“Crown Prince Petro Liam Gelli the thirty second.” Mary-Ann laughed as she recalled the purple jelly’s name. He had insisted that he the crown prince of the Great Jelly Kingdom which he stated existed south of the empire. The only thing south of the empire was the Great Swamp and while quite a few humans called it home, if they wanted to call it the Kingdom of the Jellies then as far as she was concerned they were welcome to it.

“Name strange.” Al startled her as she hadn’t heard him come in.

It was late and she had been alone in the lab after Phyron had removed the purple jelly before calling it a day. Thankfully he left the jelly beside her for hours during which she learned quite a lot. She still couldn’t use her magic but she had begun to understand how she could, but more importantly she could now detach a piece of herself without feeling like she had her arm torn off. In fact she even learned how to push all the waste and dying cells into that area. It pleased her to think that Phyron was basically experimenting with her crap.

After the jelly was taken away she had asked Al to come back later after Phyron had gone to bed. Now she just needed to convince him to help her and Petro escape. While she had waited for his return she had constantly gone over her arguments to convince him. First she would use the stick, pointing out that Phyron was preparing to have him killed so he could examine him and figure out how he could hear her. She foresaw his return argument that he was necessary to communicate with her to which she would explain that he was probably intending to rip out her core, essentially killing her. She would then point out that he is a slave and even if Phyron doesn’t kill him, he will never be set free and will most likely be killed in one of his experiments.

Once she was done beating him with the stick she would offer him the carrot: she would teach him magic. She had watched as he tried to copy Phyron every time he thought he could get away with it. He had even had a few sparks of actual magic with completely surprised her as there had never been a goblin mage, shamans sure, but never a mage. He obviously couldn’t become a wizard as they must be academy trained and sanctioned by the crown, but he could definitely become a mage. Additionally she would promise to remove the slave brand once she regained her magic. Currently she could solicit his help because the brand had been attuned to her as Phyron’s apprentice and he had never revoked it. Once she had gained enough control over her magic to remove the barrier over her container she should also be able to muffle the tracking spell attached to the slave brand.

She figuratively took a deep breath (Jellies don’t breathe after all) and decided to go for it.

“I need your help to escape.” She started.

“Ok, I help.” He responded.

“Now just wait while I… wait, what?” She was thrown off track by his sudden acceptance and couldn’t get her mind clear of her argumets.

“I help.” He stated. “We escape together.”

This was tremendous and Mary-Ann almost wanted cry with joy. With his help they would definitely be able to escape. She was so overwrought with emotion that she remained silent for long enough to make Al start to get nervous.

“We no escape?” he asked confusing her silence for disapproval. He was beginning to wonder if it had been a test.

“Yes. Yes, we escape. I mean yes we will escape.” She corrected herself. “We have got work on your common.”

“Common broken?” he asked.

“Yep.” She replied. “But don’t worry, well get it straightened out.” Al was incredibly intelligent for a goblin but half of that sentence didn’t make any sense to him however slavery had taught him to just agree with the human and figure things out later.

“First things, first.” She continued. “While I am preparing to break the spells over my container I will need you to find out where Phyron keeps his notebook.”

Al was horrified. He had once seen a goblin touch Phyron’s notebook and it didn’t end well. The curious goblin had seen the notebook on the table beside an experiment and wanted to see what was in it. If it wasn’t drawing then he would have been disappointed as it is well known that goblins can’t read. He never had to chance to find out as the instant he touched the book his fingers burst into flame. As the unfortunate goblin ran around screaming the flames quickly climbed up his arm before spreading across the rest of his body. Even worse, each goblin he touched as he ran around also caught fire. By the time Phyron returned the first goblin was dead, three others were nearly dead, and four more were burned. All it took was a wave of his hand to extinguish the fire but he was furious at the damage to the lab. Al had avoided the whole mess by hiding under a table.

“No touch book!” He yelled out. Mary-Ann cringed shushing him. Phyron couldn’t know they were meeting without him around.

“No, don’t touch the book.” She confirmed. “Just find out where he keeps it, I’ll find a way to get past his wards.” Truthfully she doubted she could break past his wards but she could probably seal the book so the wards wouldn’t go off. If she did that then they could at least take the book with them even if they couldn’t open it.

“No touch book.” Al repeated quieter but with determination. “You teach magic now?”

“What?” she was confused, she was going to promise him that and had even practiced what she was going to say in her head but she hadn’t actually offered to teach him. “Where did you get that idea?” she asked.

“You say it when I came in. Not loud but you say.” He sounded confused by her question.

“Oh” Mary-Ann would have been bright red if she could blush. She figured that she must have been mumbling her speech to herself.

“Pretty color.” Al said as he watched her shift though several shades of pink. Apparently she could blush.

“Actually, yeah, we will start teaching you now.” She said as she realized that if she couldn’t get her magic working she could train him to cast the spells they would need to escape. “I have seen you following Phyron around trying to copy him as he casts spells so why don’t we start by you telling me what you have figured out about magic so far.”

