Neither Reece nor Tress even moved for a good minute, but eventually Reece slowly let himself sit down, exhausted. He’d barely registered how tense he’d gotten. Roc disappearing was devastating as far as the number of questions he'd left unanswered, but at least Reece now had the space to breathe and process what–

Tress' barely contained giggles yanked him out of his thoughts, and he turned to look at her. "Oh, sorry, sorry, it’s nothing," Tress apologized, containing her laughter only marginally better.

Reece couldn't help but feel this was unhelpful phrasing. "What is it?"

"Oh, um..." A teasing grin formed on Tress' face as she took a moment to carefully choose her words for maximum vagueness, "I simply realized what just happened."

Reece stared at Tress for a moment, attempting to puzzle out what she could be referring to. Roc had said something about a gift for him, right? But what did…

Tress watched unimpressed as Reece once more dove into his own thoughts. Leaning down, she snapped her claws in front of Reece’s face, interrupting his thoughts a second time. "Uh, hey, I’m teasing you here? It’s more fun if you ask questions.”

Reece was somewhat taken aback by the accuracy of this suggestion, “O-oh, uh, do you, um, know what Roc meant by a gift for me?”

“Oh, I mean, it’s The Enchantment, right?” Tress said, putting extra effort to emphasize the words “the enchantment” such that they were undeniably capitalized.

Reece supposed it was obvious, but that wasn’t very illuminating… "So, wait, what did he enchant?"

"Probably just your goggles, right? You don’t have very much else on you."

It took a moment for this to sink in. His… goggles? Tress was right, he didn’t really have any other clothes on him. Trying to wear much else with a body of mostly shell and slime never felt really necessary. So, his goggles were enchanted now? He supposed it was fitting… Wait, won’t I have to-

Tress adopted a look of concern as she watched "Oh, um, hey, I don't know why you're scared, but I don't think there's any need to be; if this magic works how I think it does it's honestly pretty cool!"

Reece took a quick deep breath to calm himself down. He hadn’t even realized how obvious his fear was, which almost scared him even more. “Sorry, I’m fine, what sort of enchantment is it?”

Tress furrowed the ridges above her eyes "still look scared to me… fine, if not knowing is freaking yourself out that badly, I’ll stop teasing. Hmm,” Tress took a moment to try and figure out what the best way to explain would be. "Okay, could you pretend to be, like, confused for a second?"

“…what?”

“Yeah, perfect, like that, now just look up.”

Reece diligently looked above his head, and he saw something floating in the air above him. It was a softly glowing question mark from what he could tell . He reached up to inquisitively poke it, but found his hand went right through the shape. He stared at the floating object for a bit, and after a few moments the shape faded out.

"...what the heck?"

"Now there's some illusory sweat droplets on your face now, which I guess signals you're nervous? Er," Tress gave a sheepish laugh. "Sorry, that play-by-play probably isn't helpful. Seems like the enchantment is pairing your emotions or thoughts or something with some kind of visual effect."

Reece thought back on the conversation with this context, "what did you see that made you laugh earlier?”

Tress chuckled a little. “Oh, it was a little spinning ring of dots above your head, which I think meant you were trying to process what happened? I don’t know, it just seemed silly to suddenly see.”

Reece stared at nothing in particular for a few seconds. Tress didn’t see any kind of visual effect pop up either. Perhaps he was just, taking a moment to himself. Eventually, he managed to ask "...why?"

“Come again?”

“Why did any of this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?” Reece’s voice was darkly calm. “…I need to fix this. This isn’t something I can just hide, and if anyone finds out then…” Dark clouds formed around Reece’s head. He did not finish his sentence.

Tress wasn’t sure what she should do. Were these clouds… guilt, maybe? She supposed its possible for someone to feel guilt upon being rewarded. Her first instinct was to try and suggest that he deserved the reward for making it through the temple, but she held off. Something about that approach seemed wrong to her.

Tress sat down next to Reece and gently placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, not wanting to risk overstepping her bounds with a hug. “Hey, I’m… not sure I know what’s eating you up right now. Are you… worried the enchantment is bad, or something? I think it’s pretty cool, at least. I admit it might not be tangibly useful, but there is some fun to be had with illusions like these, I feel. Plus, you could always just take off your –” Tress stopped herself as she saw the intensity of Reece’s stare at her suggestion. “Ah, not an option, got it.”

“I can’t get rid of these goggles.” Reece said with a sigh. It was technically possible, but he didn’t even consider the use of won’t. “But if they’re like this, there’s no way I can keep them. If anyone else finds out they’re magic, they’re gone.”

“Oh, worried about theft are ya?” Tress let out a sigh of relief to finally have an actionable problem to solve “I could be your bodyguard, if you want.”

Reece looked at her, unsure if he should take that as a joke or not. “I’m, not really worried about being mugged, it’s the law. All magic items need to be turned in for research as soon as possible, and no exceptions would apply to me.”

