The night was cool to Krill, a cool breeze blowing through his antenna as they crouched in a late night fog lit eerily from above by the light of a waning moon. The last few hours of the ship's journey had been stressful to say the least, the Vrul planetary defense nexus was one of the most advanced outside of Celzex technology, so sneaking through should have been impossible.

The only problem?

The defense nexus was bio coded against any creature that wasn't Vrul, unless strictly invited, though it would let other Vrul through without any question. All they had to do was fly right in, though Etium spent an uncomfortable amount of time wrapped in a led sheet to block the scanners. Still, passing through Vrul airspace was a tense moment as they all prayed and silently begged the architect to let them pass.

Someone must have been on their side as they managed to make it to solid ground under cover of near complete darkness aside from the light of the dim moon, now reflecting off a sea of fog. It had taken time to land their aircraft, carefully attempting to avoid clearings and rings of barren ground that indicated infection by the V virus. Once upon a time Admiral Vir and others had come to the Vrul planet to stir up the V zombies and kill them en masse, but that didn't mean there weren't likely to be stragglers.

In fact, Krill would have counted on it.

The last thing he wanted to do was get infected.

Etium insisted on stepping out first taking on the role of their protective detail. Etium had long since given up his position in the accounting department and joined the marines in their training exercises. Despite his generally nervous demeanor, the Tesraki seemed to have learned quickly, and his footfalls were soft and sure as his feet whispered down the ramp, disappearing into the silent bank of fog. There was no noise beyond the barrier, and Krill had to stop his imagination in its tracks before it could conjure up images of Etium stepping from the fog, covered head to toe in spore filled boils

Etium's return was heralded by the soft, click, click, click of his geodetector –small handheld device that was supposed to be able to see through the ground by way of radar pulses. Krill had originally rejected the idea reasoning that radar pulses were a type of radio wave and so could be picked up by the hibernating Vrul under the surface, though Riss insisted that it would be on the incorrect frequency.

In the end Etium braved the fog to find out.

The slow clicking of his detector moved forward from the fog, and krill readied himself to run back inside the ship.

Etium appeared from the fog like an apparition, eyes peering out from behind his HUD goggles as he waved them forward with one hand.

Krill sighed in relief and turned to Riss.

Together the five of them inflated their Helium sacks and grabbed on to the end of a long rope. The last time they had encountered the V virus, it had been alerted primarily by sound and vibrations. Krill also assumed they could hear radio waves on the frequencies that Vrul often spoke, and so demanded that the others keep their antennae silent, and speak by mouth alone if they needed to or not at all. They knew it was possible for an animal to survive uninfected on the surface of the planet, and so, to lessen the amount of danger they might be in, they gave the lead rope to Etium, who clipped one end to his belt, and began their slow trek forward into the fog, heralded by the gentle click glick click of his geodetector.

It had the same sort of sound that one might expect from a Geiger counter, and krill found that it had the same uneasy affect on him as potential radiation. As they pushed into the fog, Krill strained his hearing listening for any sign or sound of the infected Vrul zombies emerging like locusts after many lng years entered in the soil.

Overhead, lady Night held dominion over the cool quiet, tending to her death garden by soft whispers of wind and a thick blanket of fog. Krill shivered as the slow beat of the counter continued. Etium was near silent as he moved over the ground having replaced his thick soled boots with soft leather shoes to reduce vibrations.

So far it worked and the little creature led them steadily under cover of fog and darkness.

The trees began to thicken around them, packing into herds that got larger and lager as the city approached. The clicking on the counter clicked just a beat faster than it had before and krill held his breath. Etium paused and inched forward, the counter sped up. Etium stepped back and then to the right.

The counter flared up again.

Only when he inched to the left did the counter slowly return to its original beat. Krill glanced over his shoulder to see the grubs clustered together, holding hands, their eyes wide.

Sometimes it was hard to remember how young they were. It was unknown how long the childhood of a vrul typically tended to last. The vrul council had made use of them from such a young age that krill had been sure their mental capacity was fully function by little over a year of age, yet.... Somehow, raising These grubs had let him see otherwise.

The clicking started up again with more urgency.

Etium tried a few more directions but was eventually forced to move ahead anyway, skirting the edges of one of those circular clearings. Krill squinted through the fog, noting the patch of barren earth where nothing grew, indicators of disease and rot beneath the surfaces. If this circle was unbroken, it likely meant that the occupants were still slumbering below the surface.

Krill imagined their bodies suspended in dirt and darkness, feeling the slow vibration of the world around them.

He shivered.

They continued to move forward latched onto Etium and what protection he could offer.

In the distance the walls of the city rose up, and Etium reached into his gear. He Held the device out in front of him and gave them a hand signal. The Vrul had thermal vision so unless they did something about it, someone was bound to notice. The device in his hand was designed to put up a cooling screen in front of them to mask their position. Vrul did not have very good night vision, and with their thermal gone the sweeping spotlights could be avoided.

They were passing onto an old battleground now.

Soft crunching below Etium's feet alerted Krill to a strangeness on the ground below, and he looked down to find a gruesome sight forcing himself to look back up, and pulling the grubs to them so he could shield their eyes from what lay beneath.

