After another hour of flying he was starting to wonder how much longer he had left when he looked down and saw a small house in the middle of the woods. It looked like something out of a fairy tale and seemed very appealing to him for a reason he couldn’t understand. He paused to hover over it and focused on the place to see what it was he found so interesting but could find nothing so he decided to float down a little closer to get a better look. He descended faster than he expected and before he knew it he was hovering right in front of the door.
“That’s weird”, he thought, “I don’t remember coming down so far” when he was suddenly surrounded by a circle of light. He tried to turn around and leave but the light was like a wall that he couldn’t break through. Thinking quickly, he grabbed one of his shoes and used the spell he knew to transform it into a hammer, this time not forgetting to make it steel, and swung it with all his might but it just bounced off. He tried again but this time it disintegrated after bouncing off. At this point he also noticed that his clothes were dissolving into nothing and he was slowly dropping to the ground where he landed on what he had initially mistaken for a welcome mat but now realized was a large piece of wood nailed into the cement covered in runes. He couldn’t read them exactly but he knew what they meant, he was caught in a trap that was negating all of his magic. For a moment he thought that maybe this field would cancel the other magic that turned him into a fairy and waited to see if he was turning back but when nothing happened he did all he could do and tried banging on the walls with his tiny fists but to no avail.
Just when he was about to give up hope, the door opened and he got his first encounter with a human since he had been shrunk and turned into a fairy. She was massive, he tried to tell how tall she was but from his perspective it was impossible. She was wearing a robe with a hood over her face so he couldn’t see much, the only clue he had about who she was were her feet. Judging by how narrow and slender they were, even at the overblown size he was seeing them at, he figured she was a woman but couldn’t really be sure and that didn’t give him much to work with anyway. All he really knew was that without help he was at her mercy.
Cassy turned around just in time to see Carl drop down toward the house he spotted and immediately knew she had to hurry. Pushing herself to her limit she rushed down to him but only managed to get there just as the dispel field went up. She tried breaking the wall and calling for him but it seemed like whatever was blocking the magic was also blocking his view of the outside world. She watched his futile attempts to escape but was powerless to help. She started to cry, knowing there was no way she could get to him now but if she could go get others they could come back and figure out what to do. For now, she had to hope he’d be able to stay safe. Before she took flight she scanned the area until she found a snake slithering a few yards away. She rushed over to him and asked,
“Please! I need your help. Can you deliver a message to the fairy trapped in that house?”
The snake looked toward where she was pointing and said,
“Are you serious? Do you know what lives in there? She’d skin me and use my organs for potions” but when he saw the look on the ugly creature’s face he felt bad and with a sigh said,
“Fine, I’ll see what I can do. What’s the message?”
“Tell hi…” she decided not to confuse the snake and corrected herself, “tell her Cassy is coming back with help and she needs to just stay calm and wait for a little while”
The snake nodded and slithered off as she flew away faster than she had ever flown to get help.
Carl tried to fend off the giant hand that reached for him but it was no use, she was much too strong for him and without any magic he was defenseless. And, he also realized, even with magic he didn’t really know too many spells that could help him fight a giantess like he was facing right now. He shuddered as the massive fingers wrapped around, far more tightly than they needed to for someone his size making it a struggle to breathe. Without a word the giantess lifted Carl up and carried him inside where she walked down a hallway and into a room that looked like a mix between a modern laboratory and a medieval alchemy lab (or what he imagined one would look like since his only experience with them was in movies and TV shows). Still not having said one thing to him or even acknowledged his presence other than coming out to collect him, she walked over to small metal platform with leather straps small enough for someone his size and placed him lying face up in the middle. She then held him down with two fingers that he was unable to budge no matter how much he struggled, like so many things this made him painfully aware of his new size and lack of strength only this was the first time those things scared him, and with her free hand fastened one strap on each hand and foot then lowered a glass dome over it and walked away out of his sight.
He tried to get a look at his surroundings to see of there was anything he could possibly use in the event he managed to break free but all he could see were shelves with bottles and unrecognizable equipment along the walls. Cassy didn’t say how good fairies hearing was but on his flight he noticed he could hear things that sounded further than he was used to so he decided to focus on that and see if he could maybe hear anything useful.
Closing his eyes he managed to slow his breathing and began to listen closely. He could hear the giant woman’s steps as she walked around the room with the occasional flip of a switch or press of a button but nothing that helped. Focusing more he could hear what sounded like many legs scurrying in the walls accompanied by voices that were saying,
What sounded like an older English woman whispering, “Oh dear, she has another one. I hope she at least lets treats this one better than the other, the poor thing’s been through so much” followed by a gruff sounding male voice with an accent he couldn’t quite place saying,
“Hush, you know she doesn’t like us nosing around. Just stick to the path she agreed we can use and be on our way” followed by a sigh from the female voice and the legs moving faster as they went away and out his range.
