Everything now was baby. Baby baby baby. The baby needs milk. The baby might be sleepy. The baby needs a new diaper. Oh gods, we don’t have disposable diapers. That means someone’s going to have to wash out rags after… ugh.

A way to transport the baby safely. How often the baby should be fed. Burp the baby or she’ll get gassy and fussy.

The baby.

The baby.

The baby.

I had to laugh. It was fixing the most pressing of my immediate concerns: having my mother watch my every move. She was astonished to learn that she was now a grandmother for the third time, she was in love with the squalling little bundle, and she immediately made Tara into a Fletcher.

Larelle hunkered down and stared. Being eight feet tall and packed with more muscles than were physically possible on earth, the size difference made me laugh. The child was the size of Larelle’s head.

“She’s very fragile,” I heard my mom tell the Guardian. “You’ll have to keep the Magmamander away from her.”

“Of course,” Larelle said in a soft and soothing tone. I thought back to when I’d last heard her speak from her mouth, and couldn’t.

Alan also took to the baby more readily than I anticipated, speaking in mushy baby talk and hurrying around to cast various spells to make problems go away. He rapidly manifested cloth with a spell and created diapers with Tara, sewing them with a literal needle and thread. After that, when we had full diapers, he simply cast a spell and cleansed all the filth off them. He quickly learned that the diapers needed to be hanging up or held out in front of him, because the cleansing spell didn’t just poof the mess away, but shot it off the cloth in a pointed explosion, like a claymore mine. Cone of Filth, we started calling the spell. Sure he protested, the spell was called Cleanse. Nobody called it that.

I gardened while Airaconda floated Tara and the baby nearby, gently rocking the two of them and bringing them close to me every once in a while. I dried out herbs and flowers, stroked the baby’s cheek, ground up ingredients, touched the tiny golden hair puffing out from under the swaddle blanket, and worked on my Healer stuff while Airaconda floated the baby oh so softly toward my mother, who lavished her with attention.

All baby, all the time.

Yes the baby was cute, and adorable. She had teeny little toesies. She had this tuft of golden hair. She could barely open her eyes. Oh my gosh she yawned. Ohhhhhh the cutesy widdle yawny-wawny!

Everything baby.

In the meantime, I tracked the progress of my clones. One was tied up with Regina slowly stroking my palm to keep me from disappearing. The young Wizard from Flunt-on-the-Rustle, Dakota, hadn’t checked in with me. She’d promised she wouldn’t let me get taken back to the Agency HQ before rejoining her team.

The other me had finished up thoroughly painting Fairy Poppins’s interior with Fletcher seed, making me groan in dismay. Cinzy was already convinced she had been impregnated, and I hadn’t been careful with Regina, and now Poppy. It wasn’t easy to be careful when you were in three places at once, and when you had a sex-starved, bossy little fairy begging you to fill her to the brim. Pulling out sucked… but the consequences were now here, out in the open.  

This new Fertility skill, I swear.

Tara made her slow way over to me and laid her head on my shoulder.

“Your mom is the best,” she said.

“I know. And thank you.”

“I mean my parents are pretty great, but they clearly had a million kids and didn’t have the time to really pay us a lot of attention. But I guess for grandkids, parents go crazy. After the empty nest phase and worrying about you growing up right, making money, not taking drugs, not screwing up your life and ending up in jail… they get to spoil the hell out of their grandchildren.”

I laughed at seeing the old Tara talking away. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. You should probably get more rest.”

“You would think that… but I also just had a full term pregnancy over the course of just a few weeks and labor lasted under two hours.”

Magic.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding at my expression.

“You’ve got a name for her?”

She grinned. “I was going to name her Christine or Christina, but now I’m thinking Christinapher.” She couldn’t hold it together and burst out laughing at her own joke.

“That is literally the worst name I’ve ever heard,” I told her, laughing.

“Christinapherella?”

“Stop.”

“Christopherinnia?”

“I’m going to add Bull on the end of your name. Tara-bull.”

“What do you think about something Nakamamamon?” she suddenly asked. “I have Airaconda. How about Con… Connie? Condoleeza is a name. I could use that. No… but I do like our team. Isabella? Evie? Cynthia? Cindy? Gina? Chrysta? No, that’s back to Christopherina. Chrystal? Ooh I could go with Larelle’s name and make her Sarelle.”

“I’m pretty sure the species Larelle comes from has those names covered, unless you’re in love with it.”

“Ugh, this is hard!” She put her hand dramatically over her face and swooned into me.

I was beginning to wonder if the baby would ever get a name. “You mean to tell me you were pregnant all that time and you never got around to thinking about a name?”

