Featured

Marienheid (2)

2

It was ultimately to the panther’s benefit that he couldn’t see the contours of the grey sheets lightly draped over empty air, the seemingly solid surface the three of them were laying on nothing more than a trick of the AG emitter’s steady thrum underneath. It was hard enough for the panther to comprehend the living canyon he uneasily paced through, the sheer size and scale of the two giants on either side. They both looked peaceful, even when he was close enough to hear their lungs fill up with air and feel their warm exhale run through his black fur. He reached out to stroke the deer’s face, amazed he was small enough to fit inside the herbivore’s mouth. So lost in the daydream of it that he was entirely unprepared for the booming greeting, while the diminutive panther leaned into his face. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Markus was stunned into silence. Corin brought his head up and rested it on his palm. He let out a nice long yawn, a living, breathing statue from the perspective of the micro panther. He glanced over to Pub, hoping he had also woken up. “It’s alright…you know how deep Pub can sleep, especially after he’s thoroughly satisfied.” Involuntary memories of the tiger’s two orgasms sprang to the panther’s mind and were just as quickly suppressed. He didn’t have the stamina to keep chasing those thoughts. “Come now, I can’t be that intimidating, not after last night…”

The panther blushed, wary of the advances of other giants.  “N-no, of course not, I know you don’t mean me harm–”

The deer raised a paw, silencing the obedient panther. “You don’t have to feign politeness, not around me. Pub’s really into the ‘sirs’ and ‘oh, master please!’s but I seek different pleasures.” The strange way the deer said the last two words sent Markus’s heart nearly into convulsions.

“No, sir, y-you don’t understand, your size–it would be inappropriate for me to think that I’m at your level–”

The deer sighed. “Enough with that bullshit too. Honestly, I expected more. All that Pub is going through, and because of you…” he trailed off with two clicks of his tongue and a shake of his head, disappointment unmistakable. “What I want to know is if Pub has told you why he hasn’t activated your lace.”

The word meant nothing to the panther, and so he shook his head. “Wh-what’s that?”

“Typical, always likes his little secrets. Well, I outrank him, so I can activate it for you. If you wish.” The deer’s words dripped like honey into his ear. It was almost enough to make the panther want to comply, to make the charming deer happy. The deer reached down, a fuzzy digit ruffling the top of the panther’s head, and the panther started to calm, a feeling of gentle reassurance seeping through his body. He would ask Corin just what a lace was–while the deer accessed the tiny little spindles that lay dormant throughout his brain and activated them.

He felt a million pinpricks of light slowly dissolve from and into his vision, replaced in their stead with a vast, deep blackness. One by one, the pinpricks came back into focus, starting to form connections, what seemed like an eternity passing as the panther observed each and every path slowly come together to form an astronomical loop of trade and transit. He realized to his amazement that the entire Republic was laid before him: every ship’s relative location to each habitable system and the webs of traffic that wove the tens of thousands of unique habs together. Olonne was in there, somewhere, and he spent a fruitless eternity searching for his homeworld. It took another eternity for the deer’s words to come through, but once they did they wiped the galactic map from his thoughts. 

“I’m starting to see why he waited. It was a little reckless of me, bringing you in here without running you through your paces.” The voice was impossible, louder by several orders of magnitude than the loudest sound that he had ever heard. The deer was an adept, having spent more time by some measures in this virtual space than in the world of flesh and blood. “Focus on the sound of my voice. It’s something solid you can cling to without getting overloaded.”

The words were propelled by their own force and absolutely filled the panther’s mind. He had no choice. The more attention he paid to the words booming through his mind, the clearer the words suspended in air in front of him became. He realized there was a lot more information hidden behind the words that he could access if he felt so inclined (points of inflection, ambiguities of translation, transcriptions in hundreds of different formats), but it was just as easy to ignore them and focus on the words themselves and their meaning. He realized the Autonomous Zone map had faded from his view, but if he tried to focus on what was lying behind the deer’s words, their source, all he could see was large stalks of fur. He stared at the light brown to dark auburn fur, drinking in every millimeter of the massive titan, and realized he was able to perceive the deer in all his enormity, bigger in this virtual space than a planet, booming down orders like some intimate Godhead. “There we go. Now we can talk just the two of us. We won’t have to worry about Pub.”

The panther didn’t speak, in fact found himself quite unable to respond. Instead he passed a quiet moment in stunned contemplation of just how something so unfathomably gigantic could speak, let alone speak to him.

“I like you, Mark, I really do, but I have a few questions for you.” The panther was still shell-shocked by the deer’s enormity. Corin let out a sigh, blotting out the micro’s vision and replacing the massive tufts of brownish-black fur with a cervine little more than twice the panther’s size. “I’m not getting any smaller, Markus. You can’t take away all my fun. So tell me…how much do you know? Why would you say that Pub was sent to your planet?”

It took Markus a moment to figure out how to speak and another to decide what to say, amazed that this virtual environment had shifted so seamlessly into a public garden, furs of different sizes (none bigger than the cervine) ran about and lounged and all the things that nobles could do on public lands before Publius liberated and then ate them. The thought helped him to find his voice, the words coming out in a torrent as he related the story as he saw it. Publius Maximus was a divine avenger, sent down from the heavens to conquer their planet so it could be developed and aid in the war effort for a war that he confessed to not knowing much about. “But it must be a great cause if master Publius has pledged his life for it. And I am here because he wants to give me citizenship, for reasons that only he knows.” An arched eyebrow from the cervine who took a seat, realized he was shorter than the panther, and grew himself so that his seated form was a few feet taller than the panther. Intimidated, he added, “P-perhaps–because I would follow him anywhere, and any cause that is worthy for him is certainly worth my own devotion.”

“You know very little, then, and that is a very dangerous thing indeed. Not nothing, but very little. Would you like to know more?”

The question was a rose with sharp thorns,equal parts enchanting and dangerous. It gave the panther pause. “I…think I do.”

“It is not an idle question,” the deer said, relishing the booming resonance he could bring to his voice. “Nor is it a trick. I can tell you things that Publius won’t, or can’t. Surely there is something you wonder about.” He started to crawl over the panther’s head, growing large enough his toned arms held his broad chest and shoulders far above the awestruck panther. His first thought was of a church, Corin serving as an altarpiece to himself.

The panther let out an instinctual “N-no” that grew more resolute on repetition. “No, please no. I trust Publius’ judgment.”

“I was hoping you’d put up a fight.” The panther’s shoulders slumped in relief, before the next words proved that relief premature. “It gives me an excuse to do this.” A chill ran down his spine as Corin began to grow again, his slender arms ascending into the heavens as his smirk grew all the more threatening. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to know?”

The panther wisely sensed a trap, but foolishly thought a shake of his head would get him out of trouble.

The deer’s smirk inverted, now a heavy frown. “Oh come now, I know that isn’t true,” he continued to grow, his frown softening as he noticed how quickly the panther seemed to dwindle under the canopy formed by his torso. With a theatrical flick of his wrist, the deer conjured up a lovely forest scene centered on a meadow large enough for Corin’s growing body It was surrounded on all sides by a line of trees with multi-colored flowers–some not even part of the panther’s visible spectrum–a radiant sea that spilled through that distracted Markus for long enough that Corin was able to ascend to the heavens. A full mountain of deer flesh loomed overhead, his forepaws large enough to scoop up an entire city. “And I can’t just tell you secrets, little panther…” He leaned down so his face–larger now than the largest buildings that panther had seen, even the ones on the outskirts of Patelwa–filled the sky above the panther’s head. “You have to ask the right questions first.”

The constant shifts in size were too much for the already overwhelmed panther. He had seen too much, too quickly. He was curious, and wanted to know more about the tiger and his mission, perhaps now even more than Lukas with his meticulous notes on what the tiger said and where and when, his tired and sententious debates about what the “words of our lord” meant. What did Publius really mean when he said that the sky was filled with light at all hours, and not just during spark-showers? They had both had so many unresolved questions–and they all seemed pointless now. Trivial. Neither he nor Lukas could have anticipated anything like this. And so he continued to hold his tongue.

“I’m not letting you out of here,” the deer’s words boomed ominously through the panther’s mind. He felt encased in the deer’s very thoughts. If there was a way he could escape this, whatever this was, he did not know and furthermore had no clue where to start. “Not until you ask me something. So if you won’t speak, I may as well have some fun with you.” The deer, quite the adept at disrobing in any environment, snapped his fingers and rapidly outgrew his remaining clothes, making the sheer Dionysian robe that barely preserved his modesty fall to shreds around Mark. It was one thing to take in a deer who was only ten times as large, but the scales involved here were unreal in every sense of the word. In many ways he was more impressive than when he was planet-sized; he could actually fathom the massive tower of fur and flesh as a living creature and not just some unfathomable and immense deity. He was filled with a deep, gnawing terror that only increased when the enormous cervine’s cock thumped down onto the ground mere meters away, followed shortly thereafter by a brown-furred digit that pressed him into a cockhead a dozen times his size.

He struggled in vain against the deer’s still-growing erection, no longer sure if it was getting larger from mere arousal or his continued growth. “You need to be better at guarding your thoughts. Of course, that’s also why I dragged you into here, so you couldn’t hide behind your coy exterior. You are positively filled with doubts…” He pressed the panther into his slit–already wet with pre–just enough force so he felt himself slowly but surely start to slide inside. The deer’s words remained audible even as the panther drowned in Corin’s warm flesh and cum. “I, however, know that I made the right call bringing you into here. For one,” he let out a loud, heavy moan, large enough to make the panther reach up, fighting the tight flesh and wetness surrounding his body and covering his overawed ears as best he could manage, “you feel even better than usual…and I can even provide an easy escape valve for you! I’ll let you out the moment you ask me a question about Pub. Your master.” The sneer in his voice was as unmistakable as it was horrifying.

Corin, caught up in the moment and savoring–as he often did–the feeling of being so much bigger than the drowning panther, had overplayed his hand. Markus did not know that he could not actually drown in this virtual environment, that his desire to breathe was just a reflex from his waking mind that could be switched off easily with the proper thought. This was intentional on the massive cervine’s part, who wanted to put an absurd pressure on the panther to tell him what he most wanted to know about the tiger, but he didn’t think Mark’s mind would collapse under that pressure, completely blank as he struggled, frantic for some air. He asked the first question that came to mind. “How…” the cum rushing into his mouth made the words hard to form, even as the feeling of it splashing down his throat was strangely pleasant in the virtual environment. “How large should Pub be?”

The deer paused for a moment, all motion temporarily frozen in his consideration. Just as the panther felt himself start to drown in his cum, the deer’s strokes grew more furious. The panther’s sense of the sheer size of the cockhead he was trapped inside was beyond him, to say nothing of the size of the entire shaft. The deer’s breath quickened as he rapidly reached climax, a load the size of several aquifers splashing through the modeled city surrounded by his brown-furred thighs. He struggled against the sea of deer inundating him, the panther felt the deer’s moans turn to laughter. “That’s your question? You want to know what I think about THAT, huh? Well, to be honest, I think he looks best when he’s looming over a city…not unlike how I’m currently looming over you.” His voice retained its raucous, earth-shattering qualities, a size and scale so far beyond his wildest imaginings, even with his knowledge of Pub and the predilections of giants like him. “Those scales are denied to us in the real, so we have to escape here to live the truly impossible.” The implicit possibilities in the deer’s words would have stunned the panther if he were capable of registering them for anything but their physical effects.

Rivers of cum flowed around and through the fantastically large buildings, dislodging a few megastructures as the panther, light enough to float downstream, tried in vain to avoid the tons and tons of debris. “I suppose I can pull back a bit now that you’ve served your purpose,” his softened words were followed by Corin dwindling in size, his massive, continent-spanning ocean of cum slowly subsiding. The panther, hyperventilating on the ground of a picturesque city park and still covered in the deer’s seed, remained completely unprepared for Corin stomping down on either side of his stupefied body. “I don’t think you can handle it here. I see now why Pub kept your lace off.” The deer lifted his hoof–even as he shrank he was still more than large enough to crush the panther’s entire body–and then it came crashing down, disconnecting the panther from the network and sending him thudding back into the real.

His physical body–breathing just as heavily as when he was struggling against a sea of deer seed in that virtual city–had the benefit of at least being dry, though his head ached with a dull, throbbing pain while his back was now pressed against the tiger’s, each snore loud enough to reverberate through his one-twelfth-scale frame. He usually had to worry about the tiger turning in his sleep, crashing down and smothering him in warm, hefty tiger fur, but as he turned his head to meet the mischievous glint in Corin’s eyes, he knew he had much more dangerous things to worry about. And he feared he had wasted his only chance to find out what they might be.

*

Of the 28,417 orbitals, megastructures and hollowed-out asteroids that form the permanent and fixed installations of the Kynthari Autonomous Republic, most serve some practical purpose. Although the logic of post-scarcity economics does not require the same level of specialization common among grade 4, 5 and even grade 6 interstellar cultures, the residue of such specialization remains common even among the remnants of sublimed civilizations, where one might assume the highest level of historical development, provided one grants, arguendo, that energy sublimation is the endpoint of all political economies.

As a result, the Arkendus Orbital is somewhat rare among emplacements in that it lacks even a nominally practical purpose; it is alone in a three-planet system orbiting a white dwarf without even microbial life, many parsecs from the nearest population centers, Kynthari or otherwise. It is about average for orbitals of its class, composed of 32 plates, each with a population ranging from five hundred thousand to fifty million sentient souls scattered over 1,472,621 square kilometers, each plate overseen by an administrative council of three to five Dhi who are themselves overseen by a council of three random Dhi chosen by lot on a biannual basis from the qualified AI’s…

The rabbit skimmed down the page, glossing the tiger’s verbose prose in search of anything useful, something he didn’t already know. He knew he had at least read this introduction–maybe five, maybe ten years ago–but it all seemed unfamiliar here and now. A lovely cadenza galloped up and down four octaves through the string section in perfect counterpoint to Cody’s frustration.

With few exceptions, all plates adhere to the fifteen principles outlined in the Declaration of Sentiments drafted and signed by the original Construction Council (29 biologics, 143 drones, and 7 Dhi):

  1. Historical literacy. Arkendus shall function as a living, breathing document to past ways of being and supposedly obsolescent modes of production.

The first principle remains the central organizing pillar of the orbital. All estates conform to some central theme, some sort of historical ideal that they strive to recreate in a unique way. Freedom of expression is valued; different perspectives on historical events are encouraged, and it is rare indeed to find a singular viewpoint represented even within one estate. This is especially unremarkable given the communal nature of these exhibits, created by groups of biologics and drones…

This archaic style was more than a little pretentious, and as Pub went on and on, providing commentary on every principle in turn with the same overwritten nonsense, Cody, a resident of the orbital now for more than sixty-five percent of his life, decided he did not need a refresher on its internal workings. He skipped to a later passage as the string section crescendoed and the horns rang out rapid, ascending G-minor arpeggios.

  1. Enthusiastic and continuous consent. Both visitors and permanent residents will at all times be allowed to leave any installation or experience. No forms of power and exploitation will be simulated, even those based on originally coercive relationships, without the full and explicit consent of all involved.

Consent is of course paramount to any proper historical reenactment, and though Marienheid is uniquely situated, historically and geographically, to certain intensities of sentiment…

Pub could go on when he was in a mood. The rabbit knew from experience how easy it was to blur the line between consensual and non-consensual without violating the spirit of the law. His eyes glazed over the rest of the explanation and turned instead to the next page.

It is interesting to note the flexibility built into the principles. Though there is a common goal of understanding and learning woven throughout their very fabric, it is tempered with an acknowledgement of the necessity of experimentation. Principle fourteen, History is not static, a little ornament that you can pluck up and store in your kitchen cabinet next to the fancy silverware and jade. It is a living, breathing thing, a chimæra that individuals and social movements and academics and politicians and commissars try to reshape to their whims, a rapids we are drowning in and swimming into and against–all in vain. And it is in that spirit that we have established Marienheid, the subject of these three volumes.

Based on historic estates from Old Terra, Marienheid embodies the true spirit of Arkendus, a complete exploration of what it means to live under an absolute hierarchy, not just of status and wealth but of that most important quality, size…

The rabbit burst out laughing as he read this, amazed the tiger’s libido was so brazen that it could come out even in the midst of such heady concepts. An ermine threw him a look of disgust from the next box over that he only just caught out of the corner of his eye. His box was the only one scaled to his size, so Cody paid her no mind; besides, her girlfriend’s eyes were completely glazed over, staring off into some virtual environment–an even greater lapse of plate etiquette.

The tiger did come up with several reasons why testing the effect that massive physical discrepancies have in social formation is a worthwhile endeavor, but the arguments were well-worn and obviously pretextual. Cody had heard a very inebriated Pub admit as much to him several times–”Oh come now, you know it’s just an excuse to fuck with some little people,” followed by a belch loud enough to send their paw-sized servants scurrying away in terror.

But then the tiger was annoyingly multi-faceted in an age that the bun found exceedingly simplistic and sterile. That was why he had been drawn to him during his first century, the radical juxtaposition of technologies that made up- and down-shifting possible with their potential historical impact, how those of increased size might abuse their authorities in new, distinctly horrifying ways. There wasn’t much more to set Marienheid apart from other estates with a similar sadomasochistic bent, but at that time the handsome tiger and his Lilliputians were more than enough reason to stay.

Cody closed the book after the introduction, as it progressed into a narrative history of the estate, long, drawn-out sections the rabbit knew would soon include mention of himself. Things that he was intimately familiar with. Nothing of use to him now.

The dark green cover was embossed, a clear facsimile of the historical style of so many works in his library, a nice serif typeface and a title page that goes on and on, overexplaining the premise in the most excruciating detail…

He remembered that first night together with the tiger, the way his laugh filled the bedroom when the bun admitted he was only fifty-five. “You’re barely an adult, then, probably just out of university, assuming you’re that type,” which was a very safe assumption to make. “And since you’re on Arkendus, I think that’s a safe assumption. Where did you go?”

Cody, lithe and demure: “The Pro’ushtal College.”

“My alma mater! What are the odds? It has been too long since I’ve been past the Ladelian Nebulae…I can see why you came here. Not that far away, but remote enough that your friends didn’t know it when you said you were moving there. Didn’t even have to bring up the cute tiger you had a crush on even though you hadn’t properly met.”

The tiger had him so thoroughly pegged that he had no choice but to object. 

Pub had thrown up his hands in mock surrender. “Maybe I’m wrong. I’m only ninety-five, after all.” The rest was history, a sly wink before they shifted into discussions of what they would change about history, given the proper resizing and bouts of passionate, mixed-size sex.

Pub was large. He had a certain weight to him that he couldn’t help but throw around. Cody was foolish, stubborn, and unable to drop his resentment at his given height. Of course the constant array of micros licking his asshole helped to blunt that harsh reality, but he still resented the way the tiger carried himself, strutting around like he was the inevitable outcome of millions of years of evolution, both natural and directed. Of course he was a positively titanic mountain of soft, furry warmth–was it any wonder that the rabbit wished he was the large one, a tiger handheld and malleable, forced to see his mighty form eclipsed by the twinkish bun. The bun was desperate to make this reality, to feel the tiger’s dwindled little body in his fist and tease the erection his forceable resizing drew out of the once-fearsome giant.

And so he’d stolen one of the estate’s shifters, even reskinned it in a classical ray-gun style to appeal to the tiger’s antiquarian sensibilities. Pub hadn’t believed he was serious when he pointed the ray-gun at himself. “I won’t if you beg me not to.” Cody had offered, but there was really no choice. He was too proud and Cody knew it. It was part of the scenario’s appeal to them both. His confidence dwindled with his body, the unfamiliar terror of looking up at the bun only grew more acute as Cody made him smaller and smaller, half his size and then a quarter, an eighth, a tenth…small enough to feel the rumble of the bun’s footsteps like seismic activity, relishing the reduction of the Marienheid’s lord to toy-size.

Pub was completely broken that night, a whimpering plaything begging for his size back, too embarrassed to summon a drone or message a Dhi or anything that would allow him to grow back to his proper height at the cost of his pride, which he would admit to the now-massive rabbit after a few hours under his gargantuan rear, in between endless compliments of his natural leadership qualities, compliments that shifted over the night into a sincerely coerced demand that the bun help him run the estate. They were both eager to explore the past with such a perfect giant–allowing the tiger back to his original size was more of an acknowledgement that Pub would not be nearly as interesting submissive as he would an equal, a partner-in-crime.

If only he could remember the name of the alligator currently struggling for breath against the musky, overwhelming heat of his rear end. While there were allowances at Marienheid for genetic enhancements that were not period appropriate, most of which allowed for the myriad resleeving and consciousness backups standard to the average Kynthari, even as other tasks–like staring slack-jawed into the distance because your girlfriend has dragged you to some boring reproduction of an ancient opera and you could only make it halfway through Act I–are somewhat discouraged. But the gator (either a Duke or perhaps Larson) is a rare treat, a micro without a backup. It was a high stakes game to play with the massive rabbit, all the more because it was a challenge Cody relished. He has, despite his bravado, never actually brought himself to kill a tiny in a situation like, uh, Dukesson’s, but that could always change. Tonight might be the night. Larduke or whatever had already tiring by the first intermission and completely lifeless throughout Act II. He wasn’t making a good case for himself. Pub would never.

But then, Pub wouldn’t shrink for Cody. He’d said as much when he invited Corin. He was all business these days, no time for pleasure if it didn’t serve some larger, more noble goal. He’d hoped to get more from the book, but he didn’t have the patience to wander through 800 immaculately bound and absurdly overwrought pages in search of some novel insight into someone he had known, lived with and loved for decades. It was a fool’s errand. He’d never put it into his writing, not even the margins of the dry historical stuff, his personal favorite. Nothing there that Cody didn’t know.

He looked down at the stage, faking a smile as the full-figured mouse soprano met his enormous gaze as she ascended a Picardy third arpeggio with impressive intonation. She was barking up the wrong tree, of course, but that didn’t mean the bun couldn’t flirt a little and try to forget the next morning. Maybe one of the dancers would want to spend the night with a lonely giant. They, at least, would last long enough to get their master off.

*

History is a current against which we all struggle in vain. It is a narrative that ties each atom of the universe to every other in an infinite chain of being from the smallest to the largest of forces. It is a meaning imposed upon us and by us, a common understanding that we use to shield ourselves from the reality of our decisions, the consequences of our own actions and beliefs. It is a blindness that protects our fragile egos from even a scrap of necessary self-reflection. Marienheid pulses with this knowledge, it is alive with the certainty that one day all our tales will be forgotten or so twisted by re-telling that we would not recognize them. But still we will leave an impact on the very fabric of being. History is the process of examining the eddies in the water, piecing this with that so that X can lead to Y and then Z and Q, so that one event can be said to have caused another–though it was earlier, took longer, and happened for much more complicated reasons than you suspected…

Featured

Marienheid

1

The rabbit surveyed with a cold indifference, considering each and every footman, valet, maid, and gardener, both organic and biomechanical. He circulated the grounds from the arboretum to the hothouses, the conservatory to the abbey, with an eye for patronizing nitpicks, zeroing in on the smallest mistakes in an otherwise idyllic estate. His assistant felt compelled to whisper after the third gardener was told that his roses were sub par, “Sir, do you have to be quite so critical?”

“We have standards to uphold here, Quiltin. You should know that better than anyone! Since Pub has elected to return…” The rabbit trailed off when he saw one of the landscapers use a nullifier to remove an unsightly stump. “Come now, nothing period inappropriate! I know we’ve been lax for the last couple decades but the tiger will be anything but! He will notice!” A level of shrill beyond the owl’s previous maximum. Cody could be as demanding and unreasonable as anyone else, but he usually knew to temper it with charm and gay élan.

“Sir, you’ve been tramping around for hours…” Quiltin hazarded. Normally the bun encouraged a certain level of honesty from his workforce, but the owl really should have known better than to risk it with Cody in such a state.

“Oh, so what he sees the moment he arrives isn’t important? Isn’t in fact the MOST important?” The owl considered how the tiger’s approach from the air would almost certainly show him the gardens long before he took the carriage to the front door, but decided it was better to hold his tongue. Another approach was warranted.

“Sir, the groundskeepers are fine. You hired half of them yourself, and I personally oversaw the construction of the other half. Cody–I mean, Sir–forgive me for prying, but,” a moment’s hesitation, just enough to reconsider the question he was about to ask. “Is there something else on your mind?” There was nothing the owl could have said that didn’t come without a certain amount of risk, so he might as well try the direct route.

The bun knew well enough not to do anything rash. He took a deep breath, followed by an equally lengthy sigh. “It’s been too long; you don’t remember what it was like when he was here,” he insisted, turning his head to look at the owl eye-to-eye. “But I suppose you have a point. Tell me, Quil, what did you think when you heard he was coming back?”

“You mean for the visit? I was excited, of course. It’s been ages since I’ve seen the master and well, I’m sure we’ll have to play some Shatranj–”

“You aren’t even a bit worried?” The bun interrupted, forceful enough that the owl had to latch his talons into the soft-white fur of his massive shoulder to stop himself from falling down the fifty-nine meters between him and the ground below. “You should know better than anyone how demanding and unreasonable he can be.”

The owl had once spent several days pinned underneath the tiger’s sack. Unable to come up with an adequate response, he held fast to the bun’s ear as the giant stepped over a nice topiary glornack, the bottom of his paw just brushing its forehorn and bringing it to the giant’s attention. “This isn’t period accurate! The humans didn’t even leave orbit until several centuries after the chateau’s original was built.”

The owl did, at least, have a rejoinder for this. “And there weren’t giant tigers and rabbits stomping around their micro servants, either, but we’ve found a way to make allowances for that.”

Cody let out a heavy sigh. “I suppose we’ll just have to hope that every other anachronism appeals to him as much as does the feeling of a groundskeeper going crunch under a forepaw.” He made a point to emphasize his words with a hefty stomp that, luckily for the nearby work crew, did not come crashing down on top of some innocent servant.

The owl chortled a little in spite of his own reservations. “Sir–I just know there’s more to it than you’re letting on. Please, tell me.”

The bun could have squeezed the owl into a light red pulp for being so presumptuous, but luckily for his bodily integrity the white-furred behemoth was not feeling quite so vindictive. Nor as playful. “I suppose you’re right. It’s that panther…”

The owl tried to give the best advice he could manage under the circumstances. “The report says he isn’t as tall as me! How could he make you worry?” 

He was completely unprepared for the bun’s response. “He didn’t tell you, did he? Pub…wants to give that panther citizenship.”

“Oh…well, then…” the owl paused, completely at a loss for words. “He can do that? The planet is only recently conquered, and he’s not exactly…”

“The fool has told that panther all about his mission. Apparently that’s enough to qualify him, at least when it comes with the ringing endorsement of someone with the flawless service record he has…” Cody sighed. “How many years has it been since I’ve seen him?”

The owl was diligent as ever. “27, sir!” He was so naturally chirpy, it came out rather sing-song. He realized his mistake immediately after he could do nothing to correct it.

“TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS and he thinks he can just waltz back here with someone else in tow? What if they decide to get married? That tiger is a walking anachronism, don’t say he won’t!” The owl’s beak clamped shut on an attempt to calm his master down. It was not the right time. “Some little slut grabs his attention while he’s out on assignment and he gets distracted from what really matters in life.”

Quiltin hazarded a question, “And just who is that?” He instantly regretted his action as he was forced to brace himself against the rabbit’s face as the giant made an abrupt turn about-face, pacing back and forth over the landscaping crew. They continued to work diligently underfoot, trying not to think about their overseer stomping mere meters from them and their work.

“What else, Quil? ME–no, really US, both of us, and all of this too. Even some of you,” he gestured down to the few laborers trying their hardest not to listen, to just focus on tilling the grounds according to the rabbit’s exacting specifications. Each step was a fresh reminder how easy it would be to end up a red smear against those broad, white-furred paws. Each and every footfall was a booming reminder of his scale.

“I never wanted that idiot to join the army but I knew once he had his mind set on one of his absurd notions I couldn’t stop him. It took me a long time to forgive him for abandoning me.” The workers had heard variations on this basic theme, as had the owl, but it was rare indeed for Cody to open up about his absent co-founder. “I thought I’d worked all of those negative emotions through my system.” The owl held his tongue on the relative frequency of Cody’s complaints. “But then I find that he wants to bring this…this…subject into our home, not merely as some plaything but as a potential lifemate…it makes my blood BOIL, Quil.” He emphasized his words by twisting his paw with enough force to cause several of the nearby crew to spontaneously decide they had more important work in a nearby field, a trickle of workers that turned into a rapid stampede so noticeable that Cody felt compelled to comment. “Oh come now, I’m not angry with any of you!” The workers remembered how recently he had berated their work and continued their retreat.

“Sir, if I might recommend something?” Cody resisted the urge to stare daggers at the impertinent owl, throwing him a nod instead. He’d at least listen to what Quil had to say. “Pub is no fool. He might make impulsive decisions without consulting anyone else, but he always has his reasons. And he wouldn’t be coming back here at all if he didn’t want to reconnect. Give the panther a chance. If he’s going to be a citizen, after all, there isn’t much you’ll be able to do to keep them apart.”

