FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Bowser's castle was an intimidating sight. Surrounded by fire with walls sweeping upwards towards the sky, it was an imposing place, and most people knew better than to enter it. Oh, sure, Mario got in and out, but that was Mario. The average person was not going to tempt the King inside, not if they valued their life. However, now and then there was someone that went inside, not because they wanted to, but because they didn't quite know what they were getting into. This is the story of one of those people.

#

Nathan wasn't the biggest of people, nor was he normal sized. In fact, he wasn't even big enough to be called small. The proper word for the wolf, indeed, was 'Micro', and not a particularly big micro at that. The anthro wolf barely reached three inches tall, and that was when he stood up as straight as he could. Standing on his tiptoes, he might have gained another centimeter, but that was if the person doing the measuring was feeling rather generous.

Certainly he didn't stand out that much in comparison to the castle around him. Each of the cobblestones he walked over took him almost fifteen seconds to cross, and that was at a half-jog. If he walked, it would take him an entire half minute to get from one side to the other. He was encouraged to keep moving by the heat of the castle, both by the torches keeping the air at a humid, sweltering heat, and the strange heat that came up from underneath the rock. It wasn't so much that it burned, but it was a little uncomfortable to his feet if he stayed in one place for too long.

After taking nearly an hour to get out of the courtyard in front of the drawbridge, though, Nathan was at a loss for what he should do. He'd come into the castle to explore it, and maybe find something that would hold his interest for a while, but it was so much bigger than he'd thought it would be. Oh, he was used to things being larger than him, but this was the first time that he'd been in a castle. Even the hall he was in soared higher than he was used to seeing in normal houses, and made him feel even smaller than he normally did. Either the person who lived here was a fan of things being huge, or he was bigger than normal himself.

For a moment, Nathan considered leaving the castle, but there were two things that stopped him from doing that. The first was that it had taken him all this time to get across the courtyard to the entry hall of the castle, and going back would take just as long, if not longer. Even with the heat of the cobblestones keeping him moving, he doubted that he'd be able to match that speed again, not for a full hour of movement.

The second reason, and the more important one, was that the drawbridge for the castle was pulled up. If it had been any other castle, he would have considered swimming away, but with this one being surrounded by magma or lava or whatever the specific sort of molten earth it was, that wasn't really an option. The micro wolf didn't mind some heat, but he wasn't about to leap into a source of it that would turn him into a melted puddle of wolf goo.

So he walked further down the hall. Thankfully there was some carpet along the center of it, which kept his feet from feeling quite so uncomfortable. Of course, being in the middle of the hall he needed to keep his eyes peeled for anything walking around so he wasn't squished, but the soft carpet definitely was worth the extra vigilance.

Strands of carpet brushed against him. He chuckled, realizing this was how most people would feel when they were walking through a field, the strands and fibers coming up to about his waist level. It wasn't bad, almost ticklish at times, though a little bit tiring as he had to work to push some of the fibers out of the way. Thick as they were, he almost wished he had some sort of machete like the explorers in the movies.

As he made his way down the hall, he started to see more things. Portraits on the wall of a princess of some sort, a human, he thought to himself, wearing a pink dress and smiling. At first, there were only a few of these portraits, but the further down the hall Nathan went, the more of them he found. They were clustered together, showing the princess in all sorts of locations, usually surrounded by little toadstool-like creatures. It was a little bit creepy, the level of obsession the owner of the castle had with that princess. "He really needs to get a hobby," the wolf muttered to himself as he passed by what had to be the two hundredth portrait of her.

He reached a fork in the hall, and took the left one without bothering to look where he was going. At his size, directions didn't really matter much; he was as likely to be out of his depth in one direction as the other, and so far there hadn't been anything that dangerous to the castle. Well, aside from the smoldering heat and the magma moat. Lava moat. Whatever it was.

An hour passed. Nathan panted as he pushed his way through the carpet fibers, occasionally having to stop and rest. He leaned against some of the stiffer fibers, shaking his head a few times. "Just how long does this hall go on?" he muttered to himself. "How big is this castle?"

