Bula’s Bargain

By VivettaVenray

 

(WARNING: Contains some content people might find gross. In particular, snot/mucus, earwax, burping, and, without spoiling too much, some wound-related things including wound-vore.

 

There's still plenty of more 'traditional' size content of course. For instance, this story also contains crushing, normal vore, internals, digestion, cruelty, jewellery-cages, and gore among other things.

 

Lastly, the main character is a giant female troll. She is very much like a human in design, but please keep this in mind when reading!)

 

(NOTE: This story was intended to be a much shorter one, but quickly grew in size [no pun intended]. In fact, for this story, I even ended up making a scene-list spreadsheet for outlining purposes.

 

I want to reiterate that some of the size tags are referring to size-differences rather than absolute sizes. I don't want to mislead, but at the same time I do want people who want giga-tier size differences to be able to find the story in case they might enjoy it!)

 

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Chapter 1: Wake up

 

Just a few clouds hung above the great swath of forest. The morning sun had rose enough that the sky had just turned blue. Its warmth and light went appreciated by most of the creatures of the woods. With such great weather, it was a prime day for hunting, foraging, or exploring.

 

One denizen of the woods scampered about till she came upon an interesting disturbance. A rustling bit of wind shifted through the trees. The breeze ruffled the white-spotted brown-fur of her deer-half, and the rhythmic nature of it perked her ears. With four hooved feet gently pattering against the dirt, twigs, and grass, Ampadia moved to follow the current to its source.

 

Little did the deer-woman know that further ahead rested an enormous being. Her gigantic green body stretched out in a circular clearing. Circled by trees, the giant woman’s area of rest seemed cozy, albeit partially self-made. Many of the trees circling the area were bent, knocked over, or crushed outright in order to make space for the sleeping troll.

 

Light-green skin covered the giant body: lighter green in some places like her palms and soles, but darker, more olive green in other spots like her lips and the areolae of her breasts. Moreover, her skin was speckled with darker green spots. Like freckles, they dappled mostly her shoulders, outer arms, side of her thighs, upper chest, and just a bit by her cheeks. Unlike freckles though, the dots were perfect circles and varied a good deal in size. Some spots were tiny dots, while others where as big or bigger than the pad of the giant’s thumb in diameter.

 

Even the smallest spots were big to the deer-woman, though; it was all comparatively with someone as massive as the female troll. Her body stretched over 500ft (152m). She had somewhat of pear build: not fat, nor chubby as her taut stomach and overall taut, somewhat rubbery-feel skin could attest. She had noticeable curves and sturdy thighs. It was the kind of build that looked strong, even without the dense musculature toning of a barbarian orc or the like.

 

Of course, at such a massive size, her strength was unquestioned. She had no need for a more toned body just as she had no need for clothes. Her entire gigantic body was bare, save a thick gold ring worn as a piercing just above her navel.

 

The deer-woman followed the breeze as it rustled the branches. As she got closer, her long blonde hair flew back from the force of it. She finally passed by a couple of trees and gracefully hopped onto the trunk of a fallen one. Ampadia could at last see the source: the exhales from a sleeping, green-skinned giant!

 

The enormous being rested on her side with only her hands, the soft grass, and a few crushed shrubs as her pillow. Her eyebrows and hair were the same shade of dark green, with the latter spreading down past the giant’s shoulders and stopping just at her chest.

 

Curious, the deer-woman stepped a tad closer towards the sleeping giant. She had never seen anything like this before, and her hooves gently pattered along the tree trunk with hints of excitement. She jumped down on the grass. Gently as ever, she approached for a closer look. The face of the woman, like the rest of the body she could see, hadn’t a single blemish on it. In fact, she looked quite beautiful: the spots were symmetrical, face well-proportioned. It egged Ampadia on for a closer look.

 

The giant stirred and the deer-woman froze in her tracks, mesmerized by such a large creature moving even slightly. One giant arm draped down the giant’s side, and the green fingers drummed on the skin there. Ampadia turned her head to the left at the sound of trees breaking. The giant had stretched her legs out and knocked over one or two against her bare feet. Sounds of branches crushing followed those of the trees timbering over.

 

The ground vibrated softly from such a massive being in even those minor motions. Ampadia stared at that face. The eye-lids fluttered, still closed, and then, before the deer-woman’s eyes, those lips parted. The giant’s mouth stretched out wide and open as a sudden roar of hot, humid breath ripped past the deer-woman. The blonde being saw the inside of the maw, dripping with thick saliva in front of a dark throat. Some of it splashed onto her with the motion, sprinkling her with the cloying drool driblets from that great, big...

 

“Yaaaaaaawn”

 

The noise was bellowing, and those big green-eyelids stirred. The deer-woman quickly scampered back in fright. Her hooves crushed a bit of twigs she lacked the composure to spot. Startled now by her own sounds, Ampadia started waltzing slowly back out of the clearing and to some shrubs at the area’s border. It was then she heard the sound of smacking lips, followed by a grunt from the giant’s throat.

 

Curiosity struck and she turned around. The giant’s eyes were half-open, then shot to near-full as it was clear she had been spotted. The deer-woman froze again, staring back into giant emerald eyes: greener than her own and set against near perfectly white sclera.

 

The giant smiled.

 

--==--==--==--

 

Half-awake, I stretched my legs and felt trees snap to the scrunches of my toes. My palm glided across my smooth warm skin, and I was just about to scratch my side when I felt a great yawn within me. About half-way through the gesture I was worried about scaring the morning birds, but I simply had to let the yawn out. Must’ve been the pleasant evening last night. A belly full of bickering goblins lulled me to sleep quite nicely. Shame they were gone by now.

 

Lazily, I opened my eyes just a tad to see quite the surprise. A woman with her lower-half the body of a deer stood before me. I realized she had been in direct path of my loud yawn and the morning breath that came with it. Her blonde hair and brown deer-fur was ruffled, wet at parts, and she quickly scampered away from me.

 

I thought I smelled something before I opened my eyes, but I didn’t expect a creature like this. By the time she turned to face me I was awake. I quickly gleamed the rest of her features. She had on only a bit of cloth and twigs covering her chest. Her skin was milky-fair, hair a beautiful blonde, and she seemed to be an adult--though just barely. Her human features seemed to be like a human in their 20s, so we had that in common.

 

Brown antlers poked from her head. I squinted a tad to focus on her ears: they were wide, a bit forward and slightly pointed at the edges. I had my hunches from her smell, but now I was pretty sure she wasn’t some fae spirit. White spots adorned the fur on her deer-half’s thighs and butt which, unlike a normal deer’s, I knew persisted into adulthood for the females of her kind.

 

She was a cervitaur, I was near sure. She might’ve been a scout for her tribe, or perhaps a lone one just trying to make it on her own. In either case, it was clear from her curious, timid expression she didn’t know what I was. I think the slight points to my own ears made her think I was a big forest spirit or fae or something. She had no idea I was a troll.

 

No sooner than I figured that out did she take a few steps back. She was cautious. I spoke, hoping the volume of my voice wouldn’t spook her further.

 

“Hey.”, I said. “What’s your name?”

 

The cervitaur froze. “A-ampadia.”, she said. Her arms crossed by her chest.

 

“Ampadia.” I repeated. I managed not to butcher the pronunciation despite morning spit still pooled in my mouth.

 

“My name’s Bula.”, I said. “Come here, let me get a closer look at you.”

Her body froze up even more than it already was. Least she wasn’t moving away.

 

“Come on, I don’t bite.” I said, using the gentlest tone I could muster.

 

She meekly smiled and her hooves pattered my way. My smile naturally grew wider in turn. She got close enough I wasn’t worried about missing. I lifted my right arm up and slammed my palm atop her. She let out a scream, muffled by my hand. I had pressed her down on her side to the ground, but that didn’t stop her from tickling my palm with frantic hoof kicks.

 

I opened wide and stuffed her right into my gob. I was fast enough snagging to be surprised she even had time to fidget in my hands. She was just as feisty in my mouth. While she flailed around in there, I savored her taste. I pushed her against my cheeks to help get the flavor of morning out of my mouth.

 

With one gulp I sent her down my throat. True to my word, I didn’t bite.

 

--==--==--==--

 

Ampadia had approached the giant green woman cautiously, but it didn’t matter. The palm was about 30ft wide and more than enough to catch her even if she managed to run. Instead, she stood, dumbstruck, as the giant hand slammed down atop her in a small quake.

 

The blond cervitaur fell on her side. She kicked her legs best she could but the fingers scooped her up then quickly brought her towards that gaping maw.

 

“No! No stop!”, said Ampadia. Her cries fell on deaf ears, and the humid, stale breath wafting her way soon enveloped her entirely. The lips sealed and she was inside the giant troll’s mouth. A band of dangling saliva draped down her back. With a whimper, Ampadia shuddered and fussed.

 

Bula’s tongue was quick to respond. All her kicks and squirms were for naught as a tongue more than twice as big as herself wrestled her with ease. She was pinned by the muscle; its tip prodded Ampadia and further matted her saliva-soaked fur. She was stuck against a slick cheek. The cervitaur screamed out, but the only reply she got were the slurping sounds as she was savored like a piece of meat. Even the idle noises of the giant’s mouth and throat seemed louder than her own begging voice.

 

“Please stop! Stop!”

 

No use. She felt one of her legs bend and almost break from an especially forceful bit of wet suction from a suckle. Coated in drool, she fussed futilely till that tongue tilted.

 

“No! Please not that no!”

 

It was dark with the lips closed, but Ampadia could hear the throat quiver in anticipation. She saw that chasm on her way in and didn’t want to go down it.

 

“Stop! I’ll do anything! no!”

 

Again, futile. Bula’s tongue and throat both shifted. The latter grabbed Ampadia by her back first. The strength was too much, the tongue too slick, and she was tugged right on down.

 

Slimy flesh squeezed her from all sides. The muscles were too tight and strong to even kick. She heard the giant’s heart beat around her, and the horrible workings of the gut she was heading too. Ampadia did her best to resist, even as she went closer and closer to that gurgling doom.

 

--==--==--==--

 

I felt the little treat wiggle down my throat. Not a bad start to a breakfast, but I need far more than that to remotely fill my stomach.

 

Nice as the day was for lounging, I did have something I wanted to do today. The light fluttering sensation from my belly ring would’ve reminded me even if I forgot. Besides, needed to get the rest of an early meal.

 

Slowly, I pushed myself off the ground and rose up. With the grass under my feet, I stretched my arms to to the sky and let out another yawn. Warm light hit almost every inch of my naked body. I had a feeling today would be a lovely spring day.

 

From my yawn, in the distance, some of the tree-tops rustled and flocks of birds flew off. I debated chasing after them, but my cave wasn’t too far off so wasn’t like I needed to nab them for a meal.

 

I took a step out of the clearing and onto some of the shin-high oak trees around me. They crumpled easily under my soles like everything else in this area of the Snowless Forest. There were taller trees in other parts of the woods, but few anywhere managed to rival my height. Most of the ones around me now barely crested my ankles. Many a tree trunk laid as splinters in my walk.

 

Each step came with a little thoom to my ears and a pleasing vibration under sole. It’s almost as if the earth wanted me to trod on it with how it egged me on like this. One of my steps landed on a little clearing and squished all the shrubs therein. It faintly tickled.

 

My cave was a short walk away to me. Sadly, I didn’t run into any other cervitaurs along the way. She was definitely alone. There were no other people scurrying by my toes either: least none I could see, hear, or smell. My senses were keen. Only fae could elude them, and even then only with their magic. Well, fae and some crafty elves.

 

--==--==--==--

 

Ampadia had reached the giant troll’s stomach just before that massive body rose. Shortly after plopping down in the dark, churning organ the deer-taur tumbled as the living chamber seemed to shift 90 degrees. A loud, muffled yawn hit her ears.

 

The cervitaur couldn't see in the acrid environment, but all her other senses were on high alert. The air stung her eyes. The ‘floor’ and ‘walls’ constantly shifted. Juices pooled around her and stung her skin. She ran to the walls to pound on them, but the most she got out of that were gurgles and splashes of mucus or whatever slimy fluid coated the flesh.

 

A strong, rhythmic heartbeat wracked the area, thankfully muffled by the flesh of the big body like all the other noises. Ampadia kicked against the stomach walls till she started stumbling. The giant was on the move. She kept falling over into puddles of juices, unable to keep her footing. A stinging pain began to build, and her pleas and screams went unanswered. She wished she could see in here, least then she’d be able to try and find a more stable spot.

 

Chapter 2: Cave

 

Trees toppled from the kicks of my toes and against the front of my ankles. Step after step I left my mark, but soon I saw foot prints from yesterday. Beyond them loomed a decent sized mountain with a large hole set into it. My cave.

 

The height of the entranceway was a taller than me: about half as so. The subtly-blue glow from the fungus on the sleek dark-gray stone walls greets me. I stuck my finger in my mouth, wet it, then scraped up a finger-full of the light-blue glowshrooms.

 

Into my mouth they went. One chomp and I gulped them down. I try not to eat too much of the ones that grow on the walls; wouldn’t want to run out of light in the dark when it suits me. Instead, I looked down to the ground and all the boulders lining it. I reached down and hefted one up, admiring the glow from its bottom. Glowshrooms clung over the rock’s bottom there, and their fluffy tops puffed out once uncompressed.

 

Course, they wouldn’t get much fresh cave air before going down to my belly. I lapped my tongue against the stone and took in all but the fungus at the very edge. With my saliva still glistening on the rock, I set it back on the ground.

 

Again, hardly enough to fill me up, so I repeated the gesture with a few more boulders: lifting them up, licking up some glowshrooms, and placing them back down. After 6 or so boulders I had my fill for now. I wanted to save a bit of room in the hopes a little “friend” of mine did her job. If she didn’t, well, she was little enough I didn’t need much room, I supposed.

 

My hair had gotten long: enough to bug me as it kept falling over my arms as I moved them. I made my way to the back of the cave--was heading there anyways. I was thoughtful enough to have the ground boulders to the sides of the cave, so that I had a thin bit of path to walk to the back of the hollow. The stone was smooth and a bit chill beneath my steps: refreshing.

 

--==--==--==--

 

Ampadia heard the guttural sounds of eating. In particular, she heard the sound of the troll’s teeth mashing something up once or twice before gulping it down. That familiar sound of the throat squelching something down hit her wide ears again, and she shivered with the freshness of her memory of being gulped down.

 

A bit of light filled the stomach from above. With a mix of hope and confusion, Ampadia looked up just in time to see the glowing mushroom mash heading her way. The soaked gunk fell on her and she cried out in disgust.

 

She felt a soggy, albeit more intact, piece of the swallowed mash on her palm. Taking a closer, Ampadia noticed it was a mushroom of some kind. The light it emitted was white, but the semi-transparent, lightly-blue flesh of the fungus gave the light the barest bit of blue in hue.

 

Ampadia quickly cast the shroom aside and did her best to shake the mash from her body. Her eyes were adjusting to the new light when the stomach quickly tumbled. Bula was leaning down, then back up again and the cervitaur bounced along the shifting chamber with the motions. Another loud gulp rang out and more of the mushrooms rained down, less chewed this time. They fell on her, light enough not to hurt, but still sopping with saliva and throat slime.

 

Before Ampadia could even try to adjust, Bula repeated the gesture, then again and again, taking a few disjointing steps in the process. The blonde deer-taur bounced to and fro as the foodstuff rained down. Undulating slimy walls zipped past her as she did her best to dodge the raining piles of fungal mush. The troll was hardly consistent with whether or not she chewed, and Ampadia was bonked on the head by woofed down full shrooms just as much as she was drenched in slimy, chewed mushroom mash.

 

At last Bula stopped eating and the cervitaur stood up. She had a few moments to regret her wish for some light in the stomach. She had previously thought that if she could use her vision, she might find a weak spot of the stomach walls to kick, or a way out. Instead, with the light of the glow shrooms illuminating the gut, Ampadia could only see just how hopeless and horrifying the situation was.

The fleshy walls were towering, and every bit as repulsive as their texture entailed. Red rippling flesh, lined with layers of juices surrounded her and rippled under her feet. Ampadia looked up to see the entry sphincter into the stomach looming far out of reach. She looked behind herself to see a similar fleshy ‘gate’ out of the stomach.

 

Desperate, Ampadia rush over towards it. She tripped a couple times form the shifting stomach and her own panic--one time failing right into a pile of the soggy glowshrooms. Still, she managed to reach the sphincter and tried with all her might to pry it open. No luck.

 

In the process, the cervitaur got a look at her stinging skin and saw it was a bright red. Bits of it were peeling. Her eyes stung from the air still. She turned and saw some of her fur was already dissolved away. It occurred to Ampadia that she wasn’t leaving this gut as anything other than soup, and even then she’d just be absorbed later on in this giant being’s oppressive innards.

 

Ampadia didn’t even know the nature of the being she was inside. She had never seen a giant troll before, and her kind never saw a need for caves, so the strange shrooms were unknown to her too. It was a nightmare with a hint of the unknown to her to face the prospect of dying here. She rushed to a stomach wall and started pounding again, screaming, but Bula’s movements quickly had her falling over.

 

The stomach churned as the giant started moving again. Several times the cervitaur’s weight in glowshrooms had been devoured, and it all bounced around the chamber with her. Ampadia was hit with a big bolus of the stuff. The light of them so close as to hurt her already irritated eyes. A quake rung out on the stomach walls, rhythmic.

 

Was the devouring giant woman mocking her? Ampadia pounded a few more times against the walls. The giant muttered something, then a snort from the horrible giant reached her ears alongside another thundering, squelching churn. She got buried under piles of the digesting glowshrooms, and lacked the strength to crawl out.

 

--==--==--==--

 

I neared the back of my cave, pausing to snort away an itch in my nose. Then, I idly drummed my fingers against my stomach once in range of the cave’s end. The back of my cave had “shelves” of a sort: a word for surfaces to set things, often inlaid into a wall or the like. I had learnt it from the same settlement of little people that carved these into the cave.

 

“Ah, there.” I said aloud. I grabbed up the curious tool, which had grips on either end of two sharp blades. Pressing the grips together, the blades glided against one another to snip. I was told by that same group of little people that the design was based, least partially, off of sheep sheers. They often used littler versions of the one in my hand to trim their beards--something they did very reluctantly, only when the beards got too long or unwieldy for battle.

 

There were all sorts of pretty runes on the tool, but I looked at them enough times already, and just went right into cutting my hair. I grabbed my dark green locks to a bundle and cut so that my hair would rest just past my shoulders now. If I cut it just at my shoulders, it’d tickle the bare skin there and distract me. Shorter was an option, but I liked it a tad long usually.

 

Thankfully, my head hair was far slower to regrow than the other parts of my body. I set the trimmed locks on one of the shelves as I finished trimming up my hair.

 

The same people that made that device and my shelves also taught me more about the glowshrooms. I’m no dummy, and probably would’ve figured out how to grow something like them eventually, but those dwarves said they had them as a staple in their diet for centuries.

 

They needed darkness to grow, and moisture. That was all, but pressure helped. Made for a good staple for me too, since the saliva I left under the boulders had the shrooms grow back in time. That type of compression apparently helped them grow as well, pressure I guess. Strange sort of fungus.

 

Fast growing, filling, and nutritious they were definitely a real nice crop. That they illuminated my insides for my more delicious, more wiggling meals was a nice bonus.

 

That particular small city of dwarves was probably the best settlement of little people I ever had working for me. Shame they turned against me. They developed some new weapon gizmo to hit me with: big iron arrows from a giant crossbow. It emboldened them to break their promises and snide me on my offerings. Once they fired the thing and it failed as I expected, I smashed their homes and gulped most of them down. The one silver lining of it was how delicious they all were.

 

There’s more dwarves out there somewhere in the forest I thought, but the woods were big enough that I’m not sure even I explored it fully. Then again, I hadn’t really tried to yet. I hoped I’d find more someday, but it was time to check up on another lead for a settlement.

 

The dwarves made me more than just that clipper after all. They also made my belly ring: mostly gold and certainly special. I felt a bit of fussing there again and moved my fingers to the big gold hoop just above my navel. I slid the ring around and admired the object.

 

Per my demands, those dwarves had made it with the ability to cage someone inside. This way, I could have a prisoner or, if they were small enough, two without needing to carry them in my hands. With the ring rotated, the part that used to be in my flesh was exposed to air. Rather than solid gold, this part of the metal was grated like a cage--which it certainly was.

 

Inside was a squat green fellow. Squinting, I noticed he wasn’t too happy to see me as his eyes adjusted to the shroom-gifted light of the cave.

 

I unhooked the ring, so that one of the ‘walls’ for him would part and lead out to the open. Not very useful, as he was still hundreds of feet off the ground. I moved my other hand over. My palm hung beneath the opening. I twisted the ring and noticed him clinging to the bars to try and hold on. I was surprised he’d want more time in the ring, but he wouldn’t get it regardless.

 

“Out”, I said sternly. Be it from fear or just shock from my voice’s tone, he let go and plopped onto my palm.

Chapter 3: Scout

 

Rigras had one doozy of a day yesterday. He witnessed almost his entire tribe devoured by the giant troll. He himself was in a handful heading straight towards her maw when his lover, Mirgis, spoke up. She kicked at the troll’s toe for attention, and shouted that she’d do anything to spare him.

