Finally, here is the new chapter of the SG:GI.

I must say, things have moved so far from Stargate series that it is slightly funny that this story is called the 'Stargate: Galactic Imperium', but given my long term plan based around the Stargate Universe, it is not too far off.

Mass Effect Universe episode is at an end, and I cut it short because, frankly, it began to bore me to death!

So, I did a bit of re-think and went back to the drawing board.

I think I have managed to find a way to weaken the main character just enough to make it fun without actually nerfing him. Seriously, I cannot actually weaken him for real because he has to face the Void Keeper-level enemies.

Marvel and DC universes as well as the Lovecraftian universe are rather important, so I am not touching it at the moment.

I was thinking about Hellboy universe separately, with the Daemon King Monarch appearing as the main point.

Anyway, I have decided to with Buffy series straight on.

The problem is that I have no idea where to insert GEK after Buffy. We will get to Halo, but I need a couple more universes for GEK to collect powers and abilities.

Any suggestion? If you have a suggestion for a particular universe for GEK to visit, give me the name of the film/game/book and one particular item/power/ability for GEK.

PS: Abilities to do with death is appreciated.

PPS: Universes already with plans: Halo, Supernatural, American Gods (TV version), DC 'Injustice: Gods Among us' comic,

PPPS: Universes with 'maybe' plans: Constantine (TV version), God of War (may be waiting for the 3rd game?),

Enjoy!

Chapter 131

Mass Effect Universe

Milky Way Galaxy

Distant Corners of Milky Way

The element of surprise was on my side.

My Replicators ambushed and assaulted the Reapers across the galaxy in a beautifully synchronised and overwhelming manoeuvre against almost all the Reapers at once, except for those in standby mode near the 'civilised' sectors of the galaxy.

The Reapers had been in deep sleep, and thanks to intricately formed subspace distortions and temporal dilation fields in randomised flux pattern, each cluster of Reapers were effectively isolated while my Replicators communicated with each other through the bio-neural connective modules created from the genetically modified human brains converted into bio-computers. Using the brains of enhanced human psykers, I had created a far more efficient method of Warp-communication than even the Eldar.

Well, I did get to use what I had learned about the Eldar's technology. Of course, the months of delay between locating the Reapers and the assault had not only been for the development of a strategic and tactical plan. It was mostly me being depressed even in my soul form. The prototype heaven that I had been building had been strongly affected by my mood and it became a chaotic and terrifying realm of sorrows and depressive atmosphere as I bemoaned my Laemis.

Unlike the mortals and their emotions, my pain did not fade.

The wound simply deepened.

It took weeks to get back to a functioning level of consciousness, but I had managed to return my proper self and enacted the war.

For each two Reapers, one large Replicator Mothership would suddenly appear between the two and stretched long Replicator tentacles around the Reapers and made them immobile. Meanwhile, the billions of smaller Replicator vessels would pop out from the subspace and gently attach themselves to the surface of the giant Reapers.

Within a single Earth hour, I had one-thirds of all dormant Reapers caught in the trap, and the second hour saw the percentage increase to almost ninety percent. In just over two hours, I had at least captured one million eight hundred twenty thousand Reapers.

Of course, this was in their body only. The real war was in the cyberspace.

The Reapers fought back.

This was expected and I was prepared.

The handful of lucky Reapers, numbering just under two hundred sixty thousand, had managed awake from their automated alarm. However, most of them were well spread out throughout the galaxy in their hidden clusters. Unable to connect to the rest of the Reapers, each of the surviving Reaper clusters was unable to muster as much computing power as they were capable of, and they were certainly divided in the physical sense.

Even as they struggled to escape the surprise attack, my Replicator vessels that had stayed away from the initial attack had engaged the Reapers.

Reapers desperately fired their magnetohydrodynamic cannons, sending forth terrible red beams that would have sheared most armour and shield apart. Unfortunately for the Reapers, I was still the God Emperor of the Galactic Imperium who had absorbed so many impressive technologies. Even the technology of the Asgard alone would have made a match against the Reapers.

The problem here was that Reapers had never encountered a species that could challenge them in the first place. Other than their original makers in the Leviathans, the Reapers had maintained technological superiority while culling the civilisations every fifty thousand years, long before even the most advanced species could develop something impressive enough to become a threat to the Reapers.

