Liara T'Soni and the Ring of Life

by nakati7

Liara T'Soni is a very determined archaeologist who isn't worried to do a little tomb raiding to discover ancient knowledge. Cam Shepard is an ex-Alliance mercenary with a thing for people much smarter than she is. There's no way they'll get up to anything dangerous together, right?

12. Chapter 12

Liara descended carefully down the steps before her, the heels of her boots scuffing lightly across the stone illuminated by her flashlight. By her side, Shepard held up her pistol as they walked, a small ray of light emitting from an attachment under the barrel. Before them, all that could be seen were dull stone walls and precariously steep stairs stained with ominous dark splotches of dried liquid every several feet or so. Outside the scope of the light, however, a heavy darkness weighed down on them as they moved deeper into the bowels of the pyramid.

Back on the surface, they had quickly discovered that the hallway they had unlocked ran only a short distance forwards before dropping off into a steep staircase plunging into the shadows. Seeing no other path to take, they had descended down the stairs for the past fifteen minutes, monotonously plodding downwards down the unending steps. The stairs themselves were an utterly unremarkable set of sharp angles carved into the rock of the pyramid, occasionally twisting to the left or right but always doggedly moving further down.

Liara winced, briefly rubbing her thigh as the slow burn of exertion slowly spread across her legs. She suddenly found herself quite thankful that she had always made a point to stay in shape during her time at Serrice, or else she worried that any return trip back up to the surface would be unbearable.

The scrape of boots across rock broke her concentration, prompting her to turn over her shoulder to see Jack right herself after nearly slipping on one of the many dark stains on the ground. With a disgusted twist to her lips, she growled, "Why the hell even build such a big ass pyramid if the only thing in here is some stupid stairs covered in shit? We could've just gone to a subway station and gotten the same thing."

By her side, Miranda scoffed. "If you're bothered by it so much, you should've stayed back on the surface." Sniffing disdainfully, she carefully stepped over a crack in the stone steps. "Honestly though, I would've thought you'd be used to the more vile places of the galaxy with your history."

Liara sighed as Jack puffed up with indignant rage, and in moments the previously quiet stairway began to echo with grating voices and barbed statements as she and Miranda once again dissolved into bickering. Glancing over towards Shepard in the dim lighting, she saw an exasperated grimace that matched her own. Noticing Liara's eyes on her, Shepard jerked her head back towards the two women behind them and rolled her eyes. Silently, she mouthed tourists with an exaggerated frown.

Liara chuckled and lightly swatted her shoulder. Weathering the blow with a slanted grin, Shepard bumped her arm lightly into Liara's before turning her gaze back to the stairway before them. Attempting to ignore the soft heat now suffusing her cheeks, Liara followed suit as she once again forced herself to examine the stairwell for any hidden details or markings.

Unfortunately, however, the only noticeable feature about the stairs seemed to be how unending they were, and after several more minutes she gave up on her search. Despite her love of ancient ruins for their glimpses into the past, she found herself wishing the Protheans had invested more into building elevators.

Eventually, Jack and Miranda's argument fizzled out once more, leaving the two simmering silently as the group continued to move through the dark. As the oppressive quiet of the pyramid returned, however, Liara found herself no more comfortable than before as the silence began to weigh on her. Every step she took now produced loud echoes that shot away into the dark around them, and every so often a whisper of a sound would reflect back up the stairs to brush past their ears.

She shivered as the memory of voices chanting her name ran through her mind, and with a quick motion she checked to make sure her pistol was still in its holster. There had been no sign of anything that could have produced what she heard up on the surface, but she knew what she had heard. Something was down here with them, and Liara found herself looking forwards to finding whatever it was with equal measure of anticipation and dread.

They turned once more as the stairs began to curve to the right, revealing yet more dusty shadows clinging insidiously to the corners of the square stairwell before them. Even with Shepard and her lighting the way, the darkness surrounding them only seemed to thicken as they walked, normal shadows taking on a substance and weight that unnerved Liara. Swallowing thickly, she felt her shoulders tighten with nervous tension as she glanced towards a particularly large blotch on the floor. Throughout her career, she had always found that ruins tended to have a unique feeling about them, as if stepping back in time by inspecting the bones of ages past. Here, however, a creeping sense of malevolence began to build in the back of her mind, unsettling her more and more the deeper they went. It was, she realized, the least inviting place she thought she had ever encountered.

By her side, Shepard shifted uncomfortably in her armored vest and readjusted her grip on her pistol. She glanced towards Liara for a moment, then returned her gaze forwards as she asked, "So, Doc, is it normal for Prothean ruins to run this deep? I kinda figured we would have found something by now."

Liara shook her head. "No, this is definitely out of the ordinary," she said, her voice oddly subdued by the oppressive atmosphere. "They must have placed enormous value on whatever is inside this pyramid for them to have excavated space for such a large structure."

"Something important like a piece of the Eternia Disk, maybe?"

Liara nodded, her mouth set into a grim line. Behind them both, Jack grunted, "What the fuck's an Eternia Disk?"

As Miranda began to explain the multiple names of the Ring of Life, the stairway curved around one final corner before finally leveling out, revealing a long stone hallway extending before them. Sighing with relief, Liara stepped down from the last stair and paused for a moment, enjoying a respite from the constant downwards motion of the last twenty minutes. By her side, Shepard fished her flask out from her pack to take a brief sip of water before hoisting her light to illuminate the hallway before them.

Peering forwards, Liara saw the floor before them extend outwards in a straight shot before eventually vanishing into shadows in the distance. To either side of this, the floor simply melted into the dark as no sign of any walls or ceiling bordering this hallway were visible. She took a step forwards and frowned, trying to pierce the darkness ahead with her gaze, but the shadows laying ahead refused to offer up their secrets.

She took another step forwards, only to stop as a sharp electric sizzle rang out from all around. A moment later, a dull hum filled the air as lights flickered on all around them, illuminating their surroundings for the first time since they had entered the pyramid. Squinting her eyes against the sudden glare, Liara looked around to see rows of fluorescent lights now shining through thin slits set into the stone walls, looking incredibly out of place among the otherwise ancient stone.

Glancing forwards, she saw the path ahead was now fully lit by these lights, revealing a straight stone walkway ten feet across and nearly a hundred feet long before it ended in another open doorway like the one they stood in currently. To either side, however, the ground dropped away to create a large open space surrounding this raised stone walkway, around which were curved walls of stone that all ran together to create a cylindrical chamber running the length of the room. All together, Liara found it created the impression of having to walk through the length of some massive tube, lined both with ancient stone and flickering lights in an odd dichotomy of technology.

She paused as she took in these curved walls, noticing after a few moments that set every two meters and parallel to the walkway were sets of alcoves carved into the rock. Each of these contained its own statue of a stone figure holding a long blade with its tip set into the ground. Unlike the other blade-wielding statues she had seen, however, each and every one in this room was headless, with the neck ending in a stone stump just above the shoulders.

A cold lump began to form in Liara's chest as she took in these rows of headless soldiers, all seemingly waiting at parade rest. Reaching to pull her notebook out of her bag, she started to sketch these new figures while attempting to shake off the idea that they were simply lying in wait for some unknown signal. It wouldn't do for her to miss out on crucial details just because of a bout of nerves, after all.

Stepping up to stand next to Liara, Miranda looked forwards and pointed towards the floor ahead. "Wait, what is that?"

Liara glanced up from her notes to follow her gaze. Now fully visible in the light, she saw before her was a latticework of tiles, all carved into different shapes and sizes and extending across the entire walkway. Inscribed onto each of these tiles were small symbols, and with a start Liara recognized them as Prothean glyphs.

"These are words," she said, squatting down to examine them more closely. "Three words, actually, repeated over and over again."

By her side, Shepard holstered her pistol as she asked, "What words?"

Liara's brow furrowed as she began to decipher the glyphs. With a sinking feeling, she read out in a grave voice, "Death, Rebirth, and Power."

Silence fell as her words rang out, the atmosphere around them once again seeming oddly thick and heavy. After a few seconds, Miranda shrugged. "Very dramatic, I'll give them that, but do they actually have any significance here?"

"What, you think they just carved some random word of the day?" Shepard asked.

Liara chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before responding, "Perhaps, but I suspect that these words were chosen on purpose." Gesturing all around them, she continued, "Nothing else about these ruins was built for no reason, so we should assume these hold some purpose as well."

She quickly jotted down the three words into her notebook as she spoke, then placed it back into her bag. "Alright, if you could all step back, I'd like to try something."

Shepard and Miranda retreated several steps to stand next to Jack at the base of the stairs. Glancing over her shoulder to ensure they were far enough away, Liara nodded and turned back forwards to look at the frontmost tiles before her.

The vast majority of these all displayed the glyph for Death, with a smattering of Power symbols scattered in between the rest. Sweeping her gaze across the dozens of beheaded statues lining the walls, Liara cautiously reached out to tap the nearest Death tile with the tip of her boot before snatching it back as quickly as she could.

A soft scrape of stone and a dull rush of air were Liara's only warning before a pillar of stone two feet in diameter smashed into the spot her foot had been a split-second before, demolishing the tile into shattered pieces. She stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over herself in her haste as her mouth dropped open in shock.

A pair of strong hands clamped onto her shoulders, steadying her as Shepard worriedly asked, "Are you okay?"

