A mage's tale - chapter 2

Hi all!

Here is a new chapter for the story A mage's tale. It contains Goddess worshipping. As was voted for through the tag poll.
Chapter 1 was poster a long time ago, so I will post that one as well. Makes it easier for you to read it in one go. But you can also just scroll right away to chapter 2 if like :)

Happy holidays!

Chapter 1

Fifteen-year old Darran knelt down,  plucked some green moisty grass from the soil and sniffed at it. He  loved the radiant smell of nature in the early morning. 
Startled,  he gaped up when the frantic voices of his friends shook him out of his  moment of savor. In the distance, he saw them casting fireballs in their  hands and throw against a steep stony cliff near an idyllic small lake;  all girdled among a forest of pines. It was a place in the human realm  they always went if the need to fool around was present. 

 “Sheesh! Did you see that?!” Ackorn, one of his friends shouted after  launching a pyroblast on the already scourged stony surface. On impact,  it exploded in a cluster of smaller, sizzling fragments, swirling down,  until the wet soil quenched the heat. The small, fubsy bloke beamed like  a kindergarten bambino who successfully building a tower of blocks. 

“Not bad.” CJ, his other friend spoke in his characteristic deep  grumbling voice. “But get a load of this.” He circled both arms and  threw two blazing balls, which roared through the air, with a long tail  of sparks behind it, and submerged into even a bigger one before it  clenched with a splat against the still smoky cliff. Its reverberating  explosion exceeded that of his friend by far.

“Wooow!” Ackorn gasped in awe, admiring his proud-hearted friend.

“Pitiful.” Darran mingled in, both boys shook up, looking at him with curiosity.

He strutted towards his friends and pushed CJ aside.

“Shut your faces.” He silenced his buds, rolled up his sleeves and  mentally prepared himself. His buddies stood there, watching, in total  deference, heedful not to make a sound.
Inhaling deep, Darran closed  his eyes and recapitulated every subtle instruction the high mage had  given him. His mind and body had to work together with absolute  coherence if he wanted to succeed what he was about to do.
He recited the necessary words until, blue sparks awakened and danced about in the palm of his hands.
He brought both of his hands together in a shooting stance.
Darran  rose his concentration even higher, maximized it, to a degree, where  every possible extern stimulus was filtered out of his consciousness. It  was only him and the maturing ball of electricity, crepitate in his  hands.
He felt an excessive flow of power coursing through his body and directed it all to the core of the powerful attack to be.
In the far back of his mind, beyond his impregnable wall of concentration, he heard the gasps of wonderment of his friends.
He opened his luminous eyes and blasted off, in a swift motion.
It  roared and sparked its way towards the stone wall, with a trail of  small fading lighting bolts to split, crack and fade behind it.
With  a resonant bang, it exploded against the thick stone wall, cleaved a  massive crater in it, with gravel and sparks bursting every which way.
Its  sound echoed over the tree tops, causing a flock of birds to flutter  off. Both Ackorn and CJ made gestures and utter of reverence.
When all sound diminished, a sudden voice crawled out of the woods.

“Congratulations brother.” The voice of a young girl spoke. “You definitely have the biggest cock.”

They all spun and saw a girl with glossy maroon hair who  approached them in a perky manner; her feet rustled through the high  grass when her sneakers plowed through.
Darran’s feeling of euphoria  immediately abated into nothingness when he saw his detested sister  coming for them. How was she able to find them? Wasn’t it enough for her  to pester him at home? Does she really have to intrude his spare fun  time with his friends?

“What?” She said when she noticed all three gawking at her. "That's what this was all about right? A tinhorn cock-race.”

Darran looked at her with deep disdain and annoyance.

“What are you doing here Quisinda?” He snorted “your not supposed to be here.”

“Well, neither are you whipster.” She pinched his nose and winked at  Ackorn with a seductive smile, swaying her dark red hair. The latter  immediately melted with a sheepish smile.
With her hands on her hips, she scrutinized the cracked stone wall.

