The competition was well and truly heating up, while the competitors were unfortunately slowing down. Right now Mibbet and Andre were neck and neck, and were both going at the same speed (which was a lot slower than at the start.) Mibbet had decided after this contest odds were good she would never look at another pie as long as she lived. The pastry dried you out, and to a frog a major instinct is to avoid dehydration, as frog re-hydration is not often possible to put into practice.

Andre finally stopped, the fork slipping from their fingers, as they watched Mibbet to see what would happen next. But Mibbet was in trouble too, they were evenly matched, but if she never saw another eel pie again it would be too soon. Then an idea hit her, as Andre picked up speed nonce more. There was no reason she chose to enter beyond a desire to spite eels, and all this pastry was chock full of eels. So Mibbet peeled the lid off the first pie, and jabbed her fork into the decidedly unappetising looking if you aren’t fuelled by vengeance eel. Then scarfed it down as messily as humanly possible, and given that she was only marginally qualified as a member of the species, and had less than three months experience that was pretty dang messy. Andre was reaching for another pie when they saw her scarfing down a whole eel like the worlds grimmest spaghetti. That along with the awareness of what the pie filling was (a fact most competitors had carefully purged from their minds so as to be able to compete,) left Andre rapidly going greener than Mibbet in their glory days. Then suitably hydrated by a load of slippery eel Mibbet proceeded to down the crust while Andre darted for a bucket. (Luckily there was a rule of no continuing after that as eel pie puke somewhat messed up the counting process.)

Thus Mibbet claimed her victory, and was granted her prize, a months supply of pie. Which she was more than happy to forego, and settled for the tin trophy.

Soon enough the next event began, shade rabbits were the fastest running critters that lived near the city, and so every year people would release them, and place bets on which ones got out of the city fastest. (The first foot free if you will.) The prize for the black bun derby was a good chunk of shortbread and a glass of whisky, so it was quite a popular event, but Mibbet, having been an animal herself had no desire to participate and instead decided to wander and see what she could see. She went to the shooting gallery, and to the shock of the man in charge there succeeded in the game, and was presented with a long trunked bunny eared Sqwoomphette she had no idea what to call, but vowed to keep the hell away from Rascal and Alba. It was cotton candy pink with big puppy eyes, and little hoppy feet, and all told looked like it would be item one on a hellcat menu if not properly protected. She set it up nice and secure in the footlocker for now while she went to acquire a proper hutch that could be suspended out of reach of flaming felines, because she didn’t have the heart to turn it loose knowing it would be caught and put back in the stall as a prize within seconds of release.

That done it was time to resume her explorations, starting at the top of the city and working her way down. It looked like it was going to be a long night. It seemed that this year the lanterns that hung everywhere were serving a secondary purpose too, with all the water frozen there was less to break an explorers fall as they descended, at least less that didn’t also break other, more vital stuff, like bones, organs, pride.

So the lantern ropes were being employed for people to climb or slide down to get to their destinations. Since nobody wanted a frozen mud dip unless they were a complete masochist, or rich enough to buy the myth that mud would display genuine beautifying properties, (as opposed to what a mud bath actually does, act as a regular bath with some crack filler that makes you look a little smoother for about ten minutes before it all gets washed off, by which point you’ve probably forgotten where the cracks were or imagined them to be a kajillion times worse, so in comparison the same old you is a massive improvement. Humans are kind of weird like that.) In which case you probably did enough research to realise that it needs warm mud, with particular chemical properties, and landing face down in a slopsicle does not count here, not to mention icy mud doesn’t also come with cucumbers over your eyes, which is somehow miraculously supposed to make the bags under your eyes vanish, not just make you reek of cucumber, honest.

Usually there was a tunnel of love through the city, on romantic gondolas, but this year nobody was willing to punt for the ride, so it was a no go, and instead the locals had smoothed out the passage, and added a series of mirrors. Because what everybody needed of course when disoriented in the dark was distorted mirror images, nothing bad could ever come of that right? There had also been other features added of course, like rotating tunnels, and false doors but this was the only route down that didn’t involve abseiling or the fairground, and as previously mentioned Rosalind may have had an issue or two with fairgrounds, especially those with circuses. So through the nightmarish mirror maze it was, and since all those pies left one rather dry, and the drink stalls were a few streets below there was no time like the present. Squaring her shoulders Mibbet headed in, and as expected it didn’t take long to get hopelessly lost.

Then from the direction that Mibbet assumed the entrance was in came a sound that made Rosalind’s blood run cold. HAhaHaHaHaHAHAHAHA........... only one abomination laughed like that, and now Rosalind really wanted out of here, somebody had sent in the clowns.