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You both keep low and still.
Within several minutes you hear the thrum of Bug wings.
Two patrol squadrons, over ten Bugz total, arrive at the crator. They confer, make three of the younger smaller Bugs go towards the center of the BOOM, check it out.
The young ones are not sure what they're looking at. No Dorf or Rhea tunnels coming up, like they might expect, no prints, no movement, no bodies.
The older ones with rank, seeing nothing happen and getting worthless answers, start getting into to see for themselves.
Sikky n Noiffy are out. Sikky's jaggkt n rusted where it's not all crudded up, but not to worry: the jaggz make it like a sawr, see, and no one you ever used it on died of tittyness whatever that is
>+8 Degrees of Success
"<span class="mu-g"><span class="mu-i">Narr.</span></span>"
The Drood casts Bonfire again, at a position somewhat closer to you, then Control Flames twice, once to flare the Bonfire, once to move the 5'x5' mass of flame, sweeping all over the crater.
It sets off a chain reaction. Even the ones who reacted fast enough to begin liftoff are caught in it. YOU waste no time, charge right through the bushes. The Drood, face white, gets a hold of himself enough to ready a spell, in case you need backup, or he needs to run like a liddle bich.
The seed of this plan came from YOU getting through the Rhean Reffijjee pikkypokkt gauntlet: the first trick is never the real one.
The execution and executions are all YOU: in order of priority, attack the stunned, chase wounded, finish the halfmaimed; the fainted and near dead can keep.
None of them gave you much trouble: the Candlemakers' HiMaX formula had a bit of spark in it, smells like dedd fish inna potty phosphorus; even if they don't have much in the way of ears, they're dazed by the light. With their eyes the way they are, seeing all-round, when the BOOMcandles cooked, even if they were not caught in the concussion wave they'd have their brains fried in the light blazing through every cell in their honeycomb eyes.
No struggle, no trubble, even if Daggy's not at work.
You find a few things out through active experience: their natural Armor's quite good, grown closed, sometimes layered, so you have to stab into the joints or breathing holes to get started at all. This might be a bit of a problem for YOU if you need to fight one face on: the Carrionpede, as far as you know, leads with hooks and ends with slashes; it's not big on pokies, or at least accurate ones. And the twistygougy that you do with a hard pokie might not be possible if the armor is layered and thick enough. Like a Bug's.
You're so focussed on your twiggings youre absentmindedly chewing on a Bug's head when you get back to the Drood to dismiss him.
"<span class="mu-g">Whadd.</span>" you say to his ashen face, picking up a stone to crack the Mantid head open, like a crab. The mandibles are still moving.
The Drood leaves after barfing. You leave after Pouching the rest, to go.
