When we arrived back at the mages’ guild, a quick check of the directory told the regular-sized humans we were with where to go.  Sondra seemed more comfortable here so she took the lead, guiding Margret down long, torch-lit corridors while Bushwack balanced comfortably on her shoulder.  Even though it was in a different wing of the building, there was nothing we had not seen before.  For a group of people who could reshape reality to their whims, these wizards did not seem particularly imaginative with décor.

Sondra slowed to a stop, giving Bushwack enough time to compensate, and stood in front of a door with glowing azure runes over it.  “This is the place,” she said, and began studying the door.  She stood almost motionless for several minutes while Margret got increasingly agitated.

“Why are we just standing here?” she finally demanded.  “Open the door!”  Margret reached for the handle, but Sondra put out an arm to stop her.

“The door will open itself,” Sondra replied.  “Observe.”  She knocked hard on the door three times slowly, then shouted through it, “We’ve got money!”  After a moment the door unlatched on its own and swung inward, and the two humans rushed over the threshold.

The chief abjurer stood with each hand resting on a different podium beside her with her chin haughtily raised toward us.  Bright green hair flowed wildly down the length of her body, with a pair of long, pointed ears poking through it.  She had sharp features and fair, unblemished skin, and the look in her almond-shaped violet eyes exuded a powerful aura of confidence.  Her dark magenta gown was buckled with leather straps down the front, and a high, stiff collar displayed its gold trim like a peacock’s plumage.  I thought she looked young for her position, but elves seemed to be eternally youthful.

“From your diminutive companion, I presume you are the individuals I am anticipating,” she declared.  Her voice was strong, and even with our extreme size difference distorting it I found it melodic.  “Place your diminished comrade along with the infernal article beside my right hand and no fewer than a thousand coins of gold by my left and I shall begin the de-possession forthwith.”

Margret dropped her sack of loot on the appropriate pedestal and stepped back.  “This ought to be enough,” she said, and the elven wizard stiffly raised a long hand toward her.

“If the amount suffices, the ritual shall succeed,” she proclaimed.  “If not, it shall fizzle.  “Regardless, no more or less shall be consumed.”  The statement did little to reassure anyone, but I suspected that was not her intent.

Sondra stood before the other podium, and I noticed the abjurer’s presence was not solely from her imperious bearing.  Even standing on Sondra’s shoulder, I had to look up at her chest.  She was amazingly tall, even for an elf, and the pedestals were sized for her.  Bushwack simply stepped from the shoulder onto the stone and walked to stand between her extended index and middle fingers.

“Demonic magic has ravaged your stature,” the abjurer stated.  “Present me with the demon’s former possession, and I shall restore your magnitude.”

Bushwack glared upward at her.  “Why do you wizards keep assuming that I’m the one who’s been shrunk?” she shouted.  “I’m a pixie, this is my natural size!  Haven’t you masters of all things magical ever seen a pixie before?  The shrunken person is this guy!”  She jabbed a finger in my direction, then bent forward to set me down at her own feet.  Despite her rage, she was careful not to hurt me when she placed me on the stone, and made sure I was clear of her fingers before storming off to stand back on Sondra’s shoulder.

Her fingers were twice as thick as I was tall, and under the abjurer’s intense stoic gaze I felt as though I may wither further.  “You have my sincerest apologies, wild fey.  As for you, minuscule man, do you have the object with which I shall disjunct your affliction?”

“Yes, I have it right here,” I said, holding the strand of hair up.  Her keen eyes spotted it, and she reached over and pinched it with her other hand.  She held it to her heavily shadowed eyes to inspect it, then languidly looked back to me.  “It may seem insignificant, but I can feel the vile aura emanating from this hair.  When the spell consumes it, you shall be cleansed.”

The abjurer lit a candle on each pedestal with a flick of her finger and began reciting the incantation.  She spoke in a low, droning voice that reminded me of a pipe organ, and waves of force emanated from her throat.  Her eyes glowed bright purple, and she seemed to get larger before my eyes.  As the spell continued, she more closely resembled a mountain in size, and it felt like I stood at the bottom of a great crevasse between her fingers.

I realized that was Kirinhalut’s fell essence within me dwindling, and I was seeing what it saw.  As the spell continued it grew more intense, and her voice changed to a continuous rumble.  When I felt like I was the size of a grain of sand, she touched the tip of the hair to my forehead.  The demonic presence leapt into it from me, then the hair vanished.

For the first time in months, I felt free without needing magic to disrupt the succubus’s influence over me.  The presence I had become so accustomed to that it seemed like a part of me was gone.  My mind was clear, unmuddled by Kirinhalut’s control waiting to assert itself.  She could no longer know what I knew or force me to comply with her desires, and I would never hear her voice in my head again.  Most importantly, I would not be joining her to endure unending torment after my death.

However, I was still puny.  I looked around from my spot between her fingers, and everyone but the abjurer was visibly perplexed.  Sondra managed to speak up without sounding disappointed, saying, “He’s still small, though.”

“He remains minuscule, yes,” the abjurer agreed.  “You will permit me to inspect him.”  She was not asking permission, as became clear when her index finger moved in a wide arc over my head.  It set down surprisingly softly for something of such great size, then turned on its side.  Her thumb and forefinger moved inward, each of them dwarfing me, and clamped my body between their tips.  Carefully she plucked me from the pedestal, then in a smooth, steady motion lifted me toward her face.

