Apefmhet: A Feast For Scarabs

[Sertor Potens]

164PW
Lorenzo didn't have much time left to him. Every drop of blood leaking out of his torn throat and stomach was like a drop of sand in the hourglass trickling away the last minutes of his life.

It had been a simple assignment. Guard duty for a party of dust-loving fanciers of old ruins. The pay hadn't been the best, but the hirers weren't being picky. Which is probably how they ended up with that horrendous bitch Tagi and that overly large monstrosity Sertor taking up space and trying to talk at them. That had been bad enough.

Annoying partners aside, matters in the ruins of Abdju had become... complicated. Which was fancy talk for 'fucked up the arse with a morning star'. Or something equally uncomfortable.

The last thing Lorenzo heard as his vision faded was Sertor's ridiculous lisping bellow.
"To the temple! Ref ad triariof venit! Fight on!"

Fuck that guy, thought Lorenzo. Fuck him and everything to do with Apefmhet and Abdju and the African provinces.
But most of all, fuck THAT guy.

---

Imagine, for a moment, the serene and quasi-mystical atmosphere of an ancient city fallen to ruins. The old temples, wrought of great stone blocks, still standing but half drowned in sand. The entrance to the ancient necropolis hidden away in some dust-choked temple vault. The call of impatient vultures and the laughter of hyenas.

Okay, so the latter was probably Tagi trying to scare the civilians, but there's always one person who'll ruin the mood, no matter what you do.

Ignore Tagi's Hyena laugh for a moment, and imagine the awe-inspiring spectacle of ancient lithic structures. Are you there yet? The warmth of the dawn sun setting the desert sands alight with a radiance the likes of which you'll not see elsewhere? Good. That's nice, isn't it? Relaxing.

Now, add a whole bunch of blood, screaming, and death over the space of a day or two.
Who's counting the hours, right? We'll fill in those details later. For now, we shall focus on the stupidly large Rhino man, the Kerostriarius legionary Sertor.

Sertor, at the moment Lorenzo spent his dying moments cursing him, was in truth most pleased. He was surrounded on all sides by angry insectoid creatures - no telling what they looked like, his monocle had been the first thing the damn things had managed to snap from its chain and leather holster. But he could smell and hear them, and even better, they were trying very hard indeed to kill him. It was glorious. The air was filled with the acrid tang of the scarabesque monstrosities' vitrious fluids. The dirt and sand was splattered with blood, chitin, and ichor.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the others weren't quite so appreciative of the chance to properly earn their pay. They, were, if one were to objectively appraise the situation, losing quite badly. Which just would not do.

Lorenzo was down and leaking badly, as was Micah, Karam, and Federico. Most of the non-mercenary members of the expedition were spread around the encampment. Some of them were -really- spread around. An arm here, a leg there. It was quite obvious they needed to pull themselves together.

Sertor bellowed "To the temple! Ref ad triariof venit! Fight on!"

He led the charge with his shield, bashing his way through the throng with judicious use of Scutum and Gladius to clear a path. Greenish-white ichor doused friend and foe alike in a foul-smelling mess as the surviving mercenaries and civilians fought to stay in the large mercenary's wake. The smell was almost thick enough in the air to throw off Sertor's ability to navigate, but they didn't have far to go. Relatively speaking.

But what of Tagi throughout this? Living in the lap of luxury, no doubt, perched upon Sertor's large 'backpack'. Perhaps the large reinforced structure seemed to Tagi more reminiscent of a Howdah, with Sertor the war elephant beneath it, as she shot arrow after arrow into the swarm surrounding them. Yes, let us now cut to Tagi, and continue this tale of exotic calamity through a djinn's warped vision.

[Tagi]

Any attempt for the scene to be viewed as glorious or dignified would be in vain. It should be understood that any scene that included Tagi in it could not include the former, and while there are exceptions to any rule, let us be quite frank: in this circumstance, such an exception would be an unheard of rarity.

"Die!" She would shriek, laugh, and shriek again. "Die!"

Each word was punctuated by an arrow sticking out of one of the creatures, which she referred to as 'scabies' -- not because they had anything to do with the infection, but because she liked the way the word sounded and so tended to use it as an insult for things she intended to kill, or desired to kill but wasn't presently able to do so. These she was able to kill. That she did so with abandon and delight was ruined by the fact that she was showing the world her underthings.

