V3Epilogue-Labor for the Wicked

Tybalt turned to the mummies all around him.

“We have to go,” the necromancer said. “I have to go… become a father.”

He touched his Undead Storage seal, pushed a little mana in, and quickly went around and sucked in all the surrounding undead.

Then he teleported to the location where he sensed Robert was.

The necromancer landed just outside a gigantic white tent by the seaside, near the Whadesgart port but outside the town walls. The large location had been set up specifically for this purpose, to give Tybalt an easier route to his wives when they were giving birth.

“Do you want us to go inside the town walls, Your Majesty?” One of two midwives - Pearl was her name - poked her head out of the tent and spoke up as soon as the necromancer appeared.

“Have there been any difficulties yet?” he asked.

The other midwife stepped out alongside Pearl as he spoke, and when he finished, the women exchanged a glance, raising a frown on the necromancer’s face.

“Talk to me, please,” he said gently.

“No complications yet, no, sire,” said the other midwife, Heather.

“Then keep them here, ideally in the same room,” Tybalt ordered. “As long as there’s a room big enough. I want to be there for both of the births. And I want them to cheer each other on.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the midwives said, bowing their heads.

“The only reason I might have suggested moving inside is just in case,” said Pearl. She lowered her voice. “If there is an emergency, there is a surgeon in town who can open up a woman in such a situation, and… save the babe.”

“I have the power to do that myself,” Tybalt replied simply. Surgeons, he knew from past observation and from reading Invisible Enemies, were basically incompetent when it came to conducting any procedure safely. They were good at cutting people open, removing things, and then closing them up. Those were all things Tybalt could do more effectively than them, while also watching out for microbes. At his level of skill manipulating both flesh and pestilence, he thought it was safe to say that if he had to perform a procedure to remove a child, he could do better than a surgeon.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” the midwives said in unison, visibly nervous.

It was their existing anxiety that made him refrain from issuing any threats as to what might happen if one of his wives was hurt or killed. That wouldn’t be productive right now. The midwives were already aware that their lives hung in the balance.

Instead, he stepped inside the tent, where Mariella lay calmly, breathing deeply and counting quietly to herself.

Several feet away, Vidalia lay, an uncomfortable expression on her face, and moaned. Both women wore only loose-fitting robes rather than their usual clothing, which told Tybalt they were already well into the process.

“Oh, you’re here, darling, ohhhhh.”

“You should see to her first,” Mariella said quietly.

“I’m fine,” Vidalia said through gritted teeth.

“The dream seer has been in labor for longer, Your Majesty,” said Pearl. “She doesn’t seem to be advancing very quickly, though.”

“I’m fine,” Vidalia practically snarled.

“Pearl, you help Mariella,” Tybalt said. “Heather, you work on Vidalia. You can both work together if one starts giving birth.” There seemed to be some friction between Pearl and Vidalia - or just the tension of the birthing situation - but he wasn’t going to let anything ruin this day.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” both midwives replied instantly.

The necromancer spent the next couple of hours walking back and forth between Vidalia and Mariella, holding their hands, rubbing their shoulders, giving them sips of water - and then the fire mage let out a loud noise that sounded almost more like a farm animal than a human.

“She’s ready, sir!” Pearl exclaimed.

The necromancer and Pearl gave Mariella all the attention they could, but ultimately, red-faced and panting hard, she lay on her back and began to strain and push on her own.

Tybalt stood over her, wondering where to put his hands - he felt very nervous and unprepared suddenly - but then the fire mage smiled at him.

“No problems,” she breathed. “Feels great!”

“He’s crowning!” Pearl said, crouching down and lowering her head to look between Mariella’s legs.

Tybalt barely remembered what that meant. The midwife could see the top of the baby’s head.

Already?

Mariella started groaning and grunting. Tybalt stepped to one side and took her hand. She squeezed hard as she exerted herself.

“I forget how strong you are,” he said. “We’ll have to spar again once this baby is out.”

She gritted her teeth rather than smiling.

But the birth only took a few minutes from there. The head popped out, and Pearl guided Tybalt’s hands down to the back of the head. The two of them pulled the child free together. The necromancer had requested this when planning the births with the midwives. He wanted to help pull the children into the world with his own hands.

He reached out and closed his fingers around the umbilical cord, severing it instantly with Fleshcraft.

“Let me,” Mariella said breathlessly. “Ha, let me hold him.”

Tybalt nodded and handed her the baby, a big, healthy-looking child with a full head of dark-colored hair plastered to his head.

As the midwives both moved to focus on Vidalia, the necromancer stayed close to his firstborn son and Mariella. The baby had begun to feed as Tybalt sat down beside Mariella, but Tybalt put his arm around mother and child and simply added his warmth to what his wife was already giving.

