Tanya and Elora: A Touch of Foolishness (TFMC)

Hey folks!

Prepping this post in advance, so I hope the Quest stuff is going well! Working away at my current requests as well... Guess I've got nothing much to report! Good luck out there all. Enjoy the story, and I'll catch you later!

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“This is your fault,” Tanya snarled, shouldering her way through the library door in a rush, her left wrist locked in a death grip by her right hand. Her left hand, currently wearing a white glove, even seemed to be struggling with her right, which was bare skin, though it failed to break its grip. “I can’t believe this!”

“First off, no it isn’t.” Elora wasn’t far behind her, quickly slamming the door shut in their wake. “Second off this isn’t the time to be playing the blame game. And third off, even if it is it’s your fault too.”

“It was your job to check for curses!” The blonde Paladin shot a glare over her shoulder, thundering across the room towards an empty desk, and all but slamming her own arm down against it. “Your main job! Help me tie this stupid thing down.”

Elora nodded, quickly navigating around her friend. The room wasn’t that large – a small room for quiet study, with a few tables and bookshelves, nothing more – so space was at something of a premium.

“And I did!” She explained as she looped a coil of strong rope around the bottom of the desk, quickly binding it around Tanya’s restrained wrist. “Mostly. Look, I never claimed to be perfect, even the best cursed detectors only have a 95% rate of success…”

The look that the blonde shot her Sorceress friend probably would have killed a weaker Adventurer. El, having seen much more frightening things over the course of her career, just rolled her eyes. “Look, you were the one who put the stupid thing on! Don’t go blaming me for all of this!”

She gestured to Tanya’s bound hand – a hand that was wiggling around quite independently of the Paladin’s wishes, despite now being firmly tied down. That probably had something to do with the white glove she was wearing over it – a slender, silken garment inscribed with glowing purple runes around the palm and the tips of its fingers.

“It was with my dress clothes!” Tay protested. “I thought it was part of the outfit you insisted I wore for the ceremony.”

She gestured to herself, or rather, to the outfit she was wearing. Rather unusually, there was no sign of her typical plate armour on her today. Instead, she was dressed in her official guild uniform – a much less protective uniform consisting of a green collared shirt, a black jacket with golden stitching, and black leggings. It looked rather sharp on her, perhaps even dashing, even though half of the shirt buttons had been left undone when her glove problem had made itself known.

Actually, that might have enhanced the dashing look…

“Wha- No! Look at the stupid thing!” The elf, who was wearing her traditionally stylish red dress (because she always made sure to look her best, whatever the occasion) shook her head with incredulous ferocity. “It’s entirely the wrong colour. The gloves I got you were sun white; those are clearly cream!”

The blonde gaped at her. “Those are the same damn thing!”

Elora gasped. “The are not, and language, Tanya, what if the little rookie Adventurers heard that foul tongue!”

Tay’s eye twitched. “Don’t you try to-!”

But she was shushed quickly, the Sorceress quickly covering her mouth with her hand. “Abuhbub, hush now, be calm. The important thing about resisting curses is keeping control of your emotions. And the important thing about not disrupting the ceremony is not raising out voices, understand?”

“I know how to resist a- Rgh.” The Paladin took a deep breath. “I. Am calm. I am very calm. Even though you are making this impossible!”

“That doesn’t sound calm to me,” El said, shaking her head as she circled around the room again, pulling a heavy looking tome down off from one of the top shelves – Creative Curses and How To Identify Them - dropping it on another empty desk. “Come on, Paladins are supposed to be good at this.”

“It was very calm!” Tay snapped. “Now shut up and get this thing off me!”

“I’m working on it, I’m working on it…” The elf began to leaf through pages of the book. “I need to identify what kind of curse we’re dealing with first. This gets way harder to deal with after you put the cursed item on, you know?”

“Well maybe if someone had checked all of our loot from the last dungeon properly…!”

“See now you’re just getting back into the blame game.” Another page turned. “Just relax. Tell me, have you noticed any symptoms?”

“Aside from my hand now moving on its own, you mean?”

“I think we can definitely count that as one, yes,” she muttered, licking her finger. “But anything else?”

The blonde sighed, taking a seat and leaning back, trying not to look at her struggling hand. “Like what?”

Elora shrugged. “Well, anything out of the ordinary might help. There’s a lot of different curses out there. We don’t want to try curing the wrong one. That can have… Consequences…”

Just seeing the elf’s wince was enough to convince her friend that she didn’t want to know more. “Great. Okay. Anything else…” She closed her eyes and took a breath. “I guess I’ve got a headache?”

