The tavern was bustling, filled with the noise that came from adventurers returning from a successful quest - cheers, jeers, and a lot of asking for more booze as they spent their hard won coin on round after round for the patrons. And her party was at the center, having just completed a lengthy dungeon run, was at the center of the festivities, and were certainly having fun with it. One, a woman draped in black with a pointy hat, was singing a bawdy song while swinging her ale around and firing off magic at random (she nearly set the alcohol in the back alight, if another wizard in the crowd hadn’t prepped a water spell to extinguish it), as a man whose clothing consisted of a loincloth and entirely too many leather straps was making passes at anything with boobs that passed (some of which were reciprocated, others being met with slaps or smashing of a bottle over his head, neither of which seemed to faze him), or alternatively getting into a brawl with someone who tried the same. Those two, at least, were having a good time.

The blonde tough looking girl in full plate that was sat between them, on the other hand, was quite miserable.

Magdalyn, or ‘Maggie’ as her party generally called her, liked to think of herself as a devout paladin, a warrior of the gods and generally pretty virtuous person. She said all the prayers, smited evil and acted with benevolence and kindness to those in need. Sure, she could be a little overzealous with her own morality, but that was sort of expected for paladins. And she didn’t go on a purging spree when people disagreed, unlike what the man who trained her had sometimes advocated. Even if sometimes she was horrified by the immorality of some of the people in the world at large.

Her party was, unfortunately, one of those groups.

She wasn’t sure how, frankly, but she’d ended up assigned to one of the more… questionable, parties in the guild, featuring a witch that practiced dark magic and was generally the horniest person Maggie had met, and a former bandit who found out they could do the same thing they always had done but get thanked for it if they became an adventurer. In short, not the sort of people a paladin would generally like - or that anyone who got in their way would like very much either, for that matter.

The whole expedition, from the moment they left the guild with the quest bulletin in hand to their return, Maggie had been doing her level best to keep them in line. No, you can’t just threaten someone for not giving you a discount. No, you can’t polymorph someone into a racoon because they laughed at your hat, even if they were admittedly pretty rude about it. And of course you can’t seriously contemplate backstabbing that caravan we passed because the merchant was condescending. It had been chaotic from the word go, and while she felt that the two at least meant well - they wouldn’t have been accepted as adventurers if they didn’t - they had the self control of small children.

Magdalyn cleared her throat. “Excuse me, you two…” she said. The witch and former bandit - Rhiana and Ellis, respectively - both ignored her. Maggie cleared her throat again, louder, and finally they turned to her.

“Heeey, Maggie,” Ellis, about half a dozen drinks in, slurred, “What’s up with you? Whatcha need?”

“Well, I’d like to ask-” Magdalyn started.

“Do you want me to get you a drink? I’ll use my share, since you’re a cutie.” Rhiana offered.

“No, that’s fine thank you, I want-”

“Well, she seems a bit flushed, maybe she needs to work something off - hey, bar wench! Got an offer-”

“Oh Gods no, please,” Maggie hadn’t been blushing before but she started now - her face was feeling hot, and it wasn’t just embarrassment.

“Oh lay off her, she doesn’t wanna do it with strangers.” Rhianna chided the bandit.

Maggie took a deep breath. “Thank you…”

“So I’ll just help her upstairs~” Rhiana finished.

Maggie stood up abruptly. “No! I’m-gah! I’m sick of you two!” she shouted.

The pair blinked, and the tavern (or at least, those patrons near the party) went quiet. “...What’d I do?” Ellis asked.

“You both are just… drinking so much, and acting so disrespectful to the workers, and disrespectful to me, and I really want to like you, you’ve got good in you, but you’re making it so hard-” Magdalyn took a deep breath, and let it out. “I’m going outside to cool off.” she said, leaving a small coin in payment for her water (with a generous tip).

She strode out of the tavern as the conversation started back up, as if nothing had happened, and sat on a small bench just to the side of the door. She shouldn’t have exploded like that, she knew. She didn’t want to be so… self righteous about it. She knew that her definitions of what was ok were probably pretty different from the rest of the people in there, and she shouldn’t take out her frustration on them.

But it had just been too much! There was raucous partying, then there was irresponsible use of magic and getting into fist fights over who had the right to grab a passing waitress’ ass. As far as she was concerned, the latter was over a line.

She sat there and fumed for a while. She should go back and apologize, she thought. But she didn’t move. It would be shameful, wouldn’t it? She couldn’t just face them so quick after that. Especially not Rhiana… she blushed a bit thinking of her. She was a witch who flirted with powers that shouldn’t be used as easily as she flirted with Maggie, so she knew she shouldn’t care. But, well, since they’d joined up she’d helped Maggie out of more than a few spots where her sheltered upbringing had led her to make a fool of herself or worse. She made jokes, but usually not at Maggie’s expense. And she was… to be frank she was very pretty, and Maggie noticed it and didn’t know how to handle that.

