Dungeons and Diapers (Chapter 17, Updated Oct 11th)

[Panther Cub]

Uh-oh! I wonder what kind of supplies? :3

 

[PeculiarChangeling]

3 hours ago, Panther Cub said:

Uh-oh! I wonder what kind of supplies? :3

 

Really boring ones! Just the most boring possible thing you can think of. Nothing exciting or kinky at all! ?

[Silver]

Still loving this story.

[PeculiarChangeling]

I wrote this as a special bit of bonus content, sort of an after credits scene. It takes place roughly in the middle of Chapter 8, but away from Sandra's POV. 

 

“... I know we can count on you. Good night, Sandra!” Quinn shut the tavern room’s door, the forced smile slipping off his face as he turned towards Tarja. “We should tell her.”

“No,” Tarja said, shaking her head, her knees wobbling as she crouched to remove her boots. “She has enough to worry about as it is, and we aren’t even certain- Damn this knot.” Her fingers shaking, she was having trouble unlacing the boot.

Quinn knelt, helping her without comment. It wasn’t a complicated knot, and his deft, calloused fingers were able to pull it free without the slightest trouble.

It wasn’t the knot, it was Tarja.

“We know,” Quinn said, bluntly, moving to the other boot. “You’ve never had nerves like this. Your grace is… Going away.”

Tarja pushed his hand away. “No. I’m not- I can do it.” She seized the string, pulling and tugging, fingers trembling so badly that Quinn thought that nerves might be adding to the curse, even if it wasn’t the sole cause of her loss in coordination.

He stayed, crouched next to her, for a full minute. When she finally gave up, he removed the laces and pulled away her other boot without comment, then began undoing the buttons on her blouse. “Trust Sandra. She’ll understand.”

While it was clear that Tarja didn’t want his help, she didn’t tell him to stop, either. She waited for him to get all the buttons, then shrugged out of the shirt, revealing the snug, blue onesie she had on underneath.

Seven stars decorated the front, and though they seemed magical in origin, Tarja hadn’t yet been able to decipher their nature. All she knew was that, though the onesie’s button snaps could be undone, she couldn’t take it off.

And, since it appeared on her body in the cave, she’d been losing her fine motor function, and the draining wasn’t stopping.

Quinn looked down at her. “Do you need help with the snaps?”

Tarja blushed. If he didn’t take them off for her, she’d end up peeing on herself when she tried to use the chamber pot. She nodded, stiffly, and Quinn undid them for her.

She hadn’t yet gotten used to peeing with her new…

“Gods dammit,” she said, feeling her eyes get wet. She tried to wipe away the tears, but Quinn had already seen.

“Tarja,” he said, his rough voice as soft as he could make it. “It’s alright. We’ll find a counterspell.”

“When?”

“As soon as-”

“You saw what the Wizard can do,” Tarja cut him off. “We lack the skill, the resources, to counterspell that before…”

She trailed off. Quinn put his hands on her shoulders. “Before what?”

Tarja’s voice was barely audible, not even a whisper. “Before he takes the rest of me.”

“Oh, Tarja…” Quinn shook his head. “He hasn’t taken you.”

“Hasn’t he? My body,” she said, her voice cracking. “My grace, the things I’ve spent my lifetime improving - He’s just twisted me up, leaving me something else. Every time I think of facing him, I fear what he’ll take next, at what point I’ll become someone else, someone I can’t recognize.”

“You are Tarja,” Quinn said, taking her hands. He could completely cover both her hands with his, and he felt how they shook. “You, are Tarja. The strongest woman I know. Not because of how well you can shoot an arrow at a monster, but because of who you are. He can’t take that.”

The words felt clumsy. He couldn’t give speeches like Sandra, but he could support his friend.

“If you can’t button your shirt, I’ll do it for you,” Quinn said. “If you can’t run, I will carry you. I don’t love you for the arrangement of your bones and your blood. It’s who you are, Tarja, and-”

She was staring up at him, her eyes wide. Her hands balled into nervous fists inside his soft grasp, and she asked, “What did you say?”

Quinn blinked, running back his words in his head. Oh. I said-

Tarja pulled her hands towards herself, gently dragging Quinn forward, and she leaned in for an awkward, slightly misaligned kiss. Quinn was so surprised, he didn’t react once they parted, his face frozen with half-puckered lips.

“I love you too,” she said. “But you can’t promise we’ll get out of this without being changed.”

“Of course we won’t,” Quinn said. “But if we change, we’ll do it together, and the person we become- the people we become- Persons? I…”

“I get it,” Tarja said. “We’ll make it together.”

Quinn nodded. “I promise.”

[Jayme]

Wow, I didn't realize what I was missing. I don't know how I missed this story to begin with but I finally caught up with it and Now I Want More, please!

[Panther Cub]

Awww, this was a very touching scene... also, awww, I bet Tarja looks adorable in her blue onesie! Although, a diaper of her own would probably help...

[PeculiarChangeling]

15 minutes ago, Panther Cub said:

Awww, this was a very touching scene... also, awww, I bet Tarja looks adorable in her blue onesie! Although, a diaper of her own would probably help...

I'm sure she does, but if Tarja got put in diapers, then that would mean three out of four party members were diapered! And then Quinn would feel left out.  

27 minutes ago, Jayme said:

Wow, I didn't realize what I was missing. I don't know how I missed this story to begin with but I finally caught up with it and Now I Want More, please!

More NOW? But you just got some! I have to ration this stuff out y'know, it's potent stuff! 
But, I mean. Since you said please... Well... I guess you can have some more now... 

Chapter 9

 

“Okay, what’s the deal?” Sandra asked, holding a cup of warm tea as she sat down on the studded leather bench in the back room. “And why the privacy?”

“Because,” Janet said, ensuring that the door was locked and lighting a few candles. “Rumors may be fun, but they can also kill a quest in the cradle if we’re not careful.”

“The wizard said he wouldn’t scry on us,” Quinn pointed out, leaning awkwardly against the X-shaped piece of furniture on the side of the room.

“And did he say anything about informants?” Janet asked. After letting the question float in the air for a few minutes, she added, “And besides, he’s not the only player in town. It’ll make sense once I’m done explaining, I promise.”

“Sure…” Tarja said, looking around the space. “But why are we back here?”

Janet held up a finger, then took a small brass pan pipe off the wall, taking in a breath. Sandra recognized it as a wondrous item, and expected some sort of sound barrier or distortion when Janet used it.

Instead, Janet puffed out a breath, blew on the pipes, and they produced the sound of a loud WHACK!, followed by a pained, aroused moan.

Janet set down the pipes, but the illusion repeated, the sound of a sexual beating echoing through the room. Speaking just loud enough that the party could hear her, she explained, “I wanted to cover the sound of our conversation, and the only place this illusion would be reasonable is back here.”

“Ah,” Sandra said, nodding. “That… makes sense.”

Tarja turned a little pink, but it was far from the most embarrassing thing they’d done in the past couple weeks.

“So, I have a ritual spell that I can use to relieve the effects on D’arvit,” Janet continued, “But, in order to counteract the intensely, sexually charged magic that’s been cast on him, I need a magical object imbued with equal, opposite energy. Like balancing out law with chaos, or chaos with law. We must provide the opposite side of the coin in order to create harmony.”

“And you need us to find an object for you?” Sandra asked. “What sort of scale are we talking about?”

“If it were anything less than extreme, we’d already have it on hand,” Janet said, looking over at Quinn. “Uh, don’t touch that.”

Quinn paused in the middle of inspecting a large wooden paddle that was hanging on the wall, which gave off a faint magical aura. “Oookay.”

“It’s for… self play,” Janet explained, simply. “Anyways. We’ve got a fair number of particularly mundane items. Self-adjusting weigh scales tend to do the trick, but for this, we need something on the level of a relic, to counteract the sheer power of sexual magic that was used to bind him. Good news is, I have one in mind so you won’t need to search. Bad news, I don’t know how you’ll get in there.”

“What’s the object?” Sandra asked.

“Dranngvit’s Ledger. A tome that lists the relative value of all major trade goods at the trade ports listed within. We know it’s held within the Great Library at the City, but that’s as far as our information goes.”

“That’s pretty good information,” Quinn said. “We go to the library, take the book. Is it in a restricted section or something?”

“Quinn,” Tarja said, with a tone that conveyed, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about’.

“What?” Quinn asked, oblivious to the subtext. It was possible that he was distracted by the loud sound of a spanking that was echoing above their conversation. It was also possible that he was just a bit socially inept.

“The library isn’t available to the public,” Janet explained, before Tarja had to step in. “Only high ranking merchant and political guild members, nobility, certain scholars, people of that rank can grant leave to enter it at all. And beyond that, there’s a series of trials to enter the zone that the ledger is kept within. It’s built to ensure that nobody can take the valuable information without having the knowledge necessary to use it - If you are found to be unwise or unworthy, you can’t even look at the books and relics held within.”

“Well that’s dumb,” Quinn said.

“The last great library got burned down by pillagers after a siege, who were mad that the treasure held within wasn’t made out of gold,” Tarja pointed out.

“So,” Sandra mused. “We just need to find someone who can get us into the library, get through these ordeals, and take the book?”

“First part’s harder than it sounds,” Janet said.

Sandra pursed her lips. “I’m not so sure it will be. We’ve got connections.”

“Who?” Janet asked.

Raising an eyebrow, Sandra asked, “Do you need to know?”

Janet hesitated, then shook her head. “I suppose not, and I can appreciate your discretion.”

“His name is Darius,” Sandra said. “We did a quest for him a few weeks back, he seemed like good people.”

Janet blinked. “Why-”

Sandra smiled. “I wanted to see how you’d react.”

Another pause went by, broken only by the loud moans and sounds of what had changed to a whip or possibly a belt. “Well… If your Darius can get you into the library, you’ll just need to pass the tests, then have your wizard complete a simple ritual at the end and take the book. That’s all we know.”

“And why can’t a Calistrian priest go get the ledger?” Sandra asked.

“Because we aren’t allowed in the library for one,” Janet said. “And our skillsets tend not to fall under ‘passing bureaucratic ordeals’, for two. Besides, that’s what subcontractors who owe us favors are for.”

“Fair,” Sandra said. “We can do the job. Payment?”

“We do the spell to cure your guild member,” the priestess said. “If you think you deserve a cash payment for that, take it up with your guildmaster.”

“That’s a deal.” Sandra got to her feet, wincing at a particularly pained, aroused cry from the illusion. “You can turn that off now, I think we’re done here.”

“I actually have a couple questions, kind of a… sidenote, I guess,” Tarja said. “But Sandra, you don’t need to wait up for me.”

Her party was keeping secrets from her. Sandra hated it, but confronting Tarja about it wouldn’t be productive. “Deal with your thing, I’ll go see how Hadrian is doing,” Sandra said. “Quinn?”

“He can stay,” Tarja said. “Er… I mean, it doesn’t really matter, but…”

“Quinn, stay,” Sandra instructed, leaving the dungeon room to go find her wizard.

…

They took another day in town. Hadrian had to finish explaining the magic he’d learned to one of the few people who would understand him, and they needed to restock on supplies, talk to the guildmaster about a rate for the job, and generally recover from the last several days of action.

Tarja decided to do some shopping on her own. Sandra pretended that she didn’t think anything of it, but it was hard not to stare when she saw the usually so graceful changeling stumble on her way out the door.

The guildmaster, at least, was more than willing to pay standard rates for a party of their skill level doing a relic retrieval quest. Since it was in-house, it didn’t pay as well as when a wealthy benefactor hired the guild to do contract work, but it was a fair rate. She even hooked up the party with a caravan that needed a basic escort on their way to the City. It was a low rate, but since they were headed there anyways, Sandra was more than happy for a little extra coin in their pocket.

A sending confirmed that Darius would be in the City handling business for the next week, and that he’d be happy to meet to discuss a business proposition - though, of course, his new wife would be taking part in the negotiations, as per his customs. Sandra was already anticipating Karena throwing a fit at their mere arrival, but there was no getting around that. If Darius’s merchant guild connections didn’t pan out or if he turned them down, they’d just need to start over on finding a way into the Great Library.

With all that wrapped up and finalized, it was time to travel, and for once, their travel was uneventful. Nobody messed with the caravan on the three day trip to the City, so for the party’s part, it was just a few days of travel, rest, and recuperation.

At least, for most of the party.

Tarja’s clumsiness continued to get worse. Dropping silverware over dinner. Failing to get a campfire started with a flint, because her hands were shaking so badly. Tripping over her own feet in ways that would seem ridiculous for someone with her grace just a few days prior.

It was building to a confrontation point, and Sandra knew it. If this went on for much longer, they wouldn’t be able to pretend everything was fine. Even Hadrian was starting to notice, and he tended to be about as oblivious as a person could get. He’d stopped stumbling in heels after a few days of forced practice, and a quip after Tarja tripped about how he was more stable on heels than she was without was eerily accurate.

Tarja was, at least, able to walk through the gates of the City under her own power, but Sandra could do the math. She knew how quickly Tarja’s dexterity was degrading, and it didn’t seem like it would be that long before she would lack the coordination necessary to stand.

She’ll come to you when she’s ready, Sandra reminded herself. Don’t push her. You’ve pushed them enough. They’ve given you enough trust without you making a fuss over this.

After another night at the Sodden Songbird, the guild-friendly inn and tavern, it was time to meet with Darius. They dressed up for the occasion, as much as possible - Bathing, putting on their nicer clothes that weren’t so battle worn. Quinn chose not to wear his armor even though it looked more like a ballroom dress than a battle outfit, choosing instead to put on simple but neat cotton clothes.

Hadrian couldn’t do nearly as much as the rest of the party, but at least ensured that his latex bodysuit and gloves were clean, and timed the removal of his pacifier so that he wouldn’t have it show up at an inopportune time during the meeting.

The manor was large for a home within the City, though modest for someone of Darius’s standing, only two stories high with plain, practical architecture. Sandra knew he had manors in more than one city, but given that so much trade would be conducted in the City, she had expected something a bit more grand.

Still, she presented herself to the master of the house, who looked the party up and down, nodded, and left to confirm the appointment.

“Do you suppose Karena might be… indisposed?” Hadrian asked, sounding hopeful.

“Shh,” Sandra said. “She might be able to hear you, and we need to be on her good side.”

“Does she even have a-”

Quinn thumped him on the back of the head, and that ended the discussion.

The master of the house returned a moment later. “They are ready for your proposal,” he said. “Come in.”

The party followed, walking in through a modest entry hall and up the stairs.

“Restrooms are to the left, and should you require refreshments or changing supplies, I can fetch them for you,” he explained. Sandra noted the comment about changing supplies, but he was almost stoically professional, and it came off as a frank explanation of what he could offer rather than a jibe. Most likely, living with someone else cursed to wear diapers, he’d long since stopped being amused by the novelty of it.

Or, maybe he was just really professional. Sandra couldn’t be sure.

Either way, he stood at the side of the double doors leading into Darius’s office, pulling them open for the party.

Darius was inside, but he wasn’t sitting at his desk. Karena was. They both had a large map spread out in front of them, and Darius was leaning over the side, pointing and explaining something about trade routes. Karena, unsurprisingly, had a sneer on her face, and that expression didn’t go away when she looked up and saw the party.

Sandra sighed. Maybe this was a waste of time. Bowing slightly, she did her best to remember the rules of courtesy, “Darius Drumet, I’m honored to be in your household.”

“Sandra Cassidy, I welcome you and your party,” Darius said, addressing them with a smile and a bow of his own, before setting a hand on Karena’s shoulder. “But this is not my household alone.”

“Darius and Karena Drumet,” Sandra repeated, doing a second bow. “Of course.”

“What do you want?” Karena cut in. “We’re busy.”

Sandra walked further into the office, her party coming in behind her. There were chairs laid out, so she gestured to them. “May we sit?”

Darius didn’t respond, instead looking down at Karena, deferring to her. After a begrudging pause, she nodded.

Oh gods, Sandra realized, as she took a seat. He’s using this as a training opportunity for her.

