“‘Let’s keep going,’ she says. ‘We can totally beat that storm’, she says. And because I’m such a nice guy, I believe her. And get wet for it.” The young man grumbled, pulling his cloak tighter and holding his (magically waterproofed, thank the gods) tome over his head to try and reduce the steady pattering of rain.

“Oh just shut up already, Cedric. I apologized a thousand times already.” His companion, a well muscled, short haired young woman groaned. “Usually my weather predictions are spot on!”

“Saya, when you spend most of your life in a monastery on top of the highest mountain in the country, your options for weather are a bit limited.”

The pair were wandering down an old, rarely used road. When they’d left the shelter of the cave hours ago, it had been a clear day. The clouds had seemed to move in at just the point where it would be more trouble than it was worth to go back and sit out the storm, and from that point onwards it had steadily gotten worse, and worse, and worse. They were soaked to the bone, the ill kept dirt road turning to mud beneath their boots.

Of course, it wasn’t the first time the adventuring duo of mage and monk had had miserable travels. They were experienced and well travelled - as far as travel conditions go, a rainstorm was nothing compared to being waylaid by monsters and bandits as they so often were. The damp and cramp confines of deep caverns and dungeons may as well have been second homes. But there was something uniquely miserable about traveling through heavy rain in clothing ill suited to the task.

“How long was it to the next town?” Saya asked.

“I’d check, but it’d ruin the map.” Cedric groaned. “We had another two days' travel to go when we left the cave, at least.”

“At least it can’t get worse, right?”

Lightning struck a tree by the road, right on queue.

“...Please stop tempting the gods. They have a sick sense of humor.”

“Wait, did you see that? Lit up by the lightning and all, I thought I saw something.”

Cedric rolled his eyes, but kept an eye out. At the next thunderclap, he saw something silhouetted against the sky, on the hill just before the forest. “A mansion? All the way out here?

“You know how rich people are,” Saya said, “Inconvenience is a small price to pay if they don’t have to interact with the peasants.”

“And a mountain monastery is so different?”

“Something about being closer to the gods or something,rather than away from poor people.”

“Sure, sure. Let’s go see if anyone’s home.”

The adventurers trudged their way up the hill, the gothic spires of the manor getting ever more distinct. It was an old looking place, the sort of locale that tends to be haunted, taken over, or other such disasters. It looked rather intact though - there were the signs of fresh repair and maintenance visible throughout the facade, indicating that it was not in fact a haunted home. At the very least, it was occupied by people who cared enough to make it look nice.

Soon, they reached the door. Saya hefted the heavy gold knocker and crashed it against the door hard enough that Cedric winced and hoped she wouldn’t crack the wood. “Hello! Hello? Anyone in there?” she called out. Raising her voice to try and carry it over the crash of thunder and pounding rain.

“You could stand to be a bit more polite-” Cedric started, but the door had begun to slowly grind itself open.

In the doorway, a young woman dressed in a maid’s uniform, with stark white hair kept in a lengthy ponytail, eyed them with similarly silvered eyes. She was almost unnaturally still, until she curtsied. “Welcome. It has been some time since we have received visitors.” she said, her voice just a little bit too neutral.

Saya and Cedric looked at each other, but the monk spoke first. “Hello hello! Nice to meet you, I’m Saya and this is Cedric and we were wondering if-”

“You might stay for the storm?” the maid finished for her.

“Whoa, are you-”

“No, I am not psychic,” the maid said sharply. “I am simply reasonably competent at logical deduction. It is a terrible storm outside. We are the only visible shelter for some way around, as well as near the road between villages.”

Cedric rolled his eyes, but bowed deeply to the maid. “Cedric, professional adventurer and mage, at your service. We request asylum from the storm, and have funds for adequate recompense if requested. We’d like to speak to your mistress, if you please.”

“Certainly. I can, however, assure you that you will be granted a stay here if you so wish. We have no need for money, but if you could provide your assistance in the maintenance of the manor while you stay, that would be quite acceptable.”

Cedric put away the gold pouch he’d been preparing to offer. “That seems to be reasonable. Thank you very much, miss. Now, I suppose we should take care of both obligations right away-”

“I’ll see your boss, lady.” Saya said quickly, “I’ve never been one for cleaning.”

“Saya, you couldn’t negotiate your way out of your grandmother’s house-”

“Very well,” the maid said. Another, identical paid walked up to the doorway, curtsied, and gestured for Saya to follow her. Cedric sighed as she skipped off with her.

“Well then… guess I’m helping you out, then. Anything I can do at the moment?”

“As a matter of fact, yes…”

-----

Saya admittedly wasn’t good at negotiation. But well, the maids seemed confident that their boss would find it in their heart to let them stay the night, and they probably knew them reasonably well. “Where are we going?” she asked idly.

“To the baths, actually,” the maid said. “We can’t well allow you to see the Mistress fresh from the road."

Usually, Saya would object to essentially being called smelly. But right now a bath honestly sounded pretty great, and she wasn’t about to complain about that. “Lead the way then, lady!” she said cheerfully, trooping on down the halls.

