Chapter 1

The cosmos was silent.

Sephiroth listened as he sailed, the arcing bands of his conquered Life-stream propelling him on. He passed new-born stars, drifting planets of dead rock, and ancient black holes bending light around their pull. He ignored them and soared onwards, ever listening. Light was deceptive, but life, life sang. In the vast expanse of silence, there, on the edge of a galaxy, he heard a hushed sigh of life.

He adjusted his course.

The cries of sapience lead him to a round little ship. So loud for such a small group, he had expected an old world with a weak heartbeat. He approached from the dark, keeping himself hidden from view. Of the many worlds he had merged with on his search he had never yet found life that had escaped its own planet's orbit. The metal vessel drifted in slow orbit around a gas giant in an otherwise empty star system, far from any aid. Petty mortals and their hubris.

He listened. The occupants were tightly packed but not unhappy. The cacophony of untamed life energy murmured with noisy purpose and satisfaction. The passengers were singing.

He drifted closer, emitting no light and bending that of the star at his back around to his front to continue on its path undisturbed.

The song was complex for such little life forms, chattering insectoids without physical mouths. They sang in chorus through a mental connection they all shared. No wonder such a small collection of life had caught his attention, they were communicating through their own little vessel of Lifestream, independent of a planet.

All but one of the occupants were children. He could hear the strong voice of the eldest leading the little ones. Ah. The mother, a queen guiding her brood.

He listened long enough to grasp the notes of their song, how the queen wove her instructions into it. Her children sang back to her as they fulfilled her will in the maintenance of the ship and tending to the egg sacs of their brethren.

He reached across the void to twist a single note.

The chattering little ones took it up and carried it through the ship. The queen sang on, repeating herself here and there to correct their chorus. The sour note lingered, slightly off, echoing back and forward between the workers.

The queen sang louder, clear and patient.

He could feel her confusion but she dismissed it as the mistake of inexperienced children.

He twisted the song a little more and followed it down in their minds.

The queen faltered. She began her verse again.

The little ones sang on without her. He directed them and they sliced open the egg sacs of their brethren.

The queen screamed. The little ones turned on her, still singing happily. She didn't know how to fight back. Too scared of injuring them, she retaliated only weakly. She activated the ship's beacons in her flailing, crying for help. Her young overwhelmed her with sheer numbers, slicing her open with sharp pincers.

The song died away as she fell. The emergency beacon continued, calling into the stillness.

The little ones looked around, unsteady on floors slick with their handiwork. They began to chatter, a desperate attempt to take up the song again, confused and alone. The scared wail disintegrated into cries for help. They begged for the song to come back and lead them again.

Sephiroth reached down and told them to open the walls. Frantic for instruction and comfort, they followed his voice and destroyed the ship.

Oxygen vented into the void and the little ones joined their mother.

The strands of all their life energy pooled and coiled within the wreckage and around bodies growing cold. Still so scared and lost. Still calling for help. He called to the disjointed cacophony and it came to him. He took it all, smoothing out the memories of pain and fear and hope, erasing all they were in life. The queen's energy resisted but only for a moment, recognising her murderer. He took the memory from her and the energy faded into his own resplendent current, until it was simply more of him.

He floated alone amidst the debris.

The cosmos was silent.

Nothing but his own thoughts reverberated back up to him through the depths of life energy he had converted. The new life had confessed its secrets, this galaxy was heavily populated already. Good. He would take it all. And perhaps after his work was done, he would choose from within this galaxy a place to build the promised land.

There was no surge of Jenova's hunger at the thought, nor the rasping agony of Gaia's self-righteous dead. Eons ago he had smothered all in the tide, from the strongest to the weakest little soul. No voice but his own endured.

He did not need to speak to himself, so the Lifestream flowed in silence. He wondered if the shining future of the promised land would also be silent.

He turned away from the wreckage towards the galaxy's centre. It would be whatever he commanded it to be.

He listened.

Further within the star cluster he heard the rhythm of a planet's heartbeat. He concentrated on it, it was not far away and the path was clear.

A whisper of life hitched from inside the same star system as him.

He paused. The whisper died away – masked.

Without moving he stretched out with his mind, straining to hear what had hidden itself from him. There, on the other side of the gas giant. It was little more than a shadow to his senses but he heard the efforts to keep itself from view. The tight control of a consciousness enacting its will.

It was watching him.

If he had a mouth he would have smiled. It have been so very long since anything had so much as seen him coming, let alone mounted any effective defences. He would see what this creature was capable of.

First, he focused on the distant planet again and launched himself onwards. The whisper of life did not follow and he felt disappointed in it. He would return after taking the planet and see what defences it had mounted.

