John the Father

[neokenka Note: I'm back! I chose a terrible place to go on hiatus for the latter half of a brutal semester, but my grades are in, I'm smiling, and it's time to get this show back on the road... even if it involves this very long chapter involving all kinds of things. This won't be the new normal length, I promise; just wanted to get to... well, you'll see.]

The tentacled mother of his first children asked him a question... and that was a lot to take in at once for an 18-year-old who was still occasionally jacking off to hentai just two weeks ago.

“Are they to your satisfaction?” vibrated the new Tita.

“They’re... they seem fine,” John finally managed, “though I’m still figuring that out...” John glanced at Regan who still cradled her head like the moon elf might snatch it away. “Regan, it’s alright.”

The freaked-out dullahan didn’t respond.

“Tita, you’re not going to hurt anyone unless I say so, right?”

Tita bowed her head. “I remain your , Master... even if I do so with a clarity I wish I always had.”

John waved Regan over. Her eyes rapidly went side-to-side in what had been her practiced replacement for shaking her head, though John had yet to learn this about the girl. Seeing that she remained frozen, John opened a tunnel behind her and far behind himself, letting her slowly step backwards out of the triage. Her scampering feet echoed as John continued, “What clarity? Explain.”

“I am a to a human... and the depths of the indignity of this has not reached me until now. More,” she warbled as her larger tentacles came to rest in her offered palms, “I have been turned into this... monstrosity. Yet it feels completely natural, as does the new knowledge in my mind that... this insight is horrible, Master,” she said with a pout, and her double-eyelids blinked again, “this horror is our heritage, and... and the truth is burned into my thoughts, truth you could not have yourself planted... truth you could not know.”

John was inclined to guess she was right, but that didn’t satisfy his curiosity. “How are you so sure?”

She smiled... just a bit too widely. “You would not have impregnated me if you knew these truths.”

“Try me.”

“Master?”

“What, you think I’m going to let that ominous shit hang over my head? Tell me what you meant about what you’ve learned about your heritage.”

Tita’s smile very nearly faltered, but she maintained it as she whispered, “What is known to me is instinct, and nothing more... but that instinct betrays a nature I had always thought a matter of nobility, of grace... it is something my people had always borne, but never to this degree.”

“Stop beating around the bush-”

“I want to kill, Master,” she bluntly continued, “I long to kill every… thing from the garden’s plants to you.” Her body lashed outward, her tentacles springing her body forward before whipping to slam John’s head in opposite directions and at different angles. Her leap brought her completely out of the triage and into the hall; the opposing forces of her blow would be devastating to a creature of bone and skin... or at least, they would if they didn’t then need to slow until they could do no more than softly caress John’s face. He didn’t break his eye contact with her, though it took all his self-control to not flinch. “I want to see your organs, John Newman. I want to eat them, digest them, and expel them as filth just to make sure they’re truly digested.”

John wrinkled his nose at that. “I asked you about your heritage.”

“That is my heritage. It is wrong to let you live,” she groaned, “and I feel it in my body. Thinking to my... more primitive Matriarchs, they are wrong to live as well. We... no, the keel-taloshi... were a mistake. I feel purer than ever, and now... now I recognize the stain on our genes. My people must die... or else shed their ugly bodies and become purer. We are not the heiresses of the Mother Moon… we are her excrement.”

“There’s that ‘Mother Moon’ again… I never asked, because I figured she was some goddess of yours, but what is she in your religion?”

“Religion?” the platinum blonde chuckled. “Mother Moon is our fact... only it is impossible. We cannot be her children.”

“You’re… part-moonbeast, whatever that is.” There was no tooltip for the label. “Is this what a ‘moonbeast’ is? Some kind of genocidal monster?”

“Beast of the Moon...?” Whatever John had told her hadn’t quite translated back in their strange meta-language of Master and Minion. “No... those are the Mother Moon’s guardians. But they are... they are not her children. We were her children, or so we believed.”

“I’ve got some bad news to confirm that, then: your stat sheet says you’re a moonbeast hybrid. I could swear I’ve heard of that before, but I guess like elves there’s some weird feedback to Earth-”

“Of course,” she whispered, “we... we truly were... abominations...” Tita’s lithe arms hugged her own torso as she felt a wave of nausea hit her. Her smile fell off at last... and something like a wide-eyed panic gripped her, though her voice was still a trembling whisper. “Kill...”

“What’s wrong-?”

“Kill... kill those horrors we made, Master.”

The innocent infant faces filled his mind. “I won’t,” he answered indignantly.

“KILL THEM!!!” Tita’s warbling voice became a stretching, scratching shriek as her pupils widened until her eyes were swallowed in black. Her tentacles raged in the air—for they could neither rage against him nor against the temple’s walls—and found no satisfaction. Her mouth stretched slightly longer than a human mouth could be permitted, showing twitching tendrils all along the inside corners of her maw. Tears rolled down Tita’s face as she continued to shriek in fury, her mouth shrinking back down to form words, “I cannot bear this! You’re right… we’re her spawn, her unworthy pets, escaped from her bosom to think ourselves… scions! I am... impure, yet so much purer than all my people, I... I cannot birth yet filthier spawn!” Her words rolled anger into John’s veins as he began to run hot. These were their babies, and she really wanted to- “Make me not the carrion mother! Nurture not the filth and mucus of our crime! I will smother them if you only let me, I will snap their frail, blasphemous necks before they even know the taste of-”

“Be silent.”

Tita’s body froze as the command took her... and her eyes began to shrink as the rage passed, but it was too late for her to try and muster calming words. John’s face was red with fury, and he spoke words that gripped Tita’s body like a seizure.

