Chapter 14: Step

My burp was strong enough to have knocked the elf woman right over. While it was going on, I couldn’t exactly take in how it was affecting the fae specks themselves, but I figured if it knocked that elf over it must’ve been quite destructive to their tiny little fae selves.

I did take in the look on the shroom-treant’s face though, and she did not look pleased. Once it was over, I had one more quick burp in me to let out. Then, I took a closer look at things.

“Huh, you really are a pathetic sort aren’t you?”, I said. I was addressing the sprites mostly, but my words could’ve applied to any of them.

Much of the city seemed destroyed. The almost mossy-looking city now seemed like dust everywhere but its center. My belch had blown almost everyone away, with only the area behind the elf being safe. I supposed her body must have blocked the force of it for most of them, even if her falling back crushed a few. Even laying down, her form must’ve towered over the teeny sprite homes.

The elf woman seemed to be in a bit of a shock or something, since her face seemed real upset, and she wasn’t getting up despite not looking injured much. It was actually the shroom-treant who spoke up to me this time.

“How could you! Do you see what you’ve done? This level of carnage. Even for one as willfully vile as you, you must admit it’s wasteful.”, she said.

“Hey.”, I replied. “It’s not as though I burped on purpose.”

I grinned, then continued.

“I just didn’t bother aiming elsewhere.”

That said, I pursed my lips and blew some air out. I could see a few more homes fly away, along with a good deal more sprites. The latter were so small to me as to seem like sparkles with how the light of the midday sun hit their wings.

Many flew towards the shroom-treant, while others seemed to fly past at speed I’m sure they couldn’t survive. The mushroom woman winced while this was happening; my focused exhale getting into her beady black eyes no doubt.

“What are you doing?”, she said.

I finished blowing a second later, then started to shift my body back up.

“Just making sure the city’s dry. I figured there might’ve been little bits of spit or something. Wouldn’t be anything I could feel too well, nor a big deal either way. But, it was such little effort I supposed it couldn’t hurt--me at least.”

I chuckled again. I had moved my body to have my right foot planted to the side of the city. Once again, I saw that dusty moss of a city stir from just flopping my foot down.

That wasn’t my goal, though. Instead, I leaned forward and wrapped one hand about the shroom-treant’s stalk.

“What are you doing now?”, she said.

“You ever say anything else? Always questions with you types. I’m ripping you out of the ground, dummy, you’re coming with me.”

She fussed a bit, started to say something, but my grip had my fingers move over the mouth of that face she formed. With my right foot planted firmly on the ground, and the left pressing its toes down for support, I yanked her right up.

Mushrooms didn’t have much in terms of roots, but she was quite the big shroom-woman. Though she didn’t come up to my knees, she towered over the village. The bulky under-body of the shroomy being left quite the hole once I tugged her out. Well, not to me it didn’t, but her removal was disruptive enough to cause a few more sprite buildings to fall into the crater left behind.

I stood upright with the shroom-treant in my hand. With a finger still covering her mouth, I brought her cap close for another bite. I chewed, savored, then swallowed.

“I got a decent amount of useful prizes in my cave, but I think you’ll be one of the best yet. A never-ending snack.”

I moved my fingers down. She moved to speak once able, but before she could I dragged my tongue against the face she formed. Horrified at the sensation of my spit there no doubt, she unformed her face for the time being.

“Don’t wanna watch what I’m gonna do to the last bits of your settlement huh? No matter, I got a piece of the city that doesn’t have that choice.”

I moved my fingers to my belly ring, wherein rested a good deal of the sprite settlement. Listening closely, I could hear their despair. I could only imagine their view for what I was about to do.

The city was due below me now. Only a small circle of it seemed undestroyed beneath my foot. That was all thanks to the elf woman and her spread-arms tumble. It had protected the city from my exhale too from the looks of it.

Smirking, I took one step back for more space, then started to raise my right foot. The elf-woman began to stir and stood back up herself.

She looked up at the underside of my foot as I held it overhead both her and those last bits of intact fae city.

“Looks like this is the end for you, elf, and this sprite settlement at last. If any of you little fae specks survive this, you ‘ought to tell the other fae to leave me alone. The forest is mine, not yours or theirs. If you don’t like it...”

I lowered my foot.

“Too bad.”

I felt the elf fall back against the weight behind my sole.

--==--==--==--

Helemys had gotten up just in time to brace herself for what was coming. Bula’s theft of the shroom-treant had destabilized the ground a tad, but it was stable enough for her to stay steady at least. Still, she worried she might not be steady for long.

Bula’s foot wooshed through the air to hover overhead, and the giant troll started slowly stepping down. Even to the elf, who stood well over 6ft in height, that foot seemed unstoppable. It stretched about 75ft long, and its width was enough to shadow her with ease.

