Water dripped onto Honda’s head from a leak in the ceiling. She shuttered and shook, as she did every time the water fell on her silky red hair. The other members of the guild didn’t notice she was getting dripped on, all except for one of the member’s whose name Honda didn’t know yet—a silver haired thief— who seemed to enjoy watching Honda squirm every time the water hit her.

The other members were all giants compared to Honda, who only came at 4 foot 2 whereas the tallest member of the group was a staggering 14 foot goliath. Honda felt like a midget compared to the rest of the group, and felt more like a small pet than an actual member. She was only able to join the guild because of their desperate need for more mages, since they seem to run through mages a lot faster than the other classes. 

Much like in her height, Honda had a lot of trouble measuring up to the other mages in her guild. She had the lowest mana out of any of them, unable to even perform a basic healing spell for injured fighters. She couldn’t defend herself against other’s magics either, as doing so would completely drain her mana and render her unable to perform anything else. For all intensive purposes, Honda was a useless member, but yet the silver haired thief hadn’t taken her eyes off her.

“Let’s get down to business.” A red tiefling standing in the front of the speakeasy said. A hush fell over the crowd. “We received word from the party out in Westbrow. They need reinforcements to defend against an invading group of orcs. Any heads want in?” Several hands went up, and the speaker chose an elfling and deemed him party leader. He then proceeded to pick out a number of people in the room to join him.

The tiefling continued with his announcements, offering up several quests that came in that morning from the governor. Several minutes passed when a peach hand shot up from the crowd. It was the silvered hair thief. 

“Yes, Saki?” The tiefling said, stopping mid sentence. 

The silver haired thief, whose name was apparently Saki, pointed in Honda’s direction. “We need somebody to fix the hole in the roof. Rain water has been ripping on the dwarf over there for an hour now.”

Honda’s face turned red as the entire room turned to her, another drop of water splashing her hair. Honda looked nothing like a dwarf other than her small height. Where dwarfs were round and covered in sprouts of hair, Honda was thin and clean shaven save for her long red hair. Saki must’ve known Honda was a human and was making fun of her height. 

“I’ll get somebody right on it.” The tiefling said. Saki smirked. 

Honda was happy that somebody was looking out for her, but her shy nature made her hate being the center of attention. She would’ve rather Saki asked the tiefling later in privacy, but at least she wouldn’t have to go through this again. 

As time passed, the tiefling continued to speak. The thief stopped looking towards Honda after the leak was fixed, no longer finding her amusing. After another half an hour, the moment Honda was waiting for was finally upon her.

“Now, today is recruitment day. As many of you already know, we have some 15 new members today. Party heads will be able to interview the recruits after the meeting and choose to induct them into their parties. But before then—”

Saki’s hand shot up again. The tiefling, who looked annoyed, called on her. “I want the gross looking dwarf in my party.” She said, “The one with the wet red hair that looks like she doesn’t want to be here.” 

The whole room turned towards Honda again. Saki wanted her in her party? But they had only just met, and she didn’t know anything about her. Would Saki regret her choice when she finds out just how unpowerful Honda was? 

With a sigh, the tiefling okayed the decision. Honda was officially a member of Saki’s party. “Good luck with that one.” A pale man whispered next to Honda. Honda wanted to ask what he meant, but she didn’t have the courage to speak up. Not after being embarrassed twice. 

“She likes somebody in her party to tease and push around.” The man said as if reading Honda’s mind. “She’ll protect you, but you’ll be her punching bag to bully on missions. Honestly, you would’ve been better off not having a party at all and changing to a supporting class.” 

Honda’s heart was racing. She was excited to be picked first by Saki—who she learned was a very high ranking member of the guild being their best power house— but was it worth the hassle she was going to be put through? Maybe the man was over exaggerating, and she’d be fine. 

The next thing Honda knew, the meeting was over, and Saki was approaching her. Every instinct in her small body was telling her to run away and that this woman meant trouble, but she said put. 

“You’re with me, runt.” Saki said with a smile. Saki grabbed Honda by one of her pigtails and lifted her up. Honda squirmed, trying to not have her hair ripped out of her body. “You really are a small thing. You won’t be much help to me, but you’re better than nothing.”

Honda fell on her ass. The fall was almost twice her height. “Th-thank you for picking me, Miss.”

Saki waved her hand. “No need to call me Miss, call me Saki. Or goddess, up to you.” Honda couldn’t tell if she was joking about being called goddess. “If you can, drag yourself up and follow me back to my room. We have to talk about our first mission. We’ll be setting out tonight, it’ll take two days to get to Eldomond.” With that, Saki was gone. Honda tried her best to follow her back to her room, but her size made it hard and she almost got lost.

Back in Saki’s room, she told Honda all about a cohort of goblins that has been terrorizing a local village just outside of the town they resided in. They would begin to travel as soon as their travel bags had been packed, which only took an hour to do—20 minutes for Honda to pack her bag and an extra twenty for Honda to pack Saki’s. Saki had made it very clear that she intended to use Honda as a pack mule, so Honda made sure not to pack more than needed.

At exactly 20 hours, the two began traveling. Most parties had at least 5 members apart from them, but Saki was so powerful that she didn’t need any help at all other than a helpless thing to belittle and make carry her things.

