At least the sun was bright and warm on my face, the morning dew brought out the true colors of the world around us, and Shakindria floated a cup of coffee over to me. I took it with relief, and sipped at the hot black potion, wincing at the glorious heat.

“You, my dear, are amazing.”

This beverage is quite tasty, though it does unpredictable things to my psychic abilities. I’m almost certain of it, but not completely certain, but I think I can reasonably say that it affects me.

That was entirely too much. Shakindria was cut off from coffee while we had an important mission to undertake.

Chrysta floated near the tent, and as soon as I exited, she got within three feet of me at all times. Regina had stumbled out and was making some pretty odd sounds in her throat.

And then Azalea clung to me like a backpack. Two of her hair tentacles were wrapped around my thighs, making my pants bulge out obscenely, and two of them wrapped under my shoulders, tickling my armpits. Her head, evil yellow eyes and all, peeked just over one shoulder.

“Are you doing that on purpose?” I asked. Her tentacles were pulsing and flexing in a rhythm that felt akin to sliding in and out of her elastic little body.

“Doing what?” she asked innocently. I could hear the mischief coating her voice like honey.

I hadn’t considered my crotch to be much of an erogenous zone until now.

***

“What do you want to do?” Cinzy asked, wriggling her butt into my crotch. After several seconds, she captured my hands in hers and guided them to her hips and then up her sides.

“We need to know what the status is for all of us,” I said, and slid my hands just inside the waistband of her skirt and over her hips. She sighed.

“Hard to think like this,” she muttered, and relaxed into my body. She kept flexing her butt and relaxing it, trapping my growing erection again and again.

“Okay,” I said. “There’s the full frontal option.”

Cinzy groaned. “You’re not talking about doing me right here and now, are you?”

“I am not,” I said with a chuckle, though I wriggled my fingers a little deeper into her skirt and got my hands on the tops of her thighs. There’s a lot of missed real estate on a woman’s thighs. They’re smooth, sleek, and they quiver so nicely. “Unfortunately I have to stay in intimate contact with someone at all times.”

“Unfortunately,” she said, grinding her butt up against me, and allowing her eyes to drift closed. We hadn’t dealt with the subject of the HQ castle at all.

“There are a couple of ideas to consider.” One was barging right into the castle and looking for Jacoby. She owed me big time and would hopefully marshal her forces to my aid. Two: trying to outpace the castle and finding Drat and Trent before they reached the mountain. Three was barging into the castle and looking for Rus. He was a good guy and would hear me out. Honestly, I figured most of these people would be reasonable, until we reached the highest of higher ups. Four: give Cinzy, Poppy, Garnet and Skulkins a head start. Vellenia would stay with me and we would keep the Agency’s eyes off the others while they thought they had me, at which point Vellenia could let go of me and I’d blink out of existence. There was always the chance that this would backfire, and they’d forcibly separate us the moment we got inside.

“How are you just… ugh… just going to… waltz right into the castle?” she groaned. She’d added a hand behind her butt, stroking my erection through my pants.

“I can…” Frack, there was an easy solution to that one, but Cinzy wouldn’t like it. “Do you trust me?”

“Huh?” She murmured, halfway to a nice relaxed orgasm.

***

“It actually doesn’t matter if they capture me,” I said. I was Fletcher II, and already considering just blinking out of existence after going straight to the HQ. Giving myself up for capture wasn’t just a solid possibility, it was a good idea. If this team thought they had me, they’d play into our plan.

“It does too!” Azalea grumped from where she was in contact with almost my whole body. “It really really matters! To me! Dunderhead.”

“Could you… give me a little… room to move?”

“No! No way.”

I moved jerkily forward into the cool morning air, soaking my divine shoes with dew and having cold wet feet for just a moment before the magic inside them dried it off.

Before us, the Bard was flanked by one Ranger I recognized: the one riding the divine griffin. This guy was the dirtbag. The other one was a stockier guy, with wavy brown hair drawn back and tied into a man bun. I liked him a lot more, instantly. He was a Ranger who wanted to be away from people and out in the wilderness. He probably also smoked everything to see if it would mimic the effects of weed.

This Bard was the first male of the class I’d ever seen. He was perfectly sculpted by excess Likability: brown hair swept aside into an effortless and just slightly messy do, that awful stubble beard that never worked on my face but somehow worked perfectly here, and clothes tailored to fit his toned and cut physique. His t-shirt showed off his six pack, while his pants hung low enough on his hips to frame those things they call cum gutters. Somehow, he even pulled off a pair of moccasins without socks. Everything about him should’ve screamed douchebag, but instead he seemed just right.