Nothing answered his question aloud, not that he expected it to. But then again, he also didn't expect the sounds of footsteps in the distance.

The wolf perked up his ears at the sound of heavy footsteps, and just like that, he had all of his energy back. Taking off at a run along the carpet, he forced himself to look forward. The footsteps were still far away after all, and the last thing he needed to do was trip while looking around for something that was probably not even in sight yet.

Surprisingly he reached the end of the carpet in little more than a minute, and he almost fell over when he stepped from the plush red material onto the cobblestones again. His feet, having gotten used to the cooler feeling of the carpet, immediately heated up from the nearly hot cobblestones, and Nathan jumped around a few times. "Hot hot hot hot!" he yelped as he leaped from one foot to another, dancing along the floor in an exceedingly strange way, trying to keep moving away from the footsteps.

Yet the footsteps were getting louder and louder, and by now he could hear them clearly. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Very heavy, he thought. Not just a regular person or anthro back there, but someone really big. Figuring he better get a look at whatever was coming down the hallway, he gingerly walked out of the carpet's direction from the hallway, and peered down.

He gasped at the sight coming his way. It looked like a large bipedal turtle, but it was thicker and more broad than any that he'd seen before. It wasn't quite fat, but merely a little chub on top of a lot of muscle. A hell of a lot of muscle, he noted as he watched the legs and arms flex as the big guy walked around. The shell was green and the skin yellow, the hair on top of the creature's head was red and the shell spiked. Sharp teeth filled the mouth, and from the way that the creature grunted and grimaced, Nathan could see every darn one of them.

But what really caught his attention were the two puffy, big feet stomping into the ground with every step the creature took. He stared at them, the yellow skin shimmering slightly with hints of sweat, and he had little doubt that the toes were soaked. After all, he was more than a little warm in the castle and he had only been here for a few hours. This large male must live here, so he was doubtlessly sweating all the time. A chance breeze blew down the hall, and the stench of musk and sweat, of sheer body odor, slammed into the wolf nearly hard enough to knock him down, and more than hard enough to stun him, leaving him wobbling a little bit.

As the turtle-thing walked down the hall, Nathan heard him muttering to himself. Well, muttering in a way that carried everywhere. He leaned forward, listening. "That stupid plumber, stealing the princess away from me. AGAIN. How many times do I have to steal her from the kingdom before he just gives up and lets me keep her?" the creature said. "I mean, I'm Bowser! How can she resist me?"

So, at least he had a name for the creature. Bowser. He felt that he should know that name, but the reasons why escaped him. That didn't matter. What did matter was that he needed to find a way to keep out of Bowser's way until he could get out of the castle again. Though...

He looked down again, staring at the big yellow feet as they carried the turtle-thing along. The wolf did like those, and would have liked a closer view of them. Not so much while they were stomping him, but he would have enjoyed a look at them. A pity that he had to stay out of their way instead of being able to get close.

What felt like a few moments went by for him, when suddenly the feet stopped moving. Nathan blinked, seeing how the toes were barely two feet away from him. A longer distance for him, not so long for Bowser. He slowly looked up, trembling as he followed the legs up to the waist, and the waist up to the slightly bulging belly, and from there to the heat.

Brutish but still intelligent eyes looked down at him, and a small wisp of flame escaped the reptile's mouth. "Ugh, another bug in my castle," Bowser grunted. One foot lifted off of the ground, the three toes spreading slightly as they wiggled. From this close distance, Nathan could see that the underside was a slightly different shade of yellow, and that the bottom was fairly flat, with little to no arch in comparison to most plantigrade feet. "Better get rid of it."

"Hey wait!" Nathan shouted as he backpedaled. "I'm not - oof!" he cut off as he tripped over one of the gaps between the cobblestones, falling on his back. The foot continued its descent, and his eyes went wide. "I'm not a bug!" he tried to shout.

Unfortunately, his voice was either too quiet or Bowser couldn't hear. That, or the reptile just didn't care. The foot came down on top of him, pinning him in place under the musky foot flesh. His nose filled with the odor of feet, and sweat, and the fur on his chest and belly and, well, everywhere on his front was utterly soaked in the stuff. His muzzle poked between two of the puffy, somehow soft toes, the skin rubbing against him with every little shift that Bowser made. Surprisingly, he wasn't dead. At least, not yet.