“Explain it all to me,” Karena said. “What do you need from us, and what are you offering in trade?” Blunt, which was expected. Sandra suspected that she’d been instructed on what to inquire about, but hadn’t yet learned the courtesy of how to ask about those things politely.

Then again… Sandra didn’t personally mind blunt. It let her cut to the point. “We’re trying to retrieve a ledger from the Great Library. We can pass the trials on our own to get to the inner sanctum, but we need someone with trade guild authority to let us in. In exchange, we will give the tome to you once it’s done being used by our client.”

“What tome, exactly?” Karena asked.

No point hiding their goal, seeing as it was their main bargaining chip. “Dranngvit’s Ledger.”

Karena glanced up at Darius, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t know what that is.”

“A relic,” Darius said. “Useful, valuable, but getting it is risky. Who is it for?”

“The Calistrian temple,” Sandra said. “The same wizard who cursed Karena has also begun targeting adventurers, but the ledger can be used in a curing ritual.”

“You want out of your diapers,” Karena said, flatly.

Sandra shook her head. “It’s not for me, or any of us.”

Karena frowned. “But you have been cursed. Obviously. No self-respecting wizard would wear that by choice.”

Darius cleared his throat, but it was a little late for propriety.

“It might be possible to use it to cure us, too,” Sandra conceded. “But we’re not doing it for ourselves. A good man was cursed to the point of complete helplessness. We want to get his life back, and we need the ledger to do that. By my estimation, it could provide a great trade benefit to you as well, given the information inside.”

Leaning on the desk, Darius took a deep breath. “I appreciate you coming to us, but I’m afraid we can’t accept this offer.”

“Do you need further incentive?” Sandra asked. “I can’t offer wealth directly, but if you want to retrieve anything from beyond the trials, or guild credit-”

“It’s not that,” Darius said. “We’ve got a position we need to uphold. If we let you into the library, then we’ll be responsible for whatever you do in there, and… well, I mean no offense, but the guild isn’t known for maintaining collateral damage. You could cause great destruction if you make a mistake, and that would hang around our neck.”

“We’ll be careful,” Sandra said, quickly. “We won’t do anything that could harm the books or relics in the library, even if it means failing the trials. Obviously, maintaining the integrity of the library is our first priority.”

Darius sighed. “I believe that you’re sincere, but we-”

“You keep saying we,” Karena interrupted. “I’m pretty sure I haven’t said anything about it yet.”

All eyes fell on Karena. A second passed, before Darius said, “I’ve spent too long working on our partnerships in the City to risk it.”

“Is this your business, or is it a partnership?” Karena asked, simply.

Darius pursed his lips. “I’ve got more experience-”

“Is this your business, or is it a partnership?” Karena repeated.

Pressing his thumb to the bridge of his nose, Darius shut his eyes and sighed. “It’s a partnership.”

Karena nodded. “And did you ask what I thought before you said what we were going to do?”

“No,” Darius said. “But trust me-”

Karena finally stood, facing her husband with a flat look. “I do trust you, but I disagree with your stance. We’re in a recessive period of business, and we need an edge to regain that trade or we’ll be overwhelmed by our competition. This relic could offer us that edge, and- No, no. Let me finish.” She raised a finger, cutting Darius off as he opened his mouth to speak. “And, if we don’t trust the adventurer’s guild to act safely and do their job correctly, then why did you hire them to escort me?”

The question hung in the air for a long pause, and Darius had no response.

“You think they’re too reckless and incompetent to go through a library, but they were fine to protect your wife?” Karena demanded. “Some partnership!”

“That’s not what I-” Darius started. “Fine. The decision is yours, and the consequences will fall on your share of the business.”

“Yeah, no. We do this together. I’m not going to hold back the benefits from when the plan works, and it would be silly if I did, so I’m not going to protect you from the risks, either.”

Karena’s expression had grown harder over the course of the discussion. It was still mostly flat and cold, but there was just a hint of anger that threatened to take over her demeanor if things got pushed any further.

Darius wilted. “Fine.”

“Thank you.” Karena faced Sandra again, opening her mouth, then rolling her eyes. “Dammit, not-”

Plop.

A pacifier appeared between her lips, and she had to turn and face Darius to get his help removing it. With it removed, she made a few tentative noises as she regained her voice. “Buh- mbuhn… uh… anyways. Ask your contacts with the temple if this spell would be repeatable, so long as they were lent use of the tome. I might commission their services once this is all said and done.”

“Will do,” Sandra said, surprised at how the conversation had gone. She’d expected Darius to be in their corner, with Karena being the one they needed to convince. Either way, she’d take the win.

“We should go over details and work up a contract,” Karena said, sitting back down. “How long- Uh.”

She turned pink, her nose wrinkling slightly, at the same time that Sandra caught a whiff of a dirty diaper. The whole room pretended not to notice anything as she, Hadrian, and Karena all quietly checked their own diapers to see if it was them.

“Uh… I don’t need to be here for this,” Hadrian said, after a pause. “I’m going to… take a walk.”

Both diapered women sighed in relief. At least it wasn’t me.

“Right, details,” Sandra said. “Let’s get down to brass tacks.”

…

The Great Library lived up to its name. Getting access was fairly painless with the writ of approval from Karena Drumet, though the party had to surrender their weapons, spell components, and generally anything they could use for combat.

The library was arranged in ringed tiers, circled by an enchanted stone wall that could protect it in case of siege or invasion. The complete outer ring of the library was nothing but book shelves stacked with tomes, and Sandra had to drag Hadrian through it by his collar to keep from getting sidetracked looking through all the many, many books stored there.

“We can do this later, after the quest,” she insisted, walking them through the next ring of the library, which was more akin to a museum of relics.

Few had practical merit, there were no magical swords or enchanted armor - rather, it had examples of different scales from across the nation, murals and artwork depicting great trade ships, and other boring but historically significant artifacts.

The trials they were meant to face, then, were in the third ring.

No guards barred the only passageway through the third wall, protecting the contents of the Library’s greatest knowledge and treasures. Just a simple signpost, with a plain message written on it.

All those who pass through this door will be weighed and measured in wisdom and intellect. Should you be found wanting, you will be barred from entry from this day until the End of Days.

“That’s a bit dramatic,” Quinn commented. “What’s wrong with just saying ‘Banned forever’?”

“From the lore I’ve been taught, I don’t expect there will be any fighting,” Tarja said, ignoring his question. “From what I’ve heard of this test, it’s largely cerebral in nature. Hadrian should take point, he's got more book knowledge than the rest of us.”

“Hadrian leads, then,” Sandra agreed, glad that she could summon a knife if it did come to combat. She didn’t trust any trial to be bloodless and nonviolent, no matter its reputation.

Bodysuit squeaking slightly, Hadrian led the way through the door and under a low passageway while Tarja took the last few moments before entering to give the party reminders. “Be ready for anything. It could be a test of reaction, of quick wits, of thoughtfulness - Don’t let your guard down.”

They entered the third ring, and the trials began.

It was, largely, an anticlimax. Nothing came rushing at them, no sphinx with riddles, no instant challenge.

Instead, the party found itself facing a long, ethereal… line. Dozens of people were waiting in a snaking queue separated by ropes and stanchions. At the end, a man working at a desk was handling paperwork, very, very slowly.

Sandra’s magical vision saw that the people in line were illusory, but she doubted that cutting past them would work.

The first trial, it seemed, was a test of patience.

“Tarja,” she said. “Do we all need to go through the trials, or does just one of us need to complete each one?”

“We’re tested as a party. As long as one of us can pass each trial and nobody fails, we’re fine.”

“Then I’ll go,” Sandra said. “I’ve got reasonably good endurance, and I won’t need to step out of the line for bathroom breaks. Everyone else… find something to do to kill time, I guess.”

She stepped up and got into line.

It was ungodly boring.

It barely moved. One person would get their paperwork done, and the line would shuffle forward by mere inches. Every time she tried to count how many people were ahead of her, the number seemed to shift, making an accurate count impossible to gauge.

Hours dripped by, as though she’d stepped into another dimension and the passage of time had changed. Her diaper self cleaned, at least once, indicating the hours. She had nothing to do, nobody to talk to, all she could do was wait.

At times, she was tempted to cut forward, noticing gaps in the line and inobservant people who wouldn’t notice her slipping forward. She didn’t give into temptation.  She waited, patiently, for the little eternity it took to get to the front of line.

Finally, it ended. She got to the front of the line, where the bored-looking attendant slid across an exceedingly long and detailed form for her to fill out. It required listing a lot of mundane details and signing a few dozen times, but she got through it with speed and quality penmanship, ensuring along the way that the paperwork wasn’t magically binding in any way.

Once it was complete, the attendant looked up, nodded, and called past her, “Next!”

Then, the whole line vanished with a puff of smoke.

The rest of the party looked up, noticing she was done. Quinn was stretching and generally keeping himself warmed up physically, Hadrian was reading through a spellbook, and Tarja was just sitting cross legged and leaning against the wall.

“Gods,” Sandra groaned, stretching out her back. “How long was I waiting?”

Quinn shrugged. “Fifteen minutes?”

“Did we pass?” Hadrian asked.

“I think so. We’re not being booted out, so…” Sandra shrugged.

Tarja sat up from where she’d “And there’s the next test…”

From around the bend of the ring, what appeared to be a hundred and one soldiers were approaching, all with bandanas tied tightly around their heads. Some were blue, and some were purple, seemingly in an even split - though Sandra couldn’t make a precise count that quickly.

The party tensed, readying for combat. The soldiers didn’t seem aggressive, but they were approaching fast, and they were coordinated. If they wanted to cause trouble, they could pose real problems for the party very easily.

Instead, they stopped in a rank, twenty feet away, and the only soldier without a bandanna stepped forward.

He cleared his throat, getting the attention of the party. “To pass the next trial, you must answer me this question. The soldiers behind me cannot speak, and are all perfectly rational. They cannot-”

“Fifty days,” Hadrian said.

The speaker paused. “Excuse me?”

“Fifty days,” he repeated, confidently. Glancing at the rest of the party, he said, “What? I know this one. Classic logic puzzle.”

“Erm…” the speaker said, glancing back at the soldiers and shrugging. “Well… yes. You have passed.”

And, like the last illusion, they all disappeared in a puff of smoke.

“So, a trial of patience, and trial of wisdom… sort of,” Sandra said. “So far, so easy. What do you suppose is next?”

The party pondered that for a moment in silence. The silence dragged out longer.

After ten seconds, Sandra realized something was wrong.

Turning, she saw that they’d all been gagged with cloth and had their hands and feet bound with rope. Only she could still move and speak freely.

Whirling again, a figure was standing in front of her, wearing a formal cloak and breeches. “The final test,” he said, “Is a test of delegation. Three accomplices, three tasks. You will set one to each, and they must pass or fail, on their own.”

“That’s easy,” Sandra said. “I know my party.”

“Then you should not struggle at all.” The figure stepped back, waving his hand out as three challenges appeared before them.

A bear, in a fenced ring, raging and furious. Fighting the beast would be easy for Quinn, even without his weapons.

A long, scrawled document sat next to an empty scroll. Something word-based, easy for Hadrian.

And, finally, a deep, open pit, with a raised platform on the near end and slender rods placed every six feet to balance upon.

Under normal circumstances, perfect for Tarja, but today…

“Down the beast,” the figure said. “Translate the record. Cross the pit.”

Sandra spun, facing her party. The choices were obvious, but also impossible. Tarja on her best day could cross that pit without blinking, but as things stood, she’d stumble and fall on the first jump.

But saying that out loud meant acknowledging that Tarja was losing her dexterity. It meant admitting that Sandra had known all along and not said anything, because she was waiting for Tarja to show her a little trust.

She swallowed.

“What do I do if my party can’t complete these tasks?” she asked.

“Admit defeat and leave.”

She swallowed, realizing her mistake. She should have confronted Tarja sooner, resolved her curse before doing these challenges. Now, she might have doomed them all.

Glancing back at Tarja, Sandra saw that her eyes were wide with the same realization.

Think. There’s got to be another solution.

She took a step forward, inspecting the pit, hoping to find some trick that would aid in crossing it. It was some twenty feet across, with a ramp leading up to the ten-foot-high platform. It seemed like it would help, starting on high ground, but in practice it would make the jumps from rod to rod even harder - Each rod was a couple feet lower than the last, but staggered unevenly. Only a great acrobat would be able to make those jumps.

In fact, Sandra was starting to doubt that Tarja could have actually crossed it on a good day. It was too much, even for her.

Frowning, she walked over to the bear, examining it. A big, furious beast, slamming its shoulder into the fence and making it shake. Could Quinn even fight that thing?

Finally, she walked over to the scroll, squinting at it. It only took her a second to recognize the language written there, and once she did, she had an idea of what to do.

“Tarja will handle the bear,” she said. “Quinn, the translation. Hadrian, you’d better have something up your sleeve to cross that pit.”

“Is that your final decision?” the looming figure asked. Sandra nodded. The figure, along with the bindings on her party, vanished.

Tarja stepped up to Sandra, shaking her head. “Sandra, I-”

“Not now,” Sandra said, turning away from her. “Do your job.”

Tarja hesitated. She was shaking, but it wasn’t clear if she was unsteady or not. “How long have you known?”

“Since before we returned to the temple,” Sandra said, flatly. “You should have told me. I gave you plenty of chances.”

“I didn’t- You had so much you were dealing with,” Tarja said.

Quinn didn’t know what to say, standing back awkwardly, but Hadrian didn’t know what was going on and was too obtuse to know that staying quiet would be wise. “What are you talking about?”

“Tarja’s been hiding her curses from us,” Sandra said. “Quinn has, too. And if I hadn’t found out through luck, we’d all be banished from these trials right about now.”

The changeling opened her mouth, her voice cracking a little. “I’m sorr-”

Sandra cut her off. “Do your job, and let’s hope we can pass this trial in spite of things. If anyone fails their test, then you and I are going to have words.”

[Jayme]

53 minutes ago, PeculiarChangeling said:

More NOW? But you just got some! I have to ration this stuff out y'know, it's potent stuff! 
But, I mean. Since you said please... Well... I guess you can have some more now... 

Thank you so much for the additional chapter, your story is excellent and I love how the characters are so well fleshed out its almost like watching a video.

I also wanted to clarify that I didn't mean right now for the extra chapter, I'd never be that rude. But thank you anyways!

[PeculiarChangeling]

12 hours ago, Jayme said:

Thank you so much for the additional chapter, your story is excellent and I love how the characters are so well fleshed out its almost like watching a video.

I also wanted to clarify that I didn't mean right now for the extra chapter, I'd never be that rude. But thank you anyways!

I understood what you meant, I was just being silly because I happened to be posting the chapter yesterday anyways and thought the timing was funny. ?

[Jayme]

19 minutes ago, PeculiarChangeling said:

I understood what you meant, I was just being silly because I happened to be posting the chapter yesterday anyways and thought the timing was funny. ?

I guess I had perfect timing then. Lol

[Bonsai]

This story is indeed addictive. My favorite part in this chapter was the negotiation with Karena and Darius (your names for Nobles appear to be influenced by a certain infamous author that is withholding the end of his saga to us readers for several years... don’t you dare to do the same! ?)

[PeculiarChangeling]

On 6/4/2021 at 4:12 AM, Bonsai said:

This story is indeed addictive. My favorite part in this chapter was the negotiation with Karena and Darius (your names for Nobles appear to be influenced by a certain infamous author that is withholding the end of his saga to us readers for several years... don’t you dare to do the same! ?)

I'm not actually sure who you're referring to!

The names actually have two meanings - First, Karena is a "Karen", if you will.

 

Second, their initials spell out to KID and DAD. ?

[Bonsai]

7 hours ago, PeculiarChangeling said:

I'm not actually sure who you're referring to!

R R Martin.

[PeculiarChangeling]

26 minutes ago, Bonsai said:

R R Martin.

Okay, maybe I'm just spacing out, but now I'm not sure which *characters* you're referring to. 

