Consequences by intergalelactic

Humans were stubborn creatures. They had been so since their conception, and they would remain so until the very last drew their final breath. Oftentimes, their bullheadedness was endearing to the more timeless races of the realm. Let them strive for their independence, they’d say. Their lives were frail, feeble, and far too short to be of any consequence. Such had been the King of the Summer Court’s opinion for several centuries, and he had been more than content to leave the mortals engulfed into his kingdom alone.

After all, the might of a hundred mortal armies would be nothing against a single faery. At least, that’s what he had thought.

And then one rebellious, wretched fiefdom had murdered a pixie.

They brought their full strength to bear against him, a slow and brutal death by a thousand arrows and wings set aflame. There was talk that the survivors danced around his relatively enormous corpse through the night, celebrating their “hard-fought” victory over one of their oppressors. Their desecration did not end there either, for they cut off the long strands of his hair as if it were bundles of wheat, skinned him to make leather, and chipped at his exposed bone through rotted flesh that they may forge new weapons.

The trees, faithful as they were and ever watchful, carried the horror story over hill, through glen, and over dell until it reached the inquisitive ears of King Mazus.

His fury could be felt throughout every corner of his lands. It made the grass shiver and the branches quake, the soil quivered and the riverbeds fell low so as not to meet his gaze. The four winds carried his anger like a plague, turning the air thick with dread and malice that no mortal alive–and in fact, very few of the Fair Folk themselves–had ever felt.

A mortal may not have understood the great King’s rage, for after all, the pixie to him was no bigger than a particularly pesky fly and was one of hundreds of thousand of his ilk. Mazus had never met the little thing, and would likely never know his name or where he came from…but the pixie was his. A member of his Court, torn apart from the lowest and most fickle of creatures under his dominion. It should have never happened, and yet it had, and the consequences would be severe indeed.

The King’s procession was a precise and careful march. He did not linger overlong or stray unnecessarily, for his destination and purpose were all too clear. Earth trembled as he walked, the distant rumbles of doom heralding his approach to the little village that saw fit to defy him. Though they tried to arm themselves as they had before with the little pixie, the mortals knew that the foe approaching them would not fall to cold-iron tipped arrows and white hot flame.

Though they denied his sovereignty over him for so many years, they knew it was their Lord King who approached them now. To be under his rule was to know his breath was the wind, his heartbeat pumped life through the land just as it did his own body. Try as they might to reject him, demonize him, hate him…He was everywhere, he made up everything from the frailest leaf to the mightiest of mountains, and the mortals? The mortals had invited the wrath of the land itself to their door.

When they could spot him in the distance, the smallest flicker of hope anyone had to defeat him was quickly snuffed out. His emerald eyes seemed to bore into their souls as he steadily approached them with each earth-rattling footstep. Though his face was impassive, the fires of his righteous justice seemed to light the Summer King like he were a ray of blistering sunlight. The closer he became, the bigger he seemed to become. Larger than mountains, big enough to scrape the sky and then so utterly enormous that clouds only reached his hips.

The mortals could not walk two feet without stumbling, falling over themselves as their world shook from the King’s gait. A shadow in his silhouette fell over the countryside, blocking out the sun only for it to be replaced by the King himself. Blinding, beautiful, and terrible.

When he finally came upon them, towering so high that even with their necks craned as far back as they could go, they could not rightly see his face. His glittering verdant wings spread out behind him, nearly blowing them away as he did so, and making them feel even more pathetically minuscule before him.

“Such impudence.” Mazus growled, his voice so soft and yet it carried the force of a bomb as it cracked against the ears of a thousand frightened mortals and only served to strike more fear into their hearts.

The King lowered himself down to the ground, knees pressed so deep into the ground they formed new canyons. His arms crested the horizon as he planted his hands on either side of the fiefdom so that he may loom his upper body over them and completely block out the blue sky above. They were, as they always had been, surrounded by him. The heavens were now his face, the unnerving perfection of the Fair Folk glaring down at them with poisonous green eyes and hair so fair it would make the finest gold look dull.

“Mortals do not exist in my kingdom out of any respect for your former claim on these lands.” Said the King. “If I wanted, if I were so inclined, there would be no mortals here. You and your kin remain because you are nothing to us, and removing you would be a waste of our time.”

Nothing. The word echoed for miles, settled itself in their ears and wrapped around their hearts like a noose.

“My people place ample value on debt. You, and every single human within my lands, owe me quite the substantial one. It is I who keeps your fields thriving and your waters fresh; who keeps you safe from the hands of my brethren. Without me, you would have been wiped off the face of the earth the second you became mine.”

