“Do you think she’s dead?” Quinn asked, peering over the log towards the mouth of the cave.

“Shh,” Sandra hissed.

“If she got in a fight, we’d have heard it by now,” Hadrian added. “But Sandra’s right. We should be quiet.”

The big half-orc frowned, but rested his elbows on the ground and put his chin in his hands, relaxing as he watched. “I figure she’s dead. Been almost an hour.”

Sandra glared at her two colleagues. Though formidable in their own fields, they were about as subtle as a tarrasque in a tea shop. “Quiet. The wizard could be listening.”

“She’s not dead,” Hadrian repeated, raising his wrist to look at his hand-wound watch. “And it’s been only fourteen minutes. Your sense of time is askew.”

“Your watch is wrong,” Quinn muttered back. “I’m following the sun. It says that it’s been almost an hour.”

“I made this watch myself,” the wizard hissed back, his softly-pointed ears twitching in annoyance. “It’s not wrong.”

“Children!” Sandra snapped, louder than either of them.

They both looked back at her in unison. “Shhh!”

She groaned, turning her eyes back towards the cave. Quiet, moving like silk over stones, their ranger left the dungeon and crept back towards them.

“See? She’s not dea- ow!” The wizard yelped, as Quinn slapped him on the shoulder.

Tarja Turunen was a beauty, even in her studded leather armor. Gliding towards the rest of the party, she slipped over the log and crouched.

“Traps?” Sandra asked, quietly.

“Traps,” Tarja nodded. “A lot of traps. I didn’t see any enemies, but it’s basically wall-to-the-wall with crossbows, swinging hammers, you name it.”

“We take our time then,” Sandra declared. “I’ll take point, make sure everything gets disarmed.”

“If I get shot with a crossbow trap you missed, I’ll take it out and stab you with it,” Quinn growled. To someone who didn’t know him, it would have been a threat, but Sandra recognized it as a vote of confidence.

Sandra looked at their ranger. “Tarja, is it safe to just walk up?”

“Safe enough, but be careful once you step inside,” Tarja replied. “We’ll be right behind you if you get into shit.”

She looked over at Hadrian. “And you’ve got your wizard stuff ready to dispel anything that gets tossed at me, right?”

“Absolutely. No spell will molest you while I’m there to warn you.”

Sandra nodded, hopped over the log, and strolled into the dungeon.

Easy money, she reminded herself. She was taking point in the most dangerous part of the dungeon, but that wouldn’t be a problem. The reward was supposed to be high, the risk was low, by the time the sun was down they’d be back at the tavern drinking ale and celebrating good fortune with good friends.

Pupils shifting as she walked into the darkness, Sandra scanned the ground for danger. Nothing, for about twenty feet, and then… Aha!

A trip line. It was an old standby, and for good reason: Easy to build, hard to spot. Maybe it would trigger a crossbow, maybe it would drop boulders on her head, maybe it was actually there just to make her trip. Either way, it was her job to dismantle it without getting hurt.

She started to move to examine it closer, then frowned. That’s too easy.

Stepping back, she crouched low and surveyed the ground again. There was more gravel here than anywhere else, scattered over the floor, as though it were hiding something else.

“Clever, clever,” she whispered, spotting the pressure plates. Tip-toeing up, she spun shadows around her hands, perfectly weighted tools appearing between her fingers. Reaching the pressure plates, she got to work.

It was slow going, tedious, and exhausting. The dungeon crawl was the least exciting adventure she could remember being on. Few traps were even as clever as the first one, and most were dithering and poorly put together, like the wizard who’d set this all up couldn’t even be bothered to make traps that would even kill people.

She found a pit with no spikes at the bottom, a spring-loaded dart gun with no poison, and even a rope dangling from the ceiling of the cave that, if pulled, would dump a bucket of water on the victim’s head.

The design was childish to the extreme, but she tried not to let her guard down as she worked, methodical and deliberate, deeper into the cave.

An hour later, though, she’d had enough. Sandra stood up straight, faced her party, and announced, “Okay, I’m done.”

“The traps are gone?” Quinn asked.

“The traps are harmless,” Sandra explained. “It’d be faster to just walk through here and trigger them all than to disarm them, and about as productive. The most dangerous thing I’ve seen them do is weak enough to be countered by a ‘Cure Light Wounds’ potion.”

