Be an Alien: Renewal - Kiray's Crisis

Prologue

Deep inside a cave, two creatures paced around a room, scribbling notes down on pads of smooth bark that were attached to slates of rock. One walked up to a glass cage, which was filled with a strange white fungus that glowed in the dimly lit space in which it was set.

"Hey, come look at this," the other skiedon called from across the room, causing the first one to pull himself away from the glass enclosure.

"What is it?" the first one said, his dark blue tail swaying impatiently.

"You know that sample of shapeshifter blood we got a little while ago?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"I put some of it on the fungus, look what happened."

The skiedon stepped aside to let the first one peer into the smaller glass cage that was set on the table. Inside, it was almost completely covered in the fungus, except for one small spot near the middle, where it looked like it had been melted.

"It did that?" the first skiedon asked, looking in awe at the new disco- very.

"Yeah," the other skiedon said, "It's even stronger than the blue goop in the logs near our camp. I think they share something in both of them that is great at killing off any organism that isn't itself."

"Wow! Do you think we could get another shapeshifter? We could finally have found a cure for this stuff!"

The white fungus, as the skiedons called it, was a parasitic organism. If it came into contact with any animal, it could take control of the creature's brain and use it and its nutrients to spread its spores. If it got loose, it could infect all of Kiray. The skiedons were trying to find a cure for it, and they had found that the blue goop that hurt almost any living thing that came into contact with it could be the key, aside from the fact it was quite weak. They were trying to see if they could, perhaps, genetically engineer it to be more effective, but the process was too slow.

However, now they had discovered that the blood of a certain elusive creature that could shapeshift would have the same effect, and it was even stronger. If they could find a shapeshifter and contain it, they could possibly exterminate the fungus once and for all.

"Maybe." The second skiedon said. "But they're so hard to find. I wonder if there are even any nearby."