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

Ilshar grunted as a volley of return fire tore through the brush, a fair few shots finding their mark in him. Several clanged on the chestplate of his armour, leaving pitted impact marks. Four struck in less protected points, burying themselves in exposed joints and, in one case, passing clean through his upper arm where the metal plates left it open, the rotting fungal mass more yielding than flesh and bone to its focused trajectory. He registered the wounds with clinical detachment, his deadened neural system and multitude of small internal watcher-organs reacting to them more like an old, hollow mouldering tree and its curious inhabitants than a body that had been struck. The penetrating shots could debilitate his limbs if not extracted, but there would be time for that; thanks to tarrhaidim sturdiness, right now getting distracted by them and suffering more accurate fire was much more dangerous than themselves.

His branching senses followed the unfolding of the ambush all the while, while an ear remained on the comms. Predictably, the power-armoured soldier was both the greatest danger to the attack and the lynchpin of the CivSec forces. The automata were likely controlled by either him or the lighter troopers, and the latter were difficult to focus as long as he was alive and fighting like a one-human platoon. Or was it really a human? The blood dripping from the cracked armour didn’t look like theirs, but maybe that was just a side-effect of genetic augmentation, which this monster was no doubt full of. Whatever it was, it was blunting the Envenomed’s momentum, and pressure was mounting on their allies. If he could take out both the power armour and the CivSec with it, or at least break any control they had over their automated weapons…

[i][b]“Keep clear of them a moment! Echo, you’re good,”[/b][/i] Ilshar barked over the comms as he let his gun fall to his hip and stretched out his arms, flexing and unfolding his fingers as he stirred the channels of his ether-implants. Channeling now that he was exposed and the enemy knew where he was seemed dangerous if not completely suicidal, but the barrage the two voidhangers were laying down and especially Echo’s charge should have been enough of a distraction.

He raised his hands, held in the familiar circular shape, and sent his focus inward through the pulsing web within his limbs. The air before him darkened, then appeared to ripple as if from intense heat, or if it were somehow reflecting flowing water. Moments later, a murky brown-bluish cloud of what looked like dense smoke coursed across it from emptiness. The clumps of Chasm-spores were carried by the impetus of the impalpable current towards the enemies’ position, spreading into finer clusters as they did. Their effect on anything organic they met would be virulent, turning flesh to suppurating rot in seconds. The titan of rock and metal that was Echo would be safe from their influence, but for the CivSec troops they could well be deadly, and now that the power-armoured soldier had several holes in his defenses, he was no less at risk.