The clack of wooden mugs and the quiet beat of cheerful music playing from the bard in the corner was the pleasant kind of atmosphere that the Order of Mythril Questiors had missed while on the road…

“I’m telling you, that name is never going to catch on.”

“Ho ho ho, I think I know a little more about branding than you, my dear Gloria! After all, does not the name Celestia Youngblood the Bright strike fear into the hearts of evildoers from coast to coast?”

“… I’d have to get back to you on that.” The rouge shook her head, chuckling into her breakfast and trying not to smile as the dark-haired mage across from her puffed up her chest. Celestia was a bit of an odd duck, but she was a powerful spell caster (even if she probably wasn’t as powerful as she bragged she was) and a decent person at heart. Putting up with her ego wasn’t so difficult in exchange for the ability to throw lightning bolts at hordes of bandits.

“Branding is everything in the Adventurer game, my dear trapsmith,” the mage chuckled, enchanting a knife to butter her toast with a snap of her fingers. “You should try to be more decisive about such things. People can only hire us if they’ve heard of us. Why do you think I’m always letting people that they are speaking to the greatest living mage in Galfandria, hmm?”

Gloria very carefully did not answer her true thoughts on that particular habit of Celestia’s. Instead, she deflected. “Is Questiors even a real word?”

“It is if we say it enough~!”

Beside them, the other two members of their party were chatting amongst themselves.

“It’s so nice to be back…” Cora sighed, gulping down mead from her tankard. Some might say it was too early in the day to be drinking. The redhead disagreed!

“We’ve been on the road way too long,” Zoey, her sister, nodded beside her. Zoey was absolutely the one who would be saying it was too early to be drinking. Alas, Cora was the older sibling, and wouldn’t have listened anyway.

The sisters weren’t exactly opposites – actually they were far more similar than either wanted to admit. Maybe that was why Cora had dyed her hair, moving it away from her sibling’s much less eye-catching brown locks. But that was just appearance – personality-wise, they were really like night and day, with Zoey the cautious one doing her best to counter Cora’s care-free risk taking. It wasn’t a perfect balance, but they made it work well for the team.

“Yeah, I didn’t think that quest would take as much out of us as it did,” Gloria added, chomping on some bacon. “Those mountain paths are harder going than they look.”

“Well it would have been faster if you’d simply taken my advice!” Celestia chipped in from the side, trying to speak while taking a chomp out of her toast and look dignified while doing so. She managed two. “It would have been an easy teleport.”

“Oooh no, we’re not taking a group teleport again. Not after what happened in-”

“Abuhbub.” The Mage quickly shushed the Thief. “That didn’t count. There was a freak solar flare. These things happen.”

“Well the sun was looking solar flare-y, so we walked instead.” Gloria grinned, flicking her own long brown hair back over her shoulder.

“Hmph.” Celestia crossed her arms, pouting. “Perhaps I’ll finally be able to convince you luddites to take the easy way next quest…”

“Oh yeah!” Mouth still full, Cora looked over to the Thief. “Speaking of next quest, did you find our next job for us Gloria?”

But the rouge shook her head. “No, not yet. I went out to check the quest board while you guys were getting up, but there wasn’t anything interesting. Some stuff for looking after someone’s kids, a lost cat or two, and one job for cleaning out the horse racing stables…”

There were general murmurs of disappointment around the table. No one became an Adventurer to spend their days cleaning up after horses.

“Hopefully there will be something a bit more suitable to our level of prestige.” Celestia sighed, sweeping a hand through her hair. “If we spend another week being forced to clean gutters to earn our night’s food, I will teleport us to the other end of the country solar flares or no.”

Yeah, none of them doubted her.

“It’ll be fine, I’m sure,” Gloria tried to soothe the Mage’s ego. “I checked early in the morning. If we go and take a look now, I’m sure more quests will have rolled in.”

“Very well.” The dark haired caster nodded, finishing off her breakfast. “Shall we go and take a look?”

There was a wave of nods and a general sense of rushed consumption as the party quickly stuffed what was left of their food into their mouths, before all of them rose to leave together. Now, with bellies filled and their feet well rested, it was time for them to get underway with a new adventure.

