It was a warm summer morning and a young woman was hunched over her workbench. She had been awake since the previous night trying to calculate the proper formulas for her latest alchemical circle. She was trying to get the ratio between mana and magnesium just right so she could get her magical lantern to burn twice as long. Said woman was called Harriet and she was an alchemist. Her job was to create new artifices, create and improve alchemical circles and create chimeras. Harriet was pulling an all-nighter because she had managed to advance in a particularly tricky alchemical equation she had been stuck for weeks and was about to finish it, she just needed to get the precise ratio.
“Attempt 113, 63.45% magnesium” She talked to herself while deploying the alchemical circle she had. She poured a precisely measured amount of magnesium powder at the center of the circle on the paper in front of her.
“Sloooooow and steady” she kept talking to herself and cautiously activated the circle. The alchemical formula in the circle slowly spinning the powder, igniting it. The powder started to burn, almost eating all the powder in one go until…
“Just hooold, just hoooold” Harriet almost chanted under her breath. The spinning fire kept spinning until it finally stopped, holding itself apparently without any support over the circle. A white flame, holding over the blue glow of the alchemical glyph.
Harriet almost face planted on the desk, she had finally finished the damn equation. She usually wore a beret, common accessory for alchemists where she lived, but that had been thrown on the floor hours ago. Her beautiful shoulder-length black hair disheveled after a whole night of experiment failures. Her usually carefully draped cape over her cotton shirt was unbuttoned around her collar and was being used as a blanket as she had hunched over her desk during the night. Even her usually beautiful green eyes were resting over dark bags around her eyes. She threw her arms back and stretched as far as she could but as she did that, she almost fell back on her chair. She balanced herself back and looked down to what had messed up her balance, a bulging pregnant looking belly looking overdue with a single baby.
Harriet was a very busy alchemist and she had been in need of an assistant for at least a few months. Most alchemists would just hire an apprentice for that, but she decided to take this as a personal challenge. She had been focused on magical circles for the last year or so and wanted to go back to creating chimeras. Creating a chimera smart enough to help her in the workshop would be a good way to practice her skills, would be a good work sample for future patrons of her alchemical abilities and would also allow for much more interesting company than a snot-nosed, uppity apprentice.
Harriet’s belly started shifting. Seems like almost falling down had also given her creation a scare. Harriet started rubbing her belly.
“Calm down in there. It was just a scare. No need to get riled up.” She talked to her belly. The mass stopped moving and seemed to calm down. Harriet had really outdone herself with her current chimera. She had taken some faerie essence, so her chimera would fly, some dragon essence, so she’d be able to extract some powerful alchemical component whenever she needed and she had added a little tiny bit of human blood. Creating human chimeras was kind of risky, many things to consider and when you add human blood to the creature, it makes it so it has to be gestated on a human body until the final week of development, but she was confident she had given her creation just enough human blood for it to understand human speech.
“Oooof. Almost done.” She said as she rose up from her desk chair. She had started this experiment 2 weeks ago and the fetus had developed quite well, but she had underestimated the size it would reach. “Should have re-calculated the amount of dragon essence.” She thought to herself. “But that’s not a problem, I think it is big enough, I’ll transfer it to a birthing pod later today and get ready to send this new equation straight to the alchemist guild. These longer burning lanterns will finance this workshop for a good while.” Harriet slowly made her way to the spiral stairs that led to her personal area, on the second floor of her workshop, hand on the small of her back, another hand on the rails, trying to lift her belly high enough to not knee herself each step of the way.
Finally, she made it to the top of the stairs, leading straight to her living-room/kitchen; usually this would be the place where Harriet would lounge after a tiresome night of experiments, brew some tea and catch up on her reading, but she was feeling way too exhausted. She made her way past the cooking counter and went straight to her bedroom. All she wanted was a good bath and a good day of sleep. As soon as she entered her bedroom, she threw her cape on her bed and quickly undressed herself, save for her skirt, which was trickier to take off since she had to work around her belly to unzip it. Finally undressed, she walked towards her bathroom when she went past the full-length mirror she had next to her wardrobe. Harriet took a moment to take a look at her. This chimera was really taking advantage of her wide hips to grow quite comfortably. She ran her hands over her belly, going to her hips and thighs. The “pregnancy” was mostly alchemically induced, so her breasts had not grown nor she did feel the usual side-effects related to growing a normal human baby in her womb. She had the body of a young woman with the pregnant belly of a brood mother. Harriet started walking again, hand slowly rubbing the underside her womb. She’d have to double check to see if she had a birthing pod big enough for this chimera.
At her bathroom, she activated the circles she had attached to her bathtub, some minor heat circles to keep the water warm, just at the precise temperature she so enjoyed. Harriet slowly sat down on her bath and let the water hold a bit of her weight for a while. Some slits of sunlight were passing through the window of her bathroom; she could hear the carriages and people starting their day on the street down below. Her stomach was shifting and moving above water level, being too big to be fully immersed. The chimera seemed to be quite lively and full of energy, seemingly trying to move closer to the points of the bath where the circles kept the water heated.
