Tali stood off to the side as she watched the Shepard cry. After the horrors of the night before, Tali had drifted off into an uneasy sleep with the demon she had summoned by her side. They had both been awoken by the light of the rising sun leaking in through the building's windows. While Tali gulped down the breakfast in her nutrient-paste tub, Shepard had run outside, where she had promptly fallen to her knees sobbing. Tali followed after her when she saw her companion fall and comforted her when she realized that Shepard was crying. But that had been half an hour ago, and no matter how many 'there there's Tali had given her, it did nothing to assuage the flood of water coming from the demon's eyes. Now Tali was trying to give her some space so she could get these emotions out of her system and had done so for about thirty minutes. If Shepard didn't stop by the one-hour mark, Tali would try talking to her.
In the meantime she was currently trying, and failing, to contact Vodok. Despite her perfectly fine reception the previous day her comm was giving her nothing but static now. Could one of those… things from the previous night have messed with her omnitool? Her diagnostics check said no, but after what she had seen, Tali wasn't so sure if she should trust it. Granted, the supernatural occurrences had stopped ever since she had summoned Shepard, but with her demon currently… indisposed, who was to say that some new monster wouldn't try to bring Tali's Pilgrimage to a morbid end?
Tali's question was answered with a loud boom.
Turning Southward, both she and Shepard saw a pillar of smoke slowly rising into the air. A pillar centered exactly where the Salarian camp was located. A few seconds later a loud droning horn, so deafening that Tali thought it would overload her Suit's audio receptors, echoed through the air. Turning to their left they saw a dreadnaught of gigantic proportions descend from the sky. Its squid-like shape was adorned with purplish-black metal plating, and several tentacle-like servos taht extended out from both the sides and the base of the ship. Swarming around it were dozens of Geth dropships, which were now breaking away to descend upon the abandoned city.
"Oh, come on!" Shepard screamed as she got to her feet. "I'm home! This isn't supposed to be happening again!" The demon then let out a maddened wail of rage as she grabbed hold of an assault rifle from one of the nearby barricades. She took a few seconds to look over the weapon before throwing it aside with a hiss. The rifle slammed into the wall of the building behind them so hard that the concrete wall chipped. Tali's eyes widened at the display of strength as Shepard stormed over towards her. "Your shotgun. Give it to me."
Tali sputtered for a second and took a couple of steps back. "Wh-What?! Look, I'm grateful for your help last night, but I'm not giving some random woman a shotgun after I saw her eat a room full of people."
Shepard's tail hissed at her while the demon herself stopped midstride. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and her jaw was clenched so tightly Tali could have sworn that she could hear the other woman's teeth grinding together. Shepard's fingers were curved into a claw-like visage as she raised her hands to the side of her head. For a moment, Tali thought that her companion was going to lunge at her and tear the shotgun from her grasp right before ripping out her throat. Instead, Shepard took in a deep breath and let it out slowly over the course of a full minute.
"Look… Tali. I know you must be scared of me-"
"I'm not just scared of you bosh'tet!" Tali pointed at the flock of gunships spreading out over the city. "Those are Geth ships! They're going to kill us all. I'm not giving up the best means I have of defending myself!"
Shepard's eyes shot wide open as a small smile crossed her face. "YES! They ARE going to kill us. And I am the best hope you have of getting out of this alive. I helped you last night. You know what I can do. Let me help you again."
Shepard held out a hand towards her.
Tali was silent for a few seconds before she handed over her shotgun and drew her pistol. Somehow, on an instinctual level, Tali knew that Shepard was telling the truth. "We need to get to the Salarian Camp. We might be able to get aboard one of their ships before they evacuate."
Shepard shook her head. "That's the last place we should be headed. In less than an hour, they'll have all been turned into husks. What we need to do is head northeast towards where my ship is in the spaceport. It'll probably be a few hours before the Reaper leaves, but as soon as its gone, we can make a break for orbit."
"Wait, what's a Reaper?" Tali asked cocking her head slightly.
Shepard turned back to look at her with a bewildered expression on her face and pointed a finger out towards the massive dreadnought. "That obviously."
