Thayna crept her way through the ivory terrace, scanning the foyer for any signs of Tharsia. It was well into the evening, and she never missed a wink of sleep after sundown. Still, it couldn't hurt to be careful. Thayna tiptoed to the big, brass doors of Thalana's dwellings, and gave it a tentative push.

The inside was lit with a dim, flickering fire, as usual, and the gaudy interior flickered in and out of view against the weak light. Thayna had always questioned Thalana's tastes in interior decor, but she wove the intricate shapes and colors herself with her magic. She was a gifted mage when it came to alchemy, and with her fire magic, she was able to sculpt any metal into whatever she wanted. A good portion of the city was built thanks to her.

Thayna could hear the muted sounds of smacking lips from behind the altar. No doubt that it was Thalana playing with whoever was unlucky enough to be sent to her today. Thayna eased herself inside and closed the door behind her with a click.

Thalana must have heard this, and her head rose from the opposite side of the altar. In her mouth was the upper body of a hapless man, gone limp from the literal tongue lashing she had administered. Thayna had always thought too little in common with Thalana for them to get along, but she was the only person Thayna could rely on in Farum.

Thayna walked to the front of altar, sighing as she sat on a convenient stone block that was carved out from the base. She leaned an elbow against the side of the altar, resting her cheek in in her hand as she lazily looked up to where Thalana sat.. “Are humans so good that you must taste every one of them, sister?” Thayna said with a sigh.

Thalana grabbed the man’s legs and pulled him free from her mouth. A sticky film of saliva covered his body and face, making it difficult to make out his identity. She placed him in the basin and began rubbing the saliva she had inflicted off of him, leaving him to lie in a shallower part of the basin when she was done. The man didn’t once move as she cleaned him.

“The sweet congeal of flesh and fear is a delicacy fit only for my tongue, my dear Thayna,” Thalana said, perching herself over the basin and looking down with a devilish grin at where Thayna sat, “Only one with as gifted a sense of taste as I may appreciate its splendor.”

“Harumph,” Thayna grunted. Talking with such flamboyance was one of the things she hated about Thalana; it felt like she was talking her down with her big words.

“So do you have Tharsia’s new captive with you?” Thayna asked quickly, wanting to get this over and done with.

“But of course,” Thalana said, withdrawing herself behind the altar once more, completely ignoring the man left in the basin. Thayna heard the ruffle and shuffle of things being moved around, and curious to know what she was searching for so ferverntly, Thayna rose from her seat and looked over the basin. It was dark on the other side, but Thayna spotted the limp man lying in the basin.

“Is that him?” Thayna asked, pointing to the man.

“Heavens, no,” said Thalana a short laugh, “He’s one of the house servants tied to mother whom I found scurrying about late at night. Seeing him gave me the idea to grab a late night snack.”

“Then where is the man?” Thayna said impatiently, “Don’t tell me you’ve really gone and eaten him this time?

“While the flesh of men are sweet,” Thalana growled, “Their blood is a taint on their rich flavor. One should only partake on their shell, and never their life.”

Which means you’ve tried it before, Thayna thought to herself, Or you’d never know what blood tastes like.

The rummaging stopped, and Thalana popped her head back up the Altar, taking with her a small, sleeping man clutched in both her hands. Thayna instantly recognized him as the man she left behind at the burnt village today, though his clothes were more torn than she remembered them to be, and his hair was messy like he’d just come out of a shower. He was unhurt for the most part, Thayna heaved a sigh of relief. It was good to know he made it back in one piece, at least.

"John kept me company in the afternoon," Thalana said, carefully lowering down the snoring John and passing him to Thayna, "I let him rest when he became too tired. Tharsia always did drives newcomers too hard when they first come in, so he was out like a light in an instant."

So his name is John, Thayna thought. She didn't normally bother with a human's name, but knowing that Thalana knew something she didn't irked her.

Thayna reached up to receive John's snoozing body, keeping his body lined to the ground and not rouse him from slumber. Gently, she cradled him to her chest, keeping him nestled under the curve of her modest breast. She savored the fact that John fit perfectly against her body, his tiny frame resting easily between it and her supporting arm. Thayna chanced a prod at John's chest, and was delighted when he stirred and continued to snore.

"Take good care of him," Thalana said to Thayna as she retreated back into the shadows behind the altar, "He's a treasure."

"I wouldn't count on it," Thayna said defiantly. You probably just want him around as a convenient appetizer, Thayna thought to herself.

"Oh," Thalana said with a smile as the last vestiges of light disappeared from her face, "I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised."

John had dreams. Not dreams of endless visions of avarice, eternal sodomy with an infinite harem, or any of the stereotypical flights of fancy the bardsongs or epics depicted. No, John was much simpler than that, satisfied that he owned a small shop in which he lived in, selling simple breads and wheat like his father before him, keeping a stable in the back in which he could give Matilda a good scrub at the end of a day's work. He'd invite friends over, and they would make merry with the leftover bread and mead, laughing and cheering as the night lost its youth. There was, of course, no self-respecting bakery with a stable right behind it, and John never stayed anywhere long enough to have friends, and so he roused himself from his dream, gently waking to the sound of ruffled cloth and string nearby.

