With the dawn of the sun rising in the east, morning came to the sleepy hamlet of Riesenfalle, the townspeople slowly awakening to what would surely be a day of celebration and exciting festivities. In just a few short hours, the Riesenfalle Centennial Magic Royale would commence, and with word having spread throughout the city during the prior evening that Maius Vastonia’s father would be coming out of his semi-retirement to challenge him this year, it was certain to be an event that could not be missed. Preparing themselves for a battle between the finest mages in their town’s history, the citizens made their way over to the fairgrounds at Bony Day Spring, taking their seats far ahead of the starting time to secure the best view possible for the eventual performance. Vendors picked up their booths and set up shop closer to the excitement, peddling their wares and knowing that they would be able to turn a much heftier profit by capitalizing on the unexpected boost of popularity to what was originally billed as a much more tame spectacle. Hopes ran high for a truly amazing display of magical talents to celebrate the town’s one hundred years of tradition, and with the Vastonia men pitted against one another as its sole competitors, it would truly be a once-in-a-lifetime match between two titans of Riesenfalle’s signature genre of magic.
Although the rest of the town had awoken early for the day’s events, the same could not be said for Lina Inverse, the young sorceress still sound asleep in her bed even as the noon hour approached. Tired from yesterday’s events and wanting to catch up on as much beauty rest as possible to show off to the crowd, she was completely dead to the world around her, snoring gently while in the thick of her slumber.
“Rise and shine, sunshine!” Linus’s voice called out to her, yelling at Lina to awaken. “If ya don’t get up now, you’re gonna sleep through the whole damn Royale. You want that friend’a yours to win that badly? Then get up already!”
“Mgrgh… What?” a groggy Lina mumbled, slowly lifting her head from her pillow. “Linus?... Where are you? Ugh… What time is it anyway?”
“Look to the left of your bed.”
Doing as instructed, the young girl gently tapped her cheeks to wake herself up, tossed off her covers, swung her legs over the side of her mattress, and was able to quickly spy a small, metallic box-like device sitting on a table next to her mattress. “What the...?”
“Never you mind what it is. Let’s just say that it’s a kinda remote speaker of sorts,” the old man explained. “Now get up and get dressed. Show’s almost about ta start!”
“Already?!” Lina howled, enraged at the lack of notice. Hopping out of bed, she immediately began changing into her usual attire, starting by tossing her yellow shirt over her head and pulling it down with both hands before inserting her arms into the sleeves. “Why the heck didn’t you wake me up earlier, old man?! Don’t you know it takes time for a girl to get ready?”
“When you were sleeping like a baby like that? Figured you could use as much rest as possible to be at tip-top shape for the day ahead,” he responded. “Anyway, you see a small little beige thing next to the speaker? Go on ahead and put it in your ear. It’s a magical earpiece that’ll let us communicate during the Royale no matter how far apart we are. Gotta coordinate if we’re to beat my knucklehead of a son, after all.”
“An earpiece, huh?” Scanning the table for the item in question, Lina picked up what appeared to be the strange device, placing it in her right ear and lodging it deep into her ear canal. “Alright, think I got it on,” she confirmed, continuing to put on the rest of her clothes.
“Good, good. Time for a test run then. I’m gonna kill the power to this thing now…” The small box gave out a muffled electrical whirring noise as it powered down shortly after Linus expressed his intent, leaving the mage alone in the privacy of her room once it was fully turned off. There was silence for several seconds before Lina heard Linus’s voice once again, this time emanating from directly within her ear. “Can ya hear me, kid?”
“Yeah, perfectly actually,” she replied, her mood mildly increasing as she marveled at the feat of magical technology. “This is gonna be really helpful. I can’t believe you actually made such a thing yourself!”
“Me? Ha! No. This is just somethin’ I stole from my son,” he brazenly admitted. “I mean, I could’ve made my own if I wanted to, but I’m not really the whole technological type, y’know? Tch, kids these days… Anyway, what Maius don’t know won’t hurt ‘em, so we’ll use these to our advantage. He’s probably got a set for himself and that ugly friend of yours too already set up, so we’ll have an even playing field.”
“I shoulda known better than to think that…” Lina sighed as she put on her shoes, now finally dressed and ready for action. “Well, I’m all set now on my end. Just when is this thing supposed to start anyway?”
“Whenever the heck you head outside, kid,” Linus responded. “Staging area’s not too far from where you are now, so we’re just waitin’ on you over here for my half of the team. C’mon now, you’re keepin’ the entire town waitin’, so get a move on! The longer you wait, the longer you don’t get to see my Linus Vastonia original!”
“That’s right!” the Bandit Killer exclaimed, reminding herself of the entire reason for agreeing to assist in this competition in the first place. “Alright, Riesenfalle Magic Royale, here I come!”
Kicking down the door to the outside, Lina ran out into the open excitedly, her eyes closed in deep thought, imagining what mysterious spell her partner had concocted for their side’s performance. Hehe, I can’t wait to see what spell he’ll use on that doll! There’s no doubt in my mind it’ll be to give it a bigger chest, and when I help to show it off to the crowd and we beat Naga and Maius, he’ll be so grateful that he’ll cast it on me for free! I can see it now… “Oh Lina, you were the best assistant I’ve ever had! Please, take this for your-” The fiery-haired mage’s thoughts were soon interrupted as she suddenly walked into a large green tree, too unaware of the outside world to have noticed it amidst her fantasies.