I’m a father now, he thought, his heart pounding. How is that…? How is it possible that I’m a father? Me. I went from a bastard with no family, nothing to my name, to a father who has everything possible to give to his children… The heavens are showering their blessings upon me.

They sat like this for almost half an hour, the necromancer tenderly stroking his firstborn son’s hair in between rubbing Mariella’s shoulders or kissing her temple.

“This is such a beautiful day,” he said.

Mariella nodded, speechless but clearly feeling the same sentiment as him.

Then Vidalia cried out. She was finally arriving at the same finish line Mariella had reached earlier. The fire mage smiled and nodded for him to go to her.

“Good luck,” Mariella said.

Tybalt nodded, kissed her tenderly on the lips, and rose to his feet.

Then he was with the foxgirl, holding her hands as she moaned and grunted, red-faced, already panting, her body having a noticeably more difficult time handling the strain of childbirth than Mariella had.

On the plus side, Tybalt was able to help a bit more with Vidalia’s birth. He applied pressure to her hips in a way the midwives had shown him weeks before.

On the other hand, he became very nervous as her labor went on longer and longer.

The midwives, both working on Vidalia now, exchanged anxious looks, to Tybalt’s annoyance. He could feel the effect that had on the foxgirl.

She looked to Tybalt for reassurance, and he whispered sweet words into her ear.

He wouldn’t let anything happen to her, he would protect her, he would heal her if something tore. Those words seemed to make a difference.

Thankfully, finally, with far more apparent physical exertion than Mariella had demonstrated, pouring sweat and tears down her cheeks, Vidalia managed to push the baby’s head out. Heather and Tybalt grabbed the gooey, hairy baby head and guided it the rest of the way as quickly as they could, and Heather removed the umbilical cord from where it had managed to wind itself around the child’s neck.

The necromancer, for his part, used a soft towel to wipe the viscera away from the boy’s face. Then he severed the umbilical cord with Fleshcraft as he had for the first child.

He’s breathing, Tybalt thought as the baby’s chest slowly rose and fell. He hadn’t realized how worried he had been until he had that thought.

“He’s handsome, huh?” Vidalia asked, her voice exhausted but somehow still full of the bravado she sometimes showed - the false confidence covering up insecurity that he found endearing.

“He looks like… like both of us,” Tybalt said.

The baby was smaller than Mariella’s, and he had sandy brown hair, a mix of Tybalt and Vidalia’s hair colorations. The necromancer was a little surprised to note that the child didn’t have fox ears or a tail, but he recalled there was roughly a fifty-fifty chance of that when humans and beastfolk interbred.

“Yeah, exactly, so handsome,” Vidalia said, crossing her arms weakly in front of her chest - normally small, but now swollen with pregnancy and full of milk.

The sound of footsteps drew his gaze to the left.

Mariella stood there, leaning on Pearl, who was helping the fire mage to walk while the midwife held the other baby in her hands.

“Congratulations,” Mariella said, looking back and forth from the baby in Tybalt’s arms to Vidalia.

“I think you deserve the congratulations more,” the foxgirl replied, wrinkling her nose. “You won the race.”

“Your boy is beautiful,” the fire mage said, looking back to the baby Tybalt held.

“So is yours,” Vidalia said, though the necromancer knew she hadn’t gotten a good look at Mariella’s child yet.

Pearl stepped forward and handed Tybalt his other boy, and he took both children in his arms. Almost at the exact same moment, they opened their eyes and looked up at him.

It was so close together that later, he wouldn’t be able to tell which one’s eyelids parted first.

From his left, a pair of green eyes identical to his own stared deep into his. From his right, the boy looked at him through narrow slitted eyes, as if he wanted to go to sleep. One eye was green like Tybalt’s. The other was blue-gray, like his mother’s.

“They’re very beautiful,” the necromancer murmured.

Then his son with Vidalia, the boy with the mismatched eyes, began to cry.

Oh, no…

“It’s all right, Tybalt, come here,” Vidalia said.

The necromancer gave her a look but walked toward her.

“There, there, Tybalt,” she cooed as she took the baby, all her attention on the boy now.

Tybalt realized that without discussing it at all, the foxgirl had decided to name their firstborn child after him.

He turned to Mariella. “Did you have a name in mind for our son?” he asked. “In all the fuss of planning for conquest, I seem to have left this for the last minute.”

The fire mage nodded with a tired smile. “Yeah. Your tutor’s name. Balthus.” The midwife helped her to ease herself down to a position on the floor. “He seems like one of the only people from your past who was actually a good influence, someone you liked and respected.”

Tybalt nodded. “I like it.”

I’m glad you didn’t pick Tybalt too, he thought. That’s a fight I wouldn’t want to have today.

The midwives helped the necromancer, his wives, and their two sons to get comfortable in the blankets on the floor, and Tybalt held his family close.

Despite all that he had already done, it felt like his real life had only just begun.