“Hmm... that’s a bit too much fur, remove it from here to here”

“That tail’s too long as well, it should maybe be about half as long? No, a bit more than half, maybe two thirds this length?”

You’re probably wondering how I got here. Well, for that, we’ll need to back up a bit.

The meeting concluded soon after Tilly put her foot down about how to treat the man decimating the local bandit population, and nothing else that was particularly interesting was mentioned. The next meeting was the final one, and was entirely about the command structure and reporting protocol during the months the Empress was going to be absent. It was mostly a reminder of what had been previously agreed upon, and lasted maybe ten minutes. After that, Tilly and I returned to her chambers, where Yuri was waiting for us.

Well, no, by the way she was dressed - or rather, undressed - she was mostly waiting for Tilly. I was placed on a pillow by the window while the two ladies navigated the hurdles of being intimate while bearing unnaturally large baby bumps. While it was nothing I hadn’t seen before - being the one that caused both pregnancies - I also wasn’t particularly interested in watching or participating. 

Speaking of their bellies, Yuri’s wasn’t as large as Tilly’s despite beginning to show about three months earlier. Yuri started showing over half a year ago, whereas Tilly’s only became noticeable four months ago, around the time Yuri had to stop making public appearances because she couldn’t hide her pregnancy. However, Tilly quickly caught up, likely because she wasn't half Empyrean - and Empyrean gestation periods tend to be about 15~18 months, almost double that of humans - and then Tilly passed her in size about six weeks before I went on leave. Even so, their expected due dates were both within the next month and a half or so, but an exact date was rather hard to pin down given the uncertainty of how their kids’ paternity would affect things.

But this doesn’t explain the conversation I dropped you in the middle of. For that, we’ll need to jump ahead by about a week.

“Looking at him basking in that sunbeam, he really is cute”

“You only just noticed?”

“No, but I was thinking... hopefully our children inherit that glossy fur”

[I work hard to keep my fur looking like this, you know]

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen you spending an hour just grooming yourself, you don’t have to remind me. But your human form’s hair isn’t that glossy, right?”

“I mean, it’s hair, not fur, right? It’s naturally going to be a bit different”

“That raises a good question, does your catlike humanoid form have hair or fur?”

[Hair and fur are just different names for the same thing, the difference is mostly who it's on. The reason for my human form’s hair being less well-kept is that it looks wrong for a human to lick their hand to groom the hair on their head. For a cat, that’s perfectly normal behavior, but so is being naked, and we all know how people would look at a human walking the palace grounds while naked]

Now, I feel I should mention, I do use more normal human methods of caring for my hair, including putting up with baths. It just doesn’t quite have the same results as a cat’s method.

[If you want, I could show you what you’d look like if I cleaned your hair the way I clean my fur]

“You can do that with your shapeshifting?”

[Uhh... no, I’d just spend an hour or so carefully licking her hair, working out any tangles, removing every speck of dust and dirt, and aligning every strand]

“That sounds like a sweet thing to try at some point, but uh... going back to the shapeshifting thing. How much can you change to be catlike? Is it just the ears and the tail?”

[No, I can change my arms and legs too, the form I’ve been using lately has actual claws, not fingernails]

As I spoke, I shifted into the form I used as Glatisant and flexed my claws a few times while flashing my fangs.

“It’s also the fangs and eyes. If I wanted to, I could do other things too I think. Putting fur on my arms and legs is probably doable, but I haven’t really tried it”

“In that case... could you show us what you expect our children to look like?”

“I’m not gonna lie, I don’t have the slightest idea what they’ll look like. For all I know, they’ll be cats with the torso of a human where their head would be, similar to the Plainsrunner nomads, except they’d have the lower half of a cat instead of a horse”

“Coul-”

“No. I can’t take that form”

After a quick pause for one disappointed facial expression from Tilly and a different expression from Yuri I couldn’t figure out, the latter jumped in with her own thoughts on the matter.

“Well, I think they’ll probably look similar to the tabaxi. Feline head overall, mostly humanoid body but covered in fur, maybe with human hands and feet instead of paws”

“Hmm... I’ll try, I’ve seen a few of them, but most of my experience is with the half-tabaxi”

Six slowly improving attempts later, I managed to become a human with paws at the ends of furry arms and legs, plus some fur on my chest. Since I was focused on making my body look a specific way, I didn’t split my focus to make my clothes appear around my body, so I was naked - nothing the two women hadn’t seen before, though it seemed to briefly elicit another strange face from Yuri. I only mention it because Yuri asked if I could use a female body.

“I could, but no”

“I’d like to see what this’d look like with breasts. We’re probably going to have at least one daughter, after all”

“And we’ll have about a decade before any of our daughters start developing them”

“Come on, I’d like to see that too. Could you put up with it for me?”

Of course, Tilly joined in. It’s hard for me to refuse both of them when they ask for something I’m not completely opposed to, so I reluctantly tried. Two small fur-covered mounds and as many cheering ladies later, I found myself subjected to the barrage of minor alterations. My limbs were too furry, Yuri wanted it limited to my forearms and calves, with my upper arms and thighs left human. Tilly, meanwhile, wanted my tail to be shorter.