“Yeowch!” she yelped in pain, falling backwards flat on her rear from the force of the impact. “What’s the big idea?! Stupid dumb tree! Can’t you see I was…?”
Lina took a moment to regain her composure and examine the tree in front of her, noticing something peculiar about its composition. Unlike any arbor she had encountered before in her life, this one appeared to be not made of wood, but composed of a durable viridescent material that felt just as strong, if not even stronger. Additionally, whereas regular trees possessed numerous branches and leaves upon their sides and top, this anomaly was devoid of any other signs of foliage, instead merely bending slightly at its apex, forming a concave curve of minor shade overhead. The entire scene seemed eerily familiar to the sorceress, and while she had never seen a timber like this up close before, she knew that somewhere deep in her memories, she had encountered this type of plant at some point in her life.
“Where the heck have I seen this thing before…?” the Zephilian witch wondered aloud, closing her eyes in thought to concentrate. “I know I’ve seen it… I just… I can’t remember…” After tapping her right index finger against her chin for several seconds, her memories seemed to trigger a revelation in the back of her mind, one that filled her head with terror. “No… No way… There’s no possible way…” the magus trailed off, shaking her head in utter disbelief. “But it… it really is, isn’t it? This is… it really is… a blade of grass?!”
Lina was stunned at the incredibly frightful discovery, but she quickly attempted to rationalize the situation; perhaps Linus was playing a prank on her? Given his eccentric nature and the amount of effort he wanted to put in towards the defeat of his son, it would not be too far-fetched for him to go to such lengths, incorporating stagecraft into their presentation without telling her about it first to gauge her reaction. There’s no way this is real, she calmed herself down, trying to put ludicrous conclusions out of her mind. If it really was just a blade of grass, then it wouldn’t’ve felt like I ran into a brick wall. Still, least he could’ve done was keep me in the loop instead of springing it on me like this. I dunno what he’s gonna be using this for, but might as well see what it is. “Hey Linus, can ya hear me?” she called out to him using her earpiece communicator.
“Loud and clear, little lady,” he immediately replied. “What’s the matter? You out and about yet?”
“Yeah, about that…” Lina trailed off, scratching the back of her head awkwardly before continuing, “...I ran into one of your props out here. There’s a bunch of ‘em scattered all over the place, actually. You mind telling me what the heck they’re all about? I didn’t even know these were even allowed in a magic competition.”
“Oh, those…” Linus paused, his voice suddenly sounding much more chipper than it ever had been. “Guess you finally made it outside then? Well, I feel bad about pulling your leg about this any more than I need to, so I’m gonna come right out with it: that ain’t no prop. It’s the genuine article,” the wizard stated flatly. “To be honest, you’re actually on the Royale grounds right now!”
“Wh-Wh… WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?!”
“Heh, I see now you’re noticing that my body-altering magic worked, did ya?” Linus continued as the gravity of the situation began to sink in for Lina. “I gotta say kid, you’re definitely my pride and joy, way better than using that doll I was going to use for this! The second I saw your petite little form, I knew right then and there that you could be extra puny and even more adorable than before. I hadn’t felt so inspired in years!” the elder Vastonia laughed zealously, still excited about his chance encounter with his muse. “So, while you were sleeping last night, I put up a magical barrier around your room, applied the magic, and before I knew it, you started to shrink, shrink, shrink! Ha, kept right on shrinking through most of the night until it finally settled into ya, but I’ve gotta admit, I really outdid myself this time. Shame I had to give up my detached guest room for it to work, but ya gotta crack a few eggs, am I right?” he happily chuckled. “After that, all I had to do was cast another barrier over your little place, pick it up carefully, and then drop it off right in the middle of the field here so you could just walk right out onto the Royale stage. Pretty nice of me, right?”
“You… You… You did what to me while I was sleeping?!” the Bandit Killer fumed, practically breathing fire out of her mouth from the amount of pure, unbridled anger flowing through her body. “Ugh! I thought something was off about you, but I’d never think you’d do something this sleazy! Anything else you want to tell me about while you’re getting things off your conscience? Like, oh, just how small I am right now?!”
“Hmmm…” Linus paused, performing calculations in his head before he answered. “If I had to take I guess, I’d say you’re about… around 1/70th of an inch tall, give or take a few fractions of an inch. You’re gonna be the star of the Royale, Lina! Ha! Let’s see my idiot son try and match this masterpiece!”
“One… One seventieth… of an… of an inch…?!” Lina stuttered, barely able to get the words out of her mouth. “You made me this small?! Just what the hell is the matter with you, old timer?! And why didn’t you use the doll for this like you were planning on, anyway?!”
