After a short rest to make sure Maury has enough time to apply some medicine and grumble a lot, the duo gather the four little turnips and place them inside one of the shelters at Neumann's insistence.

"They will be safe from any storm, and they will wake up all piled on top of each other. It will be hilarious when someone grows to full size and ends up with a foot in their eye."

Maury doesn't bother pointing out that they won't be around to see it. It is a moment of pettiness coming from the little human, and she approves. The orgres DID just try to eat her, after all. She feels she would be perfectly justified in throwing them into the fire. But she isn't sure if that will break the enchantment, and she doesn't feel up to running from four full-grown ogres again, so under the shelter they are tossed.

It has nothing to do with not wanting to kill them in case it makes the human unhappy. Just because he saved her doesn't mean any big emotional scenes have to happen. But... a small, itty bitty part of her mind knows he had no idea what would happen when he pasted himself on the face of the ogre. His world either never had slimes or they hadn't had them in a very long time. For all he knew, he could have been torn apart. And yet, he jumped in and bought her the time to get to her weapon. And that meant she hadn't been forced to let loose her magic...

"So how many carrots did we find here?"

She can tell that at least some of his cheerfulness is forced, and it bothers her that it bothers her. Not as much as the answer to the question does, though. "One," she bites out, making sure the carrot is safely in her bag before putting her arms back through the straps and settling it onto her back again.

"I... that's..."

Maury grabs him and puts him back on her shoulder, flicking the little propeller on his hat. The turnip bone stays in hand, just in case. Cracks are already forming along its length. The porous material might not be able to take many more uses. "It is one more than we had when we left the cottage. I don't think those geniuses stole them. We follow the trail, and we will find the rest."

"Right," he responds brightly. "We will find the rest in no time. One down, eleven more to go!"

"Eleven! There were twelve stolen?"

"Did I forget to tell you that part? I'm sure that I told you. Maybe you were too distracted drawing on your bones at the time."

Any kinder thoughts she might have been entertaining are gone in a flash. Eleven more carrots. When I find the thief, I will feed his face to a chicken, she thinks to herself, narrowing her eyes.

The dowsing bone takes them out of the forest and out across a field leading down to a sandy beach. They stop for a midday break, sharing the eggs given to them that morning. Neumann hasn't said anything about the food upsetting his stomach or whatever he uses to digest, so she splits off part of the eggs and places them on a smooth rock for him to eat.

"I need to find out what slimes actually eat," she says around a mouthful of soft white goodness. "I don't want to poison you."

"I guess that is good? But I don't want to be a slime forever."

"I don't know how to turn you back into a human right now. And if I did, I would probably have to kill you just for being human and then get kicked out for having a human inside the school."

"Maurgeth," (she preens when he says the correct name, but he ignores it), "Do you really think killing humans is the best way to deal with them? Maybe things are different than you know."

"Or maybe things are exactly as I know." She sighs, not believing what she is about to say. "At least in my world. But maybe they are different in your world. I will reprogram the mirror when we get back and only take humans from this world."

If Neumann wonders why she has made this concession, he doesn't ask. He doesn't say anything else at all, which is great in her opinion. He talks entirely too much sometimes, and it is hard enough to deal with during slow times. The afternoon isn't half over, and her leg hurts where it was grabbed, and her head hurts where it bonked on the ground. She stops a few more times for short breaks before giving up and calling it for the day.

A few twigs and a carefully whispered fire spell, and they are set for warmth when the sun goes down. There are no problems summoning fire, it is the first element she learned when she first started school and there are no distractions besides the various aches and the exhaustion making her body feel like it weighs a thousand pounds. It has been a really long day.

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Sleeping for 12 hours, even laying on cold sand that works its way inside all layers of clothing, does a lot to improve Maury's disposition. It wasn't quite dinner time when she fell asleep the night before, so it is a lot earlier than she is used to when she wakes up the next morning. The sky over the ocean is tinged with yellow and orange, where the sun will rise soon enough. Maury scoots her back against the cliff face and stares out over the water.

It would be in error to say that Maurgeth the Terrible is questioning her lazy ways. Her aversion to work started for a very good reason, after all. Still, the image of her weapon out of reach as she was being carried toward her future as Ogre droppings is leading her to reevaluate her stance on leveling her light weapon summoning skill.