The heartbeat lead him to a quiet ocean world. Little life populated its waters, none of it intelligent. He observed the meagre offerings and considered whether it was worth his efforts. He hovered over the saline waters, listening to the thin heartbeat. It sped up at his proximity.

A whisper, from behind one of the planet's moons.

Not so disappointing after all, he considered, listening for his watcher. It had travelled faster than he expected, and with little energy expended for him to have missed its arrival. It hid in the moons shadow, but that did nothing to disguise the hushed murmur of its spirit energy.

There was intent there, studying him.

He let himself sink into the waves, severing a mere splinter of his presence and leaving it to hover half submerged in the water where its size might not be easily discerned. The bulk of himself he plunged down, down into the planet, past the suddenly panicking planet's consciousness, and out the other side. He reined in himself, his energy and vibrance.

He soared around the star system, approaching the distracted watcher from far above the planet. Likely it observed the world through light, so he doused his, as silent and dark as the cosmos.

It looked like a ship, but he doubted it truly was. A long thin metal vessel, shaped after a sea creature. The life within sounded nothing like the little insects and their mother, he couldn't hear the babble of passengers, the disjointed energy of a crew, or even the empty echo of automation. He concentrated further and heard…

A current. Spirit energy bound up into tight coils, directed and redirected along structured passageways. 'Current' was inaccurate, the life within was more like netting, bound into place by hard rivets of solid, concentrated energy. What was it, a mobile Mako reactor? No, its energy was active and constantly flowing through its coils, self-sustaining, and well ordered. Like wires in a server rack.

It was a machine, and it was alive.

Fascinating, he thought, as he descended upon its hull. He sunk his will into it, ready to claim the bound up nets of life.

If it was surprised, it showed no sign of it. Strong walls met him, and the Consciousness lashed back with a will of its own.

He steeled himself and burrowed deeper into its form. The bound up spirit energy responded only sluggishly to him, stored in a form he didn't know. The solid rivets of energy resisted him and threw back mental volleys that burned at his own strength.

He endured. At last he broke through, shattering the rivets, and forced its stores to convert into spirit energy as he knew it. It was a greater struggle than any he had faced since Gaia and he felt satisfaction with the conquered watcher. He called its energy to him. There was a burning flash and a violent concentration of life slammed into him. The sheer quantity shocked him, easily a planet's worth bound into such a small physical vessel.

But it was empty. He searched through himself, the energy melding gentling into his current now that he had converted it, but it… it held nothing new. No knowledge, no wisdom, not even the curiosity of a blank slate. If the vessel was a server, someone had done a system wipe just before their final defeat.

There had been no trace of the Consciousness in the currents of his new energy. Did it destroy itself?

Frustrated and even more disappointed than before, he left the empty vessel in its place by the moon and floated back down to the planet. Their futile battle had lasted hours. He sank down into the core and tore the planet's energy away from the rock and merged with it. It knew so little.

He recalled the sliver of himself he had left in the waters.

It didn't move.

He paused in his planet destruction, looking back up to the surface.

The sliver of energy had changed, less a little current bending in on itself, more like a twisted cable of… netting.

He rocketed up through the planet, seething at the sudden turn. Seconds before he burst through the surface, the connection with the sliver of himself was cut and he couldn't feel it at all. He could hear it though, coiling tighter.

He ascended up into the night, no longer hiding himself.

His severed energy was gone. A much larger ship watched him from high above the atmosphere, its whisper ever so slightly louder. He recognised the same Consciousness within, the same quiet Intent.

He drew his energy in to himself, holding it under tight leash as he examined what had been taken from him. The exchange of energy had not been even. He took far more than he lost, but he had gained no knowledge. If the living machine could take knowledge from spirit energy as he did then what might it have learned about him?

He could feel the Consciousness studying him, cold and analytical. He had underestimated it. Anger, cold and hungry, reverberated through him.

He would suffer no threats. But he accepted its challenge.

He presented his old human body, as he hadn't in centuries, and pointed his sword at the vessel. Then he turned and pointed it at the ship he had claimed, now cold and empty in the moon's orbit.

He rose high in the sky and sailed back to it, reaching along the empty hull and lining it with his own intent. The overwhelming bulk of himself he kept outside in the dark, no longer hiding. Another sliver of himself, smaller and more securely tied back to himself than the last, slid inside and waited.

It was an obvious gambit, with little risk and little chance of success, but this creature had earned his attention. He would see what they claimed of themselves.

His watcher remained stationary above the planet's atmosphere, but the whisper stretched out, and then the little ship in his grasp lit up. In one of the empty reservoirs that had once housed the solid rivets of energy, a place where strength of will was the only measure that mattered, the Intent rose up, opposite his own presence.