They were walking over a field of corpses, sun baked and dried out by the sun, mummified to brittle husks where they had fallen. Krill could see the gaping holes in their flesh were the spore pockets had developed before they died, destroyed in one fell swoop by a group of humans riding in helicopters and brandishing machine guns from positions as door gunners as metal music blasted in the background.

Krill could remember watching that moment as Vrul lifted into the sky and were mowed down by gunfire.

He shivered again as another husk passed away below him, its glassy prismatic eyes staring off into nothingness. Etium stepped forward foot passing straight through the abdominal cavity of one of the long dead Vrul. He cursed softly, but his boot came away free and unsoiled. All that remained of the Vrul was a shell, and any squishy insides had long since dried up after their use was not longer required.

The field of corpses grew thicker as they inched towards the walls. In the darkness, Krill noted changes in the landscape of bodies. With assistance from a small night vision monocular, krill could see small flowers sprouting from the bodies of the fallen arrayed in sprigs and clusters atop masses and piles.

Riss was muttering something softly in the darkness.

Krill had never seen some of these flowers, noting a strange pale orb that grew in clusters around the corpse, pulsing gently to some incomprehensible beat, and that is when he heard it. it came to him as a sort of crackling static in the back of his head, which he did his best to ignore, But the closer they got to the wall, the more insistent the sound became, a sort of warbling chatter at the back of his head. At first he wondered if a communications system had gone down and started broadcasting their frequency, but no that did not seem right.

An even longer moment passed, and Krill thought he picked up a sound inside.

Hungry.

He paused and tugged on Etium's rope.

The Tesraki turned to look at Krill who pointed wide eyed into the fog at their left.

Etium gave a hand signal turning off his geodetector and inched forward in that direction, keeping the group of them concealed low as he peered up and over the next pile of bodies.

This is when the sound became clear to krill, a soft cracking cringing noise repeated over and over and over again.

The memory would make Krill shiver when remembering it for the rest of his life.

A vrul.

A V zombie more precise, having somehow survived the killing field, likely buried and pinned under the bodies of the fallen, now free to roam open air.

It was a beta of some sort, with a de inflated helium sack. It sat on a pile of corpses, idly desecrating its fallen companions methodically. As Krill watched, in horror, the vrul broke off the limb of one of it's fallen comrades, spinning it over in its hands like it was examining soemthing, trying to unravel the mysteries, before discarding the limb once more. With one hand it reached down and inside an open body cavity and popped out the shriveled husk of what Krill recognized as the Vrul equivalent of a liver, only to turn it around and around in its hands for a moment and then discard it.

He kept the grub's eyes closed though the sight would haunt him to his very last day.

Etium backed away slowly, inching around other piles of bodies, keeping well away from the virus while he oriented them towards the wall.

The radio static paused.

Krill held his breath.

He sensed, soemthing, through the static. It wasn't really words, more like the Vrul radio euiptment of a curious moan.

Had the creature heard them?

He sensed, movement somehow, or an intent to move, and he cursed inwardly. He turned to look at Riss who appeared as if he was about to involuntarily lose consciousness. If either of them had been human Krill was sure one of them would have thrown up by now.

Etium hurried forward his ears perked, likely hearing soemthing that krill could not. Krill was glad for this of course as it meant they were moving further away from that thing, though to him the strange, moaning static never decreased.

They were being stalked, he was sure of it.

He was about to tug on Etium's rope again to let him know, but when Etium suddenly turned his head, krill became sure the Tesraki new. Their space was faster now, more frantic but still quiet. The moaning static grew louder and more.... Interested, more determined. Krill took a deep breath and held it begging the universe to let them pass. They were inching closer to the wall now.

If they were further out krill was sure Etium would have killed the bastard but as of now muzzle flash would certainly alert the Vrul on the wall to their presence, yet still the moaning was growing louder.

The wall was growing larger in Krill's vision, and every now and again etium was forced to stop for roving searchlights that spilled over the ground. This slowed them considerably, and somewhere in the distance the creature was gaining on them.

The shield wall was not up, so krill could see the individual bodies standing guard atop the wall backlit as silhouettes in their own spotlights. The fog was beginning to desperce, and as Krill looked over his shoulder, he flinched to see the grey pale stumbling figure standing not a few hundred feet from them staring with glassy eyes and malicious intent.

The moaning picked up, and it began to move forward, scuttling over the ground like a spider, heading straight for them.

Krill clamped a hand over Clotho's mouth as she opened it to scream.

Overhead a searchlight snaped downward and voices atop the wall called for action. Etium dove behind a pile just in time to draw them in with him, narrowly ducking the searchlight as it fell on the lone Vrul creature intend on infection.

"FIRE!" someone ordered, and in moments the creature burst into orange flame. It screamed and bumbled around on the ground clawing at itself as it attempted to remove the fire. The spotlight was intent on its target, so Etium moved to hurry them forward making it to the base of the wall just as the last flames were flickering out and the Vrul body fell hard to the ground, joining its brethren as a corpse.

A sacrificial offering to the night