[PeculiarChangeling]

Chapter Ten

“Sandra.”

Sandra ignored her, deliberately walking away without looking back at the changeling.

“Please,” Tarja called. “Talk to me.”

Reaching the wall, Sandra turned, leaned against it, and crossed her arms. She had nothing to say that wouldn’t be distilled in anger, and the rest of the party didn’t deserve to get caught in that crossfire.

Tarja had lied. She had lied, and kept secrets, and put the entire party in serious danger in doing so. If they had come up on a situation where relying on Tarja’s skill and finesse was critical, the whole party could have been killed.

More to the point, she had betrayed Sandra’s trust, and Sandra couldn’t deal with those emotions right now.

Besides, the party had work to do.

Three trials, three party members.

They looked around at each other, eyeing their tasks.

Quinn went first, uncertain until he approached the document. The trial - translating an old ledger - seemed an unusual choice for him, until he sat down and read it.

It was written in Orcish. Sandra had caught that once she sat down to read it, and even if Quinn was no scholar, he was certainly literate. The handwriting wouldn’t be perfect, but the job would get done.

He sat down, picked up the pen, and started writing.

Hadrian was the most uncertain, not because of the task, but because he was still clueless about the drama going on. He started walking towards Sandra, to talk to her, but she shook her head.

He deserved the truth, and she’d give it to him soon, but not just then. She wanted to wait until she could speak without feeling like her words were about to boil over.

Stopping, the wizard looked between Sandra and the challenge, pursed his lips, and walked back to the pit.

Sandra didn’t know how he’d make it across, but he was crafty. Twenty feet across, with staggered rods to provide platforms to jump on, but Hadrian wouldn’t have had the acrobatic skill to land gracefully on those rods even if he wasn’t wearing high heels. The ten foot platform at the starting point would make things worse; having to drop a couple feet with each jump from pole to pole would be incredibly difficult.

Hadrian examined the platform, climbing up the ladder, then sliding back down and walking around it to inspect the poles and the landing pad at the far end.

Once his inspection was done, he started walking towards Sandra again.

“I have a question,” he said.

“About the task, or about Tarja?” Sandra asked.

“Both, but I’ll just ask about the task.” Hadrian reached into his satchel, digging inside. “They took away our spell components and weapons when we came in, but we weren’t strictly banned from magic. Do you think it’s alright if I use this?”

He produced a trio of uncut gems, fused together and bound in a gold circle. The holy symbol of Yuelral.

“I… guess that’s okay, since it wasn’t explicitly banned,” Sandra said. “They seem like very ‘Letter of the law’ people here. You can use holy symbols?”

“A little trick I picked up,” Hadrian said. “It’s a lot easier to sneak in a holy symbol than a spell component pouch, when everyone knows you’re not a cleric.”

“Then use that,” Sandra said. “What are you planning?”

“There was a scholar, Pythagoras. From a different plane. Have you heard of him?” Hadrian asked.

Sandra shook her head.

“Okay then, the simple version. When calculating the sides of a triangle, the sum-” He spotted the already glazed-over look on Sandra’s face and shrugged.“Never mind, it’s not important. I’m using math.”

“I still don’t get it.”

Winking, Hadrian said, “Then watch and learn.”

Walking back to the platform, he focused for a moment, conjuring a little magic. Sandra, focusing on him with her magical detection, identified the type of spells he was doing and tried to guess the exact magic.

Is that… Feather fall and expeditious retreat?

She blinked, getting it.

Taking a breath, Hadrian stepped back, got ready, and then ran forward as fast as he could - which, given the magical buff to his movement, was pretty fast.

He didn’t exactly leap, and it wasn’t graceful at all. When he went over the edge of the platform, he tumbled into the air and started to fall at an unnaturally slow rate. At the same time, his momentum carried him forward at great speed, and he just soared over the pillars that were supposed to be jumped on.

Reaching the far end of the pit, he crashed, which Sandra supposed was a type of landing. Even if it was deeply inelegant, he’d made it across by increasing his horizontal speed and reducing his vertical speed to their extremes.

Math, then.

And that only left Tarja. She was stumbling, unable to really fight, and she had to deal with the bear.

She’s a ranger, Sandra knew. This shouldn’t even be hard.

A part of her wanted Tarja to fail. It was a cruel, mean spirited little part, and she shoved it down. Spite would get her nowhere, and if Tarja failed, they all failed. All Sandra would get was someone to blame.

She watched with anticipation anyways. Tarja dropped into the pit on the far side of the bear, speaking words that Sandra couldn’t comprehend. The bear roared and wailed in response, and Tarja spoke again in her strange, animalistic tongue.

She knows how to speak with animals, Sandra thought. Of course.

The bear cautiously loped towards Tarja, and Tarja didn’t run. She instead crouched, taking the bear’s extended paw.

Sandra was too far away to get a clear visual, but she guessed. Thorns, or needles, or something painful and jammed deep into the bear’s flesh. Whatever it was, Tarja removed it all, patted the bear on its head, and said one more thing before turning to leave the pit. The bear was, by its posture, grateful.

And Tarja couldn’t climb out of the pit. Her grip slipped, and she couldn’t jump high enough to grab up at the ledge and get a leg over the side.

Rolling her eyes, Sandra walked back over, reaching her arm down to give Tarja a hand. Tarja accepted, and Sandra towed her out.

“Thanks,” Tarja said, rubbing at the back of her neck.

Sandra nodded, curtly, and walked away. She didn’t have a destination, she just needed to walk away, and she ended up heading towards Hadrian.

“Man, that was a rush,” Hadrian said, sitting on the ground with one latex-covered leg tucked up to his chest. Surprisingly, his outfit didn’t seem to be tarnished or scraped - Sandra wondered if it was part of the magic that kept the thing on his body. A spell to keep the bodysuit intact would be in character.

“Maybe you should start doing more athletics,” Sandra said. “If you enjoy it.”

“Eh, not enough time in the day.” Hadrian shrugged, opening his mouth to speak again. His vision darted past her, though, and his mouth just stayed open, gaping.

“What?” Sandra said, turning.

There was a big door opening on the inside ring of wall. A big door. Almost comically large. A Tarrasque could have walked through it without destroying anything - though it probably would have just for fun.

Sandra was sure that the doorway hadn’t been there a minute ago.

“I guess we passed,” Sandra said.

“Knew we would,” Hadrian said. “Never had any doubt.”

“Uh-huh.” Sandra looked around. “Quinn, get ready. There shouldn’t be any more challenges inside, but you never know.”

Quinn nodded.

Sandra stayed ready to summon an umbral knife, but there didn’t seem to be any threats inside the enormous doorway, just a passage into a dark chamber with a large raised dais in the middle.

Something about the layout seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. Walking forward, she passed under the threshold of the doorway and felt a change in the air. She couldn’t quite place what it was - not temperature, not humidity, but something.

“Big door,” Quinn commented, adjusting the hem of his dress as he stepped through the threshold behind her. “Where’s the book?”

“I’m guessing we’ve got to do something with that dais to get it,” Sandra replied. “Hadrian, do you have any idea what we’re looking at?”

Hadrian walked past her, strutting in his heels towards the platform. “It’s conjuration,” he said, after a moment. “I couldn’t say for sure exactly what it does, though. Give me a minute.”

Sandra waited while he did his Wizarding, walking around, inspecting things, making quiet ‘hmmm’ noises every few moments.

“Knowing how thorough Hadrian likes to be… this could take dais,” Quinn quipped.

Sandra glanced at him, but didn’t crack a smile. She was in too bad of a mood to appreciate bad puns.

“Please,” Tarja said, quietly. “I’m sorry, but I knew you had so much on your plate. Don’t blame Quinn.”

Sandra wasn’t sure when the ranger had walked up behind her, but she didn’t look back, and she didn’t keep her voice low or private. “I don’t. Quinn had an impossible choice, either betraying his team or the woman he loves, and we both know he’s a romantic at heart. I don’t envy the dilemma he had, knowing someone would be hurt no matter what he did.”

Tarja made a choking noise, and Sandra regretted the poison in her words, but it was too late to take them back. Before the ranger could draw any more barbs out of her, Sandra walked away.

“Hadrian, how’s it looking?”

“It’s some kind of summoning platform,” the wizard replied. “I can’t say exactly how it works, but I think you use it almost like a catalog - activate it, and it teleports the object you want to you.”

“Why would they do that?” Sandra asked.

“To keep people from looking for things that are hidden. You can’t just come in and clear out the shelves if you don’t even know what’s on the shelf,” Hadrian pointed out.

“Well, keep studying, we need it working.”

“Oh, I can get it working,” Hadrian said. “Standard ritual. I can activate it, I just can’t promise it’ll do exactly what I predicted.”

“Do it, then,” Sandra said. “How long will it take?”

“A few minutes,” Hadrian replied.

Sandra nodded, stepping back and letting Hadrian work his magic.

The ritual wasn’t very complicated, or particularly flashy. Sandra couldn’t personally tell the difference between ‘Wizardly chanting’ and ‘Idle mumbling’ so from her perspective, Hadrian was just sashaying around the dais, waving his hands and muttering every few seconds.

Ignoring him, she tried to put a finger on what was so familiar about the platform. Something about the door… She turned and looked up at the ridiculously imposing doorway behind them, and then back at the platform.

She looked at the doorway again, backing up and getting a look at it from the far side of the chamber. The size had thrown her off, but now that she was inspecting it from further back, she recognized the shape, the design. It was almost like an aiudara, an ‘Elf gate’, but that would mean…

Oh. It’s not a catalog.

“Magicae, magicarum, magicus! Wizardry!” Hadrian finished chanting - or, at least, that’s what it sounded like to Sandra, who wasn’t paying attention to the ostentatiously silly words he’d been saying. Runes around the platform began to glow, and Sandra spun as he said, “It’s done! Should only take a few moments to-”

“Brace yourself!” Sandra shouted, calling up an umbral dagger and readying for a fight. “Something might be coming through that door!”

The whole party reacted for a fight, despite being largely unarmed. They whirled, and with a flash of magic, the world around them changed. Everything outside the door vanished, replaced with a swirling bit of color. Over the course of seconds, that color took shape, until it was clearly recognizable as…

The same room that they were already in. A perfect mirror copy, except without four startled adventurers standing in it.

Sandra breathed a sigh of relief.

“What is it?” Hadrian asked, walking up beside her.

“I think…” Sandra said, “It’s an interplanar gate. We’re looking at another dimension that’s bound to this place, and that ritual opens and closes the door.”

“Are you sure?”

“Only way to find out is to go through and close the door,” Sandra said. “If the doorway shows us another dimension, we’ll know I’m right.”

The party glanced at each other tentatively, braced themselves with the knowledge that they weren’t alone, and walked through the passageway.

Again, Sandra felt the quality of the air shift. Hadrian, quick on his stilettoed feet, hurried over to the other platform, and shut off the spell.

Sandra’s prediction had been right. When the magic ended, the mirror image of the chamber vanished in the doorway, and was replaced by another world.

For a moment, the party was awestruck. Hadrian shuffled forward, eyes wide, and the rest of them just stared.

The sky was a deep crimson-purple, broken up by pale pink clouds that drifted past. Nothing grew, but that wasn’t what struck Sandra. They were on the top of a tower, or possibly floating high up in the air, but either way she had an unobstructed view of a city below, and it… was…

Infinite.

Sandra wanted to think of words like ‘Gargantuan’ and ‘Colossal’, but that didn’t cut it. The city stretched into the horizon, and it was all built purposefully, with symmetrical roads and endless, complicated patterns to the layout.

This was no city built by any nation Sandra had ever heard of. All she could think was that, no matter how great her problems seemed, the extent of reality was far greater. Gods, planes, and dimensions had a far greater scope than any mortal could truly comprehend, and this was a humbling reminder of that fact.

“Any idea where we are?” Quinn asked.

“Somewhere dangerous, I’d expect,” Sandra said, shaking her head and regaining her composure. “We’ll need to be careful, watch where we’re going. The people in this city might not be friendly. They might not even be people for all I know. The ledger will be somewhere, but it’s so… big…”

“It could take a lifetime to search this place and we still wouldn’t be close,” Tarja said, stepping up along Sandra to look out at the city with her.

Sandra didn’t respond directly, but she agreed with the sentiment. “Our only option is to start looking. I don’t understand why the portal would just drop us here, but we need to start looking, and-”

“Found it!” Hadrian called.

Sandra blinked, glancing at him. “Where?”

He pointed at a sign just outside the large gate entrance. Sandra had to step out and look at it, but once she did she saw that it was a pair of maps - one of the local area, one of the tower they stood on. A red dot was marked, “YOU ARE HERE”, and other numbers and symbols dotted the whole thing. To the side, there was a legend.

“It’s a complicated map, but it looks like tomes and ledgers are all located…” Hadrian pointed with a finger, poking a specific spot on the map of the area. “Here, in this building.”

Sandra walked up and squinted at the map, then looked out at the city below them. The tower they were on was a massive spiraling thing that would take ages to walk down or up, and squinting down, she thought she could tell the building they were looking for apart from the others around it.

“So we need to get down, get the book, and then just get back up here,” she said. “Fine. Slow, but not hard.”

“The legend here also, uh,” Hadrian paused, squinting at words that Sandra couldn’t read. “Says that each area marked with an X, Skull, or pitted triangle, is some kind of test or challenge? Or a contest? Getting down the tower is proof that we, basically, deserve to be here and can take what we please, within reason, I think.”

“What, exactly, does it say? Are there details about the challenges?”

Hadrian paused, skimming it again. “I’m gonna be honest… this is some really funky dialect. It’s kind of like Auran, but only kind of, and I think it’s written in a rhyming meter, and there’s some weird metaphor going on... This one bit is either about a three headed dragon, or maybe it’s a poisonous bunch of herbs…”

“So we’ve got some ambiguous challenges and lateral thinking to win our prize,” Sandra said.

“Yup.”

She cracked her knuckles. “Let’s do this.”

…

“Is that all the switches?” Sandra asked, looking around. They’d found six, spaced out throughout the room, meaning it took the whole party, plus Hadrian and Sandra both casting Mage Hand to get the last two.

They weren’t entirely sure what the switches would do, but they were at a dead end and this room was practically screaming ‘puzzle’. Thirty minutes of exploring and riddle solving had revealed six switches.

“We’ve looked everywhere and done our best,” Tarja said. “It’s all of them.”

“Throw them on the count of three,” Sandra said. “One, two, thr- WOAH!”

She yelped as the floor dropped out from beneath them, dropping the whole party down into an endless pit.

Well, it wasn’t endless. She couldn’t see the bottom, but she knew there would be a bottom to it. A flash of magic filled her senses a moment later, and the party’s fall speed reduced significantly, to no faster than falling from a short height. That didn’t stop her from flailing in an oh-shit-I’m-falling panic, but a part of her realized she wasn’t about to die from the impact.

A second later she landed on the ground, bottom first, squelching slightly.

“Is everyone okay?” Sandra asked.

Quinn had landed in a heap of his lacey armor a few feet away; his armor-dress had billowed up around him in the fall and he had to extricate himself with a little work. Tarja was on her back, unhurt but blinking in surprise at the sudden fall.

Hadrian, somehow, managed to land on his feet. He was getting good at walking in heels, apparently.

“Where are we?” Quinn asked, looking around. It was dark. That wasn’t really a problem, everyone in the party could see in the dark, but it meant that the space around them was all black and white, sharp, colorless contrasts denoting shapes within sixty feet or so.

Sandra had her knife out in an instant, ready to fight. This felt like an arena pit, and she was ready for an ambush.

No ambush came.

She looked around a little more. There were four tunnels, one at each corner. The walls above the tunnels were marked with dithered dots in a strange pattern that Sandra couldn’t comprehend.

“We need to go down one of the tunnels,” Hadrian guessed. “Four options, but if I had to guess, three probably don’t lead anywhere good, and… Ah. There we go.”