 

Bula chuckled at her foolish bravery, and set her up for a task with him held as hostage till it was done. The giant green-skin woman didn’t spare any of the others, though. With a collective scream they went down her throat.

 

Once done feasting on the couple’s tribe, Bula spun her belly ring around and stuck him inside it. He screamed as she slid it back around again after. The light of the setting sun faded out of view as the troll’s flesh obscured his vision. The inner flesh moved against the pierced half of the ring, constantly shifting in an attempt to heal itself back together.

 

Stuck in close proximity to her stomach, in the dark, he listened to gulp after gulp. The flesh that tried to engulf the ring muffled the noises of her voracious appetite, but not nearly enough. The goblin heard well the chuckles between handfuls, and the fresh screams as people settled into that churning, gurgling gut so near to him in his confinement.

 

Eventually, he heard Bula talk to Mirgis. The troll was telling his lover to do something, find something, but he couldn’t hear the details aside from knowing that if she failed, his life and hers would be over.

 

Bula, as Rigras knew her name to be, then let Mirgis go he presumed while he was stuck with the giant green troll. Soon as the sun set she laid down to rest, but Rigras didn’t sleep well. Even with the near pitch dark of being trapped in a ring looped through her flesh, rest was difficult. The flesh constantly tried, and failed, to heal back together. The ring in the way meant it couldn’t, but those tries filled his ears with an eerie squelching sound. The ring itself was hardly comfortable to lay in too, and though the inner-flesh of the giant’s body didn’t get his ‘cage’ wet, that didn’t help much.

 

By far, what kept him up most was the screams. He heard the rest of his tribe getting digested. “It burns!” many said. “Help!” said others. The usual bickerings and feuds many of the goblins had between each other died down in that gut. Instead, they tried, and failed, to fight the fleshy surroundings around them. He heard them yell about how their eyes burnt, how they felt the skin slough and dissolve from their bones. It was horrible.

 

The only consolation was that he wasn’t in there with them: least not yet. He worried about Mirgis too, thinking of what would happen to her--and him--should she fail in whatever task was going on.

 

He didn’t much sleep, and it wasn’t too long after waking up that he heard Bula swallow some other victim. All she did was scream too, and pound against the stomach walls. He heard it, though Bula didn’t seem to. The troll didn’t seem to give Ampadia heed even if she felt the cervitaur pounding around in there.

 

Rigras was small, 3 feet tall. He was small to other humanoids, and knew he had to seem less than half an inch to that giant 500ft troll. His tribe only fed Bula in bulk, and even then it sounded like her stomach had room to spare. He figured only someone truly cruel would gulp down just one woman like that.

 

He had listened to Ampadia digest alive without a choice in the matter. The goblin wasn’t exactly a knight in conduct: he had been greedy before, rude, but Bula’s cruelty was far even for a goblin like himself.

 

With his mind back in the then-present, he hopped out of the cage onto Bula’s palm. He knew from that tone it’d be unwise to test her patience, but it wasn’t on purpose that he did. He was just in a bit of a shock. The light from the fungus in the cave had been more than a bit jarring. It was nice to have some fresh air. Back in the ring, he had to inhale the stale air that filtered through the minor gap between the hoop piercing and the troll-flesh that constantly tried to heal together through it.

 

The troll snapped her now empty prison-piercing back together to hang above her navel as before. Rigras struggled to get his footing on that soft green palm, and soon as he did he stumbled. Bula jostled her palm as she rose it up. Her free hand dipped into a pool of rain water that dripped from a hole above the cave to a basin-like depression near the stone floor. A small stream also fed to it, then out to keep the water moving. She splashed him with it--presumably to clean any fluid that got on him in the cage, which was little to none thankfully. That done she lifted him to her mouth.

 

Those deep-green lips stretched to a 20ft wide smile. Her teeth slipped through shortly after. Then she spoke.

 

“Ready to go visit your lover, runt?”

 

Her nose twitched. Her dark green eyes widened. She slipped her tongue tip out to wet those lips of hers.

 

“Part of me hopes she’s failed, then I have an excuse to gobble her and you right up. Not very filling you goblins are, but you got a nice texture when I push you up with my tongue. Decent taste too.”

 

That wet tongue slipped out to prod Rigras. He shivered in response.

 

“Please.”, he stammered. “Don’t hurt us.”

 

Bula withdrew her tongue back inside.

 

“Mmmm”, she rumbled. “We’ll see. You better hope she shows up at the meeting spot with some good news. Else you and her will have to spend most of your reunion in my stomach.”

 

Her fingers lightly curled towards Rigras and she stomped out of the cave. The fungal light left and the outside sunlight replaced it.

 

--==--==--==--

 

I had told that goblin woman, Mirgis, to meet me at a clearing not too far from my cave.

 

I realize she might’ve deduced my cave’s location from that, maybe told some people, but I didn’t care if forest folk found my forest.

 

My natural scent--which I’ve been told isn’t bad at all--was something that kept any dumb creatures away. Humanoids without as good a sense of scent could use their brain to stay away instead.

 

Even if they never heard of me, my footprints should serve as warning enough to stay out, and even if they went deep in my cave they’d have a hard time reaching my shelves where I put anything remotely valuable or unique. Much of it’s too giant for their tiny selves anyways.

 

I loosely bent my fingers toward Rigras. He rode in my palm, level to my chest, and got to enjoy a fraction of the view my giant self experienced every day. Of course, he didn’t seem to enjoy it much. He was terrified of falling. He gently pinched at the skin of my palm to stay stable. The little green runt was probably worried about slipping out through some fingers or tumbling right off.

 

Of course, I wouldn’t let that happen. I didn’t want to jeopardize getting information out of my unwilling scout gobliness. Still, I didn’t want Rigras to know that, so I only subtly curled my fingers towards him. That’d be enough to catch him should he actually tumble from the vibrations of gigantic body in motion.

 

Still, if I messed up, I could probably get Mirgis to squeal anyways with a bit of ‘pressure’. At the same time, I couldn’t be sure. I wouldn’t want her mind to break from lost love or something, and her become some gibbering, useless person that forgot what she saw.

 

That happened now and then. I remember a dwarven man going mad once when my foot fell on his wife. So blinded by rage, he was, that he went into a tantrum and attacked his fellow dwarves like a wild animal. It was a sight to see. When I gulped him down later, he almost tasted a bit more wild, but I think that was just my imagination or something.

 

I chuckled at the thought of it, and my mind was back to the then-present as a particularly nice tree crunched under the ball of my foot. The clearing wasn’t too far now. Rigras, that cowardly goblin, still shivered in my palm. I knew he was desperate for Mirgis to have succeeded.

 

I wouldn’t say I was desperate, but I did want her to succeed, and I’d keep the sniveling goblin alive to give her every reason to be forward with me. I actually had hopes that someone as small and sneaky as Mirgis, even by little-people standards, could actually find that wood elf settlement I was looking for.

 

Wood elves...

 

I had only run into a few of them. They did some hit and run arrow attacks on my ankles now and then, till they wised up and figured out those didn’t work. Despite their tallness--again, for little people--they were quite the elusive sort. I only ever caught two, and they were far from cooperative. Given my size I couldn’t exactly stealthily track the elves myself.

 

Even after bending ones limbs every which way he didn’t talk, nor did the other I caught. Least I had no reason not to gulp them down. That alone was a reason to find the settlement: grudge aside, they were delicious. Their flavor against my tongue was a nice mix of the more mundane taste of commoner people and with some subtle sweetness to it. The fae tasted sweet, and were another very rare treat of mine as well as a thorn in my side. I figured the wood elves flavor was cause of the rumors of elves being a bit fae themselves, in a sense at least.

 

At my stature I reached the clearing in a few minutes. Mirgis was there and I smirked at the sight of her. I was well aware despite calling them and the elves, dwarves, and most of what else I run to “little people’ that I was actually the giant one. I knew my size and strength well and sauntered her way, eyes on her, flattening trees and shrubbery with every step.

 

Seeing her body stumble from my footfalls sent a pleasant tingle down my neck, shoulders and chest--among maybe another area or two.

 

--==--==--==--

 

Mirgis waited for hours in the clearing till she knew Bula was coming. She felt the subtle tremors under her cloth-wrapped feet even before the troll came into sight.

 

The adult gobliness’s memory was still stained from last night, when her tribe was handily beaten and devoured. Yet, she still managed to forget just how gigantic the troll was. Few trees stood taller than Bula’s ankles, and even fewer came close to her knees. All of them were cast aside in her those thooming steps that thudded louder and louder.

The quakes increased in ferocity, and so did the volume of the booms and the frequency of trees snapping. Mirgis almost covered her ears from it all. Her kind had cut down trees now and then for shelter or shield crafting, but in Bula’s stroll that giant had felled more than they did in a month for sure.

 

Eventually Mirgis started bouncing. As the memories of that brutal night came back, she became too distracted to hold her balance and stumbled over onto her butt. Bula kept walking closer. She set one gigantic green foot down into the clearing. The ped was nearly 80 feet long, and the brown-eyed goblin saw it sink a tad into the ground.

 

The tremors were too much for Mirgis to scramble back up. In just two more steps Bula’s toes loomed before her. One pinky toe dwarfed her by a few inches, and to reach the big toe she and her lover Rigras would need to stand on each other’s shoulders. If Bula slid her foot forward, she’d be crushed by those toes with ease.

 

Instead, Bula gave the digits a wiggle and sent some minor vibrations through the ground. She quickly got to her feet, then held fast as some wind shifted. Bula was leaning down. A giant hand set its back down to the ground. Mirgis turned to her frightened lover atop the giant green palm. She meekly smiled his way, head looking down at the ground.

 

“Up!” came that loud, feminine voice from above. Bula’s.

 

Mirgis obeyed, not wanting to tick off the troll and put her mate at further risk. She scrambled up fingers thick as tree trunks. It was embarrassing really: having to dig her fingers and toes into the side of fingers just to climb onto a hand, but she managed.

 

The gobliness didn’t have a chance to talk to Rigras. A lurching pressure knocked her and him back on their dark-green asses. Bula raised her body back up, palm with it.

 

Standing at her full height of more than 500ft, the giant troll brought the couple up to her face--far enough that they could see her eyes craning their necks a bit. She spoke and even at such a ‘safe’ distance her breath still brushed by the duo. It reminded them of how big she was. Goblins were small and used to feeling like it when dealing with the other humanoids of the world, but Mirgis figured she never felt as small as she did right then.

 

“So, you find what I asked you to, squirt? For your sake I hope you did.”

 

“I did!”, shouted Mirgis. Her voice was that proud sort of squeaky, one she used when finding some treasure or assignment. She had been a scout for her tribe before Bula even choose her for this role--though she suspected the troll didn’t know that. Bula probably just saw her as the smallest and most useful for the part. A quick but accurate judgment.

 

“Good.”, said Bula. “Let’s walk a bit then.”

 

Rigras opened his mouth to protest, but decided better against it. Mirgis and him started to bounce as that massive body went on the move again. The gobliness’s lover seemed to be a tad more used to this by now, so she followed his lead in grabbing at the palm flesh and holding tight.

 

Every step carried a boom with it, and once Bula cleared the clearing the sound of crunched trees and the like came back. Just a simple stroll caused such a racket and carried such a presence. Of course, the goblin duo were smart enough to realize Bula was doing this for more than just idle walking. She wanted to intimidate them some more.

 

It wasn’t like it was needed. Talking to someone with a mouth that could gulp down a tribe of goblins was intimidating enough. Mirgis suspected it was less a “need” to intimidate more so much as a “want”.

 

--==--==--==--

 

“Where is it?”, I asked the gobliness. My eyes were on them. Another batch of trees crunched under my naked heel. The feeling was pleasant. That little dark-haired goblin was smart enough to wait till the noise faded to reply.

 

“I’ll tell you!”, she squeaked to me. “But you got to promise again to be swell to us. I did what you said after all.”

 

Perhaps she wasn’t as smart as I had just given her credit for. A tree fell just as I paused my stride. I felt the sturdy trunk of it pulp beneath the ball of my right foot. That male goblin jumped from the fear the noise and my stern look must’ve put in him.

 

“Do you realize how easily I can end you? I wonder, how long does it take you to climb the trees I flatten to wood-scrap with every step? If you want a chance of living after that you’ll talk fast. Your tiny little lives are very much in my hand.”

 

I slowly tilted my palm to the side. The goblins scrambled to hold on. A scream from Rigras and a couple more seconds had Mirgis very eagerly shouting.

 

“Ok I’ll tell you! They are to the northeast.”

 

“How far?”, I ask.

 

“I had to walk almost all night to get there.”

“Shouldn’t take me too long then.”

 

“Listen, t-there’s something else you should know thought, before going.”

 

“Are you hiding information from me?”

I tilted my palm back level, and brought the goblins face height, though still the same distance from my body. I curled my fingers their way, as though I was gonna crush them. I wasn’t, not till hearing the info at least, but I wanted to hear it fast.

 

“It’s fairies!”, shouted Mirgis.

“What?”, I said. Apparently I was a bit loud since the two covered their ears. Mirgis even gave one of hers a flick as though to help get the sound out.

 

“Yes.”, she continued. “Well, fae at least. Pixies maybe. I followed some of the wood elves to a patch of forest and they just... disappeared into it.”

 

“Did you go in?”, I asked. My impatience seeped into my tone and I saw the two goblins fidget beneath it a moment.

 

“Of course, but I couldn’t go far. There were guards on a wall. I only poked my head in really to be honest.”

 

I grunted. Fae were something of a big annoyance to me, despite their size. The smallest fae I knew was but an inch. An inch! Imagine a life like that... Larger fae spirits could be giant, though as big as me I can’t say since I haven’t seen any of those more powerful sorts.

 

Still, pixies and sprites and the like harangued me now and then. They’d fly by and stab at my toes with swords or the like. I hardly ever felt it. That didn’t bother me, and they learned that soon. What really irked me was how they’d use magic. Not on me, but against me. They’d obfuscate parts of the woods, illusioning up fake trees and the lake to try and make me lose my way.

 

I used more than sight to navigate the woods, and years of experience gave me quite the memory of things. Still, it’s annoying and can slow me down at times. I’m sure they’d do worse if they could. Far as I know, they disliked me since I didn't respect nature. I probably stepped on more than a few tress they liked.

 

What else was I to do, though? I couldn’t exactly walk through trees like some fae and the druids supposedly could. Even then, why should I? Most trees are smaller than me so they can be crunched underfoot, like everything and everyone else that is. I’m big and they are small, so if I can break it and I want to, I will. I’m not gonna tiptoe through the Snowless Forest, my home too, just to please a bunch of fae, several of whom are so small that dozens could get stuck under a toe-nail of mine. I’m part of nature too, just one they don’t like. Sometimes I wonder if it’s envy.

 

In any case, the way I saw it was if they didn’t like me, they could run off out of the forest somewhere else like all the smart little folk, fae or no. I guess I might miss being able to eat the little various people now and then, but the fae being gone would be a boon and worth it.

 

It made sense the wood elves might collaborate with the fae. Same nature-loving goal and all. It was plausible, but it’d be annoying. I didn’t want to believe it.

 

“Do you have proof?” I asked Mirgis. My eyes were squinting a tad incredulously--again this was something I hoped to be false, since then I’d have an excuse to swallow the two and not have to deal with any fae while I visited the wood elves.

 

Mirgis nodded hastily.

 

“Y-yes. Here, I found this magic dust. Pixie dust. I didn’t see the pixie, but what else could it be?”

 

I squinted, but in the palm of a goblin it was hard to see even with my keen eyes.

 

“I want a closer look. Hold still.”, I said. I moved them closer to my face.

 

“W-wait, don’t you want to be careful? That stuff could be dangerous!” said Rigras. The male goblin finally spoke up. I snorted at the notion.

 

“It’d need to be really potent pixie dust, or a lot more than a goblin handful to do anything to someone as big as me.”

 

I brought the quivering pair closer to my face. Leaning in, I squinted at the two of them; in particular, I focused on Mirgis and what she had in her hand. I was careful breathing so as to not blow it away, well, at least till I saw that sparkling pinkish dust there. That was definitely pixie dust, which meant fae involvement.

 

I felt an itch in my nose; a tingling sensation. I quickly realized I must’ve inhaled a bit of the pixie dust, but I had no time to think on that before that itch in my nose built.

 

“Ah, Ah, Ah-choo!”

 

Without even thinking I leaned in to sneeze into my hand. I felt a viscous wetness across palm, and quick, loud squeaks of pain hit my ears. I drew my hand away and the few strings of mucus still connected to my nose snapped off and onto my hand.

 

I had sneezed out whatever morning snot was still in my nose, and the resulting wad of mucus covered almost my entire palm. The two goblins writhed in it, with a bit of red blood around them from their injuries. I wiggled my fingers and felt the goo.

 

“Yuck.”, I said. I crouched down to some shin-height trees and wiped my hand off on their tops and the upper trunks. In the process the main one I cleaned my hand with fell over.

 

--==--==--==--

 

Mirgis and Rigras watched, legs trembling, as Bula leaned in close to inspect the pixie dust. The gobliness did her best to steady herself, not wanting to spill any of the pixie dust and risk upsetting the giant troll woman. Up close so close to that face, she was reminded how unfair the universe was.

 

Bula was huge. She had a mouth wide enough to suck up a handful of her kind at a time--that she saw first hand. Even just leaning in, the giant troll shook their bodies. Air brushed by Mirgis and her lover with the gentle flow of those dark green locks.

 

It wasn’t just the size though. Bula’s skin was a nicer shade of green than her own, Mirgis thought. If one could look past the dark green spots, there was an odd sort of beauty to the troll. Bula’s face was symmetrical, the features pleasing to the eye.

 

Of course, Mirgis considered herself pretty fetching for a goblin. She was young, in her early 20s, but none of that mattered. That’s not why it was no unfair.

 

Bula was wasn’t *just* pretty, but big *too*. Goblins lived shorter lives than most other races, getting old and their features gnarled. Mirgis didn’t know too much about trolls, but she knew they lived quite awhile--long enough that she never heard of one dying of old age.

 

That giant green-skinned being would live a long life with her beauty, and a size big enough to do whatever she wanted without reproach. Simply by virtue of being a giant troll, Bula would live a longer, better, and happier life, often at the expense of littler people like her.

 

Mirgis certainly knew that first hand.

 

As a goblin scout she scrounged for trinkets and materials for the tribe that hardly let her keep any for herself. What little she had for her own she used to decorate a small little hut that Bula crushed without a care under-heel. All her tribe was went down that greedy gullet of the giant. All Mirgis knew, and all her tribe worked for, was destroyed for an evening meal to Bula.

 

That giant face loomed in, squinting right at her. Mirgis did her best to steady under such a big and intimidating gaze, but her knees trembled just like her lover Rigras. Bula was trying to be gentle with her breaths, but even that sent Mirgis’s dark locks fluttering.

 

Of course, she only did it to not blow the pixie dust away. Mirgis was certainly smart enough to notice that much. Bula didn’t care about the pair much beyond their use to her, that much was clear.

 

The gobliness wondered if anything she noticed was something Bula didn’t. She saw those deep-green eyes widen at that sight of the pixie dust. Did Bula know she gave off a tell like that? Did it even matter?

 

Mirgis noticed the pixie dust fly up one of Bula’s nostrils. Bula didn’t seem to notice that right away, but her body did. She saw that nose twitch.

 

“Ah,”

 

Bula inhaled a tad and the goblins shifted forward. Rigras cried out to try and get Bula’s attention; Mirgis did too. Their cries were dwarfed by the sound of the troll’s inhales.

 

“Ah,”

 

Mirgis braced herself. Rigras moved to grab her hand, but tripped from the motion of the giant’s palm as it shifted with the heaves.

 

“Ah-choo!”

 

It all happened so fast. Bula leaned in, completely disregarding their presence and sneezed. A thick deluge of snot hit the pair and covered them in viscous muck. They each yelped in pain, but not so much from the goo itself. That hurt, but what really got the goblins was the pressure.

 

When Bula cupped her hand to her face and sneezed, she limited where air could escape to. Her sneeze pushed not just snot from her nose and a bit of spittle from her mouth, but also oodles of air from her lungs to force it out. A torrent of air from within Bula’s body roared out and broke the bones of the pair in the process. It was less like a current and more like a ballista going off in force.

Rigras was less prepared and took a brunt of the damage. He couldn’t stop screaming, even as the snot threatened to drown him. Mirgis couldn’t feel her toes, but she could definitely feel how those limbs were cracked at the shins. One of arms was bent backwards, the other had its fingers crushed. Desperately flailing her neck, she manged to get her mucus covered face out of the snot’s surface. At that same time, a string of snot snapped from Bula’s right nostril and thwapped against the gobliness’s body. It felt like a wet whip.

 

With her vision blurred a bit by the opaqueness of the clear-ish snot, she saw Bula’s massive mouth move.

“Yuck”, was what the giant said.

Then the troll lowered the pair down to tree tops. Rigras yelped and screamed. His voice sounded different, and Mirgis realized her love’s chest might’ve been crushed. She turned to look at him and noticed his arm laying vaguely visible in the snot a good 5 feet away from him. The sneeze had blown it right off. It moved further from her lover as the branches clipped them from Bula’s hand. The tree fell down and another burst of pain wracked the two.

