Howdy! This one's short but sweet, and by sweet I mean crammed full of fetish stuff. Cum, lactation, cis ladies growing dicks, some mind stuff but it's not permanent, uhh...yeah! I also did some worldbuilding because I have no control over my actions. Enjoy!
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Michele knocked on the door, making a conscious effort not to stare at the giant hole that had been burned into the side of the aging farmhouse. Arcannon fire had stained the splinters of the wooden wall with a sickly green colour. Newer boards had been crudely tacked on around a tarp that hung taut in the damaged space, just enough to keep out the rain.
After some fruitless jiggling of the knob from the other side and some muffled curses, the front door opened. Standing in the broken frame was a broad-shouldered woman with wild green hair. Well-worn shirt and overalls, skin tanned from long days in the sun. She looked like something out of a pastoral painting from before the war. The kind of idealized image city folk liked to hang on their walls to forget their dreary reality. Michele caught herself starring.
"The posting said you needed help?" Michele asked, letting the heavy rucksack fall from her shoulder and onto the decrepit, peeling patio.
"I did. I do. Who's asking? You're not from around here, obviously." Her accent was provincial in a charming way. Michele had to try and keep from smiling, lest she look like the aloof city girl she was.
"My name's Michele. I was studying to be a vet before. No call for those in the city now. Government says I'd be more use out here in the sticks, so here I am."
The other woman looked her up and down with a quirked eyebrow. Her shirt and pants were the oldest and most expendable things she owned. Threadbare in places but not torn or scuffed or stained. Her boots on the other hand were brand new, fresh government issue. Some of the others on the coach she'd ridden in had muttered something about 'playing farmer'. Something similar was likely going through Vicky's mind, Michele surmised.
"You sure you're up for farming?"
Michele threw up her hands. "Of course I'm not sure. But if I want my ration card, I gotta work for it. And yours is the only farm I saw without livestock. I'm not afraid of manual labour, just not used to it."
"Alright," she nodded. There was no trace of sarcastic dismissal in her voice. "Name's Vicky. Won't lie, work's gonna be hard. But I'll feed you better than what the ration cards'll give you, and you'll sleep better'n you've ever slept in your life. Want to take a look around?"
Vicky led the way, pointing out the features as she saw them. The farm was at least a hundred years old, she explained, built on land allotted to her family from spoils gained from the War of Northern Expansion. Several outbuildings told of different decades, telling the tale of generational occupation. The largest building was a dairy barn directly opposite the house, another hole blown clear through the northeast corner.
"Say," Vicky mused, "How come a vet student doesn't want to be around animals?"
"Family profession. Hate animals myself. Dumb, messy, and always needing something. I'll take anything where I don't have to deal with them."
Vicky shrugged. "Fair enough, I guess. Let's take a look inside, I'll need your help with this," Vicky said. To Michele's relief, it truly was empty of occupants. The scarred wall let mid morning sun pool through in a great shaft of light, illuminating scattered piles of old uniforms, stretchers, and empty wooden crates piled in the centre of the building. Since this part of the county had been directly behind the front line, it was likely this had been used as a casualty clearing station.
"I'll need your help in here first," Vicky said, picking up a helmet from the ground and dusting it off. "Damn government man said they'd cleaned all this shit up before they gave me the call to come back. Lo and behold, a lotta garbage." She tossed it into the corner with two dozen other identical pieces of headgear.
"Least the building's still around," Michele said absently. She blanched when she realized what a landmine that kind of guilt might be in a conversation. "Sorry, I didn't mean anything by it."
Vicky waved her off. "S'all good. You're right, I am lucky. When the front came through, all the soldiers took was my livestock. Poor things weren't getting fed anyway. We raised sheep here, chickens, but mostly cattle. A lot of these apparatuses were for keeping the cows fed, watered, and clean. Before I can even think of getting livestock back, these out buildings need to be cleared, cleaned, and repaired. On that topic, what's your MC rating?"
Ice water ran up Michele's spine. "I don't have one," she lied, "They drafted all the magic users for service, remember? I never served."
