41 Asari Distress

--> Ashley has settled in aboard the Normandy, and despite an involuntary twitch of the gun hand, she refrained from shooting EDI on sight. Even with prior warning that the same cerberus robot which nearly killed her is now occupied by our ship's AI, it was plainly no easy matter for Ashley to abide its presence upon meeting, and I don't foresee the two of them having tea together any time soon. Had I been so foolish as to bring EDI with me to reclaim the Citadel, things would have gone far, far worse.

The Reapers have conquered and occupied a lot of territory, but their alarming rate of expansion is beginning to ebb. Numerous and awingly powerful as they are, even they cannot defend all points at once. The Alliance Navy cannot reclaim lost ground, but we've begun putting severe dents in Reaper occupation forces left to subdue captured worlds. Forced to begin covering their proverbial tails and intermittently back-tracking, the Reapers cannot sustain their hitherto headlong rate of expansion. Instead of wasting our forces in futile defence against overwhelming odds, Hackett has preserved our fleets at the cost of ground, focusing on counter-attacks whenever and wherever the Reapers leave themselves vulnerable.

The inevitable long-term result of this conflict is still a foregone conclusion, but their advance is in abatement. We can hold them for a long time yet.

Liara has informed me of an Asari distress call in the Nimbus Cluster. Asari High Command sent in commandos. Those soldiers have failed to report back.

They aren’t the hardiest race the Galaxy, but Asari commandos, lithe and powerful biotics, some with centuries of experience, are among the most cunning and lethal hunters in the Galaxy. If a team of them were somehow outmatched, the danger must be great indeed. Liara tells me that out of all the threats Asari face at this time, they’ve asked for my aid in this matter. They haven't said why, only giving us the coordinates for a habitation on the planet Lesuss.

This sounds important. Especially as there is no intel available; both the planet the commandos were sent to and their mission there are conspicuously lacking in details. An Asari colony in the Mesana System, Lesuss has no disclosed population or industry, its environment is barely habitable; dark, barren, inhospitable, and cold. A grim place.

Setting course for Lesuss.

--> O horrors. I’ve seen many grim things in the course of my service, the Reapers have been cause of all the worst. But for all the atrocities and twisted abominations that I’ve seen, what we found on Lesuss chills me to the bone.

We found the outer grounds of the monastery vacant, filled only with the bleak light of a cold and distant sun, dominated overall by an absolute silence. The pale and cheerless light of the grounds left behind for the pitch-dark halls of the interior, our torches almost seemed weaker than they ought: the clinging darkness receded grudgingly before our advance, only to close in again behind us like some grim curtain that crept and closed round our small circle of light. And over all hung the same constant of deathly silence.

We searched through that place, room after room revealing no living thing; neither friend nor foe was to be found in all the upper levels. And so we searched deeper, creeping further and further down into the depths of that lifeless edifice, hands gripping weapons and trigger-fingers twitching at the sound of our own footsteps, we strained to penetrate what seemed an iron curtain of almost tangible dread surrounded by a mute and hollow blackness. I swear I could hear the sound of Ashley's heartbeat behind me; Liara's sharp intake of breath at the clatter of something brushed off a table as we passed, Garrus' rasping hiss of anticipation at the turn of a corner, seemed loud and dangerous.

The noises came slowly at first. Faint whispers. Our own movements had become so loud in our ears as we slipped through those still and noiseless halls, with no living thing to be found, our hearing was keyed to the highest pitch. We stopped stock still, trying to tell from whence the whispers came. Had there ever been such a thing as a mouse in some hidden corner of that place, the noise that broke suddenly upon our ears like a knife in the dark would have struck it dead with fear: for the whispers of menace that seemed first near then far were suddenly consummated by such a scream as no natural thing can make.

A banshee had found us.

The Reapers have harvested and warped many races; Human, Batarian, Rachni, Prothean, Turian, even fusing Turian and Krogan together into one powerful monstrosity. Hitherto, the Asari have had but little contact with the Reapers, and none have been turned. That changed on Lesuss. The beautiful and serene Asari were being taken and changed.

