[center][h2][b]Ilshar Ard’sabekh[/b][/h2][/center]


Ilshar found his eyes wandering at the tiresome banter of human and posthuman - if there was one thing that the amount of implants did not change, it seemed, it was the rambunctiousness of their kind. Of course, to mention that would have prompted a new volley of invective and distractions, so he forbore to mention that as he checked the compactness of the fungal flesh on his left forearm around the fresh suture line, already barely visible among the mouldering pores and overgrowth. The nascent symbiote-worm stirred tentatively within the spongy muscle, digging its warren as it extruded the growing segments of its bodies into the ambient Chasm. The feeling was ever so slightly grating, but it was something he could get used to. In the right circumstances, an easy reminder that he still had a forearm at all could be precious.

Satisfied with his limb’s integrity, he raised the full front of his head at the scielto.

[b]“Don’t discount the ground-born. We might not be used to swimming the void, but some of us feel the wafts of the Chasm as well as any star eel.”[/b] He could have added something about the strength of a primordial gift as opposed to incidental mutation, but the atmosphere was already tense enough without that.

Echo seemed to have the right of it, ultimately - most of what needed to be said had been. Ilshar finished storing his newly replenished ammunition and was about to do the same with the vacuum supplies, when the vrexul’s explanation made him pause.

[b]“Coordinates, you say. We might have some just from dropping a scan of the station into a spatial chart, but that’s hardly good enough on its own. We’ll have to map the interior as we go. An extraction plan will do us little good if our support has to tunnel through walls and solid debris to get to us, let alone if they’re caught in the Chasm’s teeth on the way.”[/b]