“You’ll nurture our children as if they were the most precious, wonderful things in your life. You will never speak like this of them again; you will not harm them or misguide them. You will let them know nothing of your hate… and you will shower them with love.”

She shook her head violently in a useless plea. But her body was already moving without her will; her tentacles made her movements slide and glide through the air with an alien grace, and she turned to face John even as her tentacles carried her towards the nearest entrance to the basement, at the center of the temple, where her needy young awaited her doting “love.”

John inhaled suddenly; he had stopped breathing in his anger. Her mouth opened and closed in attempts to beg. “You may speak.”

“You don’t know what you’ve done-!”

“Neither do you,” he murmured from behind clenched teeth. He raised his voice so she could hear him before commanding, “Never protest these orders again without my permission.”

Her smile did not return as her tentacles and stray taps of her feet took her below the temple… to fawn over her products. If only to try and find the console, John eventually sucked in more air and went to the center of the temple as well. Eyes followed him after they finished following the new, tentacled horror living in their shared home, and so John knew he had some introductions to do.

The remodeling had been soft: the staircase in the main hall was wider and permitted taller creatures than the one in John’s sanctuary, suspiciously perfect for someone of Durr the Wise’s size. With a mental command, he summoned everyone but Tita so he could try and make sense of the last 70 or so hours… both for them and for himself.

The explanation was simpler than he had anticipated: most had only nodded and dispersed back to their various corners of the temple. The only ones left at the center were Alysha and Woofroot, both lazing by one of the pools with the former naked in her hybrid form; Juniluny, still naked per her punishment, looking eager to ask questions; Ju, in her verdant green attire, was already moving forward to indicate her desire to ask her own; and a shaken Regan still wearing John’s clothes. His red, long-sleeve shirt now had the sleeves rolled up enough to reveal her forearms, and the shirt’s wrinkled lengths hid the fact that she was still wearing his navy-blue boxers. In hindsight, she had gone days now without a change of clothes... but so did all of his summons. Was that alright?

Ju was the first to ask, “Then this was… an accident?”

“Yes… I mean, not the kids themselves! They’re fine, it’s… well, the point is I didn’t think she’d get that pregnant, or even necessarily pregnant, when we did the deed. Her birthing them now, though, was... technically on purpose.”

Ju’s eye twitched at that. “Did you... believe her infertile?”

“W-Well, it was more complicated with Alysha.”

“Do not name me and that monster in the same breath, Newman,” interrupted the spider-like elf from where she sat by the pool.

“Yeah, yeah, quite an impressive trick, Master,” Juniluny yawned, “but you should leave it to the real scientist, now!”

A cloud fell over John’s expression; the halfling didn’t take notice. “... What?”

“The Cabal had half-baked half-breed happenstances before, but I never got my hands on them! If these are really human-elf mutts, then I must be permitted to experiment on them!”

Regan, still in something of a state of shock, opened her mouth in stunned silence at that. But a glance at the very naked, very voluptuous Snickerbottom returned Regan’s gaze to the floor.

“You’re not to experiment on anyone or anything without my express permission,” John ordered as he tried to rein his fury in, “even your own when you eventually give birth.” Why was he surprised? He knew the monstrous things she had done... why would being his change that? John did his best to process the latest threat of pain and suffering on newborns from his minions.

Juniluny laughed… though the nervousness therein was impossible to hide. “Y-You keep dreaming, then, you daft-dicked dullard! Whatever you did with the elves… it will not take with me... which makes this all the rarer an opportunity!”

John contemplated the Halfling… and her pregnancy status. Three sons, firmly attached to the walls of her hobbit womb and very slowly growing…

Regan seemed hesitant to ask her own burning questions, but she still hadn’t left. Ju, disgusted with the conversation, merely bowed her head and excused herself as the others did.

How can I teach her empathy? The question was rhetorical; the new idea had spawned first, and that innocent question was its justification. “So if I did get you pregnant, you’d want to see the results, right?”

“That’s…” Juniluny hesitated, but a star shone in her eye, “well, not if I can’t try different formulae and spells on them, tall one.”

“Not even curious?”

“Of course I am. But that’s-”

“They’d be your own sons, though... wouldn’t you want to protect them?”

Juniluny’s face unexpectedly blushed at that. “S-Sons? W-Well, I’m a woman of science, not some doting, brainless mother!” Her lip trembled... but she couldn’t refuse to answer him fully. The Commandments forbade it. “But I... would!” She covered her mouth with a hand... and then looked down at nothing as she tried to figure out why she’d say that.

“You’d want to protect them…?”

Juniluny did her best to shake her head, knowing it would be futile; and so she nodded enthusiastically. What was wrong with her? Were her empty, childish dreams of motherhood from her youth really still there? What a daft child she herself once was-

“Good enough for me!”

Juniluny suddenly covered her privates and nipples as best she could, expecting another round of dubious sex… but that damage had already been done, even if she didn’t want to believe it.

Here I didn’t think I’d use it, but… “Time to try this new ability out.”

“Wait one sodding-!”

“Don’t move until I say, Juniluny,” he commanded, earning curious stares from the dullahan and dark elf as they watched him work.

Sovereignty: You used Breeder’s Authority (Gestation) on Juniluny Snickerbottom! Casting time is one minute. Target: accelerate to one hour prior to labor to birth.

The last Temple upgrade meant that another 100 slots had opened up in the nursery beyond the 2,000 now occupied with Tita’s young… and rather than leave the half-halfling mystery unanswered, Juniluny seemed the perfect subject to fill just three more of those empty cradles. The spell bar slowly charged on his interface as he held his hand over the stopped hobbit.