The pressure suddenly picked up, and Nathan gasped as he was held down by the foot against the floor. Thankfully the cobblestones weren't hot enough to burn him through his fur coat, but it still made it even hotter for him. He gasped for breath, the hot air made even more humid with the addition of the slick foot on top of him. Already the pressure was threatening to make several things inside of him pop, and he doubted that Bowser was using his full weight.

"A fuzzy kind of bug. Haven't seen one of those before," the bigger male muttered, his voice barely audible to Nathan. "Heh, gonna have to wash my foot off for sure after I'm done with this one."

Groaning, the wolf tried to pull his arms from the floor to push at the foot, tried to squirm. Both were futile. The pressure on top of him was too great for any sort of movement, and he could already feel himself sinking against the giving foot flesh of the giant above him. The toes drummed around his head, wiggling up and down. It not only fanned the scent of the sweat between the toes further into his nose, but drenched his lips with the small pools of sweat between them, forcing him to open his mouth and swallow it if he didn't want to drown before he was crushed.

As he swallowed it down, the pressure gradually increased on top of him, and he gagged and gasped under the foot. It was slow as the foot seemed to give a bit, letting him sink into the flesh as it crushed him between the stones below and the sweaty skin above. He felt the heat soaking into him, forcing him to sweat as well. Honestly he wouldn't have been surprised if he was sweating something else by this point, but with his face bound between the toes, there was no way for him to be sure.

Seconds stretched out as Bowser put more and more weight down on his foot, forcing Nathan further and further into the foot and harder and harder against the stone floor. He groaned between the toes, his breathing getting shallower and shallower as he felt his body get thinner and thinner, flattened out under the broad foot above. His chest burned, air coming in short supply as the pressure increased bit by bit.

A crack broke his concentration, but he had so little air in his lungs and body that he could barely feel it. He assumed it came from his chest or his hips, but he couldn't feel it to be sure. But he knew that it meant that his body wouldn't be standing up to much more.

The sensation of pressure increased from his feet upwards. As Bowser's foot flattened out over him, it squished him flat. Nathan could just vaguely feel it starting down at his feet, splashing apart as the flesh and bones burst, leaving him without them. The rest of his body was numb to it, flattening out with everything inside crushed as the foot slowly pushed down more firmly.

Gasping and gagging, the wolf remained pinned down beneath the toes. They held him firmly, but were slowly descending on top of him. He closed his eyes, unwilling to watch them come down on him, but feeling them anyway as they pressed on his face. The pressure against the end of his muzzle was terrible, strong and powerful, and he felt it getting pushed into his face, breaking it down, destroying it.

With that done, his face only lasted for a second longer as the toes crushed it. The last thought in his head wasn't fear, nor was it anything of anger or hate. He wasn't that kind of wolf. It was actually a very simple sort of thought, and if Bowser had heard it, he might have been surprised. Surprised, and probably flattered.

Nathan's last thought before he was totally crushed was, "At least I got a good look at his feet."

Optional Additional Ending

Groaning, Nathan pulled himself up from a cobblestone with a shake of his head. "Ugh, that has to be the longest crush to date," the wolf muttered to himself. He shook a bit as he stood up, tottering from one side to the other as he got used to being alive again.

Due to their size, micros usually didn't live that long. If they weren't stomped on by someone much bigger than them, they were snapped up by a normally harmless creature, or faced some other sort of death that got them at an early age. As a result, the number of micros in the world was not very high.

One of the few reasons that Nathan had lived as long as he had was because he was a special sort of micro. Every so often, one of them were born that had the ability to reform after death, and while it did take a little time, it made sure that they'd be able to survive long enough to keep the micro race going.

"That makes....43 reformations, I think," the wolf said to himself as he rubbed his arms, getting the circulation going strong. "I wonder if I can make it 44 before the day is over." His eyes flicked around the room in the castle, setting out to try and find Bowser again.