sitting off in a corner. The one currently nursing a welt on the side of his head had rambled something about him not taking their 'bio-technology' away from them before Saren pistol whipped him into submission.

"I'm more concerned about where these nudists are now." Liara asked looking at the footage clearly concerned. "Whatever they are they're vastly stronger than what the Geth are."

"I can answer that." The footage changed, the Geth lined a hallway with something resembling mines.

The Thorian opted to send it's army of nudists up on a bum rush, after all it had reserves, but once the hallway had been full of Asari the mine like devices suddenly activated and skewered whatever Asari was above it at the time. That wasn't what pushed the Nudists back. That particular honour went to the spikes injecting veins of some mystery blue tech into the bodies of the Asari, and over the course of several fast forwarded hours all the Asari clones were warped into monstrous creatures. The Asari bodies had been forcibly stretched, limbs becoming longer, bellies swelling and turning into churning biotic furnaces, the crests fractured and split apart as the cranium's expanded, and Liara threw up. Not just the ones in the one hallway, the Geth lined every floor they could get to in the tower with those spike traps before retreating to their ship. The upper floors of the tower were filled with those monstrous creatures writhing around on those spikes, which then retracted and released their victims. The level of Biotics the nudists were using were on a level that Saren had only ever seen in Matriarchs with close to a thousand years to hone and refine their power, the dried out cybernetically enhanced Husks the Geth mass produced appeared to teleport from place to place, shattered stone with bare hands and tanked shots that would make Krogan drop. Each of their fingers had been transformed into a razor sharp stiletto which together with their power to apparently teleport made them devastating to enemy forces, that was flatly ignoring the usual Adept skill set that included such lovely things like singularity, warp, charge, slam. The point being that the spiked Asari were roughly one or two times stronger than their unconverted counterparts, and were more than happy to prove this as gospel.

"Based on the footage we think that the Thorian Asari and these... Husks are making their way down through the underground caverns beneath the settlement trying to get to the Thorian we presume."

Saren tapped his fingers on his arm as he began making a call.

"Where did the Thorian get an Asari from?" Liara asked looking incredulous.

"We don't know." The Salarian scientist zoomed in on the faces of one of the few of the Nudists he could get an image of that wasn't warped by battle rage. "She's not one of our people though." Liara stared at the Asari clone as realisation slowly dawned on her and her face warped in horror.

"Shepard-" Suddenly a loud screeching came from Saren's communicator like a thousand nails being raked down a chalkboard. Saren quickly shut down his communicator before his ears started bleeding.

"Yeah. The Husks like to scream, loudly. I muted the audio. For obvious reasons." The Scientist explained while sticking his finger into his ear Canals. Ah but the bad news just kept coming.

"Saren. Your Sonic nulifier just sent us a warning of a Reaper signal. Is everything okay down there?" Liara and Saren looked at each other with similar looks of realisation, a horrified Asari and a Turian with Grim determination.

""Damn it.""

Shepard's and Kaiden's sonic nullifiers were working. That was the rough extent of the good news. The rampaging biotics down there had ripped open a hole to the surface that Shepard and Kaiden had opted to investigate, and stumbled across a hoard of green naked women fighting horror movie monsters. Psionically implanted memories kicked in, those wailing horrors look like the same kind of synth-organic shock troops that the Reapers liked to employ during the events of the last cycle, the only difference being what species they were. So knowing who their enemy was the two opted to focus on them first. The two found a spot on the wall of the Cavern, climbed their way up with inhuman strength and agility, attached themselves to the wall with grapples and began picking out targets.

"Singularities are stronger than usual." Of the two of them Shepard was the only one to see a biotic fight before, the singularities being spat out by those Husks were about two or three times bigger than Wrex's.

"Really?" Kaiden took aim with a plasma shot gun. The ball of white hot fire hit a singularity that had formed in the middle of the enemy formation and it burst, destabilised and releasing slashes of biotics and plasma tearing apart several of the Husks. "Where do you think they get it?"