 

Rigras piped down moments after, finally saving his strength, though still visibly writhing in pain. Mirgis had to grit her teeth to composure herself. She shouted up to Bula, who sat on her haunches and had wiped most of the last bit of snot off her palm and onto the ground--for some other creature to stumble into no doubt.

 

Mirgis shouted.

“Bula. Help us!”

 

The giant troll tilted her head, then spoke.

 

“I’m not touching you two. You’re both covered in snot.”

 

Mirgis’s felt her heart fall like a stone. Bula still looked down, her knees looming to either side of the two in her crouch.

 

“I did everything you asked, you said you wouldn’t harm us then!”

 

“I said I wouldn’t kill you. The sneeze was an accident.”

 

“We’ll die here! I can’t feel my feet. Rigras can’t even breath. I don’t wanna die. Please.”

 

Bula shrugged.

 

“Maybe you should've held that pixie dust tighter then. I can’t possibly keep track of every little thing. You’re lucky you ended out as good as you did. Besides...”

 

Bula held up her palm, it looked clean and dry as before.

 

“My hand’s already clean again. I think it has something to do with how my body heals. I wouldn’t want to get snot on it again, like I said.”

 

Mirgis had forgotten that aspect of trolls. Not only was Bula gonna live a long live of getting her way, but she’d be scar-less all the while. She sneezes in her hand and its clean, while her and the love of her life wallow in the snot. An entire life of others dealing with her actions. Bula was above consequences like she was above the trees: towering, unassailable.

 

“Unfair.”, murmured Mirgis.

 

“What was that?”, said Bula. She looked down at the gobliness with a cocked eyebrow.

 

“Unfair!”, shouted Mirgis. She wiggled to free her head a tad more of the snot.

 

“It’s not fair! I did everything you said. I didn’t sleep to find what you were looking for, and now you’re leaving us to die. I would’ve been better off not helping you at all. You... big bully! You monster!”

 

Bula leaned in just a tad. She smirked.

 

“You have the audacity to chastise me? You’re lucky I even planned to let you go at all. I didn’t need to do anything for you. Letting you live long enough to get me that info ‘ought’ve been enough for a runt like you.”

 

The giant troll pursed her lips as though to spit on the pair, but she paused. Her wry smirk sent a shiver down Mirgis’s spine.

 

“No.”, she said. “I won’t put you out of your misery. I’m letting you go, as promised. You’re right though, those injuries look pretty bad. You probably won’t make it. It’s just proof of how fragile you are. A solid thing in my sneeze: you’re just like a booger. A little booger. A speck.”

 

Bula rose back up to her full height. Another gust of displaced wind hit the duo. She looked down, still smiling.

 

“On the off-chance you get out, you better not let me see you again or you’ll get to see the fluids inside my gut ‘stead of my nose.”

 

“No! No wait!”, said Mirgis. She flailed, sinking herself a bit into the snot and having to puff out to stop it from creeping in her mouth.

 

“Come back!” the gobliness howled. “I don’t wanna die!”

 

Bula simply chuckled, looked to the sun then walked north-east. She left them there.

 

Mirgis turned to face Rigras, who had sunk under the surface of the snot. She had turned from Bula just in time to see his struggles fade.

 

‘I’m next.’, she thought. Try as she might, the gobliness couldn’t free herself from the snot--certainly not with that broken arm of hers, not to mention the other busted bones. One struggle just sunk her deeper into the mucousy muck.

 

‘Unfair’, she thought. Her mood sunk much as her body did in the goop.

Chapter 4: Walk

 

I took a deep breath in through my nose and sighed out through my mouth.

 

“Ah~”

 

It was apparently obnoxious enough to scare a few more birds, but I didn’t care. I was kind of glad I sneezed back then. Aside from inadvertently teaching those goblins a lesson about how puny they were, I also managed to clear my nose out. My breathing was clear once again and it felt great.

 

I trusted the gobliness’s information. She seemed honest enough. That pixie dust would be hard to get elsewise. Plus, if she had been lying she would’ve tried to offer the real location to save her life from my snot. Of course, if she had offered info then it wouldn’t mean she was telling the truth, but that she didn’t offer it at all lead me to think she was being true with her words.

 

Northeast took me deeper into the forest were the taller trees grew. It made sense for wood elves to settle there, since it was a tad more cumbersome for me to traverse that area. Shame too, as it’d take me a little time to reach it.

 

I traveled along, crunching trees and whatever else fell under my tread. I was focused on finding that settlement, so I when I saw another half-deer woman in my path I simply stepped on her, not breaking my stride.

 

Was she looking for the cervitaur I ate this morning? Perhaps they were friends or lovers. I didn’t speculate much, nor did I care. I didn’t even stoop the few seconds it’d take to snatch her up and gulp her down. Aside from staying focused on finding the village, I was saving room in my stomach in case this hidden settlement wasn’t exactly welcoming to my visit. So, I just felt her body break under the ball of my foot and on.

 

Soon, most trees started reaching my shins with few cresting my knees. Then, most crested my knees with a few reaching the top of my thighs. Eventually I reached deeper into the forest where trees tall to my chest were the norm, albeit with plenty of shorter trees beneath.

 

Quite a few trees even reached my shoulders. Some, more daring, towered just a bit above me even. Instead of stomping what was in my path, there were times I had to knock a towering aged oak over with a sway from my hips or a shove from my arms. For the ones smaller than my chest, a good shove sufficed.

 

I shoved a tree just below my chest, and chuckled as it started a minor chain reaction falling over a few of the smaller trees nearby. I stopped a moment to watch that.

 

Of course, there was plenty of room to move between the trees too when I saw fit for it. Those big trees needed a lot of space to themselves to spread their roots and the like: space that could only be filled by the much shorter trees and other lesser flora.

 

I wondered why the fae seemed to prefer the death of a few smaller plants than a single large tree like the many around me. Seemed to make some sense to worry about quantity more than quality when it came to the plants, and I stomped far more shrubs than trees in my strolls. Perhaps it’s cause the larger trees might take longer to grow? Well, in just over 20 years of age I towered over most the trees so, seemed like it’s a tree problem, not mine, I thought.

 

Eventually, after a good deal of walking I stumbled upon a clearing. What made me realize this was the spot was the fact that is was a natural clearing. The wood elves didn’t seem to type to cut down trees to make a clearing for themselves, but no group of little people would’ve passed up on such a nice land situation either.

 

A few boulders were what made the clearing natural, as they’d complicate tree growth. It wasn’t fully clear of course: there were smaller plants, shrubs, grass and the like of course. Still, it was certainly clear enough to me. None of the boulders could handle my might as I stepped on them and pounded them to dust beneath my tread.

 

Sure enough, I squinted at the end of the vast open area and saw a collection of tall empty trees which towered over me. It seemed suspicious, so I trailed my gaze to the left and noticed a slight shimmer with a bit of a curve. That was probably the end of the illusion.

 

I talked while I moved.

 

“Drop the illusion magic. I’m walking over anyways, and you probably want to let it down before I walk into whatever wall or fort you’ve built.”

 

I worked in a few more steps till they dropped the barrier. The sight of a settlement built around the trees greeted me. A large wall was the most prominent feature, made with sturdy oak logs fortified further with plates of lumber squares. Slender brown-skinned folk hastily rolled up ladders of vine and logs as they saw my approach.

 

Past the wall I gazed at an impressive display of tree homes. Wooden walkways spiraled down the great looming oaks and also bridged between them. I saw wood and flora made homes in the hollows of the trees.

 

Whatever structures didn’t tower over the wall were obscured by it, I presumed. The illusion was accurate in that the trees were the same, only what the elves built around it was hidden. I hadn’t looked too hard, but overall I was admittedly impressed to be greeted by such a nature-adapted city.

 

Arrows flew at me. I was greeted by arrows too, it seemed.

 

It didn’t matter. I forgave their foolish, feeble attacks just as much as my body forgot them. Their tiny arrows were nothing, not even a tickle. My body pushed them out as it healed the few that managed to lightly pierce into my skin. There wasn’t a drop of blood.

 

No, that slight didn’t matter, so long as they were receptive to the offer I had for them.

 

“Let’s chat.”, I shouted.

Chapter 5: Bargain

 

Qinala had called the cease fire order with grit teeth. Soon as they felt the vibrations of giant steps, she had rushed to the front wall and was glad she did.

 

The captain of the guard stood a good 6’8”, tall even among the traditionally taller gender of the wood elves. Autumn-brown hair stopped just below the pointed ears that poked through it. Plant-spun fabrics rested against her willowy body and were held snug to her youthful-looking copper skin by ties of vines and twigs. Shaped cuts of hard bark protected her shoulders, shins, and the exterior of her arms.

 

Wood elves valued their dexterity and nimbleness in combat, so the joints were uncovered by the light bark alongside her neck and other traditionally vulnerable parts of her body. A daring sort of light armor, but standard among the guards by her side. Like all elves, her feet were bare so as to better balance herself and increase her connection to nature.

 

The only thing setting Qinala’s outfit apart from her fellow soldiers were some more stylishly laid leaves on her shoulder bark-pads. She wore those marginally inefficient frills only at the council’s insistence.

 

The elves steadied themselves on their bare feet. One of her guards ran up to her.

 

“Qinala!”, said the shorter she-elf. “Is that the troll the scouts talked about?”

 

Qinala nodded. “Seems so. Everyone prepare yourselves. We’ll hear what she has to say.”

 

The soldier stepped back, gulping as Qinala was visibly upset at having to parlay with an enemy. Her normal ruthlessness towards foes had to be tempered. Yet, all the elves knew why. Though not all were hundreds of years old like Qinala, they lived long enough, and were trained enough, to know about trolls.

 

A typical troll stood a good 9 to 11 feet tall. They were naturally strong, able to punch right through weaker shields and yank away the sturdiest. Worse still, they could heal from almost any wound. Their teeth could tear through bone, and their stomach acid could digest the finest steel.

 

Those were the male trolls.

Females trolls stood over 50 times the size of males with stomach acid 10 times as strong but just as slow. Male trolls were a minor problem for wood elves. Strong, but sluggish by elf standards. They were a bit more troublesome if especially if allied with an orc or goblin tribe.

 

Female trolls, however, were a disaster. A single one could ravage an area for countless years, effectively ageless and immortal. Few things could penetrate their skin, and even fewer couldn’t be healed back within seconds.

 

The only good thing about female trolls was their rarity. They were hundreds of times less common as the males, but even that didn’t help much when they were thousands of times more deadly and problematic.

 

Qinala’s settlement knew that well, and they have heard of Bula. Although, none expected her to visit them this day.

 

The giant green-skinned troll-woman continued her approach. The ground shook louder and louder. The wall itself vibrated, but it held, as did most of the elves atop it. Those that didn’t got a stern look from the guard captain.

 

Soon, Bula’s booming foliage crunching steps paused, and the troll was upon them. These elves lived on trees taller than that giant herself, but the wall itself came up only to below the troll’s chest.

 

Qinala stared up with the others, hands held tight to a leaf-ornamented glaive weapon. Bula crouched down enough to get her face level with the top of the wall. Each elf looked at the darker, muted green spots on her cheeks. Some of the smaller body-markings rivaled their hands in size.

 

With her darker-green lips looming in front of them, Bula smiled. She spoke soon after.

 

“Two handfuls of food a day.”, the troll began. Her words were loud but the voice was certainly light enough for a female, albeit a bit on the tougher side of timbre.

 

“My hands, not yours of course.”, she continued. “Also 10 people a week. They don’t have to be yours, and you can spread them out over the week, but you do need to provide ‘em. If you do that, and don’t expand more than I say so, then I’ll let ya’ live.”

 

Qinala blinked. Her fingers tightened on the handle of her glaive. The pointed nails of her toes curled into the wood at her feet.

 

“How dare you!”, she shouted. “We have lived in this forest thousands of years and this spot hundreds. We’ve more honor than to become your slaves, and no decision like this could be reached without the council-”

 

Qinala’s speech was interrupted by a loud, humid roar of air from Bula’s open maw. Strands of saliva dangled from the roof to the tongue. They warbled and broke as that torrid gust flew forth to ruffle the guard. Another elf fell over from it and Qinala, the closest, held tight only by digging the butt of her glaive into the floor beneath.

 

A droplet of saliva hit Qinala’s forehead, far too warm to cool the captain’s rage.

 

“Yaaaawn”

 

--==--==--==--

 

After giving my usual spiel, one of the leaders of the little people got all riled up with a rant. Nothing I haven’t seen before and I couldn’t help but yawn out of boredom. It was a real yawn of course, but not directing it away from the little things was a conscious choice.

 

I might’ve also dragged out the end of it a bit.

 

With their hairs ruffled at the yawn’s end I smacked my lips.

 

“Are you done? Do you have an answer or not?”

 

The elf I assumed was the group’s leader spoke up. She was a tall, wiry sort that the others seemed to look to right now.

 

“I cannot give an answer. We have a system here. Big decisions are done via a council appointed by-”

 

“So you need to talk to the actual rulers then?”, I interrupted.

 

“They aren’t rulers so much as a guiding-”

 

“So to someone. Whatever.”

 

I waved her away, my patience thinning.

“Come back with a decision in 15 minutes, else I’ll assume it’s a no and I’ll help myself to your city, as I will if you act dumb and attack. In the meantime...”

 

I quickly pinched up one of the elven guards with my left hand. They were a thin willowy man with long blonde locks. Kind of handsome. I licked my lips as he fidgeted against my thumb and forefinger.

 

“I’ll keep this one as collateral.”

 

I squinted back at Qinala. I could see, even at her diminutive scale, that her face strained to avoid leaking the fullness of her rage.

 

“If you hurt any of my fellows then I, Qinala, leader of the guard shall personally-”

 

I waved her away again.

 

“Time’s ticking.”, I said.

 

Qinala moved off and took a pair of guards with her. I stayed with the rest of the elves that were on the wall and the one in my fingers. I looked to the held one while addressing them all.

 

“So, pixie dust huh? Allied with the fae?”

 

The elves said nothing, including the terrified one in my grip. I gently squeezed him to feel the tones of his tiny muscles. The one in my fingers let out a grunt. Wood elves, like all elves, were tall among the little races, but still less than a thumb tall to me. So, when the ones on the wall gripped their spears and glaives tighter, I couldn’t help but chuckle.

 

“Silent treatment huh? Fair enough, I’ll find it out anyways, or else...”

 

I wiggled the elf in my grip again. Bark-protected guards steadied on their teeny feet and took up subtly aggressive poses. Those slender folk were so brave, but foolish. They thought the pinched he-elf was my hostage, but they *all* were.

 

I noticed one of the elven guards looking at me with an especially grumpy face. I set my eyes to her.

 

“What?”, I asked, dangling the finger-held elf to the side for a moment.

 

She didn’t answer, but even I could see her brow furrowed more.

 

“Oh.”, I said. “Did I eat one of your friends?”

 

She didn’t answer, but the sinew of her taut legs tensed up.

 

“I only ate two of your kind of late, one male one female, which was it?”

 

No answer still.

 

“Well, if it’s any consolation. Both were delicious, from what I tasted. And, I did taste them quite thoroughly.”

 

I slipped my tongue from my lips to poke at the elf in my fingers and dab it at his tiny head.

“Mmm~”

 

She took a step back, still tensed. I could tell she wanted to slice my tongue right off, but even if she could it’d just grow back. I had nothing to fear.

 

Then, after 5 minutes had passed. A loud wooshing noise went through the air. I saw a blur of brown flying towards me, but didn’t care to dodge. Once the projectile punctured just below my chest, I saw what it was: a gigantic wooden arrow.

 

My feet slipped back a tad in the ground to steady myself from the impact. The fingers of my free right-hand gripped the top of the wall. A loud horn sounded from somewhere deep in the city, but that sound of attack wasn’t needed for the guards in front of me to start stabbing at my fingers.

 

Most could hardly leave a scratch, but the few that cut my skin paused in shock as my flesh knitted back together. Even then, I could feel my body trying to heal through the giant arrowhead.

 

I lifted my right hand and swiped left to right to knock the guards over. I wasn’t gentle, but nor was I too forceful either. Still, some of them weren’t getting back up--just writhing there.

 

I laughed, then wrapped that free hand about the arrow shaft and pulled it out. I studied the thing as the small hole just below my chest quickly sealed back up. I had never heard of elves with ballistas, but I supposed with an all wood arrow it could fit their style.

 

I chucked the projectile overhead, and chuckled again.

 

“Seems I have my answer.”

 

Many of the guard’s were still gathering themselves off the wall.

 

“My broken bones heal in a flash.”

In my left hand I held that kicking, irate elf ‘hostage’. With a flex of my fingers I bent his knees the wrong way. I let him scream for a second or two before speaking again.

 

“Seems wood-elf bones don’t.”

 

I popped the elf into my mouth and swallowed.

 

“Quite the treat your kind are. Less meaty than some other smaller folk for sure, but good thing you’re so plentiful here. That’s quite the upside to you refusing my offer: guess I’ll be eating well today~”

 

I slammed either of my hands down atop the wall, then brought them together to in a clap and gathered most of those guards up. My hands missed a few, but I got enough to feel some decent squirming once I stuffed them in my gob.

 

Another delightfully squirming gulp followed, then I grinned down at the few stragglers and walked right through the city wall.

Chapter 6: Troll Attack

 

Xyrralei was incensed. Bula’s words had rattled her core: she had indeed lost a friend to that troll woman. Orithyra was her name, and the two had known each other for nearly as long as they could remember. Decades of bonding, gone in a flash when that giant monster swallowed her down.

 

The guard often chastised herself. If only she had known what would happen that day, the things she would’ve said to her friend then.

 

She couldn’t help herself from gripping her spear as Bula taunted her. The elven woman’s rage built, but she managed to accomplish a little goal. She didn’t let loose how much she cared for the guard in the troll’s hand. To Bula, that man was just a hostage. To Xyrralei, though, he was Hergolor and another friend with a century of history together.

 

The big arrow fired. The elves had watched Bula for sometime, and prepared some for the giant being stumbling onto their city. Xyrralei didn’t need to wait for the war horn to rush in and start hacking at Bula’s fingers. She couldn’t wait to see the looming troll’s body hit the ground.

 

But, that didn’t happen. That giant arrow which took a group effort days to carve was yanked out as little more nuisance then a splinter. Her spear strikes against the elf-dwarfing digits barely even broke skin. Bits of a reddish-brown blood splashed out weakly, though the wounds quickly healed back up with the liquid simply falling right off the green-skin of the troll’s hand.

 

Bula snapped Hergolor’s legs then ate him up. Xyrralei’s rage was stoked further by the sound of his bones cracking. She kept fighting, with the frustration of not being able to harm the vile troll egging on her already seething rage. She fought faster and savager than ever before. Her ferocity was unrivaled among the other similarly irate guards around her.

 

All for nothing.

 

Xyrralei kept fighting. But, with a slam of her hands on the wall, Bula reminded the elves how outmatched they were. The logs and flat wood atop the wall tumbled. The elven guard woman needed all her strength to balance herself upright for the few moments before Bula clapped.

 

Giant light-green palms came together from either side. More cracks of bones rang out. By being in the middle, Xyrralei should’ve quite a brunt of it, but instead made it out with mere bruises. The troll had stopped her palms from completely coming together *too* hard.

She wanted at least some of them alive.

 

Surrounded by fellow guards, many with skin-jutting bones and wrong-bent limbs, she was brought up to that troll’s awaiting maw and stuffed right in. Xyrralei had lost her spear, but reached for a dagger held snug to her bark ankle guard with vine-twine. She steadied herself on the tongue best she could with its slick bumping surface under foot, but tripped as she lounged to stab that crimson muscle.

 

Soaked in spittle, her and the other grabbed guards had nary a few seconds before she swallowed them all down.

 

Bula’s throat was even more packed than the mouth. The muscles tightly squeezed the elves to a ball together in there. Xyrralei pressed her feet against the walls inside, but they were too strong and slimy to get a hold. In fact, one squeeze of the troll’s esophagus snapped her shoulder out of place. She yelped in pain, but knew from the screams of those elven bodies pressed against her that she had it lucky thus far.

 

All that changed when they fell in the actual gut. The entire place was illuminated by what the elves recognized as partially digested glowshrooms. Some were still intact, but many of the shrooms were mush, or soggy enough that a simple touch had them lose some form and puddle.

 

With the light of Bula’s past meal, the elves could see the horror they were stuck in. Xyrralei had landed atop some hard, poking objects that were so brittle as to crush against her back moments later. She turned to see what it was: bones. She placed her hands on the partially digested skull belonging to what appeared to be a cervitaur.

 

Xyrralei shouted. The troll could’ve easily lived entirely off glowshrooms or even trees, yet here she was eating forest people, eating her and her kind. All their suffering just for selfish reasons. The guard woman quickly got to her feet and joined all the able others in pounding at the walls or generally trying to cause the least bit of pain to the monstrous woman that ate them.

 

Nothing.

 

What little weapons still intact on the way down were quick to become useless in the acid, and they failed to hurt even the tiniest bit of the troll’s stomach flesh. Instead, the elves with the strength to do so resorted to punching at every bit of undulating flesh about them, screaming all the while from pain and anger.

