The Ikon - 3/3

Disclaimer: This story contains adult themes. It is not suitable for minors or the easily offended.

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Alice joined the clergy to have her own life apart from her family. But when her very special sister comes of age, Alice must answer her Calling.

Contains: Rapid Breast Expansion, Breast Expansion as Weight Gain, Giantess

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The Ikon

III

When Lucien gave up his chambers to Alice, he’d claimed he was taking a room at the village inn. At nightfall, Alice sent the crowd of petitioners away. She got her sister settled for bed, and walked to the inn. Despite the late hour, the common room bustled with revelry; toasts and cheers for Lady Titania and her Ikon ringing out every few minutes.

“Aye, he was here,” the innkeeper said. “He set off for t’capital two or three nights ago.”

By the time Alice caught up with Lucien, dusk had fallen the following day. The old priest was spending the night in a hayloft, which meant there were none but horses to overhear Alice berate the man.

“What do you mean by fleeing your post?”

“Flee my post? I’ve served the people of Rivermere since I was younger than you, girl.”

“And that means you can just slip off in the night, without a word?”

Lucien relaxed somewhat, blowing out a sigh. “Sister Alice, what is this really about?”

“Did you know this would happen?”

“What would happen?”

“Lydia’s consecration… making her… bigger?”

“The Ikon has always been a healthy young woman.”

“Lucien. Half the village were lined up outside the chapel yesterday morning with food offerings, and I had to send them home last night. She does nothing but eat, and she’s growing as fast as she eats. Titania’s tits, she was over eight feet tall when I left!”

“You shouldn’t blaspheme, Sister.”

Alice scoffed. “I’ve heard you say as much and worse a dozen times. Are you coming back to help me or not?”

Lucien shook his head.

“But why?”

The old priest put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve done my part, Alice. Lady knows your sister isn’t the easiest person to care for, but I served. I did all Titania asked of me and more. I dare say I’ve earned my rest.”

Alice sighed. “Alright.”

“Our Lady wouldn’t ask more than you’re able, Sister. She wont forsake you.”

“Right. Thanks, Lucien.”

It had gotten dark while she argued with Lucien, so Alice took a room for the night. She had to get back to Rivermere, back to the Ikon.

By the time she returned to the chapel in Rivermere, Alice had been gone nearly three days. Unseasonable rain showers delayed her return journey, and then she came upon a caravan of pilgrims en route to the Ikon. She was obliged to travel with them and their ox-carts, overflowing with harvest produce.

Chawmp champ… Mmmm!

Uwoooom

Alice edged past the queue of petitioners at the chapel, dreading what she’d find inside. She could hear Lydia stuffing her face from the courtyard, for stars’ sake!

The Ikon had grown even more than Alice feared. Her throne was nowhere in sight, likely shattered to pieces under a bottom that was several paces wide. Her legs spread down the sides of the chamber, each meaty thigh rising to Alice’s chest. Her head was still a few feet shy of the ceiling rafters, but she couldn’t have stood up without destroying the chapel’s roof. A few steps into the audience chamber, Alice lost sight of Lydia’s face. Her supernatural growth had expanded her body in every direction, but her inhuman breasts continued to grow faster than the rest. They thrust out from Lydia’s giant frame, hovering in the upper portion of the chamber like a second ceiling. While Alice could walk under that ceiling easily, a group of hunched-over men scurried around in the shadow of the Ikon’s bosom.

Someone had organized the queue in a horseshoe shape; coming in one door, looping around to toss their offerings into large baskets. Bigger offerings, which had become more of them than not, were simply dropped off. Each of the faithful called their praise and admiration up to the Ikon as they passed, following the queue out the other side of the double doors. If Lydia made any response to this adoration, it was muffled by the appreciative moans of her eating. Once filled, the men hauled the baskets under Lydia’s bosom to perch them on her right leg, just above the knee. Lydia, in turn, lifted each basket like a large bowl, propped it on the vast shelf of her bosom, scooped whatever food it contained into her mouth, and set the empty basket on her left knee. The whole operation was surprisingly efficient, which Alice didn’t necessarily see as a good thing.

