The Garania Empire, having been for centuries the dominant power on the continent and undoubtedly one of the strongest nations on the planet, was in a bad state.

To understand why, we have to look at the ruler of the empire, Empress Isabella I. She had ascended to the throne at the age of 15, despite her father, the late emperor Lothair IV, having died of old age, he had been far too busy in his youth he spent conquering vast swathes of land, leading to him having his first and only child late in his life.

Isabella herself was a very kind person, despite her powerful position she made sure to treat everyone with respect, whether they be the ruler of a neighbouring empire or a local castle’s janitor. She wanted nothing but the best for her nation, but its troubles were due to causes beyond her control, and her youth and inexperience certainly didn’t help.

The problem was that in the country’s law books, dating back hundreds of years and claiming to be ordained by the Gods, women were forbidden to hold the throne. The then sick and elderly Lothair had changed the law hastily to allow his daughter to be his successor, a move that was seen as blasphemous by most of the nobility and military.

At the time, most members of these aforementioned groups had kept their mouths shut as the old emperor was still held in high esteem by all his subjects, once he had croaked every ambitious male noble with even the furthest connection to the royal bloodline had claimed the throne for himself.

Furthermore, the peasantry of the nation wanted to be free of the high taxes and long, hard days of manual labour that were imposed on them by the nobility. Isabella did not want to use the army to quell the ensuing peasant revolts, but she was too inexperienced and unable to convince the peasants to stop revolting, nor the nobles to grant them concessions.

All in all, this meant that just two years after Isabella had taken the throne, the Garania empire was now a house of cards about to topple, with several pretender armies beginning to march to the capital and peasants in several cities having overrun the local castles and proclaimed self-rule. All of the Empress’s efforts to calm down the situation had just made it worse, as the nobles refused to listen to a woman, and the peasants refused to listen to someone who’s clothes cost more gold than they’d ever see in their life.

Now, Isabella lay in a slouched position on her golden throne, the ornate crown adorned with hundreds of priceless jewels and passed down the royal family for generations sat atop her luscious blonde hair that flowed down to her shoulders. Her style of dress was far more akin to that of her father’s than that of most queens, wearing a regal shirt made of the finest silk on the planet, her coat of similar quality lying on the throne behind her as it was a hot day. Her pants stretched down to her ankles, where her feet were in sandals adorned with jewels and her nails painted purple, a sign of her status considering how rare the pigment was.

The empress had fallen into desperation, and had sent invitations to nobles not in revolt against her asking for possible solutions to the crisis the empire was facing, an invitation that was taken by a group of unmarried noblewomen to be their opportunity at remaking the empire in their vision, with the help of a particular device developed by a court scientist.

The group of six noblewomen, accompanied by a security entourage told to stand outside of the castle, entered the royal palace, its servants bowing to them as they entered the throne room, kneeling before their empress.

Isabella allowed the women to stand up and come closer in order to present their idea to her.

One of the noblewomen began to speak for the group. “Your Majesty, we are here to present just what is necessary to end the crisis this country is facing. Eleanor, please provide a demonstration to the Empress.”

The brunette on the right of the group put her hand in her bag, pulling out a device that had a similar appearance to a crossbow, except with a tiny barrel instead of the usual bolt. “What you see here your majesty, has the power to shrink down anything you can think of.” She primed the weapon, then aimed it at an end table at the side of the room. As soon as the barrel collided with the table, it became discoloured and rapidly began to shrink for a few seconds, before reaching a height of a few centimetres.

Isabella’s eyes widened, she was astonished that such a device existed and was capable of this extraordinary feat. She attempted to remain calm as she responded, “Very well, now how shall this end the strife that plagues the empire?”

“With this device, we’re capable of completely changing society in order to make sure that what caused this crisis cannot happen again. Firstly, all peasant towns and cities are to be shrunken down immensely, after all, how can peasants revolt if they don’t reach above our toenails? Of course, a few will remain at normal size to provide food for us, but their numbers won’t be large enough to stage a proper revolt.”

The woman at the front of the group continued with a smirk beginning to show on her face, “The second step is to strip all male nobles of their titles and shrink them down to the size of a mouse or so, in order to make sure that they can never claim your throne. They can serve as servants, and they’ll still be large enough to be able to impregnate a normal sized woman.”

Isabella thought that this step was far too extreme, but then she remembered all the times her opinion had been disregarded, how there were dozens of nobles in revolt against her purely because of her gender, and decided that it was probably for the best, and nodded as the noblewoman continued.

“All we need to make this a reality, is to construct this device on the scale of a siege engine in order to be able to apply it to entire towns and cities. We can’t do this with our property and workers as we need far more materials and manpower than is on our fiefs, so I implore you, your Majesty, to give us these tools.”

The Empress believed the solution to the peasant revolts provided by these women was far too extreme, for peasants to be the size of ants in comparison to the nobles, but it was either that or her head on a pike and the empire in flames, so she had no choice but to accept.

