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twitchesandstitches · 4 years ago

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Wedding Eve in Hoard Keep Commission

Another comm for @alt-hammer set in their Noblestuck AU, this time featuring Porrim and Bronya visiting the land of the Pyropes before the historically unprecedented wedding of Latula and Mituna, introducing Terezi, Karkat and Kankri, as well as Redglare!

Featuring hyper pregnancy, unbirth, size difference, hyper boob, hyper butt, hyper belly, Redglare being really very large, and Kankri attempting to cause musicals.

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There were many ancient buildings from before the modern age of the noble families, of the like that probably would not be made again for many ages.

They were something from an older age; buildings inherently magical, aetheric essence pulsing through them and their own strange functions and unique enchantments like blood through a living thing. There were factories in the underlands of the Zahhak castles, daily pumping out scores of weaponry, armor and the foundations of architecture under the watchful eyes of mechanists who would be sorely loath to admit they had no idea what they were working with. To look inside those factories was to see… well, nothing. Nothing at all in there but a solid, tangible and black emptiness, staring right back with a presence all its own. No one was quite sure what happened to the material they put in.

And there were the massive and ancient ships of the Amporas and Serkets, enormous war machines that could end entire civilizations with the fearsome weaponry at their disposal; larger than some city districts, flying beneath the ocean itself or skipping on the waves with no apparent means of production; death itself to anything on the water. The means to make more was lost, and many felt this was absolutely for the best.

Every one of the noble families (the Megidos in their halls of the dead, the Captors atop the universities of magic and lore, the Pyropes and their dragons, the Leijons in the distant jungle lands and the Maryams in the oasis secured from the walking corpses of long dead monsters, the Zahhak aristocrats and the sea-faring Serket pirate lords, the Makara priesthood atoning for the sins of their blood, the Peixes and the Amporas of the shorelands, and most recently the Vantases and their human kindred-in-arms) had laid claim to one of these mighty relics.

It might, depending on one’s perspective, be a prerequisite. Each of the families was descended from people who had laid claim to one of these relics or taken it for themselves, worked out how to get it operational, and then used it for all it was worth. They had largely remained in power because they were untouchable, some more literally than others. Even the Vantases, who were only a single generation into being a noble house, had done so when they had been found worthy to use such an artifact.

It wasn’t surprising that war had plagued the continent until only recently.

At the far west of the continent, there was a mighty mountain range, covering much of the entire coastline, all the way to the magocracies of the Captors and their metropolitan libraries, and it was the land of the Pyropes. They were the dragon riders, among the largest and strongest of knights, blessed with insight, and empowered by the mighty blood of their ancestors. In the wars of the dragon riders they had won out, and they had laid claim to one such relic that was greatly prized by anyone who wanted to hold their land, for it was literally untouchable in war.

The Pyrope lands were marked by the trees growing across much of the mountain range. These trees, in their many varieties, were probably magical in nature: there were several thousand species alone across any given direction; needle-leaf conifers growing on the highest reaches, flowering trunks that grew into the supports of tree-cities around the cliff sides, expansive banyan trees near the wetter areas of the Vantas wetlands, and massive greenwood trees that were big enough to be mistaken for mountains themselves closest to the sea, but all the trees had this in common: their leaves flowered bright teal, the same blue-green shade as the blood of the dragons that called the land home.

The dragons, and the trolls who ruled and had long since bonded with those dragons.

Fortresses of various sorts were a hallmark of the continent, especially here with the many various dragon rider lineages having warred against each other for eons, and fortifications had featured heavily in the conflicts. But against the largest mountain in the entire mountain range, there was an especially massive castle, one so large that it wasn’t legally considered a castle at all, but a sprawling city with fortifications.

It was older than any troll bloodline to still be extant. It was older than any modern civilization; it had been there before the humans had come, it may have been there before the trolls had arisen from their swampy origins, and it would likely be there long after all else was dust.

See it clearly; think of a mountainside, soaring high into the heavens, one of the largest mountains in all the world. Now imagine around it, an impossibly large castle assembled around it; perhaps even grown in some fashion, considering the strangely organic pattern in the stone work that wasn’t likely for something that had been assembled.

Imagine its walls clinging tight around the mountain, around terraces and plateaus, over cliff sides and descending along the paths of rivers. Imagine bolt holes and tunnels into the mountain, veins for the castle and the lifesblood that was its people; and within its massive depths, thousands of people living there. Farmers and artisans, clever craftsmen and wise scholars. Writers, sculptors, and dragons. Hundreds of dragons, of many different varieties from the Red Queen famously bound to the Pyrope line itself, to the many different varieties and sizes, all the way to tiny coal-stokers just big enough to fit in a human’s lap. And humans! They dwelled here, freely, without fear, in open defiance that they had once been shackled in other lands not so long ago, and that said something of the character of the trolls who owned this keep now.

The keep had been passed down over the ages, from one owner to another. It had been hotly contested by both warlords and settlers, and why not? It’s powers were not fully known, but anyone knew of its famous ability to generate a massive shield that no sword nor spell could pierce, not even the mountain-breaking superweapons of the Serkets; to hold the keep, and to master its powers, was to be truly untouchable in your own lands.

And the size, and curvaceousness, of its seer-warriors was well known in the modern day. The keep channeled its energies into them, making them far larger than normal, and it's magic now ran in the blood of the Pyrope line, so that its daughters grew bigger and more bountiful than any other save perhaps the Maryams.

This keep had been kept for eons, from many hands won over another, until its present owners had slain the most vindictive of the old dragon riders, burning their history down so they could start fresh; some, less well disposed to their uncompromising ways, had suggested they started the war to do the same to the whole continent.

But, all the same, the Pyropes sought to protect others. They’d bonded with their dragons, internalizing some of their mentality, and they believed that dragons ought to protect what they cared about most. What they cared about was their people. And thus this great city-castle was the Hoard Keep.

Porrim Maryam, in one of the grand plateaus near the peak, enshrouded in the warm and protecting walls of the Keep, thought it all sounded very nice.

