Inside the master chamber of the castle, a young girl of only twenty in age and half that in appearance and manner jumped about on her bed with a doll swinging from her hand. They were both dressed elegantly (the doll sporting garments that even the proudest of peasants couldn’t afford), but the girl’s hair and clothes were wild and ruffled from the pounding abuse to the queen-size mattress. The sheets were a mess as well. Laughing aloud, the girl threw her arms into the air and fell backwards. The soft springs propelled her back to her feet, where she continued to bounce about from the foot of the bed to the head and back again, the whole time catching the canopy of the bed in her hair.
She was having so much fun that she didn’t notice the heavy oak doors slide open and another girl, quite a deal older in almost every means, enter the chamber. She wore red ribbons in her hair and a white dress with sleeves that puffed and blossomed like a flower in spring. Her arms were bare and pale and smooth like a crisp fallen snow and she put one gloved hand to her mouth, clearing her throat to get the little girl’s (in comparison) attention.
“Pardon me, Your Highness,” she said when the little girl stopped bouncing for a moment. “There is a Necromancer in the front hall who wishes to speak to you.”
“What does she want?” the girl whined.
“To join the Tournament of Champions.”
“Is she alone?”
“There is a Black Knight with her as well.”
“Any men?” she asked with a glimmer in her eye.
“Yes, she has one on a leash and another around her neck.”
Further adding to her juvenile disposition, the corner of the girl’s lips lifted the way a child’s would upon being promised some great new toy.
“Shall I tell them you’ll be down momentarily?”
“Yes, yes. Thank you, Fallon.”
The girl by the doorway, apparently named Fallon, bowed. “It is my pleasure, Your Highness.”
“Please, none of those formalities. We’re good friends, aren’t we?”
“Well, yes. Yes, of course, Your Highness.”
The little girl of twenty leaped off the bed. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no! No ‘Your Highness’. That makes me feel so…old!”
“You are the queen now…Your Highness.”
“Hmph,” she said, sticking out her lower lip.
Fallon sighed. “…I’m sorry, Isabella. I’m only treating you the way I would treat your mother if she were here.”
“Well, she’s not here! And we’re best friends. So be my friend and stop acting like you’re a servant to me. That’s what men are for anyway.”
“Yes, you are right,” Fallon laughed. “But still, I swore unto your mother the same oath I swore unto you. I am, until untimely circumstance or death on either part, at your every command.”
“Blah, blah, blah, blah,” Isabella said, wobbling her head left and right and sticking her tongue out.
“Oh…stop it, you!” Fallon laughed again. “Your mother would never approve of any of this.”
“When mommy cat is away, baby kitten will play.”
“Even so, you’re going to have play queen until she returns and I must pass on my services to you. I am sure we can make this work.”
“Ugh, except for all the boring luncheons… We don’t have any of those today, do we?”
“Um…you slept ‘til well past luncheon, Your Highness. We missed seeing you there.”
“What a pity,” Isabella said. “Maybe I’ll have to sleep through tomorrow’s as well.”
“Well, Countess Olivia did ask to speak with you.”
“I hope you gave her my answer in the form of some violent action to the face.”
“In a way. I told her you’d be free to speak tomorrow.”
“Ugh, why’d you go and do that? Now I actually have to talk to that pompous whore.”
“Your Highness!”
“Sorry, what’s the sophisticated word for ‘whore’?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure Olivia is that too.”
Isabella laughed. “That’s true.”
There was a moment of silence between them when their laughter died down.
“…It’s good to see you smile again,” Fallon said at last. “I know it’s hard to rule a kingdom without your mother here.”
“Thank you, again, Fallon.”
“If that is all then, Your Highness…”
“Yes, that is all.”
Fallon bowed and exited the room, quietly shutting the doors behind her.
Isabella watched her go and then looked down at her dress, green and furrowed like unkempt foliage. She tugged at the wrinkles in an attempt to smooth them out as she made her way across the chamber to a great oak dresser, some eight feet in height and width, and opened it. There were racks of many colorful garments, but all that she pushed aside in order to get what was in the back—a silver birdcage, small enough to fit in her cupped hands as she brought it out, with a little man inside. He didn’t seem to be too happy in the cage, though. The moment he saw the open light from the dresser door, he began to scream and curse the heavens, and when he saw Isabella’s face as she picked up the cage…well, that was enough to drive him insane.
“You can’t do this to me!” he roared. “I am a great man in my country! The gods will smite you for this malevolent kidnapping!”
Isabella lowered the cage onto her bedside table and plopped down on the mattress next to it. “Silly man, there are no gods—only goddesses.” Then she cocked her head to the side and stared at him through the bars. “Besides, you’re the one who tried to attack my kingdom. I don’t see how that makes you ‘great’ at all.”
“The race of Women has forgotten a time when Men and Women used to coexist peacefully and equally! Your people destroy our crops and step on our villages and crush our people—all for fun!”
“It is pretty fun,” Isabella giggled.
The man hurled his weight against the bars, but they only clanged and held strong against his mightiest of powers. “But why do I speak to you of this matter? It was your ancestor that separated the two races! And so it would seem that Fate gave you not only her name but her blindness and foolishness as well.”
The whole time he spoke, Isabella continued to flap her jaw up and down and roll her eyes from one side to the other, mocking him with every word. Despite her juvenile facade, though, she was very refined and elegant. Her hair, though plain and russet, was glorified by many buns and streams that could’ve well been a garden pouring down her neck. Her face, too, was plain and yet, like the moon and the sun to the curves on the earth, it was lit up by her emerald eyes that shared in her everlasting amusement. She was short (but not nearly as short as the man in the cage) and delicate, something like a feather under the fluffed garments of downy soft silks, which gave her that young look—the same young look her mother had that kept her looking so childlike.
The man glared up at her, his knuckles tightening around the bars of the cage. “This kingdom is in for a world of change. The race of Men has not given up home. I hope that you, Queen Isabella, can see this now and act accordingly before all is lost. Men don’t die so easily!”
But Isabella had already left the chamber, eager to meet the new contestants for the Tournament of Champions…
Giantess World