Nodding mutely, Liara stared at the shards of rock now scattered across the floor. That could've been me, she thought dimly.

Shaking off her stupor, she stepped up towards the tiles once again and craned her neck to peer up at the curved ceiling some fifty feet above them. To her dismay, she realized that the curved plane of stone serving as the outer wall of the chamber was also segmented into thousands of tiles, all small enough to avoid detection unless you knew to look for them. Glancing towards the pillar that nearly flattened her, she noticed it ran all the way up to the ceiling in one unbroken shaft. She looked back towards the many symbols on the floor once more, grimly realizing that each one probably had its own corresponding section of the ceiling just waiting to crush anyone who touched them.

Turning back towards the rest of the group, she pointed out the tiles lining the walls of the chamber and said, "Nobody touch anything, this whole place might collapse around us."

The others stared up at the ceiling with queasy expressions as Shepard crossed her arms, muttering, "At least the other ruin only tried to shoot me. This is just excessive."

Returning her gaze to the floor, Liara frowned as she examined the glyphs extending before her once more. It made a certain kind of sense that this place would be rigged up with traps, even as the ruins on Jiwai were. However, there had to be some way to proceed safely through, she reasoned, or else why would they have even built an entrance in the first place?

Her gaze landed on a small tile several rows out onto the walkway, only a foot across and surrounded by much larger tiles. This one tile, however, was engraved with the symbol for Rebirth, unlike any other tiles surrounding it. Her mind starting to race, she quickly scanned the surrounding area and found that out of all the tiles within fifteen feet of the doorway, no other tile seemed to carry this mark.

Unfortunately, this tile was just slightly too far away for her to easily step onto it while keeping her back foot in the doorway. Realizing she would have to jump and simply hope she was right, Liara grimaced and tightly gripped the strap of her satchel. "I'm going to try something," she announced, then lightly hopped onto the tile.

Her feet landed side by side directly in the center of the tile, with only inches to spare in any direction. She froze as she landed, instinctively clenching her muscles as she awaited a swift and crushing pain, but to her relief none came. Carefully swiveling around while making sure to avoid any other tiles, she turned back to the others and called out, "I was right, only touch the tiles that say 'rebirth' and we should be fine."

Across the gap, she found Shepard and Miranda staring at her with incredulous expressions, while behind them Jack seemed vaguely impressed. After a moment, Shepard shook off her stupor and called back, "Okay, but what about if we don't have a PhD in reading Prothean?"

"Oh, goddess, of course," Liara stammered, her cheeks warming. Momentarily flummoxed, she glanced around the floor for a moment before shrugging. "Just step where I step, I guess?"

"Good enough for me," Jack grunted. "Now can we hurry the hell up? This place is making me twitchy."

Nodding, Liara slowly shifted back around to face forwards. Casting her gaze around, she quickly found another Rebirth tile only half a step away, with a second one only a few feet behind it. She nimbly stepped over to this next tile and released a small sigh as once again no massive stone pylon squished her into the floor. Following the trail of safe spots beginning to emerge before her, she quickly began to progress across the walkway through a combination of long steps or short leaps.

After traversing nearly the first fifty feet in this manner, Liara heard a shout ring out followed shortly by a ground shaking impact. Twisting over her shoulder, she saw Miranda stopped several feet behind her, her face deathly pale as she stood inches away from a second stone column, freshly smashed into the floor. Behind her, Shepard and Jack had stopped their progress and instead were staring towards Miranda with horrified expressions.

Upon seeing everyone's eyes on her, Miranda straightened her back and adopted a casually aloof look, simply saying, "I slipped."

Shepard cracked a grin as Jack rolled her eyes, and despite the danger of the situation Liara started to smile as well. A sigh of relief escaped her, fogging in the frigid air around her, and as she forced her shoulders to relax she began to rub the chill from her arms.

She frowned, stopping in place as she did so. The air inside the temple had been less scorching than the desert outside, but it hadn't been especially cold, either. Exhaling once more, she once again saw her breath escape her in a cloud of fog before dissipating into nothing.

As she puzzled over this, she became aware of a particularly cold spot just behind her left leg. Twisting to her side to look, she saw only her satchel pressed up against its usual place against her thigh. Gingerly lifting it away from herself by the strap, the intense chill immediately faded away, only to reappear as she put the bag back.

"Shepard," she began, trepidation clear in her voice, "we may have a problem—"

She cut off as a flash of light caught her eye. Snapping her head up, she saw all of the many glyphs carved into the floor and the walls began to glow in sequence, starting at the far end of the chamber and racing towards the entrance in a wave of vibrant blue light. A moment later, a massive sound blasted forth from the far door, rumbling through the stone and vibrating at the base of Liara's skull like the roar of some massive creature.

This roar was overwhelmingly loud, obliterating any other sounds in the room for a good five seconds before it finally faded away. Wincing at the sudden ringing in her aural cavities, Liara glanced down to see the symbol beneath her feet still shimmering, as if the tile she stood on contained a light buried inside. She glanced towards the other three, all of them looking as nervous as she felt while still balancing on their various tiles.

A tremor ran through the ground, nearly tipping her over as the rock rumbled beneath her. As she forced herself to stay upright, the glyphs covering the floor pulsed once again, this time nearly blinding in intensity, and down the walkway she heard Shepard grumble, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

The world shook as suddenly a pillar slammed into the ground to Liara's left. Flinching violently, she looked up to see the curved ceiling now rippling like an ocean wave as more pillars began to dislodge, some dropping several feet before stopping while others plunged down towards the ground like massive spears. Seconds later, another fell straight towards her, forcing her to throw herself backwards to avoid being flattened. Pulling herself back up to her feet, she screamed, "Run!" and began to sprint towards the far side.

Her boots slammed into the floor as she forced herself forwards, her head craned upwards to watch for falling pillars as she ran. The burn in her legs from earlier resurfaced with a vengeance as she constantly was forced to sharply change direction, sometimes skidding completely to a stop to avoid running directly into a pillar that had fallen directly in front of her. Behind her, she heard the rest of the group keeping pace as she ran, but she didn't dare take her eyes off the ceiling above.

She spun around a set of two pillars that had fallen together, creating a wall across part of the walkway. Seeing that the far doorway was now only twenty feet away, she put on a burst of speed in a desperate dash towards safety, narrowly avoiding a third pillar as it crashed down into the tile she had occupied moments ago.

At that moment, however, a pillar fell directly in front of her, missing her right foot by inches and placing an obstacle directly in her path. Having no time to stop her momentum, her shoulder and upper chest collided into the stone at full speed, spinning her towards the edge of the walkway and driving the air from her lungs in a pained gasp.

Glancing upwards, her heart sank as a pillar dislodged itself directly above her, seeming to fall in slow motion as it fell inexorably towards the ground. With no time to think and nowhere to run, she sank into a squat before flinging herself backwards out into the empty space around the walkway with a hoarse yell.

The rushing air roared passed her dizzyingly fast as her stomach lurched up into her chest, the world spinning around her sickeningly quickly as she fell. A desperate cry of "No!" rang out from above her, and a moment later the world flashed blue as an odd sense of weightlessness suffused through her limbs. The rotation of the chamber slowly came to a stop, and as she got her bearings once more, she found her whole body was glowing biotic blue and slowly ascending back upwards to be level with the walkway.

After a few seconds of this, her sightline cleared the bottom of the floor, revealing Shepard standing alone on the walkway, her hands outstretched and lit with biotic energy as she grit her teeth in concentration. Further down the walkway, Miranda and Jack had nearly cleared the far door which, to Liara's mounting horror, was slowly but steadily sliding closed towards the ground.

Shepard, however, looked at none of this, her eyes locked onto Liara as she ignored the pillars shattering the ground all around her. Spinning on one heel, she raised one hand towards the far door, aiming like a javelin thrower, before hurling her second hand forwards with a scream that echoed throughout the chamber.

The world compressed around Liara for a moment as she accelerated rapidly, and a moment later she slammed back onto the walkway and slid the last ten feet through the doorway on her side. Pain lanced through her right cheek and both forearms as the rough floor scraped her skin, causing her to cry out before finally she slid to a stop.

Forcing herself back to her feet as her stomach churned from the sudden whiplash of motion, she found Miranda and Jack both standing at her side just inside the large stone doorframe. The door, however, was now nearly half closed, and to her dismay she saw Shepard was still over forty feet away as she jerked from side to side to avoid the pillars now cascading down all around her. Hunching down so she could see more clearly past the descending door, Liara screamed, "Shepard, run!"

Shepard's head snapped towards the sound of her voice, her face hardened into a mask of pure concentration. In a burst of light, she flashed forwards ten feet and broke out into a sprint, weaving her way between the columns obstructing her way with all the grace of a dancer. Again she flash stepped, reappearing even closer to the door as a grouping of three pillars shattered the stone in her wake, and at this distance Liara could make out the feral grin stretching across her face.

Several more pillars fell with a deafening clash before the door, obscuring Liara's view of Shepard for a moment. Her heart leapt up into her throat as she attempted to peer past them, squatting even further down as the door continued to close. Only two feet of open space remained, forcing Liara to nearly lay flat on the ground to see past it.