“Oh, that? Don’t you worry about that,” the legendary mage replied, casually dismissing her ire. “You’re now my official entry into the Magic Royale! I just didn’t have enough time to build up enough magic power to sustain the spell indefinitely on such short notice, so the next best thing was to cast it on you and let your own magic power do it for me. That’s why I had to shrink you while you were asleep - it was the only way I could make sure I could give Maius the trouncin’ of a lifetime today!”
“You expect me to believe that as an excuse?!” the shrunken sorceress wailed, causing Linus to grasp his ear in pain on the receiving end from the sheer loudness of her voice. “This has gotta be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard before in my life! Of all the dumb things you coulda done, you didn’t even bother to see if-” A sudden tremor coursing through the ground interrupted Lina’s tirade, causing her to grab onto a nearby piece of grass to maintain her balance. “Woah! And what the heck was that?!”
“I dunno, kid, but it ain’t just you. We all felt something just now,” Linus affirmed, looking out at the gathered townspeople in the stands behind him, concern and fear beginning to form on their faces. “What the hell was that anyway? There ain’t no fault lines around these parts…”
A second shockwave coursed through the Bony Day Spring shortly afterwards, genuinely beginning to spark cause for alarm in the citizenry. Moments later, a third quake followed, this time stronger than the last, with a fourth following in a regular interval. With just how frequent and rhythmic these vibrations were occurring, it almost seemed as if something was approaching the fairgrounds from afar, drawing nearer with each approaching step. Whatever it was, based on the power it was generating from its footsteps, it clearly had to be rather massive.
“Mommy, Mommy!” a young boy cried out from among the crowd, seeking his mother’s attention. “Look, over there! What’s that purple thing behind the mountain?”
After the fifth rumbling of the earth had passed, some of the attending townspeople were able to spy a large tuft of violet plumage on the other side of a nearby ridge, drawing the attention of the rest of their fellow Riesenfallians though shouts of wonder and bewilderment combined with numerous people pointing towards the strange sight. Another rattling motion followed soon after the tuft was spotted, this time bringing into view none other than… a human face. The attendees swiftly became silent, awed at the gorgeous visage that had revealed itself while realizing that it was a giant human that had been making the terrible tremors over the past minute. The towering being took another step forward as it walked around the mountainside, revealing more of its physique and features; it was a young female with flowing violet locks, her face grinning with unshakable confidence and satisfaction. The giantess’s next thunderous footfall allowed her to fully clear the obstruction of the tall earthen mound, putting her full, curvaceous figure on display for the masses.
BOOOOOOOOING!
A loud, spring-like sound emanated from the woman’s body as her massive, full bosom bounced in place several times before settling down, a consequence of her body’s natural motion.
“So… jiggly…” a young teenager in the audience commented, spilling his drink onto his now-seething girlfriend’s lap.
“Mommy, Mommy! Look at what that lady’s-”
“Close your eyes, son!” his mother yelled, immediately covering her son’s eyes to spare him from the adult sight at the supposedly all-ages event.
With another jiggling footfall, the graceful colossus now appeared to be standing next to the nearby mountain by comparison, giving the townspeople an estimate of her size: roughly around 300 feet in height. The woman advanced onward without saying a word, continuing to take slow and precise steps forward, each rattling the earth as she drew closer to the fairgrounds. In reality, the mysterious woman was drinking up the gazes and attention being thrust upon her by the bewildered public, her ego swelling with each successive movement of her gait.
“Almost there, my goddess,” Maius called out to the woman from within the crowd of his fellow locals, seemingly directing her with a strange device embedded in his left ear. “Just another two steps forward and… Yes, that’s perfect! Stop right there! That’s far enough away to give my father room for whatever he’s brought today. Let the entire town feast their eyes upon your resplendent beauty!”
“Ohhhhhh-hohohohoho!” the massive Naga cackled as she reached her designated spot, bringing up her left hand in front of her chin for her signature haughty display of superiority. The moment the towering beauty began her laughter, the entire village - including Maius - grasped their ears in pain from the sheer volume of her words alone. When Naga was at her normal height, her smug chuckling was already notorious for causing people to flee from her naturally loud voice, choosing to run for their lives rather than to suffer through her obnoxious exhibition. Now, having been increased to close to sixty times her scale, there was no chance of escaping her hubris; Naga’s omnipresent laughter resounded throughout all of Riesenfalle, ensuring that everyone in town would know of her inherent eminence.
“Nnnnngh…” Lina yelped in pain, dropping to her knees from her spot on the ground and covering her ears tightly, luckily somewhat resistant to Naga’s guffaw after their numerous travels together. “Are you freakin’ kidding me?! Why the hell is Naga a giant?!”
“Hmm?” the mighty sorceress blinked, cutting off her laughter immediately. “I could’ve sworn I just heard Lina…” Placing her hands on her hips in mild curiosity, Naga began to scan the surrounding area, ignoring the crowds and instead focusing her vision on the large staging grounds in front of her.
