"Oceane! Grace! Are these your children?" I said in shock as I approached the two of them. "I completely forgot you were trying for children, you never mentioned them in any of your letters!"
Oceane was brimming with happiness. Her hard and sharp exterior has eased a lot since I last saw her. "They are! Come look, I'd like you to meet them!"
The baby Oceane was holding looked a lot like her. Instead of legs, the baby had a long tail coiled around one of her mother's arms. Sky blue scales glittered across her entire body in a lighter tone than the blue parts of her mother's scales, but were a solid color rather than Oceane's blue and white. Bright green eyes peered out of her incredibly cute face. She had small batlike wings behind her, but they didn't look like they would be large enough to lift her up any time soon. Like Ashe, the baby looked more developed than her age would suggest, and she was smiling up at me as I looked down at her. The young baby reached out and took one of my fingers into her tiny hand, squeezing it gently in interest.
Oceane smiled. "If you're wondering how old Cerulean is, she was actually in my belly for a bit longer than her sister there. The two of them were actually born on the same day! Even though they were conceived a while apart, this little troublemaker didn't want to come out until her sister did."
I turned to the floppy-eared Grace in shock, who smiled even more warmly than Oceane did. "It is true. Though neither one of us had expected to give birth so soon. We had our midwives checking on us daily when it looked like we were already due. Even though Cerulean had been conceived later than Cinnamon, both of them came much earlier than most pregnancies... As I expect you are already aware, based on that cute child I see Bella holding over there."
Grace held out Cinnamon for me to look at. She looked a lot more like Grace than Oceane, with a shimmery tan and brown coloring. I could see why they chose to call her Cinnamon. Her shiny speckled fur looked almost like cinnamon sugar. She was a canine beastfolk with cute floppy ears like her mother, but had the bright blue eyes of Oceane. So far, there has been a pattern of the Lilim looking mostly like their mother with some traits inherited from their sire. She had a thin succubus tail rather than a typical canine one, but she was cutely wagging it the way a dog might.
While I was absorbed in meeting Cerulean and Cinnamon, Bella had brought over Ashe to show off. Ashe looked excited to see them, and the other babies reacted similarly to her. Ashe has repeatedly shown herself to be a lot more intelligent than I would normally expect a baby of her age to be, though she hadn't said her first words yet. Normally children this large might already be speaking, but it seemed none of the three were there yet, despite all of them looking like toddlers already. It seems like Oceane's children are also rather smart for their age, based on the way they were interacting with us.
Oceane looked around and giggled. "Let's take this to my office. I believe we may be disrupting business by showing off our children here."
As we walked past the crowd and up the stairs, I had many of the succubi I recognized wave at me. Some I had only met a few times after their transformations, but I also recognized people like Nadia, Tisha, and Jade in the crowd that came to meet us. I promised to talk with many of them later and reassured them that we wouldn't be leaving for a while. If things went according to plan, we would be staying through the winter and only returning to Traehall in early spring. Bella followed me up the stairs, but everyone else in our group left to chat with their acquaintances here.
The thing that has to have changed the most since we were last here is Oceane's office. A lot of her usual furniture had been moved out, and a relatively large area had been set up for the babies to sit and play. Grace's desk had also been moved in here. The two workspaces were on either ends of the room, instead of Oceane's old intimidating monster of a desk taking up all the space.
Oceane chuckled. "I'm not surprised to see that look on your face. I never would have expected to move around my office like this either, but there are advantages to the two of us sharing this space while we get work done."
Grace and Oceane sat their children in the small baby pen, and Grace waved for Bella to do the same. With a smile, Bella set Ashe down in the play area and let the children get acquainted with each other.
"It's nice to have another child for Ashe to play with. There aren't any other children her age in Traehall right now," Bella said with a smile.
"Ashe looks a lot more like a mix of you two than either of our children does," Grace noted.
I shrugged. "It's hard to say how things work yet. But I see that Cinnamon has your eyes, Oceane."
Oceane smiled widely. "I noticed that right away, too. I was very excited to see the resemblance." Oceane reached out to gently take Grace's hand. "I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunities to see if this is a pattern that holds."
Grace rolled her eyes, but still smiled at Oceane's attention. "It has been quite amusing to see my wife get so lovey-dovey after our children were born. She never used to be this way."
"Wife?" I asked, surprised.
Oceane smiled and nodded. "We officially got married two months ago. It was just a small ceremony in the Morkinnen church. We didn't want to make a large spectacle of it, but we may have a larger ceremony for it later. As much as I would love to do something like that, things are much too busy for anything more elaborate right now."
"Why didn't you say anything in your letters?" I asked. "This is big news!"
Grace laughed. "It's not that big of a deal. As Oceane said, it was just a small ceremony. Only a few of our closest friends in the brothel attended. You should have seen us though, the two of us were both so large we could barely walk when we decided to go through with it."