Certainly, she thought, it was very different from the home she’d known. Porrim was a vampire, of the Maryam clan that came from an oasis city considered a center of refinement and culture, and she was familiar only with the desert. She knew well the open sky before her, and the sun beating down. But here? It was colder, and the sky a small sight between the towering walls of stone.

It was… surprisingly cozy.

Personally, she thought the whole thing kind of looked like a big iridescent cake someone had smashed into the side of the mountain.

It was just like a multi-tiered cake. At the bottom was a vast terrace, of sprawling little villages bordering farmland and caves that their fungal farming and crawler-beast ranching was done on a scale to feed their entire territory with ease. The villages got bigger, clumping into micro cities until you got to the border of one of the upper walls, and then you got another, rather larger terrace, where much of the industrial and artisan workers lived, keeping the sewer systems functional, the rivers and canals streaking through the castle properly maintained.

And the terraces got narrow as they kept going up, the upper classes and nobility poised up high as if to leap down and strike anything that threatened the people who kept them alive. In turn, the dragon nobles (as they were called) were honorbound to swoop down and defend their people, with flame and blade.

Porrim looked up into the sky as she walked. Great leather-winged shapes flew, periodically belching clouds of flame, their eyes burning bright like small suns.

There were many reasons the Pyropes had never been ousted, not even during the greatest conflict between them and the Makaras when the humans had sought sanctuary with the dragonlords. Having fiercely loyal living siege breakers was certainly a factor.

But respect might have been a greater factor, and love for the protecting dragonlords was something the other trolls who had claimed this keep in the past hadn’t managed. Certainly, the Pyropes were much loved by the humans, Porrim thought as one showed her around town as a proper tour guide, much to the consternation of the actual tour guide.

“Anyways, if you tilt your eye-jigglies that away,” he said, pointing towards a large building across the street. “I’m pretty sure that’s one super big library. Dunno what the name of it is but it’s huge, I’ll give it that.” He was a little below average height for a human; to Porrim and her friends, who naturally stood far larger than humans, he was adorably tiny. A slender human, his skin a deep brown and his hair curled, he bore a few details that suggested he’d been trained in the magical traditions of knighthood. The flowing capes he wore suggested it, and his were a bright red, rather than the teal clothing seen elsewhere.

Porrim rubbed a hooked horn, rising from her dark hair; her other horn was slightly curved instead of hooked, and both were very long, and as per the traditions of her people, heavily carved with the heraldic symbols that indicated full status as a vampire matron among her clan. The same curves, spirals and flowering designs carved into her horns ran down her black skin, over her broad shoulders, her heavy arms, and especially the massive belly slung out in front of her, nearly as big as she was and wiggling with something inside. Or rather, multiple someones; Porrim had absorbed several people in order to reform them as vampires, and the process left her quite big!

Their tour guide led them onwards, apparently deciding on a whim that it would be a good idea to lead them there.

Porrim didn’t mean to make her hips sway so seductively, so enticingly, the hems of her robes fluttering around her knees. They’d just grown so large, and the width of her pelvis so great, it had affected something in her stride; she couldn’t help but advance like each step was carrying her upwards, her other hip swinging sharply down, for a delightful rhythm that attracted attention to her with each. She felt eyes nervously shift to her and then away, as if embarrassed, and beneath her veils, Porrim smirked in delight.

In front of her, her tattooed belly wobbled heavily from within, the occasional hand pressing out against its surface, or a leg or torso just barely visible. Distending so far its lower slopes nearly touched the floor, supported by a number of oiled straps from her shoulders and tied to a huge round brace holding up the bottom of her belly, she was very clearly pregnant. And in the particular traditions of the Maryam clan, pregnant with adults; absorbed through powers particular to her own clan, her body remaking them into new vampires. This detail was common knowledge around here, and Porrim glanced aside, smirking beneath her glossy veil when she saw people’s eyes lingering on her massive belly. Do they want to be in there too? She wondered.

‘You bet, babe,’ said a voice that was not her own. The people inside her, while they were being reshaped into true vampires, were usually completely out of it in a dreamless slumber connected to her mind, filling her pleasurably as their half-thoughts soothed her own. But sometimes, a strong enough emotion or thought made itself known, and briefly, Cronus awoke from his own dormancy in her to say this. She smiled and put a hand against her stomach, and thought she felt his hand press back.

They were nearly to the library and Porrim found her breasts constantly bouncing right over her face as her belly jogged them up. The noble families tended to get… ample as they grew more powerful, owing to certain arcane traditions and quirks of their magical bloodlines, and the Maryams grew very rapidly, so that Porrim wasn’t entirely used to having breasts nearly as big as her entire upper torso bounding and overflowing on top of her gravid belly. They projected out by at least three feet, each nearly as wide around as her torso and their motion a soothing, pleasant friction. She did have to walk carefully to avoid walking right into someone.

Each step, her huge hips swaying here and there in step with the forward moment of her massive belly and breasts, felt terribly uneven. Something was throwing her weight off, and Porrim tugged at the insufficient fabric bolt securing the fabric around her breasts. “We should have brought a poet. Your home is lovely, Latula!”

She spoke to a taller troll standing beside her. Porrim Maryam was a tall woman as trolls went, and Latula was much larger, as befit a scion of the dragon line; Porrim’s horns were only on level with her shoulders, and when Latula threw a playful punch into her shoulder, it nearly knocked her off stride. This was no mean feat; Maryam matrons like her could shrug off direct impacts from falling buildings, and it was hardly a surprise that Latula was so strong; the teals were enormously strong for the greenblood trolls, and Latula had trained in the magical ways of a knight, adding to her physical power.

“What, Kankri doesn’t count?” Latula joked. She was built on broader lines than her friend; while Porrim was a tall and curvy (and heavily pregnant) figure of a troll, her body adorned in the Pyropian attempts to replicate the gauzy silks and heat-resisting veils and robes of her homeland, Latula was much more bottom heavy, her breasts a little bigger than her head but her butt was as big around as a lot of Porrim’s whole body, her big belly outslung in a firm, maternal mass, and her hips absolutely enormous. Watching thighs more than six feet around slam into each other in an aggressively friendly swagger was certainly a thing to see.