A burst of blue light appeared directly in front of her, sending her scrabbling backwards as Shepard slid headfirst under the door. Moments after her boots crossed the threshold, the stone door slammed shut, cutting off the cacophony of shattering stone and blinding blue light from the chamber.

Shepard quickly stood to her feet, her short hair and armored vest now covered in dust as she energetically bounced on her toes. "I take it back, that was actually pretty fun."

Liara rose up off the floor a moment later, wincing as she gingerly touched a scrape on her elbow. "I'm glad at least someone enjoyed that. I think half of my skin is still back on that walkway."

Wincing, Shepard awkwardly scratched the back of her neck with a sheepish expression. "Right, yeah. Sorry about that, by the way."

Liara smiled and briefly touched her on the arm. "I'll be fine, Shepard," she said in a soft voice, prompting Shepard to smile in return.

Turning over her shoulder, she looked past Miranda and Jack to examine the new space they found themselves in. More strips of fluorescent lights set into the walls cast a dim, flickering light over another long hallway chiseled out of the surrounding stone in stark right angles. Dimly, Liara made out another door at the far end, just barely visible through the gloom.

To her side, Miranda shifted and ran an eye over the closed door behind them. "Seems like this place wasn't built with backtracking in mind." Turning to face Liara, she arched an eyebrow and asked, "Should we get going, then?"

Liara nodded. "Further in we go."

The four of them set off down the hallway at a cautious pace, Liara and Miranda in front as Shepard and Jack followed behind. Compared to the frantic action of the last chamber, this passage seemed deathly quiet to Liara, who found she could hear her own heartbeat pounding away as the last vestiges of adrenaline drained away. Despite the dim lights mounted every few feet, she felt the dark atmosphere weighing down on her more than ever.

A brief glimmer flickered in the corner of her eye, causing her to come to a stop as she glanced to her left. Frowning, she found that the walls on either side of the hallway had changed texture, no longer stone but now a dark, smooth material that reflected the lights from above. Leaning towards the wall, she gently brushed her fingers across its surface and discovered it to be hard and oddly cool to the touch.

A loud kachunk rang out, like the sound of a large switch being thrown, and a moment later several more sets of lights activated and flooded the hallway with light. Wincing at the sudden glare, Liara raised up one hand to cover her face from the light as she took a step away from the wall. As her eyes adjusted, however, her hand slowly fell back down as her brow rose in surprise. "Oh, Goddess."

Before her, bright white light shined through the transparent planes of glass now visible on either side of the hallway. Behind what Liara realized were large windows, a second set of stone walls were recessed ten feet into the surrounding rock, creating a sizable gap between them and the glass. The floor of this newly revealed space bordering the hallway was filled almost entirely by what looked like long moats of viscous, pitch black fluid that reflected the light across it in shimmering patterns. Against the far wall, a thin stone ledge emerged, creating a slim walkway jutting out into these canals of sludge.

Liara, however, only had eyes for the dozens of figures lined up shoulder to shoulder on this walkway. Unlike the many statues they had discovered, these figures were not featureless statues, but instead all appeared to be ancient mummified corpses, all severely decomposed and tightly wrapped in stained cloth bandages. Each body had clearly been dead for centuries upon centuries, as evident by the patches of emaciated skin visible through the rotten bandages and protruding bones, but all somehow stood upright behind this glass despite this.

Miranda stepped forwards, running her hands over the glass with a look of morbid fascination. "What is this place?" she asked, her voice surprisingly loud in the quiet of the hallway.

Shaking her head slowly, Liara reached for her notebook once again as she replied, "I don't know, but I'm starting to think there's more going on here than just hiding a piece of the Ring." Flipping open to a new page, she quickly sketched out an image of the nearest corpse. "Even with all the statues we found on Jiwai, I thought it could have just been an artistic style of the time, but this…" she said, gesturing forwards. "This is something more than that."

"Liara, look." She turned at the sound of Shepard's voice to find her pointing at her satchel. "Your bag is glowing."

Looking down, Liara found that once again hints of blue light shining from beneath the flap of her bag. She slowly opened the satchel, allowing a torrent of neon light to pour out across the hallway and illuminate the ceiling above. Squinting, she peered down into the bag to see that once again the curved stone fragment was glowing through the many runes carved into it, brighter than she had ever seen before.

"Is that what I think it is?" Looking up, Liara saw Miranda watching her with crossed arms and a suspicious gaze. She nodded, prompting Miranda to throw her hands up into the air in frustration. "Why would you bring that here? I let you hold onto that under the expectation that you would keep it away from Cerberus, but here it is anyways! What were you thinking?"

Liara crossed her arms defensively as her cheeks began to warm. "I wasn't aware that it was yours to give to me."

"Oh, don't give me that, you know bloody well what I mean—"

A blast of sound exploded from the satchel, rumbling through the floor beneath Liara's feet as a pulse of light discharged from the fragment. In less than a second this flash expanded across the entire room, short circuiting each fluorescent light it came across in a shower of sparks before finally dissipating through the walls as fast as it had appeared.

Plunged once again into darkness, Liara scrambled through her bag for her flashlight, doing her best to avoid touching the stone fragment as she did so. Finally, her fingers wrapped around the smooth metal light, and with a click she activated it and projected a thin beam of light across the dark hall. Before her, the other three winced at the sudden light in their faces, but to Liara's relief everyone seemed to be unhurt.

"Is everyone alright?" she whispered, suddenly nervous to speak too loudly in the darkness.

The rest of the group quickly confirmed a lack of injuries, and after a second Shepard asked, "What the hell was that?"

Liara shrugged, then realized that in the dark no one would be able to see the gesture. "I don't know, it has never done anything like that before. Something about this place," she said, gesturing the light around the hall, "must be affecting—"

She stopped, then slowly pointed her flashlight towards the glass. "Where did the bodies go?"

Silence fell as the others all turned to stare through the glass to see no sign of the mummified corpses, as if they had never existed. Sweeping her flashlight along the entire pane of glass, the only sign that Liara could find that they had ever been there at all were ripples gliding across the surface of the black liquid covering the floor.

"Oh, fuck this," Jack spat, nervously looking over her shoulder towards the far exit. "Somebody's messing with us, it's not like those things just got up and left." She paused, a brief flash of anxiety twisting at the corners of her mouth. "Right?"

The utter quiet that followed her question was, Liara thought, one of the most unsettling things she had ever experienced. Goosebumps began to prickle the skin of her arms as a shiver ran down her spine, and looking over towards Shepard she saw her own fear reflected in the furrow of her brow.

"I think we should keep moving," Shepard said, her voice low and rough. Liara nodded, and by unspoken consent the entire group drew their weapons as one before continuing down the dark hallway.

Quickly moving through the next doorway, they entered into a much wider room than the previous hallway. Flashing her light quickly around the walls, Liara noticed this room to be a large square space fifty feet from wall to wall. Lining these walls were dozens upon dozens of blocky, rectangular protrusions extending several inches, underneath which was another channel of black, slimy liquid that ran all the way around the room.

As she moved further into the room, Liara gagged as an overwhelming scent of rot filled her nose, churning her stomach and making her eyes water. Sweeping her light around to find the source of the stench, she found the room to be full of dozens of elevated stone slabs spaced equidistantly across the floor, all of which had more mummified corpses laid out across them. Next to each of these slabs, she saw what appeared to be small consoles jutting up from the floor, their screens all cracked and covered in a thick layer of dust. All together, these stations took up a vast majority of the space in this room, leaving space for only a few walkways across the length of the chamber.

"God, this place reeks," Miranda groaned, lowering her pistol with one hand to plug her nose with the other. Looking towards the bodies before them, she asked, "What is this, some kind of morgue?"

"No." Liara turned towards Jack to find her with a stricken expression, her fingers white from strain as they throttled the stock of her pistol. "It's a lab."

A cold pit of revulsion sank through Liara's chest like a stone. "I suppose we can't be sure just from a glance, but–"

"It's a fucking lab, okay?" Jack snarled, her chest heaving and her bared teeth flashing in the dark. "I know what I'm talking about on this one, trust me."

Liara glanced back towards Jack, noticing just how hard she was breathing and how quickly her eyes flicked across the room, never staying still for more than a moment. She frowned, distressed and puzzled by the sudden emotion visible on Jack's usually stoic face, when with a pang it hit her. She's terrified, but of what?

A loud grating screech of stone across stone rang out from behind them, and spinning around Liara saw just a flash of the previous hallway before yet another thick stone door slammed into place. Her heart sinking, she glanced towards either side of the door to see a pair of huge stone counterweights now sitting on the floor, a thick rope running from the top of each through a complex system of pulleys set into the wall before finally vanishing into holes carved into the stone just above the door.

"I'm starting to get sick of that," Shepard grumbled.

Peering across the room, Liara blinked as she saw two more doors set into the opposite wall, one more towards the left side and one towards the right and each with its own set of large counterweights. "There is our way out," she called, then strode forwards with as much confidence as she could muster.

She moved past the first set of stone slabs, carefully staying as far away from them as possible while studiously avoiding looking at the bodies they held. She could hear the others following behind and took some amount of comfort from their presence, but even still she found she couldn't force herself to look at the corpses for more than a second or two.

Finding remains of the dead was quite common in her line of work, depending on the purpose of the ruins she was excavating, and logically she knew that these bodies must have been dead for countless years. Despite this, in this place and in this oppressive darkness, the bodies here seemed to radiate an ugly malice as if they had died furious and remained so all this time.

