The Arena

Dried blood and dismembered corpses littered the sun-baked sand of the arena. There were too many bodies to count: hundreds of men, dozens of horses, a few elephants, a handful of tigers. There was even one unfortunate giraffe, his long neck twisted by the beast’s huge hands. Only a few dozen gladiators were still alive and standing. They were scattered about the battlefield, fleeing whenever she got close, hoping that the beast would simply grow too tired to hunt them. Injured and exhausted, they had long since given up on fighting. The stragglers simply did their best to survive, trying to keep their distance from the huge beast that stalked them. But they could only run for so long. 

The gladiatrix was bruised and winded, her body caked with dried blood and dirt. Only her face was still clean, yet she was still beautiful for all her brutality. Her body was naked, save for three things: the mesh of ropes tied around her large breasts, the shackles on her wrists, and the chainmail garment that was tight around her hips. She sniffed into the air, searching for her next quarry. The gladiatrix no longer moved with the vigor that she had a few hours earlier, but she was still out for blood. 

She smelled one of them, a man standing near the edge of the arena. His scent told her that the man was tired, wounded, scared. The gladiatrix gave chase, standing up to walk on two legs. The man hobbled away on broken legs, but with her long strides the gladiatrix was upon him quickly. His back turned, she grabbed his legs, dragging him to the ground before lifting him up into the air. Tired, she let herself fall down onto the sand. The guard dangled by his feet, wriggling and writhing like a caught fish, but his struggle served only to entertain the cheering crowds. 

The gladiatrix dropped him into her mouth, closing her lips as soon as he was inside. He tried to back out of her mouth, feet first, forcing his feet out from between her lips. But then she chewed, biting down on his midsection once, then again. The man’s body went limp. His body was covered in sand and dirt, and while the gritty texture displeased the gladiatrix, she had grown used to it these last few hours. She chewed and swallowed his torso, then his lower body. The gladiatrix became suddenly aware of the fullness of her stomach, rubbing her hands over her now protruding belly. She had eaten many men today, dozens if not more, yet only now did she begin to feel full. 

Fullness was a sensation she was unused to. Her handlers often starved her: to keep her lean, and to keep her vicious. It was far from the only cruelty they visited upon her. When she trained, they would attach heavy chains to the shackles on her legs, which clanked and rattled as they dragged against the ground. The chains made her slow and clumsy, so that every movement was difficult. With so much weight on the shackles, and ankles would chafe and bleed. 

Sometimes she would refuse to fight, or try to flee from the arena during training, and they would shoot at her legs with. She had dozens of tiny scars from where the arrows had pelted her, some of them still painful. She would try to catch the archers, but with the heavy chains on her feet, she never could. But today, they had taken off the chains. Today, she was not starved. Today she could feast.

Remembrance of Things Crushed

Just before the battle, they had given her blood to drink, as they always did: but this blood was different. It had a strange, red glow to it, an unnatural glow. It was a glow that she hadn’t seen in years, a glow that reminded her of a time she had forgotten. 

She was young then, and small, smaller even then the gladiators she now so readily devoured. She remembered herself speaking, though the words she formed then now had little meaning to her. Another girl, as small as she was, had given her a small cup. It was filled with a strange liquid. A sound came to her, “Wine,” though she did not remember what it meant. The sound made her remember something: a taste she had once found pleasant, at once sweet and bitter. But then they poured some strange powder into the drink, and the wine started to glow. As she remembered the strange sensation, she thought of another sound: “Red.” This sound made her think of the blood she had spilled on the arena, and of the crimson banners that flew above the coliseum. And another sound came to her: “Spice.”

She remembered her friend taking the cup, pouring a small handful of crystals into the wine. Her friend drank first. The spice made her friend giddy, and she and started giggling uncontrollably. Then, slowly, her friend began to grow. Soon her clothes had become too tight. Her friend’s legs stretched out until her dress barely came to her knees. Her hips grew wider, until her once-loose dress now hugged her curves tightly. Her breasts grew, and her blouse started to tear, then suddenly ripped open. And then the growing stopped. Her friend, now almost a foot taller, laughed in amazement at her own growth.

She remembered taking the cup into her own hands. Memories rushed to her, half-recalled fragments of images and sensations. She remembered looking at the cup, half-full with the blood-red wine, the liquid glowing strangely. She remembered the strange feeling she had before drinking the wine, and another sound came to her: “Reluctance.” And yet she had taken the cup in her hand, and swallowed, just a bit at first, before swallowing what was left of it. She recalled the strange tingling in her throat, and the feeling of warmth that permeated her body. She remembered the pain that she had felt as her body started to grow, her limbs stretching, her clothes becoming tight. Her dress started to tear. And she remembered her body continuing to grow, until her dress suddenly ripped open. Her friend had laughed as her now tattered dress fell to the ground. She tried to cover herself, grabbing her breasts and crotch, and suddenly realized how big her breasts had become. Her once tiny breasts had grown big, and soft, and heavy. She realized that her hips had grown wider, her behind fuller. 

