The flight itself is completely uneventful. I'm invisible, above the clouds, and going ridiculously fast. Very little is up here, I can see basically everything coming from a mile away, and basically nothing can see me coming… so I am fine.

  I stop and create the ‘rescue party’ at the specified location, give them the five hundred pounds of food, and give them their orders… and then start to leave. I catch an Outsider with human-level intellect at the edge of my Mindsight, so I decide to hang around for a little bit and watch.

  Oh. Wow. That's got to her the craziest body I've ever seen. She seems made for making milk, as much as Aunt Wanda. I mean, okay, the four arms thing is weird, but mostly par for the course for a Tiefling. But the rest? She's basically covered in mammary gnds. I literally cannot make out her figure because any angle on her torso is covered by bouncing, fleshy orbs: They start just below her chin and don't stop until her knees, fully covering her shoulders, upper arms, chest, back, waist, hips, and thighs. Those milk makers are individually bigger than her head, and she has SO MANY of them squeezed onto her frame: It's a wonder she can walk at all. They also seem swollen: She's dripping milk from every one of her many taps, and obviously feeling it. There's also the less striking bits of her appearance, of course: Bck hair just starting to go gray down to her ankles (the hair doesn't help with her modesty at all, as it just slides between her giant milk makers), olive skin, eyes the color of amber and the shape of almonds… a pretty face, assuming anyone bothers to look. She's also wounded: There's a single rge gash and dried blood on her lower left arm… it looks like she blocked something sharp with it. A single gash, so likely a weapon and not the cws of some beast… and she's naked out in the middle of nowhere.

  My summoned creatures follow their orders: They take pity on her. I watch as the merchant gets down and wraps the woman… my aunt… in his cloak… and I frown briefly as I notice the summoned creature isn't acting quite as artificially as most of them. I mean, I didn't think this would fool anybody; it's going to take two days for the crew to get to my town, and these ‘people’ I make don't have backgrounds and always act in a perfunctory manner: They fool exactly nobody.

  Yet these ones… if I didn't know better….“Hey Uncle C?”

  “Couldn't resist hanging around to watch, eh?” The cold voice of Death whispers in my head.

  “I don't imagine it's going to hurt anything, but that's not why I'm fgging you.” I pause, "These summons aren't acting like most of them.”

  “Hmm? Let me have a look…” my uncle trails off, “Ah. Umm. That's…” He goes silent in my head for a few minutes, and I wait patiently until he continues, just watching the ranger bandage up my aunt's wounds and listening in to them follow the script much better than they should be capable of doing, “Okay. So. I'm not permitted to tell you things you don't already know in this instance, but as my champion, there's still some things I can tell you, so… please don't give those specific summons any further orders. Also, please don't dismiss them. Either would be very wrong.”

  I know this game, “But it's perfectly fine to give my other summons whatever orders I like, dismiss them if they're inconvenient, and whatnot.”

  “Right,” The Comforter answers quickly, “they're just soulless extensions of your will. Doing so has no more ethical weight than styling or trimming your hair.”

  “Which implies these ones are not soulless extensions of my will… but if you felt the need to tell me not to dismiss them or give them orders, it means they're still following the rules of thieir creation.” I consider, “Do you know how these ones became ‘special’?”

  “None of my siblings should be able to pull that off…” Death tells me what he can.

  “Which leaves Grandpa,” I fill in as my uncle trails off. “I suppose I shouldn't be surprised he's taking an active interest in one of his daughters.”

  “That's my conclusion,” my uncle replies, “but this is the first time I've caught Him acting directly in this.”

  I think about that for a moment, “So He has simply been letting the old Life wander and leaving her fate up to the family she was starving out?”

  “As nearly as any of us have been able to tell, yes,” the voice in my head goes quiet a while, "He gives us some iinformation about what will happen if we don't intervene... but what we do is entirely on us."

  I consider, “I suppose I should get going…”

  “The job here is done, certainly. Talk to you ter.”

  “Another time…” I reply as I head off and the Comforter's voice fades from my head.

