She dropped her sword, bowed over, and rubbed her hand across her swollen belly.
“We need to stop for a minute,” she said, breathing heavily as she leaned against a nearby tree.
“Eilee,” Treycore said. “There’s clearly something wrong. Sydar… or whatever that was… did something to you.”
“Yes… I’d… have… to agree.” Her hair was drenched with sweat as she breathed forcefully through clenched teeth. Her worn and tired appearance made her look like she’d been jogging all day, though because of her condition, they had walked a modest pace and taken frequent breaks.
“Oh!” she screamed.
She collapsed and curled into a ball, making fists and beating them against the ground.
“Oh, it hurts! It hurts so much!”
She rolled onto her back.
“Treycore, get it out of me!”
He looked at her, bewildered. “What?”
“There’s something inside me! Cut it out! Cut it out!”
Her breathing was frantic, unsteady.
“Oh, what’s it doing? Why’s it doing that? Ah!”
She snatched his neck and pulled him close.
“Get… it… out… of me… NOW!”
She pulled her dress up, exposing her belly.
As he saw movement shift from one side of her belly button to the other, like a snake slithering across it, he knew he needed to get whatever it was out.
He pressed his blade a few inches beneath her navel and created an incision. He moved his sword up and down as he sawed through the flesh across her abdomen, creating an opening.
Eilee clung to the ground and jerked her head about as she screamed until her voice cracked.
She removed one of her hands from the ground and clung to a lock of Treycore’s golden hair, pulling so that he felt she was going to yank it out by the roots.
Treycore screamed with her.
As he became confident of the size of his incision, he reached inside the flap he’d created and grabbed the moving obstruction. He pulled it out, carefully at first. He didn’t want to hurt Eilee beyond something she could easily repair from.
A ball of blood slid from the flap.
As it sprawled out, Treycore realized what it was… a baby!
Eilee looked at it, her eyes wide.
“What?”
“That’s impossible,” Treycore said. Higherling females were incapable of bearing children. However, he knew this wasn’t the child of a higherling, but something Sydar had put inside of her.
He threw it onto the ground. It unleashed a shrill cry.
Eilee formed an “O” with her lips as she steadied her breathing. She crawled across the ground and retrieved her sword from where she’d dropped it.
“Eilee!” Treycore said.