One leg was perched high on Sertor's backpack, the other braced further down (her toes, should one notice, had grown slightly over the edge of her sandal, giving her a disturbingly prehensile grip). Her kaftan was hiked up to her thighs, which was horrible etiquette on the best of times. It was the worst of times then, because not only was she baring her legs beyond what was appropriate in any public situation, but she was also flashing the world. It should be made clear: Tagi was not wearing underwear. With the sun beaming down on them from above and bouncing off the bright sand, anyone within a short distance would be able to see everything. So, no, there was no gravity to the situation. The poor sods unfortunate enough to die would find themselves quite disgusted should they linger on as ghosts, because one would not simply be able to edit Tagi out of one's end. They would have to make do with an undignified death.

Tagi started to sing a centuries-old marching song as she emptied her quiver and reached for her secondary short-range pack. Anyone familiar with the language would immediately recognize her unfamiliarity with it; her accent was gut-wrenching and she skipped several important parts of the sentence structure, filling in the blanks with another language that sounded similar but was separated by time and region. Thankfully for all within earshot, she was quick at pulling out her refills and shoving them into her quiver, wherein her more normal cries resumed.

"Di -- hey, quit jolting me!" In the melee, it couldn't be for certain who she was speaking to, but given that the only person she was in contact with was Sertor, who had engaged with one of the "scabies," it was a fair bet. "Whoops!"

Up ahead, near the door, someone had just lost an arm. One arrow had saved the rest of the someone from being completely eviscerated, assuming that blood loss and shock didn't do the rest of the job. "Die!"

Three of their little sheep had made it into the temple alongside one of their mercenary brethren. That left one -- no! two! -- of their little sheep left to go instead. "Aw. . ." Nope, make that one. Oh well, two other mercs were covering and were in good positions, meaning that they likely wouldn't see more dead unless the temple was a death trap and they were all doomed to die anyways. "Forward!" She was shouting down at Sertor now, goading him on by thumping the top of his backpack with her upper foot. They were close to the temple now, and she had twisted to cover their backs.

Twang. Zwing. Thump. "Die!"

At least she wasn't singing.

[Sertor Potens]

Sertor was blessed, and cursed, with hearing as finetuned and sharp as the creatures from which his kind were originally made. There was, for example, a musical dissonance in the movements of the swarming insectoid soldiers, a kind of occasionally broken fricative symmetry which made reading their movements as much an artistic pleasure as it was a precursor to a brutal swording.

This is mentioned only by way of contrast for the fact that Tagi's singing fell under the category of 'abomination unto mankind'. And Sertor could hear every little nuance of off-key, off-tune, and badly cadenced verse. Damn right he jolted the noisy wench. And then pretended not to hear her complaints. Admittedly, he could legitimately claim the excuse that he had already sustained several injuries where blows had punctured through the leather sections of his armour or struck unarmoured parts, and was too busy to worry about her comfort. But, the simple truth was, Sertor just wanted her to stop her infernal singing.

Also for the record, it must be noted, the last two to die in that chaotic charge for the temple actually died due to a sudden loss of their will to live. "Death take me, so that I may never see between Tagi's legs again" were their final prayers, and the scarab warriors were quick to grant their wish. Not deliberately, of course - the two were just afternoon tea awaiting the proper sous-chef preparation - but it does highlight that the antagonists of this little tragedy aren't all that bad.

When the last survivors of their expedition made it through the temple entrance, they fell back to another room with a smaller opening where Sertor could take up the task of pretending to be a door. A very violent, guest-shredding, door. When things finally settled down to the therapeutic sound of an oversized gladius chunking through the press of chitin, Sertor called back to the survivors with his signature, deep and rumbling, bass lisp "How many of uf are left? Are there any other entranfef or ekfitf through which our foef might advanf upon uf?"

[Tagi]

"Karam," Tagi snapped her fingers. "Karam, translate."

The demand was not rewarded with a response. That wasn't to say that the interior of the temple, besides the noises generated by death-by-Sertor, was silent. There was the quiet groans of the man who now could only claim one arm, and the curt orders of the mercenary attending to him. A civvie was muttering to himself as he edged along one of the walls, peering out into the depths of the temple. There was a narrow doorway opposite of the one Sertor currently blocked, but what lay beyond it was dark and foreboding. One of the other surviving mercenaries had already started towards the civvie, no doubt to pull him back towards the dubious safety of the interior. Still, no one answered Tagi, and as she looked around the room she soon realized why.