Hadrian frowned, his expression ashen and grey in the near perfect darkness of the cave. “That doesn’t seem wise.”

“I’m not saying we just stumble through blind, I’m saying that I don’t need to disarm every last one,” Sandra explained. “Just keep your eyes open and you’ll be fine.”

Quinn started to walk forward, needing no other convincing, but Tarja put up a hand to stop him. “Sandra. Are you sure about this?”

“As sure as I can be. If the wizard could make better traps, he would have by now.”

“Hadrian, what are your thoughts?” Tarja asked, still unconvinced.

“Well, I’d need to think on it for a spell.” Scratching at his hairless chin, he said, “It’s possible that this is all an elaborate trap in and of itself. Tire out our expert, make her careless, then spring the tricky traps a moment later. It’s what I might do, if I had enough time and resources.”

“It’s a lame idea,” Sandra shot back. “We’re not the first crew to come through here, and any idiot can disable these traps. Hell, someone sturdy enough could just walk right into them and be fine. Would you want to spend eight hours carefully resetting basic traps just to try and tire out the next chucklehead party to wander through?”

“No,” Hadrian replied. “I wouldn’t. The wizard could have constructs, though, or-”

“Have you seen any constructs?” Sandra asked.

“No.”

“So, my point stands. If someone else wants to take point and tediously scan for trip wires that unleash slingshots and pebbles, be my guest. I’m done.” Her party shuffled their feet, but nobody stepped forward. “That’s what I thought.”

Turning to face down the cave, she started walking forward. She wasn’t careless - she didn’t go around stomping on pressure plates just for the hell of it, but she also didn’t pay any particular attention to small details, either.

It worked out approximately like she’d expected. A rock pelted her on the shoulder, and at one point she had to get out of the way of a slowly moving log that could have been seriously dangerous if she’d been tied up and completely unable to get out of the way for twenty seconds or so.

Naturally, she didn’t see the first real trap until it was far, far too late.

It came out of nowhere. Sandra didn’t even see what had triggered it - one moment, they were walking forward, cautious and mindful of danger. The next moment, a fluttering swarm of what looked like insects swooped in from the ceiling, making a beeline towards Hadrian.

He had time to call up a shield, but they ignored the magical barrier, and his attempts to slap them down proved to be of little use.

Sandra couldn’t get a good look at the creatures. In the black-and-white of her darkvision, they looked to have a bulbous head and a shield of some kind of chitin, or… plastic? Maybe there are constructs after all.

Everyone drew their weapons, but the wizard ended it before they could close in, opening his mouth wide and calling out a word of power, waving his hands and producing a burnt piece of bark from his component pouch.

Sandra wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw one of the bugs fly into his mouth as he called up the spell. Before she could look again, a stormcloud appeared around the wizard’s head, crackling with electricity and power.

A shadowy black blade in her hand, Sandra watched cautiously, not wanting to charge in and start swinging at the space occupied by her party member. Tarja was no better. Even as precise a shot as the ranger was, she couldn’t hit a target she couldn’t properly see. Add in the proximity to the wizards’ head, and shooting would be unnecessarily dangerous.

Quinn seemed ready to charge, first, but after twenty four seconds the stormcloud disappeared, and the swarm clattered to the floor. Hadrian looked frazzled, having been shocked by his own spell, but he wasn’t about to go down for the count from it. He spun, facing Sandra.

“What’s in your mouth?” she asked, walking up. One of the objects had gone in after all, but now that it was in place and unmoving, she could see that it was no bug. As the wizard opened his bag to let out his creepy little familiar, shedding some light in the room, she confirmed that it was indeed plastic, pastel, and- “Is that a pacifier?”

“Ah baba phoo bwaah!” Hadrian said, annoyed. “A- Buh?”

She could detect the magic on the pacifier, plain as day. She identified it as an enchantment, and with careful examination of the threads of power, she saw that it was some kind of speech-incapacitating curse.

“It’s keeping him from talking,” she said, walking up.

He didn’t need to move his lips to say, ‘No shit’, his expression did that plenty well. Pawing at his mouth, he tried to pull the pink pacifier out of his mouth, but it didn’t budge no matter how hard he pulled.

