By the time poor Errol’s lecture ended he looked like his soul was about to slip away from him. He had been told off a lot in the past (at least when he got caught, so really not as often as he could have done with, but still.) Yet this was the first time in a long time he’d been given such a thorough scolding.

That done Mibbet started to prepare the measures needed to prevent things getting worse.

Puppy had reappeared at the cave’s entrance by embarrassed looking Eccos, (at least she assumed that was what those blobs of suspiciously darker blackness were, it was a fairly safe bet.) Squealing with delight she realised she could fly again, which posed a question she could have asked sooner. That being WHY THE HELL DIDN’T SHE FLY OVER RATHER THAN GOING THROUGH THE CRYSTAL NIGHTMARE. Well in all fairness to do that she’d have to ditch the wagon, and if they left Trundles behind Elvira would have sulked for weeks, weeks on the road with a sulky Elvira? Maybe the crystal cave was a better bet.

That said she now faced an issue, how to stop others from using this route, as it clearly wasn’t an option anymore. In the long term that was easy, set up a shrine each end to seal it up. As a high priestess it would be easy to set that up, albeit pricey. In the short term though she needed a solution. A way to make it so no wagon would wish to pass this way for a few weeks. Luckily she already had an idea of how to handle this. Whoever had made this road had been stingy in every area but the cave (where the Eccos had been ridiculously thorough as bad roads are noisy.) Leaving a mere dirt trail, pitted and rutted by wagon wheels, and the remains of some wagons that had been pushed out of the cave after their owners “recruitment”. (At that Mibbet made a note, after this tour Sir Leeroy was not allowed to plan journeys anymore, he clearly sucked at it. Having the commonsense on these issues of a garden snail, and the survival instincts of a very depressed lemming.)

If they wanted to make it impassible there were several methods, Mibbet decided to combine them. First off getting Sir Leeroy to grab an axe, and lop down a few trees along the road side, shoving them all over the path at random. A few hours work? Sure, but hauling them all clear of the trail? That would take days.

Then she poured as much water magic as she physically could onto the path, turning it into a muddy mess. Then she passed Errol a shovel and set him to the task he was best at STIRRING. He was made to churn up the muddy soil into a sloppy mess you could safely call a travellers hell. At this rate Mibbet figured the midges would settle in after a few hours, producing temporary froggy paradise. (Well except for the frog currently suffering from human skin who hated those bitey little bar stewards with a fiery fury most people reserve for people who sing one line of a song over and over, and DON’T SEEM TO KNOW THE REST OF THE WORDS, and as we all know that is a lot of hate, there is nothing worse than a half an ear worm. Well except the person who subjects you to it.)

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That done she took up her broom once more, and ferried Sir Leeroy and Errol over to the other side, where the whole process was done over again. (As you can probably imagine by the time they were done over there Errol was absolutely knackered,) then finally Addy was asked to pass a message on to Prime Minister Stryke explaining what had happened here. A message that no doubt would be accompanied by a sudden onset stress ulcer. By now the poor guy was amassing quite a collection of those. On the plus side if she didn’t clean up the messes she encountered along the way the collection would probably have been doubled, so let’s chalk that up as a win shall we.

That done it was time to head off again, as they rolled off along the undamaged stretch of road (advantages of being the one to wreck something include the option to do it behind yourself rather than getting into the middle of it,) heading towards the distant town of Jussasasayme.

Nobody noticed as the wagon trundled off a small series of shadowy things slipping out of the big luggage trunk on the back, flitting from tree to tree to keep out of the sun until they reached home, and the safety of their cave.

Though **** couldn’t help wondering how the humans found It, and if they knew about the other ten scattered around the kingdom. Well that wasn’t their problem, the other Eccos could handle keeping them contained. Besides what could they do about it, it wasn’t like they could tell her.

************************************************************************

Years later the shrines on the cursed road still stood firm, blocking off passage. As expected of a shrine of Wannashowa each one of them was fronted by a large pond. A gigantic frog statue sat blocking the entrances. There were a few odd things about this particular pair of shrines though, firstly the monks here took their vows of silence seriously, to the level where if you kicked up a ruckus around them you would find yourself forcefully ejected, and quite likely black and blue. Second there was the issue of funding, these shrines had funded their own building and maintenance from the outset, and nobody seemed quite sure where the funds had come from. But any would be thieves would find themselves beaten up, and quite unable to tell anybody how. Finally there were another set of priests there wearing dark robes, and no matter how much you peered at them you would never see a trace of the figure beneath.