"Where's Karam?" She was tapping one of her claws on the back of her bow. The sound was repetitive and no doubt annoying to some of the surviving party, should they be able to hear it.

"Dead," Ramon said as he grabbed the arm of the overly curious civvie and pulled him none-too-gently away from the opening. The mercenary looked through instead.

"Oh. Ramon," Tagi said, and when Ramon looked back at her she pointed at him. "Translate."

"By the shadows of the Changers, Tagi, be useful for once and go scout the temple."

Tagi looked nonplussed. "He said that? I didn't hear my name."

"Just do it."

Tagi's face scrunched up, and for a moment it might have looked -- to an outsider, of course, at which time there were plenty present who did not know her well -- like she was considering attacking the other mercenary. Then her face smoothed over, and she started to strip her pack and weapons as she walked towards Ramon. He took her things without comment, this action having become fairly routine between her and the other mercenaries since they'd first signed on, and she changed into a hyena. Her form blurred like paint, and then a large, muscular hyena was sniffing along the edge of the doorway that lead deeper into the temple. Ramon was looking away. Most of them were; the blurring was a bit like having your head knocked about for most people. Not a pleasant sensation. Besides which, there wasn't really anything positive that came out of looking at Tagi for any length of time. Or being near her.

The hyena trotted into the darkness of the inner temple with a cackle of hyena laughter, teeth bared in a happy hyena grin. Several seconds later, human-shaped Tagi was taking her things back from Ramon. "Empty. Smells like old, old death. No scabies been in there."

"Scabies?" One of the civilians, who sounded quite justifiably uncertain about addressing the potential monstrosity among them, asked the inevitable.

"You know. Scabies." Tagi gestured towards Sertor and the mess beyond him.

Ramon sighed.

[Sertor Potens]

Sertor's ears twitched when Tagi spoke, and rotated to take in the full conversation between herself and Ramon. He was, in fact, quite ready to interject into the ludicrous exchange when the pressure of the scarab-shelled creatures in front of him demanded his attention.

It was moments like these that a proper-thinking Kerostriarii like Sertor learned to appreciate the little things. Things like ignoring the armourers who said "Are you insane? If you cover the front of your already stupidly large shield with steel, it'd weigh far too much." Not to mention the whining "I had to get another bloke to help me lift it when I put in the reinforced banding on the back of the damn thing." Come to think of it, there had been a lot of complaining involved in that commission.

Yes, Sertor thought, as his shield began to look rather dented and pocked by the violence the scarabs were inflicting on it, those had been Imperial Bishani very well spent. His ears twitched again as the chitinous blade-arms of one of the scarab warriors caused a horribly shrill grating sound as it scraped across the scutum bossing. His gladius and right arm were soaked in foul-smelling ichor, and getting worse with each brutal thrust and chop delivered to the creatures trying to get around him to the softer meals behind.

A tense minute or two ended with a brief surcease of activity as the scarab warriors re-swarmed for another push. Sertor could hear them pulling away their fallen to clear a path for the next assault. "Ramon, pleafe tell Tagi that she needf to learn the language of Eyropa better, if only to fave yourfelf the inconvenienf of having to tranflate it into wordf that even a child can underftand. Are there any other ekfits or entranfes through which thefe creaturef could enter and surround uf?" Unfortunately, Ramon was going to say no such thing to Tagi, not if he wanted to keep his insides inside.

The pressure resumed with a vengeance then, as the swarm once more attacked over a path made slick with the vital liquids of their fallen, and Sertor could feel the burn of ichor in new cuts. The chunk-chok-sklshh of Sertor's butchery recommenced as the swarm tried to push through the bottleneck blocked by the large mercenary's efforts. Sertor complained back to the others "Why don't any of you ufe fpearf? Are you ufeleff? A couple of Haftae thrufting into the gapf here would be very helpful right now. I am of half a mind to demand a bonuf for thif."