Porrim wondered if it was like a warning bell for the Pyropes, who tended toward this kind of figure. Listen for the clap of mighty thighs and the smacking of a huge butt, it suggested, and be unafraid for nothing is stronger than the dragonrider near you!

Latula’s fastened a furred cloak around a body-glove that carefully outlined her entire body, streaks of yellow visible in patterns on her sides, and in her cleavage, there was a small medallion worn on a necklace, disappearing between her cleavage to be held safe and snug between them. It glowed faintly, and Latula made a show out of tucking it and giving her breasts a bit of a flounce, as if to keep it secured as close to her heart as possible. She looked a bit proud, even bashful.

Porrim glanced at her, smiling faintly.

Latula tilted her head up, awkwardly pushing up smoked red glasses to her eyes. The furred collar couldn’t quite hide the blush rising up to her cheeks.

They were now at the doors of the library and passing into it, their tour guide (who was named Dave, according to a neat script on his cloak) headbutting it open for no apparent reason. Then again, he had been trained in the Pyrope ways, according to the iconography on that robe as well; the terminal scales were only granted to those that were authorized to use Pyrope magical techniques and were up to their specifications. Some of the others were a bit more enthusiastic about popping into a random library.

In particular, Bronya hopped forward, her hands clasped with some difficulty in front of her own bustline; she was even more ridiculously big than Porrim, her breasts rising up in front of her face so much it must have been hard to see, the sides of them spilling past the diameter of her massive hips, but even they looked small compared to her gigantic belly. It was even bigger than Porrim’s, dipping nearly to the ground, and it would have been flat on the ground if not for an elegant and unobtrusive brace hoisting it up to somewhere around her knees. Just like Porrim’s, the forms of slumbering people being reshaped into vampires surged against her skin periodically, but it seemed like there was a more in Bronya than in Porrim; as big as Porrim was, she could have used Bronya’s belly as a bed.

Bronya’s long hair fell down past her hips, a streak of bright green flowing past her curved horns and ending somewhere past a backside that distorted edges of even the Pyrope-style robes she’d put on. The tailors hadn’t had any more luck getting her outfit to fit properly, and until they could find something that fit, she was making do with robes that at least fit.

“I’ve always wanted to see the libraries of the Pyropes!” She said excitedly, bounding forward and almost trampling a few people with her huge, gravid belly.

“Me as well,” said Kankri Vantas, the last of their number. He was smaller than either of them, closer to the diminutive humans in height; a muscular, broad shouldered troll, he was surprisingly wide for his size, and when he moved you got the impression it was best to get out of the way. The carefully controlled expression of his round, dour face abruptly opened into a genuine expression of true delight; the half-cape worn by a Vantas knight swung back behind as he flourished his arm in a dramatic gesture. “Just think of it! Books gathered from across the entire landscape!”

Bronya leaned down and carefully took hold of his hands, fingers wrapping carelessly over his palms. “Works of art discussion and techniques through the ages!” Impulsively she spun him a little, right in front of her belly and allowed him to support himself off it like a climber on a happy cliff.

“Records of lectures from famed philosophers of golden ages!” He declared, letting himself be spun around!

“Architectural designs and fashions throughout the ages, in numerical order of objective fanciness!” Bronya spun him around; above them the library was a sort of hollow tube, with a circular staircase spiraling upwards. Many floors fanned out from it, each one dedicated to a broad subject (Such as works of fiction, artwork, and at the very top, a collective ‘we don’t really know where to put it so here it goes’ floor). Around them, librarians paused in surprise, contemplating the sight of so much jiggling and belly poking out. They took some interest for academic reasons; a glowing woman with prominent fangs, tattoos and green clothing read ‘Maryam vampire’ pretty clearly.

“Comprehensive maps to the most ancient ruins known to trollkind and ruminations on their cultures!” Kankri declared passionately, and with even greater passion, added “Damara even donated some!”

“And little joke books that Karako might like!” Bronya said, referring to her adopted child, who was currently off at a daycare.

“I feel… so passionately about this,” Kankri said as she stopped twirling. “It could almost…” he placed a hand on his chest. “Make a troll want to…”

The others, detecting the warning signs, winced.

“Want to sing!”

Bronya and Kankri both prepared themselves, breathing in deeply…

Dave tapped them both on the shoulder… or at least on Kankri’s shoulder, Bronya got an impatient poke in the hip. They both looked down at Dave, who gazed up at a solid wall of shapely troll to gaze as sternly as he could without really caring that much. “Guys, chill. You’re not allowed to do musical routines in the library on this day of the week.”

Bronya frowned sadly. “Ohh…” she perked up. “Still, I have always wanted to come here!” She hurried off, trying not to knock anyone down with her huge belly. Some cautious researchers, intrigued by the Maryam rites of unbirthing and recreation, followed after her softly.

Kankri put a hand to his nose, frowning deeply, and as he finally caught up to events, a scandalized look came over him, mingled with horror. “I almost… defied local customs! Me, an outsider! Invited to these lands and I almost broke a taboo!”

“Ehh, I wouldn’t say it's a taboo,” Latula said, behind him, waving a hand. “It’s just supposed to be done on certain days…”

He fled to her, clasping her hand. “Latula, I swear, I did not mean to break the ways of your people!”

She patted him on the head. “Chill, dude, you’re cool.”

Kankri turned to Dave and bowed to him. “I thank you, tour guide. Without your advice, I may have committed a terrible wrong.”

“Yep, without me you would have been the worst criminal in two hundred years,” Dave said, not blinking.

Kankri hurried away, perhaps to find a book to drown his shame in, and Latula glared at Dave, who was now grinning a little. “Dude! Don’t mess with him like that, he thinks you’re serious!”

Dave just kept grinning. “He makes it easy.” He thumbed at the door. “I’ll be hanging right here if anyone needs me or when you wanna bounce from here. Just… standing there. Being all cool, and fancy. And with a really cool cape. A cape way cooler than what you got.”

Latula growled. “I wanted to be the tour guide!”

Dave pointed at her while walking backwards. “Hey, dragon princess, brides don’t do dirty work! And not just because your mom thought it would be funny to annoy you like that.”

Latula made a few inarticulate noises of strangled frustration as he left.

