When I made it back to the palace, I headed into the underground infirmary, which had a side chamber for pill refinements. I shoved the furnace that was there into the corner so I could bring out my own, and spent almost an entire day making batch after batch of pills. In the end, I was left with a measly 31 miniature pills, each the size of a grain of rice, that were of a quality I was satisfied with - the rest were all destined for incineration, though a select few were held as emergency backups until I could make more high-quality ones. Fortunately, each one should last for a bit over a month, meaning this pile of pills would last for two and a half years. 

Unfortunately, I used up the palace’s entire collection of yggdrasil bark... and it’d take quite a while to get more. Perhaps the Association has some, or has the connections to get some on short notice, but I wouldn’t count on it, it’s used in an extremely small number of pills, only one of which is used by those below tier 7 - and it’s simply used to aid in the creation of a less-cracked core when advancing to tier 7, which is why the empire had any at all. The previous Emperor wanted to have as much potential as possible when advancing, and spared no expense to make that happen.

“So, now to figure out how to feed these to Snow. I guess the only option is to dissolve the pill in some milk... but I don’t know how that’d change its effectiveness”

“As long as it wouldn’t be poisonous, it’s better than nothing”

“I’m not worried about that, thanks to her spirit body, any poisons only strengthen her. She’ll handle traceless phantom god viper venom without any worries”

“Are you sure about that?”

Xena, the midwife, is ever the worrywart about her charges. But yes, I was certain. Master’s old friend, who died a few centuries before I was born, had a fire elemental physique, and Master told me of the many things he did with it, from bathing in magma to... erm... fornicating with a dragon.

“Elemental physiques grant an absolutely perfect immunity to their element, and the formula for the pill used to seal them changes depending on the element. For a poison elemental physique, it requires a strong poison - the stronger, the better. For a fire elemental physique, it’d require something like a true phoenix’s crest or a flame dragon’s heart”

“What... what poison did you put into this one?”

“As I said, she will handle the traceless phantom god viper venom without any worries”

“Where did you get your hands on that?”

I smiled beneath my half-mask, one fang poking out from beneath my upper lip, as I extended my right arm. With a thought, Snek slithered out of my loose sleeve to twine about my fingers - having grown up a bit more over the years, she was now a bit thicker than my thumb, and could extend from fingertip to elbow if she stretched out straight. She had also learned how to speak out loud, the same as her mother.

“This is Snek. Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite... well, not unless I ask her to. Say hi, Snek”

“Sssalutations, lady Xena. I appreciate your care for our friends and their sssons and daughters”

“Oh my... that’s a rare sight. I don’t know... has anyone ever had one of them as a spirit companion before?”

“At least two... but yes, they’re quite rare, even in the wild. I raised her since before she hatched”

“Well... I still don’t like it, feeding poison to an infant... but if you’re certain about this... there’s a special solution we midwives often use, which allows most pills to dissolve well in milk”

After - or rather, during - a brief explanation, Yuri squeezed out a bit of milk, Xena mixed in the pill and a pale yellow liquid she kept in a large vial labeled baby pill extract, and then the two of them fed the resulting mixture to Snow. Almost immediately, she stopped exuding her poison spirit mist, and over the course of the next few hours, her purple skin blotches faded to the same milky white color as the rest of her skin and fur.

“Well, now it’s time for a conversation. Xena, T-err... papa... I want you both to listen carefully”

“It kinda just sounds wrong, you calling me papa, but I’m listening”

“Yuri has been out of the public eye since she began showing. Only a couple of maids have seen her, and they’ve been sworn to secrecy. In other words, as far as the public will know, I’m the mother of all 11 of these children. I want both of you to keep that secret, okay? Not even your closest friends can know, nor your family. It is just us four”

Well, I was planning to tell Mia and Chen about this, but evidently I’ll have one more secret I'll be keeping from them.

“That was the agreement we’d made initially, I have no plans to back out on that”

“Hmm... I did already tell Shags - sorry, that’s my husband - that I was taking care of the empress and her consort. but that should be fine, he knows not to talk about my work, just as I don’t talk about his work as the head te- never mind. If you don’t mind my using this meeting to bring up my own requests... I think it’s about time to take a look at each child’s spirit realm, to see what their spirit companions are”

“Very well. I expect that most of them will have either dragons or elemental incarnations as their companions, but... can’t hurt to check”

“Not serpentine?”

