Al’Istaan, August-24
Today we had a lot more luck than sense. Large caravan. Really large. We should have been much more careful approaching it, but with literally nothing happening here for weeks and no irregularities with any of the last caravans around here, we weren’t. We were less than 50 m from the first beetle, when the shooting started. If one of Vasya’s grenades hadn’t by chance hit one of the beetles that turned out to be packed full with ammo and explosives, and if there hadn’t been so damn many of the critters that they practically had to crawl over one another, and if that razoredged shard of chitin hadn’t severed their shaman’s head, and of the wounded beetles hadn’t screamed so much and so shrilly that their screaming brought down an avalanche… Pravda! That screaming. We had a lot more luck than sense today.
Notes:
My first idea was to have a neutral report, maybe even just a tabulation of the destroyed caravan, but then (after considered a letter) I ended up with the diary entry. Screaming beetles!