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

[PeculiarChangeling]

Chapter Thirteen (For Real) 

“So,” Quinn ribbed Sandra, smirking all the while they walked 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 and a puffy diaper.”

“My frilly pink armor doesn’t make my voice flutter or my tail wag, and the diaper’s just here for a few hours,” Quinn grinned, shifting slightly from foot to foot. “You, on the other hand–I’m pretty sure your pitch jumped a whole octave once that thing kicked in.”

Looking down at herself, Sandra inspected the ropes that bound her body. She could walk, barely–her thighs were bound together by intricate shibari knots, and even her newfound tail had ropes around it, pinning it to her back, but it had enough slack that the visible wag from side to side could still be noticed clearly, and she could bend her knees and still shuffle along at a moderate pace. More problematically, the ropes knotted between her breasts and over her chest kept her arms stuck to her side. The relic cuff dangled from her wrist, and she could feel magic woven into the ropes that’d prevent any supernatural attempt to remove them.

The only way these ropes were coming off was if she shackled someone else to the curse.

“Just…shut up,” Sandra grumbled, wishing the tight, snug feel of the coarse rope around her skin didn’t make her blush with every step. “It’s not that I’m–it’s magic. Obviously. You can tell it’s messing with me, right?”

Hadrian and Tarja exchanged a glance, while Quinn just sniggered at her paltry defense.

Sandra may not have been an out-and-out wizard, but she did have a fair knack for magic. Focusing on herself, she concentrated, saying aloud, “I’ll prove it with a spell–whatever magical compulsion’s affecting me, I can root it out.”

“So you are horny for the ropes,” Quinn commented, noting her tacit admission.

She ignored him, focusing on the Detect Charm spell. With just a little effort, she looked around for compulsions, and…

Nothing. Not even the littlest bit of influence lay over her mind.

“Um…” she said, her blush deepening as a bout of arousal washed over her. “It’s…”

“Hah!” Quinn barked out a triumphant laugh. “No compulsion, right? You just like being a bunny.”

At Hadrian’s raised eyebrow, Sandra sheepishly admitted, “A ‘Rope Bunny’ is someone who gets tied up for…yeah. How do you know that?”

Quinn just shrugged. “Sisters. Lots of ‘em.”

Rallying her remaining scraps of dignity, Sandra changed the subject. “We should be keeping an eye out for danger, not cracking jokes–it’s a long walk back to the house with the toy chest inside, and plenty of dangers lie between us and it.”

“Remind me why we can’t just use the magic rock the priest gave you right here?” Tarja asked, walking almost as unsteadily as Sandra. Quinn held her hand, guiding her safely down the path since her legs were so unsteady–the curse from her onesie had only grown worse, and she could barely walk without aid now.

“The gemstone’s a tether to our home plane, but it’s not all powerful,” Hadrian explained, breathing heavily as they hiked down the mountain. “The reason we traveled to the next town over and built a particular circle was so the metaphysical energy on our side would match the energy in that toy chest. If we try to open the way back home from here, most likely scenario: The gemstone just breaks because the energy on this hill is too scattered and the magic isn’t strong enough to punch through. Or, if we’re particularly unlucky, we’d get dropped back into our home plane somewhere way far from home. Like in a volcano.”

“That all seems convoluted,” Tarja commented. “There wasn’t just a spell that you could use to jump from one plane to another directly?”

“Oh, sure there is,” Hadrian said. “And if I had another couple decades of practice and experience, I might be skilled enough to try it. There’s maybe a thousand people in the world who can do magic that difficult.”

Tarja frowned and held up a hand, stopping the party’s progress. “Wait…”

The party obeyed, trusting her judgment. Sandra surveyed the foothill ahead of them–the lightly grown over mountain gave way to thicker trees to one side, towards the low ridge they’d come in, while a sheer drop to the left gave way to the deep valley below.

“Hag,” Tarja whispered. “Up ahead. I think she cut off our path back.”

Sandra pursed her lips, then felt a jolt of sensation run through her as the ropes tightened, woven silk threads brushing over her breasts and nipples. Under her breath, she whispered, “Fuck…”

“We’ll get past this,” Hadrian assured her.

Quinn just smirked, giving Sandra a knowing, ‘I’ll-tease-you-about-this-later’ look.

“We’ll have to go around,” Sandra announced in a low tone, shifting to look at the dropoff down towards the valley. “With climbing gear, we can move along the cliff face until we get past the hag, then climb back up and get past it. This looks like very climbable terrain.”

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, turning her neck and gesturing towards her bag with her chin. “Fortunately, we should be able to tie to, um…to my harness pretty easily. It’ll distribute my weight well.”

“You’re the expert,” Quinn beamed, walking over and opening her pack to take out the rope and climbing spikes.

“Maybe I should take the relic, since you’re the climbing whiz,” Hadrian suggested. “Cuff it to me, and drag me around.”

The suggestion had merit, but Sandra didn’t want to sacrifice a friend’s safety to improve her own. “It’s fine, I’ll hold it. We’ll be slower, but…” A shriek echoed through the forest, and her mind changed. “Okay, fine. Let’s just get out of here.”

Hadrian stepped over to her, grabbed the other side of the artifact, and snapped it tightly around his wrist. It locked, and the other side fell free of Sandra–the ropes binding her lost their magic, but they didn’t simply vanish, meaning she’d still have to be untied.

For his part, Hadrian dropped to his knees, gasping with sudden pleasure. Sandra could barely spare a glance his way, too busy conjuring an umbral knife in her clenched hand to begin cutting herself free, but she saw a spectral form…”assaulting” him.

“Quinn, a little help?” she asked, slicing through one of the ropes on her arm.

The half-orc barbarian, distracted by the show, jumped in and helped clear the arms from her body, quipping in Hadrian’s direction. “I knew you had a type, but wow!”

Hadrian started on an annoyed retort, but the words choked in his throat as the ghostly half-corporeal being put its mouth around his…well, Sandra couldn’t see what it was doing, but its tongue passed through his latex bodysuit and diaper as though they weren’t there, and by his gasps, he could feel it beneath all the layers.

A few feet tall, stacked, and thicker than a bowl of oatmeal, the ghostly apparition currently performing cunnilingus on their mage had a certain resemblance to a priest of Calistria they all knew.

Free of the ropes, Sandra turned to face the cliffside, calculating the best place to jump down. She’d been hoping Hadrian would be bound by the same ropes she had–both because it’d give her a convenient excuse to dodge Quinn’s teasing, and because it would serve as a solid attachment point for the ropes, but now she was going to have to find a way to climb down with him, too.

Struck by an insight, she gestured to their right, where the cliff face turned steeply up. “Quinn, get us tied off up there.” With a burst of simple magic, she conjured a basic object–just a loose stone berm that rope could be secured to.

He hesitated, shifting his weight anxiously. “Shouldn’t we go lower, not higher?”

“Just do it,” Sandra snapped. “No time.”

Quinn’s objection was solid–they’d just be buying more distance to climb, more effort expended, more time–but she didn’t have time to explain her intuition. Pulling the rope from her bag, she did the math.

There wasn’t enough to climb down all the way. There wasn’t even time to tie everyone up properly. They’d have to move down a little, use their climbing spikes to move the attachment point, and creep down the cliffside. It’d take all day, but it was safer than facing off against a hag who could defeat their whole party with a thought.

“We’ll have to keep these simple,” she said aloud, channeling all her reserves of magic into the rope so that it began to move. “Safety harnesses. If you fall, you might get some bruising–nothing I can do about that, so sorry in advance.”

“Just get it done,” Tarja said, raising her shaky arms, allowing the animated rope to snake around her body into a secure, if simple, harness. “I’m a strong climber when I’m…y’know. In control. Once it’s time to climb, I’ll steady myself. ”

She’ll wet herself, Sandra translated in her head, remembering the effects of the cursed onesie. She was starting to have trouble tracking everyone’s various afflictions–Quinn was mostly well off, save for his armor and breasts and the temporary diaper, and the fact that for the duration of their time in this plane he seemed to be shrunk–but Tarja was dealing with a whole pack of curses, and Quinn had his unchangeable latex bodysuit, heels, diaper, his bits had been swapped around, and probably another thing she couldn’t remember at the moment.

“Hadrian, can you concentrate well enough to cast a spell?” she asked, not looking up from her work.

“Uh…uh-huh,” he mumbled.

“Tell me you’ve got a feather fall ready,” she said. “I don’t want to burn through your magic if we don’t have to, but if this goes sideways, we’ll need you as a backup.”

“Ye-” he gasped mid-affirmation, back arching in pleasure. “Ff-fuck! Yes, yes, yes–”

Sandra assumed that his first ‘yes’ was for the important thing–that he had the spell ready–and dismissed the rest as magically induced pleasure.

Another shriek echoed through the woods, much closer this time. The hag stalked them, moving in with every moment, watching for the best opening to strike. Not that it needed one–they’d lose in any battle, no matter how many advantages they built, but the hag couldn’t know if they were playing possum or not.

Tossing the rope to Quinn so it could wind itself around him, she felt grateful he’d been shrunk. As small as he was, it wouldn’t take much rope to hold him, and he’d weigh a whole lot less while climbing down.

“We’re running out of time,” Tarja said, tone calm, expression terrified as she gazed into the woods.

“We’ll be fine,” Sandra assured her, commanding the rope to loop around herself, far faster than if she tied it the old fashioned way.

Tarja nodded, but her eyes were pools of fear. “Do you know what happens to your soul if a dreamthief hag kills you?”

“We’re secure!” Quinn called, looping the other end of the rope off around a tree stump.

That just left Hadrian, and Sandra took the excuse not to answer Tarja’s question. She knew the answer, and it wasn’t pretty.

“Arms up,” she told Hadrian, who was trying desperately to focus in spite of, not only the first spectral cunnilinguist, but a second shortstack now sitting over his shoulders, riding his own mouth.

He moaned, blushed, and pulled his face away long enough to say, “I can–oh gods–I can fight…”

“Sure, just stay with me,” Sandra said, ignoring how his back tensed and arched as she prepared him for the descent.

Something still nagged at her. A small detail she’d forgotten in the frantic stream of consciousness over the past few minutes.

“There she is,” Tarja said, glancing at Sandra. “No time. We’ve got to go.”

Sandra nodded, while Quinn ran over the rope, so she could secure everyone. It was a truly terrible system, cobbled together without any of the safeties she’d like–ideally, she’d want a strand of rope for each climber–but in the time they had, it was the best she could do. Hadrian was their backup, ready to cast feather fall should the ropes fall through.

“On my count, jump.” Sandra didn’t glance back at the shrieking beast barrelling down upon them, she just prepared herself. “Three–”

“One!” Tarja interjected, running forward in terror. She had perfect balance–she’d wet herself to regain control, or perhaps she’d simply wet herself in terror.

And, since they were tied together, if one went they all went. The rest of the party caught up and ran with her, jumping over the edge of the cliff. They dropped, fell, and the rope snapped taut. Sandra felt the rope dig into her skin with bruising force, but they’d made it out of easy striking range.

“Okay, okay,” she panted. “As long as the hag doesn’t cut–”

“Don’t say it,” Quinn interjected. “Remember what happens when you say it?”

Sandra did, and she didn’t finish her ominous statement.

The hag cut the rope anyway.

Dropping, suddenly, the party began to fall down the length of the cliff. Sandra waited for Hadrian to use his magic, to levitate the party safely down to the ground, but no spell came.

Spinning in the air as they flew downward, she saw her other party members. Tarja, more afraid of the monster that lied above than the impact that approached below. Quinn, his dress billowing like a parasol as he plummeted. And Hadrian, confused and horny and helpless…

With his gods-damned pacifier in his mouth.

“That’s what I forg–” Sandra started to exclaim, before she hit the ground and blacked out.

…

Dreams within dreams were a strange thing.

It was already odd enough that, as an elf, she dreamt. It was even more odd to dream while her physical body resided in a dream plane. Her mind wandered past the normal realms of unconscious imagination, into further, deeper places.

Sandra didn’t remember much after she awoke, but she did recall one detail from her somnambulation through a distant plane.

She’d been noticed.

…

Sandra’s eyes snapped open and she tried to sit up.

She couldn’t.

Her initial reaction was fear–she’d been paralyzed by the fall. As she tried to move, though, she realized she’d gotten it wrong–she wasn’t unable to control her body, she was stuck. Looking up, she saw the layers of tree branches and vines she’d fallen through, and glancing to the side with her eyes, she saw a wide pool of thin, sticky slime. It had the consistency of a glue trap, adhering her to the forest floor. It, fortunately, didn’t seem that deep–they didn’t have to worry about sinking, just being stuck.

“Sound off,” she said, trying–and failing–to peel herself up. “Everyone ok?”

“Mmm-phuu,” Hadrian moaned through his pacifier.

“Ugh…” Quinn groaned. “Ouch.”

“Alright here,” Tarja said. Her voice came from up higher, and Sandra glanced with her eyes to see the ranger hanging from a group of vines that had caught her mid-fall.

Wrinkling her nose, Sandra caught the whiff of a dirty diaper. With a shimmy of her butt and a wiggle of her dragon tail, she confirmed it wasn’t her.

“We need to get out of here. Can anyone move?”

“Mm-bughh,” Hadrian mewled. Sandra could hear the sloppy sex sounds coming from his direction, though thankfully he wasn’t in her eyeline so she didn’t have to watch.

“What is this stuff?” Quinn asked. “I can barely move.”

“I’m guessing someone in the real world has a, uh, thing for restrained movement,” Sandra said.

“Here,” Tarja suggested. “If I hang down, I can probably give you a hand without being stuck mys–woah!”

She yelped as one of the vines moved, suddenly, wrapping itself around her ankle. In a quick movement, she pulled out her knife and slashed the vine, falling free–and, with her natural grace returned, she managed to land on her feet.

Sandra was briefly worried that Tarja would be as stuck as the rest of them, but since it was only Tarja’s shoes, she had a lot less surface area stuck, and a lot more room to move. With a bit of effort, she managed to pry one of her feet free and take a step towards Sandra.

