The Kingdom of Jin was known as a land of savage beasts. From cunning snake folk, to monstrous oni. All creatures feared and reviled across the Kingdoms of Ganxia. Beings that most would gather hunting parties and chase down like animals. It was the one Kingdom where they could be said to have a safe haven from the rest of the world. All of it possible by the grace of King Hui, the Dragon King of the Western Oceans. When their neighbors raised hunting parties to try and drive them out it was the King that smashed them into nothing. 

Despite its population, generally the kingdom got along for the iron will of its king kept the clan leaders in line. None wished to cross him and risk his wrath falling upon them. So confident was he in his boundless strength and power that he had an open challenge. Those that wished the crown could simply challenge him for it at any time. In the early days there had been many such challenges. Those had ended fairly quickly. Though the practice was still quite open and it was this that brought Xila to the court of the Dragon King. 

The young woman strode through the streets of Jiza, the capital of Jin. Towering over all the city was a vast mountain with a palace that curled around its surface. The palace of the king. Soon enough it would be hers before the day was over. The horned woman had many clear paths from her way as she walked, her towering twenty foot tall form marking the woman as one of the oni clans. Her toned form was covered in thick metal armor and upon her back was a massive blade that could have likely cut a house in half. Xila was well known as the strongest of the oni clans and thus it was her right to challenge the King. A dragon would bow before an oni before the day. 

The guards stopped her at the gates, a pair of serpantfolk looking her up and down. “What businessssss have you in the palaccccce.” 

“I have come to claim the throne of Jin from King Hui. Inform him of the challenge and that Xila of the Northern Oni Clan has come to sit upon his throne.” She said with a grin that displayed a number of sharp teeth. 

The pair of serpents looked at each other incredulously. One of them shrugged and slithered off toward the palace. The red skinned woman crossed her arms and frowned as she waited for about half an hour before she received a rather abrupt invitation. She blinked and one moment she was standing outside the palace and the next she found herself in a vast treasury. Her breath hitched at the sudden shift of her location and at the sight of a mountain of glittering treasure before her. Coiled around it was a sight she had only seen flying above the skies of Jin. 

Red scales glittered in the torchlight and a long and winding serpentine body filled the space around the area. The beast was easily a thousand meters from snout to tail and could have swallowed her in one easy gulp. A pair of eyes considered her and a snort escaped its nostrils before a flash of light filled her sight, causing Xila to shield her eyes in surprise. The Oni winced from the bright flash but as it cleared she found the dragon had vanished. 

It was often said Rulers of the Kingdoms of Ganxia were essentially gods. For indeed they were chosen by the Celestial Heavens to rule over their lands as immortals. They could rise others up as immortals as well and attain absurd sizes. The power they flexed over their lands was without peer, they could cause rains and droughts with the change of moods. Standing before Xila was one such ruler, King Hui in a humanoid form. 

He was half her size though his presence seemed to fill the space the dragon had left behind. A shock of fiery red hair was pulled back behind his head in a long ponytail that stretched to his lower back. His faintly bronzed skinned face was quite handsome, beautiful some might call it though there were enough masculine cuts to prevent him being mistaken for a woman without a wardrobe change. A red silk robe trimmed in gold billowed around him and a pair of gemmed sandals peeked out from under it as he set a hand on one hip. Really he appeared to be a very handsome and tall human man, though the red slitted eyes betrayed his true nature.

“An age it has been since last I’d gotten a challenge for the throne! I had feared the fighting spirit had left the proud Oni! It’s no fun if you don’t struggle against my grip over the country.” The redhead remarked with a voice quite rich and lovely. 

Xila recovered from her shock at how fast things had started moving and offered him a broad grin. “A fine face you have, King Hui. Will be a pity to mar it. If you recognize my superior strength then perhaps I might have a place for you as a mount.” The woman said, feeling some confidence return as he assumed a humanoid form. 

The king let out a booming laugh that echoed through the room. “Confident as well! I like you, Xila of the Northern Oni. Very well then! Show me your strength then. If you impress me I may well have mercy when you are bested. Should you disappoint me, I’ll give you a few decades to consider the foolishness of your actions.” He said as he slammed his fist into his open palm and gestured for the Oni to come at him. 