“Hmmm, so you can already feel external stimuli, huh.” Harriet said, almost clinically. She started pushing against her belly, trying to make the chimera inside her stop doing it. The chimera kept trying to move towards the heated water.
 “Stop.” Harriet said in a stern tone. The chimera immediately stopped and the mass shifted back to her middle. “Good, I appreciate an obedient assistant.” Harriet kept running her hands over her womb, feeling the chimera slowly shift inside her. It was getting so big; she could swear she could feel its heartbeat.
“This is too unwieldy.” Harriet thought to herself. This chimera was way too big for what she had in mind. She wanted a chimera slightly bigger than a dog, maybe bipedal to help her reach high shelves and dexterous enough to deal with delicate components. This chimera was obviously too big to walk around the workshop without breaking all the equipment. And where would she put the damn thing?
Harriet sighed, this was a dud, she’d transfer it to the birthing pod after her rest and deconstruct it to get back some of the essence she used. It’s just a shame she wasted these last weeks’ walking with a baby bump around and had nothing to show in the end. “Well, failure is just the other side of success. I’ll re-draw the equations and use less dragon essence.” Harriet stretched her arms and enjoyed the rest of her bath.
After taking a few minutes drying herself up, a few more minutes than usual thanks to the belly, she went back to her bedroom, took her most comfortable silk nightie out of her wardrobe and closed the curtains, so she could sleep soundly during the day. She carefully lay down on her bed, picking some pillows to support her belly. She was quite uncomfortable, but she was so exhausted she didn’t mind. As she fell asleep, she half-yawned to herself as she drifted away “*Yaaa-* as soon as I –*aaaawwwwn*- get up, I’ll get rid of it.”
A lurch rolled inside her belly.

¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬Harriet woke up with a weird feeling in her belly.
Harriet lazily opened her eyes, still drifting in and out of her sleepy stupor. She could feel something rolling and kicking her from inside. She was sleeping on her side, pillows supporting her stomach, but as soon as she looked down to herself, she saw that her belly had grown during her sleep. While it looked overdue with a single baby as she went to sleep, she now looked ready to give birth to twins, big ones at that.
Harriet’s middle was rolling and shifting right before her eyes, as if the chimera was having problems to sleep. Harriet slapped her belly and yelled “Hey, stop it in there! Are you insane?!” The mass inside her womb stopped for a second, as if it had been scared by the sudden yell, then the rolling and churning got even faster.
“Ooooaooooooohhh” Harriet said now both hands on top of her shifting womb. The chimera was now actively head-butting and kicking her from the inside, seemingly desperate. Harriet had enough of it and tried to roll out of her bed. “That’s enough! I’ll draw a circle and put you to sleep at this very instant!” Harriet yelled, livid with her chimera. She shifted her weight, but the chimera was relentless in its thrashing. Every time she tried to roll out of bed, the chimera’s tantrum put her off of balance. With much struggle, Harriet managed to sit down and tried to stand up. As she stood up, the chimera was shifting downwards. At first, most of the movement looked like bumps and shifts near her breasts and bellybutton, but with her standing up motion, the chimera had started going downwards. Harriet noticed that shift. “Oh no, you fucking don’t.” She said between her teeth. It was hard walking fast when you had a 12-pound being inside your womb, but Harriet was as stubborn as the chimera, wincing through the thrashing in her middle and taking steps, one by one, towards her living room, where she kept paper and magic ink, for the circles.
Harriet pushed back bumps and slapped her belly every time the chimera stretched her womb a bit too far.
“How dare you try to hurt me?” Harriet said, between pushes and slaps. In her silk nightie, she could see quite clearly her womb shifting down. The chimera was getting closer to the exit.
Already at her living room, Harriet leaned on every piece of furniture she had on the way to her center table, where the paper and the ink were. As Harriet reached the table, she felt something that made her fall to the ground. The chimera had found the exit. It had given a hard head-butt straight into her cervix, which gave just a bit, but the chimera was smart enough to know that the give would increase.
Harriet was now desperate; she crawled towards her center table, her face scrunching with each pain, the chimera shoving its head more and more into her cervix. She stretched her hand over the table, head at floor level, she was on her side, cradling her belly with her other hand, instinctively trying to sooth the being inside her. A futile attempt, she knew, but her body seemed to feel it was what she should be doing.
She scrapped her hand over the table, dropping the paper and the ink on the floor. Harriet dragged herself towards the fallen paper and the ink bottle, now spilt all over the floor. ‘FUCK, WHERE’S THE PEN!?” Harriet yelled. The Chimera was getting impatient, the opening wasn’t giving anymore. It started moving back and forth inside the womb. Harriet could see her belly wobbling, up and down, the being was taking momentum, to shove itself harder against the opening.