John opened his eyes. The last thing he remembered was that Thalana had released him from his oral duties when he couldn't muster the strength to even resist her another moment longer, prompting her to allow him a brief respite. They talked instead, though John was uncomfortable with being told how individual parts of his body were delicious, but John soon tired of that, too, and drifted to sleep.

Now, he was in a different room altogether. He was on the floor, warmed by a nearby stove scaled to be as large as a barn, and sitting on a bit of wooly carpet. On the other side, he saw an assortment of tailoring equipment; thread, needles, and spare fabric of various colors, all proportional to the giantess behind them.

Thayna was hunched over, working her hands on an unfinished pair of sandals on the floor. She was threading the straps to the leathery sole with a giant needle and large, hempen rope, making a rough stitching pattern along the sides of each sandal. John thought amusedly that her sandals looked like a pair of flattened boats.

"Oh," Thayna's voice sounded above John, her giant face hovering over where John was lying down on, "You're awake, John."

"Hrn-" John made a sleepy just-woke-up sound, but stopped when he heard what Thayna had just said, "Wait, how do you know my name?"

"It wasn't hard to find out," Thayna simply replied. John gave a quizzical look when she furrowed her eyebrows irritably, but didn't pursue the matter.

"Where am I?" John asked. Looking around, it was clear he was still in the ivory terrace, but this room was considerably more cluttered than the last. The musty smell of cured leather hung in the room. Piles of broken or unfinished shoes lay heaped in a corner of the room while a small cache of materials were strewn about on the other side. Leatherworking, smithed metals, rope and fabrics of all colors, nails and wires in finely wrapped packages; this place gave the impression of a very disorganized shoe shop.

"You're in my room," Thayna said, punishing John with a slap when he balked at her words, "You might think it's funny to be living here like this, but that's what you get for being born with a mage mark on your foot. We giantesses go through shoes almost as quickly as we make them, so most like my sisters don't bother."

Thayna knotted the end of the rope of the sandal she was sewing, and produced a tiny flame to burn off the excess length still sticking out. "But I must wear shoes wherever I go in order to protect my mark," Thayna continued, trying on the finished sandal, "The soles are one of the worst places to have a mage mark, but losing your mark is the worst of all. It disqualifies you from being a mage." Thayna tore the sandal from her foot and tossed it and its pair into the pile of spent shoes behind her.

"And the only thing worse than being the weakest mage ever," Thayna growled as she moved to pluck John from the ground, "Is to become markless like you humans."

Thayna took John in her hand and put him exactly where her sandal had just been before. John gulped, knowing what was coming, and sure enough, Thayna's marked foot came down upon him. This time, however, she was much more generous about space for John to breath as her toes only came up to John's abdomen. He felt a familiar exhale of energy as Thayna extracted another sliver of magic from his body. It was still a far cry from when Tharsia and Thalana did it, but for a human like John, it was amazing that they could perform magic at all.

"You're going to be my attendant for today," Thayna said, looking down at the miniscule frame of John. He felt like a twig under her foot, and she knew she could snap him like one if she so wanted to. Humans were weak, but it was a reminder to Thayna that that was how other mages saw her as well, "Don't annoy me too much and it'll be a relatively uneventful day for you. Your first task, as you might have guessed, is to replenish my magic. If we're to do anything else today, I'll need all the magic I can get."

Another breath of energy left John as Thayna's foot pressed down on him. He winced as he felt Thayna's toes raking his belly, but thankfully, her full weight wasn't behind her foot this time. The slow cycle of stepping and drawing energy continued, and Thayna returned to her shoe cobbling again.

John was starting to get used to this treatment the mages gave to humans, and he worried that he would soon find that being eaten, beaten and...feeten (John was very bad at rhyming) were natural occurrences in life. He tried to wiggle his way out, but Thayna had a firm grip on his body. He wasn't getting out of this any time soon physically.

"Hey, uh," John shouted, waving his hands frantically to get Thayna's attention, "Mistress Thayna! Your ladyship! Um, your magnificence?"

Thayna stopped to turn to John and said very curtly, "What?"

John was a merchant. Persuasion should be an area he was good at, right? "If you'd kindly listen to what I have to say-"

"No," said Thayna instantly. So much for persuasion.

"Alright, cool," John continued as he fought against Thayna's foot's pressure for breath. He needed to make conversation at least, "Let's talk about you, then. Whatcha' making?"

"Sandals," Thayna said with eyes rolled, "If you've been following what I was saying, you'd know."

"Great," John said, "It's a lot of work to make them by yourself, isn't it? And with such beautiful feet as your own, you'd like something to compliment them perfectly as you move. I have a friend who deals in apparel in town, maybe if we can-"

Thayna let out a very heavy sigh and said, "Alright, fine. What do you want, annoying peasant commoner human person John?"