One of the civilians, an antiquarian who'd been brought in to help navigate the ruins in their search for the artifact and had spent the last few minutes quietly gibbering to himself in a corner, found in Sertor's words a reason to speak up. Well, 'speak' is perhaps the wrong phrase. Screech, perhaps? Wail hysterically? However you look at it, there was nothing manly about the man right then. "A bonus? A BONUS?! We are all going to DIE here you oversized and witless fool! Oh Changers, I thought this was going to be the crowning moment of my career. If I'd helped retrieve the Sceptre of Asari, mythological lord of the underworld, my name would have been lauded in academic circles. And now I'm going to die in a temple dedicated to him. AND YOU TALK OF BONUSES?!!"

Okay, yeah, that last bit was definitely a screech. High-pitched and womanish to boot. With a voice that annoying, it's guaranteed he'll find a way to survive just long enough to annoy the shit out of everyone. Ramon bounced a rock off the man's shin "Shut it, Giacomo. I don't plan on bloody dying here, but keep up that caterwauling and I might just let the damn things put you out of my misery." Giacomo responded with an eloquent yelp-and-sulk combination. Well played, sir. Well played.

[Tagi]

"See? That was my name. He didn't say it before. Lying is bad or something to you people, right?"
"We need exits and entrances mapped before we're -- "

Giacomo took that moment to have his little fit. Tagi watched him, curious, until Ramon shut him up. She snapped her fingers at Ramon, expectant. "We don't want to be overrun. We also need to know any advantages we might have. Haven't you scouted before?" Ramon's expression was quite sour.

Tagi thought about replying, but there was a din of chitin-on-steel from the doorway. Insistant irritant though she may have proven to be when it came to talking to others, she was also not going to indefinitely trust their safety to a walking animal with a shield. She was, she supposed, distracted from the high of that charge across the sand, catching kill after kill while the blood churned around them, leaving delicious bodies that would mature in a few hundred years into something only she could truly --

"Sertor is right -- Giacomo, here, assist with this -- " It was Evren speaking. He gestured to the first aid they were performing on the one-armed man (why did they bother? Waste of supplies and effort). Sir demanding, that Evren. Tagi had her own job to do before he got on his soapplatform and started to pretend he was royalty again. She shifted and trotted back into the darkness.

She was suited to being a hyena in that environment (and more for the fact that it shut her up and got her out of the way): her night vision was much crisper, and as there was darkness aplenty the deeper she trotted she felt right at home. There were dead tugging at her senses, testing her honed control. She couldn't smell them just yet, proving that they were buried deep (there ahead, and below), and the only things she heard was the clamor behind her. Oh, there was a slight rustle outside, and small streamers of daylight from a doorway that had since collapsed, choking itself shut, but she had meant what she'd said on the first go around -- the scabies didn't venture into the temple. Why, she couldn't give a concrete answer to, but if they had ever ventured a step into the temple it had long since been wiped away by time. Though they certainly did want in now, which meant that perhaps it had to do with the temple being more her style hunting grounds then for them. Would they eat the bodies of the fallen? Tagi felt strangely territorial at the thought.

She trotted up a flight of stairs, and found herself stopped by a pair of doors that smelt of old rot and metal. They were stubborn things, heavy and unwilling to give up their secrets to nudges and leaning alone. Without the fear of scaring off her companions, Tagi was free to mutate her form into an awkward half thing that could not be described as part human or part hyena, though it was an abomination that hunkered on two legs, had hands, and the head of a hyena. She molded armor for herself, shrinking her form enough to allow it to thicken up. Defense and speed were the goals: if she was surprised she would need time to shift into a proper fighting form. The inbetweensies were very useful, but as soon as she aired them under a common shared sun there was panic and chaos. Twisted creatures were generally not good news -- ghul djinns among them -- so she'd never seen the point of learning to fight in one of them.

She managed to clear the doorway, though it took some elongation to accomplish it without absolutely wrenching the door aside. The interior was more darkness, and more elaborate architecture that humans seemed so fond of. Always the grandiose sentiments for their worship, be it of some fanciful deity or some form of power. Pillars were most prominent, coupled with an unnecessarily high ceiling and designs on the walls that she could only just see were there. She could smell the clogged backwash of a spring whose water had most likely once filled a small pool, but now lurked under the plumbing that had been designed for it. There were statues, rotted cloth nearly gone to dust, and vegetation that hovered perilously close to death.

