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 MIDWIZARD OF COSCONIA

Chapter One: A Giant Problem

They say that the Giants aspired to the sovereignty of Heaven, and piled the mountains, heaped together, even to the lofty stars.

–Ovid

50 years before the Twelve Race War

Rotoplas, Giant Territory

“PUSH!!!” Izzie screamed for what felt like the 100th time today. The baby giant’s head had been crowning for at least six hours, and the midwizard was starting to get worried this baby wasn’t coming. She knew this was a potential complication, but it was the first time she’d actually seen it in real life. The textbooks and simulations couldn’t prepare you for the real thing. 

This baby wasn’t coming out. She could feel it in her gut. It wasn’t unusual for a giant to labor for weeks and push for upwards of an entire day, but the 24 hour mark had just passed with no end in sight. Izzie tried to envision what her professor had taught her about giantess pregnancy complications in midwizardry school. 

Size is the giant’s greatest asset and their biggest downfall, Professor Vylt lectured. The average giantess, who is typically taller than her partner, is 25 feet tall. Of the many types of giants–rock giants, frost giants, and even the fabled fire giants–the rock giants are the smallest in stature. 

This lecture is a giant pain in my ass, Dalfa whispered to Izzie. 

Shhh, Izzie stifled a giggle and shushed her best friend, playfully smacking her under the desk. This is going to be on the test! Izzie knew the mind mage would ace the exam no matter what, but Izzie wasn’t as naturally book smart. 

After a gestation of nearly two years, Professor Vylt continued, a giant baby–pardon my oxymoron–will usually weigh around sixty pounds. The entire class gasped at this. Giants were only the second race they had covered so far in midwizardry school, and after starting with dwarves and their 3–4 pound babies, a sixty pound baby was incomprehensible. They had gone on to learn that giants would give birth to babies up to five feet tall. 

Damn, Dalfa whispered again. That’s lanky as hell.

Izzie looked up at the sweating giantess. Even though she had cast a spell on herself to increase her own size to help with the delivery, Sydyr still towered over the wizard. Sydyr, the youngest sister of the Giant King of Rotoplas, was considered to be one of the smaller giantesses, clocking in at about 21 feet by Izzie’s estimation. Part of being a midwizard was meeting her patients where they’re at, which sometimes included physically changing form. Since Izzie was the height of a normal wizard, about six feet tall, there was no way she could deliver a baby nearly the same size as her. For this reason, all midwizards were required to learn the spell corporus gigantorum, which effectively doubled their size.

Sydyr, like most rock giants, had rough, gray skin. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but Izzie thought her skin looked even grayer right now, like the ash leftover after a fire. That wasn’t a good sign. Her strong jaw was set with determination, but it was clear she was in pain. 

The giantess’ coarse, black hair was plastered against her anguished face. Her breaths were short and gasping, and her typically imposing presence seemed diminished. Weak. Scared. Her older sister sat by her bedside with a massive hand resting gently on her shoulder.  

“Take a break for a few minutes,” Izzie told the giantess. She looked deeply into Sydyr’s dark, shadowed eyes. She could tell how exhausted she was, but in spite of that she remained resolute. “How are your energy levels doing, Syd?”

“I’m fine,” she grunted. “I can do this.” Izzie knew she was putting on a brave face. Her normally thunderous voice was barely above a whisper. “I know I can do this,” she reaffirmed with a bit of her normal thunder returning. “What do you need me to do?”

Izzie pondered on this for a moment. She was trying her best to appear as a calm, reassuring presence, but she was terrified. She knew if this baby didn’t come out soon, there was a high probability both mom and baby wouldn’t make it, and she couldn’t let that happen. 

The midwizard pulled her wand out of her pocket and tapped it against Sydyr’s chest. Izzie had something special that set her apart from other wizards—a blood magic Affinity. All wizards were born with an Affinity to a specific type of magic, like how Dalfa had a mental Affinity. As far as Izzie knew, she was the only wizard in Cosconia with a blood magic Affinity. She came from a long line of blood wizards, but her father had abandoned the family when she was young, and her mother died giving birth to her little brother. He didn’t survive either. Izzie was nowhere near the level of power of some of her ancestors that had fought in the War for Cosconia, like her great-grandmother, but after the ritual failed, she preferred to use her blood magic for healing instead of violence. 