Mazus’ angry gaze only intensified as he leaned down further, engulfing the entire fiefdom in his warmth. Each breath he took popped their ears and rattled their windows, they could feel his heartbeat through the ground as it thrummed and throbbed fast within his massive chest. His enormous, soft lips hovered above them, and his words assaulted them with each booming, thunderous syllable.

“Is this how you seek to repay me? By slaughtering my kin and defiling his corpse? Ungrateful, unruly, undisciplined…You have taken more than you’ve been given, and I will not suffer to let you think this will go unpunished.”

The Summer King exhaled a long, frustrated sigh.

“You partook of that pixie’s flesh, did you not?” He asked, knowing he would receive no answer. “Thus, I will partake of yours.”

Chaos. Cries and shrieks of fear broke out in the streets as the mortals worked out what that meant. Many began to flee, in vain, as if running from Mazus was possible. Others stayed in their homes, buried under a fort of pillows and blankets to block off the inevitable. To not see it, as it came for them…And some watched. Awestruck. Shellshocked. At the devastation that would await them.

Mazus parted his lips, wide and slow, granting the fiefdom a look into the empty, dark maw of his mouth. His hot breath washed over them, smelling of sweetgrass, honeysuckle, and cloves. They could hear the drip of lakes-full of saliva as it pooled in his mouth, eager and hungry to devour them. His tongue slid out from the starving cavern, a massive red monster that landed in the ground with a cacophonous rumble. It was just as incomprehensibly large as the rest of the faery, each taste bud big enough to utterly dwarf any mountain or hill.

The tongue slid across the ground, unyielding and unmerciful as it tore through buildings and trees and people. Those at the end of the tongue’s path realized, dreadfully, that not only was escape futile…but it would only take the King one mere lick to be rid of them all. On and on it went, the sticky wet flesh scooping up the land like it was a fair treat to the monolithic King. Some mortals survived the initial contact with it, standing upon unstable, soaked wreckage that rode along with the tongue on its disastrous journey. Above them shone a roof of pearly white teeth, and behind them…

Well. Nobody wanted to think about what was behind them.

It couldn’t have lasted more than half a minute, but the act felt as if it were taking a lifetime. Watching their home be torn apart, ravaged, by nothing more than a tongue very quickly drove the defeated human to madness. It deprived them of hope, and many fell to their knees in despair and gave up to allow Mazus to eat them. At the end of the fiefdom, he dug the tongue into the earth so that he may spoon every single mortal morsel into his mouth. Balancing the debris and remainder on his tongue, he rose back up so that he rested neatly on his knees, bringing the humans higher into the air than they would have ever thought possible.

Silence, deathly silence, overtook them…and then the tongue began to retreat back to its cave. The mortals screamed as they were pulled into the dark, wet maw of their displeased King, and became trapped in the hot void as his lips closed neatly after them. Saliva pooled and drenched and drowned and doomed the survivors, the landscape of his miles-long tongue shifted and moved like a snake as he tasted his snack. Mazus seemed to want to savor them, letting them sit and stew on his taste buds.

He seemed to like how they taste, for the distant monster of his stomach roared hungrily, and he hummed in appreciation at the myriad of flavors on his tongue. Sweet, salty, metallic, sour, fear, awe, reverence…

The last thing these mortals felt was the gravity shift, and a deafening gulp as he swallowed them and everything they knew whole.

A few managed to survive on the corners of his lips, sticking to him like crumbs after a delicious meal. They clung to the remains of their homes and farms, the wind of such high altitude battering against them and threatening to send them plummeting to their deaths. When they thought they were safe, a shadow once again darkened over them as a thumb bigger than their minds could reckon with crashed against his lips, brushing them deep into the crevasses of his thumbprint and off of his face. His emerald eyes shined down upon them, somehow seeing their pathetic, infinitesimal selves.

And he smirked, exhaling a quiet laugh that sent shivers down their spine despite the ungodly warmth of his skin around them.

“Lucky me,” The King murmured, so cruel and so venomous. “I get seconds.”

His lips parted, and the last vestiges of the fiefdom were pulled into his maw as he delicately licked each his fingers clean.

Other mortal settlements could no doubt see him, and had witnessed his act of destruction against their kin. Good, he thought as he rose to his feet to depart, let them see it as a lesson.

All that would remain of this rebellious village would be the crater their King’s tongue left, and the fearful stories told in the dark of what would happen should anyone test his patience again.