He took on his physical form again, luring it out. What mechanised abomination would greet him?

A human woman stepped forward.

He looked down at her.

She smiled up at him with hard, unamused eyes. She was short and compact in stature, in an undecorated military uniform and short red hair.

"I'm Shepard," she said. She reached out a hand to shake.

Perhaps she mistook his appearance for proof of human smallness in him and presented something she deemed comparable. Something insignificant, offensive in its mundanity, and by all appearances easy to overcome. She had set the same trap as him. He ignored the proffered hand.

"You have something of mine," he said.

"You can consider it payment," she replied, unimpressed. "For what you did to the Rachni and her brood."

Ah, the insects. "They were mine to take."

"They are mine to defend. As are all in this galaxy."

He regarded her for a moment. The Rachni queen had not known much, but she had called for aid and expected it to come. She had felt safe within the stretches of this galaxy.

"I have come to conquer," he said, thoughtfully. "In your place I shall build something better."

She crossed her arms. "We're not going to get on well, then, are we?"

They stared each other down for a moment. There wasn't much of her in the ship, just enough to talk. It would do.

He sprung his trap, locking her in.

She flashed through the network. He gave chase, trying to force a conversion, but she was quick. The controls activated. He sensed her intent a millisecond before the vessel detonated. A violent blast lit the dark with an energy he didn't recognise. He hurled himself back, feeling the edges of himself sizzle.

All the spirit energy on board burnt out and both connections severed.

The ship watched him still from across the star system, unmoved. The lines were drawn. He would meet the challenge of this machine that dared stand in his way and the galaxy it thought to protect would pay the price for its hubris.

The ship shot to lightspeed, retreating from the system.

Marigold closed her eyes and held onto her jasmine tea.

Outside, people were yelling.

She breathed in the relaxing scent, held it, and then let a slow breath out threw her mouth. She repeated the process.

People were yelling. In the third auxiliary office of the Asari Councillor, people were yelling.

She took a shaky sip.

Chaos. Absolute chaos.

She glimpsed down at the reports on her desk. She winced.

Marigold was one of the youngest Asari working under the councillor. She'd graduated from Serrice U with excellent grades, done her years of volunteer and local government work, before getting her foot in the door at a spritely one hundred and ninety eight years old. It had been her goal for so long to work here, in the heart of the galaxy, her finger on the pulse. She had said a lot of things along the way about making a difference and improving the world because that was what you said when chasing public office.

Now that she was getting into her second decade here, she was realising that what she really wanted was for everything to be tidy. Organised and according to plan.

There was nothing tidy about the stream of reports coming in.

She took another calming breath.

She pulled forward the first incident report. A relay in the Attican Traverse had been deactivated by the Shepards. Here she was just trying to keep everything neat and sensible, to bring some kind of rationale to the word, while a fleet of giant sentient ships had the gall to just… barge in and do whatever it wanted.

Close vital relay routes. Change comm buoy locations, move its sentries through contested space, and add security to Geth servers without so much as memo. Then it informed, informed, the Citadel Council of the changes it was making.

She wasn't even responsible for resolving the mess, just fact checking the reports and sending them off to whichever sub-office it concerned, and it was the worst nightmare she had ever encountered. How was she supposed to verify any of this? What was anyone supposed to do?

"Procedure? Never heard of it," she muttered under her breath. "Advanced warning? I don't think so. Traditional and cultural observances? No, no, its fine, really. Do whatever you want, its only tax payer credits."

"We don't pay the Shepards," Taerna, the woman at the desk next to her, replied.

"We pay for the relay they just closed without warning!"

Taerna looked up from her console. She was the only Asari here younger than Marigold, with deep blue skin and brazenly blocky markings running the length of her scalp crests.

"Aren't you worried about… like, why?" the younger woman asked. "It's a defensive fleet, and its mobilising. That's probably not a good sign."

"I'll tell you what's not a good sign, we're at the whims of this, this thing-"

"That's racist."

"-that doesn't feel the need to respect our system of government," Marigold finished, ignoring the quip. "Who do the Shepards answer to? A defensive fleet? Well, defensive of whom, and on who's orders? It's our galaxy, and there are rules."

Taerna grinned at her. "This like when Danli put your green tea bags in with the peppermint, yeah?"

"Okay, you can't do that. Everyone knows you can't do that. The green still smells like peppermint!"

"It's not even the same tea, you've gone through so many packets since then."

"The smell is in the box now!" She stopped, forcing a deep breath in, and out, in, and out. It was normally calming. "All I know is that if the Shepard fleet had KPIs, I don't think they'd be meeting them."