"I didn't ask if you had served. I'm asking what equipment are you rated for?" She put her hands on her hips, the implication clear.
Michele made a show of looking over her shoulder, but the check had been in part genuine. Last thing she needed was a provost or god forbid some "patriotic" bystander to turn her in.
"Listen, by the time I came of age, the war was in the shitter. I didn't want to die for nothing. I'm an MC-1, maybe an MC-2 at most. No good for anything but the simplest machines."
Vicky nodded and flashed a reassuring smile. "I'm not a monster. I'm not going to turn you in. I just wanted to know if you could work the conveyors. It would save me time and energy of finding a magitech myself. MC-1 should be plenty for most of what I need."
Michele's pulse only slowed a fraction. In the rush to exonerate herself of being a threat she decided outing herself as a draft dodger was the better option. She smiled weakly.
"Anything you need, just show me what to do."
***
After stowing her bag and a brief tour around the farmhouse, she put herself to work. Vicky made it clear she didn't have to, but she wanted to. Whether it be to prove herself as a hard worker, or to prove herself to the attractive farm girl, she wanted to get her hands dirty.
Metaphorically. Her brand new work gloves were covered in dirt and god knows what after a few hours of hauling wheelbarrows full of junk out to a temporary garbage pile outside, easily accessible for whoever ends up hauling it away. She stopped to take breaks to mop her brow, or take long swigs from an army surplus canteen that she refilled from a pump well. The water had a metallic tang but was refreshingly cool. She upended the last of the bottle over her curly brown hair. As she let it drip down her face and neck, she let her eyes wander over what she'd uncovered so far.
Something wasn't quite right.
She couldn't put her finger on it exactly, but there were a lot of little oddities that caught her attention. Most of the restraining cages for the cows looked typical, but others were strange. The milkers and limb cuffs were all wrong, placed at bizarre angles. At first she thought it was something for goats or pigs or some other animal you could theoretically milk, but no, no readily available answer fit.
The milk tanks also held a mystery. The system was set up to receive milk from all the stalls, but those with the modified harnesses also had a hookup to receive milk from the tank. Like an inefficient, confusing loop.
"Why would you feed cows their own milk?" she mused aloud, using a shovel to dig through the clutter. Past a pile of old rags and some industrial sized springs she spotted the glint of something shiny. Her curiosity thoroughly piqued, she bent and retrieved it, dusting it off in the process.
It was an old bell, the kind you clip around the neck of a cow to keep them out of trouble. Despite heavy denting and damage, the silvery metal it was made of still gleamed in the sunlight. She took it over closer to where the hole was to get a better look.
A spark momentarily connected her fingertip and the bell. The jolt of pain made her let go. It fell a few inches, then stopped. She didn't catch it. It just stopped falling.
"What the fuck?" She passed a hand through the air below and above it. Nothing. It hung in the air as if suspended on a thread, in seeming defiance of gravity and common sense. Before she could touch it again, it launched itself at high speed at her!
Michele fell backward, knocked down by the force of the bell's attack. It pressed against her neck, and she felt something tickling around either side of her throat. She pulled at it, but it wouldn't budge. With an audible click, it snapped into place. Michele panicked, worrying that it was trying to strangle her. But the pressure didn't increase, she merely had a bell attached to her neck with some kind of collar.
She frowned. A cowbell? Sort of embarrassing, but not deadly or threatening. She rocked her shoulders and the bell rattled. Yep, it was a bell. But why would someone enchant a bell to automatically clip around a neck? There was no mechanism she could determine or operate. Whatever magic had latched it onto her had locked it that way. If it worked the way magic locks usually worked, it'd take a keyword to remove it.
Michele was halfway out of the barn when she felt an itching sensation around her nipple. She scratched at it absently, but it only increased. It soon spread to her other nipple, and expanded outward. The itching became a warmth, a heat underneath her skin like a localized fever. She undid the buttons on her shirt in haste to examine it. There she saw the first clue that something was dreadfully wrong.
