Considering how difficult the new task was, Gustav and his group still started it with their best foot forward. They now have a big, dependable tunnel they could rely on and even located a few plausible whereabouts of the spaceship!
Things couldn't have gone better, now, there was only the matter of actually finding the ship. That should be far trickier, but he was enthusiastic.
He didn't plan to go through this tunnel now, however. It felt tasteless to go anywhere without Arila, even if she couldn't contribute much to this upcoming journey.
"We'll go tomorrow, I guess. We woke up early for nothing, and now we gotta play soldier all day with blasters on my hands. Don't even know if more aliens are coming here, or if we can survive if they attack." Gustav muttered.
One of the demons deciphered his ramblings, and immediately encouraged. "Father figure, don't worry. We eat monsters, so aliens probably taste good... hehe."
That was definitely comforting. Their demonic hunger wasn't so appealing, no, but he felt comfortable with how useful they could be now, since they were bigger and stronger than ever before!
...
They got back to the village in no time, since there wasn't anything else to do. Gustav and the crawlers were bored out of their minds early in the morning.
They grew accustomed to adrenaline these days, so it was torturous to stay still.
The best idea was to play around with the blasters which he looted, just to see how much of a mess they could cause against an open piece of land.
"Fun..." He thought, but that was when he heard a common lady guard yell out somewhat helplessly, for attention.
"The eggs!" She yelled, from about twenty meters away.
"What about the eggs?" Gustav shouted back, and then started running towards the guard house.
The first impression he got was that someone, had been dumb enough to break them. It could literally be the worst thing that could happen!
Even if there were actual scary demons in those eggs, they were barely even babies at the moment; Supposedly, not even fully formed. it was simply cruel to kill them, even if it was accidentally!
Anyway, the same guard dispelled all worry after she said. "They're hatching already, sir! Come look!"
"What! Is that supposed to happen now?" Gustav followed along.
Regarding how long it would take for a demonic egg to hatch, he didn't have the slightest clue. When he was kidnapped by the terranidan aliens, he supposedly slept for over a month!
The eggs could've hatched after a day in the meantime, or even a month, and common logic encouraged the latter. This presumed, early hatch sounded more like an abrupt abortion.
It further explained how clueless Gustav was, around 'demon egg science'. He didn't know what to do, or how to react.
Anyway, once he got to the guard house, it was apparent why that guard lady was freaking out. The eggs were glowing violently with a red and yellow shade, as if they were close to catching on fire!
"Now that looks demonic," Gustav said.
While the eggs crackled and rattled, he was under the impression that they'll explode very soon. Quite the opposite happened though, right after!
Everything went quiet, which was ironically very horror-like. Even that blinding light disappeared quickly!
Gustav needed a moment to rub off the sparkling dots on his eyes, and as he finally went deeper into the room, he noticed that all four eggs hatched.
"They look like rocks," He thought.
He referred to their dark-grey color, of course. It was his first impression, but rocks weren't typically elongated and soft.
It took a few seconds to notice the two pairs of legs, which these one-foot long babies had. The little horns on their heads, confirmed a portion of their heritage; They are a unique species of rhino!
"Arila's gonna freak out... but, at least she sounded ready to be a dad, or mom? Still don't know, but they're definitely her children." He mumbled.
"Your children too, father." A crawler demon corrected, as the little group sensed the newborn siblings.
As if the topic of parenthood got the newborns excited, they suddenly started squealing. "Papa! Papa!"
This got Gustav excited, of course, and this time around he was joyful rather than spooked. He tried to rub them a little bit, with the tip of his fingers, but was prevented from doing so!
All of a sudden, the newborns started shifting colors and radited that fire-like glow again. Within a few seconds, they shape-shifted into an entirely different form.
When Gustav noticed a pair of dark-red wings, he first thought. "Demons?"
A moment later, he confirmed that each of them looked like stereotypical demons, except they were very tiny. Each of them stood a foot tall with their two little legs, and fluttered their wings around too, as if they were breaking them in for the first time.
"Why am I giving birth to demons, I'm not a demon... So this kinda means that 'a demon' fucked me in the ass for life, damn it!" He thought, but obviously he wasn't a science wizard.
Gustav already loved these children, but love didn't make the situation any less confusing. He had no idea how these eggs worked!
As if they tried to torture his senses even more, the kids started transforming again. This time, they looked a lot like humans, except human babies can't really stand up and weren't only a foot tall.
At this point, Gustav could only say. "Interesting... you have three forms."
In the following hour, he spent every beating second observing them. They had to be one of the most impressive creatures he ever saw, aliens included.
They were all girls, and Arila was over the moon when she figured that out. Joy overwhelmed the team of two, and they felt pretty unique just to be their parents.
The newborns instantly noticed their mother as well, as if they had an extra sense for stuff like that. No introduction was necessary.
At first sight, they kept chanting. "Mama! Mama!"
"Mother got a lot more than what she asked for, but today that's a good thing." She joked, referring to multiple recent 'experiences' and journeys.
The sight of birth gave her a wave of energy, that a common healing procedure never could. She was happy, and had mostly walked herself here, all the way back from her own home!