“How the heck can she even hear me from way up there?” the miniscule mage wondered aloud, amazed at just how keen her frenemy’s senses had become practically overnight. “Well, it’s worth a shot. Not that she’ll be able to see me at my puny size,” she shrugged, reminding herself of her current predicament. “Hey Naga, down here! Heh, let’s see if you can spot me from-”
“Oh! Why there you are, Lina!” the gigantic goddess interrupted, having pinpointed her rival’s exact location from her vantage point. “My, my, what have we here? I always knew you were a bit on the small side, but I never thought you’d embrace your inferiority complex to this degree, Lina Inverse,” Naga pridefully taunted. “Then again, when you’re traveling about with the strongest sorceress in the world all the time, it’d be a natural consequence that you’d just want to literally shrink away before my awesome might. Ohhhhhh-hohohohoho!”
“Grrr…” the fiery-haired teen growled, gritting her teeth in pure anger as Naga belittled her stature. “Oh yeah?! I dunno how you can see me either, but what I do know is that there’s no way a moron like you could come up with a spell like that on your own,” she fired back. “You know, your height’s kinda fitting too, Naga - now you can literally be the big dummy you are in everyday life! I can’t believe you’re so insecure that you needed to be as big as your fragile ego just so you could stand a chance of beating us. You really are just an overgrown idiot!”
Naga took the full brunt of the smaller woman’s insults without even so much as a hint of irritation, keeping her composure due in large part to her increased confidence in her stature and her natural maturity. “You know, Lina, my height isn’t the only thing that’s grown…” Bending downwards to loom over her opponent, Naga attempted to intimidate her jealous rival by playing on her strongest desire.
BOING! BOING! Naga’s chest bounced in place, audibly jiggling once again for everyone in range of her shaking bosom.
“I’d say I’ve gone up at least two sizes, wouldn’t you say?” she emphasized, flashing a victorious grin in the process while bracing her hands against her sides to keep herself balanced. “In fact, if I had to make a guess, it looks like your small breasts have gotten even smaller from where I’m standing. How fitting that such a small sorceress like you has a flat chest at your pathetic little stature. You might as well not have any breasts at all! Ohhhhhhhh-hohohohoho!”
“How dare you!” the Bandit Killer wailed, balling her hands into fists to channel at least part of the endless fury coursing throughout her body. “I’ll kill you! I’ll crush you! I’ll make you wish you were never born!” she threatened, stomping her feet one after another against the soft earth to further vent. “Stop showing off just because you have a tiny bit more than I do! I’m plenty-” Lina’s mind instantly went blank as her right hand touched her chest, realizing that Naga had been right all along, discovering that her bosom was, in fact, flatter than its usual state. “What in the hell?!” she immediately raged, wasting no time in contacting Linus for an explanation. “Linus, you senile old man! Just what did you do to my chest?!”
“Huh, what’re you gettin’ mad at me for? It’s all part of my spell!” the legendary wizard replied, not quite understanding why his assistant would have further qualms with his enchantment. “Being flat-chested is a rare breed, an elusive wonder in this world of ours. Sure, you could have some massive melons like your friend there, but those are so common! Now having a smaller chest? That is what this world needs more of, I tell ya. Not to mention it fits with the whole small magic theme I have going on here: smaller everything! Well, except for your magical potential, of course. That’s probably the one thing I actually made larger, just in case worse came ta worse, ya see,” Linus casually elaborated. “I ain’t the best at guessin’ ladies’ sizes and all, but I reckon you dropped down a full size, at least down to an A-cup, if not smaller. It’s like the kids always say these days: flat is all that!”
“NO IT ISN’T!” Lina shouted at the top of her lungs, causing Linus to again suffer more ear damage while Naga began her laughter anew from high above, assuming that her rival had received some terrible news. Still… she paused, instantly calming herself among the chaos as her mind wandered elsewhere, ...I wonder what he meant by saying he did something to my magical potential? He said he didn’t make it any smaller, and the way he sounded made it seem like he might’ve increased it just in case I ran into any problems or something. Just what else did he do to me that he hasn’t told me about yet?
As Naga continued to laugh at Lina’s unexpected physical hardship, the two sole competitors of the Riesenfalle Centennial Magic Royale reunited over on the main viewing area, Maius having come to join his parent now that his own secret weapon had arrived.
“Well, father, I see you’re still here,” Maius smirked, brashly greeting his opponent. “Can’t say I’m not surprised, though I’m sure my heavenly idol here will show you the true folly of your ways soon enough.”
“Meh! To hell with you and your freak show of an assistant there!” Linus growled back. “You wouldn’t know true beauty if it bit ya in the behind! Now my little lady? Heh. She’s a real work of art, I tell ya!”
“I see we both had the same idea then,” Maius chuckled, his attitude beginning to improve slightly. “I guess it’s true what they say, ‘Like father, like son.’”
“Heh,” his father began, cracking a slight grin of his own. “You might still be an idiot in my eyes, but you’re still my flesh ‘n blood. A Vastonia never misses a chance to show what they’re made of by any means necessary!”
“Which doesn’t surprise me why you decided to participate,” the younger Vastonia sighed. Before risking irritating his father once again, Maius expertly decided to change the subject to something more conducive to keeping his competition calm. “So, dad, I’m kinda curious… What exactly did you do to that sorceress of yours? I know she’s here, obviously, but I can’t see her at all.”
