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The Old Growth, had it the face to scowl with, would have done so thunderously as it felt the foreign mind, the mind-that-travels, tearing apart it's few remaining servants with their own servants in tow. Only the buds-of-offered-flesh had posed any sort of real hurdle to the invaders, their powers-like-Protheans making them both more durable and more dangerous than anything else it had tried to defend itself with.
It cursed the uselessness of the servants that had nested above it's home. The tools that the mind-that-travels had used against them had rendered them useless, unable to move so much as a single appendage even if it could have forced them into consciousness.
Still, the Old Growth's fury was tempered by calculation. The mind-that-travels had revealed much in its assault through the tunnels, if one had the ability and the wisdom to recognize it. Patterns of thought, preferences of movement and organization, even the subtle harmonics of its will as it commanded the lesser minds that followed. Most intriguing of all was the way it had wielded the powers-like-Protheans and the power-of-minds, weaving them in and out and around one another in a way that it had never before witnessed, despite it's great age. Yet, for all of it's lethality, everything that the-mind-that-travels had done since arriving in the place-of-cultivation proved that the foreign mind was by nature gentle and merciful. Reluctant though The Old Growth would be to negotiate with those-that-scurry, it understood the concept of 'discretion being the better part of valor'. It would speak with the foreign mind, convince it that one mind should not fight and kill another, nor take the servants of the other.
The foreign mind would understand and agree, it was sure. One mind was doubtlessly similar enough to another that such a compact could be reached, though privately it wondered if it would be possible to have the flesh-that-serves returned to it, if only to ensure the-metal-that-serves-betrayal could not come back and harm The Old Growth.
And, if no agreement could be reached, well…it had been preparing and emplacing it's strongest of servant-kind. If the foreign mind would not be reasoned with, it would strike at mind and body both. Surely, that would be sufficient to achieve victory for The Old Growth.
A tendril of thought reached out from The Old Growth, probing carefully through the tunnels where the acrid smell of discharged weapons still lingered. It searched for the distinctive mental signature of the mind-that-travels, finding it growing close with a speed that was…disconcerting. It had known already that it's servants were hardly hampering it's advance, but still…it was only moments away from arriving to stand before The Old Growth. The foreign consciousness burned with an intensity that made The Old Growth recoil slightly, the foreign mind painful to the touch, but it pressed on, determined that this was the best course of action. Pain was temporary for one such as it, even pain of the mind.
Peace, it projected, wrapping the concept in layers of faux submission and manipulative reasonableness, the falsehoods resonating with honesty along their connection. The Old Growth seeks understanding and harmony between minds-that-think.
The response came swiftly, sharp as a blade through its extended consciousness, it's tendril flayed and raw in an instant. Where the Old Growth had expected it's courtesy, false-clad though it was, to be returned, it instead found itself shuddering from the spike of wrath that flowed along the mental link.
You know nothing of understanding, came the reply in words that were not spoken, not thought, but hammered into the consciousness of The Old Growth like searing brands. It recoiled, every syllable giving pain-of-mind. You speak of peace while your servants kill and corrupt. You claim to seek harmony while you violate minds. You offer nothing cloaked in falsehood. Monster. Corrupter. Slaver.
The hatred in that final word was…all encompassing. Nothing was worse to the foreign mind than those that enslaved others, and The Old Growth was confused enough, and injured enough, to let it's baffled internal thoughts leak across the tattered link. Were those without minds not meant to serve? They were blind and weak, fumbling and scurrying in the darkness that they were mired within, filthy and wretched. To live and die in service to those greater than they was their purpose, a fact as immutable and constant as the rotations of the world and the rising of the sun and moon.
Hatred turned incandescent, fury burning molten-hot.
I AM COMING FOR YOU.
The declaration, the condemnation, thundered through The Old Growth's consciousness with such force that it physically recoiled, withdrawing it's ravaged mental tendril entirely. Pain lanced through its awareness, a concept it had not experienced in millennia, and the tendril brought with it images of flesh-that-serves in chains, barely clothed, writhing on the ground in agony beneath the boot of flesh-with-four-eyes before the connection was cut. There would be no negotiation now, it realized. The foreign mind wished to become the-mind-that-purged, and The Old Growth was it's target.
