Chapter Text
“Feels weird being back in the Misty Woods after such a long time. Remember when we were kids and we dared each other to go in? We’d take a few steps into the mist and come running back the moment we heard a sound. Then one day I went further than either of us had before. I think you’d been teasing me a lot back back then, so I had to prove myself. I went so far that I lost track of where I was and started crying for my mom. Then you ran in to rescue me, but you got lost too!We stayed together shouting for help until your uncle came and told us to follow the sound of his voice. Turned out we’d been sitting just thirty paces from the tree line! Ha-ha!”
Barnes hardly needed reminding. That was the incident that had made him rethink every childhood dream about wanting to be an adventurer. It was what made him stay here in Rendale while Yuna went out to learn magic, see the world, and only now returned, years later as an accomplished mage and adventurer. Still he forced a smile and chuckled along with his old friend as they walked side by side.
“You know, it may have been your uncle who rescued us, but I always thought you were the real hero that day.”
The shade of Yuna’s wide-brimmed hat did as much as the mist to obscure her face, but Barnes still saw the smile she gave him, and the warm look in her eyes, and turned away from them. He gripped the sword hanging from his belt. Its weight was unfamiliar to him, as were his boots, his helmet, his cuirass, his bracelets… items Yuna had collected on her travels, which she had meant to sell for coin once she found a merchant able to pay their worth, and which she was lending him for this expedition.
Since Yuna’s return, the renouncement of his old dream was thrown in his face every time he saw her pristine mage’s dress and red shawl over her shoulders, her enchanted rings and necklaces, her staff encrusted with enough gold and jewels to be worth more than all he owned. He should have been adventuring beside her, not whiling away his best years in the farm where the only thing he had to look forward to was the occasional festival. He wanted to go out, to see the world, to solve quests and grow as a person; to prove himself worthy, to himself and to Yuna. Those weren’t the words he used when proposing he join her once she left town again, but he suspected she understood anyways.
Yuna approached the proposal gently. The path she meant to follow from here, she said, was not for the inexperienced adventurer. Fiery foothills shadowed by mountains where dragons dwelt, thick swamps full of poisonous beasts and plants, an ancient battlefield blighted by an undead plague, marked the fastest and, to a ripe adventurer, the most fruitful path to the elven cities out west. Before letting him come along, she had to see how capable he was. Well, she hadn’t said that either, but it’s what Barnes took from her deflections and her sudden suggestion to pay this place a visit.
The monsters in the Misty Woods weren’t half as deadly as the ones he’d encounter on Yuna’s adventures—in fact, she strongly implied they were some of the weakest, most harmless monsters one could find—so they would make good fodder for him to show what he could do. At least, with any luck they would. Barnes had to be honest with himself: he had absolutely no adventuring skills. Before Yuna gave him hers, he hadn’t wielded any sword but the toy ones they played with as kids and never fought anything except a snake he found in his outhouse once (though to his credit he had slain that slithering foe with a good smack of his shovel). If he made a good showing today, he would owe it all to Yuna’s equipment.
Deeper in the woods, the noise of natural wildlife gave way to more sinister sounds. Squelch, squick, shuffle, growl; Barnes’s knuckles whitened on the sword hilt every time he heard something, and he looked towards the noise seeing nothing but a tree or two and that omnipresent grey wall. “Don’t you know any spells to disperse the mist around here?” he asked.
“I do, but that would make it easier for them to find us,” Yuna told him. “Besides, I can sense most kinds of creatures we’re likely to find here. The first one’s right ahead. Zombie. A very weak, rotted one, it feels like. You can handle it easily.” She sounded so confident. Barnes drew the sword. An enchanted holy sword, she had said; strong against undead and some other monsters they were likely to find here. His shield was light but sturdy, and carried an enchantment of endurance. His boots guarded against slowing effects, his helmet against blinding ones, and his cuirass lent him enough strength to carry everything without encumbrance. But even with all that equipment he quivered in his boots when that gross, shuffling thing crept into view.
