The unpleasant wave of sensation hit Ilshar an instant earlier than the putrid nerve-clusters in his body could interpret it, drowning him in a surge of vague but stifling unease that would have made someone less hardened freeze up on the spot. As it was, his body was already halfway behind a rock, a proper lithoid one, before he recognised the sense of vulnerability for what it was. Open. Defenseless. A clear target. Augmented senses screamed danger at him, and the message they sent was every bit as clear as the whizzing bullet and the peremptory words that followed it. The feeling did not fully subside even when the rock was safely interposed between most of his body and the now even more sinister treeline, and every inch of himself he left exposed to keep watch over the woods made him keenly aware of itself.
He was about to growl something in response to Rasch, when the staccato of a new series of shots interrupted the gurgle in his amorphous throat and left his shard-toothed maw hanging open in bemusement. The pure human - Kleo, was it - seemed determined to antagonise every force on this worm-forsaken world, to the point Ilshar was beginning to doubt if she was some sort of double agent embedded in their ranks to sabotage them. Most humans were Leaguers, after all, weren't they...
"Kadharra! Hold still!" he cursed, churning as loud as his voice would carry. Perhaps the force in the trees would hear that and take it as a sign of goodwill on his part, but to pray for such a fate would have been hubris at this point. Regardless, he had to make some attempt to defuse the situation, and the only vocal channel was with Rasch. The tarrhaidim let go of his gun and raised both empty hands, splayed wide oped, over the rim of his covering rock. The gesture was universal enough; it remained to be seen if the hidden guerrillas would trust it for what it was.
Drifting through the cosmic graveyard of the Halo Stars, Laethem is a bleak, monochrome world of dark skies, desolate lands and icy starlight. Much of its surface is covered in barren rock wastes, broken only by sluggish inky seas wherein swim vast and somnolent things of curious and archaic appearance, the only form of life to stubbornly cling to existence under the open air. The thinness of Laethem’s atmosphere and the distance from its star, white-faced Achrum, cast upon it a perennial pall of chilly night, pierced more strongly by the sinister constellations that loom over it at all times than by the feeble sun. To venture out unprotected for longer than brief hours would spell death from cold and asphyxiation in the deepest valley as surely as on the highest peak.
Given the planet’s remote location and the poverty of its conditions, it is perhaps surprising that it should ever have been chosen by ancient humanity not merely as a site of habitation, but of massed settlement. Three great hive spires were built upon the world, though only one still stands to this day, and the already immense networks of caverns and tunnels in its crust were further expanded by gargantuan mining operations until they formed an interconnected web spanning Laethem’s full extension. These feats of engineering have given the modestly sized, inhospitable planet deceptively extensive space for its population to multiply, and in the havoc of Old Night it has grown unchecked, fracturing over the generations into three wide strata roughly distinguished by their proximity to the surface.
The people of the surviving Hive Koytos have deviated the least from base humanity, and still desperately fight to maintain the purity of their lineages. The severity of the struggle, and the harshness of life in the spire, have hardened them into a rigid, severely regimented martial society which brooks no dissent or scruple in the fight for survival. They are beset from below by the teeming hordes of the Pale Ones, the abhuman breeds that have mutated and grown in Laethem’s subterranean labyrinths. Strange and grotesque are their visages, with lean, spindly bodies and chalky hairless skin, their eyes vestigial or wholly absent; some even sport huge nostrils whose fine smell guides them as well as any other sense. While parts of the Pale Ones still cling to vestiges of civilization, many have devolved into barbarism or been swayed to the worship of cruel monster-gods, and seek the conquest of the spire above. The other two hives have already fallen at their hands, destroyed by their last defenders in final acts of defiance.
Deep in the lowermost levels of Laethem’s maze, where even the Pale Ones rarely tread, there lurks a third, seldom-seen strain of deviate humankind. Bred in the distant past for heavy labour in the mines, the ogryn-like colossi known as the Ghug roam vaults that no light has reached in millennia. Never gifted with developed minds, they are now little better than cannibal beasts, and the rare times when their voracious hunting packs ascend from their pits become days of storied dread for the world’s underdwellers.
Psyker Grade: Zeta. A telepath of notable strength, Nolrakh is nevertheless limited in the forms his talent can effectively manifest in, none of which are beyond the reach of most trained human psykers.