“Jealous are ya? Finally seen the light?” Linus boasted. “Well, wanting to beat you finally gave me that final push I needed to get back into the game, and heck, I managed to even fulfill my dream in the process: I made the ultimate small-scale being by my own hands!”
“Ultimate small-scale being?” Lina blinked, picking up on their conversation as Linus had left the channel open by accident. “Hey, what gives?! What kinda wizard has the last name of Vastonia and has a dream like that?!”
“Oh, you can hear me, kid? Well, I’ll tell ya who: this one!” he proudly replied, laughing heartily. “First of all, the family name’s just that - a name. What, you think I care about what someone with the last name of Inverse does for a living? No way! Now, back in the old days, the name Vastonia was meant to define someone with a vast amount of knowledge, but that’s kinda gone by the wayside over the centuries.”
“At least in your interpretation, old man…” Maius huffed, clearly in disagreement.
“Ah, shut it already, you lazy young’un! You wanted to hear what I did or not?”
“Might as well,” his son shrugged. “You’re gonna tell me regardless.”
“Darn right I am! You gotta understand real Vastonia ingenuity when someone’s nice enough to tell ya all about it!” Linus retorted. “After thinkin’ about it for a while, I realized that by mixing some of my older magics with a rare piece of orihalcon from, uh… What’s that place called again? Biaz? Yeah, think that was it. Anyway, that along with some of my personally-grown crop of Reducshrooms was all I needed. Mix ‘em up together to make a temporary amplifier for my patented reduction magics, and before I knew it, I was able to turn the kid into my masterpiece! And heck, I threw in a little somethin’ extra ta make sure she was plenty powerful to boot! Big things gotta come in small packages, am I right?”
“He specializes in… reduction magics…” Lina gasped, at a complete loss for words. The revelation that the legendary manipulator’s last name was the opposite of his professional skill set left the tiny magician utterly flabbergasted and incredibly betrayed. While Lina herself knew that he was without equal in his field, she had truly hoped for some form of enlargement magics to be used on her body, unaware that this was far from the case. “So… Wait, don’t tell me…” she loudly gulped, trying to remain composed. “If you think your last name means ‘vast knowledge’ and you know your way around making things smaller, then that must mean that Maius…”
“Thinks our family name has to do something with the larger things in life and vast sizes? Darn right he does!” Linus confirmed. “Idiot’s been blathering on about it since he was ten. That’s why as soon as I could, I kicked him outta the house ‘cause no son of mine was gonna make a mockery of our family history like that!”
“You just simply fail to realize that it could mean both, father, though I certainly believe it means a love of all things massive,” Maius corrected him. “After all, ‘bigger is better’, as they say, and nothing else here is quite as large as the magnificent, massive Naga in front of our very eyes!”
“Bah! Dunno how anyone could like someone as big as that,” the elder Vastonia huffed. “Even back when she was normal, she was still too much of a freak!”
“Hmph! I can see you truly are just jealous, father,” his son smirked. “However, because you detailed your own methods in creating your ultimate creation, so shall I to prove that my enlargement magics are the true signature spells of the Vastonia name!”
“Oh brother…” Lina facepalmed, picking up Maius’s explanation over her communicator.
“You see, father, I, too, was striving to make my masterpiece, the ultimate gigantic human being inspired by my love of all things gargantuan and the pride of the Vastonia family name,” the enlargement-specialist began. “I ended up stumbling upon a ritual magic that would allow a one-time-only expansion to the person or object as its target, though a human would have active control of how large they would wish to become. Luckily for me, the ritual required a few gallons of water from the Fountain of Growth over on Mipross Island, a rare import that I already had plenty of in my possession. So, while the vision of loveliness before us was asleep, resting and becoming even more beautiful in the process, I simply infused the gemstones on her tiara and bosom, along with her strange skull necklace, with the necessary magical power needed for the ritual to activate. By the time I finished, practically all of my special water was used up, though it was more than worth the use. Why, you may ask? Because something I had truly hoped for actually occurred…”
BOING! BOING! the jiggling sound of Naga’s chest coincidentally rang out, drawing everyone’s attention back to her heaving orbs.
“...And that was… that her bounty swelled right before my very eyes!” Maius laughed, a slight amount of blood trickling down from his right nostril as he spoke. “After all, massive breasts are the sign of an ideal, fertile woman, so having them become larger still was a sign from the gods that I was destined to win today!”
“That’s… uh… really somethin’ else there, son…” Linus blinked deadpan, unable to understand his child’s obsession with all things gigantic. “So, uh, you said somethin’ about a controlled growth burst, huh?” he continued, trying to shift the subject somewhat. “How the heck did ya get her to agree on being that tall in the first place?”
“Well, if you must know…”
-----------------------------
Earlier that morning…
“There, the magic should now be fully settled in,” Maius whispered to himself, standing over the form of the sleeping Naga. After watching over her body all night long, the exhausted magician only needed to take the final step of convincing his assistant to use her sole growth spurt responsibly, becoming large enough to amaze the crowd at the Royale, yet not too large as to be a threat to the city itself should something go awry. Maius knew that Naga’s ego was as enormous as she herself deserved to be, and that if left unchecked, would derail his plans with an errant desire. To counteract this, he came up with a plan to guarantee that Naga herself would comply with his original vision, and all it would take was a simple piece of paper and a pen. “Awaken, my sleeping beauty,” he gently called out to her, watching lovingly as the sorceress’s resplendent sapphire irises gently fluttered open.