“Remember, there are healing potions and antidotes in my bag. I’ll be standing by, ready to help if you need it.” A hand on his shoulder gave him some momentum. He stepped forward, almost within sword’s-reach of the undead, and held himself at the ready. The thing had lost its lower body somewhere. Its stench was foul, and he kept from breathing in too much. It crept a little closer, almost touching his boot. With shaking hand, he raised the sword overhead, and delivered a blow at the thing’s shoulder. Its rotting flesh sizzled and let out a sickly sweet smell. It grunted, but seemed not to mind too much. It tried to come closer, but that arm wouldn’t move as it wanted anymore. “Very good, Barnes! Now finish it off. One blow to the head should do it.”
One blow to the head. If his arm hadn’t faltered mid swing he would have gotten it already. Barnes yanked the sword free of the rotting flesh. It slid out as easily as if the creature were made of melted butter, and cut through the head just as easily on the second swing. One last groan escaped the zombie as it settled into its second death.
“That was… so easy.” He still trembled a little, and his voice did too, but he meant it. One, two—why, it was no harder than reaping wheat. He felt some strength return to his muscles. Some welcome confidence. Or, no, this was something more. Could it be… EXP? Had he leveled up?
Yuna walked up behind him, and heartily clapped his shoulder. “Well done! A little rough, but you’ll get used to the sword soon, I know it. Now let’s keep going. I sense a lesser slime up ahead. You’ll want to stab it, not slice it, right through its core.” After this taste of success, Barnes was eager for more fighting. He followed Yuna to the slime, a dull green thing some two feet across, and followed her advice to pop the round, gooey core at its center. Took a few thrusts to hit the bulls-eye, and in the meantime it spat some acid on him, but his equipment took the attack with no more than a scuff mark. Next was a dire rat, then an imp, then another zombie, this one mostly in one piece; a small rat pack, a poltergeist, and a devil goat. That last one proved the most dangerous of the bunch, though its headbutt only bruised him. He felt better after every few fights; stronger, faster, sturdier. Only by a little each time, but any progress was good progress.
“Well, this as been a good outing. Are you ready to go back yet, Barnes? It’s getting late.”
“Not yet! One more level up, then I’m good to go.”
“Alright. There’s another rat pack nearby. I think it should be enough.”
“More rats? Come on, there has to be something else nearby. I’m tired of fighting weaklings. I want to show you what I can really do!”
“We can do that tomorrow, or the day after. I’m not leaving for some time yet, so there’s no rush.”
“Why wait? We’re already here. Might as well do it now. It’ll only be one more fight. And don’t tell me there aren’t any stronger monsters here. The way you suddenly turned and started going down a different path earlier, I’m sure you sensed something ahead of us that you wanted to avoid.”
“How perceptive.” Yuna sighed. “I did sense a large slime of some sort. Those are usually left for more experienced adventurers, and a sword isn’t the best weapon to fight them… but if you really want to, I guess you can give it a whirl.” Barnes insisted, so she turned and led him toward this monster slime, telling him the best way to fight it. “Its core will probably be deeper than the length of your sword. You’ll have to slice away chunks of its slime to thin out the covering and leave a clear shot, but those chunks will still follow the core’s will and try to attack you or rejoin the main body. Try to focus on one area to thin out, or you could find yourself surrounded. Oh, and a slime of this size will probably stay alive and flailing for a little while after you pop the core, so take a step back and let it finish dying. And remember, I’m here if you need anything.”