The bun’s frown gradually shifted into a perceptive smirk. “Well, I’m not so sure about that.”

*

I was safely stored in the master’s pocket when we boarded, and even then I’m not ashamed to say I was absolutely terrified. You know how long I’ve been around him; I’m used to his massive scale, how easily one of his fingertips can nuzzle my cheek, just as it can crush me into a bloody pulp. But being around so many other immensities was hard to comprehend and impossible to process, so I curled up in his breast pocket instead, basking in the warmth of our master and trying as best I could to forget this absurd voyage.

I gather he has something akin to shore leave, though he’s always upset when I put it in such terms. He wants to make sure that I remember that his military is not my own, and to be wary of the ‘myriad differences between his military experience and the medieval one I’m familiar with.’ Myriad. Medieval! Why be simple when he can be obtuse? Why be legible when he can be abstruse? As far as I can tell, the differences are simply those of scale and ideology, but I can’t plausibly deny that those are important, sometimes even pivotal differences, so I let the subject lie–as I often must when it comes to our Lord.

I think you, the one who is always so eager to learn more about the sovereign’s world, would have a much easier time of this than I am. Whenever I bring myself to peek out of the pocket, I find myself somewhere new, struggling to understand something inscrutable. I thought the translator would help with this, but as often as I can actually fathom what the alien is saying, I’m thrown into complete disarray by some five limbed creature who, despite making no sound I can perceive, the translator insists is telling me by means of the oscillation of his thin, serpine body to ‘atone for my sins’.

The sovereign remains thoughtful as ever. You know Publius. Always happy to answer any questions, though so many cause him to erupt into deep, resonant laughter that hurts my ears more than I let on. I did choose to stay in the shirt pocket. And even though he insists that no one would mind if I did decide to stay down there for the duration, or at least until I feel more comfortable–if he’s serious about the purpose of this visit, I think I deserve a little bit of dignity. Even if I’m the only one around who recognizes it as such.

There are far too many fantastic sights to describe in the detail they all deserve, but I must start with the vessel that traverses the space between worlds like the seas of our world, something that Publius insists is called a starship. I can’t say I can come up with a better alternative, but the name still sounds rather ridiculous to my ears. Publius is at least gracious enough to humor my argument, that sailing on the sea and traveling through the heavens are so entirely different any comparison is laughable on its face. He insists that our world was only a few centuries away from developing something similar, but I doubt he’s serious. You never can tell when he’s teasing or giving you an honest answer that you just cannot accept.

Even he admits we were more than “a few centuries” from creating a ship like this one, on which we currently “sail.” I still don’t understand why I never feel the motion of the ship. In the capsule that brought us towards this starship, stowed safely in the tiger’s loins, I could feel the push and pull of acceleration and deceleration, but as I write you these very words I can barely tell that I am traveling between the many suns in some sort of flying vessel. It doesn’t help that this ship is so immense. The tiger insists it isn’t that large, at least by the standards of his culture, but then he has also told me there is enough space on just one deck to fit all of Huang-di, so perhaps he is not the best judge of what scales count as impressive.

That fact should give you a better idea of just what I mean when I say that the ship is unimaginably gigantic. I gather that traveling from one end of the craft to the other–as well, you must remember, up and down the struts that connect the thirty-eight parallel plates that compose the craft–is some sort of rite of passage for locals. That might surprise you too–there are people who make this starship their permanent home! Some of them, Publius tells me, have spent their entire lives here–and when there are floors the size of nations to explore, I suppose it makes sense that you wouldn’t want to leave.

I should stress that not everything I see here is unfamiliar. Many of the furs are similar to the ones you would find on Olonne. I’ve seen ursines and ermines and canines and felines of all shapes and sizes, often side-by-side with the creatures I have no easy words for. Like the friend whose religious convictions seemed to  Publius just smirks when I ask him why some of the residents seem so bizarre and alien to me while others are so recognizable, but his one word reply, panspermia, is unfamiliar to me. I will have to consult the dictionaries here, wherever they are located.

Our incomparable conqueror is out somewhere as I write this, cavorting with an old comrade-in-arms. He’s left me all by myself in a city called Patelwa. The sheer scale of a vessel that can fit not just one, but many different cities! I’m writing this in one of their taverns, thankfully one sized for a person of our size–though every now and then someone at least half as large as Publius will pull open the roof and boom down some request to the diminutive staff. I had to beat off the advances of some grey-furred cat who was remarkably curious about the ‘weird little feather’ in my forepaw. Almost reached down and touched it with one of his claws! And of course he absolutely would not take ‘It is my quill, and I am writing a letter’ for an answer. He seemed to want to explain to me how I could use some devilish device to record my voice, obviating my need for such a primitive instrument, but a sufficiently cold shoulder was enough to freeze the approach of even an inebriated colossus.

Certain giants notwithstanding, they are a remarkably friendly people, all the more so given our size difference! I expected more attitudes like Publius, I suppose, all imperious and commanding, but I forget that our intimacy with him skews things. Still, you’d expect them to be meaner, more demanding. They are a little more forceful with those of lesser scales if they have the same intimacy we share with the regent, but in front of me, a complete stranger, they usually maintain their manners. What passes for them in this vulgar place! Given how officious the tiger is, I never would have expected that either. When they’re intoxicated they’re as unpredictable as you might expect, but fortunately any serious misconduct is swiftly dealt with by some mechanical device or other. It’s all much like the ones we have at the castle to prevent violence, those stone cuffs that wrap themselves around any offending parties and separate them so cooler heads may prevail?

Travel isn’t nearly as complicated for someone our size, at least not here in Patelwa. The ship is clearly scaled for creatures our lord’s size, but there are many equally attractive forms of conveyance, from carriages of prodigious size to movable platforms like those available in the castle. Everything is laid out precisely and for convenience–even though the imposition of artificial challenge, like using one’s own feet to travel from place to place, is, I gather, looked upon fondly as a reminder of the power of one’s own tread. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by their apparent delight in the bounce and heft of their footfalls, given our experience with the sovereign.

It is one thing entirely to be around a singular creature such as Publius, but to be around so many–I can hear how the music pulses whenever one opens up the roof. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard before, even with the regent’s diligent attempts at familiarizing me with the culture. I’m probably making it sound so terrifying, and it is that, to be sure…but there is always something new here, and Publius insists that he can get me “resleeved” if I suffer any unfortunate accidents. Take note of the plural there–though ultimately I’m not sure I want to find out what any of it means. It does not sound particularly pleasant.

Truth be told, having some time to myself like I do tonight is doing wonders for my adjustment curve as the tiger calls it. Each footfall, every magnified motion reminds me how lucky I am to have his protection. To be in such a place with the freedom to explore to my heart’s content–at least as much of this massive, country-sized floor as I dare without him by my side.

 In short, Lukas, I think you would love it here. The sounds are bright and booming and there is always something new and baffling to find, waiting around the next corner. It is a privilege, and I hope I am able to prove myself worthy of it.

*

“It has been too long, Pub.” The buck said, the first words of significance beyond an across-the-room “Oh!” from the tiger when he spied his guest across the crowded ballroom. The last time they’d seen each other in the flesh, years and years before the tiger’s assignment to Olonne, Corin had been at least a decimeter shorter but he now towered over the tiger by the same amount. It could only mean one thing.

“Long enough that I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you on your promotion! Never thought I’d be able to say I fucked a Rear Admiral.” Pub gently ribbed after a perfunctory hug, taking a seat opposite the deer. “If it has to be one of us, though, I’m happy it’s you and not me. After all, you look great with those extra inches.”

Corin briefly wondered if it was worth asking what an inch was, but knew better than to tempt the tiger’s propensity to wax on and on about some obscure etymology. “So, do you like your posting? I haven’t been in that sector of space for at least a decade, and I can’t say I remember the designation.”

“NRX-13582 to the apparatchiks in Central Archives–but the natives call it, among many other names, Olonne. And I’ve managed to almost get them to an industrial revolution. Soon we’ll be able to move past primitive accumulation and the declining rate of profit and all of it will be much easier since I ate the whole class of leeches that fight every move in the right direction–”

“If you say so,” the deer impatiently waved his hoof. “I was never the history buff, not like you.” Two tall glasses of sparkling wine were delivered by a short tortoise whose blush was evident when Corin threw him a playful wink before he scurried away. The deer snorted when he spied the distaste on the tiger’s face. “Oh come on, it’s not like you are going to fuck me!” 

“True, true…” the tiger gave a large, exaggerated shrug. “Do you know why I’m visiting Reboranze?”

The deer let out a playful chuckle. “Of course not! I like to hear this stuff directly from the source.” Yes, he had technically seen the panther on the passenger manifest attached to one Arkendus-Reboranze Ulysses Publius Maximus dai Marienheid, but he had purposefully avoided reading details before he had a chance to speak with Pub directly. He could always double-check any lingering questions with the security feed.

“You won’t believe me when I tell you,” the tiger smiled enigmatically, taking a nice long pull from his Aorish brandy before continuing. “I’m cashing in an old favor from the Admiralty and getting a friend full citizenship.”

“But I thought–” Corin knew the tiger had been on Olonne for many, many years… “You can’t mean a prim?”

“I do. And you’d do well to remember, if and when you meet him, that it’s his first time away from his homeworld.” The tiger swirled the liquid in his glass around, studying it absent-mindedly even as he continued. “A planet he was born on, naturally, and you know–limited insight before he met me. Didn’t even have a concept of a wider universe, stars were too faint in Olonne’s sky. We were lucky to come from a more curious race, I suppose.” A swig and a grimace that made the buck chuckle. “He has come such a long way since I met him, they’re still going to make me fight for every millimeter of progress.”

“I have no doubt he’s a wonderful person, Pub,” the buck eyed the couple of okapi furs who seemed to take pleasure in dancing right at the edge of the micro part of the dance floor. Force fields would stop any serious accidents, anyway, so why not indulge your size where and when you can? “And I know how long you’ve been away from here. But even you have to know getting a prim residency is almost impossible without a ship or a Dhi to endorse it, and you’re asking for citizenship.”
“Well, that’s kind of why I wanted to meet you tonight–”

The deer interrupted, unimpressed. “Oh come on, Pub, you can’t just drop this in–”

Before the tiger interjected, “Hey, hey, wanna remind me who was there on Sibraxil IV–”

“Yeah, yeah, dragging me through thousands of kilometers of hostile wilderness, just to get me to a medic.”

“You never could take the thing seriously, even now.” A deep swig to try to compensate for the sour taste the words left in his own mouth.

“If you mean the war, I don’t know how much I should credit you for playing the game better than anyone el–”

“You will not distract me into defending the ethics of confliction!” He was thankful the music was loud enough to cloak his shrillness even a little bit. “Corin, a simple yes or no will do.”

“And I would love to give you a yes, Pub, I really would.” A theatrical sigh here. “But then, I’m not really clear on what you’re asking me.”

The tiger lamented how hard it is to be direct, especially when it is the only approach that will work. “Alright, alright. I’ll fill you in. I’ve done some unpopular things on Olonne. Nothing I have reason to lose sleep over, but enough that my impeccable service record isn’t going to cut it. Not on it’s own. And I can’t get a Dhi for this but you–”

“You want me to speak for you, huh?” The deer leaned back in his seat, causing even the solid Vitruxian oak to creak under his expanded weight.

“You can stay on the ship if you have to. Worst case you’ll have to take a fast picket back here but I doubt you’d mind. And you’ll get to see Marienheid again.”

It was the deer’s turn to sigh. “Alright, alright. You do make a persuasive case, Pub. But you have to remember that I outrank you now. So…is there anything more in it for me?”

“Besides our enduring friendship?” The tiger threw Corin a knowing smirk. “Well, I suppose you and Markus could stand to get better acquainted…” Even the gulf of many decades was not enough to dull the tiger’s knowledge of the deer’s weaknesses. “I could even add myself into the mix. No extra charge.”

Luckily for Pub, both Corin and the little panther were amenable to just such an arrangement.

2

It was ultimately to the panther’s benefit that he couldn’t see the contours of the grey sheets lightly draped over empty air, the seemingly solid surface the three of them were laying on nothing more than a trick of the AG emitter’s steady thrum underneath. It was hard enough for the panther to comprehend the living canyon he uneasily paced through, the sheer size and scale of the two giants on either side. They both looked peaceful, even when he was close enough to hear their lungs fill up with air and feel their warm exhale run through his black fur. He reached out to stroke the deer’s face, amazed he was small enough to fit inside the herbivore’s mouth. So lost in the daydream of it that he was entirely unprepared for the booming greeting, while the diminutive panther leaned into his face. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Markus was stunned into silence. Corin brought his head up and rested it on his palm. He let out a nice long yawn, a living, breathing statue from the perspective of the micro panther. He glanced over to Pub, hoping he had also woken up. “It’s alright…you know how deep Pub can sleep, especially after he’s thoroughly satisfied.” Involuntary memories of the tiger’s two orgasms sprang to the panther’s mind and were just as quickly suppressed. He didn’t have the stamina to keep chasing those thoughts. “Come now, I can’t be that intimidating, not after last night…”

The panther blushed, wary of the advances of other giants.  “N-no, of course not, I know you don’t mean me harm–”

The deer raised a paw, silencing the obedient panther. “You don’t have to feign politeness, not around me. Pub’s really into the ‘sirs’ and ‘oh, master please!’s but I seek different pleasures.” The strange way the deer said the last two words sent Markus’s heart nearly into convulsions.

“No, sir, y-you don’t understand, your size–it would be inappropriate for me to think that I’m at your level–”

The deer sighed. “Enough with that bullshit too. Honestly, I expected more. All that Pub is going through, and because of you…” he trailed off with two clicks of his tongue and a shake of his head, disappointment unmistakable. “What I want to know is if Pub has told you why he hasn’t activated your lace.”

The word meant nothing to the panther, and so he shook his head. “Wh-what’s that?”

“Typical, always likes his little secrets. Well, I outrank him, so I can activate it for you. If you wish.” The deer’s words dripped like honey into his ear. It was almost enough to make the panther want to comply, to make the charming deer happy. The deer reached down, a fuzzy digit ruffling the top of the panther’s head, and the panther started to calm, a feeling of gentle reassurance seeping through his body. He would ask Corin just what a lace was–while the deer accessed the tiny little spindles that lay dormant throughout his brain and activated them.

He felt a million pinpricks of light slowly dissolve from and into his vision, replaced in their stead with a vast, deep blackness. One by one, the pinpricks came back into focus, starting to form connections, what seemed like an eternity passing as the panther observed each and every path slowly come together to form an astronomical loop of trade and transit. He realized to his amazement that the entire Republic was laid before him: every ship’s relative location to each habitable system and the webs of traffic that wove the tens of thousands of unique habs together. Olonne was in there, somewhere, and he spent a fruitless eternity searching for his homeworld. It took another eternity for the deer’s words to come through, but once they did they wiped the galactic map from his thoughts. 

“I’m starting to see why he waited. It was a little reckless of me, bringing you in here without running you through your paces.” The voice was impossible, louder by several orders of magnitude than the loudest sound that he had ever heard. The deer was an adept, having spent more time by some measures in this virtual space than in the world of flesh and blood. “Focus on the sound of my voice. It’s something solid you can cling to without getting overloaded.”

The words were propelled by their own force and absolutely filled the panther’s mind. He had no choice. The more attention he paid to the words booming through his mind, the clearer the words suspended in air in front of him became. He realized there was a lot more information hidden behind the words that he could access if he felt so inclined (points of inflection, ambiguities of translation, transcriptions in hundreds of different formats), but it was just as easy to ignore them and focus on the words themselves and their meaning. He realized the Autonomous Zone map had faded from his view, but if he tried to focus on what was lying behind the deer’s words, their source, all he could see was large stalks of fur. He stared at the light brown to dark auburn fur, drinking in every millimeter of the massive titan, and realized he was able to perceive the deer in all his enormity, bigger in this virtual space than a planet, booming down orders like some intimate Godhead. “There we go. Now we can talk just the two of us. We won’t have to worry about Pub.”

The panther didn’t speak, in fact found himself quite unable to respond. Instead he passed a quiet moment in stunned contemplation of just how something so unfathomably gigantic could speak, let alone speak to him.

“I like you, Mark, I really do, but I have a few questions for you.” The panther was still shell-shocked by the deer’s enormity. Corin let out a sigh, blotting out the micro’s vision and replacing the massive tufts of brownish-black fur with a cervine little more than twice the panther’s size. “I’m not getting any smaller, Markus. You can’t take away all my fun. So tell me…how much do you know? Why would you say that Pub was sent to your planet?”

It took Markus a moment to figure out how to speak and another to decide what to say, amazed that this virtual environment had shifted so seamlessly into a public garden, furs of different sizes (none bigger than the cervine) ran about and lounged and all the things that nobles could do on public lands before Publius liberated and then ate them. The thought helped him to find his voice, the words coming out in a torrent as he related the story as he saw it. Publius Maximus was a divine avenger, sent down from the heavens to conquer their planet so it could be developed and aid in the war effort for a war that he confessed to not knowing much about. “But it must be a great cause if master Publius has pledged his life for it. And I am here because he wants to give me citizenship, for reasons that only he knows.” An arched eyebrow from the cervine who took a seat, realized he was shorter than the panther, and grew himself so that his seated form was a few feet taller than the panther. Intimidated, he added, “P-perhaps–because I would follow him anywhere, and any cause that is worthy for him is certainly worth my own devotion.”

“You know very little, then, and that is a very dangerous thing indeed. Not nothing, but very little. Would you like to know more?”

The question was a rose with sharp thorns,equal parts enchanting and dangerous. It gave the panther pause. “I…think I do.”

“It is not an idle question,” the deer said, relishing the booming resonance he could bring to his voice. “Nor is it a trick. I can tell you things that Publius won’t, or can’t. Surely there is something you wonder about.” He started to crawl over the panther’s head, growing large enough his toned arms held his broad chest and shoulders far above the awestruck panther. His first thought was of a church, Corin serving as an altarpiece to himself.

The panther let out an instinctual “N-no” that grew more resolute on repetition. “No, please no. I trust Publius’ judgment.”

“I was hoping you’d put up a fight.” The panther’s shoulders slumped in relief, before the next words proved that relief premature. “It gives me an excuse to do this.” A chill ran down his spine as Corin began to grow again, his slender arms ascending into the heavens as his smirk grew all the more threatening. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to know?”

The panther wisely sensed a trap, but foolishly thought a shake of his head would get him out of trouble.

The deer’s smirk inverted, now a heavy frown. “Oh come now, I know that isn’t true,” he continued to grow, his frown softening as he noticed how quickly the panther seemed to dwindle under the canopy formed by his torso. With a theatrical flick of his wrist, the deer conjured up a lovely forest scene centered on a meadow large enough for Corin’s growing body It was surrounded on all sides by a line of trees with multi-colored flowers–some not even part of the panther’s visible spectrum–a radiant sea that spilled through that distracted Markus for long enough that Corin was able to ascend to the heavens. A full mountain of deer flesh loomed overhead, his forepaws large enough to scoop up an entire city. “And I can’t just tell you secrets, little panther…” He leaned down so his face–larger now than the largest buildings that panther had seen, even the ones on the outskirts of Patelwa–filled the sky above the panther’s head. “You have to ask the right questions first.”

The constant shifts in size were too much for the already overwhelmed panther. He had seen too much, too quickly. He was curious, and wanted to know more about the tiger and his mission, perhaps now even more than Lukas with his meticulous notes on what the tiger said and where and when, his tired and sententious debates about what the “words of our lord” meant. What did Publius really mean when he said that the sky was filled with light at all hours, and not just during spark-showers? They had both had so many unresolved questions–and they all seemed pointless now. Trivial. Neither he nor Lukas could have anticipated anything like this. And so he continued to hold his tongue.

“I’m not letting you out of here,” the deer’s words boomed ominously through the panther’s mind. He felt encased in the deer’s very thoughts. If there was a way he could escape this, whatever this was, he did not know and furthermore had no clue where to start. “Not until you ask me something. So if you won’t speak, I may as well have some fun with you.” The deer, quite the adept at disrobing in any environment, snapped his fingers and rapidly outgrew his remaining clothes, making the sheer Dionysian robe that barely preserved his modesty fall to shreds around Mark. It was one thing to take in a deer who was only ten times as large, but the scales involved here were unreal in every sense of the word. In many ways he was more impressive than when he was planet-sized; he could actually fathom the massive tower of fur and flesh as a living creature and not just some unfathomable and immense deity. He was filled with a deep, gnawing terror that only increased when the enormous cervine’s cock thumped down onto the ground mere meters away, followed shortly thereafter by a brown-furred digit that pressed him into a cockhead a dozen times his size.

He struggled in vain against the deer’s still-growing erection, no longer sure if it was getting larger from mere arousal or his continued growth. “You need to be better at guarding your thoughts. Of course, that’s also why I dragged you into here, so you couldn’t hide behind your coy exterior. You are positively filled with doubts…” He pressed the panther into his slit–already wet with pre–just enough force so he felt himself slowly but surely start to slide inside. The deer’s words remained audible even as the panther drowned in Corin’s warm flesh and cum. “I, however, know that I made the right call bringing you into here. For one,” he let out a loud, heavy moan, large enough to make the panther reach up, fighting the tight flesh and wetness surrounding his body and covering his overawed ears as best he could manage, “you feel even better than usual…and I can even provide an easy escape valve for you! I’ll let you out the moment you ask me a question about Pub. Your master.” The sneer in his voice was as unmistakable as it was horrifying.

Corin, caught up in the moment and savoring–as he often did–the feeling of being so much bigger than the drowning panther, had overplayed his hand. Markus did not know that he could not actually drown in this virtual environment, that his desire to breathe was just a reflex from his waking mind that could be switched off easily with the proper thought. This was intentional on the massive cervine’s part, who wanted to put an absurd pressure on the panther to tell him what he most wanted to know about the tiger, but he didn’t think Mark’s mind would collapse under that pressure, completely blank as he struggled, frantic for some air. He asked the first question that came to mind. “How…” the cum rushing into his mouth made the words hard to form, even as the feeling of it splashing down his throat was strangely pleasant in the virtual environment. “How large should Pub be?”

The deer paused for a moment, all motion temporarily frozen in his consideration. Just as the panther felt himself start to drown in his cum, the deer’s strokes grew more furious. The panther’s sense of the sheer size of the cockhead he was trapped inside was beyond him, to say nothing of the size of the entire shaft. The deer’s breath quickened as he rapidly reached climax, a load the size of several aquifers splashing through the modeled city surrounded by his brown-furred thighs. He struggled against the sea of deer inundating him, the panther felt the deer’s moans turn to laughter. “That’s your question? You want to know what I think about THAT, huh? Well, to be honest, I think he looks best when he’s looming over a city…not unlike how I’m currently looming over you.” His voice retained its raucous, earth-shattering qualities, a size and scale so far beyond his wildest imaginings, even with his knowledge of Pub and the predilections of giants like him. “Those scales are denied to us in the real, so we have to escape here to live the truly impossible.” The implicit possibilities in the deer’s words would have stunned the panther if he were capable of registering them for anything but their physical effects.

Rivers of cum flowed around and through the fantastically large buildings, dislodging a few megastructures as the panther, light enough to float downstream, tried in vain to avoid the tons and tons of debris. “I suppose I can pull back a bit now that you’ve served your purpose,” his softened words were followed by Corin dwindling in size, his massive, continent-spanning ocean of cum slowly subsiding. The panther, hyperventilating on the ground of a picturesque city park and still covered in the deer’s seed, remained completely unprepared for Corin stomping down on either side of his stupefied body. “I don’t think you can handle it here. I see now why Pub kept your lace off.” The deer lifted his hoof–even as he shrank he was still more than large enough to crush the panther’s entire body–and then it came crashing down, disconnecting the panther from the network and sending him thudding back into the real.

His physical body–breathing just as heavily as when he was struggling against a sea of deer seed in that virtual city–had the benefit of at least being dry, though his head ached with a dull, throbbing pain while his back was now pressed against the tiger’s, each snore loud enough to reverberate through his one-twelfth-scale frame. He usually had to worry about the tiger turning in his sleep, crashing down and smothering him in warm, hefty tiger fur, but as he turned his head to meet the mischievous glint in Corin’s eyes, he knew he had much more dangerous things to worry about. And he feared he had wasted his only chance to find out what they might be.

*

Of the 28,417 orbitals, megastructures and hollowed-out asteroids that form the permanent and fixed installations of the Kynthari Autonomous Republic, most serve some practical purpose. Although the logic of post-scarcity economics does not require the same level of specialization common among grade 4, 5 and even grade 6 interstellar cultures, the residue of such specialization remains common even among the remnants of sublimed civilizations, where one might assume the highest level of historical development, provided one grants, arguendo, that energy sublimation is the endpoint of all political economies.

As a result, the Arkendus Orbital is somewhat rare among emplacements in that it lacks even a nominally practical purpose; it is alone in a three-planet system orbiting a white dwarf without even microbial life, many parsecs from the nearest population centers, Kynthari or otherwise. It is about average for orbitals of its class, composed of 32 plates, each with a population ranging from five hundred thousand to fifty million sentient souls scattered over 1,472,621 square kilometers, each plate overseen by an administrative council of three to five Dhi who are themselves overseen by a council of three random Dhi chosen by lot on a biannual basis from the qualified AI’s…

The rabbit skimmed down the page, glossing the tiger’s verbose prose in search of anything useful, something he didn’t already know. He knew he had at least read this introduction–maybe five, maybe ten years ago–but it all seemed unfamiliar here and now. A lovely cadenza galloped up and down four octaves through the string section in perfect counterpoint to Cody’s frustration.

With few exceptions, all plates adhere to the fifteen principles outlined in the Declaration of Sentiments drafted and signed by the original Construction Council (29 biologics, 143 drones, and 7 Dhi):

  1. Historical literacy. Arkendus shall function as a living, breathing document to past ways of being and supposedly obsolescent modes of production.

The first principle remains the central organizing pillar of the orbital. All estates conform to some central theme, some sort of historical ideal that they strive to recreate in a unique way. Freedom of expression is valued; different perspectives on historical events are encouraged, and it is rare indeed to find a singular viewpoint represented even within one estate. This is especially unremarkable given the communal nature of these exhibits, created by groups of biologics and drones…

This archaic style was more than a little pretentious, and as Pub went on and on, providing commentary on every principle in turn with the same overwritten nonsense, Cody, a resident of the orbital now for more than sixty-five percent of his life, decided he did not need a refresher on its internal workings. He skipped to a later passage as the string section crescendoed and the horns rang out rapid, ascending G-minor arpeggios.

  1. Enthusiastic and continuous consent. Both visitors and permanent residents will at all times be allowed to leave any installation or experience. No forms of power and exploitation will be simulated, even those based on originally coercive relationships, without the full and explicit consent of all involved.

Consent is of course paramount to any proper historical reenactment, and though Marienheid is uniquely situated, historically and geographically, to certain intensities of sentiment…

Pub could go on when he was in a mood. The rabbit knew from experience how easy it was to blur the line between consensual and non-consensual without violating the spirit of the law. His eyes glazed over the rest of the explanation and turned instead to the next page.

It is interesting to note the flexibility built into the principles. Though there is a common goal of understanding and learning woven throughout their very fabric, it is tempered with an acknowledgement of the necessity of experimentation. Principle fourteen, History is not static, a little ornament that you can pluck up and store in your kitchen cabinet next to the fancy silverware and jade. It is a living, breathing thing, a chimæra that individuals and social movements and academics and politicians and commissars try to reshape to their whims, a rapids we are drowning in and swimming into and against–all in vain. And it is in that spirit that we have established Marienheid, the subject of these three volumes.

Based on historic estates from Old Terra, Marienheid embodies the true spirit of Arkendus, a complete exploration of what it means to live under an absolute hierarchy, not just of status and wealth but of that most important quality, size…

The rabbit burst out laughing as he read this, amazed the tiger’s libido was so brazen that it could come out even in the midst of such heady concepts. An ermine threw him a look of disgust from the next box over that he only just caught out of the corner of his eye. His box was the only one scaled to his size, so Cody paid her no mind; besides, her girlfriend’s eyes were completely glazed over, staring off into some virtual environment–an even greater lapse of plate etiquette.

The tiger did come up with several reasons why testing the effect that massive physical discrepancies have in social formation is a worthwhile endeavor, but the arguments were well-worn and obviously pretextual. Cody had heard a very inebriated Pub admit as much to him several times–”Oh come now, you know it’s just an excuse to fuck with some little people,” followed by a belch loud enough to send their paw-sized servants scurrying away in terror.

But then the tiger was annoyingly multi-faceted in an age that the bun found exceedingly simplistic and sterile. That was why he had been drawn to him during his first century, the radical juxtaposition of technologies that made up- and down-shifting possible with their potential historical impact, how those of increased size might abuse their authorities in new, distinctly horrifying ways. There wasn’t much more to set Marienheid apart from other estates with a similar sadomasochistic bent, but at that time the handsome tiger and his Lilliputians were more than enough reason to stay.