Taerna barked a laugh, but she sobered quickly. "They've never done this before, have they? I've never seen a report come up about the Shepards doing things."

Marigold hadn't but she wasn't going to say so. She just shook her head.

"I've never seen any record, ever, of the Shepards making a move. Not since before the fleet was even called 'Shepard'."

Marigold shook her head again. That was just fearmongering. If they got into the Shepards', the Reapers', old records, they'd end up with nothing but inane panic on their hands and nothing would get done. She turned back to her report.

The yelling in the offices next door hushed. Sharp footsteps tapped on the marble floor and they both looked up.

An Asari, frail with old age but standing tall nonetheless, walked past the glass walls of the auxiliary offices and onwards to the councillor's personal office.

"Is that…" Taerna said, half standing.

"Matriarch T'soni." Marigold felt her throat go dry. A retired matriarch, that was, if one could actually do such a thing. A veteran of the old war, and the Shepards' contact on the Citadel in the era of rebuilding that followed.

She didn't make public appearances out of politeness or decorum anymore. And now she was here.

In times like these, whatever was going on… procedure was more important than ever.

Gravity was colourful.

Shepard remembered not knowing that. Seeing the galaxy as an empty void only briefly interrupted by stars and planets and asteroids.

She knew better now. Everywhere, the dark energy of gravity glowed. It stretched and pulled in bright fluorescents far outside of the light spectrum, piercing matter and energy alike. It's vibrant display blanketed the expanses between stars, as well as the dense matter within them. There was no true vacuum or stillness: all atoms and the gaps between them were balanced somewhere in its tide.

One only needed the dark energy receptors to see it.

So it had been for the thousand years since she took up her vigil. So it had been for the eons long past that the Reaper fleet had existed.

Until the Anomaly arrived, lighting up sensors and triggering alarms from every ship she had in the cluster.

The Anomaly wasn't affected by gravity. It had no colour. It looked empty, a black patch of negative space forcing itself through the neon shades of stars and blackholes utterly unaffected by their mass shadows. Its trajectory was a perfect straight line, in breach of a number of laws of the universe.

She sent sentries to observe it. What they saw implied that it wasn't actually outside of gravity, it was bending gravity's force around it in, leaving itself floating in a little empty bubble.

Evidently their understanding of the universe had gaps in it. Would such an entity be vulnerable to biotics and mass effect based weaponry?

She fed the information back to all her lieutenants. The fleets sleeping in dark space acknowledged and archived it. Harbinger, lieutenant of the active fleet, requested they open fire immediately. Harbinger did not hold with the breaking of rules.

She commanded they watch still. It approached and destroyed a Rachni ship. Conjecture passed between her lieutenants and capitals ships near instantaneously. The Anomaly's methods were similar to the indoctrination the fleet was capable of but at speeds they could not rival.

It's destruction of the Rachni unacceptable. Disastrous first contacts happened, that was not her purview, but there was nothing but malicious intent from an outsider there. It was a hunter.

They would have to kill it.

Ships moved on her silent order.

A decoy drew its attention. The negative space split itself into two, the smaller mass hovering on the surface planet, with the other sank through the planet's core and out the other side. It could vary the density of its mass at will, then.

The emptiness circled around to hover over her decoy ship, its behaviour suggesting it believed itself invisible.

There was something very… organic, about its behaviour. Whatever it was, it was intelligent and it was likely a natural creature. Harbinger thought that statistically unlikely, but Harbinger tended to underestimate organics.

It broke the decoy ship from the inside out. Similar to what it had done to the Rachni but on a more intimate level, indoctrinating the very energy coursing through the non-sentient ship's veins. The patch of negative space grew a little larger.

Very well. She descended upon the smaller sliver of it and returned the favour. Indoctrination was a process designed to sway material minds, it worked much faster on a mind of pure energy she found.

And what energy it was, there was so much information kept within! She stripped it of all data and converted it into dark energy to disperse above the planet.

Sephiroth. That was what it called itself, and it was not a singular organic. It was itself a nation, wielding what it believed to be magic. He floated above the planet and pointed a sword at her.

What a curious creature.

She activated a second fleet from dark space. Harbinger moved their sentry points and enacted long-dormant security measures. Populations startled at the sudden change in routines a thousand years old.

Sephiroth declared war on her galaxy.

She was ready for him.

Korna relaxed into his lawn chair. The bay sparkled in the cheery afternoon sun far below him.

It hadn't been easy, finding a lawn chair strong enough to hold a full grown Krogan. Apparently nobody thought Krogan liked to relax too. He'd had to get it custom made in the end.