“Get everyone else up first,” Sandra said. “Hadrian’s probably going to need escorted free, but he might have a spell once he can take out that pacifier.”

In response, Hadrian moaned with pleasure, in the midst of his dozenth orgasm in as many minutes.

Nodding, Tarja moved to obey. Crouching, cautious so as not to get herself stuck, she crouched to help up Hadrian.

He was in luck–the latex material of his clothing was relatively anti-stick. It still took a little prying, but he got free without the need for grease, and staggered out of the slime pit with Tarja’s help. She pulled out his pacifier, and he exhaled with relief.

“F-fuck,” he grunted. “I’ve got one grease spell ready, but that’s about it for my magic…uhh…”

“Just cast it,” Sandra said. “Get Quinn out.”

Concentrating, it took him a couple tries to focus through the mid-coital bliss, but he managed to get off his little bit of magic Quinn’s way. With Quinn’s body and frilly pink armor fully lubricated, he managed to pry himself up from the slime and get to his feet.

And then the vines dropped.

Sandra could only watch–literally, there was nothing else she could do but lay there and observe the vines lower towards Quinn, moving to snatch him up. He found himself towed up from the ground, vines wrapping around his body and tying him in place in the sky.

He roared, slipping out of the vines and fighting to get free, using his teeth more than anything in an attempt to fight off the vines. “Get–” he shouted, in between chomping on a vine. “Get Sandra! I’ll hold them off!”

Tarja moved as fast as she could to Sandra’s side, and tried to help her up.

No dice. Her clothes were firmly rooted to the slime, and the pores in the leather and fabric had soaked it up, adhering her firmly down.

“You’re…” Tarja said. “I think we have to–”

“Just do it,” Sandra said, sighing in annoyance.

Retrieving her knife, Tarja started at the top and began working her way down. With all the slime pinning Sandra’s clothes down, there was only one way to get her free–her clothes would have to go.

Parts of the armor could be removed just with straps, but her shirt and pants needed the knife. Tarja worked as quickly as she could, slicing through until Sandra could sit up and get free.

And, unfortunately, that left Sandra nearly-naked save for her slightly sagging diaper.

That could have come off, too, but it’d just return, and a little bit of clothing was better than total nudity. At least she could keep her magical boots and a few other sundry accessories, even if she was effectively nude from the waist up.

More unfortunate was the need to cut her hair–she wasn’t particularly image conscious, especially not now that she’d grown used to the routine of regular outfit-centered humiliation, but she’d be visiting an alchemist to get that fixed when she could.

Standing, she started formulating a plan to free Quinn–”Waah!” she exclaimed in alarm, as a vine grabbed her by the ankle and towed her up above the trees.

The vines were better than rope. They moved, and over her naked body there was nothing between her and the tight, clinging plant that crept over her skin, trussing her up in an instant. She initially struggled, but she’d been caught unawares, and a little part of her wanted to give in.

No! She snapped at herself. Not the time!

But still–as the vines tied themselves around her exposed breasts and wound her up, and as they pulled her legs apart and bound her hands to her feet, the surge of humiliated pleasure that washed over her battled against her urge to free herself and fight.

And then the vines found their way beneath her diaper, creeping in, and Sandra felt a little moan escape her lips and felt her tail wag excitedly–

WHOOSH!

The fireball that landed above her burned through the vines in an instant. All but one of the vines lost her, and only one, tied loosely around her ankle, still held sway–she fell, but was caught short before landing in the slime again, and the other vines went slack around her body.

Hadrian stood at the edge of the slime pit, no longer cuffed, extending his hand. “Sorry it took a minute!” he called. “I had to be sure my aim was perfect. Can you swing over here?”

“Thanks,” Sandra said, thinking furiously, You couldn’t have waited another thirty seconds?

Shifting her weight back and forth, she swung on the one vine until she could grab his hand, then kicked her leg free and fell to the ground. Without her armor, she felt exposed in the dangerous forest, but as least she was out of immediate danger.

Quinn landed next to her a second later, dusting himself off. “Where’s Tarja?”

“She took the cuff,” Hadrian said, pointing to the large tree next to them. “Then sat down out of the line of fire.”

Sandra stepped around, admittedly curious about what, exactly, Tarja would be experiencing. She was reserved, and didn’t really talk about her kinks, so…

She lay against the tree, mouth open and face intensely relaxed, while spectral hands worked around her. From the motion, it looked like they were…patting her head.

Two hands massaged her back, while another set of spectral arms wrapped around her body in a hug. Two illusory hands were squeezing her own, and the hands on her head moved between gentle pats and a scalp massage while other ghostly fingers caressed the rest of her body.

She looked…cozy.

“That’s my girl,” Quinn commented with a smile.

Now that they were safe, Sandra finally took a moment to inspect their surroundings. Off just to the right of the swamp was a stony open area, with large, sharp looking rocks. Doing the math in her head, Sandra realized that if they’d gone with Quinn’s suggestion of climbing down from a lower point on the cliff, they’d have fallen onto lethal rocks instead of fall-breaking vines and goo.

“Huh,” Hadrian said.

“I know,” Sandra said. “It was just an instinct–”

“No, I mean, I thought you were the one who needed a change,” Hadrian said. Glancing back, Sandra saw that he was looking at her diaper. “But you look pretty clean.”

“It’s not you?” she asked, sniffing the air. There was a definite odor of a messy diaper.

“Might be the swamp,” Quinn suggested, quickly. “A lot of earthy smells… Just a guess.”

“It’s not important,” Hadrian said. “We need to find a new way out of here. We’re not getting back to that nursery from down at the base of this cliff, and that hag’s still up there even if we climbed up.”

Sandra considered for a moment, crossing her arms over her chest. She turned, slowly, following an imagined compass in her head until she knew where to go. “It’s…this way.”

“How do you know?” Quinn asked.

“Just like I knew where to put the rope,” she said. “My instincts.”

“Well, someone’s end stinks,” Quinn quipped. “But you’re both pretending it’s not you.”

Sandra rolled her eyes and started marching.

Paralyzed by melting comfort, Tarja couldn’t really move herself–all the gentle affection had her drooling in a comfortable puddle, and Quinn had to pick her up and carry her in his arms–which was a sight to see, given that she was now almost twice his height. Hadrian took up the rear, watching for any further trouble.

The woods were deep, and full of uncomfortably horny sounds. Every breeze sounded like a moan, every rustle sounded like a crinkling diaper. Sandra knew where to go to avoid traps and other dangers, but she only had vague clues of what exactly she’d been avoiding. Frustrated after the bondage vines had been cut short, she almost wanted to find another similar trap to finish herself off–but knew that was a bad idea.

Finally, after much hiking, she found the mouth of…a cave. The stone seemed to have been pulled back in folding layers, exposing a teardrop shaped opening with a glittering gemstone at its peak.

“Is it just me?” Quinn said.

“It’s not,” Hadrian replied. “That cave looks like a vagina.”

“A vulva, strictly speaking,” Tarja considered.

“It’s where we need to be,” Sandra said. “It’s…I think it has the right energy for you to make it work, Hadrian.”

They penetrated the chasm, walking in with a bit of light from Hadrian’s familiar. It seemed to dip down a little, then raise back up, bending towards the core of the mountain. As they pushed deeper, the light revealed many dripping crystalline stalactites and sodden stalagmites, hanging from the ceiling and dribbling a white, viscous fluid down into puddles and columns on the ground.

Based on the slightly sanitized smell, Sandra guessed that the fluid dripping from the extremely phallic stalactites wasn’t water. The whole cave glimmered with white puddles and shimmering natural crystals.

“More like stalactits, am I right?” Quinn smirked.

Hadrian focused for a moment. “This’ll do,” he said. “Just give me a few minutes to set up the magic. I want to make sure everything’s pitch perfect, we can’t risk breaking the crystal.”

“I’ll guard the entrance,” Quinn suggested, setting Tarja down in a safe spot. “While you get the magic ready.” He turned, marching back to the cave’s mouth, sidestepping a particularly large puddle on his way.

Sandra breathed a sigh of relief. They were almost home, and little was left that could do them any harm.

Hadrian used the components in his pouch to set up a circle on the highest raised surface in the cave. He took his time, working slowly, making occasional thoughtful sounds. “Hmm.”

“Problem?” Sandra asked.

“It’s not a perfect match,” Hadrian replied. “It feels like it’ll get us home, but…I can’t promise we’ll end up where we want to be.”

“It will,” Sandra said. “Trust me.”

“If you say so. Go get Quinn, we’ll be ready soon.”

Sandra nodded, shuffling back towards the entrance of the cave. The gentle breeze on her naked body made her shiver, but they hadn’t packed extra clothes for the journey–it wasn’t supposed to be a long trip.

She heard grunts of effort as she got towards the entrance, and slowed down, silencing her footfalls. As she got close enough to see, she stifled a smirk.

Quinn had his skirts pulled up, and was struggling to remove his diaper–his clearly full, clearly sagging diaper. “Gods–stupid–come off!” he grunted, in annoyance.

“Aww,” Sandra said loudly. “Is someone having trouble?”

Turning a little pink, Quinn pulled down the skirts of his armor. “No!”

“‘I think we’re just smelling the forest!’” Sandra teased, loudly. “‘Could be anything!’ But it was just your diaper, wasn’t it?”

He frowned. “It’s supposed to come off once it’s been used,” he complained. “It’s been used! I don’t think I can even use it more, or it’ll leak, but–”

Sandra shrugged. “Maybe ‘Used fully’ means it has to leak,” she suggested. “Or maybe someone else has to change it. These curses usually have a ‘gotcha’ in them somewhere. You’ll get used to it.”

He frowned, and she giggled.

“Or maybe you’ll be the party’s new stinker, and it’ll distract from the rest of us!” she added. The teasing was, admittedly, juvenile, but he’d given her plenty of smart comments when she had the cuff on. She had reason to turn things around.

“Is Hadrian ready?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah,” Sandra replied. “Come on, we’ll get home and then worry about undoing whatever stuff happened to us in here.”

“Maybe a shirt would help,” Quinn suggested with a smirk, immediately erasing any guilt Sandra felt for teasing him back.

They started walking back into the cave, into the low dip before the rise. As they passed the threshold and began moving up, though…

Rumble…

Sandra felt something wet around her boots. Looking down, she saw the wet, slimy…fluids of the cave had begun to pool, and that the line was rising rapidly.

“Come on!” she said, running forward up the cave. The sticky white liquid quickly grew behind them, flooding the entrance and trapping them inside unless they wanted to go for a swim.

Sandra really, really didn’t want to go for a swim.

“Gotta go now!” she called, running up towards Hadrian’s circle.

“I still need a–” Hadrian started, turning to glance at her. As he saw the quickly flooding pool behind her, though, his eyes widened. “Okay, quickly. Everyone get into the circle. Rocky!”

He snapped at his familiar, who’d been wandering around the cave in no particular direction until now. It quickly shuffled in, clinging to Hadrian’s leg while he held the magic at the ready.

Quinn ran to Tarja’s side, shaking her, but she was still lost in an affectionate pool. He instead hefted her, carrying her towards the circle, hopping out of a quickly growing puddle to get there.

“Okay, just stand in a circle, hold hands, and…uh…” he hesitated, looking at Tarja. Both her hands were already held by ghostly apparitions, manifested by the enchanted handcuff.

The cum line continued to rise, floating over the edge of the platform, and Sandra could see that they’d be drowning in less than a minute. It was already up past their ankles, then their knees, flooding in from nowhere.

Spotting the problem with Tarja’s hands a second later, Quinn moved to act, snapping the cuff onto his wrist.

Immediately, Tarja fell out of the magic and the cuff fell off her. With her hands free, Sandra grabbed one, and Hadrian the other, while the cuffs began working on Quinn. He had his hands free, at least, and they formed a circle, letting the magic take them–

Sandra blinked as they all fell in a heap on the ground, splashing in a puddle of the cave’s fluids that had come with them. Herself, largely naked save for the prominent diaper and sticky gods-I-hope-this-isn’t-cum that had soaked over her body. Tarja, half-focused, still recovering from the puddle of affection she’d melted into, Hadrian in his latex bodysuit, weren’t much cleaner than she was.

And Quinn, who was very obviously being fucked in every available hole by a conjured being made entirely of tentacles, climbing over his body, pulling up his skirt, working their way into his filthy diaper.

Sandra blinked, glancing around.

They’d made it back to their plane, but instead of landing in the circle at the Calistrian temple, they’d landed in another church altogether.

And, by the densely packed crowd all around them, the party had landed in the middle of their weekly service.

 

...

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[kerry]

Holy magical insanity, Batman! They've taken the magical insanity to someplace holy!

[PeculiarChangeling]

Chapter 14

 

The packed crowd of priests and supplicants backed away. Sandra had a few guesses why–it could be the smell, or the mere shock of four adventurers landing in their service, or the puddle of…white, creamy fluid that landed on the floor around them.

Sandra quickly conjured an umbral dress over herself, though most of the crowd had already gotten a great view of her exposed tits, and the outline of her diaper still showed clearly through the form-fitting black gown. It was a bit of a waste, using her limited umbral energy for a slip that barely covered her, but a little modesty was better than none.

She got to her feet, looking around. The congregation stared back. The chapel had no windows, and seemed to be hewn from unbroken stone, save for where natural gems emerged and had been polished, without ever being cut.

Yuelral, Sandra realized. They weren't in a building, they were in a cave, and the sanctuary was dedicated to Hadrian’s deity.

“Eh…” Sandra said, spinning to try to face the whole congregation at once. “Hi. I think we got here by mistake.”

Crouching, she reached to grab Hadrian by the shoulder, pulling him up to a standing position. He was relatively intact–Tarja was still coming out of her snuggle coma, and Quinn was…occupied, as well as still being about half his usual height. The dozen tentacles extending from the amorphous blob of monster that were restraining him and fucking every available orifice would probably make it difficult to speak.

“Tell them,” Sandra prompted, pushing Hadrian forward slightly.