Water was leaking into the room. Slowly, but surely, filling up the space they were standing in. Sandra was still sitting on the ground when it got to her and it soaked the back of her pants and into her diaper, replacing the warm wetness with a cold sogginess.

She got to her feet. “So we’ve got to pick one, and we don’t have a lot of time. Is there anything distinguishing them?”

“Those dots look familiar,” Quinn shrugged. “Maybe something there?”

“We could split up, go down each tunnel for a little while, and then come back,” Hadrian suggested, splashing over to examine where the water was streaming in; a tiny series of holes around the base of the walls. “If I can figure out the rate of flow, then I can determine how long we would have to search.”

“No good,” Sandra said. “What if there’s a trap? Someone could get pinned and hurt, and we wouldn’t know what had happened to them. If one of us got stuck, we’d all have to go down that way to save them, and we’d drown before we could get back and go down the right tunnel.”

“So it’s a one in four guess, then,” Hadrian said. “If we halve the search time, then we’d have enough time to double back twice, and so if one person got stuck. It’s not perfect, but-”

“No,” Sandra repeated. “Not all of us can fight, or even run. The risks of splitting up are just too high.”

Hadrian looked past her, at Tarja, who was standing in the middle of the room looking uncertain. “I can- Sandra, I can explore one of the tunnels safely. Don’t ignore a good plan on my account.”

“Tarja, stop,” Sandra said. “This isn’t about you.”

“I can run! I just-”

“You can, he can’t!” Sandra snapped, jabbing her finger at Hadrian. “Running in heels, with ankle deep water? Stop thinking about yourself.”

“I-” Tarja looked away. “I’m sorry.”

“We will try and think this through,” Sandra continued, looking back to Hadrian. “If we run out of time, we’ll pick a tunnel and pray.”

“I think those dots are a clue,” Hadrian said, “But I can’t understand them. They all look the same to me.”

Sandra looked down. The water was already three inches high, it was rising fast. Taking a soggy step closer, she said, “Can anyone see any light? Or feel air moving down these tunnels? I’m not noticing anything.”

“I… no,” Hadrian said, half ignoring her as he bounced his own ideas around. “Maybe it’s some language I don’t know, but what language uses dots?”

“I got an idea,” Quinn said. “Does someone have a light?”

“What about… If we created a loud enough noise, we could listen to the echoes, see if there was any sort of difference…”

“A code, maybe. But I don’t see enough distinction in the dithering to-”

“Hey!” Quinn shouted. “Light! Does someone have one?”

Sandra and Hadrian both snapped out of their brainstorming and looked at him. Hadrian nodded. “Yeah, sure. Come on, buddy, out you come!”

His Ioun Wyrd familiar clambered out of his bag. Normally the little guy liked to hide away from people, but at Hadrian’s nudging he could be more sociable, and when he came out, the glowing stone on his back cast light onto the whole cave. It wasn’t a night-and-day difference, but it was enough to make out color.

“Oh,” Hadrian said.

“Yeah,” Sandra agreed. “Good idea.”

Quinn beamed. “It’s like the test they made me do back when I signed up for the army. Y’know, when I was still a kid. Thought those dots looked familiar...”

The dots above each tunnel were colored, such that an easily readable line of text could be made out in each. In black and white, it was random, but with color, they were obvious signposts.

“Let’s see… Death, ‘The Pit’, ‘Escape’, and ‘Death’ again,” Hadrian read aloud. “I say we go with escape.”

Sandra nodded. “Good plan.”

…

“Oh god my feet hurt,” Quinn groaned.

“You’re telling me,” Hadrian replied. “I’ve got aches in leg muscles I didn’t even know I had.”

“We can take a break,” Sandra said. “Have some food, figure out what’s next.”

They’d been walking up and down stairs for hours, navigating a puzzle maze. Each staircase had two turns, and in order to know which was the correct way to go, a riddle had to be answered. Get it right, they were one staircase closer to their goal. Get it wrong, and they were dumped right back at the start.

At the very least, whoever had built this tower had been considerate enough to leave a couple benches out to rest on. Plus, a bonus, they’d been rewarded with weapons - simple weapons, neither magical nor even masterwork, but weapons. Tarja had a bow, Quinn had a greatsword, Sandra had a dagger, and Hadrian had a crossbow.

Sandra sat down on it, noting that her diaper had self-cleaned recently and was comfortably dry and even smelled rather nice, giving off hints of perfumed powder.

Which meant that the smell was coming from someone else.

Hadrian noticed her wrinkled nose and shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry…”

“No worries,” she said. “It happens.”

Still, she didn’t mind that he sashayed over to the far bench before digging into his pack for a snack. Quinn was sitting on the ground, stretching out his legs, his shoes off, massaging his aching soles.

Tarja sat down next to Sandra. “We got through there alright.”

“You had several good answers,” Sandra said, going through her pack and taking out some elven bread.

“Yeah…” Tarja shifted, uncomfortably. Her hands were shaking, but that was just because of the curse she’d been hiding.

I should forgive her, Sandra thought.

Tarja sat next to her, not eating, not saying anything, just waiting for Sandra to make the first move.

Sandra kept quiet and ate her food.

…

They, finally, made it to the bottom of the tower.

It hadn’t been the most dangerous or deadly series of encounters Sandra had ever faced, but it was possibly the most grueling. She wanted to take a shower and get a long, long sleep.

But, they’d made it to the ledger. The library containing all the documents was only a few blocks away from the base, and there was even an elevator waiting to take them back up to the portal once they were done.

“Just find the book,” Sandra said, as they trudged into the most extensive repository of knowledge she’d ever seen. It was a massive library, and apparently an abandoned one at that. Thousands of ancient books all there for the taking.

Even Hadrian was too tired to care much. He just checked a cabinet by the entrance containing a directory, then walked over to get the book.

“This it?” he asked, holding it up.

‘Dranngvit’s Ledger’ was written on the cover. Easy peasy.

“Let’s take it and go,” Sandra said. “There’s an inn bed with my name on it.”

He nodded, and the four of them left the library.

Rumble rumble-

Sandra felt the ground shake. She stopped.

“Hadrian,” she asked. “How confident are you of your translation of that map up there?”

He hesitated. “Uh. Well like I said, I don’t really know it that well, and there was some guesswork-”

“When you said we could take whatever we wanted once we got down here, how much guesswork went into that?”

“Um…” He bit his lip. “Run?”

“Run.”

The four of them ran. Hadrian could only go so fast with his heels, and Tarja was stumbling horribly as she tried to run. Quinn paused for a moment, snatching a potion from his bag and chugging it. Charged with magic, he scooped up the scrawny wizard under one arm, the stumbling Tarja under the other, and then ran full tilt towards the elevator.

Sandra made it first and threw open the gate. It wasn’t an enclosed ride, just a big basket with cables on all four corners. As she ran in and turned to beckon Quinn forward, she saw the creatures coming up behind him.

Half a dozen strange, geometric forms with arms and legs were running after Quinn. Or, more likely, they were running after Hadrian, who was still clutching the ledger in both arms. He was carrying the ledger, Quinn was carrying him, so they wanted Quinn.

He jumped into the elevator car, falling with his companions into a heap, and Sandra slammed the lever to start rising. Three of the whatever-they-weres got on before it could rise out of reach, dangling from the edge of the rail with triangular finger-like appendages.

And there were more. A lot more.

And it looked like some of them could fly.

“Hadrian!” Sandra called. “Tell me you’ve got some magic missiles prepared.”

He swallowed. “A few…”

She summoned her dagger and kicked at the figures climbing on board, knocking one off and stabbing another. Quinn knocked out the third, and Hadrian started blasting the flying ones who got close with various bolts of magic.

Hey, I can do that too, Sandra considered, preparing a couple Magic Missile bolts of her own. She wasn’t a true wizard, but she dabbled enough to throw power around occasionally.

The two of them just didn’t have enough firepower for all the targets coming in. Even with Hadrian firing the occasional poorly-aimed crossbow bolt, the flying creatures were too numerous, and the elevator wasn’t fast enough.

Tarja stood, her hands shaking, and took out her bow. Her hands were shaking, but she concentrated for a moment, blushed, and then looked as stable as Sandra had ever seen her.

Raising her bow, she loosed a shot and hit perfectly. She did it again, and again. She was shooting as well as she could, as though no curse was slowing her down.

Sandra made note of this and kept fighting. Tarja couldn’t do all the work.

It wasn’t a hard fight, exactly. The creatures were numerous, but mostly went down in one hit, so while it took constant attention and a flurry of attacks of all stripes, they weren’t exactly fighting an army of dragons.

The elevator sped up, faster and faster, launching them towards the top of the tower. Targets came in and were deflected, or if they landed they got to meet Quinn’s new sword.

In less than two minutes of tense combat, they made the journey up where it had taken a full day to go down. Sandra grabbed the book from Hadrian and jumped off the elevator before it could even stop and started charging towards the giant gate containing the portal between realms. She paused long enough to ensure that her party was following, and-

Tarja overtook her, snatched the book out of Sandra’s hands, and ran even faster towards the gate, luring the monsters away from the rest of the party and, most importantly, Hadrian. Quinn carried their wizard through the gate, getting him up to the portal so he could do his thing, then ran back to take up a spot by Sandra’s side, blocking the path between the gate and Tarja.

They just had to buy Hadrian a little time. Tarja loosed arrows until she ran out, Quinn slammed his sword through anyone who got close, and Sandra used a pair of umbral daggers with surgical precision. When the creatures died, they simply vanished, so Sandra felt little guilt about tearing them apart in droves. They were constructs, not people.

“Almost done!” Hadrian shouted.

Sandra looked back to nod in confirmation. It was stupid, but she was tired. Looking away cost her a precious second of reaction time, and she nearly didn’t notice the critical blow that was coming right for her head.

“Look out!” Tarja yelled, lunging from ten feet away and tackling Sandra to the ground, knocking her out of the way of the attack with a split second to spare. As they hit the ground, the world blinked, and suddenly they were back in the plane they came from.

Tarja was laying on top of Sandra, covering her body in a defensive posture, but there were no more enemies. Sandra blinked and raised an eyebrow as she felt dense, warm padding beneath Tarja’s clothing.

Blushing, Tarja explained, “I tried to tell you, but… yeah. The Calistrians told me. The curse goes away for a little while if I, um… wet a diaper.”

“Noted,” Sandra said. She pushed Tarja off, rolled to the side, and got to her feet. The book was on the ground, dropped in the fighting, so she picked it up and dusted it off. “We got the book. Let’s go get some sleep. Good work, everyone.”

Tarja blinked, getting to her feet. “Sandra, wait!”

Fine. Might as well do this now. She wheeled on Tarja. “What?”

“I- I’m sorry. I apologize for lying to you. I was wrong, and I hurt you, and I’m sorry.”

Sandra balled a fist, but nodded. She wasn’t ready for the ‘F’ word yet, but she said, “I accept your apology.”

“But… How do I make it right?”

“You can’t.” Sandra wiped her eyes. They were wet, and her heart was pounding. She could tell she was losing control, just from speaking to Tarja for a few moments.

“Then-”

“You can’t,” Sandra repeated, harsher.

She started to storm off, putting space between her and the ranger.

Tarja ran to catch up. She could still run for a little while longer, before the curse affecting her motor skills kicked back in. “I just… it feels like-”

“NO!” Sandra yelled. She turned on Tarja. Her face felt hot. “Tarja, the last thing I want right now is to give a shit how you feel. If you really care about how I’m feeling right now, if you aren’t just trying to make yourself more comfortable, then you will stop talking right now and only speak to me when it is necessary to do your job.”

Tarja stood there, stunned, tears rushing to her eyes.

Good, Sandra thought, and then she felt disgusted with herself for thinking it. “I… I want to trust you again, Tarja. But I can’t. Not right now.”

The changeling opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. “When?”

Sandra didn’t answer.

What she needed was space. She needed room to breathe, room to calm down, and she wouldn’t get that while she was around Tarja.

She walked away.

 

...

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And of course I've got a Patreon and Subscribestar. Today I put out a new, patreon exclusive story riffing on some of the concepts in A Clockwork Orange - so, naturally, I titled the story 'A Clockwork Diaper'! My version is much kinkier and not nearly so dark.  

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[Silver]

This keeps getting better and better.

[PeculiarChangeling]

On 9/5/2021 at 6:31 PM, Silver said:

This keeps getting better and better.

Thank you. I'm very pleased with how the characters are fleshing out as the story goes on. ^^

[Bonsai]

I’m addicted to reading this! I love how the story events run rather fast and instead characters are slowly developed and change (grow) a little bit in each chapter.

[PeculiarChangeling]

Chapter 11

“I’m just saying, I think you should forgive her,” Hadrian conjured a ball of roiling thunder and launched it at the bandits. “She already apologized, like, ten times.”

“It’s more complicated than that.” Sandra called her cursed knife into her hand, flinging it at a nearby bandit who’d been cocky enough to wear a cape. Her knife pinned the cape to a tree, and she winced as a small cut opened on her arm. Right, trees are a living creature.

Hadrian shrugged, sidestepping an arrow and taking a little bottle out of his component pouch. He sprinkled a drop of something on Sandra, and her wounds began to close up, albeit slowly. “She’s your friend. She’s sorry. What’s complicated about it?”

A particularly beefy bandit with a greataxe lunged at the both of them, swinging his weapon ferociously. Sandra ducked back and Hadrian caught the attack on his mage armor, leaving room for Sandra to sidestep around the bandit and slice an umbral knife through the tendons on the back of his legs. The single attack wounded him critically, right in the sweet spot, and he went down with a spray of blood and scream of rage.

Sandra wiped off her face, scanning the battlefield. “It’s a matter of trust. She put us all at risk when she lied.”

There were a baker’s dozen bandits in total. Or, well, there had been, four of them were already down. Quinn was directly engaging with three, while Tarja loosed arrows from a vantage point in a tree, chipping away at their opponents with relative impunity.

One of the bandits, wielding a fairly impressive glinting sword, called, “Get the book and run!”

“Oooh.” Sandra smacked her forehead in realization. “They’re here for the ledger!”

She ducked an attack and stabbed a bandit in the armpit, then jumped five feet back to get closer to their pack horse.

Raising her voice, she called over to Quinn, “I told you to watch what you said at that pub!”

Whirling, Quinn’s lacey dress spun and flounced as he brought his hammer down. The attack struck so hard that it carried one bandit into the next and knocked both to the ground. “Sorry!”

“Just keep it in mind next time!”

Three black darts appeared in the air at Hadrian’s call, magic missiles that launched themselves with fervor at a nearby bandit. “See what I mean? Quinn made a mistake that put us at risk too, but you’re forgiving him!”

“It’s different.” Sandra called her cursed knife back to her hand, unpinning the bandit whose cape she’d skewered just in time for Tarja’s arrows to make a pincushion out of him.

Sandra could clock the bandit leader instantly from the magical glow on his gear. She waved her hand at the ground beneath him, a bit of innate magic turning the terrain slick and precarious, buying a window for Quinn to storm up behind him and lay down a beating with his hammer.

Let’s not let Quinn have all the fun, she thought, running in to take advantage of the leader’s precarious position. He tried–and failed–to split his attention between two targets, missing her feint and giving Sandra the opening to drive her dagger through a particularly tender area.

Only a handful of bandits remained, and they looked rather wary now that the bulk of their team had been taken out.

Sandra watched them all, doing a count in her head. Three standing, nine down… weren’t there thirteen of you a minute ago?

“Runner!” Hadrian called, pointing as one of the bandits sprinted away from the pack horse, a heavy book in tow. He’d slipped in and grabbed the ledger while they were busy with the rest of the combat.

Sneaky rat, Sandra thought.

“Got him!” Tarja called, aiming and loosing her arrows, two shots back-to-back.

The bandit went down, book tumbling from his grasp.

At that, the rest of the bandits fled. The battle was complete.

* * * Level Up * * *

“Mind grabbing that?” Sandra asked Quinn, pointing to the ledger. He nodded, jogging over to retrieve the book.