Although I did indulge a little in the sin of stagnation, these Reapers were steeped in stagnation.

They had barely made any improvements or adaptation since the Protheans, even then it was in such small ways. On the other hand, my Replicators were the versions so far ahead of their originals that it was almost laughable to call them Replicators anymore. My forces came with an access to Asgard, Alteran, Ori, Asuran, Federation, Romulan, Borg, Klingon, Galactic Republic, Imperium of Mankind, the Eldar, a little from the Necrons and more.

Even at limited access to the resources, my Replicators outclassed Reapers except for one aspect.

The Reapers had souls.

The Reapers had billions of souls in each, with estimated ten quadrillion minced and blended souls in stored in total within the entirety of the Reaper race. So as powerful as my Replicators were, they could not destroy the Reapers. Yet, even with their proverbial hands tied behind their backs, my Replicators vessels of certain sizes had strong enough shield to block all attacks by the resisting Reapers.

The dormant Reapers were difficult enough to hack, given the incredible advances of the Leviathans in the first place, and unlike the external weapons, the software part of the Reapers had seen many improvements to accommodate the ever-increasing 'noise' that they gained from absorbing so many souls. They did not know but it was the side effect of forcibly containing so many souls in their physical shell. Had the Reapers been living creatures; they would have been driven mad long ago or would have already developed an ability to use the overflowing soul powers.

The only real problem was the singularly largest cluster of Reapers on approach from the galactic void. In fact, these Reapers numbered just over one and half million, making up most the Reaper forces. In considering that the small vanguard forces of Reapers were enough threat to the galaxy as to cause the events of Mass Effect 3, a million and a half Reapers were enough to conquer a whole and fully-thriving galaxy with ease. In fact, weaker galaxies such as the Star Gate universe or the Star Trek universe would easily fall to the Reapers, possibly even by the vanguard force. The Star Wars universe would fight better, and even the Warhammer 40K universe would find it difficult.

A funny thought was how both the Chaos Gods and the Tyranids would love to confront the Reapers for the souls they contain. With such souls, the Chaos Gods could spread their influence beyond the Milky Way, and Tyranids would find the super-condensed biological matter coursing through the Reapers delicious.

For several weeks, both the network of Replicators and the software of the Reapers battled against each other, trying to hack the other while protecting themselves.

Yet, the Reapers had too many cards stacked against them. Unlike my Replicators, the Reapers were divided by my trap, with smaller clusters being utterly isolated into tiny groups. Unlike my Replicators, the Reapers were unprepared. Unlike my Replicators, the Reapers did not have the experience of cyber warfare on such scale. My Replicators had all the data and experiences of incredible cyber warfare of so many galaxies.

The fact that the battle dragged on for weeks had shown an impressive resistance on the part of the Reapers, but as the Borg say, 'Resistance is FUTILE!'.

Indeed, my Replicators learned faster and faster of any methods employed by the Reapers to counter against the Replicator hacks. The hacking of the smaller clusters had been completed first, and all the knowledge gleaned from those cases were fed to the main battle.

Eventually, the battle began to turn favourably towards my Replicators.

With each passing second, scores of Reapers flickered off and on again and were controlled by the Replicators. Sometimes the Reapers would retake control of a group or two, but the speed of Replicators taking control was visibly faster and became exponential.

In the end, only the Sovereign and the Harbinger's small cluster had remained untouched and uncorrupted by my powers. The Sovereign was deliberately left standing to advance the career of my avatar Joshua Shepard, but the Harbinger was a dangerous foe.

Being the oldest surviving Reaper, this monstrous AI within the shell of the most powerful Reaper was still holding on by closing the connections of about five hundred Reapers in a closed network. Protected by every ounce of computer power it could muster, the Harbinger set up layers after layers of firewalls that was quite tough to pierce.

The first Reaper was delivered to me through a tiny gap in the wall between the reality and the Immaterium. I have not created something like an Eye of Terror even a Maelstrom, but an ion storm caught between the gravity wells of two similar-sized black holes was enough to mask a breach in reality. It was a wound on the skin of physical space, torn through like an overgrown pimple that had been lanced by inexperienced shaky hands. It was an ugly wound and it bled unreality into the reality and caused the very matter trapped within the ion storm to coalesce with a terrible chaotic jumble that vomited out monstrous anomalies with enough force to crush a solar system.

