Ilvryn

Nothing stirred in the gloom. Had keener eyes than those of the Hessil Pandits been on watch, they might have seen tiny, almost imperceptible movements, flickers of light betraying the presence of something waiting. There were no such eyes guarding the expedition, only a platoon of drunk troopers more used to using their lasrifles to light lho sticks than fight. They’d signed on to guard some tech-adept poking around xenos ruins on an empty planet - the easiest posting in the world. No heretics, no monsters, not even unhappy locals. Ilvryn had watched them through the scope of his long rifle - as the days wore on, their initial wariness and superstition turned into complacency.

The machine cultist was typical of its kind - a clumsy form, all marks of identity scrubbed away and swaddled in robes of crimson. A tripod of hissing pneumatics carried it through what had once been a temple, its pools of spring water now dried up and filled with noxious weeds and rubble. What the Mon-Keigh were searching for Ilvryn had not known, but he had bet - correctly- it had something to do with the wards his band had come to find. If the Caeiarr - their quest for the living Gods - was to be successful, they would need more than simple soul stones to guard the path to their target. It was a simple matter - allow the mon-keigh to haul and search, and clean up when they had found their treasure. Ilvryn knew the type of mon-keigh - they would not harm the artefacts, only gaze and puzzle over them like children presented with some simple mechanism. It was the easiest thing, and now the spindly red-clad cultist had what Ilvryn sought.


He sent out a message, all but silent, to his squad mates. They were spread throughout the temple, each scope trained on multiple troopers. Their lightning reflexes would allow them to drop all their targets in a matter of heartbeats. Their bodies would hit the ground before they could even raise an alarm, and then the machine would fall to Ilvryn’s own rifle. With all four acknowledgement blips playing in his ear, he trained his rifle on the clicking, whirring lenses that passed for eyes on the adept, and gently pulled the trigger.