“Ah, you heard about Snek. That’s a... special case, one I doubt will be passed down. Also, Tilly, elemental spirit companions aren’t particularly common in my family, so Ash, Snow, Cinder, and Charlotte could have basically any spirit companions... and that might raise suspicions about their heritage”

Those being the names of the second prince, fourth princess, eighth princess, and tenth princess, respectively, and are the four that technically don’t have the imperial bloodline, not that Tilly cares about that.

“It’s only about a two in three chance of having a draconic spirit companion for those with my bloodline. As long as more than half of mine have one, it should be easy enough to pass off as just a bit of bad luck”

“Well, no use fretting about it, let’s just check them and be done with it. Either they’ll have ‘em or they won’t”

With a groan, Xena stood up and walked over to where Yuri was nursing a pair of children - each swaddled in different colors and patterns to keep track of which one is which - and gently placed two of her fingers on the lower back of one of them.

“Hmm... Luna has... ah, I think that’s a Dawncrest Overlord. That’s not a dragon, but it’s still a strong one, in the phoenix family. As for Mort... I don’t recognize this, maybe our alchemist friend would. It’s a spirit plant, with a trio of red stems each with yellow leaves and capped with blue buds”

Already not a lot of potential matches, I know of, uh, seven plants like that?

“Hmm... how many leaves per stem?”

“It varies, one has six, another just three-”

Down to four options. Two are very strong, one is okay, and one is... kinda sad.

“Are they all branching out of the same point or staggered?”

“Three from a single point, but sometimes multiple points branch out with three leaves each”

“Alright, that narrows it down to two. What shape are the leaves? Are they cleft or serrated?”

“Cleft”

“Dragonip Flame Clover. Lu-cky... It has powerful psychoactive properties, both when eaten and when smelled, and an incredible resistance to fire and frost, while being able to release intense flames to defend itself. He should be able to obtain some mentalist skills if he doesn’t go down the pyromancy route”

It’s one of the top spirit plants to have as a spirit companion, outside of direct combat strength... or certain special plants that have strong connections with one realm or another - like a Yggdrasil sprout, which is about as good as a wood spirit body in terms of affinity with the wood element - or ones that have incredibly strong elemental abilities, like the Temporal Chaos Clover, which... well, I’m glad he doesn’t have that one, it’s a kill-on-sight spirit companion like the Wood Sovereign’s spirit companion, the Weaver of the Woods. 

The Temporal Chaos Clover grants strong space and time abilities, while the Weaver of the Woods can see and even slightly bend the threads of fate, both of which are seen as too strong to leave unchecked, and will get true immortals to go out of their way to kill you if you reveal that you have such a spirit companion. They’re so taboo that I wouldn’t take one of them as my spirit companion even if I had the chance. There’re worse taboos, but not many.

“Next... Oh, Lilith inherited your Temporal Wyrm, that translucent blue-green color is impossible to mistake when I’ve seen it before. As for the triplets... Shadescale Wyrm, Sunscale Wyrm, and Spatial Wyrm? I can’t tell for sure, but they’re definitely all wyrms. It’s an impressive lineup regardless of what elements they are. Coco... oh, an artifact spirit. No clue what kind, it looks like a... handbag? Perhaps it’s a spatial artifact, that’d be interesting. Finally, prince Shadow. I can’t see his spirit companion, but there’s something moving under the sand in his spirit realm”

Well, that’s all of Tilly’s kids. Onto Yuri’s.

“Ash has a Geistflame Willow, that’s another rare one. Cinder and Charlotte both have artifact spirits”

How unusual, I’ve heard that it’s roughly one in a thousand, but three of my kids do?