“I’m sure your advice is all the help I need. But thank you, Yuna.” She was worried, he could tell, but it was time to prove she didn’t have to be. They soon arrived at a huge den, big enough for a herd of sheep. At Yuna’s suggestion, he threw some rocks inside to draw out his quarry. A deep gurgling bellowed out from the burrow, and then a dragging sound. Barnes peeked over his shoulder, at Yuna readying her staff, but looked back when she pointed at the thing coming out of the hole. It was wide and a bit flattened out, but once out in the open it gathered up its mass and swelled to a height of seven feet. Barnes took step back, and in so doing drew its attention. The slime bunched up and then lunged towards him, far faster than he’d thought possible after seeing those two other slimes. He barely moved out of the way, and delivered a panicked swing. The sword sliced through, with a cut some six inches deep and a couple feet long. The gash started healing almost immediately, starting from the ends and working towards the center. He raised his arm for another swing, but then a bubble surged to the surface right in front of him, and he raised his shield to block the splash of acid before it popped.
No, not acid, or at least it didn’t smell like it. It didn’t make his nostrils itch like the other slimes’ attacks had either. Come to think of it, this big one was a different color than the others too—a clearer, bluer shade of green. Maybe it was made of different stuff? Yuna might know what kind of slime it was, but…
“Barnes! Your shield!” He looked at the shield. It was… getting smaller? Soon the handle was squeezing his fingers. He had to drop it before it crushed them, and it kept on shrinking after it hit the floor. “This isn’t a normal slime! Stand back, I’ll take care of it!”
“No! I can do this!” Barnes two-handed his sword and threw a vertical slash at the slime’s side, cleanly slicing off a piece of it. The thing bumped into him, and he staggered back, but regained his footing and went for another strike around the same area, then dodged out of the way of another spurt of the slime’s juices, and kept following that approach. Yuna stayed out of it, though a glance showed her chewing her hair in worry and ready to jump in if at a moment’s notice.
The fight quickly grew tiring. However much Barnes hacked away, he still had no clear shot at the monster’s core. Now many of the pieces he cut off had gathered themselves into smaller slimes, while some others were starting to rejoin the main body. The monster seemed little inconvenienced by all this, but Barnes couldn’t keep it up much longer. “Barnes, let me help,” Yuna said from time to time. “Please. There’s no shame in not being the strongest.” He ignored her and pressed on, trying to come up with some better approach, but it wasn’t his tactics that were holding him back; he just wasn’t strong enough for this.
In the end he couldn’t stand against the monster. It knocked him over and slid over him, covering his body in its heft. Unable to fight off so much mass, he was sucked into its innards, where it would begin the job of digesting him. “Yuna!” he tried to scream, though the slime so muffled it that he couldn’t hear himself through the sound of its digestive process. A bubble with the slime’s juices surfaced above him, and a terrible, sickly feeling overtook him as it spilled and trickled down his body. Then… something happened to the slime. It started moving wildly, and in the next moment, the thing was torn apart above him.
Barnes gulped down fresh air. He sat up, and started frantically wiping off the juices that covered him from head to toe. “Barnes? My gods!” Yuna gasped.
“What? What!?” He tried to clear his eyes, but they stung too much to open for long.
“Hang on. Take a breath and hold it. I’ll wash that stuff off of you.” He followed her instructions, and in the next moment was pushed down by a torrent of water. It stayed on him for a while, and by the end of it he felt clean again. Then he just wiped his face down and opened his eyes.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, after what happened to the shield, that the slime’s juices had made him shrink too, but Barnes had avoided thinking about it while fighting for his life. Perhaps he’d hoped that effect wouldn’t apply to living beings. Seeing it with his own eyes now, he couldn’t deny the obvious. Yes, he’d been shrunk, and to judge by first sight, he was now as small as an ant. Yuna was… enormous. Her figure stretched higher into the sky than any other being he’d seen in his life. On her face was a worried look. “Barnes… Are you… feeling alright?”
She practically whispered, yet her words came louder than the roar of any monster he’d fought today. If you’d asked him then why he was shaking, he would have blamed the chill and adrenaline, but to tell the truth, he was terrified. Terrified of Yuna’s size, and of what it meant for himself. A bug—he was a bug, and subject to all the same dangers. He screamed when Yuna crouched and stretched a hand towards him.
“Barnes,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m here to protect you. I know you’re scared, but trust me. I’ll never do anything to hurt you. Now… let’s not lose our heads here. The worst is over, but we need to plan what to do next. Any ideas?”
