Al had to scratch his head. He couldn’t figure out why Mary-Ann was screaming in such a way. He had clearly explained everything he could remember several times but she just seemed to get more and more frustrated. He looked over to where Floppy was laying on the grass with his front paws over his ears. For some reason this struck him as both funny and strange but he couldn’t quite figure out why. Eventually Mary-Ann quieted down and was either brooding or thinking, Al never could tell the difference with her.

“So, obviously, your slave seal didn’t explode, it was Phyron’s spell.” She started putting things in order. “Then you tried to cast a light spell that went rather wrong.”

“That’s putting it mildly.” The prince interjected.

“Whatever.” She continued waving a slimy tentacle in an obviously dismissive gesture causing the prince to snort disdainfully. “This spell actually worked like an attack spell.” She paused here and pointed her tentacle at Al. “We will be trying to recreate that spell later as it sounds like a great offensive spell.” She continued before Al could respond. “Then for some reason he attacks Mrs. Fluffytail, which is crazy… Though I doubt it would have made that much of a difference after bombing her den.”

“I didn’t see him…” Al started but Mary-Ann waived her tentacle again to silence him.

“You might not have seen it but between what you have said and what the prince heard it makes sense.” She tapped her tentacle on herself as she thought which seemed to be an odd habit left over from being human. “This might actually be good for us.” She said as she started to roll back and forth through the grass, absentmindedly eating it down to nicely manicured length. If Phyron would have seen this he would have thought of domesticating some species of slime for ground maintenance, sadly he wasn’t there to witness it so a revolution in gardening didn’t occur. “If he didn’t get a good look at Al in his cloak and thought that the Hell Bunny was a guard or servant then he will believe he is up against someone very powerful either magically, politically, or both.” She began to roam over a larger area unconsciously eating as she considered the issue. “Yes, this is definitely good. Well good in the short term.” Al could practically hear the wince in her words.

“Short term?” He asked as both he and Floppy, who had crawled into his lap, tilted their heads in almost exactly the same way creating quite a comical scene. Mary-Ann was too distracted to notice.

“Yeah, short term.” Al thought she was nodding to herself but it could have just been a jiggle. “Phyron will be cautious after encountering the Hell Bunny and will have to prepare to face a powerful foe which will give us some time to get further away. Unfortunately this also means that when he does come for us he will be prepared to fight a much stronger foe. I’m afraid that we won’t be able to do anything to him at that point, not even run.” She stopped and considered this for a few minutes.

“If we can get to my kingdom, this will not matter.” The prince interrupted before she could continue. “We must make haste to the south.”

“And exactly how long do you think it will take to get there?” She huffed at the prince.

“What do you mean how long?” The prince asked as Al and floppy’s heads bounced back and forth between the two. “Just find the nearest transfer point and jump to a city near the southern reaches.”

Mary-Ann sighed and her tentacle seemed to grip her body in such a way that Al could clearly picture her pinching between her eyes with a frustrated look. “Let’s just consider these transfer points to be similar to the travel gates we have here.” Somehow sensing that the prince wanted to interject she raised her voice and continued. “If we consider them to be roughly the same then we have a couple of problems; namely adequate funding and access.” She stopped to consider the problem when the prince jumped in.

“Not only am I a purple jelly I am a prince! Why would I have to pay to travel? Who would dare to block my way?” He actually started yelling in indignation.

“This is not your kingdom!” Mary-Ann yelled back. “Heck, you are more likely to be captured so people can find out what happens when they lick you!”

“Who would dare!” the prince started yelling and Mary-Ann could feel the anger rolling off of him.

“THIS. IS. NOT. YOUR. KINGDOM. You moron!” She yelled back before he could continue his tirade. He actually seemed to swell up as more red bled into him before he suddenly collapsed back into himself, the unnatural color fading until he was a pale reflection of his ordinary color. As he apparently had understood the reality he found himself in she quickly moved on to smooth over the outburst. “It seems to me that we have three things to consider immediately: first, where are we going right now; second, how can we get enough funding to support ourselves; and third, how do we keep Phyron from finding us?” She stopped again to gather her thoughts but no one interrupted her this time.

Before she could continue she was distracted by Floppy’s squeal as Al pulled his pack around and accidentally set it on the poor little guy. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Ha!” Al exclaimed as he pulled what looked like a dirty pillowcase from his pack. He promptly dropped his pack to the side coincidentally dropping it back onto floppy, who had just crawled off his lap, as he leapt up and hurried over to show Mary-Ann the stained cloth. “See!” he yelled as he nearly shoved the cloth into her.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?” She asked.

“Is a map!” He responded proudly.

“A map?” She looked at the stained piece of cloth but just couldn’t see it as a map. “Where did you get this ‘map’?”

