Mud-Pud Armor

The flash of light fades from your eyes. You blink, trying to clear your vision. Something is wrong. The dungeon walls look different, the rough stone that was at eye level moments ago now towers above you like the walls of a canyon. A pebble sits nearby, except it's the size of a boulder.

You look down at your hands, turning them over. They appear the same as always. But when you look up again, a mushroom that should barely reach your ankle now looms over you like a tree.

The fae's laughter still echoes somewhere in the cavern. You remember her offer, a simple game, she'd said. Answer a riddle and receive a blessing of mana that would last a lifetime. Fail and face a consequence of her choosing.

The riddle had seemed so simple. You'd been confident.

You'd been wrong.

Your sword lies on the ground nearby. It shrunk with you, thank the gods, along with your clothing. Small mercies. You pick it up and the familiar weight in your hand provides some comfort, though you know it's now barely the length of a needle to anyone of normal size.

A sound reaches your ears, a wet, dragging noise from somewhere down the corridor. At your normal height, you could identify dungeon creatures by their sounds alone. Slimes gurgle. Rats skitter. Goblins chatter. This sound is familiar, but the It sounds massive.

You press yourself against the base of the stone wall. The moss here is thick, each strand as wide as your arm. You push between them, creating a hiding spot of sorts.

The sound grows closer.

A shadow falls across the corridor floor. You peer through the moss and see it, a common dungeon slug, the kind you've stepped over a hundred times without thought. Brown-grey, covered in slick mucus, leaving a glistening trail behind it. Normally they're passive creatures, feeding on fungus and detritus, no threat to any adventurer.

Now the thing is the size of a horse.

It slides past your hiding spot, oblivious to your presence. The smell hits you, wet earth and rot. Its eyestalks wave lazily as it moves, each one thick as your torso. If it turned toward you, if it decided the salt on your skin smelled appetizing, you couldn't outrun it. Your sword might pierce its flesh, but what damage could you really do at this size?

The slug continues on, disappearing around a bend. You release a breath you didn't know you were holding.

You need to think. The entrance to the dungeon is perhaps three hundred paces from where the fae ambushed you, by normal measurement. At your current size, that distance might as well be miles. And between here and there.

Another sound. This one you recognize immediately.

Skittering. Many legs moving fast across stone.

A cave spider descends from the ceiling on a silk thread, its body the size of a wagon. Eight eyes reflect the dim bioluminescent glow of the dungeon fungi. Eight legs, each tipped with hooked claws, flex and grip the thread as it lowers itself.

It hasn't seen you yet. It's focused on something else, maybe the slug's trail, maybe a vibration from elsewhere.

You don't wait to find out. You push deeper into the moss, crawling on hands and knees, trying to put distance between yourself and the creature. The moss is damp and smells of earth. It soaks through your pants and sleeves.

The spider reaches the floor with a soft tap of chitin on stone. You can hear it moving.

You keep crawling.

The moss thins ahead. Beyond it lies open ground, a stretch of bare stone floor that would take you seconds to cross at normal size. Now you estimate it at several minutes of exposed running. On the far side, a crack in the wall might be large enough to shelter in. Might be.

Behind you, the skittering stops.

Through the moss strands you can see the spider has gone still. Its cluster of eyes seems to scan the area. Spiders hunt by vibration as much as sight. Every movement you make sends tremors through the ground.

The moment stretches. Your lungs burn with the need to breathe deeper.

The spider turns away. It begins climbing back up its thread, ascending toward whatever web it's built in the darkness above.

You breathe again.

But you know this is only the beginning. Between you and the dungeon entrance lies a gauntlet of creatures that never posed a threat before, slugs, spiders, beetles, centipedes, and worse. Things that live in cracks and hunt in shadows, things you've never even noticed at your normal size.

And beyond the creatures, there's the dungeon itself. Gaps between stones become chasms. Puddles become lakes. A single step for a normal person is a journey for you.

You could wait for adventurers. The harvest festival runs three days. Maybe a party will come early, seeking to avoid the crowds. Maybe someone will find you, recognize you're not vermin, help you somehow.

Or maybe they'll step on you without ever knowing.

The dungeon groans around you, settling in its ancient bones. Somewhere water drips. Somewhere something breathes in the dark.

You grip your tiny sword and begin moving toward the crack in the wall. One obstacle at a time. One step at a time.

Survival first. Everything else after.

---

The darkness of the dungeon presses around you. You've been hiding in the crack for what feels like hours, listening to the sounds of creatures moving past. Your legs ache from crouching. Your throat is dry.

Then you see it, light bouncing off the walls, growing brighter. Not the soft glow of fungi or the cold gleam of bioluminescence. Warm light.

Torchlight.

Footsteps follow, heavy clanking. Metal on stone. Armor.

You press forward, peering out from the crack. A figure rounds the corner, and your heart leaps. An adventurer. A knight, judging by the plate armor covering most of his body. He's large, broad-shouldered, with a thick neck and-

He steps into better light and you see his face. A boar. Black fur covering a wide snout, tusks jutting from his lower jaw, small eyes squinting in the torchlight. A beastmen, the kind common enough in the border towns. His ears twitch as he walks, listening.

He holds a torch in one hand. The other hand is pressed firmly against his crotch, adjusting himself through his armor with..

"Gonna find me some little ones tonight," he mutters to himself, a grin spreading across his snout. "Gonna feel so fuckin' good."