There were three essential aspects to performing magic. The first was Affinity, which made doing blood magic come naturally to Izzie. The second was Skill. A mage of any sort had to train for years to become sufficiently Skilled in a spell. The more Skilled you were in a particular spell, the easier it was to perform and the stronger the spell would be. Finally, an effective spell needed the proper Intent. This was the hardest to define when teaching new wizards, since it was a nebulous mix of emotion and circumstance.

With a simple tap of her wand, she used the vitala spell to ascertain important information about Sydyr’s current status. She was in bad shape. Izzie closed her eyes and envisioned she was the black blood flowing through the giant’s body. She arrived at her heart, the size of Izzie’s head. Unlike her own four-chambered heart, she could sense the giantess’ six-chambered heart. She had learned in her anatomy classes giants had an extra two chambers purely for the storage of blood. Rock giants were slow, sedentary creatures. Though they lived for many centuries, they rarely left their own small communities. A giant’s heart usually beat around twenty-five times per minute, which was plenty sufficient for their slow, day-to-day tasks. However, the nearly five liters of blood stored in their extra chambers was ready at a moment’s notice to supply the rest of their massive bodies with the vital oxygen and nutrients required to move quickly if they needed to defend themselves or escape a dangerous situation. 

Sydyr’s heart was beating at a blistering seventy-five beats per minute. It was an ominous sign of impending disaster, but she persisted as she navigated through the rest of the giantess’ body. She found nothing else amiss, but she knew an extremely fast heart rate was sometimes the only warning sign prior to the heart stopping completely. 

She could not let that happen. For two reasons. The first was that Sydyr was her patient. Pregnancy was hard, and it was scary. Izzie’s dark past had awakened in her a deep desire to walk this path with scared freles. Though there had been some recent advances in midwizardry, maternal mortality remained high in many communities, especially giant communities. Izzie had learned in the beginning of midwizardry school that about a fifth of giantesses died in labor, almost always taking their babies along with them. By the time she graduated twelve years later, the rate had increased to nearly a quarter. Nobody could explain why. 

The second reason she couldn’t let Sydyr die today was a little more selfish–she also didn’t want to die today. Syd’s older brother, Grodge, had hunted Izzie down in the nearby capital of Ysaldur, where Izzie had been living in the community to learn more about giant pregnancies. Izzie discovered giants could nearly always predict the arrival of a baby to within a month. Sydyr being three months past the “due date” was unprecedented. Even though she had informed him she was barely out of midwizardry school, he didn’t care. He just wanted somebody there for his sister. She couldn’t blame him. At first, Grodge, the Giant King of Rotoplas, seemed like a scared, overprotective brother. The situation took a turn when they got close to Syd’s home. 

“I have not been truthful with you, wizard,” he boomed in his gravelly voice. There were many myths about giants being stupid or unintelligent, but this wasn’t true. They spoke slowly and used few words, but they were far from unintelligent. “Sydyr is special. There was a prophecy. Foretold by the elders hundreds of years ago, after the Great Divide. They told of a leader who would refuse to enter the world, but if he did, he would lead the giants through times of war.” That’s weird, thought Izzie. Cosconia has been at peace for centuries. “Sydyr’s son will go on to lead not just our kingdom, but the entire giant race. Skygyr is to be our savior—and you must save him. If he doesn’t make it, neither will you.” Izzie shuddered as his ominous words seemed to shake the earth. 

“How do you even know the baby is a mele?” she asked the Giant King, trying to keep her composure. He towered over her in her normal form, being over 20 feet taller than her. She felt like a child in his presence, and his ember-like eyes glowed with silent anger. She was rapidly trying to make sense of the situation, because though her profession required facing life and death, it usually wasn’t her own. 

“I just know,” he responded after a long pause. “Skygyr is the chosen.” 

Those were the last words Grodge had spoken to her, and now the prince stood menacingly near Syd’s bed. “You must save the chosen one,” he reminded Izzie.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Grodge,” Sydyr grunted between painful contractions. “My baby is not chosen. The prophecy is not real. It’s just from some dumb book written before any of us were born. I knew the risks when I got pregnant.”

“NO!” The Giant King shouted, making Izzie nearly jump out of her skin. “No,” he said more softly after he saw his sister look at him with fear in her eyes. “She will help you. You will not die today. I will not allow it.”

