Prologue: Emerald Dawn

The allied fleet was in chaos. Wounded ships vented atmosphere, casualties and glittering eezo across the sky above Earth. Reapers, some damaged, but most intact, hung in space unimaginably ancient and terrifying even in their smallest movements. They did not pursue the ships now fleeing the system. Did they understand what was about to happen, or did they simply not care? That thought was beyond the captains and crews of the departing ships. Among those who remained, such a thought was further still. Those whose ships were too damaged to flee marveled at the sight unfolding across their monitors and through their view ports. Silently or not, each of those left behind prayed to their Spirits, their Gods, Goddesses, and Ancestors, not knowing if their next breaths would be their lasts.

Spinning open, the Citadel caught the reflected light of Luna along the vast expanses of the Wards, the petals of this mechanical flower. At its heart, the Crucible distorted the space around it, gathering dark energy from this and other nearby dimensions, building in power. The pulses started slowly as waves cascading along the Wards towards the Presidium and the Crucible. The waves built in power and speed, matching the distortions coming from the Crucible, both racing to the point in space at the very center of the Presidium ring. Every ounce of light began to dim as the waves of dark energy built around that point, a rising crescendo of overwhelming force. For those left alive in the Wards of the Citadel, the power was deafening, each wave seemingly pulling the very life from their bodies as they curled into fetal positions where they had stood.

As massive as the buildup had become, it vanished in but a heartbeat. For two more heartbeats, a deathly stillness lingered. Suddenly, the entire orbit of Earth was bathed in brilliant light, as if Sol had exploded into a nova. An emerald dawn blinding every living and unliving thing in the sky. A light without heat that penetrated hull, barrier, skin and bone as if nothing material could hinder its passage. Earth shuddered in the wave of light, as if reluctant to surrender the violence and death on her surface. The broken ships surrounding the Citadel were cast about as leaves in an Autumn storm. The wave rippled out from the Citadel, a massive beam could be seen at its core, a radiant pillar the width of the opened station, stretching from Earth into the depths of space. Nearly 40 AU from Earth the beam incinerated the dwarf moon Nix and slammed into the Charon Mass Relay which reacted violently. All three containment rings on the ancient device began to spin at incredible velocities. The mechanically fluid symmetry of the massive object gave way to a shaking and chaotic flexing as the Relay fought to contain, direct and add to the energy pouring through it. The silvery metal of the arcane machine reflected the jade beam connecting the relay to the Citadel, the millions of components and angles of its surface bent and shifted the light, turning the device into a gemstone hanging in space.

The emerald waves rushed along the surface of every object in the Sol system, expanding outwards. As the wave surged away from the Crucible, it gained speed, shifting into other spectrums as it exceeded light speed. Even invisible, its passage was just as penetrating and just as unyielding. In its wake, the fundamental chemistry of creation was altered. Organic and inorganic lost meaning, carbon and silica became interchangeable, biochemical interactions flowed with quantum states and electron charges, amino acids and polymer chains became one. Where organic life and inorganic machine once stood separate, dark mirrors of each other, now they stood as one. Plant, animal, machine, and mineral became something else. Where respiration and consumption once fueled life, now some of those could draw energy from heat, light, sound, and kinesis, even others could perform all of those. The distinction between creator and created was replaced by the relationship of parent and child. The flaws of one were burned away by the strengths of the other. In the first few moments of this new reality, possible and impossible were suddenly and irrevocably redefined.

Back in Earth orbit, the Crucible began to heave under the strain of powering the massive wave. Slowly, stress fractures began to race along the sphere and tower that comprised the weapon. Instead of releasing its remaining energy upon the planet below, the power was directed inward, folding space along infinite dimensions. The Crucible began to implode. As the great weapon shuddered in its cradle atop the Presidium ring, the beam began to flicker, its power source dying. With a green-white flash, the Crucible collapsed into a single atom and ceased to exist in this dimension. The beam faded as it raced away from the Citadel, almost a rainfall in reverse barreling into the heavens. As the Citadel was left behind in darkness, one last brilliant comet of emerald energy raced after the fading beam, chasing it into space.

As the last ounces of energy flowed into the Mass Relay, the containment rings aligned and locked. A new beam, as brilliant and powerful as the first, erupted from the edge of the relay into space beyond, immediately shifting beyond both the visible spectrums and the barrier of lightspeed. It arced across space in the blink of an eye, the beam reappearing and connecting to the Arcturus Stream Relay. The power burst into the new relay, and caused an identical green pulse to erupt from the core, spreading across every object in the Arcturus Stream and surging outward. Just as it had done to the Charon Relay, the energy began rebuilding as the Arcturus containment rings churned with speed. The final gasps of energy reached Arcturus and the Charon Relay darkened, its containment rings shattered, drifting away from the station. From Arcturus, the process repeated again, connecting to each of the ancient Mass Relays across the galaxy. Each connection matched to a pulse of green energy and a beam connecting to the next system until no more systems and no more relays were left to connect. The last relay to fire, the enigmatic Omega 4 Relay, poured all of its remaining energy coreward to be absorbed by the cluster of black holes and stellar nurseries at the heart of the galaxy, forever changing the very building blocks of life in the Milky Way.

Author's Notes (10/4/13): This is an exercise in writing for me. Tired of the glamorizing of technical proposals and tedious political debate, I have decided to venture into the realm of fiction with what has become my favorite Science Fiction universe, Mass Effect. Possibly lost amidst the great volume of such works on FanFiction (over 13,000 as of this writing) it may simply be an exercise in vanity. However, having read a fair amount of the stories in the community, I noticed a distinct lack of those depicting "my decisions" and even fewer addressing the post-Reaper War of the Synthesis ending. I know there's quite a bit of resentment at some of the endings, even some very vocal ones about "space magic" and whatnot. However, looking at the series as a whole, the story was constantly moving towards one of acceptance of other cultures and species and a unification of the galaxy. That concept flew in the face of the ideal of the Reapers, where only their view of order existed, where the distinctiveness of each harvested cycle was washed away into the faceless shell of the Reaper. Even between Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, steps were taken to reinforce that homogenous nature of the cycle (compare the last scene post-collector in ME2 vs. the Reaper flotilla above Earth.) The Synthesis ending, for me, was the logical conclusion of that path. From Ilos to Mnemosyne to Rannoch, and Javik's "Force of Evolution" soliloquy, Shepard was meant to see that our differences were not nearly as great as we believed them. The Paragon path led Shepard to take so many lives for so many causes that her only path to redemption had to be (to quote The Doctor) "Just this once, everyone lives."

I'll post as frequently as I can until I run out of ideas. I have about six or so in the hopper as new chapters that need work. I don't know if there will be an over-arcing story in there, but maybe.

Author's Notes (10/5/13): Corrected some typos and poor word choices on the re-read. Fixed the tense problems in the last section.