The temple was larger then she'd given it credit for. She broke into a shuffling trot, hampered by the awkwardness of her form only until she found more doorways. They were irritations given their hulking, listing states; she could smell the wood that had once been solid, but none of them were made of just wood alone. All of them had been fitted or coated with metal; there were gold on several of the doors, but beyond them she smelled only dank air. Sealed shut for a long time, those rooms, and no business of hers. Instead she followed the smell of the desert beyond, picking out hints of daylight and stopping only when she found a staircase that went down. There, temptation in the sense of long dead below, but she turned instead and ran to report to her companions.

She re-entered the first room in her human shape. "Next room has a cave-in on the doorway, at the other end there's another door leading outside, but it'll hold a good bit, no signs of scabies pecking at it yet. There's stairs going down below on that same end, and some sealed up rooms I didn't check. No smell of the outside from them, anyhow. Hey, he dead yet?" She was looking at the one-armed man who was laid down with the severed arm propped up and further disfigured by a wad of makeshift bandages. A small dot of darkness and a few stained cloths around him belied the effort that had gone into him. His eyes were closed, and two of the remaining civvies sat alongside him.

[Sertor Potens]

If by now you've started to come to the realisation that mercenary work isn't quite the glamourous pursuit you'd been romanticising it to be, well, congratu-fucking-lations on the profound new insight. Welcome to reality. There's a lot of boring busy-work for mercs. Like cutting up bugs and noticing how nobody else is doing anything remotely useful. Except for that bitch Tagi. She at least got some scouting done. Not that Sertor minds the busy work either. There's something pleasant to the Kerostriarii psychology about legitimately brutalising things in the same way their ancestors did.

Unfortunately, neither Tagi nor Sertor's sterling efforts were on the mind of Fariq, sole surviving expedition leader since his brother Haqim got himself bugmunched. Needless to say, Fariq wasn't in the best of moods. Not that he'd been a paragon of good cheer at the best of times. No, sour-faced Fariq had himself a reputation. The thin faced man, whose lengthy goatee resembled something out of a moral lesson against the evils of grand viziers, glared when Tagi spoke and spat out "Do not even think about it, corpse-eater! It is in your contract! No member of this expedition is to be eaten by you! NONE! Go kill those things like you have been paid to do!"

Sertor, once more blessed by a slight reprieve in the pressure of the assault on the front doorway, rumbled out "Well, ftrictly fpeaking, we have been contracted to retrieve the artifact and protect the ekfpeditition. There if no fpefific mention of whole-fale flaughter of native inhabitantf. Fimply keeping them from killing you would be adhering to the termf of the contract. But for a bonuf and the coft of armour repairf, we could re-negofiate afpectf of how we define protection. I have fpare paperf in my pack. Are we weady to move to a fmaller room? Perhapf there if a fubtewanean ekfit from thif plafe."

[Tagi]

Tagi was taken about. "Think about what? There's nothing in the contract about what goes on in my fucking head, stonehumper." Taken aback quickly turned to grumpy. Who'd just gone through possibly scaby-infested temple to make sure they could all go to sleep later that night tucked into their bedrolls all safe and snug? Tagi had. The thanks she got was some assertion that she'd be happy chewing on ol' one-arm, when he was all fresh and. . .gooey. Yuck.

"You will pay me proper respect," there was a pause there, the brief kind that implied inventive invective was right around the corner. So, it was probably good that Sertor chose to speak up at that precise and well-timed moment.

Tagi was not known to let a good round of cussing go unanswered. The fact that they were in the middle of a job wouldn't stop her, it would just make her more noisy while she did whatever task was assigned her. If she was forced into hyena form, she'd like as not continue her blabbering once she was in a position to do so. Maybe that was why, rather than give Fariq another chance to air his discontent with the mercenaries who'd signed on with him, Ramon chose to translate without being asked.

"All right then, we retrieve the artifact and keep ourselves living. Let's go on and find a way out like the -- like Sertor here suggests. Something underground so we don't catch more attention on the way out. If you'll show the way, Tagi?"

"Sure, yeah, I'll get right on that -- one thing though, I ain't taking him with us." She was pointing at the one-armed man. "Oh, yeah, and if Ol' Horny here wants to play door that's great, just great, but if he's not how're we planning on keeping them out?"

"Idiot," Fariq most certainly did not mutter, because if he had he would find himself the target of Tagi's ire later.

Oh, wait, he did mutter it, and it looked as if he thought he got away with it, too. Tagi didn't respond to him, instead expectantly waiting for some sort of reply from Giacomo, Sertor, or Ramon.