“I… I don’t know.” Barnes stood up in the muddy puddle. He looked around the forest, at the big slime’s den and the distant wall of mist. “I think… we need to get out of here.”
Yuna nodded. “Good idea. Lets get back to the village, and back to your place. We’ll be safer there, and I can look through my books to see if there’s any way to cure you. But I’m going to have to carry you there. Are you comfortable with that? How do you want to handle it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I could ride in your hat?”
“In my hat. Yes, that could work. But first I’ll put a protective spell on you, to keep you safe in case anything happens.” Barnes nodded, and she held her hands in the air above him, channeling some magic into him. He did feel more protected once she finished. “And now, if you’re ready, I’ll use my magic to lift you up.” Another nod, then Yuna motioned for him to rise up, and his body obeyed, rising weightlessly to hover above her palm. She raised him so high up, just by standing up with him. If she dropped him now, he’d fall several hundred feet to the earth—or only four feet to her.
With hat in hand, Yuna moved him slowly onto her head. “Lie low, and hang on to my hair,” she said, and once he was gripping a carmine hair in each hand like thick ropes, she set the hat back on her head and marched away.
The walk was long and dreadful. Not just the sounds of the Misty Woods monsters, but also those of the normal wildlife and the village folk made Barnes tense. A hungry sparrow was no less deadly to someone his size than a wailing ghost was, and if he fell any one of his neighbors could step on him without ever noticing what he was. It sounded like Yuna never went through the village proper, though, but took the long way around to get at his home on the far end. Trying to keep this a secret from the others? Well he thanked her, whatever the reason for it.
He heard the door open and shut, and floorboards under Yuna’s feet, then the hat came off and she got him floating over her hand again. “Here we are,” she sighed, taking a seat at his table where she then set him down. Her hand rested nearby, and her fingers drummed against the wood, though they stopped and sheepishly curled up when he gave them a wary look.
Everything was still unnervingly huge, but at least being in his own home made Barnes a little less afraid. “Well, Barney… I hate to say it, but I told you to get away from that big slime. You really should have listened.”
She didn’t hate to say it half as much as he hated to hear it, but he couldn’t argue against it. “You’re being very casual about this,” he said.
Yuna shrugged. “The shock wore off. We’re somewhere safe now, and I have you protected, so there’s nothing to worry about right now. And I’m no expert on size slimes, but I remember that their poison is supposed to wear off after a time. I think the worst case scenario is that you stay like this for a few days, maybe a few weeks. We’ll both have to get used to this in that case.”
“Weeks? Isn’t there anything you can do to help this along?”
“The only size magic I know is Mini, and that’s obviously not what we need. And size slimes are rare, so antidotes for their poison are even rarer. I’ll take a look through my books, like I said, but I thought about it during the walk back, and I don’t think there’s anything there that will help. Sorry but right now the best I can do is help you get comfortable.” She gestured at his cupboard to open, then convinced a cup to come floating to the table, where a little bit of magic filled it up for her. “Ah… All that walking really took a toll on me. What about you? Do you want a drink, or did you get enough from your shower before?” Barnes shook his head. This felt so surreal, the way she talked to him like he wasn’t the size of a bug—far smaller than her fingertips, as she showed by bringing one next to him. “I’ll leave you this I case you change your mind.” A drop of water hung from her fingertip, and stayed behind when she touched it to the table. Just one drop, but in Barnes’s view it was enough to fill a barrel. And how may hundreds, or thousands of barrels, was Yuna chugging with each gulp? He’d avoided those kinds of thoughts until now, but if he was going to stay like this for long, he’d have to come to terms with them sooner or later.
“Hey. What’s got you so down?” Yuna asked. He looked up, at her ruby red eyes. “I know it’ll be hard getting used to this, but I promise I’ll help you along in any way I can. It won’t be as bad as you think. Maybe you’ll even find some upsides!”
“What upside can there possibly be in this?”