“Man, I don’t know what it is, but I’m feeling good,” Hadrian said, stretching out his arms. “Did that fight feel too easy to you?”

“Yeah, I’m not sure,” Sandra nodded. She felt it too, the sense that her practice, training, and most of all her experience had finally paid off in a big way. She just felt stronger than she had that morning. “I’d never say a fight was too easy, but it certainly wasn’t a challenge.”

“Anyways.” Hadrian looked at Sandra, waiting for her to make eye contact. “You can’t stay mad at Tarja forever. It’s bad for the party.”

“Don’t.” Sandra shook her head. “It’s not going to be forever, but I need time.”

He sighed. “Fine.”

Walking back with the ledger, Quinn called out, “I think this fight calls for a celebration!”

“It was just some bandits,” Sandra said. “Nothing too dangerous.”

“Nonsense. It was a momentous battle! We slayed the evil doers and saved the dusty old book! Tonight, we feast!”

“You want to feast every night,” Tarja smirked, putting aside her bow.

Quinn gave a toothy grin. “Well tonight we’ve got an excuse. Feasting is on me!”

Sandra paused before assenting. They could use the morale boost. “Tonight, we feast.”

While Hadrian checked everyone’s injuries and applied a little healing where he could, Sandra inspected the bodies of the bandits. Most held little of value, and nothing at all by way of identification. The leader was thoroughly dead, but he had had a journal along with his glimmering magical sword and a fancy, though mundane, ring. She happily lifted all three from him.

Most of the bandits were still breathing, albeit in bad shape. Once their weapons were confiscated, Sandra helped stabilize them all so they wouldn’t bleed out on the road.

“Suppose the city guard comes out this far?” Hadrian asked.

“Maybe, maybe not, but I think they’ve learned their lessons,” Sandra replied, looking at the barely-conscious bandits.

One of them had the wherewithal to string a few words together, mixed in with some coughs and painful wheezing. “Bunch of… diapered freaks!”

“Freaks who kicked your ass without even trying,” Sandra pointed out. “Trust me, you don’t want to find out what we do to enemies that actually annoy us.”

“We should get moving, in case they’ve got more friends,” Tarja said.

Hadrian opened his mouth, and from his expression Sandra knew what he was about to say. ‘If more show up, we’ll trounce them like we did the first group’. Catching Sandra’s eyes, though, he course corrected mid-sentence. “If more… I mean, Tarja has a good point.”

Sandra sighed. Tarja was right, but Sandra didn’t need Hadrian to play friendship matchmaker. “City’s not far, and we’ve got quests to turn in. Let’s start walking.”

They rolled into town like heroes, though their absurd costumes rendered them heroes of a comedy. Sandra’s visibly bulging diaper poked out from her clothes, Hadrian had stopped bothering to hide his latex and heels, and Quinn wore his dress without shame. Tarja was the only one able to cover up her cursed apparel, but she was arguably the most cursed one in the party.

Sandra told the city guards about the bandits they’d encountered. After establishing her guild credentials, she gave the guardsman the journal she’d found, directions up the path to where they’d had their fight, and an estimate of how many had gotten away.

That done, they were let through the gate without trouble.

Their next stop was the Calistrian temple, to unload the ledger. The evening’s holy debauchery had yet to start; stripping poles were still being cleaned and the all-you-can-eat-buffet in the corner was still just a series of empty metal trays over tea warmers. Janet was out and directing the placement of torches to light the shows.

“Can someone get Janet the ledger and go over the details of the mission with her while I go find Gwyndomere and–”

“I’ll do it!” Hadrian volunteered.

“Right, sure,” Sandra said. “Everyone else, just kill some time, I’ve got to go see a man about a curse.”

Hadrian rushed off to go talk to Janet–or, since she was in her skimpy dancing costume, it was probably appropriate to call her by Serendipity–and Sandra walked back to the high priest’s rectory, rapping on the door.

“Come in!” he called, his voice a low, sultry melody.

Sandra opened the door. The priest was sitting at an ornate wooden desk, leaning over a series of scrolls with an intent expression. He had a side window open, so that the sound of the street market outside could drift in as background noise to his work. Looking up at Sandra, he smiled.

“How went your quest?” Gwyndomere asked.

“We found what we were searching for,” Sandra replied, walking up and taking a seat across from him. “Nobody was seriously hurt or cursed any more than we already were. All told, it was a win.”

“No one was physically hurt,” he said.

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

Gwyndomere leaned forward, his expression restrained. “I’ve known you and yours for only a few fleeting moments, but even I can see the rifts forming. Your party is cracking.”

“That wasn’t because of the quest.” Sandra balled a hand into a fist, looking off to the side. “It would have happened no matter what we did.”

“Still. Take care, that you don’t break apart completely and… ah. Very good.”

Sandra blinked. “Excuse me?”

He ignored her for a moment, scooting his chair back and looking in the space beneath his desk where Sandra couldn’t see. “You’re improving, but don’t overuse your tongue. Restraint goes as far as inhibition.”

A priest of Calistra clambered out, wiping his mouth on his holy robes before bowing, first to Gwyndomere, then to Sandra. He mumbled, “Thank you.”

Sandra blinked. “I… was he…”

“A student in the art of fellatio,” Gwyndomere explained, as the priest hurried out of his rectory. “But never mind that. I am once again in need of your services, if we are to cure your cursed compatriot. With the ledger, we have one end of the spectrum of sensation; the epitome of profound boredom. Now we need the other end of that spectrum.”

That was good. Sandra liked talking about business, it was something she could focus on that didn’t feel confusing or out of her depth. “Tell me.”

…

“Another fetch quest?” Hadrian groaned, but beneath his complaint he was grinning. It was hard to be upset when they were flush with gold.

“I think that calls for another round!” Quinn added, cheerfully holding up his mug to signal the barmaid.

“It’s not really a fetch quest,” Sandra said. “I mean, we’re literally fetching something, but the High Priest made it sound like the hard part will be carrying it back, not just getting to it.”

“I’m glad for the work,” Hadrian said, “But why send us again? Surely he could have sent another party to do this while we were busy getting the ledger.”

“We’re uniquely situated to carry the relic on account of, well…” Sandra paused, glancing up as the tall, busty barmaid came by their table. “Pardon, could we get some of whatever you’ve got roasting over that fire? Our barbarian is hungry.”

The barmaid glanced at Quinn, who was as tall and busty as her, though the maid had longer hair. “Sure thing. And, dear,” she leaned in to Sandra, speaking quietly. “Your unmentionables are showing.”

Sandra glanced back at the waistband of her diaper, which was unmistakable peeking over the top of her pants. “I know, it’s a curse,” she explained, sighing. “But thanks for telling me.” At least it had self-cleaned before they came in to feast, she didn’t particularly want the barmaid telling her that she needed a change.

“Tsk,” the barmaid said, standing up straight. “What’s the plane coming to these days? When I was an adventurer, you just had to deal with good, old-fashioned dismemberment and torture. None of this extended humiliation. World’s gone mad, I tell you.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Quinn said.

“You’ll drink to anything,” Tarja pointed out, holding her own drink in both hands so that her trembling fingers wouldn’t cause it to spill.

“Anyways,” Sandra said. “He was vague on the details, but it sounds like we’re, eh… already afflicted in such a way that it will limit what the relic can do.”

“So it’s a sex thing,” Quinn said.

“Yeah. It’s a sex thing. We’ll be getting the exact properties of the artefact in two days time.”

Hadrian tilted his head. “Why then?”

“Because he told me two day’s time.” Sandra shrugged. “I didn’t press the subject. What I do know is that we’ll need to leave town again, to head up to a temple and cross into another realm.”

“Plane of order again?” Hadrian asked.

“No,” Sandra said. “It’s not even a proper plane, it’s too small. I couldn’t pronounce the name, it was in Celestial, but it’s a zone of… well, sex stuff.”

Quinn snorted. Everyone glanced at him, and he clarified, “It’s an erogenous zone.”

The whole table groaned.

…

Part of Sandra was tempted to use their two days to find another small quest. Surely there had to be something profitable to do around town while they waited, but when she brought this up to the party, Quinn only said, “Don’t call me Shirley.”

So, they took a break. They deserved it, anyways, after everything they’d been through, and it gave time for shopping.

With the coin from the last quest weighing down her pockets, Sandra went out to market. It was perhaps a bit conceited, but she wanted a new outfit. Her current clothes revealed her diapers a little too much, and it was time to fix that.

Her search, it seemed, was in vain. A dozen merchant stalls and twice as many outfits, and each of them proved capable of wardrobe malfunctions. Skirts grew too short to hide her diaper, and dresses seemed to constantly catch the wind, billowing up in her face. Pants slid down to expose the waistband, bodysuits shrunk until the outline of her diaper was plainly visible, and cloaks would always hang back without concealing anything.

She finally gave up after trying a toga, which simply slipped off her shoulder as she walked about the merchant’s tent, testing its fit. The other customers all gawked at her, nearly-naked, damp diaper sagging, and she retreated to the changing room in humiliated defeat.

Leather armor and a visible waistband would have to do.

Once that avenue was explored and dismissed, she turned her focus to practical matters. She had the party’s purse as well as her own cash to spend, and plenty of gear to pick up. Party rations were running low, and she had some ideas of how to equip herself as well.

There were shops aplenty with magical gear, but she went first to a market square a bit to the north of the city. It was well guarded; guild merchants paid for protection so they could sell their wares openly without fear of thieves, and so customers could rest easy knowing the only person who’d dip into their coin purse was the merchant they bought from.

A bard had taken up by the fountain in the square, wandering with a lute around his neck and a song in his throat. An inverted hat floated around his ankles, darting out to take coins from passing shoppers. When they paid, he sang them a complimentary couplet, weaving it perfectly into his song.

Sandra listened for a minute, but she’d heard better, and she didn’t see a reason to waste a copper coin on a compliment. She moved on, inspecting a cart of magical apparel. A pair of leather boots caught her eye, and the faint aura of transmutation over them caught her interest.

“The boots,” she asked. “Striding and Springing?”

“Ah, good eye,” the cart merchant said. “With these, you’ll be quick as a monk.”

“Monks can be pretty quick,” she said. “May I?”

With confidence that the city guards would stop any theft, the shopkeeper nodded. “Help yourself.”

She took them from the shelf, using a nearby stool to unlace her current boots so she could try the new ones on. While she did, a hat floated over to her, bumping against her leg.

“A coin, from the pretty elf?” the bard called. “Let me sing your praise, m’lady.”

“I’ve got no coin for you,” she replied. “I worked for this money, and I need to spend it practically, not on songs.”

The bard tsk’ed. “But you listened. Surely you can spare a copper piece for my trouble?”

She rolled her eyes at him, tying the laces on the first boot.

The hat bobbed away, but the bard struck a loud chord, calling out, “A song, then! For the elf with the callous heart!”

Sandra shut her eyes and set her jaw. Of course. Complements for those who pay, mockery for those who don’t. And given the crinkling waistband protruding from her pants, she knew just what the mockery was going to be about.

She ignored him and resumed trying on the boots, while his song started up, particularly loud.

“A show of hands, then, who all could tell she was an adventurer just by the smell?” he called. That got chuckles, and when the bard broke into verse, it had more listeners than any of his previous works. Nobody wanted to be a bard’s target, but watching someone else get eviscerated bought him a rapt audience.

The tune was jaunty and upbeat, the sort of thing that could get a whole tavern singing along if the patrons had enough liquor to lubricate their voices. “Long live Sandra the heartless, a near-escape failure’s her greatest success! Scoffing and spitting is what she does best, her cleverest plans, a hunch and a guess, but still in the guild she lingers!”

Sandra scowled and shot him a glare, but the lyrics surprised her. The insults were…not totally off base, but were oddly toothless. When she’d seen bards grow vengeful in the past, they cut with wit like a razor, but he had only a dagger.

“Your song sucks,” she called, standing straight and testing the boots with a gentle hop. She felt light as air, a spring in her step that quickened her pace.

“Ah, you think of your mother!” he called back. A cheap joke, but the crowd laughed as he rolled into the second verse. “Her party’s a lot of miserable fools, her only true skill’s using friends as her tools, her confidants hate her, they think that she’s cruel, they think her as thick as an ogrekin’s drool, but still in her party, they linger!”

Okay, that was too far. Insult her, that was fine, but insult her party and she couldn’t let it stand.

“This is what passes for comedy these days?” she demanded, marching up to him with perhaps a bit more haste than she’d intended. She told herself it was the boots, not her anger. “A stock verse? Where’s the wit in that?”

“Stock?” he asked, tilting his head innocently, strumming the chorus out and speaking in a light rhythm. The song hadn’t ended, it was only in reprieve. “You wound me, but I suppose that’s to be expected from Sandra the Heartless.”

“I’ve heard better cold readings from a two bit fortune teller,” she snapped.

“Why,” he said, “What makes you think I haven’t tailored my insults just for you?”

“Because, you haven’t mentioned my diaper!” she snapped.

Everyone watching, which by now seemed to be the entire courtyard, stared. Then the laughter started.

The bard flashed her a devilish grin. “Witless as I’d hoped,” he whispered for her ears only, before raising his voice. “If you insist! Long live Sandra the heartless! She’s not potty trained and of that she’ll attest! Filling her trousers is what she does best. She’ll only change when her diapers are messed, but still, the smell, it lingers!”

Sandra flushed bright red, feeling the utter fool; she’d fallen right into his trap. Just commenting on her diaper might have gotten him some cheap laughs, but baiting her into shouting it out for all to hear first–that made his punchlines hit all the harder.

She whirled and started to march away, but the boots still needed to be paid for. She had to trudge back to the cart and count out payment, all the while the bard repeated the chorus, convincing the crowd to sing along with ‘filling her trousers is what she does best’. The boots paid for, she set her shoulders and trudged out of the courtyard, hiding how red her cheeks had become.

The jokes about her diaper brought up her most self-conscious thoughts, but the embarrassment faded quickly. This was the wizard’s doing, if only indirectly, setting her up for humiliation.

No, what ate away at Sandra long after the blush was gone from her cheeks was the second verse. The one about her party. It’d been tailored to rankle her, and it had worked because she feared he was right.

They didn’t trust her, and with good reason. Whether the bard had known, or whether his song had been a guess, the shoe fit her perfectly.

She kept trudging, head down, until she couldn’t hear the market anymore. She’d gone from one courtyard to another, though this one was populated with food and creature comforts, everything from fresh fruit to pastries to roasted meat spinning over spits.

Sandra was so caught up in her brooding that she almost didn’t notice Quinn until he stepped right up in front of her.

“Sandra!” he said, clapping her on the shoulder. He wasn’t in his armored dress, instead wearing trousers and a loose travelling shirt that almost hid his breasts. “Turkey?”

He offered her a turkey leg that was clutched in his left hand–of course, he’d bought two, though the other was gnawed almost to the bone.

She shook her head. “Weren’t you with Hadrian?”

“He had business at the temple,” Quinn said. “Something about Janet.”

Sandra considered the time. Janet–Serendipity–would be on stage right about now. At least he’s having a better afternoon than me, she thought.

“You’re in a foul mood,” Quinn commented. “Do you need–”

“NO!” Sandra snapped. “I don’t need a diaper change, and I’d appreciate if people stopped bringing it up.”

“Someone to talk to.” Quinn finished.

“Oh.” She looked away, and nearly turned him down, but she couldn’t quite say no.

“Here.” Quinn offered her the turkey leg. “Find a place to sit. I’ll be back.”

“I’m not taking your food,” Sandra said. “You paid for it.”

“Hunger makes all moods worse,” Quinn recited. It sounded like old orcish wisdom.

She took it, and looked around for a bench. Indecisively, she took a bite of the turkey leg once she’d sat down.

It was good. Crispy skin, tender flesh…she did feel a bit better with some food in her belly.

Quinn returned a minute later with two wooden tankards of ale, foaming over the rim. He passed one to her. “Drink.”

“Quinn, you don’t need to mother m–”

“Drink. Food in your belly, ale in your heart, then we talk.”