The results of the Reapers’ diabolical machinations are always gruesome and horrifying, an unliving blasphemy against the life and beauty of the original. But the Asari; the difference was even more acute. Nothing could be further from those fair, gentle blue nymphs than the menacing aberrations they were transformed into. Dark, towering mockeries of feminine form, those monsters emit a shriek that curdles the blood: it is as though the all-consuming hatred of the Reapers were mingled with the voice of a woman’s last cry in all-surpassing fear and pain.

They are very hard to kill.

Lesuss was home to an Ardat Yakshi monastery. Unlike Morinth who chose to indulge her mortal appetite and feed upon the minds of an endless sequence of lovers, these Ardat Yakshi chose to live a life of seclusion. Born with defects beyond their will or control, they made the only choice they could in remaining there on Lesuss, a lonely and celibate company of mutual isolation living out the many long years of their Asari lifespan on this cold and lonesome rock, a place where even the sun at its height fails to warm the stone or lighten the sky.

Samara was there. We found her fighting the Reapers in the depths of the monastery. Of her three daughters, one she has killed for murder, with my help: Morinth was the reason why Samara had become a Justicar, and now she had returned here to save her two remaining daughters.

Three daughters, all of them Ardat Yakshi. It is no great wonder that Samara chose to bind herself to a code of absolute justice, or that her mate, an Asari whose name I never learned, ended her own life.

But only one of Samara’s daughters could be saved. Falere, who tried so hard to save her sister Rila, is the only survivor from that grim harvest of Lesuss. Rila, too far gone to be saved, regained control of her own will long enough to detonate the bomb that the now dead commandos had brought with them. She died in cleansing inferno amidst those that sought to claim her. The reapers thralls were purged from Lesuss. Rila’s bravery is to be commended.

It is uncertain what Samara’s original intentions had been when she came to the monastery; perhaps even she herself did not know. But Rila’s strength and resolve even as the shades of blackness were falling across her eyes rendered once more firm in Samara’s mind the duty of the Justicar code. It forbids any Ardat Yakshi to live outside of a monastery, on pain of death. In what she saw as her only way to avoid breaking her code, Samara drew her weapon, and nearly took her own life rather than kill her last daughter. With my intervention, and Falere’s voluntary promise to abide in the ruins of the monastery rather than leave, Samara was spared from her own adherence to a code that brooked no compromise.

It will be difficult for Falere to survive here in this barren and desolate landscape, but she may well outlive the rest of us. With the monastery and all who were within destroyed, this out-of the-way planet no longer holds anything of value to the Reapers. Were we to fail, it is possible Falere would eke out a meagre existence on this rock, and in the end die a natural death here on Lesuss, long after the rest of the Galaxy had been consumed.

The Normandy has provided Falere with enough supplies to last for some months, long enough to for the war to be decided, one way or another. Clean-up for whichever side wins could take decades even centuries, but within a few months we will have completed and deployed the Crucible, and determined the fate of the Galaxy.

We're all soldiers. Even Liara, sweet and harmless though she may seem, is battle-hardened; there's not a soul aboard this ship that hasn't seen Reapers and their abominations before, but even they seemed shaken by what we found on Lesuss. We'd all known, sooner or later, Asari too would be seized by the Reapers. That knowledge fails to mitigate the horror we witnessed. Even the snide and arrogant Javik was quiet after seeing what the Reapers had wrought upon the fair Asari. The monastery isn't all. There'll be more of them.

Should Samara survive the war, she will return to her daughter. Sentiment; sweet it may be in peace, but in war its bitterness arises at the loss of those that are loved. So much death. Those two are the sole survivors of a family fraught with pain and loss. Most women would not bear it with strength as they do. Perhaps in times like these, even the weak are granted strength beyond their nature.

May that strength that comes from above be with us all.

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