He cleared his throat, glanced around, and cleared his throat again. “I’m no expert on planar travel, but I think it’s my fault we’re here–it’s, uh. It’s a long story. Do–how many of you know about dream realms? I’ll back up…”

Sandra wasn’t sure how many of the congregation were listening to his rambling explanation. Most seemed distracted by the active sex scene taking place on the floor between Quinn and the tentacles. More were politely trying not to notice anything at all, as though they hadn’t seen four adventurers in extremely horny dress and situation suddenly appear in their sanctuary.

By the back of the space, Sandra saw two elves whisper to one another, before one scurried off to the back.

“So, we were stuck, and when I found a cave that had similar energy I decided to try and get us home from there–I’m not sure what caused it, but there was a crisis in the cave, and…yeah. If I’d had more time, I’d have tried to ensure I knew where we were going, but it was a bit of a rush.” He blushed, glancing down at Quinn. “Eh, can we do something for him?”

Sandra hesitated. At least her affliction had been manageable, she hadn’t been totally unable to think or speak. Bending, she reached out for the free end of the cuff, clapping it around her wrist. The tentacles retracted, and a complicated series of ropes sprung out and bound her up in an instant. Quinn relaxed onto the floor, limp and not fully collected, while she tried to decide what to say.

“We had a quest–” she started. Under her breath, she whispered to Hadrian, “You follow Yeural, this is kind of your domain here.”

“So what, we’ve got the same deity and that means I can explain this?” Hadrian whispered back. “What kind of backwards logic is that?”

Sandra glanced around before shooting back. “I don’t know–maybe you know someone here? It’s mostly half elves, so…”

“How’s that supposed to help? We don’t all know each other!” Hadrian snapped back. Their conversation wasn’t really private, but he’d given up keeping his voice hushed at this point. “What–oh, gods.”

Raising a hand to his face, Hadrian turned halfway and tried, rather shoddily, to conceal his identity. Sandra followed his eye line from a moment prior and spotted a half elf coming from the back room, walking with someone who appeared to be a high priest–her robes were more ornate, and she just had a sort of matriarchal air to her. “Do you know him?”

“We were in seminary together, before I became a wizard,” Hadrian grumbled back. “I just hope he doesn’t recognize me–”

“Hadrian!” the half-elf called out, strolling up. “I thought that was you. Do you know what’s going on?”

Hadrian buried his face in his hand, shaking it slightly. “We were doing a quest in a dream plane, some shit happened, we ended up here by mistake.”

The new half-elf glanced between Hadrian, Sandra, and the high priest. “That’s…not it. Come on, we should talk.”

Sandra glanced down at herself. She was running out of umbral energy, and soon her shadowy dress would vanish and leave nothing behind except for a soggy diaper and a whole lot of intricately tied rope. “Do you have something I could change into? My armor got left behind, and…yeah.”

The high priest nodded. “We can work this out in the rectory.”

It took a few minutes to get everything sorted. The congregation was, for the most part, sent home, with many profuse apologies from Sandra. Eventually they all made it to the back rectory, and with a few minutes to recover, Tarja and Quinn managed to collect themselves. Hadrian’s former classmate left to get some clothes, and the high priest was finishing off a few things with the loitering congregation members, leaving them alone for the time being.

Sitting next to Quinn on a long couch, Sandra said, “So… tentacles.”

“Shut up,” Quinn shot back, blushing.

“After all your quips about the rope?” Sandra replied.

“I didn’t–it’s as much a surprise to me as you, that relic might be making a mistake or something,” Quinn suggested. “Really. I’ve got no idea where that came from.”

Sandra rolled her eyes. “Please.”

“Tarja–” Quinn said, glancing to their ranger for backup. “Come on, I need someone in my corner here.”

“You, eh,” she started to say. “I mean…”

“Come on!” Quinn objected.

Changing the subject, Tarja asked, “Uh, which one of us needs a change?”

Sandra took another moment to gloat. “That’d be Quinn, despite him claiming it was one of us earlier.”

He grumbled, lifting the petticoats of his armor to show off the diaper. “Not my fault–the tapes won’t come free, see?” Grabbing the edge of the diaper, he attempted to remove it, and it came off easily.

“I see someone who’s a little too eager to claim everything’s just bad luck and curses,” Sandra replied, basking in his blush. Turnabout was fair play, and in this case, it was particularly sweet. To really hammer it home, she added, “You were supposed to be able to take it off once you’d used it ‘fully’, so what changed in the past ten minutes, hmm?”

“Er…” Quinn said, unwilling to finish the thought. Getting to his feet, which still left his eyeline no higher than Sandra’s midsection, he glanced around and said, “I’m going to go, uh, find a bathroom.”

Sandra smirked. “You do that.”

While they waited a moment longer, Hadrian opened his bag, coaxing out his familiar. The rocky little Ioun Wyrd clambered out, glowing softly. “There you are,” Hadrian encouraged, scratching the clump of sentient stones like it was a puppy. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

Turning the wyrd over in his hands, he hesitated. “Eh…that wasn’t there before.”

Sandra leaned over, glancing in. The familiar had, indeed, acquired a new gemstone, a particularly…clitoral one, there just wasn’t a better word for it, between its two hind legs. She chuckled. “Well, I think we know why the cave got mad.”

Hadrian sighed, setting his familiar aside. “Buddy, we’ve talked about this, you can’t just steal strange gemstones without making sure they’re not cursed first. Okay?”

The Ioun Wyrd seemed to droop, and despite not having a recognizable face, Sandra got a definitive ‘sad puppy’ sense from its posture.

About then, the other half elf came in, carrying a white gown. Sandra needed a hand from Tarja to pull it over herself, since her arms were still tied up, but once it was over herself she dismissed the black umbral dress and sat back, feeling a bit more relaxed.

“I’m Sonwyn,” the half elf said, taking a seat off to the party’s left in a simple wooden chair. “Hadrian and I were friends in seminary–though maybe that’s why he ended up here, if there’s some sort of mental connection or familiarity going on.”

“We were in a cave full of dildo stalactites,” Sandra said. “It’s the closest point between that realm and here we could find, I think someone in your congregation may have been daydreaming about it and that’s why we came through in the temple.”

Sonwyn blushed, ever so slightly. “Ah, well…who can say. Maybe it was a coincidence after all.”

The high priest came in, finally, striding through the room so she could sit in the more ornate seat across from the party. “Now that we’re settled, my name is Minnogan.”

“Sandra,” she replied, “And this is Hadrian, Quinn, and Tarja. We’re with the adventurer’s guild.”

She nodded. “You’re working for Gwyndomere, yes? The Calistrian high priest?”

“That’s right,” Sandra explained. “We’re getting supplies for a counter-curse. Do you know of the Wizard of Paraphilia?”

“I’ve heard legends and rumors,” Minnogan said. “We received a warning recently that he may be trying to create his own school of magic.”

“We’re the people who figured that out,” Hadrian cut in. “Or, we guessed it, anyways, we don’t know for certain.”

The high priest nodded, sitting back. “Well, if you’ve crossed paths with the Wizard and walked away, even…afflicted, that speaks to your competence.”

“I’m surprised you managed to slip his attention, though,” Sonwyn added. “He doesn’t typically let people go, if the rumors are true.”

“We struck a deal,” Sandra explained. “That’s…well, it’s why we’re ‘afflicted’ as much as we are. He promised to leave us alone if we took on a few curses and didn’t dispel them.”

Sonwyn tilted his head. “But you’re getting counter-curse supplies?”

“For someone else,” Sandra said. “An adventurer we rescued.”

“I see.” Minnogan frowned, considering. “Your trip to the dream realm, it…attracted attention.”

“The Wizard is looking for us again?” Sandra sat up straight, alarmed. “How do you know?”

“Not the Wizard,” Minnogan said. “Yuelral.”

Sandra frowned, not following. “Well sure, we’re here–I know that has to draw some of your people’s eyes, but I don’t know why you’re telling me that.”

“Sandra,” Hadrian cut in.

She glanced at him. “What?”

“He didn’t say followers of Yuelral.” Hadrian looked stunned, and when Sandra parsed his meaning she felt that way too.

“We–no, you have to be mistaken,” Sandra said. “There’s no w–a god?”

“Possibly more than one, but I only know of Yuelral’s attention with any certainty, any other gods would just be an educated guess. You’re dabbling with forces above your understanding,” Minnogan warned. “I frankly don’t know what’s going on, why she noticed, but she did. I felt that much when you arrived. Your actions are no longer simply those of a few guild members on a quest, you’re wrapped up in something larger.”

Sandra swallowed. “What should we do?”

The high priest considered, thinking for several long moments before she spoke. “In my experience, the gods will reach out to you if they want something. For now, just act with care, and know that you have an audience.”

Taking in a long breath, Sandra considered the implications. It couldn’t be about them, they were just a few guild members trying to make a living. Was the relic not supposed to be taken? Were they in danger for having retrieved it? That would mean Gwyndomere was either lying to them, or oblivious to the danger he’d put them in.

There was only one other option she could think of. They’d drawn attention because of their engagement with the Wizard.

To Sandra’s mind, that alternative was far more terrifying.

…

In a small stroke of luck, the temple they’d appeared in was only a few day’s travel away from where they’d intended to return anyway. Their return trip with the artifact would be longer than planned, but it wouldn’t require some incredible quest just to deliver it back to Gwyndomere’s particular church.

There was some debate over who should carry the relic while they traveled. Everyone was suspiciously willing to ‘take the sacrifice’ and carry the burden for the rest of the party’s sake, and Sandra suspected that this eagerness had less to do with carrying a burden and more to do with the artifact’s effects on its carrier.

It was, finally, decided that Tarja could carry it during the day and Sandra would take it at night. Quinn and Hadrian’s particular effects when they bore the relic were just too noisy and distracting, Tarja could just be laid down in a cart and left to melt in a puddle of physical affection while they crossed the country, and Sandra was the only one who could realistically sleep while wearing it.

With a borrowed cart and three horses summoned by Hadrian, the party set out to return the artifact.

It wasn’t their most leisurely cross-country trip. They had the money to pay for inns, thankfully, but it was an often awkward and occasionally humiliating process of parading their way up to the rental rooms, garnering looks from other travelers who liked to gawk at their cursed procession.

Sandra picked up some new leather armor as soon as she could, and though it didn’t offer her any more modesty than her last set–the curse that was set on exposing her diaper to the public wasn’t tied to any particular outfit, after all–it’d protect her from a knife or a claw pretty well.

Re-stocked and with no reason to delay, the party montaged their way through the countryside. Her concerns about being on the wrong side of the gods didn’t come to anything, at least not yet–they encountered no trouble on their path, save for odd looks and snickering comments. A week later, they’d made it back to the city they’d started in, one extremely horny artifact in tow.

Evening ‘Service’ was in session as they arrived, so the party shuffled their way along the side to the back. Holy strippers put on their shows with aplomb, though only Hadrian paid much attention; Sandra was too focused on spotting Gwyndomere, Quinn was too focused on carrying Tarja, and Tarja was too focused on the effects of the magical cuff currently conjuring a dozen hands to give her gentle head scratches, shoulder rubs, and affection.

“I don’t see Serendipity,” Hadrian commented. “Do you think something’s wrong?”

“Maybe she’s off tonight,” Sandra replied.

“No, she’s scheduled…eh, I mean I think she’d probably be performing tonight.” Hadrian self-corrected quickly, though Sandra noticed he was a bit too aware of Serendipity’s performance schedule for it to be coincidence.

She sighed. “If you want to go find her–”

“Thanks,” he said, departing from the group to go look around the far side of the chapel.

Truth be told, there wasn’t much else to do but wait. Finding an out of the way place to sit, they passed the time until the congregation finished off their ‘worship’ for the evening and drifted out. Hadrian wandered back after a while, disappointed, having been unable to locate his favorite performer, while the rest of them just passed the time.

Finally, as the last bit of the show ended and the last patrons shambled out the door, Sandra got up and went to catch that performer’s attention. The dancing priest was a tall something-humanoid that Sandra didn’t place right away, wearing little except a belt and codpiece.

“I need to speak to Gwyndomere,” she said.

He didn’t look at her right away, walking along the stage towards a back door. “He’s currently occupied, you can come back tomorrow or speak to another priest.”

“Look at me,” Sandra snapped. “It’s urgent.”

He glanced down at her, hesitated, then said, “Eh–right. You’re Sandra, aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh,” she confirmed. “I’m pretty sure Gwyndomere will want to see us right away.”

He nodded and, contrary to his previously aloof behavior, scurried off to go get the high priest.

Only a moment later, he returned, alone, wearing a vaguely concerned expression.

“Something wrong?” Sandra asked.

“Come with me. He’s busy.”

She followed him to the back, towards Gwyndomere’s rectory. She’d been here before, and the escort felt a little unnecessary, but she didn’t see the need to argue about it. Clearly something was going on that had this priest a little rattled, but she didn’t care what it was so long as it didn’t stop her from finishing her quest.

Reaching the back room, Sandra saw the reason for the back-and-forth, why Gwyndomere had been unavailable–he was in the midst of meditation.

And he was naked.

Sandra couldn’t even pretend that her mouth didn’t start to water at the sight of him. The high priest practically radiated sexuality, giving off a pure sense of sexual power that had her want to take him right there. Even motionless, sitting on the ground with his legs spread out in a V, every inch of him screamed, ‘I will rock your world’. His body was molded with precision–not overdone like a bodybuilder, but toned just right to emphasize his sleek, supple body. His lips had just the right softness to them, and–

You’ve got a job to do, Sandra reminded herself. Leaning over to the priest, she asked, “How long does he typically meditate?”

“He’s not meditating,” the priest replied. “He’s in the middle of a conversation.”

At that comment, Gwyndomere opened one eye, then both, dropping his concentration. “Sandra,” he said. “I’m so glad you’re here, we’ve much to discuss.”

“I–you were talking to someone,” Sandra said. “Was it important? I don’t want to interrupt.”

“Please, interrupt. We were talking about what I need to tell you, now that you’re here I can move forward.” Gwyndomere pushed to his feet, and Sandra had to enforce her willpower to avoid staring between his legs. “Would you be more comfortable if I put on some clothing?”