By the time Neumann stops loudly snoring, (seriously, how does a slime with no mouth, lungs, or vocal cords snore?) Maury is able to get the smallest of her bone weapons to appear in her hand five out of five times! A rather impressive five point skill jump, even if leveling up to ten is much easier than higher levels. Breakfast is a handful of the dried fruit Old Lady Spencer buried at the bottom of her bag, and when she suggests they wait a little before heading out, she of course says it is because she is oh so tired and hurty, and not because she is feeling a glow every time the right weapon shows up in her hand.

"Where will we go next?" Neumann asks when Maury finally decides she has practiced enough for the morning and stands up, dusting as much sand off of herself as she can.

"I think we will continue along the beach. There is likely an opening into the underground somewhere alone here. The dowser is pointing right at the cliff face."

The morning wears on with no sign of so much as a crack in the smooth stone, and Maury is just beginning to wonder if they will need to scale the surface to look for an entrance up top when an entrance appears before them!

More accurately, when a small section of wall blasts outward, sending rock and a skinny figure flying out into the surf. Maury thinks she recognizes the figure splashing around in the water, some boy from her morning classes, but she can't remember his name and she thinks he is the one that often smells of pickled meat, so she doesn't bother to help him.

"Should we help-"

"Nope," she interrupts Neumann, stepping over the lip of the jagged opening in the stone and into a passageway lit with torches every twenty feet or so. Figures struggle in the confined areas, and by the height differences she can make out, it would appear that she has stumbled upon one of the gathering groups. And they are struggling far too much with their mission.

Ducking around the combatants, occasionally pushing a smaller one out of her way, Maury wanders down the halls, ducking her head into doorways as the dowser changes directions occasionally, looking for some sign that she has found what she is looking for. In a large storage room, the stamp-sized bone points directly at a pile of orange on top of a table, and she hurries toward it. Okay, she doesn't hurry so much as limp, but we won't point that out to her.

Seven, eight, nine carrots go into her bag before the dowser spins around for a moment and points out of the room at an unmistakably upward angle. Two figures fall into the storage room, the smaller one making a wet squishy sound before the clear light of a soul crystal shines from the hand of the larger one. Maury steps around them both and heads for the door, running smack into another figure as she enters the hallway.

The morning's practice shows as an inscribed ulna appears in her hand, but a familiar voice stops her from bringing it down on a tawny colored head.

"Maury? What are you doing here?"

Maury blinks twice and lowers her weapon. "Oh, hello, Sidney. I just came to get some carrots. I'll see you back at school -"

A flash of metal behind her friend has her pushing him out of the way before bringing the osteological bludgeon down on a wiry little human's head. They turn purple and shrink, the sword they were swinging at Sidney falling to the ground next to the eggplant that they have turned into.

"How did you do that?" Sidney asked at the same time as Neumann asks, "What's with you and vegetables?" This, of course, changes Sidney's question to a series of wordless sounds as he points at the talking slime.

"I carved a rune into this bone to aid in transmogrification without a spoken or gestured spell, and I like vegetables."

"But... but..."

"Breathe, Sidney."

He looks around to make sure there is nobody else charging at them, then picks up the eggplant and eyes it suspiciously. "Ignoring your talking slime for the moment, are there runes to turn people into eggplants? When did you learn rune carving?"

"Pixiesnort recommended I switch classes after you left. Vestments wasn't going well. And no, it is a change rune, I just changed the change rune to get it to do what I want." Changed the change...she snort laughs at her choice of words. Sounds funny.

"That's not...that shouldn't work, Maury, you can't just change runes."

"Oh, well I did." Maury sends her bone back into her bag, already bored with the conversation. "I'm going to get going, I still have two more carrots to find. See you back at school, Sidney. Try not to die!"

"Carrots? Wait, Maury -"

She ignores him and turns back toward the way she first came in, once again dodging celestim that are STILL fighting in the hall, winding her way through the halls and back out into sunlight once more.

"What did he mean that you can't change runes?" A curious voice asks from her shoulder.

"Who knows, he was obviously rattled. Most of the carrots were in there, so it is kind of obvious who stole them. Were the last two dropped somewhere? But we are being led to another area farther away, and that wouldn't make sense."

Maury turns left and heads farther down the beach. The sun is almost directly overhead, and the waves are glittering like diamonds as they cover the shore before retreating. A bounce has entered her step, and she permits herself to smile at how smoothly that big group of carrots was obtained. Plus, she was able to test out another of her runes! Eggplant human was a success! Hopefully, there will not be an opportunity to test out the rest of her produce producing rune weapons, but after the turnip and eggplant wins, she is feeling pretty good.