“Hey!” She poked a finger into my chest. “I thought I had months to go.”

“We are going to be getting underway this time tomorrow, right? We have work to do.”

We did, that was true. She took my hand. “Sorry about blabbing to your mother.”

I had a whole lot of complicated feelings about that. That night, when the bananas were ripening and the various nut trees were halfway to maturity, and the oaks were mostly mighty, she sat down next to me, where I was staring into the Magmamander fire.

“So,” she said.

Ah yes. I would need to address the elephant in the room: me siring a child.

“There was every reason to believe that she was going to take months to come to term,” I said. “I… should have told you.”

“I don’t need to be privy to your every move, of course,” she said. “I would like to know if you’re dating anyone. It warms an old dying lady’s heart, you know?”

“You’re not dying!” I protested.

“Poor choice of words perhaps,” she responded. “A mother likes to know how her son is doing. Although…” She peered around. “From the looks of things you seemed to be dating one of the others.”

It was complicated. So complicated. How could I tell her about the powers, about the permission I’d been granted by Regina in the early days, and how her rabid enthusiasm to see me do others had helped me get involved with the others? I definitely wasn’t going to tell her about anything about the strange Ivy and Isabelle situation, but she had definitely gotten vibes regarding me and Regina, me and Vellenia, and also me and Cinzy. She was smart, and even though Shakindria was cool and collected, she might have figured that situation out… especially with Azalea’s big mouth blabbing about mating sticks.

I had to laugh. This world had really transformed me into a new person. I liked that person, though I wondered if people like my mom would be able to wrap their heads around it.

“Can I say it’s complicated?” I asked.

“Sure, but then I get to interpret that however I like,” she said, grinning.

***

Dim light filtered down through the crevasse, and somewhere nearby the drip, drip, drip

of water felt like the ticking of a clock.

Buckley was raging, walking back and forth and occasionally throwing his arms in the air. “I still don’t see why we can’t force him through a teleportation spell. Just take him there by leaps and bounds.”

“Portal style teleportation requires subjects to be willing,” one of the Wizards replied loudly. They then started talking about the insane amounts of mana it required once you got farther away than thirty feet, and how much of a strain it was on Durability for every subject to go through past the caster. They then complained about how unfair it was to have every single attribute a factor in their spell casting, because they specialized in Ingenuity and Affinity, and everything else was left seriously by the wayside.

“Well can’t we just build carts and put the circles on the carts? You always have the perfect spell for the job.”

The Wizards replied in a much lower voice, and Fletcher II couldn’t make it out. They were all trying to talk over one another, and I noted how agitated Buckley became by his chakras. I seriously needed to level Mana Affinity more so I could see in situations like this. It had already been helpful in demystifying the sorts of abilities I’d be receiving from potential partners, along with identifying the types of abilities I would get through Meld. Now it seemed I could see the flare up of emotions on someone I couldn’t see with my plain old eyes.

I could also detect other mana signatures deeper in the rock. Nakamamon for sure, burrowing through the rock or situated in caverns down below. I couldn’t get a clear enough picture of them to use Identify, but I could see how big they were. Looking down through the rock below with Mana Affinity was like peering at a constellation. Each tiny pinprick was a chakra point.

Buckley exploded. “I know all about the damn stone Sorcerer, okay? And I am sure it would be lovely to have him here, but he’s not here.” I also noted the Fierce or similar ability effect wash over the area by the blanket of enraged mana.

There was some subdued muttering.

Buckley suffered this for a few moments before sneering at them and stalking off. Reese sidled up to them, and I knew because he commented in an offhand way, “Looks like someone wants to get a beat down for the Healer to heal up. Now, before you say another word, turn around and start putting together solutions instead of complaining about what you can’t do. Ah! Ah ah! If I have to hear the word ‘but’ someone’s getting a rain of blunt arrows to the back and kidneys.”

All the while, Regina rubbed her thumbs and fingers over mine. It was touching also, listening to her tell me how we were going to be fine, all was going to be well, we would think of a way to get out of this, and then she was going to take me to a secluded stream with a picturesque waterfall splashing down into it, and fork me until I could barely walk.

Eventually a familiar voice came over to deliver some water to me.

“Drink this,” Dakota said.

“It’s good to hear your voice,” I said.

“Keep it down,” she said, barely audible. The steady drip, drip, drip of the water continued to mark the time.

I used Psyspeech to contact her this time. You’re on board? You’ll let Shakindria and Chrysta go?