To the sprites? This seemed truly hopeless. Though only a fraction of the sprite city still lived, it was still hundreds of the little fae. Their sky was shadowed by a canopy of light-green troll-sole which didn’t seem too different than any other humanoid’s sole really, save for the unstoppable size of it.

For those inch-tall fae, every detail of that ped’s underside seemed deadly in its own right. Each curve of the foot could crush them in one way or another. For them, that 75ft+ ped stretched around 4000ft in length--nearly a mile. It looked bigger to the sprites than Bula’s entire body did to the 1ft-tall pixies, who saw the giant troll as over half a mile tall. The toes were titanic to the sprites, with the foot itself like an ender of worlds.

Which it was, in a sense. Even on the off-chance of survival, it was an end to a world they knew for hundreds of years. Their entire city was in the path of her step. And, like before, Bula had no mercy for them.

The foot came down. Bula wasn’t trying to be either particularly fast or slow. It was normal to her: a simple snuffing out under step. With death barring down on the smaller beings, they couldn’t help but wish for more time.

The sole touched Helemys first. Shouting with rage, she lifted her arms to try and hold the foot away. That didn’t work, and it wasn’t long before she fell back on her butt, then on back in two destructive drops.

For a brief moment, her body gave a paltry bit of resistant. Not from the elf-woman’s strength, but simply because her body took up space. For just a little bit, less than a second, Helemys protected the city in at least one sense of the word.

Then, she was crushed. The weight was too much and her body burst. Some of the nearby buildings and sprites were covered in her blood or bits of bones as the unstoppable foot pressed the elf’s body to the point of destruction. A few sprites were wounded from that, but that didn’t matter. A moment later and the step finished.

Unlike the elf, the pixies, most sprites, and the city’s diminutive little structures didn’t even last fractions of a seconds against Bula’s step. They were dust to the giant troll, and flattened as such. Sprites and pixies burst against the soft sole skin. Every pixie beneath was crushed, but a few sprites were lucky enough to eke out a bit more time in the space beneath her toes.

Just a bit, though.

Once her foot was fully flat on the city, Bula let out one of those pleased grunts of hers. She wasn’t satisfied though, not by that.

Eager to ensure their fullest demise, the giant troll twisted her foot side to side and smeared what few fae survived beneath the step. Those sprites that survived between or behind her toes were squished in the scrunching of the digits, or else barreled over as they moved side to side.

“Ah.”, said Bula. She gave a few more twists, and a few more pleased, indulgent grunts.

The giant troll lifted her foot up and inspected the damage under her sole. Helemys’s squished bits fell from her sole as her skin expunged it via a consequence of her body’s self-healing properties. A bit of debris still lingered, but she brushed that off herself before setting the foot back down. A pleasant vibration from her might hitting the ground reverberated through her sole and up her leg.

She sighed yet again.

Bula’s enjoyment contrasted with the dismay of Miraddella and the fae stuck in her cage-piercing. Though the shroom-treant retreated her facial features, she could still sense what was going on. She could hear still, for one thing, and with her heightened senses she heard hundreds of screams snuffed out with that giant troll’s stomp.

More than that, though, she could feel magic. Sprites and pixies were inherently magical beings, and with their death that magic passed. So, she had a very intuitive sense of the magnitude of lives lost.

Those fae stuck in Bula’s ring didn’t have the luxury of hiding their faces. Though some couldn’t turn their heads due to crowding, all could close their eyes, sure.

Yet, many found themselves unable to look away from the horror of it all. They saw the top of Bula’s foot from a bird’s eye view. The elf and their city was there one moment, then the foot obscured it the next. Only the settlement bits between her toes could be seen, and that was quickly gone as the troll swiveled her foot to wipe out even those meager remaining bits.

Their old home was gone, and their new one was a cruel cage. As if to torment the fae therein further, Bula’s stomach gurgles were heard once or twice during the stomp. It was yet another reminder of their settlement’s demise what with her having ate so much of it. They figured they’d have to get use to that horrible sound and its implications. They were hanging so close to that taut tummy, after all.

Bula moved her fingers from where Miraddella usually formed her face. She spoke to the shroom-treant assuming, correctly, that the shroomy being could hear her.

“There, the city’s all done. Now you have nothing to be too attached to.”

Bula started moving back in the direction of her lair.

“I think you’ll like my cave. It’s nice and damp, good for a shroom person like you. You won’t ever have to worry about seeing the sun again.”

She chuckled, then took another big bite of the shroom woman’s cap.

The journey back would be long and jostling for both the shroom-treant and all the fae stuck in Bula’s ring.

For Bula, it was a pleasant, victorious stroll.