Inspecting the pacifiers on the floor, Sandra could sense that they were all enchanted like the first, the magical aura on them identical to the one in Hadrian’s mouth. If he hadn’t thought fast while they were in a swarm, they might have gotten to the whole party, rendering everyone effectively mute.

Sandra nodded, impressed. Good work, Hadrian. Reaching out, she hooked a finger around the plastic loop at the end of his pacifier, pulling experimentally.

The pacifier popped free.

“Ah- Baba?” he said, still annoyed, hands on his hips. “Ah, towd, you, so!”

“Ah, thank the gods it isn’t permanent,” Sandra said, sighing in relief. “How do you feel?”

“Vindicated!” Hadrian shouted. “I told you-”

They both looked up suddenly, feeling the magic stirring in the air.

It wasn’t just a trap. It was an attack.

Energy swirled, nebulous and powerful, glittering in Sandra’s supernatural senses. She flicked her hand to call up a shadowy umbral blade, going back-to-back with the wizard as they prepared to ward off the spells.

Quinn raised his own weapon, a wicked-sharp greataxe, bellowing in fury as he summoned his own strength and got ready for a fight. Tarja, for her part, had put her back to a wall and notched her bow.

The attack was coming from the mouth of the cave. Past the edge of how far she could see in the dark, Sandra could only make out vague shapes. They cast vicious shadows in the light of Hadrian’s ioun familiar, and they were barreling forward at terrifying speed.

Sandra wasn’t ashamed to break first. “Run!” she called out, feet starting to move under her as she scrambled deeper into the cave. “Retreat! We’ve got to get to a choke point!”

She wasn’t fleeing in fear, she was making a tactical move towards a potentially superior position.

Without her to aid in the fight, the rest of the party didn’t see any chances in staying put. She forced their hand, making them run or fight at only three-quarters strength.

As a group, they fled, escaping the charging monsters by running deeper into the lion’s den.

Quinn’s leg snagged on a bit of ribbon, stretched across the ground like a tripwire. He went down, and when he came back up, the ribbon was twisting around him like a serpent. Bellowing, he put on more speed, getting to the front of the pack as they got deeper into the cave.

A pressure plate shot a blast of brilliant white magic up at Tarja, making the fabric around her legs and hips buffer in the gale, then settled. She didn’t seem hurt, and if the magic was intended to slow her, it didn’t work.

Sandra was so busy watching her allies, ensuring that they were all together in their flight, that she didn’t see the trap right in front of her until she’d planted her foot in the low pit.

It wasn’t even one of the good traps. She’d been caught off guard by a hole in the ground. Rolling onto her back, the fear overtook her, and she screamed as the monsters finally got close enough that she could see them forward, loping towards, grizzly fur and white teeth becoming visible. They were bears. Dozens of them. Dozens of…

Teddy bears.

Getting back up, Sandra felt suddenly silly for having been so afraid.

Whipping out her shadow sword, she called, “We can take them here!”

Hearing her call, her party turned one by one, came to the same realization, and together stood their ground against the oncoming horde.

Fur and fluff were cut and thrown as they cut through their enemies, so caught up in the heat of battle that little else seemed to matter.

Sandra danced from side, eviscerating the teddy constructs when they weren’t looking, shattering their candy hearts with well placed strikes. Tarja simply skewered them like pincushions, turning the teddy bears into teddy porcupines as each one fell in turn. Quinn wasn’t so subtle, simply ripping one bear apart with each swing of his huge axe. Hadrian…

“Hadrian, what in the planes are you doing?” she called over her shoulder, looking back at the wizard. He looked confused, hands moving, mouth open as he called up magic, but his usual volley of attacking spells were not flying.

There was no time to think about it, not until the fight was over. She skewered one more teddy, then dropped her blade, letting it dissolve back into shadow as her allies finished off the last handful of enemies.

“Hadrian!” she called, running up to him. “Are you alright? What’s wrong?”

“Abbh-tthbt!” he said, frowning. “Ah… Bah. Ahbabha.”

“Can you understand me? Nod if you can understand me.”

He looked at her blankly, as though she were the one speaking gibberish. Looking down, Sandra spotted a pressure plate sunk into the ground. He’d tripped some sort of magical trap, and now he couldn’t speak.