“Impressive brother. Impressive indeed.” She whistled. “Can I play along?”

Both Ackorn and CJ looked distraught, when Quisinda pointed her  lovely, begging eyes to them. It was more than obvious they felt the  tension between brother and sister and didn’t know how to stand around  them.
Darran’s tolerance breached its limit when he saw her cocky  attitude, manipulating his friends with her enticing lips and flirty  winks.

“Fuck off. We don’t want you here.” He blurted.

At first, Quisinda looked at him, surprised, then; a smile formed on her face when she trudged to him.

“Im sorry there brother, correct me if I’m wrong but; are you actually defying me?” Quisinda asked with a small laughter at the end of the sentence. She crossed her arms with a challenging look on her face.
Darran  swallowed hard, but kept his bravado. He knew that his sister was very  powerful as a mage, but he just couldn’t handle the fact that she was  degrading him in front of his best friends. Besides, his quite recent  destructive achievement, with the stone wall, gave his confidence a  great boost. Maybe, after all those demeaning and painful years, he  actually had a chance against her.
A red glow engulfed his body when  Darran amplified, and directed all of his energies towards his hands.  He had made his decision.
Two blue colored flames ignited in his palms, becoming more radiant by the second.
Beyond his whispering chants he heard his friends gasp in awe when they sensed the enormous power beaming off Darran.

“Make it count brother.” Was all Quisinda said when she realized her brother decided to go for the hard way.
She stood there, with an inscrutable look on her face, arms crossed.

“Don’t worry. I will.” Darran said.

It seemed Quisinda intended to grant him the time of the world.
Darran would make sure that this would be the last mistake she ever makes. Her arrogance will be her doom.
He  would make her pay for all those years of pejorative jinxes, like,  turning his whole body into stone, except his head and force him to suck  empty, until the last drop, a bottle of seawater.
Or, to conjure a hairy third arm on his back with a will of its own, in a state of berserk.
As  of late, Quisinda seemed to be fond of reducing his size to that of an  action figure and plunge him in all kinds of survival situations, like,  fighting mystical three-eyed rats with the ability to sneeze  hydrochloric acid when threatened.
Darran was unfailingly powerless  to stop her. Being older, Quisinda was constantly a few steps ahead of  him, with more knowledge, intellect and power. His futile attempts to  counter-spell her hazard assaults merely resulted in derisive laughters  and extended tortures.
Recent years, however, the ever-present gap  between them simply became bigger. This was due to the fact that  Quisinda was a positive marvel, shredding every dished sorcery challenge  like a beast.
No one knew where her potential would take her and  here was Darran, ready to challenge her for a fight, with his best buds  as audience.
He brought his hands together, emerged the blue flaming  elements into one, melting it into an even bigger element and prepared  to blast her smirk off with a full blow in the face.
Darran wrenched  every bit of arcane energy from his fibers, concentrated it all to the  one point in his hands. He wanted to make sure his sister would feel the  full potential of his powers. He wasn’t even sure if she would survive  this attack, he didn’t care though, good riddance. He hated her to the  core.

“You rile me with the linger there brother.” He heard  Quisinda fuming. “Allow me to kill some time while I wait for your...  finishing touch.” 
She brought up her index-finger and in a matter  of seconds an enormous radiant ball of red energy sprouted, balancing on  the tip of her finger, outshining Darran’s conceived element by far. 
He felt an immense energy beaming from it, pushing the force of his own  carefully conjured spell aside like a matchstick who tries to compete  with a fire pit.
Darran’s complacency staggered when he looked into  his sister’s radiant eyes and heard the loud crackles of her floating  enchantment. It flickered and brightened up her face, giving it an eerie  look.
He noticed an almost indistinct crooked smile forming on one corner of pretty lips when she looked back at him.
A subtle sign she had sensed his shaky attitude.
How can a girl her age radiates such ridiculous power? Was it a mistake to challenge this teenage marvel?