Optimized offerings meant her sister was stuffing her face faster than ever. Charlotte’s ingenious gown was intact, to Alice’s astonishment, but it appeared to be near the end of its rope. Gone was the train of surplus linen brushing the floor behind her back, and the strips over her legs reached no further than her knees. Once flowy and elegant, every spare inch of material was stretched taut as a bowstring by her voluminous bosom. Two strips of linen arced up over their middles, and hints of areola peeked out where flesh billowed around its restraints. The rings holding everything together were warped into ovals, creaking and groaning with each basket Lydia emptied.

Charlotte stood near Lydia’s left ankle, scratching her head. She’d brought another gown—at least, that’s what Alice hoped the wheelbarrow of folded linen was—but she watched the Ikon eat and grow, seeming even more overwhelmed than Alice herself.

“Charlotte?”

“Oh, Sister, thank goodness you’ve returned.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Well, I’ve brought new garments for the Ikon, you see.”

“Let me guess; another dream vision?”

Charlotte grinned mischievously. “Don’t tell anyone, but I made the same gown as before, and simply doubled the measurements. The other sewers in town leant me their aid. After seeing the Ikon with my own eyes, I thought she might need it…”

Alice followed the seamstress’s wide-eyed gaze as she stared up at Lydia’s swelling form. Her mountainous bosom gurgled, and one of the rings became less circular.

Charlotte gulped. “Perhaps we should have tripled the measurements.”

Alice put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “You did well, Charlotte.” My sister eats like a pig, she did not add.

“Thank you, Sister. There isn’t enough linen left in Rivermere to make such a garment, anyhow. It took nearly our entire stock to make this one.” Her eyes flicked back up to Lydia’s looming femininity. “We did make the bodice segments a bit more, erm, accommodating this time, thank the Lady.”

“A… wise precaution, to be sure…” Alice shook herself. “We should forestall the offerings to get her changed into it, yes? I don’t think we’ll get her behind that curtain.”

“I think it’s best if we don’t ask her to move, yes.”

Alice imagined her sister crawling back to her bedchamber like a gigantic baby in a house made of twigs. She nodded.

Two women approached the seamstress. “I think we’re ready, Charlotte.”

Alice paused Lydia’s snacking—after explaining the situation to her sister yet again—and sent the petitioners outside. Between Charlotte and her fellow seamstresses, they’d assembled a team of about a dozen assistants and laborers, including the men who’d been ferrying baskets of food. They scaled the walls on ropes, and Alice noticed for the first time that the loops and scrollwork of the ceiling beams was not entirely decorative.

With the lightest bite of cutters into its rings, Lydia’s garment burst off her like dandelion fluff in a stiff wind. Her bosom plumped excitedly out of its confines, dropping a bit nearer the floor and taking up even more space. Their fat, glistening nipples were larger than Alice’s fist.

Charlotte’s band seemed unaffected by this spectacle. The women gathered the remains of Lydia’s old gown while the men hoisted the new one on rope lines. They worked with the efficiency of a ship’s crew, synchronized with shouts and chants. Like sails raised to catch the wind, yard after yard of linen draped across the Ikon’s vast form. More pulling and heaving drew everything snug, and in a matter of moments, Lydia was clothed as she had been. But rather than an overstuffed robe struggling to contain its wearer, this one was a perfect fit.

“Aww, it’s so cute!” Lydia boomed. “Thanks so much, everyone!”

Grrrrwgle

“Can you let my people in, Alice? I’m still hungry.”

THOOM! BWOOM!

Lydia bounced on her bottom, licking her lips. Dust and cracked plaster rained down from the chapel ceiling. On the downward bounces, Lydia’s quaking bosom nearly reached the floor.