As if summoned by her thoughts, the door to the tavern swung open and Rhiana walked through it, carrying a pair of mugs. She sat down beside the sulking paladin and offered her the mug. Magdalyn took it without a word, and cautiously sniffed it. “...I don’t drink.” she said after a while.

“It’s not booze.” Rhiana said. “It’s something to help you relax though.”

“...Well, I appreciate the thought at least” Maggie said, and started carefully sipping it. It didn’t taste bad. Sort of like warm milk. “...Thanks.”

There was an awkward pause as the two sipped their drinks. Maggie felt herself calming down. This was more like it, nice and quiet and peaceful. She eventually spoke again. “I’m… I’m sorry for blowing up in there. It was just getting to be too much… I was about to say ‘debauchery and sin’ but that’s not very productive so… just leave it as ‘too much’.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I know you’ve just been sheltered. Drink your drink and calm down a bit, and we can talk it out.” Rhiana said cheerfully. “Really, what was going on in there wasn’t all that extreme by the standards of adventurers, you know? You just need a bit of a thicker skin.”

Maggie nodded absentmindedly as she drank. The drink, whatever it was, was helping her relax a lot. She felt so much better already, just sitting and talking, and the drink was helping all the worries and troubles fade away. Her eyelids fluttered as her irises grew cloudy. She was… very sleepy, all of a sudden… “Thicker skin…? You mean, literal, or…?”

Rhiana laughed a little. “It’s just an expression, you silly girl. It means you have to get better at not being bothered by stuff. Stop worrying about what everyone else is doing, and focus on yourself.”

“Focus on myself, huh…?” Maggie said dreamily, nodding along. “But… I like thinking about other people…” she didn’t notice how as she spoke, and more as Rhiana spoke, she began to subtly change. Her bright blonde hair began to darken, black at the tips and encroaching upwards.

“And that’s fine. Other people can be a blast to party with, to talk with, to have… other recreational activities with…” the way she said that made her meaning crystal clear, even to someone like Maggie, and she blushed a bit as the witch continued, “And if you want to worry about them, fine. But that doesn’t mean you should let what they’re doing bother you. They can be themselves - their morality isn’t your concern.”

Maggie nodded. She supposed that was kinda contrary to what she’d been taught, but it made sense to her in the moment. As the black crept along her hair, her plain, unadorned and unremarkable plate armor began to shift in shape. The metal seemed to lose coherency and solidity, like melting wax, as it transformed. “It’s… it’s good not to force my thoughts on others…” Maggie said, interpreting the instruction as something she’d accept. “Not my business.”

“That’s right.” Rhiana said, scooting a bit closer to Maggie as she did so and smiling serenely. Maggie couldn’t help but think, in the sluggish and slow way she was left with at the moment, that she looked so pretty in the moon and starlight of the outside of the tavern… “And the same way, you don’t have to worry about what they think of you, right?”

“That’s right, I don’t…” Maggie said. “They don’t have any more right to judge me than I have to judge them. So I don’t need to care what they think.” Her formerly fair hair was nearly gone, replaced by midnight tresses at all but the roots. Her armor had started to settle into a new shape, one that was much better fit to her figure than her previous one, and it’s unvarnished silver started to paint itself black from the shoulder plates downwards.

Rhiana smiled approvingly at how the girl was coming along. She had taken the magical drink without a fight, and was easy to mold now. A worse witch might have erased her entirely and put a new, loyal minion in her place. Rhiana wasn’t that. Despite herself she liked the uptight paladin. But she was so repressed, so clearly held down by tradition and training. No, Rhiana didn’t want to turn Maggie into someone else. She just wanted to let her be who she wanted to be. “That’s right. Just do whatever you want, and who cares what they think?” she said. “When we go back in there, you should let yourself have fun. Don’t worry about if anyone thinks what you’re doing is wrong, or what your master would think. You just have to worry about what you’ll think.”

Maggie actually smiled a bit at that. “Yeah. I should let myself have fun…” she said. Her armor conformed to her figure already - but that just meant it was easy to watch her figure change. Her modest A-cups push out beneath the sculpted plates as they grew to B, then to C cups. Raising a bit in the seat as her bottom ballooned, as her waist narrowed. ...Ok, Rhiana wasn’t going as far as some other witches would, but she wasn’t above making some adjustments to her taste. “...Also,” Maggie added absentmindedly, “I should deck Ellis.”

