Chapter 64: Chapter Sixty-three – In which Ark deals with a bit of mystery concerning the sudden arrival of his newest daughter.

Three days had been spent so far trying to make Prima’s belly fat, but I hadn’t had the faintest bit of luck. I realized I had made a serious mistake in making that deal with Prima, especially when I didn’t know if I could actually back my promise up. It was the middle of the night currently, and Prima was so exhausted from having her belly being loaded like an industrial dishwasher that she wouldn’t notice me missing for a moment if I were to take a small breather in the breeding room.

While I do enjoy being comforted by the motherly Berry, or the playful Lily, there’s something secure in being with Prima, even if she occasionally gets a bit physical with me. I know it’s coming from a good place most of the time. Prima’s just a bit careful about opening her heart to me, I think. Whereas it’s the exact opposite for say, Vera, whose feelings I've already chosen to accept entirely when I agreed to bring the burden of impending motherhood onto her.

Speaking of Vera, when I approached the breeding room, I could hear Vera calling out my human name. That wasn’t usually a problem. She knew my real name, and I’m sure with Stella having called me it many times in front of some of the other goblins, they must know it too. Button certainly will remember it! No, the problem was why she was calling out my name in the middle of the night when I wasn’t even around.

It wasn’t a matter of her rubbing herself and wishing I was there instead of her fingers. When I entered the breeding room, the magic lantern that usually kept it lit, wasn’t on. While the room was dark, I had the topaz stone on my person and it was generating light so I could navigate the inside of goblin-home without stubbing my toes or running face-first into a wall. Strangely enough, the location of both Vera’s voice and the one place the light my topaz wasn’t reaching were in the same direction… the entertaining area in the Southeast corner of the room.

It didn’t take a genius to see that there was some kind of magic being used to block that area off from my sight. I could sense the familiar emanations of magic, but it also felt a bit overwhelming to me. I might have thought it to be some machination of the Great Protector, but what I felt was mana of a very different wavelength.

I was cautious in approaching the wall of darkness. Was it a physical barrier meant to separate Vera from me? If so, why? Either way, I wouldn’t give up trying to make sure she was doing okay on the other side. I brought the topaz stone in front of me, and it wouldn’t pierce the veil no matter how bright I made it, so with the only course of action remaining to me, I put my hand up against it…

And it passed right through.

Two steps later, I also passed through it.

Vera, who had kept calling my name, finally stopped once she saw me. That was good. But on the dais in the middle of the entertaining area, she lay atop it, her belly fat, and blood spilling out from between her legs.

“Ark.”

I had rushed to Vera’s side, hoping she had some answers to give me as to what the fuck was going on, but all she had was a smile on her face, and a hand rubbing her belly.

“Name.” She said, and her arm fell to the side of the dais, tapping a certain place.

Etched into the stone dais were letters. Letters which should not exist in this world.

GLACE – it read in the Western alphabet I was familiar with in my previous life. In all capital letters.

“Vera… what is going on?”

“Soon.”

Vera wasn’t cryptic so much as concise. She was telling me our daughter was about ready to come into the world.

“Okay, stay here, I’ll go get Berry.”

When I moved to leave, the wall of darkness was gone. I felt a little better about that, but I also didn’t want to leave Vera alone longer than necessary. Stella had moved out of the breeding room, so the nearest person I could depend on was Berry.

There were a thousand things going through my mind as I dashed to Berry’s room. The most obvious being how the fuck did her belly blow up when we hadn’t done it in days? Outside of the small romp I had with Lily and Berry on the day Diana took Orchid and Lilac on their first hunt together, I’ve been diligent in trying to uphold my end of the deal with Prima. The only goblin getting big seed in the cave in the last three days has been Prima.

So then, was there something else that triggered it, and not just the act of wasting seed with goblin?

“Berry!” I called out loudly to her, enough to wake her up. Diana also peeked her head out of her own adjacent cave-hole. “I need you to help me! Vera… she’s… her strong one is coming!”

After a quick explanation of the situation, Berry had gotten up and told me to go back to Vera. Berry would send Diana to fetch the Old One and bring her there, while she would bring the alchemy set and some clean rags to help take care of the after-affairs of childbirth.

