For all that I had learned a lot in my classes this past semester, it was good to be able to pursue my own personal projects again, even just for a short time.

“Good, good, just like that. Nice and relaxed. Calm. We’re almost done.” My hand moved slowly along Miranda’s bare back and I continued to murmur reassurances as my mana swept through her body. Mapping the complex web of natural circulations in my pet succubus’s body had proven to be a very productive project so far, it was just a shame that the process was not particularly pleasant for my research subject.

Miranda flinched suddenly and whimpered painfully through the simple gag in her mouth. It wasn’t really there to silence her, her occasional pained cries were mostly muffled by the sheets she was lying on and weren’t enough to distract me from my work, but rather to make sure she didn’t accidentally bite off her tongue if I did something particularly painful. That was a particularly painful and unpleasant injury to heal and this was much easier.

“It’s alright Miranda, we’re nearly done,” I reassured her again reflexively, but my attention was completely consumed by the intricate knots of mana just beneath her shoulder blades. I’d completely missed this section of her circulations the previous time I’d examined her, too focused on the primary concentrations of mana within her breasts and reproductive organs, and infusing her body with enough mana to clearly sense the intricacies of the circulation without damaging anything was taking the majority of my focus.

I mentally traced a single intricate thread, watching the way it flowed along her spine as part of a dense network, then split off towards her shoulder, looped through itself several times in a knot I could barely make out, and then wound back into Miranda’s core.

The circulations of magical creatures really were something else. This thread was one of countless thousands, each following a nearly identical path and yet every single one was completely distinct in its exact final form. Constructing something like this would take me days, perhaps even weeks, of work, and that was not even considering the amount of time needed to design such a circulation.

And, what was the result of all this impossibly complex magical architecture? As far as I could tell, literally nothing right now. After all, Miranda didn’t have any wings, so this circulation meant to aid in natural flight was utterly inert.

A glance at the clock on my wall told me what time it was. Ugh, almost five o'clock already? I sighed heavily and reluctantly withdrew my mana from Miranda’s body. She instantly sagged down onto the bed beneath her, the tightly coiled muscles in her back and shoulders relaxing as the source of her pain for the last several hours finally vanished.

“How are you feeling?” I asked softly. Miranda turned her head to look up at me and I suddenly remembered about the gag in her mouth. “Oh, right.” I swiftly unclasped the latch behind her head and set the bit gag on the table beside my bed. Rea would take care of cleaning it and putting it back in its place.

“So?” I prompted again after giving Miranda a moment to stretch her jaw.

“Not as bad as last time,” Miranda whispered hoarsely. “Still. Really. Hurts.”

“Unfortunately that’s likely to be unavoidable. I was hoping it would be a little gentler on you this time since your oath makes your body more compatible with my mana, there's only so much it can do. There’s no real way to make having someone else’s mana riffling around inside your soul pleasant, especially when I need to keep the concentration high enough to see things clearly.”

“Okay. Did you get what you wanted?”

I hummed thoughtfully. “Somewhat,” I eventually answered. After nearly three hours of examining Miranda’s circulations, I had found a number of points of interest that warranted further examination. There were definitely a number of changes I noticed between what I’d seen today and what I’d found the last time I’d examined her in depth.

Some of those could be explained by my more refined mana sense––patches that had simply looked like balls of mana a few months ago now clearly consisted of many hundreds of strands wound tightly around each other until they appeared to be a single point rather than a disconnected bundle. Others however I believed were likely to be related to Miranda’s ability to acquire traits from those she fed on. There were some distinctly elven bits within her muscles and chest that I hadn’t seen before she’d started consuming elven juices for most of her meals.

“I’ll probably need a few more sessions in the future. Definitely a few when you’re feeding, both regularly and using the potions I prepared.”

Miranda clearly didn’t particularly like that idea, even with her bond she remained rather pain-averse, but it wasn’t like she had any choice in the matter. “Okay Orion. Just tell me when.”