There was a long hesitation before she agreed. “Yes. Reese is the worst and Buckley isn’t much better,” she breathed. “What were you thinking, getting caught?”

“I was thinking I could get you out at the same time. A lot of birds with one stone.”

She froze in the middle of tipping the cup to my lips, and instead spilled water all down my front.

“Do you have anyone else on board?”

She didn’t answer, but instead dabbed at my shirt ineffectually. If she hadn’t talked anyone else into joining this endeavor, it was going to be a lot harder than I imagined. Maybe this wasn’t going to go Fletcher’s way after all.

***

Rus didn’t seem flustered at all to see me in the doorway separating him from the interior of the castle, leading out onto the Nakamamon landing platform he always used and near his office.

“Well then,” he said, grinning. “Fancy meeting you here!”

“Rus,” I said, nodding. “It’s good seeing you.”

“How long’s it been, eh?”

I shrugged. “I couldn’t even count the weeks or months if I tried. A lot’s happened.”

“Don’t I know it.” And my stomach knotted up. What had he heard? I didn’t have to wait for him to do something outwardly hostile, since I would be vanishing the moment things here heated up too much. I just needed information.

The big guy seemed to be waiting for me, so I told him all about the situation with the migrating lake… god… thing, and how we ended up in Slinktrickle for the Marshin egg issue and the whole problem of having no clothes on all the time. In between the Marshins nearly going zombie mode on us, I ended up curing their egg situation with the help of Cinzy, blowing silly raspberries all over them.

“You did what now?” Rus asked, his hands clasped over his belly and laughing uproariously.

I smiled a lopsided smile at him. “Sometimes you don’t have a spray bottle, and you gotta improvise.”

From there it was the holy underwear—and other articles of clothing—of the God of Apparel, bringing him back to life—

“Hang on just a dang minute,” he said. “You brought a god, back to life? As in back from the dead?”

I wasn’t super comfortable with the Jesus comparisons, so I shrugged it off. “After that, Glumpdumpkin—”

He came up and looped an arm around my shoulders. “All this sounds completely nuts, boy. But bringing a god back to life, I hadn’t heard that one. What’d it look like? Heck, what’d that feel like?”

After I told him, he was staring across the considerable vista just shaking his head again and again. He’d mutter something inaudible, look at me, then mutter something again.

“I guess there’s no going through with it then,” he said.

“What’s that mean?”

“I can’t just call for backup and arrest you, kiddo. You’re doing more than all the other journeyman Healers out there in the field. Heck, you’re probably getting more done than all of em put together.”

“Oh… thanks.”

“I know I’m supposed to have you thrown in a cell and interrogated, but man. I can’t do that to someone who’s resurrected the god of not being naked. What happens when that one gets sick again? I have a very embarrassing mole with a very embarrassing shape in a very embarrassing place.”

With no idea what to say to that, I just let him carry on. And that also meant letting Poppy massage my cock with her whole body.

“Did you know that our current crop of healers haven’t healed a large or huge god in the whole time you’ve been here?”

“I hadn’t known that.”

“In fact, Rainer had to go out and do a rush job because an entire town was filling up with desserts.” He chuckled. “Pastries everywhere. Croissants and pies and coffee cakes thudding against the rooftops and people trying to shovel out their homes every morning. It was too much. Yeah, we had two different field Healers head in there, and neither of them could handle the situation. Turned out the god was real big.” He slapped his gut. “Bigger than this bad boy if you can believe it.”

“I… cannot.”

He laughed again, and I couldn’t help but like the sound.

“And you took on a large on all by yourself, no intervention necessary.”

To be fair, I hadn’t known that it was possible to get Rainer out to help me. It probably would have been better to take on a more experienced Wizard, but everything had turned out all right in the end.

“Yep, turns out all the Agency Wizards on staff here have a strong dislike of Mr. Fletcher.”

“Huh?”

“You passed over all of them and took on a level 1 instead of liberating them from their tedious and boring desk jobs that inhibit their ability to level. So every time you tried to pass a note to HQ, for some mysterious reason those messages were getting lost, coming through garbled, or taking far longer than they should’ve.”

I had messed with the Wizards, and that was a no-no in every book series I’d ever read, and every video game that had Wizards.

“Now I am aware that you are supposed to be apprehended, you are supposed to be locked up and interrogated, and your mother along with you. And after that, we’re supposed to apprehend and lock up all your associates.”

“That would put a damper on me healing up more gods, and researching a literal cure for cancer.”

Rus rubbed his bearded chin. “What are you hoping to get out of this interaction, fugitive Healer? And why are your pants glowing?”

This is Christopher going to be more embarrassed than a mole.