“Well, for one? I think you look really cute right now.” Barnes blinked, and stared blankly at Yuna. “Do you mind if I pick you up? I want to know what it’s like to hold you.”
“Uh… I guess it’s alright.” Barnes wanted to take back his answer when he saw her whole hand moving fast towards him. He stumbled back, nearly screamed, but held steady while her hand slowed its approach. Her fingertips settled on the table, with her thumb a few paces in front of him and her forefinger at her back. The latter came forward first, a towering wall of pink that stopped when it touched his body. She must have been moving as gently as could be, but to him it was still rough, and more than a little frightening. Only his trust kept him from bolting when her thumb closed in too. It really felt like he’d be crushed between those walls, until they actually came together and he realized how soft they were.
By reflex he tried to wriggle free, though it was just as hopeless as escaping the slime from earlier once it slid over him. When those fingers lifted him up, he sensed the ground receding and clung to their skin instead.
“Are you comfortable there?” Yuna asked once she held him to her eyes, but Barnes was too overwhelmed by all of her to answer. The might of her voice sounding so close to him, reverberating through his body; the sight of her eyes, so immense, so beautiful, and his own meager self reflected in their pupils; the weight of her flesh enveloping most of his body. He’d never before felt so completely at someone’s mercy. It was distressing, and despite his faith in Yuna, he couldn’t help thinking of how easily she could break him.
“It’s okay. Everything’s fine, see? That protective spell won’t let you come to harm from something as small as this. I’m sure I could even step on you and you’d still be fine. You asked me what there is to like about your new size. Maybe this will answer that question.” Yuna lowered him, past her face, past her neck, through the diamond-shaped window to her chest framed by gold trimmings, and dropped him into her cleavage. Her breasts held him snugly once her fingers receded, so snugly he almost couldn’t right himself. “Now what do you think? Go on, say something.” Yuna’s cheeks tinged with pink above him, but it was nothing compared to how much he was blushing. He looked around, but there was little to see beside her face and the roundness of her breasts; everything brought him back to Yuna.
“W-what’s with all this?” he made himself ask, just to have something to say.
“You don’t really think I missed all those times you were stealing looks at my chest, did you?” His cheeks were really burning now. He wished he could have hidden them somewhere else. “I thought you might appreciate a closer look, and what could be closer than this?”
Barnes cleared his throat. “Um… Yuna. I-I know I looked a little more than I probably should have, but…”
“Oh, hush! You don’t have to say anything. If I didn’t want you looking, I wouldn’t keep wearing these clothes. Relax and enjoy this, okay? I’ll start looking into your condition.”
There was an outline of a door on the wall, drawn with chalk and flanked by two purple candles, that Yuna had put there after he agreed to let her stay in his home. Walking up to it now, she held out her hand, magically lit the candle wicks, and made a deep purple door appear in the outline, with a handle of solid gold. It took her to the pocket realm where she kept her study, bedroom, bathroom, and everything else she could ask for. The study on its own was bigger than all his cabin, filled with more books than had ever passed through the village. Yuna’s steps carried her from shelf to shelf, while Barnes struggled not to sink deeper with every bounce of her heavy bosom. Struggled and failed. The smallest bob defeated his grip, and if he tried to climb higher, in seconds his little progress was undone. Soon his feet were caught between Yuna’s boobs, then his knees, his hips, and lastly shoulders had all been swallowed up before Yuna noticed and fished him back out, once he called for help.
“Sorry about that. I guess I shouldn’t leave you there while I’m walking. Though you would have been fine with my magic protecting you. Well I’m sitting now, so feel free to relax. I’m sure you need your rest more than me. And let me know if you want anything. I’ll be happy to help!”
With her breasts no longer moving except for a gentle rise and fall with her breathing, Barney grew more at ease. They were as soft as he’d ever imagined, warmer and more welcoming than his own bed. Only his bashfulness kept him tense, but once he found a comfortable way to lie between them, that faded too, and then there was nothing to keep him from settling in to sleep.