412Author's Note: FINALLY! I AM DONE! I'm probably going to try and reduce my writing workload, at least until NaNoWriMo starts again, or maybe I'll try doing Inktober. In Any case Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 100: The End of the Cycle Part 6
08M 00D 00H Until the Colossus Fires Finale T
he fighting lasted for days, thousands of insane Reapers tearing each other to pieces, the survivors moved onto the next battle, the dead joined them under the influence of Necromancy. In the end thousands of Reapers, living and dead, once again flooded into the Galaxy on the far end of the Galaxy from the Union's territory, or in other words entering directly into the Four Shroud Entities territory.
"Your champion is leading the Reapers." The Instrument of Desire turned it's attention to the End of the Cycle. "Are you okay with this?"
"She has killed thousands of Reapers, and now it's time for you to do your part." The End of the Cycle replied gesturing for the Four to Fight.
So the fighting started, and yet this was not the Reapers of Yore with the same tactics that they once utilised, there was no indoctrination to directly take control of the populace, and the use of husk technology was far more restrained only targeting the Shroud's monsters, the Giants, Beholders, Centaur's and Skeletons, the Synthorganic abominations tearing across whatever city they were in and breaking enemy resistance manually. Each of the Reaper's was a beacon of Psionic energy, mixing together Thorian, Eezo and their Nanite Husk technology in order to mass produce jammers on every world that they invaded, cutting off the Shroud's influence as they corralled the populace. As days wore on more and more worlds were cut off from the influence of the crippled Shroud Entities.
"You're okay with this?" The Eater had been hobbled, they only had the bare minimal amount of influence needed to hold together the Weave and command their followers as did the others.
"You're still killing plenty of Reapers."
Which was factually true after all. Each world had access to Thorian spores, and enough raw organic matter that they could spawn Thresher Maws big enough to tear them down. The Reapers have no interest in the culture, history or language of the people that they wipe out and use as raw materials, they left that task to their mortal slaves that they acquired using indoctrination. The Reaper's apparently made sure that all of their own kind carried knowledge of the Four Tumour's had been among those who had been reanimated, or were among the dead, there was no avenue left to bring them under the Tumour's control.
"I'm just making sure that you're behaving yourselves."
"I find it suspicious that someone who is dedicated to ending the Reapers are standing by as they run wild." To be fair the Whisperer of Secrets found a lot of things suspicious, it was kind of his whole thing after all.
"I am the collective will of the Galaxy." The End shrugged as if it was no big deal. "It demands that you begone, even the four of you don't like each other, I am merely going to follow your wishes."
07M 00D 00H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
The Union laughed at the idea of an alliance. The Anti-wormhole devices were deployed to every system, the gaps between were being actively patrolled by Custodian ships and any Shroud force that tried to breach Union territory was terminated with extreme prejudice.
The Spire was being rebuilt again, returned to something closer to it's original configuration, with improvements.
Saren had created a monster, the Tebrid's that had been linked together into a virtual space had invited their friends over, the station had been deconstructed and rebuilt several times, each time including new innovations that the Tebrids had devised improving processing speed of the station each time allowing them to spend more time in cyber space in exchange for less time in real space, to the point that the innovations went to their flesh and blood bodies too.
Their DNA had been Altered, Gorthikian extra brains and improved neural structures which together with the extreme stress being placed on their bodies by their technology had dramatically shortened their expected lifespans. In fact they were dying off so much that they made additional innovations, Tiyanki reproductive tendrils, the ability to naturally bud growing more Tebrids directly from their bodies, Plasmoid body types that made it so that several Tebrids could be crammed into the space that only one use to be able to occupy, and nano technology building life span improving cybernetics and Grey boxes directly into their bodies as they grew. The nano technology also broke down dead Tebrid flesh, integrating the data from their grey boxes directly into the next generation and preserving the knowledge and personalities of the previous generation.