Skills and Abilities:
Haunter of the Dark: Born and grown under distant stars and in deepest shadow, Nolrakh shuns the light and takes to darkness as his home. The sight of his vitreous, atrophic eye is dim in the glow of day, but seizes upon shapes and motion with uncanny precision when immersed in penumbra, painting a colourless but stark world of outlines to his mind. Where the shadows grow too deep even for this gift, his psychic ability to perceive the minds of living things in his vicinity supplies, along with the strange senses of his mutated physiology - the taste of the wind, the tremors of the soil, the vibrations in the air all lead him to his quarry. Despite his imposing size, his deftness in moving unseen and unheard as long as darkness cloaks him is downright preternatural, even when armoured; no predator nor prey can match his nightly stalking.
Horror Made Flesh: Fear and revulsion are the mutant’s lot, and Nolrakh is no exception. As heavily as his ghastly appearance weighs on him, he knows it can be leveraged to inspire dread in his enemies, and is skilful in doing so should it be required. Misshapen claws and teeth flashing at the edge of one’s vision, or the apparition of a hideous visage, can break the staunchest spirits, but the Ninth Primarch’s potency of fear goes beyond mere physical intimidation. A hypnotic force dwells in his eye which can strike those who meet its gaze with paralyzing anguish, or plague them with hallucinations were they even to escape its grasp. Should all else fail, he summons forth raw psychic might to batter down the most stubborn mind with the force of Warp-induced emotion.
The Flawed Fortress: Nolrakh’s body is perpetually at war with itself, wracked by periodic surges of degeneration and reconstruction which preclude all attempts at an external cure for his deformity. His regenerative potential, truly stupendous by any standard, stubbornly rejects surgical or bionic alterations as well as the fruits of his mutation, which in turn never fail to reassert themselves in the same immutable forms. Grisly a fate as this may be, a hidden blessing lurks in it, for harm is likewise unable to leave a lasting mark on the Primarch. No matter how deep the wound or thorough the mutilation, he can recover from virtually any injury as long as he is not slain outright, and even regrow entire limbs with minimal medical assistance. This, together with his resilience to pain, enables him to fight in an uniquely lethal style, recklessly exposing himself to damage that he might strike with ferocious abandon.
Appearance:
Obscure flaws in the Ninth’s genes have conspired with the Warp to undermine the image of physical perfection that ought to have been his birthright as a Primarch. A germ of disfigurment forever gnaws at him from within, regularly rising to hiderously transfigure him before being forced back by his innate regeneration in an agonizing cycle that repeats every solar month.
At the peak of his health, Nolrakh could well pass for truly human were it not for his stature. Towering at some twelve feet in height, he has the robust frame of a warrior, though his pale skin belies his darkling habits. His firm, if subtly tense posture and unscarred bald head do not appear out of place among the Imperium’s gene-altered troops, and his stern statuesque features lend him an air fit for command. The only flaw marring them are his eyes, of whom one – which precisely is never constant – is a hollow socket, and the other murky, with no discernable iris.
This state, however, only endures for a matter of days, after which an unholy transformation begins. Skin frays and recedes, hard white growths part twisting flesh, and facial features drift almost fluidly overnight, until in about a week the decay is complete.
In this state, Nolrakh’s body is a horrific mass of knotted strands of muscle, ragged coils of pale skin and exposed plates of hardened bone extruding from a fantastically misshapen skeleton. Thin strips of purulent necrosis are nested between the ridges and chaotic contours of his frame. His hands are claws of sharpened bone, his head little more than a skull of exposed osseous exoskeleton, pitted and gouged like a lunar surface. His eye, now truly cyclopean, sits in its fractured center, surmounting the rictus death-grin of a lipless mouth, from which issues a voice at once guttural, crackling and sibilant – a mere ruin of the curt and acerbic, yet compelling tones of his apex. In time, the process of healing begins, and the horror is steadily swathed in healthy skin and flesh once more, but ever it remains skulking under the surface until it is ready to emerge anew.
Ashamed of his monstrous and unstable essence, the Ninth usually hides his features under heavy robes or armour, with a veil or hood that lends him his moniker.
