Alear tried his best to stay awake, but there was only so much he could do at his pitiful size. It wasn't long before the vast forces he experienced, stuck on the tip of Veyle's toe, proved too much for him to handle and made him lose consciousness. So he remained while the mind-controlled girl tended to her duties around the castle, following her father's wishes to prepare everything for his conquest. But she could only work for a few hours before the need for sleep overtook her, a product of the spell that was put on her and her better self's resistance to it.
A pair of guards accompanied her to her room and stood sentry at the door as she entered, to ensure her better self couldn't escape before the spell was cast on her once again. Then, once she was inside, the wicked Veyle lay on her bed with a yawn, settling down on the soft quilt. Before falling asleep, she looked down to her toe, where her pathetic speck of a brother still clung to his miserable life, and smiled, wiggling her toes to rouse him.
“Wake up, brother dear~. Don't you want to meet your sister? She'll be waking up soon, and I know she'll want to see you as much as you wish to see her. I wonder though, even if she does see you, will she even recognize you as her brother, or will she see only the puny little flea you are now and crush you like a bug?” Veyle chuckled, rocking Alear's world with another wiggle of her toes. Of course, even getting her attention wouldn't do him any good, but she wasn't about to ruin that little surprise; better to let him keep his hopes alive for now; that would make his future despair all the sweeter.
“Night night, my poor, pathetic brother. See you later... or not!” With a yawn, Veyle shut her eyes and fell asleep, leaving Alear to his fate.
While the divine dragon sensed some sort of trap in this, he knew he didn't have a choice but to try getting his sister's attention. He started struggling against the dried spit that bound him to her skin, trying with all his might to break free of it, but even after so long its hold on his body was more than he could truly challenge in his pathetic state. It was only when Veyle's toes started twitching in her sleep that he could make a bit of progress, as the shifting of her skin with each little movement slowly loosened the hold it had on him. Then, freeing his limbs one by one, he managed finally to extract himself from her skin.
Carefully he stood and climbed towards her toenail, until he reached the very tip of her toe, from where he could look out at her peacefully sleeping figure stretched out before him, taking in the mile-long trek that awaited him if he was to reach her head.
All told it wasn't that long a journey. He could finish it in twenty minutes at most if all went well. But that was the catch: if all went well. At his size he was so fragile and helpless, any little thing might spell the end of him. Why, Veyle had only to roll over right now and she could kill him even as she slept, crushing him between her toe and the bed. Her evil self was right; he really was nothing but a flea. Even if he survived the journey, was there really any chance of her recognizing him when she woke up? There was only one way to find out.
Striding forward, Alear hopped over Veyle's toenail and climbed down her foot to begin his journey over her body. Though he was ready the entire time to run or hop off if it ever looked like she was about to crush him, in the end she slept so peacefully that he was never given cause for alarm; she stirred a bit when he was crossing her belly, but nothing more.
In less than fifteen minutes Alear had crossed the greater part of her body and now climbed up the gentle slope of her chest. Reaching the peak, he saw her resting face lying before him, turned down ever so slightly by the pillow it rested on. He was nearly at his destination now; just a little further and he would be at her head; from there he meant to climb into her ears and call to her in the hopes that she might hear him. If that didn't work then... he'd just have to come up with something else. He couldn't afford to give up now, not when so much was at stake.
He continued on his way, beginning the journey down the other side of Veyle's chest. But he hadn't gotten far when he heard her sigh and saw her turn her head. Then, at last, she blinked her eyes open, and slowly looked around the room.
Alear's heart nearly jumped out of his chest. This might be the chance he was waiting for! He put his hands around his mouth and shouted at his sister, hoping that by some miracle the sounds might make it to her, even if she couldn't make out his words. Then he started desperately waving his arms, thinking it might catch her eye as she was looking around. But he had no such luck. Her eyes passed right over him and then turned elsewhere, missing him completely. Still, he didn't let that discourage him and he kept shouting and waving until her sigh put an end to that.
The rise of her chest as she breathed in deep came so suddenly that it forced Alear to his knees. Then she let it all out. Her breath rippled around him, threatening to tear him from his sister, but Alear held on tight to her dress. He was still clinging to it when she sat up in bed, bringing to him a massive upheaval as it seemed like the whole world had been turned on its side.
