[Seargentbig]

Sorry this chapter is a little late, but I will try to get the next one up by Saturday just the same. Hey, look! It's really long instead!
Please note, I've had to edit a prior post to conform with the chronology of the story. Maybe you won't notice. Maybe you will. Either way, read the next chapter.


I walked into the new area, the one with the last flintlock. I was very surprised to see it suspended about thirty metres ahead of me. Further ahead, I saw the lever, down at the end of a passage, with a window showing the colours of the early morning.
I stopped, and looked around. It was simple. There was no danger.
It was a trap. I could sense it.
Straining my other five, I tried to detect where the trick was. I was at a passage opposite to the lever one, and between the two was a cavern, with the flintlock suspended above the middle. The walls were too high to climb, so the only way through was ahead.
I wondered if I was prepared. I could be better. My side still ached, possibly worse than before. The chicks were fine, but I was running out of meat. I felt something that suggested I was out of web. I decided I wasn’t, but there was not much I could do about it.
A sound began. It was huge and enveloping. It reverberated off the walls, and became distorted. But the origin was clear – it was some kind of Scrab.
Challenge.
Oh, odd… I had to beat the thing. No tricks, no tactics, I had to kill it in combat!
The thing walked out, and stood right at the other end of the arena, in front of the other passage. It was huge, twice the side of another scrab, blood red all over, scarred but strong. This thing must have been old to have grown so big, and strong to have grown so old. There was no other choice, I had to walk out.
I left the passage. As I entered the cavern, I realised I had stepped on a pressure pad. The grinding of stone behind me told me there was no running.
“Hhruuuuaaaaaarrrrrrrrghhhh” the thing challenged. I recognised the massing of spooce the thing had summoned, meaning that it was ready to use a shred attack.
Howl, the scrab inside me directed.
“Hhiiiiiiiiarrrrrrrrrrrr” I responded. The screeching had hurt my throat, and wasn’t nearly as strong as my opponents. I felt a certain hopelessness.
Something strange happened. The world around me clouded and went out of focus, and I was looking at the world through a red haze. The last thing I did was look at the only clear thing in my sight – the Scrab.

The haze lifted, and I could see nothing but a huge, blinding light. I wondered if I was dead, and this was what had come afterwards. I could vaguely feel something on my arm, and my head didn’t feel right. I decided that the afterlife wasn’t as good as people thought it was, if you could still feel –
PAIN!
Everything clicked into place right then. I was looking down the passage with the flintlock lever, staring right at the newly risen sun. I looked away, and instead at my right arm, which had been torn open at some point, with the flesh just stripped of. I could see the bone!
My eye stung, and I realised I was bleeding into it. It made seeing somewhat difficult, but it didn’t stop me seeing the behemoth on the cavern floor, dead.
Memory started streaming back. It felt as though I was a computer, slowly booting up. I remembered howling and summoning the shred power, then I rushed towards the giant scrab.
We ran towards each other, but when we met I didn’t encounter the amazingly fast flurry of limbs I, watching, was expecting, but we both moved at the same rate. In fact, I moved a little faster. He jabbed at me with his jaw, but I dodged right. When the thing swung round to hit my chest with the tip of its mouth, I backed away and ducked behind it. Seizing my chance, I thrust at its back, but the thing’s skin was very thick and solid, think enough to protect it from bullets from a slig popper. I didn’t break it.
I just pulled my arm out of the back when it swung round again it hit me with the side of its jaw. It felt like being hit by a train, and I was thrown several feet. However, I was falling very slowly, and as I was the Scrab turned and charged at me. In mid flight, I twisted to try to avoid the blow and it caught me on the arm instead. I felt skin and sinew part from each other as it forced its lower jaw through my arm, then nick bone and tear away. I felt it like a pressure, or how a limb is simply known to be somewhere. There was no pain.
As it pulled away with an appreciable fraction of my arm, I finally landed. I flexed to my feet, and tried charging the thing again. My right arm had stopped working, which I doubted was a good thing. Watching it again, anyway. I wasn’t thinking about anything consciously when I was fighting the Scrab, but I must have been thinking because when it brought its mouth to bear I ducked and slid under the thing.
I won’t describe the underside of a Scrab right now. Besides, what was currently occupying my attention was the needle-point feet. In particular, the fact that legs almost as tall as I was were stabbing at me. I stooped and tried to get out, but the legs blocked my way and I had to dodge them, too. I almost did, but one caught my face. It broke one of my fingers clean off! Just drove it through one of the joints and tore it off when it pulled my face into the ground with it. I didn’t much care then, but it’s not a finger I’m ever going to get back.
I finally got out from under the huge monster. I turned to face it, and I jumped at it again. I landed on its back. Pulled now not by a scrab instinct but a paramite one, because the scrab way of thrusting I used my own sharp toes and one working arm to climb up the beast’s back. It started bucking like a irate elum. I held on, digging into the skin on its back and made my way up to the back of the neck.
I twisted my head around as best I could. A paramite’s fingers are spread around the mouth so that it can get at a weak point in the victim’s neck no matter where it attacks from. For bigger creatures, anyway. For the smaller ones, it will simply stab their internal organs or swallow them whole. Either way, I managed to find the mighty Scarab’s jugular. I bit.
It howled again, but this time not the almighty herald of a champion. This time it howled like a mortally wounded animal. I jumped off and backed off from the frantic beast. It’s screeching was an awful noise. It turned around, trying to get me, but the loss of blood was taking it’s effect. Oh, odd, there was blood everwhere! It saw me, and started charging again but it didn’t get far before it stumbled. It uttered it’s death cry, then collapsed in front of me, letting the light from the newly risen sun behind it to stream past the window, lever and corpse. I stood there dazed for a while.
Until I returned to the present. I decided it wasn’t good for my eyes to be staring at the sun like that, and instead lowered my face as I walked towards the lever and then pulled it with a mouth now containing only five fingers.

Greg was smoking a cigarette back in the hub. He felt it helped him calm his nerves. He was, of course, completely wrong, but he smoked them anyway. He wanted to calm down after seeing that beast, being threatened by Shawn, and finding the bodies in the rest room, as well as the one survivor, Doug, absolutely traumatized. It had been a long night, but his shift was nearly over and there would be some more guards coming soon. A few of his comrades had started sleeping already.
A sound began. It wasn’t immediately obvious, but it had a sence of inevitability. It was a grinding of stone on stone. Greg turned to look at it.
The last door, the one leading to the centre of the temple had opened.
After Greg was sure he hadn’t just suffered a heart attack, he woke the sleeping sligs and alerted the other ones. They stared at it for some time.
Eventually, Shawn said, “Well. I guess this means the monster didn’t stop that freak after all.”
He looked around, then murmured, "I hope those heavy snoozers get here soon..."