Harriet was almost delirious, slapping her hand on the floor, trying to reach the paper, but…
“ARRRRRRHGGGGHHH.” It was too late. The chimera’s head was now lodged. And with that…
“No, nooo, nooooooo.” Harriet knew what was coming. Now that the chimera had breached her womb, the alchemical process that disguised the pregnancy from her body had been broken and her body was now working overtime to catch-up to the process, kick-starting contractions.
“No, please noo. You are too big.” Harriet pleaded to the being inside of her, but at this point, the chimera had went too far into this ordeal and he would just be stuck if it stopped. With each contraction, the chimera felt constrained and thrashed in response after each one, making Harriet twice as miserable.
 “Urrrrhrggh. Urrrrghh AAAARRRRRGGHH!” Harriet yelled as the chimera now pushed its way out, her pelvis grating around the massive creature, doing months’ worth of stretching in a few, excruciating minutes. Harriet grinded her teeth and twisted her face for each inch the chimera made into her birth canal.
 “You URRRRRGGGH little monster.” Harriet now cursed under her breath “I should have NEVER MADE YOOOOOOOUUUUURRHHHHHGGGH!” Another strong contraction hit her, trying to squeeze this foreign being out of her, with minor success. Still laying down on the floor, she felt her whole lower body hurting in agony, being stretched beyond its normal and feeling the creature’s apparent scaled skin scrapping against her inner walls.
 As Harriet cursed the chimera between her contractions, the chimera was finally making its way to her opening proper. As it approached her entrance, Harriet started spreading her legs, out of instinct. As she did that, her hips also started buckling up a bit, the motion relieving a bit of the pressure and helping the progress a small amount. Harriet was livid, but delaying the birth would just bring more agony to herself. She felt the chimera almost crowning, so she took a hold of her thighs, spread as much as she could and start pushing with all force.
“oooof, oooof, ooof   YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” she yelled, as the contraction hit and she pushed with all the raw strength she could muster in herself. The chimera was finally crowing, but it was much too big. The first thing to appear out of her opening was its snout, clearly reptilian and elongated. Harriet couldn’t see it, but she could feel it sniffing the air outside. She despised that feeling, an animal being birthed by her. She hated it with a passion.
“OUT, OUT,OOOURRRRGRGGHH!” She groaned, pushing it harder and harder. The chimera as feeling suffocated, barely able to register what has happening, Harriet’s vaginal wall squeezing it into a vice grip, almost suffocating it with each contraction. In response, it started to shift inside her birth canal, its scales and wings hurting Harriet a lot.
Between Harriet’s maniac groans and pushes and the chimeras constant shift, the labor had ground to an almost halt, the contractions now almost overlapping each other. Harriet had enough.
“OUT, YOU ARE GOING TO GET OUT NOOOOOOOW!” She got her hands over her center table and, with a massive effort, started to get herself ‘up’, she was going to squat and push it out. “I’m going to get you out of me and kill you myself.” Harriet let out another guttural yell and pushed again.
With the combined efforts of gravity, Harriet’s push and the chimera struggle, the chimera’s head had finally cleared Harriet’s stretched lips. As soon as its head came out, Harriet got a hold of it with the hand she wasn’t using to support herself on the table.
“I’m yanking you out, you monster.” As she started pulling and pushing it out at the same time. Harriet felt like she was trying to pull her spine out, due to how painful it felt when she pulled the chimera, but she didn’t care at this point. She needed it out and she’d do anything to do it.
The chimera struggled, trying to bite her hand as she did, trying to open its wings inside her birth canal, but only managing to make her hurt even more.
“ENOUGH! OUUUUUUUUUUTTTTTTTTT!” With one last massive contraction and one hard pull, Harriet yanked the chimera out of her. As she did that, blood spilt all over the floor, her inside most likely completely ravaged by the raging chimera. Harriet was barely conscious at this point, her hand around the chimera’s neck. It had just been born and it was also exhausted, and suddenly, darkness…
Harriet woke up. She slowly opened her eyes. As she woke up, she remembered the hellish ordeal she had gone through. In a motion of pure anger, she looked back at the spot on the floor where she last saw the chimera. Nothing was there. She noticed a trail of blood, making its way to the nearest open window.
“Disgusting demon, seems like the wings were fully functional.” She muttered to herself. She looked at her battered body: Belly deflated and flaccid, hips completely numb; probably fractured and she could see and feel the state of her vagina, probably torn from the inside.
Harriet struggled to sit down properly; the weight of her body over her hips was killing her. She was a competent alchemist; she would be able to fix the damage to her body, in a few weeks she’d have her perfect body back, but the pain…
“That I’ll never forgive.” She said to the air, almost like a statement to herself. How did that measly monster dare to defy her, to use her as a mere broodmare? Harriet was already planning: the spells, the circles, and the bounty. She gave birth to this ingrate being, she’d be the one to kill it, with her own hands.