“Yeah, I can see both changes being good. This tail, while being the same proportional length as it is in cat form, is much too large when scaled up to this size. Gimme a moment”

One more shift later, I was looking in a mirror, and seeing a teenage girl with fur covering her tail, forearms and lower legs, alongside triangular ears and feline eyes on an otherwise human face - ah, no, her lips hid a set of fangs. Overall, a form I liked, though I probably would identify with it more if it was male.

While I was thinking about that, a pair of hands and a belly came into view from behind me before the hands wrapped around my chest and began stroking the fur there.

“Hmm... I think I’d prefer doing this if there wasn’t any fur here”

“Move over, I want to try”

So, from a dress-up doll to part of a petting zoo. While the petting was nice, physically speaking, I felt like I was taking psychological damage by the second.

“Any other changes for me to show you, or can I go back to my sunbeam now?”

“Hmm... I’m satisfied with this, what about you, Yuri?”

“Uh... hey... cats have like eight nip-”

“NOPE! I’m gonna stop you right there. It’s always a possibility for that to be true for our children, but I’m not going to be doing that myself”

“You’re no fun...”

With a despondent sigh and then yet another weird facial expression, Yuri raised her hands in defeat.

“Alright, I’m done with this too... AH! Tilly?”

“Hmm? What is it?”

“Do you think it’s safe for you to take that pill now?”

Tilly briefly looked confused, a feeling I shared, but what I didn’t share was the shift to an expression of realization followed by an immediate panic.

“Huh? OH. Oh shit, why didn’t you say something earlier? Uh, wait, I think, no, yeah, the midwife said anytime starting on Woodday, today is Metalday, so… let’s go”

“Can someone fill me in?”

“Congrats, Tama. You might be able to see the faces of your children before the day is done”

“Huh? OH. You’re having contractions? Was that what those strange faces were?”

“Yeah”

“How long has that been going on?”

“Only about three days”

Excuse me, what?

“How... why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because it’s still a bit early for Tilly. Since I could hold it for a while, I figured I would”

“First off, how? Second, why didn’t you tell us you were doing that?”

“Since the strength of Empyreans is tied to light, we do our best to give birth under the light of the noon-high sun, and have developed the ability to delay that for up to a week or two if needed... though it seems I can’t hold it for very long, probably due to the fact that I'm only half Empyrean. As for why I didn’t tell you, it’s because if I did, you would’ve insisted on inducing your own birth dangerously early”

“Hmm... what time is it?”

I poked my head out the window to look at the palace’s clock tower, and reported to the ladies that it was about an hour before noon. Not much time, but enough.

“In that case, let’s go. Tama, if you could assist like before”

“Of course”

As I shifted back into my natural form, Tilly pulled a bell cord by the bed, and not thirty seconds later did a maid come into the room.

“Could you pass an urgent message to Xena? She’ll likely be in the infirmary, tell her to meet me in the usual place, she’ll know where that is”

The usual place, by the way, was a secret infirmary accessible through only a handful of hidden passages, made to care for the imperial family when they were gravely ill. It had a small courtyard garden as well, fully enclosed by walls that had no windows, which is where Yuri would be giving birth under the bright light of the sun.

While the maid raced out of the room at top speed, I gave the two women some handrails to hold onto while they moved into the imperial walk-in closet, put a specific code into the dial on the wall, and then went down the stairs that appeared. The tunnel they traveled down didn’t branch off, ever, and after walking for just a few minutes we arrived at a room with a wide assortment of medical and alchemical tools - I’d been making use of the latter for the last few years - as well as a trio of large beds and a pair of exam tables. Tilly and Yuri sat on the edge of one of the beds, and waited in silence for a few minutes until an elderly devilkin lady hobbled in.

“I see someone didn’t send for me when she first felt her contractions. So, I’m assuming you want to follow through on the plan? It is a bit early, but not too early to be unduly risky”

“Yes, I do intend on giving birth at the same time as Yuri. Otherwise, it’ll be hard to pass the kids off as the result of one single pregnancy”

“Given how big your bellies are, I’m not sure it’ll be easy just based on the likely numbers... but, I am Your Majesty’s loyal subject, your wish is my command”

I’m not sure either of the other two heard what the midwife muttered, but I, hiding in the shadows under one of the other beds, certainly did. She then handed Tilly a pill I’d made with extra care, refining almost a hundred of them until I got one with a level of quality I was satisfied with. It didn’t have a fancy name, it was just known as the Midwife's Induction Pill, and it did exactly what the name suggested - it induces labor in someone who is pregnant. It has a few other effects, mostly to do with making the birthing process go more smoothly and somewhat more quickly than normal, so she also handed a second one to Yuri and instructed both of them to eat it only after they had moved to the garden.

So, up a shallow ramp they all slowly walked, eventually sliding a wall out of the way to reveal a secluded courtyard filled with greenery with a large open space in the middle. Two beds and some other equipment had been set up there, and I, per prior instructions from Tilly, was in a sunbeam on a rock in a corner of the courtyard that Xena couldn’t see from the center.

