After a brief rest, and a farewell from *&$* and the other shroomlings it was time to go, (they would probably have stayed longer, but food was something they were rather fond of, and they rather missed it. But eating while masked up to prevent spores entering the body wasn’t really an option, and only cold stuff could be eaten in the carriage, which made Rascal grouchy. Nobody wants to travel with a regular cat in a bad mood, much less a full grown hellcat, so it was time to go.

Rosalind seemed more anxious the further along this trail they went, and she was even blocking the reason from Mibbet, but there was nothing they could do about that but bear it and wait to see what happened.

“Once we get back to the capital we need to check on the necromancy laws” Mibbet said, “make sure to close all the loopholes that a scumbag could exploit, not sure how to do it but we really need to, if for nothing else than to make sure this mess never happens again.”

“Agreed” Rosalind replied, “I really do not want to face another horde, I may have gotten through my fear of them, but that’s still a big nope for me.” (Reality was that it was a huge nope, in flashing magic lights ten feet high, accompanied by a few hellnaws, and a few wild no way Jose’s, but Rosalind was not really keen on admitting weaknesses the nope was already far more than she wanted to admit to, but Mibbet picked up her feelings a little so there was no point in lying.)

Once they were clear of the Fungal Forest they found themselves on a worn out road leading into a great big plain, with miles and miles of tall grass, with all sorts of creatures bounding around. The most common was a whole herd of almost children’s picture book style deer, which would have been cute except for the addition of a set of teeth that would make piranha jealous, and the fact that they were currently feeding on what was left of a giant wolf like creature.

“I see your nope, and raise you a few kajillion more, I know deer will feed on bones sometimes, but I’ve definitely never seen them get preemptive before, I hate this place” Mibbet sighed.

“Bloody wizards” Rosalind groaned, “somebody needs to tell them just because it’s called the fabric of reality doesn’t mean you need to take a seam ripper to it.”

“Well this has been a lovely trip, time to go back to the castle?”

“Nope” Elvira chimed in. “Our kingdoms, our mess, you know the rules, and these things will eat pretty much everything in their path.”

“CRAP” Rosalind groaned “this is going to suck, but we can’t turn back now.”

“No we can’t, and if I ever meet the wizard who did this I’m shoving his magic wand in a place where even a light spell won’t make the sun shine, EDGEWISE.”

Mibbet couldn’t help a wince at Elvira’s idea, that did not sound comfortable. “OK I vote we call these things o’deer, because the more of them show up the more I’m thinking it.”

“Oh dear wasn’t quite what I was thinking, but if it’s going in the monster manuals then we’ve got to make it something an adventurer can say in polite company.” Elvira said. (It was a constant source of bafflement to Rosalind, Mibbet and everybody else in the group why the name’s in the monster manual had to be polite despite the many varied gruesome descriptions inside of hunting, mating, and many varied other gross, disturbing, and often times alarming things said monsters got up to. Reality was the reason was rather simple. Adventurers due in part to their lifestyle that often included encountering said monsters were to be frank brutally honest, with language more salty than a sailor eating pickles by a dead sea. Their clients on the other hand were regularly nobles, who didn’t really care what happened to adventurers, so insisted on only knowing the monster name and the cost of the job. Adventurers, being adventurers had taken to this by very creatively naming the creatures what they did. Which lead to complaints after the first case of a “f*$^ no they lay eggs in you and then *^&$ %^^&*&% in the “£*^$ with the !%*%^”%$ wasp”, in part because those dashes weren’t initially dashes, and a handful of other equally creative names, it was decided monster names for the manual were only allowed to be punny, polite, dryer than a desert, or in dead languages, and no swearwords in dead languages were not allowed thank you very much, swearwords were also restricted for similar reasons. Also descriptions in dead languages were restricted, to prevent the more scholarly adventurers getting creative with the rules, because nobles dislike creativity and when it came to malicious compliance adventurers can find loopholes faster than any demon, or most lawyers for that matter.)

Errol meanwhile, while terrified about the idea of carnivorous deer, was also from an area with lots of deer. Meaning he knew that with the way they bred the thought of a deer going apex predator, and breeding with local deer was not something he wished to see. So he braced himself.

Rascal and Alba of course, rather peckish and grouchy from too long in the carriage looked at the bounty with rather different eyes. Self delivering all you can eat buffet sounded pretty good, and beat Jerky, so before anybody could stop them they dove headlong into the herd. Which in a rather uncharacteristic manner for their species decided to try to thin them.

Sir Leeroy waded into the fray, and just when they thought the situation couldn’t get any more nopetacular the first blow struck home, then the Odeer sensing blood pounced on their prey, and.... well it seemed they were hungry.

“THEY EAT THEIR WOUNDED?” Mibbet screeched, readying choppy, her hellnaw quota for the day extremely full.

“O deer O deer” Rosalind sighed.