Saren closed his eyes and willed the tension out of his shoulders. He took a deep breath, held it, let it out. Thinking out the rhythm of breathing was acceptable. Not ideal, but acceptable. It kept the words away. Or did it? They would creep back on him as soon as he’d relax.
“You’re doing it again,” said Elethea, and he nodded. “No need to move,” she censured.
He tried to clear his mind again. Nobody but him had difficulty with this exercise. Inferior as they were in both intellect and ambition, the other students have all moved on to advanced techniques. And Saren didn’t like lagging.
“May I imagine music?”
Continue reading Directed
The hum of the engines was giving Garrus a hell of a headache.
It hadn’t bothered him before Donnelly and his crew installed the silly torque compensator into the guiding of the starboard cannon. Either there was a loose panel on the compensator, or the tech team hadn’t returned the panels in proper positions, and now there was a sickening resonance with one of the lower frequencies of the FTL core. Garrus had demanded that the engineering crew come back and reassemble the entire thing, but Donnelly wouldn’t hear of it. Literally. Garrus brought him in and told him what to listen to, where to put his hand to feel the vibration. He even produced the spectrum of acoustic waves present in the battery, with the offending peak clearly visible — and positioned just outside the range audible by humans. Donnelly shrugged and suggested they take the question to Miranda, but Garrus said no. He’d rather stand it for a couple days. Eventually he’d learn to filter it out.
Continue reading Fruit from Palaven
The not-as-trivial-as-you’d-expect task of pulling together my various fanfics begins with some of the oldest, and some of the newest:
Ghost in the Machine – my nanowrimo 2011 novel that is being posted weekly on FFN, and beginning with this weekend, here as well. This is a Mass Effect AU that retells the events of the first game under the assumption that Nihlus Kryik, the original Spectre of ME, didn’t die on Eden Prime.
A Hidden Place – one of my favorite works. Nihlus would like to know more about his secretive mentor. But asking Saren personal questions simply doesn’t cut it.
The Candidate – probably my best. Nihlus is near the end of his training with Saren when they are sent to evaluate potential Spectre candidates. Garrus is one of them and he is determined to leave an impression despite his father’s wishes. A sharp-edged triangle forms and cuts deep. Rated M[ature] for hot slash and serious heart-breaking potential.
The Black Khajiit – an Elder Scrolls fable written for Temple Zero in 2009. Damn, that makes me feel old.
Jauffre’s Testimony – one of my zillion interconnected, half-baked, Elder Scrolls fics, possibly dating back to 2007 or 2008. Jauffre speaks to Martin about his reluctance to search for the Heir before hearing the Emperor’s last words.
Well. That’s all for now, folks.
Garrus was leading a drunken krogan by the cuffed hands to a padded cell when a familiar smiling face showed up on the news-holo in the main hall of the C-Sec compound. He smiled back at it; no time to listen to the news report now, but he made a mental note to look it up on the extranet later.
Continue reading Obsession
Saren froze in mid-motion, listening. He was in his room – a small chamber near the bridge, divided from Sovereign’s “main artery” by a thin, improvised door. Benezia was moving about on the bridge. Pacing to and fro. Then she stilled, and he resumed the inspection, manipulating the camera remotely from the workstation and observing the feed on the screen. Two mirrors would have done a much better job, but he had none. Asking Benezia to lend him hers would have invited too many questions. He didn’t want her to see him like this. He didn’t want her to know about his strange thoughts, strange suspicions. All he wanted was five minutes of peace to see what the hell was that thing on his back, but apparently it was too much to ask for. Always someone watching. Always someone listening.
Continue reading Nine
Shepard was sitting on a hospital bed with her legs tucked under her, biting her thumbnail vigorously. On the other side of the med bay, Nihlus was lying unconscious. Technically, he wasn’t sleeping, or so Dr Chakwas had said, but apparently that didn’t mean he couldn’t dream. His eyeballs were moving frenetically under his dark eyelids and every so often, his arms and legs would twitch as if he were trying to run. She could relate to that sort of dream. Someone had once told her that you dreamed of being chased and unable to move except in god damned slow motion when your legs got entangled in the sheets. Shepard had tried sleeping without sheets. Didn’t help. Her shrink had laughed his ass off when she’d told him. Good man. God rest his soul.
Continue reading Bad Dreams