A dull pain flared in Liara's left hip, distracting her from her ruminations. With a start, she realized an intense chill had appeared on her left side once again, seeping through the thick cloth of her pants and making her leg feel as if it had been submerged in ice.

She winced, shaking out her leg to try to get the blood moving once again, and glancing down she saw her satchel was now covered in small crystals of ice that glimmered in the dim light. Shifting to move the bag away from herself, she brought it closer to her face to inspect it only to cry out as another blinding pulse of light exploded from the bag, washing over her and sweeping across the room in a flash.

Wincing and rubbing her eyes, Liara tried to blink away the afterimage seared into her retinas. She turned towards the rest of the group, intending to ask after them when the words fell silent in her mouth as the room came to life around her.

Neon light flooded the chamber as Prothean runes now burned on every rectangular protrusion in the walls, as well as across the wide surfaces of the stone slabs and the floor tiles surrounding them. Flicking off her flashlight, she slowly spun around to see even the ceiling covered in these glyphs, all of which slowly pulsed in rhythm.

A ghostly blue tint fell across the room from these symbols, creating even darker shadows that slanted across the floor haphazardly and revealing even more gruesome details of the corpses that Liara had previously missed. To her side, she noticed Shepard shoot her a questioning look, as if to ask if this was something normal, but Liara simply shook her head. Whatever was going on down here, she was beginning to realize, was something no one had ever seen before.

A deafening roar once again shook through the walls of the chamber, obliterating all thoughts or sensations other than itself in a wave of overwhelming noise that seemed to rattle Liara's brain around in her skull. The ground shook and the walls rumbled from the sheer volume of the sound, raining down clouds of dust and small chips of stone from the ceiling.

Then, just as quickly as it had begun, the sound stopped once more. Liara stood slowly, realizing as she did so that the symbols covering the chamber were now pulsing rapid, uncoordinated flashes, as if they had been startled by the noise. The back of her neck began to tingle as if someone was blowing softly across her skin, and as the silence deepened she heard it.

T'Soni… T'Soni… T'Soni…

She snapped her head around, frantically searching for the source of the sound, and yet nothing was there. Her eyes widened as her breathing quickened, an insidious tendril of fear worming its way through her as she spun around once more.

"Liara, what's wrong?" She turned to see Miranda and Jack staring at the glowing symbols around them, their expressions a mix of awe and fear. Shepard, however, only had eyes for her as her brow furrowed with concern. "Did something happen?"

T'Soni… T'Soni…

"Goddess," Liara cried, "can't you hear them? Those voices, the ones chanting my name." She felt tears begin to prick at the corner of her eyes as she groaned, frustrated both with herself and with the situation at hand. "They sound like they're everywhere, but none of you can ever hear them!"

Shepard's frown deepened as she snapped her head around the room, clearly trying to listen for the whispers still dancing around Liara's perception. "Shit, I can't hear anything," she growled, shaking her head angrily. "How would someone only speak to you?"

Liara's response was cut off before she could begin by a flood of neon light bursting through the dim shadows of the chamber. Turning towards its source, she saw a large beam of light emitting from an indentation carved into the center of the chamber ceiling. Squinting her eyes, she peered through the light to see a massive carving of the Prothean glyph for death, nearly five feet across and blazing with ethereal blue light.

Liara shivered at the sight, her skin rising into goosebumps as static energy seemed to fill the air. "Shepard?" she called, feeling suddenly vulnerable in this chamber.

Shepard took a glance up towards the massive symbol on the ceiling and scowled. "Alright, everybody move it!" she barked, springing into action with no hesitation. "Left side door right now, we are leaving!"

Liara stumbled forwards, clipping the side of her hip on the corner of a nearby slab in her rush. Ignoring the burst of pain, she fell in step with Miranda and Jack as they rushed through the room, moving through narrow paths between stone slabs as quickly as they could without tripping over one another.

Another tremor shook the ground as the eerie light around them flared even brighter. Snapping her head around, Liara saw that the channel of black liquid bordering the room was now glowing a brilliant teal that cast eclectic shadows up onto the ceiling. A moment later, she realized that the glyphs on the walls had all synchronized together, now pulsing as one like a massive heartbeat.

Just as Liara crossed the center of the chamber, a series of dry cracks rang out behind her, followed by a wet gurgle that chilled her blood. She immediately skidded to a stop, only to be nearly bowled over by Miranda and Jack as they followed behind. Her heart began to kick violently against her ribs and the tips of her fingers began to numb from fright, but all the same she ever so slowly turned around to face the sound.

Her gaze fell upon a stone slab fifteen feet back, upon which rested yet another of the many dessicated corpses that filled the chamber. Examining it closely, nothing seemed out of the ordinary about this particular body, and after several moments she began to think that she had imagined the sound completely.

The corpse suddenly twitched, popping Liara's blooming hope like a balloon as another dull crunch echoed across the room. A second later, a glimmering light began to pool around the body, and with a surge of revulsion Liara realized it was beginning to leak more glowing blue liquid through the gaps in the ancient bandages wrapped around it. The body twitched again, one of its arms jumping several inches to one side, and a second gurgling rasp tore from its throat.

T'Soni…

Liara stared, unable to move or even to look away, as the corpse began to move, haltingly and unnaturally snapping its limbs into place one at a time in a gruesome display of disjointed sockets and hyperextended joints. With the sound of tearing meat and snapping bones, it arched its back and heaved itself upright headfirst, leaving behind a pool of viscous teal blood on the slab beneath it. Swinging its legs off the slab, Liara saw one foot was bent almost completely backwards, forcing it to hunch awkwardly as it shambled up to its full height.

It's a turian, Liara thought, dimly noting the corpse's imposing height and partially broken crest jutting from the top of its skull. Now clearly able to see its entire body, the more rational part of her mind noticed several points of ghostly light emanating from it, poking past soiled bandages and protruding shards of bone as if lit from within. With a horrific crunch, the body turned its head towards Liara, and she nearly screamed as she saw two pits of blue light blazing away where its eyes should have been.

Something bumped into her back, causing her to yelp and spin around to see Shepard backing towards her with her pistol raised. Beyond her, Liara saw a second corpse peel itself off a stone slab, leaving half of its jaw behind as it forced itself to stand on ruined legs. To her left, Miranda was staring with a disgusted grimace towards a pair of bodies with decaying asari crests shambling towards her, and on her right Jack was aiming her own pistol with shaking hands towards a mummified salarian smearing a glowing stain across the floor.

"This can't be happening, this is impossible," Liara breathed, her heart hammering away as fear squeezed the air from her lungs. Turning back towards the turian, she saw that three more corpses had risen up behind it, with several more starting to twitch and shake about. Feeling the hysteria begin to mount, she swept her gaze once more around the chamber to see that every single corpse in the room had begun to rise up from its slumber.

The corpse before her lurched to a stop, as if unsure what to do about these four intruders. A moment of stillness passed, in which nobody moved and no words were spoken. Liara's heartbeat seemed deafeningly loud in the utter stillness, and belatedly she thought it might simply give out from its exertions.

T'SONI…

Liara flinched as her name rang out all around her, painfully loud as it fell from the mouths of the corpses surrounding them. Before she could respond, however, the sound of a pistol chambering filled the air as Jack took a step towards the nearest corpse.

"Come on then, you undead motherfuckers!" she screamed, then fired a round directly into its chest.

The bullet tore through the corpse like a hammer through rotten wood, blasting completely through it and leaving a hole the size of a fist. The corpse lurched backwards from the impact, neon blue liquid oozing from the wound, then caught itself with its gnarled legs. It looked down for a moment towards its newly ruined torso, as if surprised by the attack, then lifted its head to let out a bestial snarl as it lunged forwards with arms outstretched.

"Open fire!" Shepard yelled, and as Liara squeezed down on her trigger the chamber exploded into chaos. Broken howls and gibbering screeches echoed around the walls as the horde of corpses surrounding them collapsed inwards like a wave of bodies. Liara quickly emptied her magazine into the dead turian before her, blowing off an arm and a significant portion of its torso before it finally collapsed. Frantically slamming home a fresh thermal clip, she spun to fire towards a volus dragging itself forwards on its arms, then danced out of the reach of a dead human before blasting it across the room with a biotic shove.

Behind her, several more biotic detonations sounded as corpses began to fly across the room, and risking a glance over her shoulder she saw Miranda and Jack both shooting into the throng of corpses with one hand while flinging pulses of biotics with the other. Beyond them, Shepard was wielding her shotgun the way an artist might handle a brush, dancing around grasping hands and snapping jaws while blowing away anyone who might get too close.

A hand clamped onto Liara's bicep, and with a start she spun around to see a withered corpse now directly in front of her. A split second later, stars exploded across her vision as a broken hand smashed across the side of her face, snapping her head to one side with a grunt as a spike of pain lanced through her skull. She fell back onto one knee and spat a glob of purple blood onto the ground, grimacing as she realized she had bitten her tongue. Looking up, she saw the corpse lifting both hands above her with the clear intention of slamming her into the floor.

