An Heir for House Odestag

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Ahsch stared at his wife for a long moment. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that? It almost sounded like you said…”

“We need to make an heir,” Avery repeated.

“...Yeah, it sounded like you said that.” The hrafthi was quick to raise his hands in surrender when his wife shot him a deadly glare. “Hey, can you blame me? I picked up on your… shall we say, _distaste _for the idea of having your own children quite early in our relationship, so this is a bit… surprising? Shocking?” He frowned at her. “Are you feeling quite well?”

“I will kill you and put a Mana-sealing artifact on your next body,” Avery hissed.

After several seconds, Ahsch coughed. “Noted. But still, this is… unexpected, to say the least.”

His wife grimaced. “Unexpected, but… inevitable. I actually sort of was planning to let the house die out, since I doubted I’d ever marry, but…” she gave him a quite emotional look. “Things changed.”

“Okay… but why now?”

Avery let out a long sigh, reached for the bottle beside her, then frowned at it and left it where it was. “I… I didn’t love you,” she began, still looking at the bottle with an almost angry expression. “Not at first. And I don’t think you loved me right away either.”

“That’s… fair.”

“I think I started loving you pretty fast though, but I didn’t let myself admit it. But then you… you… and I realized what you meant to me.” She let out a short, deprecating grunt of laughter. “You never realize what you have until it’s gone.” She then looked at Ahsch. “But I didn’t lose you. You came back to me. And I realized that we… or rather, I am only mortal. I’m not invincible. I could die at any time, or you could be killed before you can rebind to a new body here and be gone into the multiverse and I just…” She took a deep breath. “It’s… safe. Not entirely, but… that cunt is gone in the wind, probably licking her wounds in some far-off country right now, things are relatively stable here, and… well, honestly, anyone looking our way is going to be more focused on your marriage to Kirasiel than whatever we get up to. And with war on the horizon and the fucking _mess _you brought back from Phashak…”

Ahsch grinned sheepishly. “Sorry.”

Avery shook her head while smiling, rolling her eyes at the same time. “Honestly, I’m not surprised. You’re a damned magnet for danger.” She sighed again, her hand twitching towards the bottle, but she didn’t lift it off the table. “But with everything going on, I think that this is as safe and… quiet as things will be. There’s too much bound to happen too soon, and the longer we put this off, the more likely that things will… well.”

Ahsch frowned at her. “You’re not planning on dying on me anytime soon, are you?”

Avery avoided his gaze. “Hey, you died first,” she muttered.

He leaned forward. “Yeah, but I don’t stay dead. You…” He swallowed, shying away from the thought. “You just seem very… pessimistically certain that _something _will happen, and that worries me.”

She finally looked at him with a small, reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

He still did, but relented. “I guess if we’re for sure making a kid together… do you…” he flushed. “Okay, I haven’t really… Stisea’s daughter just happened, and both times I’ve impregnated Ariin were for, uh… me?” He cleared his throat. “Do you… _want _anything for our kid? I can make sure they inherit things you want that they could inherit in the first place. I can also pick the sex and species, at least from among what I’ve… er…”

“I remember your bullshit Boons,” Avery said, smirking at him. Then the smirk faded as she thought deeply for several minutes. “I… I don’t want my child to be… made,” she eventually said, frowning. “But… maybe make sure they inherit my magic? The shaid magic? Past that let’s just… see what happens.”

Ahsch nodded. “Okay.” He flushed again. “And, uh… when do you… want to do this? You sound like you want it sooner than later, but… today? Right now? Tonight?”

She frowned again, but her response was much quicker. “Don’t guarantee it. You can control your fertility with your bullshit, right? Set it to ‘normal.’ And we’ll just… see what happens. We can try multiple times until it’s confirmed.”

“One au naturale pregnancy, coming right up!” Ahsch grinned. Avery raised an eyebrow at the phrase, and he realized what had happened. “Ah, so, on Earth, there’s a language called ‘French.’ ‘Au naturale’ is normally used to mean ‘naked,’ both in terms of clothes but also in terms of, say, seasoning on food. But it’s also used to mean ‘without adornment’ in general, or ‘done simply.’”

Avery shook her head. “It still baffles me that you seem to know so much about foreign nations and languages from your original world.”

Ahsch thought about it for a second. “To be fair, Euphoria is rather… primitive, in comparison. The closest analogue I can think of would be the medieval period of Earth, which was roughly a thousand years before I was born. In the era I lived in, you could travel to the other side of the planet in a matter of hours, and communicate with anyone in the world anywhere fairly easily.”

“And all without magic,” Avery said, shaking her head again, an amused smile on her face. “The devices of the Earthians truly must have been terrifying.”

A somber look shadowed Ahsch’s face. “Yes. Some were largely innocuous, like cars and phones, and the majority of people used them daily without a second thought - though they could be used for good or ill. But we also had the capacity for… terrible destruction.” He thought for a moment. “Now I am become ****, the destroyer of worlds.’” When Avery gave him a searching look, he translated the phrase. “I think it’s originally from a religion, but the man who I’m thinking of had just witnessed the beginnings of mankind’s ability to destroy when he said it. They had created a… a bomb, an explosive device to be dropped by flying machines. Many bombs had existed before, but this one… it tore apart the smallest particles of matter, cascading into untold destruction. A device which could fit in this room was capable of destroying an entire city in the blink of an eye. And it was not even the most powerful weapon created. Eventually, we tried to _de_escalate our arms race, as the full arsenal of the two greatest powers in the world could cause a _nuclear _winter, where the sun couldn’t shine through the clouds they would create, and the fallout of the weapons would poison the air, water, and land for centuries to come. It would likely spell the end of humanity.”

Avery stared at her husband for a quiet moment. “There are some in the world - Phashak among them - who could cleanse Euphoria of civilization. But they are individuals of immense age and power. That nations would hold the capability of eradicating themselves so easily…”

“It’s a sobering thought,” Ahsch agreed. “And I’m glad to be away from it all. Though sometimes…”

Avery tilted her head. “Sometimes what?” she prompted.

Ahsch smiled slightly. “Sometimes I wonder what’s happened back there. I think about what I miss and… well. I was told that, with time and effort, maybe I could find my way throughout the multiverse. So maybe someday, I could return to Earth.”