Concept:
A living paradox, a loftiest pinnacle of humanity and a most vile of miscreations coexisting in a single tormented body, Nolrakh is a being haunted by his aberrant nature and forever goaded by the hope for salvation, or at least redemption. Burdened by what he sees as his innate sin, he at once abases himself before the Emperor he has failed and is driven to acts of tremendous hubris in his efforts to restore himself, be that atrocious carnage in a futile bid for glory or the blackest scientific inquests in search of an escape from the unnatural cycle that measures his existence; in the same breath, he yearns to serve humanity and immolates it on the altar of his desperation. Tragic spirit and loathsome butcher, champion and abomination, Primarch and mutant; such is the fate of the Ninth.
Legion Name: Legio IX, “the Reviled”; later known as the Star Reavers.
Associated Primach: Nolrakh.
Concept: Descendants of savage techno-nomads from the nighted Antarctic plains, the warriors of the Ninth Legion are harrowed by the curse inherited from their sire. Though stable enough on implantation, as if eager to infect healthy bodies, their gene-seed is fraught with the exsecratio corporis, the malediction of the flesh, a plague of cascading mutation that ravages them as they age. Some of them swell and bloat into faceless, spike-toothed unwieldy hulks the size of tactical dreadnought armour; others are twisted into hunched, predatory shapes, with exposed plates and ridges of bone matching those of their progenitor. In the vast majority, however, the exsecratio manifests as a gradual atrophy of limbs and organs, forcing its victims to seek bionic replacements.
The Reviled channel the pain and rancor of their affliction into a peculiarly vicious and gruesome form of warfare. Thirsting to mangle their foes’ bodies as well as shatter their spirits with abject terror, they often strike in darkness, bearing down in close combat with a fury of roaring metal and fearsome weapons from Terra’s past. Like their forebears, they are sworn to the chainblade and venerate the ice-flame, and like them they give no quarter.
Drifting through the cosmic graveyard of the Halo Stars, Laethem is a bleak, monochrome world of dark skies, desolate lands and icy starlight. Much of its surface is covered in barren rock wastes, broken only by sluggish inky seas wherein swim vast and somnolent things of curious and archaic appearance, the only form of life to stubbornly cling to existence under the open air. The thinness of Laethem’s atmosphere and the distance from its star, white-faced Achrum, cast upon it a perennial pall of chilly night, pierced more strongly by the sinister constellations that loom over it at all times than by the feeble sun. To venture out unprotected for longer than brief hours would spell death from cold and asphyxiation in the deepest valley as surely as on the highest peak.
Given the planet’s remote location and the poverty of its conditions, it is perhaps surprising that it should ever have been chosen by ancient humanity not merely as a site of habitation, but of massed settlement. Three great hive spires were built upon the world, though only one still stands to this day, and the already immense networks of caverns and tunnels in its crust were further expanded by gargantuan mining operations until they formed an interconnected web spanning Laethem’s full extension. These feats of engineering have given the modestly sized, inhospitable planet deceptively extensive space for its population to multiply, and in the havoc of Old Night it has grown unchecked, fracturing over the generations into three wide strata roughly distinguished by their proximity to the surface.
The people of the surviving Hive Koytos have deviated the least from base humanity, and still desperately fight to maintain the purity of their lineages. The severity of the struggle, and the harshness of life in the spire, have hardened them into a rigid, severely regimented martial society which brooks no dissent or scruple in the fight for survival. They are beset from below by the teeming hordes of the Pale Ones, the abhuman breeds that have mutated and grown in Laethem’s subterranean labyrinths. Strange and grotesque are their visages, with lean, spindly bodies and chalky hairless skin, their eyes vestigial or wholly absent; some even sport huge nostrils whose fine smell guides them as well as any other sense. While parts of the Pale Ones still cling to vestiges of civilization, many have devolved into barbarism or been swayed to the worship of cruel monster-gods, and seek the conquest of the spire above. The other two hives have already fallen at their hands, destroyed by their last defenders in final acts of defiance.