After about half an hour of listening to two women screaming in pain - a soundproofing barrier had been set up over the courtyard many centuries ago, so nobody but the four of us could hear what was going on in there - I heard a third voice join in the screaming, and soon after, a fourth, fifth, and sixth. When the fourth baby came into the world, however, the one who began screaming was not the child but the midwife.

“Antidote, antidote! I need antidote pills!”

I heard her frantically searching through her bins full of pill bottles, and as I came out I watched as Xena stumbled and fell against the table in her panic. So I shifted into the form I’d used as Tama the alchemist, complete with pill master’s robes, but while also wearing my mask to hide my identity.

“What kind of poison do you need an antidote for?”

“AH! WHO ARE YOU? HOW DI-”

“I’m the father of those children. I’m also an alchemist, and I deal with poisons frequently. What kind of poison is it?”

“I don’t know... but this child, the one with violet skin, has been exuding poison since the moment she was born. My hands are numb and - oh shit, another baby - no, I can’t deliver it while my hands are covered in poison, what do I do?”

“Hmm... I see. Wash your hands with this for now, then give me a minute or two and I’ll have a better antidote concocted. It won’t be perfect but it should work well enough”

As she washed her hands with a general-use cleansing solution, I put on a pair of gloves and picked up the girl with blotchy purple skin and snow-white fur, examining her briefly before figuring out what was going on. She was simultaneously incredibly lucky and horribly unlucky, as she had the literal one in several billion odds of being born with an elemental physique, where her body was not only naturally attuned to but was in fact partially made out of one specific kind of elemental spirit. The problem came from what kind of spirit that was - the poison element. The poison she exuded wasn’t any kind of toxin you might think of being produced by plants, animals, or even concocted by alchemists, but instead it was poison elemental spirit so dense it took on a physical form.

The good news is, that’s a lot easier to make an antidote for than most poisons of similar potency. The bad news is, it’s going to take years for her to be able to consciously control the production and emission of that poison spirit mist. One other good thing is that I happened to know how to make a pill that would suppress a spirit body’s external traits. It was one of the few specific formulae Master actually wrote down, most of the other formulae I learned were products of knowledge on various materials’ properties, and because of that, they didn’t have a specific ingredient list, many different ingredients could be substitutes for each part. 

The Spirit Body Seal pill does take a few hours to make, and I don’t even have all the materials, but I do know that the Alchemist’s Association has them. Maybe it’s time for Tama the Alchemist to make a triumphant return? I decided to think about that later, since at the moment I had to do something about the other children who were dying from the poisonous spirit mist this girl was spreading around. Even I could feel myself starting to succumb to its effects, my vision and thinking growing slightly hazy as I felt my breathing become difficult.

I pulled out a few pills, sliced them into something close to a powder using some wire-like blades of Solid Nothing, and combined them with a few fresh ingredients - suture vine leaves, and then both the sap of the elnechiman tree and the juice of its fruit. Without even any heat, just by mashing them with a mortar and pestle, I got a decent paste, which I quickly strained and pressed to make a thin liquid I could feed to everyone here. I started by giving myself and Xena a dose so we didn’t collapse at an inopportune time, then Yuri, who seemed to be quite affected by her daughter’s poison, and only then did I begin to dribble some into each baby’s mouth. Once I’d given a dose to all five babies, I gave the last dose to Tilly... and began making more when Xena pulled out a sixth screaming infant.

“I’m glad we have servants who’ll be taking care of their needs, I shudder to think about what it’d be like taking care of sextuplets without them”

“It’ll be at least nonuplets, Yuri has at least one more and Tilly has another one behind the one I’m seeing now”

“Okay, let me rephrase: I’m glad I’m not going to be involved in the messy cacophony that will be the childcare for these kits, I’m pretty much just the sperm donor and a friend of their mothers, that’s it”

“Speaking of, why do they have some tabaxi traits if neither you nor their mothers are tabaxi?”

“Because this isn’t my real form, it’s just the one most suited to alchemy and handling hazardous entities like poison-mist-producing babies. Can you imagine how hard it’d be to get it out of fur? And how hard it’d be to hold a baby with paws and claws?”

“You make a good point”

I generally do make good points, yes.

[No you don’t]

[We certainly can agree with that assessment]

[The readers might not, but that’s because of the biased viewpoint you’ve been sharing]

[And this is where he’ll sssay sssomething like “ssstop that, there’s no author or readers, this isn’t a ssstory or sssaga”]

[No, this is where he’ll stay silent]

I mean, Fives is right there, but...

[Looks like I win]

[Oh fuck off]

Guess I’m not staying silent after all.

CaTastrophy427

This overall took a bit longer than I expected, but it's also a lot longer than I expected - and yet didn't get quite as far as I'd expected either. As a side note, I'm starting to regret the chapter naming convention I came up with, but it's just a tad too late to change it. C'est la vie. I know I'm leaving y'all on a cliffhanger (I think that might be like my first or second one ever?) but... I'm off to work on my other novel. Direct any complaints about this to me in my discord server I guess. And now I'mma shut up and double check the formatting because it's like three minutes until my usual publication time and I wanna get this out on the weekend like I said I would