It was hard not to feel the glares against their backs as the smoking wreckage of civilian architecture slowly retreated back into the distance, joining the protests of the scielto commander as still-piping hot barrels were pressed against their back. Soon it was but smoke visible through the envelopment of the forest green as it trembled from the raging violence in the valley.

Every few minutes, a great light would erupt in an explosive blast from the valley or the mountain opposite to their own, the pinkish-white light overwhelming the pure gold of the mid-day sun. Branches would tremble, the dirty leaves that had replaced foot-trails fluttered from the blast-waves that washed over them. The worst was the light however, as if a small sun had blossomed off in the distance yet whose shining splendor greedily overrode that of the planet's primary star, silhouetting the foliage that enshrouded them from the world in streams of black, slihouetted shadows. 

Rather than illuminate and reveal, the lack of paths through the uneven, wooded mountainside with its logs, vines, and rocks became hidden momentarily in near-blinding flashes. They were diminishing in frequency and ferocity as they progressed and one could see why with a glance off to the side. Down in the valley, sloping fronts of dark-green armored personnel carriers, top-mounted autocannons spitting as digitigrade-legged bipedal mecha stalking forth ostrich like sent storms of missile and minigun-spray into bonfire-raging blasts of CivSec positions. 

Storms of flashing energy-jacketed rounds and piercing flashes of condensed beam-energy responded in kind as they seared and scored scars and hits along tanks that had last seen active service in the Veiled War. The ensuing energy-splash or detonating armor cast black shapes against the erupting flames as infantry rapidly disembarked mere feet from rumbling, boxy vehicles and stomping bipedal warmachines. Far heavier vehicles lay in wait, entrenched in camouflage of repuroposed trees and heavy netting or sniping them down lengthy sightlines extending over trenches and between bunkers. 

It was easy to miss out on the buzzing of the communicator-panel in its reinforced carrying-case. There was so much going on that even when the savage judgement day knell of the artillery-cannon's blasts died down, that left the shrieking of aircraft and multi-targetting missiles in its place. It was not enough to drown out the nagging buzz of the device, nor was the smoke that began to creep forth enough to hide the extravagance of the raging battle that consumed the region.

It was more akin to a fog with how it crept from deeper into the woods where the light was forced to not only navigate the dense leafy cover but also the wafting white that rolled out from within its depths. The roads were entirely absent now and the only real way to visually orient themselves was where the light of explosions and energy beams shone from. It was further away from the mountain edge, moreso on the spine of the enormous formation, and getting harder to see without some sort of scanning or imaging capability that was unaffected by such visual obstruction.

All the while the communicator buzzed naggingly, awaiting for anyone to respond. It was clear for once as the sounds of battle grew distant, almost as if respectful of the sombre and somewhat pungent fog that crept in. Where trees once stood tight and clustered they began to slouch and lean; dinner-plate sized holes punched through their bodies or having gutted their circumferences caused a few to keel over, resting upon one another or the forest floor itself. 

It made the area somewhat easier to navigate yet more and more of the trees were increasingly fallen, some torn into smaller log-chunks, their leafy tops crumpled and burnt as they wreathed their own remains. Spent shell casings flashed at the Envenomed squad's sight, all of them the sort reserved for anti-material rifles others withered and crusty, shaped like the pupae of flying insects yet laced with deliberately implanted metal firing mechanisms - those ones were at least for light autocannons. 

They were in a clearing in the woods, the fog heavy yet not entirely obscuring - they could see the blast-craters upon the ground, the trees that had been sunken along with the large, chunky and lump-like shapes laying scattered all around, limbs of some large, monstrous, multi-digited sort and blackened bio-metallic acrmor could be made out through non-enhanced sight as both the main recipients of immense violence and the source of much of the smoke. So too could be areas of elevated terrain; jutting rock-heads slouching off before the congregation of massive, shattered forms, their sides torn and desecrated by retaliatory fire. 

Piles of rubble stood in front of these natural formations, having violently deformed them but far lesser than the now brutally deceased who who had fired upon some unknown aggressor. A few larger, older trees sat proud and looming, extending past the fog and scourged with puncturing wounds but none of which were anything like the massive holes punched through the trees prior or the arthropod bodies in the area. The latter two were large enough sometimes that a human could fit its body through the wounds torn through them; these would be a much tighter to impossible squeeze to make.

With the team nearly halfway to the artillery emplacement, it was clear that they would have to cross a treacherous and eerie stretch of the mountain where some sort of battle had taken place. The bodies appeared arthropod like and most of them were facing towards the bulging rocks that jutted from the earth, yet what exactly had slaughtered them so thoroughly?

And why was the communicator-panel they were handed starting to beep and blink a red warning light, then a green signal-transmission one?