She took the tankard and sipped, foam bubbling on her lip like a mustache.

“You’re upset about Tarja,” Quinn said. “That she lied to you. I understand how you feel.”

“It’s not that,” Sandra looked away. “I…I mean, I am. But it’s more why she lied.”

Quinn nodded. “You take on too much guilt. It’s not your fault she was cursed.”

“Maybe.” Sandra looked down at her reflection in the ale. “But it is my fault that she didn’t tell me.”

“No, it’s–”

“Yeah, I know. I know I’m playing the fool, that my thoughts are ridiculous. I’m still having them,” she said. “I’m not strong enough, not smart enough, for her to trust me. Tarja didn’t say anything because she thought I couldn’t take it. She thought I couldn’t deal with the stress of knowing she was struggling. And…”

She trailed off. Quinn listened, patiently.

“And if I say it’s no problem, that she’s forgiven, then I admit she was right.”

Sandra drained the rest of the tankard and set it aside.

“Sandra,” Quinn said.

“I know. I already said it, I’m being ridiculous.”

“No. Well, yes, but–no.” He shook his head. “You’re missing the point of forgiving her.”

“Sure,” Sandra shrugged.

“Did you know I had six sisters?” Quinn asked.

She was taken off guard by the non sequitur. “No.”

“All older than me. I think my mum wished I was a girl, so she’d have a complete set.” He chuckled, glancing down. “They taught me to fight. You can imagine–one boy with six older sisters, I had trouble keeping up. We wrestled, we roughhoused, it’s probably why I was such a quick study in the army.”

“Where are you going with this?” Sandra asked.

“When I was fourteen, one of my sisters stabbed me in the chest with a pitchfork. Almost died. We’d been playing at being knights in the barn, and, well…yeah. She stabbed me in the chest. With a pitchfork.”

“You mentioned.”

“I’m not a bard, alright?” he shrugged. “I didn’t talk to her for a week. She kept insisting it was my own fault, since any blind idiot could have blocked, she didn’t really mean to hit me. And I thought she was right.”

Sandra looked up at him. “So what’d you do?”

“She had this boy she was sweet on, brought him back to the barn for a roll in the hay. I tossed a beehive in there and shut the door.” He chuckled. “I swear, you’ve never heard a scream like when someone’s been stung on his–”

“Is your story going somewhere?” Sandra asked. “I’m not siccing bees on Tarja.”

“Oh. Yeah, please don’t.” Quinn shook his head. “Especially since I’d be the guy in that…never mind. My point is, I wasn’t mad because of what she’d done, I was mad because what it said about me. I didn’t handle it well. Before then, we’d been best friends, but after, we hated each other for years. Don’t repeat my mistake.”

“I’m not ready to put this behind me,” Sandra said.

“Then don’t, but don’t let your friendship die. Tarja made a mistake, but she’s not your enemy.” He paused. “Do you want me to talk to her?”

“And tell her about that time you got a guy’s dick stung?” Sandra asked. “No thanks. I’ll talk with her.”

“Good!” He clapped her on the back and pulled Sandra into a hug. “See? Food, ale, talk. It works.”

“Uh-huh.” Sandra choked for air and pushed out of the hug. She got to her feet, only now noticing the bundle tied to Quinn’s back. “What’s that?”

“Swapped out my hammer for something a bit more…ranged,” he grinned. “I’ve got more shopping to do. See you back at the tavern?”

“See you there.”

…

She beat everyone back to the tavern, waiting for Tarja. The ranger came in only a little while later, legs shaking.

I wonder how much longer she’ll be able to walk? Sandra thought.

Standing from her seat, Sandra walked over to her party member. Her friend. “Tarja.”

“Sandra,” Tarja said, surprised. “Did you hear something about the mission?”

“No.” Sandra pointed to the table. “Take a seat.”

“What’s–”

“Just take a seat, please,” Sandra sighed.

Tarja walked over, sitting down opposite the tankard Sandra had ordered.

Sandra sat, and slid the beer to her. “I got this for you.”

“You’re not thirsty?”

“I already had one.” Sandra avoided eye contact. “I’m not going to forgive you today.”

Tarja winced, as though she’d been struck. “Please, Sandra. I don’t know what you want.”

“One week.” She looked up at Tarja. “That’s what I want. In one week, we will forget this ever happened. Wipe it from the ledger. Okay?”

The ranger opened her mouth, shut it. Frowned. “Why one week?”

“I did the math in my head,” Sandra said. “A week from now, you won’t be able to walk. In a week, you wouldn’t have been able to keep hiding this from me, even if I was totally blind to the signs.”

Tarja took a drink. “Do you think the Calistrians will be able to fix it?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll figure something out.”

“I don’t want to be a burden to the party.”

Sandra looked her in the eye. “Never. Maybe we’ll need to care for you, but you’ll never be a burden.”

Tarja smiled weakly. “Thank you.”

Sandra got to her feet. “No need. It’s just how it is. You’re my friend.”

 

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[PeculiarChangeling]

Chapter 11.5

Hadrian slipped into the temple, cautiously checking that he hadn’t been followed. He pulled his long coat around himself tighter. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, per say, but still…privacy was a virtue. He was here to watch, not to be seen.

Shuffling through the crowd, he kept his head down, making his way towards the section he’d come to see.

Her section.

Serendipity performed beautifully. Because it was beauty he was here for, not anything more lurid–he had taste. This wasn’t a strip club, it was a temple to one of the gods. The fact that the priests and priestesses would flash their tits and expose themselves for donations meant nothing.

He took a seat right below her, surging with…artistic appreciation…as he watched Serendipity dance. Tonight she wore panties and a silk scarf that drooped down over her chest, always teasing at showing her nipples without giving a full view, save for when someone in the audience made a donation to the gods–then the scarf would pull back, revealing her perfect, supple breasts for a tantalizing moment.

She was beautiful, muscles toned and lithe, and every inch of her made him want to burst out of the catsuit that clung to his body, and especially to burst out of the diaper he’d been trapped in. There weren’t many inches of her, her eye level was around his belly button, but that only made her stocky body more enticing.

While he watched, entranced, an elf next to him took note. Leaning over, she slid a hand beneath his long coat, running it over the smooth, almost frictionless material of his catsuit. “When do you perform, darling? You’re gorgeous.”

“I don’t–” he started, flushing pink at the interest. Her hand made him uncomfortable, he wasn’t used to this sort of attention from strangers, but he didn’t know how to explain. “I’m not–”

She slid her hand down, running it over the bulge of padding between his legs. She seemed surprise at the crinkle of padding there, but that didn’t stop her from feeling him there, pressing in an almost-probing way, reminding him that he’d been rearranged down there. “Are you sure? You–”

A strong arm caught the elf’s hand, pulling it back. “You do not touch,” Serendipity warned. “You’ve been warned about this, Marigold.”

“He said he’s not a performer.” Marigold’s tone was sultry, and she scooted posessively closer to Hadrian, using her other hand to stroke between his legs, over the material of his cursed catsuit.

Hadrian’s cheeks flushed pinker, while his almost-nude protector pulled Marigold to her feet. “Leave, now.”

A moment of heat passed between them, but Marigold pulled away. “You’re no fun.”

She left, and Serendipity addressed everyone who’d been watching her performance. “I’m sorry for the interruption. Are you alright, wizard?”

He was momentarily hurt that she didn’t use his name, before recognizing that it was to conceal his identity. He was just another visitor to the temple. “I’m fine, I was just…surprised that she mistook me as a performer.”

“You’re dressed for it, certainly,” Serendipity quipped.

His lips twitched, and he looked away from her. “Well…”

She bent over at the waist, leaning forward so her face was close to his. In order to reach, she had to stand on tip-toe. “Would you like to?”

He blinked. “I can’t dance.”

“That can be worked around. I asked what you wanted, not what you could do.”

Hadrian swallowed. Being up on stage, all eyes on him…the thought was mortifying. Yet even as he considered it, he found himself standing, shucking out of his coat, accepting Serendipity’s hand and moving up onto the stage.

From his position, the audience seemed to melt away. He could hear them, but the light turned the crowd into points of darkness. Not a thousand observers judging him, just a rapt audience, wanting to see him. His catsuit glittered like stardust in the light, showing the shape of his whole body from his neck to bulging diaper to the high heels that sat permanently on his feet.

Her hands flashed, and he heard her voice whisper in his ear, though her lips barely moved. “Follow my lead. You can remove these with the release bar, they’re all for show.”

He meant to ask her, “What?” but as he tried to form the question, he felt magic blurring around his mouth. With the most awkward timing imaginable, the pacifier he’d been cursed with plopped between his lips, rendering speech impossible. He couldn’t protest or argue with words.

Standing below him, Serendipity moved her hands again, and around one wrist he felt a metallic click. As he looked down, the click was met on the other wrist–a pair of shiny mithril manacles cuffed him to the dancing pole, and…

And he could dance. He felt a surge of understanding hit him, magical intuition that guided his body. He turned, facing the audience, sliding his hands above his head and rotating his hips. He bent his knees, getting low, and then raised a latex-covered leg over the pole to spin around it.

As the calls and coins of the crowd reached him, and he felt the pole between his legs press up against the front of his diaper, he surged again. It wasn’t beauty, the pretense could be dropped, this was just hot.

Serendipity danced around him, sharing the pole, moving perfectly in sync. Even without magical enhancements, she was the more graceful of the pair, so she followed his actions, dancing to him because she could easily keep up.

He tried to be subtle, though how effective that subtlety was could be up for debate, as he chose his moves to include as much contact between his diaper and the pole as possible, seeking out the friction and sensation. He surged to escape the confines of his diaper, his catsuit, to find a room with Serendipity or just to have her take him on stage. Dancing with her was more alluring than watching by far.

And there was no point denying it–the attention drove him wild. He felt attractive, he felt powerful, he felt wanted. A little part of him grappled with how he’d changed, physically, how he wanted Serendipity inside of him, but complex matters of identity were beyond his thoughts. He was for that moment a sexual icon, a paragon of grace and maybe just a hint of beguilement.

In time, a new dancer came, signalling the end to their performance. Serendipity removed the cuff around his wrist and slipped it free of the pole, then winked at him and snapped it right back in place, dragging him down the stage, towards the temple’s rectory.

Once they were alone, she stood on tiptoe and reached up, freeing the pacifier from his lips. “You’d have made a delicious priest,” she said.

“I… that… I…” he stammered. “Gods.”

The gnome priestess pressed herself against him, looking up. “You brought in plenty of donations for our god tonight,” she purred. “How would you like her servant to reward you?”

Her expression left precisely zero room for misinterpretation. “I don’t…” he mumbled. “I can’t take this off.”

“We’re in the temple of Calistria,” she reminded. “We can work around that.”

Hadrian flushed pinker. “I’ve…”

“I know all your curses, Hadrian,” she said. “We can work around that, too.”

At a loss for words, he just nodded, vigorously.

Serendipity leaned back, pulling on his cuffs, and towed Hadrian to bed.

Fin

Chapter 12

 

“So…is this it?” Quinn scratched his head, inspecting the circle.

Sandra looked down at the runes marked into the floor, drawn with salt and oil. The priests had been very nice about everything, and had followed the instructions sent by Gwyndomere to a T. “It should be. Why?”

“I suppose I’m underwhelmed,” Quinn shrugged. “Last time we needed to travel across planes, there was a test, and a ritual, I had to do paperwork, it was a whole big thing. Just having someone else do a ritual seems too ea–”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Hadrian snapped. “Never say that a quest seems too easy.”

Sandra didn’t care as much about superstition or jinxes, but she didn’t want her people letting their guard down. “What Hadrian said is true. We’ve still got to traverse this dimension, get the relic, and get out. It’s never ‘too easy’.”

They’d only needed a day to travel one city over, where a Temple of Desna sat. They were on good terms with the Calistrians, and had agreed to put together the ritual circle to transport the party to the plane where their relic sat.

“It bothers me that we don’t know what it looks like,” Tarja said. “What if we overlook it?”

“The relic’s on a pedestal,” Sandra said, “In a large cathedral built specifically to house it, or…it’s in a building made to house it, the details were unclear. We can’t miss it, though, is the point.”

“If you insist, but it still bothers me.”

“Bothered or not, we should get moving,” Sandra said, nodding to the priest waiting off to the side. “It might be a hike to our goal and waiting won’t do us any favors.”

The priest stepped forward, wiping his hands on an oil-soaked cloth tied to his waistband. “Just sit down within the circle and try not to move,” he explained. “You may feel a small pinch behind the bridge of your nose. Sandra, please hold this, you’ll be acting as the tether from this plane to the next.”

He held out a small gemstone, which she accepted. The four of them sat, Tarja needing help from Quinn, her legs so shaky that she couldn’t easily sit without just flopping over. They had all their weapons, gear, and magical accouterments in tow. The priest crouched to begin the ritual, and Sandra asked, “How will we know when it sta–”

She felt a pinch and her vision flashed white. A moment later, she found herself sitting in another plane.

“Never getting used to that,” Quinn grunted, pushing to his feet. “Where are we?”

Sandra looked around. They’d appeared inside some sort of unlit room, save for a tiny glow from the gemstone she’d been given. Thanks to her darkvision, she could see around the space, but there was no obvious exit. In front of her, there was just a plain wall made from enormous oak boards.

“Here, buddy,” Hadrian said, coaxing out his familiar. A light shone around the space, making it easier to see.

“Ah!” Quinn yelped. Sandra spun and looked, in time to see him swing his hammer down with crushing force, ripping the head off an enormous bear.

An enormous…teddy bear.

“What a beast,” Hadrian quipped. “I’m shocked you defeated it.”

“Hey, we’ve fought teddy bears before,” Quinn shot back. “I’m not taking my chances.”

Sandra pocketed the gemstone and looked around a little more. Other stuffed animals were scattered through the room, all of them life-size, but still clearly toys–they weren’t taxidermy, they were fabric stuffed with lumpy wads of cotton.

The room clearly had no doors, and the walls were high enough that the whole party would have to stand on each other’s shoulders to reach the top. It had no exits, though the round, domed roof was built with hinges that…

“Ah,” Sandra said, realizing. “We’re in a toy chest.” Now that she’d recognized it, she could also see the brass keyhole on the opposite wall from the hinges, large enough that she could reach inside with her arm without ever touching the sides.

“What’s an enormous toy chest doing in a pocket dimension dedicated to, uh, sexual proclivities?” Tarja asked.

Sandra looked down at herself, her diaper poking out from her armor. Then she looked over at Quinn, in his pretty princess dress. “Take a guess.”

“We probably appeared here because it aligned with our curses,” Hadrian suggested.

“Let’s hope it’s not locked,” Sandra said, conjuring an umbral pair of climber’s spikes in her hands. Walking up to the wall with the keyhole, she dug one of the spikes into the wood and tested it. The tool held her weight, and she grinned. “I’ll be up in just a moment. Quinn, how much weight can you lift?”

“With the right spells, quite a lot,” Quinn said. “Give me a moment.”

She began scaling the wall, dangling from her spikes. Once she reached the keyhole, she inspected it–too narrow for her to climb through, but she could reach inside and feel around for the pins. Shifting the umbral hooks so she was standing atop them, precariously balanced, she reached inside with both arms and got to work.

It was the strangest lockpicking experience of her life, but the comically oversized pins proved easy to pick. The chest unlocked with a little pop, an airgap appearing between the base of the lid and the top of the chest’s main section.

Reconjuring her hooks back in her hands, she used the keyway as a foothold, climbing up the rest of the way. Once up, she grunted and held on with one arm while she fished in her bag, coming out with a length of durable silk rope, one of three such loops she always carried with her.

“Quinn, I want you to climb up here with me and open the chest, you’re the only one here who’s strong enough.” she said, tying the rope around her other hook. Hopefully, it’d take Quinn’s weight. Adjusting her grip, she hung on, waiting for him to come join her.

The hook trembled but held as he scaled the side of the chest, reaching the top and dangling next to Sandra.