This filled him with a small bit of hope. He didn’t know what he was just listening to but at least they sounded friendly to some degree. He made a mental note to try and reach them when he could. He was also curious about what they meant by ‘other one’ and when he listened further he could hear a light sobbing coming from the edge of his hearing range. That must be who they were referring to. Did they mean another fairy? Did this giant psycho have more than one of them in this trap?
His thoughts were interrupted when the metal he was lying on began to heat up and emit a high pitched hum. Before he could even start to wonder what that he was he felt a strong electric shock through his whole body, enough to make him convulse and scream out in pain, a sound that reminded me how high his voice was now. He didn’t know how long the shock went on but it felt like like several minutes. When it subsided he lay there breathing heavily and covered in sweat. He was on the verge of unconsciousness but managed to will himself to stay conscious. Looking at his body he saw that a white mist was rising from every pore and collecting toward the top of the dome. Once it was all gathered there a panel slid open and it was sucked up into a tube where he watched it move up and out of his sight. He tried to follow where it went but found he was too weak to see very well and his heart was beating so fast it was all he could hear.
After a few more minutes the glass lifted and the giant face of his captor appeared over him. After her immense size, the first thing he noticed about her was how young she looked. She couldn’t have been more than 25, probably younger. Going off of what he had seen of the house and the look of this lab he expected an old hag, something like a traditional witch, so he was taken aback by the youthful face now looking down on him. She was quite attractive, definitely the kind of woman he would consider his type were circumstances much different, he always had a thing for glasses on women, she was not at all what he was expecting to see. Then she did something that he wasn’t expecting, she smiled and greeted him,
“Wow, you’re a small one. But no matter, you’ll do for my purposes anyway. You’re going to be spending a lot of time here but if you cooperate I promise I’ll try to make it as painless as I can” she said in a very pleasant and almost welcoming tone. If he had been his usual self he would have seen this girl as a cute shy nerd, now he saw her as a terrifying monster who held his life in his hands and for some reason was being nice now? When she saw how confused he looked she added with a slightly less pleasant tone,
“I said I’d TRY to make it painless. I’m told the extraction still hurts, just be grateful you aren’t your little friend in the other room. She had to go through the prototypes”, he winced as she lowered her face closer to him until it was all that filled his vision, and inhaled,
“Mmm! You smell even better than her, like a sugar cookie! I’ll have to try you out after you’ve recovered. But for now” she began to unfasten his restraints which he took as his opportunity to make a run for it. Focusing on the strap she had just removed he began the chant and concentrated on making it into a weapon only to realize nothing was happening. He tried again but still nothing. Lucky for him she didn’t seem to be noticing as she unfastened the others and when he was free he tried to fly up and away from her, he’d figure out where once he was out of her reach, but found that although his wings moved, he didn’t get more than a few inches of his scale off the ground before dropping. While he was wondering what was happening he was once again grabbed in the giant hand and brought up to the face.
“You silly little thing”, she said with an evil smirk, “I thought you could tell that this whole house has your magic restricted. All you can manage are your simple healing spells” her smirk became a large menacing smile as she continued, “which you should be thankful for because you’re going to need it to take care of this” then she reached up with her free hand and grasping the tip of one of his wings, folded it between her fingers until he heard a snap and was blinded with agony unlike he had ever felt. This time he didn’t fight the darkness and let his mind drift off.
He woke lying on his stomach in what he soon realized was a pile of cotton balls. He tried to roll over onto his back to sit up but the pain made him stop halfway so he instead rose to his knees and with some effort managed to stand from a kneeling position. Scanning his surroundings he saw that he was in a glass fish tank, like everything else it was hard to judge the size of anything but he guess it was a 20 gallon tank. The ‘floor’ was covered in wood shavings that were rough on his feet and felt like he could get a splinter any moment so he walked carefully as he surveyed his prison. Looking up there was a large light shining down on him and most of the area, in the center of the tank there was a rock. Other than that it was empty for except for the far corner where he saw another fairy, likely the one he had heard earlier, cowering in the corner but watching him closely. As he approached her the sharp wood kept cutting his feet but not enough to draw blood, just enough to be annoying, making him miss the use of his wings more than ever. Slowing his pace, he started to feel the sharp pain from the broken wing and stopped at the rock to catch his breath. Upon sitting on it he could feel warmth and he realized this was a heating rock that you’d find in a reptile tank. This made him realize that everything he was seeing in this ‘room’ was something you’d find in a pet store and he felt smaller than ever.
“Is this all I am now?” he said out loud to himself, “just a pet for some psychopath?”
“N-no. Not a pet” a scared quiet voice answered from the corner of the tank, “We’re something much worse to her”, he looked over and saw the other fairy now hovering just barely above the shavings, thinking that was a good idea but then looking back over his shoulder and remembering that wasn’t possible for him at the moment.
He watched as she slowly made her way, constantly stopping and looking up at every sound out of fear the monster was back and ready to bolt back to the safety of her corner when that happened. Luckily for Carl it didn’t and she made it to the rock and sat down next to him.