 

A single churn would knock them all over. it covered in stomach juices and chyme. A loud echo from the walls signaled the seemingly mocking pat Bula did.

 

Back outside, the rest of the guards at the front of the wall braced themselves as another ‘wall’ of green flesh ran right into them.

 

--==--==--==--

 

Wood and logs broke against me with ease. The wall was puny to someone with my size and strength. Bits of debris fell from my body, alongside the remaining guards. That’s the thing about high walls: when they crumble, the little folk on it fall with it.

 

A gurgle from my stomach rung out. I chuckled. The elves within were feisty: it almost felt like they were dancing in there. I loved that feeling almost as much as their taste.

 

Thankfully, there were plenty more.

 

To my left and right were structures attached to the trees as auxiliary guard towers. More elves stood atop the walkways about and the bridges between the tall trees, with more standing on the sturdy branches. A quick swing of my arms took care of them, and I was sure to get one handful more of elves down my throat. Satisfying.

 

The trees themselves couldn’t hold up to me. I placed my hands on the trunk of one to my left, then repeated for the one to my right. Whatever elves still hung on to the branches or dug their feet into the bark quickly learned they were doomed either way. The tree on the right even tumbled into another at its side, causing the latter’s trunk to crack and a few clumsy elves to slip.

 

I laughed.

 

I took another step and felt a crunching sensations. Screams reached my ears. By then, the fallout from the wall’s collapse had cleared and I could see clearly looking down. To my delight, the entire floor of the nature-built city was teeming with habitats. The elves didn’t just live on the trees, but the ground as well in squarish homes made of wood and decorated with flowers. They had two floors at most, usually one, and I could clip a few under my foot at once.

 

The dirt shifted and some homes crunched as I tilted my right foot to the side and looked down. I saw on my sole some fractured wood and elf bodies fall from my toes to the ground. One of the bodies still twitched.

 

Laughing, I set my foot back down and twisted, then wiggled my toes into the remains of a couple homes. Elf citizens ran past my toes, completely defenseless as they fled their homes deeper into the settlement. I shifted my foot forward to run over a few and felt them squish. That done, I raised my left leg high over some intact wood hovels and stamped down, crushing those and all beneath into splinters.

 

I wiggled my toes and grunted, having felt a good 5 or 10 of the elves pop beneath that step.

 

--==--==--==--

 

The wood elves who had their homes on the ground made up most of the settlement. It wasn’t so much a status thing as it was trying to use all available land that they settled low.

 

They had felt the boom of Bula’s approaching steps, though from so low behind the city walls they could only see the top of her body past the looming logs making up that defensive fortification. They heard her, though, and her horrible bargain.

 

A great arrow shot overhead, the giant troll pulled it free then, shortly after, the wall fell. Its collapse came with a cloud of dirt and raining wood chunks which ruined more than a few homes and ended more than a few elven lives.

 

People panicked, but many had faith in the tree-top archers and stayed put in their homes. A big mistake, as Bula’s first step past the walls crushed dozens. She didn’t seem to notice, both from the dust and from the archers pelting her with their volleys. Still, the people didn’t have that luxury. Each of her steps was an audible thoom that quaked the ground beneath their naked feet.

 

Bula eventually noticed them, and in her cruelty slid her foot forward through a few more homes. It was hopeless for the elves below. No guards were in that area, and even if so they wouldn’t be equipped for a threat like this. Naturally, the citizens certainly weren’t.

 

Just one of the troll’s feet was a monster in itself. The big toe rivaled the size of some of the smaller elves, and the ped itself was more than 75ft long and 25ft wide. There were no roads in the wood elf city, only the dirt paths carved by elven feet over many years that passed between structures. These ‘streets’ were, nonetheless, packed with elves trying to flee.

 

They’d have no such luck. With Bula’s mocking laughter ringing out from above, that giant rose her foot into the air. A canopy of light-green troll-sole hung overhead for one long mocking moment before slamming down and turning the elves beneath to pulp. All those homes with their years of history, too, were flattened into barely recognizable bits.

 

The troll simply grinned down. She looked to raise her foot up and stomp down again, but she turned as more arrows caught her attention.

 

That didn’t spare those at her feet. They fell under-her tread as she rushed at the great oaks and the archers upon them. Dodging the foot was effectively-impossible given the appendage’s size, even for the graceful nimble-footed elves. Still, those lucky enough to be away from Bula’s footfalls dealt instead with the collapsing great oaks that Bula pushed and tugged down. The very trees they loved became harbingers of death as their towering trunks fell over the elves by the score.

 

To add insult to injury, those beneath the shadow of Bula’s passing foot perished to falling debris. Those that didn't were instead showered with gore from the troll’s soles. The self-healing properties of the giant troll’s flesh helped expunge foreign matter from its surface, meaning that it came down as a rain of death and misery to those caught beneath. In contrast, Bula’s soles were usually clean by the next step or two.

 

For a being so big, Bula moved unfairly fast. The archers didn’t stand a chance as Bula advanced towards the greatest oak in the city where the council waited. She was ruthless, and her clenched fists smashed many a home or archer-post on the trees surrounding the city. Flower decorated vines and ancient trees fell left and right.

 

Her appetite seemed as unending as her ferocity, and the only thing that seemed worse than getting crunched by a closed-fist was getting nabbed by an open one. The screams as elves saw that greedy gullet of hers for the first time shivered spines. Archers watched their companions get devoured, only to get smashed to paste, fall from a shaky tree hundreds of feet tall or, if particularly unlucky, devoured themselves.

 

A cluster of archers, ready to face their death as they tumbled from an oak, found themselves landing on a soft green surface. Bula had caught them with her hand not to save them, but to stuff them right into her salivating maw. Awash in her humid breath, she gulped them down like so many others thus far.

 

Bula marched towards that tallest tree, looming a good thousand feet tall. There, she figured the council must be. Indeed, once she got close enough she saw a wooden platform with the elven ballista upon it. It was unloaded, they had since learned it was useless against her.

 

A new horn sounded, different in timbre from the last. It didn’t mean surrender, but rather “fall-back”--to consolidate and protect the council and the Great Tree. Bula laughed as she saw the elves scurry away towards that looming tree.

 

Without any arrows to distract her, Bula started to pay attention to her feet again. Right at her toes, a crowd of elves was packed dense between some broken homes and the trunk of a fallen tree hundreds of feet long and dozens thick.

 

She lifted her foot up above a swath of pure elf-folk.

 

--==--==--==--

 

There were few feelings better than seeing a retreat. Even if they were just running away to consolidate, the message was still clear: ‘we can’t handle her’. They can’t handle me. Can’t blame them, as I haven’t met any settlement that could yet.

 

Course, there *were* a few feelings better and they were also within my grasp or, rather, under-step. Without the archers to distract me, much of this city was defenseless as the guards and such held up at that giant tree in the distance. I looked down to a crowd of elves all huddled together and smiled.

 

I slammed my heel to the ground and angled my foot above the mob. Bits of wood debris, little to me, were at their side. The trunk of a tree I fell was behind them, and my foot was to their front. They were trapped.

 

I pivoted my foot forward. The shadow of my sole no doubt growing darker as it drew down on them. This was far from my first time stomping on people, but it was still a treat to have them all bunched up like this without much buildings or the like mixed in.

 

By taking my time, without a single word I reminded them and any elves brave and foolish enough to watch that their people had no hope. I felt their bodies bunch up. The bottom of my foot forced the elves before from standing to squatting, then sitting, and then laying down. I felt their hands push futility against my sole, unable to move even a single toe let alone the whole thing.

 

One errant flail of tiny elf arms tickled me, and a curl of my toes popped a couple of elves heads and torso’s like little berries. I heard their screams muffled as they wailed into the flesh of my foot and their fellow puny elves. My foot pressed too far down for any room for ‘em.

 

I felt their bodies ‘give’ a bit, then felt the snapping of bones. That was the best part, that ‘crunch’. Like a lot of good things in life it went by quick. From then on there were only a few smaller crunches eked out with a few twists of my ped. Wiggles of my toes broke the last bit of their bones to dust, and by then they were all mush and liquid blood.

 

I lifted my foot up and the gore fell from it, leaving behind quite the visceral mess.

 

I grunted: there was a certain thrill to a solid step like that, one where it’s mostly people. It was a real reminder just how strong I was, and not to mention a good motivator. That big tree, twice my size, loomed in the distance where the council was who could perhaps answer some questions of mine.

 

Still, there wasn’t too big a rush. I wanted to get there before they saw fit to escape, but a little bit of wreckage on the way couldn’t hurt.

 

I set my eyes to all the homes at my feet and stomped, again and again. I walked with purpose, but tried not to be too predictable. I’d step on one pair of homes, then immediately swipe my foot towards some elves who thought they were safe.

 

I wondered if the elves at that great big tree were watching me turn their city into ruin. Some little folk used glass to see far, but who knows how good elven eyesight was in general. I looked dead ahead towards the looming oak while slamming my steps onto a few dozen of their people’s homes. Over and over again.

 

While marching along, I bent down to help myself to more of the little folk. I scooped up a couple of homes at a time and just popped them in my mouth alongside whatever elves got caught in the gesture. Unfortunately, the homes were a bit too big to swallow whole for me, but just one or two chomps was enough. That kept most elves alive to wiggle down my throat.

 

I wasn’t worried about eating the homes of course, knowing that my stomach could handle far tougher things that that. For the most part, if a creature, plant, or one of their crafts could fit in my mouth, then it could serve as food.

 

That great tree was only hundreds of feet away from me soon enough. Some of the trees here were a bit taller than me, but this oaken thing was about double my height if not more. Some roots neared the thickness of my arms, and the branches too were similar in girth.

 

I noticed how defended it was now. Squinting, I spotted the archers among the wooden platforms and spirals on it, or atop the roofs of whatever tree-built buildings there were there. Near the center of the tree, about level with my chest, was a big hollow. That was the most guarded, and it had a big log-made platform jutting out with a bunch of guards, archers, and that ballista from earlier: unloaded, since they figured it was useless against me. Wise of ‘em.

 

That one elf was there too: the feisty guard woman with the autumn hair. I bet she was glad to fire that giant weapon at me earlier. I wondered how she felt seeing me walk towards her, wound-less, with much of their settlement wrecked behind me.

 

I paused a moment, dug my toes into the ground, then broke into a sprint. Arrows flew my way in droves, but I had no fear.

Chapter 7: Council

 

The Great Tree existed many centuries before the elves of the settlement built their city around it. Back then, it didn’t have its hollow in the center. The wood elves would never dare carve into the tree themselves, but from the great oak’s process of growth the space formed naturally.

 

Some of the civilization considered the hollow a blessing of nature gods or powerful fae, others were not so sure. But, in any case, the wide and sacred space was transformed into into the council’s chamber. A large round table sat at its center, and one wooden chair stood taller than the rest. It, unlike the others, was vacant. It belonged to Council Lead Beimenor, who stood presently side by side with the city guard’s lead.

 

The male elf stood almost as tall as Qinala. It was rare for an elf to be old enough to show a single wrinkle, yet the silver-haired elf had at least four on his grim countenance. Qinala didn’t seem any cheerier herself. Guards surrounded them with an awful mix of nervousness and horror manifested as slight trembles in their slender legs.

 

They looked towards Bula as she grinned in the tree’s direction, all while gleefully destroying homes and terrorizing the populace in the process. Old trees longed cares for and loved by the elves fell over in droves. The male elf watched on, forlorn at the losses thus far.

 

“Are you sure we can handle this?”, said Beimenor. He looked dead ahead, but the only one he could be speaking to was Qinala.

 

“I’m not about to not try.”, said the elven warrior.

 

“I worry the ballista was a mistake. Perhaps there was another way.”

 

“When the emergency vote was cast today, it was unanimous.”

“Right enough, Qinala, but it is a rather somber affair to see all this devastation and death.”

 

Before the two continued, Bula suddenly paused before rushing right at the tree. Her advance was steady thus far, and the thoom of her footfalls was something the elves had just gotten used to. Now, those bare green feet pounded into the ground as the giant troll sprinted fast in their direction.

 

“Get back to the hollow!”, said Qinala.

Beimenor retreated there without a word to stand among the others already in that room.

 

“Archers, ready!”, shouted the guard leader. The bow-wielding men and women around her pulled arrows from their quiver and dipped the tips into wood buckets filled with a strange purple fluid. The wooden arrowheads now sizzled.

 

“Fire!”, said Qinala and the guards obeyed. A volley of acid-tipped arrows soared through the sky towards Bula. Even with the unsteady footing from the troll’s giant steps, the target was big enough, and the elves skilled enough, to hit their mark.

 

Bula saw it coming and shielded her body with her arms. The projectiles pierced the outermost layer of her skin, which sizzled like the arrow tips. Many guards, Qinala included, smirked in a mix of pride of hope. That was quickly dashed as the tiny wounds healed fast on the giant’s skin.

 

There were rumors that acid could kill a troll, but that seemed false now. At the very least, it was with the quantity of the wood-safe concoction they had on hand. It was also the guards’ last plan. The guards looked to Qinala for orders, and one asked directly.

 

“Orders?”, said the guard.

 

Qinala thought, stunned in a rare moment for her. The troll was faster than they thought. There wouldn’t be enough time for another volley. She clutched the handle of the glaive and dug her feet into the wood of the hollow-jutting fortification platform.

 

“Brace yourselves!”, she shouted.

 

Guards covered not just the platform, but every structure on the Great Tree as a whole. There were a few homes attached to the giant tree, and to live there was a great privilege and honor. The roofs were used as makeshift platforms for some of the archers, who found their footholds getting more unsteady as Bula’s footsteps grew closer.

 

Of course, the wide sprawling roots of the tree were guarded as well, as it’s there one could reach the walkways leading up. The idea was for guards there to poke or shoot at her toes, but that idea clearly fell through as did the acid arrow assault. So, those elves were simply the first to squish as Bula advanced at a rapid pace.

 

With her elbow raised, the giant green troll leapt up into the air and *slammed* right into the great tree’s front. The entire plant shook, and elves fell in droves from the pathways. The shaking alone took care of that, but a good deal also collapsed from the vibrations cascading through the tree or, more simply, breaking against Bula’s body. Dozens of defenders practically burst into red juice this way.

 

The platform where Qinala rested crushed against the very front of Bula’s arm. The giant troll had crouched to line that target up with the hard bend of her elbow. The log-made platform was sturdy though, and wasn’t entirely broken.

 

Though many of the guards there fell, Qinala had moved back with the tip of her glaive dug into some wood footing beneath her. In this way, she held her position better than the others.

 

As the tree shook, Bula loomed back to her full height, and the platform in front of the hollow was level to just below her chest. She arced her arm back for a punch aimed square at the hollow.

 

“Bula!!!”, shouted Qinala at the top of her lungs. “I challenge you to one on one combat.”

 

Those inside the hollow gasped. It was a fools errand. Did she mean to simply stall the giant? In any case, like many acts of a warrior like Qinala, it seemed brave as it was foolish.

 

But, it did seem to get Bula’s attention and halt her punch. Her laughter came out as a roaring bellow. After a few seconds of the ear rocking mirth, she shrugged.

 

“Sure.”, said Bula. “Do your worst~”

 

Qinala’s lips stretched back, teeth bared, and glaive gripped. Her naked feet pattered against the rickety platform below. At the very edge, she leapt into the sky towards the monolithic foe.

 

From within the hollow of the Great Tree, many of the council members crept forward. They unhuddled from beneath their chairs, and stood closer to the chamber’s entrance. Among those few was a curious Beimenor with a silver-haired elf woman by his side. There, they watched, and they weren’t the only ones.

 

Bula herself seemed to just take the attack: observe it. Qinala moved quick, but the giant troll didn’t even attempt to bat the elven guard out of the way. She didn’t even move to dodge. The giant green woman had a soft smile on her face as the elf’s glaive pointed at her skin. That smile only slightly twitched as the glaive sliced into the green flesh.

 

Qinala’s battle-cry continued. The guard woman had nothing but disgust and anger towards Bula, and she poured it all into the attack. She had spun the glaive so as to pierce the troll’s flesh from above: something like a diving attack.

 

The blade of the glaive stuck into flesh a bit below Bula’s chest. Beneath the overhang of one of the troll’s tits, she gripped her toes into the green skin and dug the weapon deeper. She twisted it side to side to widen the wound. Curiously, not much blood came out, and what did was a reddish-brown liquid with an odd feeling to it.

 

Nonetheless, the deepness of the wound pleased the elf. A bit of the troll’s skin sort of flapped forward, making a pocket of sorts. Qinala hadn’t thought to do damage like that so easily. A bit of jubilation leaked into the tone of her battle cry, which still trailed on.

 

Then, without so much as a word, Bula reached down with her finger. Qinala’s expression shifted to shock as that digit pressed at her back and pushed her right into the wound.

 

The guard-elf had ceased her battle-cry.

 

--==--==--==--

 

I waited a bit for the elf warrior to say something. Maybe “What?” or “Stop!” or “Why?”, but that never came. She seemed a tad too confused by what I was doing. It wasn’t until her legs slid into that fresh wound that she even started to fuss.

 

So, I spoke first.

 

“That was your attack huh? I hardly even felt it. My body would have no issue healing a wound three-times as deep.”

I pushed her in a tad more. With her weapon, she had cut a sort of half-oval-line into my abdomen just below my left breast. The very left and right edges of the wound were already pulling themselves back together, healing.

 

“That’s the thing about us trolls, we’re great at recovering from injuries. I bet you thought those acid arrows of yours might’ve worked, but even fire’s something I can handle with enough time. You could’ve hit my heart with that glaive of yours and I’d probably be all better within a couple minutes tops.”

 

I chuckled, then continued.

 

“My body’s way of healing will have no problem finishing you off on its own.”

 

I moved my fingers towards the handle of that weapon and pulled it out. I flicked it away over my shoulder among the debris left in my wake. Then, I brought my finger back down and stuffed the elf’s head into the wound.

 

The woman tried to fidget out, but I could already feel my flesh starting to come back together. All of the onlooking elves seemed horrified by the sounds and sight of my wound closing on the guard elf.

 

I simply laughed again.

 

The guard elf kept quiet for awhile, out of pride no doubt. But her body betrayed her fear--or at least her panic. I could feel her squirming around in there, flailing with all her limbs. As my body healed, there was less and less room for her to move around.

 

An outline of her writhing body pressed from within at the sight of the wound. By then, my flesh had healed the superficial cut and the middle bits of the wound were coming back together. I could feel it: not painful, but certainly odd. It was worth it, though, as the elf woman at last started screaming.

 

A few cracks echoed from my flesh: her bones, certainly not any of mine. I turned towards the onlookers, including a few of those seemingly important elves cowering in the tree’s hollow. That outline of the guard woman started shrinking as the sounds of crunching and muffled screams increased. I still directed my chat towards my current ‘victim’ though.

 

“My body should have no issues dissolving you there either. I’m sure you’re thinking about why my ring...”

 

I moved my finger to my navel-near prison-hoop ring and flicked it up. It bopped gently against back my skin.

 

“...Doesn’t get dissolved or crushed like you are, elf-woman. That’s partially cause it’s poking out a bit. Once something’s fully in a wound of mine, my body is a lot more aggressive at seeing it as an intruding bit of dust or the like. Makes sense you’d get crushed by my body healing, right, since neither you or any of the rest of your kind pose more threat to me than a speck of dirt.”

 

I looked down at the shrinking outline now.

 

“Try not to scream too much in there, elf. You wouldn’t want to waste too much air.”

 

--==--==--==--

 

Qinala felt a lot of things. Her anger and disgust only increased as she the troll’s flesh squeezed at her kicking feet and healed around her body. She felt a tad humiliated, too, at being ‘tricked’ like this. Knowing a blow meant nothing, Bula just stood there and took it, only to use the wound against Qinala herself! A wound she was so proud to have inflicted served only to harm the guard captain now.

Qinala’s honor was tarnished, and it wasn’t long till the wound started squeezing around her. When Bula pushed her down into the wound, that’s when it really got dangerous.

 

Light was snuffed out as the flesh healed on the edges. The wound was sealed, with only the middle bits of severed tissue needing to heal. The healing process for the troll was as efficient as it was grotesque--and it was certainly painful for anything living stuck between.

 

The familiar texture of Bula’s blood was on Qinala’s skin, but there wasn’t that much of it oddly enough. It was hard to pay mind to it when the flesh around the wiry elf’s body was quite literally crushing her. With Bula’s taunts reaching her through the muffling flesh, Qinala felt her limbs and bones twist and crunch. There was more strength in Bula’s mending flesh than in all the guard-elf’s body, and that fact alone made her scream and struggle more.

 

The flesh was slick and unyielding as it tried to heal right through Qinala. If that wasn’t enough, Bula’s body started to dissolve the “irritation” in the wound that Qinala was. She felt some tingles on her skin from the troll’s blood, which she knew alchemists kept in vials for a reason. Yet, there was another fluid, less viscous and more slippery and slick. Qinala couldn’t see in the dark, but whatever color it was--assuming the fluid had one--it most certainly burned.

