Mibbet was taking a brief break, making the most of the time before Princessly nonsense forced her back onto the road again. She was whizzing around on Puppy, while Rosalind cackled like a maniac, apparently pseudo berserker Princesses liked high-velocity broomstick shenanigans, who knew? Not that Mibbet minded, as far as she was concerned she owed her host one for the creative vocabulary lessons. (Even if she could really have done without the accompanying, and rather too explanatory for comfort, mental images that went with it).

Then something shot past below, was that a hare? No, a deer? What the hell, she was pretty sure a mere moment earlier the thing pursuing it had not been an otter? Now they were a wren and an eagle. What the hell was going on?

“Druid’s duel” Rosalind sighed, “Don’t try to make sense of it, they’ll be at this nonsense forever if you gave them a chance.” Sure enough, now they were a cat and a mouse, just then the cat lunged forward and bit down on what had become a hedgehog. “you may want to stop them now before they end up abstract art or something, or they’ll start dragging Gods in and we’ll never hear the end of it. Besides if we leave it too long it’ll get all mythological”

“BUGGER THAT,” Mibbet snapped, she had very strong feelings about prophecies, Gods, and mythology these days. (True they mostly consisted of wishing they would go sling their hook, rather than dragging the humans into their drama yet again, humans were a big enough pain in the hindquarters without that sort of nonsense thank you very much). She swooped down and unleashed her best imitation of her mother's bossy voice.

“HWHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS.” (it’s amazing what mangling pronunciation will do for your authority, anybody who has ever dealt with snobs knows that a hwhat is usually far more likely to be trouble down the line than a plain old what. It’s the poshese equivalent to using somebody's full name, with the added bonus you don’t need to find out any of them, including the middle one before you can use it.”

“Stttaaay out of thiss mortal” The cat creature hissed, before taking the form of an old woman, being somewhat distracted by the work of pulling a number of hedgehog quills from her mouth. Mibbet hated it when things tried to remind her of her mortal status by stressing it, 75 percent of the time the thing that said it was in fact not immortal itself. In which case the plan would backfire spectacularly, and the other 25 percent of the time it was actual gods, far too bound by the rules to smite a mortal without a damn good reason. Then again, Mibbet thought to herself, maybe she was getting just a tiny bit jaded these days.

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Gwen Cerys was absolutely bloody fuming, first off her apprentice had ruined her perfectly good brew op, and in a manner that transferred all the effects to him. Now this human had the nerve to interfere in their duel? Well, she knew how to scare the pants off the girl with minimal effort, assuming she could do it around a mouthful of flaming spines, who turns into a hedgehog during a druid's duel? Bad form is what it was.

“Stay out of this mortal”, she hissed. She had to admit much as the spines hurt they were incredibly good at making her voice more intimidating. If they didn’t hurt so much Gwen would have considered keeping the damn things in. She kept a close eye on her wayward apprentice, at the first sign of him attempting to escape she was going to kill him and get her power back. (Like she wasn’t going to do that anyway, he had nobody to blame but himself.)

Strangely the girl she had just threatened seemed unusually unconcerned about the threat. She was looking at Gwen in the same way one looks at a child throwing a tantrum. half amused, half exasperated. Gwen started to think, that maybe, just maybe, her flawless plan had backfired a tad, as the girl drew a humongous axe from her back.

“Calling me mortal to scare me isn’t going to work out so well, partially because immortal is not the same as invulnerable, partially because I suspect you are neither. I’d be happy to help you test my theory if you threaten me again, and if you are indeed immortal I will even help you put all your pieces back together afterward.”

“What if I’m invulnerable?” Gwen asked with a gulp.

“Then it won’t hurt a bit.” The girl replied with a smirk, oh, and the young druid boy sneaking off? May want to reconsider that plan too. I can help sort this mess out, preferably before you guys decide to see who would win between an elephant and a rhino, nobody is allowed to trash this place but me. Now I’m going to ask again what the hell is going on here?”

Gwen looked into the girl's eyes for a moment, before deciding not to test her theory, something about that axe in that girl's hands made her nervous.

“He stole my magic brew.” She yelled.

“Not on purpose” Rhys replied. “I splashed myself while mixing it”

“You consumed it, do you have any idea how hard I had to work to get the ingredients for that stuff?”

“Then maybe don’t leave the blind kid tending the fire.”

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

Mibbet felt a headache coming on.

“Let’s try this again from the top, how did this start?” She asked, wishing she had a cuppa with her.

“I hired this brat to stir my potion, a gift for my son, and he drank it”. The woman snarled.

“I got splashed and licked the burn.” The boy replied, quietly, he had clearly had enough of this.

“So what other staff were present?”

“Just Boldah, he was stoking the fire.”

“Boldah, would he be the blind kid mentioned earlier?”

“yups”

“Why should that matter?” The woman growled, it seemed to Mibbet she was aiming for the whole menagerie of passive-aggressive.

“It matters because you clearly made no provisions for the disabilities of your staff, did you have procedures for dealing with workplace injuries?”

The woman muttered something too quiet to hear. (Gwen did indeed have a policy for workplace injuries, it was to kill them so they don’t gain her power, but she at least had the brains not to say the quiet bits out loud.

“So no provisions for workplace safety, no access safety, and using a disabled person to avoid your secret spilling, pun unintended. Then trying to kill your apprentice to cover for your accident? I’m just going to ask one more thing before I make a call on this.”

“What would that be?” Gwen snapped.

“Wouldn’t a non-disclosure agreement have been less trouble?”

Gwen pondered this for a moment.

“Who exactly are you to swan in here like you own the place, and tell us what to do?”

“Princess Rosalind Von Harmsworth, if you want to appeal my decision you could try my father, the king, or my mother, but I really wouldn’t suggest that, she isn’t as patient about this stuff as me. Failing that, you have failed to perform your duty to ensure the safety of your workers, so any mishaps and the effects of them are your fault, you do not get to fight, maim, eat, or otherwise punish your apprentice based on them. So you either provide the equipment to do their job safely and without magical alteration, or you stop whingeing. Now if you two agree you can just get an NDA and get it out of the way.”

Gwen pondered that for a moment. “Don’t those sorts of things usually involve lawyers?” She asked.

Her apprentice looked just as uncomfortable as Gwen herself at that moment, apparently, magic duels resulting in injury, or pseudo cannibalism were fine, but clearly, lawyers were over a line for them.

“Can we just agree to duel to the death?” The apprentice asked, “pretty sure I’m going to lose, but I have a funny feeling I’ll get a rematch somehow.”

Mibbet looked at the pair with a sigh, there was just no helping some people. "Sure, but the surviving individual is still getting a visit from the workplace safety commission."