A clear answer pronounced itself when Quisinda suddenly pointed her  finger to the stone cliff, intonated some extraneous words and blasted  it whole to a million pieces. The ear-shattering explosion thundered  every present noise back in its hole, echoing every which way through  the thick woods. Subsequently, an avalanche of innumerable pieces of  stone streamed down, rolling like waterfall, when the once solid,  centuries-old cliff crumbled into a large heap.

“And that’s how its done gentlemen.” Quisinda said with saturated hubris, after all wreckage lulled.

Aghast, eyes bulgy, Darran had just witnessed a true display of  power, a destruction spell of master degree, pulled off by his  seventeen-year-old sister, without breaking a sweat.
He immediately regretted his bravado from earlier and made his spell dwindle, like a fading candle, with meager hopes of mercy. 
Quisinda looked at him, wonder-struck. 

“Wait a minute… am I missing something here?” She asked when she saw  his shriveling spell. “Weren’t you about to melt my face off?” She  asked.

Darran stumbled over his own words, all fidgeted. “I-I was just  m-messing around.” He said with a mortified smile. “You k-k-know me…  right?!”

“I know you alright.” Quisinda’s face turned dark serious.  “...and you should know me too.” She walked over to him. Quisinda was a  few inches taller than him, so he had to look up when she placed herself  right in front of him. Her boobs almost touched his chest when he felt  her hot breath in his face. 
The cute freckles on her cheek got outshined by her green irises, which spat fire when she spoke.

“No one challenges me and backs down before I had my share of fun.”

An awkward silence fell whereby Darran eyed his friends in hopes for  some reinforcements. This was to no avail. He could see in their eyes  that they were even more petrified of this ginger powerhouse than him. 
He swallowed deep and fetched some courage before turning his gaze into his sister’s green watchers. 
He felt too proud to beg for forgiveness, so he braced himself for  whatever Quisinda had in store for him. He was completely delivered to  her whims now. 
Suddenly, he noticed her becoming bigger. He soon realized that was only an optical illusion for he was the one shrinking. 
He saw her healthy bosom slid by when he was already shrunk to the height of her pale, flat abdomen. 

“Please don’t!” He begged. “Anything but this… please!” His voice raised a few octaves out of despair.

He was slowly shrunk passed her denim shorts and saw the folds in them when her polished hands rested on her slender hips. 
He looked up and witnessed her firm, bare thighs rising, looming over, like emerging pillars of doom.
When  Darran’s size descended beneath the lower half of her shin, a slight of  worry streamed over when he didn’t feel the shrink process slack. She  had usually shrunk him to the size of an action figure before she  plunged him in her twisted games.
He got struck by panic when he had  shrunk further and even her sneaker transformed into a monumental  architecture and subsequently, sunk below the blades of grass until they  appeared like tall trees to him.
It was like he was suddenly  emerged into the world of insects. Everything was gloomy dark around  him, apart from a few scratchy sprits of sunlight, wrestling their way  through the thick roof of grass.
He looked every which way and could  see distinct details of once trivial things, grains of sand that now  seemed like small pointy rocks and a common grass leaf which looked like  some otherwordly tree.
The sound of rustle and cracks yanked him  out of his contemplation when he pivoted and witnessed a sight which got  him beset by deep anxiety.
An ant, at least the size of a small car, was groping about with razor-sharp mandibles, just a few metres away from him.
Darran now realized how incredible tiny his sister had made him. He never deemed her that capable.
It pierced his already present fear for her only deeper.
With  powers like these, she was downright dangerous, maybe a serious threat  to society even if malicious intentions brewed up in her mind. What more  was she capable of?

A rumbling thunder yanked him out of his amazement.
It came from  the sky. He couldn’t see much due to the packed, overhanging grass, but  he knew that it was merely the sound of his now massive sister laughing.  It sounded like the booming laughter of God herself.