Hopefully one that was a bit more glamorous than being discount cleaners for the day.

The party fell into comfortable chatter as they left the inn – Gloria verbally sparring a little with Celestia, who was being haughty as always, while Cora boisterously interrupted at every chance she got. Zoey was the one who remained quiet, smiling at seeing her friends getting along, but paying her surroundings more attention than them, really.

Which might have been why she noticed the figure in dark robes near the quest board down the street as they left the inn. The others were a bit too distracted to notice, but the brown haired Warrior thought she saw the mysterious stranger posting a notice to the board before walking away…

They were gone by the time the party actually reached the board, though, and Zoey quickly forgot about them as she began to read through the requests, just like the others. Gloria had been right, sadly. There wasn’t much here, just errands and chores…

“Aha!” Celestia’s finger lanced out, pinning a slip of paper. “How about this one?”

Gloria leaned in, trying to read around her fingertip. “Investigate the Haunted Manor… Huh, that wasn’t here earlier.”

“Ohhh!” The redhead of the group’s eyes lit up. “Are we gunna fight some ghosts?”

The Mage snorted. “Please, Cora, be sensible. Most ‘hauntings’ are perfectly rational magical phenomena, nothing to do with ghosts.”

“Aw.” The elder sister folded her arms. “She made it sound kind of boring now…”

“Wha- Hey!”

“Don’t listen to her, girls.” Gloria chuckled, pulling the quest slip off the board. “Listen to this: Reward: 10000 gold pieces.”

“Ten thou-?!” Even Celestia looked stunned to hear that kind of number being thrown around.

“Each.”

Silence descended upon the group. For a moment, each adventurer was fantasising about what they might do with such a collection of wealth. Gloria was considering the prestige of the kind of legendary missions she and her group could accomplish with those funds – their deeds would go down in history! Celestia, of course, was rubbing her hands together as she imagined the kinds of spells she could create - Unlimited power! Cora, well, she was grinning quite goofily as she imagined a big house, with a lot of food on the table and servants to maintain it all... While Zoey was twiddling her fingers, wondering how much it might cost to fund a small charity to handle all of these chore-type quests instead of leaving them to adventurers.

So when, after that moment had passed, Gloria turned to the group and asked, “So we’re doing this one then?”

The reply was unanimous. “Yes!”

Though even as they started walking away, Zoey couldn’t help but wonder why she had such a bad feeling about this one…

-

The Manor was a fair distance away from the town, a trek down long dirt roads and through a few overhung trails. Of course, such a journey was nothing to experienced adventurers like the Mithril Questiors (name still under consideration), so it wasn’t long before the group was standing at the gates to the property.

“I don’t know about this one, guys…” Zoey’s worries had only gotten worse as they grew closer to their destination, and now that she could actually see the place, there was no holding them back. “Maybe it’s a bit much for us.”

It certainly looked haunted. The building sat at the top of a hill shrouded by dark cloud, the centre of a large estate filled with unkept lawns and shadow-filled forests. And the manor itself was huge, a sprawling structure with multiple high spires and cracked windows. If the younger Warrior had been asked to imagine a haunted house before arriving here, this would have been it!

Alas, she was the lone voice of dissent.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Celestia was, of course, the first to dismiss her. “It’s a simple job for the likes of me – or us, I suppose. It would be embarrassing to turn back now.”

“She’s right… Sort of.” Gloria was a bit more diplomatic, but she was just as committed. “We’re already here. If we walk up to the door and then leave, we’re just telling everyone we’re cowards. And think of the payday!”

“All that steak we could buy…” Cora was less eloquent about the subject than either of them, but her intentions were equally clear.

So Zoey just sighed. “I mean… I guess…”

Fortunately, there was someone there to reassure her.

“Worry not, my dear meatheaded friend!” … Celestia was not good at reassuring people. “If we do encounter an actual haunting, you’ll be safe. For you are under the protection of Celestia Youngblood the Bright!

And, as the greatest Mage of all time, I’ll happily show you how to deal with a simple spectre – Oh ho ho ho ho!”