She nimbly swung around on her knee, avoiding the blow by inches as it whistled past her head. Continuing her momentum, she swept the corpse's legs out from it before firing her pistol point blank into its half-rotted skull. Leaping back to her feet, she continued to pour bullet after bullet into the dozens of corpses now bearing down on her, but often found that anything short of blasting off limbs often failed to even stagger them. She reloaded again, fumbling the clip for a few precious moments before slotting it into her weapon. With a start, she realized that at this rate she would be out of ammunition in less than a minute.

"These bastards won't give up!" Miranda yelled over the bursts of gunfire, clearly having similar issues. Having learned her lesson, however, Liara didn't turn towards the sound of her voice, but rather hurled a whirling singularity into the crowd before her to try to make some space.

From farther away than Liara expected, Shepard's voice called, "Take out their legs so they can't swarm us as fast!"

Concerned about the distance growing between members of the team, Liara emptied her third thermal clip into the legs of the closest corpses before her, sending them sprawling onto the ground. She turned and leapt up onto a nearby stone slab, then turned to find Shepard now several rows of slabs away and surrounded by nearly twenty corpses all focused on her.

"Shepard, over here!" she yelled, waving her arms above her head to try to get her attention.

A hoarse battle cry rang out as a biotic explosion detonated, sending a dozen bodies flying across the chamber. In the gap that appeared, Liara spotted Shepard crackling with energy and her lips pulled back into a snarl. She fired two blasts from her shotgun, kneecapping a pair of approaching corpses, then deftly reloaded as she turned to acknowledge Liara with a nod.

Suddenly, her face paled and her eyes widened as she shouted, "Liara, look out!"

Liara had only just begun to spin around when something heavy slammed into the side of her ribs. She flew off the side of the stone slab, tumbling to the ground in a heap underneath the mummified human grappling her with its ruined hands. They skid several feet across the ground, the rough stone scraping her skin, before her head glanced off of the side of another slab and her vision blacked out for a moment.

Pain rattled around in her head as bells seemed to ring all around her, her every thought suddenly sluggish and exhausting. Groggily, she blindly flailed her arms above her, only vaguely aware of the figure currently trying to smother her to death. Something tightened around her throat, muddling her thoughts even more as her breathing was cut off. Hm, she managed to think to herself, this seems bad.

An explosion shook the world around her and immediately the pressure on her neck lessened. Liara coughed and forced air back into her lungs, then finally cracked her eyes open just in time to see the world stop spinning around her. Forcing herself upright, she looked over to see her attacker now smashed into the side of a slab several feet away. Looking to her other side, she saw Miranda turn away from her, her hands still simmering with biotic power as she raised her pistol to shoot at a dead vorcha running them down.

Liara coughed and spat out another mouthful of blood, then winced and forced herself to stand. "Thank you," she rasped, gesturing towards her attacker.

Miranda nodded without turning around. "Don't mention it."

A pained cry pierced the air, causing them both to whirl towards the sound. Peering through the throng of bodies surrounding them, Liara just barely made out the form of Jack several feet away, surrounded on all sides and bleeding from several small cuts on her arms. Jack screamed again, her pistol momentarily forgotten as she balled both hands into glowing fists and began pounding away at anything within reach, each blast tearing through four or five corpses at once and throwing pieces of rotten flesh and withered bone across the chamber.

In a flash of light, Shepard appeared at her side, ducking underneath her wild swings and lashing out at any corpses trying to attack between strikes. Together, they swiftly mowed through ten shambling corpses in seconds, but even still more continued to take their place. "How many bodies were stored here?" Liara groaned, panting heavily between each word as she danced out of yet another corpse's violent embrace.

As if in response to her question, the sound of frothing water splashing over stone erupted from all directions. Glancing around, Liara saw the glowing blue channel of fluid bordering the room now roiling with activity, and moments later ten, then twenty more corpses exploded upwards out of the liquid and shambled forwards to join the melee.

"T'Soni," Miranda barked, "we need to get out of here!"

Liara ducked under a wild slap from an asari whose head was more skull than flesh, then kicked it in its stomach hard enough to flip it over the stone slab behind it. "How close is the nearest door?"

Miranda flung a pair of bodies across the room with a biotic pull, grunting with exertion before spinning over her shoulder. "Thirty feet, directly behind us."

Nodding, Liara threw out another singularity to ensnare the closest group corpses, then spun on her heel and sprinted towards the far wall with Miranda on her heels. Even as they ran they continued to fight, with Miranda shooting out the legs of any corpses shuffling towards them even as Liara blasted back any that got too close. "Shepard, Jack, follow us!" she shouted, desperately hoping they could hear her still.

Just before the last set of slabs, a hulking elcor rose up to challenge them, swinging the remains of its meaty hands like sledgehammers. Liara juked to her left, then jumped up onto a slab, flipped over the elcor, and landed squarely on its shoulders. Rearing back one hand, she punched downwards as hard as possible in a blast of biotics, forcing the elcor's head downwards and into the floor with an earthshaking crash.

She hopped back down to the floor and dashed around another set of massive stone counterweights, then through the door and into the dark hallway beyond, arriving just seconds after Miranda. Turning back towards the chamber, she saw Shepard and Jack still side by side in the center of the chamber, fighting like a violent storm of dark energy amid a tidal wave of the dead.

"Shepard!" she screamed. "Get over here!"

Shepard's head snapped up towards her, the usual warm brown of her eyes now alight with blazing blue fire. She glanced towards the horde of corpses descending upon her, then towards the distance between her and the door, and then finally looked back up to meet Liara's gaze. A lopsided grin appeared on her face, and even as she raised her pistol she shouted, "See you on the other side, Liara!"

She fired once, then again, and the sound of snapping rope filled the air as two stone counterweights fell to the ground. A moment later, stone grinding over stone rang out as the now unsupported door fell to the ground, smashing into the floor and effectively sealing Shepard inside. Liara screamed, pounding her fists into the stone, but it would not budge no matter how hard she tried to move it. Eventually, she felt a hand on her shoulder, and turning around she saw Miranda simply shake her head with a grave frown.

Liara sighed, then stepped away from the door as she massaged her aching hands. There was no way out now except to continue onwards, so Shepard would have to fend for herself.

---

"I'm gonna kill you, Shepard!"

Shepard huffed a humorless laugh, ducking underneath a blow before punching a corpse in the ribs hard enough to cave in its side. "You can kill me if we get out of this alive," she yelled back.

She slapped a fresh clip into her shotgun, wincing as the stripes of pain across her arms pulsed from the motion. No matter how efficiently she blew back the wave of bodies before her, it seemed as if two more were always ready to rush her, forcing her to fight in much closer quarters than she would have liked. Consequently, several corpses had landed glancing blows on her despite her best efforts, leaving several bruises and scrapes across her bare arms and upper torso.

A pair of talons latched onto her right foot, nearly tripping her as she spun around to find a new target. Glancing down, she saw a vorcha corpse clinging to her, nearly everything beneath its exoskeleton wasted away over the centuries. Without hesitating, Shepard lifted up her left foot and stomped down on its wrists, snapping through them with shocking ease. Now free of its grasp, she retreated a step and leveled her shotgun to blast the vorcha into the floor.

Having a brief reprieve, she turned to see Jack fighting off a swarm of her own, her limbs also covered in scratches and splotches of glowing blue ichor from slain enemies. Shepard stepped forwards, shooting down a corpse attempting to sneak up on Jack as she did so, then placed her own back against hers.

"We gotta get out of here!" Shepard yelled, shooting the arm off a gangly turian corpse before kicking it over a slab.

Jack grunted and threw another burst of biotics out into the horde. "Yeah, no shit. How, though?"

"Head for the door!" A corpse lunged towards her, arms outstretched and teeth bared. Rearing her head back out of its reach, Shepard shot out a hand to grab it by the neck, then with a biotic surge hurled it backwards over her head.

Without hesitation, Jack leapt up into the air and grabbed the body as it flew past, then like a falling star slammed it into the ground in an explosion that shook the floor. "You broke the door, dumbass!"

Shepard rolled her eyes. "The other door," she snapped, pointing towards the one remaining exit from the chamber.

"Oh. Right." Jack emptied the clip of her pistol into an approaching turian, then turned to run with Shepard towards this last hope of escape. They opened fire as they ran, scything down another six corpses between Shepard's shotgun and Jack's pistol, but even still the dead piled in around them like a cresting wave of corpses.

A violent tremor shook the ground, nearly throwing Shepard off her feet while all around dozens of corpses tripped over each other. Shortly after, a sharp crack rang out as a thin fissure split through the ceiling overhead and rained down chips of stone. Shepard's brow furrowed, and as she watched the fissure widened with a second tremor, splintering erratically down the far wall before partially shattering the top of the door frame before her in a spray of dust and rock.

Dread pooled in Shepard's stomach as she watched several smaller cracks begin to spread across the door. "Get to the door," she barked, "Now!"

Jack barreled over the last part of the chamber before slipping through the door. Right on her heels, Shepard pounded her boots into the floor as fast as she could before finally diving headfirst through the open door. She sailed weightless through the air, for just a moment, then slammed into the rough stone floor beyond the door with a grunt.

Seconds later, a loud groan filled the air accompanied by splintering stone as the door frame buckled and collapsed into a heap of broken rock. The world shook beneath Shepard as a massive cloud of dust exploded through the air, then finally silence fell as the deluge of rubble came to a halt.

