The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand, thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.
T. Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Garrus has no idea how long he’s been standing there, lost in thought. Lost, period. He can no longer see the sky-car up on the gallery. So Shepard’s gone. He did tell her that he needed time. How much time? He glances around but the fake daylight is no more of a clue than the cold shimmering of the holo-ads lining the promenade.
So many people down here, so much traffic… what the hell was he thinking? The clamor of the busy street rises and falls in his ears together with the waves of despair and self-loathing, alternating in a nauseating rhythm. Prepared to take revenge – his hand stayed by mercy that wasn’t his own. Or was it? The uncertainty is crippling, paralyzing. Does she really know him that well? Does she really know him better than he knows himself?
Continue reading Forgiven
I’m Watching You is another Saren/Nihlus story from the period of training, which is to say, the period before The Candidate, and as such, it deals with the theme of friendship slowly turning into something more, despite Saren’s efforts to keep it strictly professional. Posted on FFN and rated M for mild explicit content. Namely…
When Saren had set up the hidden cameras, he knew there would be things he didn’t want to see. Like Nihlus drinking on duty, or hiding drugs on the ship, or taking out dirty clothes from the washer and wearing them. But he wasn’t expecting… this.
Image: Anjian @ DeviantArt
Nihlus didn’t know what to make of the fact that every single waitress in the Den recognized him. He had no memory of any of them. He downed a shot of quarian tequila, then asked for the whole bottle and settled into one of the secluded booths in the back. The slow rhythm of the music – drell, as far as he could tell – was resonating with his vocal cavity in a pleasant, dreamy way. For the first time since setting foot on the Normandy, he could relax, let his head roll back, let his eyes focus on infinity. With each drag from the bottle, he was feeling more and more like doing exactly what Saren had suggested: forgetting any commitment ‘he thought he owed him’ and reliving one of the hottest experiences of his youth: Garrus Vakarian.
Continue reading Persuasion
Well, take “new” with a grain of salt. I think I wrote this during 2009, before the first Elder Scrolls novel – which pretty much kills the point of this story – was published. Back at the day, there was still room for speculation about the true nature of the Landfall, and Report No. 1772 was a way to present my theory about it in the most indirect way possible. I considered submitting it to Temple Zero, but simply couldn’t, perhaps on account of excessive technobabble that doesn’t fit well with the mythopoetic atmosphere of that place. So here it is now, made public for the first time.
Image: tarnvogL @ DeviantArt
by confrater Qodvo Jr.
I file this final report and leave it to the Synod to debate or ignore. The request of the Curator of Ancient Theology and Paleonumerology Department of the Imperial Library has been fulfilled and my findings have been sent to him in a separate letter (filed under No. 1771).
This report contains a complete and accurate transcript of the correspondence that our opinion was requested about. My interpretation, threat assessment and recommendations follow the transcript in the interest of clarity.
Continue reading Report No. 1772
The airlock cycle had never taken this long before. Both of them stank so horribly that even the violent torrent of repressurization wasn’t able to blow it off and away from Saren’s nostrils. Disgusting damp swamp.
He hated dampness with a passion. He hated wet clothes, wet skin, wet planets. He hated sweating, sinking knee-deep in opaque green puddles of suspicious appearance, he hated being sprayed with mud while pushing the back of the lander (it was a damn lander how the hell did a lander manage to get stuck it was the driver wasn’t it it’s his fault it’s all his damn fault).
But most of all, he hated when people didn’t listen to him. When people were trying to sound smart instead of trying to be smart. When people failed to recognize the signs even when he intentionally broadcasted them on all the damn frequencies. When people who knew him pretended they didn’t. When people thought that because he wasn’t in a talkative mood it meant that he was immune to the muck they had both been wading through for hours. Gah!
Continue reading Unnerved and Unnerving