Alice waved to the man guarding the doors. “Get the queue going again, please.”

If Lydia kept that up, she’d bring the building down on their heads. In moments, the queue was reformed and filling baskets of food for the Ikon to wolf down. Alice felt the chapel floor vibrate as those baskets of food miraculously became more and more Lydia. It was a good thing her new dress had room to grow.

Thoom!

Crack!

Two mornings later, Alice was thrown from her bed by an earthquake. An earthquake, and a wall collapsing somewhere far too nearby. She sprang to her feet, but when she yanked open her door, the opening was blocked by pale, plush skin. The ground shook. This was no earthquake.

Squeezing through her small window, Alice ran to the back garden, where she heard the wall collapse. A pair of legs that could only belong to her sister stretched onto the lawn. Toes towered over her head, ankles that started above her waist thickened ever higher toward calves and dimpled knees just inside what had once been Lydia’s sleeping chamber. Alice peered in through the gaping wall. Past the knees, the legs only got wider and taller and rounder until they seemed to fill the entire chapel from one wall to its opposite.

Homf! Chomp, chomp… Brrrrm

Echoing through the small building were the unmistakeable sounds of eating. This was getting ridiculous. Okay, Alice admitted to herself as she circled around to the front of the chapel, this had been ridiculous for a while. Her sister’s size when she’d first returned to Rivermere could have been called ridiculous. This was absurd, unreal… Alice didn’t have a word for what this was, but it had to stop.

Despite having seen the situation at the rear of the chapel, Alice gasped as she beheld her sister’s upper half. Lydia had rolled onto her back, which explained the earthquake and the demolished wall. Her arms were folded under her head, and her breasts filled the chamber even more fully than her thighs and bottom. Her new dress already tight and straining, Lydia’s gargantuan glands formed a curving wall of flesh bisected by two strips of taut linen and a tight crevice of cleavage. They pressed against both side walls and reached nearly to the ceiling. That explained why Alice’s door was blocked.

The same volunteers, who Alice had come to think of as her acolytes—or at least, her sister’s acolytes—had devised a new system for getting food offerings into the Ikon. With the same loops and pulleys they’d used to change her gown, they hung two bushel baskets in such a way that each could be swung out over Lydia’s head, tipped into her open mouth, then brought back to be refilled while the other took its place.

“Good morning -homf- Alice!”

“Hi… I see you’ve made yourself more comfortable.”

“Oh -ulp- yeah. Sitting up was getting -munch- so cramped.”

Alice couldn’t believe her eyes. Each of those baskets would have lasted their family several days when they were girls, even with Lydia’s healthy appetite. This Lydia, the Ikon, was emptying them in single mouthfuls! The acolytes worked so efficiently that Alice couldn’t reach a count of fifteen between each of her sister’s “bites.”

She stopped a woman struggling with a wheelbarrow of roasted meats. “Why are you all still feeding her? Don’t you think she’s big enough?”

The woman looked genuinely confused. She smiled at Alice as if this was the happiest day of her life. “I’m not sure what you mean, Sister. It’s our joy and privilege to serve Our Lady’s Ikon.”

Alice prayed the wince hadn’t reached her face. “Of course. Lady bless you for your, er, generosity.”

Munch, gulp, grooooow…

All day, Lydia’s followers hauled baskets and carts and wagon loads of offerings to the chapel. The acolytes filled their baskets and dumped them into her mouth. Lydia ate and ate, and she grew and grew.

Sometime after midday, Alice and the acolytes found puddles on the chapel floor. They spread rugs to keep the volunteers’ feet from slipping, but the source wasn’t hard to deduce. Without a baby, without even being pregnant, Lydia was making milk. It was a sign of how many impossible things Alice had seen already that this new development barely registered as odd. She simply shuddered at the thought of a newborn huge enough to nurse from twelve-foot tall udders.