Every Bard was a showoff, but it was astonishing to see this one go in a completely different way.

The Bard’s tone was incredibly smooth and friendly. Even as he said, “That’s far enough,” it sounded like he would pick up the tab at the bar.

“What do you want?”

The Bard chuckled. “You, obviously.”

***

Tara was already breathing heavily by the time I got into her tent. April looked up from where she was staring at the exposed basketball of a stomach, and the pained expression on Tara’s face. April appeared to be having an existential crisis.

“Why doesn’t the egg come out?” April asked.

I sometimes forgot that this ultra curvy, adorable creature had become an adult in an awful hurry by exposing herself to divinity. I want to say on accident but she might have done so on purpose. Regardless of a body that rivaled Cinzy’s, she was new to almost everything.

“She’s not having an egg,” my mother told her. “She’s going to have a tiny human.”

“All right, let’s make her more comfortable.” No sooner had the words left my mouth than Airaconda blew in, slithered under Tara’s body once, then looped back to slither beneath her again. She ended up propped at a comfortable position, with a gigantic air snake as her pillow.

“You ready…” Tara asked, “to become a grandma?”

My mother turned a look so disbelieving, so fundamentally shocked my way, that a laugh escaped me. An automatic embarrassment and guilt laugh, like I’d just been caught with a girl in my room as a high schooler.

It was well past time to engage Mender’s Soothing Mental Balm and Mending Aura.

Mender’s Soothing Mental Balm III

(Special Ability, Rare, Aura)

Speak soothing words to those within range suffering from mental or emotional distress to help ease their torment and anguish.

Spend an Affinity Token. Make a Treatment check with Affinity to immediately begin healing all beings within range. All mental illnesses suffered by nearby non-divine creatures are healed so long as this aura is active. Once the aura ends, all creatures previously affected by mental illnesses regain them at half strength and half duration.

Range: 60 feet. Duration: 1 hour.

III- Spend 5 Affinity Tokens to ease the mental anguish of all beings within one mile of your location over the course of an hour.

I had just spent 6 Affinity Tokens, but my Affinity was up at 10 now, so I could afford to spend another. Both April and Tara visibly relaxed. The worry lines in my mother’s face also unknitted.

“We will have to talk about this,” she said, but quietly.

Duh. I had a better chance of sprouting a second head than I did avoiding this topic.

“But not now,” she said. “You have your healing aura, yes?”

It would be better than the Healer’s Breath she should’ve gotten by now. I stifled a grin and a chuckle imagining her bending down and breathing directly on Tara’s nethers.

Activating Mending Aura was also crucial.

Mending Aura II

(Special Ability, Rare, Aura)

Make a Treatment check with Affinity to immediately begin healing all wounded beings within range. Targets are healed by 5 hit points for each success you scored on your check, per second. Symptoms experienced by targets are reduced in intensity by 75% for an hour, per second of exposure to this aura, to a maximum of two days. Targets may only benefit from this aura once per day.

The Treatment check could not have gone better: with Treatments at 12 and Affinity at 9, I scored 9 successes, an unthinkable number from when I had started. Meaning Tara was gaining back 45 hit points a second.

“For the next hour,” I breathed. Luckily for Tara and I, most babies ended up being born within an hour! I chuckled darkly to myself.

“How can I help?” my mother asked.

“A simple healing potion would be good.” I hadn’t gotten to my garden yet. “We have the ingredients.” Split between the two away teams, and this one.

Mom went to position the cauldron above the Magmamander while I talked with Tara. Alan sat beside her holding her hand and staring around like he wasn’t sure of anything.

“You’re doing fine,” I told her.

“You don’t know that!” she snapped. “You didn’t even check me over.” Then she grinned. “I got you in trouble… ugh… didn’t I?”

I nodded, and did a quick Diagnostic. With my boon from the God of Productivity, I could simply produce the stones I needed to run over her chakras to see if it was a magical malady. It wasn’t, but new chakra points were all curled up in there with her. Her seat chakra was releasing mana at a trickle. From there, I produced a stethoscope and listened to the baby’s heartbeat. As soon as it vanished, I had the measuring device needed to see how far she’d dilated.

The check went with Ingenuity, giving me 22 levels to go with. I quickly scored 12 successes, an astonishing number compared with where I’d started.

The window told me she was speeding through labor and the situation was faster than normal. Not unexpected, since she’d gone from barely pregnant to giving birth in the space of a week.