Like this Technology now faced a explosive revolution, the Tebrids were studying the Weave at a accelerated rate, they were now researching ways to stabilise and alter the weave to suit their own interests, increasing he speed of light, improving the conductivity of Alloys, anything to drive forward their next innovation. Not even the Spire was spared their machinations as they worked to rebuild, restore and improve the Psi construct to it's former glory with a entire galaxy worth of Zro for the Tebrids to play with. All the while a golden needle started to take form across the database that had become the Tebrid's collective consciousness.
06M 00D 00H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
Fending off the Reaper's attack took the Tumour's full attention, not to mention tampering with the weave by the Tebrids, it took Dahaka a uncomfortably long time to escape his black hole prison, and when he did finally escape he was bursting with power, a walking piggy bank of psionic energy from his masters as they attempted to cut their losses against the Reapers. And then the local wormhole blocker went down, only in that area. A familiar figure appearing before Dahaka could break anything else. For Two months Thuban refused to leave her child's side, refused to let the abomination that he had become wreak anymore havoc. Now a Wormhole had opened, releasing a Dreadnought into the area, one that soon transformed into a giant.
"Go get checked out." The Worm hole blocker immediately went back up as soon as the giant had stepped through, however Thuban was easily capable of flying over to the nearest medical station her followers had set up specifically for her. Thuban rumbled in response. "Lady, you do not want to see what we're going to do to his little mot." Thuban relented, sending backwards glances as she left the system. "You!" The tone of the psionic message had flown past angry, flown past mere rage and straight to calm and stayed there in that state. "Do you have any idea what we call a child who hits their own mother where we come from?" The Centurion assumed a boxer's stance as the giant war machines's weapons came online with a quiet whine, the four headed beast growling in response. "I'll let you take a wild guess!"
Four sets of lizard lips curled upwards into a snarl at the war machines, already energies were gathering together full multiple blasts as the creature prepared for an attack. At once multiple breathes were released into the direction of the Centurion at once, and then Dahaka turned around and attempted to flee. Right now he represented the largest concentrated chunk of his master's power and if he was killed or worse captured then it would be a severe blow to them.
"Where do you think you are going!?" A tractor beam grabbed hold of Dahaka by his tail and started forcibly dragging the beast backwards towards the Centurion. Immediately the Green and red heads bent over to unleash fire and exotic gas attacks to break the hold, but was suddenly interrupted as a second beam hit the Eater's head and forced the head and the tail apart, and then three more beams fired out to restrain each head. "You have this coming brat." While one hand produced a tractor beam from each of its finger tips the other had produced a spike from each knuckle. "If we had our way we would hammer each of these into your hearts!" Each spike was jammed to in each of Dahaka's necks, cleanly severing the spine before the internal mechanisms activated and spread out, the spiking wasn't lethal, but it did Leave the four headed beast paralysed from it's necks down, and that was only part one. "Cloacas. I have our monster getting ready right now." Already technorganic material was spreading out from the four spikes like a piece of celery drinking up food dye.
05M 00D 00H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
The Reaper's had constructed a base, or rather a temple. The way that the four Tumours had been sealed away originally was to round up or kill all their followers, process them into synthorganic goo, and then turn them into Reapers, complete with the dozens of fail-safes that were in place specifically to deal with the Tumours. Now all of their followers were dead or cut off. Each of them were undergoing psionic and gene therapy specifically to remove their former master's influence from them and, hopefully, prevent them from returning in a different form, the only one who had to be sealed away was Dahaka. With the Reaper's job done it was time for their rewards.
"Land on the planet and wait for your relief." The Reapers were soon replaced by the Draconics, who had taken up the solemn duty of watching over Dahaka's tomb in order to ensure that the psychic abominations that had been sealed along with his corpse never got to rise again.
04M 00D 00H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
The Colossus had been rebuilt, repaired, the need for a complete retrofit for Dragon Scales had evaporated but it still had work to do.
Thousands of Reapers had been gathered on the world below, and upon them the Colossus fired, it's choice of weapon a Geneforge that remade their bodies on a genetic level, breaking down their synthorganic cores, destroying their nano-technology and rebuilding them into the theoretical base organisms that had been harvested to create the Reapers in the first place, and soon the Galaxy had a population boom in the billions, replacing the massive amount of casualties that had been suffered throughout council space.