Nearly the whole minute had passed until Juniluny grumbled, “Once you’re done with this little ‘experiment’ of yours, whatever you think it’s going to accomplish, I’d like to negotiate the terms of my imprisonment: namely you actually letting me out of this turbulent temple of tits before I go start stewing stircrazy-stuck in somoooohhh!”

Juniluny howled in surprise—not pain, for which John was grateful—as her body very harmlessly… very painlessly… expanded. Her torso ballooned forward until her heavy breasts were buoyed atop it; her tiny hobbit womb, now expanded to fit three half-human-sized babies, was stretched to dimensions it never would’ve supported without this intervention. Inside, her babies waited to be born, each fully grown and ready to taste the naked air outside their mother’s body. Their mother, for all her haughtiness, stared down as her tits expanded a full cup size and spat dual streams of milk like celebratory fireworks. “Wuh… Wuh…”

John suppressed the urge to nervously laugh at the sight. He was doing it again after all… but the fear was gone, for now. Whatever fate awaited these three, could it differ much from the 2,000 already born? He would solve his newfound problem for all of them, or woefully few of them, either way. “Go lay in my bed. You’re going to go into labor in about an hour or so, maybe sooner.”

Juniluny’s hands caressed her smooth, distended belly as she stared down at her body… and managed, in as calm a voice as she could summon:

“FOCKING WHAT-”

Juniluny was then conveyed to John’s bedroom.

Convey is now level 3!

“Well, that answers… that?” John watched as Ju scurried from his sanctuary, likely surprised by a sudden, super-pregnant halfling manifesting on the bed. He thought to call after the undead concubine, but he still had too much to do… and too many children to meet. He had to find that console and see what these nurse spirits were about, praying they were as useful and nurturing as the first tooltip suggested.

Only Regan remained with burning questions... and John had little patience for her seemingly permanent shyness. “What is it, Regan? Ask your questions without hesitation.”

His word was her command, and her eyes watered as she was to ask, “Are ya gonna wizard babies into all o’ us?! Am I gonna turn into a creepy monster too, now, am I?!” Her words were painted with her panic.

John blinked at the tearful head being cradled in trembling teenage arms… and glanced up at the flaring, pink fire rising from her shoulders out of the collar of his unharmed shirt.

He glanced between her face and where it normally ought to be enough for her to catch on. “Ah’m not a monster-! Oh God, you’re really gonna, aren’t ya-?!”

“No! Sorry, it was just... nevermind. No, I’m not going to touch you unless you want me to.”

“Ah...” Regan’s blush remained. “‘Course. And ah do, of co-.” Her arms tensed as her face broke into a panic. “A-Ah mean I... do… o! Oh God, ah mean that-“ Her head was pinned to her belly with one hand now as the other flipped over her mouth. She looked ready to cry again.

Had he forgotten to tell her about the enforced truthsaying? It was amusing at first, but now it just made John feel like a bully. Alright, no more of this. “From now on, when a new summon arrives in the temple, they’ll be told about all the rules that control them.” Again the temple pulsed… but this time, something new caught John’s eyes.

He had been mostly turned away from it: his statue had remained at the heart of the temple in its haughty pose and fearless nudity over the surrounding shallow pools and, now, the wide staircase opposite of it. John’s right shoulder and back had been turned to that familiar fixture, but now something new had erupted from it: a holographic panel, nearly 40” across, in the same, gray interface as the other temple room prompts. It was hard to miss a living room television-sized screen when it was nearly projected through you, and so John quickly turned to see what must be the temple’s console.

A scroll bar on the right, a thin panel on the left, tabs on top, and a field in the middle made John wonder if using word processors all his life had somehow shaped the Game for him as much as video games had. The tabs numbered five, and the first of them was now open: COMMANDMENTS. They all read, in a line: COMMANDMENTS, TEMPLE LAYOUT, MINION CONTROL, HEARTH MONITOR, and CHILDCARE.

On the left, buttons labeled ACTIVE, INACTIVE, and HISTORY suggested that the rules John had been flippantly setting for all summons had been indexed, recorded and, even if repealed, made subject to his review. The only Commandments of the temple he had passed so far were now listed:

“There will be no .”
“There will be no lies.”
“There will be complete and total truth when answering the Master.”
“The commandments shall be known to all newcomers.”

They were not worded as John had declared them, but these encapsulated John’s whims perfectly. Though the rest of the menu had no identifying marks, John concluded that this was the console: he could imagine no other meaning in the presence of a CHILDCARE tab on the newfound menu.

The dullahan, initially grateful for a distraction, had her sight drawn to the same screen… as did Fairy who, despite her feigned disinterest, watched her Master carefully from where she sat at the foyer’s decorative fountain.

“Well, this must be the console…” John assured himself. He tried scrolling down the list of commandments, but it refused to budge; the four he had dictated hadn’t been enough to scroll and the buttons on the side produced nothing new.

“This is…” John turned and was confronted with Regan’s held up head now poring over the short list. “These are rules we follow then, yah?”

“Yes… sorry. I’m not sure why you’d even want me to touch you-”

“Ah do! Fuck!” She buried her face in her own, braless bosom as if her whole head had gone rogue.

John glanced up at her level again… and considered what he had seen so far from his low-level summons… in particular Tita. The moon elves had been all too subservient to John, but Tita, now equal to his level, seemed anything but eager to please. Regan, a meager level 5, had a far wider gulf of power influencing her than even the moon elves did at first.

There was only one fair conclusion, then. “Look, it’s… not really you that wants that.” She didn’t unbury her face, but she did untense at his kind tone. “It’s just that your level is too low for you to… ‘resist’ me, I guess.” Man, that sounds bad… John considered what else he had done in the past few days and decided it was hardly the worst thought he had humored. “Higher level beings are able to keep their wits about them better, that’s all.”