Trapped and held in place by a dozen gigantic tentacles of metal chains, artificial muscles and Replicator blocks, the daunting figure of a Reaper slowly approached the ion storm, its body protected by the extended shield from the Replicator mothership. The gravity shear of the two black holes barely three light years apart had almost crushed the two vessels, but they had accurately slipped into the narrow corridor between the gravity fields. Navigating through that ever-shifting terrain was difficult but then the Replicators were good at doing such technical things.

There, at the end of the road, was a jagged flare of burning light that was both dark and bright at the same time, as if all the impossibilities were pulled in together to form something that should not exist. The Replicator vessel pushed the Reaper into that blinding opening, the pressure of entropic cascade shattering the fabric of space and time along the edges of the non-existence. Even with the shield still wrapped around it, the Reaper's shell shuddered as the matter that formed the body began to turn into waves and frequencies of energy set so high up in the planes of existence.

The shield flickered finally and turned off just as the Reaper became something that was both material and immaterial. The content within its shell, the minced souls trapped within the massive machine, began to boil as it entered the realm of the souls.

The massive form of a Reaper groaned in the silence of empty space as it was pushed forwards through the thick eddies of the Warp by the entangled tentacles and chains of a Replicator mothership. The Replicator mothership had formed a skin-tight field of reality around itself. This improved and modified Geller Field generator was working quite well with the non-biological nature of my Replicators.

The Reaper was then dragged into the deepest corners of the Immaterium, deep into the world of willpower that I had created there. As soon as it had arrived upon the 'heaven' of my mind, the prototype 'angels' began to crawl upon the Reaper and tore apart its pale soul that had developed through the ages of being so near a container full of burning souls. Being an artificial intelligence without organic parts, it was not able to fully achieve a proper soul, but it had some pale version of it.

Allowing my 'angels' to shred and devour the individual Reaper's soul, my mighty soul reached out and grasped the giant ball of pure soul energy that loomed larger than even my own immense soul.

"Thank you for the meal!"

Milky Way Galaxy

2183

Eden Prime

Now that I have had the taste of the first Reaper and all the juicy soul smoothie, it was time to turn my attention back to the tentatively connected avatar of mine back in the material universe.

Joshua Shepard was in pursuit of the mysterious foe even as Eden Prime was being assailed by the unwitting Geth who had no idea about the capability of the human empire that stood by its highly militaristic culture.

Shepard and SAS Normandy was en route to secure the Prothean beacon found on the surface of Eden Prime that was being excavated by the Royal Archaeological Society of Earth, funded by the Holy Church and her massive scientific divisions. Of course, this had meant that the Alliance Military had taken note of the site and had deployed quite a sizeable garrison on the planet, including some brand-new Space Marines of the Fourth Order to be created.

Orbiting the planet alongside the quite several defensive vessels, defence platforms and three battle stations was a Mark 2 Fratrum-class Space Marine Cruiser painted in black. This was the tenth Fratrum-class vessel though it was an updated version and was almost fifteen percent larger than the original Fratrum-class vessels. Commissioned as the first vessel of the Space Marines of the Order of Saint Benedictus until their capital ship was completed, the 'SAS Augustine' was the home to the newest order of Space Marines.

Although only consisting of a Warrior-Bishop, two Deacons and thirty-seven Space Marines, the Black Fraternity was armed and equipped with the latest weapons designed specifically for the Space Marines. One of these new weapons included a pair of heavy-duty tanks and a Venerable Warrior-Archbishop interred into the Sarcophagus Armour. As a recognition for his deeds, the Warrior-Archbishop was on his way to sainthood, already given veneration and soon to be 'Blessed'. Given these special measures, the Order of Saint Benedictus the 'Black Fraternity' was quite a powerhouse despite being less than one tenth in size of other Fraternities.

Little did the Geth, or Saren for that matter, know that the world of Eden Prime was thusly protected by the might of the human military and faith.

The first one to fire was the System Parameter Defenders.

These were the latest defensive measures developed by the Alliance Military for the outlying worlds.