Chapter 2

CJ and Ackorn's eyes were still transfixed on the piece of grass where they'd witnessed Darran's body dwindling away just a moment ago. Their mouth and eyes were stunned, wide open in a glare of shock. Yet despite that, there was also a slight remnant of hope doused upon their expression.

It amused Quisinda. It was like they expected to see Darran suddenly emerging from the grass to unleash a fatal blow upon his sister.

The only thing my brother will battle are the ants in the dirt beneath my feet.

Quisinda could not blame them, though. Darran's friends had always been simple-minded fools. Their wits were way too inferior to truly grasp the depth of Quisinda's powers.

Darran was merely a tiny louse in the dirt right now, forced to fight off the littlest of insects to survive. The only way for him to grow back to his former size was if Quisinda would allow it.

"Care to join your friend, lads?" she gestured gracefully toward the grass at her feet.

Both CJ and Ackorn looked up with bulging eyes. Quisinda chuckled as she saw them flinching, taking a step backward as she brought her hand up with a sardonic smirk plastered on her cute, freckled face. Electrical arcs sparked and swirled around her fingers.

"Scared?" she asked.

"BOO!"

Quisinda laughed boisterously as Ackorn shrieked and slumped backward with his not so small rear in the dirt. He received a reprimanding look from his friend.

"Ha! You guys are delightfully entertaining. I can give you that! I see why my brother likes to hang around with you lot. It makes him appear less stupid than when he's in the company of people who deem him less clever than he dares to admit.

"Get it?" she asked Ackorn, who was looking at her like he was busy pushing out a large dump.

"Of course, you don't. But he does!" she placed her hands on her hips and looked down.

"Aint that right, my tiny whiny little brother, you?" she said in a condescending voice. Quisinda squatted, zeroed her eyes on the spot where her minuscule brother was probably fighting off ants and sow-bugs and such. Tiny electrical sparks shot down from the tip of her finger, striking blades of grass, scorching them, as Quisinda unleashed a prolific thunderstorm for poor Darran.

"You'll kill him!" Ackorn called out as he took a step forward.

He flinched, almost falling on his butt again when Quisinda treated him on an angry glare and added, "I know what I'm doing, dipstick! And besides, what do you care anyway? You were always a doofus, nothing more than a punching bag in the eyes of my brother. I'm doing you a favor here, and you know it."

Quisinda frowned, "What the?..."

She turned her head and looked over her shoulder. Something was tickling her butt.

"My, my, my, what do we have here?" she pivoted on her feet to turn around. The cut-off denim shorts, wrapped nicely around her well-shaped butt, pulled tighter when she plunged her bare knees in the grass. Placing her hands on the ground, Quisinda looked down upon a humble army of about ten humanoids who appeared to be smaller than her pinky finger even. Quisinda sniggered as she saw them yelling at her with squeaky, foreign voices while hurling tiny spears and arrows at her.

"Mother always told me stories about the Frivelies." Quisinda stared with interest at the enraged little creatures. "A tiny race of people with magical abilities, roaming about in the human realm. I always dismissed those stories as nonsense. Guess mother was right all along."

Ackorn and CJ came ambling up beside her, eager to witness Quisinda's discovery.

"You're not stepping on my brother now, are you, Ackorn?" Quisinda said in earnestness.

Ackorn quickly jumped back, inspecting the underside of his shoe.

A curt derisive snort escaped Quisinda's lips, "You're lucky I still sense his life's energy."

She turned her attention back to the Frivelies again, drooling with curiosity, as they battered her knees and hands with puny, harmless weapons.

"If you guys are here, your village must be close by too. It's a shame I can't understand you. Although I have serious doubts that you guys would tell me willingly." She reached her arm out. Tiny shrieks were heard when Quisinda's hand lunged at the group of Frivelies. They stood their ground bravely, hurling arrows and spears, but were bested with ease by Quisinda's seemingly impregnable huge hand. Quisinda laughed with joy as the little Frivelie, who was firmly clutched within her fist, pounded away with all the strength his cute small hands could muster in a desperate bid to wrestle loose.