 

Corrosive liquid started sloughing and melting off her flesh. It sunk into the guard-woman's skin, making her entire body softer for the healing flesh to push through. Qinala had flesh pushing against her back and front. Both areas of the troll’s insides wanted to get back together. Bula’s body was gonna push through anything in the way to do so.

 

Sandwiched between the flesh, Qinala’s pain-ridden body was crushed as the two ‘halves’ of the wound came together. That finally crushed her skull, but her mushy body was further torn and smushed as the flesh pressed right through it. Within seconds after, the elf’s body was broken down and whatever nutrients could be salvaged were carried away by the troll’s blood to nourish Bula’s giant body.

 

--==--==--==--

 

I ran my fingers across where the wound used to be. The outline was entirely gone, having shrunken down before a horrified audience. Many of the little guards were so shaken as to stand there, mouth agape and stunned. Others worked up the senses to retreat. Not that they’d get anywhere far with what I planned to do.

 

“Mmm, an odd sensation that was, but pleasant in its own sense. Tell me ruling elves--as I’m sure it’s you in that tree hollow there--do you regret not giving into my demands? All your scouting and spying and fae cavorting, for what? To see your city end up as a meal and a mess of broken homes. Lot of good you did.”

 

I locked my fingers together and brought my arms up.

 

“Say goodbye to your precious tree, elves.”

 

I brought my arms down in a slam against the tree’s trunk. It was a big plant; its trunk was about as wide as my body while standing nearly twice as tall. Though above me, it was *far* from being above my strength. A few of the homes and guard posts attached to the tree fell from my one smack. I was putting my entire weight into my blows, and looking down I noticed some of the tree roots stir in result.

 

I hit the tree again, then again and again. I could only imagine the panic running through whatever ruling ‘council’ that elf guard mentioned earlier. It egged me on. Some structures still clung to the tree, and a few elves with them. I moved my hands towards those few standing wooden walkways and hovels. They crushed easily in my grip or were otherwise dashed away with swings of my arms. Elves tumbled hundreds of feet down to the ground, where my own peds would’ve likely taken care of them on the off-chance the fall didn’t.

 

Only the elves in the tree’s hollow still remained, and with a swipe of my palm knocking off the platform in front of me, they had no where to go. I resumed trying to fell the tree. A few more hits from my fists destabilized it more.

 

I stamped my feet into the dirt and home-debris by the tree’s roots. Palms to the tree, I pushed with all my might. Even I heard fully and well the roar of displaced dirt from the tilting oak. I grunted, teeth clenched, as I pushed with all my giant strength. I heard screams from the hollow within. That egged me on, too.

 

Dirt fell from some giant roots feeling sun for the first time in what must’ve been centuries. Still, the tree hold snug, even as it angled away from me. A few stubborn roots held it in place.

 

With the giant tree angled, I stopped pushing, took a step back, and placed my sole against its sloping bark. I pressed against for a bit of a test in its stability again, then gave it one big kick.

 

Bark flew out from under my sole. That seemed to do it, as the tree fell all the way back, timbering onto what bits of the elven city settled behind it.

 

As it fell to a resounding crash, I chuckled again. It was rare to find something that even remotely required my strength to thwart, so I was exhilarated. A grumble from my stomach also reminded me how the exertion piqued my hunger.

 

I walked towards the tree and straddled it with my feet on either side. I had to step over its jutting roots, from which globs of dirt size of boulders still fell.

 

Beneath me was the hollow. My ears twitched at the sounds of some pained whimpers, but seems like a bunch were still alive in there. My stomach grumbled again. I bent over and put my hand into the hollow.

Chapter 8: Meeting

 

The council of elves was a good two dozen strong, though there were seats for more at the large round table. Said table was what the elves and their special winged ‘guest’ hid under and clung to as the Great Tree tumbled on down.

 

The council had seen centuries-old trees fall from the safety of their hollow today. They had seen many an aged home, too, crushed beneath the giant troll’s feet or carelessly tossed down her throat. But to know the Great Tree would fall, and to be in it as it did so, was a most pernicious sort of dread and despair.

 

The ground chamber shifted and air rushed into the hollow. It took all the occupants of the room could manage to hang on and avoid flying out the hollow, where they’d surely die upon crashing down onto the bark. Incredibly, all the council members managed to hold on, though many not without injury. One had died from the force of the impact, and a few others were crippled with broken bones and the like. One elf’s shinbone poked out just below her knee.

 

Great pain came from the impact, true, but not so just the injuries brought that. Pain came from knowing what the great oak’s falling entailed. The tree fell with a great earth-quaking thoom even louder and more reverberating than the steps of Bula. Those sounds were joined by that of crushed homes and more than a few trees, as the entire other half of the city was behind the Great Tree.

 

Smaller trees, still aged, were crushed beneath the Great Tree’s bulk, as were all the homes on those lesser trunks, and, of course, the dozens and dozens of ground-set wooden homes for the elves behind. The felling of the tree ended the lives of hundreds of elves who previously lived in the shadow of its stately trunk.

 

There wasn’t much time to mourn. Once the quakes from the tree ended, those of Bula’s footsteps followed. The chamber thumped and thudded in tune with the rhythmic steps till Bula was upon them. She crouched down, peering into the hollow with that face of hers: green skinned with spots on the cheeks and near the eyes. She licked her lips and stuck her hand in.

 

The council scrambled around the overturned table: least the ones that could walk did. As misfortune would have it, Bula grabbed one of the more uninjured elves. The council woman was lifted out with ease despite the other elves trying to tug her back by her slender legs. Bula’s finger hold was too strong, and she yanked the she-elf up and slipped them into her maw. A gulp followed.

 

“Mmmm~”

 

That curt, echoing utterance was all Bula gave in return for that elf’s life.

She reached down for more, about to grab Beimenor the council lead, when she paused. Eyes wide, she spotted the guest. Standing a mere 1 foot tall was a stark naked pointed-ear woman with rainbow hair and light-pink skin. Despite the meager size, the sparkles as she flapped those iridescent wings in flight made her more than easy to spot to the giant troll. Bula seemed to recognize what she was.

 

“A pixie? You were having a meeting with a pixie when I arrived? Figures, I knew you fae pests were in a partnership. Need the taller squirts to help you out huh? Or, maybe it’s the other way around?”

 

Rillal looked to the elves she called allies. They had met every week to discuss issues affect the Snowless Forest, and Bula’s acts were a frequent topic. Now, it seems a time had come where they met the giant troll firsthand.

 

The pixie nodded to Beimenor and the silver-haired woman by his side. She had wordlessly conveyed to the council her plan with just the solemn nod and the look on her face. She would distract Bula, hoping to lead the giant troll astray.

 

“Over here you big bully!”, shouted the pixie.

 

Rillal flew out of the hollow and upped her magic, spreading her pixie dust to make a disorienting light show around her body. She spun circles around the hollow at fast speeds, hoping that Bula couldn’t pluck her out of the obfuscating sparkle storm she cooked up.

 

Bula’s eyes followed the swirling show of light and sparkles for a short while. Rillal spoke again.

 

“Ha, you’ll never find the sprite village, just like you’ll never catch me!”

 

The pixie then continued with her plan, trying to fly off and lead Bula away. Then, the wood elves of the council could gather survivors and flee. That was what she thought would happen, but she underestimated the troll’s intelligence.

 

Rillal spread her wings and flapped them to soar away from Bula. Yet, to her shock and horror she was moving back towards the troll rather than away. The wind seemed to push her backwards, and it was far too late that she realized Bula had leaned forward, opened wide, and started sucking her in!

 

The 1ft tall pixie looked back at a gaping maw which, to her, seemed to open about 100ft tall and wide. Bands of drool thick enough to drown her dangled from the troll’s palate. The tongue was outstretched, slickened and eager for her arrival.

Rillal screamed.

 

--==--==--==--

 

A pixie! They were a rare sight given their magical tricks being oh too good for hiding and fleeing. This one seemed brave, and instead tried to trick me with clouds of magic and the like.

 

I think all the time around those sprites makes pixies forget just how small they are, though. I didn’t need to pluck her out of a magic cloud if I could just suck the whole thing up.

 

Which I did.

 

Whatever sparkling magic it was dissipated on my tongue with a few tingles, and I kept going to get that pixie in my gob too. She flew away, fast too, but I had more power in my lungs than she did in her body many times over. Flapping her hardest she couldn’t get away, and I felt that sweet flavor hit my taste-buds once she splatted on my tongue.

“Wait!”, she cried.

 

To keep her from flying away I immediately rolled my tongue back in and started savoring her. I rocked her body with my “mmm”s, no doubt, I rubbed her against the inside of my cheek to get her wings nice and wet. That would keep her in my maw should she want to speak and try to bargain with me.

 

As predicted, she did. She started saying something over and over. For humor and curiosity’s sake, I decided to hear her out. I moved her to the side of my other cheek with a flick of my tongue, then opened wide so her voice could reach me.

She must’ve been using magic or something, cause her voice was louder with a different sort of timbre. I probably would’ve heard it regardless, though.

 

“Stop, stop. I’ll take you to the sprite village just please, let me go!”

 

I chuckled, and she yelped as that probably jostled my spit about her tiny body or something.

 

“I know from experience you’ll just take me on a wild goose chase. No, your immortal life comes to an end now. I’ll find that sprite village in time. Now, down my throat you go sweet treat”

 

Looking into the hollow, I scooped the fae back up with my tongue and stuck the muscle out to show her off. I couldn’t really see her myself, even looking down, but from the elven gasps I heard she must’ve looked pretty humiliated and soaked in my spit. That same spit kept her held snug and from flying off and away.

 

I slid my tongue back in and gulped. It might’ve been wise to suck off her wings first, and pixies used them to make their pixie dust and, of course, fly. But, I was confident she couldn’t escape my body, and a bit of a fluttering feeling might be nice. Even if I slurped the wings they would’ve grown back--well, they would if she wasn’t in my stomach as she’d soon be.

 

I looked back into the hollow where that council met. They looked horrified and frightened. Elves were more naturally in tune with magic than some of the other little folk, but pixies and most fae were just naturally gifted at magic overall. They didn’t even need to learn it, it was innate to them. Sounds nice, but I’m far more happy with the gifts I have than those little fae do. After all, not a lot of good that magic’ll do when they’re stewing in my guts.

 

Point was, though, that the elves had just seen me gulp down and defeat a being they lauded and probably relied on in part for the settlement’s illusory protections.

 

I reached in with my left hand and grabbed another elf randomly. In the process, I must’ve wounded one with my prodding fingers as I felt a wet squish and a loud screech. Seemed to have been a leg as one of the elves screamed.

 

I ended up pinching up a different elf. A wiry, super thin brown-haired fellow. I brought him to my mouth, swallowed, then went back in. This time, I looked into the snack hole of a hollow before grabbing my next treat. A beautiful silver-haired elf caught my eye. She looked pretty young despite the hair color, but that was common among elves. White-ish hair didn’t necessarily mean age, after all.

 

I snatched her up and brought her towards my lips. I was tempted to bring her to another spot given how alluring she was: even at my size I could make out the stunning shine of her copper skin and the grace of her slender limbs. I could always explore her a bit with my tongue though.

 

She bathed in my exhale as I opened wide. I dragged my tongue against the front of her ornate nature-y getup, wetting those leaves, cloth and bark all while getting a hint of her flavor as she tried to push my tongue from her face. Useless, of course, as I could easily suffocate her just by laying my tongue’s weight upon her.

Before I stuffed her into my gob, though, one of the elves in the hollow piped up.

 

“No, please don’t eat her!”, he said. “Not my love.”

 

I eyed him. He was an older sort. Silver hair like hers, but with my keen eyesight I made out a few wrinkles. Old was relative, since they were both probably hundreds of years in age, but for him to have wrinkles visible to me, he must’ve been up there in years.

 

I ignored him, moving his lover closer to my tongue.

 

‘If he has an offer, he better say it quick, and it better be good.’, I thought.

 

“I’ll tell you where the sprite village is. Just please, spare us.”, he said.

 

He did have an offer, and it was good.

 

The other elves gasped in unison at the horror of it. They figured I cared more about revenge on the fae than the elves, and they were right. Still, to sacrifice their allies like that seemed most dishonorable to them I figured.

 

Not that I cared.

 

I moved the woman away from my mouth, then moved my free right hand into the hollow. The elves were wise enough to clear the way. My palm was open and outstretched best it could be within that hole of the felled tree. My intent was clear and that male elf hopped onto my palm. I knew he’d tell me the truth. He seemed desperate to save his love.

 

“Alright, I’m listening.”, I said.

 

“No Beimenor, don’t!” said the woman in my grip.

 

“Helemys please, it’s the only way to save our village!”, he shouted back.

 

“You can’t trust her she’s-”

 

I moved my thumb over the she-elf’s head to shut her up. She started fidgeting. I brought my open palm up, and this ‘Beimenor’ up with it, towards my face.

 

“Stop, you’ll suffocate her!”, he shouted.

“You’re not in a position to tell me what to do squirt, but if you tell me where that fae village is, I’ll spare her.”, I said.

 

“It’s to the north, a bit west. It’s under a large red-capped mushroom. The village is tiny, even for us, but the mushroom is huge. Well, maybe not huge to you, but you won’t miss it for sure. Now, please...”

 

His voice trailed off. He answered so fast it was pathetic. I smiled.

 

“Thanks.”, I said, then brought him towards my open maw.

 

--==--==--==--

 

Beimenor had told the troll the info. She had said thanks and not a moment later started moving him towards her open maw.

 

“Wait, wait!”, he shouted. “You said you’d spare us!”

 

She paused, a big grin on her face. Delighted malice twinkled in those green eyes on pure white sclera.

 

“I never said that. I said I’d spare your lover here, and I will. In fact, you can even see.”

 

Bula moved Beimenor’s wife towards her navel. She had moved her thumb from the she-elf, Helemys, who promptly chastised her husband.

“What have you done!”, she shouted.

Beimenor had no reply. He simply watched in Bula’s palm, angled for that purpose, as the giant troll’s left hand moved itself and his wife towards a belly ring.

The large golden hoop hung just above the navel of the green-skinned giant. Holding Helemys in-between two fingers, Bula used the other digits of the hand to pry the ring open. The segment with a sort of metal grilling pattern to it opened, and Bula started stuffing his wife inside the piercing.

 

“Wait no! No no you can’t!”, he shouted. His wife seemed displeased too, and tried to grab hold of the ring to keep herself out. Bula’s finger was stronger, and she stuffed the elven woman inside without too much fuss. The ring was big, but the elves were a taller race and thus the elf woman didn’t have too much room to move around in there. Seeing his wife ‘caged’ liked this brought Beimenor to near tears.

 

“How could you, you monster, you vile, dumb monster!”, he said.

 

Bula shut the ring back together. Helemys was stuck inside the piercing prison now as it hung near the troll’s tummy. Bula brought Beimenor back to her face.

 

“Dumb?”, she chuckled at the repeat of his words. Every utterance of hers now washed him in her humid breath. She continued.

 

“You’re the one that sold out another village just to spare one elf, your own lover: selfish and dumb. I heard dumb thrown around a lot by you smallfolk but it’s all by your ‘little’ standards. For example, even if I could read, would you make books my size?”

 

“P-perhaps if you were nice.”, he stammered.

 

Bula let out a belly-deep roar of laughter. She scoffed after.

 

“Puh-lease, don’t jest me now. Lot of good your civilization does when its stewing away in my gut. You wanna get a good look at your settlement, I’ll give you it as its gurgled away. I’ll gulp down all the other council members too, that way you can have one big last meeting in my stomach.”

 

“No, no stop you foul monster of a-”

 

Bula stuffed him into her mouth. She suckled him some, snapping his limbs with the force. Then, she gulped.

 

Her face moved back over the hollow.

 

“Time to gobble you all up. You should’ve taken my deal. I bet you’re the ones feeling real stupid right about now~”

 

She dug her hand into the hollow. What was left of the meting table crushed beneath her curling fingers. She scooped up a handful of the council members, and brought the elves to her mouth. That a bit of the ruined table was caught in her grasp didn’t seem to bother her one bit.

 

*Gulp*

 

The remaining council members shuddered, fleeing towards the exterior of the hollow as that giant green hand reached back in. Bula was wise to them, though, and simply dragged her hand around the curve of the hollow as though the appendage were a shovel. This way, she scooped up the last of the council, many now crippled, and brought them to her mouth.

 

In they went and down to her stomach they traveled. The prideful elves had their garbs sullied and their bodies slimed by the tight, slick contractions of the giant troll’s throat. Through a similarly slimy sphincter they were squeezed and plopped right into that churning gut.

 

Bula gave her tummy a pat, chuckling. She heard a meek voice.

 

“Monster!”, said Helemys. “You’re a monster! A rotten one at that.”

 

The she-elf yelped as Bula tilted the ring up and looked down at her prisoner.

 

“I’m not rotten at all, quite clean in fact. But, as far as ‘monster’ goes, I’m not quite done yet.”

 

Bula looked towards the last patch of intact elf settlement. It had a few waist high-trees surrounding a smattering of elven ground homes.

 

“There’s still a bit of this city left to wipe out.”, continued Bula.

Chapter 9: Destruction

 

Inside Bula’s gut was quite the mess. When Beimenor was swallowed he fell right into a veritable pool of glowing chyme. The glowshrooms from Bula’s breakfast were almost entirely mush by now, yet their bioluminescence still persisted.

 

Of course, some were completely dissolved and that blue-tinted glow did diminish, but the pixie ‘guest’ of the gut more than made up for that. With all that light, it was still clear to see all the moaning, dissolving elves and plenty of early-snacked elf skeletons as well.

 

Rillal flew around in a panic, her wings alight with magical glow as she used her own magic to see. As a pixie, her wings and the dust they spread naturally sparkled, but her illumination was past that and deliberate. The naked pink-skinned fae was desperately searching for a way out. Nimbly dodging drops of stomach acid from the ‘roof’ of the gut, she flew towards the sphincter leading back to the throat and pounded away.

 

“Let me out!”, she shouted. “I’m not going to be food. I refuse! Not to some giant brute.”

 

Beimenor tried to calm her down, but it was no use. When that didn’t work, he apologized, knowing she had heard at least Bula’s words even stuck in the gut.

 

“I’m sorry I told her, but you must understand, I have been with this village since the start. In the moment, to save even what little was left of it I-”

 

“Shut up!”, she said. “I’m not concerned with assuaging your guilt now. You can confess to the wrinkles of this troll’s torrid gut. I’ve got to get out of here and warn the sprite village, both that Bula is coming, and of the ineptitude of our elven allies!”

 

Rillal tried to work her arms into the stomach-esophageal sphincter to try and pry it open. But, she was small and even that ring of slimy flesh dwarfed her tiny winged form. She didn’t give up though; in fact, she was so focused that she ignored the gulping noises echoing around as Bula swallowed the council.

 

The sphincter twitched and Rillal eagerly shoved her arms in, happy to have an opening. This was a fatal mistake, as she realized too late from the screams of the incoming elves. Squeezed together into a bolus of interlocking limbs, a few elves squelched through that sphincter all at once: which was the entire reason the muscular ring had twitched at all.

 

The weight of the elves crushed Rillal’s arms, and as they plopped into the gut they did so atop her. Caught up with the new comers, the pixie fell with them into the churning chyme below. The people atop her didn’t exactly help her get her bearings. An errant hand from an elf woman crushed the pixie’s foot. She yelped in pain, but still managed to slip free.

 

Rillal stumbled from the chyme and hopped onto a piece of semi-solid mushroom mush. A drop of stomach acid plopped on her from above, wetting her wings to the point of uselessness, and just in time for the next batch of elves to fall in and atop her.

 

These members of the council were even more panicked then the others. Once again, Rillal got free though, and tried to keep her head above the churning slushy ‘waters’.

 

The elves stood above the chyme with their tall height, and started bickering with one another. Most blamed Beimenor for all this, but the uncharacteristically forlorn council lead was quick to remind the other members of the council that they agreed with all the joint “forest-preservation” efforts between them and the fae village.

 

As though Rillal wasn’t even there, they talked about how maybe they would have been better off not allying with the fae to track and try to dissuade Bula from wrecking the forest with her careless destruction and selfish appetites. Other, wiser voices knew that if Bula found them at any point, she’d have tried to enslave them regardless. But, it was hard to focus and stay civil, calm, and collected when the slimy ground of a torrid gut shifted below and around you.

 

The conversation continued breaking down. Churns of Bula’s gut whipped up waves of the chyme to splash the elves, further coating them in the omnipresent stomach juices. It also didn’t help that the troll started moving, heralded by the chamber bouncing and the flesh-muffled thoom of her giant steps.

 

Once the acids started burning, all sense of decorum was out the window. The elves started panicking.

 

Once again, the elves acted as though Rillal wasn’t even there. This time, with far deadlier consequences. The panicked stumbling of one of the younger council women lead her to step right on the pixie. The fae’s wings were crushed under an elven foot, then another as yet another council woman was running around the stomach, pounding on the walls and trying to shake the singing digestive fluids off her. She failed in that quest, her flesh was still slowly dissolving, but in the process her toes crushed Rillal’s neck all without the elf woman even realizing.