The four of us laughed together at the image.
"Maybe we can get married too while we're here," Bella said with a slightly dreamy expression.
I blushed and nodded. "I've imagined having a huge wedding... but maybe something smaller would be appropriate for us as well. It would be nice to have a large ceremony in Goldenhearth, but there are a lot of people in Traehall that I would want to attend too, and that just isn't realistic at the moment."
Bella seemed to mull over the idea in her head before finally shaking it. "I think at this point, I would rather wait and have a large celebration later. Our first child was already born before we were married, so I don't think there's any rush."
Grace stood up to make tea for all of us while we chatted about a few light topics. Oceane asked me about how Raya and Sibyl were doing, how things were going as a whole in Traehall, and we shared some of our early experiences with parenthood. Bella and I shared our observations about their apparent differences with fully grown succubi and my decision to call them 'Lilim' to differentiate them from transformed succubi. Oceane and Grace had no objection to that, having come to some of the same conclusions based on their own observations about the children.
The conversation began to drift toward the former members of the Tamin church I had told her about in my last letter. We hadn't delved into anything serious yet, but it was already clear that we were about to get into the actual reason for our trip here.
After setting a cup of warm tea in front of each of us, Grace sat down. "Should we call Morrigan and Torien here for this part of the conversation?"
I nodded. "As much as I would like for the two of them to have more time to relax, I think we should start discussing our plans going forward. I didn't want to be too open about our reasons for visiting over letter."
Oceane nodded. "Wise. I wouldn't expect you to travel with your newborn child for no reason."
Bella turned away, looking a bit guilty, but I decided I didn't want to reopen such a fresh wound. The two of us had reconciled over what had happened, and it really wasn't her fault in the end. There was no reason to clarify why we had chosen to take Ashe along. Now that she was here, I was actually glad she came along though, a bit of socialization with other children her age was probably a good experience for her. There was no way that the two of them had missed her reaction, but they chose not to ask.
"Yes," I said with a nod. "Cecilia has told you about our plans to secede from Eastern Torlimal, right?"
Oceane and Grace both nodded.
"Well, we have a plan to make Goldenhearth a bit more receptive to that idea."
"I don't think Eastern Torlimal will give up their claimed territory that easily, especially if they would basically be accepting another country boxing them in from the frontier," Oceane replied. Her demeanor had already sharpened back into the woman I remembered now that we were discussing more serious topics.
There was a slight knock from behind me, and a succubus I didn't recognize opened the door to let Morrigan and Torien through. "These are the two guests you asked for, Madame Oceane."
Oceane nodded. "Thank you, please leave us."
"Of course," she said with a nod before silently closing the door behind them.
Morrigan and Torien watched the two babies playing for a moment before sitting down next to the two of us on the couch.
"Now that the two of you are also here, what kind of plan do you have that will make Eastern Torlimal receptive to your secession?" Oceane asked.
Morrigan held out a hand and summoned a flame without even a hint of effort. "Because we can teach everyone how to use magic again."
Oceane's eyes widened. "All of you still retain the ability to use your magic?"
I nodded and summoned an illusory bird to demonstrate. "Morrigan is a wild mage. She figured out how to use magic again only days after System's End. We hadn't realized how few people would be able to grasp the new way that magic works without the system. It wasn't until I spoke with Corrine, formerly of the Tamin church, that I realized how rare that was. Watching the former mages in the streets of Norta and Goldenhearth has been a wake-up call."
Grace furrowed her brows. "Had Cecilia never mentioned how few people retained their magic when she traveled here in the past?"
Morrigan shook her head. "She had mentioned that former mages had become beggars, but we didn't realize the scale of the issue, or that it was because they had no other options. I had... wrongly assumed there would be other wild mages like myself that would have stepped into teach people how to use magic again like I did."
Oceane frowned. "There are a few people in Goldenhearth working on the problem from what I've heard, but no one has been able to figure out how to bridge the gap between wild magic and system magic yet. This could mean a lot... The war with Western Torlimal would be much easier to win with actual mages on the field. The city's security and the livelihood of the mage adventurers would all turn around if magic were back on the table."
Morrigan sighed. "It won't be that simple. I didn't bridge the gap between wild magic and system magic. In order to cast again, you have to relearn system spells using wild magic techniques. You essentially need to learn the basics of wild casting to regain access to your mana pool. Then, any spells you previously had through the system can be relearned, especially if they were very familiar to you, but it takes time and effort to get there. But I know how to teach it. I've been teaching others how to do it ever since System's End."
Grace laughed. "Lilith wrote in her letters that you had founded a school and become a teacher, but she never mentioned what you were teaching others. Perhaps we should have inquired, but this is extraordinary."
Oceane's smile grew, and the predatory grin I was familiar with reappeared on her face. "I see now... This is something you can definitely leverage into a clean break from Eastern Torlimal. I have someone to introduce to you first, though."