Al picked himself up then quickly grabbed his head to see if it was still attached to his body. After feeling around for a few seconds he let out a breath as he found himself to be in one piece. He tried to see what was going on but the air was filled with so much dust that he couldn’t even see his fingers in front of his face, though he did feel it when he accidentally poked himself in the eye.

He took a breath but then couldn’t stop coughing. Thankfully he tripped over his pack so he took out a rag and tied it over his nose and mouth which helped. Between all the dust still hanging in the air and having poked himself in the eye Al was nearly blind but he did notice that most of the dust was falling from above so he pulled up the hood of his robe to try and block it.

As the dust slowly settled he found the back half of Floppy sticking out of the wall desperately kicking away with his back legs. When Al pulled him from the wall he discovered that he was actually half buried in Mary-Ann who had been splattered against the wall and covered in dust. He pulled her off the wall and when she balled herself back up he breathed a sigh of relief and put both her and Floppy, who was making cute little coughing and sneezing noises into his pocket.

His dark vision made all the dust particles in the air shine which made it near impossible to see anything more than five or six feet away so he called out to Mary-Ann to help him cast a light spell only to get a muffled groan in response. Shrugging his shoulders he prepared to cast the light spell anyway.

“Are you trying to kill us?” the prince asked. He had already seen some of the spectacular failures when Al cast magic on his own so he was justified in his criticism but Al simply ignored him.

Taking as deep a breath as he dared Al began casting the light spell only to be interrupted by a disturbingly familiar voice.

“I don’t know who you are,” Phyron stated in an angry tone, “but you will regret stealing from me.” His cold voice was accentuated by the glow of a spell forming in the dark.

******

Phyron was fast, his spell would be finished in just a second but it was already too late. When he called out to the figure in the dark he only felt relatively weak mana fluctuations so he didn’t consider him a threat but in the next instant he felt a large mana flux and even before he could see any clue as to what spell was being cast he pulled up his shield and started to back away.

In the time it took for Al and Mary-Ann to poke a hole in Al’s slave mark night had fallen outside the den. The dark outside was made even darker by the falling dust and shadows cast from the spellstones that had fallen from the ceiling and been mostly covered by dirt, rocks, and dust. This made it a hundred times worse when the light spell that Al had been casting suddenly went very wrong when he was startled by Phyron’s voice. Instead of a soft, gentle light that would use very little mana to glow for hours on end, what occurred was a sudden flash of light fueled by enough mana to cast a hundred light spells. To call it a flash is not entirely correct as a flash is just a sudden bright light, no this was something more. The light itself was so intense that just closing your eyes would not have save you from being blinded but is only the beginning as, unlike the magelight spell which didn’t produce any noticeable heat, the air rolled crazily as the temperature spiked further riling up the dust that was just beginning to settle. This dust was then shoved away from the source of light as the light itself seemed to take on a strange weight which oddly enough forced everything away from it.

The magelight spell is usually tethered in place, or manually controlled by the caster but this time it seemed to tear off on its own speeding toward where Phyron’s voice had come from. Perhaps this was another oddity of the miscast spell or perhaps it was Al’s subconscious controlling it but either way it was a blessing to him. His luck was actually good this time, or maybe so bad it was good. When he heard Phyron’s voice he had instinctively jumped back and covered his face so he wasn’t blinded, though he could have sworn he saw the bones in his arms for a brief few seconds. In fact other than being a little singed around the edges he wasn’t hurt at all which, considering his past experience casting spells on his own, was quite amazing.

Phyron, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so lucky. He had always believed in the adage that one must go into fight with their eyes wide open so when the flash occurred he was instantly blinded. If he were mortal this would be permanent and there would be no hope of restoring his sight without powerful magic. As it stood this was still no small injury but given enough time his eyes would be fully restored. This wasn’t as debilitating as it might seem however as there were several spells that would let him see without eyes but they were somewhat mana intensive so he wouldn’t be able to continue the fight for long. Additionally, while these spell were fairly quick to cast, they were not instant so he would still be venerable for several seconds at least.