“I will. Now then––”

The door to my room swung open and Camille slipped inside, quickly shutting the door behind her. Her eyes darted around the room, pausing for a moment to focus on me standing over Miranda’s naked form, and then she bowed her head. “Hi Orion.”

“Perfect, you’re right on time. Take a seat, I’ll be with you in just a moment.”

Camille awkwardly looked around, then gingerly sat down on the stool Rea typically used when she was working with my cows. I put her out of mind for the moment and refocused my attention on Miranda.

“Right, as I was saying. Hold still and tell me how this feels.”

I raised a hand in the air over Miranda, the motion technically unnecessary, but I found it helped me focus. Mana flowed from my fingertips and I carefully directed it into the shape of my newest spell. I formed it layer by layer, meticulously shifting my mana in just the right way to simulate the higher-dimensional structures of the spellforms I was utilizing.

It took me several minutes to fully construct the spell matrix and once I was done I forced the spell matrix to hold in place as I double checked that everything was done perfectly. I didn’t often work with these spellforms and it was always best to be sure when you were experimenting with the highest circle of magic you were capable of casting.

Eventually, once I was completely certain that everything looked exactly right, I released my hold on the spell. Everything snapped into place and a gentle cloud of sparkling, ethereal mist rained down on Miranda, floating for a moment suspended above her skin before sinking into her body.

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Tension visibly drained from my pet succubus’s body and through the bond between us I could feel her relief. “Oh gods, that's…incredible,” Miranda whispered breathlessly. “Thank you, Orion.”

Well, that seemed to have worked the way I’d hoped it would. Hopefully this would reduce the time needed for Miranda and my future research subjects to recover between sessions. It had taken an annoying amount of time to track down and learn such a specialized spell––few people had use for a soul-focussed pain-relief spell that you couldn’t really use on yourself––but hopefully the amount of time I saved in the future would make up for the time spent now.

“Take as long as you need to recover, but make sure you eat before you leave,” I ordered. I let my gaze linger on the peaceful expression on Miranda’s face for another moment, then turned to the patiently waiting Camille.

“Right. Good afternoon Camille. How are you feeling? Did you have a chance to talk to Miranda yesterday?”

Camile, who had been staring at Rea as my darling went through one of the simple mana control exercises I’d assigned her, whirled around towards me and jerkily nodded her head. “Uh, better? Yeah, uh, I mean…yes Orio––sir, I feel better. We talked.”

I watched her silently for several seconds and she shifted in obvious discomfort under my gaze. I could sense the faint traces of an expertly cast illusion over her face and I had a feeling I knew what she was trying to hide. Through it all, her eyes remained focused squarely on the floor beneath me.

I sighed again. I had been sighing a lot lately.

“Camille, look at me.” I ordered gently. I’d missed a lot of cues that should have been obvious in the past, but Miranda had warned me this morning that Camille hadn’t taken things well and I was determined not to let our relationship devolve through my own lack of social skills. “And drop the illusion.

She jumped slightly at my words, but obeyed quickly enough. The moment the illusionary veil lifted from over her face it was clear what exactly she’d been trying to hide.

Camille had been crying. Probably a lot. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face was covered in red splotches, and the cosmetics she’d started applying to cover up the redness had tear-streaks running through them. Clearly she’d tried to cover up the mundane way before that had proven ineffective and she’d switched to more direct magic.

I wanted to hug her, but Miranda had suggested that might just make things worse, at least at first. Instead, I walked over to my desk, dropped heavily into my chair, and rubbed my eyes and forehead with my hand.

“Well. I was going to start working on a training plan for you, but I think we have something else we need to talk about first.” I paused and looked directly into Camille’s eyes. I could see fresh tears gathering and there was a tiny quiver in her lower lip. I could almost feel the fear, doubt, and so much more rolling off her in waves. She was both terrified and utterly resigned to her fate, and seeing Camille like this, knowing that I’d done this, was not the most pleasant of sensations.