She held me before one massive eye, its violet iris larger than I was, and stared at me without blinking for several seconds.  “His spiritual essence has indeed been released from the demon’s clutches,” she said as though reading a recipe.  “However, his physical being has been consumed to fuel the succubus’s power, and he shall not regain it.  This is unfortunate, as his junction previously endowed him with potent durability and endurance like no other mortal, and he has become as vulnerable as his stature suggests.  Further, he has been marked by powerful entities for his transgression, and no thaumaturgical method can rejuvenate his size.”

“So, he’ll always be this small?” Sondra asked after a moment.

“Correct.”  After all this time, the abjurer had yet to blink.  She placed me back on the pedestal with the same calm, gentle motion she had used to pick me up, even while speaking.  “I suggest you treat the manlet carefully.  He is quite delicate, and anything but the gentlest of contact may extinguish him.”  Her digits released me, and she clasped her hands in front of her thighs.

“Our transaction is concluded,” she declared.  “Feel free to leave with the manlet when you are ready.”  She kept her violet gaze on me, and I felt uneasy beneath it.

Bushwack stepped forward to grab me, but Sondra gently stopped her.  She placed a fingertip against the pedestal, and I carefully walked onto the pad.  When I stood in the middle of it she slowly raised it toward her face, making sure not to jostle me too strongly as she positioned me between her eyes.  Sondra’s clear blue irises were a welcome change from the abjurer’s intense violet, and her features, though enormous, were still human.

“I guess this was always a possibility, even if none of us wanted to admit it,” she said.  “That’s okay, though.  You’re still a member of our group, and I don’t care any less for you.”

“Yeah, the most important thing is that you’re fully yourself again,” Margret added.  “We’ve never known you when you weren’t small, so for us, nothing about you has changed.”

“We just need to get you some good equipment,” Bushwack put in.  “If you’re still willing to hang around, I’m sure we’ll all chip in some money to get a weapon and some armor made for you.”

“Thanks for the support,” I responded, “but there’s something more urgent than getting me geared up.  Kirinhalut’s still at large, and she’ll soon know that I’m free.  We need to get to her before she can escape and torment more people.”

The abjurer cleared her throat as a subtle reminder that we were still in her room, and we filed out.  Sondra moved slowly, making sure I could stay balanced on her finger, and kept her focus on me as she walked.  Margret gave her something to easily follow, and closed the door once we were all back in the hallway.

“So, how should we do it?” Sondra asked.  “Take on Kirinhalut, I mean.”

“Seems pretty simple to me,” Margret replied.  “She’s a demon, right?  So we’ll hit her until she gets banished.  No need to make it more complicated.”

Now that she could not stop me, I decided they should know the whole truth.  “She’s after the orb, too,” I told them.  “That’s probably what she was doing in that dungeon to begin with.  If you have it on you, she’ll do what she can to get it from you.  She might make you give it to her yourself.”

“No need to worry about that!” Margret exclaimed.  “It’s in a locked chest in our room!”  We stared back in response, and her enthusiasm started to flag.

“You do understand how that’s worse, right?” Bushwack asked.  “She can get to it whenever she wants, we have to hurry!  Sondra, I know you want to hold him, but we don’t have time for you to walk carefully.  Give him to me and let’s get moving.”  I nearly tipped over and fell off backward when Sondra moved her hand, but the sudden stop pitched me forward toward the pixie.  She grabbed me before I tumbled off the fingertip and pulled me to her stomach for safety, letting my head poke out so I could see where we were going.

They hurried out of the guild hall fast enough that the stones in the walls blurred together and kept the pace up as they raced through the streets.  Bushwack had to take a seat to keep from being thrown from Sondra’s shoulder as she weaved between carts and pedestrians, even shoving a few of them aside.  They were not pleased to deal with rushing adventurers, but by the time they realized what was happening we were long gone.

We did not slow down until reaching the inn, and the two moving on foot took a moment to catch their breath.  Inside, everything looked normal: it had not been transformed into a hellscape by the demon’s power yet.  People sat at tables enjoying their lunch, and a bard played from a small stage in the corner.  We might be able to stop Kirinhalut from getting the orb at all.

As we moved toward the stairs, however, I noticed something was off.  From my place on Sondra’s shoulder, I noticed the humans seemed several inches shorter than average.  The same was probably true of the other races, though I did not see enough of them to know for sure.  It became conclusive when I saw someone from this morning, who had been the same size as Sondra, now no longer reached her shoulders.  Kirinhalut had been working her magic on these people subtly enough they did not notice, and I suspected her powers had been enhanced.

We walked quickly up the stairs and briefly stopped in our room.  Margret went to check beneath the pillow where she had stashed the orb and found it was gone; even the small wooden chest that held it was missing.  We stormed back into the corridor and strode down the wooden hallway until we were at Kirinhalut’s door.  Sondra and Margret glanced at each other, and the latter drew her weapon and shield in preparation.  A fight against an artifact-empowered succubus was going to be rough, but we knew that it had to be done.  The fate of many lives, and perhaps the whole kingdom, depended on it.