Porrim, a book on sculpture techniques and cultural relevance through the ages in her hand, waved to her. “Please, Latula, please sit down.”

Grumbling to herself, Latula walked back over and sat down. The bench creaked as she sat down, her massive butt overflowing both in front of it and that, rising up a couple feet higher just because of how much butt she had. Porrim was much the same, but given that her belly was so huge that she required a couple people to carefully put some pedestals beneath it for support, it wasn’t so apparent.

Kankri and Bronya didn’t feel the need to come back; they would, Porrim supposed, meet up with them when they were done here. Perhaps they would spend the day here; they had several months before the big event was upon them, and with that thought, she glanced at Latula, who was still fuming but calming herself down, tugging something on a string out of her cleavage.

Porrim watched her with a faint smile; her fangs were long, protruding over her thick lower lip, and it was about as menacing as a goldfish. (And not the fire-breathing, mile long ones either.)

It wasn’t common for the nobles to leave their home territories, she reflected, even on business. Though this was business of a sort, given the need for the allied noble families to show solidarity.

It was particularly important for the Pyropes. History lived with them, in libraries like this; in the grand court archives where every crime in their lands was recorded, and in other records. The ones where historical crimes were marked down. The Pyropes had a particularly vindictive view when it came to justice: ‘a perpetuator for every crime, and a noose for every perpetuator.’ They looked at history and they saw the wrongs left to fester, both recently and in the distant past, and it was their pleasure to repair it.

So much of the continent’s history was a crime. To the trolls, but by other trolls to them. There were injustices down to the carapacians that had arrived from across the sea, and most of all to the humans that lived under troll rule. Porrim glanced at some humans walking by, their sleeves long and their faces staring down by habit, and she wondered how many of them bore the marks of shackles burned into their wrists, or ownership stamps bound into their foreheads.

Many tealbloods had owned this keep. Not all of them had been kind. There was a lot of blood soaked in these stones, and she supposed the seers the Pyropes trained were specifically trained to come to terms with the horrors in their past. But it was the Pyropes that had set the humans free; it was Redglare herself who had broken the chains of humans, told them they were free, and declared who was responsible for their torment.

It wasn’t the Pyropes who had started the war that had burned the continent down and had killed thousands, but it was the Pyropes that had flown down on their dragon armies, and left nothing but ashes and vengeance behind.

It was Pyrope blades that cut the Makaras down to nothing but a few bloodlines, their ash-stricken homelands a suitable punishment for the horrors they had inflicted. It was dragonfire that had scorched keeps and castles, barracks and naval fleets, and had turned entire kingdoms to soot and grisly chunks.

Porrim had been trained to think of these sort of things, for the days when she might set policy. Her own oasis city had been a neutral ground and sanctuary for ages, maintaining careful balance and kept secure by the inhospitable dangers of her homeland, and she had taken to politics quite well. She kept thinking about the significance of the Pyropes inviting others to such a big event as this, and it struck her that it was very much an extended hand of friendship.

Now she observed that Latula had pulled her trinket out from between her boobs, her claws lightly tracing it, her bright teal eyes looking distant as though she were thinking of something, or someone else. Latula stared at it longingly, sighing softly to herself and clearly lost in thought.

It was a chunk of teal crystal inlaid with gold; chipped right off from a variety of pseudo-floral mineral that grew very quickly in the underground cave systems where a lot of the local agriculture was grown in conditions that didn’t require sunlight; edible mushrooms, cave-dwelling giant bat livestock, digger beasts, and so forth. These crystals naturally glowed faintly and had a unique beauty, lustrous and gleaming like fine metal when properly treated.

It was a tradition among the Pyropes to offer them carved medallions, necklaces, medals or other such things as an engagement gift. It meant something; the crystals below had been traditionally allowed to grow to such size that their immensely strong structures could carry massive weights, and serve as the foundations of cities and castles. Even a small one, properly treated, could be the seed of something that carried houses and lifted up mighty realms. And they had to be decorated, carved; you had to make it look pretty, had to put a creative spark into your gift; that made it personal. Inlay it with precious metals, or an abstract image of hands clasped together, and the more tastelessly ostentatious, the better. The people of the dragon lands tended to have all the fine artistic discernment of a concussed magpie.

Now Latula’s claws traced geometric lines and sharp angles arranged into a lovely, if clumsy design. It was an artistic peculiarity of the Captor mages, who rather liked patterns based in mathematics. It was not a well-carved piece, though; the edges were chipped everywhere, cracks were visible here and there when the chisel had bit too deeply. But the carver had tried, working around some very severe motor control difficulties; fingers that spasmed and twitched on their own had nonetheless worked hard, sheer stubbornness triumphing over the limitations of his body. Space had been used to convey as much a design as the actual carving, the design was as simple as possible for the carver to manage it without too much difficulty, and while it was hard to say what the design actually was, it looked pretty.

Latula tenderly cradled the medallion and its gold-colored necklace strings, and she kissed it softly.

There was a soft popping sound. Latula tilted her head up and stiffened when she saw Porrim grinning at her, and even glowing faintly.

Porrim opened her mouth to say something.

“Nuh uh!” Said Latula, waving a finger and tucking the medallion back into her cleavage, the slight impact making the lower crest of her breasts shift slightly around her belly. “You keep those dirty thoughts to yourself, vampire lady!”

“What makes you think it was going to be dirty? I promise you, all my thoughts were about how romantic it is.”

Latula sneered. “You know my magic is all about foresight and seeing the future, right?”

“...I wasn’t going to say exclusively dirty things about you imagining that medallion as being Mituna, now was I?” Porrim said innocently.

“Yes, and you were going to be explicit about it!” Latula crossed her arms with an indignant ‘hmph!’.

A long moment passed between them as the banter wore down, after that. People walked past them, perhaps word spreading that today the scion of the Maryam Clan was visiting. People came to peek, and Porrim noticed a few people poking their heads from around bookcases, and she felt the warm caress of their gazes upon her stomach.