Sandra hesitated on her answer–it’d certainly remove a distraction, but he did look good naked. She didn’t want to just openly admit to lusting after the priest, but nor did she want to take the step to rob herself of the show.

Fortunately, Quinn stepped in and solved the dilemma, glancing away from Tarja to reply. “Yes, please.”

He took the gown from his desk, nodding and pulling it over himself. “You have the cuff?”

“It’s on Tarja’s wrist,” Sandra said. “Careful, it–”

“It manifests the carnal fantasies of the wearer, I know,” he said. “Some details were filled in after you left. May I?” Stepping forward, he turned his wrist up and extended it towards Tarja.

Sandra hesitated, curious what sexual nightmares might appear–from what she knew, Gwyndomere had dabbled in just about every kink, fetish, and sexual position known to man. She’d experienced a mere kiss with him, and it’d come close to outdoing every sexual experience she’d ever had. He was an expert in all forms of lovemaking, and he was about to expose his true interests to the room.

“Of course,” she said, though she didn’t have to do anything to facilitate the transfer.

Gwyndomere reached down, took Tarja’s wrist, and lifted the free end of the cuff to his own arm. Locking it in place, he freed Tarja, adjusted the fit a little bit to avoid chafing, and raised his hand to inspect the artifact.

Nothing happened.

So far as Sandra could tell, the magic had winked out. She inspected it with her magic detection and saw that the power in the cuff was still there, it just wasn’t doing anything. “But…” she said. “You figured out how to dispel it?”

“Not precisely,” Gwyndomere replied, returning his focus to Sandra. “But it cannot multiply zero. Without any carnal fantasy to manifest, it seems to have gone inert.” Reaching down, he thumbed the lever on the side, and the cuff came free, falling to the ground.

Wow. Sandra’s impression of the priest increased a few more notches, before her attention returned to his earlier comment. “You were talking about me. Who with?”

“Calistria,” he replied. “She’s aware of what’s going on with the Wizard, and with your efforts to stymie his progress.”

“We’re not stymieing his progress, though,” Hadrian objected. “We’re just kind of…surviving.”

“And yet you gathered the relics necessary to undo some of his work,” Gwyndomere said, walking back to his desk and sitting down. “And taken on further curses to accomplish that, I see.”

He glanced past Sandra, at her tail, and then to Quinn, whose change in height still hadn’t gone away. Sandra, to her annoyance, noticed her tail was wagging, something she definitely hadn’t told it to do.

“I think the dream realm messed with magic in general,” she said. “But like Hadrian said, we’re not exactly taking the fight to the wizard. The best we’ve managed to do is convince him to stop going after us, and that only lasts for as long as he feels like keeping his end of the bargain.”

“Would you like to?” Gwyndomere asked.

The question hung in the air for a few seconds, as Sandra assembled the different pieces in her head. They’d drawn the attention of gods, and now a priest with enormous divine influence was asking if they wanted to go after the Wizard.

Her first impulse fell out of her mouth before she could collect her thoughts fully. “We can’t fight him–he’s vastly stronger than us. We’ve barely survived with planning and luck.”

“Power isn’t just raw magic,” Gwyndomere replied, leaning back in his seat. “It’s also resources, and ingenuity, and allies. You have those.”

“He’s not just working on raw strength,” Hadrian cut in. “His magic–I’ve barely scratched the surface in trying to understand it, but my research into his spells shows a lot of “ingenuity”. Emphasis on the genius part of that word. He’s developing his whole own school of magic, that’s once-in-a-millenium levels of intelligence.”

“Should we even be talking about this?” Quinn asked. “If he finds out we’re even debating it, he might change his mind about our arrangement and break the treaty.”

“Mhmm,” Gwyndomere said. “You’re not wrong. It’ll be difficult. But is hiding and scraping to recover really a better alternative?”

Sandra was stunned. Glancing to her party, she asked, “What do you think?”

“I think it’s suicide, but waiting for the wizard to come destroy us is just a slower way of dying,” Hadrian said. “Let’s face it–we’re skating on borrowed time right now.”

“It doesn’t matter how smart he is, a hammer through the skull’s a hammer through the skull,” Quinn added.

Tarja thought for a moment longer. Sandra thought she might still be in her post-headpatting stupor, but then she said, “We were talking about allies–does that include Calistria herself?”

The question hung in the air. Gywndomere didn’t say yes, but nor did he say no.

“Wait, you can’t be serious,” Sandra said. “A goddess–”

“Several, in fact,” Gwyndomere corrected. “None who would be so overt as to call themselves your allies, but…they don’t particularly want a new school in this vein, either. Calistria in particular, as a school of lust would interfere with her own domains, but she’s not the only one.”

“What sort of help would we be getting?” Sandra asked. “Like…magic? Blessings?”

“Maybe not anything so overt, but it opens certain doors,” Gwyndomere said. “I know I’m being coy–I’ll only say, for now, that I don’t have the liberty to be more open. Calistria is fairly frank about her intentions, but not about the means she’s willing to use, and not all are so open. And, for now, there’s something more pressing to take care of. Just think on what we’ve said, for now we’ve got work to do.”

“What work is that?” Sandra asked, moving to follow him even before he answered.

Gwyndomere got to his feet. “You’ve brought back the cuff, and we already have Dranngvit's Ledger. There’s an adventurer who needs our help, and delay only means he’ll suffer for longer.”

…

There wasn’t too much for them to do, as it turned out, but Sandra still would have helped even if she was just on standby the whole time.

Serendipity was, still, nowhere to be seen, to Hadrian’s chagrin, but several other Calistrian priests helped form a circle. Hadrian himself joined in as well, knowing enough of the ritual magic to be of assistance, and he took a seat at the north side of the circle, next to the cuff. Gwyndomere sat opposite him, next to the ledger, and together they formed the poles of the counterspell.

The adventurer, Leon D’arvit, was still stuck in his crib, a shell of his former self. The layers upon layers of curses that rendered him as helpless as an infant, unable to so much as feed himself or get up, would be gone soon. It was unclear if he could even tell what was going on, since he couldn’t speak, but Sandra hoped he knew he’d be free before the night was over.

Sandra, Quinn, and Tarja were on standby as bodyguards. Should the spell open up an unintended door to another realm, they would have to fight off whatever came through. Sandra doubted such an incursion would happen, but there was also the other possibility, that once they undid the spells on this adventurer, the Wizard would come a calling to extract revenge.

If he did, she’d make sure Leon got away. He’d suffered for long enough. The wizard could extract his anger on her, but she’d stop him there.

That is, if she was strong enough to do so.

Just as she was about to ask if they were ready to start, Gwyndomere began to hum.

A gentle, warm light filled the room, and Sandra felt her chest stir with emotion, and then… other parts of her began to stir, too. She felt a surge of boredom and arousal, a rising high of intense need for pleasure and the stifling tedium of an endless customer service line. Those two pitches rose, higher and higher, like competing thrums of sound playing from two tuning forks set with opposite pitch, and she thought the emotion might tear her apart.

But, as it rose, the two notes reached harmony with one another. Their resonant frequencies became equal and opposite, canceling each other out, and Sandra felt a true, placid calm.

The crib melted away, and the clothes, and the curses.

Leon D’arvit, the adventurer so cursed as to be unrecognizable, returned to his true self. His body grew and lost its femininity, regaining a robust, masculine shape. The silk cloth that had bound him simply went away.

He was naked, and as he looked around, at his hands, his body, the circle of priests around him, he began to cry.

It wasn’t unexpected. He’d been so bound up in magic he probably couldn’t even experience his own thoughts and emotions until now. He might not physically have even been able to cry, except for a baby’s wail, which was a far leap from the sort of emotional release he needed.

Swelling with empathy, Sandra rushed to comfort him–

“No!” Hadrian yelped, but it was too late.

She’d crossed into the circle, and the magic seized her as thoroughly as it’d seized Leon, but without any of the gentle, soft changes. A magical fist slammed her into the ground and she reeled, blinking a few times just to recover her vision.

She felt…different. Something had changed. Something…

Her diaper was gone. Or, well, not gone, but it lay next to her on the ground, and it’d reverted to the appearance of plain cotton panties. Next to it, a strip of blue fabric. She still had her tail, but…she’d been cured of her other curses.

She got to her feet, looking down at herself. “I–”

“You fool!” Gwyndomere bellowed, getting to his feet.

Sandra’s eyes widened. “I just wanted to help–”

“Not you,” he snapped. “Hadrian, you broke the magic. What were you thinking, crying out like that?”

“Sandra was going to–”

“She wasn’t going to do anything if you maintained your focus,” Gwyndomere snapped.

“It’s fine, isn’t it?” Sandra cut in. “What’s wrong?”

“The erotic side of the circle lost its control,” Gwyndomere seethed, looking down and back. “It overwhelmed the other relic.”

She followed his gaze and gasped. The ledger, the one they’d risked their lives and spent weeks retrieving–heck, the one they’d promised to give to Darius and Karena after they were done with it–had turned to a blackened pile of soot.

Gwyndomere sighed. “It’ll regenerate, but not quickly.”

“How long?” Sandra asked.

“Ten years and a day, I believe. Until then, the spell won’t be possible.”

“We can find another relic, can’t we?” Hadrian asked, jumping to his feet. “Something to take its place.”

“Maybe,” Gwyndomere said, quietly. “I’ll begin the search, but for now, nobody else can be cured.”

Sandra looked down at herself. She’d been fixed, but her party wasn’t in the same boat. If she hadn’t rushed forward, Hadrian wouldn’t have called out, and the spell wouldn’t have gone haywire.

Suddenly, her freedom didn’t feel like so much of a blessing.

 

...

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[PeculiarChangeling]

Chapter Fifteen

 

“I don’t necessarily see the need to be here for this.” Quinn, the diminutive half-orc, stared up at the rafters of the office. Reclined on a couch, propped up by pillows almost as big as he was, he fidgeted in spite of the effort spent to make the environment comfortable. A fire crackled in the hearth, bathing the room in a warm, golden glow, and Brick had brewed the adventurer a fresh pot of his favorite tea. “My thoughts don’t need fixing, I think I’ve got a good handle on my head.”

Brick adjusted his half moon spectacles, leaning forward ever so slightly in his large, comfortable chair. He’d heard this objection before, and knew how to react to the misconception. “I’m sure you do,” the orc therapist offered, “but therapy doesn’t have to be about fixing things. You’re quite athletic, you’ve got a good handle on your physique, but you still exercise and practice to stay fit, don’t you?”

Quinn tilted his head, reconsidering. Brick knew immediately that his suggestion had landed, as the half-orc relaxed a bit. “I suppose it’s like having a sparring partner,” he suggested. “Alright, certainly. So what should we talk about?”

“How did you get into adventuring?” Brick asked. “That’s quite a career commitment, after all.”

…

Hadrian shrugged, scratching his chin.

Brick knew the wizard’s type, though he cast no judgment. Hadrian had been the skeptic from the moment he lay down on the couch, and even now Brick suspected that–rather than thinking to answer the question honestly–Hadrian was considering what reaction each of his answers would give.

A colleague of Brick’s, Serendipity, had given him the referral on this party. She’d suggested they talk to him, get a general assessment before they move on to more adventures, and from the little background Brick knew, he had to agree. Adventuring created stress and conflict at the best of times, and this party had flown far from the best of times.

Settling on a response, Hadrian said, “I originally trained in seminary. I knew I wanted to be a cleric, whether that ended up being someone serving in a temple, or a servant going out to do holy works, but it didn’t work out. Just a matter of a bad fit–there weren’t any, horrible fallings out or anything, I just trained for about a year before deciding I would be better off practicing wizardry, and serving Yuelral in a more personal way. You know, not openly as a representative, but just trying to embody her values in my day-to-day.”

Brick made a mental note of this–not a thought committed to memory, but a note from his psyche transcribed directly onto the paper in front of him. His clients had a tendency to grow nervous when he got out a pen, so he’d invested in the magical tool to put them at ease.

…

“Don’t you need to take notes?” Sandra asked, fidgeting. She was half-laying on the couch, but one leg was draped over the side, tapping anxiously against the floor. “Or do you just have one of those ironclad memories, like a Luxodon?”

Brick smiled. He could already tell Sandra had a lot on her mind–she led a party, and had made a habit of concerning herself with everyone else’s needs. Making sure everyone else was taken care of. “I’ve got a psychic notepad,” he confirmed with her. “It’s alright.”

She laid back, content with that answer, though she continued to fidget. “So, anyways, once I’d caught the questing bug, I knew I had to do it for a living. I’d always been cunning, or at least that’s what my parents said, so I started training to join the guild as a rogue.”

Gently, Brick reached down, sliding the wooden cube puzzle on his table forward. It had no solution, but it gave his clients something to fiddle with.

Sandra just kept tapping her foot, looking around the room.

…

“I never saw it as a commitment, really,” Tarja said. “My moms raised me out in a cave, deep in a mountain range to the south. I don’t even think of myself as a ranger, really–these aren’t skills I acquired to fit any sort of guild box, it’s just what I do. I would have been content to just go see the world, subsisting wherever I needed, but Sandra and I bumped into each other when she was just looking to put together her party. I helped her out, we bonded, and when she offered me a job I decided sticking with a group wouldn’t be so bad.”

Brick nodded. “So Sandra’s the reason you’re an adventurer today?”

…

“You could say that,” Hadrian said. “That’s a funny story, actually.” The half-elf sat forward. He’d refused to lay down and instead sat on the edge of the couch, so he could watch Brick’s expression. Brick didn’t mind the suspicion, though the constant squeaks as Hadrian adjusted his posture, rubbing his latex bodysuit against itself, was a bit of a distraction.

“Sandra and I were both still apprenticing for different parties, looking to join the guild proper–or, well, I wasn’t so much ‘apprenticing’ as ‘doing chores for older adventurers’. I was getting pretty sick of it, thinking about dropping out entirely and finding a tower to squat in after all, but I’d already paid my dues for six months so I decided to stick it out. Her party and mine teamed up on a quest, they were hired to rescue a nobleman and we’d been picked up to kill an ice dragon, and it turned out the dragon had taken the nobleman. Point is, we were setting up camp outside the dragon’s lair, and Sandra and I were the only ones not gonna be going inside, and we got to talking–”

…

“Naked!” Sandra laughed, throwing her hands up in a broad gesture.