Deep in the lowermost levels of Laethem’s maze, where even the Pale Ones rarely tread, there lurks a third, seldom-seen strain of deviate humankind. Bred in the distant past for heavy labour in the mines, the ogryn-like colossi known as the Ghug roam vaults that no light has reached in millennia. Never gifted with developed minds, they are now little better than cannibal beasts, and the rare times when their voracious hunting packs ascend from their pits become days of storied dread for the world’s underdwellers.
Psyker Grade: Zeta. A telepath of notable strength, Nolrakh is nevertheless limited in the forms his talent can effectively manifest in, none of which are beyond the reach of most trained human psykers.
Skills and Abilities:
Haunter of the Dark: Born and grown under distant stars and in deepest shadow, Nolrakh shuns the light and takes to darkness as his home. The sight of his vitreous, atrophic eye is dim in the glow of day, but seizes upon shapes and motion with uncanny precision when immersed in penumbra, painting a colourless but stark world of outlines to his mind. Where the shadows grow too deep even for this gift, his psychic ability to perceive the minds of living things in his vicinity supplies, along with the strange senses of his mutated physiology - the taste of the wind, the tremors of the soil, the vibrations in the air all lead him to his quarry. Despite his imposing size, his deftness in moving unseen and unheard as long as darkness cloaks him is downright preternatural, even when armoured; no predator nor prey can match his nightly stalking.
Horror Made Flesh: Fear and revulsion are the mutant’s lot, and Nolrakh is no exception. As heavily as his ghastly appearance weighs on him, he knows it can be leveraged to inspire dread in his enemies, and is skilful in doing so should it be required. Misshapen claws and teeth flashing at the edge of one’s vision, or the apparition of a hideous visage, can break the staunchest spirits, but the Ninth Primarch’s potency of fear goes beyond mere physical intimidation. A hypnotic force dwells in his eye which can strike those who meet its gaze with paralyzing anguish, or plague them with hallucinations were they even to escape its grasp. Should all else fail, he summons forth raw psychic might to batter down the most stubborn mind with the force of Warp-induced emotion.
The Flawed Fortress: Nolrakh’s body is perpetually at war with itself, wracked by periodic surges of degeneration and reconstruction which preclude all attempts at an external cure for his deformity. His regenerative potential, truly stupendous by any standard, stubbornly rejects surgical or bionic alterations as well as the fruits of his mutation, which in turn never fail to reassert themselves in the same immutable forms. Grisly a fate as this may be, a hidden blessing lurks in it, for harm is likewise unable to leave a lasting mark on the Primarch. No matter how deep the wound or thorough the mutilation, he can recover from virtually any injury as long as he is not slain outright, and even regrow entire limbs with minimal medical assistance. This, together with his resilience to pain, enables him to fight in an uniquely lethal style, recklessly exposing himself to damage that he might strike with ferocious abandon.
Appearance:
Obscure flaws in the Ninth’s genes have conspired with the Warp to undermine the image of physical perfection that ought to have been his birthright as a Primarch. A germ of disfigurment forever gnaws at him from within, regularly rising to hiderously transfigure him before being forced back by his innate regeneration in an agonizing cycle that repeats every solar month.
At the peak of his health, Nolrakh could well pass for truly human were it not for his stature. Towering at some twelve feet in height, he has the robust frame of a warrior, though his pale skin belies his darkling habits. His firm, if subtly tense posture and unscarred bald head do not appear out of place among the Imperium’s gene-altered troops, and his stern statuesque features lend him an air fit for command. The only flaw marring them are his eyes, of whom one – which precisely is never constant – is a hollow socket, and the other murky, with no discernable iris.
This state, however, only endures for a matter of days, after which an unholy transformation begins. Skin frays and recedes, hard white growths part twisting flesh, and facial features drift almost fluidly overnight, until in about a week the decay is complete.
In this state, Nolrakh’s body is a horrific mass of knotted strands of muscle, ragged coils of pale skin and exposed plates of hardened bone extruding from a fantastically misshapen skeleton. Thin strips of purulent necrosis are nested between the ridges and chaotic contours of his frame. His hands are claws of sharpened bone, his head little more than a skull of exposed osseous exoskeleton, pitted and gouged like a lunar surface. His eye, now truly cyclopean, sits in its fractured center, surmounting the rictus death-grin of a lipless mouth, from which issues a voice at once guttural, crackling and sibilant – a mere ruin of the curt and acerbic, yet compelling tones of his apex. In time, the process of healing begins, and the horror is steadily swathed in healthy skin and flesh once more, but ever it remains skulking under the surface until it is ready to emerge anew.