Costing nearly ten percent of the weapons budget of past three years, the Systems Alliance Military had created a set of powerful defence weapons platforms equipped with long range sensors and weapons set in a large orbit around the sun of a solar system. Planet-oriented defences could be blinded of an enemy would approach from certain angles and directions, hidden by the gravity wells of the sun or other planets. To cover this weakness, the Alliance Military had deployed two-thousand eight-hundred eighty platforms in circular disc formation, with the equatorial deployment of three-hundred-sixty platforms spread out an approximately seven-hundred-thousand-kilometre distance.

Thus, when the Geth fleet had translated into the system and went past several gas giants and planetoids, they were detected by the overlapping long-range sensor grid of the SPD. Identifying the Geth signatures, the advanced non-sentient AI automatically armed and fired its missiles.

Detected and targeted by thirty-one SPD platforms, the Geth fleet soon realised the dangers of super-ranged stealth missiles with firewall-protected self-guidance computer system fitted with extra powerful anti-matter fusion warhead. Each SPD fired all their sixteen-missile ordinance package, sending a rapid succession of missiles slightly larger than LGM-30 Minuteman missiles of 21st Century USA.

A total of four hundred ninety-six missiles slammed into the Geth fleet.

The first missile waves exploded just before they struck the Geth vessels, and the quakes of antimatter fusion explosions shattered smaller vessels into smithereens and larger vessels were instantly crippled. The vessels in the middle and the rear of the fleet had survived, but they had to navigate around the cloud of debris.

Then the SPD platforms reloaded from the stockpile of missiles in the energy pattern buffers.

The second and the third waves of missiles had crippled the Geth fleet which had come in greater number than it had in the original timeline.

Once past the SPD, the Geth were met by the relentless firepower and deadly focus of the human defenders who were unwilling to let the machine-race from reaching the planet.

Of course, besides the battle, the real war was fought over the Prothean ruin excavated by the Royal Archaeological Society of Earth and the pawns of Sovereign descended even through the terrible fight in the high orbit.

I watched in a bemused negligence as the mighty stream of timeline and fate forced its way into reality and attempted to patch up what I had already ruined. Events happened, and the Turian Nihilus was shot in the back by Saren, and eventually, my Shepard discovered the truth about it.

Things happened fast, though not fast from my godly gaze. Cocooned in the relative safety of the deepest hole in the Warp, things moved about even as I melted down the soul energy of the first Reaper into distilled form and drinking it one gulp at a time. My heaven was fuelled by the soul energy that I was consuming while the legions of my hell were also being slowly formed. One good thing is that it was not my own soul that was being drained to build the heaven and hell. While I was focusing on the most efficient way to use that energy, my attention upon the material world was fleeting at best.

Shepard had exposed Saren, then met up with Liara T'Soni. His life continued to follow the original timeline, but the minor differences in the human culture had continued to feed me the low but consistent stream of temporal energy with which I hid within the Immaterium and dissolved the condensed soul energy from the Reaper. I began to grab the second Reaper and the third Reaper and devoured their innards.

The pilot colony world of Feros was saved and its four hundred people had been saved, including the one-hundred-strong security team that had protected the proto-colony from the Geth attack. Of course, the civilian-model 'M3 Altere' mech-walkers were greatly useful for the security personnel. Designed to emulate the Sarcophagus armour used by the Space Marines.

While the M3 Altere series was not driven by a single crippled Space Marine but by two mortal human pilots, the machine was still a mighty thing of war. Armed with two 30mm Gatling-type autocannons, two 50mm pulse-laser cannons and a missile turret, the M3 Altere could lay down such heavy firepower that no Geth could stand up to the firepower of the walkers that could traverse the landscape with ease. This was on top of the dozen 'R2-H Lopast' heavy railgun tanks recently purchased by the ExoGeni Corporation who had sponsored the colonisation.

The defence of the planet was successful, and it had forced Saren's hands and he had quickly rallied the forces of Geth prepared by the Sovereign. The enemies of the free people of the galaxy hastened their plans, while the Sovereign pondered upon why it could not contact others of its kind.

As I consumed my fifteenth Reaper and as the Harbinger was on its final legs against the assaults of my Replicators, the Sovereign finally made its move.

Using Saren as the puppet and constantly fighting Shepard across the known galaxy, the vanguard Reaper had rallied the Geth that it had indoctrinated. In fact, a greater number of Geth vessels were assembled when the Sovereign discovered that the Keepers did not respond its commands. It was not a race to stop Saren and the Sovereign, and Shepard had quickly sent his report and recommendations.