Xila reached back for her blade and tossed her bone white hair over her shoulder as she drew the massive weapon. It was bigger than Hui was by many times and thicker than him. Strong inhuman muscles bulged beneath thick metal plates as she hefted it up and surged forward across the fine gleaming floors. He wasn’t moving from the way, instead simply waiting for her to come to him. Confident. Well, she was going to test the claims of immortality then. She lifted her blade high above her head and moved with speed faster than her size would suggest, bringing the weapon down with a mighty chop. 

CLANG

There was a jerk along her arm as she landed the blade and it struck against his open palm. It might as well have been trying to cut through the side of a mountain. She didn’t even appear to have broken skin. The redhead was looking up at her, using one hand to hold the mighty blade. His red eyes flickered with something as a slight frown crossed his lips. 

“Is that truly what you chose to challenge me with? You’re little more than a fly buzzing before the sun, little Oni. A shame.” He lamented as he brought his other hand up and swung his fist into the side of the blade. 

Xila was a woman that had seen a number of battles. She had heard the tales of King Hui’s boundless strength. This was something else however. This was beyond strength. This was unreal. She dropped her grip on her blade’s handle and reeled back a fist as adrenaline surged through her veins. She smashed her fist right into the face of the man, Hui not even seeming to bother to dodge. 

CRACK

Something broke and it most certainly wasn’t Hui’s face. Xila felt pain burn its way up her arm and fell to her knees, crying out from the pain that flared up her arm from the broken fractures that formed from trying to punch Hui in his face. The King was eye level with her now and moved forward slowly, extending a finger toward her forehead. The well manicured digit poked her head and the next thing she knew she was sent flying back, the Oni smashing into a pillar before sliding down to the well tiled floor. 

“Tsk. And here I had gotten excited when I heard an Oni had come to challenge me. You know your ancestors and I had battles that thundered through the very mountains, the sound heard from beyond our kingdom. What a disappointment.” The redhead said with a roll of his eyes. “Ah well. I would say that is firmly my win.” The man remarked as he started walking his way toward Xila. 

Humiliation. That was the feeling that seared through Xila’s veins. It was almost as strong as the pain that had ignited across her senses. Almost. He had handled her with ease. Like she had been nothing. He handled her as effortlessly as she would have handled a normal human. Even moreso. The gulf between them was beyond a gulf. It was a universe apart. He was in another dimension of power compared to her. 

“I’ll not kill you for your mistake, you won’t learn that way after all. However I will see you humbled before me for the annoyance.” Hui said. 

Her head was spinning now. It wasn’t from the pain though that wasn’t helping matters. The world was bending and twisting around her. She felt sick as a sense of vertigo overcame her. The world became a blur as he stood before her with a hand on his hip once more. She felt like she was… getting smaller? The oni’s eyes flew wide as she struggled to stand and when she did she found herself at eye level with Hui’s knees and rapidly dwindling. 

“W-wait! A rematch, yes, I can surely win with a second chance!” Xila said hurriedly. 

Hui snorted and pushed back upon her horned head, watching her dwindling form fall flat on her ass. “We’ll see if you still believe that in two decades.” He said. 

The shrinking didn’t stop for the mighty Oni. She watched in growing despair as she found herself eye level with his shin. His ankle. Down and down she went, the form of the redhead King of Jin towering more and more above her. She didn’t slow when she reached eye level with his pretty and polished toenails. Nor when she reached eye level with his sandal itself. Fear grew more and more as she dwindled more rapidly. 

When she stopped she found herself upon a vast and endless expanse of white. Massive boulders and mountains were all around her, the bits of rubble that had fallen from the pillar she had impacted. Little more than flecks of dust and dirt and to Xila they had become wholly different. And then… her eyes started to trail upward to the vast shadow that had engulfed her and her heart froze over. 

A wall of unending fine leather stretched before her, vast and towering into the heavens. She knew what it was. She knew exactly what it was but her mind was rebelling against the very idea of it with each passing moment. It would clich her reality. The reality that this unended wall stretching into the heavens was the sandal of King Hui and the lean and beautiful redhead was beyond. The ground occasionally rumbled and shook, the bits of towering dirt and dust around her shaking. The slightest shifts of his toes above had caused the seismic activity. 

“Hear me, Xila of the Northern Oni Clans.” The voice wasn’t so much a voice as thunder that forced the injured and terrified Oni to her knees. “By my decree as King of Jin, you are rendered immortal until such time you serve out your sentence of twenty years upon my divine form. Should you die, you will return to life where you died. Should you starve you will return to life full again. Use the time to reflect on your sin of wasting my time.” The voice boomed out. 

