The dragon's harem

Years ago, a couple had newly married and awaited their first child with anticipation and happiness. Their lives had been nothing short of beautiful until then, and that was the last thing they needed: a child to anchor their family down and start a new stage in their lives.

But as the days passed, the mother started having problems with her pregnancy. Getting too tired, sickly, feeling extreme pain, and eventually, the child never made it.

Their first was a disaster, a sad and awful thing to experience, but it never managed to bring them down, and a year later, they were awaiting their second child.

But just like the first, it never made it beyond its six months and came out dead. No matter what healers or clerics they visited, the mother was just incapable of bearing the child that long. The reason remained unknown, and the two were finally breaking down, unwilling to try again and witness another of their children die.

So when the desperate couple failed to find help among the clerics and healers, they were forced to look elsewhere, and the wife ended up finding her way deep into the dark swamps of the human kingdom of Ruris.

There, in the middle of nowhere, she reached the one woman she was searching for. A witch that some of the locals told of her power and skill with alchemy and healing concoctions. Maybe the mother was sick, diseased, and she needed a mortal cure besides magic. The same way healing magic can’t stop fevers, whatever plagues her flesh might be the same.

But even the witch told her the same story that the clerics explained. She just can’t bear a child. But unlike them, she was able to add another detail, that the problem might not be physical or magical, but linked right to her soul.

She just cannot create a new life. Souls are like cells; after dividing several hundred or thousands of times, they reach a point where they cannot divide properly anymore.

She gave her a solution, though, and it was to look for a non-human husband, a monster with a powerful soul, one who could make up for her lacking life-force.

That witch never tried to hide the fact that she dabbles in necromancy, and that she was willing to try and resurrect her dead second child as a botched and zombified horror.

When the woman was unwilling to throw her husband away or taint her dead children, the witch directed her toward a nearby shrine.

Most divine beings, like the gods, never break the laws of the universe; they are willing to help people, but not at the expense of damaging or tampering with the fabric of fate. The witch herself was powerless, but her acquaintances weren’t, the ancient devils of hell.

But she did warn the woman that her situation was not salvageable. Whatever solution that shrine might give her, it’ll always come with either a hefty price or something else that they never wanted.

She even said. “Those who ask for the impossible are always taxed with impossible prices.”

Eventually, the woman found herself standing in front of a large, ancient, and crumbling statue of a cat… no, it was a jaguar, massive and fierce-looking. She prayed to it, but nothing happened.

The forest around it was thick, but calm; the sun was warm, but the air was cold. The place felt strange as the birds fell silent the moment she approached, and all of the flies and bugs flying in the forest landed, all looking toward the statue.

But what made her feel even more disturbed was that whenever she looked away from the statue, its eyes would shift to a new position, as if it were alive and looking around.

To most people, that would be the sign to leave and never come back. But to the desperate woman. It meant this place had real power in it.

She prayed, and prayed, and prayed for hours.

When her prayers remained unheard, she returned to the witch, where she heard some happy news for once. That shrine, it worked. The devil heard her prayers and promised to help her, not for free, but she’ll try.

All the woman needs to do is try to have another child a year from now. Agnar’s mother still remembered the witch’s freckled face, tanned skin, and eerie golden eyes, the acidic and rancid smell permeating through the shed, and the scattered skeletons; she even remembered her name, Morana.

The devil who’s Agnar’s mother ended up visiting was none other than an old, and long forgotten shrine dedicated to the goddess of the hunt, wilderness, and free will, Selena, Maharaja The God Eater.

Selena had promised to help, and so she got moving quickly, and she caused a lot of trouble for the gods. Not because of any malicious intent or trickery, she just never bothered to learn the rules.

First, she came unannounced to the underworld, the place where souls rest while waiting for the gods to pick them up for trial. There, she had Ereshkigal, the divine goddess of the underworld and caretaker of souls, find the souls of the woman’s children. The first one that died, it was already too late, its soul had already been digested back to energy and sent through the cycle of reincarnation, since no god could speak for it.

But the second soul, Selena, had arrived just in time before Ereshkigal could grind that soul. If she had been a week later, it would’ve been all for naught.

The soul she found was still not fully formed, slowly decaying and crumbling. A weak flame, barely able to exist as nothing more than mana and energy.

Ereshkigal saw no hope for that soul; even if Selena were to take it and put it in a healthy body, it would just fall apart and die days later. That’s why no god helped, because it was impossible to save that child with any means that didn’t involve something drastic that might end up unwanted.

It was then that Selena had another idea: if the woman wasn’t able to fully form the soul, why wouldn’t she just finish her work for her? So she took the soul, nested it in her womb for the coming months, and fully formed it into a devil.

Ereshkigal argued that turning the woman’s child into a devil like that is no different than killing it. But Selena argued back that as long as they never make it to hell before they naturally die, their soul being that of a devil would never affect their lives. Even their children would just take from the human part of their soul instead.

So when the woman had her third attempt for a child a year later, and the child died before getting born as expected, Maharaja was there waiting, and took the soul she’s been keeping stable and shoved it in there.

The third child died, but the second child’s soul that was reformed took place, and it latched onto the body.

The child was still born early in its sixth month; it was not fully developed, weak, fragile, but it still survived. It didn’t matter how weak the body was, how cold the winters were, or how harsh life got. That kid had a devil’s soul, and he was far more resilient than anyone else.

Agnar was then born in a human body, but with a stitched soul, half of it human, and half of it a devilish rakshasa, carrying the cruse and blessing of Maharaja.

What the parents noticed was that he was born a warlock, bearing the contract of his second mother since before birth, and his parents never risked it with another child ever again. In fact, they never knew he was their second child, not the third.

Maharaja also found it convenient to use her contract to slowly feed the devilish soul curses, so it won’t starve. Devils, after all, were supposed to live in hell, not the mortal world.

Agnar was growing, healthy, and energetic. Everything that his parents wanted in a child.

The woman, since then, returned to the witch and jaguar shrine, leaving gifts and prayers each year.