"Reaper tech?" Shepard shrugged her shoulders. As one the husks stopped fighting and looked up into the air where Shepard and Kaiden had made their little nest. Of the Husks some had been killed, some wounded, some were still intact. One of the wounded husks that was sprawled out on the ground with an abdomen wound rose into the air, and screamed, screaming louder than all the rest had. Flesh rippled and cracked, bolts of energy ripped off of her frame, veins of blood and circuits turned orange with raw fire, all of her wounds were healed as the creature stood up straight. "You remember that from the sims?" Shepard asked staring wide eyed and Kaiden shook his head in the negative.

"Ah. You would be the 'union.'" The former Asari spoke with a deep booming masculine voice as if it had turned into a walking megaphone.

Before either of the Dragoons could process the fact that the creature had suddenly learned how to talk it disappeared, it's biotic warp causing it to move so fast that it had disappeared, and then reappeared in front of them. Cables were cut and the two Dragoons jumped in opposite directions as the husk's claws were sunk five inches into solid rock. The two returned fire with plasma shot guns and in response the monster ripped its claws out of the stone. Rock was flung front walls, between the super strength that was used to chuck them and the presence of Warp fields around them each stone managed to hit the ground like a home made meteor shower, the pitiful attempts made by the two Dragoon's to shoot back was interrupted as they were forced to dodge again to avoid the falling debris. In the meantime the monster had jumped into the air, did a back flip, before swan diving back into the ground landing with enough force to shatter the cave floor and make the whole colony shake. Stalactites broke off, briefly floated as they were hit with a biotic field, and then slammed into the ground hard enough to start bringing the whole cavern down.

A tendril reached over and wrapped around the two Dragoons before quickly zipping back into the fleshy walls that they had sprouted from.

The monster didn't look very impressed, even as the colony collapsed on it. Above the skies of Noveria Desolas watched as his partner drifted in and out of a state of dormancy.

"Was it really necessary to attack yourself?" Desolas's voice had an artificial inflection to it, one of the many augmentations made using a combination of reaper and Geth technology.

Silence remained. If it was just a matter of needing the Thorian dead it could've just bombed the planet with impunity before they left, there was something else too. Sovereign had grown curious of the Union. Of a race and government that had developed outside of the influence of the Preservers, an abomination to everything that it had ever cared about yes, but also fascinating, a find that appealed to every fibre of it's being as a Preserver. Desolas had to keep on track of the current objective. They had to be diplomatic when dealing with Binary Helix, cracking open the facility from the sky would kill their prize, as Helix would anyway if they tried to seize the planet by force. Even a being as eternal as Sovereign was growing impatient by the delays, the Union distracting it was good for their mission. That of course didn't mean that he was delaying the operation wilfully, only that he was acting in a surgical fashion to cut through the red tape without Binary Helix interfering as much as possible. Still Desolas was mighty glad the Union was doing their work for them.

Their first memories were of fire, of watching as the great ships burned a hole through their world, were they a threat? Were they an obstacle. It did not remember why it had been killed, only that it was now in another world. The ships came later, establishing a colony. The dead followed soon after and I was able to obtain information. Protheans. That was what they called themselves. They did not know of me. Did not know why they had killed me. The Protheans had burned so many worlds I wasn't even able to figure out which one that my ashes had drifted from. I was utterly irrelevant to them. And so they would be irrelevant to me. I ignored their pleas when the harvesters came, I only set about the process of preserving my own existence, water, darkness, warmth and nutrition was what I needed most, years in the colony ensured that I had all four in abundance. The Harvester's knew of my existence through those among my flock they turned to their cause, and tried to burn me out again. I didn't let them though, I refused to die again! Their fires provided me warmth, this planet's oceans water, my Protheans digging and construction darkness, their corpses nutrition, I merely had to dig, dig deep enough that the Harvesters couldn't get to me. They thought I was a threat? I'd prove them right! When the Harvesters left I expanded outwards. I subverted the plants, the animals, they evolved under my guiding hand into the perfect hosts, and spread outwards around the planet. I had sampled the Protheans technology, and the Harvesters before it turned malignant and had to be destroyed. The Prothean's machines were like I, organic, or that which interfaces with organic, I seized it, expanded my consciousness, my knowledge, my effectiveness. I had no means to build ships like they would, but others would come in time as the Protheans had. I had all of eternity to wait after all. And I was right, new aliens had come, Salarians, their technology was... disappointing in comparison to the Protheans, frustratingly synthetic, but they took... samples, my creepers off world. I didn't care about their ambitions, only that they would perpetuate my own, spreading my influence to other worlds, expanding my hive mind, and perhaps I would be led to more technology to expand my influence. And I was right. Prethoryn are they? Organic deep space organisms? Oh tough and voracious too?