The brunette looked at her friends uneasily, but in the end she had to nod along. They weren’t wrong – it was a good payday, and they should be capable of doing this. They weren’t rookie adventurers! She just had the weirdest feeling…

Well, that was her job in the party – the one who had to look out for the traps that the others might be about to walk into! So she’d do her job, and hopefully, with a little luck, it’d all turn out okay. That was certainly what she decided she’d be working for as the quartet walked up the long gravel path to the manor itself. Try to think positive!

Of course, that became a lot more difficult when the front door slammed shut behind them, and refused to open again. Worried, Zoey immediately stepped back to try the handle – which refused to budge, and almost burned her hand with how cold it was. Uh oh.

“Uh, girls?” She looked to the others. “I think we might be locked in…”

“Ah.” Okay, now Gloria started to look a little nervous. “Are you sure…?”

“Pretty sure!” Zoey gestured to the door – which was now starting to shimmer with ethereal light, a ghostly barrier preventing anyone from getting close.

“Aha!” Celestia, of course, only saw this as encouraging. “Then there really might be a ghostly presence here. Excellent! I can’t wait to send it running in fear!”

“Yeah, um… That’ll be great…” The brown-haired Thief was finally looking a little nervous. She liked to know where her escape route was, and the front door sealing itself threw a pretty big wrench into that. “But while we look for it, how about we also find ourselves a way out of here too? You know, just in case.”

“Ah, you worry too much, Gloria.” Cora, lackadaisical as ever, waved the woman’s worries off casually. “Everything’s fine. We’ll slam this big ol’ spook, and maybe let Celestia have her big light show, and then once we’re done the door will open just fine! Besides, where are we going to find another exit? This isn’t a Bard’s tale, there’s not going to be a bunch of secret passages all over the-”

Just where the secret passages weren’t would, alas, remain a mystery – for even as the redhead dismissed their existence, she leaned up against a wall, and then vanished as said wall spun around, carrying her out of sight and locking back into place as if nothing had happened.

“Cora!” Zoey rushed over to the wall, trying to trigger the hidden passage again, or failing that, just plain smash through it – but that shimmering etherial barrier rose up in front of her again, blocking her off.

“Damnit!” Now Gloria was actually sounding rather stressed. “This is the worst time to be going off on your own! We need to find her before she wanders off…”

Celestia rolled her eyes. “Of all the ways to get separated,” she muttered. “Very well. She can’t have gone too far…”

“Mm. I’ll check the rooms nearby.” Zoey was normally the most cautious member of the group, but if her sister was in danger, that attitude underwent a sharp reversal. Already, she was hurrying down the hall, trying to work out a quick route to move towards wherever Cora had ended up.

“Right. I’ll go see if the layout upstairs is the same. I might be able to work out where she’s gotten to from there.” Gloria was already five steps up the staircase. After all, there were more windows upstairs, and thus, probably more ways to escape.

“I’ll see if she’s fallen into the basement.” The dark-haired Mage nodded. “That would be just like her…”

All three nodded, the quick plan seeming reasonable to them. Sure, it seemed silly to split up when they were trying to prevent getting separated, but none of them planned on going very far from one another. They’d be just around the corner a little.

But they should have known that nothing was going to go to plan for them on this quest…

-

The basement was colder than Celestia expected as she descended the bottom step. Cobwebs hung from every corner, dust clung to every surface – it sure felt like no one else had been down here for a long time. And it was certainly quiet. Perhaps Cora hadn’t ended up down here after all.

“Cora?” She called out all the same, wanting to be sure. “Come on, muscle for brains, this is no time for your klutziness to be sabotaging our big mission!”

… Rudeness was how she showed she cared. Plus if anything was going to get Cora yelling back, it was a taunt. Yet, still, all was quiet.

“I guess she really isn’t here,” the Mage muttered. “What a waste of time. I suppose I’d best go back and…”

She turned around and froze. There, hovering in front of her, between Celestia and the stairs, was a spirit.

The creature was unmistakable. A floating, partially transparent creature in the shape of a human woman, but its flesh was a glowing blue, wrapped up in white robes that hid its face.

And the instant she saw it, it laughed in her face.