Slowly, the dullahan turned her head in her grasp, though half her face remained buried in the crook of her left arm as she peeked out at him. Her eyes glistened. “So… these feelings ah’ve been having… they’re all fake, then?”

John felt a small pang in his chest at the softness of her voice. Her thighs pressed together in anticipation. Her nipples were pointed through the shirt. She held her breath for what would no doubt be a heady sigh of relief. John felt an itch that seemed absurd after what he had just gone through. “W-Well… I mean, they’re as real as anything, I’m just saying, they’re… only this strong because of… that?”

“O-Oh…” Neither teenager was too sure of what to do with that, so John turned back to the interface to try and toy with it. “S… so these aren’t my thoughts?”

“N-No, they are, they’re just… well…”

“More honest?” She took a step closer.

Christ, what am I supposed to do-? “More manipulated,” he himself to admit, “which is why I… shouldn’t…”

She sighed audibly as she slowly rotated her head to face him straight on. “Shouldn’t… touch meh?”

The petite 18-year-old shouldn’t have been capable of making John feel like he was perving on a youngster—he wasn’t even two weeks legal himself!—but her innocent, naked hunger made him feel that way. He kept turned to the console, toying idly with it; it didn’t help that his pants were taut as his body yearned for relief inside her young, virgin body-

“Please…” She stepped forward.

“Regan, this isn’t-”

“H-H-Hold…!”

John himself to look at her… and followed her eyes as her arms extended towards him.

Her shaking hands held her head up to him as her eyes glistened. “H-H-H-H-Hold m-my…” She was hyperventilating; her entire head was beet red as her body squirmed and trembled in an effort to not take her head back and run away screaming. Her head, meanwhile, screwed her eyes shut as it grew redder still; the girl looked ready to puke, which made for a strange anatomy question in a dullahan.

John carefully, and quietly, took her head from her hands and, without hesitation, cradled it to his chest with her cheek against his leather armor. Her eyes shot open as she realized she no longer held her own head... but she said nothing. John cradled the head carefully, his left hand holding her where her neck would be while his right gently rubbed the top of her black hair. “Like this?”

She wanted to bite her lip to keep her mouth shut… but the Master had asked a question. “Yeh, but without the armor—oh Jesus!”

John obliged her and transferred his armor back into his inventory, leaving him naked once again. His erect cock flicked up, earning a distrustful glare from
Alysha; thankfully, it was still out of Regan’s field of view. The Irish teen felt her ear and bare cheek press against his chest and made a small, mouse-like noise as he
cradled and caressed her head. Her body, perhaps due to a lack of discipline or so much time disconnected, began to shake its balled up fists and hug itself. John
thought to say something, but decided against it. Instead he marveled at the bizarre sensations: of holding a head without a body, of feeling a perfectly normal scalp on one hand and the really weird sensation of the “back” and bottom of a jaw as she spoke… and the heat of her cheek against his skin.

Regan said nothing for a moment, content to enjoy the feeling of John’s gentle pats on her head. Far and away, Fairy just watched in irritation. Vok, coiled up in his usual corner, made a low, vibrating noise as he meditated.

“M-Mah mum and dad would hold meh like this, oft’n times… it was hard fer them.”

The moment of eroticism passed with that. John’s whisper was too urgent, “I’ll get you back to them, I promise.”

Regan smiled between the petting of her head and his promise... but her mind finally wandered—from tentacled beasts or freakish pregnancies—to that idea... of going back to her parents. To burdening them anew.

“It was real hard for them all... given mah condition, given... all this now.” Her body rested her hands on her shoulders as if to emphasize the flame. “They... they lived their whole lives for meh, just about, y’know?” Her voice cracked. “They never said it though... I saw a program once about it, about some paralyzed girlie burdenin’ her parents, all useless like, until mum heard it and changed the channel... I think she...”

John continued to silently comfort the dullahan. This had taken an uncomfortable turn, but he wasn’t sure what to say.

“Well, if we could tell them I’m alright,” she said with a shaking voice, “and happy even... that might be better, yeah? Then they could just-”

“You should leave that to them,” John finally answered, “and stop assuming they think you’re a burden. You’re not.”

“But I’m-!”

“Society is.”

Regan blinked in confusion. The patting had stopped.

“If the Order didn’t kidnap your body, or enforce this weird secrecy along with the rest of them, then you could’ve just rejoined society... and lived normally, completely... except maybe for roller coasters,” John added, trying to lighten his brooding speech. “But even if they can’t change... you can’t assume they took care of you all this time without loving having you around.”

“Yah can’t... know that,” she bitterly whispered, “ya don’t even-”

“They were so angry when you vanished and I appeared.”

“W-What?”

“That’s how I got you back in the first place: I had to swap places with you. The immediate demands to know what I did with you, the fear and anger and want to attack me the moment it seemed I tried to take you away... it was real and overflowing.”

Regan stared, wide-eyed, at the bicep of the arm holding her. Her vision began to blur.

“They love you so much... and right now they’re probably tearing the city apart looking for us both and... I’m sorry,” John apologized as he felt her tears burn against his chest. “I didn’t mean to upset you more.”

“N-Nah, it’s...” Regan didn’t finish her sentence; her body simply moved forward and embraced John as he hugged the head to his chest. Her body was short enough that cradling her head almost made it attached to the shoulders, and the heatless fire of her body slowly wafted around Regan’s crying face, making her tears rolling amethysts.

John held her for a time.

---

Thirty minutes later...

The barracks proved spacious and welcome for Regan once she had finished processing John’s words, at least for now. While John held her head, Regan launched her body into the massive cushion that was essentially a bed. Nearby, proof that this was Regan’s bed—beyond the Temple interface declaring it so—stood in the form of a cushioned basket set into the wall over the bed, such that even some accident would land her skull safely into the folds below. This was where she agreed to think things through a bit more... about both her parents and her alleged feelings for John.