 

Beimenor found a silver lining in all the chaos, as the council members got off his back for the mistakes he may have made. He scooted towards the walls of Bula’s stomach, where he heard the voice of his wife shouting from that hoop prison.

 

“Helemys!”, he shouted. “I’m sorry, stay safe out there.”

 

“Beimenor!”, he heard back. “I forgive you, just do your best to persevere.”, she said back, and he had to really focus to make out those words.

 

“Of course, I love you Helemys-”

 

A thundering churn knocked him over beneath the chyme. The entire stomach shifted down and the contents jostled with it. A loud boom echoed outside, alongside the now familiar sound of snuffed screams and crunched homes.

 

Bula had sat down.

 

--==--==--==--

 

I made my way to that last bit of intact city. My stomach was aflutter with whatever that pixie was up to, and all the elves screaming and flailing about made for a real nice mixture of delights in there. The prissy types of smallfolk were often some of the more active meals.

 

I needed a bit more room than was there to sit my giant self down: too many trees. So, I simply crushed a couple of the home-dappled trees to the ground. I nudged them over with my feet, then flattened their trunks with a couple twists of the respective foot. That done, I sat down with a slew of elven ground-homes between my thighs. The feeling of all those homes turning to fractured bits beneath my thighs and cheeks stoked another ‘appetite’ brewing with me.

 

The woman in the hoop ring was gabbering to her friends in my belly best she could, but once I sat down she got all disoriented and shut up for a bit. All the better for me to focus on the delights before me.

 

Elves tried to run out past my legs towards freedom, but I yanked up one of the shin-high trees to my side and threw it between my feet, attached elf-homes and all. That cut off escape while crushing the fastest runners. Not a single elf got out, not with my legs towering to their side and the impassible tree now between my feet.

 

They were all mine, always were since the moment I got here.

 

I reached down and scooped up one of the elven homes. A few male and female elves clung to the roof or tried to hold on within the two-floored structure. I popped the roof open and shook it out into my open mouth, then chucked the entire thing in. A slam of it against the roof of my mouth via tongue had it broken up enough to glide right down my throat.

I sighed, pleased, then looked back at all the quivering, fidgeting elves beneath me and between my legs.

 

“Since you elves are the last ones alive, you all get to help me with something special~”

 

I moved my hand towards my crotch and teased the outer lips of my cunt. A bit of ‘dew’ was already forming. I glided my thumb down the length of my slit, getting a bit of the sticky stuff on the pad. Then, I reached for a nice dense mob of elves and scooped them up. While they wiggled and screamed in my fingers, I spoke again.

 

“There’s just something about feeling you all crush, feeling you wiggle down my throat that just gets me going.”

 

I lifted the handful to my mouth, my steamy breath getting a few to wince.

 

“Maybe it’s just a part of being a female troll: something that prods me towards breaking and eating little folk like you to survive. I’ve never met another female troll, but I hope I’m right if I do. That way, we can have a lot of fun together.”

 

My body felt warmer than the afternoon sun could get it alone. I licked my lips. Unwilling to restrain myself, I popped a beautiful elven man into my mouth gulped him whole. Not all would live to help me get off more ‘directly’, it’d seem.

 

“Mmmf, I’m getting excited, and your pretty elf bodies ain’t exactly helping with my urges here. Lets get you all to work.”

 

I moved the handful all the way down to my slit and pushed them in. With my hand sealing the entrance, I rubbed myself as they squirmed.

 

--==--==--==--

 

The elves watched one of their own get swallowed right down, and after Bula’s words they were carted towards her awaiting snatch. Heat wafted from the troll’s vulva, alongside a distinctly feminine scent: not foul, but overpowering nonetheless. They were glad that despite being naked all the time, usually outside, the troll’s physiology kept her body nice and clean.

 

Once past the folds of the troll’s womanhood, the elves were in trouble. The walls clung to them, pushing against them with every clench of the muscles therein. Bula’s fingers shoved them in, too strong to resist. She had no regard for their welfare, only for getting her pleasure even as her prodding fingers snapped their bones.

 

To Bula, the elves were more bonus sensations than the main stimulators themselves. Her fingers did most of the work. They were little more than toys in there. She mashed them against her folds and into her clit till their bodies broke which, inevitably, they did.

 

Thankfully for Bula, there were plenty more elves to ‘work’ with. She simply yanked the broken and dead elves out and scooped up another fresh handful of the beings.

 

Much as her hunger, this appetite was seemingly insatiable. The pace of her self-love, and of the death of the elves, only increased as she got more into things. Her hands crashed down onto the roofs of houses while her fingers fished for more elven men and women to stuff into her snatch. Those fingers, slick and sticky with her juices, were impossible to avoid. One dash of the digits and the elves were scooped up, held snug by those cloying fluids as they made the journey to her sex.

 

Bula’s body, over 500ft tall, fidgeted its legs. She dug her heels into the few buildings left in the ecstatic delight. Her moans were unabashed, her movements as frequent as they were unpredictable. Homes were snuffed out with the fanning out-and-in of her legs, and a good chunk of the elves at her front were rolled over by her thighs as they came together slightly.

 

Her moans, too, were unrestrained and rocked the pointed ears of the elves as they roared out into the Snowless Forest.

 

--==--==--==--

 

Warmth flowed through my body from a core of pleasure centered about my sex. Pulses of ecstasy traveled across my spine and from head-to-toe. Once the elves stopped their squirming I pulled them out, useless as they were, and then fetched more.

 

Moans brewed in me and pushed past my lips. I didn’t even try to hinder myself here. I was told some of the smaller races would find masturbation out in the open like this taboo. I never understood that myself; what exactly could they do to me about it? If anything, the looks of horror my pleasuring drew only stoked the fire warming me.

 

No, if I wanted to do something I did it, especially now in the fit of my passion.

 

I wanted more sensations, so I dug the soles of my feet into a few homes. Curling my toes, I felt elven bodies break and squish. My legs fidgeted, and I felt more homes break against the sensitive interior sides of my thighs. I restrained myself from slamming my legs together so I’d have that feeling for later, but I never restrained the roars of bliss coming from my center and blaring louder than any horn the puny elves could make.

 

I was huge, strong, powerful. I devoured these people for my sustenance and pleasure, and the notion pleased me mid throes. I wrapped my free hand around one of the shorter oak trees. Some homes clung to it still. Eyes closed, I dragged my tongue against the tree’s trunk and lapped them up.

 

These elves were fodder. Fuel to my appetites: to burn in my gut and break in my cunt.

 

As I swallowed, I felt my climax coming on. A few more wiggles of my finger ought to do it. I pressed my forefinger against my clit with a pair of elves between it. I felt their spines pop as I went over the edge with a long, unstoppable moan.

 

--==--==--==--

 

The elves in the tree homes thought themselves safer since Bula had to reach out for them. Though they were safe from spending time in her snatch, they were hardly out of dangers way. The trees broke against those the powerful legs and sturdy thighs which fidgeted into them. Some elves were uprooted with the tree itself, then licked up as mid-pleasuring snacks.

 

The satisfied, reverberating “Mmmm” from swallowing them whole let the elves know she got more than just a gourmet sort of enjoyment out of the act.

 

Elves within Bula’s snatch were exhausted, soaking, and in a constant state of bodily distress. That was *before* Bula began her climax. Once the giant troll orgasmed the vaginal walls, already tight enough to fracture bones, clamped down on them hard. Joints popped and bodies broke. Spines snapped to the extent that torsos spun around the opposite way. Elves were clenched to broken, mangled forms.

 

Those with the means covered their ears as a veritable roar blared for what might’ve been a mile. Her pussy quivered and a tide of femcum gushed out of Bula’s folds. The deluge washed away all the elves in her sex, who were carried by the nectar towards the debris below to fall atop their fellow settlement-goers.

 

Bula’s entire body moved with the explosion of bliss, and her legs slammed together shut for a brief moment. During that time, all between those limbs--from the sides of her feet to her thighs--were crushed. A bit more sensation hit her skin, pleasing her at the expense of over a hundred lives. Those stuck in the valley of her legs saw those towering thighs come together as two unstoppable walls to splat them flat.

 

As those crushed by the digits knew well, Bula didn’t move her hand out of the way during her orgasm. She was eager to squeeze every last bit of sensation out of the climax. If any bit of pleasure slipped away before she could eke it out with her teasing fingers, it was not for a lack of trying.

 

Consequently, the giant troll woman gushed all over the palm of her right hand as well. As her moans died down and the after-glow enveloped her, she brought that sticky hand towards some of the few remaining bits of living elves and intact homes. The sticky nature once again came in handy for sticking them to the palm which already had a bit of a crowd. Not every elf serving her to climax died: those on the outer folds simply flew to her palm, stuck, but alive albeit bone-broken or bruised.

 

Bula opened wide and brought her hand to her mouth. She lapped up a bit of that sweet feminine bounty before just sliding her fingers into her gob and slurping the elves off with it. She swallowed whole, as usual.

 

The elves, hardly able to move in her semi-viscous bliss, had no chance resisting that throat and, like so many others that day, fell down into Bula’s gut. Their reward for having their bodies used as toys was a gruesome death dissolving away in torrid troll gut.

 

Within that belly ring prison-piercing, Helemys saw quite a bit of what happened. She shook in her cage with the quaking gyrations of Bula’s hips. She heard handful after handful of her people break in the monstrous woman’s slit, and saw many of their panicked expressions as they passed towards the troll’s crotch.

 

Seeing Bula bring those femcum-stuck people up to her mouth for devourment was the last straw. She heard them in there, churning with the others as she was stuck in close proximity to the troll’s merciless stomach region.

 

The silver-haired elf woman spoke up again, yelling, screaming.

 

“You monster! You ungrateful monster! All you care about is yourself. You heinous... creature!”

 

--==--==--==--

 

I had just swallowed the handful and my little elf friend started squeaking up again. I brought the hand I just used to please myself towards the ring. She could probably still smell my pleasure on my fingers, even though they were dry by now. A quick wipe of them on some debris took care of that.

 

I tilted the ring up, so she could perhaps see my face if she looked up through the gilded gratings of her little container.

 

“Your little city had its chance. Be glad I found some use for them. They certainly brought me some joy, fed me too. Even your lover did. It’s hard to tell since I ate so many, but I think his fluttering died down a short while ago.”

 

I drummed my fingers against my tummy, just above the piercing. Chuckles flew by my lips.

 

I stood up to my full height. There were only little patches of the settlement left now, and just two trees with a few homes on them. Despite the elf-woman’s screams, I stomped them out real fast.

 

“I think I’ve spent enough time here. Let’s go visit that fae village your lover was talking about. It better be good, since I spared you for it, after all.”

 

I walked northwest to where that council leader had said the fae village would be. The destroyed elf settlement was left in my wake, destroyed.

Chapter 10: Fae Village

 

If one checked a scroll on sprites, the first thing mentioned would likely be the small size of that particular fae. These very common types of fairies hovered only an inch in height. With such diminutive heights, an adventurer might be quick to think them not much of a threat.

They’d be wrong.

 

Though puny in raw size, sprites were as attuned to nature as any other fae. Like most other fae they, too, were also adept at magic. Though not as naturally talented as the 1ft-tall pixies, a sprite could still make itself quite the nuisance via illusory misdirection, as well as magically coaxing out poisons from plants to rub on their tiny swords and arrows.

 

Indeed, most sprites were fighters. Many a huntress encroaching on the deep woods found themselves tripping with numb ankles as swarms of sprites did fly-by slashes with paralytic tipped swords and arrows. They used their numbers to compensate for their size, and with such innate connection to nature, the average sprite knew almost every hollow to hide in or stone to duck beneath within their territory.

 

Sprites typically lived in villages, unlike the all-female pixies for whom it was more of a personal choice. There were quite a few settlements among the Snowless Forest, but only one cooperated with the village Beimenor once called home. It’s not that the fae were cruel to the mundane races--they adored those that respected the forest. Rather, a fae village covered a very large range. Only one really got the chance to meet the wood-elf village and all other fae settlements aware of those wood-elves figured one alliance was enough. They had their own areas to attend to.

 

The one village Beimenor and the other wood-elves stayed in contact with dwelled beneath an enormous 50ft tall mushroom. The red cap of the shroom sheltered their city from any rain drops while some surrounding tree roots and pebbles made for a nice natural wall from any floods.

 

Soft dirt made for fine building ground for the sprites, and build they did over the years. Their tiny houses were made of the smallest, thinnest twigs and twig shavings, as well as the most delicate leaves and flower petals. Between these homes stamped the gentle feet of naked pixies. Many lived in the village too, though not in houses, yet others were simply visiting or helped keep watch.

 

Male and female sprites flew through the settlement which spread through the city which used almost all the area shaded by the mushroom cap above. The buildings stretched back to just a bit before the shroom’s meaty white stalk, which was given a berth of respect by the sprites. It was here in their city that they rested and rejoiced between plans and actions to defend the forest.

 

Of course, the sprites didn’t try to attack Bula directly. She was much, much too big for that. Instead, they helped use magic and misdirection to lure her away from vulnerable parts of the forest and try to turn the giant back towards her lair. Even then, pixies did much of the work there.

 

As the afternoon went on, the sprites and pixies went about their usual business and leisure in the city. Then, came a great doom-heralding boom through the ground which startled them all.

 

Being an inch tall, the sprites were no stranger to booms. They were friends with the critters of the forest, and those posed no issue. Similarly, a random travelers didn’t either: such people could be lead away with ease or, if hostile, easily handled through poison and pixie magic.

 

This quaking sensation, this boom, was big. Very, very big. The sprites feared the worst, and their fears seemed true.

 

The reverberations got louder and louder, closer and closer, till it became very clear what was upon them. On their perspective of a ‘horizon’ came two giant green ‘objects’: Bula’s feet.

 

A sprite was just an inch tall. The average humanoid race, to them, would seem 500ft tall or so. The 1ft tall pixies that lived among them, walking along the space between their homes, would seem to be about 60ft tall to the sprites.

 

Bula, however, actually was 500ft tall. To the pixies, she seemed about half a mile in height. To the sprites, for whom the average elf seemed taller than some hills, Bula seemed to be well over 5 miles tall: past 6, even. Comparatively, of course.

 

Sprites were not one to panic, they were one to prepare. But, they had never thought this would happen. They were so deep in the woods, so out of sight, that they never thought she’d find them. Someone had to have told her, and they deduced it was the elves. Rather then blame their allies, many wondered only what had become of them to be pushed to betray the alliance.

 

So, the sprites and pixies tried to prepare. Sprites marshaled at the front of the city by the hundreds, beating their insect-like wings to fly in formations and stand stalwart with their swords. The pixies, too, braced themselves with magic already sparkling in their wings and between their fingers.

 

But, once Bula’s feet reached the edge of the city, it would’ve been clear to any impartial observer that they had no chance. The sprites couldn’t possibly prepare for toes that towered dozens of comparative meters: each digit stood over hundreds of feet tall--comparatively.

 

The toes wiggled, announcing her presence with some more vibrations to the city. From high above, the bellowing laughter of Bula rung out.

 

“Well, this must be the place. Let me get a closer look.”

 

The sprites struck at the toes, prompting little more than a few extra wiggles. But, Bula had announced her body was moving and nothing they could do would stop it. The giant troll’s feet shifted back, sprites cleared the way.

 

After taking a few quaking steps back, Bula shifted down to the ground with a thunderous thud. She laid down onto her stomach, with every minor, thoughtless movement of shifting her position being another reverberating disturbance to the sprites and their settlement.

 

Laying on her front, feet kicking in the air, Bula slid her body forward so her head was just about under the cap of that 50ft tall shroom. Her dark green hair encroached into the city. The strands, comparatively almost half a meter in thickness to the sprites, managed to barrel over a few of the boundary structures of the city. All the while, they made the ‘streets’ near-impassable by blocking them off in their laying.

 

Bula’s face loomed before the entire city and the sprites and pixies hovering to defend it. She smiled a smile that seemed over a thousand feet wide. Her eyes widened. She had clearly spotted them. The expression alone was enough of a taunt.

 

--==--==--==--

 

The mushroom stuck out like a sore thumb in the forest. It was the only red cap around. I probably would’ve found it if I was in the area, but this deep in the woods wasn’t someplace I usually needed to go.

 

I set my feet outside the cap, announcing my presence with a few toe wiggles among my words. I was gambling this was the spot but, I thought, ‘where else could they be?’

 

I bent down, belly against the soft cool ground, chin resting on crossed arms, and smiled.

 

It was them alright, and I was thrilled. I knew sprites were small, but I could still hardly believe just how puny they were when I found them. The pests that had irked me with magics for quite some time were right before me, and I could easily wipe them out.

 

I’m not sure what I expected. Fortifications, a bigger city maybe? The sprites were just specks, and their settlement reflected it. A sneeze of mine could wipe out the bulk of the place. The area of it was a bit bigger about the size of my feet side by side. The pixies were a bit larger than the sprites, but still nothing to me and not a concern.

 

Thrilled, beyond thrilled. It took me awhile to stop smiling, during which they futilely attacked my chin. I opened my mouth to speak, dragging out my words to let their doom sink in.

 

“I foooooound yoooooou”, I said. That pastiche of green and brown veritable-moss that made up their city trembled from my words alone.

 

I kicked my legs in the air, giddy. I felt the air sift between my toes as I continued.

 

“You little things have been such a nuisance. Hiding, magicking, pesky fae. Only good thing your kind ever did was making the forest free of snowfall as the legends say. Now, you’re just bothersome little pests. Your bugs to normal people, imagine what you are to me, so vulnerable.”

 

The fae retreated from tickling my chin just a moment. Perhaps they thought I wanted to talk? No, sprites weren’t the type for that. They were just trying to think of a better strategy. I wouldn’t give them any time: not that they had a chance to beat me anyways.

 

“No, imagine what I’m like to you. A titan, or a god.”

 

I chuckled aloud at the thought, and saw cloud of sparkles push back. Must’ve been a group of sprites.

 

Still chuckling, I languidly moved my right hand forward and hovered my forefinger over some of their city. I moved my shadow, making them guess where I’d strike.

“I bet it feels bad to be caught huh? To be ‘under my thumb’?”

 

I curled back my other fingers and pressed my thumb down on bit of their city. I gave the digit a few twists, grunting in satisfaction.

 

“I’m gonna destroy your pathetic little city.”, I declared, and I meant it.

 

“The only question is how.”

 

The sprites and pixies moved to attack my face, with the former just barely visible. Squinting real hard I could almost make out their few scraps of cloth and their tiny weapons.

 

They figured my facial features--eyes, lips--were more sensitive. Correct, but both the sprites and pixies were far too small to do anything to me even there. As they harmlessly tickled the softer flesh of my lips, I simply stuck my tongue and gave a quick lick.

 

I felt some delicate ‘fluttering’ sensations on my tongue, which were sprites no doubt and at least one pixie. I swallowed, overemphasizing the motion and noises best I could. I wanted them to feel fear, to squirm. They’d feed my satisfaction even if not very filling in their own right.

 

I blinked and noticed some little clouds of sprites falling down. They must’ve got clipped my eyelashes.

 

“Pathetic!”, I said. My tone leaked my joy like a water spring did water.

 

I pursed my lips and sucked in another ‘cloud’ of the sprites.

 

The fools kept attacking me even after that.

 

--==--==--==--

 

Every sprite in the city would defend it to the death, no matter the foe. That was just the type of people they were. Still, even they had to admit things weren’t looking good.

 

They thought it best to attack Bula’s face, figuring the area was more vulnerable. Hundreds sprites rushed the lips while dodging the slender stamping feet of their pixie allies. Once close enough, past the edge of their city, they took flight and swarmed the darker-green lip flesh.

 

Nothing. Their attacks did nothing--sans some tickles perhaps. The magic fizzled out on what seemed to be hundreds of feet of lips for the sprites. They could see the small indents in the lips as something to get their limbs stuck in: their puny weapons and strengths had no chance against someone that big. Even the pixie magic seemed to fizzle away harmlessly.

 

Still, they didn’t give up. Motion was observed and there was a bit of hope, till they realized it was a counter-attack, of course. Bula opened wide and even her casual exhales made the sprites stumble. A simple lick of her tongue and they were stuck.

 

There was no hope to dodge. To the inch-tall sprites, Bula’s tongue seemed to stretch about 600ft in length even if it was only about 28ft in real terms. The troll’s saliva stuck them to that bumpy surface and curled back. One swallow later and they along with a few pixies were down the monstrous troll woman’s gullet.

 

For beings as small as the sprites, it was challenging to try and comprehend those insides. The throat seemed like a great writhing tunnel, and its peristalsis an unstoppable hectic force squeezing and speeding them down towards Bula’s gut. Many sprites, perhaps the ‘lucky’ ones, got stuck to some of the throat slime and stayed there to perish via drowning.

The other fae passed through a massive gateway of flesh towards Bula’s gut. Wings soggy from all the fluids, they plummeted into what seemed like an actual sea of chyme. Some glowshrooms gave a bit of light to the chamber which seemed as massive as it was uncompromising. Many minuscule sprites disappeared under the churning waves, digesting alongside the bones of dead elves that seemed like giants.

 

Of course, a few elves still lived, wounded from the acid and near-death. They weren’t in much of a state to notice the fae, let alone offer any help. That’d be pointless too; they couldn’t even help themselves. All in Bula’s gut seemed fated to dissolve, only question was how long would the excruciating process take?