Lydia herself had fallen into another trance. Between mouthfuls the size of a sheep or pig, she murmured for more. The acolytes dripped with sweat as they heaved on ropes, dumping food into her without ceasing.

Grrroooown… plop!

Somewhere far above their heads, Lydia’s pony keg nipples slid into cavities in the chapel ceiling which must have been crafted for the purpose. Her behemoth bosom churned and heaved, gurgling with a sound different from the stretching and swelling Alice had endured for the past week.

Crosh, cresh, glug glug glug…

Faster even than the inhuman speed with which they’d grown to fill the chapel, the Ikon’s breasts bulged in every direction. A gushing sound like a babbling brook surrounded Alice, and a tumult of voices drew her out to the courtyard.

All around the chapel, down the lane, and even to the village square, fountains ran white with milk. Carved stonework Alice had always assumed was mere ornamentation turned out to be fountains and aqueducts. The large fountain in the square now sprayed milk instead of water. Sculptures of Titania’s Daughters decorating the chapel gushed from their carved nipples. And in between, basins filled with thick, rich goodness until they overflowed.

Once again, the villagers were a step ahead of Alice. Anyone not queued to dump even more food into her gigantic sister clustered around the fountains. They filled jugs and jars, bottles and bowls, flagons and flasks. They made giddy toasts and guzzled it down, singing the Goddess’s praises. They’d been cheerful when they brought Lydia food offerings; now they smiled and danced with pure joy. Someone handed Alice a mug brimming with milk. Her every instinct told her to shove it back into their hands or pour it on the cobbles. Nevertheless, a small crowd watched her expectantly, so she drank. To her annoyance, the milk was quite good—rather than holding back a gag, she wiped her lips with a finger and smiled at the beaming onlookers.

For the remainder of the day, everything in Rivermere that wasn’t centered on the Ikon ceased. Half the village collected and transported milk while the other half continued to offer food at the chapel’s entrance. Alice gave directions and assistance where she could, but most of the time, there was nothing for her to do but watch. Hearing Titania’s voice at her sister’s consecration had stirred her faith. The revelation of the chapel’s pulley and rigging system had solidified it. The apotheosis of milk fountains, built into the structure before she or her sister were even born, erased all doubt. Whatever the Goddess’s plans, Lydia was at the center of it. Be that as it may, Alice hoped the Rivermerians could gather enough milk to balance out the tonnes of harvest they’d fed to their Ikon while the fountains lasted.

Indeed, as Alice sat in the courtyard, she watched the chapel walls bow. Over the din of the crowd and the echoes of Lydia’s incessant eating, she heard stones grind and beams creak. Her sister’s enormous head had inched out of the doors over the hours until she seemed to be wearing the entire building as a dress. A dress that was getting tighter as the acolytes rigged more pulleys and fed Lydia ever faster.

Gulp, ulp, ulp, ulp…

Like a crate fattening into a barrel, the Titanian chapel bulged and curved. The box-like shape became increasingly spherical as Lydia ate and ate. Rivulets of milk seeped between widening gaps in the stonework. Fresh streams trickled down from above as the triangular roof plumped upward like a double-arched dome.

As Alice suspected, the milk fountains wouldn’t last long. Their streaming arcs sputtered as the chapel distorted, more and more milk seeping between the cracking stone. The leaks became sprays, like the hull of a leaking ship in reverse. A mist of milk wafted over the courtyard. The chapel hissed like a boiling kettle.

“Get back!” Alice yelled at the acolytes.

For the first time since the morning of her consecration, Lydia’s queue of food-bearing followers had subsided. The dozen or so men and women who’d been feeding her fled across the courtyard, helping Alice evacuate the space around the chapel.

CRRASSHH!!!