This left John to return to the console, ready to explore its features... only to be intercepted by the pained cries emanating from his sanctuary. With a blink, he was by his bed... where a sweating, moaning Juniluny lay pinned to the bed by the massiveness of her torso. Her legs were splayed open and sprayed to glisten with broken waters; she was pained to deliver, if she could even manage it, and she let him know the moment her rolling eyes caught sight of him.

“Focking cockswaggerin’ shitfock!” Juniluny couldn’t contain her accent, or her unborn sons, any longer.

“Alright,” John declared with a firm nod, “so do halflings deliver easier when they have orgasms?”

“Fock you! Daft bastard fuhoooooock! No, we fucking... DON’T!”

Jesus, well so much for anesthetic... although... “It would make it less painful, perhaps...” With a caress on Juniluny’s milk-leaking tit, John dumped all of his mana into aphrodisiac, sending the hobbit into a mad spiral of liquid-spewing. “Alright, we’ll get through this,” the master cooed to his pregnant , “and you’ll be done before you even feel it.”

“I still... hah... feeaaahhl!” Her words devolved into fetal, Scottish-sounding pejoratives as John lowered his mouth to suck on her generous tit, drinking up its restorative power as he shifted his mana and health about to to pump more magic into the hobbit and help her deliver. Her cervix and birth canal widened, her elasticity increased, and her nervous system became dulled solely to pain; combined with the rubbing of her clit and his nursing, she was well on her way to deliver her first son in minutes where it might have taken hours.

He conveyed her so her head was over the edge of the bed, letting it fall back as he fed his cock down her moaning throat. The feeling of his entry, combined with his vicious twisting of her spraying nipples, pushed her into a quivering state of constant micro-orgasms. “Alright, now push,” John breathed as he fucked her mouth. His humps made her breasts sway from where he hung them between thumbs and forefingers; her giant belly swayed as well until, with an impressive shift, it began to divide under the skin.

The first baby was coming.

Nearby, once again at her usual post by the fountain, Ahk watched with a terrified, confused curiosity.

“P-Push,” John moaned as he felt Juniluny’s thick lips kiss the base of his crotch. Her throat bulged from the turgid rod inside it, but a hearty halfling was always one to swallow. Her throat tried desperately, crushing him and feeling him rub the sensitive insides of her throat until it made her squirt the excess fluids from her crushing vagina... even as an infant began its well-lubricated journey downward. “Keep going,” he urged as he watched the lump shift about. He released her nipples and withdrew from her mouth; it was time. He opened a tunnel in front of her vagina... and watched its lips part as the baby crowned.

He had seen this 2,000 times now… and he still wasn’t completely ready to see it again.

John reached through, cradled the infant out, and softly moved it away and towards Juniluny’s exhausted arms. Unlike the elven births, halflings apparently still came with their placentas and umbilical cords; as if anticipating this, a nurse spirit was quickly in reach and, with invisible , severed the cord totally from the crying babe’s belly.

The hobbit mother, her mouth still hanging open and panting, felt a mouth upon her nipple and glanced down at the largely human-looking infant, marked only by a slight point to his ears. He was a redhead, like Juniluny’s grandpa; he had John’s nose, she would eventually figure, and at 9 pounds he was monstrously large for a Halfling newborn.

Because he wasn’t a halfling… not completely.

The implication, and the shifting as a second son prepared to be born, stunned Juniluny into confused mixtures of happy and terrified crying.

---

One more temple hour later...

Equilibrium is now level 6!
Heal Monster is now level 16!
Aphrodisiac is now level 10!

John disregarded his pop-ups as he focused on doing what he could to pleasure, and so relieve, the suffering former Cabalist.

Juniluny’s body had been completely restored and returned to its pre-pregnancy condition, leaving her just a bit chubbier than before... aside from the swell of her milky tits upon which two hungry mouths now suckled.

Juniluny sat in the study where the bookshelf had mysteriously filled with texts on child-rearing. She carried two children, each looped in an arm, while two nurse spirits floated overhead in preparation. The third rested in the crook of John’s left arm; still unsure of what to say, think, or even feel, the ex-Cabal mage could only stare down at impossible creatures.

No, not impossible for a powerful mage. Just... for someone like John to manage. This was her thought, even after John put babies in her... even after John took babies right back out. Even as they now suckled upon her as proof that she really was under his absolute control… even more than her former master could ever really manage. His orders kept her stable… but she feared her lack of reaction to that realization more than the realization itself.

John kept the third son another moment before surrendering him to the nurse spirit. The spirit pulsed happily as it levitated the baby and began to head for the nursery where, no doubt, yet another crib waited for the child. All of John’s sons remained unnamed and level 0, and each had only the silly-sounding class of “Half-Halfing.” John stared at the sniffling, newborn face in amazement as he was carried off... and then turned to the second mother of his children.

“I’m going to check what these spirits do for the babies… you’ll stay here, then?”

Juniluny, still wide-eyed and exhausted, muttered as she looked up at him. “I’m…”

John walked over to the chair, his eyes resting on hers. They trembled with moisture. Her thick lips pouted in something approaching a sob, though none came. Her long ears drooped from under oily, curly black locks of hair. Her eyes widened in sudden revelation. “What is it?”

“I’m a mother.” It was hard to gauge her emotion there, other than… “fragile.”

John leaned forward and put his hands on the armrests… and between the babes at her breasts and the barred way, Juniluny never felt so trapped. John tipped his head and kissed her unmoving, half-opened mouth, ignoring the gentle noise of nursing as he tasted her. He broke off the terrified kiss and whispered, “How does that make you feel?”

