"Shite, not again!" She grants Broc a touch of Calistria's guidance and then takes one of the lit torches. She then takes a step back to spread out some more.
Edrukk steps forward into the intersection and to the right to try to hold off the larger beetle.
He sets his feet and leads with his shield.
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"Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangle spray,
All heart-broke, I heard her say:
‘Oh my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.’"
Kata begins a mornful dirge, one that springs to mind regarding insects, and steps forward pulling a scroll from her pack.
The great beetle rears back and, with a horrible clicking retch, releases a blast of acid straight at Edrukk.
The dwarf attempts to block the stream of caustic spew with his shield.
Realizing what Broccan and Rosella are doing, Alaïs reaches quickly for one of the torches Rosella lights, taking a hasty step back before hurling her flask of oil into the seething mass of insects, hoping that either she or one of the others can take advantage of the flammable spray before the swarm boils over any of them again.
"‘Oh my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.’"
A hysterical thought bubbles up in Alaïs, as she instinctively picks up the metre of Kata’s song, and remembers an old, old flyting travesty of metre that could be adjusted for the occasion:
"Can they see my dreadful toil?For I lost my bottle of oil!"
It’s the sort of bardic in-joke that’s probably completely inappropriate under the circumstances, so she bites her lip on her panicked laugh.
Lamp oil splatters across the stone floor, coating the beetles—and splashing onto Rosella's boots and ankles.
The matron acid beetle charges at Edrukk, chittering angrily. Latching its mandibles onto his shoulder, she attempts to rip his arm out of its socket.
Broccan strikes at the writhing pile of oily beetles with one of the lit torches.
"Pitying, I dropped a tear:
But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied, "What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night?
"I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetle's hum;
Little wanderer, hie thee home!"
Finishing the poem's last stanza, the elegy lingers in the cairn's still air, and Kata unfurls the scroll in her hands. Her hands shake, being so close to the writhing mass of beetles, but Kata's voice is clear. The arcane syllable is voiced, lilting and choral, and while the scroll crumbles to dust, Rosella's wounds are salved.
Broccan sweeps his burning brand through the carpet of oil-dripping beetles, and flame erupts from the ground beneath Rosella's feet.
Briar takes a tentative step closer, the torch at the ready to swipe at the bugs should they come towards her.
Rosella takes her newly-lit torch and swipes it at the swarm of beetles. An oddly hysterical giggle escapes her as the beetles are set aflame, causing her to parrot Kata's latest verse. "'I am set to light the ground!'"
Not wanting to stand in fire, (and thus undo all Kata's hard work), she then prudently retreats.
Rosella and Broccan swing their torches in powerful arcs, cleaving through scores of beetles and incinerating the creatures by the hundreds.
The swarm scatters in all directions.
Edrukk, quite wounded, carefully withdraws to the intersection so his friends can bring their weapons to bear.
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As the crackling of flames replaces the chittering of the swarm and the adventurers can catch their breaths, the clattering of the last large beetle’s legs and jaws notwithstanding, Alaïs has to concentrate to shake off a certain fey giddiness. Seeing a badly wounded Edrukk fall back, she moves to support him, but as she does so, under the sound of the fire and the monstrous beetle, she’s sure she hears something else too, something on a gentle wind – a breath, really – that she can’t place.
She wonders if it’s fate, if doom has a sound. If so, it isn’t accompanied by inspiration to elevate and dignify her thoughts. Should I have found a battle-cry? And what a ludicrous tale! I refuse to allow ‘The Last Stand of Lady Thalanassa’ to be about a damned beetle, for goddess’ sake!
“Briar,” she asks, keeping her voice as calm as she can as she takes up a defensive position, “do you think it would be a good idea to try to pin this thing by its shadow? To buy some time?”
The beetle rushes at Edrukk again, only to be intercepted by Alais. It lunges for her instead, ominous, dramatic bardic poetry rising through the halls as Lady Thalanessa raises her elven blade and prepares to meet her destiny.
Briar grimaces as Alais looks to her. "It would be a good idea! I already used up my stronger magic for the day, though."
Briar waits for either Kata or Broc to move, then drops her torch and takes a step forward, drawing Ravid Maple and tapping Edrukk once with it.