Then as the Sovereign entered the extreme range of the Citadel, the fleet around the Citadel responded with all the force that they could muster.

At this point, the interest that I had on this galaxy had waned since I had obtained what I had desired from this universe. I was now in possession of souls in their trillions and all ground down to their base levels, which had meant that with a little refinement, even the alien souls would be 'edible' for me.

I went into an almost automated hibernation mode. I had created a mechanism within the Immaterium to consume, process, refine and absorb the souls from the captured Reapers, and I would hibernate during this period to work on the next part of my plan.

Soon, I was made vaguely aware of an ambush by the Collectors commanded by the Harbinger, who had sought to create a human-form Reaper to find an escape from my relentless assaults upon it. It knew that its days were numbered, and was attempting to find a new vessel to inhabit.

Shepard had foiled that plan, of course, with the aid of the Illusive Man, the mysterious head of the Thirteenth Order, the secret order within the Holy Church. A new Normandy was constructed with greater defence and heavy ordinance as well as a squad of Space Marines aboard to support the famed Commander Shepard.

Without its contingency plan, the Harbinger was defeated by my Replicators, and I was able to get the next phase of the plan on track.

Events of Mass Effect 3 unfolded but this time with the Reapers assaulting the homeworlds of other major alien races first, and an attack on Earth, though devastating, was halted by the might of the Alliance military.

Unfortunately, my manipulation of events had meant that Shepard was unable to choose the right option in the end. While he could breeze through the difficulties since there was no 'Cerberus' to stymie his path, there were aliens who attempted to get in his way, and it was a difficult path for him. His few alien allies had died on his journey, with only Tali surviving until the end.

Of course, the victory of the year-long war was hard fought.

This was my doing.

I had the Replicators construct massive cloning factories on the outskirts of the galaxy to provide the Replicator-controlled Reapers with more materials for their 'Husk' troops, and produced few other beasts to give the Reapers even more destructive capabilities. After all, a Husk-form of Rancor from the Star Wars Universe was a badass that slaughtered many Turians. Ogres and Trolls from the Warcraft Universe were also nice to use against both the Krogans and Asari.

The war had finally ended with Shepard finally reclaiming the Catalyst to destroy the Reapers.

It took three-hundred-sixty-one days for the Reapers to be defeated, and it had left a devastated and ruined galaxy that had left almost one-fifth of the Turians dead, half of the Krogans, nearly fifteen percent of Asari and devastating twenty-six-point-four percent of the Salarians. Humans suffered too but the actual numbers were kept secret. The Salarians had estimated that somewhere between fifteen to twenty percent of Earth's population to have died, with at least another one hundred million humans across their colonies.

The dust settled, and the galaxy was at peace and all were too busy rebuilding to cause trouble. Batarians and Vorcha did some piracy only to be hunted by the vengeful humans who were not tolerating any Batarians seeking to enslave humans.

It was only about five years since the end of the Reaper War that the Salarians had discovered a horrific discovery.

The Salarians were short-lived race, and they were careful to maintain their population through carefully monitored population control. When the war had ended, the Salarians were quick to respond to the devastation by attempting to increase their population. This effort did not have the effect that they had expected. Birth-rates began to drop slowly, and by the fifth year, they had found their birth-rate to have dropped by almost fifty percent, and nearly thirty percent of their race was sterile.

Scientists attempted to figure out the reason, and thanks to their advanced medical technology and with their experience with the Genophage, they had discovered that the Salarian race was infected a different type of retrovirus but with a similar effect of Genophage, but something that would be far more damaging than the Genophage itself.

The retrovirus had sterilised Salarians with healthy genes while allowing recess genes to become inheritable, especially in terms of metabolic rate and lifespan. Horrified by the result of their initial findings, they research the impact of the virus on the newborn Salarian children until they had discovered that almost sixty percent of their children since the Reaper War had some sort of genetic defect that they all had thought to be gone.

At first, the Salarians thought it was a result of their attempts to create the Genophage, and sought to find a link there. That was a dead end, and as the sixth year drew closer, the deformities and congenital defects and disease of their newborns began to climb in percentage. The second idea was that the Reapers had caused this, and it was a good idea until a colony was discovered to have been infected with the retrovirus despite having no contact with a Reaper or their minions.

