I barely slept that night. Every time I managed to drift off, my dreams were haunted by images of war, of endless throngs of demon and goblins laying waste to everything I knew. One time I saw Gareth fighting them and dying, and returning and dying again, over and over, swarmed by goblins like a giant pulled down by ants.

Then I saw him at the head of an army, fighting to save Sharliya. But in the heat of battle, Terenaþ came up to him and cast a spell, and he simply vanished. Without his leadership to coordinate things, the whole defense crumbled quickly and the city was overrun.

In the next dream, I was the one who brought him down, blasting him with ice spikes in the back just as I had done to Terenaþ.

It was about at that point that I gave up entirely on sleep for the night. Sometimes you can just tell it's not going to do you any good. So I just lay there for a while, all alone with my guilty conscience. I wasn't feeling any sort of confirmation sensations like I had about the land. Here I was, trying to do the whole "live by faith" thing, to do what the Path and the Guidance said were right, and all I could feel was that I had betrayed someone who, while not exactly a friend, was still someone close to me, someone who trusted me.

Gareth's words about "Deborah Talar" being potentially imprisoned in Bion kept running through my head. I didn't really know about the other dungeons; that was more Joanna's wheelhouse. But I didn't want to get her involved in this, and especially not at 2 in the morning. So I went online and tried searching for the first thing that came to mind, "20 dungeon theory."

Unsurprisingly, it came up with a few reputable, evenly-written results, and a whole lot of crazy. I looked at the first couple results and got a basic overview of the concept, as well as locations of the dungeons in question. And I was a bit surprised to realize just how surprised I wasn't when I saw that one of them was located in the town of Orryn, which was located right next to Bion.

What did surprise me was that the name sounded familiar from a completely different context: Dyralight had a branch office in Orryn! I'd seen the name on æmails from time to time. Joanna had told me that we had offices near seven of the twenty dungeons; apparently this was one of them.

Unable to sleep and with time on my hands and too much on my mind to get anything done, Esott Daniels's challenge to me ran through my mind, so I loaded up the text of the Codices on my phone. I started to skim through the hero tales, just looking through the various heroes' origins like he'd asked me to, taking notes on who had come from different backgrounds.

It was nothing too deep or involved, just some mental busywork, categorizing a list of heroes, exactly the sort of soothing, pointless tedium my brain needed to relax a little. Or at least it was, until I noticed something. In the Book of St. Douglaiþ, after the simple adventures everyone learned about as kids, there was another one that I had never seen before.

As I began reading through it, I quickly saw why I'd never heard of this one as a kid. This was no simplistic morality tale, with a big obvious Evil villain to defeat for the glory of the Gods, but a surprisingly nuanced story where Douglaiþ faced a series of difficult decisions with no clear right choice, several of which cost him important possessions or even friendships. In the end he managed to successfully complete his quest, but it left him "troubled in his heart" and unsure if it was even worth it, with no real resolution to that question.

I wasn't really sure why finding that story troubled my heart so much. Maybe it was just the way it felt so out of place in a book of scripture. Maybe it was how the tone felt so wrong for St. Douglaiþ in particular; he was always presented as a supremely confident cleric whose faith led him unerringly to do the right thing that, even when it was counterintuitive, brought him triumph and glory. That's what made the rest of his stories so cool for children.

Maybe it was just that, in a time when I felt a desperate need for clarity, instead I found a new tale that offered precisely the opposite.

I was too exhausted, physically and mentally, to be worth anything at all that day, so I æmailed a quick note to Elanil that I wasn't feeling good and needed to take a sick day. Then I lay back down and finally got a bit of untormented sleep.

So of course once I woke up, the only thing I could think about was work.

Sometimes when you take your mind off of something for a while, your subconscious chips away at the problem and eventually spits out something useful. And so right as I was in the middle of taking my shower in the morning, an arrangement of about a dozen runes just popped into my mind, centered around trenna and its inverse, or "sink" and "tap" as I was thinking of naming them, to very specifically take abyssal mana attuned to mental effects and dump it into a pocket dimension, and then allow the user to draw abyssal mana from that same pocket dimension.