Once up to the side, he unslung the hammer from his back, sliding the handle into the gap beneath the chest lid. Using the magically reinforced handle as a wedge, he pushed down, creating enough space that he could get an arm in, and then another, pulling his feet up so he could push up with his hole body.

Exhaling sharply, he managed to push up to one knee, holding up the enormous chest lid like the weight of the world.

“Come on,” Sandra called down, getting up over the edge and double-securing the rope.

“A little speed’d be appreciated,” Quinn grunted, sweat building on his brow.

Hadrian jumped ahead, while Tarja hesitated for a moment. Sandra recognized the expression on her face. Once her diaper was wet, Tarja’s agility returned and she scaled the rope quickly.

All four of them up, Sandra shifted the rope so everyone else could slide down, waiting till the last moment to leave herself. Quinn shrugged and dropped the lid, slid to the side, and fell, landing in a pile of lace and petticoats next to Sandra.

“Okay,” Sandra said, dusting herself off. They were in a room large enough to serve as an arena, though her darkvision didn’t extend far enough to make out details, and Hadrian’s familiar, Rocky, didn’t cast enough light to really show off the room. “Let’s find a way out of here, get outside, and then we should be able to see the building the relic’s held in.”

“Sure,” Hadrian said. “Though…what kind of building would have a house-sized toy chest inside it?”

“I’m trying not to worry about that,” Sandra admitted, walking along the side of the chest while she wrapped up her rope. “Let’s hope whoever’s place this is, they don’t…”

The lights came on.

Dammit, maybe I should care about jinxing us after all, Sandra considered. The room came to life, and Sandra’s fears were confirmed.

Bright, colorful paint hung on the walls, and the door on the far side of the room was painted with puffy clouds. A changing table tall enough for giants, but only wide enough for people the size of dolls, sat against one wall. Across it, a similarly scaled set of cribs, and a playpen, and all the furniture one might expect from a nursery.

Only…that wasn’t right. The cribs had cuffs dangling from each corner. The high chairs had locks, and a hole in the bottom of each seat. Even the changing table had leather straps.

Sandra swallowed. “All in favor of getting out of here as fast as possible?”

“Yeah, let’s–”

The door began to open. Grabbing Hadrian by the collar, Sandra ran on impulse, leading the whole party around the corner of the chest before the enormous figure could walk inside.

“Hello, dears.” The high, sweet voice drifted across the room. “I know I heard you, where are you hiding?”

Sandra stuck her head around the side. The woman who’d walked in was huge, fifty feet tall if Sandra measured against herself. She wore her hair loose, smelled vaguely of cookies even from across the room, and had an apron that hung over her extremely ample breasts.

She also had fangs, lest anyone in the party assume she was harmless.

“We’ve got to get to the door,” Sandra hissed. “Hadrian, how much invisibility do you have prepared?”

“Not enough for the whole party,” he whispered back.

“Can you cast it on yourself and Quinn? Tarja and I are better at stealth.”

Hadrian pursed his lips and nodded, focusing on a spot of magic. He vanished, and a moment later Quinn vanished with him.

“You two split up, take the sides of the rooms,” Sandra hissed. “If you can, try to make a distraction once you’re across, Tarja–move!”

The enormous figure moved with speed across the floor, right towards their side of the toy chest. Tarja ran with Sandra around to the back of the toy chest, ducking behind together.

“Don’t you want Mommy to play with you?” she asked, her voice unnaturally soothing for all the fear saturating the room.

Sandra held her breath, listening. A second passed, and then ‘Mommy’ turned, moving away. She sighed, relieved that they’d not been found.

“Aha!” Mommy declared, and a second later a throaty cry came through the room.

That’s Quinn, Sandra realized, sticking her head out. The enormous Mommy was holding something up in her hand, something invisible to Sandra’s eyes.

“There you are, were you trying to play pretend?” she boomed. “Like Mommy couldn’t see you, my pretty little dolly. Let’s get you dressed up, okay?”

“Let me go!” Quinn yelled, his voice echoing from the space in the being’s hand. She just stood straight, carrying him over to one of the changing tables.

Crap, Sandra thought. How are we going to fight this thing?

It could see through illusions, it seemed, and was more than strong enough to manhandle Quinn. Fighting it directly would be as foolish as battling an army, or an ancient dragon.

They’d have to be clever, but Sandra couldn’t see any obvious way to trick the Mommy-beast either.

“My goodness, you don’t have a diaper on at all!” Mommy declared, fiddling with the leather straps on the changing table. “What were you going to do when you have an accident, just ruin your pretty little dress? Let’s get that taken care of.”

“Damn you!” Quinn shouted invisibly.

Sandra considered her options. Mommy was distracted for the moment, but only for a moment. They had to be quick.

She considered her gear, and took out her hank of silk rope. “Tarja,” she whispered. “Think we can tangle her up?”

Tarja nodded, getting the idea. Taking one end of the rope, she ran with Sandra, moving silently across the nursery-dungeon floor, creeping up behind the monster.

“First we put the baby on the diaper,” Mommy said in a singsong voice, while Quinn shouted in annoyance and frustration.

Sandra nodded to her friend, moving the rope behind the monster’s ankles, arranging an enormous slipnoose to tangle up the monster’s feet.

“Then we put the diaper on the baby!” Mommy declared. “And just to be sure you don’t wriggle out of it, a little special dose of Mommy Magic will keep it nice and snug until it’s time for a change.”

“I’ll go cut him loose,” Sandra whispered. “Get ready to pull the trap on my signal.”

This would be dangerous. If her plan didn’t work, Mommy would just capture her right alongside Quinn, and then the odds of escape would grow even worse.

Silently, she clambered up the side of the changing table, pulling herself up next to where she knew Quinn was - though all she could see was an invisible shape beneath leather straps. She waved her arms, using the motion to hide the fact that she’d dropped a knife by her feet, right next to where she guessed Quinn’s arms were.  “Hey!”

Mommy tilted her head. “Oh, did you have a friend?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Sandra said. “A friend. I’m here for whatever it is you want to do to me!”

“Well isn’t that nice,” Mommy said. “Let’s just–”

“AAAAGH!” Quinn roared, becoming visible as he struck Mommy right in the face, clinging to her hair and driving punches squarely into her nose.

Too fast, Sandra thought, shouting, “Tarja, now!”

The plan barely worked, but Sandra was fine with ‘barely’. Tarja pulled the rope tight while Mommy stumbled back, wincing as Quinn hit her, again and again. Her arms pinwheeled, and with her legs all tied up, she fell.

“Run!” Sandra yelled, leaping down to the ground from atop the changing table. Together, the three of them ran for the door, while behind them Mommy struggled to kick off the binding around her legs.

The three of them scampered out the door, and as they did, a quartet of horses set with bit and bridle appeared in front of them.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Sandra jumped on the nearest, holding back just long enough to ensure that the rest of her party mounted theirs. “Hadrian, you on?”

“I’m on!” Hadrian called. “Ride!”

The whole party laid on speed, spurring the conjured horses forward as fast as they’d go. Sandra only then took in their surroundings; they were in a massive hallway of some sort of demonic home–each room she could see as they rode past contained some type of dungeon or another, where half-corporeal dreams and images were held in place by other beings as large and unsettling as Mommy had been.

“Up there!” Tarja called, pointing. A set of double doors lay ahead, with glass windows at what would be the eyeline for Mommy. Through the glass, Sandra could see sky, which told her it was an exit.

Behind them, she heard a lumbering stomp and risked a glance over her shoulder. Mommy was coming after them, and she looked furious, wielding a leather-padded spanking paddle in one hand that was longer than Sandra was tall.

“How are we getting through?” Hadrian asked.

Sandra put together a plan in a matter of heartbeats. The door had a latch on it, rather than a knob, which meant they had a chance. She called two instructions, one to Hadrian, one to Quinn, and then braced herself for some quick maneuvering.

Quinn pulled out his earthbreaker hammer, took aim for a moment, then flung it like a shot put throw. It flew with inhuman accuracy, enhanced by a spell from Hadrian, and hit the door handle squarely on the latch.

The door popped open, and Quinn’s hammer returned to his hands.

“Go!” Sandra called, steering her horse through the narrow gap in the doors, barely watching where they were going.

Galloping forward, the party barely managed to stop in time before they plowed right over a cliff’s edge. Tarja called out, “Woah!” and Sandra looked forward, the precipice only a few paces ahead.

Pulling hard on the reins, she motioned for the whole party to stop. Their mounts nickered and protested, shying away from the sheer drop.

Sandra looked back. The door to the enormous house snapped shut. “It looks like we’ll need to find another way back,” she commented, finally taking a moment to absorb their surroundings.

The dimension was Golarion-like, but it was certainly not Golarion. The terrain undulated and changed too rapidly, too wildly, untamed and unconcerned with the natural laws that dictated growth on a mortal plain. Mountains grew next to jungle grew next to desert, and from their vantage point up high Sandra could see a dozen different biomes all within a day’s ride.

She could also see the creatures. Animals, beasts, magical entities that stretched the bounds of being physically plausible. What she thought was a flock of hovering birds were, on second glance, a swarm of animated cat o’ nine tails, floating through the air like jellyfish. Slithering things moved on the jungle floor below the canyon drop, barely visible in the edges of her movement.

And rising up to face them was an enormous dragon. Its scales were milky white with streaks of opal blue, each one larger than Sandra’s hand spread wide, and though it flapped its wings, the movement seemed not to cause a stir in the air.

Tarja drew her bow and Quinn his hammer, but Sandra raised her hand, stepping down from the saddle and approaching a step towards the dragon. They couldn’t fight this beast and win, but nor did it seem to want to fight them.

She looked in the dragon’s glassy eyes, pools of lapis lazuli that betrayed consciousness but not thought. It stared back at her, unblinking.

“It’s a dream dragon,” Hadrian whispered.

Sandra had never heard of them before, but she spoke softly in response. “I know.”

The dragon finally blinked, turning to float away. A wash of cold purpose filled Sandra, indistinct but meaningful. Without knowing how, she had a sudden memory of the world they were in, a sudden understanding. It was imperfect, as though she’d seen the paths only in dreams that were now fleeting in her waking mind, but she knew where they needed to go.

“The relic is this way,” she turned, pointing up the snow-capped mountain to their right. “Along the right pass.”

“Sandra,” Tarja said, concerned.

“What?” Sandra asked, her tail swishing from side to side with uncertainty. Her… tail. She looked back and saw a white-blue tail that poked through a hole in her pants, matching the dream dragon’s opalescent sheen. “I, uh…”

“It’ll probably go away soon,” Hadrian suggested. “I think it’s just a low level spell.”

“Right,” Sandra replied, shaking her head. “We…we should keep moving. Get this mission over with.”

Turning, she saddled back up. The saddle had enough room for her new tail to curl up without getting in the way, a relief since she’d otherwise have to walk or stand in the saddle the whole way.

They rode along the edge of the cliff face, making their way up the slow grade that led towards the mountain. Sandra had expected to see the structure containing the relic, but all she could see on the old stone outcrop ahead was greenery and life.

Looking back, she saw that the house behind them was no longer there, only light tree cover.

Nearby, she saw other paths, illusory and shifting. When she glanced away and looked back, she could swear that the trails had changed, shifting like snakes whenever they weren’t being observed.

But she knew the way. They were heading towards the relic.

They passed other structures, each visible only for fleeting moments until they’d rode by. Some buildings seemed rather plain, others were plainly unnatural, temples built to house the carnal desires of men. Sandra could just barely hear the sounds from inside, some of pleasure, some of terror, some of both.

“Hadrian,” she said. “This is no normal pocket dimension, is it?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied. “It’s too ephemeral.”

“What does that mean?” Quinn asked.

“That we need to be on our guard,” Sandra supplied.

“No, I mean–’Ephemeral’. What’s that word mean?”

“Transient,” Hadrian said. “It doesn’t stay the same. It’s like–”

“A dream,” Sandra finished. “I think this dimension is fueled by, well…Golarian’s collective pool of wet dreams.”

“That’s–”

“Quiet,” Tarja snapped.

To the party’s credit, they didn’t question her urgency. Every one of them fell silent.

Tarja put a finger to her lips, listening for a moment, then whispered, “Hag.”

At once, all four of them were ready for battle–weapons drawn or conjured, prepared for battle.

Ahead, they finally saw the creature, a stooping hag with curled goat horns and long, white hair. In a breathy, hushed voice, Tarja added, “Dreamthief.”

“Well then we’re fine, we’re not dreaming,” Quinn suggested in a stage whisper.

“I don’t think she cares about that,” Sandra said. “Get ready to–”

The hag’s head turned, eyes locking on Sandra’s.

“RUN!” Sandra shouted, turning and spurring her mount into the woods, no longer following any dreamlike destination.

They fled for the second time in as many hours, galloping away from the Hag as it shrieked and pursued, chasing them right into a trap.

Sandra might have caught it if she’d been paying closer attention, but as it was, she didn’t notice how the ground sloped down subtly, slicker and more unstable, until the earth shifted beneath them. The slight slippery grade gave way to a sheer, straight drop, hemmed in by muddy walls that offered no purchase.

A pulse of magic dispelled their conjured horses while they fell down, down, down into the deep pit.

By the time Sandra realized the trap, she’d already hit the bottom, forty feet below the surface and surrounded by vertical walls. The ground had formed a funnel, forcing them down here, into…

“Where exactly are we?” she asked, looking up. She could just make out the frame of the hag, skirting around the edge of the pit, hissing down at them. With one last shriek of frustration, the hag turned and left.

“If this isn’t the hag’s trap,” Sandra said, glancing around warily. “What did we fall into?”

Beneath her, the ground shifted, sliding away. She sank deeper, and her tail brushed against…

She swallowed.

“I don’t mean to alarm anyone,” she said, quietly. “But…don’t move, and don’t panic.”

Hadrian sat up sharply, alarmed. “What?”

“Shh,” Sandra repeated sharply. “It’s asleep, for now. Don’t wake it up.”

“What is it?” Tarja asked quietly. “It feels slick.”

“I’m not sure exactly, but I can feel it moving,” Sandra said. “It’s made of tentacles, and given where we are…”

She didn’t need to finish the thought. Nobody wanted the sex-dimension tentacle monster to wake up.

“So what’s the plan?” Quinn asked.

“We can’t climb out of the mud pit we fell down,” Sandra said. The tentacles beneath Sandra shifted slightly, and she sank an inch further into the mass.  “And none of us can fly. We need some other way out of here, fast.”

“That’s not totally right,” Hadrian corrected. “I can fly, sort of.”

“How?” Sandra asked, latching onto the escape plan.

“Levitate. I know the spell, I just never prepared it.”

“Doesn’t do much good, then,” Quinn said.

“Don’t count the wizard out just yet,” Hadrian quipped. “I left a couple openings in my spells today, in case we needed the flexibility. I can get it ready, I just need time.”

Sandra tried to pull herself up without shifting her weight too much. It didn’t work, and she sank another inch. “How much time?”

“Fifteen minutes.” Hadrian swallowed, nodding to himself. “I can get it ready with fifteen minutes.”

“Then do it.” She considered their options. “You’ll only be able to cast it once, right?”

“Right,” Hadrian confirmed.

“Then cast it on Quinn, and he can tow us up.” She shifted her arm, going for the hanks of rope on her belt, still there from the climb in the toy chest. She tossed one length to Quinn, who caught it without disturbing the tentacles.

“I can’t really focus on instructions right now,” Hadrian said. “Tell me later, but first let me meditate.”

He closed his eyes, thinking carefully. His familiar crawled out and sat on his chest, somehow aiding in the process, and he occasionally whispered a comment or two in thought while readying the spell.

Sandra took slow, deep breaths, trying to remain still. She could feel the tendrils beneath her, supporting her weight, shifting ever so slightly with the creature’s heartbeat.

Don’t panic, she thought to herself. She’d never practiced lying on a tentacle monster trying to keep it asleep, but the task had many similarities to other problems. Like lying on quicksand and waiting for rescue, the most important thing was to lay still, take deep breaths, and ignore the way she kept slipping lower and lower into the tentacles.

