"Woah, woah! Hold up, boys!"<br/><br/>Biggsky abruptly pulled back on the reins, forcing the horses to rear and bringing the carriage to an abrupt stop that probably was none too comfortable for its unfortunate occupants. She didn't spend any time dwelling on that, though. "Look over there!" She pointed down the tree-lined lane that the carriage was (until a second ago) travelling on. Ahead was the wreckage of another carriage, crashed against a tree. "Well, all I was paid for was to deliver you to the last known location of the missing squad, and this looks to be it. Sorry, but they're not paying me enough to actually get down and dirty with whatever monsters did this. Off you get, ladies. I'll be waiting here to pick you up once y'all have sorted things out, savvy? Wait, did you hear that?"<br/><br/>"That" was the high-pitched growling of some sort of monster. The sound seemed to have come from somewhere behind or beyond the wrecked carriage.<br/><br/><hr/><br/>It was sunny with a light breeze blowing, with neither the wrecked carriage nor the parked carriage downwind of the other. This part of the kingdom was uninhabited. The dusty road wound between rolling hills, and the only cover between the two carriages were the trees that lined either side of the road and provided shade from the sun.