“Hadrian’s down for the count,” she said, turning to face the others. “I don’t know what hit him, but he’s not talking. I think it’s like what the pacifier did. We might need to get him to a cleric to reverse the curse, and-”

She blinked as Quinn walked into the light. He was wearing… a dress. A pink, frilly dress, with strands of lace that were tied up in poofy sleeves and stitched around the hem of his skirt.

“The ribbon,” Quinn explained, his face almost as pink as his pretty dress. “It… got around my armor. Into my armor, I think.”

Sandra approached, feeling the fabric of the dress. It was sturdy, and though it looked delicate and fragile, it felt more like well-treated darkwood. It was hard, and flexible, and…

“It is your armor,” she declared. “Or, at least, it’s similar to your armor.”

“What’s the point in a transmorg- Transgom- a spell that changes my armor, if it doesn’t leave me defenseless?” Quinn asked, frowning, an expression that was particularly intimidating on his bullish face.

“I’m not sure,” Sandra said, looking over at their changeling ranger. “Tarja, what happened to you?”

“I- Nothing,” Tarja said. “I resisted it.”

Sandra accepted the statement at face value. “I’m just glad nothing got me, either. All I did was trip.”

“Eh… Sandra,” Quinn said, scratching his head. “You don’t feel that?”

She felt a chill go down her back. I’m injured. I’ve been impaled, and I haven’t yet felt it. Oh gods… I can feel it. I can feel the blood on my pants. There’ll be pain any minute now…

“I… do we have any potions?” she said, clutching at straws. “A healer’s kit. Anything.”

“For what?” Quinn asked.

Sandra blinked, daring to look down at her injury. “For what? For… uh…”

Oh.

She hadn’t been impaled, or cut, or anything else. The warmth she’d felt on her pants wasn’t blood at all, it was pee, darkening the dense fabric of her pants.

“When… when I fell,” she said, realizing as she spoke it aloud. “I felt cold, and there must have been some kind of fear spell.”

“Nothing you can’t clean up later,” Tarja said. “Let’s go, before we get attacked again.”

“Wait a minute…” Quinn said, pointing deeper into the cave. “That looks like a camp to me.”

Following his gesture, Sandra peered into the darkness. At the very edge of her darkvision, there was a firepit with a pot over it, though the embers had long since dwindled and died. Stepping closer, she saw a couple storage chests, a tent, a work table, and pail of water. All the amenities that a lone wizard would need.

“I think you’re right.” Raising an eyebrow at Quinn, she asked, “What say we go find this wizard and make him fix what he broke?”

Quinn was on board immediately, hefting his axe. Sandra expected more argument from Tarja, but even she agreed, tentatively stepping forward.

“Hadrian, stay close,” Sandra kept her voice low. “Tarja, we’ll sneak forward together, get the drop on him. Quinn, you’ll-”

“I know,” Quinn interrupted. “Once the music starts, I’ll be ready to dance.”

Sanda nodded, calling up a lengthy dagger of shadow and creeping forward.

Wizards weren’t known for their stealth, and she couldn’t detect any magical invisibility, which suggested that he was hidden in his tent. She approached, her footsteps silent save for a subtle ‘squish’ of her socks, and Tarja was following on her heels, longbow drawn.

No more traps were sprung as they got on either side of the tent. Sandra held up three fingers, counting down to two, and one, and then it was time to strike.

She cut down the side of the tent, lunging inside with a deadly strike that would-

It was empty.

The tent wasn’t just unoccupied, it had been stripped clean. There wasn’t so much as a bedroll.

Sandra frowned, stepping back through the hole she’d made in the side. “It’s empty!”

“Huh?” Quinn shouted back.

Tarja peered inside, confirming things. “He’s not here!”

The half orc lumbered over, holstering his axe on his back. “He rabbited?”

“Maybe he slipped through a Dimension Door when we got close,” Sandra suggested, “But that fire’s totally dead, and the tent it stripped bare. I think he’s been gone for a long time.”

“Damn,” Quinn said, looking down at his pink, frilly ‘armor’. “Do you suppose Hadrian will be able to dispel this?”

Hadrian wandered up behind Quinn, frowning in puzzlement at the group, crouching to look in the tent. “Hah-muh?”

“Maybe,” Sandra hedged. “Let’s see if there’s anything worth taking. Quinn, can you check the perimeter?”

“Checking for bushwhackers,” Quinn agreed. “Got it.”