It withdrew deeper, consolidating its strength, marshaling its remaining servants and preparing the contingencies it had planned to use for just such a result. Though it hadn't anticipated the-mind-that-travels to be quite so powerful or so alien, so perverted and twisted away from the way a mind should be. Still, it's plans had been laid, it's mind and servants were ready to strike, and The Old Growth had lived for a long, long time. It would not be so easily defeated as the enemy mind might hope.
The walls themselves began to shift and writhe as The Old Growth called upon resources it had hoarded for centuries, resources that it had held and maintained in case it ever became necessary to defend itself from a foe beyond its usual tools. Deep within the earth, root-like appendages as thick as the hulls of some starships began to stir, while pods the size of a small aircar pulsed and throbbed as their contents were called into service.
From them emerged its most prized servants. Not the crude flesh-that-serves or the mindless creatures it had used as cannon fodder, but the carefully preserved remnants of the Protheans that it had caught within it's tunnels as the corruption-star-minds had consumed the world above. Kept safely ensconced within The Old Growth, they had not aged and their bodies had not only not degraded, but been enhanced. Between the four of them and the half-dozen buds-of-offered-flesh that it had managed to create and place in reserve, it would have all the strength it needed to render the-mind-that-travels vulnerable to it's attack.
Satisfied that it's preparations were as complete as they could be, and ignoring the warning clamor in the back of it's consciousness, The Old Growth settled in to wait.
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Cassandra hadn't felt this angry in…a very long time. In fact, this might be the angriest she had ever been, and the least restrained with her power, including Mindoir and Anhur. Probably because the Thorian had possessed the sheer, unmitigated gall to actually try and parlay with her. Which wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world, she had wanted to evaluate it's moral stance -or lack thereof- after all. Which is exactly what she had done, if inadvertently, when the creature had (possibly by accident) shared exactly what it's moral compass was.
And whether it was a biological imperative or something else that drove the revealed beliefs, Cassandra no longer cared. If the Thorian believed, which as far as she could tell it did, that anyone that wasn't psionic deserved to be enslaved and used as tools by those that were, than it was as bad as the batarians in her mind. The same arrogance, the same belief in inherent superiority, the same refusal to see other lives as valuable. In some ways, honestly, it was worse, given the fucking thing actually violated minds in a way that the batarians never could. Oh, the batarians could break you, but they couldn't twist you, and that meant that the Thorian was now enemy number one in Cassandra Shepard's life.
The Phoenix stirred in the core of her soul, sensing her rage and feeding on it even as it amplified her power. Cassandra could feel the ancient entity unfurling through her mind, tendrils of psionic power flowing out to brush against the souls of her companions, cocooning around them protectively and showing her through example how to make sure that no other psionic could take her people away from her.
The technique was intuitive once she felt it, like watching someone demonstrate how to breathe properly, and she gently stretched out to take the proverbial reins from her partner to try it for herself.
The mental shields that bloomed around her team were gossamer-thin but diamond-hard, each one perfectly tailored to the individual it protected, shaped as they were by the differing nature of their souls. Wrex's was brutal and direct, like the krogan himself, a wall of unyielding determination and (if she had to guess) unparalleled regeneration that would outlast anyone foolish enough to attack it. Tali's was born of mathematical precision and mechanical complexity, a lattice of logical but incomprehensible defenses that would leave any potential intruder wandering lost amidst the spiraling maze.
As for Ashley, well, in some ways hers were both the simplest and yet the most powerful. She simply knew who she was. She was so aware of who she was, so firm in her beliefs and stalwart in her faith that her soul was defended by the ironclad surety of self-awareness. It was honestly quite beautiful, though Cassandra made a note to get a little more personal with her sometime. Having a strong sense of self was good, and that same unyielding self-awareness had probably helped her endure all the crap the world had put she and her family through, but the last thing she would want is for Ashley to be so rigid that she broke when she needed to bend.