“Is that from the curse or is that just you?”

“How do you tell…?”

The pair fell into a comfortable, if somewhat stressed, chatter, running through a list of potential symptoms of various kinds of curse – with Tanya trying her best to remain calm and relaxed, while Elora was just doing all she could not to snicker at her friend’s misfortune. That was the kind of leisure granted to a woman when the threat she was dealing with appeared to be both minor and contained. Weak curses like this weren’t a threat, not really. They’d both dealt with far worse than this.

But they had missed something that might have made the both of them feel otherwise.

As the Paladin sat back, her eyes closed, her breathing even, her free hand – her right, the one not currently tied to a table – was twitching, dangling down next to her chair. Bands of white cloth had appeared around her fingers, looking almost like rings. They’d actually been there for a little while now – appearing as Tanya had wrestled with herself, spread by the touch of the cursed glove wriggling for freedom. But now that the situation was ‘under control’, the meaning of their appearance was starting to make itself known.

Her fingers, ignored by her brain, brushed together, spreading the curse further and further up their lengths. The cloth stretched upwards, wrapping fondly around knuckles and well calloused skin, until all four fingers were covered in silken white. They wiggled for a moment, testing out their control, before all four of them snapped shut around her thumb, wrapping it in the same fabric in an instant. From there, it was the matter of a moment to coat the remainer of her palm, linking all of the white fingers together, and creating a backless glove that was almost a double of the cursed garment on her left hand.

“Any extra limbs growing in?”

“I think you’d notice if they were.”

“I dunno, those pants are pretty concealing…”

“Oh, by the Light, El, no.”

“Just checking!”

Ignored by the two adventurers, Tay’s right hand flexed, testing out its full range of mobility, before swinging over to her lap. The Paladin glanced down, a little surprised at the motion, but only saw the bare back of her palm, and shrugged it off as a nervous twitch. She leaned back again, taking a breath. “Breathe in… Breathe out…”

Her hand gave her thigh a reassuring squeeze. Having already dismissed it as normal, the blonde didn’t think anything unusual of that, though she did appreciate the slight massage to a tense muscle. And thus, accordingly, she didn’t notice the way the black cloth turned purple underneath her fingers…

But the hidden glove didn’t get a chance to keep working – its host was far too restless to stay still for long. “Have you found anything yet?” Tanya grunted, folding her arms and pulling the glove from its work.

“Not yet. Be patient.” El hummed as she flipped another page. “Any tingling in your extremities? Fingers and toes alright?”

“My fingers are kind of tingly?” The blonde grimaced, looking at her bound hand. “Kind of warm, too. My toes are… fine… I think.”

“You think?”

Tay shrugged, irritated, and reached down, squeezing the back of her right calf. “Well I mean now that I’m paying attention to them, they feel weird, but that’s just because I’m paying attention to them, isn’t it?”

“… I’ll just file that under ‘weird human nonsense’ and move on…”

The Paladin grunted, rolling her eyes as she massaged the back of her leg - and remained completely oblivious as the fabric of her black pants twisted, rewoven by a rolling wave of glowing purple magic, one that was stretching upwards to connect to its unfinished work up near her thigh.

Soon, the right leg of her pants wasn’t black at all. It was purple, striped with green, made of baggy cloth that flared outwards the lower down it got, before folding back abruptly just over the foot.

Satisfied with their progress, the fingers slid down her ankle, gently massaging her heel, working the sides as if trying to get rid of a cramp. Her shoe changed with every touch – going from dark, hard worn leather to something made of cloth – longer, with coiled up toe rolling back towards her ankle.

Perhaps Tanya should have noticed all this. By this point, the changes had gotten pretty sever; her entire right leg had been converted. But she was distracted, and by more than just her worries over the curse. A feeling of deep relaxation was falling over her – a lightness to her heart that she’d not often felt. Given the stress she was under, it was no wonder that she took the opportunity to unwind a little.

“I can’t believe this is how I’m spending the inauguration,” she chuckled, shaking her head. After coming all this way to help establish the new Guild Hall… “If the Guild Master finds out, she’s going to kill us.”

“She’ll kill you,” Elora corrected, sticking her pointer finger up and waving it in Tay’s direction without actually looking around at her. “I did nothing wrong – and she liked me more, too.”

“What?” The Paladin cracked an eye open. “No way, I’m the favourite!”