Cody closed the book after the introduction, as it progressed into a narrative history of the estate, long, drawn-out sections the rabbit knew would soon include mention of himself. Things that he was intimately familiar with. Nothing of use to him now.

The dark green cover was embossed, a clear facsimile of the historical style of so many works in his library, a nice serif typeface and a title page that goes on and on, overexplaining the premise in the most excruciating detail…

He remembered that first night together with the tiger, the way his laugh filled the bedroom when the bun admitted he was only fifty-five. “You’re barely an adult, then, probably just out of university, assuming you’re that type,” which was a very safe assumption to make. “And since you’re on Arkendus, I think that’s a safe assumption. Where did you go?”

Cody, lithe and demure: “The Pro’ushtal College.”

“My alma mater! What are the odds? It has been too long since I’ve been past the Ladelian Nebulae…I can see why you came here. Not that far away, but remote enough that your friends didn’t know it when you said you were moving there. Didn’t even have to bring up the cute tiger you had a crush on even though you hadn’t properly met.”

The tiger had him so thoroughly pegged that he had no choice but to object. 

Pub had thrown up his hands in mock surrender. “Maybe I’m wrong. I’m only ninety-five, after all.” The rest was history, a sly wink before they shifted into discussions of what they would change about history, given the proper resizing and bouts of passionate, mixed-size sex.

Pub was large. He had a certain weight to him that he couldn’t help but throw around. Cody was foolish, stubborn, and unable to drop his resentment at his given height. Of course the constant array of micros licking his asshole helped to blunt that harsh reality, but he still resented the way the tiger carried himself, strutting around like he was the inevitable outcome of millions of years of evolution, both natural and directed. Of course he was a positively titanic mountain of soft, furry warmth–was it any wonder that the rabbit wished he was the large one, a tiger handheld and malleable, forced to see his mighty form eclipsed by the twinkish bun. The bun was desperate to make this reality, to feel the tiger’s dwindled little body in his fist and tease the erection his forceable resizing drew out of the once-fearsome giant.

And so he’d stolen one of the estate’s shifters, even reskinned it in a classical ray-gun style to appeal to the tiger’s antiquarian sensibilities. Pub hadn’t believed he was serious when he pointed the ray-gun at himself. “I won’t if you beg me not to.” Cody had offered, but there was really no choice. He was too proud and Cody knew it. It was part of the scenario’s appeal to them both. His confidence dwindled with his body, the unfamiliar terror of looking up at the bun only grew more acute as Cody made him smaller and smaller, half his size and then a quarter, an eighth, a tenth…small enough to feel the rumble of the bun’s footsteps like seismic activity, relishing the reduction of the Marienheid’s lord to toy-size.

Pub was completely broken that night, a whimpering plaything begging for his size back, too embarrassed to summon a drone or message a Dhi or anything that would allow him to grow back to his proper height at the cost of his pride, which he would admit to the now-massive rabbit after a few hours under his gargantuan rear, in between endless compliments of his natural leadership qualities, compliments that shifted over the night into a sincerely coerced demand that the bun help him run the estate. They were both eager to explore the past with such a perfect giant–allowing the tiger back to his original size was more of an acknowledgement that Pub would not be nearly as interesting submissive as he would an equal, a partner-in-crime.

If only he could remember the name of the alligator currently struggling for breath against the musky, overwhelming heat of his rear end. While there were allowances at Marienheid for genetic enhancements that were not period appropriate, most of which allowed for the myriad resleeving and consciousness backups standard to the average Kynthari, even as other tasks–like staring slack-jawed into the distance because your girlfriend has dragged you to some boring reproduction of an ancient opera and you could only make it halfway through Act I–are somewhat discouraged. But the gator (either a Duke or perhaps Larson) is a rare treat, a micro without a backup. It was a high stakes game to play with the massive rabbit, all the more because it was a challenge Cody relished. He has, despite his bravado, never actually brought himself to kill a tiny in a situation like, uh, Dukesson’s, but that could always change. Tonight might be the night. Larduke or whatever had already tiring by the first intermission and completely lifeless throughout Act II. He wasn’t making a good case for himself. Pub would never.

But then, Pub wouldn’t shrink for Cody. He’d said as much when he invited Corin. He was all business these days, no time for pleasure if it didn’t serve some larger, more noble goal. He’d hoped to get more from the book, but he didn’t have the patience to wander through 800 immaculately bound and absurdly overwrought pages in search of some novel insight into someone he had known, lived with and loved for decades. It was a fool’s errand. He’d never put it into his writing, not even the margins of the dry historical stuff, his personal favorite. Nothing there that Cody didn’t know.

He looked down at the stage, faking a smile as the full-figured mouse soprano met his enormous gaze as she ascended a Picardy third arpeggio with impressive intonation. She was barking up the wrong tree, of course, but that didn’t mean the bun couldn’t flirt a little and try to forget the next morning. Maybe one of the dancers would want to spend the night with a lonely giant. They, at least, would last long enough to get their master off.

*

History is a current against which we all struggle in vain. It is a narrative that ties each atom of the universe to every other in an infinite chain of being from the smallest to the largest of forces. It is a meaning imposed upon us and by us, a common understanding that we use to shield ourselves from the reality of our decisions, the consequences of our own actions and beliefs. It is a blindness that protects our fragile egos from even a scrap of necessary self-reflection.Marienheid pulses with this knowledge, it is alive with the certainty that one day all our tales will be forgotten or so twisted by re-telling that we would not recognize them. But still we will leave an impact on the very fabric of being. History is the process of examining the eddies in the water, piecing this with that so that X can lead to Y and then Z and Q, so that one event can be said to have caused another–though it was earlier, took longer, and happened for much more complicated reasons than you suspected…

3 – Orbital Entire

They both made an effort to convince him otherwise, but Corin insisted that he had a meeting on another plate and it was absolutely unskippable. He would meet up with them later, after the ship docked on Arkendus, and no amount of special pleading would change his mind. “Besides, you two should meet Cody and the others by yourselves,” he insisted, an excuse that seemed thin even to Markus. “And please,” he had yelled back down the long corridor as he headed towards the hotel’s exit, “don’t roll out the red carpet, I know Cody will hate that! Love you!” And then he had blown a kiss before slipping out of sight.

“He can be a bit much, but I know that I enjoyed last night,” the tiger said, yawning and stretching as he exited the antigrav bed. “Passing you back and forth was a nice touch–he is such a good kisser after all…”

The panther didn’t react to the witty repartee. He just stared forlornly into the distance. “Is there something on your mind, Markus? You’re quiet, at least for when it’s just the two of us.”

Markus snapped to attention, forcing a smile to try–without hope–to shake this morning’s malaise. “Oh no, I’m doing fine, sire! I was just thinking about your home–I’m just, just, so excited to see it!” He couldn’t help his fake smile from cracking and knew he had to give up a little bit of the truth, “Well, I am nervous about…about who I might meet there?”

The tiger chuckled a little bit. “That makes some sense.” He let his cock flop in front of the panther as he reached down to grab a solid purple pair of syndaxian cotton briefs. The resulting bulge was not more modest, but the added cover was enough for the panther to look up and attempt to meet his master’s gaze. “Corin is–well, he’s a lot to handle, and not just because he’s made himself a little larger than me–”

Markus felt compelled to pipe up here. “He may be taller, sire, but he is nowhere near as immense! Probably doesn’t weigh half as much as you do.” His derision was evident, and in the corner of his eye he spied the tiger’s cock pulsing in amusement.

“You are very cute, defending my honor like that.” He took a few stomps closer that the panther could hear but thankfully didn’t feel, “But you know what I mean. He might even do something like this.” Always a show-off, he spread his legs wide and plopped back onto the bed, a hefty fall that knocked the panther off his feet, leaving him supine in the canyon of his master’s substantial thighs. “I thought I heard the two of you talking, but you know how deeply I sleep. It’s always possible I dreamt it.”

The panther was used to his master’s teasing, and even allowed himself a moment to revel in his monstrous power without fear that it would be used against him. “We did.” He struggled with exactly how much to reveal, making a decision to pass over the lace for now. It was too much. “We spoke a while about you, and me, and, well, a little about us together.” As he debated how much more detail he should add, Pub interrupted.

“Oh, is that so? I thought he might try to peel you off me. I hope he knew better than to offer you a job,” the last word was filled with so much contempt the panther misread as patrician.

“No, in fact we–we talked about my loyalty to you, sire. He said he’d answer any question I had about you but I–”

“Didn’t know where to start?” the tiger laughed, leaning back as he hugged the toylike panther with a hard squeeze of his soft thighs. “Or did you figure out it was a trap, and he’d tell me all about it?”

“S-something like that.”

“Which means you must have asked a good question because he would have told me if it was a bad one, or probably even if you said nothing at all.” The tiger sighed, shaking his head. “You might have even passed the test, whatever that was.” He looked down, making sure to meet the panther’s gaze. “You don’t have to tell me anything, though. I respect your privacy.”

Another of the tiger’s peculiar lies. As if there were any thing on any world that the panther could reasonably keep from his sire. “W-well, I, I…didn’t know what to say and I just–I asked him what size he wanted you to be.”

The tiger reacted much as the deer had, uproarious laughter that resonated through the miniature panther. “And what lie did he concoct? That he wanted me the size of mountains? Or perhaps that he wished I were barely enough to taste on his tongue?”

“Closer to m-mountain-sized, I suppose, though, I, I don’t know how serious he meant it–”

“He likes me at both extremes. I’ve offered the same treatment to you, you know. Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about me dwindling in your fist!” There was nothing the tiger could do to convince Markus that those words weren’t some elaborate trap, a test of his devotion. Himself, larger than his Lord? King of All Creation? Plenipotentiary and Viceroy for the Kynthari Empire? Of course he was bound to obey the chain of command, allow a superior such as Corin to lord over him–but the panther? The rules were different. They had to be. After so many decades, he fell prey to thinking that he knew the tiger better than he actually did. “Is that all you two talked about?”

The panther tried not to think about the expression on Corin’s face, a mixture of curiosity and smugness terrifying on the face of someone so immense. “Well, he rolled over after that. Said he had answered my question and had nothing more to say.” It wasn’t a lie, not really, but the omissions were glaring.

“He can be a little temperamental,” the tiger said as he sat up, “but I hope you don’t read too much into that. He liked you, I know that much. Always had a soft spot for cute little cats.”

Markus looked up and into the tiger’s eyes, enough that he actually started to convince himself that there was nothing to worry about. From Corin, at least. It was only a second’s hesitation, but once it became clear that the tiger recognized the look in his eyes for what it was, he knew he had to say something. “Well, if you really don’t mind–”

“I don’t,” the tiger boomed, his words sonorous for all their impatience.

The panther took a deep breath, gathering his resolve. “Well, that isn’t all that’s weighing on me these days.”

“Oh?”

“I’m worried about your home, sire. You–” an uneasy pause, words both said and unsaid, “have not told me much about it.”

The tiger was playfully indignant. “That’s not true, I’ve told you plenty!”

“Of course, sire, I know all about the grounds, the gardens, the orchards, the hermitage, the two opera houses, the model cities–but you haven’t told me anything about him.” Cody.

The tiger’s face froze for a moment, though not long enough for Markus to tell if displeasure or concern were the reason why. “I’ve told you plenty about him, too! What more could you want to know?”

“Well,” plunging in, far past the point of no return, “what do you think he’ll think of me? Of…us?”

Without warning, the tiger scooped the panther into his palm, bringing him up to his face with one fluid motion. “My dear, sweet panther. I am certain that he will adore you. It has been a while since we’ve been able to talk, but I doubt he sees you as much of a threat…”

The panther, who had until now not considered the possibility of being a threat, added another fear to his growing list. “It’s just that, well, you’re going through a lot of trouble on my account, and you two have lived together for so long, much longer than you and I–”

“Seventeen years is hardly nothing, even for us!” The tiger objected.

The panther withdrew a little. “Of course, sire, I merely meant that you and Cody have had so many more years together, entire centuries, even!” The tiger laughed at this overestimate but Markus soldiered on. “And he is like Corin, he knows this world as I know Olonne, perhaps even better than that.” The panther had to continue to ignore his tiger’s booming laughter. “And I worry that there are other people you haven’t told me about. It is such a large estate, sire, and even with your size, I know there must be so many people there, and, well–”

“Who knows what they will think about you?”

Markus nodded. “Something like that, yes. W-will they all be quite so large?”

The tiger considered this for a moment. “Many will be taller than you. A few will be smaller, some won’t have physical dimensions, strictly speaking, and some will be close to your size. Most of those will be servants, of course, in one way or another. I’ve told you why I built the place, right? Both the pretext and the real reason?”

“Yes, sire,” the panther’s right paw squeezed his left with enough force to make his knuckles crack. “Something about wanting to explore the effect of size on history? But you just wanted an excuse to lord your size over a group of people, boss them around with your sheer heft alone?”

“Well put. You’ve lived under tyranny so you probably won’t understand, but there’s a lot of playful nostalgia for hierarchy on Arkendus.” Markus didn’t understand the nostalgia for it, perhaps, but reverence for a towering master? That he could understand quite well. “Curiosity about it as well. And it helps that Kurfürsten is full of wanton hedonists.”

The panther’s ears perked at this. “H-hedonists?”

“Pure pleasure-seekers. Makes getting along with the estates around us very simple. Not all of them are obsessed with size, though the ones to our north and north-west are. All three of us were built to evoke different time periods and cultures, but we all share a similar obsession with size and natural hierarchies. The only people we don’t get along with are the monastics to the south who say they’re bothered by our footsteps whenever we go on hikes near their border. Even got a vote called so we have to resize within a kilometer, so there’s some bad blood there.”

The panther was frustrated that anyone would have the audacity to object to his master’s immensity. He had known those who did not fantasize about the tiger lapping them up on Olonne, but to know that such people lived so close to his homestead? Blasphemous. Even worse was the idea that his master could be so easily constrained by others. He didn’t know what he expected in this world of gods, but although he was prepared for many things and shocked by so many others, this was perhaps the most surprising–to find that the tiger had not been lying about his place in this world, a small part of a whole immensely larger than anything he had dreamed. He did report to others, and had to abide by the rules of this society. He marveled how the mighty tiger could handle the unnecessary aggressions of such clear inferiors like these monks. They were taking exception to one of his sire’s most endearing qualities, the way his tread made the ground shake with each footfall!

“You shouldn’t be that worried about them. They’ll all be on their best behavior around you since you’re new, and from a culture that hasn’t even left their homeworld. We don’t get many specimens like that in the Republic, let alone out here on Arkendus.” A flash of the galactic map entered the panther’s mind, a memory too large for his momentarily un-laced mind to fathom. Arkendus was remote, alone among foreign territory, more than thirty lightyears from the nearest Kynthari hab–a word he only vaguely understood and was somewhat terrified to find lying on the floor of his mind. 

The distances involved were so many times more remote than Olonne’s most remote wilderness. He didn’t even try to think about where his homeworld was located, not prepared for any possible answer. “If you insist, sire.”

*

Arkendus-Reboranze Ulysses Publius Maximus dai Marienheid gestured for the panther to look out the windows as they shifted from translucent to transparent. The scene was framed perfectly–the panther had no way of knowing that this was intentional but it was–the Reboaranzen sun’s backlight flushing the massive ring in a reddish-yellow aureole as it stood alone in the measureless darkness of space. He knew nothing about gravity and even less about physics, so to him the sight reminded him of some magician’s trick, though on an unfathomably immense scale. The ship had been large, unbelievably massive, but he’d only caught it in miniature, brief glimpses of parts of the whole, growing more and more colossal each second of the module’s rapid approach. He could see the orbital entire, a perfect circle in the sky that he quickly realized was occupied on the interior strip.

“Are you sure it’s…safe?” Something about living on the inside of a ring seemed a complete impossibility, like living inside the ground.

“Safer than living on your world was before I came and,” an infinitesimal pause that the panther barely noticed, “even afterwards.” The panther supposed he had no good reason to lie about that, though the afterwards sounded like false humility. “You worried about slipping into space? It can’t happen. There are four hundred layers of field generators holding the thing together, and that’s before we get to any of the physical stuff–I’m no expert in the engineering side of thing but I’m sure I could talk to one of the old bats in civil–”

“That won’t be necessary,” the panther interrupted, face flushed with embarrassment. “I’d rather spend the time with you, sire, if that’s alright.”

The tiger’s eyes flashed, amused. “You will have to suffer through some time on your own. This trip isn’t just for pleasure, unfortunately.” The panther felt a sharp pang in his heart, but knew the tiger spoke true. “But don’t worry, we’ll still have plenty of time together. I promise to spend as much of it with you as possible.”

It would have to do. The panther knew better than to gainsay the tiger, but he couldn’t hide his fear. “You really don’t have to worry about them, you’re much safer here than you ever were on Olonne.”

“H-how does that figure?” He didn’t have enough time to panic about his presumption before the tiger’s chuckle ruffled deep into his fur and rumbled through the entire transport.

“Markus, my dear, my most precious possession, I would not have brought you here if I thought you were in any danger, or even any chance of it! You have absolutely nothing to worry about from me, from Cody, from anyone in the Republic.” The words were sincere enough as far as he could tell, but they did next to nothing to assuage the panther’s fears.

“Even f-from the monks?” He asked, wanting Pub’s comfort, delighting in the way the tiger’s laughter filled the air and assuaged his deepest fears. Of course there was nothing to worry about. His master lived in a paradise.

“If you look close, there,” the tiger pointed to some spot on the strip of earth suspended in space. “You can see it.” The panther couldn’t tell what strip of land Publius was pointing to, but the thought that Marienheid was buried somewhere in that immensity filled him with a dreadful excitement.

“Oh, sire, it’s more beautiful than I could have imagined!” He wasn’t lying. He had the pleasure of seeing his homeworld from the air on many different occasions, but this was different. A circle of verdant greens and deep azures was hanging against the indescribable blackness of the aether as they sailed between the many worlds. 

If Pub knew about the panther’s ignorance, that he didn’t share his keen sense of what Marienheid looked like from every angle and perspective, he didn’t let on. The orbital continued to spin below, the large green estates abruptly replaced by blinding spaceport lights as the ship glided into drydock.

*

The horses pulling the carriage were all synthetics, perfect simulacra of the real thing but with the energy efficiency of one of the substantial factories they’d seen in port. Pub felt the need to justify the use of advanced technology in this approach, but of course Markus neither knew nor cared about the strictures of his project and whether the presence of anachronistic technologies ruined the precious verisimilitude to which the orbital community strived. He was used to a sneering contempt that, at best, turned into a sympathetic misunderstanding of the Orbital’s purpose in the minds of an endless stream of visitors. The panther was a blank slate, filled with a wiry, nervous energy that mixed uneasily well with a wide-eyed wonder.

The carriage–an opalescent white with all the baroque gold leaf touches befitting a royal conveyance from the classical period of aristocracy–had been one of the more comforting sights, finally something with which the panther was intimately familiar. His world used ungulates similar to an auroch as draught animals instead of anything recognizably equine, but Markus was intimately familiar with the idea of conveyances for the exclusive use of lords and ladies.

“Well, what do you think?” The tiger’s question boomed in his ears as he nudged the entranced panther away from the amber waves of wheat undulating in the fields they rode past. They were sized for the panther, a fact which delighted him to no end–Publius had many times tried to explain to the skeptical panther that his people included many persons of the panther’s size, but until now Markus had just assumed he exaggerated. Everyone had been friendly enough–”Well?” The impatient tiger repeated and the panther grew flushed under his dark black fur.

“I’m sorry, sire, I don’t…I wasn’t giving you my complete attention. Think about what?”

A devilish fire burned in his golden eyes. “Let’s have some fun. I’m not going to repeat myself. Just give me a yes or no.”

The panther fumbled on instinct, “I couldn’t, I mean what if–”

The tiger would have none of it. “It was an option, not any opinion, so you don’t have to worry about me ascribing thoughts to you that I know you do not hold. A simple yes will suffice.”

Markus trusted his tiger, but was completely unprepared for what he was agreeing to when he nodded his head.

“I’m happy you weren’t paying attention! I would never have gotten a yes in any other circumstance. Maestre?” He turned to the white-furred otter driving the carriage, who responded to the summons by handing the tiger a small black rod that the panther was unable to perceive beyond three basic facts: it was long, cylindrical, and a dark black darker than darkest night. The tiger secreted it in his palm before manipulating the object in some unseen way, some intricate series of movements that distracted the panther from the horror before the device’s purpose became clear to him. He was getting bigger.

“Sire–lord, m-master–Publius!” The panther cycled through his titles, trying in vain to fight the warm, pleasant feeling that had already halved the difference between their sizes. “Please, I really don’t–I, I’m begging you–” He had no clue how to make his master understand the sheer blasphemy, the absurd presumption of merely thinking he deserved to be so large. He fumbled long enough for the right words that the tiger cut him off instead.

“You did say yes, did you not? It is far past time for you to see yourself as more than a mere servant. You are my lover, Markus, and I will not have you approach Marienheid at anything less than this size.” And if Cody was thrown off along the way, all the better. “Besides, I’m still bigger.”

No amount of protest would change his mind. The tiger was so confident he’d be unable to operate it, Markus had to resign himself to his new size as best he could manage. He fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat, the sight of the fields outside the window making him a little nauseous and uneasy now that they reminded him of his heretical resizing. The tiger pulled him in for a kiss, soft and warm on his lips and shocking enough to bring him back to the present. “I always wanted to give you a proper kiss, and that certainly lived up to expectations.” The panther grew flushed and the tiger found an opportunity to pounce. “You’re much cuter when you’re embarrassed, you know that?”

He demurred as best he could. He was happy for any distraction from the massive manor that had just come into view. He would have hoped his increase in size would help the edifice to feel less intimidating, but if anything its dimensions seemed all the more impressive–it was built to be intimidating, even to someone of Corin’s stature. Whatever the mansion may have lacked in height–a mere two or three stories to the giants–it more than made up for in its length and width, stretching far into the distance as they drew closer to its immensity. It was mostly white and beige, with occasional gold and red flourishes and intricate patterns festooned into the smooth sandstone and marble. It was a fortress, entirely unlike the one he had constructed on Olonne and yet also not so entirely dissimilar. The panther doubted whether his people could construct something like this, even with the advancements Publius had brought them. The gardens in front of the castle were manicured to perfection, no fewer than three fountains bubbling water in symmetrical unison as their carriage approached the villa’s front gate.

“How is Cody treating you, Maestre? Still on ass-licking duty?”

Markus could see now the speckles of brown spotting the otter’s otherwise wonderfully cream-colored fur as his cackles filled the air. “Only when I misbehave, sir,” the driver managed to get out in between peals of deep, proud laughter.

“A Westfalen accent would be more appropriate, but I imagine your Low German needs some work.” The otter’s laughter abruptly ceased as the tiger stared daggers into him.

“I am sorry, sir, you are right of course–”

“Oh lighten up, Christien!” It was Pub’s turn to laugh, filling the air with his deep, resonant chuckles. Even now, the svelte panther felt his master’s voice burrow deep inside, calming and terrifying in equal measure. “I know it’s been a long time since I’ve been home but you all would do well to remember that I don’t fixate on the details. Not everyone is as versed in the Early Modern Era as I am, nor should they be!” He let out another rich cascade of belly laughter. “Ghastly time, filled with so much misery–not unlike Olonne before I conquered it, eh Markus?”

The tiger shifted to the panther, who felt compelled to say something, anything. “And we thank you for it, sire.”

Pub let out a sigh and kept quiet for what remained of the trip, stuck fast in a trap of his own devising. He was at least able to shake off the dour expression by the time they came to the front entrance, the carriage’s two large, oaken doors drawn open by servants Markus couldn’t help but note were half his new size, a thought that unnerved him almost as much the forbidden thought of how very, very close he now was to his lord’s size.

The bun was dressed to the nines, a solid green doublet hanging over dark blue breeches, each trimmed with elaborate patterns embossed in gold leaf. Draped in a fine red cape, arms open as he bellowed greetings to the opened carriage. “Welcome, gentlemen, to Marienheid.”

A large chortle followed the tiger as he emerged from the carriage. He preferred a more casual chemise, and made his opinions apparent. “I’ve already done that bit, Cody,” the bun gave him a sharp glare that he ignored, “and I didn’t realize you’d moved the estate back! More Henry VIII than Frederick the Great.”

The rabbit shifted his gaze to the panther now emerging from the vehicle. He’d been prepared for the possibility that Pub would resize the panther, at least he thought was, but seeing him across that lawn, aware that he might actually be taller than the bun…it made his complexe de Napoléon flare. “You should be treating me as your King, Publius. You know the rules, I’m lord of the manor.”

“I know how they used to work,” the tiger laughed some more, kissing the bun’s forepaw before surprising him with a slap on the ass. “If anything I should treat you like family, since we are both monarchs. And really, even you should know better than to humiliate people with a valid claim to your throne.”

The bun forced a strained smile. “As much of a pedantic asshole as I remember. Welcome to Marienheid, King Publius the Magnificent.” He affected a theatrical bow, the sarcasm of the gesture undercut by the regal attire that made his actions seem exaggerated and foolish. He turned to look at Markus. “I don’t believe we have met. I am Cody, master of the manor in Pub’s stead–”

The tiger kept his own sarcasm at bay as he spoke for the panther. “This, my dear bun, is my friend Mark, joining us from his home planet where I’ve been assigned for the past quarter century. I’m not surprised you’re pretending not to know, since you studiously avoided mentioning it in your responses.”

The panther avoided both of their eyes as he stood stock still, trying not to realize just how much larger he was than the many little valets and footmen now crowded around his ankles. Just one misstep would be all it took, then he could–

“What else did you expect after so many years without a solitary word? And don’t say you couldn’t have written, I know you were in regular access to general information, even heard you wished June a Happy Birthday the last couple years–”
“Oh come now, getting upset at me for well wishes–”

They would have doubtless continued to bicker well into the night if a certain owl had not chosen that moment to flutter up and onto the bun’s shoulder, doing as best a job as someone who could fit in either of their palms could at separating the two titans. “Pub, sir, it’s an honor to have you back here. If there is anything I or the other servants can do to help make you more at home, do not hesitate to ask.”

“Why, Quil! My, it’s been ages since I’ve last seen you, how are you holding up? Is Cody treating you well?”

The owl felt his cheeks grow hot at the direct attention, but it was better than hearing his two masters bicker like little children. “Of course, sir, no complaints here. I’m just honored to oversee Marienheid, it’s such a beautiful estate. Nothing like it in all of Kythar–I’ll never get used to the feeling of ordering around servants five or ten times my size.”

The bun could not let this continue without adding something of his own. “The little bird can be quite the tyrant when he needs to be, though it helps to have the lord–” glancing over at Pub, he corrected his word choice, “the lords of the manor looming behind you.” He gestured expansively at the behind, meeting the panther’s uncertain gaze with his own impossibly neutral stare. Or was it a glare? “Shall I show you the main house…Markus, was it?”

“M-Markus is fine, Mark works as well…” the panther broke eye contact, afraid of what he might find buried in the rabbit’s enigmatic smile.

Cody made an about-face, his cape lightly whacking the panther’s side and causing Markus to yelp in fright. A thoroughly unimpressive specimen with little to recommend. So tightly wound that he’s frightened of fabric phantoms. It took all his self-possession–and a little help from his drug glands–to keep contempt out of his expression. 

The panther could still feel the harsh judgment. It oozed from the rabbit’s every pore, every movement, every haughty expression. He started to feel chastened, his fears flaring up with such intensity of feeling. Who was he to think he deserved this, any of this–not just as large but even larger than this Lord? And deep, deep within, a quiet voice whispered: doesn’t Cody look a little less regal than Publius, a little more pathetic, even. The other parts of his mind tried aggressively to silence this clear, undeniable heresy, more terrors blooming into being as he considered that Pub might be able to read his thoughts like Corin had…

The owl was almost thrown off by the rabbit’s abrupt turn, but was used to Cody’s often taciturn moods and well prepared for whatever punishment clawing into the giant’s shoulder might bring. The thick fabric of his royal doublet was, luckily, rough enough to help the owl avoid being tossed the many dozen meters off and onto the cold, hard ground.

The tiger followed behind them all, making a point to nod and shake the hands of each and every footman in rapid succession. He knew most of their names without having to resort to a split-second of that slack-jawed expression of someone consulting with General Information or perhaps one of the plate’s Dhi, and the few he didn’t recognize turned out to be little more than subroutines capable of serving dishes and saying thank you in the dozen or so required languages. The smaller ones had to be picked up and gently caressed in something that approximated the action of a handshake, a full-body squeeze that made the micros feel as flushed and small as they made the tiger feel bigger and better. He turned to look at the open doorway. It had been many decades since he’d last crossed this threshold. He took everything in with a deep breath before letting it all out with an even deeper sigh.

He was Publius Maximus dai Marienheid, conqueror of Olonne. It would not work out by itself, but he would find a way to make it work. He always did.