“I copied from Phyron’s.” He proudly proclaimed. Phyron actually did have a pretty impressive map hung up in his library but Mary-Ann was having a hard time imagining the thing in front of her to be anywhere near the same. “Oh wait…” Al said as he looked at the stained cloth in his hand. “This not map… This pillowcase.” Just thinking about the nasty piece of cloth fluttering to the ground as Al ruffled through his bag again made Mary-Ann gag. She shuttered at the thought of laying her head down on it. “Here!” Al yelled as he shoved an equally dirty cloth toward Mary-Ann. “See, map!”

At first Mary-Ann couldn’t see anything special about the ‘map’ Al was shoving in her face, in fact it looking disturbing similar to his pillow case but as she actually looked at it she could see what appeared to be the same general outlines that she had seen on the map in Phyron’s library. She also saw squiggles that almost look like text but was completely illegible. She then realized that Al couldn’t read or write so he copied everything as best as he could. In fact if she squinted and turned her head just right she could almost make out a name or two.

“I can see that you tried very hard to make this map but I’m not sure it will be too helpful. I don’t know where we are to start with and I can’t make out the names. At any rate we should hold onto this and see if it will be any help after we get to a town.” She tried her best to let him down easy.

“Oh.” Al deflated a bit. “Master say that castle here when I ask him.” Al pointed at a part of him map about a quarter of the way up from the bottom.”

“Wait, you showed Phyron your map?” Mary-Ann asked incredulously.

“Huh? Uh, no, he showed me on his map.” He was still pointing at his map but he then started to put it away.

“Hold on.” Mary-Ann stopped him from putting it away and looked closely at the area Al had been pointing at. There was a blotch that did somewhat resemble a castle, or maybe a bit of jelly. After looking at the splotches and squiggles around it she thought she had figured out that the map was at least in the proper north/south orientation. Even if the scale was off the castle blob would be far too big to allow the local village to be shown so it was good for little other than a general guide. “It looks like we need to find this river,” she said pointing to a long blue line on the sheet, “and follow it south to this town.” She finished pointing to an unlabeled brown spot.

“Not town.” Al stated.

“What?” Mary-Ann look over at Al.

“Not town.” He reiterated. “Gravy.” He actually looked embarrassed.

“Oh.” Mary-Ann replied as she looked the map over. “Well that explains why there is another town so close by.” She said pointing to another brown spot, only this one had squiggles around it. “That isn’t gravy is it?”

“Umm…” Al looked at the spot for a few seconds before declaring it to be a town… and a gravy stain. It appeared that he had gotten creative with his ‘paints’. Mary-Ann was still impressed given the resources available to a goblin slave that he had managed as much as he had.

“Alright.” She continued. “Then we will have to find the river and head south until we find this town.” She said as she pointed to the second brown spot. “Hopefully we will find a few villages along the way to gather supplies and better information.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” The prince interjected before she could continue.

“And what would that be?” Mary-Ann asked with a tone that suggested she knew what he wanted but was just waiting for him to ask.

“Are you kidding?” The prince’s voice was full of distain as he continued. “Have you forgotten that we are being pursued by a wizard? We have to find a way to remove or block the tracking mark on the journal and fully eliminate the slave seal before we continue or it’ll all be for nothing.”

“Al,” she caught the goblins wandering attention, “could you cast a spark spell?”

He looked at her strangely before lifting his hand and starting to cast before he suddenly stopped and grabbed his head. He groaned and fell to the ground as he started to twitch.

“What’s wrong with him?” The prince asked.

“He overdrew his magic.” She stated as she watched Al twitch a few more times. She wasn’t being cruel; she needed him to understand the consequence of overdrawing his magic. He surprised her however when he stopped twitching and stood back up a few seconds later. “Al? You recovered pretty quickly, how do you feel?”

“Dizzy.” He stated as he flopped back down on the grass. “Sorry, no magic.” He said as he covered his eyes and laid back on the grass.

“I’m sorry Al but you had to learn how it feels. I was sure that when you cast that crazy light spell at Phyron you completely overdrew your magic. In fact, I’m glad it was a light spell that went so wrong because some other spell might have actually burned you out!”

“Burned out?” He asked.

“You could have lost the ability to use magic.” This surprised Al and he was suddenly frightened. “Don’t worry.” She continued. “The fact that you had such a reaction shows that you can still use magic… or at least you will be able to in a few days when you recover. Unfortunately that means that we can’t do anything about the tracking marks till you recover so our only option is to throw a bit of a false trail, which is why we should start following this creek.”

“Won’t that just lead to the river?” The prince asked.

“If we went downstream then sure, but this creek is coming from those mountains in the east. I say we follow it upstream until his magic returns then cut south and look for either another stream or the river.”

“That sounds like it could work but is there any way to block the signal in the short term?” The prince asked.

“About that…” Mary-Ann stopped talking and the prince could swear that she was wearing an evil grin.