While he walked the edge of the cave, looking for hidey holes, Sandra started working on one of the chests, shadowy lockpicks working to get the box open. Thirty seconds later, she had the box open, and a minute later, she had unlatched both.

The first was packed with rations, clothes, and general travel supplies. Sandra’s magical senses tingled as she picked through it, and came out with a pair of…

“Enchanted underwear?”

Holding up the plain, white briefs, Sandra focused on the magic, trying to detect its purpose. After some concentration, she thought she had it: A self cleaning spell. Briefs that never needed cleaning would be quite handy on the road, and they’d be a lot better than walking back to town in soggy panties.

She took a second to glance in the second box, which was half full of parchment, books, and various magical components, then told Tarja, “I’m going to get cleaned up in the tent. Give me a second.”

Tarja glanced at her, nodded, and then resumed looking over the half-finished teddy construct on the work table.

Ducking into the shredded tent, Sandra tugged off her boots, stripped out of her wet pants, and finally removed her panties so that she could put on the briefs.

In retrospect, she should have seen the curse coming.

As soon as the briefs were pulled into place, they transformed, changing suddenly from plain, white underwear to a thick, puffy diaper. She yelped in surprise at the sudden burst of magic, baby powder puffing out of the waistband.

“Fuck!” she exclaimed, grabbing at the tapes, half expecting to find that it would remain stuck. She was relieved to find that they came unstuck, and the diaper came away easily, falling to the ground.

She’d been shaved smooth, and her skin was paler than it had been a moment before, a thin coat of perfumed baby powder spread between her legs.

“Goddamned traps,” she groaned, reaching for her panties. “Goddamned prank underwear, goddamned teddy bears, goddamned wizards.”

Getting dressed again, she spent the time and effort to cast prestidigitation. As much as her accident had spread, it took more than a minute, but when she was done she had clean pants, shoes, and panties.

Dressed, she left the tent, glowering about the prank underwear. “Anything else useful?”

“Not much.” Tarja pressed her lips into a line. “Magical texts, but they’re gibberish as far as I can tell. Otherwise, there’s no loot.”

“What a waste,” Sandra sighed. “How much do you suppose this crawl is going to cost us?”

“Depends on if Hadrian’s curse wears off, and how tough it is to fix Quinn’s armor. I think-” she looked over her shoulder, surprised to see Hadrian digging through the box of spell components, fishing out some of the supplies and putting them into his own pack.

“I guess he’s still got his wits about him,” Sandra said. “That’s a good sign.”

Tarja shrugged. “I guess I should be glad I’m the only one who got out unscathed.”

Sandra eyed her, frowning. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. “Yeah, about that. Do you know what the trap was trying to do to you?”

“No idea,” Tarja said, glancing back and forth suspiciously. “Maybe it was going to change my clothes, like Quinn.”

“Yeah?” Sandra raised an eyebrow. “You sure it didn’t get you after all? If it’s a delayed effect, you could have been cursed and not know it.”

“That’s not what happened.”

Yeah, she’s hiding something. “Are you sure?”

Tarja pressed her lips into a line, eyes darting around for an excuse to change the subject. “Well, I didn’t pee my pants, and I’m not dressed like a dolly, so… hey, what’s this?”

Sandra rolled her eyes at the obvious deflection. “Tarja, if you’re hurt, you should just tell us so you can get patched up.”

“I’m not hurt.” Digging in the box of clothing, she pulled out a large, cotton bra from the box. “Are we sure our wizard is a ‘he’?”

Quinn walked back up, oblivious to the conversation going on. “Perimeter is clear, and there’s no other exits in the cave. What’s that?”

Sandra shook her head. “We’re not sure. Our Wizard apparently has a bra with his clothes.”

Trying to keep the attention off her, Tarja forced a chuckle, walking towards Quinn. “Hey, maybe it’s supposed to go with the girl clothes. Let’s see how well it fits?”

As she held it up, probably to compare size and tease Quinn a bit more, Sandra finally noticed the faint magical aura around the brassiere. “Tarja, wait-”

She was too slow. As the changeling held up the bra over Quinn’s chest, it flashed with magic, becoming part of his pink ensemble. Breasts simply appeared, large and supple, and looking completely out of place on the chest of a stern, muscled half-orc.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, staggering back, trying to fumble for the clasp on his back to remove the bra. “Tarja, what-”

“I’m sorry!” Tarja exclaimed, as shocked as him. “Oh, gods, I had no idea- Shit. I’m sorry.”