Brick chuckled, raising an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected the story to go in that direction, but it’d been an amusing tale. “The whole squad?”

“All of them,” Sandra confirmed. “We just about got tossed out of the guild, but since nobody got hurt and it got the troll out of the way so they could deal with the dragon, they decided to call it a wash. Still made us clean up, but hey–we were apprentices, we’d probably have been tasked with that anyways. Hadrian and I decided to form our own party once we became fully fledged members, and from there I picked up Quinn, and Tarja.”

…

Frowning down at the little wooden puzzle, Quinn shrugged. “I saw the job listing it on a poster board. ‘Help wanted–warrior, barbarian, or similar skill set. Must be willing to travel.’ Figured, hey, it beat what I was doing then. I never figured it’d lead to, y’know–” he gestured at his ample breasts and shrugged. “This. I don’t really mind, though.”

Brick didn’t get the sense that Quinn was lying in particular, but he followed up anyways, adjusting his minute spectacles. “It doesn’t bother you to have your body changed to something typically seen as feminine?”

“Oh, this is nothing, you should see my armor,” Quinn said, flipping one part of the puzzle to the side. “A frilly pink dress that protects my like nothing else. And no, it doesn’t bother me–I have six sisters, and they’re all older than me. Always fighting, too. I got the sense from one of the local boys once that ‘girly’ meant ‘bad’ or ‘weak’ and I brought that attitude home, lost a tooth for my troubles.”

He chuckled, but Brick didn’t. “They attacked you?”

Quinn laughed again. “My youngest sister–Tiana–challenged me to a wrestling match. One of my baby teeth was loose already, and about the third time she pinned me in a row, I was wriggling and it got knocked loose. Point is, she made her point. I don’t see a problem with girly. If you told me a year ago I’d be wearing a dress into battle, I’d have just laughed. The thing with the tentacles, though…”

…

“It’s your guess or mine whether the wizard is screwing with our heads as much as our bodies, or if he just picked stuff out to suit us in particular,” Hadrian admitted. “I mean, I don’t–I don’t like this, but it’s hard not to think about it as a turn on after a while. My sex drive didn’t go away, even if it works differently now, and…yeah.”

Brick wasn’t surprised by the direction their conversation had taken. Sex was the natural direction when so much of their problems related to a sexually predatious wizard. “How do you feel about that?”

Leaning back, Hadrian declared, “Fucked up! I mean, I can have fun with it, but I don’t like that I’m having fun with something I didn’t choose to do. I’m not saying there’s an issue with latex, or…y’know,” he gestured at his crotch, sealed beneath a layer of latex and a diaper, “Magical futzing with what’s down there, but I didn’t pick it.”

“It’s a consent violation,” Brick said, simply.

“Exactly.” He shrugged, grabbing a pillow and pulling it to his side. “You know I said it didn’t work out for me in the seminary, right? It was because I never felt like I had a choice in anything. Prayers at a particular time, magic limited to what we could channel from Yuelral.  When I tried to propose ideas, ways to bring the faith to more people, it got shot down unless I could cite doctrine to back it up. It just felt so… stifling.”

“And being a wizard grants you freedom?” Brick asked, making another mental note.

“Yeah. I can cast the spells I want, do good deeds the way I want. And don’t get me wrong–the clerics in my seminary weren’t dicks about it, they didn’t try and stop me, it just…didn’t fit.” He pulled the pillow a little closer, not quite hugging it, but not quite not hugging it either.

Brick didn’t need to do much here, except encourage the half-elf to keep talking. “What do you mean?”

“So, for example–and I’m not saying this was a good idea, to be clear–I had this idea. Our seminary ran a food drive, serving food to the needy. A lot of them were able bodied, they had drive, they just couldn’t find work to buy food for themselves–I suggested a sort of program where we could acquire some land, let them farm on it and keep whatever they grew, provide for themselves.” Gesturing stiffly at the ceiling, talking with his hands, he gave Brick a sense of frustration that didn’t go away over time. “I suggested it, and wasn’t told no, but I didn’t get any support either. I just got a nod, and a, ‘That sounds promising,’ and not a single one of my peers helped. I don’t know if they even liked the idea. They didn’t actually care what I had to say, I didn’t feel like I mattered.”

“That sounds frustrating,” Brick said. “I’m not surprised you left.”

“Thanks. And I mean–that’s what’s great about being an adventurer with Sandra. I’m not just there to cast spells, I’m part of her team.”

…

Tarja exhaled. “It’s my fault. I almost broke up the team.”

“You didn’t choose to be cursed,” Brick pointed out. “You can’t control the decisions of others. It sounds like you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself.”

“It’s not that I got cursed,” Tarja said. “It’s that I lied. Sandra works so hard to keep us all safe, keep us working together, and I kept it from her anyways. She knew, and she gave me the chance to come clean, and I kept lying anyways. It is my fault.”

“Alright, let’s explore that. Why did you feel the need to lie?” Brick asked.

The question was open-ended, but Tarja didn’t seem to see it that way. “I’m not saying Sandra’s untrustworthy. She’s not. I’d trust her with my life, I just–I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking, I just lied.”

“I’m sure you had a reason,” Brick said, in a tone to suggest that he wasn’t calling her wrong, just suggesting that there might be more to it.

“Not a good one,” Tarja said.

“Our motives aren’t always going to be perfectly logical, and that’s okay,” Brick said. “Do you know why you did it?”

“I…” Tarja let out a breath, shaking her head. “I said it was because Sandra had too much on her plate and didn’t need to worry about my problems, too.”

“That’s reasonable,” Brick noted.

“It’s a lie, too. It’s lies all the way down,” Tarja confessed. “I just…I couldn’t. I couldn’t confront the fact that my body was being changed, again, by some asshole we barely know. I’m not–I haven’t been me for a long time, now, and it just seems like the longer we keep going, the less me I am.”

Brick only nodded. He didn’t need to interrupt this.

“I can barely walk straight unless I piss myself,” Tarja said. “And every time I do, it’s just reinforcing how much power that–that fucking wizard has over me. My voice is getting deeper. I can feel my body changing, drifting further and further away from myself, and the longer it goes on the more I worry that no spell is going to be able to fix this. I had a potion that was supposed to fix my hormones, but it’s not enough. Nothing’s enough. Someday, and it’s going to be soon, I’m going to wake up and look in the mirror and the person I see will be unrecognizable.”

Brick pursed his lips. “You know, this isn’t a field I’m an expert in, but there are other people who know what you’re going through.”

“My friends, other victims of the wizard, I know,” Tarja said. “But the rest of the party, their curses aren’t like this. Quinn doesn’t care that he’s got breasts. Sandra and Hadrian–they’re embarrassed, sometimes, but they’re still them.”

“That’s not what I mean, precisely,” Brick said. “What you’re describing sounds like gender dysphoria.”

Tarja considered that for a long moment, and Brick recognized the expression: He’d just made a point that would seem obvious in retrospect, but put into words that the client hadn’t thought to consider until just then.

“Wait,” Tarja said. “Am I trans now?”

…

“I try to protect them,” Sandra said, speaking with her hands at the ceiling. “But what the hell am I supposed to do? I can handle myself, sure, but there are powers and forces out there that’re just infinitely more powerful. Someone like the wizard–hell, really just any wizard with a few decades of experience, can pretty effortlessly do or undo anything I work at. I just have to wonder, what is the point of even trying when we’re all so relatively weak and helpless?”

“You’ve been able to evade this wizard in the past, haven’t you?” Brick asked. This was the sort of problem he struggled with the most, because Sandra hadn’t made any unreasonable points. “Even come out on top against him.”

“He ruined the life of an adventurer on a trivial whim, and we had to spend a month gathering ancient relics to undo that,” Sandra said. “We had to bargain away our dignity to get him to give us space, and even now he could just…change his mind, whenever he wants.”

“He’s not a god,” Brick said. “I understand you feel restricted, but he’s still got to deal with mortal institutions.”

“I know, and like…I know that’s why the guilds exist, too, but it’s just so frustrating.” Sandra balled a hand into a fist, tense. “Because, sure. A lot of powerful people are in my corner, but I’m basically just relying on the good graces of others. It’s the powerlessness that gets to me–no matter how strong I get, we’re always going to be dependant on others.”

Brick nodded, taking a mental note. “Is that why you work so hard to protect your team?”

She paused, lowered her arms, glanced at him. “I get it.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, adjusting his spectacles. In a way, the glasses were his own fidget toy, something he could touch to occupy his hands.

“I don’t like relying on people above me, but I still do everything I can to protect the people below–or, well, not below me, but you know what I mean. Those in my party. Those I’m strong enough to help,” Sandra said.

That hadn’t been exactly the point Brick had in mind, but open ended questions were used for a reason. Self discovery.

“I just feel like if it weren’t for me, the whole group would–”

…

“The whole group would fall apart,” Quinn explained. “And don’t get me wrong, I love the party. I’d die for any one of them, but it just feels like they have no respect for the effort I put in. Like they don’t even notice it’s there. Like, I’m just a hammer in battle and outside of it I’m just the…I don’t know, the comic relief?”

“What makes you feel this way?” Brick said.

“I guess…don’t get me wrong, Sandra works hard, we all see that, but her understanding of party morale is inspiring speeches and determination.” He shrugged, already backing off from his own feelings. “She’s carrying the weight of all our safety on her shoulders, it’s a lot.”

“That doesn’t make your feelings less valid,” Brick assured him. “If your effort isn’t being recognized, that’s a problem, whether or not everyone else is putting in effort as well.”

Quinn looked at the wooden puzzle in his hands, which had only grown more unsolved as he fiddled with it, a complicated knot of shifting blocks. “Do you know what happened between Tarja and Sandra?”

Brick did, he’d heard this story twice already, but he wouldn’t disclose what they’d told him in confidence. “Can you tell me?”

“The really short version is, Tarja got cursed so that her motor function started degrading. Is that the right word? Degrading? Whatever–” he shook his head. “She didn’t tell Sandra, and Sandra figured it out somehow–I mean, as time went on, it got pretty obvious just from how she was stumbling–and I got caught in the middle of it. I couldn’t tell Sandra without breaking Tarja’s trust, and I couldn’t keep it a secret without breaking Sandra’s. And I just had to deal with that–Sandra kind of acknowledged it, later, but they were both so caught up in their own issues that nobody ever bothered to ask, ‘Hey, Quinn, how are you feeling?’”

…

“That sounds frustrating,” Brick said. “Have you brought this up with anyone?”

“Who?” Hadrian asked. “Sandra’s constantly got the world on her shoulders, and Tarja and Quinn–they’re a whole thing. Besides, what am I going to say, ‘It feels like you’re too stressed to be a good friend lately’? Like, how the hell’s that going to come off?”

Brick meshed his fingers, nodding sympathetically. “That doesn’t make your concerns any less valid.”

“Like, we’ve still got each other’s backs, but it used to be ale and jokes and a good time every night. We were a team. A quest goes bad, Sandra would rally us and we’d still be cheering and laughing after. A quest goes good, we’d be merry for days. But now–it’s all gallows with the cheer coming through as the exception.” He sighed, leaning back on the couch–not the way it’d been designed for, but linking his fingers behind his head and resting it against the wall. “And, sure, there’s a lot of shit going on, but it feels like everyone’s just waiting to get fucked.”

“You’ve never been under this level of pressure before, have you?” Brick asked.

“No, but like–it’s making everything else suck too. Like. Arguments stopped being little problems. Do you know the whole thing that happened with Tarja and Sandra?” He shifted a bit, trying to get comfortable.

“What happened?” Brick asked–even if he already knew, the important things were the details that mattered to Hadrian.

“So, there was this–you know what? It doesn’t matter. There was a dumb mistake and a stupid argument about it. Sandra was pissed. But the thing is, it’s not the first time someone in the party’s done something dumb. We’re in the guild–’I made a mistake that almost got us killed’ is pretty much on the job description. It never caused a tearful shouting match before.” Finally, he turned and laid back, embracing the couch. “And like–I don’t know all the details. I didn’t want to pry and nobody wanted to explain. But come on–get over it, right? Am I wrong?”

“I understand the way you’re feeling,” Brick said, trying to thread the needle without invalidating his client’s concerns. “One stressful thing can easily compound others.”

“It can, but it doesn’t have to, if everyone else would just deal with their shit. And I’m not going to say something, I know this would be a dick move to just bring this up, but–I’m over here, I’m trapped in all this,” he gestured down at his latex bodysuit, “And–I mean, it’s kind of Sandra’s fault. Am I going to call her out on it? Again, no, but–ah, fucking hmmph.” He groaned as a pacifier appeared between his lips, interrupting his rant.

“Do you need me to get that?” Brick asked, moving to stand. Hadrian nodded, so he crossed over, removing the pacifier from his client’s mouth.

“You get it,” Hadrian said. “Sandra’s deal with the wizard, confronting him in his cave, even accepting that first quest that got us into this trouble to begin with–I understand why we did it, I follow her reasoning, I’m not going to say she fucked up, but…if I wasn’t in her party, this wouldn’t have happened to me. And even though I’m keeping all that to myself, everyone is still grumpy just, like, all the time. And it sucks.”

…

“Your situation is complex,” Brick hedged. “I have a few colleagues who are better versed in the field.”

“I just–” Tarja shrugged. “I never really thought about it in those terms. When he…well, you know, when the Wizard changed my body, it was just the effects of the curse. A thing I needed to get undone. And when we found out there wouldn’t be any way to fix it…I don’t know.”

“You’ve been the victim of some rather extreme consent violations,” Brick said. “It’s common for adventurers to be cursed, but few villains in history have gleefully developed curses that seem to have no other purpose than his own titillation.”

“The wizard’s a sadistic asshole,” Tarja agreed. “I just–I don’t know how much more I can take. I know we can’t walk away, but I can’t stand the idea of him getting to do anything else to me. I know Sandra’s talking to the church, seeing about doing something aggressive, but I think I just want to walk away.”