Blissfully unaware of her brother's plight, Veyle hopped out of bed. Her breasts bounced gently, swinging him violently up and down, as she made her way to the window There she peered out into the surrounding snowy landscape, looking for... what? Alear and his party? Slim chance she'd find them in this direction. Still, she looked just in case, keeping alive the hope that they might come to rescue her soon. “Oh, Alear, where are you?” she muttered, never suspecting just how close he was. If she had only looked closely at her own chest she could have found him struggling to hold on through her walking and her breathing.
Alear could feel his grip growing weaker with each passing second, loosened by each violent bounce of his sister's chest. Out of sheer desperation he tried shouting to her again, even knowing there was almost no chance of her hearing him. And indeed she still hadn't heard him when she took another step and the movement of her breasts flung him right off. Once in the air, the subtle air currents inside her room caught him and blew him off course, sending him away from Veyle until he came to land near the center of her room. The fall left him winded, but thanks to his minuscule weight he was unharmed by the landing. Still, that was far from the only danger.
As soon as Alear could move again he hurried to pick himself up, but it was already too late. The potent tremors accompanying Veyle's footsteps shook his world so violently that he would have struggled to keep his balance even if he weren't still recovering from the fall. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw her enormous feet swinging as she slowly paced around the room, each new impact bringing her closer and closer until her foot appeared above him, her vast sole spanning the entire sky.
His end had come, or so it seemed. But when her foot fell with a thunderous boom, easily overpowering the sound of his pathetic scream, he was shocked to find that he survived. His body was pinned under Veyle's foot, but in a spot where almost no pressure was being applied. He was lucky; had she stepped even a fraction of an inch closer he would have been reduced to a tiny red spot on her sole, and even that would have been wiped away by her next few steps, leaving no trace of his existence behind. In fact, such a fate might still befall him if her foot moved just a bit. But after a few seconds she stepped away, leaving him shaking uncontrollably on the floor.
“You're not out of danger yet; get up and get moving!” he said to himself, forcing himself to his feet once Veyle had walked to the other end of the room. Wasting no time, he ran towards her bed, aiming to hide under it for as long as necessary. But soon Veyle was coming back. He ran until the tremors arising from her footsteps let him run no more, then, when he saw her foot heading right towards him, he threw himself on the ground again, hoping that lightning might strike twice.
But this time Veyle's foot stopped short of him, her toes coming down just an inch away. The shockwave of her step sent him rolling back another inch, and when he stopped he looked up and saw her other foot swinging right past him to come down on the other side. Then she turned around and sat on the edge of her bed, sighing and resting her head on her hand.
Veyle then pulled her feet back, leaving both of them resting together on the floor right in front of Alear, her toes all towering over him and rattling him as they drummed on the ground. Terrified, the tiny insect at her feet turned to flee, but he had only run a few steps before he turned back around, looking thoughtfully up at his sister, then down at her toes. He recalled how the evil Veyle had toyed with him and his group earlier, and how she had pointed out to them the most sensitive part of her foot. She said she could feel it when he attacked her there, too. Would her good self feel it now?
Alear cautiously approached that sensitive spot, between the two smallest toes of her left foot. He stood before those toes, waiting for them to quit moving so he could safely go in, but it seemed like they would never stop drumming. In the end he went in anyways, knowing he had to make his move while her foot was still within reach—he might never again get another chance as good as this.
Watching her toes closely to know where it was safe to cross, he planned out his path and ran through. Then, reaching her skin, he pulled out his sword and ran directly at her, piercing her skin with one great thrust.
Instantly Veyle jerked back her foot, yanking the hilt from Alear's hands and sending him rolling after it. She looked down, frowning, and reached down to her foot, scratching her minute wound and easily prying out the sword with her fingernail without even noticing that's what it was. Then her eyes were drawn to a tiny figure she saw moving at her feet, a figure she assumed must have been the bug responsible for stinging her. And so, while Alear waved at his sister, Veyle lifted her foot with the full intent to crush him like a bug, never suspecting the puny insect she saw beneath her was in reality her own brother.
Seeing the killing intent in her eyes, Alear started running away in terror of her foot. But, after the initial bit of pain had faded, her feelings softened as she took pity on this miserable insect which had somehow ended up in her room.
“Poor little thing,” she said, gently setting her foot back down. “All alone in this big old castle, just like me. Far from friends and family, without anyone to take care of you. You must be so scared right now isn't that so?”