Once out of the shower, I pulled up a simulator on my rune tablet and ran some tests, accounting for every variable I could think of, and ended up with one very clear conclusion. This should actually work. It would be possible to create an amulet that would nullify the effects of Joanna's aura entirely, but allow her to recirculate the mana involved so she wouldn't end up drained. It wouldn't be entirely free from drain, but with a few tweaks and a careful application of the Vaarsuvius Principle I was able to get the theoretical drain levels down to about 9%.

Hey, what do you think of this schema?

📎

Oh gods, is that what it looks like?

Sure is!

This actually looks like it might work.

You promise this isn't giving me false

hope?

I can't be certain until we test it,

but yeah, I honestly believe it's

viable. Can you come by my place

after work?

News like this, I'm half tempted to

drop everything and visit you upstairs

right now!

I'm not at work today. And I still need

a few hours to build a prototype.

Figures. OK, after work it is.

I took a few minutes to just breathe, to get the stupid grin off my face, then headed out to my car. I had work to do, but I didn't have the right materials. So I looked up an enchanting supply shop online and looked over their jewelry selection until I found a little heart-shaped pendant with a slot in it to accept a mini rune plate. I bought three of them and a dozen mini plates, since I only carried around the standard-size ones most of the time, then went back home and scribed off nine variants of the schema, tweaking a few parameters here and there to see what would work best. I kept the other three in reserve for refining and finalizing the design.

Hoping I wasn't being too premature about it, I started writing up the research paper documenting my findings, and got deep enough into it over the next few hours that I was startled when Joanna knocked at the door. When I let her in, she had this eager gleam on her face. "Where is it? Show me?"

"Hey. Good to see you too."

"Yeah, yeah, Brad. I'll give you a hug and a kiss once it's safe. If it's safe, I'll give you all the hugs and kisses, OK? But I wanna try this enchantment!"

I gave her a flat look. "I sent you the schema. You've been at work all day, in an enchanting lab. If you're that eager, you could have tried it out yourself."

She nodded. "Yeah, but you sent me a schema for an amulet. I checked the supply room, but they didn't have any amulet blanks, and trying to adapt it and enchant my clothing while at work was... not the best of ideas."

"Fair enough. They're right over there on the table. I've got nine variants set up, with the first three loaded into blanks. Try them out, one at a time. Tell me if any of them feel different."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

She put the first one on, then took it off again. "OK, didn't notice anything." She tried the next one. "Yeah, nothing there either." After making her way through the nine variants, none of them had any immediately noticeable effects on her. "So far, so good." She took a deep breath. "Ready for the moment of truth?"

I nodded, and we slowly stepped towards each other. As we got closer, just like in the isolation chamber, I didn't feel any different. "I think it's working."

She nodded. "Feeling some drain here."

"Try to draw mana in through the amulet."

She closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating. "It's not easy; I'm used to circulating through my hands." She raised one hand to the locket, then nodded. "OK, that works. This design might work better as a pair of gloves, though."

I just grinned at her and stepped closer. Putting on my best over-the-top leer and creepy voice, I asked, "Hey pretty girlie. You wanna... hug?"

She let out a loud groan and stepped up, throwing one arm around me, the other still clutching the amulet, giggling uncontrollably in my ear. "You're terrible sometimes, you know that?"

"What am I the rest of the time?"

She ran her fingers through my hair and pulled me in for a quick little kiss. "Worth the terrible."

I grinned at her as I stepped back. "OK, the hand between us thing is a bit awkward, but I think we can definitely call this a success, yeah?"

She just couldn't stop grinning. "Yeah, I'm still feeling a bit of drain, but it's not bad. I think this is pretty manageable, at least for a while."

I nodded. "I don't think that's ever going away completely. This is a piece of assistive technology, not a cure. But... it works?"

She grabbed me and pulled me in for another kiss, this one slow and lingering, then before pulling away she whispered against my mouth, "yeah, that was all me. This really works!"