"You're a feisty one, aren't you! Here, let me help you." Quisinda gently placed a finger on top of his head. The little guy kept screaming and pounding. Then his body came at ease, hanging limply between Quisinda's clutched finger.

Quisinda closed her eyes and took a long breath as her mind sank in deep concentration. A luminous, blue aura engulfed the little guy, swirling its way toward Quisinda's head.

"No way! Is she trying to… "

CJ nodded.

"But how? Not even my fa-" CJ shushed him.

"There," Quisinda opened her eyes. "Thank you, little dude. Go along, play with your friends again."

Panic broke loose in the small crowd of Frivelies when Quisinda's huge hand hovered over them. "Bombs away!" she released her grip and chuckled when the little guy bowled them all over.

Quisinda stood back up and was about to amble off when Ackorn started to blabber, "That. Was. Freakin. Aaawesome what you did back there, Quisinda! Mind reading?! Not even my grandfather could pull off such an insidious spell without losing a part of his sanity! And, and, and you carried it out like a fuckin-"

"He always like this?" Quisinda spun her head, looking at CJ.

CJ just shrugged.

"It annoys me." Quisinda snapped her fingers and Ackorn finds himself shrinking down until he was roughly one foot tall.

"You're going to pipe down, or you want to join Darran and his amazing adventures among Lucas Nickle and his ant buddies?" Quisinda cocked an eyebrow, looking down upon Ackorn. The latter merely nods in agreement.

"Good." Quisinda continued her journey, taking a few steps before she spun around again.

"He's lonely. Go join him." She snapped her fingers again and CJ gasped as he too started shrinking.

"You both be quit now, understood?" Quisinda did not wait for an answer, but strode off, With both Ackorn and CJ, who were roughly one foot tall, in tow. They tried in vain to keep up with her positively tall legs.

"It must be around here somewhere." Bushes rustled as Quisinda wrestled her way through a thick pack of branches and leaves until a clearing revealed itself in front of her.

Her eyes widened as an entire miniature settlement stretched out in front of her feet, vaster than she could ever imagine, with countless of so-called frivelies milling about in a medieval-like town to fulfill their daily business.

"Well I'll be…"

Quisinda frowned as she checked her feet.

"Hey? Why did we stop?" Ackorn said, rubbing his nose after it bounced against Quisinda's calf.

"She did it." CJ uttered in awe, joining the others.

"Look! They even have a castle!" Ackorn pointed. "I bet some fat, filthy rich king lives there. Let's abduct him and demand ransom!"

Their presence did not stay unnoticed for too long. While all simple servants and peasants ran off to cower in their wooden huts, a considerable amount of warriors assembled, forming a front to face the invading giants.

"Hey?!" We come in peace!" Ackorn conjured a ward to protect himself from the barrage of arrows and spears raining down on them.

CJ laughed, conjuring a protective ward also against the spray of steel and wood being hurled at them, "You've just suggested abducting their king for godsakes! Where is the peace in that?"

"I was going to ask him politely," Ackorn said in an apologetic tone. He screamed out as one arrow slipped past his protective ward, piercing his big toe.

Quisinda, who was vastly larger than her peers and impervious against the frivelie weapons, witnessed it all in sweet repose. She cocked her head when a procession of robed individuals marched their way to the frontline, guarded by a crescent-shaped perimeter of warriors with large shields upfront.

"Here comes the magic." Quisinda mumbled, eying them with peaked curiosity. "let's see what you got."

Both Ackorn and CJ grunted while suffering greatly under the barrage of elemental attacks hurling their way. Pyro blasts, bolts of lightning, interspersed with shards of ice, whistled and cracked through the air until they clattered against the faltering wards of both Ackorn and CJ.

"Enlarge me!" Ackorn screamed between huffs and puffs.

"No need." Quisinda answered as she watched the spectacle at her feet with great amusement. "It won't make a difference."

"Bullshit! You seem to suffer no harm by their attacks!" Ackorn called out, nearly at the end of his rope.

