The more Mary-Ann thought on it the more she realized that she did in fact need the purple jelly, though for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to trust him. If she had Al take her to a human wizard she would just wind up as an experimental subject again. Even if they hated Phyron they would simply relish the chance to steal his research all the more. She knew too many wizards from her time at the academy and from her apprenticeships to believe any of them would help her out of the kindness of their shriveled little hearts.

Though she tried to follow everything Petro taught her, she still couldn’t cast a spell on her own. If she still had hair she would have been busy pulling it out. Despite her inability to cast magic on her own, her ability to interface with Al’s magic had advanced quite quickly. Even though it had only been two days since she had kept Al from blowing himself up, she could now do the same thing with relative ease. It’s not that they had that much practice but that it seemed that everything he tried to do wanted to either backfire or explode. Quite frankly it was mindboggling, she couldn’t have created that much mayhem if she tried.

Phyron entering the lab snapped her out of her introspection and she decided to see if she could affect his magic. She waited until he cast a simple spell to light the candles under some of his lab apparatus before she attempted to interrupt the spell. She strained as hard as she could but unlike Al’s magic, Phyron’s resisted her efforts tenaciously. She fought back against it but was unable to form a resonance with it.

Though she wasn’t able to interrupt the spell she did have an effect and the spark missed the wick and instead burnt a small hole in the wax of the candle. She almost laughed when Phyron looked at his finger then cast the spell again successfully igniting the candle then he looked back at his finger before looking around the room in confusion. At that range there was no way he should have missed his target so he searched the room for anything that could have disrupted his spell.

She felt him spread his senses out through the room but he couldn’t find anything as after her attempt to affect Phyron’s magic Mary-Ann had quickly withdrawn her mana back into herself. Not only did she fear that Phyron might detect her mana but she felt completely drained from just redirecting his spell slightly. Truthfully she was on the verge of passing out but the fear of getting caught had her focused and alert, at least for the moment. Seeing Phyron give up and return to his experiments she felt the tension bleed out of and she promptly passed out.

She had no idea how long she was out but when she awoke she was surprised to find Phyron putting the finishing touches on a strange spell circle. If it would have been before she had been transformed she wouldn’t have understood its true function, she would have only seen the spell work as an overly complicated containment circle with some unknown additional functions beyond the ability of a simple apprentice to understand. This kind of spell work would be fairly common in advanced magical research. Now, however, her understanding of the flow of magical power had progressed so much that while she still didn’t fully understand what it would do she could get a general feel for it and was even able to tell that it was tailored to target a goblin.

Fear blossomed in her heart as she figured out exactly who the spell was for and from that knowledge she was able to piece together its true function. The insidious spell would take all your remaining life force and condense it down into a single unending moment. This would mean that you would be trapped in that moment, unable to move, speak or do anything whatsoever. It would also mean that no matter what happened to you, you would be unable to die so long as the spell remained active and you didn’t run out of life force. Mary-Ann felt ill as she thought of how he planned to use this. Killing Al to dissect him was evil enough but this way he would be alive and would feel it all as he was slowly torn apart in a truly horrific vivisection. Realizing that he was nearly done she started to scream out as loud as she could.

“Al! Stay away! He’s set a trap for you!” She yelled as loud and as long as she could but to her horror she found that after yelling for some time her voice began to weaken. When she checked on her status she found that not only had she not fully recovered from her earlier attempt to influence Phyron’s spell, but that her constant yelling was somehow draining her magic at a terrifying rate. If she kept this up she would pass out again so she started to carefully monitor her mana as she would periodically yell out.

After some time Phyron finished the spell work and powered up the containment circle. It was set to lock in the first goblin that stepped into the circle and would automatically set off the spell. After looking over his work he went to the door and yelled for ‘Tabard’ as he had taken to calling Al. It was after all the only way he could really tell him apart from the other goblins.

While Phyron called for Al, Mary-Ann yelled for him to stay away. She was disappointed though as Al came running through the door a few seconds later. She yelled at him to stop but he ran right past her acting as if he couldn’t hear her and practically leapt into the spell circle.

She groaned as the spell work activated and started to slam the trap shut but cried out in alarm when she noticed the two spell crystals glowing brightly in his hands. Just as the spell activated and the formations came to life he bashed the two spell stones together right in the middle of the spell’s primary matrix. It’s hard to say exactly what happened next as there was a terrific explosion of light, sound and magic that blinded all her senses. When the dust settled Al was revealed to be little more than a blackened lump of flesh and Phyron was laid out either dead or unconscious. The side of her container facing the explosion was badly cracked and the barrier’s mana was distorting dangerously.

She laughed bitterly as she prepared to die in yet another spell mishap. It would be doubly ironic as this was how she wound up as a slime in the first place and with Al dead she had no chance of escape anyway. Looking at the collapsing containment spell she thought that she might even be able to redirect enough of the damage to survive but what would be the point? With Al gone she was no longer useful to Phyron and she was sure that she would quickly follow him.

“Isn’t it ironic?” She asked herself.

“What that?” Al’s voice startled her causing her to jump then yelp as she bumped into the mana leaking from the malfunctioning barrier.

“Al? You’re Alive?” She asked then it all caught up to her. “You’re alive!” She cried out happily.

“Ug.” Al grunted affirmatively. “What Iconic mean?”