“Get out, brother,” Sydyr snapped. “The delivery room is no place for a mele. Especially not my screaming brother.”

Grodge looked as if he was about to say something, but he held back. He looked at Izzie again. “Save her. Save him.” The implied threat was clear. There was no other option. 

She was out of time. She knew if the giant’s heart rate reached 100 beats per minute, she would die and not be able to get the baby out. Izzie pulled a hair tie out of her robes to push back her silvery hair. As always, the stubborn scarlet streak tried to point the opposite direction of the rest of her hair.

“Sydyr, I have to be honest with you. The situation is dire. At this poin–”

The giantess cut her off. “I have made my peace. Our mother will protect you from Grodge. He cares too much. Thank you for all you have done.”

“What are you saying?”

“Do you have any children, midwizard?”

A sharp pang of sadness tore through Izzie’s soul, but she suppressed it. Not the time. “No. But I think being a mother is one of the most important things you can do.”

“Sometimes a mother must make the ultimate sacrifice.” 

“I’m not going to let that happen,” Izzie said.

 “Can you at least save my son?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Do I have a choice, wizard?” Sydyr grunted.

“You always have a choice. But I think I can do this.” She turned around to look through her enchanted medical bag. She hadn’t cast an enlargement spell on it, so everything seemed tiny while she was double her normal size. As a gift for graduating midwizardy school, every graduate received a bag like this. The enchantment allowed unlimited storage. She couldn’t even begin to understand the magic behind it, but she had filled it with as many medical devices and gadgets as she could find before setting off for Ysaldur. 

“Damn, you’re enormous Isadore,” the bag whispered to her.

“Don’t you know that isn’t the kind of thing you’re allowed to say to a lady? Also I’ve told you a thousand time to call me Izzie now,” she muttered in reply. Most students enchanted their bags with a basic speaking charm. In their profession, the days were long and the nights were longer, and with the travel between communities and the time spent waiting in labor, sometimes it got a little lonely. These charms didn’t give the bag sentience exactly, but usually they could hold a casual conversation and help you find what you were looking for inside the bag. 

Unfortunately, she was terrible at charms. She had no Skill or Affinity, so she had to brute force it with Intent alone. Something had gone wrong with her spell, and even though the enchanted bag did gain the ability to speak… well, it was a bit of a dick. 

“You are sooooo effed here, bruh.” Bruh? What did that even mean? For some reason, not only was the bag rude, the way it talked didn’t even seem to be of this world. It used strange words she didn’t understand and had a casual way of speaking that didn’t make sense half the time. Still, she got the gist of what the bag was saying. 

“Very helpful. Can you just help me find what I need for once?”

“I could, but will it matter? That Giant Emperor or whatever is gonna make a soup from your freshly peeled skin! Shave your liver! Squeeze the jelly from your eyes!! I’ve heard it’s quite good on toast…”

“What’s going on down there…” Sydyr asked sleepily. “Who are you talking to?”

“Uhhh nobody!” she laughed nervously. “Just a minute!”

Izzie tried to whisper quieter, but she was terrible at being quiet. If I had a penor for every time I was told to keep my voice down, I’d be the richest midwiz in Cosconia. Izzie was known among her colleagues as being the life of the party, mostly due to the fact that she was usually the loudest in the room. “First of all, you’re thinking of ogres, and they were wiped out in the War. Giants are peaceful creatures.”

“I bet he makes an excep–”

“Second of all,” she interrupted the bag. “How about a little faith? You’ve seen me pull dozens of times!”

“It’s actually only been seven times, by my count.”

“What do you mean your count? You’ve been counting the times…” Damn it. How did she always let that damn bag goad her into an argument? She loved the thing, but she was in the middle of a very tense situation. Even though the bag was bottomless, it seemed like the tool she was looking for was somehow always at the bottom. “I’ll give you a mouse if you shut up right this second and help me find the spoons.” For some reason, the bag had developed a taste for mice and she could use them to bribe it. She didn’t think it was eating them, but she wasn’t sure exactly why it wanted them. And just like that…

“Here it is!” she exclaimed, making the tired giantess perk up for the first time. She pulled out two items, a mirror image of each other. “This is a lost art among many midwizards, but I was lucky to have a professor who was an expert in one of the most effective methods of delivery, especially for giant babies.”

