“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?”