Tarja and Quinn were little better off. Only Hadrian, with a task to distract him, had his wits totally about him.

“Okay,” Sandra said, quietly. Her party needed something to work on. “Okay. Tarja, I’m going to pass you some rope. I want you to tie it around your chest so you can be towed up. Quinn, help her.”

Slowly, steadily, so as not to agitate the sleeping creature, she passed over a fifty foot length of the rope.

“Follow my lead,” Sandra said, moving slowly with her own rope. “Quinn, you may have to tow us up with a lot of force, so we need safe knots. Nothing that’ll cut off blood flow or pull joints out of alignment. Do as I do.”

“Just…hold on,” Tarja said, cheeks darkening with a blush. Her hands stopped shaking and she raised the rope. “Okay.”

“This is important,” Sandra said, as much so that they’d be focused on the task as because it mattered for safety.

Sandra folded the rope in half, forming a U-bend in the middle, and quietly, slowly, showed Tarja where to wrap it around her chest. She’d slipped deep enough into the pit that she had to finesse one hand underneath a tentacle, holding her breath as she did so, but it didn’t resist her.

Folding over the rope, she looped it again, watching Tarja. Next, the rope went over her shoulders, running back around the original loop. “Make sure you can get two fingers beneath the rope, so it won’t be too snug and cut off blood flow.”

As slow as she went, the process took most of ten minutes, and she and Tarja were both left with a secure rope harness around their chest, a loop on the end that could take another length of rope. The third and final length, the one Quinn would use to pull them up, got fed through those loops, anchoring them together and giving him a way to pull everyone up and free.

“What about me?” Quinn asked, tilting his head and extending his arm so he could check the tautness of Tarja’s rope. “Do I need a harness?”

“You’ll be up there, towing us out,” Sandra said. “It’d be redundant.”

“And Hadrian?” Tarja asked.

“The spell should be able to carry the weight of two people,” Sandra said. “Quinn, just make sure not to drop him.”

“Yes, please,” Hadrian added, blinking his eyes a few times. “Don’t drop me.”

“You’re done?” Sandra asked.

He nodded, stretching his neck. His hips had sunk beneath the surface of the tentacles, but he reached his hand down, fumbling for his component pouch. “So, Quinn, then?”

She nodded. Hadrian reached out, touching Quinn to channel the magic, and–

The creature woke up.

Sandra felt the shift, the twitch of every overlapping tentacle around her as soon as Hadrian’s magic went into effect. Quinn started to lift up and grabbed Hadrian by the wrist, towing their wizard out of the pit, but that still left Sandra and Tarja down and helpless.

“Find a place to anchor the rope, and–” Sandra called, and then a sharp tug at her ankle pulled her down.

She plunged into the writhing mass of tentacles, and felt the mental presence around her mind close, probing her mind even as it probed her body. She tried to fight back, conjuring a knife in her hand, but a tentacle wrapped around her wrist and held her tight. Snarling, Sandra dismissed the umbral blade and conjured a knife in her other hand, but it too got held down.

Angry, she made the knife appear between her teeth, whipping her head to the side. It cut through one tentacle, then was ripped away, and before she could conjure it again a tentacle lurched into her open mouth.

She resisted the psychic, almost dreamlike force that willed her to stop fighting, but could do less to stop the writhing tentacles that got beneath her clothes. Further probing tendrils crept within her diaper, and she wriggled and squirmed, desperate to keep those areas from being explored further by this monster.

A tug on her chest tried to rip her free of the creature’s grasp, but wasn’t enough. Another tug, stronger, did little more. Quinn simply wasn’t strong enough to pull her free from so many clutching tendrils.

Another few seconds passed and she sank down deeper, and then a sudden, enormous force yanked her up, so powerful that the tentacles lost their grip. She all but flew upward, rocketing out of the tentacles, and while she sped up, she crossed someone else going down.

Quinn had become enormous, twelve feet tall and surrounded by a buffeting dress that flashed in Sandra’s vision. She barely spotted the rope, tied to his waist and pulled taught; he’d fashioned himself into an enormous counterweight so that by jumping into the pit, Sandra and Tarja were pulled out.

He met the writhing mass of tentacles with a manic grin, grabbing the nearest and ripping it apart with bare hands. Above, Sandra watched the rope grow short, slung over a tree trunk to act as the pulley, and drew her knife in time to slash the rope before she could get pulled right back down after Quinn. She managed to catch the other end, which didn’t pull her down with nearly the weight she’d expected, instead hanging slack in her hand.

Below, another tentacle grabbed him, then two more, and the furious raging half-orc got towed into the pit, below the surface and out of sight.

Sandra caught Tarja’s arm, helping to steady her. They were still on a slick incline of mud, one wrong step could undo all Quinn’s efforts.

“Give me a hand so I don’t fall,” Hadrian snapped, extending his arm.

“What are you going to do?” Sandra asked.

“Quinn’s idea,” Hadrian said. “It can’t dodge while it’s in a pit, and he doesn’t think it can resist fire.”

Sandra grabbed his arm, but pulled him back. “What are you thinking? Quinn’s down there, he’ll burn too!”

“And you’d rather leave him?” Hadrian asked. “We can heal burns.”

Swallowing, Sandra admitted his logic was sound enough. There was no time to argue, so she held his arm, stabilizing him so he could get a good vantage over the edge of the pit.

Flicking out his wrist, Hadrian sent two bursting fireballs down, both detonating with a torrent of heat. Sandra winced back, but Hadrian peered down, his eyes widened, and he grabbed the rope. “He’s free! Pull!”

She expected not to be strong enough, but when she pulled, it didn’t weigh that much. Hadrian helped, and soon Tarja was assisting as well, all three of them towing up Quinn with steady tugs.

They got him up, his dress pristine, scorch marks on his face. Other than that, he looked fine–and he looked to be about three feet tall.

“What sort of hare-brained scheme was that?” Sandra demanded, stepping forward and pulling Quinn into a tight hug–since he was smaller than her, it meant picking him up to do so. Quieter, she added, “You could have gotten yourself killed.”

“You always have those convoluted magic plans,” Quinn replied, patting her on the back. “I invented one of my own. I put a fire in my belly, so I could resist what Hadrian threw after me, and then I dismissed the ‘big me’ spell. Not sure where the ‘little me’ came from–maybe I dismissed it too much?”

Hadrian snickered, and Sandra glanced at him. “What’s funny?”

He pointed, grinning. “Your tail’s wagging.”

Sandra looked back and saw he was right. Blushing, she turned away, trying to get their bearings. “Let’s get this mission finished, I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.” Smiling, she added, “And good job, everyone.”

The five of them navigated up the slope, cautious for another attack from the hag, but visibility was good in the area and the only dangerous creature they could see was a giant on the far mountain peaks, half a day’s travel away.

Once they reached an area with flat, dry terrain, Sandra called the party to stop for healing and recuperation. Hadrian knelt to check out the still-small Quinn, noting the bruises around his waist from the rope.

“Ouch,” he winced, applying a bit of infernal healing.

“No time for a harness,” Quinn shrugged, as the bruises faded away. “Where’d you learn to tie one of those, anyways?”

Sandra began removing the rope on her own body. “It’s a trick for spelunking,” she said, glancing to the side as she stripped out of the snug, constricting rope that wound around her body.

“Your tail didn’t go away,” Tarja said.

“Yeah, the spell must last a while,” Sandra shrugged.

“But the conjured horses and other magic got dispelled,” Tarja pointed out.

Hesitating, Sandra’s tail drooped as she understood. “Maybe…it’ll go away once we reenter the real world.” Changing the subject, she pointed back the way they’d run. “We just need to go a bit further this way.”

Hadrian got to his feet and stretched his back, latex squeaking. “You’re sure? I still don’t see anything, no temple or shrine or what-have-you.”

Sandra almost questioned the wisdom of trusting dreamy intuition, but nodded. “I’m sure.”

They resumed their hike. It took another twenty minutes of walking, but as the woods thinned and gave way to rocky mountain terrain, they came into view of a singular, impressive stone door.

Ancient writing adorned the door. As they got close enough to read it, Sandra asked, “Hadrian, can you read that?”

He scanned the text. “Give me a minute, I think so. It’s old, so it might–”

“Not translate perfectly, yeah, we know,” Tarja said. “I remember what happened in the last plane we visited.”

Reading it over a few times, Hadrian mouthed the text, sounding out a few words. “Okay, I think it’s a burial poem. ‘Inside this tomb lies… that’s a rune for a name, so I’m just going to guess on the pronunciation and say ‘Illia’... Inside this tomb lies Illia, the great lover, master, and servant of I’m going to say ‘Gilly-dom.’ Something something, her life, history, great epic love. Then at the end, it says, ‘Her burden may be shared. To those who wish to take it upon themselves, shackle yourself to her destiny and you may be freed by her chains.’”

Sandra nodded. “Hmm, okay. They did say that carrying the relic back would be the hard part, that must be what this ‘burden sharing’ thing is about. Is the door locked?”

Quinn stepped forward, pushing on the door. It swung open effortlessly.

“Hold on a moment,” Sandra said. “Quinn, why haven’t you changed back to normal size yet?”

He looked down at himself. “I’m going to say, ‘time passes differently here’. Normally the duration should have already run out.”

He exchanged a look with Sandra, who in turn glanced back at her tail. “You’re probably right.”

“Let’s get the relic and get out of here,” Tarja added. “We still need to make it back to where we came in.”

Sandra walked through the stone door, her knife out, ready for trouble.

The chamber was smaller than she’d expected. A singular glass table filled the center of the room, surrounded by pillars and stained glass portraits of a woman engaged in various debaucheries; whips, chains, orgies, snuggling. In all, she wore a pair of manacles, one end locked to her wrist.

And, laying on the glass table at the center of the room, the same woman lay, perfectly still, her face a visage of angelic beauty. Naked, her body on display for all to see, the only thing she wore was the handcuffs.

She was dead. That Sandra could tell by her unnatural stiffness and the aura of preserving magic over her. This was her final resting place.

“I’ll get the handcuffs, watch for traps,” Sandra said, holding out her hand and stepping forward cautiously and removing her lockpicking tools from her bag.

Though the handcuffs seemed plain, when she tried to work the lock, she found that there was no lock–or, at least, no keyhole. The half of the cuffs that dangled from the woman’s wrist was attached permanently.

Sandra attempted to move the woman’s arm to get a better look, but it resisted, hard as diamond.

She looked at the other end of the cuffs, hanging open. Right, sharing her burden, Sandra thought. Reaching down, she put her wrist inside the cuff and locked it on.

The other end of the cuffs came instantly free, so that Sandra now carried it alone. She tugged on it to confirm that the cuff was on her wrist tightly, and that the other side was free, dangling openly.

“This doesn’t seem too ba–” she started to say.

Then, a dozen strands of rope sprung up around her, enwrapping Sandra, winding around her breasts, her arms, between her lips. In a heartbeat, she was fully trussed, arms bound to her sides, an extensive harness around her body that’d leave her utterly vulnerable to anyone who might wish to pull on the ropes, further bondage that held her thighs together so that, while she could stay upright and shuffle, she couldn’t run.

Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment as the snug, hard and tight around her body. Somehow, the cuffs had read her mind, and projected a very private thought into reality.

Tarja stepped forward to try and help, but the knots were indecipherable and permanent. Sandra suspected the rope would only go away if she removed the cuff. It’s magic was clear now; it trapped its victim in a sexual fantasy of their own making.

She started to speak, but the rope that gagged her turned the words into, “Wmmbhtgo, buhcawithansfmmfthhis.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Hadrian said, “But we need to go. The Calistrians will know how to fix this.”

Yes, thank you, Sandra rolled her eyes.

Quinn, leaning in with a grin, bumping her side with his elbow. “Are you sure that you learned that rope trick for spelunking?”

Sandra’s cheeks flushed deeper, but she couldn’t retort. Groaning, she started to shuffle forward.

They had a long way to go.

[Silver]

This story is so good. I keep refreshing this forum for it ❤️

[PeculiarChangeling]

11 hours ago, Silver said:

This story is so good. I keep refreshing this forum for it ❤️

I'm getting chapters done at a rate of about once every two months right now! I'm glad you're loving it, but don't accidentally DDOS the forum ?

[Bonsai]

The tentacle sex monster is dead, long   life to the tentacle monster!

Maybe, just like Alien, it got into Sandra’s underwear and laid some eggs…

[PeculiarChangeling]

Chapter Thirteen

“So,” Quinn ribbed Sandra, smirking all the while they walked, shuffling down the narrow switchback trail down the mountain towards the way they’d come in. “Care to share with the group how you’re feeling?”

Sandra groaned, shifting in the intricate shibari restraints wrapped around her. “I’m sure the curse of this artifact is random, I have no idea why it’s ropes. Just like all the other curses–unless you want to tell me that you secretly always wanted frilly pink armor.”

“My frilly pink armor doesn’t make my voice flutter,” Quinn grinned. “You, on the other hand–”

Hadrian held up a hand. “Hold it. Something’s wrong here. Do you see that house, up ahead?”

“Yeah,” Sandra said, peering. “What is it?”

“It’s a building that people live inside, but that’s not important right now,” Hadrian explained. “I think there’s an ambush waiting for us there.”

“Well then, we’ll just need to find another way around.” Sandra looked up the switchback trail, then down. They’d come this way to avoid the hag, hoping to avoid a repeat of the trouble they’d faced on their way in, especially now that Sandra was too restrained to be any good in a fight.

“Here,” she said, peering down. “The path goes past the house and further down. We can skip it, if we just climb a little ways.”

Tarja pursed her lips. “How do you plan on climbing? I could manage it for a little while, but–”

“You’ll need to lower me on a rope,” Sandra said. “It’s the…oh no.”

Tarja turned, following her gaze.

The hag was back, and pursuing them sharply down the trail. They’d be intercepted in moments, couldn’t run forward on account of the ambush, and had little time to act.

“No time,” Sandra said. “Quinn, can you carry me?”

Quinn nodded, stepping up to lift their fearless leader. With her under one arm, and with no time to come up with a more sensible plan, he turned to slide down the hill.

His foot slipped, and he tumbled forward.

Sandra flew from his grasp and screamed, thrown down the steep hill without so much as a hand to grab for relief, with Quinn tumbling after. Though he reached for a grip, he found none, tumbling right down a crevice that went hundreds of feet down, all the way to the base of the valley far below.

Tarja and Hadrian stared. A moment later, Sandra’s screams stopped, interrupted by a wet thump. They couldn’t even see where Quinn’s body fell.

“Uh…” Tarja said. “Um. What. What are we even supposed to do at this point?”

Hadrian, equally puzzled, looked back. “The hag’s still approaching! We have to try the house, maybe it’s safe!”

Together, the two surviving party members ran, sprinting towards the cabin at the next bend of the switchback trail. Neither looked back, for fear of what might be coming up behind them.

Tarja reached the door first, opened it, and let Hadrian inside. She followed a step behind him.

“Shut the door!” someone yelled. A figure ran up, slamming the door shut.

Hadrian took them in, eyes widening. “Who are you?”

Before him stood two people–an elf and a half orc. The latter was clad in a pink set of footed pajamas that glowed with the aura of magical armor, and Hadrian could have sworn he saw a diaper peeking out from beneath the elf’s leather pants.

“I’m…um…Sandy…” the elf said, extending her hand. “I’m on a vendetta to stop the Wizard of Paraphilia, after he cursed me, but I got stuck in this plane. This is my companion…er…”

“Quill,” the half-orc suggested. “And, uh, same. I sure have a long history of reasons to hate that wizard.”

“Well, we need to figure out what to do next,” Hadrian said. “Sandy, you seem like a natural leader. Why don’t you take the head of our party as leader?”

“Sure, but there’s just one thing you’re forgetting,” Sandy said.

“What’s that?” Tarja asked.

Sandy cleared her throat, grinning from ear to pointed ear. “April fools!”

 

[Silver]

Spotted the Airplane reference ❤️