"It's okay. I bet if you asked me questions about the hobgoblins back home I wouldn't know a lot either."

Asking Sir Valance is a good idea, though. Elan ruminates on sneevils until they reach their destination. Or encounter another sneevil, going off how things went earlier.

Twilly hums a little nonsense tune to himself as they walk. 

"Hmm hmm hmm hm—EEK!" 

This last as a viny tendril grabs Twilly by the ankle and yoinks him off the path. 

Or that!

Is Twilly in a position where Elan can disentangle him?

For now! A plant that looks like a giant Venus flytrap, complete with a toothy maw, is dragging Twilly along the ground towards itself. 

"Nonono Twillies not tasty! Elan, help!" 

Elan draws his sword.

"You better leaf my friend alone!"

The vine snaps easily, the cut ends recoiling from the release of tension. The plant hisses. 

Twilly collapses to the ground in relief. 

"Oww..." 

But it's not over yet! The plant rears back, puckers its lips, and spits a small, hard projectile in Elan's direction. 

Elan's unfortunately not paying attention to the plant. Well, until it shoots him.

"Ow! Aw man, I already used up my best plant pun…"

He can still attack the flytrap without a pun, at least.

The plant continues to spit pellets at him, tries to hit him with its whiplike tendrils, and will bite him if he gets close enough, but it's not doing much damage. He can keep stabbing it, and eventually it will stop moving. 

Having bounced back to his feet, Twilly helps by alternately thwacking the plant with his stick and using his healing magic to vanish Elan's cuts and bruises. 

Oh, good. It's not the most exciting way to spend his time, but when it comes to fighting enemies exciting means dangerous.

"Thanks for the help," he says when the plant stops attacking. "Are there lots of plant monsters like that around here?"

He'd best pay attention to the surroundings in case the answer is yes for an immediate value of here.

Twilly dusts himself off. He doesn't seem injured; maybe the bursts of healing got him as well as Elan. 

"Yep! That was a seed spitter; they're pretty common in Oaklore Forest. They like to eat small animals...like moglins..." He shivers. "Thanks for saving me, Elan!" 

There don't seem to be any more in the immediate vicinity, at least.

"I'm just glad I could help!"

The path might seem clear, but Elan's learned his lesson. He tries to avoid getting lost in thought… or at least to remember that he should be paying attention when he gets lost in thought anyway.

Maybe talking about plant monsters will help.

"What else is common around here?"

"Hmm...well, you've seen sneevils and gorillaphants and bandits...other than those, the most common is bears and wolves, but I thinks there's also forest furies around here—oh, and vurrmen! I hears the knights from Oaklore complaining about the vurrmen in the ruins near the Keep." 

Elan nods.

"I think I heard someone mention vurrmen before, yeah. What are those?"

"Okies, ummm...do you know what a rat is?" 

"Yeah!"

He makes an illusion, just in case “rat” means a kind of snail or something here.

"Yep, that looks like a rat! So, vurrmen are really really BIG rats, bigger than you. Bigger than Captain Rolith! And they steal things, and make weapons that go BOOM!" 

"That's pretty big! How big are the explosions? Could they wreck a house? A castle?"

"Hmmm...maybe if it was a small house and not built very well? They's not fun to stand near when they goes boom, though!" He flattens his ears down against his head. 

Elan nods. Sounds like one of V's fireballs, maybe.

(He's still starting to feel a little out of his depth. Hopefully the magical destiny box will help with that.)

"Yeah. I wonder why there's so many types of monster that like to steal stuff. We got that back home, too, with goblins that raided places."

"Twillies not sure! Stealing isn't very nice..." 

After a bit more walking, they start to see signs of sneevil occupation again in the form of scattered boxes and barrels. 

Heading towards the highest density of boxes quickly brings them to the foot of a large oak tree. There's a sneevil-sized opening leading into the hollow trunk, and a couple of guards outside. 

"Yeah! Well, my girlfriend steals. I guess nowadays she steals a lot less than she used to when it was her job. And the people she worked for were really mean. So yeah, it's not very nice."

Oh, good, sneevil guards. Elan can address them.

"We're box inspectors following up on a report of improper building materials! Don't worry, nobody's in trouble, we just wanna make sure nothing bad happens."

One of the guards gasps in horror. 

The other guard squints. "Iz dis a trick so you can steel sneevils' boxes?" 

A direct question! Oh no!

Okay, Elan can do this.

"No, definitely not! We don't want to steal anything from sneevils. But I have it on good authority that there's a box here that shouldn't be used in forts. Or else there might be… oh, shoot, what was the kind of thing that might happen again? It's only my first day on the job, I don't remember!"

He glances at Twilly.