“Mmgh… W-What?” the groggy woman blinked. “Maius, what are you-Oop!” Naga suddenly squealed, her mouth covered by her partner’s right hand gently pressing down upon her lips.
“Shhh. Please don’t say a word, my goddess. This is all part of my plan,” he assured her with a tender smile. “Simply get dressed and come outside as soon as you can, and remember, don’t say a word until I tell you. I don’t want you to ruin the surprise…”
Naga’s eyebrows gently rose out of curiosity, intrigued by what Maius had in store for their finished spectacle for the contest, and with a silent nod, she did as asked. After leaving her side, the sorceress quickly put on the rest of her ensemble and marched outside into the open clearing in front of the inventor’s workshop, finding her partner writing something down on a piece of paper and awaiting his next set of instructions.
“Ah, Naga, my goddess, you’re here,” he smiled, finishing up the final strokes on his written parchment as the purple-haired woman approached. “Now then, as promised, I’ve just finished writing our winning slogan for the Royale today. Read it aloud to me and tell me what you think,” the young man asked, turning around his paper for her to read. “And after that, I can show you our entry.”
“Now you’re talking,” Naga smirked in turn. “If it was just this piece of paper, I might have had to blast you out of boredom. Mmm, but let’s see here…” Placing her gloved palms against the sides of her waist, the noblewoman leaned forward to get a better glimpse of the scribbled letters in front of her. “If I’m reading this right, it says, ‘I want to be as tall as Bony Day Hill?’ Just what sort of slogan is-” A sudden shiver went down the tall woman’s spine, interrupting her complaint in the process. A moment later, Naga’s entire body started shaking uncontrollably, and in the next instant, she began rapidly rising higher and higher, growing several feet per second. “What the devil is going on here? Am I… am I growing?! Hey, have my breasts always been this big?” she blinked, only now realizing the increased weight and roundness of her bosom.
“Haha! Yes, yes! It’s actually working!” Maius enthusiastically cheered, clapping his hands together and watching his hard work pay off right before his very eyes. “Grow, almighty Naga, and gain the power you’ve always deserved! With this, we shall surely win the Magic Royale today and show up my father and that friend of yours with our superior brand of enlargement magics! Oh, and um, yes, those grew larger as well,” he awkwardly paused to confirm her query. “The important thing is that it’s working! Haha!”
“Enlargement magics, huh?” the beautiful, budding giantess pondered, captivated by Maius’s plan once he mentioned directly showing up Lina in a contest of magics. “Hmmm… Well, I think I’ll wait until my body stops growing before we continue. While highly alarming, I’m even more interested in just how much I can now literally look down at Lina by the time I’m done, whenever that is. She’ll have to admit once and for all that she is nothing before the strongest sorceress of all time, Naga the Serpent! Ohhhhhh-hohohohoho!”
“P-Please keep it down, heavenly goddess!” Maius pleaded as he held his hands over his ears to mitigate the loudness of Naga’s cackling. “You’ll give away the surprise if everyone in town can hear you.”
“Oh… I suppose they could, couldn’t they?” the haughty woman paused, ceasing her laughter immediately, hoping to surprise her rival most of all. “Sorry about that. But how much longer is this supposed to last anyway? I’m already taller than all these trees… Just how big is that Whatever Hill?”
“It’s just about done, oh majestic one,” he assured her, noticing that her acceleration began to curtail as she approached her desired stature. “The place I had you speak of is adjacent to where the contest is to be held, a rather large hill that is more like a miniature mountain. It’s roughly about 300 feet tall, and that’s how large you… now are…”
Maius was without words as he witnessed the towering sorceress’s growth come to a sudden halt, leaving him to stare in sheer veneration at the vision of massiveness she had become. Before him loomed Naga’s right boot, the wall of jet black fabric a true marvel of modern magic; refraining himself from touching it, Maius immediately noted that he was not even close to reaching merely her ankle, estimating that it was roughly fifteen feet tall just to where her foot began. High above him, twin bulging melons clad in a matching tight bra cast a shadow over his miniscule figure, and above them was the face of the woman he called a goddess, looking every bit the part from her new perch high above the rest of the world.
“So, I’m 300 feet tall now, you say?” Naga wasted no time in asking once she felt her body return to normal and the shaking exit her system. Taking a moment to become adjusted to her increased frame, she turned her head slowly to the left before doing the same towards the right, letting her flowing violet hair flow proudly in the early morning breeze. “Mmmm… Well, I can’t say this is the least bit terrible at all,” she smiled, satisfied with the outcome. “The view from here is fitting for a sorceress of my caliber, not to mention the fact that my clothes grew with me as a bonus, though I suppose it’s a good thing I left my sword inside before coming out here…” she noted, flinging open her cape for a brief moment to point out her lack of weapon. “Oh well, it was useless anyway! Someone of my power doesn’t need to rely on something as weak as a sword anymore!... Not that I ever used it in the first place, of course..."