There was a surprising number of staff in the manor - whoever owned it must have been ridiculously rich. Saya noted that, but what she didn’t notice was that every maid in the manor looked completely identical - triplets, not quadruplets… quintuplets? She shook her head - it must have just been the uniforms, right? The maids probably didn’t look all that much alike, but they were dressed completely identically and her mind filled in the blanks of her quick glances. That made rather more sense than identical octuplets all in the service industry.

Soon, she reached the manor’s bathroom - or rather, bath house, as it was bigger than some of the smaller inns that she and Cedric had stayed at on their travels. “Wow… how do you get all the water?”

“The manor was built over a natural hotspring, just beneath the surface. We pipe it up with the help of some enchanted aqueducts beneath the mansion.” The maid explained helpfully. “Shall I help you disrobe?”

“That’s cool… or hot, I guess, ehehe...” Saya muttered - a constantly heated bath seemed absolutely divine, and she was a monk so she should know! She shrugged off the maid’s offer, and started loosening her martial artist’s robes, showing off her well muscled body, spotted and dashed with scars from many adventures and many more injuries. “You can wait here, if you want,” Saya said, “I can take a bath myself.”

Without waiting for the maid’s response, Saya waltzed her way into the bath house and dropped her robes on a nearby rack. The  water had already been drawn, so all she had to do was get in and soak, which she did eagerly. The warm water leached away the tension and aches from her muscles, and she sighed loudly, relaxing in the soothing embrace of the bath.

For a while, she just soaked, allowing her mind to drift - she wasn’t in any special rush, a rich lady would probably be just as irritating to deal with in five minutes as thirty. She was so unfocused that she didn’t realize she wasn’t alone until there were a pair of gentle splashes on either side. “You don’t have to help me, I know how to bathe-” she started, opening her eyes and getting an eyeful of an impressive bust and it’s clone. The heat in her face had nothing to do with the bathwater anymore as she trailed off.

The maid from outside, presumably, had come into the bath - and brought an identical twin with her. In their nude glory, she couldn’t well chalk up the similarity to uniforms anymore - if she’d had any room in her head to think about that anyway, her capacity for thought was a little bit occupied. “Of course,” one maid said.

“But we still wish to help.” the other finished.

Saya swallowed hard, and nodded, prompting the two identical maids to push close to her. They were armed with only their hands and a bubbly soapy liquid, the sort of thing she’d hear wealthy people used in their bathing. “I, uh, c-can you even use that for s-someone like…” she stammered, not able to form a full sentence even.

“Of course we can,” one maid said. She didn’t even know their names, but they began to rub the soap all over her. She gasped and groaned as their dextrous fingers traveled her rugged body, surprised by how nice and gentle they felt.

“Don’t worry about a thing,” the other twin said gently. Saya mentally noted them as “One” and “Two” since she didn’t know what else to call them. “Just relax, and let us take care of you…”

Saya wasn’t about to deny them that. She reclined in the bath, as One and Two got to work. She felt their hands running across her whole body, from her modest bust down to her most private of places. One worked higher, cleaning her short red hair, her face, and her shoulders, while Two worked lower with her feet, legs, and unmentionable spaces.

As Saya slipped into a relaxed trance of pleasure, she wasn’t able to notice what the two were really doing. She didn’t notice how as One rubbed soap into her pixie-cut hair, it started to get longer and longer, falling to her shoulders and then continuing onwards. She didn’t notice how the water washed the scars from her face, softened the harder lines and plumped her lips. “You don’t need to do a thing,” One whispered in her ear, “Just let us do all the work, you have no need nor desire to do it anyway…”

Saya groaned softly. It felt so nice, that she couldn’t bring herself to respond otherwise. The maid was right anyway… the maids were helping her, she didn’t need to do a thing, did she?

Two worked over her legs, her soaped up hands gliding over the thick cords of muscle and smoothing them right out. “You can relax. No world saving, no adventure. Just enjoying yourself, that’s all that you need to do here.”

Saya nearly got up at that, but a swift rub across her lower lips put her onto her back again with a shuddering moan. That was right. She didn’t need to worry about anything. Nothing at all.

“As an heiress of your status…” One began, as she soaped up the slowly transforming woman’s breasts. The modest buds - she barely even needed to bind them in order to fight comfortably - grew in response, a pleasurable feeling to be sure. One continued, washing the wear and tear as well as the strength from Saya’s shoulders and arms, “Your only concerns are the status of your family and that your maids do what they’re told, isn’t it? Everything else is secondary to your enjoyment of your life…”

That didn’t sound right. That didn’t make sense. Heiress? Saya was just a monk… but she couldn’t bring herself to disagree. In her trance she was just lapping up whatever the maids said, and it became the truth. Her mind itself was remolded as they washed away her old identity. Saya wasn’t a monk, they whispered - she was the lady of the mansion, a wealthy noblewoman of class and refinement. She had no muscles, just flawless, smooth skin - she couldn’t fight her way out of a paper bag, and that was even if her curvaceous body didn’t get in the way or her opponent didn’t grab at her long luxurious hair. And if the physical side wasn’t enough of a problem, Saya didn’t know where to begin in a fight - she knew tea parties and fashion, not footwork and strike sequences.