And yet it was only the first of many that needed work to be done.
Obviously, after spending countless millions, billions or even Trillions of years as the Synthorganic cores of Reapers the people in question were not well off in the head. Psionics had to be deployed in masse, including Asari mind healers, as well as cyberneticists with mood balancer technology in order to forcibly render the individuals sane again. With that done, the issue left was to find places for them to live.
03M 00D 00H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
Vast numbers of planets had been rendered uninhabitable by the Shroud god's actions, the local life forms hideously mutated in order to facilitate the shroud entities needs. Thus a campaign of aggressive terraforming was now ensuing. The Colossus was put to work, aggressively remaking and normalising the biospheres. Surprisingly enough it was taking the longest amount of time, planets belonging not only to the current factions such as Thessia for the Asari, Palaven for the Turians or Sur'kesh for the Salarians needed to be identified, planets for the various races of the Reaper's needed to be chosen. There were so many races that needed specific habitats. The most barren worlds were the most aggressively remade, turning into sprawling ecumenopolises with vast Biodomes to match individual races atmospheric and environmental conditions.
Even then a New Colossus weapon was commissioned, there was just too many things that needed to be done.
01M 00D 00H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
The Tebrids had been kept busy, Consuming actual literal mountains worth of raw materials in the form of Neu Eezo, recycled Reaper shells, and the Zro that they were constantly mass producing. New Matter Decompressors had been built, there was not a single black hole left unmined across the entire galaxy. A Neu Eezo based Colossus designed to move around entire planets, dragging worlds into the habitability zones of their respective solar systems in a perfect six point star of Moons and planets. Any world that didn't meet a bare minimal amount of raw mass was hit with a cocktail of artificially created atmospheres, oceans worth of water, Thorian based organic matter, Eezo, Zro created matter, and whatever asteroids that the Union felt like dumping on the problems before them. Sprawling station habitats had been constructed including Ring Worlds, Hab Stations and Orbital rings all just for the sake of finding more room.
Needless to say, the Galaxy soon looked like a very different place.
00M 00D 00H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
Shepard was sitting on a lawn chair, watching up into the sky as a planet in the distance was being dragged off.
"So that's the last of them?" Shepard asked putting down her telescope.
"That had better be the last of them." Liara walked out of the Hotel room the two of them were renting, wearing a white blouse and little else as she put down a serving tray next to Shepard filled with supper and coffee, or rather the first course given Shepard's appetite.
"So it's finally over?" Shepard leaned back into the lawn chair and breathed out a sigh, the headache of the past year in a half was finally over, along with her life's purpose.
"It's not like we are out of work you know." Liara sighed as she put down the tray and picked up her tablet.
"Tensions are rising, and for that matter releasing. The Krogan are going at it like rabbits and so are the Quarians, not to mention the tension with all the former Reaper Races." Liara brought up a new image though, the golden needle, the Tebrids new super engine that they created in their insane reality defying virtual environment and forced into existence via the Formless and their supply of Zro.
"And what are we going to do with that?" Shepard asked looking at Liara suspiciously.
"Cross the void into a new Galaxy." Liara replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the entire world to do.
The Tebrids were even busier than ever in the years following the end of the dual threats of the Reapers and the Shroud gods.
Into their magnum opus, the Synaptic Lathe, a massive station into which thousands of Genetically and cybernetically enhanced Tebrids were being born and dying faster than anyone can keep track, the sum total of all the knowledge the Reapers had stolen had been dumped. The Tebrids took that information, combined that with their research into Neu Eezo and Astral Threads, in their simulated environments they rapid prototyped new technology, and eventually brought that into reality.
The Tebrid's newly Designed FTL unit manipulated the laws of reality to the Tebrid's liking through Astral Threads, through this process they increased the speed of light, improved the conductivity of their electronics and that wasn't all they were building.
The Tebrid's plan to cross the void into another galaxy, the first part was their upgrade based on the destroyed Mass Relay Network. Travelling to the very edge of the Galaxy the Tebrids began their construction project.
