Characters: Joan, Lynne, Vic, Eric, Cain
Location: Somewhere in the Enchanted Forest, north of Kaligar
Time: Day 4 - 4:13 PM
Joan, Lynne, and the rest of the ninjas of Kaligar continued through the Enchanted Forest with full stomachs and calm dispositions. All except Joan. She dragged her feet through the dirt, clutching her stomach, trying not to think about the Men inside, trying not to feel their tiny fists pounding against her skin. What had she done? She knew the answer, but she couldn’t force herself to believe it. How could it be right, how could it be real? What was happening inside of her?
Lynne noticed her green face and staggering walk, but didn’t say anything until they were about twenty minutes out into the forest. Then she put an arm around Joan and held her close, like they were old friends. “What’s wrong there, Joan? You should be smiling. With cooking skills like yours, I bet you could be a master Provisioner in no time. You’d be a lot better service than those Men who try to cook. I’ve tried their food. Disgusting. But I guess that’s what you get when dinner cooks lunch.”
“…There are things,” Joan whispered, “dying inside of me. There are things—living, crawling things—dying inside of me, because of me. I can feel them. I can feel them burn and suffer. I’m killing them with every breath. What have I done?”
Lynne burst into a hyena laugh. “Calm down, Joan. They’re just Men. They’re like little bugs and they’re too stupid to feel anything anyway. Besides…” She patted Joan’s belly. “That’s the way they should go. That’s where they belong, at the bottom of the food chain. We put them there and we’ll leave them there. What other purpose do they have?”
Joan’s stomach moaned and she wasn’t sure if it was from hunger or nausea or indigestion. She guessed all three. Closing her eyes, feeling the acids burn right through her, she tried to think what it was like for the Men. Eric and Vic. She never thought about it before. When she ate players in Neverquest, back when it was just a game, she never cared to think about the pain they went through. At the most, she imagined they would feel minor itches. Maybe a jolt or twelve. But that’s not why she did it. She did it because it was funny, keeping them there, trapped inside of her for as long as possible, ignoring their kicks and screams as their hit points were drained to zero. It was all in good fun. For her.
She couldn’t imagine what it was like for them. Maybe like hell. Maybe hell would sound nice to them. She knew she would see them again, though. When she died. When she was swallowed into the bowels of hell like them because of what she had done. And she wondered if it ever ended, the swallowing and the burning, the suffering and the death. Or maybe it just kept on going. Forever. With no end. With no release.
But they weren’t alone.
“Lynne…”
“Yes, Joan?”
“You’re never going to let me go back to Ellewyn, are you?”
“You’re free to go back whenever you want.”
“You know I don’t know the way.”
Lynne didn’t respond.
“…You’re keeping me as a hostage, aren’t you? You’re going to hand me over to Princess Erika, after all I’ve done for you. Even after I watched you murder my friend. Even after you forced me to eat my slaves.”
“Forsaken, every one of them. You think you were the first? Honey, I’ve seen little girls like you turned to ash and stone at the hands of the Forsaken. It’s you innocent ones that they prey on. You’re like meat to their desires. They promise you the world, offer you friendship to gain your trust, and then present you with gifts designed to destroy our kind, because that’s the way of the Forsaken. Destruction. The unforgiven sin. They know no other path. They walk only Darkness.”
But Joan knew that wasn’t true. Raven was dark, sure, but she wasn’t Forsaken. She had just chosen to play as one. Just like she had chosen to be Goth. Who decided what were the right decisions? What gave Lynne the right to judge, to take life away? What made her so damn special? She wasn’t even real. She didn’t understand. She had no idea.
And Joan felt even worse for the Men. They were the innocent ones. They probably didn’t even want to play the game anymore. In fact, hearing their screams inside of her, Joan was sure of that.
“But now everything is better,” Lynne said with a smile. “The Forsaken are dead. There will be more, of course, but we will strike them down too. We will not see the resurrection of the Dark Lady Sorena. Kaligar will be safe.”
“Then let me go,” Joan said. “You have no use for me.”
“As I said, your cooking skills are beyond exceptional. I can still taste that chili now. And that Man—oh, by the Light, he was scrumptious. A bit on the hairy side, though.” She plucked a long, dwarven hair from her teeth. “Mm, but you simply must prepare a meal for Princess Erika. She would be delighted.”
“For the princess? I’m not that good…”
“Good?” Lynne echoed. “One bite of your chili and she will surely fire all the male chefs. Or rather, you’ll fire them—in a cooking pot! That’s all they’re good for. Hahaha!”
Her hyena laugh cut into Joan like a razor. Feeling dizzy, Joan leaned against a sagging oak tree and scrunched forward at the waist. Her stomach howled. She looked up, trying to find the sky, and almost collapsed.