“Excited, and happy, and so upset because I want to wipe that stupid smirk sideways off your sodding shit-heeled sex-sucker skull!”

“You’re going to focus on raising these kids and making them happy from now on… and raising them to be good boys and men.”

She nodded, her brow still furrowed at her master.

“Good in the way I mean.”

“I’m not daft, you…” Juniluny’s words trailed off as she just shook her head in continuing amazement.

“You’re not going to manage the psychosphere anymore… this is your new full-time job.”

“Reduce me to a wet nurse, will you?”

“Reduce you to the mother of just three of my children. You got the easy set.”

“So you’re a father,” she bitterly shot back, “now what? You’re not at all knocked by that?”

John didn’t answer that… and Juniluny tsked her babies’ daddy. “I-I need to check the console now and see what these things are doing.” Before she could taunt him further, John blinked to the statue.

The console menu had vanished once again, but now John noticed a thin, almost invisible holographic button set against the stone base of his statue. With a tap, the colossal screen returned.

Nothing new appeared under Commandments, the apparent default display, so John tapped the next and was greeted by a rapidly spinning object that slowly zoomed in to reveal what it was: a 3-D model of his Temple as if viewed from without. The rendered map made the walls transparent to reveal the contents inside. Bulging beneath the temple schematic were the new barracks and nursery; the rooms he opened were modeled as he remembered them, complete with furniture inside. The Praetorium Magus, the western hall that was still technically waiting for John to learn alchemy, was a basic rectangle enshrouded in black. If it had attached rooms, they had not yet formed on the map. On the sidebar, commands for adjusting the temple waited: MOVE ROOM, MOVE HALL, ADD TEMPLE LEVEL, TIME DILATION. Rather than fuss with them now, John only tapped the temple level button, curious to see if it meant a level in the Game or a level below or above the structure so far. He received a swift answer.

TEMPLE LEVEL: 20 > 21
COST: 1,000 soul gems
REMAINING: 12/12
APPLY?

Rather than thirst for his XP, the Temple demanded soul gems; more, this option seemed limited, somehow, though the text offered only one tooltip from “REMAINING”:

Certain events will continue adding to the Temple level. Others will also add these purchasable upgrades, the cost of which scales solely to the ones so purchased thus far.

John was eager to check the last one, but he decided that was likely the only one he’d stay on for long. So “MINION CONTROL” was next... and offered little more than an unimpressive host of square buttons with a single name of a summon on it. On the side, rather than buttons, appeared three toggles: “TIME DILATION TO ZERO,” presently set to ON, “TWO-WAY” set to ON, and “VIEW MODE ONLY,” presently set to OFF. They seemed strangely threatening to John, given their unknown use, but he had to try the features out, at least. He pressed a name at random to see if it opened a new-

The room faded to black... and was replaced with the Dojo. What had teleported John here? He glanced over his own shoulder and found it black and matted with fur... and a surprised self-assessment found his entire body was now covered in the dense black locks, his stature had shrunken considerably, and his hands now terminated in sharpened claws of a cartilage-skin mesh he had seen on Ahk... and as if in answer, the Game’s usual screen was replaced solely with Ahk’s data and a new, large interface with one button:

CURRENTLY CONTROLLING: AHK
End Control?

“Ahk! AHK?!” John’s voice echoed from the main hall. With a clumsy step—the loss of his usual agility and body gave him a brief but intense dizziness—John, in Ahk’s body, managed to come into view of a terrified-looking John Newman. “Ahk?!” he almost squealed.

“Hary crhit,” John barely managed with the odd mouth. Urgently, John pressed the end button-

... and now looked at Ahk from his own body. “Holy shit,” John repeated, newly dizzied.

Ahk, too confused and terrified to understand, fled from the bewitching dojo and into the foray. With nervous clicking and yelps, her lope paused only to glance at John and ensure she wasn’t being followed; she vanished into his sanctuary a moment later.

“What... was that?” Alysha dared to ask.

“I can swap bodies with my minions!” the summoner confidently replied. “I wonder what powers I have access to, though... or how I’d press the buttons if I possess someone without appendages...” John decided this definitely needed some play later... but for now, he had the rest of the console to explore. With a tap, he went to “HEARTH MONITOR” and was greeted with nothing more than another single button, this time labeled “SURVEIL.”

No longer fearing the console, John pressed the button; reality flickered, but remained. After a few experiments, John discovered the button was to be held down; so long as it was, he was encased in a holographic projection of the space around where he had hearthed to the temple. Most of the room was asleep following a long day; Tricia, sleepy-eyed but awake, was walking towards the co-opted kitchen of the Bitter Nines. Her arms marked the dramatic slowdown of real time as John glanced back at it... and looking at her now, after all that had transpired, bubbled a longing inside the Gamer that no one in the temple could well cure.

He had to go back soon... and so he let the surveil button go and moved on to the last button, and the one he remained most concerned with: “CHILDCARE.”

The menu switched... and greeting John was a rapidly shrinking scroll bar as the list in the center populated. The center of the screen displayed twelve stat sheets for unnamed infants, each labeled a gender, a level (zero for each of them), an age, (rounded to years and so, again, zero), and each with three buttons labeled “Nursing Regiment,” “Training,” and “Forming.” Each was set to “Plan A,” which John presumed had to do with the first of the buttons on the side: “Rearing Plans,” “Filter,” “Delete,” and, with a translucent lock icon over it, “Fuse Infants.”

The entire thing was so clinical as to disturb the Gamer; the “Delete” button in particular seemed impossibly devoid of consideration of life. He tested it with a press... and sure enough, tiny X buttons appeared on the upper-right corner of each baby’s status square. Urgently, he pressed it again to make the icons vanish. “J-Jesus,” he slammered, “then this could really... alright. No
one but me can work this console without my express permission and direction.” The screen, and Temple, flickered; it was done.

