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Like a fool, Alphinaud thinks everything is going swimmingly until the moment he feels the kiss of a cold blade against his neck. Even then, he resists, sure he’ll escape until the moment Yuyuhase cuts open his pants and slips his short, cold fingers inside him.
Afterward—after each of his beloved Braves have had their turn—he lays on the cold stone floor like a fish left too long out of water. He barely feels their hands when they haul him up and begin to drag him away. But the Flame General’s son intervenes.
Later, Alphinaud wishes he hadn’t.
His friends are glad to see him alive, but they don’t feel the sticky seed dripping down the inside of his pants as he does. At Camp Dragonhead, he throws himself into a tub of near-scalding liquid and scoops it out of him until it floats in sticky trails across the surface of the sudsy water.
But it’s already too late.
Moons come and go, each with an expected menses that doesn’t come. His cycles aren’t yet regular, and so he makes excuses. Ignores his premonitions. Studies arcane entities long into the night to muffle the worry evoked by his tender breasts inside his bindings.
He toils and toils at his obsidian carbuncle, trying to forget Yuyuhase’s chilly touch until he can’t any longer. Until the breeches Tataru made him won’t stretch anymore, no matter how he tries to force them. Until his belly finally grows too taut to ignore, his navel leading as it juts out in a shallow but unmistakable rise that presses gently against the front of his slim tunic.
Tataru cries alongside him when he tells her. The Warrior of Light’s expression hardens into a mask, and they disappear for three days. They say nothing to Alphinaud when they return, and he retreats to his room to cry some more, whispering shameful apologies into his pillow.
When all is said and done, he is relegated to Fortemps Manor as the others continue their tasks. With nothing else to occupy his mind, his late night studies become his daily studies as well, and he perfects his obsidian carbuncle. But when he stands up from his desk to attempt its first summoning, he jerks at the sharp pain that shoots down from his navel to his groin.
In doing so, he catches sight of himself in the mirror. The tunic that once laid so perfectly straight and princely bows outward, clinging to Alphinaud’s protruding belly on its way back down. His face already looks rounder, his hips and thighs wide and plush. Tears spring to his eyes. He blinks them away, then returns to his desk and begins work on another carbuncle.
Time passes too quickly. Space inside him is limited, and in hardly no time at all, his belly overtakes his thin frame. It surpasses his quickly growing breasts, proudly proclaiming its domination to all who lay eyes upon him. One hand on his painfully arched back, he tries to ignore the whispers. But each time someone utters the word she , he can’t help but tear up at the stabbing pain in his chest.
A cold, bitter Ishgardian winter comes, and with it comes a fluttering in his belly. The first time he feels it, he stiffens, and his hand balls into a fist. But no matter how many times he tries to strike himself, his arm won’t lift, and then yet more tears come.
He lets them.
He cries, begging his conscience for mercy. It responds, as always, with wave after wave of hot, sticky shame, and before long, his hesitance allows the fluttering to become firm, clear movements. Kicking. Pressing. Turning over. He awakes in the night to his entire belly shifting as the unwanted creature inside him rolls over in its uninterrupted sleep.
Soon he no longer awakens, because he stops sleeping. He stops eating as well, and when Tataru notices, she cooks him a beautiful meal of braised dodo. This won’t last forever, she reminds him. He can’t bring himself to thank her, and he can’t remember the last time he saw the Warrior of Light.
Winter turns to spring, and his breath grows short. He retreats to his room, waddling from wall to wall in discomfort as his unmanageably large belly somehow continues to expand. It sweeps outward from his pubic bone and swoops back in beneath his ribs, affording him no space to sit straight at his desk.
He is lamenting this under his breath when he first feels it.
A tightening.
He goes stiff, frozen in fear as his belly constricts, pressing a weight he knows must be a head down, against his closed cervix. The force increases, quickly building to a crescendo. His legs spread, the unbearable pressure forcing them apart, and he lets out a low moan.
Then, the onslaught stops, receding as quickly as it came. He sits up most of the night, trembling as he waits for it to return. For his nightmare’s climax to begin.
It does, the next morning.
And then that evening.
And then the next afternoon.
The attacks are uncoordinated. Irregular. He knows his body is practising. He can feel a growing restlessness in his bones, and with each renewed wave of tightness, he shakes harder, and for longer afterward.
Mind awash with images of others staring at him, spreading his legs, slipping their hands inside him, he stops leaving his room. Tataru sets down food at the door for him, but he hardly touches it. His belly reaches its limit, and grows hard. His firm, swollen breasts ooze into the front of his last fitting nightgown no matter how much he tries to staunch their flow. Tired of crying each time he sees himself, he turns his mirror to face the wall.
Eventually, the inevitable comes.
When it does, he’s asleep. He jolts awake, one hand gripping his belly beneath his navel as it tightens. At first, it feels like the others before it, and he inhales, tolerating the sensation. But the crescendo doesn’t come when he expects it to. His belly continues to constrict, pressing the creature’s head down into his pelvis until a dull ache blooms. Feeling as if his belly’s about to burst, Alphinaud grits his teeth, but it's not enough.
“Ah!”
He muffles the cry into his pillow, and the pain slips away. He only gets a short reprieve before it returns again, and again, and again.
He tries to hold in his increasingly pained cries. To be courageous and keep quiet so it’ll be over before anyone notices. His body strains fruitlessly, trying again and again to open itself for in an endeavour he’d never wanted to partake in, and he writhes.
“Ah—Twelve!” he cries from behind clenched teeth.
But then, after what seems like eons of agony, a gush of sticky, mucous-like fluid runs from him. His belly torques in a new sensation, bearing down with a strength that causes his eyes to water. The pressure descends, and before he can catch his breath, his belly clenches once more, eliciting a sob. He cries helplessly, his body holding all the power as it bears down over and over against his will.
The weight reaches his ending, and his breath hitches as he feels himself open. But then, he feels a stretching in his loins, and on its heels comes a brightly burning agony like the embrace of a flame.
His courage deserts him.
He shrieks .
Bodies rush into the room. Their hands clamp down upon his arms and shoulders, holding him to the mattress as he thrashes in a frenzied panic. His massive belly torques again, and the monster’s head stretches his opening, straining to escape, only to recede back into him.
He sobs. Screams. Cries out for his mother.
Tataru climbs upon his chest. Gripping his cheeks, she beseeches him to push. Alphinaud grits his teeth and complies. His belly burns, his entire body rattling. He shrieks again as he stretches to his limit around the monster’s skull once more, but then he runs out of breath, and it slips back inside, all his effort wasted.
“It’s not coming out,” a voice says. “We need to cut him.”
“No!” he yells, kicking his feet at the bodies clustered around the foot of the bed.
But then his belly tightens again, distracting him. Hands grip his ankles, drawing his legs apart, and he screams the word no over and over again as someone slips their cold fingers between his opening and the monster’s head.
It slithers from his body like a snake, releasing a wet, fleshy squelch. Alphinaud’s breath explodes from him in a mix between a sigh and a sob, his chest heaving uncontrollably. Anticipating the coming cry, he claps his hands over his ears.
But he has no limbs left to cover his eyes. Someone holds the monster up to him, a broad smile on their face. Its head is covered in blonde down, and it opens its eyes. They’re a familiar, filmy gold, and are flanked by his long ears.
Alphinaud can’t help it. Bitter vomit gushes from his mouth and nose, and Tataru climbs off his chest to help him, her tears overflowing and trailing down her cheeks.
“Take him away,” someone commands.
The monster disappears. Hanging over the edge of the bed, his belly loose and slack and his face plastered with sour sweat, Alphinaud closes his eyes and sinks into the darkness.