Mibbet and Rosalind watched the prison wagon rumble off, and the Palmers finally go off to rest with a smile. Then it was, at long last time to move on from Naylor. (Errol of course being Errol and having heard of the outcome at Sqwaller tried to file a petition to have Naylor formally renamed as Nopesville. Between giant spiders, and murderers, and ghosts (oh my) he had not exactly had a fun time here even in the loosest sense of the words. But now that everything was all sorted out his petition was of course quickly rejected, though so many locals took to using it it became a sort of secondary, unofficial name for the place.

This was not helped by the locals deciding it would be great fun to have scarecrow making contests every year, and many of said scarecrows taking on a decidedly spidery motif.

The crows of course steered clear of any fields occupied by such things, and yet sill left offerings at the impromptu shiny shrine, resulting in people nearby making a formal shrine, splitting the divinity between Wannashowa, due to his Saintesses involvement, and Hellnaw, god of spiders (who was of course delighted about this, as you can imagine he did not usually get a lot of worship from humans. Something about 8 legs, and multiple eyes did not sit well with the human psyche (with the exception of a few very unique individuals, including the occasional weaver, who really did appreciate the tips.)

Elvira was of course absolutely devastated that she had missed out on all the fun, but in all fairness her usual routine was eat, sleep, train, nap, train some more, eat, sleep, train, nap, then sleep. It didn’t exactly leave a spot to pencil in catch a murderer, unfortunately for Mibbet it did include a time-slot to drag her back into intense training while they were on the move, and Elvira had managed to smuggle in a few dumbbells in order to ensure it did indeed happen.

Every once in a while, just to make matters worse the demonic drill instructor would make the wagon move at a trot, and Mibbet move at an immensely painful run beside it, while still holding weights. Meanwhile Rascal just sat on the carriage roof, grooming themselves smugly (there is no way to unsmug a cat, the greatest experts in the world had tried every trick they could think of, but the end result was the cat looking smug about their failed attempt.)

Alba meanwhile had taken on the highly amusing pastime of being Spikey The Motivational Pike’s assistant in training. (The logic being if the threat of a pike up the jacksie was insufficient motivation, a large predator running up behind you would provide always sufficient encouragement to speed up. Surprising absolutely nobody this technique was rather effective.)

Thus the torment on the trail continued for many days, this of course resulted in Rosalind becoming rather more sturdy than she had been initially. Before eventually in their way to their next destination the carriage suddenly slammed to a stop. Creating a living game of pinball within, mercifully much less painfully than one would expect from such an incident due to Mibbets obsession with adding additional padding to the walls, floor, and even ceiling of the carriage.

Of course this did not prevent the launching of an overlarge owl-bear, or a hissing hellcat, who were less than impressed at their impromptu lesson in inertia, which made the interior of the carriage a rather unpleasant place to be for a few minutes after the initial emergency stop.

Once things were calmed down inside Mibbet climbed out, followed by Alba. (She would of course have very much preferred Alba wait till she was fully out before joining her in the exit, but Owl-bears, particularly irate ones have extremely limited patience, or understanding of doorway etiquette.)

So one slightly squeezy egress later Mibbet checked out the road ahead, discovering the reason for the sudden stop. Usually gaping chasm’s had a bridge over them. (Often it was either rickety and rotten, or occupied by a troll.) This particular chasm however was rather deficient in the bridge department, with only the pillars for the supports, and a stone pad on each side showing what happened to produce a deficit of bridge.

Errol was attempting to bridge the gap himself with the mortal remains of a tree. But given the gap was twice the size of the tree Mibbet had a feeling his solution would come up short.

“I was afraid this would happen.” Muttered Sir Leeroy to himself. “It seems we have no choice but to take the Crystalline Chasm route.”

“Crystalline Chasm?”

“It is far from the ideal route, there are crystal golems down there, and more than one party has vanished, but with our current numbers I am sure that it won’t be a problem.”

It would later be told that this was the moment the God Murphee looked down and snickered. There were few times that he chose to get involved. But when a mortal invited fate like that things got too fun not to. It was a personal rule of his (one could almost say a law given his strict adherence) to never let such an amusing opportunity pass.

It took several days for them to detour to the chasm, but it was the only place the slope mellowed out enough to allow easy entry to the extremely long ravine. Going around it would take them about two weeks.

“Once over this was a quarry for the crystals” Sir Leeroy explained, gesturing to a narrow path leading downwards, surrounded on both sides by massive spiked crystals that looked sharp enough to be mistaken for distant cousins to Spikey, and a rather too shear for comfort drop.

Errol looked at the massive ravine for a moment, before picking up a pebble, and looking thoughtful.

“DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT” snapped Mibbet.

“What?”

“Just so we are absolutely, positively one hundred percent clear on this Errol. If you throw, drop, kick, or "accidentally" trip releasing that stone in such a manner than you can count to inaccurately figure out how deep this crack in the dirt is then you will end up finding out when I send you down afterwards head first. Without the benefit of a rope. Do I make myself clear?”

Unsurprisingly, after a moment of thought and unable to find any loopholes Errol put the stone down.