After that particular encounter, unsurprisingly Mibbet did not want to doze off, (being surrounded by things that blend perfectly to their environment which may, or may not be hostile does have a tendency to keep one a little restless.) So her and Rosalind spent the entire night up, and feeding the fire so often it was practically a beacon, (much to Rascals delight, fire is good in their eyes, super hot fire even better.)

Finally dawn broke with a red sky (which may have been the proverbial warning, or may just have been an indicator of how ridiculously overkill the fire had been last night, hard to tell really.) The others woke up one by one, but of course no breakfast was served, which made everybody super grumpy, but on the plus side meant no dishes to wash, and made packing up a heck of a lot faster than usual. They had been marching about half an hour before Sir Leeroy (who was never a fan of an empty stomach) cracked, and pulled out a roll of kraken tape and started sealing up every crack he could find in the carriage. Then got Errol to cast the fungicidal spell inside, there was no way he was missing food yet again, all marching and no food made him a cranky boy. Hallucinating Errol as an oversized talking ham had definitely helped make up his mind that it was probably best for everybody that he solved this particular issue ASAP. Everybody took turns in the carriage eating, though they let Sir Leeroy go first, just to be safe. When after ten minutes of no shambling, hallucinations that weren’t food related, brain cravings, or spontaneous explosion it was deemed safe from spores.

It was touch and go for a bit though, after Sir Leeroy fell on the food so ravenously there was genuine concern he may have come down with a touch of zombieism (chicken soup and vitamin C don’t really cut it to help in those circumstances and it isn’t really a take these pills and see me in the morning kind of deal either.) But luckily his brainless plan didn’t end up being anything but a success, and breakfast was had by all.

Then they had a new dilemma, there was no way in hell they were getting through here in a day, which meant spending another night in the dark, in both a literal and metaphorical sense, as they still did not have a bloody clue what was lurking out there, so it was time to start planning.

Eventually it was Errol who came up with an idea, quickly gathering together vines, and weaving them into rope, (making everybody question why the hell he hadn’t done that earlier until he pointed out plaiting a few meters of rope was going to take him half the damn day, but he had absolutely miles of yarn. About the only heirloom he had of real worth was a good sized bag of holding, and he’d been using that to stash his knitting gear for years.)

Then once camp was set up for the night, and the fire was lit so brightly that if there were any local observatories they would have filed a complaint Errol got to work. Taking the rope he strategically started setting up rope snares (the kind to net or loop you, not the nasty, hurty kind, they didn’t know yet if their stalkers were hostile, and hurting them seemed like a quick way to make sure they went that way.)

“Let me guess, did you hunt a lot as a kid?” Rosalind asked.

“Yeah but that isn’t the reason I know how to set traps,” Errol replied,

”so what was your real reason?”

“That’s easy, I had five big brothers, and 12 older cousins, all who liked to play pranks, and I was the quiet kid who knew how to knit, sew, and didn’t mind playing tea parties with my sisters, so you do the maths.”

“you never got caught did you?”

“Not even once” Errol shot back with a massive (and incredibly smugly smirking) grin, “best bit they all blamed each other for the traps, no way they were gonna admit to being caught by the kid who played with dolls. So they all ended up too busy pranking each other to come for me.”

“Nice, haven’t seen the butter wouldn’t melt routine for a while.” Elvira chipped in. “Gonna guess you passed the mantle on to your little sisters when you left?”

“Pfffft like they weren’t accomplices from the start, definitely wasn’t me who removed all the bungs from Carl’s raft right before launch.” He snickered. “Those girls are lethal, especially little Mary belle, I swear she styled herself with drill curls and everybody still doesn’t believe that she’s secretly evil, the apprentice truly surpassed her master, but don’t ever tell her I said that, she’ll never believe it, I’ll never admit it, and she’ll never know the thing with the cow pies in pie crust actually got Carl. Which is better for both of us because it means I got blackmail on Carl, she got to pat herself on the back for a well done trick, and he got pat....... well you get the idea.”

That elicited a chuckle and a set of nauseated groans from Rosalind and Elvira at the same time, and a quick plea from Mibbet that Rosalind never explain that one to her, she really was better off not knowing.

Eventually all the traps were set, and everybody made a great show of gradually setting up camp for the night. They left nothing out of their act for fear of giving the game away, patrols were the same, food was eaten in the wagon. Tents pitched, hell they even dug a latrine pit. Then they “accidentally” let the fire die down a little bit, and one by one went to bed. (Though Mibbet and Rosalind carefully dropped some of their usual bait into one of the traps rigged around the camp.)