Featured

Olonne

Markus could still remember the days long past when he played pretend games of adventure and travel to lands far beyond his own meager pastures, traipsing through the dense, overgrown forest, simple and carefree. Olonne had been blessed with bumper harvests for most of his weaning, so the panther could afford to neglect his few chores. In those halcyon days, everyone became accustomed to excess, ill-prepared for the years of hardship that marked most of the panther’s adolescence.

The blight had started with wheat and quickly spread to the barley and fireoats. Markus had been taught since birth that their God had abandoned them, a belief that only seemed more and more true as he and his family struggled to find food through year after year of ever dwindling stores of grain, sickly livestock hastily slaughtered to get his family through endless days of famine and pestilence. The lords had secreted themselves behind stone walls, occulted for so long that stories spread about their opulent parties, about decadence and depravity beyond all sense of propriety and honor, the supposed chivalry of knights stripped bare and revealed as no more substantial than smoke in rain.

Publius arrived the same year he would have been pressed into military service for his Lord, a title that remained in his mind as capital letters even with everything that had transpired since. Living so close to the former and future seats of government, Markus had seen the miraculous apparition with his own eyes; the large, black and rectangular craft falling through the heavens, unnaturally silent as it streaked across the sky until its immensity stabbed into the earth with a bellowing roar. There it sat, a sight so unimaginable that he was not the only person whose first thought was of some divine retribution, the nightmarish scenes of judgment even the most grotesque priests seemed afraid to describe.

The shimmering black immensity in the distance had filled him with a trepidation bordering on complete terror. It was so many things: an absurd monstrosity, a massive imposition, a holy monument, proof of conquest, a mockery of the smallness of this world. It sprawled up and into the sky, above the dark-grey clouds it seemed to conjure, absorbing the light that used to fill every corner of the verdant countryside and replacing it with an aura of–if not sheer malice–dominion unbound, a dream of might beyond all former limits of size and power.

When the massive creature–appearance so like a cat of their own kind if not for the tiger’s sheer enormity–stepped out of clear black, the confusion and dread shifted rapidly to horror and terror. The town’s residents ran as far as possible from the massive conqueror. The monster covered so much ground with each booming footfall, it was impossible to escape his presence.

The giant let out a small, dry chuckle as he stomped over the city wall, clearly amused that his mere presence could cause such complete chaos. “There will be plenty of time to run in fear. But first,” a pause for effect long enough to draw the stunned attention of the scattering onlookers, “He must die.” The words were all the more terrifying for their pitch-perfect Olonnean, the way his voice carried across the commune and out into the surrounding hillside. His fiery, golden eyes focused on the manor in the center of town. Demonic. No other word fit Him. The speech only made the tiny felines more eager to flee from the massive, encroaching form whose every footfall sent quakes through the whole town.

He continued through a town rapidly depopulating, past fleeing peasants and towards the Lord’s manor. None of the residences or shops collapsed due to his impressive bulk, but several did develop cracks large enough that even the conqueror himself could spy them from his lofty eyeline. Struck dumb by the impossibility of the scene, Markus clung to the outside of the blacksmith’s, staring up at the enormous tiger in all of his naked glory as he continued his single-minded march to the center of town. The tremors from each and every step were enough to make the panther stumble and almost fall to the ground, even in spite of his tight grip. His life did not matter. Not in comparison to that of the jovial devil looming above their heads.

The massive tiger crossed the village and knelt in front of the opulent manor-house like a collapsing mountain. He was still a full head taller than the four-story structure, his expression hard to parse with its snarling contempt for what passed for authority on this pathetic world mixed with a clear delight at the power his every movement commanded. “Lord Raimond, I know you are up on the third floor, cowering in fear with your family. Does everyone yet know why?” His voice was loud enough to reverberate through not just the nearby field but even the distant hills. “Because he has lost every scrap of power he once held. Because the Lord is so used to acting like God-himself that he cannot even fathom the reality of judgment by a higher power.” The tiger punched a hole into the roof of the manor, the horrendous moan of wood echoing throughout an awestruck valley as he plucked the mayor up in his upsized fist. His shrieks of terror were just as clear, his tiny body unable to wrestle free from even one of the tiger’s massive digits. “Shall I list your sins or wilt thou list them first?” These words, which formed the beginning of the religious caste’s last rites, caused the slender otter who was barely large enough to fit in the tiger’s paw to blanche in terror. His shock rendered him mute–down below, unable to tear his eyes from every unimaginable action of the invader, the panther dreamed all the retribution this giant could wreak on such a worthy target, someone who had gorged himself while the peasants starved.

The tiger licked his lips, the gleeful sadist coming out as he wrapped his sandpaper tongue around the otter, finery and all–a dignity he would not allow later nobles–the wet muscle pulling him kicking and screaming into his hungry maw. The giant made a point of chewing loudly, causing the ghastly crunch of the feudal lord to linger in the ears of each witness for long after the grisly scene was concluded. The panther wasn’t sure if he hallucinated a drip of red flowing down the giant’s cheek, wiped clean by the same tongue that swallowed the lord’s corpse. It was as if he had read the panther’s mind, saw what he most wanted, and decided to grant his most gruesome wish.

“Sic semper tyrannis, as they say…” he continued with a dry chuckle as he bashed the manor house once more, swiping his arm through the second floor. The structure crackled, crumbled, and collapsed as the tiger stood at his full extent. “I trust none of you will mourn his passing. I’ve heard what you whisper about him beyond his hearing.”

The next few years were so entirely different from the previous ones that even if a distinction had not been forced from above, Markus and most other furs would have divided them into before and after Publius in any way. The wars that seemed likely to engulf–if not ultimately take–the panther’s life ended quickly as Publius went from town to town in service of his complete aristocide, decimating and often literally devouring the timorous remnants of the ruling class. Traveling bands would tell stories of the righteous tiger parading through the countryside and freeing the people from abject horrors, epic poems equal parts sardonic and hopeful in scope and outlook. Few people trusted their new sovereign’s insistence that they were free to speak their minds, fearing some sort of clever ploy to ensnare the loosest tongues so they would be easier to lop off. Markus had even heard stories of entire garrisons killing their former nobles in futile attempts to curry favor with the gargantuan regent. The fools did not realize the relish with which the tiger enjoyed his romps; running through the countryside, stomping from castle to castle, his each and every footfall fresh testament to his infinite, unknowable power. These acts backfired, bringing further wrath onto these holdings, conspirators rounded up and devoured on the spot, while others disappeared inside the new lord’s gigantic castle.

And what an impressive castle it was! He couldn’t help but note how much more gargantuan the building looked as he approached. Previous designs had been limited in both concept and execution, restricted by some combination of cost, building materials, and logic. The massive cat no longer had to worry about such trivialities. His castle was a massive edifice, one befitting the tiger’s almost ten meter height, fronted with doors of impossibly ornate oak–or perhaps cedar, the panther being no carpenter–perfectly-sized to match the outsize proportions of their sovereign. Markus mawkishly made his way over to the smaller, more modest entryway reserved for visitors of insufficient size to open the enormous doors. As this included all intelligent life on the planet apart from the sovereign, it was in effect the real entrance, and it took him several hours to work his way to the front of the long queue. Ample time to ponder the unfathomable size of their gigantic conqueror, no doubt the real purpose of the enormous entrance.

The panther attempted an air of authority as he introduced himself to the functionaries at the entrance. He stood up a little straighter, focusing hard on emphasizing each syllable. His voice cracked upon introducing himself as “the new mayor of Baslotte,” an awful croak in his throat as he squeezed out the final syllable. He was expected, and so he found himself ushered inside without anything more than a few knowing smirks from the otherwise stolid knights standing sentinel at the smaller entrance.

The exterior of the castle was almost unfathomably huge, but it was still no preparation for the scale of its interior. All around the building there were gothic touches that Markus recognized from the Archon cathedrals that Publius had not demolished in spite of the new regent’s evident distaste for both superstition and the aristocracy that had once supported itself within its auspices. Those churches were nowhere near as intricate, nor as smoothly masoned as the stone of this castle was, but they had some the same themes, the high vaulted ceilings, the flowery carving, as if the stone had grown from the ground itself, and of course rows and rows of ornate columns covered in all sorts of intricate friezes. It would not have surprised Markus to learn that Publius’ fondness for their unique architecture had led him to keep those cathedrals standing. Besides, they could always be repurposed to support the new regime.

In spite and in no small part because of its recognizable features, the castle was entirely alien to Markus. He had heard of all sorts of strange magicks and wondrous inventions the regent had brought with him from foreign stars, but to actually see them up close, working their magic right in front of his eyes, was something else entirely. The steps on staircases moved by themselves, so that the many knights and ministers and secretaries and undersecretaries shuffled about the massive complex without even having to move their feet. There were large glass casings which glided up and down the walls to different sections within the castle, presumably at the whim of the dozen or so people who could fit inside. It was this quality that surprised Markus the most, how the castle’s atrium was so bustling and full of life, each attendant and sub-attendant and minister and vice-minister scurrying about, all serving the massive master as they were in turn served by the magicks of the unfathomably gigantic castle. He tried to count the floors he could spot above his head but kept losing track around 30 or 40, a scale completely beyond the panther’s comprehension. In all the commotion, the panther almost missed a solitary lynx making a beeline straight for him.

“You must be the new mayor of Baslotte?” he asked, taking the panther’s firm nod–after his initial shock broke–for sufficient confirmation for his own introduction. “I’m Lukas, subaltern to the secretary of decorum. I will be escorting you throughout your visit here. I know how challenging the castle can be to newcomers,” he smiled a remarkably condescending smile as he swiveled on his heels and headed towards one of the nearby staircases, a wave of his hand more than sufficient to get an incredibly flustered panther to follow.

“It is a great honor to be invited to dine with the regent.” The lynx took a step up onto the staircase, and before Markus could blink, it rapidly started to ascend. “Come now, hold on before I lose you!” The lynx yelled, pointing to a railing next to the stairs, a bright blue light springing into existence that linked his grip to the lynx’s. He didn’t even have to climb the stairs to close the distance between them; the ones in between him and the subaltern seemed to evaporate into thin air so that he was only a few feet below the lynx’s own step.

“Like I said, the castle can be quite hard to adapt to. I remember the first day I worked here, trying to figure out all the different machines that the regent has so graciously provided. Suffice it to say it took an embarrassing while before I didn’t get lost on my way to the lavatory,” he laughed as his eyes met the panther’s for the first time. “I can tell by your mien that you were like me before the descent. Probably barely survived the blight, too…” he drifted off for a moment, a grave look setting into his face for just long enough for Markus to read the terror of those years of famine before it returned to his more natural, jovial disposition. “It shouldn’t surprise you that some of the old prejudices are harder to beat than others,” the lynx said. “Some men still cling to the old belief that good breeding and wealth are useful proxies for value. Publius, however, rewards men who show themselves to be worthy of reward, and punishes those who prove worthy of condemnation. You know what happened to the previous mayor, I take it?”

“I-I do,” Markus stuttered, desperately trying not to fixate on it. He had worked his way this far, and while he was pleased with his progress, working himself far above any level he might have even dreamed about attaining under the old aristocracy, he knew exactly how serious the last mayor’s crimes had been, and how swiftly the regent had punished them.

“Then you already know not to arouse the sovereign’s temper, even if you aren’t an aristocrat,” his face flickered anew with seriousness before softening as he gauged the panther’s expression. “This is not as hard as you might think it to be! Publius is not, after all, some mere tyrant! Those petty pretenders overseas like to project their own failings onto Olonne, lest their subjects realize who really stands for them…” The lynx effortlessly stepped off the revolving staircase and onto the landing, reaching through the once solid staircase and pulling Markus out with him. He continued to pull the panther through the winding halls, paying no mind to any of the big cat’s hmmphs of protest. “I would have warned you, but novices tend not to understand phasing until they’ve actually been through one themselves.” The panther was no closer to understanding what had just happened to him, how he had been brought through a solid object, but he found it prudent to keep his lips shut. At least he was learning something. Many somethings, in fact.

“Unfortunately, there isn’t an automatic conveyor on this floor, so we’ll have to proceed on foot from here. I take it you remember how to walk?” the lynx teased with that gratingly cheeky irreverence the panther had come to expect. He turned on his agile heels and briskly walked off in one single fluid motion, purple and red robes swaying just so in the breeze that Markus was given a surprisingly intimate glimpse of the lynx’s silhouette. He was sleek, middle height, with wonderfully groomed fur that suited someone who worked for the office of decorum. He was cute…but he wasn’t really Markus’s type.

“H-have you met the…the r-regent?” he asked, a stutter coming out of his disbelief that he was actually about to meet the titan in person.

“A few times,” the lynx answered without turning back to face him. “Have you ever seen him in person?”

“Yes, I-I s-saw him…during the d-descent.” Markus’s fur stood on end as he ran his paws down the front of his robes, trying to get a grip on himself and not lose sight of the larger situation. He mostly failed. At least kept pace, staying as close as he could manage to the lynx in spite of his own feverish gait.

The lynx turned back upon him to take a brief but hard look, judging whether Markus was telling the truth. The panther almost plowed right into the subaltern, stopping just in time to end up uncomfortably close to his face instead. After a moment’s hesitation, the lynx seemed satisfied that he was telling the truth. “I’m jealous! I’ve heard the regent was in rare form during the descent, and…well, he had not yet taken to our attire!” The panther had spent countless sleepless nights thinking of the giant tiger’s naked body. It was not making this visit any easier. “If you saw him then, it’s no wonder you’re so nervous. Positively quivering in your boots back there! You probably think you’re about to be punished. Nothing could be further from the truth! Publius simply does not punish people who do not deserve it.”

This sentiment was not as reassuring as it was meant.

“That’s why I know he’ll end up liberating the Bretagnes before long. I don’t work on any sort of defense policy, mind; my job is mostly accommodating diplomats and helping people like you acclimate to all of this,” he waved his arms around in an unnecessarily exaggerated fashion that did nonetheless help make the point. “But I do know someone in the defense ministry, and he’s told me there is endless talk over there about how to deal with all those barbaric little tyrannies that still don’t bow before the regent, and given Publius’s clearly divine nature, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that he’s planning on expanding his terri—”

“Lukas, I do hope you aren’t filling Markus’s head with prattle and idle gossip,” a large voice boomed to the right of them. It was unmistakable, even after the passage of almost a full decade, its dulcet basso profundo clear in his memory. It was Him. “Isn’t your job here to show the guests around, not lecture them about current events?” Turning to face the source of the booming voice, Markus found that he could see through the stone wall, much like the staircase that he had somehow been pulled through earlier. The striking visage of the massive tiger held a grin the panther couldn’t help but notice was a few arshin larger than he was tall.

The admonishment was playful enough, but Lukas cast his head down in desultory embarrassment anyway. “Of course you are right, Publius, I-” he began, but the tiger had already moved on to the panther. His eyes met the panther’s, and Markus found himself unable to look away. This was his regent, this–this was Him…and He was breathtaking in the flesh, with only, what, five or six arshin now between his lips and the panther’s body?

“What a rare specimen Baslotte has selected,” the tiger began, steamrolling the middle of what appeared to be the first paragraph of Lukas’s characteristically lengthy apology. Even as the tiger took a pause for effect, the lynx knew to quiet himself. “You’ll have to pardon my gaze, Markus. It’s not everyday that you meet someone quite so…” he trailed off, taking a pause before he started again. “A jaguar, the only one in your family with a coat that shade. We will have to talk about it more over dinner, don’t you think?” The tiger winked, turned his head, and the wall turned back into opaque stone.

“Holy shit…” Markus muttered as he struggled to catch his breath. The regent knew far more about him than he would have even hoped; was this some special interest of his, or was the giant somehow this knowledgeable about each and every one of his subjects?

“Interesting…” the lynx began after a moment of silence, as if to answer the panther’s unspoken question, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Publius take such an intense interest in someone quite so quickly. Usually it takes him a while to warm up, even those people he does like…” Through the lynx’s pauses Markus could swear he read an intense, seething jealousy. Had he once held the tiger’s interest, only to be unceremoniously replaced? “Come now, though. It will not do to keep Publius waiting.”

Lukas grew sullen and quiet for the remainder of the journey. It made Markus all that more uncomfortable, even if he was still too shocked and terrified to say much of anything himself. He just could not accept that the attention was positive. What had he done to earn the sovereign’s ire? Had he ever preached his downfall or worked against him? One heard stories of people cursing the regent and mysteriously disappearing into the night. Was he suspected of having ties to the old regime, or harboring sympathies for the old aristocracy? Distantly, he was aware that some cousins and nephews of the old king still lived in the courts of Růs and Quan-di, over the channel and across the White Ocean…but he was hardly an old regime loyalist. Their execution had been brutal and bloody, but the truth was, even though he dared never tell another soul, Markus had if anything found the thought of Publius devouring each and every lord and lady to be arousing. A colossus reaching down and just taking what was rightfully his by unmitigated, brutal force. Targets so deserving of his wrath that even now, while the panther struggled through his intense fear, the panther could feel his cock ever so slightly stiffen at the memory of the tiger’s swallowing Lord Raimond with his gorgeous jaws…

He thought that he had witnessed enough impossible things for one day–if not for his entire lifetime–but the sight of the dining room was beyond even his now expanded imagination. It was absolutely massive, large enough for his previous idea of the entire castle to occupy. Such limitations were of no consequence to the sovereign, though. The panther had heard whispers from the more learned men in town of the impossibility of the tiger’s proportions. Markus just argued that this was further proof of the sovereign’s divinity.

The walls were adorned with tapestries depicting the many heroic feats of the conquering tiger, adversaries he had bested and sacrifices he had made for comrades-in-arms. One in particular stood out, the tiger clad in the classic armor of a legendary knight as he struck a fatal blow against a creature with seven limbs and at least as many eyes and mouths. “Magnificent, aren’t they?” a voice now intimately familiar bellowed far over his head as his footfalls seemed to shake the very foundations of the room. Glancing up at the tiger’s form looming above, the panther almost fainted in reflexive terror. “I can tell you the story behind each and every one, if you’d like,” He went on, wistful, almost, like he wanted to say more before holding back. “But we have more important things to discuss.” His tone was intoxicating, jovial and friendly in spite of its sheer, enormous power.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get over being so much larger than you natives.” The flow of the giant’s voice was a gentle river the panther felt compelled to follow to whatever uncertain destination the tiger led.  As Publius crouched, his chubby thighs strained his massive trousers with his legs akimbo. “It’s hard to hold myself back,” the tiger confided, now able to once again meet the panther’s gaze with his own hungry eyes. “Forcing you to do what I please, no matter your protests. I didn’t have to devour the old nobles; probably made my mission here a little more difficult with such brutality! But oh, the fear I could taste in each and every one…” his voice growing more and more breathy as he continued. “It got into their meat, panther, and it coursed through their blood. It was so satisfying…” Underneath his clothes, the panther’s half-hard shaft continued to stiffen.

“Enough of that, though,” the giant’s tone shifted back to his more formal baritone, “I wouldn’t want to spoil your appetite, after all!” There was something about the way he said it; did he know it wouldn’t?

While Markus was transfixed with the massive monarch, servants and attendants began to scurry about the oversized table and floor, setting up all sorts of pieces in a rather ornate and nigh absurd display of power and luxury. The panther managed something approaching a brisk pace, trying his best to soak in as much detail of his absurdly large surroundings as he could understand, but each detail seemed to unfold into ten more details the more a, and before one of those details could be parsed another fifteen would draw his attention and invariably start the cycle over again.

It was in this spirit of amazement and wonder that the panther arrived at the base of a massive table seemingly carved out of a singular piece of stained oak, even though it must have taken the lumber of several forests to craft something as big as a cathedral. The presence of some mechanical car to lift him up the table leg and onto the surface of the table didn’t even register to the overwhelmed panther, nor did he register that the enormous tiger had taken his seat at the head of the table until his speech once more echoed through the brobdingnagian chamber. “I have been looking forward to this dinner for quite some time, little panther.” His voice was positively radiant, joyful as he casually plucked a wriggling form from the serving platter. The panther realized they were bound nobles in the moment just before the tiger tossed them into his waiting jaws, swallowing before he continued, equal parts monstrous and courteous. “I really do hope that none of this ruins your appetite, Markus. But I’m sure you know that each and every one of these men deserves their fate. The one I just swallowed was a fairly notorious sadist. Amusing that they never think they’ll become prey to the same violence they so wantonly inflict on others.” The tiger words were accompanied with a sardonic smile that still managed to freeze the blood in the tiny panther’s veins.

It took all of the composure the terrified panther could manage to ask him a single question. “Wh-why am I here, lord?”

“It’s hard to know where to begin. There is so much to tell you, after all! Perhaps a short biography is in order? I’ve only been around a few centuries but I’ve managed to accrue my fair share of stories and great heroic deeds.

“I have neither the time nor the inclination to fully brief you on galactic politics so that you can understand the causes of our current conflict, but they predate me by several millennia besides and the whole thing,” he waved his arms around in a gesture that implied totality, “is rather absurd, or at least it would seem by your standards. It is very rare for either side’s combatants to truly die, at least to the way you understand that word. A bunch of immortals duking it out over slightly different visions of utopia.” The panther managed a single nod of his head as the tiger locked eyes. Even though so many of the words seemed so foreign and confusing, the tiger’s eyes were so soft and strong. It was hard not to be reassured by them, if strangely. He should have been terrified of such direct attention, and of course a part of him was–but there was a warmth there, drawing the panther in with the enticing rhythm of the tiger’s words. He need not grasp every concept to understand the broad outline conveyed.

“I fought bravely and valiantly for over three centuries before earning the right to this expedition, Markus, and I feel very fortunate to have such a large degree of latitude in the way I conquer you. I could not–even in my wildest dreams!–hope to match the depravity of some of your wilder tyrants, but I like to think I’ve taken a few liberties that my comrades-in-arms will probably view with a mixture of derision and revulsion. But you…I think you understand me.”

The panther was dumbstruck, stunned for an entire moment before he managed a halting reply. “I…I’m s-sorry, m’lord, I’m j-just a simple cat and, and all these things…I d-don’t think I can even begin t-t-to understand–”

The tiger waived such concerns away with a flick of his wrist. “You already understand, Markus, in all the ways that matter. I can smell it. You’re already so flushed, little panther…I bet after I eat him,” with an excess of theatricality, Publius lifted another bound and gagged man that Markus could now recognize was a former aristocrat, struggling hard and uselessly to break free from the tiger’s unbreakable binds, before he was dropped into the tiger’s cavernous maw, crushed between his ferocious teeth. The sickening crunch was so loud it filled the panther’s tiny ears. A heavy swallow and light belch were followed by a knowing smirk. “Excuse me, where are my manners…by now you must be fully erect, I take it?”

The panther shook his head instinctively out of something resembling basic peasant propriety, but he knew the truth would be all too easy for the tiger to discover. The giant reached over, rumbling an “Is that so?” that made the panther’s breath shorten, trying hard to contain his excitement. The tiger’s massive thumb brushed the panther’s bulge as he chuffed with approval, the little creature surrounded by his fat, furry digits. “You are very cute, Markus, but you shouldn’t lie to someone twelve times your size, especially about something it would be trivial for him to find out.”

The panther’s potential responses were held in place by the tiger’s thumb idly pressing against his length, nudged this way and that by a digit almost taller than the panther. “You don’t have to say anything, little fella. You just have to take these off if you want to continue.” The force of the tiger’s words were not just within the volume of his voice nor its resounding bass, but also the meaty scent the diminutive panther could smell on his lord’s heavy breath. He didn’t have a choice. With one quick and fluid motion, the panther let his pants fall to his knees, a simple undergarment completely unable to hide his enormous, fully erect shaft.

“Do you want to know how I knew this would happen? It’s actually a funny story, and it does concern your future…” The tiger held his right index finger out to gently wrap around the back of the panther’s head while his left continued to prod the diminutive feline’s bulge with the tip of his thumb. He couldn’t help but notice how easy it would be for the tiger to crush his entire body, accidentally or on purpose.
It took all the strength in his body for Markus to manage a faint nod. He wanted to know where this was going, and the attention he was receiving from Publius, his liege and his lord, the tiger he had devoted his entire life to, was as intoxicating as it was invigorating and arousing. He was lucky that someone as large as Publius could read his expression. “My my my, aren’t you sweet…tiger got your tongue?”

Even if he wanted to say what few words came to mind, the small fur could not move his mouth to make the sounds. “Most people outside–those who don’t work for the castle at least–they don’t know I’m not really the highest authority on this planet, but it’s true. I am technically only Suzerain, Plenipotentiary and Lord High Protector. Until we’ve determined you’re at a suitable level of development, none of you will have any ability to appeal my decisions or question my authority. That should only take a few more centuries, and they’ll probably send me home after one.

“But the truth, my little panther, is…I can’t keep living like this,” the tiger continued to rub his digit up and down the panther’s sensitive length. The panther felt the breath from each word ruffle his fur, the strong scent of a fresh kill sending  primal fear and delight pulsing through the tiny carnivore. “And so, using the unfathomable resources of this office, I have calculated my sexual compatibility with each and every soul currently under my power. If I’m going to be here for a hundred years, after all, I’m going to need some real companionship! I almost went with Lukas, even though he was only seventy-fifth. He was just so desperate for my approval, and so close at hand…but you, Markus, were number one. Right down the road! And you had just been elected, so I had the perfect excuse to invite you here for a nice, long chat.”

The small cat looked up at his lord’s divine countenance with a mixture of awe and confusion. There were concepts here that did not and could not make sense to a newly emancipated serf, of course, but those paled in comparison to the ones he could understand, but which daunted him all the more. Publius…wanted him? As some sort of companion? Concubine? Love slave?

“With ah-all due respect, sire,” the panther’s eyes downcast as his hands clenched in a vain attempt to exorcise his abject terror, “I can’t see how I’d be able to help…”

“Are you worried about your size? That can always be adjusted. I could even make you as large as myself, if you so desired!” A smirk worked its way up his face and deep into his shimmering, golden eyes. “Something tells me, however, that isn’t what you mean. Even if you were my equal in scale, you’d still think of me as your liege, monarch, sire, all those wonderful honorifics I adore–to a point.” The tiger sighed a little as he plucked up another trussed noble and tossed him offhandedly into his waiting mouth. He purposefully chewed loudly before swallowing to emphasize. “But eventually, Markus, you are going to have to have a little courage. Take a risk and trust that I know what I’m doing, even if you do not.”

The words chastened the panther. His rapid heartbeat grew faster still in response to the booming taunts. He was just too large and imposing. Part of him knew this was inevitable danger, what he had already risked letting the giant toy with him so far. As if he could have it any other way. As if he had a choice. Everything that Publius wanted, he had taken. It had been that way since he landed. Why would this be any different?

“Say yes, or come up with a good reason for a no. If your objection is that deep-seated, surely you can conjure some excuse?” Markus made the mistake of looking at the pile of noble hors d’oeuvres, locking eyes with a terrified bald lynx whose horrified expression rapidly turned to one of disgust as he realized just who he was looking at. The cat felt every deprivation of his adolescence stoke the embers of his anger. He could not deny it was immensely satisfying to see the trussed noble plucked up and tossed into the tiger’s mouth, another life ended at the giant’s whim.

“Y-yes.” The terror did not leave him, but it mingled with the joy of someone whose most treasured, impossible dream had somehow found a way of coming true.  “You know I have always been your faithful servant.”

“Oh my, very good! I thought you’d keep insisting, as if I couldn’t feel your erection against my pad. Like you were not positively thrilled at the opportunity.” For someone so immense, his motions were delicate, with a gentleness that should have been beyond someone his size, a subtlety of movement that he had no right to possess. Further proof of his power, the awed panther supposed. “I do get so hot and bothered when I’m punishing nobles, and it will be quite a help to have you at hand.”

The panther didn’t even have a chance to respond to the tiger’s enormous words before he was plucked up between two padded fingertips, a third pinned to his throbbing erection, holding it fast against his groin and stomach. He should have found the display obscene, he should have made a case for his own independence, he should have said a million different excuses he could no longer muster. He struggled some halfhearted struggles, but they were more for comfort than for freedom. It was all the resistance he could manage. The gigantic tiger pulled his own erection free with one hand while he lowered the panther down to meet it.

“You’re just the right size to wrap your tiny body around it, you know. One of the reasons I fought so hard for this posting.” The panther was pressed into his giant shaft, the tiger’s voice reverberating through his body as he was rubbed up and down, each oscillation of the gargantuan paw a fraction of a second shorter than the one before. Neither of them actually changed size, but the panther, terrified in the tight confines of his gigantic fist, certainly thought they did; the tiger’s hardened cock seemed to expand around the panther’s body, taking more and more and more space while the panther dwindled in direct proportion.

He should have hated it. His mind kept returning to that insistent thought. This should have been nightmarish, one of those horrors that his neighbors muttered about in hushed tones when they were sure they couldn’t be overheard. He never should have said yes, never should have admitted his attraction to the charismatic titan. He had no one but himself to blame for getting so carried away. The fantasy of belonging to the massive tiger was too enticing, the giant of his dreams, feeling his massive member pulse and throb around his diminutive form. The red flesh was so hot it was starting to make him sweat, just barely enough room in his lungs for short, shallow breaths filled with the tiger’s heady musk. He could feel the beast’s heartbeat pulsing through every inch of his massive length. He could taste the pre on his lips, feel it in his mouth, running down his throat, making it impossible to breathe. He couldn’t think logically. His own cock spasmed against the tiger’s enormous shaft, a pathetic little orgasm with less volume than one spurt of his keeper’s, insignificant in comparison.