By year seven, they had also found that other races were also affected by a similarly debilitating retrovirus, with small differences to accommodate the different physiologies of the alien species, but the result being increased sterility and genetic defects. The Krogans were already affected by the original Genophage, and now all their newborns were as weak as Salarians.

Only the Asari and the Quarians were unaffected. Quarians were always in their suits for fear of disease anyway, and the Asari were infected but for some reason, the virus did not affect their reproductive capability.

As for humans, their borders had been closed since the war, and the rest of the Citadel races were too busy blaming each other for the outbreak of the retrovirus in every species including the Vorcha. The effect of a full-blown effect on a Vorcha was often the victim screaming in pain for a week before literally breaking down into a heap of bloody goo.

War erupted in the tenth year since the Reaper War, with the political pressure and fear took hold in every race. The Krogans mustered their strength together and assaulted the Salarians when they had discovered that the birth-rate of the Krogan race had dropped to mere four percent, and it had infuriated the massively violent race.

Unable to channel their fear and anger, Turians declared their intention to wipe out the Krogans if they dared to interfere with the Salarians from trying to find a cure. That became a full-scale war between the species, with the Asari and the Quarians being dragged into it.

Of course, the Geth became involved when someone pointed them as a potential source of the retrovirus.

Although the Asari had managed to calm the hotheads and turned full-scale wars into cold wars, the tension was enormous.

Then a discovery was made.

One of the more isolated Turian colonies affected by the virus had no visit from Geth or the Reaper, but they had discovered that the colony had received some shipments of supplies from the humans during the height of the Reaper War. They continued their investigation and found that every world affected by the virus, even to the most remote colonies, were in contact with the humans in some form.

The Citadel was in an uproar, and a delegation was sent to Earth to demand an explanation.

The explanation came in the form of a massive galaxy-wide invasion of every Citadel race by the humans.

Tuchanka and Palaven were suddenly faced with fleets of human ships including two full Orders of Space Marines. Other species such as the Asari, the Quarians and the Salarians only received one Order of Space Marines instead.

Humans had built up enough ships and military forces to park a large 'grand' fleet in the orbit of every homeworld of those major Council races. Then the human fleets were reinforced by the Geth, who now beheld human insignia upon their vessels, and their soldiers appeared to follow every command that humans gave, including self-destructive attacks. It was later found that the humans had created a computer virus so vindictive and powerful that it lobotomised the Geth and their sentience. The Geth were no longer true AI but a puppet of their human masters.

Colonies and the homeworlds of lesser races were faced with many Geth ships with a handful of human ships, and the Citadel itself had faced three Orders of Space Marines as well as enough Geth and human vessels to match the defending fleet of the Citadel ship-to-ship. Given the superior technology of the human ships, this was a losing battle for the Citadel.

The Citadel races put up a vicious fight to their bitter ends.

Despite the initial advantage that humans had over other races, the war dragged on for almost five years.

During this war, the Quarians were finally ended with all their large vessels destroyed by the human vessels and Geth fleet. The Geth, given their number, then assigned a taskforce to track down Quarian survivors.

The Volus surrendered quickly, and their entire population was forced back to their homeworld of Irune under strict blockade and quarantine. Almost a thousand defence stations were brought into the extreme orbit of Irune to reinforce the blockade and containment.

The oceanic homeworld of Hanar was destroyed by a terrible 'planet-killer' weapon that had removed the protective layer of the planet's atmosphere and boiled the seas with waves of nuclear bombing. When the bombardment ended and the atmosphere restored, much of the world was utterly polluted by deadly radiation.

The Salarians almost died out by the time of the armistice, from both the war and their susceptibility to the retrovirus. Their homeworld was lost as well as major colonies, which had left precious few of their numbers surviving by the end, and their lifespan was getting shorter by the generations.

The Asari fought hard, and they had even attempted to kill the Pope in Rome as well as causing some serious damage on some of the Earth's colonies. Yet, even they had to submit when their homeworld was devastated by the waves of Geth, fresh from their victory over the Quarians, and the fearsome Space Marines of the humans. It was a more difficult front for the humans since it was a planet full of biotics. Yet, the Reapers had done enough damage to the morale of its population, that the homeworld had surrendered about a year before the armistice and the seat of the government had to flee to the nearest surviving colony.