Quisinda sighed, "You're magical potential stands independent of your physical size. In other words, big or small, you're still a weakling."

"Aaaargh!" Ackorn fell to the ground as his protective ward shattered under the ceaseless attacks. A short time later, CJ's ward followed as he too fell down in the dirt, screaming and covering his face in vain against the flood of elemental attacks.

Quisinda snorted, "Figures… I'll handle this." She rose her hand in the air and stretched out her index finger, pointing it upwards. All elemental attacks, which were whistling through the air, came at a sudden stop.

She laughed as she noticed all those tiny, magical Frivelies sweating from exhaustion while their combined effort appeared fruitless against Quisinda's magical supremacy.

"That all you got? Boring…" she flicked her wrist and sent all the elemental attacks back to their conjurers. Panic broke loose among the frivelie ranks as a rain of fire, ice and lightning crashed down upon them, demanding casualties.

Quisinda raised both hands, palms up, "I'll teach you. You're trying to screw the wrong girl." She uttered some words of enchantment.

Screeching pandemonium erupted throughout the whole Frivelie settlement as dark clouds packed together and unleashed a devastating thunderstorm. Quisinda's laughter echoed through the air as huts and bridges and stables received the full brunt of flickering lightning bolts cracking down from the dark sky. Everyone was running about, all frenzied, as realization sank in that no Frivelie was save for Quisinda's wrath.

Quisinda cocked an eyebrow as she saw a lone figure galloping its way to her on an evenly-proportioned horse through throngs of screaming frivelies and blazing fires. He was dressed like an aristocrat, donned in an expensive looking garment, with some relic resting on his head.

The king

He galloped all the way up to Quisinda, who loomed over him like some apocalyptic Goddess, unsaddled and raised his hands in the air. He started to shout up to her in some foreign language. Quisinda did not understand a word, but his tone sounded soothing. She lowered her hands and immediately, the thunderstorm subsided, revealing a clear blue sky as the pack of dark clouds faded away.

Little by little, more and more Frivelies dared to shuffle closer as they gathered up behind their king, still on their guard for the gigantic teen girl looming over them all.

Quisinda scrutinized him, narrowing her eyes before she crouched down and placed her hand on the ground in an inviting manner. At first, the king and his people flinched in fear by her sudden movement, but when he realized that it was meant as a friendly gesture, he took a step forward. Prodded by Quisinda's gentle smile, the king took another step, then another as he approached a sprawled-out feminine hand the size of a house.

He climbed on Quisinda's hand, who kept treating him a warm smile and sat down in the middle of her palm. Quisinda stood back up to her full height and sized the little king up, scanning him with her radiant green eyes.

"You brave, brave man." She said.

An agonizing scream followed when the king combusted in a living torch as scorching flames started gnawing at him all over his body.

When all was done, Quisinda simply dropped his charred remains on the dirt below.

"There…" she clapped her hands clean. "now you serve me."

She cocked her head as she noticed that all Frivelies were slowly backing away from her. A single individual ran off, more followed.

"You stay here, right now!" Quisinda commanded. No one listened. Panic broke loose as all frivelies scurried off to find safety for the brutal teen giantess.

"You dare to defy me?!" Quisinda made a gesture with her hand and a blazing inferno brewed up at the town's perimeter, grower wider and higher, until a massive wall of flames enclosed it all, cutting off every way of escape for the poor Frivelies.

Quisinda chuckled at their futile attempts to find a way out. With her palm wide open, Quisinda slowly started to close her fingers into a tight fist. Simultaneously, the grand circle of flames contracted, becoming tighter and smaller as it burned homes and other structures at the town's outer perimeter.

"Made up your mind yet?" Quisinda's voice boomed above the scorching flames. One by one, every Frivelie lowered, bending their knees in submission to the almighty Quisinda. It was either that or face a painful death.

"Thats right," The wall of flames shrank down subsequently after Quisinda lowered her hand.

"you will all worship me now as your new Goddess."