Tress looked at Reece as seriously as she could “Look, Reece, you care a lot about your goggles?”

Reece flinched at the blunt question. “I, guess so?” I couldn’t avoid understating it.

“And how much would this ‘law’ care about your goggles?”

Ignoring the worrisome implications of the question’s phrasing, Reece considered it. He’d heard occasional stories of people who tried to keep a personal magic item because they thought it was cool or something. None of the stories he’d heard ended with them succeeding. Plus, this was a newly created magic item. Surely keeping his goggles would be even harder.

…Although, he’s, not actually sure what the government would do with it? Maybe he missed when that was covered in Magical Studies in college, but he had no idea what magic item research even entailed. And even ignoring that, how could emotion-based illusions be used for anything moral and practical? Is there even any benefit to turning it in…?

Tress smirked as she watched Reece think “Alright, that’s enough thinking, if it’s that hard to come up with an answer, you clearly care about your goggles more than they would. Combined with a bit of the old finders’ keepers, I can safely say you deserve to keep them.”

Reece sort of slumped at how lightly Tress was taking this. “Tress, even if you think that, I don’t think I can just–”

“Didn’t I just offer to be your bodyguard? You won’t have to worry about losing anything special to you while I’m around.” Tress smiled and jammed her thumb towards her face. “I’ve gotten quite good at keeping things secret and protected, I’ll have you know.”

Although utterly failing to inspire Reece with confidence, Tress did manage to get a smile to crack out of him, and the dark clouds faded out of visibility. “Heh,” Reece shook his head “look, there’s no way I could keep this hidden forever, even with your ‘bodyguarding,’ but I appreciate the sentiment.”

Tress winced, knowing that Reece was at least right on some level. Even her own best efforts couldn’t keep things uneventful for him. Especially since it’s her; she’d never been one to be described as uneventful. Although, thinking about it… “What if I brought you to bring my mom?”

“…why?” Reece asked.

“To have her see about those goggles of yours! She knows a lot about how magic works. She might know if it’s possible to reverse an enchantment, or at least tell you the specifics of the magic.” Selfishly, Tress also wanted a chance to show off how cool her mom was, but she withheld on mentioning that.

Reece seemed clearly unsure of the suggestion. ‘Clearly’ even without any help from the enchantment. “I’m not sure letting more people know about this would be productive. Especially a… magic items researcher, or something? Is that what your mom is?”

Tress laughed at this, “Oh no, she’s absolutely not, and don’t worry, she couldn’t tell anyone even if she wanted to.” This ominous statement didn’t really calm any of Reece’s worries. At best, it simply shifted the focus of his worries. “Ah, but I’d have to ask if she’d be okay with it first… Do you think you could lay low for the night and be free tomorrow?”

“Uh,” it was the middle of the week, so he still had a few more days of work, but he doesn’t have to go into his office every day, plus he might have a sick day or two left… “Probably.”

“Ah, okay!” Tress looked sheepishly at the exit, “Uh, if there’s nothing else, do you want some space?”

“…yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll come and bring you over tomorrow then.” Tress stood up and walked to the door, pausing at the threshold to turn back and look. “Oh, and thanks for doing this with me, even if it was weird, and didn’t go as I had hoped, I still had fun.” With that, she left, leaving Reece alone in the room.

Reece sat motionless for a few minutes, and slowly shifted to laying on his side, deep in thought. What was even the point of the enchantment? To make him “express himself” more? The suggestion was almost infuriating. He already knew that he needed to express himself more. He’d known for years and beaten himself up over it again and again and again! And now some stranger diagnoses him with the same problem in just over an hour and thinks he can fix it with some visual effects party trick. He should be angry about this, furious! He should, should…

Reece sighed, watching the image of steam puffing out of his head. He should be that angry, he wished he was, but he wasn’t. He felt unfairly normal as the illusion of his anger signaled fruitlessly to the world. He probably wouldn’t even do anything if he suddenly saw Roc again. He bet Tress would punch Roc without a second thought, if she was in his position. What is it like, for other people to be so driven by emotion? Was there even anything that could drive him in that way? His logical brain said yes, but he refused to believe it.

Reece remained lying down on the temple floor for more than an hour. Eventually, he successfully wore himself down, and stood up to head home. There was no way he could bring himself to take a closer look at anything here in the state he was in. And he wasn’t even sure he'd be able to come back here another day without scrambling his brain.

It dawned on him on his way out that he’d never told Tress where he lived, but he was too tired to feel anything but light amusement at this misfortune. He doubted she’d actually be able to help in any meaningful way, anyway. Still, maybe he should have some kind of plan made… Maybe he could claim the illusions were a Fiendish Effect? Fiends aren’t really an uncommon sight, especially as archeologists, so it’d at least be believable. Or maybe people would believe the enchantment prevents him from removing the goggles. That was just about the only legal way to own a personal magic item, but it’s a lie that’s so easy to expose. Still, who knows...

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