Chapter 14: Chapter 14: Azul

“No, no, NO!” Azul yelled as Floyd dove over the cauldron and pinned him to the ground, moments before the contents exploded.

Yellow and purple goo splattered the ceiling, bottles, shelves, and any vials that weren’t corked down hard were flung into the mess, shattering.

All around them, a series of tiny pops and fizzles sounded as the vials’ contents reacted with what was supposed to have been a cure for Yuu.

“It was almost stable!” Azul shouted from beneath Floyd’s shoulder, still unwilling to accept reality—he had failed to make a magical purging solution for Yuu, again. His mixture had exploded, again, and if this was anything like the other times he’d attempted this same solution, it would take hours to clean.

“Listen, Boss, the problem with trying to create something that doesn’t exist is—”

“—it doesn’t exist,” finished Jade, already beginning the tiresome process of cleaning.

Azul shoved Floyd aside thanklessly and put his arms to work cleaning the lab. In an underwater lab, his limbs could do the work of five people if he was efficient, but the process was still tedious.

“Remind me why we’re doing this, Boss?” Floyd whined, picking up a siphoning tool and beginning to pull semi-explosive goo from the ceiling.

“We are doing this to amend an error; to maintain the reputation of our business, and to—”

“To keep you from getting hitched to a human?” Floyd smarmed.

“A human who elicits such instinctual need from you that you felt the need to matemark her, which has not been done by a cecaelian…..” Jade mused.

“In living memory,” said Floyd. “Cause they’re usually smart.”

“And careful,” added Jade.

“Will you two cease the jabs?” Azul growled, cleaning as fast as he could. The sooner he had this mess cleaned up, the sooner he could face Yuu again with something more than empty words.

“I’m sorry,” after all, sounded a loss less weak when it was accompanied by a “I made you an impossible cure for the thing that I did that has heretofore not existed. Care to test it?”

He slowed in his cleaning a moment.

That was worse, actually, he decided.

He was confident, however, that he could rearrange the words better once he actually had something offer. Azul Ashengrotto was never empty-handed in a business deal.

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Is that what this is? A business deal? something in his head sighed, aggravated.

“Shut it, Jade,” Azul grumbled under his breath.

“I said nothing,” Jade responded, still polishing goo-covered vials. “Or were you meaning to say that you’ve finally discovered that this is impossible, and that there may well be an already-existing means to cure Yuu that don’t involve….”

“Piles of slime that would put the Savannaclaw latrine to shame?” Floyd suggested in a huff.

“Such a visual,” Azul snarled under his breath.

Unfortunately, Floyd may have had a point. Azul had been working for days in this hole without rest to create a working magical blood purge that didn’t react to anything but himself and his own magic. Even less fortunately, that very concept went against the laws of magical physics, and even if he succeeded, then there would exist a recipe that could cleanse anyone of his magic, meaning that if it ever got out, no one would ever be bound under one of his magical contracts again.

A massive risk.

Needs must, he told himself bitterly, carrying on with the cleaning.

“If you are done attempting what could very well be a painful magical suicide,” Jade continued as if he had never been interrupted, “you might reconsider this ridiculous attempt to recreate something that may well already have an answer, and go and see your mother.”

“This coming from YOU, Jade? You SAW her trophy room. You know what she does to clients who displease her.”

“But you are not a client, you are family,” Jade pointed out, ever the voice of reason. “And you have bags under your eyes that could carry this cauldron and a mountain of heavy shopping. This is not going to work, and you are running out of time. Have you even stopped to wonder what Yuu has been going through these past few days? Informationless? Bleeding?”

Azul grit his teeth. “Why do you think I am doing this?”

“Because you don’t wanna see Nerissa,” groaned Floyd. “Look, Azul, if there’s a way to undo this, she’s gonna know it, but you know what she’s also gonna know?”

“I’m at the tips of my tentacles,” Azul deadpanned.

“She will know if it actually works without killing your human,” said Floyd peevishly.

Azul froze midway through wiping down a bottle.

“What did you say?”

“Listen Azul,” Jade said sternly, taking the bottle from him. “This thing that you are trying to create. It will kill you if not used properly, and cannot be tested on anyone but Yuu herself. However, even if the potion is stable, it would still be just that—a test. I find myself doubting that after days of misinformation, that she will consent to such a thing at all, and of course, if it fails…”

“Gotta love the human factor!” Floyd cheered from behind a shelf.

Azul stared at the cauldron, hopeless. Jade was right, as usual. Jade was right. This path could well be on the track to killing himself and Yuu, and for what? Was it worse to risk death than to risk Yuu having an active mate mark? At worst, he could see her often enough to keep the mark tame and benign. At best….

At best, his mother would know how to reverse it.

“Jade! Floyd!” Azul snapped from his position in front of the cauldron. He removed his goggles and gloves—not that they’d done him much good anyway.

“Yes Boss!” the twins crowed together.

“We’re going to the Atlantican reef.”