The structure’s side walls collapsed into heaps. Its front fell halo-like around Lydia’s head. The roof exploded in a shower of slate and timber that luckily landed short of the watching crowd. Lydia let out an animalistic, ecstatic cry as milk geysered from her enormous nipples. The mist became a showering deluge. Unconstrained by the stone building, the Ikon’s gargantuan bosom rose higher and wider than any of the buildings around it. She thrashed and whimpered, shaking the ground as her eruption continued.

Alice held her hands fruitlessly over her head, then dropped them. She was already drenched. All around her, people laughed and sang. They set out pans and buckets to collect the raining milk. After what felt like hours, but was probably closer to ten or twenty minutes, Lydia’s letdown subsided into a steady, gushing flow. She rose from the rubble of the Titanian chapel to tower over Rivermere.

Her knees rose above Alice’s head. The single-story buildings around her reached no higher than mid-thigh. She cast the entire courtyard in shadow, most of it caused by her massive bosom. Despite doing nothing but gorge herself for over a week, most of Lydia’s body was no more plump than it’d been when Alice returned home. The “miracle” of her consecration had turned much of those nutrients into height, growing her over thirty feet tall. The rest of her food offerings had gone into her breasts. Full and fat, they jutted forward over a dozen feet. They spread wider than her pampered torso. Heavy and engorged, they hung to her navel, streaked with still-flowing milk. Her outfit, now soaked, still technically fit, though the strips meant to cover that bosom had slid between them, leaving her cask-sized nipples twitching in the open air.

“That was all soooooo yummy! Thank you so much, everyone!”

Bundles of people clustered under the milk-falls streaming down Lydia’s breasts, filling buckets and barrels. Still smiling and embracing, they seemed wholly unbothered that their harvest stockpile had been decimated. Many were already churning butter and squeezing lumps of cheese. While she’d given up on trying to comprehend Lady Titania’s plan, Alice couldn’t help but wonder if it was all worth it. What would she do with Lydia now? Where would she live? Could Alice find a house, or even a tent, big enough? How much food would she need to keep her gigantic sister fed? If she could get Lydia to fast once in a while, would she slim back down to a more manageable size?

THOOM, THOOM, THOOM

While Alice ruminated, the Ikon had turned and begun thundering out of Rivermere. Buildings trembled with each footfall, and she left small craters in the cobblestone streets. Alice ran after her, shouting to get her attention.

“Lydia!!”

Lydia stopped and turned, looking at the ground around her. “Alice? Where are you?”

Far above her head, Alice saw nothing but the undersides of those enormous breasts. Lydia pawed at her overfed chest, tugging her outfit straps back over her nipples, which did little to conceal the still-leaking nubs. She took a step back, crashing into a building with a hip that sent plaster and wood showering down.

“Oops… Oh, there you are, Alice. Aren’t we a little old to play hide-and-seek?”

Her sister couldn’t hide in the deep forest. “Where are you going?”

“It’s time for me to move on. There are so many towns and villages out there that need Titania’s blessing. More of Her followers for me to visit.”

Growwargh

Lydia’s growling stomach betrayed her benevolent words. She patted her stomach and licked her lips as if unaware of her actions.

Alice’s blood ran cold. It was the worst possible scenario. If one small village did this to her, what would a “visit” to every town in the kingdom do? How big could she get? Even with her slow, lumbering gait, she could easily eat her way clear to the coast. The Titanian temple in Buxmore Harbor was far larger than the chapel Lydia had outgrown. She could probably still stand upright inside it. Alice imagined an entire city feeding her sister. Galleys and frigates loaded with food offerings from across the sea. More acolytes emptying wagons and carts into her sister until she outgrew even that grand cathedral.

Not waiting for Alice’s response, Lydia continued waddling away. While Alice stood in her sister’s wake, Charlotte and the acolytes rushed past her. They led empty ox carts ready to fill with food and a wagonload of linen.

Alice sighed. Rivermere would have to rebuild, but they wouldn’t need her help with that. Her place was by Lydia’s side, no matter what Lady Titania’s mysterious plan was for her gluttonous sister.