Of course, that was an issue for a later date.
Right now, the Thorian was the only thing that mattered. Cassandra could feel it gathering its strength, marshaling whatever forces it had left and preparing for it's last stand. Good. Let it try. Let it bring everything it had to bear against her. Maybe then it would be the one to feel helpless, trapped and vulnerable, alone at the whims of something far more powerful than it could ever hope to…!
"Shepard." Wrex's gravelly voice cut through her thoughts, sharp and strong. "Your eyes are glowing and your aura is getting a little oppressive. Take it down a notch."
She blinked, suddenly aware of the faint orange-tinted black-purple light reflecting off the tunnel walls around them and the faint smell of fire and ozone in the air. With a flicker of thought and some small conscious effort, she reined in her power slightly, though she made sure to keep her mental shields firmly in place around her team.
"Sorry about that, guys." she said, not sounding or feeling particularly apologetic, shrugging a bit awkwardly. "Happens sometimes. Nothing to worry about."
"Right, sure." Ashley muttered sarcastically, under her breath enough that Cassandra had to wonder if she was even meant to hear it, checking her rifle for the third time in as many minutes. "Because glowing eyes and reality-warping auras are totally normal Tuesday stuff for the rest of us. Not like your hair was floating or anything…"
"These readings are fascinating, I've never seen anything like them." Tali mumbled to herself, staring at her omni-tool and tapping at the haptic interface as she scrolled through the data on display. "Her biotic aura was incredibly charged, and there were strange sub-harmonic fluctuations in the aura's attenuation…"
"Can you analyze weird science magic later, kid?" Wrex interrupted, hefting his shotgun, eyes narrowing as he sniffed the air sharply. "Right now we've got bigger problems than Shepard's light show."
As if heralded by his words, the tunnel ahead began to shift and shiver, the walls themselves seeming to breathe. A low, thrumming vibration ran through the floor beneath their feet, and Cassandra felt the Thorian's presence pressing against the edges of her consciousness like a tide of malevolent intelligence.
"It's moving, and I don't think its interested in making friends." she said, her voice carrying an edge that hadn't been there moments before as her gun barrels swayed from side to side lightly, searching for a target as much as her eyes were. "Get ready to fight."
Two minutes and a few dozen yards further down the tunnel, her words were proven correct as a full dozen Creepers attacked, alongside another of the strange, green-skinned asari clones -and they could be nothing else, they all looked exactly the same, right down to their markings and crests, while their minds were…well, nonexistent- from the shadows.
They didn't stand much of a chance, even with the asari clone along to help with her admittedly impressive biotics. Frankly, the tight quarters of the corridor hindered the Thorian's slaves far more than it helped them, limiting the number of Creepers that could get in grappling range, and those that did providing plenty of buffer between the fire-team and the asari's biotic attacks. The next several attacks went much the same way, with little if any variation in tactics and composition. Yet, in spite of that fact, it was obvious to Cassandra that the Thorian was fighting smarter, trying to overwhelm individual members of her team and bring them down. It's plan, as far as she could tell, was to whittle her people down one by one. A battle of attrition, which -theoretically- ought to be won by the side with more bodies to throw at the problem.
Unfortunately for the Thorian, her people were better than that. Even the injured Ashley, whom all of them had expected to act mostly in a support role, had downed her fair share of Creepers with bursts of carefully-aimed, impressively precise rifle fire, and Cassie couldn't help but smile slightly in approval. She hadn't imagined that she ever would, but she most certainly wasn't regretting bringing her fellow Marine aboard the Normandy, nor keeping her on her team for this mission.
It took them nearly half-an-hour, and a dozen or so more ambushes, to finally reach the Thorian, at which point only a single thought came to Cassandra's mind as she looked at the enormous, green-brown, pulsing, smelly colossus of tentacled plant-flesh that was hanging suspended in the center of the massive space before them.
"That is the probably the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life."