Ashamed of his monstrous and unstable essence, the Ninth usually hides his features under heavy robes or armour, with a veil or hood that lends him his moniker.
Concept:
A living paradox, a loftiest pinnacle of humanity and a most vile of miscreations coexisting in a single tormented body, Nolrakh is a being haunted by his aberrant nature and forever goaded by the hope for salvation, or at least redemption. Burdened by what he sees as his innate sin, he at once abases himself before the Emperor he has failed and is driven to acts of tremendous hubris in his efforts to restore himself, be that atrocious carnage in a futile bid for glory or the blackest scientific inquests in search of an escape from the unnatural cycle that measures his existence; in the same breath, he yearns to serve humanity and immolates it on the altar of his desperation. Tragic spirit and loathsome butcher, champion and abomination, Primarch and mutant; such is the fate of the Ninth.
Legion Name: Legio IX, “the Reviled”; later known as the Star Reavers.
Associated Primach: Nolrakh.
Concept: Descendants of savage techno-nomads from the nighted Antarctic plains, the warriors of the Ninth Legion are harrowed by the curse inherited from their sire. Though stable enough on implantation, as if eager to infect healthy bodies, their gene-seed is fraught with the exsecratio corporis, the malediction of the flesh, a plague of cascading mutation that ravages them as they age. Some of them swell and bloat into faceless, spike-toothed unwieldy hulks the size of tactical dreadnought armour; others are twisted into hunched, predatory shapes, with exposed plates and ridges of bone matching those of their progenitor. In the vast majority, however, the exsecratio manifests as a gradual atrophy of limbs and organs, forcing its victims to seek bionic replacements.
The Reviled channel the pain and rancor of their affliction into a peculiarly vicious and gruesome form of warfare. Thirsting to mangle their foes’ bodies as well as shatter their spirits with abject terror, they often strike in darkness, bearing down in close combat with a fury of roaring metal and fearsome weapons from Terra’s past. Like their forebears, they are sworn to the chainblade and venerate the ice-flame, and like them they give no quarter.
The tension in the air did not dissipate, but neither did the treeline erupt in fire and shrapnel, and thus after a few slowly creeping moments Ilshar felt safe enough to turn his attention away from the looming uncertainty and back to the plate still held in his hand. The intensity of the sensations he could feel seeping from it was unsettling even to an ether-touched mind, perhaps moreso due to how familiar they were as opposed to the slippery and nebulous emanations of the Chasm. Unfamiliar as he was with vrexul spirituality, he wondered just how much of the fallen insurgent lived on in this fragment. How fitting, he thought, as he slotted the plate into a loose gap on his back, to be properly integrated where his suit was lacking once conditions were more favourable. The fungus thrived on the dead and almost-dead. Such was the way of the Nexus.
"These ones were on our side. What got them is after us," he replied over the comms. On their side as far as Zanovia went, at least. Who, if anyone, the vrexul had truly followed remained a mystery, though Ilshar was ready to wager that they had been breakaways from the war. A venomous resentment much like the one he felt now had suffused those he had seen turn away from the battlefields and disappear into the void. What was less familiar, however...
"And they've been tampered with." It did not look like simple looting, certainly not his own crude groping and severing. Even if the CivSec and their allies had decided to harvest the vrexul's organs for some reason, it seemed much too clean for the hasty field job it ought to have been. Perhaps their main goal had been to make space for these implants, but this only raised even more ominous questions. The fact that the pulsating tangle did not look like an obvious booby trap, be that a bomb or an infection vector, did little to set him at ease. "I'd stay clear of them."
With crouching, wary steps, Ilshar began to make good on his own warning, keeping close to the ground as he edged away from the bodies and towards the surer protection of the rocks. The unpleasant suspicion lingered that he might already have been too late to avoid the bio-construct's effects, but for the moment it was drowned out by the awareness that he was an exposed target. He kept his gun trained on the edge of the clearing, noticing with some relief that the voidhanger looked ready to provide cover. Even if he did make it, however, he knew the safety would be temporary. There were too many unclear things in this place for it to be secure - and the cannon still waited ahead.