Over the next fifteen years A huge Megastructure was built around a Blue Dwarf Star, from the outside it looked like the skeleton of a cube, however it was full of a sophisticated energy harvesting arrays, to the point that it actually rendered the surrounding space more habitable. This Was a Quantum Catapult, a Mega-structure that was capable of hurling a ship or a fleet of ships across the vast expanse of the Galaxy in a matter of hours, and yet for the Tebrid's true ambitions it was not enough.
The Total size of the Galaxy was approximately 52 850 light years, conversely the total distance between the Milky way and the nearest Galaxy over was 2.5 million light years away, approximately five times the maximum range of the Quantum Catapult.
At the Maximum range of the Quantum Catapult, a ship was hurled into the vast expanse, a Custodian Construction ship, one that dismantled itself for materials and built a more familiar piece of technology, a jump gate, one at the new location and another right in front of the Catapult. Once the two gates had been built a second Custodian Construction ship had been fired through the gate via quantum Catapult, carrying that momentum all the way through and even deeper into the void between galaxies. A third, a fourth, a fifth, each new Gateway took an additional three years to build.
Deeper and Deeper the Tebrids went, each gate connecting together as a new network was slowly built up with the intention of building a path leading to another galaxy. There were set backs of course, destruction, misfires, and worse. Guard stations were built around the gates, habitats, maintenance units and other stations had been built around and near the Jump gates to create a liveable environment for the crew that would maintain the machinery.
Sixty Years, that was how long it took the Tebrid's to achieve their grand ambition of building a pathway to connect together Galaxies.
Sixty Years After the Reaper War, a ship had been parked above the Quantum Catapult, several ships more accurately. Colony Ships, each of them containing thousands of individuals from hundreds of species from across the Galaxy. On the observation deck A black Crested Krogan dressed in a Warlord's armour was looking at the Quantum Catapult, a Asari child was sitting on his hump as they looked over the Mega structure and the colony ships.
Conceptually, they would be similar to the Citadel, or rather what the Citadel should've been, a neutral territory not attached to any planet, each ship built either by a single race or by a combination of several races working together where they would be able to live, a station made out of cities made out of ships.
"Ello there Grunt." The Krogan was greeted by a rather cheerful figure dressed in an admiral's uniform. "Mind if I take your sister there?"
The now sixty years old Grunt handed his adoptive sister over to Shepard. Shepard was functionally immortal, much like many other people these days, the genetic fail-safes that dramatically limited her life span had been removed, she was augmented with several cybernetic implants that improved her organ functionality and supported her with medi-gel and Thorian spores all in the name of dramatically extending her life span, it was quite likely that she'd match her wife's life span.
"Liara come on!" The Asari woman looked better at 160 then most women look at fourty, joining her wife and their adopted son as they watched the Quantum catapult come to life, the ship they were standing on shook briefly, before being hurled through the jump gates and the vast expanse of the void between galaxies and by the time they saw light again, they were in Andromeda.
"Psionic sensors online General." EDI's synthesized voice echoed out, addressing Shepard directly.
"What are we looking at EDI?" Shepard asked as she lightly bounced her child in her arms.
"Psionic signatures of roughly five different races." EDI informed as she kept reviewing the data.
"Any hostiles?" There was of course a reason why the Dragoons had been the first group to be sent through the Bridge of Stars. If there was no hostiles there was a sufficient diplomatic team to handle the situation, but if there were.
"There appears to be a large scale conflict that is taking place in this sector."
"YESSS!" Grunt pumped his fists and cheered like a child on Christmas, Liara let out a sigh. "Thank you, you worthless bastards!" The new Galaxy looked like it was going to be a fun place for a army of violent idiots to let loose and go on a rampage, there hasn't been a decent fight in the galaxy for decades after all.
Review Section:
Monster King: I hate to disappoint you, I honestly do, but this is the last Chapter.
RonaldM40196867: Do I think they will build a whole ass satellite station just to make a mall? Unlikely, that same mall built into a larger station? More Likely.
Ace gaming: How could I pass up a opportunity like that?