As if he felt the tiny panther’s eruption, the tiger let out a few short, sharp chuffs as his grip grew tighter and tighter, the tension continuing to build and build until finally, with a short exhale of pleasure loud enough to echo down the great hall, the tiger let loose rope after rope of his seed, a climax large enough to drown the tiny panther in gallons and gallons of mighty ejaculate. The miniature panther nearly did.

Through the thick, watery mess the giant had made for the panther, he heard two booming claps. Attendants came over from their posts at the edge of the gigantic table, wiping the tiger’s shaft clean as they pulled the tiny panther out of his puddle at the base of his scrotum. He appreciated their decorum as they wiped him clean, a few other attendants coming over to pour water and wipe his fur clean. “They’re quite diligent, Markus. One of the perks of power, I suppose…” the tiger chuckled a little at the panther’s continued awe. His look conveyed everything, his eyebrow arched as he awaited his hapless plaything’s words.

“I. I want–I want that. That, in my life..” Each word took a visible amount of effort as it escaped the panther.

“Just that? Nothing else?” The tiger was perhaps a little cruel, but the commitment he was making to his lord was immense. He wanted something definite. Resolute.

“No, of course not!” He saw no way around it, no better expression. “I want you, sire.”

Later that night, as both felines started to run out of cum and the night wound itself inextricably down, the tiger ordered his servants away, leaving a bedchamber the size of a lesser noble’s chateau to himself and his new lover. The panther buried his head deep into the fur between the two massive mounds of flesh that made up the tiger’s chest. The panther was exhausted, feeling himself drift off close to sleep before the tiger’s words brought him back to consciousness. “Doesn’t feel real, huh?” Not for the first time that night, the panther was at a loss for words, gazing up at the enormous behemoth he had long since accepted as lord and liege,sire and sovereign, mythical and mighty and far too powerful to ever take interest in a peasant. “But it is, Markus. Though you might have to commute to the city from now on.”

Even with everything else that had passed before that night, the pledge of fidelity from the panther to the massive tiger, he couldn’t believe his ears. “I…am to live here?”

“I can carry you into town if you would prefer it,” the tiger boomed with wry humor, his each and every word so reverberant through the supine panther’s entire body. “Though I could always find you something to do around the castle if you’d rather.” His eyebrow arched suggestively.

The panther blushed, but had just enough sense to shake his head. “No, I still want to be mayor. I should serve my full term.” The corner of the tiger’s mouth twitched with a fraction of a frown. “And if I am number one on that list of yours, I’m sure you can wait four measly years.”

“I can see your point,” the giant boomed, running a finger gingerly down the petite male’s spine. “This must be your choice, after all.” His eye-slits narrowed in on the small panther, sending a shiver from his head down to his toes. It did not have to be a free choice. “I wouldn’t want to put any pressure on you.” His words were nonsensical given a second’s contemplation, the immense power he possessed. But it wasn’t entirely a lie. The tiger could not change what he was, or what he could always do to the panther. He’d forced the panther to spend hours underneath his chubby behind as he held required audiences with ministers, diplomats, and provincial administrators, feigning obliviousness to his attempts at freedom. Could he really believe that he could refuse, let alone wish to refuse in the first place?And yet he couldn’t think in terms so black and white. The panther had not, would not say no. As much as he wanted to believe it was the tiger’s power, he enjoyed being crushed underneath his bulk, gasping for breath under ass cheeks larger than most homes. He savored his fragility, so frail in his master’s paw. The tiger knew what he wanted and had the audacity to take it, to show the panther the experience, and realize that their dreams were the same, that he had always wanted such attention from such a lofty lord. They were mismatched in so many ways that should have mattered. But now, with his liege, his lord, the sovereign, his newfound lover–he was committed. He was His.

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The Beast

The panther paced in the tiger’s antechamber, trying to put his words into some semblance of order. “Sir, you have served my family well these many years, and I wish to continue our–” Here he struggled for the right word, his throat creaking in the frustration of a cat whose mind refuses to take their scattered thoughts and impose any semblance of order. He cursed his father. “Why couldn’t you have negotiated this, if you thought it was so important?” Like he was demanding an answer from his father’s ghost. It is in the nature of royalty to go a little mad from time to time, to think that since so much of the world has reshuffled itself to suit their whims that surely this one last impossible desire cannot help but fulfill itself. If the lion’s shade listened to his plea, his ghostly countenance held its tongue.

The panther would have likely stayed there long into the night pacing this way and that if the Beast had not uttered a harsh, guttural call, booming from within his lofty bedchambers. “Quit your pacing and muttering, whoever you are. Either come in or leave me to my rest!” ‘To my rest’ resonating with a measured yet garrulous growl. At least he was the same as ever.

The building that now housed the Beast used to be the old palace before the panther’s great-grandfather, Markus the Great, erected the nearby castle to serve as the new imperial center. His father had been disappointed, the panther remembered, that his only son was so disinterested in the history of the place, though he couldn’t help but notice that the King had not visited the old fortress once the Beast moved in. The last King, he had to correct himself. I am now King. That is why I am doing this. Because He is my only chance. A second’s hesitation, pregnant with doubts both said and unsaid, before the panther threw open the doors and plunged directly into the giant’s chambers.

The tiger was absolutely massive, a fact only heightened by the enclosed space. After the old castle had been superseded by the larger complex to the south, the old building was mostly used for ceremonial purposes, a feast day every other year, and for several years it had served as a hospital for soldiers wounded putting down the Leedsburg Mutiny. It was hard now to see any remnants of the history his father considered so sacred, not with the enormous tiger so large that he shrouded any trace of the building’s former purpose, whether they were stains from alcohol or those from bile and blood. No wonder his father had avoided the Beast’s chambers. More than any other sense it was the scent of the giant’s massive frame that suffused the room, a heady musk that clouded the panther’s perceptions and forced him to recall their first meeting six years before. 

The Beast was in chains then, enormous iron shackles holding him fast and firm to the wall of the dungeon. The prince had been much younger–they had both been much younger, really, but Markus was barely nineteen and not even so much as engaged. He usually hated to be taken away from his tennis courts–all the lovely furs there eager to play–but he didn’t mind joining the old lion for this. The story of this immense tiger had already become the stuff of legend, and a chance to see the fat behemoth in nothing but that army-tent-turned-loincloth and the chains that secured him to the dungeon wall was not one he could easily pass up. It was an image he would come back to over and over again–in boasts to his friends and the women he tried to seduce on and off and in and out of court, but also in private, well past midnight when he couldn’t help but turn that sight over and over in his head, cock positively dripping with lust. 

He truly was a Beast.

The titan had eaten the Duke of Richmond. Normally this would have meant instant death for someone of low birth, but the Beast was much too clever for such a bathetic outcome. He surrendered to the sheriff–a little embarrassed to report that he and his constables had taken the giant willingly–with a simple request: an audience with the King  (preferably alone) where he could explain himself and his actions.

The lion’s face had remained impassive as the giant tiger recounted his tale of woe, stories of poor peasants constantly victimized by their feudal lord and the liberties he took with any servant or farm girl that happened to spark his special interest. “Everyone knows that Richmond slept with women other than his wife,” the King said with even tones, dismissing the entire incident with a shake of his head. “I hope you have more to tell me because that alone will not be enough to convince me that what you did was just.”

The tiger bared his teeth reflexively at this provocation and almost lost the element of surprise. If he weren’t so strong and fast that the panther scarcely saw him move, he might not have managed to break the chain that was supposed to be holding his right wrist securely to the wall above his head, nor would he have been able to snatch the prince and hoist him ten feet into the air, held fast in that same meaty paw. “I know you don’t care about the honor of peasants, your majesty, but perhaps you care enough about the life of your heir to hear me out? You wouldn’t have accepted my request if you weren’t interested in what I had to say.”

The lion’s mouth twitched a little, the faintest outline of what those who knew the King well enough might see as a smile. The only man in the room capable of doing so was currently held in a giant tiger’s hefty paw, thumbclaw pressed firm against his throat. “Once again I ask, is there more to your story besides…some unfortunate lack of chivalry?” His golden mane practically shone in the torchlight–or at least it did in every nauseating retelling that the panther had been subjected to over the next six years.

With no scribe present, the prince could not remember the exact words Publius said in response. The basic outline, however, was easy enough to recall. The tiger had been normally sized, if a bit tall, until the late spring. Most of the kingdom already knew as much; half of them thought it a miracle, while the other half thought it was proof of demonic intercession. The tiger refused to clarify, claiming that he just started to grow, foot after foot, day after day. Most in the kingdom continued to believe in divine intercession.

Shortly after his prodigious growth leveled out (at something like three hundred hands, as the scholars the Beast permitted to study him eagerly reported), the tiger had discovered two terrible secrets: the nightmare that his sister was living, and the Duke’s plot to overthrow the King. The latter, easily confirmed by a search of the Duke’s private papers, was the one that interested the monarch. The giant named the drawer to search first, claiming to have seen the Duke stash the document by peering through a window, aided by his massive height. Amazed by both his loyalty and his audacity, the King was more than willing to bestow a knighthood on such an exceptional subject.

For his part, the Beast had proven worthy of the King’s faith. During the Noon Rebellions he even had to stomp through his native province, causing a minor famine that led to the deaths of dozens of peasant families, including ones the Beast had known. He was despised by commoners and distrusted at court. Feared by everyone. But though the prince kept his distance since that day–a bitter reminder of how little he was valued by his father, who had chided him that “the Duke of Calais could have reigned in your stead, and likely done a better job,” when he had had the temerity to complain about how casually the King treated his life in the negotiations, how he had even allowed the Beast the indignity of holding him until the riders came back from the Duke’s castle with confirmation of the tiger’s incredible story. “My son, you are just lucky that he has no claim to the throne, or he could easily seize it after my death.” No wonder there were so many dark, lonely nights when Markus thought about the firm grip of the tiger’s four digits as he soaked the underside of his satin sheets over and over again.

The tiger had always made clear that his oath was to the lion directly and not to any heirs. He did not rule out such an oath at a later date, but with each battle the tiger fought–and easily conquered–for his liege, the length of time between each “would you swear to serve my heir?” grew longer and longer until the King eventually stopped even asking. He had more pressing matters, and there were so many new possibilities up north…

In the six long years after, the Beast had helped the King gain prestige and struck fear into the hearts of his enemies, both foreign and domestic. The expense of providing for someone so gargantuan was monumental, of course, but the King was wise and his ministers well-chosen, and so the Kingdom never lacked the necessary funds. And the revenue from the three provinces the Beast had helped to conquer, Markus had often heard his King insist the Beast paid for himself.

When his father had taken ill following that fateful hunt, the only counsel he had for the next king was to secure the massive knight’s allegiance. “Convince him to swear an oath to you. Use whatever means you have to,” the elderly lion had managed between fits of coughing, his breath hoarse and weak where it had once been so strong and keen. “No promise is too large. He is your best chance, my child. Your only chance.” A firm, hopeless look in his eyes, a deep doubt that the King no longer bothered to hide from his only son.

And so he found himself in front of the half-naked beast, his only clothing now very similar to what he had worn then, a rather revealing and remarkably tight loincloth that wrapped around the tiger’s waist and left nothing to the imagination. “Oh it’s you, sire. Forgive me, I thought you were one of my pages! They hate to tell me bad news, think I’m going to eat them or something…” the tiger trailed off as he saw the look on the panther’s face, solemn and worried even before he felt the tiger’s deep, rumbling bass chuckles tumble through his ears. “Now!” The titan’s voice, incredulous as the look on his face, was clear even in the dim torchlight.  “…you want to negotiate with me…right now?”

“Y-you are…very perceptive, Sir Maximus!” What had given it away? Did he really stutter there, like a terrified child getting a scolding? “Now, listen.” Summoning every ounce of regal authority he could manage in front of the gigantic knight. “You have served me and my family well these many–”

“I have only ever served your father, sire,” the tiger interrupted, left eyebrow arched. “You’re gonna have to do much better than that. Come on, cut to the quick. What are you offering?”

Exactly the reason why he had been pacing the antechamber back and forth and back and forth… “Aw–Offering?” His voice so hesitant, his eyes locked onto the Beast’s enormity–and trying to keep themselves locked into the giant’s eyes instead. “Well, of course your tribute would be doubled, and I could always create some earl–”

The tiger let out a hearty belly laugh that filled the Great Hall even more than his other booming words and chuckles had managed. The panther felt himself squeezed out of the space by the oppressive largeness of the sound, triggering his recurring fantasy of getting caught under the tiger’s rump. Struggling to breathe, caught under every pound of his enormous– “You know, this is the first time we’ve ever been alone together?” The panther insistently shook his head but the tiger just continued, undeterred. “I don’t think I’m that intimidating…” A dark smile here said the exact opposite. “…is it just because you’re worried I felt your erection when I held you?”

The panther’s fur stood on end. He had never said anything, never let on for…this whole time? He knew? “I…don’t…it was a very stressful situation, and I just…got a little wrapped up in the excitement!” Hardly a convincing defense.

The tiger’s chuckles resounded, his already thunderous voice loud enough to shake the great hall to its foundations. After a moment they subsided enough for him to speak. “When I was a young feline, I found a deer in the forest with an arrow sticking out of its side. I took pity on it; I assumed it had been shot by the Duke or one of his retainers, men I loathe and despise even still. I was also afraid that such men would find me and prosecute me for poaching the King’s woods. I helped to staunch the bleeding with my shirt and nursed the doe back to health.

“When the Goddess of the Verdant Forest thanked me for tending one of her beloved deer and offered to grant my deepest desire, I was stunned. I fumbled, unsure of myself. I asked her what she thought I wanted most. ‘A larger perspective, Publius. You want to be above it all.’ I instantly, instinctively knew she was right. I was tired of being told who I was, what I must say and how I must feel. Who deserved my deference, and who was worthy of my respect. Even though I knew better than to trust a God of the woods, I couldn’t resist the temptation.

“I didn’t just grow in size…I started to see people as they really were. Just little dolls for me to play with…” the tiger’s eyes grew distant as he remembered. “Even those big, great men who used to terrify me, to demean and abuse my family and my neighbors, could be easily undone. All I had to do was apply some pressure in the right areas, uncover the right secrets and leverage them against each other, and I can’t say being the size of twelve men hurt!

“None of you ever thought it was strange that I had never been spotted near the Duke’s castle before I killed him. It was a major hole in my story, one that I would have expected the chief magistrate to notice.” The tiger’s eyes narrowed and he grew expectant.

“You said you came at night, and we all…well I know that I always figured…just what are you saying?”

“Sometimes, I get these flashes of insight. Moments where I see The Truth, and a clear way to exploit it. Your father eventually understood that my counsel was valuable, but he had no clue how much of an asset I could have been. And I’ll admit I never thought he’d make me the backup strategy to legitimize his weak-willed, spineless offspring.”

The panther did not quite know what he hated most, the way the tiger’s insults cut to the quick, the blunt, overly familiar tone this future regicide was taking with him, or the fact that his cock was now positively throbbing.

“Which I will be happy to do…with one condition, of course.”

The panther’s ears perked up at the sudden turn of events into a more favorable direction. “You…will?” His voice was dwarfed by the immensity, both physical and in sheer ego, of the Beast. His willingness to serve the diminutive panther was briefly perplexing. “Wh-what…what condition?” Prepared for the worst.

“You. I want you, sire.”

The panther was terrified by this straightforward statement of desire, struggling with how best to put his feelings into words. He was living in an impossible dream mixed with a nightmare, shades of ridiculous desires mixing seamlessly with each and every uncertainty of the prince’s former life. Each and every fear that he would never amount to anything and could not do anything but help other, greater men achieve their greatness at his own expense. His terror and his hope that others would find out his fervent desire for that monster, the most hated and feared creature at court. He was pathetic and petulant as he insisted on the only defense that came to mind. “B-but I am already affianced!”

The tiger let loose another castle-shaking laugh. “Affianced, eh? Luckily for her I don’t want your hand in marriage. I want you. Perhaps you can give me a lesson in tennis?” The tiger’s eyebrows raised as his jest hit its mark, the tiny panther even more painfully nervous than he had looked before.

“This–I–I cannot–it is not DONE,” the last word so firm and resolute the Beast knew it could not be a product of the prince’s own mind.

“Your father is dead, sire. You are now King. Act like it for once and take what I am offering you.” The Beast wrapped his furry fist around the tiny royal, lifting the panther to his smirking face. Even lit just by torchlight, the golden hues of the monster’s pelt were absolutely radiant. “Marry whomever, fill her with a dozen spoiled children if you must, but never forget that you are mine.” The words were so much more fierce with his breath washing over his tiny body, warm and moist and reeking of fresh, raw meat.

“Un–unhand me, you–you BEAST!” the king tried to order. His body betrayed him once more, his cock throbbing against the tiger’s soft and warm digits.

The tiger growled in frustration with the panther’s continued refusal. “Say it, Markus,” the tiger ordered with much more force and majesty than the king could possibly muster, both now and at any point in his life before. “Admit to me what you feel. How many nights you lay awake and dreamed of me dominating you like I can right now. How it feels to be under my control.”

The king demurred, tense and timorous in the tiger’s grasp. He choked on every possible answer, either positive or negative. None of the words were his own, just ways he thought he could imitate his father or his uncle or his cousin. People who knew what they were doing, and what they wanted.

Though the panther had stopped being outright obstinate, his continued resistance left the knight with no alternative. Pub let out a sigh more theatrical than sincere, and the massive knight opened his fist so he could reach under the king’s tunic–a fine, embroidered gown–and tear it down the middle with one swift slash from his sharpened clawtip. The panther’s chausse was next, a fine violet hue to the pants befitting a man of royal birth, shredded by the lustful tiger. “I can smell it, sire…” His deafening voice was breathy, sensual. A predator toying with his prey.

The panther’s arousal was now fully visible; the slack of his braies was not loose enough to hide his shame. “Why…I think you might even be bigger than me down there–well, if I weren’t me.” There was a certain look in the titan’s eyes, a fierce, primal hunger. It sent a shiver down the panther’s spine. The giant used his thumbclaw dexterously, making sure not to harm any bit of the sensitive organ as he ripped the king free of his last piece of clothing. The tiny monarch was amazed that the giant tiger could so easily ruin the king’s attire without bruising the terrified little panther underneath.

The tiger thought he could see a crimson hue hidden beneath the panther’s naked fur, a poorly concealed embarrassment as he struggled in vain against the giant’s grip. “Dream come true, isn’t it?” The tiger’s words dripped with irony as his tongue slipped out from between his gigantic, fearsome lips, large enough to swallow a tree, and, and–dear God the knight was so massive, the tongue muscle writhing against the king’s entire midsection, his erection desperate as the panther struggled to escape from the fast, firm grip of his captor.

“Please, please…” the panther’s words were weak, pathetic and uncertain. Did he want all of this to stop? Was he struggling to escape now, or so that he could writhe in the giant’s fist like he had so often dreamed? Either way, the giant’s paw remained wrapped around his body, his tongue lapping at the delicate little organ until…until…until the panther groaned loudly, felt his balls contract and rope after rope of royal cum splash onto the tongue of his colossal vassal.

The tiger savored the taste of the tiny royal, continuing to lick up and down his diminutive body long after the panther’s climax. “You are delicious, sire…now we shall see how well you function with something…more your size,” the tiger’s voice grew heavier as he lowered the king down to his loincloth, his arousal clear through its sheer fabric.

It was even darker in the confines of the tiger’s undergarments than it had been in the torchlit Great Bedchamber, but he didn’t need to see it to feel it, the knight’s great, pulsing mass of flesh, fully erect and now taller than the scrawny king. He wasn’t sure what was more surprising, the sheer size of the tiger’s length or how good it felt to breathe in his scent. How natural it felt to wrap his body around the warm, musky cock and pump the great mass of skin up and down, working his way bit by bit up to the cockhead so he could lap as much of this giant–of his giant’s pre as he could manage. 

Knight and king, panther and tiger, both building to this moment for the entire night, for what felt like an eternity. That panther felt the pressure build deep within the tiger’s mighty shaft, a rumbling as profound as the deep, guttural moan of pleasure grew in the titan’s throat. The panther pulled the tiger’s trigger as easily as the colossal tiger had pulled his…

The king was coated in his seed, rope after rope, a prodigious load that the tiger will later admit “was rather large, even for me” while the tiny panther gazes up at his massive face with the same mixture of awe and affection he had when the overgrown peasant pulled open his loincloth and stared down at the cum-soaked king and asked, “Is that a deal then, sire?”

~

“Well, you could send Essex instead. He’s been aching for a campaign of his own since your father wouldn’t let him fight the Bretons. And I can always eat him if he tries to revolt…”

The panther paled a little. “You–you wouldn’t!” The tiger’s hearty laughter rang through the valley, his back resting against a remote cliffside as he kept the tiny panther perched on his chest, snug and secure in the warm tiger’s ample bosom.

The ability to stride over rooftops, stomp over and squeeze through mountain passes were but only a few of the advantages of having an affair with someone so earth-shakingly immense; when he used Publius as transport the King could travel quicker than most horses, especially if the thick-thighed titan was willing to really stomp around his countryside instead of merely walking, running through fields of angry and terrified commoners and their lords. They each cursed the free rein that their liege gave the Beast, without any knowledge that the tiger was carrying the very same liege at that moment. They were supposed…well, The King was supposed to be judging a jousting tournament, one of those more grisly entertainments that both his father and the massive knight enjoyed much more than the dainty, pampered panther ever did…

“Not without your word, my liege,” the tiger managed to answer after his laughter subsided enough to speak. “It shouldn’t come to that, of course. And if I’m really that necessary at court…”

“I just feel safer with you around,” the King managed without any stutters and only a brief bit of hesitation between “I” and “just.” He was slowly getting better at projecting a regal air, at least when he wasn’t alone with the towering titan who seemed to alway strip him of his pretensions, including his ersatz confidence.

Few people in the Kingdom knew the truth about their relationship, and those that did know were mostly the knight’s squires and pages or the King’s servants and valets, all too eager to serve (or avoid being devoured) to object to all the times they were forced to see the giant kiss his handheld ruler while the King turned crimson with a mixture of pleasure and humiliation. “Not in front of the servants…” He’d order half-heartedly while Pub, a knight of many virtues except modesty, would smile and pretend he didn’t hear it.

“There will be times when I have to go on campaign, sire,” the usually jovial tiger’s face grew serious. “I…well, we have a lot of work to do, Markus.”

The panther remained undaunted, even at the prospect of being apart from him. “I think I could do anything, knowing that you’re at my side.”

The tiger couldn’t help but crack a smile at that metaphor. As if he could stand side by side with any part of the giant higher than his ankle! The sheer pride he felt that first time he saw the King upbraid the Duke of Norfolk with just a few days coaching from his new chief advisor, a timid, easily malleable prince no longer. How easily he routed the Baron of Herford’s rebellion, almost playful by the end, smashing his enormous rear into the opposing army. So amused when three or four of the mercenaries couldn’t free themselves from under his ballsack. The looks the archbishop gave them both when he found out, so livid at the lewd tiger, especially when he learned of Pub’s desecration of the remains of the opposing army in his seed!  Why, if the cardinal did not know that he could count on the support of his King absolutely and without hesitation, he might have considered resigning! How scandalized he would be to find the King actually enjoyed the tiger’s lewd exploit, or how eager he was to see the next one himself.

“Enough of all that. Would you rather start in the front or the back? ” The tiger chuffed as he looked down at his handheld King. The panther wouldn’t object to what he had planned. Not too much.

Marienheid (3)

Orbital Entire

They both made an effort to convince him otherwise, but Corin insisted that he had a meeting on another plate and it was absolutely unskippable. He would meet up with them later, after the ship docked on Arkendus, and no amount of special pleading would change his mind. “Besides, you two should meet Cody and the others by yourselves,” he insisted, an excuse that seemed thin even to Markus. “And please,” he had yelled back down the long corridor as he headed towards the hotel’s exit, “don’t roll out the red carpet, I know Cody will hate that! Love you!” And then he had blown a kiss before slipping out of sight.

“He can be a bit much, but I know that I enjoyed last night,” the tiger said, yawning and stretching as he exited the antigrav bed. “Passing you back and forth was a nice touch–he is such a good kisser after all…”

The panther didn’t react to the witty repartee. He just stared forlornly into the distance. “Is there something on your mind, Markus? You’re quiet, at least for when it’s just the two of us.”

Markus snapped to attention, forcing a smile to try–without hope–to shake this morning’s malaise. “Oh no, I’m doing fine, sire! I was just thinking about your home–I’m just, just, so excited to see it!” He couldn’t help his fake smile from cracking and knew he had to give up a little bit of the truth, “Well, I am nervous about…about who I might meet there?”

The tiger chuckled a little bit. “That makes some sense.” He let his cock flop in front of the panther as he reached down to grab a solid purple pair of syndaxian cotton briefs. The resulting bulge was not more modest, but the added cover was enough for the panther to look up and attempt to meet his master’s gaze. “Corin is–well, he’s a lot to handle, and not just because he’s made himself a little larger than me–”

Markus felt compelled to pipe up here. “He may be taller, sire, but he is nowhere near as immense! Probably doesn’t weigh half as much as you do.” His derision was evident, and in the corner of his eye he spied the tiger’s cock pulsing in amusement.

“You are very cute, defending my honor like that.” He took a few stomps closer that the panther could hear but thankfully didn’t feel, “But you know what I mean. He might even do something like this.” Always a show-off, he spread his legs wide and plopped back onto the bed, a hefty fall that knocked the panther off his feet, leaving him supine in the canyon of his master’s substantial thighs. “I thought I heard the two of you talking, but you know how deeply I sleep. It’s always possible I dreamt it.”

The panther was used to his master’s teasing, and even allowed himself a moment to revel in his monstrous power without fear that it would be used against him. “We did.” He struggled with exactly how much to reveal, making a decision to pass over the lace for now. It was too much. “We spoke a while about you, and me, and, well, a little about us together.” As he debated how much more detail he should add, Pub interrupted.

“Oh, is that so? I thought he might try to peel you off me. I hope he knew better than to offer you a job,” the last word was filled with so much contempt the panther misread as patrician.

“No, in fact we–we talked about my loyalty to you, sire. He said he’d answer any question I had about you but I–”

“Didn’t know where to start?” the tiger laughed, leaning back as he hugged the toylike panther with a hard squeeze of his soft thighs. “Or did you figure out it was a trap, and he’d tell me all about it?”

“S-something like that.”

“Which means you must have asked a good question because he would have told me if it was a bad one, or probably even if you said nothing at all.” The tiger sighed, shaking his head. “You might have even passed the test, whatever that was.” He looked down, making sure to meet the panther’s gaze. “You don’t have to tell me anything, though. I respect your privacy.”

Another of the tiger’s peculiar lies. As if there were any thing on any world that the panther could reasonably keep from his sire. “W-well, I, I…didn’t know what to say and I just–I asked him what size he wanted you to be.”

The tiger reacted much as the deer had, uproarious laughter that resonated through the miniature panther. “And what lie did he concoct? That he wanted me the size of mountains? Or perhaps that he wished I were barely enough to taste on his tongue?”

“Closer to m-mountain-sized, I suppose, though, I, I don’t know how serious he meant it–”

“He likes me at both extremes. I’ve offered the same treatment to you, you know. Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about me dwindling in your fist!” There was nothing the tiger could do to convince Markus that those words weren’t some elaborate trap, a test of his devotion. Himself, larger than his Lord? King of All Creation? Plenipotentiary and Viceroy for the Kynthari Empire? Of course he was bound to obey the chain of command, allow a superior such as Corin to lord over him–but the panther? The rules were different. They had to be. After so many decades, he fell prey to thinking that he knew the tiger better than he actually did. “Is that all you two talked about?”

The panther tried not to think about the expression on Corin’s face, a mixture of curiosity and smugness terrifying on the face of someone so immense. “Well, he rolled over after that. Said he had answered my question and had nothing more to say.” It wasn’t a lie, not really, but the omissions were glaring.

“He can be a little temperamental,” the tiger said as he sat up, “but I hope you don’t read too much into that. He liked you, I know that much. Always had a soft spot for cute little cats.”

Markus looked up and into the tiger’s eyes, enough that he actually started to convince himself that there was nothing to worry about. From Corin, at least. It was only a second’s hesitation, but once it became clear that the tiger recognized the look in his eyes for what it was, he knew he had to say something. “Well, if you really don’t mind–”

“I don’t,” the tiger boomed, his words sonorous for all their impatience.

The panther took a deep breath, gathering his resolve. “Well, that isn’t all that’s weighing on me these days.”

“Oh?”

“I’m worried about your home, sire. You–” an uneasy pause, words both said and unsaid, “have not told me much about it.”

The tiger was playfully indignant. “That’s not true, I’ve told you plenty!”