She placed a hand upon the upper crest, and it was a little higher than her jawline. Her breasts, rising over her belly by at least four feet straight up, interfered seriously with normal vision from the front and so she made do with rather more esoteric senses granted by the fertility powers of her bloodline, the same ones fed and amplified by the bodies being reshaped by her busy womb. Cronus, in some approximation of awareness, thought some miffed thoughts about them being so open about it.

Porrim certainly loved showing her body off as much as possible; she worked hard to get such a splendidly massive figure! Impishly, and to test the waters of public reaction, she tugged at a swath of translucent green fabric flowing down the side of her breasts, insufficient to provide full coverage, flowing down the sides of her body (both belly and back completely exposed, her tattoos flowing across exposed skin) and bundling up around her massive hips, finally trailing off in a slit-thigh style around her knees. As it was, her belly and breasts stretched her clothing enough that the fabric was pressed hard, and she was perilously close to a wardrobe malfunction at all times.

She didn’t actually mind, though.

Further thoughts on this matter was interrupted by something very heavy dragging on the floor, and a bookcase being pushed aside by a weight so big that even the shelf and its payload couldn’t ignore it. They looked and Latula’s mouth opened as her future vision flashed through all possible events of the next few minutes to settle on the most likely one. She sighed. “Bronya, really?!”

Eventually, Bronya shuffled out. It took some time for the actual Bronya to appear; at first all they saw was a huge belly, more and more of it coming into view with various laborious steps. It didn’t bounce or jiggle, as was normal with such big attributes. It was too heavy for that, dipping low as gravity and the weight of many new residents made it even heavier, and finally Bronya came into view, still eclipsed by her own belly.

Bronya had been big before. Now, her brace had snapped at some point before she’d dared seek out Porrim after what was very likely a moment of weakness, and Porrim’s first guess was that her stomach had grown to the point that even the distinctive braces of the Maryam’s couldn’t cope with the new weight. Her belly rose higher than her horns, the typical distended shape of a gravid vampire belly more sphere-shaped from all the weight of the new residents in her womb filling it out.

Some part of Porrim, overeager to stuff as many as possible into her womb, was quietly in awe. She wondered how Bronya had even moved down here with all that weight!

Porrim rolled her eyes. “Not to repeat Latula but… really, Bronya?”

“I’m sorry!” Bronya squeaked, her belly now pregnant even more with new residents. “But the head librarian was so very cute, and her staff was really cute, and I just couldn’t resist!”

“The staff!?” Latula said. “What’d you do with Stelsa and her girls, hrm?”

Dave emerged beyond Bronya, his usual expression of practiced aloofness bubbling away. “So, hypothetically speaking… how bad would it be if pretty much the top five administrators were suddenly out of commission for a while?”

“Um. That’s a good question. How long is a while?”

Bronya looked speculative. Porrim leaned forward into her belly and after thinking, said, “It depends on if Bronya fully vampirizes them. It could be anywhere from a few days if she doesn’t, to… a lot longer if she does.” she thought about doing a rough calculation, and then decided it’d be funnier to let Latula try to work it out; she usually made some amazing expressions at those times.

Bronya looked appalled. “I can’t let them go so soon!” she said, with an edge of dismayed shock at the very notion. “I just got ahold of them!” Various hands pressed fervently from inside of her belly, protesting the very idea.

Latula, with her own mystical connection to thoughts and minds, certainly heard what they had to say. “...Ah. Well…” She frowned, considering this deeply, tapping a claw against the side of a horn. “Huh. Guess we could word it as a diplo-whatever thingy. We could get someone to wrap that up in fancy words?”

“That’s grand to hear!” Bronya said brightly, hugging her heavy belly with a delighted sigh. “We only just met, it wouldn't be fair to depart so soon!”

A short moment passed.

Then Kankri came, a big stack of books in his arms. “I cannot believe you have the entire series of the transcribed Letters From an Anonymous Lout Complaining About Copper Grades! All eighteen volumes! This is such a rare…” He paused, peeking around the books in much the same way as Porrim had to do from her own monstrous bustline. He blinked at Bronya’s newly massive belly, the wary but entranced crowd of onlookers, and Latula apparently unsure if she ought to be amused or annoyed.

“Did I miss something?” He asked.

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Their time in the keep went on pretty much like that, and for the next month as they settled it, more of the same came and went.

Bronya did her best to restrain herself, and Redglare herself, the Dragon Queen of the keep, took an interest in the legal consequences of her impetuous ‘adoption’ of the library staff; what their clan status would be if fully vampirized, how that might be a tie between their houses, whether this would magically make their position as part of the Pyropes void in a magical sense, and other such questions that weren’t that interesting to Porrim. She was an activist in improving the lives of others, but she didn’t pay much attention to the legal issues.

It would still be some time before the actual wedding, and Porrim was well aware of the momentousness of the occasion. The grand war between the noble houses was still fresh in people’s minds; there were still places burning from Pyrope attacks, or lands left leaderless from night-time Maryam vampires striking in the dead of night. Places where the Makaras had detonated forbidden magical weaponry and it would be generations before anything could dare inhabit them again. And there were worse nightmares than that, still lingering in the quiet places people hadn’t yet opened up.

These rather gloomy thoughts were on Porrim’s mind as she went to meet up with Latula, her betrothed, and Latula’s younger sister Terezi, and with her was Kankri’s younger brother, Karkat Vantas.

“That’s the history of the world, I suppose,” she said softly to Karkat, as they walked up to a former dragon roost. “The ancient families break the world, and then our descendants clean up the mess, and do it all over again.”

Karkat made a thoughtful noise; his voice was deep enough, and his blunt fangs broad enough, that it sounded like a growl. He walked up the stairs a good distance from her; not out of dislike, as she was pretty sure he’d had a crush on her as a younger boy, but out of bashful fear of accidentally bumping into her belly or huge hips. Even a single misplaced swing of his hand might be more inappropriate a touch than he was comfortable with.

Porrim chuckled at the thought. The Vantases were just so… bashful.

“I dunno about that,” he said eventually. He was even smaller than Kanri, though perhaps only by half a foot or so; he was slightly built, broader at the hips and thigh than typical for a troll boy, his round face as delicately featured as a statue built of soap, even his horns round and stubbly. He looked fragile, like a lovely glass figurine that would crack at the touch, and it was quite a contrast to his usual grumbling, manic energy.