“I am… I am glad you are so pleased with the results, glorious Naga,” Maius nodded, happy to hear of her genuine assent to the results of his experiment. “So you’re… not mad or anything? Even though this is permanent?”
“Oh riiiiiight… I do recall you saying something along those lines last night…” the titanic mage mused, playing coy. Before Maius could blink, Naga stomped her right foot towards her partner, practically crushing him under her boot with a purposeful narrow miss. “...But to answer your question, not at all. Though, of course, if you choose to provide me with some proper compensation as well as a sign of further appreciation…”
“Are you… Are you trying to bribe me?” Another stomp was all it took to confirm the message, giving the young man a second brush with death. “Alright, alright! I got it!” he replied, throwing up his hands in defeat. “How about 100 gold coins? No, 150!”
“More than double that,” Naga curtly replied, turning her head slightly away from him to express her disdain.
“More than 300 gold coins? Are you serious?!” A third stomp reiterated that the massive woman had all the bargaining power in their exchange. “Ugh. The prize money for the Royale is 1000 gold coins though, and I need enough to recoup the costs of my entry. I’m down to my last vial of sacred water that I use for all my magics...”
“Hmmm…” Leaning forward down to her waist height, Naga extended her right hand towards the defeated Vastonia. “Give it to me. Whatever you have left of it.”
“Um… O...kay…” Maius blinked, reaching into his left pants pocket and offering up a small ampoule of water towards her gloved palm. “What do you want with it?”
“Simple: to use as a good luck charm, of course,” she grinned, immediately snatching up her prize. Standing back up to her full height, Naga brought the tiny phial up to the top of her breasts, proceeding to hold her skull necklace tightly with her left hand. With an artful display of her peerless dexterity, the Saillune princess slipped it into the right eye socket of her centerpiece, able to spy it rolling into its dark depths with ease. “There we are! Hmmm… How was I able to see that though...?”
“Oh, that’s because I cast extra-sensory magics on you as part of the ritual,” Maius interjected. “It’d be useless if you were big without the ability to interact with everything else around you, so I threw in some boosters to all of your senses, especially with your sight and hearing. It might take some getting used to, but you should be able to zoom in on anything you like and even hear distant conversations as if they’re happening right next to you, even if they’re whispering. Winning the Royale means going all out on every avenue to make sure that I present the ultimate gigantic woman as my one true masterpiece!”
“Enhanced senses with zooming, you say? Hmmm… I guess I’ll have to try it out in a bit,” Naga mentally noted for later experimentation. “But for now, as we were discussing before, I’ll take your little vial here as my good luck charm, and we’ll split the prize money right down the middle to call it a deal. A nice even 80/20!”
“80/20?! That’s nowhere even close to even! You’re really going to take 800 gold-” Naga’s boot struck the ground with tremendous force, knocking Maius off-balance and making it clear there would be no room for negotiation. “Fine, fine! 80/20 it is. I can’t believe I’m going to lose money on this competition now...”
“Mmhmm! I knew you’d see it my way,” the smug sorceress chortled, impressed by her own immense bargaining power. “Now then, perhaps I should become even larger now that we’ve agreed on our mutual coordination in this little event coming up, hmm? Tell me, all I have to do is say what I wish to be as large as or greater than, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s exactly right,” the great mage nodded up to her. “However, I must explain that it only could trigger but on-”
“That’s all I needed to hear!” Naga proudly interrupted, lifting up her left arm in front of her and pointing dramatically with her index finger. “All I have to do is desire it and such greater vantage in this world will be mine! Let’s try it out, shall we? I think I’ll start by… becoming large enough to scoop up entire swathes of trees in my hand!” she declared. Holding her pose for several seconds in the hopes that she would experience the same shivering sensation she had felt before, nothing ultimately occurred, only the sound of the gentle breeze and Maius’s exasperated sighs filling the air around her. “Hey, what gives, Maius? I thought you just said I could get even bigger?” she immediately accused him, staring daggers down at the magecrafter past her heaving chest.
“I did, but-”
“Then why isn’t it working?!” she demanded, now pouting slightly at the lack of her promised ability. “I want to be so big that I could see the other side of town from here!” Naga waited a quarter of a minute this time before becoming irate, stomping her left foot in place to demand answers. “Well?! What do you have to say for yourself? You call yourself a quality body-altering magic master with such shoddy promises, hmm?”
“That’s because…” Maius fumbled, trying to come up with a way for his assistant to drop the subject. “That’s because… ittttttttttt’s got a long recharge time! Yeah, that’s it! It can’t just be used all willy-nilly all the time,” he lied, believing it would be enough to convince her of the fib. “It just completely slipped my mind in all the excitement. However, it should be ready to go again sometime by the end of the Royale, so you could always try it again then.”
“A long recharge time, you say?” Naga huffed, crossing her arms beneath her enormous orbs. “Then why didn’t you say so in the first place? It makes sense that it would certainly be rather taxing, and it then becomes a fantastic showstopper of a finale to put Lina and your father in their places! Hmph…” Pausing for a moment, the mighty bombshell placed her hands back on her waist before continuing. “Well, we might as well head out to the show then. Just where is it, anyway?”