[Sertor Potens]

Take a moment if you would to appreciate Ramon, Patron Saint of Mercenaries. Or he could be, if he winds up like Karam. But, in that moment, that dashing man of action and finely-groomed features remained a living exemplar of that rare breed of individual: a man possessed of common sense.

It was Ramon again who kept things moving. He knew it'd be a mutiny of sorts if they left Omar, even if the normally cheerful man was currently lacking both an arm and consciousness. "Fariq, do us a favour, and shut it. Save the posturing for when we aren't at risk of being torn to pieces by those bloody things. Get the rest of those useless dust-sifters of yours to carry Omar for now. If it gets too difficult, we'll cut his throat. At least he can have an easy death. Pray to the Changers that we get the same grace at our ending. Sertor, think you can keep up a delaying action while we set up a defensive position at the next entrance?"

Sertor rumbled "Of courfe, Ramon. Give me the fignal onfe you are ready. The fooner we can achieve a more defenfible pofition, the better." In truth, the overwhelming chemical scent of the creatures' ichor was rendering one of Sertor's primary senses almost useless, and the large mercenary was hoping for a chance to scrape some of the horrendous muck off himself. Ramon called out "Evren, quit wasting time with the labourers and get your damn shield ready. Hassan, you too. The three of us are going to need to hold the next doorway until Sertor makes it back. Fariq, Giacomo, stop fucking around and get your people fucking moving! Tagi, while we play doorman, see if you can slow some of the damn things down with that bow of yours."

It wasn't exactly an orderly retreat. It was more Ramon and Evren shouting at the labourers to move faster, and shouting over Fariq who was finding new reasons to complain instead of doing something useful like moving his arse. In the end it was Hassan who shut Fariq up with the simple expedience of quietly informing him, in the native tongue of Tamazgha, that if he didn't shut up and move Hassan would cut out his tongue. Fariq, perhaps surprisingly, shut up. But then again, the men of Hassan's tribe were not known for bluffing.

Finally, Ramon gave the signal "Sertor, we're set. Try not to die." Sertor began a slow and orderly backwards advance, sweeping his large gladius in broad strokes to try and keep the creatures at bay. With the door unplugged, the horrendous chitinous creatures started pushing through the door in twos and threes. The first four through were despatched by the still-close Sertor, but once he was clear of the entrance, most of the Nehkhepera moved around the Kerostriarius to stay clear of his blade in order to attack the hopefully weaker and definitely smaller human mercenaries guarding the door. Ramon bellowed "Brace yourselves, this will be rough." A dozen of the creatures scuttled and bounded in ungainly fashion across the stone towards the mercenaries' position.

[Tagi]

Tagi grunted and gave up the first point without interference; when it came to matters that involved social delicacy she always did. "Escorts," she muttered to herself as she pulled several arrows free of her quiver. "And this bow? It is not some fucking inside duty shortbow. Do you see this curve? This is for outside! Outside!" No one paid her any heed, of course, except for a nervous glance from Pinar, who had sworn from the outset that Tagi's inclusion would spell doom for them. Tagi noticed her sign against fae right before she darted through the doorway, holding up a battered lamp she'd managed to salvage from her battered pack. The woman was paranoid, but she made it a point to always be prepared. Tagi had mocked her superstitious nature from the onset, knowing that most humankind appreciated some sort of reaction to such insults (lack of emotion tended to creep them out). She supposed they would now mock her, assuming they still survived.

Or would there be a mourning period first? She frowned as she shot the first scaby through the gap. She started out angled to the side of Sertor in the rear in order to clear line of sight, but the problem with that was that it meant she could be cut off from the door. She started sidestepping, half-drawing her bow for each shot and holding bunches of arrows in her shooting hand with her ring finger and pinky in order to increase the rapidity of her shot. She picked off the first several before they could contact the mercs, but it was obvious that would not last forever. Speaking of last, she was running out of arrows. She had one more cluster packed that could be used for her longrange bow, the rest being for her shortbow. Which was out there. Lost. Fucking scabies. She liked that bow. She missed it even now. That was the right emotion, she thought, even if it was for an inanimate object.