“Tarja!” Sandra snapped, crossing to them with long, swift strides. “You’ve got to be more careful.”

“I know,” Tarja said, pressing a hand to her forehead. “I’m stupid, I should have realized… I’ll pay for the curse removal, once we find a cleric.”

“Well, maybe we won’t need to.” Stepping behind Quinn, Sandra undid the bra strap for him, letting it fall away. The breasts remained, still as large and bouncy as ever.

Quinn slumped in frustration. “Well, shit.”

…

It was faster going out of the cave than it had been coming in. The traps had all been either disabled or set off, and there were no more waves of combat teddies to do battle with. Quinn stripped out of his frilly armor and got dressed in travel clothes, baggy and draped over his chest to hide his new breasts.

They had to pull Hadrian out by the hand when he ignored their explanation that it was time to leave. He still stopped to pick up some of the magical pacifiers on the way out, presumably for study, but after that he was willing to follow along without any more stops.

“You think we can still get the reward for clearing the cave?” Quinn asked, as they trudged back towards the main road. “The job was just to get the wizard out, one way or another, right?”

“I’ll ask the guild,” Sandra said. “But the reward was tiny. Most of the cash was going to come from selling the loot we got.”

“Damn.”

“Still a good idea, though. A little cash is better than… uh…”

She looked down, alarmed to feel her panties growing warm and wet. Flushing, she quickly waved her hand, casting prestidigitation, trying to keep up with the spreading accident.

“Sandra?” Quinn asked, glancing over his shoulder at her. “Better than what?”

Sandra frowned, turning away from the party and raising a hand to her brow, pretending to look down the road. “Uh… I thought I heard something,” she said, keeping the magic going. She couldn’t stop the accident from trickling down her legs, but she was at least able to mitigate it long enough for the flow to stop.

“I don’t hear anything,” Tarja said. “What did it sound like?”

Sandra was trying to run through the implications of her sudden, inexplicable loss of control. “Uh, an accident.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, I was wrong,” Sandra corrected. “I don’t think I heard anything.”

“Okay.” Tarja shrugged. “We’re all probably a little jumpy. We’ll feel better once we’re back on the road.”

“Y-yeah.” I just peed my pants. There was no trap, and I’m not wearing anything cursed, so… what happened?

That occupied her thoughts as they trudged back to the main road, turned east, and started the trek back into town.

The Sodden Songbird was the most popular tavern and inn in the little town of Marston. It was also the only tavern and inn in the little town of Marston. The stew was thin, the beer was strong, and they always had rooms for members of the adventurer’s guild.

Stepping inside, Sandra broke away from the party to go talk to their guild contact, while Quinn ordered beers for the table. Tarja stayed with Hadrian, leading him by the hand to their usual table so he wouldn’t wander off.

“Anand,” Sandra said, pulling up a chair across from the guild man. “Good to see you.”

Anand was a dwarf, and his keen gaze saw through her feigned cheerfulness. “Got your asses whipped, eh?”

“The wizard was gone,” Sandra explained, taking the contract from her bag and passing it back to Anand. “We fought some constructs, hit a mountain of traps, and found nothing but cursed gear and some random knick-knacks.”

“Eh, it happens. First two groups of rookies didn’t make it past the traps, came back covered in welts. Everyone get out alive?”

“Alive, and generally in one piece.” Sandra sat back. “Technically, we did get rid of the wizard, though. Pretty sure he dimension-doored out of there with his stuff when we got close.” That was a lie, but it couldn’t be proven either way.

The dwarf chuckled, took a pull of his beer, and said, “You’re gonna push for payment, then, eh?”

Sandra sighed. “Work with me here. We’re in gear that’s for adventurers with half our experience, barely keeping a roof over our heads, and now we’ve got to pay for curse removal. At least cover our expenses.”

Reaching for his pocket, Anand pulled out a coin purse marked with the guild stamp. Sandra knew that anyone but him would find the pouch completely empty and useless, but the guild man was able to pull out five shiny, almost-white coins. “Five platinum. Half the posted bounty. Best I can do.”

“Thanks, Anand.” Sandra scooped up the coins, slipping them into a pocket. “You know the best guy to remove curses around here? Might be some powerful stuff.”