The Turians of Palaven were exterminated to every individual. The humans knew that the Turians would resist, so they did not bother with a ground-based fight for almost a year, with daily arrival of supply ships carrying only planetary bombs to turn the planet into a smouldering wasteland. Indeed, no less than twelve hundred nuclear bombs were used alongside tens of thousands of anti-matter bombs. Once the eleven-months of bombardment was over, the Geth was sent down.

Survivors fought back, but weakened and starving, not even the courage of the Turians could defeat the five-million Geth combat units upgraded with human technology.

By the time of armistice signing, the Krogan race was dwindling in number from both the war and the nearly zero birth rate across their population. As a condition of their surrender, the Krogans were forced to relinquish all their colonies and were forced back to their homeworld in return for a cure to their sterility.

The armistice was signed after five years, and the Citadel Council was disbanded given that the humans now utterly controlled the Citadel and the former Council races were now either bombed to the stone-age or blockaded back on their homeworlds.

Now that they had controlled the Citadel, the humans opened it up wide and then allowed the 'Keepers' to disassemble the collected Reaper debris.

Little did other races know that the original Replicators that had usurped the Citadel had been hanging around within the Citadel, and the Keepers used them to consume and reuse the Reapers. The Citadel became like a giant antenna, with former Reaper pieces becoming building materials to extend the antenna-like shape and modify the Crucible to their mysterious needs. The few Asari and other residents that were still allowed to live in the Citadel had reported that the orb-like structure built within the Presidium Ring appeared highly religious in design, with numerous religious iconography.

The armistice had completely destroyed the balance of power in the galaxy, with the former powers within the galactic community having been reduced so immensely that the humans utterly dominated in all aspects of life. The peace did come with a cure for their sterility, but the damage to their population was already done. Salarians had ninety-two percent of their latest three generations with some sort of genetic problems, while the eighty-three percent of newly born Turians came with thin outer shells that had a devastating effect if they lived with the harsh radiations of Palevan.

Only the Asari had managed to evade the issue of the retrovirus, but the war had cost them so much so that isolationist movements were growing, with grave internal political consequences.

Second Reaper War came only seven years since the armistice, and some had hoped that the Reapers would destroy the human arrogance.

That was not to be.

The Reapers came with similar strength as before, but they all came for the Citadel, where the human and Geth fleet awaited them.

This new conflict did mean that severe human patrols and blockades were gone, with almost every human naval asset fighting the new wave of Reapers.

As the galaxy watched, the two fleets met.

The Reapers were annihilated after six days of the most intense space battle ever witnessed by the galaxy. It did cost the humans almost all their Geth fleet and lost nearly half of their human fleet.

Of course, this was my way of getting rid of the Reapers that I had drained of the souls. After all, I did not need the empty metal shells.

Although humans maintained dominion through their victory, the weakening of human fleet and the break of blockades had meant that other races began to conspire and colonise.

Almost a decade passed since the Second Reaper War, and the galaxy was back into a total war between the League of Free Races and the tyrannical human race.

The nine-year war between the humans and former Citadel races had ended in a terrible bloodshed on both sides, with nearly half of human colonies obliterated. Turians, Krogans, and Hanar were made extinct along with the Batarians who supported the League. Asari had survived as a species, but they were now enslaved by the mankind, with the female-only Asari race becoming an entire race of sex slaves, with their biotic abilities lobotomised at birth, and all and any of their history, culture, religion and traditions forcibly erased. The slaughter of their religious orders was horrific, with Justicars fighting to their last breath against the terrifying might of Space Marines.

It was three years since the final defeat of the League fleet that the humans declared to the galaxy that only humans were considered truly sentient, and all other species would be considered as 'semi-sentient'. Technology and writing were banned for other races, especially the few surviving Salarians. Asari was not banned of this because most of their new-borns were lobotomised and brainwashed anyway.

Any non-human who spoke a recognisable language or use writing or use technology were rounded up along with the numerous human sympathisers, and they were all brought to the 'Abyss of Heretics', a tiny Warp Storm that I had created for this reason. Loaded on to a sturdy but primitive cargo vessels, they were flung into the heart of the Warp Storm, where I gladly received them.

The aliens were horrified but they were nowhere as horrified as the humans who finally saw the truth of their faith and religion. I devoured them gladly.

