From there it was a simple matter to Escort Taylor back towards his current village of Residence, now sans spider related problems.

When they arrived at the outskirts of town it quickly became clear that the village existed entirely as a place for people to pretend they didn’t come from. Several small windmills spun creekily, theoretically bringing up water for the crops. But more likely nowadays bringing up enough rust to keep Errol polishing for years, with just a trickle of water. The only other noticeable thing about the place was the excess of corn. Row upon row surrounded the village, all guarded by a veritable horde of scarecrows. Not that looking at the current state of the place crows would be coming within a bajillion miles of the damned place. Crypye had even webbed up the damned scarecrows.

“With any luck most of the people will be stored somewhere in town. Spiders eat what they can and store the rest wrapped for freshness after parylising it with venom,” explained Sir Leeroy, studiously ignoring the nervous whimpering and shuddering from Errol. Who looked like he was well on his way to Nopesville, on a scenic tour of Nope, in downtown ARRRGGGHHH WHAT THE HELL? Current population him, and far too many spider related thoughts for his tastes.

Errol was carefully following The Princess around like a lost puppy. (Theoretically he was taking point for the princess, but thanks to his nerves and recent experience in the field he was subconsciously realising that maybe staying behind the Princess who eats oversized bugs for breakfast, in a very literal sense was the safest place to be in the entire town.)

So they began looking around, examining all the gargantuan webby clumps. Uncovering in their explorations multiple bewebbed bovine. Several securely silk saturated scarecrows, two terrified teachers. Far too many farmers, a grandiose gathering of Grandparents, and eventually a heavily wrapped headman who was carefully separated from his scythe prior to treatment to prevent misunderstandings. He looked like the sort who had gone down swinging, and would most likely wake up the same way.

Errol was immensely grateful to find said count contained zero spider eggs (though it took a while to stop him carefully prodding the farmers with the longest stick he could find. His brothers had dragged him to a scary play when he was younger, and as a result he knew enough to be nervous of eggs. (Though to him his mum waiting at the door when they got back, knowing they had snuck out to see it, and the resultant lecture had terrified him far more than even the play had, he’d been peeling potatoes for a month after that.) Once everybody was treated and properly awakened Malachai the Village headman introduced himself.

“Thanks for the rescue there folks. Name’s Malachai Blight, and this is Naylor. Oh wait a second, you found Tyler, thanks for that, he’s the best tailor in Naylor, and doesn’t mind making the fancy clothes the wife likes. Thanks for bringing him back safe.”

From there things went pretty much the same as usual, Villagers coming up to say thank you. Obligatory feast. (Even Rosalind was getting tired of whatever the locals wherever they went considered fancy food. She would kill for some beans on toast and a nice pot of tea right now, though not Coffee, not with Mibbet at the helm. It wasn’t worth the inevitable chaos.) It struck Rosalind that maybe the reason heroes were paid so much was because they were the only human beings who could put up with this cycle. They must have livers of Mythril, and bladders of Oricalum if the amount of drinks she was being offered was any indication.

At one point during the feast Rosalind let her guard down, and Mibbet tried some of the proffered brew. The resultant taste cause her to spit out the vile tasting substance with a series of gagging noises in a manner most unprincessly.

“What is that stuff” she asked Rosalind, after tasting that she was tempted to chew a chunk of hard tack to get rid of the taste. (A move that showed how desperate she was to get the flavour gone, as anybody who has ever eaten hard tack would be more than happy to attest.)

“It’s called beer,” Rosalind replied trying her hardest to keep the smug from her voice (and as usual failing miserably, it was her party and she’d be smug if so she wished dammit,) “It’s made by a process of fermenting wheat.”

Mibbet couldn’t help but ponder what poor innocent wheat had done to deserve ending up like that, and why it was humans insisted on the most ridiculous things being good to eat, first the Civet coffee, then frogs legs, then escargot, and now this? It was official humans were ridiculous. The only logical explanation was that humans added such things to the banquet as some kind of punishment game.

“Mibbet” Rosalind signed, “humans actually quite like beer.”

This Revelation shook Mibbet to her froggy core, that stuff tasted like a grudge in liquid form, filtered through old socks, then left to fester in a vat of mouldy wheat water for a couple of weeks. She was willing to swear that despite the human sentiment that cooking should be done with love, that whoever had prepared this despicable stuff must have used pure unrefined hatred instead.

Yet the humans were gulping it down with obvious, and very loud enjoyment (even if most of them were getting more of it on the scenery and their clothing than inside their tummies. Maybe that was the secret, Nobody actually drank the stuff, they just pretended, spilled it all over the place, oh, and it seemed that drinking more came with bragging rights, that were removed if you threw it up, bonus points if you started to sing, or dance on the tables, and it seemed the worse the performance the higher the score.) Humans she couldn’t help reiterating, were weird.