She expected herself to stop growing then, like her friend had. They had only sprinkled a few grains of the Red Spice into the wine, after all. But she felt herself growing, now even faster than before. The pain of growth turned to a warm sort of pleasure that radiated throughout her body. After a moment her friend barely came up to her chest, then her waist, then her knees. And her friend, who seemed so small now, started to look concerned, even scared. It was at that moment that her vision first started to get blurry. And then she started to feel it, a rage that welled up from the pit of her stomach. It was the same rage that would one day control her. She felt her thoughts fading, the words drifting away from her mind. In its place were simple images, simple sensations, simple desires.

She didn’t remember hurting her friend. All she remembered was finding her friend’s dead body, naked, and broken, lying by her feet. As she looked at it, she felt remorse, only for a moment, before the feeling faded away. But still she craved violence. She found herself growing again, until she towered over the small stone houses that surrounded her. She stomped on one, guided by her anger, and the house crumbled and fell over like it was made out of wet sand. Then a few men down the street saw her. They screamed and fled away from her, but it only made her want them more. She ran them down, stomping on one of them after another. As she felt her feet crushing them, she realized how big she was, how powerful she had become. And she wanted more. She spoke a single word, the last word that she would ever speak aloud, before continuing her rampage. 

She charged through the town, crushing homes and tearing men apart with her bare hands. It wasn’t the next morning, when the town was little more than a smoking ruin, that they finally captured her. At first it was only men and horses that came for her, and she crushed them almost as easily as she had the townspeople. But soon female soldiers came, soldiers nearly as big as she was. And though she was stronger than them, they outnumbered her greatly, and they were able to subdue her. They put her in chains, and marched her down a strange road.

A few days later she arrived at the Coliseum. Her eyesight was nearly gone by then, but her ears had grown sharper, and her nose sharper still. She listened to the eerie silence of the empty stadium, and she knew at once how vast it was. She smelled the blood and sweat of the arena, and knew that blood had been spilled earlier, and knew that there had been many men here. Prey.

Then something brought her back to reality: a bottle breaking upon her forehead. She let out a beastly roar. Men were booing at her. She had been sitting there for several minutes, and the crowd had become bored and angry. The gladiatrix let out a long roar; the noise displeased her greatly. She wanted nothing more than to stomp her way through the crowd, and feel the insects crushed under her feet. 

For the first time in years, she thought of leaving the arena. They had trained her not to leave the boundaries: each time she tried to leave, the pelted her legs with arrows. But this day was different, and she had no long chains to slow her down. She remembered the blood she had drank earlier, the strange way it glowed. Another word came to her mind, though she didn’t know its meaning: “Grow.” 

Growing Strong

A powerful sensation shot like lightning through her body. It was happening again, like it had before, so many years ago. Her stomach became tighter, as her body finally digested the men inside of her. And she felt herself growing more curvaceous. Her clothes, skimpy as they were, were rapidly becoming tighter, constricting her now-growing curves. Her soft breasts poured between the mesh of ropes she wore as a bra, as her chainmail undergarments became tighter around her hips and ass. The ropes around her chest started to tear, and the small metal links of her undergarments gave way one at a time. Then, suddenly, the ropes burst apart, her now huge breasts spilling out in a torrent. Her chainmail undergarments tore upon, freeing her crotch and revealing her perfectly rounded ass. And yet she wasn’t done growing. Not yet. She felt herself growing taller and taller. One minute she stood forty feet tall, then forty five, then fifty. She felt herself growing stronger, though her muscles didn’t become large and bulging like a man’s. And she felt the shackles around her wrists and ankles growing painfully tight, until in an instant their metal joints snapped open and fell to the ground. And still she grew, until the men around her looked small as mice, and she stood nearly sixty feet tall. 

She felt free now, free and alive and vigorous. But more than that, she felt intensely hungry. The gladiatrix sniffed the air, searching for prey. Circling near the edge of the arena were a series of large poles. She knew from their smell that they had chained bears and lions to them some time ago, but they were there no longer. Beyond that she smelled hundreds of armed guards. They encircled the arena, standing watch with long spears. And beyond the guards stood teeming masses of cheering spectators. She could tell from their smell that they were men, and that they were many. That was all she needed to know.