Picking herself up off the ground, Shepard turned to see the entire doorway had vanished, and now in its place was a wall of massive chunks of stone. No hints of ghastly blue light or any sounds of the swarm of nightmarish bodies seemed to be able to pierce through this blockage, and after several more seconds Shepard allowed herself to relax.

"I think we're clear," Shepard called, then coughed from the dust clogging the air. Turning around, she then found herself staring down the barrel of Jack's pistol. "Aw, shit."

"You piece of shit," Jack seethed. "You almost got us killed!"

"Woah, okay, hold on a second," Shepard said, holding her hands up in front of her.

Jack growled, her face contorted in fury. "I should shoot you right now," she spat, jabbing the pistol even closer to Shepard's face.

Shepard swallowed thickly, then in a level voice replied, "It's my job to keep Liara safe, no matter the cost, so I did what I had to do to make that happen. If there had been any other way to get Miranda and her out of that place, you bet your ass I would've done it." She defiantly raised her chin towards the pistol, a resolute set to her jaw. "So either shoot me already and get it over with, or help me find a way back to them before we actually die."

At Miranda's name, Jack's nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, before finally she lowered her pistol. "Fine," she muttered, then punched Shepard's shoulder hard enough to bruise. "But never do that shit to me again. It's not my job to die for your girlfriend, asshole."

Shepard swore and began to rub her injured shoulder. "Fair enough," she grunted.

Turning to inspect the space around them, she found that once again they stood in a thin hallway lit by strips of fluorescent lights as it extended out several hundred feet. At the far end, a dim glow emanated from the left wall, where Shepard presumed the path continued.

Another tremor shook through the ground, vibrating up through Shepard's feet and vibrating her teeth. She froze and looked up towards the ceiling, ready to bolt from another collapse, but all she saw was another cloud of dust gently drift down towards the floor. "Alright, time to go," she said, already moving further down the hall.

"If we have to go down too many more of these stupid hallways, I'm gonna lose my shit," Jack grumbled as she walked next to Shepard. "This whole place is just boring hallways and rooms that try to kill you."

Shepard chuckled. "To be fair, it's kinda your fault all this is happening." At Jack's askance expression, she dropped into a husky imitation of her voice and quoted, "It's not like those things just got up and left, right?"

An abrupt laugh erupted from Jack, who looked nearly as surprised as Shepard at the sound. "If you say the word 'jinxed' in the next five seconds I'm gonna punch you again," she warned as her mouth quirked into a grin.

Shepard snickered but decided to hold her tongue. Rolling her shoulders, she shifted the shotgun between her hands as they progressed down the hall. Silence slowly bled back into the space, the unending gloom of the pyramid settling on their shoulders despite the flickering lights set into the wall, and once again Shepard felt a simmering unease begin to manifest in her gut.

As they finally approached the glow at the far end of the hall, Shepard found she could stand the silence no longer. "So," she began, "now that the smart ones are gone, I'm thinking we should adopt a 'don't touch anything ever' policy. You know, to avoid anything else trying to squish, shoot, or eat us."

They stopped at the end of the hall, a large open doorway with light pouring through now visible to their left. "Good idea," Jack said as she peered suspiciously into the light. "I'm always down for a little 'smash first ask questions later' violence."

Shepard sighed. "Not exactly what I meant."

They stepped out of the hallway and into this new space, squinting as their eyes adjusted to the sudden bright teal light shining in their faces. Once she could see again, Shepard looked forwards to see another long chamber extending out before them, this one easily twenty feet wide and several hundred feet long. The left side wall of the chamber extended straight up from the ground, but the right wall slanted inwards at a noticeable angle as it sloped up over a hundred feet before connecting to the ceiling.

"This must be part of the outer pyramid wall," Shepard murmured, suddenly wishing Liara was there to explain the architecture of this place.

She stepped cautiously into the room, noticing that the floor was covered in more of the large stone rectangles that protruded out several inches into the air. Lifting her gaze, she blinked as she realized that these rectangles not only blanketed the floor all the way across the chamber, but covered the walls as well.

Between these straight rows of stone blocks, large strips of neon blue light ran across the walls, casting light across the chamber similarly to the ruins of Jiwai. Shepard stared at these glowing lines, mesmerized for a moment by how they seemed to swirl and eddy within their casings, before with a start she groaned, "Oh, god."

"What?" Jack asked, whirling around with her pistol raised.

Shepard pointed towards the nearest blue strip, a queasy feeling rising in her throat. "I think those lights are full of the same juice as the corpses."

Jack turned to stare towards the blue lights, her expression vaguely disgusted. "This place fuckin blows, Shepard."

They set off across the chamber, weapons clutched tightly in their hands as they carefully avoided stepping on any protruding blocks. Despite her best efforts, Shepard often found herself nearly tripping over herself due to the sheer number of these protrusions, which left very little open floor to walk through. By her side, she saw Jack having similar difficulties, and as they continued onwards their pace slowed to a crawl to avoid touching anything.

After they had progressed about fifty feet through the chamber in this manner, the glowing blue strips lining the wall flickered for a moment, then went out completely and plunged the hall into darkness. Only a moment later, however, the unsettling teal light returned to illuminate the chamber. Now, however, the light came from hundreds and hundreds of shining blue symbols, one emanating from the center of each stone block.

Shepard hefted her shotgun as she nervously glanced around the multitude of blocks surrounding them. As she did so, her eyes picked up on movement further into the hall, causing her to quickly swing one foot behind her as she fell into her usual firing position.

Anticipation thrumming through her veins, she watched as one particular stone protrusion about twenty feet away began to wiggle in place, ever so slightly pushing its way out of the ground. It paused for a moment, then resumed its motions stronger than before as the block now began to shift to the side, revealing a dark space beneath.

A bead of sweat ran down Shepard's face as she wordlessly watched the mangled limbs and ruined skin of yet another corpse appear beneath the stone. Only partially exposed, it opened its toothy maw in a wordless howl before fully shoving the block over and shakily standing to its feet..

"Jesus," Shepard breathed, sweeping her gaze around what she realized were countless coffin lids around them as each and every one began to slowly scrape open. "It's like a mass grave."

Jack whirled on her with an accusing finger held out before her. "I didn't touch shit, alright?"

Shepard rolled her eyes, warily watching as dozens more corpses began to rise up before them. "I know, Jack." She cocked her shotgun, already starting to plan her path through the crowd. She wasn't sure if there was an exit on the far side, but she figured she'd rather find out than sit here and get mauled to death.

She broke out into a run, Jack right on her heels as they headed straight for the nearest clump of rising bodies. "Just making sure that we all know this one isn't my fault," Jack yelled, her fists beginning to surge with biotics.

Shepard's own biotics flared as the corpses before them groaned a guttural challenge. "Less talking, more fighting!"

She leapt into the air, fist pulled back and crackling with energy as plunged into the crowd before her with a scream. Power exploded out from her, cracking the stone floor as corpses flew off in every direction like leaves before the wind. Planting her feet like a sprinter, she took off down the hallway, scything down any lunging corpses before her with her shotgun and her fists in tandem as she carved her way through the room.

Several feet to her right, she caught a glimpse of Jack soaring through the air on a wave of force before slamming into the ground before her with an explosion that lit the chamber. Only a moment later, she took off once again into the air and soared over the grasping, bony hands of the dead reaching out to pull her down as she traversed the hallway in leaps and bounds. Each time she landed the ground shook violently, and over the sounds of her pistol firing and the pulses of biotics she yelled, "I will destroy you all!"

Shepard's pulse roared in her ears, nearly drowning out the constant bark of her shotgun as she fired again and again into the mass of bodies constantly crowding in around her. She was as light on her feet as she had ever been, constantly switching her momentum into a new direction every few seconds as she spun out of reach of grasping talons and shattered teeth, every step an exercise of pure efficiency in combat. Everywhere she looked, more and more corpses were rising from their graves to meet her, and she knew if she stopped for even a single moment she would be overwhelmed.

She dropped to her knees and leaned backwards as her momentum carried her forwards, sliding underneath a lunging turian as she fired directly upwards into its stomach. Feeling her speed begin to slow, she jammed her foot into a coffin lid and pushed upwards, levering her remaining momentum to flip forwards through the air over a vorcha as it ran chittering towards her with arms outstretched. Her feet slammed into the ground a moment later, rattling her teeth in her skull as she swiftly spun around and fired a shot that lifted the vorcha clear off its feet and threw it several feet forwards onto the floor. Not stopping to check if it was dead, she rose and once again began to run, turning to set herself towards the far end of the hall.

As she completed her rotation, she had just a split second to register the fist of a withered salarian descending towards her before pain exploded across the left side of her face and sent her reeling to one side. Tottering unsteadily as her vision flashed red and yellow, Shepard twisted on her right foot and converted her fall into a tight spin, then pushed off and sprinted just out of range of the second blow. Looking forwards, she saw an asari corpse was now standing directly in her path, its skin spread thin over its bones and the blue color faded to a pale off-white. Rather than try to lift her weapon in time, Shepard simply lowered her shoulder and put on a burst of speed, slamming her shoulder into its chest with a crunch that sent it flying back into a pair of approaching human bodies.

As the corpses fell, a bloated volus hopped forwards as one leg bent unnaturally to one side. Not hesitating for a moment, Shepard charged forwards in a burst of light and planted it on its ass in a single biotic punch. Hopping over its rotund form, she strode forwards with her shotgun held high, firing off three shots into the legs of a hulking elcor corpse until slammed into the ground at her feet.