"F off." A wall made out of the fleshy fungal matter that comprised the Thorian itself was suddenly set on fire as Shepard and Kaiden pulled themselves out. "Surrounded by Naked exotic women? Well this is a big check off of my bucket list." Shepard stated wiping the ashes off of herself.

"Is that really a Priority now?" As Kaiden asked that the entire underground began shaking. That monster was trying to get in.

The most notable feature of the cavern, aside from the aforementioned naked green skinned women, was the giant fungal mass that was hanging from the ceiling and walls via several filaments of fungus.

"It would appear that we have a mutual enemy." One of the Asari women started talking. "Those creatures cannot permanently end my existence but if this mass dies I will have to start from scratch again."

"I don't believe we've been introduced miss." Shepard looked around at the various green skinned Asari. "Misses."

"I was called 'The Thorian' by the Protheans, and I am the god of this world." The Asari explained while gesturing to the fungal mass, in a way that Shepard realised people gesture to themselves when introducing themselves.

"'Thorian.' Kaiden remind me but 'Thorian' refers to the name of a demon who could supposedly possess people and change forms right?" Shepard asked while looking around the cave.

"It would explain a lot." Kaiden stated looking around at the cavern, at the plethora of Asari first and foremost. "Are the people in the colony clones too or did you do something else with them?"

"They came here with Exogeni and partook of my divine flesh, entirely of their own volition, consuming my flesh and taking their 'samples' off world. Water and nutrients are hardly extreme prices to pay." The cavern shook again. "You are wasting time. If I am killed here then I will simply rebuild on another world, but can you do the same thing?"

"You're awfully confident." Shepard stated a nasty smile on her features. "The bastards on the other of this wall won't just try and burn you out this time around, they'll poison the entire planet, the very atmosphere itself, life will never walk on this world again, just to kill you." Shepard glared down at the Thorian. "So tell me, since you're such a Fun-Guy, why don't you tell us why Sovereign wants to destroy you so much?"

The Thorian and it's various clones remained silent, suddenly the mass that made up the heart rippled to life and the figure of a blue, albeit unconscious, woman was dipped out of the fungus, and looked at Shepard. Unlike her numerous clones the blue woman was still wearing the body armour of a Asari commando.

"You might find this to be useful." The blue woman stated simply. Shepard looked at the woman suspiciously and walked forward looking at the trapped Asari in the eyes. The two of their eyes flashed a pale green signifying the transfer of information between them. Shepard felt something change inside of her as if she had been given the key to unlock something inside of herself. And then she got flooded with a wave of information most of which seemed to lean towards a certain apocalyptic bent.

"Well now that's interesting."

Author's Note:

RonaldM40196867: True. I think the original trilogy was decent which then progressively went down in quality the longer the franchise kept going. I also liked the animated series, but the recent movies? The so-called Skywalker saga has a bad habit of giving the characters of the first two trilogies shoddy and poorly written deaths to the point that I've seen literal porn that manages to treat the characters in question with more dignity and respect.

Gianfranco Cembran: Glad you like it.

Chronos0305: Thought about it, wondering how to implement it without violating Union Ethics laws. I have ideas for the Virtual aliens, but not as Citadel species. But considering the fact that the Raloi has such a small presence that the Mass Effect games has opted to completely ignore the presence aside from the fact that they believe that regressing back to the stone age is the best way of not incurring the Reaper's Wrath? I too will follow in their footsteps and also ignore their existence.

Deafhood1998: Hence why the Geth are having trouble. Glad you like it. Please don't make me check the math again, Stellaris ships are not to scale and I already spent far too much time on reddit trying to figure out how big they really are supposed to be, the Destiny ascendant is the biggest ship in the Council fleet, which also means that it's the only ship of that size in the council fleet.