“And finally... I’m not sure I should try to look at Snow, I’d imagine her body and spirit realm to be full of poison”

“If you don’t severely lack control over your own spirit, I doubt you’d have problems from this. That being said, I’ve also got a whole slate of antitoxin pills over here, should they be needed. Several of them are ones that work on pure poison spirit”

“I... very well. You’re a very accomplished alchemist, you claim your specialty is poison, and you did identify and solve Snow’s problem quite quickly. I’ll put my trust in you to save me, should anything go wrong”

Gingerly, she put her hand on Snow’s pale back, and then gasped. I reached for my pills, but she pulled her hand away and shook her head.

“It’s not poison, I’m fine in that regard. It’s just... fate is a cruel mistress, one with the most perverse sense of humor. She has been blessed with an elemental physique, but cursed with a void spirit realm”

So, one of my children did inherit that from me... well no, there’s superstition about that, leading to somewhat of a taboo around having children with someone who has a void spirit realm, but Master said he’d seen a huge, multi-realm study on the subject, and the numbers don’t seem to suggest any meaningful correlation between having a parent with a void spirit realm and having one yourself, in either case, it’s not even a one in a million chance. Two parents, yes, that somehow results in a 100% chance... at least when extrapolating from the three children who had that parentage that were ever found and recorded. The odds of two people of similar enough species, opposite sexes, both with void spirit realms, meeting coincidentally is astronomically low, let alone them deciding to have children together.¹But to give a few examples of things that that study found technically have a higher correlation with having a child with a void spirit realm than having one yourself: The child being born in the second or third week of minorfall; both parents eating a large quantity of dark green vegetables in the days prior to conception; the father being named Pornelius; either parent having been unprotected in between realms for at least a day; the child being the second child born to the 6th wife; the mother having seen one of the Crazed Sages of Nothing personally; and the parents being from different realms - but only if both or neither are minor realms, one major and one minor does not have that increased correlation.

Meanwhile, Tilly and Yuri were looking at one another, Tilly slightly shrugged while glancing in my direction, Yuri raised an eyebrow and made some small hand gesture, and then they both turned to look at me in unison.

“I know what you’re gonna say, the answer is no... Oh, fine, I’ll see what I can do. There’re a few ways... like, Spirit Realm Orchids are rare, but not impossible to find if one gets a bit lucky, I suppose”

“You’re not gonna...”

“Oh, I will. I’m just saying this because... well, you know why”

“Yeah, can’t have that getting out”

Xena just kept looking more and more bewildered. I just shrugged and told her that it’s unavoidable given how sensitive my identity is. 

“Well, I can’t argue with that. Now, how do we handle the announcements? Who will be the father, and what do we say about Snow’s spirit realm?”

“It’s not too hard, I think. For Snow, you can announce that she has an elemental physique that made any attempts at checking her spirit realm too risky to proceed with. As for the father, just say they were born from a relationship of political convenience, one where the empire gains a hidden protector beyond any it’s had previously. Both are true, at least to some extent”

The second part made Xena’s eyebrows shoot up, and she hesitantly asked one final question before giving up on trying to learn more about me.

“But are you truly beyond any protector the empire has ever had?”

“I mean... I have full confidence that I would’ve come out on top against the previous emperor had we clashed before he departed. I expect he would’ve said he has no chance against me if he were asked”

“Father was quite eager to accept this arrangement, upon a simple demonstration of his abilities. Don’t ask, Xena. Both for his identity and your own sanity”

“Wasn’t going to ask, I’m done with this. I’ll still help with the newborns, but I’m gonna forget this man ever existed. See, I know when I’m in over my head, and your political machinations and aromantic impregnations are none of my business”

“I wouldn’t call it aromantic, but... partially unreciprocated”

Well... that’s fair.

CaTastrophy427

Wa-whoops, I had this ready to go about 48 hours ago as of the time I'm writing this. I simply forgot to paste it in to SH and reapply  the formatting. Well, that's fine. No cliffhanger since the next chapter I'll be writing is for my other series. If you really can't wait, feel free to ask for spoilers in my discord server, it's got a dedicated spoilers section. There's other things there too. Bonus points if you noticed the reference to an earlier chapter's reference to another work - and yes, if you're the first to point that out in the proper channel, you'll get your name in the hall of fame. Who knows, there might even be prizes for hall of fame spots in the future.