That was almost too easy. "If it you would pardon this lowly subject of yours, lady Thayna-"

"ENOUGH!" Thayna shouted, "Just say your piece and be done with it."

"I, uh," John said, taking care that what he said next wouldn't fuel Thayna's wrath further, "Thought of a better way you could draw mana from me."

Thayna cocked an eyebrow and threw an intense and quizzical stare at John. This had surely piqued her interest. "What do you mean?" She demanded.

"Being caught under your grace's soles is very taxing for the small of size," John said as he patted one of Thayna's toes, "Perhaps I'd last longer if you rested on your back and faced your soles skyward?"

Thayna sighed again. When John said he found a better way, she thought he meant for her.

"Fine, whatever," Thayna grumbled, taking her foot off of John and rolling on her belly, "You're lucky I even care about you at all.”

With her body completely flipped over, Thayna's bare soles spread out before John like a fine double bed. They formed a gentle slope, and Thayna's mage mark lay in plain sight on the incline. It didn't look too bad, but John wasn't sure how much more comfortable this was going to be.

"If I catch you running off," Thayna said with a deadly tone, "You're going right back to Thalana's place."

John gulped. Suffering Thayna was a hundred times better than enduring Thalana. Quickly, he scrambled up onto the marked sole and lied down. This was much better than John had hoped. Without the murderous weight crushing him, Thayna's sole was a smooth, bouncy mattress. Never mind the smell of sweat and leather, there were hardly any callouses, and when he pushed his hand into the fleshy folds, it curved in like a baby's cheek.

Estatic with what he felt, John jumped eagerly into the ball of Thayna's feet, where her mark resided on. It was the largest expanse of skin John could find, and John snuggled into the cushiony canvas as deep as his small weight could take him. Thayna responded to the ticklish sensation by clenching her toes together, creating large folds under John. One of the folds managed to creep up to John's crotch, catching his member through his pants and yanking it as the fold grew deeper. John yelped at the sudden stimulation, feeling an erection form as the fold pulled his cock further in. It only served to further heighten the maddeningly sensual friction he felt.

It was then Thayna decided to draw magical energy from John again. This time, however, John felt a completely different, all powerful force passing through him, like a firestorm raging through a forest. A great, invisible fire raced through his every nerve and vein, sweeping every ounce of magic John had in him. An implosion of energy burned John's senses as his magic gathered into a singularity at the center of his chest, before exploding back outward into Thayna's vacuum of a mage mark.

John swore that he had been swallowed by...something. The feeling of Thayna's mage mark was so different and magnitudes more violent than any of her sister's that even John knew this was completely bizarre. Even more puzzling was that Thayna had only taken the smallest of amounts of magic from John before, but now she was capable of taking tens or hundreds of times more energy than even Tharsia or Thalana were capable of. What had just happened?

Thayna was startled, too. The sudden injection of magic many more times abundant than she's seen in her entire life put her in a state of shock and confusion, dropping her sewing equipment and shaking John off of her foot. She turned and grabbed the equally fazed little man and shook him furiously as she shouted, “What did you do?!”

John was too out of himself to even reply. His eyes were glazed in utter shock, and his body was limp from the ordeal. Thayna noticed that for whatever reason, his member stood erect in his pants. Like a smoking gun at the scene of the crime, Thayna immediately understood the implications. There was fear, pain, and an assortment of other emotions Thayna had tried, but none of them worked before. Of course it wouldn't, nobody would be turned on when they were under her foot. She whispered to herself, “Arousal...my trigger is arousal.”

With a look to her palm, Thayna tested her new found magic by conjuring a fire; a big fire which she had never the luxury to cast before, and watched in awe as a resplendent orb of fire materialized into the air. She grinned like a child at her own handiwork, but as she tried to dismiss it, her face contorted to one of dismay. The orb began to splutter and waver, spitting flames and spewing molten lava as it shattered in place. A massive resurgence of fire burst through the opening, and fire washed the room in an inferno.

Thayna dropped to her knees, watching helplessly as her room began burning around her. She had been too used to putting out her fire spells by simply letting it peter out on its own; Thayna's magical energy couldn't keep up with maintaining of the spell. Now, the fire fed on the ocean of magic Thayna drew from John, free to run rampant with Thayna unable to call off the spell.

“I...” Thayna said, stuttering, unable to do anything. Without the power to contain the situation, she could only cry out in desperation, “H-help....HELP!”

As if in response to her plea, the fires spun into a tight circle above the room, glowing an unnatural blue and taking the burning blaze off the room as it slowly collapsed in on itself. It winked out of existence in a blue puff, extinguishing the inferno and leaving the room in a smoldering wreck. Thayna rose up slowly, John still in her hand, dazed, and saw the large figure of a woman approaching through the smoldering ruin, her face obscured by the billowing smoke. She held a staff lighted with a the glow of a small, azure flame on its end. Thayna knew all too well who it was who had saved her.

“...Mom?” Thayna gasped as Thelina of Azure Flame appeared before her daughter.