“Of course, sire, I know all about the grounds, the gardens, the orchards, the hermitage, the two opera houses, the model cities–but you haven’t told me anything about him.” Cody.

The tiger’s face froze for a moment, though not long enough for Markus to tell if displeasure or concern were the reason why. “I’ve told you plenty about him, too! What more could you want to know?”

“Well,” plunging in, far past the point of no return, “what do you think he’ll think of me? Of…us?”

Without warning, the tiger scooped the panther into his palm, bringing him up to his face with one fluid motion. “My dear, sweet panther. I am certain that he will adore you. It has been a while since we’ve been able to talk, but I doubt he sees you as much of a threat…”

The panther, who had until now not considered the possibility of being a threat, added another fear to his growing list. “It’s just that, well, you’re going through a lot of trouble on my account, and you two have lived together for so long, much longer than you and I–”

“Seventeen years is hardly nothing, even for us!” The tiger objected.

The panther withdrew a little. “Of course, sire, I merely meant that you and Cody have had so many more years together, entire centuries, even!” The tiger laughed at this overestimate but Markus soldiered on. “And he is like Corin, he knows this world as I know Olonne, perhaps even better than that.” The panther had to continue to ignore his tiger’s booming laughter. “And I worry that there are other people you haven’t told me about. It is such a large estate, sire, and even with your size, I know there must be so many people there, and, well–”

“Who knows what they will think about you?”

Markus nodded. “Something like that, yes. W-will they all be quite so large?”

The tiger considered this for a moment. “Many will be taller than you. A few will be smaller, some won’t have physical dimensions, strictly speaking, and some will be close to your size. Most of those will be servants, of course, in one way or another. I’ve told you why I built the place, right? Both the pretext and the real reason?”

“Yes, sire,” the panther’s right paw squeezed his left with enough force to make his knuckles crack. “Something about wanting to explore the effect of size on history? But you just wanted an excuse to lord your size over a group of people, boss them around with your sheer heft alone?”

“Well put. You’ve lived under tyranny so you probably won’t understand, but there’s a lot of playful nostalgia for hierarchy on Arkendus.” Markus didn’t understand the nostalgia for it, perhaps, but reverence for a towering master? That he could understand quite well. “Curiosity about it as well. And it helps that Kurfürsten is full of wanton hedonists.”

The panther’s ears perked at this. “H-hedonists?”

“Pure pleasure-seekers. Makes getting along with the estates around us very simple. Not all of them are obsessed with size, though the ones to our north and north-west are. All three of us were built to evoke different time periods and cultures, but we all share a similar obsession with size and natural hierarchies. The only people we don’t get along with are the monastics to the south who say they’re bothered by our footsteps whenever we go on hikes near their border. Even got a vote called so we have to resize within a kilometer, so there’s some bad blood there.”

The panther was frustrated that anyone would have the audacity to object to his master’s immensity. He had known those who did not fantasize about the tiger lapping them up on Olonne, but to know that such people lived so close to his homestead? Blasphemous. Even worse was the idea that his master could be so easily constrained by others. He didn’t know what he expected in this world of gods, but although he was prepared for many things and shocked by so many others, this was perhaps the most surprising–to find that the tiger had not been lying about his place in this world, a small part of a whole immensely larger than anything he had dreamed. He did report to others, and had to abide by the rules of this society. He marveled how the mighty tiger could handle the unnecessary aggressions of such clear inferiors like these monks. They were taking exception to one of his sire’s most endearing qualities, the way his tread made the ground shake with each footfall!

“You shouldn’t be that worried about them. They’ll all be on their best behavior around you since you’re new, and from a culture that hasn’t even left their homeworld. We don’t get many specimens like that in the Republic, let alone out here on Arkendus.” A flash of the galactic map entered the panther’s mind, a memory too large for his momentarily un-laced mind to fathom. Arkendus was remote, alone among foreign territory, more than thirty lightyears from the nearest Kynthari hab–a word he only vaguely understood and was somewhat terrified to find lying on the floor of his mind. 

The distances involved were so many times more remote than Olonne’s most remote wilderness. He didn’t even try to think about where his homeworld was located, not prepared for any possible answer. “If you insist, sire.”

*

Arkendus-Reboranze Ulysses Publius Maximus dai Marienheid gestured for the panther to look out the windows as they shifted from translucent to transparent. The scene was framed perfectly–the panther had no way of knowing that this was intentional but it was–the Reboaranzen sun’s backlight flushing the massive ring in a reddish-yellow aureole as it stood alone in the measureless darkness of space. He knew nothing about gravity and even less about physics, so to him the sight reminded him of some magician’s trick, though on an unfathomably immense scale. The ship had been large, unbelievably massive, but he’d only caught it in miniature, brief glimpses of parts of the whole, growing more and more colossal each second of the module’s rapid approach. He could see the orbital entire, a perfect circle in the sky that he quickly realized was occupied on the interior strip.

“Are you sure it’s…safe?” Something about living on the inside of a ring seemed a complete impossibility, like living inside the ground.

“Safer than living on your world was before I came and,” an infinitesimal pause that the panther barely noticed, “even afterwards.” The panther supposed he had no good reason to lie about that, though the afterwards sounded like false humility. “You worried about slipping into space? It can’t happen. There are four hundred layers of field generators holding the thing together, and that’s before we get to any of the physical stuff–I’m no expert in the engineering side of thing but I’m sure I could talk to one of the old bats in civil–”

“That won’t be necessary,” the panther interrupted, face flushed with embarrassment. “I’d rather spend the time with you, sire, if that’s alright.”

The tiger’s eyes flashed, amused. “You will have to suffer through some time on your own. This trip isn’t just for pleasure, unfortunately.” The panther felt a sharp pang in his heart, but knew the tiger spoke true. “But don’t worry, we’ll still have plenty of time together. I promise to spend as much of it with you as possible.”

It would have to do. The panther knew better than to gainsay the tiger, but he couldn’t hide his fear. “You really don’t have to worry about them, you’re much safer here than you ever were on Olonne.”

“H-how does that figure?” He didn’t have enough time to panic about his presumption before the tiger’s chuckle ruffled deep into his fur and rumbled through the entire transport.

“Markus, my dear, my most precious possession, I would not have brought you here if I thought you were in any danger, or even any chance of it! You have absolutely nothing to worry about from me, from Cody, from anyone in the Republic.” The words were sincere enough as far as he could tell, but they did next to nothing to assuage the panther’s fears.

“Even f-from the monks?” He asked, wanting Pub’s comfort, delighting in the way the tiger’s laughter filled the air and assuaged his deepest fears. Of course there was nothing to worry about. His master lived in a paradise.

“If you look close, there,” the tiger pointed to some spot on the strip of earth suspended in space. “You can see it.” The panther couldn’t tell what strip of land Publius was pointing to, but the thought that Marienheid was buried somewhere in that immensity filled him with a dreadful excitement.

“Oh, sire, it’s more beautiful than I could have imagined!” He wasn’t lying. He had the pleasure of seeing his homeworld from the air on many different occasions, but this was different. A circle of verdant greens and deep azures was hanging against the indescribable blackness of the aether as they sailed between the many worlds. 

If Pub knew about the panther’s ignorance, that he didn’t share his keen sense of what Marienheid looked like from every angle and perspective, he didn’t let on. The orbital continued to spin below, the large green estates abruptly replaced by blinding spaceport lights as the ship glided into drydock.

*

The horses pulling the carriage were all synthetics, perfect simulacra of the real thing but with the energy efficiency of one of the substantial factories they’d seen in port. Pub felt the need to justify the use of advanced technology in this approach, but of course Markus neither knew nor cared about the strictures of his project and whether the presence of anachronistic technologies ruined the precious verisimilitude to which the orbital community strived. He was used to a sneering contempt that, at best, turned into a sympathetic misunderstanding of the Orbital’s purpose in the minds of an endless stream of visitors. The panther was a blank slate, filled with a wiry, nervous energy that mixed uneasily well with a wide-eyed wonder.

The carriage–an opalescent white with all the baroque gold leaf touches befitting a royal conveyance from the classical period of aristocracy–had been one of the more comforting sights, finally something with which the panther was intimately familiar. His world used ungulates similar to an auroch as draught animals instead of anything recognizably equine, but Markus was intimately familiar with the idea of conveyances for the exclusive use of lords and ladies.

“Well, what do you think?” The tiger’s question boomed in his ears as he nudged the entranced panther away from the amber waves of wheat undulating in the fields they rode past. They were sized for the panther, a fact which delighted him to no end–Publius had many times tried to explain to the skeptical panther that his people included many persons of the panther’s size, but until now Markus had just assumed he exaggerated. Everyone had been friendly enough–”Well?” The impatient tiger repeated and the panther grew flushed under his dark black fur.

“I’m sorry, sire, I don’t…I wasn’t giving you my complete attention. Think about what?”

A devilish fire burned in his golden eyes. “Let’s have some fun. I’m not going to repeat myself. Just give me a yes or no.”

The panther fumbled on instinct, “I couldn’t, I mean what if–”

The tiger would have none of it. “It was an option, not any opinion, so you don’t have to worry about me ascribing thoughts to you that I know you do not hold. A simple yes will suffice.”

Markus trusted his tiger, but was completely unprepared for what he was agreeing to when he nodded his head.

“I’m happy you weren’t paying attention! I would never have gotten a yes in any other circumstance. Maestre?” He turned to the white-furred otter driving the carriage, who responded to the summons by handing the tiger a small black rod that the panther was unable to perceive beyond three basic facts: it was long, cylindrical, and a dark black darker than darkest night. The tiger secreted it in his palm before manipulating the object in some unseen way, some intricate series of movements that distracted the panther from the horror before the device’s purpose became clear to him. He was getting bigger.

“Sire–lord, m-master–Publius!” The panther cycled through his titles, trying in vain to fight the warm, pleasant feeling that had already halved the difference between their sizes. “Please, I really don’t–I, I’m begging you–” He had no clue how to make his master understand the sheer blasphemy, the absurd presumption of merely thinking he deserved to be so large. He fumbled long enough for the right words that the tiger cut him off instead.

“You did say yes, did you not? It is far past time for you to see yourself as more than a mere servant. You are my lover, Markus, and I will not have you approach Marienheid at anything less than this size.” And if Cody was thrown off along the way, all the better. “Besides, I’m still bigger.”

No amount of protest would change his mind. The tiger was so confident he’d be unable to operate it, Markus had to resign himself to his new size as best he could manage. He fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat, the sight of the fields outside the window making him a little nauseous and uneasy now that they reminded him of his heretical resizing. The tiger pulled him in for a kiss, soft and warm on his lips and shocking enough to bring him back to the present. “I always wanted to give you a proper kiss, and that certainly lived up to expectations.” The panther grew flushed and the tiger found an opportunity to pounce. “You’re much cuter when you’re embarrassed, you know that?”

He demurred as best he could. He was happy for any distraction from the massive manor that had just come into view. He would have hoped his increase in size would help the edifice to feel less intimidating, but if anything its dimensions seemed all the more impressive–it was built to be intimidating, even to someone of Corin’s stature. Whatever the mansion may have lacked in height–a mere two or three stories to the giants–it more than made up for in its length and width, stretching far into the distance as they drew closer to its immensity. It was mostly white and beige, with occasional gold and red flourishes and intricate patterns festooned into the smooth sandstone and marble. It was a fortress, entirely unlike the one he had constructed on Olonne and yet also not so entirely dissimilar. The panther doubted whether his people could construct something like this, even with the advancements Publius had brought them. The gardens in front of the castle were manicured to perfection, no fewer than three fountains bubbling water in symmetrical unison as their carriage approached the villa’s front gate.

“How is Cody treating you, Maestre? Still on ass-licking duty?”

Markus could see now the speckles of brown spotting the otter’s otherwise wonderfully cream-colored fur as his cackles filled the air. “Only when I misbehave, sir,” the driver managed to get out in between peals of deep, proud laughter.

“A Westfalen accent would be more appropriate, but I imagine your Low German needs some work.” The otter’s laughter abruptly ceased as the tiger stared daggers into him.

“I am sorry, sir, you are right of course–”

“Oh lighten up, Christien!” It was Pub’s turn to laugh, filling the air with his deep, resonant chuckles. Even now, the svelte panther felt his master’s voice burrow deep inside, calming and terrifying in equal measure. “I know it’s been a long time since I’ve been home but you all would do well to remember that I don’t fixate on the details. Not everyone is as versed in the Early Modern Era as I am, nor should they be!” He let out another rich cascade of belly laughter. “Ghastly time, filled with so much misery–not unlike Olonne before I conquered it, eh Markus?”

The tiger shifted to the panther, who felt compelled to say something, anything. “And we thank you for it, sire.”

Pub let out a sigh and kept quiet for what remained of the trip, stuck fast in a trap of his own devising. He was at least able to shake off the dour expression by the time they came to the front entrance, the carriage’s two large, oaken doors drawn open by servants Markus couldn’t help but note were half his new size, a thought that unnerved him almost as much the forbidden thought of how very, very close he now was to his lord’s size.

The bun was dressed to the nines, a solid green doublet hanging over dark blue breeches, each trimmed with elaborate patterns embossed in gold leaf. Draped in a fine red cape, arms open as he bellowed greetings to the opened carriage. “Welcome, gentlemen, to Marienheid.”

A large chortle followed the tiger as he emerged from the carriage. He preferred a more casual chemise, and made his opinions apparent. “I’ve already done that bit, Cody,” the bun gave him a sharp glare that he ignored, “and I didn’t realize you’d moved the estate back! More Henry VIII than Frederick the Great.”

The rabbit shifted his gaze to the panther now emerging from the vehicle. He’d been prepared for the possibility that Pub would resize the panther, at least he thought was, but seeing him across that lawn, aware that he might actually be taller than the bun…it made his complexe de Napoléon flare. “You should be treating me as your King, Publius. You know the rules, I’m lord of the manor.”

“I know how they used to work,” the tiger laughed some more, kissing the bun’s forepaw before surprising him with a slap on the ass. “If anything I should treat you like family, since we are both monarchs. And really, even you should know better than to humiliate people with a valid claim to your throne.”

The bun forced a strained smile. “As much of a pedantic asshole as I remember. Welcome to Marienheid, King Publius the Magnificent.” He affected a theatrical bow, the sarcasm of the gesture undercut by the regal attire that made his actions seem exaggerated and foolish. He turned to look at Markus. “I don’t believe we have met. I am Cody, master of the manor in Pub’s stead–”

The tiger kept his own sarcasm at bay as he spoke for the panther. “This, my dear bun, is my friend Mark, joining us from his home planet where I’ve been assigned for the past quarter century. I’m not surprised you’re pretending not to know, since you studiously avoided mentioning it in your responses.”

The panther avoided both of their eyes as he stood stock still, trying not to realize just how much larger he was than the many little valets and footmen now crowded around his ankles. Just one misstep would be all it took, then he could–

“What else did you expect after so many years without a solitary word? And don’t say you couldn’t have written, I know you were in regular access to general information, even heard you wished June a Happy Birthday the last couple years–”
“Oh come now, getting upset at me for well wishes–”

They would have doubtless continued to bicker well into the night if a certain owl had not chosen that moment to flutter up and onto the bun’s shoulder, doing as best a job as someone who could fit in either of their palms could at separating the two titans. “Pub, sir, it’s an honor to have you back here. If there is anything I or the other servants can do to help make you more at home, do not hesitate to ask.”

“Why, Quil! My, it’s been ages since I’ve last seen you, how are you holding up? Is Cody treating you well?”

The owl felt his cheeks grow hot at the direct attention, but it was better than hearing his two masters bicker like little children. “Of course, sir, no complaints here. I’m just honored to oversee Marienheid, it’s such a beautiful estate. Nothing like it in all of Kythar–I’ll never get used to the feeling of ordering around servants five or ten times my size.”

The bun could not let this continue without adding something of his own. “The little bird can be quite the tyrant when he needs to be, though it helps to have the lord–” glancing over at Pub, he corrected his word choice, “the lords of the manor looming behind you.” He gestured expansively at the behind, meeting the panther’s uncertain gaze with his own impossibly neutral stare. Or was it a glare? “Shall I show you the main house…Markus, was it?”

“M-Markus is fine, Mark works as well…” the panther broke eye contact, afraid of what he might find buried in the rabbit’s enigmatic smile.

Cody made an about-face, his cape lightly whacking the panther’s side and causing Markus to yelp in fright. A thoroughly unimpressive specimen with little to recommend. So tightly wound that he’s frightened of fabric phantoms. It took all his self-possession–and a little help from his drug glands–to keep contempt out of his expression. 

The panther could still feel the harsh judgment. It oozed from the rabbit’s every pore, every movement, every haughty expression. He started to feel chastened, his fears flaring up with such intensity of feeling. Who was he to think he deserved this, any of this–not just as large but even larger than this Lord? And deep, deep within, a quiet voice whispered: doesn’t Cody look a little less regal than Publius, a little more pathetic, even. The other parts of his mind tried aggressively to silence this clear, undeniable heresy, more terrors blooming into being as he considered that Pub might be able to read his thoughts like Corin had…

The owl was almost thrown off by the rabbit’s abrupt turn, but was used to Cody’s often taciturn moods and well prepared for whatever punishment clawing into the giant’s shoulder might bring. The thick fabric of his royal doublet was, luckily, rough enough to help the owl avoid being tossed the many dozen meters off and onto the cold, hard ground.

The tiger followed behind them all, making a point to nod and shake the hands of each and every footman in rapid succession. He knew most of their names without having to resort to a split-second of that slack-jawed expression of someone consulting with General Information or perhaps one of the plate’s Dhi, and the few he didn’t recognize turned out to be little more than subroutines capable of serving dishes and saying thank you in the dozen or so required languages. The smaller ones had to be picked up and gently caressed in something that approximated the action of a handshake, a full-body squeeze that made the micros feel as flushed and small as they made the tiger feel bigger and better. He turned to look at the open doorway. It had been many decades since he’d last crossed this threshold. He took everything in with a deep breath before letting it all out with an even deeper sigh.

He was Publius Maximus dai Marienheid, conqueror of Olonne. It would not work out by itself, but he would find a way to make it work. He always did.

SHRINKS

It started, like all good obsessions, with some simple pleasures. Vista Books on Seventeenth had for many years prided itself on having an eclectic collection of books and magazines; sure, you could find the expected bestsellers on the shelves, but you’d find them along with a large array of unique and often pornographic underground zines and erotica to please just about any palate. The staff were also much less judgmental about what their patrons bought as a result; unlike one of those trashy porno stores right next to Capital Square that would still, this far into the ’80s, give you a few weird looks if a man bought a copy of Playgirl. (No longer having to embarrassingly claim the magazine was for his wife was one of the perks of heading into the hipper-than-thou aura the store cast over him.)

The name of the zine stuck out to Mark as much as the cheesy font: SHRINKS, all caps. Surprisingly thick for something underground, the volume had something like 70-80 pages–page numbers omitted, of course, standard practice for this stuff. Though he figured at first that the erotica would be focused on psychiatrists, he was surprised on leafing through the book to find all sorts of different stories, pictures, and illustrations of erotic scenarios involving men quite literally shrunken and at the mercy of normal-sized men. He blushed as he felt his cock harden against his jeans; he’d never really given unrealistic fantasies like these much attention, but something about the prose, the poor illustrations and clearly doctored photos looked so undeniably sexy to him that he couldn’t help but feel aroused.

He grabbed another, somewhat more conventional fetish magazine (bondage on the cover, some title like Leather Daddies or Kinky Secrets) to hide the copy of SHRINKS under as he headed to the register, but he really didn’t have to; the staff were as professional as ever, treating their perverted clientele the same way they’d treat an English professor buying a few copies of Ulysses. Thankful for the brown bag that hid his shame, he hurried out the door and drove back to his apartment, eager to dive into uncharted waters.

The first short story in the magazine didn’t really hold his interest. Something involving a diminutive mouse worshiping the footpaws of an overgrown, beefy bull. Sitting on his couch, unzipping his jeans to reveal the sizeable bulge already formed in his underwear, he freed his cock, running a paw up and down it with evident relish as he started to read the second story, simply titled “SMALL MAN”:

Absolutely everything I am about to write is 100% accurate. I have not exaggerated or embellished one iota of the information contained within. You don’t have to believe me, but that is the truth, and it’s important you know that going in.

Killer hook, the panther paused to think before he read on.

I first met James in a gay bar on the west side of town. He wasn’t really my type, at least not to begin with; he was all big and beefy, and I tend to prefer guys that are much, much shorter than me. And human to boot, and I’ve never been much of a fan of those hairless types. Still, he was insanely cute, with those boyish hips filling his jeans in all the ways that only a Kinsey six like myself can appreciate. And he really, really loved the idea of fucking a tiger. I’m kinda chubby, I’ll cop to that, and at least before I met James I was more than a little self-conscious about the few pounds I’d put on since I left both college and the weekly football games I used to play with friends on campus behind. So even though he wasn’t exactly my ideal erotic object, I took him home, we gave each other blowjobs, and we both liked each other enough to actually continue seeing each other. The perfect gay love story.

Well, not so much. The sex was good, sure, but James was kinda a meathead. He’d never even gone to college, and while that’s not usually a no-go for me or anything, he was dull as a sack of hammers when it came to anything besides whether the Badgers were gonna go all the way or idle gossip about people we both knew and even some jackasses that I didn’t. It just drove me more and more crazy with each passing day. I’ll skip over a lot of the petty dramas that led from A to B, but eventually I was so fed up that I had every intention of breaking up with him.

Except I saw him in his briefs one last time, and that was all it took for me to consider another option entirely. It wasn’t even conscious for me, to be honest. I’d never even tried it on a human before, but the moment I felt him dwindle before me, felt myself taking his height away, pulling it away strand by strand, watching him sink down to the floor…it all felt so right, so natural. It surprised me when James decided that he could even move, let alone run away from me. Didn’t he know better than that? “Come now, James, I thought you were smarter than that,” I boomed down. My voice must have shaken him deeply, given how quickly he stopped and turned around, gaping up at my massive form. He really wasn’t that dumb after all, not when it mattered.

It’s remarkable how easily he came to adore me. How much he savored his time with every single inch of his master’s body. He wasn’t even the submissive type, at least not when I met him…if anything he’d tried to dom me, and given my insecurities about guys like him, I was way more passive for our first few meetings than I should have been. But once I shrunk him, once he realized that I’d done it, and that I wasn’t going to make him bigger again…he practically melted in my hands. It just broke…I just asked him what he thinks about me, and he stuttered out the most adorable little “y-you’re my God, master!” before going back to licking the cum off my cock with his tongue.

It’s easy enough to tame someone in a situation like that. Most people aren’t stupid, and they react rationally to being forcibly captured. Shrinking someone isn’t really any different, even though it’s obviously…well, a bit unusual. He didn’t run away from me, not after I punished him for that first time leaving me. I didn’t like disciplining the little meathead, but once it was clear that I was in charge, and that I wouldn’t hesitate to do what I needed to to get what I wanted from him…he brightened up right quick. Always wanted to be on my good side, always willing to do whatever I wanted, so long as I didn’t hurt him anymore. Even started to call me his God, the adorable little human. Even insisted that I go back there and make sure the word was always capitalized.

By the time he’d read capitalized, Mark had already cum. Line after line of semen spurted out, coating his chest and even splashing his chin with a few drops. “What the fuck…” he’d muttered afterwards, shocked that this weird new fetish had been that powerful. It was like something he’d always been turned on by but never really thought about, something he’d always wanted to do but that he knew was impossible so he just kinda…didn’t pay attention to it. He had to know more.

“I know it’s a weird request, but…can’t you make an exception here?” he asked, showing the copy of SHRINKS to the amused clerk.

“Mark, right?” he asked, and all the panther could manage was a shy nod. “You’re lucky you’re so cute and you don’t just buy the smut here, or else I probably wouldn’t be willing to pull this shit up.” He turned around as he spoke, reaching down behind the counters of the independent bookstore and picking up a ratty, old binder filled with pieces of loose leaf paper covered. “The owner here’s not exactly organized, but thankfully the information is sorta in alphabetical order, and I know the guy’s name. Publius, though he always told me to just call him ‘Pub.’ If you’re lucky, we’ll actually have something on file here.”

As he leafed through the binder, Mark couldn’t help but feel himself weirdly drawn “Pub,” whoever he was. Even if he had written a weird ass story about shrinking his boyfriend…well, honestly BECAUSE he’d written the story, Mark wanted to meet him, to pick his brain and talk about all sorts of fun, kinky stuff. Besides, maybe he was cute, and clearly he was a local, if the clerk knew him by name…

“Here we go, he’s over in Bristol. I can write the address down for you…but look, dude…he was stupid enough to not make a PO Box for this thing, so I need you to promise me that you won’t do anything weird like stop by his house or anything, alright?”

Mark promised, already starting to write a letter in his head that he planned on delivering by hand.

Dear Publius,

I’m a huge fan of your zine, so much so that I asked the clerk at Vista Books for your address so I could write you a letter. I didn’t know that there was someone else who was into stuff like this before I read your stories, and honestly…I didn’t even really know that I was into it before I read the stuff. Haha.

I know I’m just some [here the word ‘random’ was poorly inserted with a ^] weirdo who has the same fetish as you, but do you wanna meet up sometime?

Mark

It was short, sweet, and to the point, but he almost couldn’t drop it into the guy’s mailbox when, three days after getting the address and writing the letter, he finally worked up the courage to drive over to the west side. The whole time he kept thinking he should just turn around, what was the point in actually doing this, he was just overthinking it and stupidly obsessed with some hot ideas, why did he have to try to take it out into the real world…but still, he kept on driving.

It took him an uncomfortably long amount of time to actually work up the courage to get out of the car, but once he did he knew there was no looking back. There wasn’t really a “bad” part of Bristol, but the neighborhood where Pub lived, Dunford Heights, was probably the closest the city came to a “wrong side of the tracks.” It was all a blur, but Mark could tell that the place was ratty and unkempt, and the wood on the porch creaked uncomfortably as he worked his way across it. Mark lived in an even shittier apartment just off campus, so he really didn’t have a reason to judge, but he couldn’t help himself from doing it just a little. Was this really the kind of guy he wanted to get mixed up with?

After what felt like an eternity, he thought “to hell with it,” opened Pub’s mailbox, dropped the folded note inside, and practically sprinted back to his car, hoping to be as far away as possible when the tiger actually read his note.

His response came in the mail a full week and a half later, typewritten and typo-free:

Dear Mark,

I was very pleased to receive your letter. I’ll confess I’ve never had an admirer before, especially one who actually comes to my door and leaves something for me, so hopefully you’ll forgive me for not knowing how to act at first.

You’ll probably be pleased to know that James was actually wrapped around my cock when you dropped off that message of yours. If I’d been better dressed I might have come out to greet you, but you were gone by the time I could pull on a pair of pants.

If you’d like to meet in person, feel free to stop by Winston’s on Big Sky any Wednesday night. I’ll be the chubby tiger behind the bar, and Wednesday’s are usually slow, so I should be able to talk you up for most of the night. Just mention that you’re the guy who liked the stories, but please don’t be weird about it.

Pub

P.S. Hopefully you won’t mind fighting James for my attention.

He was sticking to the story that he could shrink people, sure, but…it seemed more playful than delusional, the way he wrote. It was worth a shot, right? What was the worst thing that could happen? He’d have an awkward conversation and never go back to a bar he’d never been to before in the first place? Or he’d end up the shrunken slave of a gargantuan, chubby tiger God? The thought alone gave him shivers in all the right places.

He couldn’t bring himself to head to Winston’s that first week, but when the following Wednesday came around and Mark considered staying home once again, he made an effort to stop himself from being so anti-social. He was all nerves when he walked into the bar, exactly what you’d expect from a dive on that side of town. Pub had been right; it was six o’clock and the bar had maybe ten people in it, most of them murmuring silently at their tables, booths, or barstools. Getting a seat right in front of the chubby bartender was easy, and the panther shifted uneasily when Pub asked him if there was anything he could get him. “Oh, well um…I…could use a PBR, I guess?” he fumbled. He was ready to show his ID, even reaching down to grab the thing from his wallet, but Pub hurried off to the tap before his hand could even slip into his jeans pocket.

He was dressed in a red t-shirt and jeans that well complimented his chubby frame. He was heavier than the story let on, but Mark didn’t mind. If anything, it made the tiger look bigger, filling his mind with all sorts of fun thoughts. “Here you go,” Pub interrupted Mark’s train of thought, making the panther realize that he had been staring at the tiger for at least half a minute, and that Pub had noticed. “I hope I’m not barking up the wrong tree here, but could you be Mark? I didn’t get a good look before you bolted, but the way you’re staring at me…”

The panther jumped out of his skin when Pub called him by name, his skin turning a deep reddish hue underneath his fur. “I…well…y-yes, I’m Mark,” he stuttered out, trying to keep his composure and failing miserably.

“You’re much cuter than I remember, honestly. Though you were more of a black blur than anything I could really make out, so that I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me too much.” He leaned in closer. “And I can’t really have you stick to PBR, not if you’re gonna swing by my place tonight like I know you want to. Doesn’t a Fuel Cafe sound a bit better?”