“Ironic? Ironic means that… no wait, that’s not important. How are you alive? I saw you run past me then blow yourself up!”

“No me.” Al stated.

“What?” Mary-Ann asked then changed her mind. “Nevermind, you can tell me later. I need your help to keep this spell from exploding.”

“Huh? Spell already went boom.” Al pointed at the results of the previous explosion.

“Not that spell, the containment spell.” She clarified. “Just do what I tell you and it will be fine.” She explained how to cast a counter spell to break the sailing containment field. If the field were at full strength he never would have managed it but with her help they were able open the field long enough for her to slip out. In a last minute spark of genius she detached a fairly large part of herself and left it in the box.

Looking around quickly they were about to leave when they spotted Phyron’s journal. It must have been on the table near the explosion as it was currently half in and half out of a Magiware® box that had been blown off the table. Thinking quickly Mary-Ann helped Al to cast a sealing spell on the book and use the lid of the box to push it the rest of the way in.

She had not had the time to properly prepare a sealing spell nor had she had time to practice one with Al so the fact that it had fallen into a Magiware® box is the only reason she felt safe trying to take it. The quick and dirty seal would only partially shield the journal and it would be dangerous to touch. Additionally, until they had a chance to prepare and cast a better sealing spell, Phyron would be able to feel the presence of the book if he got close enough. Exactly how close, and how well he would feel it was a complete unknown but if nothing else he would have difficulty determining its exact location and the box it was in would further obfuscate its signature. Once the book was in the box she helped Al activate on of the features that made Magiware® boxes so popular and it shrunk so the book fit snugly within.

Looking back a Phyron May-Ann was delighted to see that he was still down with no signs of recovery. She sincerely doubted he was dead, after all he was a true master wizard and they were both notoriously hard to kill and likely to have some way to restore themselves to life if something ever did manage to get the job done. This is why assassins refused to take contracts on master wizards, it was too likely they the old ghost would just return the favor at some point.

Having acquired the journal Mary-Ann urged Al to move on to the next phase of their escape, which meant they had to retrieve the purple jelly before they could break out of the castle. Thankfully Phyron hadn’t stirred before they left the room but they still had to get as far as possible if they were going to actually get away clean.

Luckily the purple jelly was readily accessible in a storage room where Phyron kept all his slimes so they didn’t need to search for it. Along the way Al swung by what looked like an abandoned broom closet and grabbed a tattered apprentice robe and a surprisingly new looking pack. Quickly donning the robe over the padded under armor he was wearing he shoved Mary-Ann in a pocket and headed back out toward the storage room. At first Mary-Ann was blind to everything but the pocket but she soon discovered that she could see just by raising a tentacle of her jelly out of the pocket. At first it was a large blob and was difficult to hold up but after a little experimentation she discovered that as long as a tiny sliver was outside of the pocket she could see perfectly. She still had problems with the three hundred and sixty degree view while moving but if she concentrated in one direction she didn’t feel as nauseous. The room wasn’t locked or warded as Phyron expected his slaves to retrieve things for him rather than getting them himself so getting in wasn’t a problem and the spell over the purple Jelly’s box was simpler to open than the failing one over hers but that didn’t mean it was all roses.

“Gently slave!” Prince Petro complained as Mary-Ann helped Al hold the containment field open long enough to extract him. Mary-Ann truly wanted to leave him behind but she really was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to find someone to help her reverse the spell on her own. For a second she worried that Al would put the prince in the same pocket with her but was relieved when he shoved him rather forcefully into a different one. After some muffled grumbling the prince quieted down as Mary-Ann directed Al to grab a few spell components from the room that would prove useful to them. As they were preparing to leave Al stopped and headed toward a corner of the room following a pitiful mewing sound.

“Al, we have to hurry…” she stopped as she saw the iridescent slime pushing itself as far away from them as it could. She could somehow tell that it was little more than a baby and that it was in pain and scared out of its wits. “Shh, Shh little one, it’ll be alright.” She cooed as she looked over the spellwork on its container. She was horrified to discover that the spell work was at least as complex as what had been on hers. She continued to speak softly as she helped Al push open the seal so it could escape.

Rather than run as she thought it would do when it was given the chance the little slime seemed to curl into itself and mew even more pitifully. Al seemed to hesitate before he reached in and pulled the slime out. As soon as his fingers touched it the slime froze up in obvious fear and didn’t resist as he dropped into the same pocket she was in. She stopped paying attention to what was going on outside and instead started to try and comfort the distressed slime that was staying as far away from her as physically possible in the thankfully large pocket they were in. After some time the poor thing calmed down so she returned her focus to the outside world only to find that they had left the castle and were currently moving down the road to the village.

“Where are you going Al?” she asked.

“Tell him not to go to the village, this slave will not listen to me!” the prince yelled out before the goblin could answer.

“Village.” The goblin answered.

“Why?” Mary-Ann asked.

“Get food?” Al asked as he held up a small coin purse he must have stolen from somewhere.

“We’ll have to get food later Al, we need to get somewhere we can suppress your slave brand and better conceal Phyron’s journal.” She replied.

“Ok.” Al said as he turned off the path and moved into the woods. At first she thought he was just heading off into a random direction until he came across a small cave not too far from the path. Looking at the hidden refuge she relaxed and felt that they finally had a chance to actually pull this off.