“Now I know you’re doing fine,” I said, and gave her hand a squeeze.

“Ohhhhh,” she moaned, but this wasn’t the satisfied mid-coitus moan, but rather an agonized sound filled with hurt and glimpsing her own mortality.

“Keep hold of her hand,” I told Alan. His response was to blink and focus on me for the first time, as if he was just realizing I was in the tent.

“S-s-sure,” he said.

“When I tell you, you’re going to give all your Muscularity Tokens to Tara. And be ready with Durability Tokens too.”

“Huh?” he asked, before the realization came over him.

I was already sweating, and thankful for the breezy and cool morning. No pressure, you know, just help create a new human while keeping the present human alive. Cool cool, no doubt no doubt.

“And Tara, I’m going to need you take all your Muscularity Tokens when Alan gives them to you. For now breathe.”

From there, it was a matter of checking with my Develop Cure (human skill). I’d boosted it in the huge mass of skill points following the situation with The Lovers. I was going to develop a ‘cure’ to her pregnancy, and the UI was going to give me the steps on how to do it.

Every time I attained another skill point, new knowledge manifested inside my head somehow. It was dormant; not locked, but never accessed. And making the skill check both pointed me in the direction of newly acquired knowledge, but also sifted through all of it and located what I needed.

With Tara being a Medium sized human, my 6 levels in Medium and 13 levels of Human paired with my Ingenuity of 10 to give me 29 total levels. The check came up with 13 successes, another unthinkable sum without spending Tokens, giving me a comfortable success over the 11 successes needed.

“I want you to start taking in a deep breath and then pushing,” I told her.

Thankfully, both auras were working to limit her pain and ease her mental suffering. She was able to concentrate on my soothing instructions, breathing slowly and then pushing again and again.

It seemed so fraught, so full of possible dangers, this thing we were doing. Had humans really done this for thousands upon thousands of years? People died doing this.

I would make sure that didn’t happen. Sure I’d never done it before, and hadn’t gone through medical school, but I’d healed up gods before. Next to that, how hard could this be?

She had dilated enough to allow me to get an idea of how the baby was positioned, but I had already done so when checking over the chakras. The top of the head and forehead points of mana accumulation were close together, and although the baby was tightly packed in Tara, none of the other chakra points nearly overlapped.

I skipped right past the part where I was delivering my own baby. It was insanity to consider, but not the oddest thing I’d done. I’d already shrunk down to have sex, turned into a tentacle monster, turned into a dragon man, made a clone and double penetrated several of the girls on my team…

No, this was different. Tara hadn’t just accepted my seed but made a child from a teensy little cell into something I was about to hold in my hands. This was the miracle of life, and nothing to dismiss.

“Keep going,” I told her.

“Did you think I stopped?” she asked, incredulous. Panting and sweating on the floor of the tent, Airaconda supporting her body, Tara was a goddess herself. Her gloriously long and muscular legs quivered on either side of me. Her eyes were wide, staring at her bulging stomach, the mirror image of April sitting beside her.

“We’re going to have a healing potion ready for you,” I told her. “Breathe now, and push now.”

She clenched her entire body and pushed yet again.

“Great,” I said, and continued to feel for the head using instinctual knowledge that hadn’t been there two weeks ago. “A little bit more. It won’t be long.”

“I watched… nnnn… my mom… give birth… ohhhh…”

“Is that right?” I asked, and flicked my gaze over to Alan. He looked a question at me, but I shook my head. Muscularity Tokens wouldn’t be needed here.

“She went… into… uhhh… into the… nnn… hospital… at four in the… morning.”

“Good,” I told her, loving how Tara could just talk and talk. “Breathe in, and now push.”

Once again her whole body clenched up, eyes screwed tightly closed and breath hissing out. There was no more talking for some time. She breathed in and grunted, breathed in and groaned.

“We’re so close,” I said.

“T-tokens?” she rasped, exhausted.

“Durability Tokens if you want, but don’t use Muscularity.” I didn’t want her to clamp magically enhanced muscles down on the child.

A flash of magic followed, and Tara’s eyes fluttered open. Down below, I felt around through the fluids.

“One more,” I told her. “In… and push.”

The child that came squalling into the world was already magical. In every sense of the word, the squealing, red, dripping new human whose neck I cradled was exactly the way it should’ve been.

Exactly the way she should’ve been.

“It’s a girl,” I said reverently.

This is Christopher, blown away.