“Eek!” Startled, the Mage stumbled backwards, immediately tripping over her own robes and landing flat on her rear.

“Oooh, what a delight!” The ghost clapped its glowing hands, still giggling. “An intruder, and I found her first! Lucky lucky~”

“Rgh…” Celestia growled, slamming her hands against the ground to start lifting herself back up. “How dare you! Don’t you know who I-!”

Unfortunately, that was as far as she got, because in her ire, she’d forgotten something important about ghosts – something this one was all too happy to demonstrate. Without warning, the spirit shot forward, flowing like a white mist – straight between the black haired adventurer’s open lips.

Cold poured down the Mage’s throat, her eyes widening as she felt frost seem to grip her heart, and she felt the inside of her chest turn to ice. Her movements slowed to a weak crawl, her eyes fluttering as a strange, chilly sensation seemed to fill her…

Then her body moved without her say so, rising to her feet and patting her rather attractive, if a little modest, body down, her lips giggling all the while. “Oooh, let’s see what we’re working with here. Celestia the Mage, hmmm?”

‘What?!’ She hadn’t said that. That wasn’t her talking at all!

“Well no duh, silly. It’s me! I’m the one talking.” Her body continued to pat herself down. “I possessed you, so now let’s see what I won! Hmm, nothing too impressive in the curves department…”

‘You…!’ Even trapped in her own head, Celestia wasn’t going to take that one laying down. ‘How dare you!’

“Ehe, you’re so predictable~ Okay, I’ve got what I wanted!”

The cold retreated, replaced by soulful warmth and the beating rush of a hammering heart. The spirit had released her, drifting away to float in the air before her once again.

“Fun fun fun~ Oh, I know exactly what I’m gunna do with you!” Behind her, another ethereal barrier rose up – this one blocking off the stairs. They were trapped in the basement now.

The Mage’s eyes narrowed as she straightened herself out. “What you’re going to do with me? Don’t be absurd.” She raised a hand, lightning crackling between her fingers. “After all, you should be far more concerned with what I am going to do with you!”

There was a crack of air and a peel of quiet thunder as Celestia unleashed a blast of electricity at the offending spectre – only for her attack to miss completely, the ghost weaving around it with ease.

“Oooh, I’m so worried~” It just kept laughing at her. “The big scary mage is going to use magic at me! But how can she do that when she was too busy bragging about how great a mage she was to learn how to dispel my barrier, hm?”

“Shut up!” Oof, that one hit a little close to home. “That wasn’t- I mean- Rgh! Take this!”

She threw out another spell – this one a wave of fire washing down the corridor – but again it had no effect on the ghost. Instead, the spirit just zipped straight past it, weaving around the corridor and appearing right in front of the adventurer again, poking her on the forehead with a single spectral finger. “Boop!”

A chilly tingle passed through the Mage, running right down her spine. “Wha- What was that?” She gasped, staggering backwards a step, trying to recover her guard.

“Oh, just a little curse,” the ghost giggled. “No problem for you if you know the dispel charm, right?”

Urk. Celestia couldn’t help her flinch. The dispel charm was a rather advanced spell. N-nothing compared to her level of power and skill, of course! But… Ah… She may have… neglected to find time to learn it…

“Don’t worry~” The spirit circled around her, clearly delighting in all this. “It’s not a baaaad curse. It’ll even help you out! Those teeny boobs of yours are a thing of the past!”

The black-haired Mage twitched. “What?”

“Yuh-huh!” The ghost nodded eagerly. “My curse’ll sort that problem out for you lickity-split! It’s gunna turn alllll of your mana into milk, and pump up that chest nice and big for you.” She clapped her ethereal hands. “Of course, that’ll put an end to your spellcasting days, and also turn you into a dumb little cowgirl in the process, but you won’t mind about that, s’long as someone’s milking your brains out!”

Celestia’s eyes widened. That… That certainly couldn’t be true… Could it? Such a curse would… Would…

She shuddered, feeling a sudden surge of tingly warmth in her chest. Was it just her, or was her top starting to feel a little tight…?

Uh oh.