“Oh? Is that jealousy I hear?” El giggled to herself, delighting in finding a weak spot on her implacable friend. “Sorry, Tay, it’s absolutely me. Why do you think she’s always inviting me over for tea? We have a bond, she and I.”

“Yeah?” The Paladin let out a breath as another squeeze of her thigh sent an extra wave of pleasant relaxation through her. “I always figured she was just inviting you to kneel under the table and convince her not to fire your ass for all of the collateral damage you cause.”

“Excuse me?” The elf spun around, her jaw dropped. She was used to hearing that kind of line from… Well, from plenty of people, if she was honest, she had a bit of a reputation, but from Tanya? No way!

Of course, with her jaw already on the floor, there wasn’t anywhere for it to go when she saw what had happened to her companion. She still tried, though, eyes widening and her pointed ears twitching.

“Just a joke,” The blonde muttered, oblivious to the elf’s shock as she casually brushed her hand through her hair – unknowingly undoing her tight ponytail and adding a long pink streak to it in the process. “Don’t take everything so seriously, El.”

“Tay!” The Sorceress interrupted, the joke/insult already forgotten as she gestured to the Paladin’s transformed leg. “What the hell is this?!”

“I said it’s just a- Oh shit.” The blonde opened her eyes, her gaze flicking down to where her friend was pointing. Her face immediately went pale. “What?”

Elora scrambled back to her book, ripping through the pages. “That was my question and I asked first! Damnit, this is worse than I thou- Ah!” She stopped the book dead, finger lancing down on a newly revealed page. “Jester’s Tweak, got it!”

“El!” Tanya was definitely starting to panic, grabbing at her converted leg with what she thought was her free hand as it started to twitch. “Help!”

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it.” The Sorceress nodded, ripping the page out of the book. “Okay, it’s a converter curse, just try not to touch anything and that should slow the spread.”

This advice was of small comfort. “That’s what I was trying to do already!”

“Yes, yes, but do it better.” She squinted at the torn-out page. “Category six dispelling agent… Root of hemlock… Phoenix tears, oh bitch, those are expensive to replace… Okay! This should be easy enough to sort out, let me just-”

Still scanning the page, El turned towards the door, hurrying to fetch the ingredients that would put an end to this embarrassing episode, and-

- tripped over Tanya’s extended coiled shoe.

“Gah!” She tumbled to the floor in a heap, page fluttering through the air.

“El! Shit.” The Paladin dragged her leg back, growling, and extended a hand to her friend to help her back up. “Are you okay?”

“Nn… I’m fine, I’m fine…” The elf took the hand and pulled herself back to her feet. “Stupid curse is just getting desperate. I’ll… Uh…”

She was staring down at her clasped hand. Confused, Tanya followed her gaze – just in time to watch her gloved fingers give the elf’s digits a squeeze, and watch a new white glove form up to her friend’s wrist.

“… Oh.” There wasn’t much more she could say, really. A few things about the past couple of minutes suddenly clicked into place.

El was not so limited. “Gee, thanks, Tay,” she groaned, pulling her en-gloved hand free and shaking it. Alas, the white garment wouldn’t budge. “Very helpful.”

The Paladin’s cheeks were already rosy red as she pulled herself back into her chair, now with the unenviable job of managing three corrupted limbs. “Uh. Sorry?”

“Ugh. No, not your fault.” The elf sighed, shoving the affected hand into a pocket. “Look, just sit tight, okay? I’ll go grab the reagents for the counter spell, and we’ll get this sorted. You just try to keep all that from getting worse.”

“Right.” Tay nodded, biting her lip as she tried to carefully balance her free hand and her roaming leg without letting them touch anything. For the moment, it seemed like a reasonable enough task – while neither limb could be said to be ‘behaving’, both were reasonably within her ability to control.

“Good.” El nodded, stepping over to the door. “I’ll be back in a minute. Just… Don’t do anything, okay?”

She slipped away, and the Paladin took another deep breath. Okay. This was simple enough. Just keep an eye on her curse, keep it contained. No more of this accidentally letting it spread while she wasn’t paying attention. Then, after the curse was cured, she and El could get straight on with the inauguration ceremony and never speak about any of this ever again.

Another breath. “Come on, Tay, this is nothing new,” she muttered to herself. “Just keep calm. Don’t let it get to you.”

Of course, none of the corrupted parts of her body seemed inclined to make the situation easy on her. Her right leg was already trying to rub up against her left, attempting to spread its curse, and there was only so much she could do to stop it. She kept moving her pure leg, her last untouched limb, pulling it away from the danger – but her converted one just kept swivelling around to follow it.