Her scroll spent, Kata thinks about attacking the beetle, but doesn't see a clear way through the smoldering beetle carcasses. With Briar waving her out of the way, the elegist drops her spear and squeezes by Broccan pulling her sling from her pack as she goes.
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Rosella takes a step forward, carelessly dropping her torch on the ground in favor of drawing her bow. This creature is big enough to shoot.
"Alaïs?" Her voice is concerned as she sees the elf step out in front. She remembers her falling to the spider monstrosity before, and doesn't wish to watch history repeat itself. "Alaïs, just...be careful."
Broccan drops the torches and moves to engage the beetle, drawing his axe as he moves .
He swings down at the beetle with a vicious overhand cord-splitting strike.
An arrow lodges in the seam of the beetle's chitin. As the beetle flinches back with a hiss, Broccan springs forward around the crackling flames and brings his axe down dead in the center of the its elytra.
”Alais, let me back ‘n, Ah wanna word wit’ yon insect!”
This, she can do: maybe it’s tempting fate, but she’s heard and read enough stories to know that a certain bravado is not unbecoming of a knight.
“By all means,” she says lightly, slipping past Broccan to give Edrukk room for his word, and taking her own slash at the beetle as she goes.
Alais and Edrukk circle the beetle. Disoriented, it turns to fend off Alais's spelled blade—but this leaves it wide open. Recovering from the acid as Calistria's healing blessing hangs over him, Edrukk rears up and brings his waraxe down on the beetle's head.
Only the beetle's thick, almost metallic chitin saves her. Edrukk's axe barely breaks through before she throws him off, lunging with enough ferocity to ward even the ferocious warpriest away. Even so, yellowish ichor is dripping over her compound eyes as she leaps for his throat.
Edrukk says in Dwarven under his breath as his axe clangs off the hide of the creature, but his shield is already moving to intercept and he blocks the bite with a triumphant shout.
Broccan brings his axe down on the creature again.
With one final executioner's swing, foul-smelling ichor sprays up into the faces of Edrukk, Broccan, and Alais. There's ichor in Edrukk's beard, in Alais's hair, even in Broccan's eyes, briefly blinding the brawler with stinging pain. The beetle staggers. Her legs visibly struggle to hold up her weight—and the weight of Broccan's axe embedded deeply in her back. Then she collapses.
The flames crackle and sputter for a few more seconds before dying out. The hall is quiet.
"Phaw!" Broccan exclaims, spitting and wiping ichor from his face. "Here's t'hope'n we're done wi'bugs fer'ah bit. 'Course we bes' make sure."
Axe in one hand and sunrod in the other, he cautiously moves into the room the bugs came from, looking for movement or anything unusual.
Broccan ventures down into the western room. Here, the north and south walls taper in somewhat, and in the nook of the far western wall rests a wide stone basin backed by a five-foot-tall shelf. A hardened orange paste spills out over the two-foot basin lip and covers much of the shelf. Thousands of tiny blueish beetle larvae skitter and tunnel through the chalky substance.
A huge organic mass completely fills the room's southwest corner. Judging by the beetles spilling from within, it appears to be an enormous nest.
The beetles appear to be quite disinterested in the party, their swarm dissipated. A keening insect chorus fills the room.
Broccan draws his short sword and cautiously approaches the nest. He makes several thrusts into the nest, attempting to kill any large beetle that might be hiding within.
No larger beetles dwell within.
"Pbpbpbpbt! Ach!"
Edrukk is wiping bug innards off his face and combing it from his beard. He excitedly exclaims even as he's spitting out caustic bug juice, "Well fought! Ptew! We 'r bein' like a team more 'n more! Timely 'ealin', blockin' fer each other, aye!" He slams his axe on his shield and steps forward to look into the room with Broccan.
He stage whispers, "What 'r ye spyin', lad?" His blood's up and he really can't be quiet right now.
"'sclear!" Broccan calls out to the others. "Jus'a few lit'l bugs, bu'none'f'm'r bite'n."
"It's clear! Just a few little bugs, but none of them are biting."