“Even if confronting him means a chance at returning yourself to how it was before?” Brick asked, carefully avoiding the word, ‘Normal’.

“Do you think we can win?” Tarja asked.

“I’ve seen many adventurers pull off incredible things,” Brick replied. “And you seem to be qualified in a lot of ways, even if the power he wields is greater than your own.”

“I don’t think we can win,” Tarja said, simply. “The best we’ve done, with days of planning and preparation and hitting him when he’s not expecting it, is a snatch and grab that left all of us further cursed. How are we supposed to manage when we walk away from every fight weaker than we were before?”

She lay back, staring at the ceiling for a moment. Recognizing the thoughtful look on her face, Brick chose to remain silent, to let her ponder, waiting for her to respond.

“I can barely walk, I have to wear a diaper now, because Sandra decided we should go on the offensive against the wizard. We could have stayed out of it. We could have accepted our lumps and moved on, but she led us into that cave.” Covering her face with a hand, she said, “And in my head, I know it was the right thing to do, because we saved that other guy–D’arvitt. He was trapped, we freed him. We cured what was wrong, too. But someone else could have done that, and Sandra chose for it to be us in the line of fire.

“The reason I lied? It’s because I blamed her. I still blame her. It’s unfair, it’s shitty, I love Sandra too much to call her out on it, but she got us cursed. So why am I still giving her so much control over my choices?”

She slumped into the couch, done.

“It sounds like you’ve been burying these feelings for a while,” Brick said, calmly. “It’s good to say how you’re feeling. Even negative feelings come up for a reason.”

“I’m a bad friend,” Tarja said. “I shouldn’t feel this way about her.”

“That’s not true,” Brick replied. “Your feelings are important, just like recognizing that they’re an emotional response is important. What you do, how you act in response, is what matters. So, the question is–”

…

“So what would you like to happen?”

Hadrian sighed, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I want things to be like they were before, back when we were struggling to scrape together coin and getting our asses beat by monsters every day, then coming back to the tavern to drink and commiserate and relax. We complained, but those were the good times.”

Brick nodded. “Even though you were struggling then?”

“It was different. We were struggling, but struggling with hope–once we get some more experience, once we’re more powerful, we were going to take on the world. Get rich. Have legends written about us–shit, I don’t know. We had a dream. Now we’re just hopeless.” He shook his head. “I’ve thought about getting back into the seminary, a couple times. Finding a priest strong enough to undo all this, giving up adventuring completely. I keep telling myself that if I stay out of the way and just work in my temple, the wizard would leave me alone.”

“Why do you say it like that?” Brick asked.

“Because it’d never happen. For one, he’s too much of a petty asshole, but besides–the seminary’s not for me. I’d go crazy listening to prayers and giving blessings every day,” Hadrian said. “At the end of the day, I want to be an adventurer, I just can’t keep going along like we have been.”

Brick understood. “Alright, then. You know what you want, but–”

…

“Just an acknowledgement of the effort would be nice,” Quinn said. “I just feel like a sponge, like I’m taking everyone else’s stress and carrying it like a mule–I guess that’s two metaphors. Is there an animal that absorbs and carries stuff?”

“Was it like this before you encountered the wizard?” Brick asked.

“Sure, a little, but–how do I put this,” Quinn considered. “It wasn’t as oppressive. I could bear it just fine, because our struggles were lighter. Now it’s crushing. It’s bearable, but only if I grimace through the trouble and don’t complain. I don’t even mind supporting everyone, I just want that same treatment in kind–a little support of how I’m feeling.”

“Have you told the party?” Brick asked. “Explained to them that you’re under stress?”

“I shouldn’t have to,” Quinn said, almost snapping. “They know me. We’ve been together as a party for years. Why should I need to sit them down like children and explain that when they all dump their emotions on me, it’s effort to bear that all?”

Brick was silent for a moment. Quinn was wise enough, he’d get there.

“I should just tell them,” Quinn admitted. “They’re not mind readers, even if they shouldn’t be this oblivious.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Brick promised. “I can’t promise the outcome, but it’s always good to express your feelings to people you trust.”

Quinn sighed. “It doesn’t feel like a good time, though. There’s just so much happening, is it fair of me to demand they focus on my feelings while we’re trying not to just get obliterated by the wizard?”

“If you’re marching to battle, and you’ve got a needle in your leg, you stop to take out the needle,” Brick explained. “You don’t leave it in just because the battle is going to be a bigger problem, you fix the small problem while you have the opportunity.”

“It’s not a needle, it’s hurt feelings,” Quinn said. “I’m strong enough to deal with my feelings.”

“Maybe,” Brick said. “And you know what your options are, so–”

…

Sandra lay on the couch. “I think the only way out is to beat the wizard. For good. Stop him, kill him, lock him up on another plane, just take away his power somehow–as long as he’s out there, as long as he can come back for us, he’s a threat. He can ruin our lives.”

“So what steps do you need to take to get there?” Brick asked.

“The calistrian church has offered us some options. They have allies, and we’ve got contacts. It might be enough. Emphasis on might. But we’ll need more power than just what their allies can give us.” She shook her head. “And I need to keep my party safe.”

Brick sighed. “You’ve got a lot of doors ahead of you, a lot of ways you could go. Have you made up your mind, exactly–”

…

He asked the same thing of all of them, in the end, because it all came down to one issue: Choice. How they would proceed, how they would conquer their battles, be they emotional or physical.

In the end, it all boiled down to one question with four answers. “What are you going to do?”

 

...

Here's your semi-regular reminder that I admin a discord server for posting and sharing ABDL fiction!  https://discord.gg/FvyTkRu

[kerry]

On 7/15/2022 at 8:08 PM, PeculiarChangeling said:

Re-stocked and with no reason to delay, the party montaged their way through the countryside.

I LOVE this verb!

[kerry]

The analysis chapter is simply brilliant! You've done such a thorough job of exploring the mental and emotional wear and tear of dealing with everything that has happened. Nice work!

[PeculiarChangeling]

3 hours ago, kerry said:

The analysis chapter is simply brilliant! You've done such a thorough job of exploring the mental and emotional wear and tear of dealing with everything that has happened. Nice work!

Thank you so much! We went back and forth a lot about this chapter, and ended up writing it like a sort of 'bottle episode' in an anime. I'm really pleased with the results. ^^

[PeculiarChangeling]

Chapter 16

 

I've been really bad about posting updates for this - Updates coming soon!

...

The Archipelagon stood as a testament to, if nothing else, the sheer wealth of nobility. Neither an archipelago, nor a paragon of anything besides opulence, it nonetheless stood proud as the most ostentatious structure for a thousand miles in any direction.

A shrine to Abadar, geometrically perfect, a hexagon wall around a circular temple. At a glance, Sandra could not identify the material it’d been made of–or perhaps, coated in. It seemed the whole structure had been painted a perfect, pearly white.

“I don’t get it,” Quinn said, setting down Tarja for a moment and scratching his chin as they came over a ridge, into view of the Archipelagon.

“What don’t you get?” Tarja asked, shaky on her feet. As bad as her dexterity drain had grown, she had been having trouble walking and even standing, but she could wobble for a bit on her own when Quinn needed a break from carrying her. “It’s a temple.”

Quinn shrugged. “Well, for the ‘God of walls and ditches’, I expected…I don’t know.”

“More ditches?” Hadrian chuckled, stretching his back. “Less walking?”

“The owner said he’d give an audience to anyone who makes a pilgrimage to see the place,” Sandra said. “Pilgrimage means walking. As for the ditches…Eh. Abadar rules over other stuff. More to the point, all the real temples–sorry, all of the tithe-funded temples restrict access to their inner sanctums, and none of us are priests. So we’re going to play the game just long enough to have this chat.”

“Pilgrims can have horses,” Hadrian said, kneeling to rub at the back of his legs, through a layer of latex. “My calves are killing me.”

Sandra shook her head. Hadrian was just venting, they all knew why they were here.

They’d drawn the attention of the gods, and all of them wanted to know what was going on. Priests could sometimes be persuaded to relay messages, but in this case, they needed a divine chat, and the nearest likely candidate was here. The Archipelagon. A structure built and funded by a politician-slash-businesswoman with far, far too much money on her hands.

After a bit of soul searching, Sandra had proposed they needed more information. They’d been playing catch-up and fighting blind for too long. Making guesses and running fetch-quests to patch over the last mistake.

The time had come to find a god and get some answers.

“Let’s rest a minute,” Quinn said. “I need a little break.”

Hadrian exhaled sharply through his nostrils, not quite a laugh. “Really?”

Quinn almost let his request die, then straightened and shook his head. “Yeah, really. I’m tired. I need a break, or for someone else to carry Tarja.”

Blinking, Hadrian said, “Oh, I–sorry. I’m just so used to you being Muscle Man, I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“It’s fine,” Quinn said, moving to the edge of the road and sitting down. “It’s not so much the weight as the awkwardness–I’m as strong as ever, but it’s hard to hold a good grip and keep balance when she’s twice my size, and I’ve got to take twice as many steps as the rest of you.”

“I–” Tarja said, a little pink. “I could walk on my own for a bit.”

Sandra blushed sympathetically. Even though it allowed Tarja to bypass the dexterity drain she’d been cursed with, the side effect was humiliating: If Tarja wanted to walk, she had to choose to wet herself. Even with the option to put on a diaper beneath her cursed onesie, it was almost worse than simply having her potty training erased.

“If you’re okay with that,” Sandra said.

Tarja’s arms straightened, hands tightening into balls, and her blush deepened bright red. Nobody commented on the process, just waiting until the changeling relaxed, no longer wobbly or unstable in the slightest.

“Let’s get a move-on then,” Sandra said, offering a hand to Quinn. He was remarkably light in his reduced form, and she added with a chuckle, “I could carry you for a bit, if you want.”

He took the comment as intended: As a lighthearted joke disguising a genuine offer for help. Smiling, he shook his head. “I’m alright. Thanks.”

The remaining mile to the Archipeligon went quickly. Ivory gates loomed, a large key embossed in stark relief, ensuring nobody with even a passing knowledge of religion or the arcane could miss the purpose of this temple.

The four of them staggered up, dusty, dirty, riddled with magical curses that rendered each almost as laughable as the next–save for Sandra, who’d been purged of her curses and stood almost back at her normal self. Almost.

With a shudder, the gates opened, slow and imposing. Sandra could make out the faint glow of a magical mechanism beneath them, turning the cogs that moved the huge alabaster-white gates.

As the gates open, a short, slender halfling woman outfitted in a tailored suit of crimson and pale green fabric, raised her hands up to her sides in a gesture of greeting.

Sandra knelt, and taking her lead, the others did as well. “Archbanker Blackdown.”

“Please,” Praye Blackdown said, spreading her arms genially. “I’m merely a humble servant of Abadar, I’ve got no claim to the title of Archbanker.”

“This is your temple, isn’t it?” Tarja asked, glancing up at her.

“I built it with the wealth I’ve earned under Abadar’s grace, but I’m no cleric,” Blackdown explained. “Come in, I received your message, and we’ve much to discuss. Will you be changing into supplicant’s clothes now that you’re off the road?”

Sandra looked over the party. Hadrian didn’t have anything on over his latex bodysuit–as he’d explained, it was hot and stifling enough without adding extra layers. Tarja’s onesie was covered by her normal travel clothes and armor, and the bulge of her diaper was mostly hidden unless one knew what to look for. Quinn had stayed armored on the road–meaning he had on his pink, ruffled dress full of petticoats. And finally, Sandra had worn her typical armor, with the addition of the tail she’d acquired in the dream realm, and…

It didn’t particularly matter. “We didn’t bring any supplicant’s clothes, unless you have something for us to change into,” she said. “This is, generally, what we wear when working.”

Blackdown’s smirk carried subtle condescension, but she didn’t comment on it aloud. “Well, come in.”

They approached through the huge gate, so tall that the whole party could have stood on each other’s shoulders and not reached the top, and the enormous doors crept closed behind them.

“Explain to me why you’re here,” Praye Blackdown instructed, as they walked across a wide, sandy courtyard separating the outer walls from the inner structure, a boxy white temple made of the same matter as the walls. Crates and carts full of trade goods were stacked out in the courtyard, and off to the right Sandra saw stables being worked by experienced animal handlers. This wasn’t just a temple, then, but a place of business as well.

Or, perhaps, the business conducted was a part of the temple’s nature. The god of Merchants would have a place for mercantilism to be conducted in his home, it only made sense.

“What do you need to know?” Sandra asked. “We explained as much as we could in the letter we sent ahead.”

“I know what I need to know,” Praye countered. “I want to hear your pitch. Sell it to me.”

“Oh.” Sandra started. “Well, we’re here because we need to speak with the gods, or at least one of them, to figure out if they’re willing to help us–”

“I’m sorry,” Praye said, as a smaller door to the inner temple opened up, pushed by an unseen bit of magic. “Were my instructions unclear? Tell me where I lost you.”

“You wanted me to explain why we’re here, right?” Sandra asked, following her inside. Within the doors, she paused, stiffening as she looked around.

The interior was all pearly white, same as the exterior, lit by gilded sconces shedding magical light, but had the layout of a place of business–with space for secretaries and middle management to do bookkeeping.

“I told you to sell it to me,” Praye Blackdown explained. “I don’t care what you want, unless it offers some benefit for me.”

“Ah–” Sandra said, distracted, trying to repitch the idea in her mind as they were led deeper into the temple, past the desks and filing cabinets. “Well, if things go well, we could stop the Wizard of Paraphilia, and stopping him is good for everyone. Yourself included.”

“Hmm,” Blackdown considered, leading them finally to a side hallway. “Work on it, and do better when we speak tonight. For now, your lodging can be here–I strongly advise you to make use of the showers at the end of the hall, but the beds and rooms are yours to rest in.”

Off guard by the sudden dismissal, Sandra didn’t know what to say until Praye Blackdown was already five steps away. “Why tonight?”

“Because I prefer to conduct business over supper,” Blackdown explained. “I’ll have a servant come fetch you when dinner is ready.”