Tali stood there for several long moments, flicking her gaze between her demonic companion and the so-called Reaper. Eventually, she cleared her throat with a small, awkward cough. "Umm, you're looking at me like just pointing at something explains everything about it. Is that common in your species' culture?"
Shepard smacked her palm against her forehead and aggressively rubbed both her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. How she was able to avoid gouging out her eyes with those talon-like nails was a mystery to the Quarian. "The Reapers. The massive fucking robots that are currently carrying out a galaxy-wide genocide. Ring a bell?"
"I-I haven't heard about a genocide!" Tali yelped. Under normal circumstances, she would have just passed this off as some crazy alien who was high on red sand. But nothing about these past few days had been normal. "I checked the news yesterday and didn't see anything about any 'Reapers.'"
Shepard dropped her hand and looked at Tali. In her eyes was an almost frantic hope. "Wait. So you're telling me that you've never seen anything like that before?" The demon again pointed to the squid-like construct.
"That specifically, no. I recognize the ships around it, but that's because those are Geth, oh right, my people built them by the way. They're synthetic constructs that tried to wipe out my people, the Quarians, after they gained sentience. I had just assumed that they were the one who built that dreadnought." Tali said quickly.
Shepard ran a hand through her hair whilst nodding to herself. "That's good. The Reapers always attack the Citadel first. And since you don't know what the Reapers are, that means they couldn't have attacked the Citadel yet. Harvesting that many people would take at least a week. That means I'm in a new cycle. Which means that even though a Reaper is here, there's only one of them…"
Suddenly the demon whirled on Tali and grabbed her by the shoulders. Tali thought about pulling away from the woman but decided against it. Those nails looked sharp and even though her envirosuit was made of durable material, she didn't want to risk a suit breach when a supernatural creature was involved. Shepard then grabbed Tali's helmet and forced her to meet the other woman's gaze.
"Look, I know what I am about to say is going to sound crazy, but that ship is hosting an AI millions, possibly billions of years old. There are trillions of them in existence and soon they are going to use the Citadel as a gigantic mass relay to call forth their legions from dark space and overrun the galaxy. But I didn't spend 50,000 years in the lower planes just to relive the apocalypse. We are going to find a way to stop them. Got it?" Shepard said without blinking or stuttering
Tali hastily nodded her head. "I got it."
Shepard blinked in surprise. "You believe me?"
"Yup."
"Just like that?"
"I summoned you with a blood ritual wherein after, you proceeded to EAT a room full of people before shrinking down from a giant monster to what you look like now. My dad could drop out of the sky without his suit on, and I wouldn't bat an eyelash." Tali said sardonically before hanging her head despondently. "All you're saying is more crazy shit is about to happen to my life."
"Pretty much." Shepard smiled at her and patted her on the shoulder. "Now, c'mon, let's get moving."
Tali ran back into the nearby building to grab her backpack, which was still lying next to the motorcycle that Vodok had lent her. She briefly debated whether she had enough time to repair the battery engine that she had haphazardly disabled the night before but decided that it wouldn't be worth it. There was really only enough room for one person on the bike, and even if she and Shepard could squeeze both their backsides onto the small seat, they would need to spend several seconds dismounting if they got into a fight. Several seconds where a Geth Spitfire could rip through their kinetic barriers. It was probably the reason Shepard had not said anything about it.
Tali ran back out of the building and followed Shepard as she sprinted towards the series of checkpoints and slid underneath them. From there, the demonic woman led the Quarian into the maze of streets and alleyways crisscrossing their way through the city. Occasionally, a Geth gunship would cross by overhead, causing Tali to clench her pistol each time in anticipation of a possible firefight. It was the fourth gunship she saw that finally descended and dropped its detachment of Geth in a nearby parking lot that she and Shepard were passing by. The Geth, led by a Geth Prime, had somehow picked them up on their scanners and were bringing their weapons to bear on them.