“Eh, you can ask the cleric over at the Temple of Calistria, but if it’s strong you’ll have to go into the city. Want me to get you some names?”

“I’ll check with the cleric,” Sandra said. “Any other jobs in town?”

Anand shrugged. “Check with me tomorrow. I’m waiting back to hear about a man and a pegasus. Might be big.”

“Thanks.” Sandra got up, walking over to the barkeep, a gelatinous blobby figure who was just barely translucent enough to let light through their body.

The barkeep jiggled in acknowledgement, somehow managing to speak without apparent lips, tongue, or mouth. “What can I do you for?”

“Paying our tab, and getting rooms for another night. How much do we owe you?” Sandra asked. She knew the total, but she hoped they would forget to add something up in the tally.

“You’re a week behind on rooms, plus food, beer, and the gear you had me ship in. Nine gold, two silver, six copper.”

She took one of the platinum coins, setting it on the counter. “This should cover us for tonight, too, then.”

“That still leaves you shy the six copper,” the barkeep corrected.

Damn. Sandra fished around for change, put the copper on the counter, and nodded to the thing. “You’re a shrewd business-blob.”

It seemed to acknowledge the comment, then returned to wiping down the counter.

“Sandra!” Quinn exclaimed, holding up a tankard, sloshing a bit of the foaming brew over the top. “Have a beer, and we’ll toast to ill fortune and good friends.”

Sandra took the tankard, but she didn’t sit down. “To good friends.”

They all drank, save for Hadrian, who only took a pull from his own beer after he saw what the rest of the party was doing.

Taking the coins from her pocket, she passed one to Quinn and another to Tarja. “Anand was willing to pay half. I’ll hang on to Hardian’s cut until he starts talking sense again.”

Tarja played the coin over her delicate fingers, while Quinn just put his coin in a deep pocket, staying hunched over to conceal his new breasts. “Should cover the cleric’s fees.”

“Should,” Sandra said, setting down the tankard. “You want to finish this? I’m going to go get some sleep.”

“Are you certain?” Tarja asked. “The night’s still young.”

“It’s too old for me.”

“I’m not complainin’,” Quinn said, taking her drink. “Free beer.”

“Goodnight,” Sandra said, ducking out of the bar and taking the exterior stairs to the second floor. Fiddling with her key, she unlocked her room and stepped inside.

Finally alone, she slumped against the wall.

“Shit.”

The party was her responsibility. She wasn’t officially their leader, but she’d been the one to accept this bounty, and she’d royally screwed it up. She’d led them into a trap, and if they made any money off this job at all, it would be because the cleric cut them a deal fixing the trouble that Sandra had brought down on them.

And, when they were walking home, she’d peed her pants.

There hadn’t been any more accidents, but that was as likely to simply be because she hadn’t needed to go. For all she knew, she could be about to have another accident without realizing.

Kicking off her boots, she stripped out of her pack, belt, and other gear. Less burdened, she pulled off her pants and shirt, laid down on the straw mattress, and tried to get comfortable.

She could hear the noise of the bar below, talk and laughter and cheers as people relaxed at the end of the day. She shut it out, shut her eyes, and went to sleep.

…

Sandra woke up early. The earliest birds had started to chirp, but sunlight wasn’t even coming in through the window yet.

“Ugh,” she groaned, thinking about going back to sleep. She was still tired, and she really didn’t want to get up and face the day. She was going to have to go talk to the cleric, check with Anand, try and rustle up more work if he couldn’t give her anything.

It would be easier to just sleep through the morning. Put off her responsibilities for a while, slack off, let her future self handle things.

Nah. If I go back to sleep, I won’t want to get up all day.

She sat up in bed, wrinkling her nose. Something smelled foul. Judging by the intensity of the smell, something absolutely disgusting must have gone down in the bar.

Or… it’s in the room.

Leaning over, Sandra was going to peer under the bed and see if an animal had gotten inside, but the shift in weight made something squelch and squish between her legs.

She froze, not wanting to look and confirm her suspicions to be true. As long as she held still and didn’t check, she could pretend that it was just her imagination.

The stinky odor hit her again, caught up by a breeze from the window. She couldn’t keep pretending. Flipping up her blanket, she looked down.

Sure enough, the wizard’s diaper had returned. Worse, it was full.