Ashley said the words that they were all thinking, almost disturbingly matter-of-fact, as she stared at it. There was a moment of companionable, silent agreement before she frowned and glanced down at the rifle in her hands. "You know, Skipper, I don't think our rifles can kill that thing. Not unless we want to be here for the next week or so, anyway. Think the Normandy could hit it?"
"Probably, even as far underground as this is, but I don't know how bad the collateral damage would be. And we'd have to figure out where this is in comparison to the surface as well, which probably won't be as easy as we'd like." Cassandra responded, almost as conversationally as the question had been posed, as she eyed the Thorian's main body with a thoughtful furrow to her brow. "My best plan at the moment is to follow it's tendrils to their anchor points and destroy them, so it falls to the bottom of this pit thing. If that doesn't kill it outright, we can figure something else out from there."
"As good a plan as any, I suppose." Tali remarked, tilting her head to the side as she examined the creature, before pointing to four particularly large and thick tendrils. "I'm going to guess that those four are the primary supports. Severing three of them should do the trick, all four would be even better. I think…"
"Down!" Wrex thundered suddenly, biotics blooming to full strength as he swept Tali into his arms, and Cassandra had a moment to be shocked by the fact that she hasn't sensed anything coming before Ashley slammed into her, the impact carrying both of them to the ground. There was a flurry of gunfire, close enough that Cassandra could here the hypersonic rounds flit through the air where they had just been standing to gouge rents in the wall, and her biotics bloomed as she rolled her injured subordinate beneath herself and threw up the strongest Biotic Sphere that she could around the two of them. Another barrage of fire slammed into it's opaque surface as it solidified into existence just in time, and she spun up to her feet with her SMGs chattering in response…only to watch wide-eyed as her own volley was almost contemptuously blocked by the barriers of the four entities on the far side of the room.
They were tall, their appearances distinctly insectoid to her, with two pairs of dual-pupiled eyes and three pairs of nostrils on the face of a carapaced head. Their limbs were long, ending in three-fingered hands and two-toed feet, and Cassandra felt something very like fear as she recognized them from the many long lectures of her love: Protheans. Twisted by the Thorian, to be sure, but Protheans all the same.
The realization was a painful one, and on the heels of that pain came a new facet to her rage. These weren't just any enslaved beings, bad enough thought it would have been. These were the last remnants of the galaxy's most advanced civilization, reduced to puppets dancing on the Thorian's strings, unable to even die and rest in peace with their fallen kin. The Phoenix stirred restlessly in the back of her mind, its ancient presence recognizing something in these corrupted forms that made it recoil with what felt almost like grief, and Cassandra absently made a mental note to enquire further when she had a moment to spare.
The quartet advanced, spreading out, and Cassandra growled to herself as a half-dozen of the asari clones fanned out behind them. The Thorian was going all in now, it seemed, and her team was injured and tired. She was going to have to let loose a little, show more of her hand -her power- than she would prefer, but given the circumstances and the potential consequences if she didn't it was the only reasonable choice to make.
Rolling her shoulders, she eyed her first target and started calling up a far greater depth of strength than she had been expecting, or willing, to display to strangers.
"You three, focus on dealing with the asari clones." she ordered calmly as thick ribbons of red-gold flames began to bleed into her biotic aura which swirled around her like a firestorm. "Leave these four thralls to me."
She crossed the room in an instant, lashing out with one flame-wreathed fist at the center left target, but it was gone in a flicker of movement and the snap! of a biotic charge, leaving her enhanced blow to tear a great gouge out of the wall behind it instead. Fuck, these bastards were fast, and clearly they still retained plenty of control and -her thoughts paused for a moment as she was forced to tank a biotic throw to her side, sending her skidding, though she used the momentum to land a powerful kick to another thrall's leg, shattering it's knee- power from their old lives. Fortunately, as intelligent and as cunning as the Thorian seemed to be, it likewise seemed to be an animalistic sort of cunning. Thinking only one or two moves ahead and failing to, as she had just proven, consider end results of its tactics.