Mark had never tried one, but he nodded eagerly anyway. It was much more bitter than he was used to, but it was kinda nice, all things considered.

“You a student? And are you from here originally? I don’t think I’ve seen you around town, and I know I’d remember someone like you.” The words were vague but flattering enough that Mark kept on blushing.

“I’m a senior, actually. It’s my last semester. I’m studying chemistry, so hopefully I can get a job at one of the labs around here,” Mark said with a shrug. His plans for post-graduation had never really come together. “And I’m not from here, but I am from Lancaster, so not that far away.”

“I remember my last semester…didn’t get my diploma, to be honest, because I started working here and didn’t really want to become a lawy—” An older beaver from the end of the bar called out to Pub, demanding another Coors. “Fuck off, Rick, I’m getting my dick wet,” he muttered under his breath before reluctantly pouring him another beer. “What was I saying again? Yeah, I dropped out because I made enough money here to make a decent living, and I was trying to figure myself out, and well…I guess I’m still kinda figuring myself out.” He rubbed the back of his head awkwardly as he did this, his veneer of dominance shattering a little bit as he did so.

It was honestly nice that they didn’t start with any kinky talk, not that they could have managed much of anything in a public setting like this. They shared a hamburger with fries and chatted their way through all sorts of subjects, from movies they liked to books they’d read to games they played. Mark liked Pub way more than he thought he would, and they both bonded over their mutual love of Star Wars and Star Trek and all things nerdy. It put the panther at ease, that Pub wasn’t this unapproachable sex god or a creepy weirdo. He could imagine hitting on the tiger normally, which made the slow decision he made to ask Pub if they could go back to that duplex all the easier to make. Didn’t he just want to talk about all the kinky shit they could get up to if Pub could really shrink him? All the fun things they could do with James, all the cute little things they could do together if they just let their inhibitions drop.

Luckily for them both, Pub wasn’t working a closer that night. As 10 o’clock approached, Mark, more than a little inebriated after a night full of drinking, asked a question he never would have managed sober. “Can I stay at your place tonight?”

It was Pub’s turn to act all embarrassed. “I was actually working up the courage to ask you that…I’d love to show you around, Mark.” He was so sweet, and when he spun Mark around by the shoulder and gave him a kiss on the lips, the panther couldn’t help but smile at all the different wonderful ways this night could end. Pub insisted on driving, and since he was dead sober and the lightweight panther was decidedly not, Mark didn’t argue. “The power locks don’t work,” Pub explained as he opened the driver’s side door of the Oldsmobile before reaching over and unlocking the passenger-side door.

“Thanks for the ride, I d-dunno if I could make it all the way home r-right now,” Mark’s stuttering more a function of his drunkenness than his nerves at this point. “Oh, do I get to meet James tonight?” Mark asked playfully, and the tiger responded with a hearty chuckle.

“I would love to show him to you if he were real,” and in spite of the fact that Mark knew that James wasn’t real, actually having Pub admit as much made him more than a little sad. It broke kayfabe, and even though he was somewhat relieved to have the carefully constructed illusion shattered…there was still that part of him that wanted it to be true.

“Aww, I was kinda hoping you’d actually found a way to, I dunno…actually make that possible, somehow,” the panther admitted shyly.

The tiger gave him a mischievous grin in affirmation. “I bet you’d have some real fun with a little guy like that, and I know I’d love to fuck both of you. Provided you’d be up for that,” he added, hastily. This was something that Mark really liked about Pub, the way that he seemed to take a genuine interest in what the panther thought and was feeling…as well as all the attention the bartender had heaped on him, often to the detriment of the other patrons. He was somehow much more charming in real life than in fiction.

“It’s alright, I’m sure there are other ways we can have fun.”

Mark had been too harried the last time he was at Pub’s duplex to actually take in the sight of it. Even at night Mark could tell it was a bit of a dump, though not one without its dilapidated charms. “Watch that step,” Pub managed to blurt out just as Mark put his full weight on the step in question, causing the wood to bend and the panther to trip. Agile and (probably more importantly) sober, the tiger sprang into action, wrapping an arm around the panther as he fell and pulling him close into a tight embrace.

“Oh gosh…” Mark guffawed as he snuggled into the tiger’s chub, hidden under that bright red t-shirt.

“Easy there, panther boy…” he trailed off and gave Mark another kiss before continuing. “Sorry, that step has been out for years and the landlord still hasn’t gotten around to fixing it.”

Mark wished he could stay in the tiger’s arms forever, but he didn’t make a fuss when the tiger let go and headed towards the front door. The interior matched the exterior, ratty couch that was easily ten years old, bookshelf that was missing a chunk from one of the shelves, taped up posters of bands the panther didn’t know that were more than a little torn, he thought he could spy a large pile of unwashed dishes in the kitchen sink, there were still piles of clothes scattered on the floor and some spots in the carpet that Mark couldn’t help but eye with suspicion. “I keep meaning to find a new place, but the rent here is so cheap and the landlord mostly stays out of my business. Probably still thinks I’m straight,” Pub chuckled, clearly used to the reaction he could read on Mark’s face. He gestured for the panther to take a seat on the couch before heading into the kitchen. “Make yourself at home! I’m grabbing a beer, you want one too?” He shouted as Mark could hear what he assumed was the refrigerator door open.

“I’ll stick to w-water for now,” Mark replied, and he heard a cabinet open and the faucet turn on soon afterwards.

The living room wasn’t exactly tidy, but it wasn’t a wreck either. In the dim yellow light of the floor lamp, Mark could even make out some of the titles on the bookshelf opposite him: Gulliver’s Travels, Fantastic Voyage, and something titled Giants in Myth: A Comparative Treatise. “Everything you’d probably expect from a weirdo like me. My dad gave me that copy of Gulliver’s Travels when I was eight or nine,” Pub said as he walked back in, the ice in the water glass clinking all the way. “Probably why I’m so screwed up with all this giant stuff,” he chuckled once more, and Mark could only nod awkwardly along.

Pub took a seat on the couch next to Mark, but didn’t make any other moves on the panther. “I didn’t think you’d come, honestly. Especially after you didn’t show up last week,” Pub continued after an awkward pause made it clear that Mark didn’t know what he could add.

“Sorry…” Mark said with a guilty expression.

“Don’t be. You’re here now, and that’s what matters. Besides, I leaned way too hard into that whole ‘I can shrink people’ bit, must have come off like I was crazy.”

“No, you didn’t,” Mark lied. “If anything, it was kinda endearing.” Well, at least that was true.

Pub took a nice long drink from his beer before offering it to Mark. “You don’t have to drink a full one, but this stuff is brewed by Trappist monks. You’ve gotta at least manage a swig.”

Mark definitely did not feel up for taking any more alcohol into his system, but he grabbed the beer from Pub anyway and took a swig. It tasted a little grainy and very bitter, the kind of taste that he knew he should like even though he very much did not. “It’s great….but really, Pub, I think I had one too many at Winston’s.”

Pub took a hearty swig of his own. “I haven’t been totally truthful with you, Mark, and I hope you understand. James…well, the story was fake, but he was real.”

Mark’s expression shifted briefly to something hurt and confused, but ended up more bemused by the time he managed to get out an “Oh?”

“Well, I mean…not all of the story is…fuck, why did you have to be so perfect? If I didn’t know you were into this shit I wouldn’t even be talking about it. Never even mentioned it to James before I shrank him…”

Mark was now just confused. “You…Pub, what are you talking about?”

“Please don’t freak out, that’s what ended up happening with James and I really don’t want that again,” Pub asked, his expression heavy as Mark started to dwindle before his eyes. “I held it in as long as I could, Mark, I swear, but you are such an attractive prize. I almost accidentally did it at the bar.”

“What’s happening?” the panther asked, his confusion rapidly turning into paranoia as he felt himself grow light headed and his body…contract, somehow. His clothes grew heavy and loose, so much looser than they should have been. It reminded him of when he was a kid and he used to try to walk around in his dad’s shoes or wear his shirts, the clothes dangling uselessly off his body. “Oh god, you…you’re really doing it.” The realization sobered Mark up, at least as much as he could manage. “You can…make people smaller…”

Pub was nothing like he’d been in the story. “Y-yeah, and to be honest James wasn’t the first person I shrank, either. I used to do it with friends when I was younger. We’d do stuff like play hide and seek. James, though, James I shrank because I didn’t want him to be my boyfriend. I wanted him to be my pet.” With each word, Mark could feel himself getting smaller and smaller, his clothes looser and looser on his body until he slipped inside his own shirt. He tried to untangle himself from the mass of large clothes in vain. “He was just as cute when he struggled with his clothes…don’t worry, soon you’ll be little enough to slip through your shirt collar.”

Mark’s legs retracted up through the thighs of his jeans, leaving the mass of denim draped across the couch, tucked into his now empty shoes and socks down below. He finally managed to get his head back out of his shirt collar, and found himself greeted with the mischievous grin of his erstwhile date. “H-how?” was all Mark could manage, slinking back against the back of the couch instinctively. He wanted to be as far away from the now-gigantic tiger as possible.

Pub was not having it. He reached down with his right paw, wrapping his soft fingers around the terrified, naked little panther. The view changed rapidly, deliriously fast, but Mark could still make out Pub’s bare torso speeding by, a mix of orange and yellowish fur with black stripes, more mountain than tiger at his current scale. “I can’t really explain it,” he said as he lifted the panther up to his face. “It’s just something that happens if I think about things the right way.”

“If you d-did shrink J-James…where is h-he?” Mark asked, voice now trembling with fear as much as alcohol.

Pub sighed, but then that playful grin quickly returned to his face with a slightly malevolent mien. “Oh him? He couldn’t cut it. Turns out that cute boyfriends don’t always make good pets! So I just ate him,” Pub licked his lips obscenely as he held the panther close enough that he could smell the hamburger on Pub’s breath. Mark was beyond terrified, physically shaking in fear…but he was also insanely horny, and his body betrayed him. Without skipping a beat, Pub’s tongue lapped out and started licking the panther’s erection, puckering his lips afterwards like he was tasting a fine wine. “My my my, you taste delicious when you’re scared for your own life! You’re perfect, Mark…” Pub sighed once more, staring down at the the svelte panther with loving eyes. “I’m not a monster. James had a nervous breakdown when I shrank him and bolted the moment I returned him to normal. Didn’t even take his jeans with him,” Pub chuckled drily.

A moment of silence passed between them before Pub continued. “I can tell by your erection that you’re really into this, Mark. I’m sure you’re terrified as fuck too, worried that I’m actually going to eat you or something, but c’mon, little guy…you love me.” He wobbled his gut playfully with his free paw, Mark unable to stop staring at the gyrating sight before him.

“N-no…you’ve gotta make me n-normal size again,” Mark insisted, but his pleading was weak and half-willed. There was definitely a part of him that wanted to be big again and run away from this ridiculous situation, and that part was logical and in control, but it was quickly overcome by the lust he felt for the gigantic tiger, his body, his massive form towering over him, especially with the musk that filled the air, all the little details that combined to make this experience so weirdly magical and mesmerizing.

The tiger was undeterred. “You know, I don’t think I really have to do anything, Mark. I’m not really the type to force myself on others, that’s true…but you’re a bad liar, and you should know better than to pretend you don’t like this when I can see your cock slap against your abs every time you so much as glance at my stomach. You aren’t like James at all…you love this shit, and you want to see where this is going. Have you been fantasizing about me giving you a blowjob at this size?” Pub finished with a dramatic swipe, pulling the panther right up to his face. “That lick wasn’t nearly enough,” he intoned breathily before eagerly lapping at the little panther’s erection, tasting each and over little drop of precum that came spilling out with each and every tender, massive lick.

Mark couldn’t pretend any longer. He loved every second of this, he loved being the tiger’s little pet and he loved that he could do whatever he wanted with the shrunken cat…but chose to give him the biggest blowjob of his life, so weirdly gentle and playful if more than a little forceful. “F-fuck…” was all he could manage before he gave in and felt himself get closer and closer and closer to release, sending line after line of cum onto the tiger’s sandpapery tongue. Pub wasn’t that surprised at how wonderful it tasted, given how much he loved the taste of Mark’s pre…but his cum was even better, and the tiger relished being able to lap down every single last drop before letting the panther pant heavily as he felt Mark’s little body collapse into his soft palm.

“I’ll take that as a ‘thank you, Pub.’” The tiger nuzzled against the little panther’s heaving chest, smiling when his whiskers and facial fur caused the panther to burst out laughing. “You know, being ticklish isn’t the best quality in someone you wanna shrink. Wouldn’t want you to get uncomfortable, little guy,” he added with his by now clearly characteristic sarcasm. “Don’t get too comfortable, though…I’m not making you big again until you’ve gotten me off, too.”

The words barely had enough time to be processed before Mark started to feel himself moving again, this time downwards and much slower than he’d been snatched up. The sight of Pub’s chest and stomach that he was able now to examine in much greater detail, even as he only managed to tilt his head up a little bit to gape at the massive body passing in front of him. He could count the strands of fur, they were so clear to him now…and he was so lost in his own train of thought that he didn’t even notice the cock until the tiger’s musk wafted out and over his body, overpowering his poor shrunken little nose. “I know, I know…you’d thought it’d be bigger,” Pub teased, his voice reverberating through the shrunken cat from on high. “But that should just make your task easier.” The titan thrust his hips, laughing as a few drops of pre splattered Mark’s chest and stained his black fur.

The panther didn’t need more goading to wrap his arms around Pub’s gigantic shaft, grinning as he softly but firmly nuzzled against the cockhead. Fuck, this was exactly as good as he had imagined it would be, even if the tiger was a little rougher around the edges than the panther might have preferred. Hell, probably because he was rougher around the edges than the panther would have preferred. It wasn’t long before his tentative embrace grew tighter and tighter. Mark really put his back into it, knowing full well that Pub wouldn’t be able to get off with some weak movements here and there, not when he wasn’t even as big as the cock. He breathed in the scent, something vaguely cinnamon-y, a little spicy and more than a little rank. It wasn’t unpleasant, in spite of everything. If anything, it was a little intoxicating, being this small, able to just fit inside Pub’s briefs if he felt so inclined. His arms started to rub the shaft up and down, and his legs followed suit shortly thereafter, their motion falling into sync and joined by a few embarrassed licks of the giant’s cockhead.

“Damn, that felt GOOD,” Pub boomed overhead, the tiger almost unable to keep himself from wrapping his hand around his cock and giving it a few helpful pumps. “K-keep that up,” he insisted, his voice losing a bit of that domineering tone in the process.

Mark wasn’t even paying attention to the words the tiger said, just to the way his cock grew harder and harder the more he played with it. He started to cling to it, pulling himself up when the cock started to spasm. With a lot of effort, Mark even managed to hang off the cock’s side, and then work his way up to actually mounting the thing, straddling it like a horse as he nuzzled his head into Pub’s gut. Almost seductively, Pub’s eyes watching his every move, the panther splayed down the giant’s cock, running his paws slowly and sensually down the erection that he’d managed to get hard enough that the teasing almost hurt. “You like this, big boy?” Mark asked, with a giggle, his body now wrapped almost playfully around the topside of Pub’s reddened cock. He didn’t wait for an answer before he started to squeeze once more, slowly and deliberately, almost like he was milking the massive endowment. “There there,” he said breathily, fully embodying the role he’d decided to play. “You’re so close…” Pub couldn’t hear the words but he could feel the panther’s little breaths against his cock and it was driving him mad. He was so close. He wasn’t thinking with his head anymore, he just wrapped his right paw around Mark, pinning him to his shaft, the panther’s mild protest of “H-hey,” not nearly enough to stop the giant from rubbing Mark rapidly up and down his shaft, up and down and up and down and…line after line of his own cum started to spurt out after only four or five of his own pumps, the tiger’s breathing even harder than Mark’s as he basked in the glow and then afterglow of the orgasm.

“I–fuck, I never got anything like that from James,” Pub admitted as he plopped down on the couch, the panther wobbling slightly as he basted in the tiger’s cum, stuck fast to his shaft. “I…umm…I hope you liked it too,” he shyly admitted, half-questioningly, losing his veneer of domination the moment he had reached orgasm. It was one thing to play the “dominating giant” and quite another to actually be one. He unpinned the panther from his cock and deposited him back in his left paw so he could actually manage a response.

“I…suppose I did…” the panther admitted, rather embarrassed himself that he had gotten as into it as he had.

Without warning, the tiger pressed the panther to his chest. Mark was able to hear Pub’s heart beat, each palpitation and murmur magnified to infeline scale. Pub held the panther there for a lot longer than Mark thought he would, neither saying a word, not wanting to break the silence or the moment. “You know, I could probably argue that you didn’t really get me off, so I don’t have to make you big again,” Pub said as he started to restore Mark’s size. “That would be missing the point, though.” The panther grew inch by inch, rapidly growing back to his former stature, his slender form still held close to the tiger’s own ample frame. “Well, big guy…” Pub chuckled a little before continuing, “Wanna take a shower? You can leave afterwards. I’ll even make sure you take your pants.”

The panther silently nuzzled into his tiger’s chest. Even at this size, he felt positively dwarfed by the chubby tiger. A wry smile creeped onto his face as he fumbled through a response. “I’ll t-take a shower with you, P-Pub…but only if I get to be the soap.”

Gas, Grass, or Ass?

Alexei almost jumped out of his seat when he first saw the flash of white against the dark backdrop. The wolf was driving so fast, he wouldn’t have caught the rabbit if he didn’t have such bright white fur, or if the road wasn’t just straight, flat countryside for several miles. As he slowed his car down gradually, he started to make out more and more details on the bunny; bright white fur visible under an open jacket, tight skinny jeans that showed off a lithe figure with round hips, a hesitant, outstretched thumb. The wolf actually felt a little unfashionable in his black t-shirt and loose-fitting dark blue jeans. On a whim, he slowed down the car and rolled down the passenger side window, stopping about ten feet in front of the rabbit.

Alexei didn’t usually pick up hitchhikers. A well-built wolf in his mid-twenties, he wasn’t worried about his safety or anything, no matter how many poorly worded urban legends he heard about murderous psychopaths in sheep’s clothing. No, the fact of the matter was that Alexei wasn’t exactly a “brotherhood of furs” kind of guy; what did it matter to him that this other fur needed his help? That was hardly his fault, and hardly his problem.

So it was unusual that he even stopped his car, let alone that he gave the bunny a ride. Still, the wolf could easily rationalize his actions. First, he was a bunny, so deep down in his primordial brain, signals went off that might have initially been used for hunting and killing rabbits, but were now constrained by more…civilized centers of the brain. Second, Alexei thought the bunny looked cute; the way he was dressed, that light jacket open just enough to reveal the fishnet shirt that he was wearing underneath, was perfectly complementary to his svelte, snow furred torso. The wolf rarely found boys attractive, but the bunny’s meek, feminine figure was far too enticing. Third, and perhaps most important, the wolf was bored. He was driving home on a remote country road from a party that he’d only managed to get slightly tipsy at. He wanted a distraction, and the bunny just might be it.

The bunny, Cody, jogged a little to catch up. He peeked his head into the ancient dark red Pontiac Grand Am hesitantly. “Thanks for st-stopping,” he stuttered as he caught sight of the wolf for the first time, perhaps a little taken with the black and dark-grey furred wolf. “Not many cars passing this late at night.” The door unlocked and the bunny wordlessly entered, buckling his seatbelt before he started to stare out the window.

The wolf drove forward, much less reckless now that he had a passenger. Cool summer air streamed into his car from the bunny’s open window and filled it with the smells of the countryside. “Where are you headed?” he asked, stealing a glance at the bunny’s body when he was sure that the bunny wasn’t paying attention. In the darkness, with nothing but his headlights to go by, he’d thought that the bunny was pure white; up close, he could now see underneath the fishnet shirt that that wasn’t true. The bunny was mostly his pure, snowy white, but there was a light grey-furred diamond on his chest.

“Just a few miles down,” the bunny said as he gestured out the window. “I live on Miller Road. Know where that is?” the bunny asked, still looking out the window. Every now and then, against the dark forests and the endless fields of corn and wheat, he could make out the flicker of a firefly searching for his mate.

Alexei didn’t. “Sure,” he said, nonchalantly. It probably wouldn’t be hard to spot a road sign, right? It wouldn’t matter that the wolf didn’t know.

“Good. You can just drop me off at the end of the road, I can make my way up it,” Cody shyly added, continuing out look out at the cornfields in the dark night.

The wolf shook his head. “I don’t mind driving you all the way to your house,” he said, making an effort to be a little nice and personable. He didn’t know why he felt obligated to drive nicer and be a bit less gruff than usual, but he wanted to…impress the rabbit, and definitely didn’t want him to feel threatened or inconvenienced.

None of that stopped him from asking a rather crude question. “Gas, grass, or ass? No one rides for free.” He gave the bunny a rather toothy grin, baring his sharp canines for Cody to see.

The bunny finally turned around, looking over to gauge how serious the wolf was. The knowing, ironic smirk on Alexei’s face said one thing, but the noticeable bulge that the bunny spotted in his jeans said something else entirely. Hardly believing himself, he leaned over and ran his right paw down the wolf’s chest. “For you, honey, I’d give all three,” he added, in his most sultry voice, before he reached into his coat pocket.

Alexei couldn’t believe the femboy’s forwardness, but he also didn’t fault it. “Well, I just filled the tank up back in Burton,” a town only six or so miles back up the road, where the failed party had been, “so I’m afraid you can only pay with grass or ass.” His tone was deadpan and serious, but the wolf was still mostly joking.

Cody, however, saw an opening and was more than willing to take it. He pulled a joint and a lighter out of his pocket, waving them about to the incredulous wolf. “Good thing I have this, then,” he teased as he lit up and took a nice, long hit.

“What’s your name?” was all a disbelieving wolf could come up with, after a moment of silence. “I-I’m Alexei.” Now it was his turn to stutter.

“Cody,” the bunny returned as he exhaled. He passed the joint to the driver before continuing, “Nice to meet you, Alexei. Is the offer of buttsex still on the table, or have we moved past that?”

Alexei couldn’t help but take a nice long drag on the joint before even attempting to answer that. He passed the joint back to the rabbit before he exhaled, half-muttering, “I…guess…”

The bunny knew better than to poke this bear, though. He laid back in his seat and responded, “If you ever want to just pull over into a field and bend me over the hood, I’m fine with that.” He took another nice long hit, exhaling out the window into the night air.

Alexei was committed. He didn’t give warning that he was going to do it, but the very next time that he saw an opening deep into one of the fields they would see regularly passing on either side, he turned off his high beams and turned off down a dirt road that took them in between rows and rows of some crop that was indistinguishable in the night air.

“I can’t say I’ve ever been fucked in a soybean field,” the bunny said after he’d taken yet another hit off the joint. Huh, guess the crop wasn’t so indistinguishable after all.

The wolf killed the engine and shut off the lights. It was surprisingly dark; the wolf, hailing from large, hectic cities, was still not used to just how dark the countryside could get. The moon peeked out from behind a mass of clouds, shining just enough light for the wolf’s sensitive vision to see pretty decently, all things considered, but it was still so much darker than what he was used to, even after living in Burketsville for three years.

The wolf was so distracted by the darkness that he didn’t even notice the bunny lean over once more and give him an affectionate kiss on the cheek. “I thought I wouldn’t be having any fun tonight,” the bunny confessed, a little forlornly. “But then a cutie like you showed up and just swept me off my feet!” He giggled as he undid his seat belt and crawled over into the large lap of his lupine companion, once again running his paws over the lupine’s rough, muscular chest.

Alexei was a bit too modest for all of this, though. Without saying a word, he hoisted the bunny up off his lap and back into his seat, undoing his own seatbelt. “No need to get all sentimental about it. It’s just…payment,” the wolf said with a little reluctance. The bunny was turning him on something fierce, but he didn’t want to lose any semblance of control. The wolf opened his door and gestured for the bunny to do the same.

Several emotions rushed through the bunny. The rebuke made Cody frown slightly, but he still dutifully got out of the car, ditching the joint onto the ground and snuffing it out under a shoe. He was decently buzzed by now, which only heightened the things he was about to experience. He smirked as he realized that the wolf probably still thought that he was in charge, and that he was the dominant one.

Cody’s expression was nothing but adoring, however, when he tossed off his jacket playfully, turning around slowly in the moonlight to reveal the entirety of his half-naked torso to the hungry wolf. Silently, the wolf undid his belt and unfastened and then unzipped his jeans, revealing the blue boxer-briefs underneath before pulling them down as well. After tucking the waistband underneath his grey-furred balls, his cock fully erect as it was just peeking out of his fuzzy sheath. Cody actually let out a moan at the sight, unzipping his own jeans and practically tearing them off his behind. He leaned over the hood of the car, his face pressed up against the still warm metal, and pulled his yellow briefs down.

Alexei spit into his hands and started to rub it down his cock. He’d never done something like this without a source of lube around, and he hoped that his spit and pre would be enough. As if he’d read his thoughts, the rabbit said, “Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll be able to fit you in.” Well, who was the wolf to deny the rabbit’s request? Especially once Cody reached back and spread his cheeks nice and wide. That ass was so enticing that the wolf didn’t even notice how weird the bunny looked in the moonlight, how much more radiant and luminescent he seemed compared to the rest of the wolf’s surroundings, including the car that he had pressed himself up against.

His cock met little resistance as it pressed up against Cody’s asshole, sliding inside. The wolf didn’t thrust that hard at first, working the bunny’s tight rear open gradually, to minimize any discomfort on the bunny’s part. Why he was trying so hard to not discomfort the bunny he gave little thought, and he definitely didn’t think it was a sign of his submission. Why would he?

Cody’s magic had long since started to do its work. The wolf remained oblivious, but the bunny certainly noticed the wolf’s massive cock slowly dwindle smaller and smaller, gradually becoming easier to fit further and further up his ass. All the while, the bunny was bucking against the wolf, countering every thrust with one of his own in the opposite direction, the gyrations lining up just perfectly enough to rub the wolf’s cock up against the bunny’s prostate. “Mmm, good boy,” the bunny moaned, panting, as he rubbed his cock against the hood of the car, occasionally giving his privates a nice squeeze as his own pre started to dribble out and turn the metal into a slippery surface.

A voice deep within Alexei bucked at all of this, insisting that he wasn’t gay, that he’d only ever fucked pussy, that he was strong, and that he was dominant. It was easily overrode by the facts of the situation. Cody, at 5’9”, was actually now taller than he was. He was graciously allowing the wolf to fuck him, and he was intensely grateful that he even allowed the wolf to drive him out here. “Thank you, master,” he offered to the now significantly larger bunny. He looked down at himself and grinned as he saw himself visibly contract, getting smaller and smaller at an increasing pace. “Yes, make me smaller, like I’ve always wanted to be…”

Cody was ecstatic. It had been so long since he’d managed a nice assfucking; even in the rather strange circles that he ran in, it was hard to find someone who could truly satisfy him. There weren’t many wolves at the raves he frequented, people who were so sure of their wants and needs that it was easy to just tweak them a little, move them around and push them in directions that they might not otherwise want to go. This was particularly easy during the full moon, when his powers were at their apex. He hadn’t even had to give verbal instructions.

As the wolf rapidly dwindled, his cock caught in the bunny’s ass even as he grew too short he had to lie down on top of the now massive bunny, larger than anyone he had ever fucked before. He was twice his size, and then three times his size, and then four times, just as rapidly. The ass in front of him took on larger and larger dimensions, the hole still keeping a firm grip on his cock as he shrank smaller and smaller. This was…right. This was all he needed. To worship his master’s ass.

Eventually, the bunny flipped over, pinning the shrinking wolf under a bunny butt that was by then about as long as he was tall. He was no longer dwindling rapidly; he was almost the perfect size for his purpose. “Deeper,” the bunny intoned as he briefly forgot who was in control of whom. He was now the one with a hunger that needed to be satisfied, and the wolf was just the size to satisfy him. Without any hesitation, the wolf used his fingers to pry open the sphincter in front of him, a sphincter that shuddered in response to his sensitive touch, releasing just long enough so that the wolf could be shove himself inside. He wouldn’t have minded no matter what, but he was happy that the bunny was remarkably clean inside, and any…unpleasant odors were overpowered by a sweet musk.

Cody was masturbating furiously as the wolf entered his ass. “Deeper,” the word he kept repeating, became a mantra to center down into the sensations of the squirming, eager little ass slave that he’d created, the one rubbing up against his prostate with evident glee. He could even feel Alexei’s tiny tongue lap up against his prostate, eagerly putting all of his energy into pleasing his master. Neither of them noticed when Alexei cummed, because it was massively overshadowed by Cody’s orgasm.

The walls of Cody’s ass spasmed around the now fully “inserted” wolf as the pleasure washed out from his cock and spread over him. Line after line of cum was shot high into the air, glowing a bright white in the moonlight. The bunny writhed in pleasure on the hood of the car, keeping his ass firmly clenched around his asstoy. As he basked in the afterglow, he made a promise to himself. Against precedent, he’d keep this wolf. It was the least he owed such a wonderfully obedient toy!