And with that, she left, dismissing the party and the conversation without another thought.

“I don’t like her,” Hadrian said, quietly, as they walked into the lodging–little more than a barracks, albeit one with fine silk sheets and pillowy blankets on down mattresses.

“The gods want to speak to us,” Quinn said. “Does it really matter that we didn’t bring the right robes, or whatever?”

“Be polite,” Sandra warned. “She still has the right to refuse us entry to the inner sanctum, and without access, we can’t talk to Abadar.”

“I can play politics,” Hadrian promised. “But I’m not going to hold my tongue when she’s not even around to hear me.”

Tarja collapsed onto one of the beds, her legs buckling out from under her as they entered–her curse reinstated in full force once again. “What’s our backup plan if we aren’t allowed in?”

“We don’t really have one,” Sandra admitted. “It’s this, or we find another religious site not overseen by a priesthood, or else one of us will need to be inducted as a cleric somewhere so we can access a real holy site. Both of those options could take months or years, so I really don’t want to screw this up.”

“Serendipity is looking into the possibility of talking to Calistria at an orgy,” Hadrian added. “But it’d need to be…intense, for there to be a chance that it works.”

“Like I said,” Sandra repeated. “I really don’t want to screw this up. We just need Praye to let us into the inner sanctum, then we’ll be home free.”

“Well, in the meantime,” Hadrian said, rubbing at the back of his legs, “I’m not going to say no to some rest and a shower. My calves are killing me.”

Sandra nodded, gesturing with her head towards the bathroom. “Good call. Anyone mind if I go first?”

At the lack of objections, she ducked into the bathroom, shutting the door and taking a breath.

She was filthy from traveling. Heat meant sweat, and sweat and dust had caked her in a fine film of grime, but more than that she needed a change.

Checking her trousers, she breathed a sigh of relief. Though she had leaked, the wet spot around the leg gathers was barely noticeable, almost certainly overlooked by Praye and the party. She needed to get better about that.

Though she’d been freed of the cursed diaper and clothing, that freedom hadn’t been perfect. Though no longer trapped in a diaper, her potty training hadn’t returned, and a private conversation with a Calistrian healer had confirmed her fears–she’d need to work to get that control back the old fashioned way.

And, another hiccup–she no longer had a magical, self-cleaning diaper. She’d had to learn to change herself, and more importantly, to check her diaper regularly to make sure she wouldn’t leak.

By the wet crescent-moon shapes on the inside of her pants, that diligence needed work. She’d almost considered putting the cursed diaper back on, since she was stuck with the incontinence anyways, but disregarded the idea as impulsive. It might take a while, but her potty training would return, with practice and diligence.

For now, she stripped herself naked and stepped into the shower. Her tail still hung between her legs–the counterspell designed to undo the Wizard’s curses had been fine tuned and specific to a certain frequency of magic, and any efforts to undo dream magic would need to be just as specific on an entirely different frequency.

Still, she’d almost grown not to mind it. Unlike the humiliating curses from the Wizard, this felt almost more like…a gift, perhaps, if not one she’d have asked for. There was no malice behind it.

Cleansing herself with hot water and fancy soap, Sandra dried herself off with a towel, then went about cleaning her clothes up with judicious prestidigitation. She’d found that the cantrip couldn’t quite clean a diaper while she wore it, but rinsed off and wrung out, the magic refreshed it to like-new. The leak stains vanished from her pants, and the dust melted off her clothes, leaving her clean and as professional as she could manage.

It’d be good enough for Abadar, she expected–he’d already taken an interest in her activities. She just hoped it’d be good enough for Praye Blackdown as well.

Returning to the room, she let Tarja go with Quinn to take the next turn in the bathroom, and for her free time she went with a nap for herself. Hadrian was right, the trip had been exhausting, and a little rest would do her good.

“Sandra?” Quinn asked, nudging her arm.

She sat up, surprised. “Huh?” She didn’t recall falling asleep, but she hadn’t heard Quinn or Tarja return, so she knew she must have dozed off. “Is it time for supper?”

“No, but you were twitching,” Quinn said. “A nightmare, I’d guess.”

“I don’t remember anything,” Sandra said, though she still felt a prickle of adrenaline, as though she’d been wary of a fight about to break out.

The party had gotten ‘cleaned up’ as it were; similarly washing away the dirt and grime, cleaning up their clothes. Quinn at least looked less frilly, having removed his armor in exchange for simple traveling clothes, though he was still as busty as he was short. Tarja’s onesie was concealed, though the slight bulge of her diaper was not, and there was little Hadrian could do about his latex bodysuit save for wearing a fetching jacket overtop of it.

Sandra stood and stretched, as much to untangle her muscles as her mind. She felt nervous for no reason she could pin down, save for the apparent nightmare she couldn’t recall.

While she did that, a knock came at the door. Hadrian answered it, and a servant in a nicely tailored suit cleared his throat. “I’ve been sent to show you to the dining hall.”

“Alright,” Sandra said, steeling herself for their greatest challenge yet: an awkward dinner. “Let’s do this.”

…

Dinner was served at a table of comical proportions. Long enough to seat thirty people, barely wide enough for one person to sit at either end, in a marble hall of equally grandiose design.

Sandra briefly considered taking the bait and sitting at the far end, across from Praye Blackdown, but shouting through their conversation felt ill-advised, so she instead sat on Praye’s righthand side.

Another complication presented itself: Praye had built this dining hall with her own body type in mind, and nobody else’s. The chairs were awkwardly short, with a table to match, and uncomfortably narrow, so that Sandra’s thighs were pressed up against the armrests.

Quinn was right at home in his shrunken down body, but the rest of them sat awkwardly, legs bumping up against the underside of the table across from Tarja. Hadrian, unable to bend his legs quite far enough, just pulled the chair away and sat on the ground.

Well-dressed servants poured wine into delicate glass flutes, while the first course, some kind of brothy soup, was laid out.

“Did you work on your pitch while you rested?” Praye inquired, swirling her wine.

“I gave it some thought,” Sandra said. It wasn’t totally a lie–she had considered it, at least. “The gods have already expressed interest in speaking with us. We know they’re watching. Were you to deny us access, you’d be risking the ire of several powerful deities.”

Nodding, Praye’s lips played up in a slight smile. “That’s better, I suppose. But have you considered the alternative?”

“What alternative?” Sandra asked, knees bumping against the bottom of the table as she tried to shift to get comfortable.

“That, should you insult the gods with your presence, I could draw their ire for allowing you into my sanctum,” Praye explained. “So what assurances do I have that you’re going to perform well?”

Sandra seethed, and she heard Hadrian’s latex clothes squeak as he shifted in annoyance. Before he could say anything cutting, she said, “We’ve gone up against the Wizard before and bloodied his nose, and come away from it alive and whole. He’s pursued us and been held off. Our information about his magic is greater than anything anyone else in the realm has learned. Who else do you know that can make such a claim?”

Praye’s smile never quite reached her eyes, but she nodded. “Tell me of your pilgrimage.”

As servants brought out the main course–roasted meat in an expensive-smelling sauce–Sandra fought back frustration. Though she couldn’t prove it, she knew in her belly that Praye had already decided what she would do, and this whole conversation was a show for her entertainment.

“We walked here, on foot, as per your request,” she explained. “As we already established, we don’t have any other robes or fancy clothing.”

“Have you thought about where you might acquire such clothing?” Praye asked, tilting her head.

Quinn made a small sound.

Dammit.

“Something to add?” Praye Blackdown asked.

“Where would we?” Quinn said, bluntly. “Unless you’re offering to give us some.”

“Certainly not,” Praye said. “Though, if you’d be interested in buying robes from me, that could be arranged.”

“Sa–” Hadrian started. Sandra bumped him with her leg.

“We’re fine, thank you,” Sandra insisted, drawing the conversation to a rather harsh conclusion before anyone else could blow it. “We just need to use your sanctum. Please. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with this test, but the gods have already shown that they’re interested in us. We’ve shown we can handle it. Give us leave, or don’t, but don’t bar us because we can’t play word games as well as you.”

Praye tilted her head back in a slight nod. “As you wish, then.”

Getting to her feet, Blackdown strode across the room, down the length of the table, and out the far door.

That left the four of them alone, for a moment, uncertain where to go.

“So, what happened to ‘be polite’?” Hadrian asked.

Tarja chimed in, “Sandra, that was brash, you have to admit.”

“She wasn’t going to let us win in the verbal sparring,” Sandra said. “I wanted to end the bout on our terms. And besides, we know Abadar wants to speak to us.”

“Do you? Or was that an assumption made on incomplete information?”

The voice that interjected was deep, and not particularly bothered, but also carried with it a sharp edge. It made Sandra think of her father, except that the subtleties in the tone were far deeper than any mortal.

She looked down the length of the table. Fifty feet down at the far end, in the seat across from where Praye had been, sat a handsome man who appeared to be in his fifties, dressed in robes and armor of crimson and deep brass.

Sandra faced him. “Lord Abadar.”

“Sandra Cassidy,” Abadar replied. Though some forty feet down the table, his voice carried clearly. “You asked for this audience. Speak your piece.”

Sandra didn’t allow herself to gawk, and cut simply and directly to the point. “We need something to allow us to defeat the wizard. He plans to make a new school of magic–and you know those plans could wreak havoc on the realms of mortals and gods alike if nobody stops him, and it’s clear you have a plan for us, so let’s lay it out. Hadrian can tell you what he’s learned of the wizard’s magic, and we can tell you everything we know about his tactics. What do you want us to do, and what can you give us?”

He nodded his head. “And the reason you’re asking this of me?”

“Because…” Sandra started. “Well, simply, because we could. And we couldn’t get to anyone else easily.”

“Do you know the impact on trade and business that a new school of magic would cause?” Abadar asked.

Sandra didn’t, precisely, but she took a guess. “It’d throw things into chaos.”

“In what way?” Abadar inquired. “Specifically.”

“I suppose–” Sandra started.

“I’m not going to help you,” Abadar said, simply. “But, as a courtesy to my peers who would see you succeed, I will explain why.”

Sandra swallowed. “Why did you–”

“I did not request this conversation,” Abadar said. “We took note of your activities because you are acting against powerful forces, but notice is not the same as approval. Let me be clear, Sandra: Your goals are not in question here. Your ability to carry out those goals is.”

“That’s why we need power,” Hadrian cut in. “Something you–or any god–can give us to even the scales. Surely–”

His pacifier plopped into place between his lips, cutting him off. Abadar’s eyes narrowed. “You will allow me to speak.”

“Did you–” Sandra started, glancing between Hadrian and Abadar. “You can control his curse?”

He nodded slightly, approving of the question. “In a fashion. Magic is the lifeblood of all divinity. It shapes us, and in turn we control it. Now, may I continue?”

Sandra kept quiet. She understood the implied, ‘If you interrupt again, I won’t be so polite.’

“You’ve only persisted this long due to a stroke of cosmic luck.” Abadar continued flatly. “You’ve shown cleverness, and tenacity, but cleverness and tenacity are not the only traits one needs when up against the wizard. Do you know why you’ve managed to survive against him so far?”

“Why?” Sandra asked, vocalizing the hypothetical.

“Because you’ve caught him by surprise, and you’re not worth his time.” Abadar let that statement hang in the air for a beat before he continued, speaking like a student to a child. “The Wizard of Paraphilia has amassed great power, and wrapped himself in defensive magic the likes of which you could hardly fathom. He is not incapable of destroying you, you’ve only found yourself in a position of being just strong enough that it’d be an inconvenience for him to do so. And were I to give you power–a boon, so you might go face him directly–he would suddenly find that inconvenience worth it.”

“So get us more boons,” Sandra said. “So we can stop him for good. His power isn’t infinite.”

“You are not the only mortal champions in the world,” Abadar countered. “Were it in my interest to face strength with raw strength, and simply overpower the wizard, I’d pick a paragon whose strength already rivals the wizard’s. That isn’t in my interest. The more power we bring into the mortal realm, the more we stir up trouble–we want the wizard defeated, yes, but not if his defeat brings forth greater danger.”

“Hey now,” Quinn said. “We’ve kicked him where the sun don’t shine once before, we can catch him by surprise again. You’re acting like you’d have to bring in the full power of your divine strength to stop him for–”

“Mmm,” Abadar raised a hand, and Quinn simply fell silent. “Please remember that my presence here is a courtesy. Waste my time again, and I will not hesitate to give up that courtesy.”

“May I ask a question?” Tarja asked, quietly.

He nodded. “You may.”

“Would you?” she asked, quietly.

It took Sandra a moment to jump back a few moments and recognize what Tarja was asking, but Abadar answered immediately. “It would take more power than I could bring into the plane without fracturing it beyond recognition. The wizard has found ways to tap into primordial powers, the powers he needs to enact his plans, and matching force with force has ceased to be an option. Though we might lend you much strength, it will take more than strength to beat him.”

Sandra exhaled. “So what do you want from us?”

“Nothing. You’re not the champions I’ve chosen,” Abadar explained. “We are watching, but that is all–we have observed your quests, and your failures, and the way you operate, and we are simply unimpressed.”

He let a moment pass, for an objection. Sandra didn’t answer; He was going to explain regardless of what she said.

“You have had only one moment of triumph over the wizard, and then only fleeting,” Abadar explained. “Your first meeting with traps he had left behind, you were soundly humiliated. Your second, you could hardly protect your charge from his curses. Every moment of your lives has been spent cleaning up from him, scraping by to undo a little of his damage. Only once, with careful preparation and clever trickery, were you able to face him as peers and get away, but that cost you more dearly than any other encounter, before or since.

“To put it simply and plainly, you do not have the focus, the clarity, the presence and planning to be entrusted with our power. You are reactive. Your ability to handle threats as they arise is impressive given your inexperience, but that is all that it is–handling threats as they arise, taking your lumps, limping along weaker than before. Even now, before me, you are demonstrating your inability to think ahead past your next fight.” He let his words end for a moment, staring quietly at her.

“I don’t understand,” Sandra said, when it seemed that he was leaving an opening to reply without incurring his wrath. “What did we miss?”