At first Mary-Ann was fascinated as Al explained how he followed both her and Phyron around while carefully watching and listening to what they did each time they cast a spell but that fascination quickly turned to concern then to horror as he explained how he had cast the spark spell for the first time into Phyron’s robe then again later to light a candle. He complained that he had burnt himself both times but she wasn’t surprised as he was casting without protection. In fact she glad he had only cast the spell twice as he had been extremely lucky to only get burnt. If the spell had truly backfired it would have been lucky if it had only taken his hand off, if he had been unlucky he could have blown himself up and taken anyone nearby with him. Her horror tuned to pure dread at what he said next.

“I show how cast.” He said as he raised his arm and started to form the spell.

“Stop!” she yelled but was too late as the mana around his finger built up then started to flare. Time slowed down for her as she watched a disaster in the making; the spell was going to backfire spectacularly. It was ironic that she could see the mana and the spell forms in a way she never could as a human but couldn’t cast to save her life. She could see exactly where the spell form was failing and could tell that it would create a feedback loop within the spell that would build until it detonated. If she wasn’t so scared and angry she would have been impressed by the amount of mana he was pumping into the spell, it was far more than she could have used just starting out. Her anger turned to frustration as she realized that if she could just nudge the mana back into the spell form it would complete the spell and it would cast successfully without the disastrous results she could see coming. She was so frustrated that she mentally slapped at the spell form and was utterly surprised when it actually distorted under her command.

She was so surprised that she almost didn’t notice that the spell was still going out of control but quickly recovered and tried pushing spell into the correct formation. At first nothing happened and she began to despair but then she noticed that while the spell didn’t work it also hadn’t collapsed. She strained and stretched as hard as she could but it was hard to control. After several agonizing seconds she finally felt something pop and his miscast spell snaped back into proper alignment.

The spark that jumped from Al’s finger was somewhat anticlimactic but he still danced around happily as the spell had finally worked! He was so excited that he prepared to cast it again but Mary-Ann yelled at him to stop again.

“Why stop?” He asked.

“Why stop?!” she repeated angrily. “Do you have any idea how close you came to blowing us up?” Al took a breath to answer her but she just continued on before he could speak. “Oh course you don’t. You didn’t cast that spell correctly, in fact if I hadn’t interceded and fixed it you would have most likely killed us both!” She was yelling by the end. She really wanted to huff at him but her current form didn’t allow for it, not that she didn’t try.

“Inconsivered?” He asked nonsensically looking extremely confused.

“Interceded!” She yelled. “It means your spell was going to explode but I fixed it!”

“Spell broken?”

“Yes!” She replied.

“How?” He asked.

“I… You… It…” She had to stop and think as she couldn’t answer his question as she wasn’t exactly sure herself. What she had done, affecting the mana flow of another wizard after the spell had been cast, should have been impossible and yet that was exactly what she had done. She took a few figurative breaths before she continued. “When you cast the spell the spell form wasn’t complete and you had no protections either built into your spell work or into a focus so when it started to collapse there was nothing to stop it.” Seeing the confusion on his face she winced, she had a lot to teach him. “You didn’t cast the spell correctly so it was breaking apart.” He at least seamed to understand that. “In order to fix that I had to use my mana to reinforce and restructure the spell so the mana could properly flow through the spell form.” Seeing confusion in his eyes yet again she simplified what she had just said. “I made a spell to fix it.”

“Oh.” He seemed to understand. “You magic fixed now?” It took her a few seconds to understand that he meant she could cast spells and not just restating that she had fixed his spell.

“No, not exactly. I can’t cast my own spells yet but it seems that I can affect yours.” Before he could ask I simplified it again. “I can only use my magic on other people’s spells. Do us both a favor and don’t try to use magic until I can teach you the basics and even then don’t use it without me, at least at first.”

“Ok.” He agreed. “I wait you teach me.” She winced at his wording thinking again that she would have to teach him to speak properly.

“Good.” She replied. “Then we will get started tonight. Just remember not to use it without me around, also you absolutely cannot use any magic around Phyron. If he figures out that you can use magic you’ll wind up on the dissection table faster than you can imagine.”

Al nodded his head. He wasn’t sure what dissection was but he was sure it was unpleasant. Mary-Ann spent the next couple of hours just going over the basics of what mana was and how to move it around in the body to both help it grow and to prepare for casting spells. She wouldn’t have even gone that fast in trying to teach him but he had already been using mana to attempt to cast spells so she thought that it would be best to get him moving in the right direction as quickly as possible. She knew that it would take him a very long time to even get the basics down but if he could at least cycle his mana he would be less likely to try casting another spell before he was ready.

As she taught him she tried moving his mana using her own and was pleasantly surprised to find that the more she worked with him the easier it was. It was by no means easy but at least she could nudge it without using all of her strength. In fact the only reason he made as much progress in cycling his mana as he did was because she could directly push it into a flow so he could feel how it was done.

By the time midnight had rolled around both of them were wiped out and needed to sleep. Mary-Ann thought that things were looking up as she watched Al sneak out of the room. Perhaps there really was a chance they could escape and she could return to normal. Perhaps.