"Get down!" Shepard yelled as she dragged Tali into cover behind what looked and smelled to be a dumpster. Of course, the perfectly preserved city also had to have perfectly preserved trash. "Stay here, I can handle this," Shepard said as she crawled out of cover.
"I can handle myself you know…" Tali's retort died on her lips as the demon leapt onto a nearby Geth and ripped its lightbulb shaped optic out of its head with her bare hands. She made up for her lack of a kinetic barrier by using her snake-like tail to bite into a nearby Geth rocket trooper and drag it into the line of fire from its allies. The Geth stopped as soon as they realized what their opponent was doing, but not before they had brought down their comrade's barriers. A fact Shepard used to her advantage as she leveled Tali's shotgun in its face and pulled the trigger.
As the Geth's lifeless corpse fell to the ground, Shepard grabbed the rocket launcher with her free hand and fired its payload at the Geth Prime. The low-velocity missile slipped through the Prime's shields and wedged itself into the Geth's armored plating where it then detonated.
The remaining Geth froze for a few seconds as their network was suddenly deprived of its most powerful processing unit. During this time, Shepard proceeded to claw through them. Literally. With nothing but her bare claws, Shepard ripped through the metallic bodies of the Geth, treating their armor as if it was nothing but paper.
The whole ordeal lasted about fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds wherein Tali saw a force that would have given even a squad of Quarian marines trouble be torn to shreds by the monster she had called forth. Tali's mind briefly drifted back to the book in her backpack and wondered what other secrets it might yet hold.
"Let's move! Those… what did you call them? Geth? Well, whatever they are, they probably signaled our location to the others before I could take them all out." Shepard's voice halted Tali's current train of thought and brought her back to the situation at hand. Shepard was already dashing towards the entry of another alleywa,y and Tali was forced to start running in order to keep up with her.
Like a predator traversing its hunting grounds, Shepard led Tali through the twisting labyrinthian layout of the city until they finally emerged out onto one of the larger thoroughfares. Shepard grabbed hold of Tali's arm and practically dragged her around another series of barricades and towards one of the many skyscrapers on this street. There was nothing visibly special about this one in particular, but Tali trusted that Shepard, being a presumed inhabitant of this world, knew where she was going. Shepard pried open the sliding glass doors with her hands and ushered Tali inside. As she did so, the Quarian could hear the loud thrum of another Geth gunship behind her.
As Shepard slipped back around her to take the lead once again, Tali took the chance to throw a quick glance over her shoulder. This time, the squadron of Geth was not being led by a Prime, but what looked to be a Krogan.
What the hell was going on? Since when did the Geth work with Krogan mercenaries?
"How much farther till we get to your ship?" Tali asked as she followed Shepard
"Not far. Once we get to the basement, we can take the tunnel that leads to the underground hangar." Shepard replied as she grabbed Tali's arm again and drug her around a corner and towards a stairwell. Behind them, Tali could hear the loud thundering steps of the Krogan and his Geth entourage.
"I don't suppose you could do the same thing to these Geth, could you?" Tali gasped, slightly breathless, as she lightly jogged down the stairs. They had been running non-stop for the past several minutes, and Tali was finally starting to feel winded.
"What thing would that be?"
"Uhh, kill them?" Tali said as she reached the bottom of the stairs. The room they emerged too was on the other side of the skyscraper from where they had entered. Through the nearby window, Tali could make out the first bit of grass she had seen in the concrete jungle. The floor below this one would most likely be the basement.
"Oh. Yeah, totally." Shepard said, unholstering out her shotgun and flattening her back against the wall adjacent to the stairwell's door. Tali copied the demon's movement and drew her pistol.
The Krogan charged into the room screaming, running straight past the two women standing beside the doorway. The Geth, at the very least, had the good sense to look to the side as they entered. It did the first one very little, however, as even its processors were unable to calculate a counter to the shotgun being shoved into its face. Its head exploded into a shower of sparks and white synthetic fluid. The next Geth met a similar fate as its single-minded focus on the demon who had killed its squadmate prevented it from noticing Tali's pistol blowing a hole in the back of its stalk-like neck. The next few Geth met similar ends as Tali and Shepard stepped out of cover and emptied their magazines into the kill box that was the stairwell. The Geth's kinetic barriers were swiftly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of gunfire and a few applications of Tali's overload module on her Omnitool. When the last of the Geth fell, a loud booming laugh began to fill the room.