 

For the tiny fae, it seemed not too long.

 

Other sprites attacked Bula’s eyes. Here, they seemed to succeed in irritating those ocular orbs a bit. But, a simple blink from the giant troll took wipe out said irritation along with its many sources.

The lashes came down as unyielding columns of dark-green hair. The fae were crushed between the keratin pillars as they drifted by each other. For Bula, a simple blink carried immense forces to their tiny bodies: more than enough to splatter the sprites on impacts. Each lash was a great and tremendous weapon in its own right.

 

After that, Bula pursed her lips and inhaled a dozens more fae. Their tiny wings had no chance to escape such a powerful tugging force, so down her gullet they went.

 

A few sprites broke off to other areas. Some tried to sneak in through Bula’s nose to try and wound her there, but an idle inhale from the troll’s nostrils took them in far before they were ready. They also underestimated the quantity and stickiness of the mucus lining the region.

 

Those sprites found themselves glued to nose-hairs by Bula’s snot. A simple sniff pulled them deeper from there, till eventually the snot was too thick to change positions in, let alone escape from. At that point, it was only a short matter of time till they drowned in Bula’s boogers.

 

A very small amount of sprites, just a few dozen, saw fit to head towards Bula’s right ear. They thought it’d be easy to fly in there and cripple her sense of hearing. Though sprites didn’t get ear-aches, they knew many a mundane race could suffer debilitating pain from such injuries.

 

Of course, they made the same mistake the nasal-assailing fae did--only with earwax instead of snot. They got caught in the yellow-brown waxy stuff. The substance quickly cloyed their wings to the point of uselessness. Once stuck, they quickly learned the substance was like quicksand: every move they made sunk them deeper in. Eventually, each one flailed forward, positioned to drown.

Bula, though, felt a slight tingle in her slight-pointed green ear and simply gave that right one of hers a gentle tug towards the lobe area. That crushed a few sprites then and there, while ensuring the others were properly buried. From Bula’s perspective, she simply got rid of an itch. Her body was capable of ejecting the intruders from her ears with time on its own.

 

Chuckling, Bula let the battle go on a tad further. One more lick of fae had some sprites falling back towards her cheeks. There, even the smaller of those freckle-like dark-green spots dwarfed them by the dozen.

 

“Enough. I think I’ll lap up your city like the treat it is. A bit of sprinkles to rain down on those elves already stewing in my guts.”

 

One more chuckle sent some sprites flying. Then, Bula opened wide and stuck her tongue out towards the fae city.

 

That great open maw blasted humid heat out in the form of breath. Its taunting *“Aaaaa”* vibrated those twig-shaving made structures.

 

All that paled in comparison to Bula’s tongue.

She had simply reached out with the crimson muscle to lap up a bit of that moss-like city--from her perspective. To the sprites, a great wall of red-pink flesh was upon the place they called home for centuries. Saliva dripped from it and the roof of Bula’s mouth, and a single droplet ravaged some of the border.

 

Not that it mattered, though, as soon bits of the city made contact with the muscle itself, it was finished. Buildings and fae were crushed by the papillae of the tongue, but even more were stuck on contact. Saliva holding them steady, Bula dragged tongue deeper into the city. She had almost a tongue-full of the settlement before a voice rang out.

 

“Stop!”, said the feminine voice. It seemed unusually loud to Bula, and was *booming* to the fae. Said fae lamented, as they recognized the voice right away.

Chapter 11: Mushroom

 

The fae turned towards the source, and Bula did as well. That giant troll withdrew her tongue into her mouth and swallowed whatever she had gotten so far. The speaker was unable to save whatever of the city dappled the troll’s tongue, but there was still more to protect.

 

Both Bula and all the city inhabitants looked right at that big 50ft tall mushroom. There, on the thick white stalk a face did form. A nose, a mouth, and black eyes appeared on that mushroom ‘trunk’, and then the features became more apparent as an entire face formed with a bit of depth. It looked much like the face of a beautiful elf or human woman smack dab in the middle of the stalk.

 

She continued speaking.

 

“Stop, I say. I cannot bare to see my precious friends suffer any longer, throwing themselves at you in vain. I cannot bare to see the city I shaded for all these years perish.”

 

A pixie with a few sprites around her flew up towards the mushroom-being.

 

“Don’t do this, whatever it is.”, said the pixie. “We can protect you.”

 

The shroom-face smiled weakly.

 

“You and the others helped defend me many times in the past. Please, this is the least I can do.”

 

The pixie and sprites floated down, crestfallen. Bula still watched on, not seeing fit to intervene. A bit of impatience crept into the troll’s look of curiosity, however, so the talking mushroom was quick to continue.

 

“My name is Miraddella, and I am the shroom-treant who watches over this city and, in turn, they watched over me. I offer myself for the protection of the fae around me, and the city shadowed by my cap. Like you, troll, I can regrow as long as a sufficient chunk of me remains. I’d be a never ending food source.”

 

Bula seemed to be listening. Miraddella continued.

 

“Go on, try a piece.”, said the shroom-treant. Her tone was a tad defeated, though some optimism still crept into her voice.

 

--==--==--==--

 

A “shroom-treant”. I had never heard of anything like that, but it was the kind of fae-thing I didn’t doubt existed. Everyone knew about treants of course: tree-spirits or talking trees. Occasionally, they’d walk too. I’ve walked on a few myself. Treant plus mushroom didn’t seem impossible.

 

She looked a tad odd. The juxtaposition of that face’s beauty on a succulent stark-white shroom stalk seemed... well, just odd I guess. Still, a never-ending food source seemed pretty neat. She offered for me to try a piece, but I would have done so anyway, treant or no.

 

I scooted back a bit, then reached out to nab a big chunk of the shroom’s cap. Though she was big to little folk, she still wouldn’t crest my knees were I standing. So, the chunk I tore off resulted in a bit of the city exposed to the air above the hole in her cap. Not that I cared, but it seemed neat to me that I ate a piece of the city’s usual ‘sky’.

 

Balancing my body upwards a tad on my left arm, I ate the chunk of shroom-cap with my right. The taste was savory and rich: far more so than the comparatively bland glowshrooms I ate by the hundreds every day. She was by far the most delicious mushroom I ever had a piece of. I swallowed, the pleasant taste stayed on my tongue just a moment afterwards.

 

“Not bad.”, I said, and helped myself to another piece. She got to gabbering again.

 

--==--==--==--

 

“I’m... pleased you enjoy my flesh. There’s no pain for me when you do that, but it admittedly feels... strange to have chunks of my body yanked off like that.”, said Miraddella.

 

That tearing sensation still lingered in her mind, but it was definitely the kind of thing the shroom-treant could get used to over time; she hoped.

 

The shroomy being continued.

 

“Nevertheless, I would feel that 10,000 times over if it could protect my friends. All I require is a bit of moisture: even humidity in the air will do. My cap also glows in the absence of sunlight, in case that could aid you in some way. Surly you can realize this is a good deal. In addition, I am sure these fae will bother you no longer, now that you have proved your might. I can’t speak for the other fae of the Snowless Forest, but I’m sure if you spare these kind fae-folk, word will get around. Please, Bula, do this so-”

 

“No.”, said Bula. The troll then tore off another piece of the shroom-treant’s cap.

 

--==--==--==--

 

The look on the mushroom lady’s face when I said no was hilarious. I held back my laughter so I could eat the shroom piece without issue, but my lips curled to a smile.

 

“I... I beg your pardon”, she said to me. “But, you seem to be enjoying me?”

 

“I am”, I said.

 

“And if the fae promise to leave you alone, I see no reason to-”

 

“You don’t understand”, I said. “I don’t *need* to make a deal. I can just yank you out of the ground anyways, and sprinkle what’s left of this ‘precious’ city atop your cap as seasoning.”

 

I licked my lips.

 

“Mmm, that is a tempting idea come to think of it. Anyways, these sprites and pixies have caused me a lot of trouble. I’m not about to just let them go, even if they leave me be. If they were smart, they would’ve left me alone first time I saw them. I don’t owe them anything now, and I never did.”

 

That shroom-treant seemed pretty glum. I chuckled, then kept talking.

 

“You see, I’m bigger then them, and I’m bigger than you. Big enough to do what I please to all of you, so I will. Is there anything more ‘natural’ then that? For all this protection of nature stuff, you all seem to gloss over that one fact of things.”

 

I laughed again, then took another piece from that suddenly-silent shroom-treant. By now, almost the entire front half of her cap was gone, and most of the city was before me. I swallowed, then spoke as I moved to sit with my knees to the ground. My fingers rubbed at my belly-ring, no doubt irking my elven prize inside it.

 

“I’m not worried about the other fae cities. They’ll see what I’ll leave of this one, and leave me alone themselves. Or, maybe they won’t. I might destroy them either way. Fae have been causing me nothing but trouble since I’ve known them. I’d love to root out every settlement in the Snowless Forest. For now though, this one will do.”

 

--==--==--==--

 

Miraddella stared, horrified. She hadn’t expected this sort of reaction, but Bula’s words had her metaphorically chilled. How could she stop Bula? She couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything: anything but watch.

 

Bula shifted her position so as to lay with her knees to the ground, resting on the back of her legs in a knee-sit. With her cap torn, Miraddella could look up for a clear view towards Bula’s taut tummy.

 

The shroom-treant imagined the horrors going on in there. Hundreds of fae lost to that greedy gut. Her imagination wasn’t too far off, though she couldn’t bare to imagine the role her shroom-flesh played in it.

 

Light from the glowshrooms had been dying down. Though they were a resilient food source, the churnings and acids of Bula’s gut had been breaking them down steadily over the hours. There was still enough to see the horror going on, but compared to elves from earlier, the sprites were much more in-the-dark so to speak.

 

However, Miraddella’s mushroom cap glowed in the absence of sunlight. Soon as Bula closed her mouth around the chunks, they glowed a white light. Those somewhat-chewed chunks of the shroom-treant shined all the way down Bula’s throat before plopping in the gut.

 

For the sprites within the troll’s stomach, suddenly the light was renewed. The iridescent mushroom mush fell down like boulders in that sea of chyme. Many a sprite was crushed underneath the shroom-chunks a bit of tragic irony. The very mushroom-woman they protected crunched them with pieces of her torn shroom-flesh.

 

Others weren’t crushed so much as pinned by the weight of the saliva-sogged shroom slop. They suffocated from the lack of air under its bulk, or else drowned as the heft of it kept their heads under the corrosive sea.

 

Still, most sprites, pixies, and the few remaining elves simply had to shield their eyes as nothing was left for imagination once again with the new bioluminescent light from the shroom pieces. The sprites were in horrific awe at the sheer size of Bula’s stomach. Those rippling walls seemed to stretched for hundreds of feet--comparatively. Pixies were similarly humbled and dismayed, while the lethargic, acid-agonized elves could hardly muster the strength to tilt their heads away from the initially disconcerting new light source.

 

Bula wasn’t calling attention to her stomach though or, rather, the stomach as a whole. No, she was fiddling with that strange piercing of hers: a big, thick ring through her flesh just above her navel. Miraddella snapped out of her trance to take a look at it. At last, she had noticed someone inside it. An elf! The troll had taken a prisoner, and kept them close to her body this whole time.

 

“That’s not a piercing, that’s a cage? Who are you keeping in there?”, said Miraddella.

 

“Oh don’t worry about her. Some lover of an important elf, the same one that told me how to get here. But, I shouldn't overstock the cage. That wouldn’t be fair to all you little sprites.”

 

Bula unlatched the piercing and slipped it free. The copper-skinned elf-woman inside tumbled around in the process. Not even seconds after the hoop was free from the troll’s green flesh did the piercing area heal. Right before the eyes of Miraddella and the fae in the city, the entry and exit holes for the ring pierced back together as though nothing had ever even looped through that flesh.

 

Bula gave the ring a shake and Helemys flopped down right at the edge of the fae city. To the inch-tall sprites, she seemed well over 500ft tall, and to the foot-tall pixies she was closer to just 50ft. Those sprites at the border flew back from the shockwave of her head hitting the soft dirt. The entire city felt a vibration from her tumble as well, but soon as it ended, some sprites went over to investigate.

 

Many of the sprites recognized the elf as the wife of Beimenor, who was the council lead for the elven settlement they allied with. She too was on the council, and part of many meetings. Their thoughts on her given recent events were conflicted to say the least.

 

Still, there wasn’t much time for mulling things over. Bula took the ring, now open, and brought the entry of it towards the city itself. Miraddella and all the sprites were confused, and those in the path of the piercing did their best to outrun it.

 

Bula’s voice rung out again with its booming volume.

 

“Don’t worry shroom lady, a bit of this city will survive as my new ring ornament. I never had a pet city before. I’m sure they’ll enjoy their new home, just as you will.”

 

From the perspective of the sprites, the entrance to that ring-cage was like a great big open tunnel. It barreled towards them and dug into the foundation of their city. All in its path was roped up into the ‘cage’ portion of the piercing. Per Bula’s orders, the grilling of the ‘cage’ was made to have space-gaps less than an inch in length and width. So, all the caught sprites couldn’t escape once stuck.

 

Of course, the fae tried to fly away. Pixies and sprites beat their wings fast as they could. However, Bula was simply much too big and much too fast with the ring. Even those at the front found their escape foiled as Bula’s hand slammed down at the edge of the city. Having crushed dozens of lives and a good few homes in the process, her light-green palm became like a wall cutting off their escape.

 

With her fingers curled, the giant troll effortlessly corralled a decent fraction of the city into her golden hoop-cage. It was chaos in there, with a good few fae houses destroyed or at least crumbling from the transport to that new ‘home’ in her belly-ring.

 

All the new ‘guests’ arrived disoriented. The scooping motion of the ring on the city caused many a fae to tumble out of their flight. A few of the pixies crashed into their sprite allies and crushed them beneath their naked backsides. In the panic, many a kicking leg from a pixie accidentally crushed a sprite home or even crushed one of the sprites or a few. Screams and yelps of dismay and disgust rung out, but if Bula’s words about being her pets were true, then it seemed as though they’d have plenty of time to come to turn with their accidental destruction and slaughter.

 

Once the cage-segment of the ring was full, Bula started bringing it back towards her taut tummy region. The majority who survived the collection looked up as that giant golden object finally left. They breathed a sigh of relief as they saw the gargantuan troll take that gilded tool of torment away.

As it moved back towards her navel, many fae on the ground had a disturbing realization. She said only a bit of the city would survive: those in the ring. That meant she was aiming to wipe them out. Though both fates seemed horrible, seems they would avoid that cage at the cost of their lives.

 

Those inside the ring had a bit of light snuffed out as the pad of Bula’s thumb covered the other end of the ring. She assured that none would fly out and escape. They were joining her as part of her ring-ornament, it seemed.

 

--==--==--==--

 

I scooped the city into the hoop till I was full. That done, I moved it to my navel. All it took was my thumb to hold them in place. A few feisty fae started punching against the digit’s pad. I only felt the sprites cause they did it in bulk. They were pathetic, really, but hundreds of them fluttering, stuck, within my belly ring had a certain appeal.

 

They would be like a living trophy to my conquering. Who else could say they had bits of a city as decoration? I imagined how much better my other ‘negotiations’ with future smallfolk cities would go once they noticed the hoop and saw entire homes and immortal fae stuck inside.

 

Of course, I had to actually put the ring on. I could never permanently pierce myself, as the holes always healed. I’ve been told by some past hoop-pets that my body actually tries to heal around them if I tilt the ring so that the cage-segment is inside my body. That brought me a bit of joy.

 

Sliding the hoop back into my flesh wasn't exactly joyous though. I punctured myself just above the navel to pierce in the usual spot. It didn’t hurt too much, but it felt pretty odd like always. My body didn’t need too high a pain sensation since I could heal so much on my own. Still, I winced a tad just from the weirdness of it all. A grunt also left my throat to sound through the air.

 

But, it was done, and I took a moment to admire the new prize in my piercing. I tilted the ring up and smiled down at all those hundreds of sprites stuck inside. Some pixies were stuck too, their magic failing against whatever little runes those dwarves etched within the gold hoop as a protective barrier to such things.

 

Some irate whinging took me out of the moment. The voice was familiar. That elf-woman I dumped out to the ground a moment ago was shouting at me. She had since stirred from her fall, looking not too worse for wear.

 

Standing on her bare feet, the little elf had taken a prideful stance.

 

“You coward! Disgusting, despicable coward. You wouldn’t be doing this if you weren’t big.”

 

My brow furrowed and I reached down for her. The bottom of my palm slammed to the ground in the process and visibly shook her footing. A few of the weaker sprite homes nearby collapsed from the gesture. That irked me, since I wanted to save them for something--I didn’t know what yet, but something more directed than that.

 

Still, it was more important for me in the moment to jostle the elf and shake her loud-mouth self up a bit. I curled my fingers around her and brought her up past my stomach to my face.

 

“Well I *am* big, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”, I said.

 

My fingers pinched the tops of her arms together, and I could feel her own little fingers fidget against the pads of my thumb and forefinger. The rest of her body lightly swayed as my hand moved a tad. Her legs dangled, kicking at air.

 

“Oh, are you gonna kill me now too? Betray a promise? Wonder how many of those you’ve done.”, she said.

I grinned.

 

“I said I’d spare you, never how long. But, if you’re so tough, why don’t you try and stop me then. Try and stop me from destroying this fae city and you with it.”

 

I moved my hand a bit to send her body swinging. I lowered my hand closer to the ground, so as to not kill her with the fall. Then, when I felt the aim was good enough, I let go and the elf-woman flew through the air and landed smack dab in the middle of the sprite settlement.

Chapter 12: Big and Small

 

Helemys was too angry to be afraid: until Bula let go. At that point, her body fell with a thump to land on the fae settlement.

 

The silver-haired copper-skinned elf fell back down across a good dozen sprite homes. She had heard screams snuff out with her landing. The elf quickly sat up, and realized the bottom bit of her nature-made outfit was rimmed by a layer of debris. Her bare feet were soles down and stretched out, and she felt some crushed homes there too.

 

Horrified at what she had unintentionally done, the beautiful elf woman quickly stood up.

 

“I’m sorry!”, she said. “I didn’t mean to, Bula threw me here!”

 

The many sprites and fewer pixies were too busy dodging the chaos to do much. Helemys had, without really thinking, shifted her slender feet to adjust her posture. In the process, those peds cleaved through a few more homes.

 

“I’m sorry! Please forgive me. I wanted to help you, I-”

 

Her attention, Miraddella’s, and the attention of most of the sprites and pixies turned towards Bula. The ground rumbled as the giant troll moved back to a front-laying position again. Her chin rested on her crossed arms, and her crossed legs kicked through the air once or twice.

 

As a consequence of the movement, those fae stuck in the piercing prison were also stuck in the dark. With Bula’s belly to the ground, no sun reached them. Their screams never escaped from underneath her massive form, though there was air enough for them to survive of course.

 

The troll woman’s face loomed over Helemys, and over the entire city as well. It occurred to Helemys that, since the sprites were an inch tall, she herself would seem over 500ft tall to them as an elf. The buildings of the settlement, too, were designed with the sprites in mind.

 

In that sense, she was to the sprites much like Bula was to her: a giant menace, whether she wanted to be by not. Helemys herself would seem under an inch to Bula, she figured. So, she figured the troll must’ve seemed more than 5 miles to the sprites. With Bula being huge to her now, she wondered how that troll would look if she were a sprite.

 

Helemys had often envied the fae for their magical prowess and flight, but right now she was happy she wasn’t as small as them. Even the pixies didn’t come up to her knee. Bula, to them, must’ve looked like something else. A living mountain.

 

A mountain that was smiling.

 

Bula’s eyes were right on Helemys and the bits of the settlement her feet were set on. Those giant green eyes ignored Miraddella for the moment, and the shroom-treant was still at a lost for words regardless. Helemys took a quick look at that mushroom woman to see her face glum and stour. A curt, throaty chuckle from Bula grabbed the elf’s attention again fast though.

 

“Go ahead.”, said Bula. “Attack me. Save this village if you think it’s worth getting feisty about.”

 

Helemys looked to Bula, then down at her feet. She lifted one foot to see bits of debris caught to her sole, as well as a few sprites. Shocked, she hurriedly brushed it off her sole to the city below. In the process, she nearly lost her balance and tumbled again. Thankfully, she instead managed to hop on one foot to regain that balance, albeit stomping an empty sprite home in the process.

 

The elf woman set her foot back down where there was already a print in the debris. This way, she managed her damage. She was at a lost for words, but knew it was unwise to try and stop that woman now. She’d cause too much damage.

 

Bula saw clearly that Helemys didn’t want to wreck the sprite city more than she already did. But, the giant troll wanted to at least witness a feeble attempt on the elf’s part. So, she egged the silver-haired elf on. She spoke.

 

“C’mon, you were talking so big before. Maybe you even feel pretty big what with all those sprites down at your toes. Did you step on any by mistake? Hard for me to see, but I bet ya’ did.”

 

Bula had a smug grin on her face. The giant troll notice Helemys getting irked by it.