They stepped out into the staircase and into the dragon roost. He looked around for someone, briefly distracted. Today, there were many trolls, some humans and carapacians mingling among them; some of them were tending to the few dragons left around, while most were simply reading or gazing into the sky. A few wearing the revealing, comfortable robes of the trained seers sat there, staring out as they allowed their minds to wander freely and their magic to take hold of the could be and grant them the future sight.

(Metaphorically. Most of the seers sacrificed their senses in exchange for seeing the abstract and the possible futures; sight was common enough, and Latula had lost her sense of smell, and she was far from the only one to do it like that.)

Not seeing who he was looking for, Karkat continued. They walked past dozens of house-sized stalls, designed to accommodate dozens of dragon breeds, and now, almost all of them were empty. It was the same story across all the roosts; once there had been ten dragons for every troll, the keep always abuzz with the distant beat of leathery wings. But that had been before the war, and the loss of so many.

“Mituna and Latula’s wedding isn’t political,” he said. “Sure. There’s the usual political crap around it, and I guess they can use it, but… in the old days, they’d have been married off. Hell, what’s the chances the dragon seers and the high mages would have bothered ever talking to one another? But… this war changed stuff, Porrim.”

They came to a balcony, overlooking the lands and lower levels, and there were several others there; a large seer bigger even than Porrim, and resting on a couch, a particularly massive knight apparently dozing, her bustline bigger than the couch she was napping on.

They stopped at the balcony, and it struck a thought in Karkat.

“The dragon riders set the humans free,” he said. “They defended my home when the brownblood knights tried to take it over for the war effort, and they declared us nobles when all was said and done. And now… the kids of that war are becoming friends. We’re getting married.” He leaned on the balcony, still looking out with a contemplative air at the sky. “Does that sound like the kind of world that would be made in the old days?”

The large seer Porrim had seen was sitting there, larger than anyone else there, perked up at the sound of his distinctive voice. She turned, and first Porrim realized how big she was, taller than Porrim even sitting down. As she stood up, there was a lot of wobbling from various outlying parts of her body, her robes cut to show off as much of her as possible. When she stood to her full, imposing height, her seat was left creaking behind her, sinking inwards without her massive body to put weight on it.

Oblivious to this, Karkat gestured outwards to the horizon. It was hard to honestly see a horizon in the circumstances; the keep was simply so huge, it’s walls so high and extensive that if you looked onwards, in any direction, you’d probably just end up seeing more of the keep. The fortifications loomed high into the sky for miles around, in the distance terrace forms and mountainside lakes defined warmer edges around some of the most distant walls far below the descending lowlands. Rivers winded, rather like glistening ribbons, all the way from the mountain itself and spilled downwards, splitting into dozens more, and the sunlight made them glow at this time of day.

And from wall to wall, it was filled with more city. Buildings built upon other buildings, rope-bridges connecting to one another in lieu of traditional streets, the architecture flowing up the walls and climbing higher; there were a few houses or civic buildings that peeked over the walls, many hundreds of feet up. The sound of it all was a physical presence, or perhaps the sound of a dance; a single vast sense of movement from below, the pulse and breath of so many people creating the life of the city. Humans, trolls, and other beings all living together without any real interest in how historically unusual that was, that only a few generations ago so many of them would have been in chains in other lands…

Them living together, in peace, had been as unthinkable as a tealblood marrying a goldblood mage. Or perhaps a mutant being raised to knighthood.

Now the seer that had gotten up approached. She was powerful enough to have picked up on his thoughts, and now she spoke aloud, “We’re in a better position than our ancestors were, and I guess we got a duty to keep doing better.”

“See, that’s what I’m saying,” Karkat said as Porrim turned towards the seer, her eyes a bit wide with surprise. “We can do better! I mean, look at where you came from; best as anyone can guess the whole place used to be farmland and then someone let loose something bad there, and now the whole place is one big undeath zone. But you’re fixing it; it's actually getting better than it’s been in hundreds of years. We can actually fix the crap going on!”

“Or look at where you’re from,” said the seer, now standing directly above Karkat, and she was not only tall but… thick, her breasts jutting out so that Karkat was put into shadow beneath them. He blinked upwards, the experience familiar enough that it instantly made him realize who it was. “The lake your guys live on. It used to be a fishing village where people tried to hide away from everyone else, and now? When you make a challenge, everyone listens. Hell, it’s a place where humans get to have a voice.” She grinned, her teeth big and sharp, and the scarred eyes staring out were glassy and a dull red, seeing nothing at all.

“Ah, there you are, Terezi!” Porrim said as Karkat whirled around and sank his arms into her stomach in a very serious hug. His expression remained as dour as usual even as his shoulders heaved with the strength needed to really sink into her, but at least her outfit had the right kind of cut for skin-on-skin contact, cut around the sides to make room with her expansive belly.

Terezi Pyrope laughed warmly, reaching down past her huge breasts to sink her claws into his robes and pull him clear off the ground into a face-smothering hug where her breasts overflowed his entire head and shoulders, pulling more and more of him right into her cleavage and against the flat plane where her breasts joined her body. Despite him being abnormally heavy for his size, she carried him easily with the frankly ludicrous strength honed by the mystical bond to dragons that her ancestors had passed on; the power of the great beasts flowed through her, as surely as any other seer of her kingdom took the spirits of dragons and stranger creatures into their bodies (whether through a sort of mystical pregnancy, or other means) to empower their foresight.

Karkat was an intensely private person; he might have come off as manic and emotionally expressive, and certainly he never lied about what he felt, or what he really meant by what he said, but he kept as much as he could to himself. He was naturally suited to have been a spy or perhaps an inside agent if he had lived in more troubled times; as it was, he never really let himself be too open, perhaps out of a sense of propriety; more stringent and grim than Kankri. It was a bit of a Vantas thing, Porrim supposed.

But he was… well, he wasn’t smiling, but he was clinging tight to her, openly and unashamed of doing so in public where everyone could see; his arms sank into her breasts now, and he didn’t appear to care about the intimacy of being in her cleavage, not in the heat of the moment, or its own curious romance.

