Bella unties the fellow's gag first. "Who're you?" she asks.

"Name's," he coughs, "Kanim."

"What's with the ears?"

"Unpleasant surprise," he says. "Wizards figured out how to get in and out safely themselves by taking unpleasant surprise bait with them. The ears are just the most visible thing on me, I was bait for a few trips."

"Is that why she's blue?" Bella asks, jerking her head in Tony's direction.

"No," says Kanim. "Don't think so. I think that's fire suppression, or something."

"Oof." Bella swallows and turns to the princesses, working on the knots around Kanim's hands. "Um, my specs are almost completely broken, only one lens left - I panicked and put them on trying to figure out how the cave worked when we were split up and they exploded in my face, all I have is a spare witchlens that wasn't on them... I'm going to be less use than usual till I have new ones made."

Sherlock hugs Tony, as best she can with the armour.

"Nevertheless," she says, "I expect we can manage to leave."

"Yeah," agrees Bella. "Erm - Kanim - is there by any chance less total unpleasant surprise when someone is bait?"

"You mean," snorts Kanim, "if you copy the wizards' spell when we walk out of here am I going to have any worse of a time of it? Won't be more unpleasant for me, will be more," he flicks an ear, "long-term, unpleasant surprises for bait seem to be stickier, I already have no idea how I'm going to get my ears turned back."

"I don't even know if I can copy the spell without my specs to look at it from a few angles." She finishes untying his hands and leaves him to the task of his own feet, and then she starts gingerly inspecting the wizard staffs for traps, wrapping the first one she deems safe up in fabric in lieu of the more sophisticated prep work she was able to manage with the last leaving of a Sherlock-killed wizard.

"I can do it, now I'm not gagged," he says. "If you leave me one of those staffs I even will. You have no idea how hard it is to find intact non-discard staffs."

Bella pauses. "I have some idea. I live in the Enchanted Forest. How about I pack them all up and we can divvy 'em up outside?"

"Fair enough since you're the one with the sleeves," acknowledges Kanim.

Sherlock smiles slightly.

Bella wraps up all the staffs, although she's clearly running low on fabric by the time she finds number six. "Where're you from, Kanim?"

"Sathem-by-the-Mountains." He peers at her assessingly. "So, it's reasonably obvious by now, but we are both magicians, right?"

"Yes," says Bella, smiling slightly.

"That," says Kanim, "is fantastic, let's have dinner sometime."

"I am," says Bella, "engaged," and then it occurs to her that this precludes nothing, "and also gay, but we should certainly compare notes if you are not otherwise particularly occupied."

"Ah," sighs Kanim.

"I have cooperative wizard friends," Bella adds enticingly.

"That is at least four times better than a dinner date, I platonically love you forever," says Kanim.

"By the way, these are Sherlock, and Tony," says Bella, "my fiancée and my sort-of-other-fiancée conditional on me being able to work out the obvious technical problem with both princesses of the Enchanted Forest marrying somebody female."

"Charmed," says Kanim. "And that sounds like a really interesting problem!"

"Doesn't it just?"

"I'd help," he agrees, "I've been missing for so long I'm pretty sure no one expects me to turn up late for my appointments. Help platonically," he adds, "I mean." He rubs his chafed ankles. Bella, who has now packed up all the staffs, takes his hand and mulaglarbys him, then goes and does the same to Tony.

Hugs! Bella likes hugging Tony. This is a positive development.

"All right, time to curse myself with unpleasant surprises and lead you out of this place, I guess," says Kanim, "I really wish you didn't have a healing trigger spell, that makes me much more likely to get seriously injured, it's the Cave of Unpleasant Surprises, not the Cave of Likely Fatal Surprises, but it can sorta tell that sort of thing."

"...Oops," says Bella.

"Oh, I'm sure it's usually much to everyone's advantage to have a healing trigger, this just happens to be a really perverse cave," says Kanim. "Well, this spell isn't hard, just make sure you stick close to me as best you can on the way out." He stares into space, and makes broad, slow gestures, then makes a face. "That's baiting the cave taken care of, here goes nothing."

They proceed out, managing to stay in a single group. Kanim is assailed by a swarm of inexplicable bees, acquires a tail to match his ears, and is the one to discover another patch of noxious moss, which is apparently new to him even though Sherlock saw it before. Bella heals him as necessary and finally they are no longer in the cave.

"This cave has now twice attempted to turn me into a donkey. I wonder if it's trying to tell me something," says Kanim.

"If it's trying to tell you something, it's presumably trying to tell you something unpleasantly surprising, but not necessarily something true," says Bella. "Am I correct in thinking that you're okay with coming home with us instead of getting dropped at Sathem-by-the-Mountains?"

"Oh, sure," says Kanim, "I was being itinerant, don't have anyplace in particular to get back to, I would love to visit the Enchanted Forest and fiddle with technical problems such as getting my ears back to normal. I am considering keeping the tail. I think it's fetching."

"The ears itch," explains Kanim, scratching one. "I haven't had a chance to examine their aesthetic properties."

"I've never seen you without them so I can't judge," Bella says, taking her seat on the flying carpet. Kanim sits behind her.

Sherlock and Tony also climb on.

"If they itch, then by all means get rid of them," says Sherlock. "Does the tail not itch also?"

"Not so far!" says Kanim. "It twitches by itself, a bit, which was, shall we say, unpleasantly surprising, but it doesn't itch. I'll work on the ears first and then see how I feel about the tail."

Bella commands up the carpet and turns back the way she and Sherlock came.