 

“Don’t you want to avenge your elven friends? Your people? Your weak, feeble, delicious people? I’m right here, face bared and undefended. I’m the troll that ruined your little village. I’m the one that ate your squirmer of a lover. Come on, is this how you honor their memory, by standing still like a coward? Those elves died for you. Those delicious, squirmy little elves that wiggled right down my throat. Mmmmm~”

 

Bula stuck her tongue out and obnoxiously dragged it across her lips. That did it.

 

Visibly enraged, Helemys walked closer. She actually took two normal steps before remembering where she was. Those two steps squished some sprites flat, and took out a good few homes. Other fae dodged just in time out from under those slender, copper-skinned feet.

 

Helemys frowned, sorrow hitting her again and mixing with the unpleasant stew of emotions.

 

“I’m sorry.”, she said. “But I have to at least try and stop her. Surly you can understand, fierce as you are sprites. I’m sorry all this happened. Please, clear the way for me though.”

 

Moving more carefully Helemys proceeded through the city back towards the border. Past that edge the smug visage of Bula still loomed. Her fingers rested on her spotted cheek now as she watched the ‘entertainment’.

 

The sprites and pixies cleared the way for Helemys’s slow walk over. The elf raised her foot, and the fae cleared from its shadow. Of course, any buildings stuck underneath were gone: flattened beneath the elf’s sole in a sensation she found more than a tad disconcerting.

 

Still, the fae cooperated much as they could. The sprites detested that troll too. They wouldn’t deny the elf a chance to strike. Perhaps someone as big as the elf might be able to do a bit of damage to the overconfident troll. They were foolish in that notion, of course, but they hadn’t seen the battle earlier. There, Bula single-handedly leveled the elven village and the trees supporting it, too.

 

Helemys approached, crunching a few more homes in the process. She was near the edge of the city, about ready to run and pound at the dark-green lips of that smug smile. However, Bula’s face shifted. A sudden, loud vibration of a noise rung out.

 

From deep within Bula’s belly came a gurgle. A loud and ominous one.

Chapter 13: Burp

 

I had succeeded in getting the elf-woman to actually try and fight me. Unfortunately, she got real careful with that itty-bitty city after just a few steps. It seemed liked the fae were cooperating by moving out of her way. Even after her lover led me to them, they seemed to try and make it easier for her.

 

Well, I suppose they did have a mutual enemy still: me. No worries, it was still entertaining. The little elf carefully moved through the city, all while I swayed my legs in delight. It was admittedly amusing in its own special way. That mix of anger and cautiousness just seemed humorous to me for whatever reason. My smile grew wider.

 

Then, I felt it. A bit of a stirring in my gut. It was familiar, and I knew what was coming. This was one of the bigger ones. The lucky timing surprised me as much as it delighted me.

 

A buildup of air brewed in my belly and roared up my throat. I did my conscious part, relaxing my gullet and preparing to open wide so as to unleash what was coming upon the city.

 

With the elf and the shroom-treant due in front of me, city before and beneath them, I opened wide and let loose one of the biggest belches I’ve ever done.

 

It was loud enough to rock *my* ears, and it felt fiery hot roaring past my maw.

 

I kept it going for a good few seconds.

 

--==--==--==--

 

“Burrrrrrrrrp”

 

Before Helemys, Miraddella, or anyone else could figure out what was coming, it was already far too late. Bula’s mouth swung open and she unleashed a bassy explosion of torrid, roaring air.

 

The burp shook the ground and the air itself with its roar. A fierce gale of the hot air knocked Helemys right over. She fell down atop some of the sprite homes she had tried to avoid earlier. A few dozen sprites were caught beneath as well, crushed beneath her hindquarters and the palms she slammed to the ground to try and stop the fall. One pixie was even caught beneath the elf’s back, but she was big enough to not have more than a few bruises once the elf sat up.

 

Yet, none of that mattered. The city was doomed anyways. The burp tore through it more than the elf ever good. The burp that knocked over the elf was a veritable storm to the city itself.

 

The hot, humid air came from Bula’s gut and ripped through buildings like a hurricane. Not just roofs, but the little nature-made hovels themselves were uplifted if not exploded outright from the force. All those carefully placed floral ornaments and delicately shaven twig fortifications were broken and scattered to the scorching burp-winds as deadly debris.

 

Though a few fae did die to the hurtling bits of nature, it was only a few. Bula’s burp itself was deadly to the magical beings. Sprites in its path didn’t stand a chance, as the force of the burp either crushed their bones outright if close enough, or sent them colliding into the ground at deadly speeds.

 

Many survived the initial impact with the ground or whatever they flew towards, but their wings didn’t. The belch was fierce enough to tear even the pixie wings, so the delicate insect-like wings of the sprites basically evaporated. Of course, a fae could regenerate its wings over time, and healing magics and potions did exist for that sort of thing. However, that took time, and it didn’t seem likely they’d get the chance. Besides, they had other more pressing injuries to worry about.

 

Bula’s burp carried more than hot air. Bits of saliva joined the torrid torrent. The amounts were small enough to avoid notice from Bula. However, the troll was big and the sprites were small. So, even that much had an effect.

 

Minute to Bula, droplets of saliva slammed into a few sprites. Some were hit right out of the air, while others were hit while they were already writhing on the ground, immobile. In either case, humiliation followed if drowning didn’t. Those wounded beforehand were in no position to wiggle away or dodge, after all.

 

To the inch-tall sprites, Bula’s “tiny” bits of spittle were still about half a meter of cloying coating. The fluid covered the faces of many a paralyzed fae, wounded from the burp, who either stewed in the stuff as insult to injury, or were positioned poorly enough to asphyxiate on some of the littlest beads of troll spit.

 

The torrent carried broken homes and fae all the way to Miraddella. Though farthest from the burp, she was still directly opposite it. She closed her black eyes as the torrid air stung it. The scent of Bula’s living meals was upon it, along with a vile acrid hint.

 

Sprites crashed into her thick stalk by the hundreds and, as with most of Bula’s actions, a few pixies were caught up in it too. Broken debris and bodies hit the shroom-treant. She was fine physically from it; her white shroom-stalk flesh was spongy enough to take the hit. Still, mentally, it was agonizing to watch much of the city and the people she overlooked slamming into her, broken.

 

The last bit of horror came in the form of partially digested fae. Since the gas of the burp came from Bula’s gut, it carried some of the matter in there with it. In there, the current was strong enough to launch up all the victims churning away, but only the sprites were small and light enough to slip past the sphincter towards her esophagus and ride the current straight out her mouth.

 

They didn’t do so alive, however. Many were dissolved bodies at that points, barely skeletons. The few surviving fae at the time of the burp died flying up her throat in torrid, forceful belch-winds. Their corpses went with the burp to slam into the city and Miraddella at the other end.

 

These acid-melted or burp-torn corpses were comparatively few and, like the tiny bits of spittle, went unnoticed by Bula. However, each and every one elicited a horrible shriek from the fae who saw them. Many had a twisted reunion with their friends or lovers in this sense.

 

One female sprite had, via pure, cruel chance, her lover’s acid-drenched skeleton land right atop her own burp-broken form. Plenty slammed into Miraddella too, where they briefly besmirched her stalk before falling off the 50ft shroom-treant to the ground.

 

Sadly, even many of the living sprites that slammed into her fell as well. Their wings useless, they splattered to the ground with her able to do nothing but watch.

 

The destructive belch continued for what felt like minutes, but was in fact only a few seconds. Once it finally settled, the fae could finally hear their own cries of agony and dismay with the bassy boom of it gone.

 

All turned to the giant troll again soon enough after the burp stopped. Helemys in particular stared, abhorred, at a satisfied looking Bula. The giant troll let out a sigh then, as an extra bit of humiliation, a quick, short post-burp mini-belch.

 

“Ha”, said Bula.

 

That was it. All she immediately had to say about that devastating eructation was a curt little chuckle.

Chapter 14: Step

 

My burp was strong enough to have knocked the elf woman right over. While it was going on, I couldn’t exactly take in how it was affecting the fae specks themselves, but I figured if it knocked that elf over it must’ve been quite destructive to their tiny little fae selves.

 

I did take in the look on the shroom-treant’s face though, and she did not look pleased. Once it was over, I had one more quick burp in me to let out. Then, I took a closer look at things.

 

“Huh, you really are a pathetic sort aren’t you?”, I said. I was addressing the sprites mostly, but my words could’ve applied to any of them.

 

Much of the city seemed destroyed. The almost mossy-looking city now seemed like dust everywhere but its center. My belch had blown almost everyone away, with only the area behind the elf being safe. I supposed her body must have blocked the force of it for most of them, even if her falling back crushed a few. Even laying down, her form must’ve towered over the teeny sprite homes.

 

The elf woman seemed to be in a bit of a shock or something, since her face seemed real upset, and she wasn’t getting up despite not looking injured much. It was actually the shroom-treant who spoke up to me this time.

 

“How could you! Do you see what you’ve done? This level of carnage. Even for one as willfully vile as you, you must admit it’s wasteful.”, she said.

 

“Hey.”, I replied. “It’s not as though I burped on purpose.”

 

I grinned, then continued.

 

“I just didn’t bother aiming elsewhere.”

 

That said, I pursed my lips and blew some air out. I could see a few more homes fly away, along with a good deal more sprites. The latter were so small to me as to seem like sparkles with how the light of the midday sun hit their wings.

 

Many flew towards the shroom-treant, while others seemed to fly past at speed I’m sure they couldn’t survive. The mushroom woman winced while this was happening; my focused exhale getting into her beady black eyes no doubt.

 

“What are you doing?”, she said.

 

I finished blowing a second later, then started to shift my body back up.

 

“Just making sure the city’s dry. I figured there might’ve been little bits of spit or something. Wouldn’t be anything I could feel too well, nor a big deal either way. But, it was such little effort I supposed it couldn’t hurt--me at least.”

 

I chuckled again. I had moved my body to have my right foot planted to the side of the city. Once again, I saw that dusty moss of a city stir from just flopping my foot down.

 

That wasn’t my goal, though. Instead, I leaned forward and wrapped one hand about the shroom-treant’s stalk.

“What are you doing now?”, she said.

 

“You ever say anything else? Always questions with you types. I’m ripping you out of the ground, dummy, you’re coming with me.”

 

She fussed a bit, started to say something, but my grip had my fingers move over the mouth of that face she formed. With my right foot planted firmly on the ground, and the left pressing its toes down for support, I yanked her right up.

 

Mushrooms didn’t have much in terms of roots, but she was quite the big shroom-woman. Though she didn’t come up to my knees, she towered over the village. The bulky under-body of the shroomy being left quite the hole once I tugged her out. Well, not to me it didn’t, but her removal was disruptive enough to cause a few more sprite buildings to fall into the crater left behind.

 

I stood upright with the shroom-treant in my hand. With a finger still covering her mouth, I brought her cap close for another bite. I chewed, savored, then swallowed.

“I got a decent amount of useful prizes in my cave, but I think you’ll be one of the best yet. A never-ending snack.”

 

I moved my fingers down. She moved to speak once able, but before she could I dragged my tongue against the face she formed. Horrified at the sensation of my spit there no doubt, she unformed her face for the time being.

 

“Don’t wanna watch what I’m gonna do to the last bits of your settlement huh? No matter, I got a piece of the city that doesn’t have that choice.”

 

I moved my fingers to my belly ring, wherein rested a good deal of the sprite settlement. Listening closely, I could hear their despair. I could only imagine their view for what I was about to do.

 

The city was due below me now. Only a small circle of it seemed undestroyed beneath my foot. That was all thanks to the elf woman and her spread-arms tumble. It had protected the city from my exhale too from the looks of it.

 

Smirking, I took one step back for more space, then started to raise my right foot. The elf-woman began to stir and stood back up herself.

 

She looked up at the underside of my foot as I held it overhead both her and those last bits of intact fae city.

 

“Looks like this is the end for you, elf, and this sprite settlement at last. If any of you little fae specks survive this, you ‘ought to tell the other fae to leave me alone. The forest is mine, not yours or theirs. If you don’t like it...”

 

I lowered my foot.

 

“Too bad.”

 

I felt the elf fall back against the weight behind my sole.

 

--==--==--==--

 

Helemys had gotten up just in time to brace herself for what was coming. Bula’s theft of the shroom-treant had destabilized the ground a tad, but it was stable enough for her to stay steady at least. Still, she worried she might not be steady for long.

 

Bula’s foot wooshed through the air to hover overhead, and the giant troll started slowly stepping down. Even to the elf, who stood well over 6ft in height, that foot seemed unstoppable. It stretched about 75ft long, and its width was enough to shadow her with ease.

 

To the sprites? This seemed truly hopeless. Though only a fraction of the sprite city still lived, it was still hundreds of the little fae. Their sky was shadowed by a canopy of light-green troll-sole which didn’t seem too different than any other humanoid’s sole really, save for the unstoppable size of it.

 

For those inch-tall fae, every detail of that ped’s underside seemed deadly in its own right. Each curve of the foot could crush them in one way or another. For them, that 75ft+ ped stretched around 4000ft in length--nearly a mile. It looked bigger to the sprites than Bula’s entire body did to the 1ft-tall pixies, who saw the giant troll as over half a mile tall. The toes were titanic to the sprites, with the foot itself like an ender of worlds.

 

Which it was, in a sense. Even on the off-chance of survival, it was an end to a world they knew for hundreds of years. Their entire city was in the path of her step. And, like before, Bula had no mercy for them.

 

The foot came down. Bula wasn’t trying to be either particularly fast or slow. It was normal to her: a simple snuffing out under step. With death barring down on the smaller beings, they couldn’t help but wish for more time.

 

The sole touched Helemys first. Shouting with rage, she lifted her arms to try and hold the foot away. That didn’t work, and it wasn’t long before she fell back on her butt, then on back in two destructive drops.

 

For a brief moment, her body gave a paltry bit of resistant. Not from the elf-woman’s strength, but simply because her body took up space. For just a little bit, less than a second, Helemys protected the city in at least one sense of the word.

Then, she was crushed. The weight was too much and her body burst. Some of the nearby buildings and sprites were covered in her blood or bits of bones as the unstoppable foot pressed the elf’s body to the point of destruction. A few sprites were wounded from that, but that didn’t matter. A moment later and the step finished.

 

Unlike the elf, the pixies, most sprites, and the city’s diminutive little structures didn’t even last fractions of a seconds against Bula’s step. They were dust to the giant troll, and flattened as such. Sprites and pixies burst against the soft sole skin. Every pixie beneath was crushed, but a few sprites were lucky enough to eke out a bit more time in the space beneath her toes.

 

Just a bit, though.

 

Once her foot was fully flat on the city, Bula let out one of those pleased grunts of hers. She wasn’t satisfied though, not by that.

 

Eager to ensure their fullest demise, the giant troll twisted her foot side to side and smeared what few fae survived beneath the step. Those sprites that survived between or behind her toes were squished in the scrunching of the digits, or else barreled over as they moved side to side.

 

“Ah.”, said Bula. She gave a few more twists, and a few more pleased, indulgent grunts.

 

The giant troll lifted her foot up and inspected the damage under her sole. Helemys’s squished bits fell from her sole as her skin expunged it via a consequence of her body’s self-healing properties. A bit of debris still lingered, but she brushed that off herself before setting the foot back down. A pleasant vibration from her might hitting the ground reverberated through her sole and up her leg.

 

She sighed yet again.

 

Bula’s enjoyment contrasted with the dismay of Miraddella and the fae stuck in her cage-piercing. Though the shroom-treant retreated her facial features, she could still sense what was going on. She could hear still, for one thing, and with her heightened senses she heard hundreds of screams snuffed out with that giant troll’s stomp.

 

More than that, though, she could feel magic. Sprites and pixies were inherently magical beings, and with their death that magic passed. So, she had a very intuitive sense of the magnitude of lives lost.

 

Those fae stuck in Bula’s ring didn’t have the luxury of hiding their faces. Though some couldn’t turn their heads due to crowding, all could close their eyes, sure.

 

Yet, many found themselves unable to look away from the horror of it all. They saw the top of Bula’s foot from a bird’s eye view. The elf and their city was there one moment, then the foot obscured it the next. Only the settlement bits between her toes could be seen, and that was quickly gone as the troll swiveled her foot to wipe out even those meager remaining bits.

 

Their old home was gone, and their new one was a cruel cage. As if to torment the fae therein further, Bula’s stomach gurgles were heard once or twice during the stomp. It was yet another reminder of their settlement’s demise what with her having ate so much of it. They figured they’d have to get use to that horrible sound and its implications. They were hanging so close to that taut tummy, after all.

 

Bula moved her fingers from where Miraddella usually formed her face. She spoke to the shroom-treant assuming, correctly, that the shroomy being could hear her.

 

“There, the city’s all done. Now you have nothing to be too attached to.”

 

Bula started moving back in the direction of her lair.

 

“I think you’ll like my cave. It’s nice and damp, good for a shroom person like you. You won’t ever have to worry about seeing the sun again.”

 

She chuckled, then took another big bite of the shroom woman’s cap.

 

The journey back would be long and jostling for both the shroom-treant and all the fae stuck in Bula’s ring.

 

For Bula, it was a pleasant, victorious stroll.

Chapter 15: Bula

 

It was another pleasant morning for the giant troll. Last evening had a bit of a rain though, so she had rested inside her cave. Another, much smaller being had the same idea, and Bula had caught them.

 

The brown-bearded gnome rested on one of her stone-carved shelves. To his right, rooted in a bundle of dirt and positioned near a stream of incoming water was a giant red-capped shroom with a sullen face on its stalk. The cap had a bite-mark on it, which was slowly regrowing.

 

Bula chewed a chunk of shroom-treant in her mouth as she studied the little, 2ft tall gnome. The pad of her thumb was pressed against his stubby legs.

 

“Mmf,”, she began. “Keep squirming like that against my thumb and it might be hard to resist flattening you. I’ll ask you again, where do you come from? Where’s your village or city or whatnot?”

 

“I’ll never tell!”, said the gnome. He continued fruitlessly pushing against a thumb bigger than his entire body.

 

“No matter what,”, he continued. “I’ll never tell. I’ll never-agh!”

 

Bula pressed down, turning his legs from the knees down into paste. She quickly flicked the mess away. The gnome’s squeaky screams reached her ears, and she smirked.

 

“Are you sure about that? If you wanna leave my cave alive, you better tell me. I promise I won’t just up and wreck your home if you do.”

 

The gnome needed a few more seconds to stop screaming, which Bula begrudgingly gave.

 

“You, you promise you won’t just kill them all?”, he said.

 

“I do, I won’t *just* up and kill them all. Now talk, I’m getting impatient here.”

 

She hovered her thumb over him again.

 

“Ok ok, it’s to the south--southwest, really. There’s a rocky clearing between some trees. That’s where I live. We have some tunnels underground too, connecting our homes and the like, so be careful where you step. You wouldn’t want to collapse them.”

 

Bula smirked. “That should be enough to find them. Alright then.”

 

--==--==--==--

 

I scooped up the gnome. He was still bleeding from his legs, but not as much as right when I crushed them. I moved towards the exit of the cave with him screaming all the while. All the jostling in my palm hurt him, it seemed.

 

Oh well.

 

I twisted my hoop-piercing so that the fae within could get some fresh air and, of course, delight me with their myriad groans and the like. Up till now, they were watching the inside of my body try to heal around them. The thought of how that might look to their tiny selves had me chuckle.

 

The gnome asked where I was taking him and the like, but I stayed silent. It wasn’t so much as to torment the little gnome--though that was a nice bonus. No, I was just busy thinking of all the fun stuff I could do to his village should they not cooperate.

 

My imagination was running wild. Tunnels under normal earth... I envisioned myself putting my lips to one end of a tunnel and inhaling. All those gnomes flying right into my maw: my mouth watered at the thought.

 

“What, what’s that in your belly ring!”, he asked. “Are those... sprites? Fae homes?”

 

My palm was low to my belly. He must’ve noticed my little piercing there.

 

“Don’t worry about them, they bothered me for quite some time.”, I said. He asked more questions about the settlement and I didn’t bother to answer.

 

My feet moved from cool cave stone to warmer natural ground outside. I stepped forward to find some nice ankle-high trees. My feet fell on a few of them as I bent towards one in particular. I tilted my palm and towards it and dropped the gnome down by that tree’s roots.

 

“Wait wait!”, he shouted. “Are you just leaving me here?”

 

“I said I’d let you out of my cave alive, and you are.”, I said. I shook my hand and the last bit of his blood was off of it.

 

“But my legs, you crushed them. I can hardly move. The pain alone is-”

 

“Not my problem.”, I said. “You should’ve talked faster. Who knows? If you’re resourceful, you might be survive still in the forest.”

 

I rose up to my full height and checked the sun in the sky. I turned to the southwest and took a step. The vibration of it slipped him from the tree roots down more towards the ground.

 

“Stop. No. You can’t!”, he said.

 

I very clearly could, and took another step away. He then asked another question.

 

“What are you gonna do them, to my village?”, he said.

 

I paused to answer it.

 

“If they like what I have to say, they’ll live, at least most of ‘em. If not, well, I had a pretty light breakfast today.”

 

I patted my taut tummy, then walked away. No matter what, though, I’d help myself to at least one of those villagers. It had been awhile since I ate any gnomes.

 

Fin