We spent the next several minutes testing out the other schemas and found the differences between them to be minimal, as I'd expected, but she found one that felt slightly better than the rest. "OK, let's go with this schema. We really should rework it into a pair of gloves, though."

So we sat there at the table right next to each other, at my rune tablet, working together on the schema. It was nothing out of the ordinary; Kayla and I had done this dozens of times, but there was a certain thrill to it with Joanna because this had never been possible with her before! When we had a schema that looked good to both of us, I scribed it off onto a mini plate.

"OK, I don't know what you'd like to use," I said. "Why don't you run to the store and grab a nice pair of gloves that could take this plate? And with the amulet, you can go shopping in complete safety."

She nodded. "Ummm... you mind if I get two pairs?"

"You probably won't need a spare to wear while the one's being washed."

"No," she said. "I... I wanna send the other pair to my mom. She's been dealing with this even longer than I have."

"Oh! Wow, yeah, definitely. Go ahead and send one to her."

She beamed and gave me a quick side-hug before heading off to the store. I worked on the paper while she was out. She returned with a couple pairs of charcoal gray fingerless gloves, embroidered with intricate geometric designs in bright red, green, and yellow. "I figure if I'm gonna wear these," she said, "they might as well look awesome!" We opened up seams on the right-hand glove for each pair, inserted the mini plates, and Mended them back up.

She slipped her pair on, then gasped and rubbed at her forehead before pulling the amulet off. "Ugh, there's some nasty feedback if you're wearing two of this," she groaned.

I gave her a few moments to recover, then smiled at over her. "Hey, Joanna?"

"Hmm?"

"I know this might be a little bit forward of me, but..."

"Come on," she said. "Out with it."

"You wanna catch a movie with me tonight?"

That drew another gasp from her, but this time a happy one. "Are... are you asking me out, Brad? Like on a date? A real one?" I nodded, and suddenly she was throwing her arms around me and literally crying on my shoulder, these big, trembly sobs. "No one's ever..." she repeated a few times.

I held her close and let her get it out of her system, hands lightly stroking her back. "Hey, you all right?"

"*sniffle* Yeah, yeah, sorry, gods, I'm so embarrassed. It's just..."

"I understand. This is a bit new to you."

"Yeah! And... yeah, I'd love to." She pulled away from me and looked down at herself. "I... I have no idea what I'm supposed to wear for a first date!"

"Hey." I took one of her hands between both of mine. "Just chill. It's me. You already know me. I'm not gonna judge your clothes, and if anyone else does, who cares? You're not dating them. The dress you've got on right now is just fine."

She gestured at the dress, which covered her from throat to ankles. "You don't think it's a little... I dunno? Frumpy?"

I shrugged. "Honestly? Yeah, it kinda is. But I also know you've got a very good reason behind the whole 'cover myself in layers of protection' theme you've got going on, and that's not going to change right away just because you've got some help with the underlying problem. So I'm fine with that. Just be you tonight and I'll be happy."

Suddenly she was hugging me and crying again. "I... I'm sorry... I feel like such a... such a..."

I stroked her hair gently. "Such a person overwhelmed by new experiences?"

"Yeah! Like... like this is all stuff I should have been able to deal with and process ten years ago as a normal girl, but I never could, and now there's a decade of it hitting me all at once!"

"Well I'm here for you, OK?"

She pulled away and gave me a shy smile. "Thanks."

I went online and pulled up a list of movies showing nearby. "Any of these look good?"

She looked through them. "Slasher. Princess romance. Space, space, space... wow, so many starjammer movies right now. Bo~ring! Huh, what about that one?"

I pulled up more information. Looked like a cop on an airship that someone's trying to destroy, and they set it up so people think he's the bad guy.

"That looks fun. Wanna see it?"

"Sure. Next showing's in an hour and a half. Grab some dinner before that?"

She shook her head. "Nah, it's still a bit early. Dinner after?"

"That works too."

"Good, that'll give me a bit of time." She took a slow breath. "I'm going to head back to my place and spend the next hour or so screaming and bouncing off the walls, then compose myself and change into something at least a little nicer than this. I'll meet you at the theater."