  The trip to my town doesn't take long; I'm only thirty miles away, and travel (now) at about a hundred thirty six miles an hour between running as a flying dragon, Haste, and casting Dimension Door every few seconds.

  I take a moment to survey the pce… my workers have made a lot of progress: The outer curtain wall around the town is rgely up, and I can see the outline of the pace quite well… including the curtain wall we have pnned for it: We'll have three sets of walls: The outer city wall of stone backed by wood (we didn't see a reason to remove the old wall, so we are just putting a fully new, full-sized stone wall in front of it), the castle curtain wall of stone at our property's border (just behind the dry moat) and the actual stone walls of the castle itself.

  I nd outside of sight of the town, and let everyone out of the Keyhome. We then all walk in through the front gate.

  As we go, Aldamen speaks up, “So… where would you like me to set up shop?”

  Roger chuckles, “We bought our nd from the town council; I suggest you do the same. We can discuss renting space in our castle if you can't reach an agreement with the council… or we can expand the city walls to accommodate, but again… we'd need to come to an arrangement.”

  The female half-orc frowns, “You're not just going to give it to me, huh?”

  Our halfling shrugs, “The guild charges us for services: Guild cards, party registration, testing… and you take a cut from the dungeon maintenance charges the crown pays out when you're paying us to clean the dungeon. When you've always charged us for the things we need, I see little reason why we should just give you what you want for nothing.”

  The guildmaster presses her lips into a line for a moment, then sighs, “I suppose you have a point. Where's the council?”

  “Either the barracks or the…” Roger starts..

  “I believe Richard is in the mess hall at the moment,” I interrupt, having looked for the town speaker via Mindsight, “and I should go that way anyway.” He's next to a low ont humanoid... a baby... which means he went through childbirth while we were away.

  At my party mates’ raised eyebrows, I quickly sign, “I'll expin ter.” I suppose I can let them in on my telepathy; it's going to be crazy useful in the dungeon.

  “When did you learn Drow Sign? The dark elves keep that nguage a closely guarded secret,” the guildmaster asks as we all head to the mess hall.

  “Is that what it is?” Bearcw shrugs, “It's just something we've been learning as a group.”

  I shrug, “I learned it at university,” before I officially entered, but still, I was living there at the time, “my instructor didn't tell me where she learned it.” I mean, Mom just knows things… kind of like I do now, I suppose, and I stopped asking about it long ago, “Silent communication is handy in the dungeon. Where'd you pick it up?”

  “I haven't,” Aldamen lies to me, “but I've fought Drow, and I recognize what it is.”

  Just as well I didn't expin immediately. I briefly check with one of the priestesses… no, no milk yet. I suppose that lines up, but my aunt isn't going to get here for at least another day and a half: Wagons travel slowly. How long does it take a newborn to starve? Oh dear….

  We enter the mess hall to the sounds of a baby crying. I look around the various people eating, and spot my target: Yeah, that's Richard, now thin, sitting at arm's length from a squaling baby. I rush over, “Why aren't you…”

  “That THING is NOT my baby,” Richard practically spits as he interrupts me, “the abominable spawn of that evil gnome can rot in the Abyss for all I care.”

  I take a moment to look at the mother… she's practically falling off the bench, his face is flushed, her eyes aren't tracking well… he's drunk. I suppose I can't really bme her.

  I'm maybe not thinking too terribly clearly as I act, “Mind helping me out of my armor?” I distractedly gnce at Bearcw, who hastens to oblige, helping me with the straps and things as I wiggle out of my breastpte. That takes thirty seconds of eternity, my teeth gritted as I am mostly forced to just let the baby cry. That done, I rip my shirt open as I shift to my female form, pick the poor child up, and hold the little one to my own chest… no, I don't have any colostrum for the baby. It does, however, calm the child down while I quietly cast Dream Feast, Dey Disease, and Dey Poison to reduce the impact of missing that early stage. Of course, now that I can think again, I'm suddenly very aware that I'm topless, in my female were form, in a room stuffed with men.

  I gnce around and see everyone's licking their lips, staring at me like I'm a well-prepared steak and they haven't eaten in three days….