The blonde forced herself to growl, pushing away at how funny this all felt, how silly she must look right now. “Stop that,” she panted. “Not giving in that easy…”

What could she do, though? With her arm bound to the table, there was nowhere she could move to that would- wait! That was it!

Grinning at her sudden realisation, Tanya spun in her chair, using her free limb to shuffle closer to the table, and used its legs to firmly block her own. The purple right shook and shoved against the solid oak, but it couldn’t get around it to her black left. Curse defeated.

“Haha~” Now she allowed herself to laugh. “There! Told her I knew how to deal with curses.”

But her success was short lived. For though she had managed to firmly lodge her legs apart from one another, she had missed the real threat. Because while she was focused on the big distraction her leg was putting on, she’d completely forgotten her still corrupted and still unbound right hand.

And it had been busy. While she’d fumbled and swivelled in her seat, it had steadily been creeping up her body, fingers climbing their way gently up her jacket, leaving small patches of purple tracks in their wake. Any motion from her arm, a simple flex of her biceps, would have foiled its journey – the hand could only go where the wrist allowed it to. But she’d been too busy dealing with matters below the waist to notice the track above it…

And now, just as she basked her victory, the glove struck.

From the base of her throat, the cursed limb umped upwards, seizing a firm grip on her chin before swiftly crawling up over her face. Startled, the Paladin’s eyes widened, and her instincts kicked in. She instantly tried to call for help, recognising the danger she was suddenly in.

“Uh. El? E-Mmph!” But alas, just as she tried to raise her voice, opening her mouth to yell, her corrupted hand slapped over her mouth, muffling her firmly into silence. “Mmhmnhm!”

With its target silenced, the glove quickly went to work, spreading itself over the blonde’s face. Firm fingers massaged her temples as her thumb stroked her cheek. But it felt like they were doing more than that. It felt like they were massaging her mind itself…

Squeeze…

Her thoughts tangled, her panic and fear getting jumbled up with bliss and joviality. Her mind became foggy, with little things like where she was, what was happening to her, and who she was, became difficult to grasp. Confusion took hold, but that was quickly massaged away too. Her mind was a warm lump of clay in the hands of a sculptor, being shaped into a more proper form.

Rub…

Warm feelings bubbled up inside her, stoked by the gentle pleasure being massaged into her. A soothing wave of relaxation, stronger than any that she’d felt before, rushed through her, stilling all of her concerns and washing them all away. The kneaded mixture that was her identity relaxed and settled, her eyes rolling up in her head as all of her cares were folded out of her head.

Stroke…

Heehee… Heh heh heh… Hahaha~!

All of this was just… so… silly~

A giggle burst from her lips, her mouth curving up into a silly smile, her eyes crossing as the brain behind them drowned in delighted, giddy pleasure. Her old cares had vanished, her worries popping like balloons, but not to worry! New ones were being worked in. They sparkled so pleasantly in her brain and filled her mind easily – there was nothing else left to get in their way.

But life was so dull, wasn’t it? So boring and drab. Wherever you went, village, town, city, or wilds, everything was all the same. So serious and bleak. Didn’t people deserve joy? Laughter? Happiness? Surely everyone needed someone to cheer them up!

What higher calling could there be than brightening everyone’s day?

Who could want anything more than to be… a Jester~?

The idea settled into her mind like a boulder at the bottom of a lake, solid and secure. Another giggle rumbled through the Paladin’s throat as the glove gave her head one last squeeze, before hopping away.

It left a few changes in its wake, of course. Tanya’s lips were a little fuller, her makeup a touch… sluttier, her eyelashes darker, her cheeks redder. But the real difference was in her eyes – in the vapid glaze they carried, and in the mischievous glint that sparkled within them. Anyone who took a close look at her now could see this wasn’t the same Holy Knight that everyone knew. Though the silly smile might have given that away too…

The blonde giggled again, though she hid the sound with her gloved hand. There was something she had to do before she could properly indulge. Quickly, she unhooked her legs from the table, finally surrendering her left to the same corruption as her right, and cooing with delight as her left shoe was converted into a rolled point by her right foot. That was so much better.

But better still would be having both hands to use. With a quick glance to the door, the cursed Adventurer fumbled with the rope, hurriedly untying her own knots to release her left arm. Finally, she was free.

The half-turned Jester clapped her hands together, grinning, and finally completing her right glove, before sliding her arm back under the untied rope. No reason to spoil the surprise, after all. Then she leaned back in her chair, striking a variety of poses that were more silly than practical, before her left glove slapped her lightly in the face, shaking her head, and letting her sit more calmly.