The Mage fumbled with her robes, pulling them out a little to give herself room to breathe (quite literally) as she tried to remember what little she knew about the dispel charm. If this curse did anything like what the spirit was saying, she was in a great deal of trouble. After all, one of the traits she was always bragging about was how much mana she had…

“Oho! Looking a little worried now, Miss Celestia Youngblood the Bright? Well, don’t worry, it’s easy enough to cleanse my little curse if you know how~”

Growling, Celestia began to pull magic together for another attack. “In that case, why don’t you tell me how- OOH!”

She gasped as her bust suddenly swelled outwards, stretching her top to the point where more than a few stitches began to pop, almost doubling in size in an instant. At the same moment, the mana she’d been trying to gather for her spell dissipated – drained down into her tits.

“Lovely!” The spirit circled around the stunned Mage, giving her new mana-tanks a squeeze and delighting in the squeal she got out of their owner. “This is a much better use for all that magic than throwing fireballs! And it’d be no fun if I told you how to fix it~”

The Mage’s hand slapped through the ghost, but it just broke into mist and reformed a step away. “Still, I should be fair and give you a chance, right? So don’t worry! The basement has a library filled with magical tomes – I’m sure one or two of them have the dispel charm in them. You just need to find it and learn!” There was a flash of light under the spirit’s hood that might have been a wink. “You’d better go quick though – take too long, and I don’t think my lovely new dumb little moo-cow’s going to remember how to reeeeeaaaaaad~”

Stretching the last word out, the ghost vanished into a haze of white mist, flowing off through the walls – though her laughter continued to echo through the halls for quite some time. Celestia snarled, but it was an empty gesture and they both knew it. With this curse, it wasn’t like she could throw any more lightning bolts after her.

But once she’d learned that dispel charm? Oh, there was going to be a reckoning – you could count on that!

So, grumbling, the mage quickly tied her robes to try and contain her new heft, and began her search. The basement couldn’t be that big, could it? Surely she could find a few magical texts without much difficulty…

Of course her first challenge was going to be finding anything down here. It was pitch black, and it only got worse as she moved further away from the stairs. By the time she’d pushed her way through the first storage room, she could barely see her hands in front of her face.

“This is ridiculous,” the Mage muttered. “How am I supposed to do this without at least a torch?” She shook her head – then paused, snapping her fingers as she began to smirk. “Ah, of course! I’m being silly. I’ll just cast a light spell, and-Nnh!”

She had barely begun to summon mana into her hand before she felt that hot tingle in her chest again, and all of her power was suddenly sucked away into her tits. There was a loud ripping sound as her top finally tore completely, leaving her newly enhanced bust on full display…

… But there was something else, too. The tingle hadn’t just been in her chest. She’d felt something in her head, too, a brief shock of warmth. Gingerly, she reached up to the top of her head, feeling around. Her fingers found two firm spikes poking up through her hair. Horns. She had horns now.

“Mm… Muhaybe that was a bad idea,” she managed, her lips struggling with the first word for some reason.

“Well!” Celestia jumped in fright, her chest jiggling distractingly, as a voice suddenly spoke up from right by her ear. “I don’t want you to miss out on your progress! Here, let me help…”

And with that, light dawned throughout the basement, candles with white flames springing to life on every wall. It was still quite dim, but it was miles better than the darkness from before.

“Could you help mmmme out by telling me where the library is?” The dark haired adventurer complained to the dusty air… But, of course, there was no response.

“Hmph.”

Reduced to staggering through the underground passages, the Mage tried to clear her head. She was feeling a little foggy upstairs, she had to admit – but, but of course, for a genius of her calib- calo… Of her smarts, this was nothing. Her mind might be a little milky, but she was still just fine, moo need to worry.

Then, as she came to the end of another spiderweb filled corridor, she found something that might be a problem. A stack of boxes, blocking off the next hall. They looked far too heavy to lift even if she wasn’t a noodle-armed mage. There was enough of a gap to squeeze past them – but she was going to have to crawl.