There was something wrong about this place, that much Ilshar agreed with as he dropped off the unztadlige's back onto the clearing's blasted ground. The increasing distance they had gained from the sounds of battle below had not been unwelcome, but there was always such a thing as too quiet a moment, especially this close to an enemy's positions. He found himself doubting whether the steadily creeping fog that had welcomed them among the trees was itself some trick of the cannon's defenders, an artificial vapour released to obfuscate the approach to the mountaintop. Excessive as that might have seemed in a heavily wooded area like this, it might not have been without its advantages. Right now, much to his irritation, it was interfering with his own detection attempts. The organs of taste and smell opening and breathing about his skin were quickly flooded with its bland humidity, leaving these senses useless. All he was going to perceive without seeing it were qillatu discharges through his more exotic implanted receptors, and even than might have been too little, too late.
And then there were those bodies.
Ilshar trudged up to the grotesque heap of mangled carcasses and crouched beside them. He had seen similar-looking things before. Not quite identical, but then they tended to be as augmented as any military type in the Expanse, if not more. The memories he had of them were not good.
"Hope these aren't what I think," he grunted aloud as he dug about the mass of splintered carapace and insectile viscera, now and then extruding a long, wormlike tongue to try a piece to the taste. If the League had brought vrexul, they valued this planet much more than anyone had imagined, and his squad's job had gotten that much harder and more dangerous. But even if these were vrexul - he was still not fully sure - had they actually been with the League? If their shells had borne any signs of their allegiance, most of it was now too battered to tell. As he rolled over a dismembered body with no small effort in search of identifying marks, Ilshar spotted an intact smaller plate on its underside. The material looked solid. Too heavy for a whole suit, certainly, but this much was just about the right amount to patch up a vital spot on his own piecemeal armour.
He had just finished painstakingly tearing the segment of slick bio-metal from its host when he heard Rasch's warning. Rotting Abyss, let it not be vrexul. He hunkered as best he could behind the heaped bodies, reaching for his gun and casting out his ethereal senses. If the Nexus was propitious, this cover, however improvised, would be enough.
With the situation defused, Ilshar eased back into his usual slumping hunch, briefly raising a hand as the ZRF group departed. Ultimately, it was a small thing they fought for. A planet, a government, a few billion lives at most. A little spark for hatred; the lords of the League or the Dominion, every bit as mortal as they were, would have thought nothing of it. But it was all their world, and it was hard to blame them if they snapped at the blundering of those supposedly here to help. Here to help - the Dolsilvec people had sounded like that during the war, too, and what had come of it? The good kind of allies kept quiet and did what they had to do, and so he, too, remained silent as he listened to the Intransigence contact's briefing, eye-rifts warily opening in his squadmates' directions all the while.
"Ready," he finally assented once everything had been laid out and the group prepared to move. Approach, seize, commandeer. The human had been right to look askance at him; that had never been his specialty. Covert approach and sabotage, yes, but the plan here was supposed to be something a touch more elaborate. What that would leave for him to do besides watching the approach once they got there remained to be seen. "Any of you good with League systems?"
If they got there, of course. If CivSec had any neurons, they would not have left their benefactors' gift lightly defended.
As Ilshar ambled towards the improvised assembly point, his lateral perceptors saw the bipedal symbiote of the huge Echo - or was it actually an extension of the unztadlige? - briefly fall into step beside him. He scarcely had the time to wonder if it, too, was there to ask for something before it rattled at him in its mechanical way. "Notice: Apologies. Elaboration: This platform may have caused unintended friendly fire during fire mission." Of course, the ether-worm. It had been taken out by Echo's shot. Not in little part, Ilshar reflected, his own fault for failing to consider just how destructive that cannon was.
"No harm done," he grunted back. These things happened on the battlefield, and at least this time nobody had died. He did appreciate the gesture for putting him more at ease about the unztadlige; machine-like as it sounded and looked, there was something like a living mind under its metallic carapace after all. That was well. Thinking machines unsettled him.