Ah, Evren had engaged first, slamming one with his shield even as Tagi picked one off that had headed for the two helping the living corpse through the door. She inched closer as Sertor approached them, his broad back blocking Tagi's sight to the doorway. No helping it, she didn't want to be far enough over to see around him, and Ramon could tell her what Sertor had seen later.

With the scabies closed with the men, Tagi began to focus on the left side of the room -- the side next to Hassan -- and found herself out of arrows. She slung her bow back into its scabbard, wincing with the move. All she had was a machete -- she was not about to ditch her gear in order to go hyena, not with so many scabies about -- and then Ramon called over the sound of the butcherwork, "Tagi, through!"

Oh, there was Sertor's back. It was a large back, a nice back. She hacked at a scaby who'd got too close as she herself retreated back through the doorway, resheathing the machete and pulling out her last bundle of arrows to shove into her quiver. Evren came through next, then it was down to three in that room, scabies pressing in on them from all sides as they prepared to come through the door.

[Sertor Potens]

Sertor, it can be fairly said, wasn't having the most enjoyable of times. It wasn't the sting of the numerous small lacerations and a rather nasty cut on his left leg. It wasn't the noise and clamour of countless large insectoid abominations trying to tear at him. It was the smell. Changers curse that horrendous acrid chemical odour thickening the air to the point of choking. How could he be expected to smell the direction of an attack when his olfactory organs were clogged with Nehkhepera chemical emissions? It was a miserable state of affairs.

Naturally, Sertor took out his displeasure on the scarab warriors which came within the bounds of his reach. His slow retreat was punctuated with lashing cuts to any which came close enough. The Kerostriarius noted with satisfaction the careful spread with which scarabs were falling to arrows. The scarabs were being slowed down by their fallen, funnelling more within range of Sertor, and reducing the numbers having to be faced by Ramon, Hassan and Evren.

Eventually, Sertor made it to the entrance. At last, there'd be a moment of respite. Finally, there'd be... another problem. "Oh, fiddleftickf." Sertor hadn't had much opportunity to take a look at the entrance he was making for. In fact, he'd solely relied upon his hearing to pinpoint Ramon's location as his point of navigation. The doorway it turned out, whilst quite adequate for two men fighting side to side, wasn't quite designed with a Kerostriarius in mind.

Metal plates scraped, and a large helmet bounced against the stone lintel, as Sertor first tried to retreat in backwards. He might as well have tried to jam an arrowhead through the eye of a needle. Sertor muttered "Accurfed doorf! Why muft you alwayf fruftrate my planf!" And by muttered, it must be clarified, it meant that everyone could hear his complaining. Sertor shieldbashed a trio of scarab warriors away from him, then shuffled and crouched a little, pushing his pack into the opening. With that achieved, and his gladius smashing down another creature, Sertor turned and scuttled sideways into the doorway like some oversized and hideous gray crab.

Having rethought his entrance strategy, Sertor was finally in, blocking most of the doorway with his shield. Sertor commented "I think we are making progreff. I fenfe that their morale if dropping". Utter bullshit, of course, but it sounded good, right? Just like the Triarii of old might have said.

[Tagi]

Even Tagi did not need a translation when Sertor started banging up against the door. She watched, wide-eyed as a child watching his sibling put a ball in its mouth (and failing spectacularly). The last bit, though, was not something she could divine through her enormous social skills. "Does he need to be pulled?" She asked Ramon, who was not paying attention to her. No one was, once again, as attentions were brought forward to the door. Tagi was not so concerned with the door; while in it Sertor was acting the part of a most admirable stopper. Sure, he might die whilst standing there, but who was she to argue his value while he provided such admirable cover?

But what a sight he was, lodged in there, grunting and with his strange way of speech. He sounded comparatively relaxed about things, though, which Tagi could at least sorta respect. "The door," she said, loudly, pantomiming reaching for it to shut it. She still wasn't quite sure whether his speech impediment was a symptom of a more pervasive condition, or if it was just some bad luck trick of his ancestry. People really did seem to be dependent on their heritage for their traits. At least, that's how Tagi saw it, but whenever she brought it up there was always some level of offense involved. Mortality bound species were really quite so touchy.

"Keep going," she said, shooing the civvies on, with good ol' reliable Hassan to lead them. "You'll see the next door. It'll be a squeeze, but it should be sound. Just don't be having stone fucking falling on everyone, or between the dark and the light I'll be demanding extra pay to dig your sorry bones out -- and no, not to eat you, you're too -- yeah, the door, yeah."