That part hadn’t been Rhiana’s - she laughed a bit at that. “Yeah, he deserves it.” she agreed. “Honestly, I think that one of the big things for you is that you need to learn that you don’t need to deny yourself things. If you wanna do something and nobody’s getting hurt by it, it’s fine to do it.”

Maggie nodded. “Yeah… I guess I’ve always been too used to not letting myself have anything. I… I guess it’s ok to have fun, sometimes, I… don’t need to be so serious.” As she spoke, at this point driving her own mental change more than Rhiana was, her armor settled into it’s final shape. The black was accentuated by accents of gold, a decoration that Maggie never would have thought of adding herself. And moreover, the armor was a bit… stylized, one could say. Besides clinging to her figure it also had some minor aesthetic enchantment now - namely, some that made certain plates on the chest and the thighs invisible, giving windows to the cleavage and pale flesh below. Rhiana raised an eyebrow, as that part hadn’t been of her own design - the spell in the drink took nearly as much direction from Maggie as it did from Rhiana.

“That’s right. You can let yourself have fun. Just like I’m letting myself have fun doing this…” Rhiana said, and leaned in to kiss Maggie on the mouth. As she did, she felt the magic seal itself - the loosened inhibitions and the physical change would stick now. The magical kiss was core to witch tradition, rather than just because Rhiana wanted to do it that way - not that she didn’t thoroughly enjoy the excuse. As she pulled away, the last physical changes had come in, Maggie’s skin turning a pale white, as her face gained a smattering of makeup - black lipstick and eyeliner completing the new ‘dark knight’ vibe that Rhiana loved so much.

Maggie’s eyes came back into focus, and she stood up stretching, clearly unaware of the changes that had taken her. “Thanks for the talk, Rhiana,” she said, “I think I really needed that. She offered the witch a hand up - loosened inhibitions hadn’t made her any less of a nice girl at heart.

Rhiana took it, and gasped as Maggie pulled her close and kissed her on the mouth. And it wasn’t a simple peck, either - she was holding the witch close, and there was more than a little bit of tongue as the newly minted dark knight embraced her. This had definitely not been part of the spell, just part of the former paladin’s new lack of restraint. Rhiana got over her surprise rather quickly and reciprocated in kind, and she wasn’t sure how long they kissed.

Eventually, they disengaged, gasping for breath. Maggie licked her lips, and smirked. “Gods, I’ve wanted to do that for so long now… can’t believe I didn’t do it earlier.”

Rhiana was a bit dazed by the force of the kiss and took a minute to collect herself. “I… uh… wow…” she muttered. She was still trying to regather her thoughts as she felt Maggie take her arm and bring her back to the tavern.

The partying paused as the patrons turned to look at the two. Was the paladin going to go off on them again? In their respective drunken stupors, they didn’t notice how she’d changed. Maggie let them wait for a bit. “Next three rounds are on me!” she called, to a wild applause.

Ellis stumbled over to them, grinning like an idiot. “Heeey Maggie, glad you had a change of heart! You needed to get the Immovable Rod out of your ass!”

Maggie smiled. “Yeah, I guess I did. How many more passes at the ladies have you made since I left?”

“Five.” Ellis said. “Anyways, ain’t you lookin’ fine? I don’t remember the boob window but I don’t mind noticing it now-” He was shut up by a fist to the face, sending him sprawling.

“Five fingers for five passes,” Maggie said cheerfully as Rhiana stared at her. “Oh, don’t be like that, I took off my gauntlet first. I could have done so much worse.”

Rhiana smiled. “I bet you could have. Drinks?”

“Please.” Maggie said with a return smile.

The pair drunk the night away, singing rather bawdy songs and doing a lot of kissing, to the cheers of the gathered adventurers. Maggie was rather more lively now, and clearly much more comfortable. Comfortable enough that she didn’t balk at the leers at least, although she punched a guy when they thought they had a good angle to grab at Rhiana’s ass. Soon, the partying was dying down with most of the people either unconscious on the ground or brought upstairs. Eventually, even Maggie and Rhiana headed upstairs. The witch was swaying from the booze, while the rather tougher Maggie supported her.

“That was… thatsh was funn…” the drunken witch slurred. “Bests night ever…”

“I have to agree. Full of new experiences.” Maggie said, as she helped the witch into the bed and started taking off her armor.

“Wants… wants one more? Like I said earlier, hehehe~” Rhiana giggled, patting the bed.

“Of course I do…” Maggie said, getting into the bed. When Rhiana’s hand roamed downwards, though, Maggie caught it with her own. “Not like that…” she gently corrected. Rhiana giggled, and snuggled up against her.

The two drifted off, in each other’s arms, cuddling until morning.