The filter options were far more predictable: sortable by alphabet, time of birth, race (half-moon elf, half-halfling), gender (male, female, fluid, non-binary, trinary+, null, other, and a baffling category simply labeled “unclear”), sex (male, female, and herm), level, class, weight, and height. The nearly as startling entry of “Fuse Infants” simply returned an error message:

The Fusion Chamber must be unlocked to use this feature.

Fusion chamber?! John had plenty of video game references to know what that was... but the current context made it seem hideous. But whatever it did, John had to assume it was to be found in the still-locked wing of the temple.

Moving on, he opened the Rearing Plans and was greeted by a sub-menu: now, instead of infant names, plans were lined up with small summaries of their elements. Only plan A had content, however: plans B through D, with the rest of the alphabet presumably scrollable below, were empty. He fiddled a bit more with this exhaustive system, discovering more bizarre elements within each dimension of childcare: “Nursing Regiment” was a fancy word for deciding how much sustenance, simulated touch, and entertainment each child was afforded, each metered out from a pool of pips that called for some balance.

Given that none of his summons needed sustenance, John had to guess this was more about how the children would grow: as if they were emaciated, strong, or plump. The rest seemed dangerous to deprive, lest he make heartless, cruel people of his offspring as the real world had of so many of its own; he decided that Plan A’s balance, 5/5/5, seemed well enough to leave alone.

“Training” proved more integral to their future usefulness: Plan A stated that each would be given “minimal martial training and a focus on magic.” Clicking on this featured a text prompt instead of a host of buttons: John could just dictate the plan instead. “Alright then...”

Textbox: no martial training, and train them all to be mages specialized in healing and creation.

Training regiment set.

Well, that was easy! Of course, he’d have to wait a decade or two to see if the order was even plausible, but for now that seemed to fill one void in his ranks: aside from his newly-tentacled horror, he had no decent healing minions.

“Forming” proved the strangest yet: he was greeted with a forty-point attribute chart where the prismatic blob in the center grew or shrunk along the ten axes radiating from the middle. At the end of each axis, some bizarre psychological element like “sexuality,” “confidence,” “aggression,” “empathy,” and so on was placed. Plan A was still tuned to make warriors, putting most points into confidence and aggression; with his fingers, John manipulated the pointy blob, tugging it along a certain axis and watching some opposing attribute shrink. Chastity shrunk from sexuality; empathy grew from shrinking aggression; confidence found balance with humility; and so on. John tugged along this map of a mind to make what he imagined would be a merciful, humble white mage, but stopped short of exhausting the dozens of other things he could fuss with. Mostly satisfied, he locked the plan in and left his offspring to the mercy of Plan A.

Changes applied. Updating nursing spirits... updated.

Was that all it took? It seemed impossible that childhoods could just be... simulated by these ghostly pink sprites, so John was determined to check it out himself. A blink later and he was at the mouth of the nursery again. Greeting him was the swarm of pink bulbs above, each either dancing idly or diving on occasion to bathe an infant in a brief, pink radiance. The infants largely slept peacefully; none stirred when John was near, and the only ones he saw awake were those writhing with simple, curious expressions in a short trail of cribs... one that ended with Tita, now with an elven baby girl cradled to her breast and suckling with closed eyes.

Tita looked to John as he approached. Her tentacles hung limply behind her like fleshy robes; her fingers gently caressed her baby’s head in commanded empathy; her teeth were clenched through a smile as she beamed down at the adorable, pink-cheeked horror she had birthed. John saw little of the mother in this girl: she was black-haired and barely inhuman in shape, with only the slight rise in her ears giving any indicator of her heritage. She was cute as a button too and, if John had to guess, seemed a week old already with wide, almost white-blue eyes glancing all around.

A week old... by human standards... so if she was half-elf, shouldn’t she be aging slower? The mystery stuck with John.

“I am caring for them, as you asked,” Tita growled, “I am nursing these... mistakes.”

“Don’t call them that.”

“They cannot understand me... but your wish is my enslaving command.” She flinched as the baby bit down, urging more of the strange milk down its throat. “It does not hunger... none of them do,” Tita hissed, “but they feed... they want, even when they have no need. Typical...”

“This is what you will do until they are grown... except for the halfling babies. I’m not sure what to do with those, yet...”

“Halflings... then you her to deliver as well.”

John went to pass Tita... and with a careless hand he reached between her tentacles to dive his middle fingers into her cleft from behind. She inhaled sharply; she wanted to put the child down immediately, but his orders made no exception here. She continued to feed her young as the father roughly fingered her. “I could make you give me more, you know.”

“P-Please, Master,” Tita sobbed, horrified at the notion, “this is already too much... even more would-!”

John withdrew his fingers and continued his walk, wiping the moisture off on his pants as he went, until he tired of walking. A few tunnels later, he had reached the far wall of the nursery... and against it, some of the ninety-seven free cribs surrounded him. Would he actually fill them as he so idly threatened just now? His new power could claim any child not yet born... would he use so immoral a trick? Could he?

What the Hell am I even doing with the ones I have?

A week or two ago, John might have felt sick just considering the question... but this past week, let alone the last three days, had done wonders for his tolerance of the obscene. He had enough insight to recognize this; he also had enough awareness to recall how parents spoke of their first child or children, how their worlds and lives had suddenly become about perfecting and raising the infants in their care. Was that not how John was meant to feel? Was this still not real enough to hit him? Am I in shock?