She thought back on Professor Vylt. She had been one of Izzie’s mentors at school, and she had done a lot of shadowing of the professor’s work in giant communities. Just before graduation, Vylt revealed the exciting but shocking news–she had become pregnant herself. It wasn’t particularly hard for giants to get pregnant, but many avoided it due to the mortality rate. Despite the large size of Ysaldur, communities throughout Giant Territory were shrinking rapidly due to this fact. In spite of all her knowledge and practical experience, Professor Vylt didn’t survive her own pregnancy. Like so many before her, the baby got stuck coming out.

Izzie shook off the gloomy thoughts of her late professor. “These are forceps. They’re basically like giant spoons that go on the baby’s head so we can pull him out.” Izzie realized she’d started referring to the baby as a mele too, even though as far as she knew, there was still a fifty percent chance it would be a frele. That was one thing that was common to all races with two sexes she knew of–there was never a race who produced more of one than the other. A strange quirk of biology that tied everybody together. Freles, like Izzie and Sydyr, were the childbearing sex of any race, be they elf, halfling, wizard, or orc, and the other sex called mele. The only race that broke convention were merfolk, since mermen laid eggs and mermaids didn’t.

The forceps were made of steel, like most good swords. There were two separate pieces of the forceps, which looked like giant spoons. They interlocked with each other when applied correctly. The forceps had a long metal handle for the midwizard to hold onto, and a curved blade to exactly match curvature of a baby’s head. “These are what we use to deliver babies that won’t come out.” 

Sydyr looked at the forceps skeptically. “Those would barely fit around my baby’s foot, much less his head.”

Izzie chuckled, slightly embarrassed. “Ah, yes, well. Of course.” She muttered a spell, cosarus gigantorum. It was a slight modification of the spell she used to make herself big, and it turned the item to exactly the size needed to deliver Skygyr. It was an easy spell to cast with Skill alone. “There we go!”

Sydyr was slightly pacified, but still unsure. “You are too small to pull my baby out. I am three months late. He is likely almost as big as you.” 

Izzie wasn’t quite sure that estimate lined up, but she didn’t say anything. “You’re right. I’m just guiding and pulling. You’re doing all the work.”

“I’m too tired,” the giantess said simply. “I can’t do it.”

This is where Izzie’s idea got a little dicey. “I know. But I have my blood magic which may be able to help.” Being the only blood wizard in Cosconia, much of what Izzie did was self-taught. She spent many years studying blood magic before she enrolled in midwizardry school, but she didn’t have many opportunities for practical application. Now that she was out refining her craft, she could experiment with her abilities a bit.

The giantess looked at her skeptically. “What are you going to do to me?”

Isadore explained her idea to her, and the giantess grunted with displeasure. “You’re in control here, Sydyr. You can say no. But I think I can save him.”

“Do whatever you need to do to help my baby.”

Izzie closed her eyes and envisioned herself within the giantess’ heart again. Her heart rate was up to ninety beats per minute. Shit, she thought to herself. It wasn’t a guarantee Syd’s heart would stop if she got over 100, but the chances were too high. Her intuition told her Sydyr was not going to be one of the lucky ones. “Take a few deep breaths for me,” she spoke out loud. Taking deep breaths didn’t actually do anything, as all midwizards knew, but it was something you said when you wanted a patient to relax. 

She could feel the giantess’ breathing slow. It was a good sign she still had enough control to do so. Once she established the connection with Syd’s blood, she opened her eyes. “You ready to be a mom?” Izzie asked the giantess. 

She nodded. Izzie set her jaw, which everybody always described as sharp. She wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not. Sweat poured down her pale skin, which rarely saw the sun because of how much she worked. 

“Alright, Syd. I’m moving the blood from your reserves. You might feel a little lightheaded, but push through it. I’m sending half of it to your uterus, and half of it to the vessels that supply your heart.” The sangimovi spell worked perfectly for this. Her heart rate was now at ninety-five, but she didn’t tell the giantess. She couldn’t let her lose focus. “That way, more oxygen goes to your heart, and we can protect you during this process.”