He chuckles, a deep rumbling sound, and keeps walking. His armor clanks with each step. A sword hangs at his hip, standard issue. His belly strains slightly against the lower portion of his breastplate, he's thick, carrying weight in his midsection.

You don't have time to be picky. He's your only chance.

You scramble out of the crack and wave your arms. At your size, you must look like an insect. You shout, but your voice comes out thin and high.

The boar stops. His ears swivel toward you. He squints, lowering the torch.

"The fuck?"

He crouches down, bringing his face closer to the ground. His snout twitches. You can smell him, sweat and metal.

"Holy shit," he breathes. "You're a tiny fuckin' person."

He reaches down with his free hand, thick fingers closing around you before you can react. He lifts you up, bringing you level with his face. His palm is warm and slightly damp with sweat. You can see his features clearly, the coarse black fur, the wet nose, the brown eyes peering at you with curiosity.

His expression shifts. The cocky grin falters. His ears fold back slightly.

"Uh." He glances around the dungeon, then back at you. "You didn't hear what I was sayin' just now, did ya?"

His face fur doesn't show a blush, but you can see the heat rising in his ears. They've gone from black to a faint reddish tint at the edges.

"Was just, uh. Talkin' about slimes. For alchemical purposes. Reagents and shit." He clears his throat. "Totally normal knight stuff."

His eyes won't meet yours, darting around the cavern instead.

"Anyway! What happened to ya, little guy?" he asks, clearly eager to change the subject. His breath washes over you, hot and smelling of ale. "You get cursed or some shit?"

You try to explain, the fae, the riddle, the shrinking, but before you can get more than a few words out, a roar echoes through the dungeon.

The boar's ears snap upright. His eyes go wide.

"Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck."

He moves fast for someone his size. His hand tilts and you slide off his palm, falling through the gap between his breastplate and his body. You tumble through darkness, fabric brushing against you, until you land on something soft and warm.

His belly.

You're inside his armor, pressed between the metal exterior and his sweat-damp tunic. The fabric is thin enough that you can feel the heat of his skin through it, the give of fat and muscle beneath. You grab fistfuls of the cloth, trying to find purchase as his body lurches into motion.

He's running.

"Shit shit shit shit shit-"

His voice comes from above, muffled by layers of cloth and metal. His heartbeat pounds rapidly against your back. Each stride tosses you around, his belly shifting and bouncing beneath you. You slide down, then up, then sideways, clinging to the tunic to avoid tumbling into the dark recesses of his armor.

Something changes. His breathing hitches. You feel a shudder run through his body that has nothing to do with running.

"N-no, not now-fuck-"

His voice cracks. His stride falters for a moment before he picks it back up.

You're scrambling for grip, your tiny hands and feet pressing into the soft flesh of his belly through the thin fabric. Each movement you make seems to affect him. His stomach tenses, then releases. A sound escapes him, something between a grunt and a whine.

"S-stop movin' around so much," he gasps out between breaths. "Please-fuck-I can't-"

But you can't stop. The bouncing of his run keeps throwing you off balance. You cling tighter, pressing your whole body against him for stability.

He makes a strangled noise.

The footsteps behind seem to fade slightly. He's outpacing whatever was chasing him, but his running has become uneven, jerky.

Then, suddenly, the running stops.

You hear panting. Clacking sounds, buckles being undone with trembling fingers. Something heavy hits the ground with a thud. Then lighter sounds, more buckles, straps being loosened.

Light floods in as he lifts his tunic, pulling it up over the swell of his belly. You blink against the sudden brightness.

He's sitting with his back against a tree, having apparently fled outside the dungeon entrance into the forest. His breastplate lies discarded beside him. His tunic is bunched up under his armpits, exposing his torso, a wide expanse of black fur over soft fat, rising and falling with his heavy breaths.

You're still clinging to the fur of his belly, tiny hands gripping the coarse strands.

He looks down at you. His tongue lolls out of his mouth. Drool drips from his lower lip onto his chest. His eyes are half-lidded, unfocused.

Both of his hands are pressed against his crotch, fingers working at the fastenings of his lower armor.

Then he seems to realize you're watching.

His whole body goes rigid. His hands freeze on his crotch. His ears flatten completely against his skull and that reddish tint spreads across them fully, visible even through the black fur.

"I-this isn't-" he stammers. "I wasn't gonna-"

He pulls his hands away from his groin, holding them up in the air. The bulge in his pants is impossible to miss, straining against the fabric, but he's pretending it doesn't exist.

"It's a medical condition!" he blurts out. "The armor chafes! Gets real uncomfortable when ya run, and I gotta-I gotta adjust things-"

He's sweating heavily, and not just from the exertion. A bead of drool escapes his mouth and lands on his belly, inches from where you're clinging.

"Fuck," he mutters, squeezing his eyes shut. "Fuck, this is so embarrassin'. You probably think I'm some kinda freak."

His belly shifts as he breathes. His heartbeat is still racing, pounding through the flesh you're pressed against.

He opens one eye, peeking down at you.

"You're not gonna tell anyone about this, right?" His voice comes out smaller than before. "Like, when we get ya back to normal size? This stays between us?"

His ears twitch nervously. Despite his size, despite the armor and the sword and the muscles beneath the fat, he looks almost vulnerable in this moment.

"Name's Chandum," he mumbles, still not quite meeting your eyes. "What's yours, little guy?"