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.