"Alright, ladies. I've got to admit that was impressive. But I'm not as fragile as those tin cans." The Krogan grinned as the two-meter mountain of muscle lumbered forward.
Keelah, he's huge!
Tali fumbled with her pistol as she tried to pop the heat sink on her gun. The Krogan chuckled as he watched her. "What's the matter suit rat? Never reloaded a gun befo-"
The Kogan's gloating was cut off by a Shepard as she leapt forward onto the face of the gigantic alien and kicked his shotgun out of his hands. He screamed as Shepard's claw-like nails tore at his eyes in an attempt to gouge them out. Meanwhile ,Shepard's serpentine tail twisted around Shepard's waist and sunk its fangs into the Krogan's throat. Tali saw a few drops of greenish-yellow fluid seep out from around the snake's mouth as the acidic venom was pumped into the behemoth's body.
But this Krogan was not like the Geth.
The Geth were incapable of feeling pain.
The Krogan was.
And as such it was also capable of feeling anger.
The Krogan roared as its fist slammed into Shepard's abdomen. The jagged black metal armor she was wearing cracked under the force of the blow, and its owner's eyes widened as the breath was forced up out of her lungs. Strangely enough Tali herself also felt a slight pain in her stomach followed by a strange breathless sensation. Nevertheless, the demon refused to let go and instead responded by biting down into the exposed flesh on the side of the alien's neck below its armored skull. The Krogan screamed in pain as he finally pried the demon off him. He threw the demon against the wall as he clutched at the gaping wound in the side of his neck from where Shepard had bitten down into. Tali saw a couple of stars dance in front of her eyes as she felt a sudden pain in her head and back.
"You're going to pay for that BITCH!" The Krogan roared as he drew his knife. Shepard stood up, still holding the piece of alien meat in her mouth, before swallowing it whole with an audible gulping noise. She licked her lips before lunging at the beast again.
This time the Krogan was ready for her. He threw an arm up to keep the demon from latching onto his face a gain and thrust towards the crack in her armor with his knife. The blow missed, however, as Krogan's knife hand was twisted to the side by Shepard's tail as its fangs hooked onto it. The Krogan growled as he headbutted her. Shepard headbutted him back.
The two continued to grapple like this for a few seconds before Tali, who had been sitting there mesmerized by her companion's penchant for violence, finally remembered that she had a pistol. Looking down at the pistol, she finally managed to pop the heatsink and reload the weapon. Then, raising the weapon to bear on the Krogan's massive frame, she fired three shots.
The Krogan screamed as one of the bullets lodged itself in the beast's already bloody eye. The momentary distraction was all Shepard needed to land a brutal left hook to the Krogan's new blind spot. The blow was so strong that the Krogan actually stumbled from the force of it. Tali smiled as she finally managed to be helpful for a change rather than letting her monstrous companion handle all the work. Her eyes further widened as the Krogan's knees began to tremble and he leaned against the wall for support.
Had that actually been enough to kill a Krogan?
Their alien adversary coughed wetly as blood spewed out of his gigantic maw. "Wh-Whats going on? Why do I feel so weak? Its like my throat is burning-"
"Well my venom does tend to have that effect on people." Shepard grinned as her snake-like tail plucked the combat knife out of the Krogan's shaking hand. "I'll admit that for the dose I gave you, you've held out longer than most would have. Usually, my prey would be a quivering mess on the floor by now-"
Shepard's monologue was cut off as the Krogan whirled on her and slammed his head into her's. "I'm not dead yet, you bitch!" he yelled as he wrapped his arms around her waist and charged into the nearby wall. Tali felt the breath get knocked out of her, followed by a pain in her skull and the entirety of her torso. This was despite the fact that she had been dealt no injuries whatsoever. The only one who had been hurt here was the Krogan and Shepard-
Shepard.