“Camille, for what it’s worth…I want you to know that I neither plan nor want to hurt you. You said it yourself; you need help and I’m going to help you. I’m your friend Camille. You’re going to be okay. I––”

Before I could finish, Camille burst into tears and I trailed off. It was something I’d said. Probably the friend thing? But I didn’t understand why that had set her off. At least she hadn’t fainted. Crying was probably better than fainting, right?

“Camille? Camille. Talk to me, Camille. What’s wrong?”

My words only seemed to fan the flames higher, but Camille could no more disobey my direct command than she could fight a dragon. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong! What’s wrong!”

I frowned momentarily as Camille choked back a sob. That was the problem with poorly worded orders combined with an oath vague enough to not obviously look like a slave binding. The only order in my words had been ‘Talk to me, Camille’. Not, ‘tell me what’s wrong, Camille’.

However, I had a feeling that rewording my command would just make her cry more and delay any forthcoming answers. I would learn everything soon enough and Camille was worth spending some time on, no matter how much more productive it would be to do something, well, productive instead of watching her cry.

“Orion, te–tell me hon–nestly, was…was any of it real? How…how can you…can you sit there and call me your friend. When… when…” her tears returned with a vengeance, but she’d gotten the point across.

There were a number of ways I could have responded. The easiest thing to do was what I was tentatively planning for Brenda. I could simply layer Camille with so many orders and commands that there would be no more issues. Such an approach could be rather damaging to the mind and soul, particularly in the long term, but it would certainly be very easy. I had read multiple books on exactly how to phrase and stack orders to ensure good results.

However, that would be horribly wasteful. Despite what she’d said, Camille was an incredibly promising mage––I hadn’t forgotten her insane story about how she’d learned her first spell––and such an approach could permanently stifle her future. It took more than just mana control and book learning to cast high-circle spells, and the accruing damage from the clash between her soul and her mind would eventually halt Camille’s advance permanently. Not only that, but it would all but kill the Camille I knew and replace her with a puppet that said all the same words and made all the same actions but had no real spirit. I already had Cayla and Briella and Camille didn’t have the connections or family to make such an approach effective.

I could have done a lot of things, but ultimately there was only one thing I was going to do. I knelt down beside Camille and wrapped my arms around her shaking shoulders. “Because it’s true, Camille,” I whispered softly. “I’ve definitely hid things from you and I can’t promise that everything is going to stay the same between us, but I definitely did and still do care about you. I know you’re scared. I know you still have a lot of questions. But it's better this way. This is for your own good.”

Eventually her tears ran dry. At my silent command Rea brought Camille a cup of calming tea and I sat beside her as she took slow, measured sips of the piping-hot beverage.

We talked. Camille asked her questions. I answered them. She certainly didn’t like many of my answers, but I was certain she’d come around eventually. I reassured her that no, I hadn’t killed all of her friends. I honestly had no idea who half the people she named were, but I was pretty sure I’d know if I’d kidnapped, tortured, and/or murdered any of them.

By the end, Camille was certainly not happy about everything, but she was no longer quite as distraught as she’d been when she’d arrived. At the very least I was pretty sure I’d managed to convince her that she wasn’t going to end up on the wall next to Nettle or trussed up like one of my cows. I honestly wasn’t sure where she’d gotten those ideas, but it would be an utter waste to use a highly intelligent and talented mage like her that way and I was not an elf or a noble to squander such abilities.

No, when the time came for Camille to quietly disappear from Avalon, she would be spending her days practicing magic, refining rituals, and helping me with my many personal projects. If I just wanted a pretty face to decorate my dorm room there were plenty of far-less useful options out there. Options that I wouldn’t be reluctant to test dangerous rituals and spells on.

…though I really wasn’t sure how to feel about the clear indignation I’d felt from her when I’d told her as much, nor when I mentioned some of my plans for Janna and her homeland. For someone who had just been sobbing about her expected future, she seemed oddly offended by my actual plans for her.