Joanna smiled at me as she came up to the room. "Missing the team already?" she asked, eyes twinkling playfully.

I grinned. "Wasn't the team I invited up here."

She looked at the glass wall. "Isolation chamber. Sounds ominous, like someplace you'd throw a prisoner."

I shook my head. "It's research equipment, for testing risky enchantments. Lets you work with them under precisely-controlled conditions by pumping ambient mana out of the room."

Her eyes widened at the implication. "You think this would help with my aura?"

"I think it's worth a try."

"OK, how does it work?"

I stepped up to the glass door. "We go inside. There's a control in there. It's pretty straightforward, really."

I walked in, to the far side of the chamber, and then Joanna came in after me. It was only after she got inside that I realized the minor flaw in my plan: the isolation chamber wasn't big enough to reach the dial, which was in the middle of the wall, while remaining 10 feet away from her. Not even close.

"I have to step into your aura for just a moment," I warned her. She nodded at me. "Oh, and you need to close the door, or it won't activate."

She closed the door, and I stepped up, turning the dial down to 5%. You'd think, after getting much closer than this several times, that I'd be getting used to it, but somehow her aura-whammy still rocked me pretty hard, and I was glad to step back out of it afterwards.

Joanna shivered slightly as the ambient mana began to be pumped away. "Wow, that feels all weird," she said.

"I know. You get used to it once you've done this a few times."

She cocked her head to the side. "You've done this before?"

I could feel my face turning red. "Working in an isolation chamber, I mean. Not..." I broke off when I saw her starting to giggle.

It took a minute or so for the chamber to finish working. "There. As low as it'll go. Now to test our hypothesis. You step up close to me, and see if it still has the same effect?"

She looked nervous, but gave me a little nod.

I held my breath — I think we both did — as she slowly approached. She came closer, closer, and... no demonic thoughts beating on my brain. "Wow," I whispered when she came within arm's reach. "I don't feel anything."

"You feel nothing?" she pouted.

I snickered and rolled my eyes. "Where'd this sudden teasing streak come from?" I reached out and lightly ran my fingers along her arm. "I'm feeling exactly what I should be feeling right now, but without any of the extra."

"And I'm... wow, this is so weird. It's like, when I was a little girl, in grade school, and I'd see a cute boy in one of my classes." Looking as nervous as I'd ever seen her, she took a little half-step closer to me, looking directly at me, hesitant, uncertain.

I reached out, gently pulling her close, sliding my hand up to the back of her head and guiding her in, pressing my lips to hers. Her whole body went stiff as a board for about half a second, then she went 'mmmmm' and leaned into me and started kissing me back, surprisingly intensely! For a good ten seconds or so, we just lost ourselves in the kiss.

She pulled away, panting softly. "Ooohhh, I'm kind of feeling weak."

I grinned at her.

"No, no, not like that. Like something's wrong weak! I think I need to get out of the chamber." She quickly crossed back towards the door, and gave me an alarmed look over her shoulder when it wouldn't open.

"It's sealed," I said. "Won't reopen until the mana equalizes." I set the dial back to 100. "It shouldn't take long."

She started taking deep, slow breaths, and holding her hands at her sides, fingers completely straight, subtly curling and uncurling like little kids always do when they first start learning to circulate. I stepped back when the ambient level grew high enough that I could feel her aura starting to kick in again.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Oh gods, oh gods, I can't believe we just did that," she whispered. "Anyone could have walked by and seen us!"

"Everyone's out to lunch," I said.

"Yeah, but we really shouldn't do this again. I feel drained, like I've been holding barriers up for half an hour."

"I understand. But it worked! We now know that it's possible to nullify your succubus aura."

"Not for long, not without sending me into drain shock."

"Not this way, sure. But it's a starting point. Or... could be a starting point, if you're willing to pursue a bit of research?" I smiled at her. "Also, you're an amazing kisser."

She blushed, her already-crimson face going a few shades darker, and looked away from me. "Not sure how I feel about being a test subject, even for something as amazing as finally being free from the succubus. But... gods that felt amazing, to just get a completely normal kiss in with someone, let alone someone I actually like!" Then she gasped. "Brad! I think I really do actually like you. Like, just for me, not because the succubus makes me want you." She looked up at me and I could see her eyes glistening. "This is kind of crazy. I've never felt this before; never been capable of feeling this before!"