The demon that she had summoned.
The demon that she had summoned.
Had the summoning ritual somehow bound Shepard's life to Tali's? It certainly seemed so, as the Quarian could feel every single punch and kick that the Krogan threw. Somehow, she even felt it when Shepard's snake-like tail was stepped on. It stood to reason, therefore that if Shepard were to die…
The Krogan continued to lay into the cornered demon as his regenerative abilities and blood rage began to kick in. Shepard tried to retaliate with the occasional punch but the Krogan's barrage was too furious for even her to overcome. The charge had knocked her off her guard and she couldn't get it back up. All she had were her bare hands to defend herself with since the charge had also knocked the shotgun out of its makeshift holster on her hip.
The shotgun.
Tali lunged for it and popped the heat sink. From there she shakily fire raised the weapon and emptied the entire magazine in the krogan's back before following it up with incineration from her omnitool. The Krogan growled at her as he turned around, barely affected by Tali's lackluster suprise attack. As the monster stomped over to her, Tali dimly realized in the back of her mind that it would have been smarter for her to fire off her incineration first so as to melt the Krogan's armor.
Tali used her legs to scramble backwards along the smooth tiled floor, and she reloaded her weapon again and fired at the Krogan's face. The alien simply raised his armored hand to cover his one remaining good eye and let the rest of his rage-contorted face simply absorb the gunfire. Tali flicked a switch on her shotgun, activating the carnage round loaded into it, and blew the arm clean off.
The Krogan screamed as his mutilated limb gushed blood like a fountain. Instead of attempting to try and stop the bleeding, he used his remaining hand to grab Tali's foot and drag her closer. Tali screamed as she dropped the shotgun and tried vainly to gain some kind of purchase on the floor. The Krogan then gripped her by the neck and lifted her off the ground. The Quarian tried to gag out a quick prayer to her clan's ancestors for help, but the words were sealed inside her windpipe by the Krogan's fist.
In the end, it did not matter.
Tali's ancestors would not save her.
But Shepard would.
Tali's scream had snapped the demon out of the daze of pain she was in, and now Shepard was back on her feet. This time, angrier than before. And this time, wielding the combat knife.
It had taken her tail getting stepped on to drag it within arms' reach, but to the expert fighter, it was a much better trade-off when the alternative was being beaten to death. The chimeric demon let out a bestial roar as she leapt onto the Krogan's hump and drove the alien's own knife into his neck up to the hilt. The blade traced a jagged line across the beast's throat as Shepard cut him open. With her free hand she plunged her arm into the Krogan's innards and pulled out the first thing she grabbed onto.
The Krogan dropped Tali as his windpipe was ripped out his throat. He gurgled helplessly as the serpentine tail, which now had a portion that looked flatter than the rest of it, plunged its head into the wound and began to drink. Shepard's eyes rolled back in, her head, and she let out a sigh as the Krogan's eyes glowed a faint green before going entirely black, and his body collapsed to the floor.
Tali lay on the floor from where she had been dropped and rubbed her throat as she caught her breath. Shepard stumbled over towards her. "You okay?"
Tali nodded before slowly getting up and making her way to one of the downed Geth. "Yeah, j-just give me a minute. I want to try and see if I can't salvage the data cores of one of these Geth and find out why they came here. They haven't left our home system in 300 years. Whatever reason they have for coming to this world… well, lets just say it can't be good."
Shepard nodded and turned her attention to the Krogan's corpse while Tali turned hers to the Geth with the least damaged central processing core. As she worked, Tali's mind began to drift.
What the hell had she gotten herself into?
First, she was almost torn apart by shadow spirits before being saved by a giant monster. Then, the giant monster turns into a beautiful woman who would go onto slaughter two squads of Geth and a Krogan. Speaking of which, what was Shepard anyway? She looked vaguely like the native Terrans Tali had seen in the library photo but with horns and a tail. The book she had used to summon her had called her a demon, but truth be told, Tali still didn't know exactly what that was. There was no good translation for it.