Izzie’s goal was to give a boost to Syd’s uterus, which contained the presumably massive baby, so they could get this baby out with the assistance of the forceps. She took the first forcep, the left one, and cast a spell on it. Lubricado. All midwizards learned this spell on day one of their twelve year midwizardy education. This spell lubricated the blade to minimize any discomfort for the already miserable giantess. Since she could see the crown of the baby’s head, hence the term crowning, she pressed the blade against the baby’s head and slid it into place. The late Professor Vylt had always told her a forceps-assisted delivery was as much an art as it was a science. You couldn’t see where the blade ended up, since it was inside the body along the side of the baby’s head. Everything was done by feel. Izzie could feel the blade go exactly where she wanted it to. Twelve hells yea, she thought to herself. 

After casting lubricado on the second blade, she slid it into place on the opposite side of the first one. Again, it found exactly the right place. Izzie knew it was the right place, even if she couldn’t exactly explain why. Maybe it was Maternal Magic. Maybe it was good training. The locking mechanism clicked into place with an extremely satisfying sound. 

Though she hadn’t mentioned this to the giantess, she had a final spell to cast, though this one would be on herself since she knew Sydyr’s weakened body wouldn’t be able to handle it. Enforza corporus. It would strengthen her entire body, but she knew that after it wore off, she would be extremely weak. Spells to strengthen the body weren’t in line with her Affinity, but she had a fair amount of Skill and more Intent than ever since three lives were on the line. It was worth it. She had learned the spell specifically for instances such as this.

“Alright Syd. This is it. Time to meet this kid. You ready?” Izzie asked, power coursing through her body. “On the count of three, you’re going to give me the biggest push you got. Every bit of energy you have left. You’ve got this.”

“Three…” Izzie felt the giantess’s heart rate increase to 102 beats per minute. She was committed, so there was no going back. There wasn’t any spell she knew to prevent the giantess’ heart from giving out. “Two…” the midwizard tightened her grip on the forceps, feeling the strength in every single muscle in her body. “One…” She took a deep breath in and prepared to pull all her might.

With an earth-shattering roar, Syd pushed with a power the wizard had never seen in her life. Even with her magically enhanced body, the power emanating from the giantess was far greater. This is something the midwizard had observed many times over the years. Maternal Magic. There weren’t any textbooks on it. It wasn’t officially recognized as a school of magic. Many people (mostly meles) didn’t even believe it existed. But Izzie had seen it dozens of times. A strength that transcended known science. A baby pulling through against all odds. She could see it on full display in front of her. As Syd pushed, Izzie used her enhanced strength to pull harder than she’d ever pulled before. She knew there were risks to a forceps delivery, like injuries to the baby’s head, eyes, mouth, or even brain, but she wasn’t worried. The forceps were exactly where they needed to be. 

For the first time in what felt like days, she felt the baby move. She could see the baby descending right in front of her. It was working. It was working! “Yes!! Syd! Don’t stop, keep this push up and you’re going to meet this baby!” The baby continued to descend as Izzie pulled. She knew her enhanced strength wouldn’t last much longer, but she would pull until she dropped. 

Finally! The baby’s head was completely out. The giant baby had a thick coat of brown hair on his head. The forceps had been a smashing success! She saved him. Maybe this really is a special baby, she mused.

Now that the head was out, the hard part was over. She removed the forceps since they’d done their job, and she just had to put gentle downward traction on the head and the baby’s giant shoulder would pop right…

No. No no no no. This can’t be happening right now. We were so close. This is what Izzie had been worried about from the beginning, she’d just pushed it to the back of her mind because labor wasn’t progressing. Size is their biggest asset and their greatest downfall. Like many medical terms, the word for this one was in the old language. Dejombro. The baby’s head was out but the shoulder was stuck. 

Dearest Izzie,

I hope your time in Giant Territory is going well! I can’t imagine how hard it is for you to be there after what happened to Prof Vylt. How are you? Meet any cute meles yet? I’m here in Halfling Territory, and it’s even more bleak than we learned about. I swear I lose more babies than I save. But I did successfully deliver quintuplets the other day, you’d be so proud of me!

Western Cosconia is beautiful right now, I bet you’re jealous since you’re probably freezing your ass off in Ysaldur. I miss you, and I hope we can see each other really soon. 

Love, Dalfa

P.S. You are so lucky you have a blood magic Affinity. My mind magic is practically useless for delivering babies. Why the hells did I become a midwizard again?!