Evren had swung 'round to glare at Tagi, which was a commonly understood signal to shut up. Tagi minced forwards to the clamoring scuffle of scabies pinging off of Sertor's shield, and helpfully grabbed the edge of the door -- inward swinging, thank the spirits -- ready to swing it shut the moment Sertor gave her leeway.

[Sertor Potens]

Sertor rotated his ears in mild irritation. It was always the way. Have a little trouble getting through a door that wasn't designed for you, and suddenly people think you are not only incompetent, but lacking in basic comprehension. Sertor calmly asserted "I am well aware of what a door if, Tagi" as he used his shield once more to propel a pair of the scarab warriors away from the aforementioned portal. A moment later, the Kerostriarius had stepped back, and watched Tagi slam the bronze-clad temple door shut.

Sertor immediately braced the door in the short term through the simple expedience of laying his shield flat against it and applying some of his own incredible mass to hold the door in place. "If there fomething heavy with which we can fecure the door? The bronfe will foon begin to warp and buckle under the weight of a perfiftent affault."

[Tagi]

Tagi beamed. It was always so surprising when Sertor used her name; it always seemed to her that he was rather like one of the human's dogs that occasionally performed amazing tricks. She had wanted to pat him on the head and maybe rub his ears for some time, but had figured she might have her arm wrenched off. They really didn't have time to deal with that in front of the humans -- she had stressed them out enough as it was with what she was, much less what she was capable of doing.

"Tagi?" Ramon said, and she nodded.

"There's rocks from the cave in, over here, on the left. They'll be fucking heavy, but I figure we'll be able to heft 'em, right y'lug?" She waggled her eyebrows at him in challenge, trotting over to the area she meant, not disturbed in the least by the heavy shadows. She started to increase her muscle size, carefully pushing herself pass the instinctive limits of mass that her body imposed on her. The instant she felt a tingle of warp, she stopped. It was a tricky thing to add extra mass too far beyond her normal weight.

She picked out a rock and put her hand on it, sassy grin in place when Ramon gave her a dubious look. It was big. It even looked heavy -- but that was the point. Ramon called over Hassan, and between the three of them they managed to take the rock to the door. It was oblong, and awkward, but that was the point. Once in place, Ramon made them carry two more over to brace the first. Then Tagi was leading them to the back, where the second doorway was jammed, and only the small Pinar could get through. Evren was obviously frustrated, and he gave Tagi a dark look. "How'd you get past?"

She grinned at him, and turned to Ramon, "Maybe that one can prop it open and keep it stable until we get through?"

That one did, of course, refer to Sertor, as evidenced by the thumb she jerked in his direction.

[Sertor Potens]

Sertor relaxed when the door was momentarily blocked, and used his own strength to help them shift the boulders into a more stable position against the door. The ear-grating shrill of chitin on bronze continued, and the Kerostriarius' ears twitched in protest.

As the others prepared the next doorway for passage, Sertor moved into position, sheathing his gladius and tossing his scutum through before bracing the lintel-stone. As the survivors of the expedition passed through the precarious portal, Sertor grumbled "Damn bugf are far too noify. There waf no need for fuch a fuff. Digging holef in groundf if hardly an act of warfare"

Now let us pause, for just the briefest of moments, to consider the scenario here. Behold the splendour of an ancient megalithic temple of incredible masonry, yet whose blocks are crumbling, some of its very walls falling in here and there. Imagine the long-past conflicts which shook the ground and undermined even the stability of such a structure. Imagine the mighty chords of grey muscle, like a pillar of the finest masonry, carved in the shape of Sertor as he braces the lintel. The hiss of dust sifting down as the very act of clearing the entrance shifts away the tenuous support from the cracked stone frame surrounding the doorway.

Imagine the magnificence of a creature, not particularly designed for the acrobatics of a frantic forward roll, clunking across the stone floor like a beetle flipped onto its back. Feel the impact as the masonry falls down with a thunderous crash of deafening sound and nostril-clogging dust.

Imagine all that, and wonder: was this really worth the pay?

Let us take a step back, then, to where this all started to go wrong in the first place. The recruiting office.
And let us look at this shining moment of blissful ignorance formed by lack of oracular powers through the eyes of Tagi.