“H-Hold on, my giant muse! While it’s just over the hill in the distance over there, it’s still too early, and I need to get over there in advance to make sure your entrance is absolutely perfect,” her companion explained. “Oh, that’s right! I almost forgot! I transmuted your earring with a communicator I made myself so that I can help command you from a distance,” he elaborated. “You can probably hear me regardless, but it just makes things easier this way. Trust me when I say that if you wait for my signal and do as I say in the Royale, not only will we trounce our competition, but all eyes will be on you as you make the grandest entrance in its hundred year history!”
“Hmmm…” the titaness mused, tapping her left thumb against the side of her chin in thought for a short while, flashing a bright grin of approval soon afterwards. “Well, when you put it like that, how could I possibly say no?”
-----------------------------
“Let’s just say she desired the same thing I did…” Maius boasted.
Yeah right, Lina mentally sighed. Knowing Naga, he probably just duped her into getting as big as he wanted. She’s too stupid to use magic like that properly…
A loud klaxon blared from the back of the spectator stands, alerting everyone present at the spring that the show was about to begin. “Fellow citizens of Riesenfalle!” a deep, older male voice called out to the masses via a loudspeaker. “As your mayor, I welcome all of you to this celebration of our fair city’s rich legacy of cultural and magical heritage. Now, without further delay, let the Riesenfalle Centennial Magic Royale commence!” A loud roar of applause emanated from the townspeople at the declaration, the citizenry absolutely ecstatic at finding out just what this year’s competitors had to offer in their demonstrations of magical prowess.
“Hmph. Finally, we’re getting started,” Naga smugly stated, looking past her amplified chest down at her rival in the grass below her. “I’m surprised you haven’t backed out yet, Lina. What with that pathetic little state you’ve been reduced to, it’s a miracle you haven’t already died of embarrassment. It must truly be impossible not to mope about when you have so much less than I do. Ohhhhhh-hohohohoho!”
“Grrrrr…!” the diminished Bandit Killer growled through her teeth, unable to restrain herself around Naga’s latest bout of self-satisfied laughter. “I can’t believe you! All that added height has gone to that empty little head of yours! I pay for your food all the time, and this is how you repay me?! I won’t stand for it any longer!” Patching into her communicator, Lina immediately contacted Linus to vent her frustration. “Hey, old man! New plan! How about we turn this Royale thing of yours from just a demonstration into a full-on battle royale? I can’t let Naga keep mouthing off like this, and I’m sure your locals would love to see a real magical fight. Everyone wins, don’t you think?”
“Hmmm…”
“A battle royale, huh? You versus me?” the giant woman inquired, interested in the proposition herself. “That sounds fine by me. In fact, it’ll be the perfect opportunity to show the entire world that I am the superior sorceress! Handing you your defeat in front of all these people will be a perfect stage to finally settle our rivalry, Lina Inverse!”
“I don’t think we’ve got much choice in the matter, father,” Maius noted. “Those two are going to fight whether we try and stop them or not.”
“Hmph… Much as I hate to admit it, you got a point there, son,” the elder Vastonia nodded. “Alright, we’ll head up and talk to the mayor about the change. You two just stay here and keep from killing each other while we smooth things over and get the people to safety. Talk about one heck of a show for the centennial…”
“That certainly won’t be a problem,” Naga acceded, retreating two steps away from her present position to put some distance between herself and her rival. “Though you may have to warn Lina again. I can’t guarantee she won’t start flinging spells before then because she knows she has no chance of defeating me!”
“What did you just say?!” the fiery teenager demanded, their banter serving as the perfect intermission while the citizens of Riesenfalle calmly began to evacuate the spectator stands in the background. “Are you that insecure that you’re gonna lose? Maybe if your brain was even a quarter of the size of those balloons you’re carrying around, then maybe you might stand a chance!”
“Hmph! How dare you!” her much larger competition shouted in offense. “I won’t stand for you making fun of my intellect!”
The two sorceresses continued to trade insults back and forth for roughly two minutes, both of them reaching their boiling points by the time another siren blared from the now barren stands, drawing their attention. The once capacity crowd had now been completely relocated to another impromptu viewing area in the town itself, assuring both women that they could now do battle against one another without causing any accidental injuries to civilians. From high in the bleachers, the Vastonia men waved down to their lovely assistants, assuring them that everything had been cleared for the battle they craved.
“Hey! We’re all set on our end,” Linus called out to the magicians. “The mayor’s gonna give ya the signal to kick things off real soon, so be ready. You better not lose out there, kid! I need to show my son here what real Vastonia magics can do!”
“As if!” Maius instantly countered, looking towards his gigantic creation in the distance. “The great goddess Naga will prove once and for all that size trumps all in terms of power and form! You can do this, oh divine one!”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please!” the bass tone of the mayor rang out from above, his voice resonating over the speaker system. “I have done as you’ve both asked, so let your young associates here settle your disputes for you. Now then…” he paused momentarily, clearing his throat before continuing. “Without any further delay, let the first ever Riesenfalle Magical Battle Royale… begin!”