John squeezed the stone rim of an unoccupied crib and, testing kinetic condenser, put his body’s strength into his grip. The bed was now one rail short as the stone snapped and crumbled under his grip. He lifted the dusty, undamaged hand to his eyes as a cleric spirit began the long trip down to fix the crib.

John stared at his unscarred palm and wondered. What am I supposed to be doing? He closed it into a fist. Whatever that is... it probably isn’t this. No. Right now, I’ve dragged a whole bunch of people into this mess with me and I need to get them home.

He’d leave philosophy for when he’d be in a position to go back to the Academy... if he even bothered. If he even could, insane as that seemed now.

Deciding he’d check on the children later, perhaps once they had time to grow, John focused on checking in with the various summons, reviewing his forces, and preparing for the takeover of Vantage... if only to get the “legendary” humans back home.

He blinked about the temple, checking his various summons and considering their XP. In particular he considered those low-level summons who, after seeing so much proof of minion evolutions, made John expect interesting things.

Vok, who ultimately helped his own mother and siblings, was understandably harder to find. “Vok,” John called out once he discovered the minion’s hiding place.

The serpent-man was coiled upon one of the massive cushions below that John had almost missed twice walking by it. The Flamescale Failure formed a small pool of scales that glimmered like garnets in the torchlight. The pool shifted and Vok’s face appeared. The guilt he felt didn’t change his appearance: still did the irregular horns upon his chin form a stubble of bone, still did his human-like lips frown at the end of a snake-like mouth, and still did his leathery, vermilion fans that parsed clean locks of black hair fold low in peace. “You have need of me?”

“I think it’s time we put that XP of yours to good use.”

A moment later, Vok found himself in the training pit... and facing his Master as the latter worked on a Game menu. The Failure hesitated before he asked, “What is... ‘XP’?”

“It’s a measure of experience that you’ve earned from...” Helping me kill everyone you knew. The belief that none of these monsters were real until John showed up was quickly unraveling thanks to Vantage. What about the Complex? What about the alleged fate of his people before John showed up? What about-

“From what?”

“Living... and so on. Alright,” the Gamer hastily declared, eager to move on, “here goes something!” John converted all of Vok’s training XP and watched the notifications light up.

Vok is now level 11!
Vok is now level 12!
...
Vok is now level 16!

John watched and waited... but nothing more came. “Huh... guess it’s like Sokémon and only some of you evolve...”

Vok, who flexed his arms with curiosity, had no idea how to reply to that. A quick glance to his character sheet, however, did reveal some change to John.

Vok
Level 16 Warrior
HP: 820 / 820
MP: 70 / 70
XP: 8,960/10,150 (TP: 0)
Stats: Str 33, Agi 28, End 29, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 6, Lib 16
Status Effects: None
Qualities: Immune to Curses, Immune to Fire
Abilities: Breathe Fire lvl16, Frightful Presence lvl4, Sword of Life’s Flame lvl8
Previously a genetic failure to the Flamescale Brood. It once bore in its makeup the result of the Curse of Henrick the Plain: the bloodline's persistent tendency to meld humanoid features with those of the once-proud dragon race. This one is no longer cursed, however, and with its supreme draconic genes could give life to a new generation of dragons or dragon-breeds.

Dragons-breeds...? There was no tooltip for this throwaway term, but the curse that persisted even after Vok’s branding was indeed gone... and Vok was soon onto the newfound knowledge in his mind.

Vok casts Sword of Life’s Flame.

A familiar spell... and a familiar effect as a monstrous sword some ten feet in length, carved from fire but holding a shape as steady as steel, fell into the white palms of Vok’s hands. The sword’s tip danced near the training pit’s doorway as Vok remained frozen in utter surprise.

“Whoa-hoa! Maybe you’ll be able to help after all,” John said.

“This is... this is a blessing of dragons. I...” The sword vanished... and Vok’s hands covered his golden eyes. “I am not permitted to hold such a thing...!” The naga-like minion laid upon his coiled tail as he continued to bury his face in his long, clawed fingers.

John stepped right up to the edge of that pool of scales and offered a comforting pat on Vok’s powerful shoulder. “You are now,” he whispered, “because we managed to lift the curse... and you’re more dragon than ever.”

“Blasphemy.”

“Facts.”

“You... I must be... permitted to meditate on this.”

“Sure... but before you do, I want you to test something else.”

You conveyed Fairy.

Fairy popped into existence upside-down and floundering as she tried to not crash onto the bleacher at the far back end of the training pit. “What the fuck are you calling me without warning for-?!”

“Vok, Breathe Fire once on Fairy.”

“... What-?!”

“Fairy, stay right where you-”

A hiss of metal and the crash of a waterfall: somewhere between these sounds came the noise of a Flamescale’s first true breath: a coiling blast of orange inferno, like a sigh, over the body of Fairy.

Vok breathes fire on Fairy, but Fairy is immune to fire!

Vok’s mouth closed anew... and a stunned awe had kept his golden eyes wide as the world he had known was unraveled from his own throat. He breathed the living light... he spoke the language of his ancestors... he was... a dragon. He continued to stare, unphased by the glowering Fairy, through Fairy, to whatever this incredible blessing could mean. His heart threatened to burst at the fantasy of it... of becoming a dragon... of flight... of saving his people... and breaking the curse in his mother’s memory.

“Well, I hope that helps you come to terms... with...” John’s words trailed off as he looked to Vok...

... and saw the massive hulk of muscle and shed glowing, orange tears from his glistening eyes. “I...” The gravel-filled rumble of his voice now gave hints of cracks. “I need... that moment if... if it pleases you, Master.”

John nodded slowly before conveying Vok back to his chosen bed without another word. Satisfied with how he would leave it, John exited the Temple... and was faced with only those still awake in the Vantage hideout.