Knowing this he started to thicken his defenses when he felt the rest of the spell hit his shield. The heat spiked and he screamed as he felt his skin blistering and then he felt the shield buckling under the strange effect of the broken spell, however this wasn’t Phyron’s first rodeo. He grabbed a pendant he always wore and shattered it causing a new shield to materialize behind the old one. The first shield collapsed and Al’s twisted light spell slammed into the second shield but this one seemed to fold even faster than the first one, but this was by design. The new shield spell wrapped itself around the attacking spell before shooting off down to the side. This spell was not so much a shield as a control system to redirect spells.

This spell had saved his life on several occasions so he always carried one with him. Unfortunately it was cast by crushing a single use item so it was more of a life saving measure rather than a battle spell. The spellform itself was far too complex to quick cast, nor was it possible to enchant it into a small reusable tool, maybe if he carried a rather large shield but even then the amount of mana it would cost to cast would be prohibitive.

Momentarily safe Phyron quickly recast his original shield spell along with several other protective measures before casting a spell to allow him to see. Given the time restraint he didn’t bother to cast a spell that would restore or even improve his vision he instead went with one of the quickest spells he knew so his vision was somewhat blurry and the colors were skewed.

Looking down he found that the dust was settling again so he could just make out the hooded figure that cast the offensive spell. Seeing that the figure was still somewhat stunned by the backlash of his own spell and had his back to him, Phyron quickly began to form the strongest fireball spell he knew. In front of his outstretched hand a small flame formed then quickly began to grow. At first it was little more than the size of a grain of rice but within but a few seconds it was the size of a barrel. Just as the spell was about to complete there was a lout squeal like noise off to the side. Fearing a surprise attack he instantly redirected his attack and finished the spell.

As the spell left his hand the large fireball suddenly shrunk down to the size of a marble only as it shrunk it got brighter and hotter. Once it finished shrinking it tore through the air with loud whip crack sound as the air exploded in front and collapsed behind it but even before it could hit its target the air itself seemed to explode. When Al cast his spell it had repelled all the surrounding dust however that wasn’t the case with Phyron’s spell, the incredible heat of which caused a massive dust explosion.

The explosion was beyond Phyron’s expectations and if it wasn’t for his additional defensive preparations he would have found himself in quite a bit of danger. While he was unharmed he was still knocked back and lost control of the vision spell. After quickly recasting the spell he looked around to find that most of the cavern had collapsed except for the area with the enemy wizard and the location of the creature he shot at. As he looked around for the enemy wizard he saw the dirt and rocks stirring where the creature had been.

The debris shifted around a bit before a large rabbit with a horn on its head hopped out of the pile. Looking up at Phyron floating outside of its ruined den, it hissed in agitation.

“I don’t know how you managed to survive little Horney Rabbit, but you best be respectful of your betters.” Phyron, feeling somewhat loopy from the explosion, laughed as he watched the pitiful creature. He laughed harder as it hissed again and shook itself off. His laughter died as the patterns on its fur became visible. “Hell Bunny!!” he called out as he quickly cast a mist spell and fled. The Hell Bunny hissed again and leapt after him.

If it were so easy to escape from an enraged Hell Bunny they wouldn’t be such a frightening existence. While they were not the greatest trackers, they still had incredible vision and a sense of smell that would put a regular hound to shame. Even worse they had long memories and could hold a grudge for as long as they lived. Phyron knew this of course and he was cursing as he realized he had made a terrible enemy this day. He hopped that he could evade it long enough for the other wizard to call it away. To him it was impossible for the two to have been found together unless they were related; otherwise the Hell Bunny would have attacked the other wizard. This belief was validated a short time later when the bunny hissed at him then left back the way it came from.

He didn’t give chase as that would just open him up for being attacked by both the bunny and its master. He floated there for a long while and considered his options before going back to prepare to track them down. He could only hope that they couldn’t break the protections on his diary in a short period of time. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a concern but anyone who could command a Hell Bunny was someone of incredible means.

The thing that confused him was that he hadn’t had any earth shattering discovers lately so he couldn’t figure out why they wanted his journal. It was possible they were under the mistaken impression that it was his grimoire but that seemed unlikely as even that wouldn’t have any spells that should interest someone like that.

It wouldn’t be until later that he would discover that the iridescent slime was missing which convinced him that they were after his notes all along, and that the iridescent slime was even more incredible than he believed.

By the time he discovered this, and prepared to actually track them and take on a Hell Bunny, several days had passed but given that they had to keep the Hell Bunny hidden as they traveled, he was confident he could catch up.