A rogue has found a legendary coin that makes a copy of the original every hout, as long as there is space free nearby.
Since every guard knows he's less than... trustable, he has a plan to smuggle it into his home using the only space the guards won't search - his insides.
At first it works, the guards let him pass. However, when he reaches his place, he notices the coin has moved too dedp inside, and he is unable to take it out... and since there is "some" free space inaide him, it has already multiplied a few times.
Now, with the coin stuck in there, he can feel each time another one appears in him, pure gold heavily wieghting him down, stretching his gut and making more space for future coins to appear inside him.
Good stuff! The rogue trying to contain his smugness as the guards search him, their hands patting and brushing just inches away from the coin.
But maybe while he's being so roughly handled he feels something strange inside. Dread settles in the pit of his stomach, but he's unable to articulate why.
The guards find nothing suspicious on him and reluctantly let him go, completely unaware of the slowly filling coin pouch sitting low in his belly.
Though strutting down the street with his treasure safe inside doesn't feel as good as he imagined; the spring in his step feels forced.
Best get home soon, all will be well once he holds the coin in his hand.
But when he squats, naked from the waist down, and feels inside himself, there's nothing.
He spends the better part of an hour fingering himself, getting increasingly aroused and panicky.
The pleasure building low in his belly suddenly overflows, and he lies back to ride out the shockwaves.
Out of breath, fingers and legs cramping, he nonetheless registers a little stab of pain inside. Was it the coin? Surely it can't get that deep.
He jiggles the little pouch of fat over his abdomen, roughly, and thinks he hears a tinkle. But that can't be. He's just tired. A good night's sleep and he'll feel for the coin again with more success tomorrow.
But when he wakes up, noon light already streaming through the windows, there's a strange weight sitting in his belly.
Like, say, there's nearly two dozen gold coins inside.
Common sense tells him to go to a healer, but he really doesn't want to explain his little predicament. The more legit ones would immediately turn him into the guard, not wanting to risk being seen as an accessory. And any underground 'doctors' would surely solve his little problem by cutting him open and claiming his spoils.
But every day the coin was inside would mean another huge handful added to the internal hoard. He couldn't go more than a week or so before he'd look... pregnant.
Still, no choice but to wait it out. His body would start to expel them eventually, surely?
His assumption was correct, but by the time 'eventually' came to pass, he looked (and felt) like he'd swallowed a cannonball.
Fortunately, his skinny rogue body gave in not too long after his navel popped out and he looked perfectly round, as it probably would have done had he really been pregnant.
Although, he mused, that would have taken much longer. And, unlike a real pregnancy, coins were much easier to birth.
The contractions were still painful, but after only an hour or two he felt the urge to get on his knees, arms leaning on the headboard, gold-stuffed belly hanging underneath him. And soon after that, the first coin landed on his bedspread with a dull thud. Then another one, and another one, and then they flowed out of him.
Before he knew it, the weight in his belly had gone, and he was sitting on a pile of coins like a dragon.
He fell asleep almost instantly, mind and heart completely unburdened, perhaps for the first time in his life.
Tomorrow, he would realise that staying in a town that was being upended by guards searching for a gold coin and becoming known as the guy who pays for everything with coins looking identical to the missing one was not great for his longtime health and happiness.
And a day or two after hurriedly leaving the city with a bindle containing more money than most people see in a lifetime, he would notice his belly getting strangely heavy again.
It would occur to him he hadn't seen the magic coin since that first fateful day. And he would wonder whether he'd been blessed or cursed.