She was no monk, and would never be mistaken for anything but a haughty, stuck up noblewoman. And as she sank into the bath with a lurid grin, she looked at her maids. “Well then? Are you just going to clean me, or are you going to actually make use of your bodies properly?”

One and Two smiled at each other, and began to properly serve their mistress.

-----

Cedric, frankly, felt like his talents were being a bit wasted helping out around the home. He also desperately wished he’d bothered to learn prestidigitation rather than dismissing it as a niche spell not worth the bother. As it turned out, he did have a situation in which rapid cleaning would be very useful. He couldn’t complain too much, though. The mansion was huge, and he expected that the guest rooms would be as luxurious as one could hope for when sheltering from a storm.

Cedric had been put to work by the head maid, as he thought of her, at a few simple, menial tasks at first. Put this thing back together (he did have a repair spell, at least), help cook the lady’s dinner, do some dishes. The last thing he was being asked to do, apparently, was to clean out the rarely used extra bedroom which had become dusty and generally filthy from disuse. The fact it was probably the room that he and Saya would be staying in did quell his irritation at having to clean it - he could hardly ask the maids to do so.

“I’ll have it cleaned right away,” he said to the head maid, taking the proffered duster and dustpan. “Thanks for letting us stay.”

“Of course, of course,” the head maid said politely, bringing out her own broom. “Allow me to assist you.”

“I appreciate it, but I can do it myself…”

“I insist.” The head maid said. She’d seemed a bit cold at the door, but she had been loosening up slightly as they worked.

Cedric shrugged. “Well, I’ll hardly say no to the help…” he said.

The two got to work quietly. The room was so dusty that they left footprints, you could hardly see the floor beneath the layer of dust and debris. It was at first a bit hard to talk without coughing, but the conversation did continue a bit after that.

“So, your friend,” the head maid said, “She must be a bit of a handful to handle, isn’t she?”

Cedric smiled a bit. “Sure is. She’s got way more bravado than you’d expect from a monk, and since she’s lived on a mountain her whole life she doesn’t have the common sense to know when it’s not the time for it. She means well, though.” He coughed a bit as dust got into his mouth

“I’m sure, I’m sure,” the head maid said. Somehow, the dust didn’t seem to cling to her like it did Cedric. The mage didn’t comment, supposing that when you clean for a living, you learn how to avoid making a mess of yourself and giving yourself more work. “Still, taking care of her must be frustrating for a magic user of your caliber.”

“It’s not that bad. To be fair, I didn’t have too much common sense when we met either - wizard training doesn’t leave much room. And someone’s gotta do it, don’t they?” Yeah… he had to take care of her. It was his duty, wasn’t it? Morally and… and professionally? That was a strange thought. He coughed again.

“So it is,” the maid agreed, carefully dusting off the bedsheets and rolling them up for later washing, “It’s good to know that the lady has such diligent helpers as you travelling with her.”

Something was weird in that sentence, but Cedric dismissed it. It didn’t seem as important as cleaning up. “Yes… she needs the help a lot and I’m happy to give it…” he muttered, his eyes unfocused.

The head maid smiled, continuing. “That’s right. You’re a good servant, tending to Mistress’ needs, aren’t you?”

“Yeah… a good servant…” Cedric said in a daze. The room had, at some point, been dusted spotless. Cedric was caked in dust, head to toe in a way that seemed a lot thicker than would be caused by regular cleaning.

“That’s a good sister. Let’s get you cleaned up, hm?” the head maid said, drawing out her duster once more.

“Good sister… yes, I think I need some cleaning…” Cedric replied, coughing a little.

The head maid got to work quickly. The duster in her hand wiped away the dust in smoky plumes, and as it did, it revealed someone quite different beneath it. The mage’s hair had gone pure white, and seemed to be longer than it had once been. As the head maid dusted from his face, the hard masculine lines softened to gentle femininity. Down the body the duster went, cleaning the traditional mage robes right off his body in favor of a maid’s uniform, as well as molding his body to be more distinctly feminine - a modest but certainly notable bust, curves that would dispel any notion of masculinity, and an excellent bottom. His - or her, at this point - proportions changed, legs lengthening and torso contracting. The finishing touch was the frilly cap, placed on the newly minted maid’s head.

The woman who had once been Cedric opened her eyes, a bright silvery color, and curtsied. “Thank you for your assistance, sister.” she said, her voice identical to the head maid’s.

“No problem at all, sister.” The head maid replied, moving behind the newly minted maid to help her tie up her hair into a ponytail. “The Mistress should be finishing her bath shortly, and I suspect she’ll want company in her bedroom. Would you like to do the honor?”

“Of course,” the maid replied. Once her hair was tied up, the two were completely indistinguishable from each other - not that there was much difference anymore, physical or mental, rendering it a bit of a moot point. “We live to serve.”

“We live to serve.” the head maid repeated.

As the two maids left the now spotless guest room, they heard a haughty laugh from the floor above. Mistress was ready, it seemed - and it sounded like she might be in a mood for two, so they hurried their pace a little.