What he appreciated much less were the shots that rang out behind him and the confusion of voices that followed. Ilshar turned about and ground his teeth together in annoyance as he surveyed the degenerating situation. That fool human. Did the Intransigence recruit just about every thrill-seeker with a loose trigger they could dredge up from the Expanse? He could sympathize with their guides over more than just a shared genetic heritage. Had someone like this been with him on Enthuur during the war, odds were that he would have ended splattered across a wall.
"It shames me to be reduced to fighting alongside such a one as this," he raised a hand in a placating gesture as he replied to the ZRF leader in the closest approximation of the latter's language as he was fluent in. It was not something he had used often before but still it rolled out from his mouth far easier than any lingua franca intelligible to non-tarrhaidim ears. "Had my fortunes in my own war of survival been any better, I would have been glad to avoid her smooth-boned kind."
He nudged a shoulder towards the rest of the squad. "But consider, my fellows in the cosmic sowing, thattheirmasters will seek retribution for their pawn, and it will be the worse for us. You still have the greatest prize," the Ulvath's barrel nodded in the scielto's direction, "One such as the regime surely values more than the blood-driven hominids. You need not brook this one's meddling much longer. This force should be gone soon, and all that is in my power to aid your cause elsewhere on this world, I will do." Ilshar nervously squinted a few half-formed eyes at the Envenomed's contact and Rasch, who had been far more peremptory in his address. He hoped the former was not about to contradict him about the squad's departure, however unwittingly.
In the chaos of smoke and erupting bullets, Ilshar could not say if his bullets had struck anything alive. There were screams, but one who had been in battle more than once knew to disregard them. He had even read it in some manual that had been passed around during the war. An involuntary scream could mislead as much as a deliberate lie, or something like that. Overconfidence at what sounded like the enemy's fear or pain could kill. So, he focused on the rhythm of his own gunfire. A burst, a pause, another burst.
Dust and splinters exploded and rained down around him as the CivSec forces at last turned their fire against the squad, forcing him to take longer pauses before ducking out from behind the shattered wall to shoot. To his dismay, the building he was behind was steadily being reduced to as bad a shape as the one whose failing cover he had left. If this kept up much longer, he could very well be finding himself exposed, and the fog of smoke could only do so much to conceal him from sight.
Unnaturally coloured lights flashed overhead, then the sound of a thunderous impact rolled down from the distant treeline, and Ilshar staggered as a wave of psychic feedback struck him. It was not as bad as it could have been had he still maintained direct contact with the ether-worm to that moment, but the strain from the collapsing connection was enough to cause a moment's disorientation. Let them not find me now...
Fortunately, as his senses realigned, the battle was already winding down. The gunfire died out, and a voice that for once was not screaming or cursing called out to them, corroborated by the suitable comm code. With a grunt, Ilshar hauled himself up from behind the battered wall and trudged towards the newcomer - their presumptive ally. On the way towards the house the (ostensible) human had emerged from, he saw the ZRF rounding up some of the enemies who were still mostly intact. He shrugged. Their planet, their war, it was up to them. They knew the situation best. As far as he was concerned, the contact was the main priority now; with the starting briefing alone, he had no idea where to go from there, and he doubted the rest of the squad had either.
For a moment, Ilshar felt as if he had fallen bodily into the Chasm. Part of his mind had followed the ether-worm as it slithered towards the treeline, an odd sensation as if some of his sensory organs had been surgically detached, altered and carried around while still somehow connected to his mind. It was disorienting, the sort of thing that could send a novice etherealist stumbling dazedly into the line of fire, confusing the oneiric creature's odd perspective and fluid airborne movement for their own. But Ilshar was no novice, and he remained firm on his feet even as those sensory angles that had stayed with him registered the approaching etheric blast. He drew his focus away from the worm long enough to right himself from his leaning position and crouch before the world around him erupted into a flash of unnatural colours and distorted perspectives.
His connection with the ether-worm had lessened the sensory shock, momentarily inuring him to this sort of abrupt shift, and his attention flowed back to the Chasmic entity as soon as he was positive that he still had at least some moments of safety. He saw, or perhaps rather felt, the potent signature among the trees, let senses that were only partly his slide over the barrier's surface. Ilshar did not see the being within as clearly as the worm would have - tall, spindly, a scielto perhaps? It was hard to say - but he could tell that it had not noticed the translucent void-predator, or at least gave no sign of it. This was just as well. As long as the barrier stayed up, there was nothing he could do to strike at the enemy etherealist, but as it was he could prepare something for when they would inevitably attack again. Wait. Stalk. Ambush. He impressed these simple thoughts onto the ether-worm's consciousness as he withdrew from it, leaving it to hover among the tree branches; if the Nexus favoured him, it would be ready to strike as soon as the prey was exposed.