Shuffling around on her hands and knees was obviously beneath the dignity of a powerful magic lady like her, but right now her boobs were feeling a little too heavy for her to care. She had to find that dispel thingy quick, or else she was never gunna fix any of this…

But eep, it was a tight fit. Just trying to push through the gap was tricky. Her boobs were so big now, and still getting bigger… And worryingly, they felt really good as they were pressed in on both sides…

“Muh-Mooooooo…” Celestia groaned, not quite sure why she made that particular noise, but knowing that it felt really nice to make. Oooh, this was, like, really hard to do, especially since all this squeeing was just making her want to squeeze herself even more…

But no! She had to keep going – otherwise she’d be stuck as a big dummy cow forever or something! And she was, like, way too amazing a spell caster lady for that to happen to her!

So she pushed on, forcing herself to keep moving. Soon enough, her front half was out the other side, pulling herself through the boxes… But now she actually found she couldn’t move. Her behind was tightly lodged in the gap.

Huh? How’d that happened? She finally managed to get her big titties through, and now her ass was stuck instead? “Nn… Mm… Moooo!”

Struggling mightily, the cursed Mage finally managed to squeeze through, popping out of the other side like a champaign cork – leaving her clothes behind completely as the already torn fabric failed to make the transition.

“Moo…” Climbing back up to her feet, she reached down, feeling around. Did her thighs feel a bit thicker than before? And, h-hey, wait, what was this long thing sticking out of her butt?

Oh. Now she had a tail, too. Looking at it, she could see it had a nice layer of white fur with black splotches, topped by a tuft of black hair that matched her head.

That was, like, bad, wasn’t it? She couldn’t quite remember…

For a moment, the Mage just stood there, naked, her arms limp at her sides, standing while leaning forwards a little, her massive chest weighing her down. Both breasts were larger than her head at this point, and still swelling, while her thighs weren’t quite so big, but were much meatier than they had been when she’d first entered the basement. Behind her, her tail flicked lazily in the air, somehow looking much more active than the mind behind her vapid eyes. She was practically drooling.

But eventually, some spark of her old self got her moving again, shambling forwards and quietly moo-ing whenever a breeze stroked against her chest. Eventually, she reached a door, managing to squeeze herself through without completely turning her mind into milk. And inside…

Nope. No good. Just a bunch of boring books in here.

“Mmmuh…”

Wait… No… That was wrong, wasn’t it…? Wasn’t what she was looking for a book or something?

The adventurer’s brow furrowed in concentration, summoning up all of her brainpower. It was hard – a lot of it had sloughed off into her tits by this point, but she was making a real effort here. There, on the table in front of her, was a big glowing book, already open and resting on a page that something told her was important.

She squinted. “Dis… pel… charm…” she managed, reading aloud as she followed the text with her finger. Then she tapped said finger against her lips. Huh, where had she heard those words before…?

Celestia wasn’t sure – the memory was lost in the cloud of milk in her head – but it looked easy enough to do. The book had nice, big, easy pictures to follow. Even a cow could cast something like that. Giggling quietly, she raised her hand to copy the motions she saw, summoning mana for the spell…

“Mmm… Mmmuuuhh…. MmmmmmMMOOOOOOOOO!!!”

And buckled straight to her knees as the last of her mana was sucked down into her chest, sending a spike of pleasure shooting up into her brain. Milk squirted from her uncovered teats as her boobs finally swelled up to truly massive size, the kind of tits that any moocow milker would be proud of. The wave splashed onto the pages of the book in front of her, instantly dissolving the aged manuscript and reducing the pictures on it to inky mulch.

But Celestia didn’t care about any of that. Her mind may have turned completely to milk and squirted out of her chest, but new thoughts were quickly rushing in to fill the void. Thoughts of what a good little cow she was, of how sweet and submissive and stupid she had always been. Of how she was such a lovely, obedient cow for her Master.

With a wide, stupid smile, the cowgirl reached up and squeezed her titanic tits, mooing with joy as milk poured from her teats, carrying whatever remained of her old self out with it.

“Wonderful.” Unfamiliar laughter echoed through the room as someone stepped through the door behind her, striding up and circling around them to cup their chin. A mysterious figure wearing long, dark robes. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down. Not so Bright any more are you, Celestia Youngblood the Cow?”

Celestia looked up at her Master with love in her eyes. There was only one thing she could say to that.

“Mooooo~!”