Hey, who could resist a little slapstick? Teehee~

She didn’t have to wait long. Soon there were footsteps, and then a smug elf bursting in through the door. “I got it!” Elora practically yelled, waving her hand in the air – the one that had picked up Tay’s curse. It was distressingly glove free, all of a sudden! “Found the cure, proved it works, you’re welcome!”

Tanya bit her rose red lip. A cure? For this wonderful blessing? Oh no no no, that wouldn’t do at all! Fortunately, she knew exactly how to deal with this. El was her best friend, after all – she couldn’t let her miss out on this.

“That’s great,” she lied with a smile, putting all of her new performance skills to good use. “How’d you manage that?”

“Heehee~ I thought you’d never ask!” The Sorceress chuckled to herself, stepping across the room to put the page she’d ripped out of the book back into place. “You see, it’s all too simple when you’re a genius like- Huh? Hey!”

Of course as soon as the Elora turned her back, Tanya had jumped to her feet and cartwheeled across the room. She landed in a graceful pirouette directly behind her friend, and didn’t waste a single second in grabbing her in a hug, locking her arms at her sides.

“Sorry, Elly,” the pink-streaked blonde giggled, finally letting her smile show. “Can’t let you spoil the fun that fast!”

“Tay, what are you- Woah!” The elf gasped as Tanya’s white-gloved hands rose up and squeezed her chest, corruption immediately seeping into her red dress. But it was different, this time. For one, the corruption was blue, spreading through the red like water through fire. For two, it wasn’t just the dress that changed…

“Ooooohhh…!” El couldn’t help but moan as her chest expanded under Tay’s palms, each squeeze growing her breasts outwards. Squeeze Pinch Squish… White hot pleasure blasted through her brain with every grope, accompanied by the oddest, airiest desire to giggle…

By the time the blonde was done squeezing, the elf was breathless, and her breasts were easily the size of her head, if not bigger. Her dress should have ripped long ago, but ‘fortunately’, the blue corruption had changed it, too. More fabric had spun itself into existence, granting her new cleavage a lovely sapphire window frame with an incredibly deep view.

El was so stunned that she barely even reacted as Tanya released her, spinning the now incredibly busty woman around to get a good look at her handiwork. “Perfect! Now there’s some good eye candy~”

The elf groaned, grabbing at the blonde’s shoulders as she tried to recover. “T-Tay, wait, stop…”

“No can do Elly! I gotta help you lighten up~” The Paladin giggled at her friend’s confusion. “And I need you to do the same for me, so…!”

She reached out and grabbed the Sorceress’s arms, sliding her hands down her sleeves, before wrapping her palms around her hands – and giving Elora a nice new pair of gloves to replace the one she’d lost.

The Sorceress’s eyes widened, the nature of how quickly things were going wrong (even if they felt so incredibly right) dawning on her. Again, she tried to break free of the blonde’s grip – but the other woman was always going win any strength contest between the two, and her struggles just amounted to a lot of jiggling.

“Let me go, Tay!” She tried pleading. “You have to stop this!”

“No way! Come on, help a girl out already!” Tanya shook her head with a smirk and a roll of her eyes, grabbing Elora’s hands and yanking them around to rest on the Paladin’s behind. “I gave you those boobs, so the least you can do it-OH! Oooh, yeah, like thaaaaat~”

El’s gloved hands hadn’t needed her permission to go to work, and to her shock the elf found herself digging her fingers into the Paladin’s cheeks, squeezing that ass for all it was worth. It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar action for her, though she’d never actually imagined doing it to the blonde (Tanya was so not her type), and the fact that she couldn’t pull her hands away made it hard to enjoy. But soon enough she felt the inevitable – Tanya’s ass beginning to grow.

It was a quick process – one that the Paladin seemed to enjoy immensely, judging by the moans. Her hips expanded rapidly, soon filling, and then overflowing between Elora’s fingers as they squeezed and kneaded her rear like dough. By the time she was done, the blonde had an ass the equivalent of Elora’s tits and seemed delighted by every bouncy inch of it.

But finally, the Sorceress’s hands let go, releasing their grip on her friend, and she pulled them back to her sides. This time she didn’t even try to make a plea – she just turned on her heel and went to run. But it did no good – Tanya pulled her back into a hug before she’d even made it three steps.

“Now now,” the blonde purred, brushing El’s hair out of her face. “We’re not done yet, Elly.”