“My favored supplicant tried to aid you,” he explained. “To give you guidance. She wouldn’t simply tell you the best way to speak to me, what I expect of any who demand my presence so brashly, but she tried. You ignored her.”

He stood up from the seat, and though he only stood at the height of an above-average human, his presence grew imatterially, until he took up all the space in the room with the weight of his words. “You though yourselves so important that you could demand an audience with me, in hastily washed traveler’s garb. You brought no offering. You ignored her suggestions. You burned a relic from my domain–in case you thought I didn’t know about your abuse of the ledger you stole. You presumed to know what I would do, and never once considered that I might give an answer you didn’t want to hear.”

Sandra had no response, or no good one. She shook her head. “So what are you going to do about the Wizard? Pick another group of champions?”

“That,” he said sharply, and the anger in his tone shone clear. “Is none of your concern. Step carefully, Sandra Cassidy, and should you demand an audience with me again, first know that my courtesy has met its limits.”

With a gout of golden fire, he vanished, leaving the room empty.

Quinn gasped as his voice returned to him, the powers of speech restored with Abadar’s departure. Hadrian, less lucky, needed Sandra’s help to remove his pacifier.

Even able to speak, though, the four of them had little to say.

Tarja spoke up first, sighing as she said it. “We’re done.”

“I’m sorry,” Sandra shook her head. “This is my fault. I should have known.”

“No,” Tarja said, shaking her head. “We’re done. We’ve been told as much by the greatest authority we could ask. The fight isn’t ours anymore.”

“But you’re still cursed,” Sandra said. “We haven’t fixed anything.”

“Honestly.” Hadrian spoke tentatively, feeling out the words as he said them. “That’s…that’s fine. Someone else will sort out the wizard. We’ll get the curses removed eventually. There’s got to be a substitute for the ledger out there somewhere, some way to get all this dealt with. We can get back to our lives.”

“I’d be fine with that,” Quinn added. “Hell, most of what was done to me, the wizard isn’t even at fault. I don’t have to wear the dress armor, and he didn’t make me this size. Curses are a part of the job. They’ll get fixed sometime or another.”

Sandra slumped back in her chair, uncertain.

She’d failed, but her party was okay. They were safe.

And maybe they were right–maybe their normal lives could be returned to, maybe they could let someone else deal with the existential problems while they went back to more mundane quest work.

She smiled. Maybe they were right. “Well, it’s worth a shot.”

...

I've been neglecting to update this properly, but new updates will be following soon! 

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[keith60]

i hope the story will go on 

[PeculiarChangeling]

6 hours ago, keith60 said:

i hope the story will go on 

It will! ^^

Chapter 17

 

14th of Pharast

My Dearest Serendipity,

I must first apologize for the lateness of this letter. It’s been some time since we’ve been to a city with a proper post office–the adventurer’s life.

Even as I miss you, it feels good to be out adventuring again. Petty quests and deliveries might not seem as grand as delving into other planes or battling world-feared wizards, but there’s a certain satisfaction in it–and, I might add, a degree of comfort in knowing that it’s unlikely we’ll be cursed or tricked or changed.

And speaking of changes–Sandra’s begun to work on her potty training! Three weeks ago, she was washing her diapers out behind camp while a few travelling wood elves passed by, and I think that’s what broke her–though, she claims it’s simply because she’s getting tired of all the washing. (I must say, even with a spell doing all the work, I’d get tired of it as well.) Regardless, she’s begun taking the opportunity to work on it daily. When we have the time in the morning, while I’m preparing my spells, she’ll go off and sit on a toilet if we’re at a tavern, or whatever latrine hole we’ve dug at camp, and work on it–it may not be the best technique, but it’s the one she’s got access to, since we’re otherwise on the road.

It hasn’t helped much, so far. During our traveling, she still doesn’t have much control over when she’ll need to go, if she has warning at all. I’m unsure if this slow improvement is a lingering effects of how the Wizard cursed her, or if it’s a side effect of being mature and trying to learn a juvenile skill. Children learn many things very, very quickly while their brains are growing, but we’ve all got adult brains, with the stunted rate of study that comes with maturity.

It’s something to research, at any rate.

And speaking of research, I’ve been learning some new spells–and tweaking a few, too. As much as he’s a bastard, the Wizard had some clever ideas on energy control, and I’ve been working them into my existing magic. It’s like a cheat! My pacifier curse inspired me to look into magic along those lines, and I’ve found that it’s far easier to silence someone by sealing their lips with a bit of rubber than to silence them with magic alone–it makes me think of all kinds of ideas that work along those lines.

What could accomplish when applying this thinking to spells of the highest order? I’ve only just begun to dig into this, but I think there’s some potential.

You might find this example funny–I’ve found that it’s easy to create diversion-style illusions by working in a bit of the magic. There’s various sounds and sensations that draw the attention of beasts and men alike more strongly than simple curiosity. Fear has commonly been used as a way to frighten guards and distract them from a sneaking spy, but that has its downsides–a frightened guard is a twitchy guard.

An aroused guard, however? Not only does that distract their attention rather strongly, it lowers inhibitions rather than raising them. Lacing in a bit of…shall I say, ‘amorous energy’ into an enchantment can offer some real benefits.

I explained this to a bard we were working with a week or so ago, and she seemed quite interested. Her typical style seemed quite–shall I say, aggressive? With music enchanted with lightning of some sort, shocking notes of power. After a bit of dabbling, we managed to work paraphilic magic into one of her more sinister spells, wherein she can sow thoughts in the minds of her targets.

It worked–perhaps a bit too well! The rest of us managed to sneak past the dragon completely undetected, and nobody was harmed. I will say, the bard seemed rather winded by the whole experience, and her clothes needed to be replaced. I almost apologized, but she only asked if I could enhance any other magic in her repertoire. She’s bringing a few spells back to her college to share with her peers–she says she plans to call the new genre she’s developed “Baby Metal”, though I don’t know if it’ll see any traction.

It’s good to be questing again. We’re far stronger than we were when last this was common, and the rewards from our guild work is stupendous–we’re flush with cash. There’s still never enough to buy everything I could possibly want. (Though I’m pretty sure some of the listed prices in the guild catalog must have an extra zero snuck onto the end for prestige.)

I must also say–and, please, accept my apologies if this is a bit rash, but…I’ve missed you, deeply. Perhaps it’s all the paraphilic magic I’ve been doing, but my thoughts drift to daily, and when I’ve got any semblance of privacy, my thoughts of you grow even stronger. I often find myself wishing I had that relic you showed me, the one that could buzz like a hornets nest–with a layer of this latex and so much fabric, it’s difficult for mere friction to get me anywhere. Would it be possible to acquire one of those from one of your Calistrian craftsmen? I’d be very happy to own one, and I’d think of you whenever I’m using it.

I hope this letter finds you well, and that your work in the temple continues to excel. Next time I am in your city, your performance will be all I desire to see.

I have the honor to be at your service,

Hadrian Mistweaver

…

10th of Sarenith

My Lovely, Sexy Serendipity,

Can I vent for a moment? I’d just like to get some frustrations out on paper and have them be heard. If you’d prefer, you don’t even have to read this–skip this first page completely and move on to where I shower you with compliments.

Sandra’s potty training has become a chore. I am more than happy for her to try her hand at self improvement, but it’s become increasingly annoying for us as a party to deal with.

It’s the waiting.

Every morning, waiting for her to sit on a potty and practice. Every evening, too, we have to wait around before supper–or we could just eat without her, but that feels like an incredibly rude thing to do.

She doesn’t even seem like she’s making progress! Every time we have to go more than a couple hours without a stop, her diaper still ends up soaked. It’s almost worse, because she ends up flustered and embarrassed, sulking off to go change as though she hasn’t been without potty training for months, as though the rest of the party wasn’t in a similar predicament. I don’t think she’s had a single dry night since getting out of her cursed diaper, and she only makes it to the potty through luck during the day.

And it’s affecting our work.

Three weeks ago–no, I should back up.

A month ago, we were called to a job the next town over. It should be six days of travel. It took us eight, because we kept having to stop for thirty minutes at a stretch so she can use her wondrous potty–it shrinks down to fit in your pocket when you’re not sitting on it–to ‘practice’.

Then, three weeks ago, when we finally arrived at the town, we got our task–staking out a cave where suspected vampire activity was occurring.

Naturally, this means staying up overnight. We were taking shifts, two at a time, on opposite sides of the cave for maximum vulnerability. And, it turns out–Sandra thought she could use her shift to try and get a little ‘training’ in. She had her pants around her ankles when activity around the cave mouth began, and I was on the other side of the shift–I had to run in, by myself, to catch the creatures who were sneaking out.

Turns out, they were just drow teens who’d been sneaking off to the cave for a little nighttime romance. But you’d best believe–when they saw Sandra waddling into the fray, holding her pants up with one hand because she hadn’t had time to re-dress herself, they made sure the village knew afterwards.

She promised it wouldn’t interfere with our work again, but then she started taking more breaks when we weren’t working, and it’s eating heavily into our social time.

I don’t want to be mean to her, but if she makes us wait before starting our travels one more time–before immediately using her diapers the minute we’re out on the trail anyways–I might have to cast silence upon myself so I can scream.

On the other side of the spectrum of ‘things that make me want to gag’, Quinn and Tarja have given up all dignity and gone full-on mushy lovers. Tarja spends most of her time on horseback these days–beats walking, I suppose–and when she’s not mounting her horse…

Let’s just say that I wish I could cast, ‘Zone of Silence’.

On a brighter note, we’ve achieved a new rank with the guild! They gave us a waiver showing ‘Noteworthy competence’ and everything. That means they’re giving us tougher quests–which, importantly, tend to pay a whole lot better. I’ve already got my shopping list put together towards new reagents, and I’ve attached a sum of gold to this parcel to pay for the wondrous item you suggested–the one that can be remotely controlled. I’d like you to keep one of the two control rings, if that’s alright.

And, on that note, I very much enjoyed the portrait you included. Give my sincerest compliments to the artist, and, I must say, it’s impressive you managed to hold that pose for long enough to get a detailed rendering. Your leg strength and balance is truly astounding, and you amaze me every time I hear from you.

I have the honor to be in your service,

Hadrian Mistweaver

…

29th of Arodus

My Serendipity, my Wonderful, my Love,

Your most recent letter, I tore open and licked the seal for any lingering taste of your lips–I miss you. I long to hear your voice, to speak with you, to be in your company again. The little communication our rings allow is a slight balm to my absent heartache, but twenty five words a day is simply not enough to express my affection for you.

Still–it’s been a comfort. I’ve asked that we find quests closer to your temple, but we’ve traveled all the way to the coast, and it will be some time before we work our way back to you. And the secondary use of the item–I’ve found myself going to the portrait you sent some months back almost daily, when I’m using it.

My magic is getting pretty scary–in a good way. The Wizard’s an abusive monster, but the tricks he worked out for amping up power is pretty impressive. “Paraphilic Magic” can be devilishly efficient when it needs to be.

You know how to stop a fire breathing dragon from roasting your party?

Simple–plop a pacifier between its lips and watch it get really mad when it can’t spit out its new binkie.

Speaking of ‘getting real mad’, Sandra’s given up on potty training for the time being. Allegedly, she’s still working at it when we stop at taverns, but I haven’t seen it, and out on quests she’s been diapering up.

I can’t say I mind. Not that it took long for her to prestidigitate her clothes after every leak or accident, but…it wasn’t working well, and I think we all knew it. She’s asked me about making a diaper that has the self-cleaning function of her old one, but without the curse attached that would undo her potty training efforts. I said I’d look into it, but–between you and me–it doesn’t really seem like there’s much in the way of potty training for it to undo.

I’m not one to speculate or point any fingers, but Sandra’s work hasn’t gotten her very far. Six months is a long time for potty training to take, or so I’ve heard. From what we know, she should be able to re-learn that skill, it just seems like her heart’s not in it.

But, I’m in no place to judge. I haven’t made much progress dealing with my own curses, either. (Not that I’d undo them if I could, given the Wizard’s threats–I don’t want him swooping down on us again just as soon as we get everything else cured and dispelled.)

Missing you deeply, I wish to be in your embrace again.

I have the honor to be your obedient servant,

Hadrian Mistweaver

…

10th of Neth

My Dearest, Serendipity,

I will see you before the dawn of a new moon.

I cannot wait.

We’d have been to you sooner, but I was pulled aside by a frankly ridiculous mixup. The Mage’s Guild had me in for questioning, after they heard reports of my spells. It seems, because I’ve been dabbling in paraphilic magic, they thought I must be working with the Wizard, as some sort of agent or lieutenant.

Fortunately, Wizards are reasonable sorts who never lose their tempers and don’t mind having their mistakes pointed out and corrected.

…I trust you’ve been around enough wizards to know that I’m being rather sarcastic.

I had to travel to their high college to get it cleared up, pointing out that I’m one of the most obvious curse victims the Wizard has inflicted his magic on, and more to the point that I had a good record of combating him. I’m not sure if I should be pleased or embarrassed that they began to accept my arguments after I unknowingly used my diaper rather thoroughly on the grand floor, pleading my case before the high counsel. It, at least, conveyed my status as victim more clearly than any words could, though perhaps I’d have spent a few more nights under house arrest if it meant avoiding that predicament.

Nonetheless, they were persuaded, and I was even invited to lecture on the merits and uses of Paraphilic magic. Its potency impressed them all, though until it’s been given further research, they decided not to do any further teaching on the subject.

The others are doing well. Sandra’s given up her potty training completely and donned her cursed diaper again–it’s an inconvenience, in one sense, but she says the self-cleaning aspect is simply too useful to care much about the downsides.

The party found small quests to occupy themselves while I dealt with my situation, and we’re looking rather good for gold–so I suggested we take a few weeks off and go back to the city to relax. After some persuading, (and a little begging,) I convinced them.

We’re coming to you.

I am coming, my love. We’ll see each other soon.

I am yours,

Hadrian Mistweaver

The End of Book One

...

And that wraps up the first arc!

More will be coming soon - I've already got several chapters of Book Two written, which is planned out in such a way that it works both as a sequel and a self contained story. 

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