Ilshar awoke to his body in time to see figures moving in through the now battered settlement. Their focus on Echo's towering bulk, evidently as unsettling for them as it had been for him, bought him precious seconds to lunge away from the now ruined building and behind a still mostly intact one across the street, praying the smoke would cover him enough. The human that had been with him seemed lost in the haze, but he had more urgent things to think of as Rasch's voice crackled within his helmet. It made sense that, as the most mobile of their team, he would flank, while the giant unzatlidge drew fire. This left it up to Ilshar to do what he did best in these situations.
"Received," he growled back into the comms, "Giving cover fire."
He leaned part of his torso out from behind the corner and raised the Ulvath's barrel. It was not a weapon built for precision, but that was not what he needed. Pressing the trigger, he sent a sweep of explosive bullets towards where the CivSec squad's fire gave away their position. A brief pause, then another burst. A pause, and another. There were not enough of them to call for a continuous automatic barrage, but these sporadic volleys should have been enough to pin them in place while the rest of the Envenomed struck home.
With a storm of gunfire and comms interference, it began. It had been a trap after all by the looks of it, but Ilshar was past the point of congratulating himself for seeing it coming. It was less of an achievement than a bare minimum for survival in situations like these. And if he wanted to cling to that life-giving threshold of performance, now was not the time for gratification, but action. Sensory organs blossomed over his exposed membranous hide, globular protrusions and spiral-sunken circles that glowed with putrid grey-green luminescence. Enhanced senses swept the tangle of houses, overlaying sight, smell and more esoteric modes of perception still. The tang of smoke and metal from projectile trails. The ill-describable, but unpleasant taste of qillatu discharge- no. The etheric blast that arched towards the gigantic Echo had come from too far away for his perception of the source to be useful to him even if he could pinpoint it.
But perhaps it could be to something else.
The human close to Ilshar called for a grenade. Not a bad idea, that, perhaps he should have prepared some. Too late for that now.
"No grenades," he growled in reply, "Keep shooting. Give cover. I'll take the ether-blaster."
Finding heavier cover, as their pointman had called out, was easier said than done when every passage between the buildings could have been a killing corridor. The best he could do was move away from the corner and towards the central point of the house he was hunkered behind. It would put him closer to the still suspiciously open door, but it seemed a more acceptable risk than sprinting across the ambushers' line of fire.
Weapon slung across his chest, Ilshar raised his arms and retracted most of his sight organs, turning his focus inward. Semi-material senses reached inward, through and beyond semi-ethereal entrails. He had sometimes heard that, according to physicists, the act of observing something could provoke a change. While he had never been one to study anything quantum, the principle rang true to him. Not because of any persuasive argument, but from simple, tangible experience. Looking into the Chasm is more than perception - it's bait.
The space between his upheld hands darkened, as if some invisible shape were filtering the daylight directly above it. Startlingly, the ground below remained clearly lit. In a moment, there was a blurring, a folding of perspective, as if the tarrhaidim and the house behind him had been a drawing on a piece of translucent paper that was being folded around that one point in midair. The suspended shadow grew deeper, expanded - and then it was gone, and something writhed in its place. A sinuous form twice as long as Ilshar's arm twisted through the air, as if swimming through water, crystalline in its transparency and yet oozingly, unmistakably organic. Smell. Seek. Hunt. The ether-worm whirled, circular tooth-ringed jaw snapping, and slid away, towards the direction where the blast had come from.
Ilshar leaned against the building's wall, dizziness coursing through him as implanted and template-bred organs fought to absorb the qillatu diffusing from him exertion. The moments immediately after reaching into the Chasm were the worst. The most dangerous. He could only pray to the source of all that churned and slithered that the rest of the team was keeping the enemy distracted enough.
op2024
Izurich
Archetype Zero
Lord Zee
Cyclone
