An obsession gone awry

When word of Prothean artifacts reached the Normandy, Liara would inevitably be gone for the next couple weeks to go see up close. The benefit of being both Shadow Broker and a member of a Spectre's entourage (not to mention sleeping with the Spectre in question) was that she could set her own hours. So, with a kiss on the lips of her red-headed love, she took off on a shuttle to the latest dig site, a half-colonized world in Asari space.

She was expecting to encounter an old friend from university who was managing the site. Instead, she found the aftermath of a raid. Slavers or pirates, she wasn't sure, though the lack of bodies suggested the former. It wasn't an uncommon story. The dig site was on a planet with civilization, so it was on a map, but that civilization was still under development, and help was far away. This would likely have gone unnoticed for some time had she not shown up.

Liara stepped off the shuttle in trepidation, pistol in hand, and started walking through the ruins of the site. She couldn't help but wonder if Eden Prime had looked similar back when Shepard first started her adventures. She looked through windows, opened doors, called out for anyone. Nothing. Disheartening, but at least there were no bodies. That meant they were likely still alive somewhere. Maybe some of them... Her eyes darted towards the dig itself.

From above, it looked like nothing but a square with a makeshift staircase going down into the ground. At the bottom of those steps, however, was an ancient underground complex, a labyrinth to put human myth to shame, walls still glowing with residual energy 100,000 years after it had been buried. This had been the find that had drawn her attention. Usually these complexes weren't so well preserved. She tried not to be wowed and focus on finding if anyone had taken refuge down here.

The problem with a labyrinth is that it is, by its very nature, labyrinthine. Liara had heard Shepard use the human idiom "finding a needle in a haystack", which had always seemed inexplicable to her. Why would someone throw a needle in a haystack in the first place? Yet down here, she found she finally understood, much to her dismay. She didn't see footprints or hear any distant footsteps or find any of the telltale signs of survivors that one usually did in places like this. Not to mention she had absolutely no idea how widespread this complex was, or how she'd get out again... Great.

It was as she was passing by a side corridor that she saw something out of the corner of her eye that stopped her where she stood. She'd never seen one up close before, but she knew it intimately from descriptions and images she'd seen.

A Prothean Beacon.

"Come..." It seemed to beckon. Suddenly, everything else seemed unimportant. Thoughts of the archeologists, the raiders, the entire situation above was irrelevant in the face of this. She walked down the corridor towards the beacon, which glowed and hissed with ancient power. It was magnificent to see one up close, standing tall and erect, she couldn't help herself. She reached out and place one hand upon it.

Suddenly, a flash of light burst forward, and Liara was lifted into the air. A glowing figure appeared, floating before her. Its appearance was alien, yet familiar somehow. How could that be? She had never seen a Prothean before...

"Goddess," she gasped in awe.

"Yes my child," it said. "I am Athame."

Athame? Athame was a Prothean? ...Yes, it made so much sense. It was obvious such beings would appear godlike to the primitive Asari.

"I am... Ah!" Liara felt a pulse of energy rush over her as Athame was probing her mind, tendrils of energy filling every synapse and nerve ending in her entire body. Naturally, and somewhat embarrassingly, this included her erogenous zones. She felt herself not only amazed, but aroused.

"Dr. Liara T'Soni," she said, chancing upon her name. "Yes... You will do just fine. I see that you have seen off the Reapers... Most excellent."

"Yes goddess. Thank you goddess," Liara replied, fervently, yet unsure as to why she was still using that phrase when the rational part of her brain told her otherwise. She supposed it just felt natural in the presence of such a magnificent specimen.

"You've devoted much of your life to the study of my people and culture, Liara T'Soni. I will now grant you the ultimate reward for your dedication. Where other beacons contain merely fragmentary information, my entire consciousness is secured here. If I am to leave, I require a living vessel. I have chosen you, and in exchange, you will know everything there is to know about my people."

"Of course goddess!" Liara replied, humbled by the opportunity to present a living Prothean to the cosmos. She felt those tendrils of energy massaging her brain, making it all tingly, priming her perhaps for what came next. She couldn't wait.

"Very well," Athame answered, sounding very satisfied indeed. "Now... Let us begin." There was another pulse of light and this time, Liara arched back and began to tremble in mid hair as she felt a stream data pour directly into her mind. Goddess, she saw it! She saw everything! The Protheans, their entire civilization, things they built, food they ate, people they... enslaved? A flicker of doubt surfaced in her mind for just an instant, but it was quickly smoothed out by Athame. Of course they enslaved other species. Conquest was the right of the mighty. Oh to feel Prothean shackles on her body and mind... She envied them.

She saw her own people, being bred by the Protheans to suit their purposes, genetically engineered to become exactly what they wanted them to be. She felt warm and fuzzy. To think, all this time, she had been an invention of the Protheans too! If she had wanted to know more about them she should have simply been exploring herself! With that thought, Liara suddenly felt herself getting wetter and wetter as Athame provided more and more data about their history and culture as well as their secrets, quietly tweaking Liara's thoughts as she did so, making sure she accepted everything like the good little vessel she was.

"And now," Athame continued through Liara's mind as Liara began to pant "You will know all there is to know about me..." With that last word came an intense sensation of pleasure emanating from Liara's snatch as Athame's consciousness flowed deeper into her mind than ever before. Athame's personal experiences contextualized the information she had been feeding Liara. Suddenly so many things made sense, and there was still more coming! She couldn't wait to share it... When she was young, on the Prothean homeworld, she had never imagined being... Wait... What was that? She wasn't a Prothean... She was a... a... Uh... What was she again? How had she come here? She reached out to Athame for assistance... Wait? Wasn't she Athame? Why would she reach out to herself? Was she someone else... She struggled to remember...

She felt an orgasm rip through her, and suddenly she didn't care who she was anymore. It was followed swiftly by another, and another, and another. Each one blanking out another part of her mind. After about 30 seconds, for the briefest of moments, she knew everything the Protheans knew, and then one final burst consigned all the thoughts, memories, and mannerisms that made up Liara T'Soni to oblivion. Her body dropped to the floor, the beacon went dead. A moment later, it pushed itself to its feet, and started to chuckle.

"At last," she said. Athame couldn't believe how easy that had been. The Asari's brain was admittedly a little more compact than she would have liked, but it would do. Her body would most definitely do, even if it would take some getting used to seeing out of only two eyes, which now glowed a vibrant green. In a way, she did feel bad for what she had done, but she'd never actually misled the Asari. For an instant, she did in fact know everything there was to know about the Protheans. She had just failed to mention that there wasn't enough room for all that information, not to mention her own consciousness, in the Asari brain. At least, not while the Asari and all she had known was still in it.

Athame stripped out of the now dampened clothing Liara had come in wearing. She would secure more comfortable, less used clothes on her own time. This planet was tropical and lovely. She would enjoy feeling the humid air on her new skin...

...

No one ever saw Liara T'Soni again. Shepard searched for months, but while they eventually found the dig site survivors on a Batarian **** ship, neither captives nor captors knew anything about Liara's whereabouts. Rumors occasionally surfaced of a strange, beautiful green-eyed Asari matching her description, but eventually they simply had to concede that she was gone.

Athame, whose project had used her name in designing the Asari god, enjoying her new lease on life as she searched for any other survivors of her people. If any others had stored themselves away digitally, rather than physically... Well... There were plenty more where this one had come from.