It was, in Porrim’s view, adorable.

She felt bad putting a pin in it. “I know you two enjoy yourselves,” she said dryly, noting the distinctive outward curve of Terezi’s belly. “But there is such a thing as time and place…?”

Terezi, unabashed, slowly let go of Karkat and allowed him to slide down her front. He dropped to the ground in a little crouch and stood up, and both of them mirrored each other, instinctively adopting the same pose; it wasn’t quite insolent, but it was definitely heading that direction.

Terezi grinned, providing a great distinction from Karkat’s more serious demeanor. Every bit of her was a contrast; where Karkat was short, she was abnormally tall for a troll, towering above him so much that his horns were somewhere around her waist, at best. Where he was generally on the slim side, she was enormously wide; even bigger and curvier than her older sister Latula, her hips were over five feet across and big enough to cause serious trouble getting through doorways; she nudged one hip against Karkat’s face, trying to get a reaction out of him.

The slit hem of her robes rode up against that hip, sliding away from incredibly wide, soft thighs that Karkat could easily use as a mattress, if he didn’t mind sinking in. Her robes were teal, and modified somewhat; a deep cleavage hole provided a grand view of her bustline, her clearly pregnant belly protruding out by about a foot and dipping low over her waist line, and the hemline was cut short around her knees. IT showed off a lot of her body, just as Terezi liked, and incidentally was easy to move around in. An important consideration, for the adventurous lifestyle of a Pyrope seer; they were often called to direct action, as their foresight was generally demanded in a combat capacity.

It was honestly hard to imagine Terezi moving fast, though Porrim felt this was a bit of a slight. Even without a butt big enough to serve as its own ultra-cushioned seat, Terezi’s breasts were so big that the automatic assumption was that they would hamper movement. They were almost as big as Karkat was, and would likely eventually be considerably larger than his whole body; already, their lower crest dipped below her waist line, almost over her hips, swelling out wider than her torso was broad… about twice as wide as her torso for each breast, in fact. They looked heavy, and Porrim knew from experience that such massive assets were not to be taken lightly.

Apparently on automatic, Karkat and Terezi’s hands came together. Porrim chuckled and went to sit down.

Karkat and Terezi came after her, and paused in midstep; Karkat turned to look at something behind them. “Um, Porrim? We have company.”

“It is a public space,” Porrim said, adjusting herself for the complicated task of sitting down when equipped with a belly bigger than most of your body, a butt bigger around than most seats were really designed to accommodate, and breasts big enough to give even more weight to that belly, even without all the people in her womb making her balance a tricky thing.

“Uh, not that kind of visitor.”

“Hi, mom,” Terezi said cheerfully.

Porrim froze up, and turned around. She suddenly remembered a pillar… or someone big enough to be mistaken for one.

It was said that magic and the essence of dragons ran in the blood of the Pyropes; Terezi and Latula, growing as big as they were and as ludicrously strong as they could be, were strong contenders for the idea. Sitting in a particularly oversized chair and overflowing a lot of it was an even better case example.

“Hello, young Maryam,” said the cool and authoritative voice of Dragon Queen Redglare, the undisputed leader of the Pyropes, commander of the dragons by right of guardianship, and the troll who had personally ended the seemingly eternal wars of the nobles through both diplomacy and force of arms, and now that Porrim realized she was there, the full weight of her presence set on the area like a lead weight.

You couldn’t look away from her. Even sitting down, doing nothing, attention was pulled her way, like flames being drawn to a much brighter, hotter fire, and it had nothing to do with her beauty, or her great size. There was a word for what she had, but somehow charisma seemed insufficient to fully describe the subtle qualities of grace, inspiration and power that Redglare could give off.

Latula was tall, Terezi was big, and both were curvy enough to do terrible things to doors when they tried to move through them in a hurry, but even laying down, Redglare made them both look small. The chair creaked beneath her as she sat up, her immensely long and pointed horns arcing up slightly as she settled into position. There was a faint noise as the knightly attire she wore, richly decorated like a sort of wearable tapestry, did its best to accommodate a figure packing more mass than some crowds did. Breasts taller than even a Makara bruiser rose up high above her, pooling over her powerfully built and matronly body like a couch stripped of framework, and as Redglare moved, it was sincerely humbling for Porrim to see so much… mass moving around.

She was even bigger than her mother, the Dolorosa. That was a very intimidating thing to live up to.

Redglare sat up fully, her massive butt making a notable dent in her clothing and the chair. Behind her broad back, the couch was severely bent, her fearsome weight far too much for it to survive; her lust for drama had taken out yet another bit of furniture. Beside her, Porrim saw Latula sitting on another chair and holding hands with a smaller, incredibly handsome goldblood troll with four horns poking through his wild hair, a contented smile on both their faces.

“Isn’t it inappropriate for a bride and groom to see each other before a proper wedding?” Porrim asked, unable to stop herself from being impish.

“Not around here, it isn’t,” Terezi said dryly. “Dunno where you heard of that kinda tradition.”

“I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about,” Redglare said, affecting an air of innocence. “Why, if I saw them being so inappropriate, I would have already said something!” She very pointedly looked away from the pair.

Latula giggled. The goldblood next to her did as well, sticking his tongue out cheerfully. It wasn’t easy to see his eyes beneath his hair, though it was easy to see the scars webbing around from below his eyes; he took a more... reckless approach to magical experiments than was perhaps wise, and it had left its damage. His hand jerked and twitched in Latula’s grip, but she held him firmly and securely and without any reaction to this.

In only a month, Latula’s belly had swelled hugely, its firm and distended shape suggesting something a little more internally complex than just gaining weight; while not as massive as Porrim’s belly (and for good reason!), she was still getting big enough that she needed her own supportive brace to support it. Her belly hung low, the lower crest about even with her knees when she was standing, and looked about as big as a couch for the goldblood that Porrim suspected was the reason her belly was so big and, well, gravid.

Latula was very obviously pregnant; this wasn’t a big deal in Pyrope views, which regarded marriage as a vague formality in any case, but Porrim still worried about the diplomatic repercussions that might come about, what with heirs and all. Trolls lived long enough that getting an ideal heir was usually a matter of just waiting long enough, but getting them early on could pose some tricky questions with educating them; something that normally required life experience from the nobles in question.