Unlike most other species in the galaxy, the Quarians worshipped their ancestors and only their ancestors. Their entire mythology was tied to their ancestors. A spirit didn't exist unless it had been alive first. They didn't believe in a Goddess like the Asari did. They didn't believe in weird spirits embodying aspects of the natural world and certain emotions as the Turians did. And they didn't believe that the Protheans were Gods either. The Quarian religion, which had seen a resurgence during their time in exile, tied every single supernatural entity to an ancestral spirit. Was it a malicious spirit? It was a malicious ancestor or the ancestor of a rival clan. Was is it a benevolent spirit? It was a kind ancestor. Was it a neutral spirit? It was an ancestor that just simply did not care.
At best, demon translated to Ral-Veshai-hessh 'bad-outsider-spirit'. But Shepard didn't seem bad. And what did outsider mean? The Kheelish word for the ancestors of other clans was Lal Hessh, which literally translated to 'not my ancestor'. The ancestors of other species was Lal Kheel Hessh, 'not my people's ancestor.' There was no such thing as an outsider spirit. All spirits were tied to their people or another species' people. And since they were all organic they were all connected.
On top of that, how were they able to understand each other? Tali did not know what language Shepard was speaking, but whenever the demon opened her mouth, it was like the words she was uttering were drowned out in place of their Kheelish variants in her mind. Was this another one of Shepard's supernatural powers? Was this something else demons could do?
What was a demon?
Tali's musing were interrupted by a loud smacking sound followed by what sounded like a belch. The Quarian frowned and pocketed the now extracted data core before turning around. Then she screamed.
Shepard looked over towards her and swallowed the piece of meat she had in her mouth. "What's wrong?" she asked, wiping away some of the blood that coated her chin and setting the organ that she had planned on eating next off to the side.
Tali scrambled backward away from the demon and the corpse she had been in the middle of devouring. For some reason, up until this point, Tali had still never made the connection that Shepard was the same giant monster that had saved her. She knew that Shepard was, but in the back of her mind, she couldn't see the kind woman who had helped and protected her as the monster who had devoured the shadow spirits and who had almost devoured her.
Now, however, that connection had finally been made.
"G-Get away from me!" Tali screamed as her back finally slammed against the wall of the room.
A look of genuine pain crossed Shepard's face before she looked down at the corpse in front of her. Then her eyes widened in realization as if she remembered what she was doing was extremely wrong, and she let out a small "Ooooohhhhh" noise. Afterward, she got to feet and held her hands up in what was supposed to be a peaceful manner, but all it did was just give Tali a better view of the blood and guts still coating them. "I know this looks bad, but-"
"BUT WHAT!?" Tali shrieked. "You are EATING him!"
"That is true, but…" Shepard was silent for a moment as she thought of what to say. "He did try to kill us, didn't he?"
Tali's glowing silver eyes went dark for a second as she blinked in incredulity. "That doesn't mean you can eat him!"
"Well, I'm hungry and its not like there's anything else for me to eat!" Shepard said, putting her hands on her hips.
"Would you like some nutrient paste?" Tali asked awkwardly, taking a tube out of her backpack and tossing it to Shepard. In the back of her mind, Tali realized the fact that Shepard considered the Krogan her only possible meal, meant that her companion did not view Tali herself as food.
Shepard caught the tub and fiddled with the cap before tearing it off. From there she sucked down the tube's contents before tossing the tube back to Tali. "That tasted like shit."
"But are you still hungry?" Tali asked, hoping that the nutrient past had done its job.
"Yes. In fact, I feel hungrier now than I did before. Like seriously, do you have any actual food on you?" Shepard snapped, offended at the lackluster offering.
"That's literally all I can physically eat," Tali responded in a deadpan tone.
Shepard cringed. "Oh… That must suck."
"It does. But usually, it satisfies my appetite."
Shepard let out a defeated sigh. "Nothing has satisfied me since I was human. All I can do now is try to mitigate how hungry I feel."
Tali cocked her head to the side in curiosity. "Human?"