“Very well, I shall grant you what you need. Go down to the workshop and explain that I approved of your plans, and they shall provide whatever you ask for.” The group of noblewomen kneeled once more to Isabella, thanking her for her approval, before walking out of the throne room.

“I can now only hope that this will result in peace and prosperity across the empire,” Isabella thought to herself…

—————————————————————————————————————————
TWO YEARS LATER
—————————————————————————————————————————

“They were begging me for food, so I just lifted my dirty foot over them and told ‘em they could lick it off my foot, then I stamped out their little town!” The table erupted into laughter as the noblewoman in her early twenties finished her story, every woman on the table being able to relate to the horrible things bored nobles did to their defenseless tiny peasants.

The annual feast held on August 21 – the founding of the Garania Empire – was well underway, although recently the activities enjoyed at the feast had expanded to noblewomen torturing ant-sized peasants who were their legal property. Although initially Isabella wanted the rights of the newly reduced peasants to be protected, this proved not only unpopular around the noblewomen who had come to enjoy doing whatever they wanted with their peasants, but also practically unenforceable, so the empress had resorted to hoping that her subjects would be merciful towards the peasants, something which had unfortunately not happened.

Just by the entrance to the royal palace where the feast was held, a merchant girl was selling insoles with shrunken cities on them, a deal which was accepted by many nobles coming to the feast, as their feet were boiling from being in their thick riding boots on a hot summer’s day, and it felt amazing on their aching feet to have a fresh insole underfoot, as well as having hundreds of people absorbing the sweat and the satisfying sensation of peasants popping under their superior feet.

Of course, “people” wasn’t exactly the term that the attendants of the feast would use to describe the bug-sized peasants, the term “tinies” having caught on as a simple term that made sense as to what they were, after all, how can a tiny be a person when a real person can squish them in a single step? It just made more sense this way.

A woman sitting on the table threw up a tiny girl, then opened her mouth and looked up in an attempt to try and catch it. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the best reflexes and the peasant missed her mouth entirely, instead landing on the table beside her and splattering on impact. The feast’s traditional food, of lavish amounts of meat, cake, vegetables, and other delicious food had seen a new addition, that being tinies. Just a few months after the Great Shrinking, as it came to be known, a few tinies had accidentally fallen into a duchess’ meal, but she had found the taste to be much better than the meal usually was, and made sure to tell all her friends about it, who then told all of theirs, and by next year tinies had become a staple of a noblewoman’s diet.

At the head of the grand table in the front of the room lay Isabella, who despite the festive mood at the feast was reminiscing about this day 3 years ago, before she became Empress. She had sneaked away from the feast and rode down to a peasants’ town just a few miles away, where their own celebrations were occurring, as the day was a national holiday for every person within the borders of Garania. She was received with a warm welcome, and stayed for a few hours enjoying the mood at the town, everyone singing along around a campfire in the middle of the town, recalling stories of mythical exploits. Late in that night, she had grabbed the hand of a cute baker’s son around her age and they kissed behind the granary, the only watching eye being the moonlight.

Of course, the town, the festive peasants, and the boy who she had given her first kiss to were most likely long gone, turned to grime by the toes of one of Isabella’s vassals. The noblewoman that had done the act had probably forgotten the next day, the hundreds of people, all with their own dreams, ambitions, and loved ones all being wiped out and forgotten, purely because a woman liked the feeling of stamping out a little town under her delicate foot.

It was in the history books that Isabella had saved the empire from collapsing, every noblewoman in the palace adored her, bestowing great gifts to the Empress as a sign of their gratitude. Despite the adoration that she held across the entire empire, Isabella was melancholic that this had become of the nation she loved, its once proud citizens being seen as less than even pets, as nothing but property for a group of nobles whose only values seemed to be whatever was more pleasurable for them, not caring in the slightest about whether it was right to turn good, innocent people into tiny stains.

Beneath the table, dozens of peasants were beneath Isabella’s royal toenails, cleaning up the grime that had accumulated there with their tongues. They had been a gift to the Empress, and she didn’t want to seem rude by rejecting it, so the noblewoman who gave her the gift commanded her servant to put them under Her Majesty’s toenails. Isabella supposed she would take them out after the feast, as she didn’t want to seem dirty by touching her feet while eating.

“Michael! Hang on, please!” A peasant yelled to her husband, who was barely hanging on to a groove on Isabella’s big toe. However, the surface had become difficult to hang on to as the day grew even hotter, causing Isabella’s feet to sweat even more. Finally, a drop of sweat landed directly on Michael, causing him to lose his grip and fall down to Isabella’s sandals, where her toe loomed overhead. The man began praying to every god he knew of, and eventually prayed even to the Empress herself to have mercy. Of course, it was not a matter of mercy when Isabella shifted her foot unconsciously, bringing down her royal toe down onto Michael, squashing him instantly.

The peasant woman still on her toe began to weep. The only thing that had made her new life bearable was her husband, who made sure to care for her even now, giving her strength to withstand the smell, the grime, and the humiliation of having to clean the bottom of someone’s toenails. Now that he was gone, she had truly lost everything she once held dear.