The elf licked her lips nervously. Part of her was panicking, struggling to think of a way out of this and failing at every attempt. But another part of her, a warmth in her chest, couldn’t help but feel excited…

Still, she tried her best to deny it. “T-Tay, we can’t…

“Just relax, Elly. Didn’t you say that was the important part?” Tay hugged her close, pressing right up against the Sorceress’s soft chest. “Lemme put a smile on that cute face of yours…”

Then, smiling, the blonde leaned in for a kiss.

Delight and giddy glee bubbled up in Elora’s heart, another surge of light-headedness leaving her dizzy, breathless, and helpless to resist. It all felt far, far too good. The curse had played subtle with Tanya, but now it was ruthlessly going for the kill. As Tanya’s face sank down, El found herself rising to meet her. Then their mouths met, and the Sorceress’s eyes rolled up in her head as her lips began to plump. Pleasure surged through her body, whiting out every last mote of control, smothering every last care and worry.

A moment later, and the Paladin’s hands rose up, and began to massage all of those worries out of her head forever, fingers softly stroking through her hair to turn it a delightful cerulean blue. Skill, power, responsibilities, all of it was worked out of her brain, none of it needed in her new calling. Who needed any of that to make people laugh?

And of course, all of her knowledge of that terrible cure popped like a bubble, disappearing like it never was. Couldn’t leave that knocking around in there!

But all too soon, it was done. The elf’s gaze was just as vapid as her human’s, and her smile just as silly. Nor would either of them have it any other way – not anymore, at least.

The two gazed into one another’s vapid eyes, hands squeezing together, and shared a giggle. Then their lips met once more, and they fell upon each other in a curse spreading frenzy.

Tay’s tits swelled under Elora’s needy palms, plumping up into proper melons…

Elora’s ass inflated into a delightfully juicy peach…

Both women’s waists sinched inwards, giving them proper hourglass figures in every way…

Hair was stroked into messy waves, a sea of pink and blue…

And their costumes continued to spread, linking up between various discoloured patches across different legs and arms, until both women were clad in bright, colourful jumpsuits covered in ribbons and whistles, skintight and obviously designed to show off their curvaceous bodies.

The fabric even spread up their necks, developing into a pair of hair concealing hoods that took the form of hats with four prongs, each one tipped by a tingling bell. Completing the look, silver masks slid down over their faces – theatrical masks showing off wide, frozen smiles, the eternal faces of a pair of jesters, and nothing more.

Yes, at long last, the curse was done. Its magic finished, leaving the pair utterly changed – and utterly oblivious that they had ever been any different. Even the cure Elora had worked so hard to find wouldn’t save them now – not that either of them minded.

Nope, they were just a simple pair of hourglass shaped jesters. Their names had been forgotten, spilled out of their brains in a sea of pleasure and moans. But they didn’t need names anymore. After all, you couldn’t tell the difference between them, save for the colours of their clothes, purple and green, or blue and red.

And they were very happy to continue enjoying one another’s smiles, but eventually something came along to remind them that they had a job to do.

There was a knock at the door. The two Jesters looked at one another, before springing to their feet, separating from one another at long last. Just in time, as the door opened, revealing a stern woman dressed in a Guild dress uniform.

Previously, Tanya and Elora would have recognised her as Lady Elingbrook, the head of the new guild hall that they were supposed to be inaugurating today. To the two Jesters, however, she was just a stranger – and one desperately in need of a smile, by the look of her.

“Ah, you must be with the entertainment,” the silver haired woman said. “Sorry to interrupt your preparations, but have you seen a human woman and her elf friend anywhere about? They’re needed for the next part of the ceremony.”

Both Jesters looked at one another and then shrugged, shaking their heads. Those names rang no bells, aside from the ones on their hats.

Jingle, jingle…

“Ah, pity…” The woman couldn’t help but smile at the sound. There was something just so very merry about it. “Well, if you do see them, let them know they’re needed on stage, quickly. We have a ceremony to conduct.”

Satisfied, she turned her back to walk away – but before she’d made it three steps, hands shot out from behind her, covering her mouth and dragging her back into the library, the door slamming shut behind her. There were the sounds of a struggle, just for a moment, and then a surprised moan – and then silence.

Silence, aside from a quiet ring…

Jingle, jingle…

The world needed so much more joy, didn’t it? Who cared about some silly new Adventurer’s Guild hall? What the world really needed to brighten everyone’s day was more clown colleges! Obviously!

Oh yes, you could definitely count on a Jester to put a smile on your face!

Jingle, jingle…~