The wall of silver that constituted Charis’s right foot forced Gage instantly onto his back. The pressure spiked upward to unbearable levels, but before Gage could fully realize his predicament, Charis had lifted her foot and kept walking, leaving him pressed into the root like a piece of gum. Waves of pain rippled up and down his battered form, but he appeared to have avoided any permanent damage. Gage wondered if the 20 level gap between the two had anything to do with it, but immediately discarded the idea. Under normal circumstances, her most powerful attack wouldn’t displace a hair on his head; but just now her mere footstep had shown him his diminished strength.
Rising groggily to his feet, Gage had just enough time to be grateful he didn’t die when he again found himself underfoot. This time Charis’s tremendous weight pushed him facedown into the root, and once again the pressure soared drastically before just as abruptly disappearing. He had the fleeting image of a cartoon character being squashed multiple times. Bewildered and aching, Gage remained prone on the root, his breath coming in gasps and his body screaming in protest. His mind couldn’t process the levels of pain he now experienced.
While the game had been designed to engage its user in a life-like world, pain had always been dulled to a reasonable extent. Aside from a fairly mild bike accident as a kid, Gage had never dealt with any real physical discomfort – until now. His nerves were on fire from Charis’s simple footstep, and he could only surmise that whatever the suited man had done to him earlier had given him a stronger connection with the game – for better or for worse.
Still, it appeared that at least some of Gage’s important combat abilities remained intact from before the witch’s curse. In fact, now that he thought about it, he had basically just had a skyscraper dropped on top of him. It was amazing that he had survived at all, Level 100 or no. Perhaps his character’s strength had been lowered proportionately to his size.
“Gage, where are you?” boomed Charis from above, anxiety edging her voice. Her search had taken her quite far from him, so he could at least relax for a moment. Still, this presented a downside: it would be impossible for him to get her attention if he didn’t get closer, which had obvious dangers.
Wincing at the thought Charis’s boot crashing down on him, Gage struggled to think of another way to get her attention – ideally from afar. She clearly couldn’t hear him, and at his size he was tough to spot. She probably wouldn’t be looking down in the first place.
As it turned out, his decision had already been made for him. He watched in growing horror as Charis spun on her heel and went straight back to where he stood, her hand on her chin. “Where could he be?” she asked aloud. He could hear her mounting desperation.
“Charis, I’m right here!” shouted Gage urgently even as he tried to escape her merciless footstep. Fortunately, with a little forewarning Gage could try to avoid his friend’s boot with his virtual body’s superhuman speed – well, a tiny man’s superhuman speed. So, in spite of his initial success, at his reduced size even his fastest movement couldn’t keep him completely out of harm’s way.
In fact, when Charis began pacing frantically back and forth, Gage found himself in some nightmarish version of Frogger. Her boots crashed down around him, seemingly trying to snuff him out underneath. Their sheer size disoriented him: he could only react to the massive footfalls instead of getting himself out of there for good. Gage managed to avoid his fate mere seconds before tripping on the uneven terrain of the root. His body tensed up involuntarily before the now-familiar pressure of Charis’s weight bore down on him.
But this time, it was slightly different. The pressure remained intense, but for some reason it came at him from both sides as well, instead of just from above – and it didn’t relent. When he felt himself rising upwards and then falling down at an alarming rate, he quickly realized what had happened: he was stuck in the tread of Charis’s boot.
Like some sort of demented rollercoaster, Charis’s foot shot him upward before plunging him towards the earth, whereupon he made impact with the ground with a shockwave of pain. He began to worry that he would die like this until he noticed that the pain lessened with each step. As luck would have it, his body had wedged itself so firmly in her tread that the rubber columns on either side of him supported the brunt of Charis’s weight, leaving him with some pressure, but not a life-threatening or even painful amount. It was certainly uncomfortable, but it was nothing compared to his first two encounters with her foot. Not including his acute embarrassment, Gage could endure this just fine.
“Gage?” Charis shouted. She came to a stop and heaved one final sigh. He heard the telltale sound of a portal opening: she had given up. Did she think he was dead? When the portal had finished opening, the ride started anew. Gage saw the bark surface of the root stretching away from him one last time before the terrain switched in the blink of an eye to the metal tiles of the Hub. When she had stepped both feet onto the ground at the Hub, Gage could hear her slamming the toe of her other boot into the ground in an effort to dislodge whatever dirt had gotten stuck in there. He had always scoffed at her ridiculous habit, a carryover habit from the real world; but this time it might help him immensely.
Sure enough, she tapped the his boot into the tiles three times, and on the third one he pried himself from her treads’ embrace and landed heavily on the ground below. Then Charis walked away at speeds he couldn’t possibly hope to match, and Gage immediately regretted his decision.
“Charis!” he shouted. “God damn it.” In a matter of seconds, she had stepped onto a disc and flown away, leaving him to wallow in despair. What was he going to do? Apparently his size precluded him from messaging of any kind on top of his inability to be physically heard. She might as well be in another dimension as far as his ability to communicate was concerned. A small but insistent thought emerged from the depths of his mind: even he did find Charis, could she even change him back? He could be the size of a bug forever. Recoiling from the awful mental image, Gage shoved the thought aside, grimly determined to never think about that again. Self-pity was not an option.
Ultimately, he didn’t have time to feel sorry himself. Although his dark thoughts prevented Gage from noticing the portal opening in front of him, the gigantic sandal rushing downwards refused to be ignored. With speed born out of desperation, Gage leaped to the side and narrowly avoided being crushed by what appeared to be a female foot dressed in an open-toed, red leather item.
An idea flashed through his mind: if Gage could get onto that sandal, he could potentially get this girl’s attention by pinching the skin of her foot! But as soon as the plan had materialized, his chance had gone. The girl had walked away – but before Gage could lament his indecision, another pair of massive feet arrived on the scene. While this person’s high-heeled boot left her skin unexposed, Gage still leapt onto the front and held fast to a buckle. He assumed that the second girl would follow the first.
He had guessed right. As he hitched a ride on top of the footwear of this unknown woman (a much more pleasant experience than underneath), he hoped that it was just a matter of time before they stopped moving. Then he would make his move.