The sweet tones of his sister's voice soothed Alear's fear, and he stopped running to look back up at her. Even thinking him a bug, she looked at him with such kindness in her eyes that at once he felt safer just being in her presence. Any moment now, she would come in for a closer look and realize who he was. Then this horrible nightmare would finally end.
Veyle slid off her bed, going down on her knees above the little bug. She reached down, fencing the little thing in with her fingers so that no matter where it turned it was forced to climb on them. Sure enough, after a little while, it climbed on her finger and she carefully lifted it up and dropped it on her open palm.
It was a strange-looking bug, unlike anything she had seen before, and Veyle thought to get a closer look at it. But when she leaned in, something bizarre happened. The little bug just... disappeared. One moment it was there, then no trace of it could be seen. Veyle blinked in surprise. Had it jumped away so fast that she hadn't even seen it move? Had something blown it away? “Did I just imagine it?”
As it turned out, none of those things was the case. Alear was still on her palm, but now he stood even smaller than before. It had happened with a flash of magic. One second he had been looking up at his sister, anticipating his rescue, and the next he was left standing atop one of countless mountain chains that stretched all around him off to the horizon, as far as his eye could see—a vast landscape made up of the grooves and wrinkles of Veyle's palm, now so immense next to him that it alone was like a whole world.
And above him was her face, her eyes searching the land for him, but failing to see anything; he was so small that he was totally invisible to his sister, and no amount of searching could have ever revealed him to her eyes.
Alear felt his heart sink in despair. He had been so close to being rescued, maybe even to rescuing his sister, but just like that his golden opportunity had been ripped away, and everything seemed more hopeless than ever before. If he had struggled so much to get her attention as a bug, how would she ever notice him now that he was a mere germ on her endless landscape of a body? She was as far above him as the stars were from the Earth, her body big enough to be his whole world; he might as well not even exist as far as she was concerned.
The divine dragon was doing his best not to lose his hope, racking his brain for any idea on how this might still be salvageable, but all his thoughts ceased as Veyle turned over her hand and filled him with fear. While looking for the little “bug” on the back of her hand, Veyle sent her brother falling off her palm, falling until he was picked up by a gentle air current and then sent flying along with so many other specks of dust floating in the air with him.
The air spun him around and around, sent him flying this way and that, soon leaving him so dizzy that he was about to be sick. Yet he held it in, and after a while he landed on the floor right between a pair of Veyle's toes.
The atmosphere down there was oppressive, dominated by the smell, the warmth, and the humidity of Veyle's feet, while the land constantly trembled with even the slightest shift of her toes. Alear stared in terror at those titanic digits towering above him, each one a miniature world all on its own next to his pathetic self. It boggled his mind to think of how utterly insignificant he was now next to his sister that even the tiny droplets of sweat gathered in the pores of her skin were to him like great lakes he could all too easily drown in. Standing in the presence of such power, such overwhelming immensity, his mind went blank as it tried its bet to come to terms with what he was seeing. And so he didn't notice that someone had entered the room until Veyle gasped and pulled her feet away, bringing them up on the bed with her. “Zephia,” she said, looking across at the tall, horned woman standing in the doorway.
“Is something wrong, Lady Veyle? You look so pale. Don't tell me you've become frightened of your loyal hound,” the mage dragon said, striding towards the young woman's bed. Alear turned around to look at her imposing coming closer and closer, each step she took producing a deafening CLACK as her heels struck the floor and shaking his diminutive world with cataclysmic intensity. Soon things were shaking so badly that Alear was bouncing helplessly on the floor, as she walked, and eventually he ended up inside of a tiny pit on the floor, something so small it would have been invisible to the naked eye.
It was just then that his world was immersed in shadow and, looking to the sky, he saw the endless sole of Zephia's black heels filling the sky. In less than a second, that dark and dusty sky had fallen on him with what seemed like enough power to split the world in half. Everything shook so much he that it seemed the end of the world. He survived, tucked away in that tiny little nook, but he nearly passed out, and the sound and the shaking were both so intense that they left him numb and deaf for a long time.
The first thing Alear heard once his ears had started to recover was the sound of his sister's voice. Only, by the way she spoke, it wasn't the real her at all; Zephia had put her back under her spell.
“Thank you for this wonderful gift, Zephia. I must make sure to reward you for it later.”
“Thank you, Lady Veyle, but serving you is reward enough. And, as for your father's request...”
“My foolish brother and his followers have all been dealt with. They will never trouble us again. There's just one more tiny little detail I have to see to, to ensure his punishment is complete.”