I couldn't help but laugh at her description. "All right, see you there. I'll text you the address of the theater just so you don't accidently go to the wrong one."

Joanna stepped up to give me one more quick smooch. "Thanks." She grabbed the spare pair of gloves and headed off.

Wow. I was actually doing this.

I ordered two tickets, making sure to get them in seating section marked as tail-friendly, then made a reservation for two at a nearby restaurant. I killed time playing video games until it was time to head over there.

I picked up our tickets at the box office, then looked around until I saw Joanna walking in. She was wearing a bright green tee with a neckline that showed off her collarbones, and a matching skirt cut just below the knees.

"Wow, that's a daring outfit," I teased as I walked up to her. "Practically scandalous!"

She giggled and gave me a quick hug.

"Seriously, though, those look new. Did you just—"

"I'm an enchanter, Brad. You know how much we make. I promise I didn't bankrupt myself or anything."

"Fair enough." I gently took her gloved hand in mine. "Guess you've never been in one of these, huh?"

"Not since I was in middle school."

"Oh, right. So then you'll know the basics."

She gave my hand a little squeeze. "Yeah."

I looked at the tickets. "OK, we're in theater 5. Looks like it's that way."

We found our seats, and she tugged at the dividing arm between them, grinning when it slid up, and scooted over a little so she could lean into me. "Mmmmm, this is nice," she whispered.

We spent the whole film on-again-off-again cuddling with a few kisses thrown in. Nothing too heavy, just enjoying the experience. The movie was nothing amazing, but... we weren't really there for the show.

"OK, so... dinner?" she asked.

"Yeah, I got reservations over at Andrew's. Hope you like seafood?"

"Anything but fish," she said as we started walking out of the theater. "Shrimp, crab, scallops, all that good stuff's fine, but fish fish just sort of taste all wrong."

"Yeah, they've got plenty there for you then."

We had a nice dinner together, then I walked her back to her car. She squeezed my hand nervously at that point. "Ummm... am I... supposed to go back to your place now?"

I shook my head. "No expectations here."

Her eyes darted back and forth and she leaned in closer, lowering her voice. "That's... kinda what always passed for a 'date' with 'demon girl Joanna,' back when... you know. The stuff you didn't want to know about."

I squeezed her shoulder gently. "Well, I'm not out with a demon girl this evening. I'm with a woman who's in full control of herself."

"I... kind of want to?" she admitted.

"Yeah, but... now you regret what you did before. And I've done stuff I regretted too." I looked into her eyes. "I don't wanna end up regretting you, Joanna. Let's take things slow?"

"Are you trying to make me cry again, Brad?"

I shook my head. "No. Let's make you smile instead." I reached behind her head and gently pulled her in for a nice, slow kiss good night. Then I turned and walked back to my car.

* * *

After a much better night's sleep than I'd had the night before, I headed back to work on Wednesday, working on finishing my writeup on the succubus suppression enchantment, when I got a quick message from Joanna.

Couldn't stop smiling last night. Come

down here for a min?

Not quite sure what she wanted, I came down and found the team in the conference room for the daily standup meeting. Torrin glanced over at me as I walked in. "Hi, Brad. What brings you down here?"

"Joanna asked me to come by," I said, looking over at her with a bit of confusion.

She just grinned. "OK, I wanted to make a bit of an announcement. You guys all know about my aura, right?" Everyone nodded or made little "mmhmm"s of acknowledgment. "Well, Brad and I have been working on the problem and..." she pulled the gloves out of her bag and slipped them on, "we've got a working enchantment that suppresses it!" Beaming from ear to ear, she crossed the room to me and gave me a big hug. I saw a few of the guys flinch when she got too close, then look shocked as they realized they weren't getting their minds whammied by succubus aura.

"Eeeee! This is so exciting!" She turned and half-ran-half-hopped over to Kayla, hugging her next. "I want a hug from everyone!" she giggled gleefully.

Oh no, I groaned inwardly as I beheld the rampaging snuggle-monster I had unwittingly helped to turn loose on our office. What have I done?