Lombardus: The Trident Clown

Chapter 21

Beetles are cute. They
Chop plants and roll dungs. One
Sprayed you acid before?

I WOULD LOVE TO UN-SEE WHAT I SAW!

I fear it might breach the little wall of sanity I have left.

What I saw was the ground opening up. Not a problem. The soil parted and a half-scarab, half-bombardier beetle dug its way out. Still, that sounds normal given that beetles aren't mythical and presumably, there might be such a hybrid out there that science hasn't discovered yet.

But this one doubled the size of a jumbo African elephant. Now, that's definitely not so normal.

The creature was a towering monstrosity of iridescent amethyst-and-amber chitin — the most ridiculous insect coloration I've ever seen. It was as if struggling to keep both ancestral traits of a bombardier and a scarab and ended up as a purple-orange-yellow mutant beetle.

It had a heavy-bodied built and two gleaming pool of onyx as eyes. The giant coleoptera scissored its way through the garden with its sharp, strong mandibles, raining down greens and barks in its wake. In a matter of minutes, as we were all too stupefied to raise a rebel finger, it flattened half the plants in the farm.

"Hey, you!" Like a fool, I called.

The creature's spine was covered by a pair of spotted, sutured plate-like forewings called the elytra. Before our eyes, the elytra rapidly opened up like the doors of a hatchback to reveal its orange diaphanous hindwings. Then with a sibilant whirr of its wings, it went airborne — twelve feet — and made for the four teenagers in sight.

You can ask me and my friends later why beetles tend to fly like Superman with their mandibles posed to chew off whatever's in their ways. Right now, don't!

We scattered. We were getting good at it. The creature landed somewhere Luke was standing a splitsecond before. It would have converted the auburn-haired boy into paste if he had moved too slow. The ground shook, cracking up into million spider-like webs.

I remembered one of my childhood animal welfare crimes. Killing a beetle is easy. Just cast it into a soapy dishwater and glub glub. Dead as a doornail. Easy as ABC. The same beetle magnified into an eighteen-foot monster with a bad taste for color?

No way! I doubted if even the Nidvera could drown it.

I figured I had a wide choice of silly options to choose from before getting turned into goo by the beetle. Quite ironic. Last time I checked, humans converted beetles into goo not the other way round.

Time for Plan Alpha.

"Hey, Shieldhead!" I waved at the hulking insect as though mistaking a bulldozer for a taxi. I suspected the thing was going to ignore this time. To my amazement, it didn't. "Why don't you come get me here."

The beetle rotated.

Bonus points for me and my friends: The thing was a gullible dunce. It gets easily distracted. Also, it was built like a tank making it have little advantage when it comes to speed.

Bonus point for Shieldhead: it can hear sounds — loud or not. And can fly momentarily. And one more thing we haven't discovered yet.

I hurled the old-fashioned glass cup in my hand at the beetle. In my ear drums, I heard the cranky voice of Lady Sophia yelling, LICKPENNY WEDDING GLASS! A mischievous smile split my face.

The fragile object hit the creature's clypeus, breaking on impact.

Shieldhead cried. It was not a cry of pain but that of anger. It made for me with six clumsy legs.

"Yo, Beetlebrain!" Lucy diverted its attention to herself. She wriggled her whole body, making her look like someone pantomiming a worm, with arms at least. "I think I look yummier, don't I?"

"Dungroller!" Someone called before it could turn to face Lucy.

"Dumbledore," Somebody blew a raspberry.

"Thickheaded Rainbowshell." Another person hollered

"Mummy's pet!" I sneered.

The creature was practically a tank. Watching from a birdeye view, I imagined it would be spinning like a gun turret, attempting to aim numerous targets (us) and miserably failing to make a choice.

The beetle was outraged. Our sounds were disruptive. I knew what it must be thinking: These brats are really getting on my nerves.

Duh. As if it had any.

Furious, Beetlebrain hissed, raised up its back and spurted a jet of boiling, noxious liquid from its rear end. The translucent spray hit the lawn, eating away at the grass. It was acid, apparently.

Hmm, that's new.

Catching us off guard by its new display, the beetle made up its mind for who to attack. I noticed it was Luke — always the unlucky one. It crawled toward the boy in an awkward gait, as fast as its six legs could carry it without tumbling over its own weight.

Time to initiate Plan Beta.

Don't forget to VOTE