I gave her a gentle smile. "Well I have. And... it's kinda overwhelming, isn't it? Like, you barely even notice the drain shock anymore now that you can circulate again, huh?"

Her eyes went wide. "Wow, I totally didn't! And yeah, that's getting better fast. Ummm... I'm still not sure I want to do this, but I'll think about it. What are we at now?"

I looked over at the gauge. "It's around 85. You'll hear a little click when the door unseals. Won't be long now."

As soon as the door went click, she stepped out and ran off, back to her desk or off to lunch or whatever. I went back to my desk and got my phone, opening a new text file. I wasn't ready to put this on company property yet, just in case she didn't want to continue, but I wanted to document my observations. It was surprisingly tricky to note down the facts about what we had both experienced in sterile, objective language, but it was important. Joanna was far from the only kith on Mundus with an Outsider bloodline that caused problems for them.

I stopped when I realized that. I could hardly be the first to have thought of using an isolation chamber, could I? A few searches online revealed the obvious truth: of course I wasn't. It had been tried before. Better (and better funded) researchers than me had pursued this a few times in the past. Gotten results consistent with my own, regarding both the successful suppression and also the mana drain. There had been a few follow-up attempts looking to apply the same general ideas I'd had, and a couple I hadn't even thought of, but they all ended up as dead ends.

Feeling a bit dejected, I went back to my research on the trenna rune. It was clearly doing something, and something really weird at that. I painstakingly tried a dozen different aspect runes to see if different flavors of mana mattered.

They didn't.

No matter what type of power flowed into this rune, it all seemed to bleed away gradually as it crossed the rune, flying in the face of the Second Law. So now what?

I was back to where I started. Either this rune was breaking the Second Law or it was doing something else that was really weird.

...or it wasn't a rune at all, but some sort of composite?

I spent the rest of the day working on possible ways to split that shape up into two or more individual runes. I tried different varieties of cutting it in half, from the obvious to the creative to the random and weird. I tried cutting it into multiple smaller pieces. None of it worked.

No smaller pieces I could find ever were able to take a flow of mana in when linked to an ingress rune. They just did nothing. It seemed clear that trenna was a single, indivisible rune with a real effect, but I was still no closer to figuring out anything about it by the end of the day.

Bleh. Well it happened. I'd been handed a cosmic mystery; I shouldn't expect to crack it in a single day.

* * *

After work I headed to the duchy courthouse to finish up the landowner process. Unclaimed wilderness land in the area was sold for 250,000 crowns per square mile, minimum purchase of one square mile, so I ended up setting up a parcel two miles long and half a mile wide. After realizing on my second trip that I had no idea how to get back there without relying on Felicity or Gareth, I'd made sure to have my phone record its GSP coordinates for the trip, so I knew precisely where to put the claim.

Oh gods, was I really about to spend a quarter-million on a bunch of monster-infested wilderness? It was starting to hit me just how crazy this was. Even though it seemed a bit insignificant compared to all the other crazy stuff that had happened to me surrounding it, like how I ever even ended up having a quarter-million to spend in the first place, the immediacy of it just kind of emphasized how crazy this specific act was.

But I was here already. At the courthouse, with an appointment, paperwork in hand, money in the bank. I really actually could go through with it. So why back out now?

I got everything signed and notarized, then I was taken before a judge for the oath of stewardship. It had some pretty specific wording to it that I wasn't expecting.

"I, Bradley Douglas Webb, do solemnly swear before the Gods, the Empire, and the Kingdom of Chitothia, that I will faithfully stand as a steward, to care for this land to the best of my abilities. I will not permit bandits nor cultists of the Outer Planes to find shelter thereon. I will uphold the laws of duchy, kingdom, and empire. I will seek faithfully to clear the land of any sources of monsters or wild magic that may reside thereon. I so swear in the name of the Twenty."

The judge observed my oath and signed off on the final papers, with a notary and a financial clerk present to witness it and take my payment respectively. And... then it was real. Official. "Congratulations, Gentleman Webb," the judge told me. "It's always good to see new young blood taking an interest in advancing civilization in our kingdom."

I just nodded to her and tried not to show just how overwhelmed I was feeling by all this. As I headed back to my apartment, I texted Felicity, letting her know it was all official now.

Well, at least I accomplished something today.