“As you say, Lady Veyle. I'll go share the news with him right away.” Zephia turned and exited the room, finally letting Alear see again. And once the door closed behind her, Alear found himself surrounded by magical energies and in the blink of an eye was whisked away from the floor, back onto that pinkish landscape of valleys and mountain ranges he had been in just a few minutes ago.
“There you are, my pathetic little brother.” Veyle's voice was so loud, Alear had to cover his ears to keep them from bursting. Wincing from the pain, he looked up and saw her face hanging in the sky. The color of her eyes had changed back to the red of her evil self again, but there was another change that caught his attention now: atop her head sat a strange helmet, shaped in the style of four wickedly curved horns.
“Have you noticed Zephia's gift yet?” Veyle said, reaching up to stroke one of the horns. “It suits me, don't you think? Such lovely shades of black and red. But you know, it's not only for decoration. Thanks to this helmet I can keep my weaker self at bay forever. That's right; you'll never see that girl again! Did you manage to say hello to her one last time, I wonder, or were you too pathetic to manage even that? Oh, and about your new size; the curse that shrank you and your companions isn't merely a one-time affair. It will keep shrinking you smaller and smaller, again and again, for as long as you still survive. Do you think you're small now, brother? Just you wait until you shrink again in a few hours; then you'll be wishing you could have stayed at this size forever.
“A harsh punishment, but it's no less than you deserve for betraying our father. Still, you are my brother, fool and traitor that you may be, so I will show you a bit of mercy.” Veyle pointed a finger at Alear, and her magic enveloped him. He could feel it taking effect, changing his body somehow, but he couldn't tell what exactly was different about him. “Do you want to know what that spell did? I bet you're curious, aren't you? Why don't I show you?”
With her magic, Veyle first immobilized Alear, then moved him back to the floor, where he lay helplessly looking up at the ceiling. He could feel his heart beating frantically against his chest as Veyle appeared in his field of view, standing tall and looking smugly at him from the infinite height that separated her from him. Then her foot came to hang over him, her toes wiggling playfully in the sky. Then, with a smile, she brought her foot down with a powerful stomp, instantly flattening him under her sole.
But though his body was crushed, Alear remained alive. Alive and in mind-breaking pain, as though he could feel every atom in his body howling while he was ground to a microscopic stain on Veyle's endless sole, spread out across miles of her skin as she slid her foot forward. Then, the moment she raised her foot, the pain ceased and remains of his body came together again, leaving him gasping as he lay stuck to the sole of his sister's foot, deep inside a tiny wrinkle in her skin.
“Now do you understand my blessing?” As Veyle spoke, she scrunched her foot, and the two vast walls of her skin to either side of Alear came together to crush shim as her wrinkle closed up. Again he was ground to nothingness, and again he came back as soon as Veyle relaxed her foot. “For as long as I live, you can never die. You will spend the rest of your life with your dear, beloved sister, as an ever-shrinking nothing on the sole of my foot. Isn't that wonderful, brother? You and I, together forever, as siblings should be. Even when you get too small for me to find you with my magic, I'll find comfort in knowing that you're with me—lost in the infinitesimal wrinkles of my foot. You're resent me for it at first, but in time, your puny mind will break and you'll silently thank me for this gift, maybe even worship me as the Goddess I am while you explore the endless world of my foot.”
Alear couldn't believe what he was hearing. He didn't want to believe it. It was a nightmare, the worst he ever had. Any moment now he would surely awaken back at camp with all his companions still alive. Right?
Then Veyle scrunched her foot again and all his illusions were crushed as painfully as his body. Unlike his body, though, they would never recover from the blow.
Veyle spent a long time torturing her brother, grinding him painfully between the folds of her skin, time and time again. She could have spent all day toying with him, but she still had other matters to attend to. And so, to close things up, she turned her foot around and touched her lips to her sole, crushing Alear under the oppressive weight of her kiss.
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
A Fire Emblem Engage story. After suffering at the mercy of Veyle's evil side, Alear has an opportunity to get help from her good self. Will he succeed, or be mistaken for a bug? Sequel to the Veyle's Shrunken Victims chapter earlier in this collection.
RATING: PG
TAGS: F/m, Nano, Feet, Fantasy, Unaware, Body exploration
RATING: PG
TAGS: F/m, Nano, Feet, Fantasy, Unaware, Body exploration