Lynne saw her and suddenly stopped laughing. “Joan, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sick.”
“You look fine.”
“No, I’m sick. Really sick.”
Studying her face, Lynne nodded and waved to the other ninjas to continue forward. “I knew you shouldn’t have had two of those Men. One will get you sick enough.”
“I’m going to puke.”
“Try to hold it down.”
“I can’t.”
And Joan took off. She didn’t wait to see if Lynne was chasing after her, didn’t care if the blue ninja took out her blade and cut her down. She wasn’t lying. She had to puke. And she did, about two hundred yards into the thick brush, where she collapsed to both knees, leaned forward, and spewed her insides out. The world began to spin. She tried not to think about anything, but entire universes swept through her mind. She nearly blacked out. Everything was flying. She couldn’t hold herself down. Her head felt light, her body felt free, and she fell over to one side, exhausted, panting, nearly blind.
Eric and Vic stood up in her vomit. Their clothes were singed, eaten away by acids, and they had red scars across their arms and legs, but they were alive. They looked at each other, wiped away the brown muck covering their faces, and then turned to Joan.
“Forgive me…” she cried, still coughing up the rest of her insides. “I never should’ve listened to her. I was wrong. I was so wrong. Oh, God… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
“Forget that!” Vic said, almost slipping as he took his first step forward. “We have to get Cain before it’s too late.”
Joan shook her head. “He’s in Lynne’s body. I did my best to save you two. You have to run now… Get far away from here…”
“Not without Cain!”
Eric nodded and stepped out of the vomit, shaking his boots clean. “Vic is right. Cain’s an asshole and a Dwarf, but he’s also our friend. We have to stick together. You must understand that now.”
“I said, ‘get out of here!’” Joan screamed, sputtering up what was left in her tummy. “Lynne doesn’t have to know. She can think you died inside of me—I don’t care! I need you to run, though. Don’t look back. Don’t come back. I’ve done all I can do and, oh, God, I’m sorry…”
“This isn’t about being sorry,” Vic said. “This is about friendship. This is about being a team, Joan. Sometimes you have to be on the losing team.”
“You idiots aren’t going to run, are you!?”
Eric stood his ground next to Vic. “The way I see it, when a friend is in trouble, there’s only one place to run—and that’s to his aid.” Suddenly, his ears perked up. “My Elven senses are tingling. Lynne is heading this way.”
“Then get out of here!” Joan cried, trying to shoo them away like flies. But they refused to budge. “She’s going to kill us all if she realizes I tried to let you go.”
“Then I guess you better eat us again,” Vic said. “Because we’re not leaving your side.”
“Joan?” came Lynne’s voice. She hacked through the trees with her sword, looking left and right and then behind her. “Joan, where’d you go? Are you okay? Joan? Jo—”
A loud clang rang through the air. Lynne’s eyes shot open and, just as quickly, closed. Her sword fell to the dirt. She collapsed next to it, falling like an old tree split by lightning, and landed facedown in a pile of vomit. She twitched for a moment and then was motionless. In the darkness of the forest, Joan stood over her body, a frying pan in hand, and trembled.
“Oh, God…” she whispered. Then she threw down the frying pan, grabbed Lynne’s sword, and kicked her body over so that the ninja’s stomach was facing up. “Please be alive. Please be alive. Please be alive…” She raised the sword above Lynne’s chest.
“Not like that!” Eric screamed, flailing his arms. “Let’s keep this PG-rated.”
Nodding quickly, numbly, Joan released the sword and pressed her palms against Lynne’s stomach. She pushed. Nothing. She pushed harder and Lynne sputtered. She continued to push, harder and harder, like she was giving CPR and had no clue what she was doing. Lynne coughed. Her eyes opened again, this time rolled back in her head, and she turned her head to the side and choked.
“Give…him…up!” Joan screamed, suddenly raising her arms to the sky. She slammed them down, crushing Lynne’s ribs, and received a mouthful of vomit. She did it again. Cain rolled out of Lynne’s mouth, crumbled up like a stale piece of bread, and slowly unfolded himself.
“I’m really…beginning to not like girls…” he groaned.
Eric and Vic helped him to his feet.
“But I think I love you guys…”
They dropped him.
“Thank God…” Joan cried, wishing she could hug them. If only they weren’t all covered in vomit. For now, she just smiled at them. They seemed to smile back. Lynne started to lift her head, started to form some shape with her lips, started to utter some solitary syllable, only to be knocked out by the frying pan again.
And this time, Joan’s hand wasn’t shaking.
Giantess World