I wondered though, for a moment, if this devouring soul business and being within the Immaterium was driving me mad. I was never this evil, I thought, but then again, I did slaughter so many in the Falling Skies Universe. I suppose I was justified as the Living God of Humankind that I must cast aside all non-humans… right?

Eventually, this question drove me to meditate on the problem.

Almost two decades in the reality passed before I concluded that I was a little insane, though fixable by getting myself back into physical form. The longer I spent as an energy being, just like the Chaos Gods, the eviler and crazier I would certainly become. This was an issue because I was losing focus of what I was doing all this for.

I knew how to hide from the Void Keeper even in physical form, so all this was certainly not necessary. Yet, there was a compulsion, hiding in the tiniest corner of my mind.

I had suspicions.

I knew what I had to do.

I sent for Shepard, the re-born Jesus, to become my anchor.

In the heart of the Citadel, Shepard sat upon the Soul Throne and began to receive the souls of the dead humans and the prayers of the living. He became a beacon of human souls, and once his mind was vaporised by the immensity of what he had become, I used that body to initiate the Rebirth Protocol.

A single cell containing the DNA of my body was summoned forth once Shepard's body was immolated with all the soul energy. It was a tough thing to truly materialise something from the Immaterium. No wonder the Chaos Gods needed so many sacrifices to bring forth their daemons into reality. Especially something so potent as my cell, it took so much power.

Yet, it was only three centuries before my body was fully re-grown, clad in my armour, and sitting upon that throne.

As I prepared my soul to re-enter the body and merge it fully, I also prepared the secondary protocols and the decoys for the Void Keeper.

I needed weapons and active decoys, and this had meant that I had to be ready to take the pain that comes with it. The wounds of a soul were a dangerous thing, even for a massive soul as myself was now. I had been preparing for it, of course, and I had enough pieces of my soul cut out and moulded into a useful form, and encased in pure soul energies.

Using the energies constantly pooled from the prayers and dead humans gathered at the Citadel, I opened a tiny hole in the dimensional barrier and sent forth the burst of my decoys.

Once the decoys were sent out, I reached out, masking myself carefully. Tendrils of my vast consciousness licked around the edges of the nearest free-floating dimensions whose fates were wavering in the infinite mysteries of the universe. It was at certain universes that I inserted my shards. Of course, my method was far superior to the dangerous and inept method of Tom Riddle with his Horcrux idiocy.

I closed the hole and wrapped the whole galaxy in a fluctuating bubble of uncertainty, which would make it very difficult for my arch nemesis from finding me.

Now, the difficult task of merging myself back into my living body was ahead. This was going to take several thousand years at least.

I sighed.

Soul Shard 11

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Universe

I woke up, and I knew that something was wrong.

The last thing I remembered was that I was just done with the Harry Potter universe, and I received the three icons of the Death.

Where was I?

I breathed in, and I felt powerful energies within myself, except I had no limbs and no sensory organs or anything. I was just a blob of flesh.

My soul was here but I did not even have a brain. I was about a million super-dense cells protected by a thick carapace, and I was vaguely aware that I was moving.

I was not dismayed because I could easily guess that I was either an emergency method of escaping my enemy, the Void Keeper, or an accident. In either case, I was quite sure my course of action… Wait… Why am I so certain my course of action?

Searching within myself, I quickly realised that I was not an accident but a carefully prepared capsule for an emergency purpose, or at least something similar. There were instructions here in the forms of powerful compulsions to do things.

Then I felt the heat.

I was made aware of myself falling, with gravity now pulling my cells in a direction.

I was making a planetfall.

I was curious where I have ended up.

It was a while before I felt an impact, and the heat from re-entry began the process of growth. Except for the outermost layer of my cells, rest of the cells within destroyed themselves to fuel the growth. At the core was a group of a thousand cells protected by a membrane, and I knew that was the anchor of my soul, and I felt it expand like an embryo.

An age had passed, or at least from my perspective.

I began to feel things. That had meant that my brain was beginning to function and nervous system was established.

The first thing that I had felt was my own heartbeat, and it beat well.

More time passed, and I felt things shift as my body grew. Something was covering the exterior of my shell, and the shell was cracking.

It was the time of my birth.

END OF CHAPTER 131