A fatal flaw, and one she intended to exploit ruthlessly. One that she intended to avoid herself, which is why her next move was landing a flaming axe kick on the fallen thrall's head, shattering it's carapace and staining her leg with gore as it's skull followed suit. Even unable to walk, it's biotics would have made it a threat she couldn't have at her back, and she wasn't going to let herself get caught off-guard in such a way.
The remaining three Prothean thralls converged on her immediately as she recovered from the rapid series of movements, their coordination disturbingly precise, certainly more so than the Creepers had been capable of. But less so than the colonists and, she wondered as she dove sideways as a wave of biotic energy slammed into where she'd been standing, about the implications that had for the amount of intelligence these particular thralls retained. Not that it was something she could deal with right now, she thought, rolling to her feet just as another thrall appeared in front of her in a blur of motion and a spike of ozone. Its fist connected with her jaw, the impact rattling her teeth and sending her stumbling backward, one hand flicking out instinctively to bat away a biotic orb that flew from another enemy.
Pain bloomed across her face a heartbeat later, her jaw cracked, but the heat of the Phoenix's fire rapidly pooled to start healing the injury. Cassandra snarled in pain and frustration both, letting that rage course through her veins as she pivoted and caught the thrall's follow-up strike with her forearm. The creature's strength was immense, it's leverage superior, and she gritted her teeth -something her still healing jaw most certainly did not enjoy- as she twisted enough to plant her other hand's palm on it's sternum. A pulse of enhanced biotics flowed to the impact point, sharp and violent, and with the sound of a thunderclap ancient armor and twisted flesh were torn away as the thrall was hurled across the room like it had been shot out of a canon.
The satisfying crunch of its impact against the far wall was immediately overshadowed by another biotic wave slamming into her from behind, lifting her off her feet and sending her tumbling across the ancient stone floor. She managed to twist and roll with the impact, riding the wave enough to land half-crouched on the ground instead of sprawled helplessly across it, and her freshly-drawn SMGs chattered as she ripped off a series of controlled bursts at the center-mass of a charging thrall.
The rounds sparked harmlessly off a biotic barrier, but they bought her the split second she needed to roll away from the crushing, biotic-enhanced stomp that would have likely done some serious damage, given the way that the thrall's foot left a sizeable crater where she'd been kneeling.
Darting forward, off balance in a way that would have been dangerous in most other circumstances, Cassandra dropped one of her guns to slam her fist into the recovering thrall's barrier, disrupting it just enough for her other hand to pull the trigger and put a three-round-burst through it's skull. That left her number of enemies halved, and she chanced a glance at her team to see how they were faring, just in time to see Wrex utterly annihilate the final asari clone's head with a point-blank blast from his Claymore. Which was good, very good, but unfortunately the two Protheans that she hadn't killed -because, God damn it all, the one she had thrown into the wall was on it's feet again- yet had decided that taking out the two least-durable, most vulnerable members of her team was the best tactical move.
Ashley saw them coming and, given the choice between protecting herself and getting Tali out of the proverbial line of fire, the Chief took the latter option. A harsh shove sent the quarian sprawling across the floor a few feet away, a shotgun boomed twice to splash ineffectually across a barrier it couldn't hope to crack, and teeth were bared in a snarl of futile resistance as one biotic-clad knife hand arced forward with the intent of piercing armor, flesh, and bone…but it was a fatal blow that would never land.
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Ashley Williams was many things, but a coward wasn't one of them.
She'd known the moment she pushed Tali out of harm's way that she probably wouldn't survive the next few seconds. The Prothean thralls were too fast, too strong, and her shields were non-existent after fighting the asari clones. But that was fine. She'd made her peace with dying many times before, not least of which on Eden Prime, and now she was once again face to face with death. But if this was where her luck ran out, at least she'd go down swinging, protecting someone who couldn't protect themselves. That was the Williams way, the Marine way, and she'd be damned if she'd disgrace herself, her family, or the Corps by abandoning it now.