Xila had no time to blink before a flash of light enveloped her microbial form just as it had when she had been beyond the gates. The next moment she knew she was upon an endless expansive of slightly tanned soft ground. The expanse was vast. Indeed it was a rolling wasteland without end. The distance her eyes could function and see saw the sky ahead as a slightly blurred red mass. Looking around her she couldn’t see beyond some of the hills and valleys. 

Upon his divine form. That was what he had said. Her eyes widened as she realized this was upon the body of King Hui somewhere. This land. This unending expanse was, to the microbial Oni, a world really. To him however, this was his right foot. She found herself upon the slope just above the toes near his smallest toe. She was so utterly insignificant, her size reduced to such a degree that she couldn’t see beyond the foot. She couldn’t comprehend anything but it and the reddish sky beyond. 

Xila had started trying to make her way in a direction. Any direction. Trying to find her way to some kind of recognizable area. Some place she could understand and fathom on a mental map instead of just more endless skin. Then, after what seemed like hours she found something she could understand. Not quite in the way she had hoped for however. It was enough to halt her steps and drive her to new levels of fear. 

A vast and gaping pit. It was endless in its depths and without an end in sight when she gazed into it. A pore. This vast pit was a single pore upon the skin of the King. Her breath started to hitch before the ground under her rumbled and shook. Hui started to walk. It wasn’t enough to throw her from his body as she was far too small for such a thing. However it was certainly enough that it pushed her forward toward the open pit in the ground. 

She screamed and scrambled, grabbing along the sides of the pit into Hui’s flawless skin, terror filling her veins as she knew well that if she fell down there she was going to have an extremely bad time. The tiny Oni was in a life and… well not death struggle but discomfort definitely. The red skinned oni clawed along the sides of the slightly bronzed skin, straining hard against the constant quakes of Hui’s steps until she managed to pull herself back up from the abyss. She then ran. She ran hard and fast to get away from the pore. 

Xila traveled long and hard, adjusting to the motion of Hui’s steps whenever he made them and avoiding falling into the monstrous pits in his skin. The King of Jin was a busy man, carrying out various functions of state and going too and fro through the vast palace. Xila was unaware of what was happening in the world beyond Hui’s foot however. It was basically an entirely different dimension as far as she was now concerned. However the events of that world beyond certainly influenced her. 

She passed by another vast pore and continued walking along the soft skin, not a landmark in sight. Then she felt a different kind of rumble and she looked toward the poor and her eyes widened ever so. A vast and massive droplet gleamed in the light, rising up from the pit of the pore and onto the skin. It was huge. Vast. Mountainous. It was also a single droplet of sweat worked up from constantly moving and the heat of the inner palace. Xila stared at it for a moment before she started running. Fleeing to get away from the droplet’s path. 

It started rolling its way down Hui’s foot and toward Xila, the red skinned woman screaming her head off as she ran. The mountain of the sweat droplet rolled along fine skin and was coming in hard and fast, looming behind her no matter how far she ran. Tears of fright came to the eyes of the microbial woman as the sweatbead came closer and closer and she could feel the body heat of Hui’s internal temperature from it. 

Then she felt a slight moistness on her back and a sudden jerk as the surface tension pulled Xila into the bead of sweat. She screamed, cut off as the salty liquid entered her mouth and she found herself floating in an ocean of the sweat. Xila swam frantically but the motion of the bead of sweat was carrying her along whether she liked it or not. Her lungs strained before she opened her lips from trying to hold it back and gallons of the sweat entered her nose and mouth, it stung at her eyes as she struggled. 

And then there was a crashing sound and Xila was freed. The woman coughed and sputtered before taking in gulps of fresh air. She blinked, blurry eyed as she tried to figure out where she was. Her eyes could only see vague shapes. Vague movements. And then, moments later, she got her answer very hard and very fast as she and a good deal of skin above her crashed against leather ground around her, crushing Xila instantly into a red smear lost among the skin. 

She had landed upon his sandal and rolled underneath his second toe after the sweat bead had shattered on impact. And now, Xila found herself caught in a cycle of life and death, returned from death by Hui’s decree before the crashing of a single toe brought her to death once more. All from his walking steps. It was constant and unending, a motion machine that was enough to drive her complete mad really. 

Far, far above in the heavens of the normal world, the King smirked. “Just twenty more years of this to go.” He remarked with a chuckle.