Rosella lowers her bow, breathing a sigh of relief that the beetles are dead and everyone's still conscious. "If I never see a bug again in my life it will be too soon." She doesn't even dislike bugs, you can't spend weeks at a time in the wilderness without getting friendly with a few ants, but those beetles are going to have her flinching at every move-
Right. In all the chaos she'd almost forgotten.
"So, um, bugs. Lots of bugs came from that room. We should, um, probably all go in that room to make sure the bugs are dead." (Rosella is not particularly subtle.)
Once everyone is in the room with Broccan and Edrukk, she drops her voice to a whisper. "There was something moving in the other room too. Not sure what, it hid from the light. Shaped a little like the big beetle though, only even bigger. Bull-sized." Given that she has no idea if the half-glimpsed shape might be intelligent, she would prefer it not know that she's talking about it.
Briar draws a Calistria three-pronged dagger with her finger and then starts fanning herself with her hand, her face red from all the fire and stress. ”Happy to do my part, Ed. Thanks to you for taking the frontline like that. “
She makes a comically disgusted face at the roasted beetles. ”I swear, I’m gonna start brewin’ some alchemist’s fire tonight. Maybe some liquid ice. Smell’d be better. Everyone alright?” She peeks around the corner and follows Ed and Broc as they look about. ”I think we should finish scoutin’ around down this hole as best we can then head up and take a rest.” She stretches, cracking her neck, her knuckles, her wrists. ”Shite, there are people who do this adventuring for a livin’? Guess it must pay well.”
Broccan sheathes his sword and returns to the hall to retrieve one of the torches he dropped. He brings it back into the room and holds it near the nest.
"If there'r no'bjections, I'm'na burn th' nest. Don'need any'o these gett'n's big'sat'one." He gestures toward the dead cow beetle. He pauses long enough for anyone who wishes to stop him. If no one does, he sets fire to the nest.
Edrukk will examine the big beetle. ”Mebbe we c’n ‘arvest bits o’ th’ big’un ‘n sell ‘em. Mebbe t’ th’ mage?”
When set ablaze, the nest produces an acrid black smoke that quickly fills the room, forcing the party to vacate for a minute or two.
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As soon as it’s clear that the huge beetle has really stopped moving for good and all, Alaïs hands automatically start moving through the gestures of a familiar cantrip as she hums its tune.
“That was truly disgusting,” she murmurs, as her spell starts cleaning the ichor from her long hair. After a half-minute or so, she redirects the spell to tidy the gentlemen too, and any of the other ladies who might appreciate it.
The nest and the paste in the room beyond only confirm Alaïs’ assessment, especially once she realizes there are larvae growing in whatever the hell the dried orange paste is. She is not ashamed to admit that she has no inclination to get much closer, and satisfies her curiosity by poking the substance with the point of her sword, only then taking a closer look at the bit of residue that sticks, sans beetle babies, until she cleans it off.
She makes a comically disgusted face at the roasted beetles. ”I swear, I’m gonna start brewin’ some alchemist’s fire tonight. Maybe some liquid ice. Smell’d be better. Everyone alright?” She peeks around the corner and follows Ed and Broc as they look about. ”I think we should finish scoutin’ around down this hole as best we can then head up and take a rest.” She stretches, cracking her neck, her knuckles, her wrists. ”S!!%e, there are people who do this adventuring for a livin’? Guess it must pay well.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea, and I think I’ll follow your example,” she agrees reflectively as she completes her assessment of the paste, which she thinks is a likely additional candidate for cleansing fire, since Broccan’s raised the subject.
"There was something moving in the other room too. Not sure what, it hid from the light. Shaped a little like the big beetle though, only even bigger. Bull-sized." Given that she has no idea if the half-glimpsed shape might be intelligent, she would prefer it not know that she's talking about it.
“Across the hall, then?” she asks, considering Rosella’s suggestion, before flicking her glance towards Kata. Alaïs herself is pretty sure that the Guiding Hand would have no objection, but the cairn does seem to be some sort of tomb, and so perhaps the Lady of Graves’ opinions – and, hence, her followers’ – would be more germane, thinking, again, of how far the adventurers can take it before they push hard enough against fate to exasperate Pharasma, with what she is sure would be predictable consequences.