But the plunging hand, intent on piercing her chest and destroying her heart, never reached her. In a swirl of heat and movement, her Commander was there, gripping the hand tight and glaring with gold-burning eyes as she shattered the attacking arm with almost casually contemptuous effort, sending the creature reeling with a rapid series of follow-up punches to it's center mass, then sweeping it's legs out from under it with a heavy blow to it's knees. It collapsed onto it's back and barely had the time to look up before she planted a boot on it's chest. A bark of her name had Ashley darted forward, though 'darting' might be an overstatement, given the shape she was in, to finish it off with a third, far more successful blast of her shotgun.
A roar from the krogan and a sickening squelching sound heralded the death of the final Prothean, and an eerie stillness and silence fell over the room, broken only -perhaps, it should be said, made somehow louder- by the harsh breathing of the survivors.
"Thanks, Skipper," Ashley managed between ragged breaths, wiping sweat and grime from her face as she surveyed the carnage around them and came to terms with the fact that she had once again escaped death, and once again been saved by her hero. "Thought I was done for there."
"Not on my watch," Cassandra replied curtly, though there was genuine warmth beneath the steel in her voice, as she stepped closer and inspected her carefully, something that had Ashley warming for more reasons than she cared to consider or acknowledge at the moment. Seemingly satisfied that she was in no worse shape than before, the Commander gripped her shoulders tightly and smiled at her. "You did good, Ash. You did real good, especially trying to protect Tali like that."
Ashley felt her cheeks burn with something that wasn't entirely from exertion as she nodded, the praise hitting harder than she'd expected, not least because it was almost painfully obvious that every single word was entirely genuine.
"Just doing my job, ma'am," she managed, though her voice came out rougher than intended, thick with emotion and what felt bizarrely like shyness.
"No, Ash." Cassandra said firmly, giving her shoulders another squeeze before releasing her. "You went above and beyond for someone you barely know without a moment of hesitation. That's not something I'll forget."
"Keelah, oh keelah." Tali breathed from where she was picking herself up off the floor, her suit a bit dirty but undamaged and unharmed, her voice shaky but filled with gratitude as she looked between them. "Thank you, Ashley, I would not have been able…I…"
She trailed of, either unwilling or unable to continue the sentence, shaking her head and running a shaking hand over her facemask. God, she really was just a kid, wasn't she?
"You're safe, that's what matters." Ashley said gruffly, trying to downplay the moment even as something warm settled in her chest at the quarian's obvious relief, which was a bit confusing. She'd never had much interaction with aliens before Eden Prime, and never particularly trusted them (it wasn't like the galaxy had gone out of their way to be nice to humanity, though fairness compelled her to admit humans were just as shit to one another) but Tali was... well, she was alright. Kid was a tech brainiac and had good instincts, even if she was green as grass and one of the most shy and awkward people Ashley had ever met.
Wrex's chuckle rumbled through the chamber as he wiped gore from his shotgun barrel, making sure. "Kid's got more spine than half the mercs I've worked with, and is better in a fight than most of them too. Make sure to keep her around, Shepard, I have the feeling she's going to come in handy."
"That's high praise coming from you, old man." Shepard laughed, turning away from Ashley and moving to collect her SMGs from where she'd been forced to discard them during the fighting. Inspecting them quickly, she reholstered them and looked back at Ashley and the others. "I don't think the Thorian has much left. It wouldn't have sent those four," she tilted her head towards the remains of the Prothean thralls, which was, by the way, horrifying. Thralls were bad enough, but four real, live Protheans? The Thorian had managed to enslave four members of the most powerful race in galactic history, and sustain them for fifty millennia.
Of course, that also meant that she had just watched her Commander take four of them apart with little in the way of assistance and look utterly incredible while doing it. How was it, Ashley wondered in the starkness that could only be born of exhaustion or substance, that the other woman looked incredibly no matter what she did?
"Alright ladies and krogan, let's finish this thing off. Ashley, take point with me." Shepard finished, and despite how tired she was, how much her body hurt and how confused her mind currently felt, Ashley smiled and hefted her rifle as she stepped forward to obey. How could she not?
Shepard trusted her to fight, after all.
[1] https://www.patreon.com/c/astandupphilosopher
[2] https://discord.gg/3VKjmXBYY8
[3] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/ShadowsAndDust