A Jaded Life

Chapter 1318

“Maggie, a moment of your time, please,” I requested, after the collection of women whom I had talked to earlier had agreed to let me take the lead in talking to the local boss-lady. That had taken much longer than I would have liked, but the delay had mostly been the result of needing to calm the angry segment of said ladies enough that they could talk without starting to rant and vent again. They had, quite obviously, a serious amount of repressed emotions, and their current, unexpected circumstances gave them a valve to vent that steam. Which they had done. Loudly, enthusiastically and with more endurance than I would have believed possible. In hindsight, I should have used some of my traits to turn down my hearing, or maybe focus it elsewhere, tuning them out that way. But, alas, I hadn’t thought of it at the time.

“What is it?” Maggie asked, looking up after putting down a few extra notes on the piece of paper she had been working on. It was somewhat amusing to see a spiral notebook still in use, given the work their community had put into rebuilding everything after the Change, to avoid the peculiar, rapid decay that so many things from before had undergone. But these notebooks, and paper in general, were still widely used.

“You are aware that I’ve talked with a fairly sizable group today, regarding some assistance?” I asked, just to make sure we started at the beginning. When she nodded with a frown on her face, I continued.

“There’s an issue, and I’d like to have your support to investigate. It might turn into relatively serious trouble in the somewhat short to medium term,” I told her, only for her frown to turn into an expression of light confusion and amusement.

“That’s a lot of qualifiers there. ‘Relatively serious’ and ‘somewhat short to medium term’? What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, not even trying to hide the amusement in her voice.

“‘Relatively serious’, means an issue that will affect the entire community but won’t be a danger to it. Just a hassle for everyone involved, but there won’t be widespread death due to it,” I explained, barely avoiding promising there would be no death due to the issue. Sadly, I had a feeling that maternal mortality and infant mortality would rise quite a bit compared to before the change, but, hopefully, it wouldn’t rise to historical levels. Even the idea made something within me clench in distaste, a reminder that I should investigate the connection between the Domain of the Mother and myself. While these slightly foreign impressions and instincts were interesting, I had no wish to be manipulated, even if the manipulation came from a part of myself. Or bound to myself, I wasn’t sure how exactly divine domains worked just yet.

“The time-frame is somewhat uncertain, too. Primarily this year, but the events will obviously continue to affect the future for quite some time,” I shrugged again, and I had a feeling that Maggie had figured something out.

“Explain,” she demanded, the amusement now completely gone.

“You might have noticed that I kept the women who sought my assistance back,” I asked, getting a nod in response, making me curious just how she had noticed that.

“The thing is, each and everyone of them is pregnant. Even someone who shouldn’t be able to get pregnant, due to age and previous medical intervention. But that didn’t matter; they all are, and I’d like to investigate if that is true for every woman of the Blessed City,” I explained, noticing the expression of horror on Maggie’s face.

“All of them?!” she shouted, her voice just a little shrill. “That’s impossible!”

“All of those whom I’ve examined, yes,” I shrugged once more, “As for the impossibility, I would have agreed that it shouldn’t be possible. But reality seems to disagree.” There was little else to say to that, no matter how ‘impossible’ we thought something was, if it had happened, it obviously was possible.

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“Yikes,” Maggie shuddered, “That’s going to be a mess in nine months, isn’t it?” She paused for a few seconds, then she nodded. “Regardless, investigate as much as necessary. This could turn seriously messy.”

“Agreed,” I nodded, turning to leave Maggie’s office. In the meantime, Maggie was staring into space, her eyes unfocused, making me wonder what she was thinking.

Now, the issue became, how was I supposed to check that many people? Not only was it time-consuming, even if a single check only took a minute, with some six or seven hundred people, that was still an entire day of nothing but back-to-back checks, which wouldn’t be feasible. So the best bet was probably to put up signs on the buildings I had set up for the newly arrived people, direct them to Jess, or maybe set up some sort of office to manage these checks.

Doing so would also give us a location to deal with future issues, though I had no idea how to even come close to handling that many pregnant women and the eventual births, all at roughly the same time. This was, quite frankly, a massive logistical nightmare, one I couldn’t help but feel responsible for.

When I arrived at the dormitories, I began posting signs, talking to the few women in attendance, and checking them in as I went. They, too, were pregnant, and every one of them was another nail in the coffin that it had only been a coincidence that all the women I had talked to earlier were pregnant, but nobody else. It had been a faint possibility, but that possibility was quickly put to rest.

Eventually, all the buildings had signs, and the present women were examined, and I retreated to an open space near the newly built buildings. There, I reached out into the ground, quickly finding a good amount of stone to work with. This area had been given to me to build on for a reason: the rocky, infertile ground made it incredibly bad for farming. But excellent to build on, using my magical methods.

Given the need, I began to draw up stone from the ground, first to form the foundations of the buildings I was constructing, and then to create the rest. It was familiar work, something I could lose myself in, though I had to put in some effort to give this building the features I wanted. This wouldn’t just be an office for the women to get their appointments; it would eventually be the building where they gave birth. That meant it had to be fairly large to accommodate the hundreds of expectant mothers, most of whom would give birth within a narrow window, and it needed to be safe, secure, and somewhat comfortable.

All of those aspects meant that building the structure took a lot of effort, to the point that I found myself sliding into a fugue state, where I effectively lost sight of reality, and only two things mattered: The building I was creating and drawing in more power from the Astral River, so I could continue building. Everything else faded into the background.

By the time I snapped out of that state, the sun had set a while ago, and the moon had risen. I had spent hours setting up the building and had only managed to get the rough shell, driving home just how large it was and how strongly I had reinforced and enhanced the construction. Even with only a casual touch, I could feel the stone brim with power, and not just Astral Power. Somehow, I had managed to imbue the stones with a touch of divinity, though I wasn’t able to easily tell what the blessing would do. Probably support the birthing process and help heal mothers and children, or something along those lines. It would be fitting for a building that was essentially a maternity hospital, big enough to serve a community much larger than the one currently established here. But then, it took a rather extraordinary situation to get a significant percentage of all women pregnant at the same time, and to have all of them share a delivery window was beyond improbable. And yet, exactly that had happened here.

Hopefully, the hospital would be sufficient to help them, especially if I took the time to provide as much magical assistance as I could when the time came.

Shaking my head, I turned my back to the hospital I had just pulled from the ground. Tomorrow, I will have to finish the rest of the building. For now, it was merely a shell, though a sturdy one and blessed with divine power; it needed much more to be usable.

Once that was done, I’d have to find a few people to man the reception, maybe find out if Maggie knows a few people who would be interested in taking the role of healer or doctor, whatever they would eventually be called. Somehow, this had turned into an even bigger issue than I had expected.