I entrusted it to Berry and returned to Vera’s side back in the breeding room.

“Vera… Tell me what happened.”

Vera would only smile.

“Next.”

She once more tapped the side of the dais where the name was etched.

“Did you write that?”

She nodded that she had.

“...why do you know how to write those symbols?”

She only held her belly again, and said “know.”

But what, exactly, did she know?

“Vera… were you calling my name out because you knew I was nearby?”

To this question, she nodded affirmatively.

Okay. That’s… something. But what was the deal with the obvious ties to my past life, or perhaps the world I once lived in… doing here? Vera couldn’t know what the letters she put into the side of the dais meant, or how to string them into a coherent word. I have never taught her the letters associated with that language of my past life, only the Runes for formulaic magic.

There is something not quite adding up. But with Vera, all it ever amounts to is guesswork. I have to ask the right questions if I want the right answers, but even if I do ask the right questions, and she’s purposely withholding information from me…

“Husband!” Berry had walked into the breeding room carrying the alchemical set and some rags. A short while later, Old One had arrived, though without Diana. As she usually did, she walked over to the pregnant goblin and laid her hands on their belly.

Her eyes opened wide this time.

“Good that you sent the Huntress. The strong one is coming now.”

“Now?” I asked in a slight panic.

“Yes. Human, help me stand her up!”

Vera was going through contractions and wasn’t making a peep, or showing any sign of discomfort. I had to scoop her up off the dais and onto her feet, furthermore, I had to fully support her body while the Old One did her usual push down thing on their bellies with her hand during each contraction, and coached them to breathe and push. Vera was entirely unable to stand or balance herself upright on her own.

Vera took the bite branch the Old One offered her to bite on, but wasn’t doing the breathing she was told to do. She wasn’t even trying to push. She didn’t even squeak in pain until the tiny claw-like hands came out and grabbed onto whatever flesh it could around her privates to help pull itself out. That was when Vera bit down on the stick and began to moan in pain. But this birth was over far too quickly. An absurdly tiny goblin had come out. She was easily a human fist smaller in size than Button was when newly born, and up that point, Button was the smallest goblin born among her sisters.

Vera had been completely spent with that effort. She simply let her body go entirely limp and I had to ease her down onto the ground instead of back onto the dais. The child, yet another tiny wrinkly goblin daughter, had pulled on the umbilical cord to no avail. The placental mass hadn’t come out yet, and she didn’t look like she had the strength to pull it out on her own. She looked straight at me and pointed at the cord. Was… she trying to tell me to do something about it?

I reached for it, grossed out beyond belief, but feeling wholly compelled to pull it out for her. I felt bad if doing so was going to hurt Vera, but she wasn’t doing anything to try and eject it herself. There was no helping it. As I tried to pull it out without using too much force, Vera gave a soft cry as it crested through her vaginal canal. That soft cry brought with it a great deal more blood. My newly born daughter pointed at the brain-like mass dangling from her umbilical cord in my hand and pointed to Vera.

Vera, who often avoided prolonged direct eye-contact except during moments of intimacy with me, was staring hard at me.

Did Vera also want to eat it or something!?

I decided the best way to deal with this, however unclean, unsanitary, and unnerving it might be, was to put both the baby and the brain-like placental mass onto Vera’s chest and let them figure it out. Vera remained limp, so my tiny daughter tried to push and lift it towards her mother’s mouth, but was still not strong enough to do so.

I didn’t see it with Diana, but my other three daughters before this one had no problems picking it up and eating part of it before they went for their mother’s breasts. So, giving in and helping a bit more, by moving the gross thing to Vera’s mouth, I watched as my goblin wife bit into it like it was a large wrinkled meaty brain-raisin. My daughter didn’t even show the first sign of interest in wanting to take a single bite of it. Instead, seeing that Vera was eating it, almost as if to appease everyone present, being only the Old One, Berry, and Myself, she went for Vera’s triangular breasts and began to suckle. Once Vera had managed to eat the entire thing, as if that was the last thing holding her consciousness in place. She passed out.

“Her body has weakened.”

Old One shifted her attention to my daughter. That was usually the part where she would declare it a strong one. However that had not happened.

“Is something wrong?” I asked her.

“She’s a runt.”