“Make sure you use your steps to wipe away my boot prints in the mud, I don’t need people knowing where I’m headed.” Saki ordered, never once looking behind at Honda, who was dreading three meters behind. Honda’s knees buckled and shook as she carried the two enormous bags on her back. Honda didn’t like the idea of following this order, but if she pleased Saki then she had a better shot of moving up the ranks. So, she swiped her small foot against the deep imprint until it was smooth. 

Honda had fallen over 13 times over the next two hours of walking. Each time she did, Saki scolded her for it. “I don’t know why I even picked you.” She screamed. “Not when there was a perfectly good lump of shit waiting in the bathroom stool.” Honda wanted to cry, but she bit her tongue to stop herself. 

After another half hour walk, Saki stopped in the middle of a clearing in the woods. “We’ll stop here for the night.” With a sigh of relief, Honda dropped both of the bags on her shoulder. Saki turned to her. “Honda, reach into my bag and pull out the firewood I told you to pack.”

Honda’s face dropped. “Um… I hadn’t packed it, ma’am. See, I wanted to make it light.”

Saki’s face reeked of something angry. She yelled at Honda worse than she ever had before. “You low life rat! I gave your worthless ass one job and you couldn’t do it. You’d save everybody a lot of trouble if you quit being a mage and became some street whore. At least then you wouldn’t have to worry about being fed, and you could actually be of use to somebody.” Saki raised her hand and slapped Honda right across the face. Honda fell to the mud below, ruining her clothes. “Go into the forest and fetch us some wood.”

“But ma’am.” Honda rose up, wiping the mud off her face. “I don’t have an ax in my bag.” 

“You’re a mage, aren’t you?” Saki asked. “Use magic to get the wood.”

“Yes ma’am!” Honda rushed into the forest. She got far enough away to where she didn’t have to worry about the tree falling on anybody. But the question still remained; how would she cut the tree down? It seemed impossible, given how little mana she had she couldn’t perform a spell strong enough to cut through the tree. 

As she stood in front of one of the smaller trees, she realized how problematic cutting down the tree would be, especially only for a couple logs. “Aha!” She cheered. She’d use a spell that would remove the bark from the tree. That way she could collect all of it without actually cutting the tree down. 

Honda extended an arm and chanted her spell. “Remetovo!” Sparks flew out of her hand and onto the tree. Suddenly, the bark of the tree started sliding off and onto the ground. Honda cheered in glee, but didn’t expect what was to happen next. 

Instead of lying limpless on the floor, the wood started creeping forward and up Honda’s leg. She shouted, trying to kick and push the bark off of her, but it was surrounding her. No, not just surrounding her. It was clinging to her skin like it once did to the tree, modeling into her. 

Honda was panicking. Did she mess up the spell somehow? The wood was sticking to her, there was no way of getting it off. “I need to use another spell.” She tried thinking of a spell to use. She could feel how little mana she had left, so she couldn’t use any spells to destroy it without resting first, something that wasn’t possible. She couldn’t inflate it, since she feared that would cause it to crush her.

What if she shrunk it instead! That way, it would get too small to hurt her. It was already up to her chest, and if she waited any longer to cast a spell her mouth and arms would be swallowed by the wood. So she raised her hand in the air, the wood quickly freezing it in place by closing around her shoulder. 

Honda shouted, “Reduce!” And with that, the wood started shrinking, and with terror in her heart, so did Honda. She screamed as the wood covered her face. She was swallowed entirely by the wood as they both shrank. 

Within a minute, she was only 5 inches tall, not much distinguishable from a small wooden nutcracker doll. Rain started pouring down from above, thickening the dirt that Honda laid in and changed it to mud. She couldn’t move, but she could still think and speak freely, though her voice was squeaky. 

An entire hour passed before she heard footsteps approaching. Her backside was completely submerged in mud, and her front side would soon be next. She only hoped that whoever it was that was approaching her would see her, but that hope quickly vanished as the underside of a large muddy leather boot appeared overhead.

The giant boot crashed down on the wooden doll girl, completely burying her in the mud. The pressure was great, and even though Honda was made of wood, she could feel the bark she was making threatening to crack. “Huh?” A familiar voice from above said. She must’ve felt something under her foot, because she started twisting it back and forth, further grounding Honda into the dirt below. 

The boot raised a few times just to crash back down before it was completely removed. Honda couldn’t move her arms to remove the mud from her eyes, but through the cracks in her vision she could make out the silver hair of the rogue she came here with. “Sa…ki.” Honda moaned out. 

The giant peered down to get a better look at the doll below. “I should’ve known that was you, pack mule. Only you could’ve screwed up getting wood so badly.” A pale hand came reaching down for Honda, digging into the mud to pick her up. “Uck, you’re disgusting.” Saki brought her middle finger and thumb forward to flick Honda three times in her wooden chest. “That explains where the tree bark went. I guess this situation is my fault, though, for trusting someone so useless with something so easy. C’mon, let's get back to the tent.”

Saki walked back with Honda gripped tightly in her hand. As the rain fell it washed away the mud covering Honda's body, and the tiny doll actually discovered some mobility she had. Her joints worked like normal— she could swing her legs, bend her arms and even wave her fingers around. As she tilted her head side to side, she finally took in what it meant to be this small. She was used to looking up at people, but being the size of a doll in a giant’s hand was a different experience. It was nothing like being next to a goliath or orc— although Honda hated the thought of what that might feel like at her current size— no, being in the hands of a fellow human was a lot more… humiliating.