The sound of shattering stone split the air, punching through the cacophony of horrid groans and screeches as small rock chips pelted Shepard's arm. Glancing to her side as she continued to run, she watched in horror as stone blocks began falling from the walls and smashing into the floor like raining missiles, exposing even more corpses as they emerged from the coffins set into the walls of the chamber. "Jack," she shouted, "stay away from the walls!"

Jack appeared in yet another explosion as the throng around her was briefly blown back. As she slapped a new clip into her pistol, she watched as yet another twenty corpses leapt from the walls onto the ground, where several collapsed into a heap as their ancient legs snapped from the impact. "God damn it, Shepard!" she yelled, running towards the nearest group of corpses with her pistol plazing. "Why is it raining fucking dead people?"

Shepard, however, was too busy outrunning the massive wave of corpses piling up behind her to respond, instead having to split her focus between laying out anything within reach while keeping an eye peeled for falling stones. Due to this, two more corpses landed blows on her shoulder and upper back just past the strap of her vest, opening up a gash on her deltoid that bled every time she pulled it back to land a punch. Leaping into the air, she smashed her knee into the first of the two corpses in a blow that shattered its jaw, then whirled around and clubbed the legs out from under the remaining body with the stock of her gun.

Wiping a smear of blood off of her palm, she gripped her shotgun once more and resumed her desperate sprint forwards. By this point, so many corpses had risen up from the ground that she was hard pressed to find a gap more than two or three feet across to run through, forcing her to rely mostly on her biotics to make progress as she began to charge from corpse to corpse. The sound of gunfire constantly rang in her ears between the low thud of her shotgun punctuated by the rapid chatter of Jack's pistol, and soon she found her right shoulder beginning to numb from weathering the kick of her shotgun so often in such a short period of time.

A scrawny human corpse lunged towards her, its eyes blazing with blue light as it soared through the air. Lowering her shotgun, Shepard simply snapped her hand out to grab it by the neck, then with her biceps rippling she roared and slammed it into the ground. Standing back up, she glanced forwards over the head of the oncoming hoard and unhappily noted that despite their frantic efforts to move forwards, they had only covered a little over half of the chamber, with easily over a hundred feet of roiling horde of dead bodies between them and the far side.

Before she could resume running, a bony hand latched tightly onto her left ankle. Turning over her shoulder, she saw a desiccated human snarling up at her from within its shallow coffin set into the ground. She raised her shotgun to blast it away, only to stop as two lunging corpses slammed painfully into her side at full speed and threw the lot of them back into the open coffin.

"Shit," Shepard grunted, feeling the back of her head bang into the skull of the human corpse now trapped below her. She raised her hands towards the two corpses now doing their best to squish the life out of her, only to stop as blow after stinging blow began to rain down on her head and upper torso. A fist slammed into her solar plexus, driving the air out of her with a whoosh of breath as a second fist clipped her ear and slammed her head back into the ground. Beneath her, she felt the third corpse's grip on her left foot tighten to a painful degree, followed by a pinching pain on her leg as it tried to gnaw through her thick pants.

Another blow landed squarely on Shepard's cheek, snapping her head to one side as the world began to spin around her. Nearly blind from pain, she flailed her arms above her to try to protect herself, only to receive several new scrapes down her forearms as the two corpses above her latched onto her arms with jagged, dirty nails. Shepard screamed, both from pain and frustration, struggling all the while to formulate just one intelligible idea to get her out of this scrape. A sudden surge of fury ignited in her chest, fueled by the pain now coursing through her body. Biotic energy began to crackle around her, and in a rush of anger she felt her mind harden into a single thought, a single animal instinct stamped across her brain.

Survive.

Shepard's left hand lashed out, quick as a snake, to grab onto the protruding collarbone of the first corpse above her. Feeling her hand latch onto bone, Shepard roared and yanked downwards, smashing her forehead into the corpse's nose as hard as she could. A sickening crunch rang out as their heads met, and Shepard felt its skull give way horrifically easily as it went limp above her. Not hesitating to register the pain now dully radiating from her own forehead, she snapped her right hand forwards to palm the head of the remaining corpse. Her biotics flared with a dull rush of power, and in a blinding flash she flung the flailing body thirty feet to the side where it smashed into the wall with a wet crunch.

Now freed from the onslaught above her, she sat upright and rolled forwards to kneel over the last corpse, who continued to bite away mindlessly at her leg. Blue fire exploded into being around her hand, and with a single blow she smashed the skull of the corpse into the floor hard enough to crack the stone.

She stood, peevishly shaking the now limp hand off of her ankle, and turned to examine how the fight had progressed in the last thirty seconds. Across the way, she saw Jack had been forced to ground by the onslaught of corpses, where she now stood with her hands spread wide as she flung blasts of biotics five feet wide hurtling through the crowd massing around her. As she watched, a turian slipped between the hammerfisted blows and leapt onto Jack's back with a snarl, only for Jack to flash almost pure white as a shockwave exploded out from her in an expanding dome of force. Shepard dropped to one knee as the wave passed over her, and even still nearly lost her footing as dozens of corpses were flung screeching past her.

Planting a hand on a nearby coffin lid, Shepard pushed herself back up to her feet to see Jack jogging over towards her, biotics still flickering around her body like a live wire. "Shepard," she grunted, her voice hoarse from yelling, "We gotta go, I'm outta ammo."

"Damn." Shepard swept her gaze around the room, looking from the mass of broken bodies gathering ahead for another assault to the seven foot stone lid at her feet. She nudged the lid with her foot, the beginnings of an idea beginning to form in her mind. She inhaled deeply, immediately deciding to commit to her plan without considering if it could be done or not. To survive, after all, was to act.

Turning back to Jack, she called, "Here, catch," then tossed over her shotgun and a handful of clips from a pocket in her vest. Jack quickly snatched the weapon out of the air, a surprised look on her face as she hefted it in one hand as she pocketed the ammunition with the other. Shrugging off her unspoken question, Shepard continued, "Consider it my apology for earlier. That's all the ammo I have on me though, so make it count."

Jack nodded, her mouth pressed into a grim line, but Shepard had already turned to kneel over the coffin lid at her feet. Spreading her hands across its rough surface, she hooked a hand underneath each side and gave it a tentative heave, only for the massive block to barely move. She glanced upwards towards the countless sets of glowing blue eyes approaching, then exhaled roughly as she leaned into that bright, burning core of fury still seething in her chest. A surge of strength ran through her like a bolt of lightning, and with a grunt she tightened her grip and heaved the entire coffin lid off the ground. Her biceps bunched and her back tightened painfully in protest of the massive weight, but in Shepard's state of utter focus she simply ignored them.

Holding the lid horizontally like a massive shield before her, she planted her feet and allowed her biotics to flare in a dizzying rush of power. "Alright," she growled, glaring over the rim of the lid towards the oncoming horde, "fuck all this." Her legs bunched, then in a blaze of light she flew forwards in the fastest biotic charge she could muster towards the vanguard of corpses ahead.

.She slammed into the front row of bodies like a sledgehammer, utterly flattening corpse after corpse as her charge sent her careening forwards through the throng. She locked her arms out in front of her, feeling them begin to shake from the effort as countless impacts rocked through the stone in her grip. After a moment she felt her speed begin to slow, and not allowing herself time to fully stop she planted one foot and charged forwards once more with a yell, flying forwards like a missile down the hall.

During this second charge, the sheer number of collisions began to shake the coffin lid more and more with each blow until finally it simply cracked in half from the strain. Shepard stumbled to a stop as she dropped one half of the lid to the floor with a slam, barely managing to keep her grip on the remaining piece of stone as she turned to examine her progress.

Behind her, she saw a furrow plowed through the horde of corpses nearly fifty feet long, littered with snapped limbs and long smears of glowing blue liquid splashed across the floor. Through this wake she had carved, she saw Jack sprinting angrily forwards as corpses began to crash in around her on either side. "Wait for me, you teleporting piece of shit!" she screamed, firing her shotgun into any corpse that got too close.

As she waited for Jack to make up the distance, Shepard turned to block a blow from a nearly skeletal turian with the chunk of rock in her hands. She then snapped one of its knees with a well placed kick, then bashed it backwards with a hefty swing of her improvised shield. "I think I kinda like this thing," she muttered to herself.

Stepping past the fallen turian, she looked forwards to see the end of the massive hall now clearly in view, with a staircase emerging from the left side of the wall and curving upwards out of view. She flatted another corpse as it unwisely entered her reach, then turned to see Jack only just catching up with her. "Come on, the exit's right over there!" she yelled.

They sprinted down the last stretch of hallway together, Jack firing her shotgun and hurling torrents of biotics out before her while Shepard ran defense, blocking any flailing fists she could see while simply plowing over any corpses in her way. Now fully fighting together, the approaching corpses seemed to simply melt away before their combined strength, giving them plenty of space to run as they sent body after body flying across the room.

Finally, they made it to the base of the stairs and immediately started running up them three at a time. Behind her, Shepard could hear the sound of hundreds of corpses wailing at their escape, prompting her to push through the burning pain beginning to seep across her legs from the constant exertion. Bodies continued to drop from the side walls, which now both slanted inwards to meet in a point high above them. However, no coffins were set into the stone steps as they shot steeply upwards, meaning far fewer corpses lay ahead of them compared to the mass of bodies behind.