Eventually, he stood up. With a wave of his hand, he removed any cum or precum that had been left to stain the hood of the car. He pulled his yellow briefs up, sealing the wolf inside his underwear. Well, that’s where he’d be stuck if he ever tried to escape his ass, which was unlikely in his current thoroughly brainwashed state. He then pulled his pants back up, zipping and fastening the jeans closed, before bending over and picking his jacket up and putting it back on.

He left Alexei’s clothes in the pile they’d fallen into on the ground. He figured they wouldn’t be discovered until Monday morning, and even if they were discovered the next morning, he’d be long gone by then. He liked leaving that enticing little clue to the wolf’s disappearance, since it was destined to remain unsolved. He headed back into the car, that shitty Pontiac which he already fantasized about crushing under his hand. Not until later, though. He still wanted to get home before dawn, and taking the car with him would only help. He started it up, shifted into reverse and backed out onto the country road before he started the drive. Alexei squirmed happily.

About a mile or so down the road, the rabbit slowed down to pick up a hitchhiker. This one was much more reluctant to get in the car than Cody had been, but after a few silent “C’mons” he was persuaded to enter the vehicle. “We’re going to the same place, after all,” Cody teased as the other fur, a big cat, harrumphed inside.

“How did you get the car?” the cat asked the rabbit, looking out the window much like the bunny had before.

“I think you know, Pub,” the bunny replied, nonchalantly.

“Is the owner still alive?” Pub asked, a little nervously and with a bit of acid. He was the exception to the rule, the one predator that Cody regularly hung out with. He’d been a lot scrawnier and shorter when they’d met.

“Why yes, in fact. And he loves where he is,” Cody answered, giggling as he felt Alexei squirm in a particularly pleasing way. “And, for that matter, I love where he is.”

Pub sighed, defeated. “You can’t just do that, you know. He probably had people that loved and cared for him.” This was why the cat was actually walking; he was on his way to the

Cody just nodded in agreement. “Yes, and now he just has two different people to love and care for him.” He reached over and grabbed Pub’s paw, but the big cat pulled away.

“It’s not the same and you know it,” Pub retorted, undeterred.

“Aww, I can always remove him from the memories of his loved ones, if you’d rather,” Cody teased, reaching over and running his paw through the orange cat’s back fur. “But I don’t think you’d like that very much either. I can return him to his old life if you really want me too.” He thought back to the jacket he’d left lying on the dirt and chuckled. “Well, minus a set of clothes. I just…thought you’d enjoy fucking me with him down there.” Cody moved his paw to the front side of the muscular feline, running a hand down his front side until he reached the bulge in his crotch. “I think at least part of you likes it,” he teased.

Pub couldn’t deny it. “We’ll…keep this one, right? Give him a nice home?” It was the best he could manage, under the circumstances.

“I promise. I wouldn’t want to ruin such a valuable toy,” Pub glared, and Cody laughed before correcting himself. “I meant pet! I really did.”

They continued driving in silence for a while, before Pub piped up. “Can I smash the car this time?” he asked, sheepishly.

Cody scratched under the cat’s chin. While Pub let out an embarrassed purr to the unexpected show of affection, the bunny nodded.

RX-14

The room was a shade of white so white it was actively offensive to Mark’s eyes, making an already uncomfortable experience all the more uncomfortable. If he had not already signed several release forms guaranteeing both his participation and a significant payout if he successfully completed the treatment regimen, the black furred panther probably would have backed out., He’d been told over and over again that the drug had no recorded fatalities, to the degree that it made him nervous just what the drug did do if they felt the need to continually stress its safety.

Mark had heard lots of rumors, of course. Working for Thermodyne, you heard all sorts of stories, and often enough witnessed even stranger things that disbelieving co-workers would insist were ridiculous. He hadn’t been interested in signing up for the RX-14 trials, even when he’d heard the drug created a euphoria that was somehow non-addictive and life-changing. It didn’t seem worth the risk, and he couldn’t fathom why Thermodyne was developing a therapeutic hallucinogen anyway. Drug research and development wasn’t exactly his field, though, so he didn’t give it much more thought. That was until he found out that the payout for trying the drug was substantial. Possibly even enough to pay off what remained of his student loans. He’d signed up the next day.

He was now having doubts, though. He fidgeted in his seat as he wondered why he was alone in this waiting room, and what exactly was taking them so long. As if on cue, a female vulpine, dressed in a long white lab coat with bare fur underneath, came out of the only door into the waiting room, seating herself in the chair directly opposite Mark. As soon as she took a seat, she muttered, mostly to herself, “Let’s see…” as she looked over her clipboard, squinting visibly as she attempted to make out the forms that Mark had filled out. Her face remained placid, neither pleased nor displeased with whatever she was reading. Her deep red fur was well groomed, and Mark couldn’t help but note that she was fairly attractive, especially for a research scientist at Thermodyne.

“It looks here like you’re an excellent candidate for this study,” she mentioned without looking up, continuing to look over the extensive questionnaire. “Young, healthy, relatively fit, with no history of schizophrenia, either in yourself or in family members…” she trailed off, leaving Mark to speculate as she continued to glance over the documents.

“G-good,” he stuttered, cursing himself for giving away his nervousness in the very first word he said to the fox. “If it’s not too much to ask,” he asked, centering himself enough to halt his stutter, “just what does RX-14, uhh…do, exactly?”

The vulpine looked up and met his gaze for the first time since she’d entered the room. “Alright. I think I’m going to give this the go ahead.” She glanced up at the security camera in the corner of the room and gave a silent nod before she continued to speak. Mark couldn’t help but ask himself if there had always been a camera in the room, and how he’d missed it if it had always been there. “Usually we take subjects out and into the testing room before we give this explanation, but since there’s no one else here, why not give you the final chance to back out right here? You work here, so I’m sure you’ve heard something about RX-14, some of it good, and some of it bad.” Mark nodded in acknowledgment; a majority of what he’d heard had been pretty vague yet menacing, but he obviously wasn’t about to bring that up to the vulpine. “Well, the drug really isn’t that bad, at least on a physiological level. The LD50 is something like 4 grams per kilogram, when the drug is perfectly effective at much, much smaller doses. It is a hallucinogen, though, and those by definition carry a psychological risk to their users.

“You see, RX-14 is not a usual hallucinatory agent. Those can cause all sorts of interesting effects, but they tend to be of little therapeutic use because they aren’t targeted in any one direction. RX-14, on the other hand, is intensely targeted. It overstimulates the amygdala, which in turn activates all sorts of brain structures in the limbic system, creating a remarkably realistic hallucination in the subject. In about half of all subjects, this hallucination is very positive. It is a pleasant experience, usually something nice and cathartic, and often enough something sexual. The other half of subjects, on the other hand, experience a much more negative hallucination. They live out a terrifying scenario composed of their worst fears and terrors. Remarkably, though, after a period of several weeks or months, even these individuals look back at the experience fondly, and report greatly reduced anxiety and depression, among other things. Only in a very small minority of subjects, exclusively those with a family or personal history of psychosis or schizophrenia so far, are any negative side effects reported. Since you don’t have either, as far as I’m aware,” the fox gave the panther a skeptical look, but didn’t skip a beat in her little spiel, “you should be totally fine. Are you with me so far?”

Mark nodded by reflex, but in reality his mind was reeling. What had he gotten himself into? Hallucinatory drugs that might bring his worst fears and anxieties to life? No wonder the payout was so good!

“Alright then. At any point before I administer the drug, you can opt out. You will not receive any payment if you do this. Afterwards, in compliance with the Safe Practices in Neuromedicine Act and company policy, we do have the right to detain you for a period not exceeding 24 hours, or until the effects of the drug wear off. Because of how vivid the hallucinations are, we are going to have to restrain you before administering the drug, but this is merely a precautionary measure, and will not impact your hallucination. Do you understand?”

The panther nodded his head, even eking out a “Y-yes.” The payment was too good; he knew that as much as it terrified him, he couldn’t back out now. He also couldn’t help but think of just what kind of fantasies the drug might bring to live, both positive and negative. You know the old adage about curiosity and cats.

“If that’s so, I can lead you back to the testing room,” she said, standing up and nonchalantly walking back to the door. Mark followed, hesitantly, a little relieved to be out of the bright white room. The corridor was drab and dimly lit, but anything was better than that waiting room. “You’ll be fine, I swear,” the fox reassured the panther. “The visions might be unpleasant, but I’ve yet to meet a subject who didn’t benefit from the treatment somehow.” The panther remained unconvinced, but he held his tongue.

At the end of the hallway was one solid black door marked “314” in gold lettering. The fox knocked when she came to it, and promptly a short ermine with a pronounced hunch opened the door and ushered the fox and panther inside. “Does he need to be informed of the risks?” the ermine asked in a deep, hoarse voice. The vulpine nodded her head wordlessly as she headed towards a cabinet in the back of the room and pulled out a vial with a clear liquid. The ermine nodded back, not that the fox could notice, with her back to him. His hair was unkempt, and he almost looked more like a mole than a stoat.

The room was mostly unadorned, the walls made of solid slate-colored concrete. There was a row of cabinets and drawers on one side, the wood paneling of the cabinets standing out in stark contrast to the dark grey walls. In the center of the room was something that almost looked like a dentist’s chair, except that it was equipped with arm restraints and leg restraints. Mark shivered a little at the sight of it. It looked too much like something you’d see in an insane asylum from the 1950s for him to be even remotely comfortable. He took a deep breath, though, and following the directions of a gesture the fox made, he took a seat. The stoat hurried himself to fasten the restraints, but they remained loose enough to allow the panther to move around comfortably. That was easily the most terrifying part of the experience so far; what were they worried he’d do if he wasn’t restrained?

The fox removed a syringe from a surgical cart and plunged it into the vial, drawing out about three quarters of a syringe full of the mysterious liquid. “This is RX-14,” the fox explained, “if that wasn’t obvious. Now, this is the last chance you have to back out, alright? Otherwise I’m going to administer the dose.” She approached Mark, tapping the syringe a few times and shooting out a small amount of the drug to remove any air bubbles. Mark nodded nervously. He wasn’t afraid of the needle or the injection, but the logical part of his brain couldn’t help but think “Why am I doing this?” He was in the restraints, though; he wasn’t backing out now. The fox stuck the needle into the crook of his arm, sending the drug coursing through his veins.

Several minutes passed in tense silence. Mark kept waiting for something to happen, and when nothing did, he grew a little more nervous. He tried to remain as calm as he could, slowly facing the realization that there wasn’t really anything that he could do about it anymore. The drug was injected, and he just had to wait to see what effect it would have on him. He wouldn’t have to wait long. His pupils dilated, he took a sharp, short breath of air, he blinked, and

Mark was sitting in his apartment, back against the couch cushions. Across from him, a newscaster droned on the television about some horrific tragedy. He grabbed the remote, conveniently placed right next to him on the sofa, and flipped off the TV. How had he gotten here? He couldn’t remember, no matter how hard he tried. He looked around to make sure that nothing was out of place, but right down to his Star Trek figurines, every detail of the apartment was accurate. There was the Star Wars poster on the wall right next to one for The Third Man and that cute French poster with a black kitty that he’d picked up at a thrift sale for a few bucks. He thought it added a little class to what otherwise looked like a fairly normal bachelor’s pad. On the coffee table lay the several beer bottles from the night before that he’d been too tired to clean up the night before.

He shifted his arms and legs, fully expecting to feel the restraints restricting his movement. He was surprised instead to find himself completely unencumbered. He stood up, stretching his sore limbs. He grabbed the few bottles, walking into the apartment’s tiny kitchenette and plopping them into the recycling with the resounding clank of glass bottles, before grabbing a glass from the cupboard and filling it with some cold water from the faucet.

The panther took a deep, long sip of water as he tried to get his bearings. Somehow, the drug had wiped out his memories from when he took it until…now, whenever now was. It wasn’t that surprising, all things considered; memory loss was probably one of the more predictable side effects of testing Thermodyne’s drugs. It still terrified him, though. For the hundredth time, he asked himself what he’d gotten himself into. Then the earthquake struck.

It was a small tremor, but it was more than enough to get the panther to drop his glass, which shattered on the kitchenette floor with a resounding crash. When another followed in short order, followed by another after that, each more intense than the last…the panther’s heart started to beat faster and faster in his chest. What the hell was going on? He hid in the doorframe to the kitchen, but the tremors continued to grow larger and larger. After a few more tremors, he heard a terrible sound: the apartment complex across the street was collapsing to the ground, the boom of concrete, wood, drywall, and thousands of personal belongings of every shape and size imploding into a heap resounding throughout the metropolis. This was followed by a massive, primal growl. It sounded like something out a movie, projected on loudspeakers for everyone to hear, and when he ran out onto his balcony to look across the street, he was shocked when he was greeted with a scene straight out of Attack of the Fifty Foot Tiger. “P-Pub?!” he called out to the massive feline currently standing in the ruins of an apartment complex that was half his size.

The tiger smirked as he looked down at the boyfriend he now dwarfed, taking a few steps across the street, not giving any heed to the cars he smashed underneath his massive footpaws. Mark was level with the giant tiger’s musky crotch, and he couldn’t help but note the naked feline’s impressive, almost bus-sized girth looming just feet in front of him. “You always said you wanted me bigger, right?” the feline boomed from above. “Well, am I big enough for you now?” he added, raising a sardonic eyebrow far above the gaping panther at crotch-level below. He gave his junk an unashamed squeeze, instantly growing half erect in front of the micro panther. “I hope you don’t mind being the little one this time,” he teased. Mark’s cock was a few inches longer than Pub’s…well, when they were the same size, at least.

Mark continued to gape up at his boyfriend’s enormity, not even able to stutter out anything but an aghast “Wh-wh-what?”

Pub took another step towards the thunderstruck panther, his half-erect cock now scraping up against Mark’s balcony and the one below him. “What’s the matter, honey? Cat got your tongue?” he asked, cheekily, letting out a deep, resounding chuckle that shook the tiny black-furred feline down to his bones. He took a slow step backwards, hoping that his massive boyfriend didn’t notice.

“Aww, babe, c’mon, you know I’d never hurt you,” Pub said as he started to reach down, aiming to scoop up the terrified panther. Seeing the massive paw approach, Mark couldn’t help but flee back inside his apartment, sprinting as fast as he could away from the massive, orange-furred tiger. A quick glance behind him revealed that the tiger was starting to lean over to get a better look inside as he tsked up above. “There’s no need to run away from me, I’m still the same old Publius!” he insisted to the paralyzed panther below him. His voice resounded so loud that window to the next door apartment’s spare bedroom shattered with a clear, sharp clink. “Oops,” the naked titan chuckled as he wiped some of the glass shards off of his whiskers.

When the panther heard all of this, it made him shudder all the more. His boyfriend was just so…powerful. So huge. Unfathomably large. He’d been about a head taller than the panther when he was normal size, but now…now he could step through apartment complexes with ease and with impunity. There was no way that he could stop the giant from doing anything that the now vastly outsized tiger wanted to do. They had had a few fights, hadn’t they? What if his boyfriend was secretly holding a grudge? The thought terrified him, and as he cowered underneath the couch, he hoped against all hope that his boyfriend would return to normal size.

Publius had leaned down just in time to see the cat scurry underneath their sofa. He let out a sigh as he yanked the balcony’s sliding doors off, throwing them down to the ground several stories below. He then reached his paw into the doll-sized apartment, doing his best not to damage the structure and harm his now micro-sized boyfriend. He wasn’t all that concerned about what his actions did to any of the other minuscule inhabitants of the city, but he sure as hell didn’t want to hurt his tiny boyfriend. Gently, he picked up the sofa, plucking it out between two fingers on his right paw. He quickly discarded it; it fell several stories and ended up crushing a Hummer underneath its weight. Several car alarms resounded through the city as Pub reached into the apartment with his other paw, gently wrapping it around Mark’s tiny, still huddled form. In fact, the panther didn’t open his eyes until he felt those digits wrap around him, at which point he let out a loud, pointed scream.

The massive tiger recoiled slightly as he heard the sharp scream, but he still wrapped his massive paw around his tiny boyfriend. The screech was more out of reflex than fear, though so after a few seconds Mark switched instead to heavy breathing. As he was ever so gently lifted up and out of the apartment, he couldn’t help but notice just how huge the paw he was in was, how easy it would be for his boyfriend to do anything he wanted with him, and yet…how soft and gentle he was, how warm and nice it felt to be in his arms. Or, well, in his hand. Mark looked up at Pub’s face and could easily make out the lines of concern and affection on his boyfriend’s now-massive face. “Pl-please don’t hurt m-me,” he stuttered, hoping against all hope that his boyfriend wasn’t about to break him in his gigantic fist.

Pub, of course, had no plans to hurt the panther. He loved Mark, after all! “Really, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m still your sweet boyfriend! Just a little bigger and little more powerful,” he understated. “I’d never let anyone hurt you, Mark,” he nodded with a stern look on his face, “least of all myself. And now I’m big enough that I can make sure that that’s true. If anything, you’re safer now than you’ve ever been.” The massive tiger started to purr, the low rumble resonating through the trapped panther’s body.

It was still far too much for Mark to take in, but he tried his hardest to believe his boyfriend was telling the truth. It was actually much easier than he thought it would be, once he really started to trust Pub’s words; they did make sense, didn’t they? Sure, the massive feline had been violent with others, but he’d been nothing but kind to Mark. As the panther was lost in thought about whether to trust the titan, Pub opened up his palm and ripped off the young lab technician’s t-shirt. “W-what a-are y-you doing?” he asked, going stuttery once more as he pushed as hard as he could against the invasive digit but found his struggles completely ineffective.

Pub let out a playful chuckle as he continued to undress his now doll-sized boyfriend. He just couldn’t resist the urge! Besides, “I’m naked, Mark, and everyone can see me. The least you could do is disrobe in solidarity!” Even with his embarrassment, Mark could see the point. And after everything that Pub had done to this city block…people weren’t really paying attention to what Pub was doing except to note that it gave them plenty of time to run away, out of the city and away from the colossal terror of the striped feline.

“O-okay,” the panther had reluctantly agreed, blushing heavily once he was down to just his underwear, a bright yellow pair of boxer briefs. Here the tiger took a surprising turn; instead of just yanking the briefs down, he placed his massive nose lightly on top of the tiny panther’s member, giving the briefs a nice long sniff.

“You smell as good as ever,” Pub said, letting out a happy sigh that betrayed no hint of teasing or irony. When he noticed that Mark had grown hard, though, his teasing side came out once more. “So, even though you’re afraid of little old me, you’re still turned on? That’s progress, at least,” he explained, before he gave the underwear a nice yank between his fingers, freeing the large erection that they barely contained. The giant tiger took a seat, blocking off traffic in both directions with a rear end so large that it actually reached into some of the ruins that Pub had created across from their apartment building. “And you know you always thought that building was an eyesore,” he teased as he relaxed, his true love in his palm, right where he wanted him. “Why don’t we do you first?” Pub offered. He didn’t wait for a response before he leaned over once more, giving the panther’s tiny but still impressive cock against his massive, sandpapery tongue. After the first lick, he lifted his muzzle up the slightest bit and apologized into the tiny panther, “I should have waited for you to say yes, but I couldn’t resist.” His warm breath washed over the panther, causing him to wriggle a little, involuntarily convulsing in pleasure.

Mark bucked against the tiger’s tongue as his massive boyfriend started to give him what must easily have been the largest blowjob in history. The tiger’s massive muzzle engulfed the panther’s dwarfed shaft, sucking on it gently but firmly, lapping up every last drop of pre-cum that spilled out. Occasionally Pub’s tongue would loll out of his mouth and give the panther’s entire body a nice, slick, warm lick. It was a lick that the panther couldn’t even pretend he minded, no matter how damp it left him. He was in heaven, and it didn’t surprise either of them that such massive overstimulation, like a giant licking his sensitive shaft, pushed him over the edge after only a few minutes. Mark shot out line after line of cum into his massive boyfriend’s mouth, the rough tongue lapping up every drop of the sweet and salty liquid that he could find. Mark practically spasmed with pleasure, and as he lay there, his entire body getting a thorough tasting from his massive boyfriend, he couldn’t conceive how this situation could get any better.

When the tiger removed his muzzle from the panther, having lapped up every bit of his cum that he could find, it didn’t surprise him that Mark was still hard. What did surprise him was the question that the panther managed to ask him, even as the tiger withdrew his mouth from his boyfriend and started to lie down, idly playing with Mark’s erection underneath his thumb. “How’d you get so big, Pub?” Mark was still brimming with energy, so even while he was asking the question, he was rubbing his erection up against the giant’s thumb that was rubbing against him, bucking his hips back and forth.

Pub let out a chuckle and evaded the question. “Who cares how I got so big? Maybe I enrolled in one of those drug trials at Thermodyne,” he teased, giving the panther a playful but loving squeeze as he lay supine in what used to be the apartment complex that he’d destroyed. It dirtied up some of his fur, of course, already covered in a mixture of wood splinters, drywall dust, and even pieces of “reinforced” concrete. None of them any match for a ferocious tiger of a sufficient size and build! He wrapped his thin yet huge lips around the panther, big enough now to more than cover the tiny panther. “Besides,” he added huskily as he lowered the panther slowly down his body down to the tumescent shaft of his own, “I think you have more pressing things to think about.”

Mark was plopped down in front of that bright red shaft, instantly overpowered by a wave of musk as he looked up to a cockhead that rose up high above him. “It won’t bite, you know,” Pub’s voice taunted up above, his paw gently nudging the smaller kitty forward. Mark had no choice but to take a few tentative steps forward and reach out and touch the massive organ. The blowjob was one thing; he could just close his eyes and enjoy it, he didn’t have to actively interact with a piece of his boyfriend’s now massive anatomy. He didn’t know where to start, or just what the tiger would react positively too. Running his hand lightly against the hot skin of the erect shaft, however, was more than enough to send a shudder up the large cat’s spine, his body wobbling and shifting as he felt the pleasure travel up and down his body. “There’s nothing you can do wrong, honey. Just wrap those lovely little arms of yours around it and give it a nice large hug, and I can take care of the rest.” Mark didn’t have to turn around and look up at his boyfriend to know that he had just given him a wink; he knew his massive feline all too well.

The panther was still tentative about wrapping his arms around the massive feline’s shaft; he didn’t feel like he could possibly please such a giant by himself. Still, he couldn’t deny that he wanted to give it a try, even if he had his doubts. The shaft was the size of a large tree, and too wide for him to give a full hug to, he quickly found out; his tiny arms reached most of the way around, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make them meet at the other side. “Ooo, you’re smaller than I thought you were,” his massive boyfriend rumbled down from up above. “Do you want some help, honey?” Mark kept his arms wrapped around the shaft as he looked back and up to his boyfriend’s face, now at least seventy feet away from him. He expected the tiger to act without actually waiting for a response, and so tensed up. Pub felt those small, furry arms tighten around his shaft and let out a resounding moan. “Maybe you can do this by yourself,” he cooed, “but I can always step in if you still trust me.” Here the massive tiger visibly winked at Mark, and the tiny panther couldn’t help but let out a little chuckle of his own.

“Lemme try this out for myself,” he shouted up at the tiger, who let out a little giggle and nodded before laying his head back down. Mark slowly sidled around the shaft, rubbing it up and down slightly as he did so, working his way around to his gigantic boyfriend’s equally gargantuan ballsack. When he finally reached them, he couldn’t help but note that the massive fleshy orbs were large enough to serve as bean bags, though he imagined his boyfriend wouldn’t be very happy with him if he just plopped down on top of one or both of them. Instead, he took a tentative, gentle step on one of the orbs, starting to rub it against his footpaw as he rubbed his arms up and down the feline’s fleshy shaft. On hearing another moan of approval, Mark planted his other footpaw on the other ball, gently kneeding the enormous scrotum against his paws, feeling the heat radiate through his pawpads and up his body in a wave that could only be described as orgasmic. He started out very slow, only putting a small fraction of his weight directly on his boyfriend’s testicles, but it quickly became apparent that at least as far as Pub was concerned, Mark was as light as a feather. His full weight was just enough to create a nice soft massage for the giant. He gradually increased his speed, adding more and more weight to rubbing that his footpaws were giving the massive scrotum while his arms were giving Pub’s shaft tighter and tighter squeezes.

Mark heard the pre sputter out before he saw or felt it; his head was right up against the feline’s shaft, after all. He had no choice but to let the thick, salty liquid rain down on him, making it easier to squeeze and rub the shaft while it grew harder and harder to get a secure grip. Luckily for the panther, he had a macro who couldn’t help but pay close attention to what was going on down there. He felt the panther start to stumble, and knowing full well that he’d eventually slip and fall, Pub knew that his time had come. “You’re amazing, Mark, but I think I’m just too big. Besides, you know how hard it is to get me off at normal size,” he added with a little sigh, “and I’m just an impatient monster!” Without any further warning, he wrapped the fingers on his left paw around his shaft, pinning his pre-cum coated boyfriend up against his burning shaft. He squeezed the “normal” sized panther affectionately, starting to rub him up and down, much further than the diminutive panther could have managed on his own.

Mark let out a loud gasp as he felt his arms start to separate even more, both the hand he was held in and the cock he was held against slowly growing larger against his increasingly diminutive form. “Oh, looks like I’m getting even larger,” Pub moaned up above, though Mark had no way of looking at his face anymore. He wasn’t even sure he had the capacity to say anything, or at least not anything that wasn’t just an incoherent moan that resembled a long “yeeeeesssss.” Pub kept on swelling larger, the panther kept on being rubbed up and down the wonderfully musky shaft, and they both kept on moaning, though Pub’s caused his entire body to vibrate, at least when the feeling became more than intense enough.

Pub’s growth, especially laying down like he was, was not a good sign for the buildings that had remained standing after Pub’s mini-rampage. His head started to break up the street behind the apartment building he’d savaged, and then the buildings across the street while his feet started to burst into the lobby of their old apartment building. That whole complex eventually collapsed after the cat started to kick a few times, and the resounding rumble of destruction made the giant kitty spurt out another shot of pre-cum. It cascaded down the sides of his cock, coating the now even more dwarfed kitty in more and more of the titan’s thick seed.

Mark was in a perfect, musky heaven. He felt his boyfriend grow larger and larger around him, the massive shaft that he was pressed up against only getting larger and larger. Soon enough, he stopped hearing the destruction sounds that Pub was probably still making, both because they were so far away from where Mark currently was and because the panther was completely encased in a light pink palm, pressed against a bright red cockhead.

Publius was soaring to unbelievable heights, Mark could just tell, but even though he grew more and more insignificant in comparison, he continued to be rubbed and squeezed up against his boyfriend’s cock, every movement he made sending a wave of pleasure through the mega and then giga-sized tiger. He felt his boyfriend outgrow the city block, then the neighborhood, and then the city itself in rapid succession; his body was now heavy enough to crack a tectonic plate, but still the giant kept on masturbating, using Mark as little more than a sex toy. Just when the cat grew large enough to peek his head out of the atmosphere, his cockhead easily miles tall by this point, Mark still miraculously pinned up against it in as tight of an embrace as he could manage…he passed the point of no return. He erupted, his cock head now larger than the largest supervolcano, the first wave of his cum brimming enough liquid to flood the Great Lakes. Some of it even shot so far up that it actually broke orbit and tumbled lazily out into space. The majority of it, though, came crashing back to Earth, drowning the few cities near the feline’s taint that had managed to survive the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions spurred by his massive growth spurt. Mark himself felt keenly aware of this, of all of this, just as he was keenly aware that he was being coated with massive quantities of sperm, lakes and lakes of the stuff, swimming his way up and up but never getting high enough to escape the white, salty liquid, until

Mark blinked and found himself back in the experiment room. The restraints remained fastened against his arms and legs, both of which now felt much sorer than when he’d entered the room. He met the vulpine’s eyes tentatively and she smiled back at him. “I take it you’re back with us, Mark?” she asked, to which he could only stupidly nod his head. “You had a nice…dream, didn’t you?”

The stoat piped up before the panther could even answer. “I’ll say! He ejaculated twice.” Experimental scientists were not exactly known for their tact, especially the ones at Thermodyne. Mark looked down towards his crotch. He was both surprised and not to see a massive cum stain against his blue jeans, leaking all the way down to the a little puddle on the floor.

“Oh, we’ll get you cleaned up, don’t worry,” the fox explained after she saw the worried look on Mark’s face. “You’re far from the first person to orgasm after taking RX-14.”

“Hey, don’t undervalue his achievement! He is the first one to orgasm twice,” the stoat added with a wry snort. The fox shot him a glare, but it was too late. Mark was by now blushing so heavily that it was visible under his dark black fur.

“I just had a n-nice dream about my b-boyfriend is all,” he blanched at the inadequate explanation.

“You’ll have a chance to describe your experience later,” the vulpine waved away Mark’s comments without a second thought. “To make sure the impression is clear, though, we do require two more rounds of testing.” She cocked her eyebrow suggestively. “Do you think you can handle it?”

At the chance to experience it all again, Mark couldn’t even feign bashfulness. He nodded vigorously as he waited for the stoat to inject him once more.