"It's what I really am!" Shepard said emphatically, putting her clawed hands on her chest, before looking away with a pained expression. "Or rather what I was."
"I… I don't follow." Tali said, getting up. Her curiosity was piqued at the prospect of getting more answers to what happened to the Terrans and their planet.
Shepard let out a sigh as her eyes unfocused slightly. "I used to be a human. This whole planet used to be full of them. But after the war with the Protheans… when the Reapers came… things started to break down."
Shepard pointed a finger at Tali's backpack. "When we discovered that magic is real-"
Keelah, of course it was. At this point, she wasn't surprised.
"-we started to abuse it. We thought it was our way of protecting ourselves against the Reapers, but our desperation left us open to things we thought were once only a myth."
"Demons?" Tali asked, stepping forward slightly.
"Not just demons. Demons, Daemons, Fey, Aberrations, Angels, Genies, and… Devils."
"Devils?" That just translated to her as 'bad-outsider-trickster-spirit.' "I don't really understand a lot of these words."
"Neither did we. We thought we did, but we were just deluding ourselves." Shepard closed her eyes. "I and my ship were recalled to Earth to help prep its defense against the oncoming Reaper assault and to quell the riots that were breaking out. As the Reapers got closer and closer to Earth more and more people were summoning fiends in hopes of making a deal to save themselves. Eventually, one group of people did… and the price of their salvation was the entire human race."
Shepard looked down at herself before continuing. "A human terrorist organization known as Cerberus made a deal with Asmodeus, the King of Hell. All Cerberus personnel would be inducted into the Infernal hierarchy, while the rest of humanity would have their souls harvested. Thankfully, I managed to prevent the harvest, but…"
"But you and the rest of your species were left mutated." Tali surmised.
"In a sense, yes. We were also trapped in the Lower Planes on top of it all. From there, we all kind of… split up. Some decided to follow Cerberus' lead and join Asmodeus, others joined the Daemon ranks of the Apocalypse Riders, and others fled into the Abyss to try and find a way back to our homeworld." Shepard paused for a second to lick her lips. "I and my crew followed Alliance high command into the Abyss where we managed to carve out a small holding for ourselves. A place where former humans could find refuge. From what I heard, it still's there, but I haven't been back to Sanctuary in a long time."
"You left?" Tali asked.
Shepard was silent for a long time before she answered. "It was supposed to be a temporary settlement. A home base we could use until we found a way back home. But we never did. It had been a couple of millenia by the time I left, and things… didn't look like they were getting any better. I couldn't stand by any longer and watch my people continue on like that. So I decided to strike out on my own and hunt down the traitors that did this to us… although at some point, I abandoned that mission too." Shepard whispered despondently. "At that point I was all alone with nothing but this never-ending hunger. I just got lost in it."
"But you seem pretty level-headed." Tali replied. "I mean, sure trying to eat the um… corpse isn't a very good sign, but you don't seem like a hunger-driven cannibalistic psycho to me."
Shepard chuckled slightly, but no smile was on her face. "Maybe not now. But I can't remember what I was like up until recently. These past few thousand years have all blurred together. When you summoned me, I lost a lot of my power, but I also returned to what I was like when I first became a demon."
Tali's eyes widened in realization. "Thats why you look fo different from when I first saw you! And it explains why you were so quick to eat the Shadow Spirits! You were hunting."
"Those Shadow Spirits were lesser Daemons who were able to partially manifest themselves in the physical plane of existence on the nightside of the planet. But yeah. That's sort of the gist of it all." Shepard said, scratching the back of her head awkwardly before promptly changing the subject. "We should probably get to my ship. It's not too far from here."
Shepard walked over to a nearby door and opened it, revealing another stairwell. Tali followed Shepard down into the basement and allowed the demon to lead her through the dark into a tunnel.
The trek through the tunnel took over an hour, but when they finally reached its end Tali finally bore witness to the greatest piece of technology the ancient race of humanity had ever built.
The underground hangar doors were partially open, allowing in a beam of light that illuminated the SSV Normandy. A stealth frigate that was leagues ahead of anything any of the Council races had managed to build this far.