He put his feet up. Worth every cent.

He'd earned it too, over the centuries. Running with the Blood Pack when he was young and stupid, even caught the tail end of the Reaper War. He helped set up the new Krogan planets when they finally got the settlement rights. Then he'd gone back to mercenary work, too young and restless for settled life. He'd been there when the Humans and Turians butted heads, the second and third times. He'd been there when the Salarians went to war with the Batarians. That one had been fun, Salarian mechs made good explosions if you shot them just right.

But then his feet got sore, for all that the doctors said they were still regenerating perfectly. What did they know, they weren't walking around in them. He was tired of the constant fighting, the drama of it. So he got his trusty shotgun bronzed, fell in love with the bossiest, most amazing Asari he'd ever met, and bought himself a lawn chair.

A light breeze made the sun dance on the water. What a view. There was a single magnificent tree on the edge of the bay that he liked to look at. A big fluffy one with pale green leaves that rustled in the breeze and made something deep inside of him smile. It reminded him of the Citadel from back in the old days. There'd been a lake up in the presidium, with fish swimming in it a synthetic tree lining it.

The house behind him smelled of cookies, but he didn't need to check on them for another ten minutes. The little troublemakers loved his cookies and they'd be cooled nicely by the time he picked them up from school. Mirna, his wife, was off at work. Probably destroying some smaller, weaker tycoon with that beautiful, steely glare of hers.

It was nice being a trophy husband. He should have retired centuries ago.

The leaves on the magnificent tree flicked about wildly. It must have gotten windy down there, but it was still peaceful up on his little balcony.

The waters churned, no longer merely dancing with the sunlight.

He let out a sigh of contentment, then he paused. It was very quiet. He looked around, usually, there were flocks of noisy sea birds flying around. The air felt taut.

Where did all the birds go?

He looked around, suspicious. There they were, waddling down by the water, little lines of them marching down the piers and boat ramps towards the water, a long walk with the tide out. He let out a guffaw, he'd never seen them do that before!

The lines waddled into the surf, their little heads bobbing in the water, and then disappearing entirely.

And then all the birds were gone.

He stopped laughing.

Deep in his gut he felt a distant relief that Mirna and the kids weren't here.

The tide shouldn't have been out. It wasn't out ten minutes ago when he sat down. He got up and leaned over the edge of the balcony. The water was still retreating.

Was there a tsunami coming? Did the tectonic stabilisers break? He glared down at it, the sudden expanse of beach, no sign of the birds even though they couldn't have gotten that far yet. What was this?

Far out in the wider harbour, the water bulged up. A dark lump of it rose up, churning from within, and refusing to reflect the bright sun.

The water burst. Wings unfurled, glowing halos burst to life, as a creature that defied all explanation rose up in a sudden cacophony from the dark oceans. A vertical halo of glowing writing hung around it, spinning, hundreds of meters wide. It had a human head and arm, but the rest… he stayed locked in place, incapable of comprehending or looking away. It outshone the sun.

It raised its arm and an army of howling creatures leapt from the edges of the water. Oh, that was where the birds had gone, he thought with breaking deranged calm. Mutated chimera of bird and fish and crustacean screamed and gurgled. They ran back up the beach, overturning stranded boats, tearing people apart. They climbed the beachside buildings and smashed windows and crawled inside.

The haloed Thing hovering over the army spoke. It chanted in no language Korna knew, but the sound of it made his knees lock. Where was his gun? He needed his gun. His armour, he'd locked it away, he needed it-

The air sparked and glowed, currents of power whipping by. Korna's feet left the ground. He was picked up and out of his balcony, hurled at breakneck speeds in an arc around the Thing in the harbour.

Shadows interrupted the Thing's glow.

A mass effect field caught him, a sudden hazy blue wall of tessellating hexagons, holding him up hundreds of meters over the ground. His ears popped.

Dozens of Reaper ships descended from in silence. Their drones spiralled down, chasing the ocean's horde, darkening the skies. They surrounded the Thing. Their sleek black dreadnaughts cast strange shadows on the city, their mass effect fields halting gravity and forming barricades of condensed air.

The Thing raised a sword.

Korna barred his teeth, furious at this creature that dared challenge his life. That attacked his home and his people here. It would see. He was not undefended.

In the muffled silence of it all, the Reapers' blast pierced through it all, a sudden deafening bellow that had not been heard in a thousand years.

"Oh," he whispered, the sudden light of nine reaper blasts focusing on one point searing his eyes out. He had forgotten.

The mass effect field surged. The current fell out from under him, and he fell.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews are greatly appreciated.

Next time: It only gets weirder.