Side Story 5.21: Angeline's Pregnancy
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Child of the System
Angeline's water broke and the pain that followed pulled a short scream out of her, just enough to reach August who was in the garden at that moment.
He dropped everything and was at her side before the sound had finished echoing. His face carried worry but not panic. He had known this was coming, known it for weeks, and some part of him had been waiting for this exact moment without ever quite letting himself believe it would arrive on an ordinary morning like any other.
It was still early. Most of the household hadn't started their work yet, which meant everyone was still home when it happened.
August moved fast once the moment hit. The emergency room had been kept clean and ready for exactly this kind of need, the same way Theressa kept it ready for whatever came through the door on any given night. He gave a few quick instructions on his way through the house: someone needed to inform the other commanders that he was stepping away from his duties for the day, someone needed to tell anyone with a shift starting later that they wouldn't be needed, and Adam and Cornick needed to run for Count Bradmoore immediately to let him know his apprentice was in labor.
They went, still in whatever they'd been wearing that morning, there was no time spent changing.
August carried Angeline to the bed in the emergency room himself. The room had been sterilized to Count Bradmoore's exact standards, a requirement he'd insisted on for every medical space in the village years ago. The man's experience put him in a category of his own, well beyond what Theressa would ever claim for herself, and she was the first to say so. Her own knowledge had come the way most healing knowledge in the world came, through tradition passed down from healers before her, useful and proven but not always current with what the more advanced practitioners across the empire had learned. What she had instead was experience earned the hard way and the willingness to keep learning from anyone willing to teach her.
Count Bradmoore was willing. More willing than most nobles in his field, who tended to guard their knowledge the way merchants guarded trade secrets. He believed people with his training belonged closer to where the actual need was, not locked away in some academy treating only the wealthy. His colleagues had frowned on that belief for years. It hadn't stopped his reputation from outgrowing theirs anyway.
He had taken his approach on Theressa differently than he took on most students. An apprentice received depth and personal attention. A regular student paid for theory and little else. Theressa earned the apprentice treatment because she had become the anchor for every healer in the village, the one who had taught Angeline and most of the others their first lessons in proper care. Bradmoore had decided her experience was worth more than any fee she could have paid him, and what he gave her in return was depth, the kind of practical knowledge that came only from years in the field rather than years in a classroom.
Less than five minutes after Adam and Cornick left to do their other errands, Count Bradmoore was already inside the room, still in his night clothes and his professional kit in hand. Theressa came in with him. Hiraya joined as the assisting healer while Adarna stayed back with the children. Donna stood by outside, ready if anyone needed her.
The rest of the household settled into the particular quiet that comes from waiting on news you can't speed up. The children were already debating, with the seriousness only children bring to questions that don't actually matter yet, whether they were getting a baby brother or a baby sister. Nobody had a strong preference. They just wanted to know.
Angeline labored for five hours.
At the end of it, she and August had a daughter.
She was healthy. She had a full head of something that would settle into hair eventually, and lungs strong enough that everyone in the front rooms heard the first cry without needing anyone to tell them what it meant.
They named her Adessa Julie Finn. Adessa came from a combination of both their mothers' names, blended into something new that carried a piece of each. Julie was a small piece of wordplay, a stand-in for July, chosen because it also happened to echo Julius, August's father. They had also prepared a name in case the child had been a boy: Auctavius Jonah Finn, meant to be pronounced Auktavius despite the spelling. That name would wait for another time, if there was ever another time for it.
When August was finally let into the room, his face carried every emotion at once. Joy, pride, and a few tears he didn't bother hiding from anyone. He crossed to Angeline's side and kissed her, told her she'd done something extraordinary, and told her to rest while he took over from here.
That was when the system spoke. Not just his.
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Announcement
WORLD SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT:
CHILD OF THE FIRST PERSONAL SYSTEM USER, ADESSA JULIE FINN
[WORLD SYSTEM: CONGRATULATIONS, CHILD OF THE FIRST PERSONAL SYSTEM USER. THE CHILD SHOULD INHERIT HER OWN PERSONAL SYSTEM SIMILAR TO THAT OF HER PARENT.
NOTE: FULL ACCESS WILL ONLY BEGIN AT 18 YEARS OLD. ONLY PARTIAL PERSONAL SYSTEM ACCESS WILL BE GRANTED UNTIL SUCH TIME. CHILD WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY AND TEMPORARILY PLACED UNDER AUGUST FINN'S PARTY SYSTEM INFLUENCE. SHARED EXP IS ENABLED. SHARED BUFFS ARE ENABLED.
NEW TITLE CREATED — GUARDIAN AND HIS WARD, FOR AUGUST FINN AND ADESSA JULIE FINN
+25% SHARED LEARNING SPEED
+25% ABSORPTION SPEED
DING!
TITLE CREATED — CHILD OF THE ELEMENT
CHILD WILL INHERIT BOTH PARENTS' ELEMENTS, COMBINING THEM INTO HER FIVE MAIN BIRTH ELEMENTS.
FIRE, LIGHTNING, WIND, LIGHT, AND WATER ELEMENT
AN UNEXPECTED BEING! ONE CREATED FROM THE INFLUENCE OF TWO BLESSED CHILDREN, ONE OF THE WORLD SYSTEM AND ONE OF THE DIVINE. SHE WILL BE THE FIRST HUMAN, ASIDE FROM THE MAGICALLY INNATE DRAGONS, TO HOLD MORE THAN ONE OR TWO ELEMENTS AT A TIME.
ELEMENTAL MASTERY EFFECT +50%
NOTE: THE ADDITION OF THE WATER ELEMENT STEMS FROM ANGELINE'S SUBTLE USE OF IT THROUGH EQUIPMENT-DRAWN MAGIC, BUT THE SYSTEM HAS FLAGGED HER MASTERY OF IT AS ADEQUATE FOR INHERITANCE.]
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Only August saw the full panel. Angeline received her own version of it, a voice in her head that didn't sound like a system at all but like something gentler, something she recognized as belonging to her patron goddess. That was simply how the World System chose to speak to those connected to the divine rather than the System itself. It borrowed the voice they already trusted.
August stood there for a long moment after it faded, just staring at nothing in particular.
He was proud. That part was simple and clean and didn't need any further thought. But underneath the pride sat something heavier, something he couldn't quite settle down. A child born with this kind of direct influence from both systems at once wasn't going to live an ordinary life no matter how hard he and Angeline worked to give her one. People would want what she had. Some would fear it. Others, in time, might follow her the way some now followed him.
Hero or something else entirely, the road ahead of her was not going to be simple.
Whatever she became, he already knew one thing for certain. Whatever shadow he cast over her future, intentional or not, would be a large one.
He looked back at Angeline, asleep now with their daughter settled against her chest, and decided that worry could wait until tomorrow.
Today was for this celebration.