Invigorated by the opportunity to break away from the pack, Shepard shot forwards up the stairs to smash her stone block over the head of an asari in her path, fully shattering the stone block as the corpse collapsed to the floor. Dropping the remaining chunks of rock to the floor, Shepard swore and allowed her biotics to rush down her arms and flare around her fists. Dancing up the steps like a boxer, she bobbed and weaved around falling coffin lids and lunging corpses, all the while throwing biotically infused haymakers that flung corpse after corpse away from her to break across the stairs.

A deep boom suddenly rang out, shaking the floor in yet another tremor as cracks began to split the walls on either side of the stairs. All around Shepard, corpses were thrown off their feet and began to slide howling down the stairs, and as the ground continued to shake several more coffin lids all fell from the walls at once and smashed into the ground like oversized hail. Not pausing to flinch, Shepard doubled down and sprinted up the stairs, Jack right on her heels as they took the opportunity to put more space between them and the corpses in hot pursuit.

The higher up the stairs they ran, the fewer corpses fell from the walls in time to threaten them. As for the ones that did, Shepard and Jack made quick work of them between a storm of biotics and well placed shotgun shots, allowing the pair to run up the stairs without ever having to slow down. Risking a glance over her shoulder as they ran, Shepard allowed herself a tired grin as she saw the main body of the horde still milling around the base of the stairs. It seemed that whatever loss of coordination reanimating had inflicted on these corpses was a significant hurdle to traversing up stairs faster than a shambling walk.

After another minute of frantically scaling the stairs, Shepard saw a flare of light as the top of the steps came into view. Skidding to a halt, she whirled around to face back down the steps and saw just the very front of the crowd of corpses following them, all still shrieking angrily as they lurched their way up the curving stairs. Glancing upwards, she saw several cracks directly overhead from the most recent set of tremors, and without hesitation she flung two pulses of biotics into the largest crevices she could find.

Two bassy impacts filled the air as her biotics found their mark, the blue energy seeping into the spidery cracks splintering across the slanted walls. A second later, two more blasts of biotics struck the ceiling as Jack caught onto her idea, and then as one they yanked their hands downwards in a surge of light, dragging several large chunks of stone out of the wall and casting them across the steps below.

The ground quaked from the impact of heavy stone upon it, provoking even more chunks of the walls to dislodge, then fall to the ground in a heap, creating an imposing wall of chunks of stone separating them from the corpses following behind. A cloud of dust exploded up the stairway, momentarily blinding Shepard as it swept past and left an ashy taste in her mouth. She coughed, waving a hand to try to clear the air around her, then turned with Jack to climb up to the top of the stairs.

Emerging out from the stairwell, they stumbled to a stop as they took in the truly massive chamber opening up around them. Giant, cylindrical walls extended out around a circular space several hundred feet across and rose up staggeringly high before vanishing into shadows far above. The floor itself of this space was divided into several wide ringed tiers, each progressively sinking fifteen feet further into the floor until reaching the central tier. Placed in the middle of this tier was a single circular platform, about twenty feet across and raised up ten feet from the floor around it, creating a space visible from any point in the chamber. In the center of this platform lay a simple stone dais, upon which what appeared to be a huge, ornately engraved battle axe was embedded blade first into the stone.

"Shepard," Jack grunted, pointing towards the nearest tier of the room. "They got more weird execution stuff in here."

Following her gaze, Shepard saw that placed every fifty feet around each tier of the chamber were more stone statues. Each of these sat on a raised stone pedestal and featured a figure standing at attention with a blade held high, as if in a warrior's salute. Sweeping her gaze across this huge, open space, Shepard realized that there must be over a hundred of these statues, all facing inwards towards the platform at the center of the chamber.

"I'm no archaeologist," she replied, "but if I had to bet I'd say this is where they did all of the executions shown in those statues we found."

As if to prove her own point, Shepard blinked as she realized that the floor and walls of this huge chamber were covered in countless more coffins, similarly to the previous chamber. Her blood ran cold as she swept her gaze over coffin after coffin after coffin, realizing that a truly staggering amount of people must have been killed and entombed in this space.

By her side, Jack shifted with a thoughtful expression. "It doesn't make sense, though," she said. "If all of the statues were about beheading people or some shit, why weren't any of those dead fucks back there already decapitated?"

Shepard shrugged. "I don't know." A shrill howl echoed up from behind them, and with a start she realized the horde of corpses must be close to reaching the makeshift blockade she had created. "We don't have time to stay here and figure it out, though."

Jack squinted forwards, a skeptical frown creasing her features. "I don't see a way out in there, Shepard."

Grimacing, Shepard began to roll out her shoulders as she stepped forwards. "Yeah, but it sure as hell beats staying here."

A squeal of static exploded into her ear, making her wince and freeze in her tracks as her earpiece activated for the first time in days. The distortion continued for several seconds, blasting Shepard's eardrums until finally the static resolved itself enough for a voice to be heard through the interference. "Normandy, this is Tali, is anybody there? Pick up, damn it!"

Shepard snapped her hand up to her earpiece in the blink of an eye, everything else forgotten as she replied, "Tali, this is Shepard. What's your situation?"

Static flared in her ear once again, fading out just in time for her to hear Tali cry, "-epard, we need pickup now! I repeat, we ne–"

A cold spike of dread punched through the rush of adrenaline coursing through Shepard's veins. "Tali, talk to me, what's going on?"

Her earpiece squealed again, and for a maddening few seconds no other sounds could be heard through the distortion. Finally, the static feedback faded away once more, and in the silence the desperate fear in Tali's voice rang out all the clearer. "We destroyed the Cerberus facility, but Garrus…"

A sob rang out through her earpiece. "Garrus got hit trying to save me, and I tried to help him but there's so much blood everywhere and I don't know how to fix bullet holes, and I just… I don't think he's going to make it, Shepard!"

The world seemed to tilt beneath Shepard, her vision nearly whiting out as a faint ringing began to fill her ears. A surge of panic began well up within her, a white-hot flash of apprehension and guilt that destroyed any other sensation in her mind. I should've been there, this is my fault, I should've been there, this is my fault…

"Joker," she finally managed to choke out, "you getting this?"

Joker's voice immediately crackled through her earpiece. "Yes ma'am, already dropping into Vahtz's upper atmosphere."

"Get them out of there as fast as god damn possible, you read me?" She paused, lifting a hand to massage the pounding pain building up behind her eyes. "And tell Chakwas to have the full trauma suite ready to go by the time you land. We are not losing a crew member today, got it?"

"Roger that, Shepard. We'll get them back in one piece.

Her earpiece clicked off, leaving Shepard in the silent storm of her own thoughts. Her mind began racing from one point to the next, frantically trying to figure out how she could best save her crew while trapped in the bowels of this hellish pyramid. Snarling, she pounded a fist against her forehead. Focus, Shepard.

She took a deep breath, forcing her mind to slow as she concentrated exclusively on what lay before her. Examining the chamber once again, she found no sign of an exit or door hidden in the far walls, leaving her to stare at the raised platform set into the center of the chamber. Gotta find a way out, can't help them from down here.

A flash of light illuminated the chamber as a flare of blue light spread out across the floor from the center of the room. Looking downwards, Shepard frowned as she saw that once again, the surface of every coffin across the entire chamber now glowed with the curved scrypt of a glowing Prothean symbol, and as she watched several of these coffins began to move as their occupants awoke inside their prisons.

The simmering point of fury buried in her chest flared to life as she watched corpse after corpse begin to rise up from the ground to oppose her. The maelstrom of her thoughts burned away as her adrenaline began to pump once more, causing her to bounce on her toes as a single line of thought cemented itself in her mind. Can't help my crew if I'm stuck down here. She snapped her gaze from corpse to corpse as they began to lurch to their feet, forming yet another horde of mummified bodies filling the space before her. Can't get out of here if I die first. She clenched her fists, feeling the familiar rush of her biotics begin to burn through her like a sun trying to escape her body. Survive.

"Shepard, you good?" Jack called in a cautious tone.

She snapped her gaze over towards Jack, feeling her lips pull back into a vicious snarl. "Let's kick some undead ass, yeah?"

Jack grinned, her smile feral and full of teeth. "Now you're speaking my language."

They turned together to face the oncoming wave of broken corpses approaching, and in unspoken agreement began to sprint straight towards the horde. Shepard's vision narrowed down to a single point, focused on the closest corpse she could see as a righteous fury gave speed to her every step. She was fucking Cam Shepard, and no undead son of a bitch was going to stop her from keeping her crew safe.

Biotics crackled around her fists in a blinding wash of energy, and an exhilarating rush of power arced through her as she screamed, "Come on!" She flashed forwards, outpacing Jack as she leapt into the air with her glowing fists held aloft like twin stars of death. For a moment, she hung weightless in the air over the roiling horde below, then in a flash she fell to earth as the world exploded into light.

---

A/N: hey gamers! man this chapter was fun to write, i missed just chunkin out a long action scene like this while listening to the doom ost. ah, good times.

also, we now officially have a spooky temple, making this a real indiana jones story finally. i hope you're all enjoying how the story's turning out, because it's only ramping up from here. see you all in the next one!