If Porrim had to take a guess, she suspected that Latula’s growth wasn’t just additional children being gestated as the result of frequent personal time with her beloved. Magic had an emotional component, and it was pretty likely that being so affectionate and loving was adding to her growth, or double-impregnating her in some unexpected, mystical fashion.

Her beloved, Mituna Captor, looked quite proud of her growth. He leaned into her, and Redglare tilted her head aside, like an ancient nest lord proudly regarding some mischievous but very skilled dragons at play. “Sure is a good thing I have no idea where my kid or kid-in-law are,” she said laconically. “Otherwise I might have to pretend I actually want to bother with what they do on their own personal time.”

“Yup,” Latula said.

“Sure is a good thing I don’t know where they are, then.” Redglare sat up completely, and slowly stood off the couch; it creaked complainingly as she left it, and watching her stand up was a sight all on it’s own; her massive hips produced a sort of moving eclipse behind her, and her breasts were so incredibly massive they were visible even from behind her.

Redglare took a step to the balcony, resting the massive shelf of her breasts against the wall. “Hey, kids. Come here a sec, would you?”

Porrim, uncomprehendingly, cautiously raised a hand. Redglare turned, and nodded at her. Meekly, Porrim approached, the overwhelming size of the towering dragon lord like a magnet.

Terezi and Karkat followed, still holding hands, though with a dutiful air. Latula and Mituna followed too, but at a bit of a distance, perhaps unsure whether to drop the pretense or not.

There was a long moment before Redglare said anything else. A tension of a sort, not taut but loose and fraying, settled around them as she gathered her thoughts.

Eventually, Redglare spoke. “Huh. A wedding with a Captor mage, with my own daughter, with nobles of the other kingdoms attending. All on their own, too.” She adjusted herself, resting into her imposing bustline like her own moving cushioned table. “Believe me, kids. When I was your age, I’d never have believed I’d say something like that.”

“Yes, mama,” Latula said meekly.

Redglare snorted. “Boy, if my Latula were here and being all ‘dutiful daughter’ and stuff, I’d tell her to quit it. I didn’t make rivers run rainbows with blood so you guys would have to be serious and crap. Live a little, y’know?” Behind her, Latula nodded seriously. Mituna rolled his eyes… or Porrim supposed he did, his head tilted in the right way anyways.

“But. Yeah. We’ve spent hundreds of years just fighting back and forth over scraps our ancestors screwed up, and doing our best to screw up what’s left. I mean, look at all the monsters the Amporas have to clean up.” Redglare started to count things off on her fingers. “The desert you Maryams are fixing up; the rogue monsters that keep popping up here and there, hot spots of wild magic making the land rot and go insane… lost experiments wandering the world, all along and miserable… automatons that are slaves to their programming, and war machines that don’t have any thought but just killing whatever they think is an enemy… and that’s not even getting into the literal demons appearing from where too much hate and despair sank into the ground.

“This whole land has been screwed up for a long, long time. I hate to say it, but the work of fixing it doesn’t stop with me. I’d love it to. But my generation isn’t going to be the one to make sure it gets fixed. Probably not yours, either; this is a job you pass on.” She turned slightly, breasts dragging on the balcony, her half-lidded eyes pausing on Terezi’s belly. “And you’re making some headway on that so, hey, congrats on getting your boy before he wises up to you being a total smart ass, kiddo.”

Terezi nodded sagely. “Yeah, that’s the plan.” Karkat snorted.

“But, jokes aside, fixing it permanently isn’t your job. But keeping it going is. Same thing for making sure there’s no backsliding, either.” Redglare’s expression softened, loosened, her eyes distant. She winced, and looked for a moment as though she were remembering something sharp and painful. “There’s too much of that. Every inch we get, someone wants to pull it a foot back into where we were. So don’t give anyone even an inch. Understand, kids?”

“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused.

She chuckled. “Smartasses. But yeah, you get the idea.” She looked into the sky. “Me, ‘Rosa, Karkat and Mituna’s dads, the Leijon chief, and the others… we started this. But we don’t finish it.” She turned, looking square at them, and the intensity of her gaze, the fervor of her belief, hit Porrim like a ton of bricks. “You don’t either, but you can take it further than we ever did.” She grinned. “You can do it. I know you can.”

Porrim tilted her head down. She wasn’t sure she believed she was the one to do that.

She stood close enough, though, that Redglare could tilt her head up, her touch light and gentle. “Hey, kiddo. None of that. I believe in you. Follow me? C’mon. Chin up.” Porrim cautiously smiled, and Redglare grinned: wild, fierce, a dragon in all ways but the physical.

Redglare shifted tacks, her point made. “Come on, no looking all serious and crap.” She spread her arms wide, turning and her huge breasts sliding down, lowest slopes somewhere around her knees once they came to rest, and projecting out more than Redglare herself was tall. “It’s a wedding! Cheer up a little, dorks.” She flounced off. “Don’t let a cranky old dragon knight pester you any, huh?” She headed off, to leave them to their own devices, and she stopped.

She paused, in front of Latula and Mituna. She peered down at them, her expression suddenly caught between the cool exterior she normally tried to project, and something more raw; something red and wet and enough to bring tears to her eyes, and her lip tremble, just for a moment.

She looked down at her eldest daughter, her proud and skilled child, and at the goldblood she’d thought of as a son for quite some time, but never really hoping that she’d be able to say so for real. And here they were; to be married soon, sealing a bond between their kingdoms, not out of political necessity but because they wanted to.

She reached down, producing a startled pair of squeaks from the two as she hugged them tight. “I’m proud, of the both of you,” she said softly.

Redglare let them go, then, and left.

Porrim watched her go, thinking about what the dragon lord had said.

She supposed they really did have a job to do.

It was a duty as nobles.

#my writing #commissions #fics #twitchy!karkat #twitchy!terezi #twitchy!porrim #twitchy!bronya #twitchy!homestuck #twitchy!redglare #twitchy!latula #twitchy!mituna #twitchy!kankri

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