“Phleph…Ugh what the hell?!” *1

“You can’t be serious right?!” The princess had disgustedly attempted to regurgitate and cough up her last meal while Shiara became mildly surprised.

“Yeah, that’s taking the prank too far! I may never have eaten shit before, but that’s definitely not what shit should taste like!” Are you trying to convince yourself or me…

“Nope, that was definitely faeces and-“

“Wait, did you say toukou?!....Why does…it feel like I’ve…heard it…somewhere…before…oh…I remember it now!...ohhhhhh!”

“Huh?” Shiara let out a befuddled mutter at Sarratina’s change in reaction. Huh indeed. If you had figured it out, why did you decide to start holding your mouth and start spinning in circles slowly? I can still hear you muttering ‘toukou’ even if you cover your mouth. Weren’t you pretty lethargic just a few moments ago? “Princess are you ok?”

Oh…I see why. I should probably tell her-

“Do you know what toukou birds are?! I didn’t realise at the start because I was more shocked at the faeces part and I haven’t heard the word ‘toukou’ in years. When I was younger, I was given a book called…’A traveller’s tale’ I really enjoyed that book so my mother got me the limited edition ‘Jack’s Almanac of Monsters (beta)’ as a birthday present. I never really understood why it was called the beta, but in the book they mentioned the toukou bird in one of their pages.”

-only to be cut off by an extremely excited princess’s speech… *2

“What did it say??” Shiara avidly asked. I could have told you two if you just waited and listened…

“I don’t remember all of it because I read it a while ago, but I remember planning to make a fortune out of domesticating them back then. The page… said… that toukou birds were a small flightless bird that could only be found in the most magically dense and therefore dangerous environments and that…-“

“-Although they are mostly harmless, weak and pacifistic, they are extremely fast runners. They also have an unspoken pact of diplomatic immunity in these environments with the other higher end and more intelligent monsters, especially plant type monsters.” Shiara, why are you looking at me with such an astonished face…?*3

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“YES! YES, and that’s because they help regulate and recycle waste produce. They mainly eat dead carcasses as well as normal bugs and insects. Their poop is extremely nutritious and helps strengthen monsters that eat it, further increasing their superiority in the food chain. The toukou bird’s feathers are also really valuable and their meat is apparently a real delicacy and it helps strengthen your magical abilities-not that I’ve ever had any…our country’s too low end…-“

“-And that is enough about the bird. We should get going, the birds should be long gone and there shouldn’t be anymore poop around here-“

“Then I guess these three are mine.” Shiara ran to a nearby tree before crouching down and grabbing… more blocks. Huh…that’s strange, the poop clearly showed that it should be only from one bird, so why were their more blocks there. The birds have always traditionally dumped the same amount every time, so why were there more…. Well, whatever, I’ll think about it later. We really needed to push on. I started leading the way again as the other two went back to closely and quietly following me.

…

“Hey shouldn’t we be going to the right more?”

“Yeah, I’ve been feeling like we’ve been going in the wrong direction for a while.”

Although I couldn’t see the sun through the upper canopy, it should be currently around noon. We had all just taken a toilet break and having relieved ourselves, decided to grab a quick bite and rest. Though there was no sun in sight, the air was quite humid and we were sweating rivers.

I’m also really glad the misunderstanding by Shiara had been cleared up or else the current situation would have been a real hassle considering I couldn’t let either of them out of my sight for safety reasons. We were about an eighth of our way through the jungle, but that was majorly because we hadn’t encountered anything that was too dangerous or that we needed to detour yet. The closer we got, the more dangerous it would get and the slower we would go, so we needed to make time now. We would also need to grab a drink some time later today and that would be dangerous as well.

“No, we are going the right way. I don’t know how it works, but the jungle will attempt to mislead intruders into walking back out of it when you are in the outer circle. Just trust me.”

With that I decided to ignore the rest of their questions and stares and march on.

…

It was late in the afternoon and we were heading towards the river. I was planning for us to grab a drink after today’s long walk before retreating away to a safer location. I was really feeling the mental fatigue hit having needed to constantly scan our nearby environment, while navigating and cutting a path through some of the overgrown places. The wide variety of normal colourful trees and ferns only made the job more stressful. I had taken a path that avoided about eighty to ninety precent of the jungle’s dangers, but some things were unavoidable and if I had not known prior to this about there being hanging creepers here, I think I would have probably been caught unaware.

THUMP!

“Hey! Vixen, watch it. Why did you stop so suddenly?” It seems I wasn’t the only one to lose focus. Well, no point starting a spat here.

“Sorry Shiara. I should have given you two some warning.“ I lent her a hand and lifted her up. “Sarra, Shiara, you see those green striped creepers that seem to be hanging down from the trees? Notice how they seem to end up as nooses hanging down?”

“Ah.”

“What about those?”

“Well they’re what’s known as Hanging Creepers. They’re monsters that lie in ambush of unsuspecting victims that walk underneath them. Don’t get within three tree’s distance to them unless you want to get hanged. However, as you can see they often live in batches, so we need to take a detour-“

“Can’t we just kill them?”

“A good question Sarra, but they’re tenacious and hard to kill. We also need to avoid making too much noise or using magic, so it will be faster, less tiring and less dangerous to just go around, so let’s go.”

I led them away from the monsters and ran parallel to the lot of them and the river. Even if I couldn’t see the river yet, I could tell we were quite close by the damp soil beneath us. Looks like it might be a while longer before we get our drink.